This power the Kanungos availed themselves of, and it was the
rod which they held over them so that the apprehension of an increase of his
rents kept the zamindar in very effectual awe of the Kanungo.
rod which they held over them so that the apprehension of an increase of his
rents kept the zamindar in very effectual awe of the Kanungo.
Cambridge History of India - v5 - British India
B.
Denham.
3 Christopher Sweitzer's Account of Ceylon.
## p. 403 (#431) ############################################
EARLY MISTAKES
403
results were lamentable. The Company selected as its representative
a Madras civilian named Andrews, who was to negotiate a treaty with
the king of Kandi, and, with plenary powers, to superintend the
revenue arrangements. He was a mari of rash and drastic measures,
utterly ignorant of the people he was sent to govern, and blind to the
fact that a newly, and barely, conquered country requires sympathy
and tactful persuasion rather than revolutionary changes. He ruth-
lessly swept away all the old customs and service tenures, and intro-
duced, without warning or preparation, the revenue system of Madras,
which meant not only taxes and duties unheard of before, but the
farming-out of those imposts to aliens from the coast of India,
"enemies to the religion of the Sinhalese, strangers to their habits,
and animated by no impulse but extortion" (Governor North). 1 They
were under inadequate supervision, and it did not take many months
to bring about the inevitable catastrophe. A fierce rebellion broke
out; the forces at the disposal of the new rulers were few; the rebels
held strong positions on the borderland between the low country and
the hills; and it was only after fierce fighting and considerable loss
of life that any headway was made against them.
This state of affairs was intolerable. Andrews was at once with-
drawn; his outrageous crew of tax-collectors was sent back to the
coast, and Pitt got his way earlier than he expected. The island was
made a crown colony, and the first governor sent out to administer
it was Frederick North, who landed in October, 1798. He was at
first placed under the orders of the governor-general of India; but
after the Treaty of Amiens four years later, this arrangement was
ended. He kept up a considerable correspondence with Lord Morn-
ington (afterwards the Marquess Wellesley), preserved in the
Wellesley MSS, and his letters throw a revealing light upon the
questionable policy he adopted. He set to work at once to abolish
the hateful taxes of his predecessor, eject the remaining Madras
civilians, and change the fiscal policy of the government by reverting
for the time to the system which the Dutch had worked upon; for
in spite of its obvious defects, it was at least familiar to the people.
Unfortunately his attention was diverted from these peaceful efforts
towards reform by a series of events at the capital of the island,
Kandi; and his method of dealing with this crisis has undoubtedly
left a stain upon his character. At the same time it may be urged
that a man must to a certain extent be judged by the standard of his
age; and it was not an age of extreme official probity or humanity.
In 1787 we find Governor Phillip, before starting for New South
Wales, deliberately suggesting in an official memorandum that, for
certain crimes,
.
1 Letter from Hon. F. North, Wellesley MSS.
2 Afterwards fifth Earl of Guildford. He was remarkable for his love of
Greece and the Greek language. He had a good deal to do with the foundation
of the Ionian University at Corfu, of which he was the first Chancellor,
## p. 404 (#432) ############################################
404
CONQUEST OF CEYLON, 1795-1815
I would wish to confine the criminal till an opportunity offered of delivering
him as a prisoner to the natives of New Zealand, and let them eat him. 1
It was not a nice age, from the modern point of view; but whether
such instances as these can excuse North for the breach of faith he
was guilty of, must be left to the judgment of the reader.
The king of Kandi died, or was deposed, in the same year as
governor North landed, and the prime minister nominated a nephew
of the queen's, Vikrama Raja Sinha, to succeed him. This was quite
in accordance with Kandian custom, and the English Government
accepted the arrangement, and prepared an embassy to the new king.
The prime minister's name was Pilamé Talawé, and he was to bulk
very large in the history of Ceylon for the next few luckless years.
He was a traitor of a not unfamiliar oriental type, and had no sooner
put his nominee on the throne than he began to conspire against him
with a view to his own advancement to the kingly dignity. He sought
a secret interview with North and explained his plans, his excuse for
his treachery being that the reigning family was of alien (i. e. South
Indian) origin, and that it was advisable to replace it by a family of
native extraction. Unfortunately North listened to the tempter; he
was anxious to get hold of Kandi, and thought he saw his chance.
After much tortuous negotiation it was finally agreed that the prime
minister should persuade the king to allow an ambassador to enter
Kandi with an armed escort, which was to be far larger than was
reported to the king; and North hoped that this "ambassador” (to
wit, his principal general) would be able to secure and hold Kandi
for the English, depose the unoffending monarch, and put Pilamé
Talawé in his place as titular monarch.
The plot fell through; for though the raja at first fell into the trap
and sanctioned the entry, the size of the escort leaked out, the other
nobles got alarmed, the king was persuaded to cancel his permission,
and the troops were mostly stopped at the boundary or led astray.
The general did indeed arrive at Kandi, but with only a handful of
men, and there was nothing for him to do but return discomfited.
But this rebuff by no means diverted the prime minister (or
adigar, as his real title was) from his intentions. After various fruitless
endeavours, he at last, in 1802, managed to effect a breach between
the Kandians and the English by causing a rich caravan, belonging
to English subjects, to be robbed by Kandian officials. This was
enough for North, who sent a large force under General Macdowall
to seize Kandi-an easy victory, as the inhabitants and the king
precipitately fled. A puppet king, Mutuswamy, with some claims
to royal blood, was placed on the throne; but it was agreed with
Pilamé Talawé that this puppet should be at once deported and that
he, the traitor, should reign in his stead. The English were sufficiently
1 Historical Records of New South Wales, vol. I, pt », p. 53.
## p. 405 (#433) ############################################
MASSACRE OF 1803
406
deluded to believe in the good faith of such a turncoat, and retired
in triumph to the coast, leaving a very small garrison (only 300
English and some native levies) behind. They had their due reward.
The adigar saw his chance, and was as ready to betray his allies the
English as his master the monarch. He calculated that by destroying
the tiny garrison and seizing the two kings, he could attain the summit
of his desires without further tedious negotiations; and proceeded to
carry out the former part of the programme. He surrounded Kandi
with sufficient troops to make resistance hopeless; he attacked and
killed many of the garrison, already decimated by disease, and called
on the remnant to surrender. Their commander, Major Davie, was
apparently not of the "bull-dog breed”. He accepted the traitor's
word that their lives should be spared, laid down his arms, and
marched out of the town on his way to Trinkomali with his sickly
following and the puppet king, Mutuswamy. But the adigar knew
well that they could not cross the large river near Kandi, as it was
swollen by floods. A party of headmen came up while they were
waiting desperately by the bank, and explained that unless Mutu-
swamy was given up, they would never be allowed to cross. Davie
was base enough to entreat the prince to agree, as the envoys had
promised that his life should be spared. The prince knew his country-
men and the adigar too well. “My god”, he exclaimed, "is it possible
that the triumphant arms of England can be so humbled as to fear
the menaces of such cowards as the Kandians? ”
Nevertheless, he was unconditionally surrendered; he stood a
mock trial with heroic restraint, answering only, "I am at the king's
mercy”; and within five minutes he met his death from the krises of
the Malay guard. His relatives and followers. were stabbed or im-
paled, and his servants were deprived of their noses and ears.
But this base act failed to save the English remnant. They were
seized by the king's troops, Major Davie was taken back to Kandi,
and the other officers and men were led two by two into a hollow
out of sight of their comrades, felled by blows inflicted by the Caffres,
and dispatched by the knives of the Kandians. One man alone
escaped from the carnage. He was found to be alive, and was twice
hung by the Kandians, but each time the rope broke. He survived
this trying ordeal, and struggled in the darkness to a hut, where a
kindly villager fed him and tended his wounds, and eventually took
him before the king, who spared his life, more probably from
superstition than humanity.
The scene of the massacre is still pointed out. "Davie's Tree"
is about three miles from Kandi, near the fatal river. The ill-starred
1 Emerson Tennent, Ceylon, II, 83.
2 See An Account of the Interior of Ceylon, by Dr Davy, a brother of the
Celebrated Şir Humphry Davy.
## p. 406 (#434) ############################################
406
CONQUEST OF CEYLON, 1795-1815
Major Davie met with a lingering doom. His life was spared, says
Mrs Heber in her journal, from a kind of superstitious feeling, as
being the individual with whom the treaty was made. He was
removed to Dumbara, but, owing to a plot by some Malays to carry
him off and get a reward from the English Government, he was
brought back to Kandi, suffering from ill-health, and died there in
1810. Several attempts were made by government to obtain his release,
but the king demanded a sea-port on the coast as the ransom for his
prisoner, and the negotiations broke down. He assumed the dress
and habits of the natives, from whom he is said latterly to have been
scarcely distinguishable, and if he had a defence for his conduct, he
was never able to make it known. His apparent cowardice was in
marked contrast to the heroism of two subordinate officers, whose
nan:es should be remembered. Captain Madge was in command of
a small fort named Fort Macdowall, with a tiny force at his disposal.
It was assaulted by swarms of Kandians simultaneously with the
attack on the capital, and safe conduct was offered in return for
capitulation. Captain Madge sternly refused, stood a blockade of
three days, and then cut his way out and began a masterly retreat
to Trinkomali, which he reached in safety, though his march lay
through an almost unbroken ambuscade. Ensign Grant was in charge
of a small redoubt called Dambudenia, slightly constructed of fascines
and earth, and garrisoned by fourteen convalescent Europeans and
twenty-two invalid Malays. He equally scorned the threats and
promises of the enemy, strengthened his flimsy fortifications with bags
of rice and provision stores, and sustained an almost incessant fire
from several thousand Kandians for ten days. His force was then
relieved from Colombo, and the place dismantled
Such was the result of North's disastrous policy; yet he seems to
have been fortunate enough to escape all official censure. Certainly
his letters to Lord Mornington do not show much remorse for his
crooked dealings; doubtless he had strong influence at home; and
the date alone may explain his escape, for in 1803 England was far
too deeply involved in her struggles with Napoleon to have much
time to spare for the petty squabbles of a distant and hardly-known
island.
The effects of the disastrous surrender at Kandi were immediate
and widespread. The whole island hovered on the verge of revolt, or
broke out into open hostilities; and the available British troops,
thinned by death and sickness, could do no more than repel the attacks
of the invaders; while the war between England and France made it
impossible to send reinforcements from home. The king of Kandi,
infiamed. by hatred of the English, defied the wiles of Pilamé Talawe,
and was backed by his whole people in his efforts to eject them from
Ceylon. He sent emissaries throughout the low country, inciting the
population to revolt, and led a large army to lay siege to Colombo.
But the garrison was strong enough to repel him when he was eighteen
## p. 407 (#435) ############################################
KANDLAN WAR
407
miles from his objective, and he retired to his hill-fastnesses, where
he felt himself secure. For it must be remembered that the country
was then without roads of any kind; dense forests and steep hills and
ravines guarded the approach to the capital; the damp enervating
heat of the low country and the foot-hills, and the plague of leeches
and mosquitoes, constituted an additional defence against English
soldiers, whose dress and equipment at that period were not exactly
of the kind best suited to warfare in near proximity to the equator.
An abortive attempt to attack Kandi from six different points in
1804 led to a very gallant action. The necessary orders had been
issued to the six different commanders, but it was eventually decided
that the difficulties were too great, and fresh orders were sent can-
celling the whole scheme. But the countermand failed to reach
Captain Johnston, whose original orders were to march from Batti-
caloa, join a detachment from Uva, and attack Kandi from the east.
He set out accordingly, with a force of 82 Europeans and 220 native
troops, failed to find any detachment from Uva, fought his way to
Kandi through the thick, unhealthy jungle and unknown country,
and took and occupied the capital for three days. As there was no
sign of any of the supporting contingents, he evacuated the town and
marched back to Trinkomali, with only sixteen British soldiers killed
and wounded. His march was through a continuous ambuscade; and,
besides his human foes, he had to contend with malaria, heavy rains,
bad equipment, the plague of insects and the want of provisions. He
has the credit of having performed the pluckiest military feat in the
annals of Ceylon.
A long period of sullen inaction followed, during which the
Kandian king gave way to all the worst excesses of an oriental tyrant.
The traitor adigar was detected in an attempt to assassinate the king
and met with a traitor's doom in 1812, and was succeeded by his
nephew, Eheylapola. This minister, heedless of the warning of his
uncle's fate, secretly solicited the help of the English to organise a
general revolt against the despot of the hills. But his treason was
discovered, and he fled for protection to Colombo, leaving behind
him his wife and family. The tragedy which followed is thus
described by Dr Davy : 1
Hurried along by the flood of his revenge, the tyrant resolved to punish
Eheylapola through his family, who still remained in his power : he sentenced
his wife and children, and his brother and wife, to death-the brother and
children to be beheaded, and the females to be drowned. In front of the
Queen's Palace the wife and children were brought from prison and delivered
over to their executioners. The lady, with great resolution, maintained her
own and her children's innocence, and then desired her eldest child to submit
to his fate. The poor boy, who was eleven years old, clung to his mother terrified
and crying; her second son, of nine years, stepped forward and bade his brother
not to be afraid; he would show him the way to die. y the blow of a sword
1 An Account of the Interior of Ceylon.
## p. 408 (#436) ############################################
408
CONQUEST OF CEYLON, 1795-1815
the head of the child was severed from the body, and thrown into a rice
mortar : the pestle was put into the mother's hands, and she was ordered to
pound it, or be disgracefully tortured. To avoid the infamy, the wretched
woman did lift up the pestle and let it fall. One by one the heads of the
children were cut off, and one by one the poor mother-but the circumstance
is too dreadful to be dwelt on. One of the children was an infant; it was
plucked from its mother's breast to be beheaded. After the execution the
sufferings of the mother were speedily relieved. She and her sister-in-law
were taken to the little tank at Bogambara and drowned.
This extract has been given in full because the memory of the
horror is still very vivid among the Sinhalese; and "The Tragedy of
Eheylapola's wife" is told and retold by many a professional story-
teller,
But the tyrant's punishment was fortunately near at hand, and
the year 1815 equally witnessed the defeat of Napoleon and the
extinction of the Kandian dynasty. He ventured to seize and disgrace-
fully mutilate a party of merchants, British subjects, who had gone
up to Kandi to trade, and sent them back to Colombo with their
severed members tied round their necks. This was the last straw :
an avenging army was instantly on the march, led by Governor Sir
R. Brownrigg in person, and within two weeks was well within reach
of the capital. The king meanwhile remained in a state of almost
passive inertness, rejecting all belief in our serious intentions to
attack him. A messenger brought him news of our troops having
crossed the frontiers : he directed his head to be struck off. Another
informed him of the defeat of his troops in the Seven Korles : he
ordered him to be impaled alive. At length he precipitately quitted
Kandi, and (14 February) the English marched in and took posses-
sion. An armed party sent out by Eheylapola discovered the house to
which the king had fled, pulled down the wall of the room where he
was hiding, and suddenly exposed the crouching tyrant to the glare of
the torches of the bystanders. He was bound with ropes, subjected
to every obloquy and insult, and handed over to the English autho-
rities, who eventually transported him to Vellore in India, where he
died in January, 1832. 2
Kandian independence was over; the whole island was in the
hands of the English, and the new régime began.
1 Emerson Tennent, Ceylon, II, 89.
2 A narrative of events which have recently occurred in Ceylon, by a
Gentleman on the Spot, London, 1815.
## p. 409 (#437) ############################################
CHAPTER XXV
THE REVENUE ADMINISTRATION OF BENGAL,
1765-86
In May, 1765, Clive returned to India, and his forceful personality
was soon at work. On 16 August, 1765, the emperor Shah 'Alam,
from motives very foreign to those of Akbar, divested the nawab of
his powers as diwan, and conferred that office on the British East India
Company to hold as a free gift and royal grant in perpetuity
(altamgha). The Company in turn appointed as its deputy or naib
diwan the same officer who had been selected to act as naib nazim,
viz. Muhammad Reza Khan, who now united in his person the full
powers of the nizamat and diwanni which had been separated by
Akbar and reunited by Murshid Kuli Khan. But the arrangement
spelt failure from the beginning. The emperor was a ruler in name
only : his diwan in Bengal was a mysterious being locally known as
the Kompani Sahib Bahadur, represented by a victorious and master-
ful foreign soldier, assisted by men who were avowedly traders, whose
interests were principally engaged in maintaining the Company's
dividends, and who lacked completely the professional training
essential to efficient administration. Confusion reigned both in the
provinces of justice and revenue.
The revenue of Bengal as assessed in the reign of Akbar 1 varied
little either in the amount or the mode of levying it until the
eighteenth century, when increasing anarchy introduced fresh assess-
ments and further exactions under the name of abwabs or cesses. The
three main sources of revenue at the time when the Company assumed
the diwanni were (a) mal, i. e. the land revenue, including royalties
on salt; (b) sair, i. e. the revenue received from the customs, tolls,
ferries, etc. ; (c) bazi jama, i. e. miscellaneous headings, such as receipts
from fines, properties, excise, etc. The land revenue was collected by
hereditary agents who held land in the various districts, paid the
revenue, and stood between the government and the actual cultivators
of the soil; these agents were in general known as zamindars, and the
cultivators of the soil as ryots.
The position of the zamindar gave considerable difficulty to the
Company's senior officers. At first he was looked upon merely as a
revenue agent, with an hereditary interest and privileges in certain
districts; but later he was considered as owning land in fee simple.
The controversy is too lengthy to be followed in this chapter; but it
may be asserted that the zamindar, though not the owner of the land
1 Report of Anderson, Croftes and Bogle, dated 28 March, 1778.
## p. 410 (#438) ############################################
410
REVENUE ADMINISTRATION OF BENGAL, 1765-86
in fee simple, was by no means a mere revenue agent; it was practi-
cally impossible by constitutional methods to break his hereditary
connection with the land of which he was the zamindar; and as long
as he performed his duties he was far more impregnable in his position
than the average English official. On the other hand, the position
cf the ryots was less enviable than that of an English cultivator of
the soil at the same period. In each village there was a mandal, or
chief ryot, who acted as their agent in dealing with the various petty
officers employed by the zamindar in the collection of the land
revenue: The result of the investigation ordered in 1776 was to give
a sad picture of the lot of the ryot and of the zamindar's indifference
to liis welfare, especially during the chaotic fifty years that followed
or the death of Murshid Kuli Khan, during which the zamindar's
receipts, owing to anarchy and consequent lack of cultivation,
diminished.
“Although", in the words of the 1776 report, "the increase of the assessinent
[in 1772] may have been the principal, or at least the original cause of the
various additional taxes imposed on the ryots it did not follow that a reduction
in the assessment would produce a diminution in the rents. The prospect of
contingent and future venefits from the cultivation and improvement of his
country is hardly sometimes sufficiently powerful to induce a zamindar to forego
the immediate advantage which he enjoys by rack-renting his zamindari and
exacting the greatest possible revenue from the tenants and vassals. Were
it necessary to support the truth of this position we could produce many proofs
from the accounts which we have collected. The instances, especially in large
zamindaris, are not infrequent where a reduction in the demands of Govern-
ment have been immediately followed by new taxes and new impositions. "
The proceedings contain frequent references from the districts in
Bengal complaining of the exactions and harshness of the zamindars.
After so many years ougnt not Government [i. e. the nawab's government]
to have obtained the most perfect and intimate nature of the value of the rents
and will it be believed at this day, it is still in the dark?
So wrote Edward Baber, Resident at Midnapur, in a letter dated 13
December, 1772, to the Committee of Revenue in Calcutta. 1 We
niust now consider the efforts by the leading executive officers of the
Company to pierce this fog of ignorance.
It has been alleged 2 that having accepted the diwanni the English
deliberately adopted a policy of festina lente chiefly because they
wished to avoid the expense and unpopularity of a general survey of
the lands; but such a survey, unless conducted entirely under expert
European supervision, was worthless, and such supervision was un-
procurable. Moreover the existing revenue nomenclature had then
been in use for nearly two centuries, the population was almost
entirely illiterate, and the bulk of such revenue records as existed
were in the hands of native registrars; these factors, combined with
2
1 Revenue Board Proceedings, 15 December, 1772, pp. 417-26.
2 Firminger: Fifth Report, etc. I, 167.
## p. 411 (#439) ############################################
THE SUPERVISORS
411
their own curtailed powers and the caprices of the directors, might
well induce the Company's local authorities to move slowly. The
directors commenced by attaching an enormous salary, nine lakhs
of rupees per annum, to the office of the naib diwan, hoping thereby
to obtain uncorrupt and efficient service.
Meanwhile, under the governorship of Verelst, the president and
Select Committee made as full an enquiry as they could, arriving at
the well-known conclusions, contained in their Proceedings 2 for
16 August, 1769, in which "certain grand original sources" of the
unsatisfactory state of the revenue collection in Bengal were enume-
rated. At home, the court of directors in June, 1769, had sent orders
to Bengal, appointing a committee "for the management of the
the diwanni revenue”; and three "supervisors” with plenary powers
sailed from England in September, 1769, but after leaving the Cape
of Good Hope were never heard of again.
Verelst and his committee made a correct diagnosis of the trouble.
They realised that the Company's European servants were kept in
complete ignorance “of the real produce and capacity of the country
by a set of men who first deceive us from interest and afterwards
continue the deception from a necessary regard to their own safety".
The chaos and misrule caused by the venal officials and adventurers
who had frequented Bengal since the death of Aurangzib, combined
with the secretive methods which a continuous oppression of the ryot
by the zamindar had produced, formed an impenetrable labyrinth
of which the key was sought in vain.
Verelst's committee established supervisors of the collections;
these supervisors received instructions to make a full and complete
enquiry into the method of collecting the revenue in their respective
districts and, in fact, into any customs, knowledge of which might
assist to improve the condition of the people; the instructions breathe
a warm and humane spirit and a real desire, not merely to collect
revenue, but to assist the oppressed cultivator of the soil. The super-
visors failed, as indeed they were bound to do. Their instructions
ordered them to prepare a rent roll, and, by enquiry, to ascertain tho
fact from which a just and profitable assessment of the revenue could
be made. Such instructions were impossible to carry out. The super-
visors soon found themselves confronted by a most formidable passive
opposition from the zamindars and kanungos which prevented any
real knowledge whatever of the amount of revenue actually paid by
the ryot to the zamindar from coming to the knowledge of the Com-
pany. By this conspiracy of two corrupt and hereditary revenue
agencies all avenues of information were closed. Between them, the
zamindars and the kanungos held all the essential information, but
the kanungo was the dominant figure.
1 Cf. letter from Hastings to the Secret Committee, 1 September 1792.
2 Cf. Verelst, A View, etc. pp. 224-39.
## p. 412 (#440) ############################################
412
REVENUE ADAINISTRATION OF BENGAL, 1765-86
A full account of this officer and his duty was submitted in May,
1787, to the Board of Revenue by J. Patterson, register, Kanungo's
Office,
The kanungo comes into prominence in the reign of Akbar, who
employed him, as the name implies, to keep the records of the pargana,
a revenue sub-division. He was in fact a registrar of a district ap-
pointed to see that the crown received its dues and that the ryot was
not oppressed; his duties were responsible and onerous; he had to
register the usages of a district, the rates and mode of its assessment, and all
regulations relating thereto. To note and record the progress of cultivation, the
produce of the land and the price current thereof, and to be at all times able to
furnish Government with materials to regulate the assessment by just and
equitable proportions.
The kanungo's duties also included
che keeping of a record of all events, such as the appointments, deaths or re-
movals of zamindars, to preserve the records of the Tumar and Taksim Jama,
and the record of the boundaries and limits of zamindars, talukdaris, parganas,
villages, etc.
They also preserved in their registers the genealogies of zamindars,
records of all grants of land, copies of the contracts of the zamindars
and tax-farmers with the government, and, in short, acted as general
custodians for every description of record in the district. There were
two main, or sadar, kanungos for Bengal, but in each pargana thera
was a deputy or naib kanungo; the office became hereditary at an
early date. Murshid Kuli Khan is stated to have replaced the
kanungos of his day by an entirely new set, but the evil was not
checked, because the new kanungos passed on their office and their
knowledge to their descendants in the same way as the evicted ones
had done.
Thus the whole of the land registration, and the entire knowledge
of the actual receipts of the land revenue, were in the hands of a
hereditary close corporation, who were the only authorities on the
real state of the revenue; their power was enormous; and only com-
plete ignorance can explain Verelst and his committee's imagining
that such knowledge would be surrendered to the Company on
demand. Edward Baber, in his letter of 13 December, 1772, called the
attention of the Board of Revenue to these facts, and to the great
power which the kanungos had over the zamindars,
because it was in the power of the Kanungos to expose the value of their
parganas.
This power the Kanungos availed themselves of, and it was the
rod which they held over them so that the apprehension of an increase of his
rents kept the zamindar in very effectual awe of the Kanungo. . . . In a word
the Kanungos have an absolute influence over the Zamindars which they
exercise in every measure that can promote their own interests.
It now
1 Original consultations, no. 63, Revenue Dept. 18 May, 1787. Printed ap.
Ramshothanı, Land Revenue History of Bengal, pp. 163-97.
## p. 413 (#441) ############################################
THE KANUNGOS
413
happens that the Kanungos manage, not only the zamindars, but the business
of the province. There is not a record but what is in their possession and so
much of the executive part have they at last obtained that they are now virtually
the Collector, while he is a mere passive representative of Government. They
are the channel through which all his orders are conveyed. . . Instead of
being the agents of Government they are become the associates of the zamin-
dars and conspire with them to conceal what it is their chief duty to divulge.
Baber drives home the argument by challenging the board to
state how the last settlement (he is referring to the settlement made
by the Committee of Circuit in 1772) was made; taking the example
of Midnapur, his own district, he asks "on what information, on what
materials was it made? was there a single instrument produced to
guide the judgment of the board? " i It will be obvious that the
1
supervisors appointed in 1769 were bound to fail. They were com-
pletely and wilfully kept in the dark by officials who had everything
to lose and nothing to gain by giving the required information. The
kanungos were only prepared to serve the state on their own terms;
and those terms included a retention of the very information which
their office was created to obtain for the state. Their action was
utterly unconstitutional and involved the admission that a few families
a
should hereditarily possess information which is the sole prerogative
of the state, and that they should use that information for their
personal and pecuniary profit.
The Company's government in India created in 1770 two Boards
of Revenue, one in Murshidabad and one in Patna, to control respec-
tively the Bengal and Bihar collections; but dissensions taking place
in the council, John Cartier was ordered to hand over his office to
Warren Hastings and several other alterations were made. Hastings
assumed office as governor and president of Fort William on 13 April,
1772.
The outstanding result of the first seven years of the Company's
administration of the diwanni is that the Company's officers in Bengal
realised that they were face to face with the great problem of ascer-
taining the difference between the sum received as land revenue by
government, and the sum actually paid by the ryot to the zamindar.
This was the secret of the zamindar and kanungo which the Company
never fathomed; it forms the burden of the collectors' reports to the
Board of Revenue from 1772 onwards; and it is the basis of the great
Shore-Grant controversy. When the revenue settlement was made
permanent in 1793 this information was still wanting, and not a single
revenue officer of the Company in 1793 could state with accuracy the
entire actual amount which the zamindars in his district received
from the ryots, or the proportion which it bore to that which the
zamindar paid to the government; yet these were the conditions in
which the revenue settlement was declared permanent.
Hastings brought to his work a sound experience of Bengal, a
1 Revenue Board Proceedings, 16 December, 1772, pp. 417-26.
## p. 414 (#442) ############################################
414
REVENUE ADMINISTRATION OF BENGAL, 1765-86
1
fluent and accurate knowledge both of Persian and of Bengali : more-
over, he had the reputation of being a loyal and most efficient servant
of the Company. It is still difficult to give an impartial verdict on his
official career. In revenue work his ability was not remarkable, and
on his own admission ? he had no practical working knowledge of it;
in fact, his influence on the actual conditions of the revenue was
unfortunate, especially when contrasted with his administration and
reorganisation of the judicature in the districts, which was a vigorous
beneficial achievement. His masterful temperament often prevented
him from using the advice of subordinates better qualified than him-
self to speak authoritatively on details of revenue administration
This inflexibility must share responsibility with the jealousy of
Francis and the ill-temper of Clavering for the deadlock which
occurred in the administration of Bengal between 1774 and 1776.
The directors' orders which confronted the new governor were
of a disturbing nature. On 14 April, 1772, these dispatches containing
the well-known proclamation arrived in Calcutta. On 11 May the
information was made public :
Notice is hereby given that the Hon'ble the Court of Directors have been
pleased to divest the Nawab Muhammad Reza Khan of his station of Naib
Diwan and have determined to stand forth publicly themselves in the character
of Diwan.
This announcement radically altered the existing system of the
collections.
The new governor and his council as a prelude to carrying out
their orders, appointed a committee to tour through various districts
of Bengal and to submit a report on their observations. Thus was
formed the Committee of Circuit, consisting of the Company's most
senior officers, including the governor himself, S. Middleton, P. M.
Dacres, J. Lawrell, and J. Graham. Their terms of reference were
based on the resolutions taken by the council on 14 May, 1772, viz.
(a) to farm the lands for a period of five years;
(b) to establish a Committee of Circuit to form the settlement;
(c) to re-introduce the supervisors under the name of collectors,
assisted by an Indian diwan in each district;
(d) to restrict the officials of the Company from any private
employment.
The Committee of Circuit realised the difficulty of their work.
The Hon'ble Court of Directors . . . declare their determination to stand
forth as Diwan, and, by the agency of the Company's servants, to take upon
themselves the entire care and management of the Revenue. By what means
this agency is to be exercised we are not instructed. They have been pleased
to direct a total change of system, and have left the plan of execution of it to
the direction of the Board without any formal repeal of the regulations they
1Cf. the evidence given by Hastings for the plaintiff in the case brought
by Kamal-ud-din Khan against the Calcutta Committee of Revenue, Governor-
General's Proceedings, . 2 September, 1776, pp. 336. 7-89.
## p. 415 (#443) ############################################
COMMITTEE OF CIRCUIT
415
had before framed and adopted to another system, the abolition of which must
necessarily include that of its subsidiary institutions unless they shall be found
to coincide with the new. The Revenue is beyond all question the first object
of Government. 1
The Committee of Circuit decided to place the revenue adminis-
tration entirely under the direct control of the president and council,
who were to form a committee of revenue; they also recommended
that the Khalsa, or treasury office, should be removed from Murshi-
dabad to Calcutta, making the latter town the financial capital of
the province.
As the duties of the diwanni comprised the administration of civil
justice, and as the business of the Committee of Circuit was to
consolidate the Company's control over the diwanni, the important
question of restoring the administration of justice in the districts came
before them. The close connection between the land revenue and
civil justice necessitates a brief mention of the committee's proposals
recorded in their Proceedings. They recommended in each district
under a collector che formation of two courts, the diwanni adalat and
the faujdari adalat, the former with civil, the latter with criminal
jurisdiction; the matters cognisable by each court were strictly
defined, and the diwanni adalat was under the direct charge of the
collector. In addition to these mufassil or district courts, two similar
sadar, or headquarters' courts, were to be established in Calcutta, the
sadar diwanni adalat being presided over by the governor or a
member of council. These courts were designed to remove the abuses
in the administration of justice referred to by Verelst in his Instruc-
tion to the Supervisors. “Every decision", he writes of these native
courts, "is a corrupt bargain with the highest bidder. . . Trifling
offenders are frequently loaded with heavy demands and capital
offences are as often absolved by the venal judge. "
The most objectionable feature of the proposed regulations, as is
pointed out by Harington,4 was that they vested in one person the
powers of a tax-collector and of a magistrate. Hastings himself
a
made this complaint against Verelst's plan introducing the super-
visors; but he was apparently forced to embody the same defect in
his own regulation. Perhaps the best and most straightforward
defence of this admitted defect was that made by Shore. 6
" 3
It is impossible to draw a line between the Revenue and Judicial
Departments in such a manner as to prevent their clashing : in this case either
the Revenue must suffer or the administration of Justice be suspended. It
may be possible in course of time to induce the natives to pay their rents with
regularity and without compulsion, but this is not the case at prevent.
1 Committee of Circuit's Proceedings, 28 July, 1772, pp. 162-8.
2 Idem, 15 August, 1772, pp. 234-48. Cf. also Coleb:ooke, Supplement, etc.
3 Verelst, op. cit. pp. 229-30.
4 Harington, Analysis, 1, 34.
5 In a minute printed in India papers, vol. vi, quoted by Harington, Ana-
lysis, a, 41-3.
6 Letter to Sir G. Cnlebrooke, 26 March, 1772.
pp. 1-8.
## p. 416 (#444) ############################################
416
REVENUE ADMINISTRATION OF BENGAL, 1765-86
The Committee of Circuit's recommendations 1 were sent with a
covering letter to the council at Fort William on 15 August, 1772,
and received the council's approval on 21 August.
21 August. They proposed
that à large proportion of that land, known as huzur zilla land,
because it paid its revenue direct to the Khalsa, should be converted
into separate districts each under a collector. The whole council was to
act as a committee of revenue, and to audit the accounts of the
diwanni assisted by an Indian officer styled the rai raian. The latter
was a most important person; his duties included the supervision of
all the provincial diwans attached to the various collectorships,
to receive from them the accounts in the Bengali language and to issue to them
a counterpart of the orders which the Board of Revenue shall from time to
time expedite to the Collectors.
The salary attached to this important post was 5000 rupees a month.
The first holder was Raja Rajballabh, a son of Raja Rai Durlabh,
the old colleague of Muhammad Reza Khan. The business of the
Khalsa was precisely defined; the post of accountant-general was
created, the first holder being Charles Croftes; and the various
departments of that office, and of the treasury in general, defined
and organised. This completed the main work of the Committee of
Circuit, and unquestionably the most successful portion was that
which dealt with the administration of justice. They inherited from
the Moghul government every evil that could afflict a judicial system :
a disorganised and corrupt judicature and incompetent agents. Dacoity
was rampant, and there was no ordinary security in the land. The
new courts, although by no means perfect, brought great relief to
trie ryots and talukdars, and within a short time began to foster
confidence in the Company's administration.
On 13 October, 1772, the new Committee of Revenue commenced
its work by settling the revenue to be collected from Hugli, Midnapur,
Birbhum, Jessore and the Calcutta zamindary lands. The settlement
was for five years, and the lands were farmed out by public auction,
in order better to discover the real value of the lands. This, in itself,
is a comment on the board's revenue policy, for they must have
known that to farm the land revenue by public auction would induce
many people to bid from motives other than mere desire for profit;
the gambling instinct, the desire for power, the opportunity of inflict-
ing injury on an enemy or of humiliating a local zamindar, all
powerfully contributed to raise the bidding beyond the value of the
revenue. The board certainly expressed an opinion that, ceteris
paribus, it was preferable to accept the bids of established zamindars,
but they had definitely placed both the zamindar and the ryot at the
2
1 Committee of Circuits Proceedings, pp. 248-58. Cf. Colebrooke, Supple-
ment, pp. 8-14 and 194-200; also Harington, Analysis, 01, 25-33.
2 Letter of the President to the Court of Directors, 3 November, 1772. Cf.
Harington, op. cit. 1, 16-18.
## p. 417 (#445) ############################################
THE COLLECTORS
417
mercy of speculating and unprincipled adventurers who, in many
cases, ousted the old zamindars and thus severed an old-established
link between government and the cultivator of the soil, for the zamin-
dar, in spite of his shortcoming, had (in the words of Hastings him-
self) “riveted an authority in the district, acquired an ascendancy
over the minds of the ryots and ingratiated their affections". Between
1772 and 1781 the connection between the zamindars and their tenants
was seriously impaired by this unfortunate method.
In justice to Hastings and his colleagues it must be remembered
that they were suddenly called upon to administer the revenues of
a country which for half a century had been in a state of increasing
disorder, and to create an administrative service from young men
who had come to the country at an immature age for a purely com-
mercial career. Among their critics is Hastings himself, whose letters
in the early days of his governorship contain disparaging references
to the collectors; yet many of those so criticised were almost imme-
diately employed by him and rose to positions of comparative
eminence; the majority came from good British homes. The record
of their work, contained in the forgotten and unpublished minutes of
perished boards, shows them to have been humane, if untrained, men
genuinely anxious to relieve the distress in their districts.
A careful perusal of the proceedings of the Board of Revenue for
the years 1772 and 1773 reveals that the most valuable suggestions
for alleviating distress among the cultivators are to be found in letters
from the district officers rather than in the resolutions of the board :
in spite of the most determined passive resistance which zamindars,
kanungos,'and farmers of the revenue made to their enquiries, it was
the collectors who enabled the voice of the oppressed ryot to reach
the headquarters of government.
The collectors soon realised that the settlement had been seriously
over-estimated, but the board refused to believe their district officers
and added to the trouble by peremptory orders for the collection of
deficits. This was done with undoubted harshness, for the collectors
had no option 3 but to carry out their orders. Confinement of zamin-
dars and farmers was freely used, but without any result except that
of adding to the confusion; and the words with which Hastings, in
his letter to the directors, dated 3 November, 1772, described the
conditions of the revenue collections in Bengal on his assumption of
the governorship, might be used with truth to describe the conditions
in collecting the same revenue in 1773.
The entire system of revenue registration was still in the hands of
an hereditary corporation and was still unknown to government,
1 In the matter of the public auction of the farms consult alsu the letter
dated 17 May, 1766, para. 17 from the Court of Directors (Long, Selections,
no. 893).
2 E. g. to L. Sulivan, 10 March, 1774.
3 Letter from the Council of Revenue at Patna, . dated 17 October, 1774.
Revenue Board Proceedings, 1 November, 1774, pp. 6395-8.
27
## p. 418 (#446) ############################################
418
REVENUE ADMINISTRATION OF BENGAL, 1765-86
which had no accurate working knowledge on which to base a general
settlement, and which was, as several district officers testified, com-
pletely ignorant of the actual amount paid by the cultivator com-
pared with that received by itself. 1 Over-assessmer. i and wholesale
farming had aggravated the mischief. Though government had
established a business-like system for keeping the accounts of such
revenue as was actually received, this was but a trifle compared with
the weighty problem that was still unsolved.
The diwanni adalats relieve the sombre colours of the picture, and
in them the cultivator found a real protection and assistance at the
hands of those collectors whose work received such scanty acknow-
ledgment : but the day of the collectors was to be short. In April,
1773, the court of directors sent orders to the governor and council to
recall the collectors from their districts and to adopt other measures
for collecting the revenues. These orders were similar to those issued
in 1769 abolishing the supervisors; the directors apparently distrusted
their junior officers, and were nervous lest private trade should
engross their time. These orders were considered by the president
and council on 23 November, 1773. 2
The board drew up a detailed temporary plan in order to give
effect to these instructions, to be "adopted and completed by such
means as experience shall furnish and the final orders of the Hon'ble
Company allow”. (1) A committee of revenue at the presidency was
formed consisting of two members of the board and three senior
Servants below council who were to meet daily and transact the
necessary business assisted by the rai raian; (2) the three provinces
were divided into six divisions, each under a provincial council
consisting of a chief, assisted by four senior servants of the Company :
in Calcutta the committee of revenue above mentioned was to carry
out the duties of such a council; (3) each district, originally a
collectorship, was placed under the control of an Indian revenue
officer (diwan), except in districts entirely let to a zamindar or
farmer, who was then empowered to act as diwan; (4) occasional
inspections were to be made by commissioners specially selected by
the board for their knowledge of Persian and "moderation of temper”
The selection of these commissioners was to be unanimous;
an objection made by a single member of the Board to any proposed as want-
ing these requisites shall be a sufficient bar to his rejection without any proof
being required to support it;
(5) the various collectors were to make up their accounts and hand
over charge to Indian deputies who were empowered to hold the
courts of diwanni adalat, but appeals in all cases were allowed to the
provincial sadar adalat now constituted to form a link between the
1 Letter from C. Bentley, collector of Chittagong, dated 10 July, 1773. Re-
venue Board Proceedings, 17 August, 1773, pp. 2620-39.
2 Idem, 23 November, 1773, pp. 3453-77.
## p. 419 (#447) ############################################
PROVINCIAL COUNCILS
419
worse.
mufassal and headquarters diwanni courts; (6) with a view to check-
ing private trade the chiefs of the provincial councils were given a
salary of 3000 sicca rupees per mensem, and had to take an oath 1
not to engage in private trade.
The changes, necessitated by the directors' orders, were for the
The collectorship as a district unit of the revenue adminis-
tration was retained, but the employment of Indian diwans instead
of European collectors deprived the Company of an increasing
knowledge among its European servants of the country, the state of
the revenue, and the methods of collection; it checked the growth of
a spirit of responsibility and of public service among the junior
officers; and it diluted the European element in the district collections
to such an extent as to render it negligible. The whole scheme, for
which the directors must bear the responsibility, is tainted with the
inference that, provided the stipulated revenue was received, the
method of collecting it did not much matter.
The proceedings of the Board of Revenue from 1773 to 1776
record a monotonous list of large deficits, defaulting zamindars,
absconding farmers, and deserting ryots. The provincial councils, like
the collectors before them, protested that the country was over-
assessed; the diwans proved incapable and unbusinesslike, and were
the subject of a circular letter of complaint issued by the board to
the provincial councils.
The new system was only in force for six months before the
Regulating Act made further changes, but its proceedings display all
he signs of impending collapse. The council of Patna sent in a
moving description of the distress in their province. Anticipating
Philip Francis, they definitely recommended a settlement in perpe-
tuity, because no satisfactory collections could be made except on
that basis of stability which only a lengthy tenure furnishes.
"It remains', they write, “that we should suomit to you our sentiments
on the measures calculated to produce a remedy. It has been successfully
practised by the Hindostan Princes that where a particular district has gone
to ruin to give it to a Zamindar or any other man of known good conduct for
a long lease of years or in perpetuity at a fixed rent not to be increased should
ever the industry of the renter raise an unexpected average to himself. . . . . "
The board in their reply considered the suggestion to be too hazardous
for experiment.
Other events were now impending. On 19 October, 1774, Clavering:
Monson, and Francis arr. ved in Calcutta. Of the three new members
of council the ablest was Francis, whose malicious and petulant
character needs no description here, but whose ability and grasp of
the intricate revenue problem in Bengal, although not free from error,
3
1 Revenue Board Proceedings, 16 March, 1774.
2 Idem, 5 July, 1774, pp. 5425-6.
3 Idem, 29 January, 1773, pp. 627-33.
## p. 420 (#448) ############################################
420
REVENUE ADMINISTRATION OF BENGAL, 1765-86
was remarkable, even if due allowance is made for his alleged
indebtedness to the "coaching" of John Shore.
The Supreme Council soon offered a most unfortunate example of
disunion to all the subordinate officers of the Company, and the same
spirit appeared in the provincial councils; thus was created a spirit
of partisanship throughout the entire service, which encouraged in
farmers, zamindars, and tenants the hope that profit might be
obtained by supporting one side or the other; but in spite of these
evils, the new council brought into the administration of the revenue
a vigorous and, on the whole, healthy spirit of enquiry. Abuses were
brought to light which under a more easy-going régime would have
remained dormant. The most noticeable result of the new change was
the position of the governor-general. Hitherto Hastings had exerted
an overwhelming, almost dictatorial, control over his council, whose
proceedings for the years 1772-4 show a general compliance with
the governor's desires, and the greatest reluctance to oppose him.
This authority was now openly disregarded. The new members of
the council came out prejudiced, if not against individual servants of
the Company, against the personnel and the Company's service in
general; but allowing for their wholesale suspicion, it must be con-
ceded that the time was ripe for a complete investigation into the
methods of collecting the revenue, and for some radical changes in
that administration.
On 21 October, 1774, the new Board of Revenue met for the first
time and the governor-general explained in detail the mode of
collecting the land revenue, and the lately introduced system of the
provincial councils, and he recommended a continuation of the
system, at any rate for the present, as the season of year was soon
approaching in which the heaviest instalments of the revenue were
due for payment. The board agreed to the suggestion, partly because
they wanted to see the existing system at work, and partly because
they realised the force of the argument for a temporary continuation
of the existing system, but “they do not mean to preclude themselves
from such future alterations as . . . some mature deliberation may
suggest to them". In revenue matters, as in others, the new councillors
soon displayed their intolerance, and the first difference was between
the governor-general and Clavering over a complaint made to the
former by the rai raian against Joseph Fowke. It is impossible to
relate here in detail the many cases of friction and open quarrelling
which occurred during the new administration; this was not always
produced by the quarrelsome attitude of the new arrivals. Hastings
and Barweil were also intolerant. The rejection of certain officers
proposed by the governor-general for promotion drew a protest from
Barwell who alleged that “good and, zealous servants had been
deprived of normal promotion”; a policy, he contended, that would
create faction throughout the service and "involve the policy and
connection of the state with the different powers of Hindostan".
3 Christopher Sweitzer's Account of Ceylon.
## p. 403 (#431) ############################################
EARLY MISTAKES
403
results were lamentable. The Company selected as its representative
a Madras civilian named Andrews, who was to negotiate a treaty with
the king of Kandi, and, with plenary powers, to superintend the
revenue arrangements. He was a mari of rash and drastic measures,
utterly ignorant of the people he was sent to govern, and blind to the
fact that a newly, and barely, conquered country requires sympathy
and tactful persuasion rather than revolutionary changes. He ruth-
lessly swept away all the old customs and service tenures, and intro-
duced, without warning or preparation, the revenue system of Madras,
which meant not only taxes and duties unheard of before, but the
farming-out of those imposts to aliens from the coast of India,
"enemies to the religion of the Sinhalese, strangers to their habits,
and animated by no impulse but extortion" (Governor North). 1 They
were under inadequate supervision, and it did not take many months
to bring about the inevitable catastrophe. A fierce rebellion broke
out; the forces at the disposal of the new rulers were few; the rebels
held strong positions on the borderland between the low country and
the hills; and it was only after fierce fighting and considerable loss
of life that any headway was made against them.
This state of affairs was intolerable. Andrews was at once with-
drawn; his outrageous crew of tax-collectors was sent back to the
coast, and Pitt got his way earlier than he expected. The island was
made a crown colony, and the first governor sent out to administer
it was Frederick North, who landed in October, 1798. He was at
first placed under the orders of the governor-general of India; but
after the Treaty of Amiens four years later, this arrangement was
ended. He kept up a considerable correspondence with Lord Morn-
ington (afterwards the Marquess Wellesley), preserved in the
Wellesley MSS, and his letters throw a revealing light upon the
questionable policy he adopted. He set to work at once to abolish
the hateful taxes of his predecessor, eject the remaining Madras
civilians, and change the fiscal policy of the government by reverting
for the time to the system which the Dutch had worked upon; for
in spite of its obvious defects, it was at least familiar to the people.
Unfortunately his attention was diverted from these peaceful efforts
towards reform by a series of events at the capital of the island,
Kandi; and his method of dealing with this crisis has undoubtedly
left a stain upon his character. At the same time it may be urged
that a man must to a certain extent be judged by the standard of his
age; and it was not an age of extreme official probity or humanity.
In 1787 we find Governor Phillip, before starting for New South
Wales, deliberately suggesting in an official memorandum that, for
certain crimes,
.
1 Letter from Hon. F. North, Wellesley MSS.
2 Afterwards fifth Earl of Guildford. He was remarkable for his love of
Greece and the Greek language. He had a good deal to do with the foundation
of the Ionian University at Corfu, of which he was the first Chancellor,
## p. 404 (#432) ############################################
404
CONQUEST OF CEYLON, 1795-1815
I would wish to confine the criminal till an opportunity offered of delivering
him as a prisoner to the natives of New Zealand, and let them eat him. 1
It was not a nice age, from the modern point of view; but whether
such instances as these can excuse North for the breach of faith he
was guilty of, must be left to the judgment of the reader.
The king of Kandi died, or was deposed, in the same year as
governor North landed, and the prime minister nominated a nephew
of the queen's, Vikrama Raja Sinha, to succeed him. This was quite
in accordance with Kandian custom, and the English Government
accepted the arrangement, and prepared an embassy to the new king.
The prime minister's name was Pilamé Talawé, and he was to bulk
very large in the history of Ceylon for the next few luckless years.
He was a traitor of a not unfamiliar oriental type, and had no sooner
put his nominee on the throne than he began to conspire against him
with a view to his own advancement to the kingly dignity. He sought
a secret interview with North and explained his plans, his excuse for
his treachery being that the reigning family was of alien (i. e. South
Indian) origin, and that it was advisable to replace it by a family of
native extraction. Unfortunately North listened to the tempter; he
was anxious to get hold of Kandi, and thought he saw his chance.
After much tortuous negotiation it was finally agreed that the prime
minister should persuade the king to allow an ambassador to enter
Kandi with an armed escort, which was to be far larger than was
reported to the king; and North hoped that this "ambassador” (to
wit, his principal general) would be able to secure and hold Kandi
for the English, depose the unoffending monarch, and put Pilamé
Talawé in his place as titular monarch.
The plot fell through; for though the raja at first fell into the trap
and sanctioned the entry, the size of the escort leaked out, the other
nobles got alarmed, the king was persuaded to cancel his permission,
and the troops were mostly stopped at the boundary or led astray.
The general did indeed arrive at Kandi, but with only a handful of
men, and there was nothing for him to do but return discomfited.
But this rebuff by no means diverted the prime minister (or
adigar, as his real title was) from his intentions. After various fruitless
endeavours, he at last, in 1802, managed to effect a breach between
the Kandians and the English by causing a rich caravan, belonging
to English subjects, to be robbed by Kandian officials. This was
enough for North, who sent a large force under General Macdowall
to seize Kandi-an easy victory, as the inhabitants and the king
precipitately fled. A puppet king, Mutuswamy, with some claims
to royal blood, was placed on the throne; but it was agreed with
Pilamé Talawé that this puppet should be at once deported and that
he, the traitor, should reign in his stead. The English were sufficiently
1 Historical Records of New South Wales, vol. I, pt », p. 53.
## p. 405 (#433) ############################################
MASSACRE OF 1803
406
deluded to believe in the good faith of such a turncoat, and retired
in triumph to the coast, leaving a very small garrison (only 300
English and some native levies) behind. They had their due reward.
The adigar saw his chance, and was as ready to betray his allies the
English as his master the monarch. He calculated that by destroying
the tiny garrison and seizing the two kings, he could attain the summit
of his desires without further tedious negotiations; and proceeded to
carry out the former part of the programme. He surrounded Kandi
with sufficient troops to make resistance hopeless; he attacked and
killed many of the garrison, already decimated by disease, and called
on the remnant to surrender. Their commander, Major Davie, was
apparently not of the "bull-dog breed”. He accepted the traitor's
word that their lives should be spared, laid down his arms, and
marched out of the town on his way to Trinkomali with his sickly
following and the puppet king, Mutuswamy. But the adigar knew
well that they could not cross the large river near Kandi, as it was
swollen by floods. A party of headmen came up while they were
waiting desperately by the bank, and explained that unless Mutu-
swamy was given up, they would never be allowed to cross. Davie
was base enough to entreat the prince to agree, as the envoys had
promised that his life should be spared. The prince knew his country-
men and the adigar too well. “My god”, he exclaimed, "is it possible
that the triumphant arms of England can be so humbled as to fear
the menaces of such cowards as the Kandians? ”
Nevertheless, he was unconditionally surrendered; he stood a
mock trial with heroic restraint, answering only, "I am at the king's
mercy”; and within five minutes he met his death from the krises of
the Malay guard. His relatives and followers. were stabbed or im-
paled, and his servants were deprived of their noses and ears.
But this base act failed to save the English remnant. They were
seized by the king's troops, Major Davie was taken back to Kandi,
and the other officers and men were led two by two into a hollow
out of sight of their comrades, felled by blows inflicted by the Caffres,
and dispatched by the knives of the Kandians. One man alone
escaped from the carnage. He was found to be alive, and was twice
hung by the Kandians, but each time the rope broke. He survived
this trying ordeal, and struggled in the darkness to a hut, where a
kindly villager fed him and tended his wounds, and eventually took
him before the king, who spared his life, more probably from
superstition than humanity.
The scene of the massacre is still pointed out. "Davie's Tree"
is about three miles from Kandi, near the fatal river. The ill-starred
1 Emerson Tennent, Ceylon, II, 83.
2 See An Account of the Interior of Ceylon, by Dr Davy, a brother of the
Celebrated Şir Humphry Davy.
## p. 406 (#434) ############################################
406
CONQUEST OF CEYLON, 1795-1815
Major Davie met with a lingering doom. His life was spared, says
Mrs Heber in her journal, from a kind of superstitious feeling, as
being the individual with whom the treaty was made. He was
removed to Dumbara, but, owing to a plot by some Malays to carry
him off and get a reward from the English Government, he was
brought back to Kandi, suffering from ill-health, and died there in
1810. Several attempts were made by government to obtain his release,
but the king demanded a sea-port on the coast as the ransom for his
prisoner, and the negotiations broke down. He assumed the dress
and habits of the natives, from whom he is said latterly to have been
scarcely distinguishable, and if he had a defence for his conduct, he
was never able to make it known. His apparent cowardice was in
marked contrast to the heroism of two subordinate officers, whose
nan:es should be remembered. Captain Madge was in command of
a small fort named Fort Macdowall, with a tiny force at his disposal.
It was assaulted by swarms of Kandians simultaneously with the
attack on the capital, and safe conduct was offered in return for
capitulation. Captain Madge sternly refused, stood a blockade of
three days, and then cut his way out and began a masterly retreat
to Trinkomali, which he reached in safety, though his march lay
through an almost unbroken ambuscade. Ensign Grant was in charge
of a small redoubt called Dambudenia, slightly constructed of fascines
and earth, and garrisoned by fourteen convalescent Europeans and
twenty-two invalid Malays. He equally scorned the threats and
promises of the enemy, strengthened his flimsy fortifications with bags
of rice and provision stores, and sustained an almost incessant fire
from several thousand Kandians for ten days. His force was then
relieved from Colombo, and the place dismantled
Such was the result of North's disastrous policy; yet he seems to
have been fortunate enough to escape all official censure. Certainly
his letters to Lord Mornington do not show much remorse for his
crooked dealings; doubtless he had strong influence at home; and
the date alone may explain his escape, for in 1803 England was far
too deeply involved in her struggles with Napoleon to have much
time to spare for the petty squabbles of a distant and hardly-known
island.
The effects of the disastrous surrender at Kandi were immediate
and widespread. The whole island hovered on the verge of revolt, or
broke out into open hostilities; and the available British troops,
thinned by death and sickness, could do no more than repel the attacks
of the invaders; while the war between England and France made it
impossible to send reinforcements from home. The king of Kandi,
infiamed. by hatred of the English, defied the wiles of Pilamé Talawe,
and was backed by his whole people in his efforts to eject them from
Ceylon. He sent emissaries throughout the low country, inciting the
population to revolt, and led a large army to lay siege to Colombo.
But the garrison was strong enough to repel him when he was eighteen
## p. 407 (#435) ############################################
KANDLAN WAR
407
miles from his objective, and he retired to his hill-fastnesses, where
he felt himself secure. For it must be remembered that the country
was then without roads of any kind; dense forests and steep hills and
ravines guarded the approach to the capital; the damp enervating
heat of the low country and the foot-hills, and the plague of leeches
and mosquitoes, constituted an additional defence against English
soldiers, whose dress and equipment at that period were not exactly
of the kind best suited to warfare in near proximity to the equator.
An abortive attempt to attack Kandi from six different points in
1804 led to a very gallant action. The necessary orders had been
issued to the six different commanders, but it was eventually decided
that the difficulties were too great, and fresh orders were sent can-
celling the whole scheme. But the countermand failed to reach
Captain Johnston, whose original orders were to march from Batti-
caloa, join a detachment from Uva, and attack Kandi from the east.
He set out accordingly, with a force of 82 Europeans and 220 native
troops, failed to find any detachment from Uva, fought his way to
Kandi through the thick, unhealthy jungle and unknown country,
and took and occupied the capital for three days. As there was no
sign of any of the supporting contingents, he evacuated the town and
marched back to Trinkomali, with only sixteen British soldiers killed
and wounded. His march was through a continuous ambuscade; and,
besides his human foes, he had to contend with malaria, heavy rains,
bad equipment, the plague of insects and the want of provisions. He
has the credit of having performed the pluckiest military feat in the
annals of Ceylon.
A long period of sullen inaction followed, during which the
Kandian king gave way to all the worst excesses of an oriental tyrant.
The traitor adigar was detected in an attempt to assassinate the king
and met with a traitor's doom in 1812, and was succeeded by his
nephew, Eheylapola. This minister, heedless of the warning of his
uncle's fate, secretly solicited the help of the English to organise a
general revolt against the despot of the hills. But his treason was
discovered, and he fled for protection to Colombo, leaving behind
him his wife and family. The tragedy which followed is thus
described by Dr Davy : 1
Hurried along by the flood of his revenge, the tyrant resolved to punish
Eheylapola through his family, who still remained in his power : he sentenced
his wife and children, and his brother and wife, to death-the brother and
children to be beheaded, and the females to be drowned. In front of the
Queen's Palace the wife and children were brought from prison and delivered
over to their executioners. The lady, with great resolution, maintained her
own and her children's innocence, and then desired her eldest child to submit
to his fate. The poor boy, who was eleven years old, clung to his mother terrified
and crying; her second son, of nine years, stepped forward and bade his brother
not to be afraid; he would show him the way to die. y the blow of a sword
1 An Account of the Interior of Ceylon.
## p. 408 (#436) ############################################
408
CONQUEST OF CEYLON, 1795-1815
the head of the child was severed from the body, and thrown into a rice
mortar : the pestle was put into the mother's hands, and she was ordered to
pound it, or be disgracefully tortured. To avoid the infamy, the wretched
woman did lift up the pestle and let it fall. One by one the heads of the
children were cut off, and one by one the poor mother-but the circumstance
is too dreadful to be dwelt on. One of the children was an infant; it was
plucked from its mother's breast to be beheaded. After the execution the
sufferings of the mother were speedily relieved. She and her sister-in-law
were taken to the little tank at Bogambara and drowned.
This extract has been given in full because the memory of the
horror is still very vivid among the Sinhalese; and "The Tragedy of
Eheylapola's wife" is told and retold by many a professional story-
teller,
But the tyrant's punishment was fortunately near at hand, and
the year 1815 equally witnessed the defeat of Napoleon and the
extinction of the Kandian dynasty. He ventured to seize and disgrace-
fully mutilate a party of merchants, British subjects, who had gone
up to Kandi to trade, and sent them back to Colombo with their
severed members tied round their necks. This was the last straw :
an avenging army was instantly on the march, led by Governor Sir
R. Brownrigg in person, and within two weeks was well within reach
of the capital. The king meanwhile remained in a state of almost
passive inertness, rejecting all belief in our serious intentions to
attack him. A messenger brought him news of our troops having
crossed the frontiers : he directed his head to be struck off. Another
informed him of the defeat of his troops in the Seven Korles : he
ordered him to be impaled alive. At length he precipitately quitted
Kandi, and (14 February) the English marched in and took posses-
sion. An armed party sent out by Eheylapola discovered the house to
which the king had fled, pulled down the wall of the room where he
was hiding, and suddenly exposed the crouching tyrant to the glare of
the torches of the bystanders. He was bound with ropes, subjected
to every obloquy and insult, and handed over to the English autho-
rities, who eventually transported him to Vellore in India, where he
died in January, 1832. 2
Kandian independence was over; the whole island was in the
hands of the English, and the new régime began.
1 Emerson Tennent, Ceylon, II, 89.
2 A narrative of events which have recently occurred in Ceylon, by a
Gentleman on the Spot, London, 1815.
## p. 409 (#437) ############################################
CHAPTER XXV
THE REVENUE ADMINISTRATION OF BENGAL,
1765-86
In May, 1765, Clive returned to India, and his forceful personality
was soon at work. On 16 August, 1765, the emperor Shah 'Alam,
from motives very foreign to those of Akbar, divested the nawab of
his powers as diwan, and conferred that office on the British East India
Company to hold as a free gift and royal grant in perpetuity
(altamgha). The Company in turn appointed as its deputy or naib
diwan the same officer who had been selected to act as naib nazim,
viz. Muhammad Reza Khan, who now united in his person the full
powers of the nizamat and diwanni which had been separated by
Akbar and reunited by Murshid Kuli Khan. But the arrangement
spelt failure from the beginning. The emperor was a ruler in name
only : his diwan in Bengal was a mysterious being locally known as
the Kompani Sahib Bahadur, represented by a victorious and master-
ful foreign soldier, assisted by men who were avowedly traders, whose
interests were principally engaged in maintaining the Company's
dividends, and who lacked completely the professional training
essential to efficient administration. Confusion reigned both in the
provinces of justice and revenue.
The revenue of Bengal as assessed in the reign of Akbar 1 varied
little either in the amount or the mode of levying it until the
eighteenth century, when increasing anarchy introduced fresh assess-
ments and further exactions under the name of abwabs or cesses. The
three main sources of revenue at the time when the Company assumed
the diwanni were (a) mal, i. e. the land revenue, including royalties
on salt; (b) sair, i. e. the revenue received from the customs, tolls,
ferries, etc. ; (c) bazi jama, i. e. miscellaneous headings, such as receipts
from fines, properties, excise, etc. The land revenue was collected by
hereditary agents who held land in the various districts, paid the
revenue, and stood between the government and the actual cultivators
of the soil; these agents were in general known as zamindars, and the
cultivators of the soil as ryots.
The position of the zamindar gave considerable difficulty to the
Company's senior officers. At first he was looked upon merely as a
revenue agent, with an hereditary interest and privileges in certain
districts; but later he was considered as owning land in fee simple.
The controversy is too lengthy to be followed in this chapter; but it
may be asserted that the zamindar, though not the owner of the land
1 Report of Anderson, Croftes and Bogle, dated 28 March, 1778.
## p. 410 (#438) ############################################
410
REVENUE ADMINISTRATION OF BENGAL, 1765-86
in fee simple, was by no means a mere revenue agent; it was practi-
cally impossible by constitutional methods to break his hereditary
connection with the land of which he was the zamindar; and as long
as he performed his duties he was far more impregnable in his position
than the average English official. On the other hand, the position
cf the ryots was less enviable than that of an English cultivator of
the soil at the same period. In each village there was a mandal, or
chief ryot, who acted as their agent in dealing with the various petty
officers employed by the zamindar in the collection of the land
revenue: The result of the investigation ordered in 1776 was to give
a sad picture of the lot of the ryot and of the zamindar's indifference
to liis welfare, especially during the chaotic fifty years that followed
or the death of Murshid Kuli Khan, during which the zamindar's
receipts, owing to anarchy and consequent lack of cultivation,
diminished.
“Although", in the words of the 1776 report, "the increase of the assessinent
[in 1772] may have been the principal, or at least the original cause of the
various additional taxes imposed on the ryots it did not follow that a reduction
in the assessment would produce a diminution in the rents. The prospect of
contingent and future venefits from the cultivation and improvement of his
country is hardly sometimes sufficiently powerful to induce a zamindar to forego
the immediate advantage which he enjoys by rack-renting his zamindari and
exacting the greatest possible revenue from the tenants and vassals. Were
it necessary to support the truth of this position we could produce many proofs
from the accounts which we have collected. The instances, especially in large
zamindaris, are not infrequent where a reduction in the demands of Govern-
ment have been immediately followed by new taxes and new impositions. "
The proceedings contain frequent references from the districts in
Bengal complaining of the exactions and harshness of the zamindars.
After so many years ougnt not Government [i. e. the nawab's government]
to have obtained the most perfect and intimate nature of the value of the rents
and will it be believed at this day, it is still in the dark?
So wrote Edward Baber, Resident at Midnapur, in a letter dated 13
December, 1772, to the Committee of Revenue in Calcutta. 1 We
niust now consider the efforts by the leading executive officers of the
Company to pierce this fog of ignorance.
It has been alleged 2 that having accepted the diwanni the English
deliberately adopted a policy of festina lente chiefly because they
wished to avoid the expense and unpopularity of a general survey of
the lands; but such a survey, unless conducted entirely under expert
European supervision, was worthless, and such supervision was un-
procurable. Moreover the existing revenue nomenclature had then
been in use for nearly two centuries, the population was almost
entirely illiterate, and the bulk of such revenue records as existed
were in the hands of native registrars; these factors, combined with
2
1 Revenue Board Proceedings, 15 December, 1772, pp. 417-26.
2 Firminger: Fifth Report, etc. I, 167.
## p. 411 (#439) ############################################
THE SUPERVISORS
411
their own curtailed powers and the caprices of the directors, might
well induce the Company's local authorities to move slowly. The
directors commenced by attaching an enormous salary, nine lakhs
of rupees per annum, to the office of the naib diwan, hoping thereby
to obtain uncorrupt and efficient service.
Meanwhile, under the governorship of Verelst, the president and
Select Committee made as full an enquiry as they could, arriving at
the well-known conclusions, contained in their Proceedings 2 for
16 August, 1769, in which "certain grand original sources" of the
unsatisfactory state of the revenue collection in Bengal were enume-
rated. At home, the court of directors in June, 1769, had sent orders
to Bengal, appointing a committee "for the management of the
the diwanni revenue”; and three "supervisors” with plenary powers
sailed from England in September, 1769, but after leaving the Cape
of Good Hope were never heard of again.
Verelst and his committee made a correct diagnosis of the trouble.
They realised that the Company's European servants were kept in
complete ignorance “of the real produce and capacity of the country
by a set of men who first deceive us from interest and afterwards
continue the deception from a necessary regard to their own safety".
The chaos and misrule caused by the venal officials and adventurers
who had frequented Bengal since the death of Aurangzib, combined
with the secretive methods which a continuous oppression of the ryot
by the zamindar had produced, formed an impenetrable labyrinth
of which the key was sought in vain.
Verelst's committee established supervisors of the collections;
these supervisors received instructions to make a full and complete
enquiry into the method of collecting the revenue in their respective
districts and, in fact, into any customs, knowledge of which might
assist to improve the condition of the people; the instructions breathe
a warm and humane spirit and a real desire, not merely to collect
revenue, but to assist the oppressed cultivator of the soil. The super-
visors failed, as indeed they were bound to do. Their instructions
ordered them to prepare a rent roll, and, by enquiry, to ascertain tho
fact from which a just and profitable assessment of the revenue could
be made. Such instructions were impossible to carry out. The super-
visors soon found themselves confronted by a most formidable passive
opposition from the zamindars and kanungos which prevented any
real knowledge whatever of the amount of revenue actually paid by
the ryot to the zamindar from coming to the knowledge of the Com-
pany. By this conspiracy of two corrupt and hereditary revenue
agencies all avenues of information were closed. Between them, the
zamindars and the kanungos held all the essential information, but
the kanungo was the dominant figure.
1 Cf. letter from Hastings to the Secret Committee, 1 September 1792.
2 Cf. Verelst, A View, etc. pp. 224-39.
## p. 412 (#440) ############################################
412
REVENUE ADAINISTRATION OF BENGAL, 1765-86
A full account of this officer and his duty was submitted in May,
1787, to the Board of Revenue by J. Patterson, register, Kanungo's
Office,
The kanungo comes into prominence in the reign of Akbar, who
employed him, as the name implies, to keep the records of the pargana,
a revenue sub-division. He was in fact a registrar of a district ap-
pointed to see that the crown received its dues and that the ryot was
not oppressed; his duties were responsible and onerous; he had to
register the usages of a district, the rates and mode of its assessment, and all
regulations relating thereto. To note and record the progress of cultivation, the
produce of the land and the price current thereof, and to be at all times able to
furnish Government with materials to regulate the assessment by just and
equitable proportions.
The kanungo's duties also included
che keeping of a record of all events, such as the appointments, deaths or re-
movals of zamindars, to preserve the records of the Tumar and Taksim Jama,
and the record of the boundaries and limits of zamindars, talukdaris, parganas,
villages, etc.
They also preserved in their registers the genealogies of zamindars,
records of all grants of land, copies of the contracts of the zamindars
and tax-farmers with the government, and, in short, acted as general
custodians for every description of record in the district. There were
two main, or sadar, kanungos for Bengal, but in each pargana thera
was a deputy or naib kanungo; the office became hereditary at an
early date. Murshid Kuli Khan is stated to have replaced the
kanungos of his day by an entirely new set, but the evil was not
checked, because the new kanungos passed on their office and their
knowledge to their descendants in the same way as the evicted ones
had done.
Thus the whole of the land registration, and the entire knowledge
of the actual receipts of the land revenue, were in the hands of a
hereditary close corporation, who were the only authorities on the
real state of the revenue; their power was enormous; and only com-
plete ignorance can explain Verelst and his committee's imagining
that such knowledge would be surrendered to the Company on
demand. Edward Baber, in his letter of 13 December, 1772, called the
attention of the Board of Revenue to these facts, and to the great
power which the kanungos had over the zamindars,
because it was in the power of the Kanungos to expose the value of their
parganas.
This power the Kanungos availed themselves of, and it was the
rod which they held over them so that the apprehension of an increase of his
rents kept the zamindar in very effectual awe of the Kanungo. . . . In a word
the Kanungos have an absolute influence over the Zamindars which they
exercise in every measure that can promote their own interests.
It now
1 Original consultations, no. 63, Revenue Dept. 18 May, 1787. Printed ap.
Ramshothanı, Land Revenue History of Bengal, pp. 163-97.
## p. 413 (#441) ############################################
THE KANUNGOS
413
happens that the Kanungos manage, not only the zamindars, but the business
of the province. There is not a record but what is in their possession and so
much of the executive part have they at last obtained that they are now virtually
the Collector, while he is a mere passive representative of Government. They
are the channel through which all his orders are conveyed. . . Instead of
being the agents of Government they are become the associates of the zamin-
dars and conspire with them to conceal what it is their chief duty to divulge.
Baber drives home the argument by challenging the board to
state how the last settlement (he is referring to the settlement made
by the Committee of Circuit in 1772) was made; taking the example
of Midnapur, his own district, he asks "on what information, on what
materials was it made? was there a single instrument produced to
guide the judgment of the board? " i It will be obvious that the
1
supervisors appointed in 1769 were bound to fail. They were com-
pletely and wilfully kept in the dark by officials who had everything
to lose and nothing to gain by giving the required information. The
kanungos were only prepared to serve the state on their own terms;
and those terms included a retention of the very information which
their office was created to obtain for the state. Their action was
utterly unconstitutional and involved the admission that a few families
a
should hereditarily possess information which is the sole prerogative
of the state, and that they should use that information for their
personal and pecuniary profit.
The Company's government in India created in 1770 two Boards
of Revenue, one in Murshidabad and one in Patna, to control respec-
tively the Bengal and Bihar collections; but dissensions taking place
in the council, John Cartier was ordered to hand over his office to
Warren Hastings and several other alterations were made. Hastings
assumed office as governor and president of Fort William on 13 April,
1772.
The outstanding result of the first seven years of the Company's
administration of the diwanni is that the Company's officers in Bengal
realised that they were face to face with the great problem of ascer-
taining the difference between the sum received as land revenue by
government, and the sum actually paid by the ryot to the zamindar.
This was the secret of the zamindar and kanungo which the Company
never fathomed; it forms the burden of the collectors' reports to the
Board of Revenue from 1772 onwards; and it is the basis of the great
Shore-Grant controversy. When the revenue settlement was made
permanent in 1793 this information was still wanting, and not a single
revenue officer of the Company in 1793 could state with accuracy the
entire actual amount which the zamindars in his district received
from the ryots, or the proportion which it bore to that which the
zamindar paid to the government; yet these were the conditions in
which the revenue settlement was declared permanent.
Hastings brought to his work a sound experience of Bengal, a
1 Revenue Board Proceedings, 16 December, 1772, pp. 417-26.
## p. 414 (#442) ############################################
414
REVENUE ADMINISTRATION OF BENGAL, 1765-86
1
fluent and accurate knowledge both of Persian and of Bengali : more-
over, he had the reputation of being a loyal and most efficient servant
of the Company. It is still difficult to give an impartial verdict on his
official career. In revenue work his ability was not remarkable, and
on his own admission ? he had no practical working knowledge of it;
in fact, his influence on the actual conditions of the revenue was
unfortunate, especially when contrasted with his administration and
reorganisation of the judicature in the districts, which was a vigorous
beneficial achievement. His masterful temperament often prevented
him from using the advice of subordinates better qualified than him-
self to speak authoritatively on details of revenue administration
This inflexibility must share responsibility with the jealousy of
Francis and the ill-temper of Clavering for the deadlock which
occurred in the administration of Bengal between 1774 and 1776.
The directors' orders which confronted the new governor were
of a disturbing nature. On 14 April, 1772, these dispatches containing
the well-known proclamation arrived in Calcutta. On 11 May the
information was made public :
Notice is hereby given that the Hon'ble the Court of Directors have been
pleased to divest the Nawab Muhammad Reza Khan of his station of Naib
Diwan and have determined to stand forth publicly themselves in the character
of Diwan.
This announcement radically altered the existing system of the
collections.
The new governor and his council as a prelude to carrying out
their orders, appointed a committee to tour through various districts
of Bengal and to submit a report on their observations. Thus was
formed the Committee of Circuit, consisting of the Company's most
senior officers, including the governor himself, S. Middleton, P. M.
Dacres, J. Lawrell, and J. Graham. Their terms of reference were
based on the resolutions taken by the council on 14 May, 1772, viz.
(a) to farm the lands for a period of five years;
(b) to establish a Committee of Circuit to form the settlement;
(c) to re-introduce the supervisors under the name of collectors,
assisted by an Indian diwan in each district;
(d) to restrict the officials of the Company from any private
employment.
The Committee of Circuit realised the difficulty of their work.
The Hon'ble Court of Directors . . . declare their determination to stand
forth as Diwan, and, by the agency of the Company's servants, to take upon
themselves the entire care and management of the Revenue. By what means
this agency is to be exercised we are not instructed. They have been pleased
to direct a total change of system, and have left the plan of execution of it to
the direction of the Board without any formal repeal of the regulations they
1Cf. the evidence given by Hastings for the plaintiff in the case brought
by Kamal-ud-din Khan against the Calcutta Committee of Revenue, Governor-
General's Proceedings, . 2 September, 1776, pp. 336. 7-89.
## p. 415 (#443) ############################################
COMMITTEE OF CIRCUIT
415
had before framed and adopted to another system, the abolition of which must
necessarily include that of its subsidiary institutions unless they shall be found
to coincide with the new. The Revenue is beyond all question the first object
of Government. 1
The Committee of Circuit decided to place the revenue adminis-
tration entirely under the direct control of the president and council,
who were to form a committee of revenue; they also recommended
that the Khalsa, or treasury office, should be removed from Murshi-
dabad to Calcutta, making the latter town the financial capital of
the province.
As the duties of the diwanni comprised the administration of civil
justice, and as the business of the Committee of Circuit was to
consolidate the Company's control over the diwanni, the important
question of restoring the administration of justice in the districts came
before them. The close connection between the land revenue and
civil justice necessitates a brief mention of the committee's proposals
recorded in their Proceedings. They recommended in each district
under a collector che formation of two courts, the diwanni adalat and
the faujdari adalat, the former with civil, the latter with criminal
jurisdiction; the matters cognisable by each court were strictly
defined, and the diwanni adalat was under the direct charge of the
collector. In addition to these mufassil or district courts, two similar
sadar, or headquarters' courts, were to be established in Calcutta, the
sadar diwanni adalat being presided over by the governor or a
member of council. These courts were designed to remove the abuses
in the administration of justice referred to by Verelst in his Instruc-
tion to the Supervisors. “Every decision", he writes of these native
courts, "is a corrupt bargain with the highest bidder. . . Trifling
offenders are frequently loaded with heavy demands and capital
offences are as often absolved by the venal judge. "
The most objectionable feature of the proposed regulations, as is
pointed out by Harington,4 was that they vested in one person the
powers of a tax-collector and of a magistrate. Hastings himself
a
made this complaint against Verelst's plan introducing the super-
visors; but he was apparently forced to embody the same defect in
his own regulation. Perhaps the best and most straightforward
defence of this admitted defect was that made by Shore. 6
" 3
It is impossible to draw a line between the Revenue and Judicial
Departments in such a manner as to prevent their clashing : in this case either
the Revenue must suffer or the administration of Justice be suspended. It
may be possible in course of time to induce the natives to pay their rents with
regularity and without compulsion, but this is not the case at prevent.
1 Committee of Circuit's Proceedings, 28 July, 1772, pp. 162-8.
2 Idem, 15 August, 1772, pp. 234-48. Cf. also Coleb:ooke, Supplement, etc.
3 Verelst, op. cit. pp. 229-30.
4 Harington, Analysis, 1, 34.
5 In a minute printed in India papers, vol. vi, quoted by Harington, Ana-
lysis, a, 41-3.
6 Letter to Sir G. Cnlebrooke, 26 March, 1772.
pp. 1-8.
## p. 416 (#444) ############################################
416
REVENUE ADMINISTRATION OF BENGAL, 1765-86
The Committee of Circuit's recommendations 1 were sent with a
covering letter to the council at Fort William on 15 August, 1772,
and received the council's approval on 21 August.
21 August. They proposed
that à large proportion of that land, known as huzur zilla land,
because it paid its revenue direct to the Khalsa, should be converted
into separate districts each under a collector. The whole council was to
act as a committee of revenue, and to audit the accounts of the
diwanni assisted by an Indian officer styled the rai raian. The latter
was a most important person; his duties included the supervision of
all the provincial diwans attached to the various collectorships,
to receive from them the accounts in the Bengali language and to issue to them
a counterpart of the orders which the Board of Revenue shall from time to
time expedite to the Collectors.
The salary attached to this important post was 5000 rupees a month.
The first holder was Raja Rajballabh, a son of Raja Rai Durlabh,
the old colleague of Muhammad Reza Khan. The business of the
Khalsa was precisely defined; the post of accountant-general was
created, the first holder being Charles Croftes; and the various
departments of that office, and of the treasury in general, defined
and organised. This completed the main work of the Committee of
Circuit, and unquestionably the most successful portion was that
which dealt with the administration of justice. They inherited from
the Moghul government every evil that could afflict a judicial system :
a disorganised and corrupt judicature and incompetent agents. Dacoity
was rampant, and there was no ordinary security in the land. The
new courts, although by no means perfect, brought great relief to
trie ryots and talukdars, and within a short time began to foster
confidence in the Company's administration.
On 13 October, 1772, the new Committee of Revenue commenced
its work by settling the revenue to be collected from Hugli, Midnapur,
Birbhum, Jessore and the Calcutta zamindary lands. The settlement
was for five years, and the lands were farmed out by public auction,
in order better to discover the real value of the lands. This, in itself,
is a comment on the board's revenue policy, for they must have
known that to farm the land revenue by public auction would induce
many people to bid from motives other than mere desire for profit;
the gambling instinct, the desire for power, the opportunity of inflict-
ing injury on an enemy or of humiliating a local zamindar, all
powerfully contributed to raise the bidding beyond the value of the
revenue. The board certainly expressed an opinion that, ceteris
paribus, it was preferable to accept the bids of established zamindars,
but they had definitely placed both the zamindar and the ryot at the
2
1 Committee of Circuits Proceedings, pp. 248-58. Cf. Colebrooke, Supple-
ment, pp. 8-14 and 194-200; also Harington, Analysis, 01, 25-33.
2 Letter of the President to the Court of Directors, 3 November, 1772. Cf.
Harington, op. cit. 1, 16-18.
## p. 417 (#445) ############################################
THE COLLECTORS
417
mercy of speculating and unprincipled adventurers who, in many
cases, ousted the old zamindars and thus severed an old-established
link between government and the cultivator of the soil, for the zamin-
dar, in spite of his shortcoming, had (in the words of Hastings him-
self) “riveted an authority in the district, acquired an ascendancy
over the minds of the ryots and ingratiated their affections". Between
1772 and 1781 the connection between the zamindars and their tenants
was seriously impaired by this unfortunate method.
In justice to Hastings and his colleagues it must be remembered
that they were suddenly called upon to administer the revenues of
a country which for half a century had been in a state of increasing
disorder, and to create an administrative service from young men
who had come to the country at an immature age for a purely com-
mercial career. Among their critics is Hastings himself, whose letters
in the early days of his governorship contain disparaging references
to the collectors; yet many of those so criticised were almost imme-
diately employed by him and rose to positions of comparative
eminence; the majority came from good British homes. The record
of their work, contained in the forgotten and unpublished minutes of
perished boards, shows them to have been humane, if untrained, men
genuinely anxious to relieve the distress in their districts.
A careful perusal of the proceedings of the Board of Revenue for
the years 1772 and 1773 reveals that the most valuable suggestions
for alleviating distress among the cultivators are to be found in letters
from the district officers rather than in the resolutions of the board :
in spite of the most determined passive resistance which zamindars,
kanungos,'and farmers of the revenue made to their enquiries, it was
the collectors who enabled the voice of the oppressed ryot to reach
the headquarters of government.
The collectors soon realised that the settlement had been seriously
over-estimated, but the board refused to believe their district officers
and added to the trouble by peremptory orders for the collection of
deficits. This was done with undoubted harshness, for the collectors
had no option 3 but to carry out their orders. Confinement of zamin-
dars and farmers was freely used, but without any result except that
of adding to the confusion; and the words with which Hastings, in
his letter to the directors, dated 3 November, 1772, described the
conditions of the revenue collections in Bengal on his assumption of
the governorship, might be used with truth to describe the conditions
in collecting the same revenue in 1773.
The entire system of revenue registration was still in the hands of
an hereditary corporation and was still unknown to government,
1 In the matter of the public auction of the farms consult alsu the letter
dated 17 May, 1766, para. 17 from the Court of Directors (Long, Selections,
no. 893).
2 E. g. to L. Sulivan, 10 March, 1774.
3 Letter from the Council of Revenue at Patna, . dated 17 October, 1774.
Revenue Board Proceedings, 1 November, 1774, pp. 6395-8.
27
## p. 418 (#446) ############################################
418
REVENUE ADMINISTRATION OF BENGAL, 1765-86
which had no accurate working knowledge on which to base a general
settlement, and which was, as several district officers testified, com-
pletely ignorant of the actual amount paid by the cultivator com-
pared with that received by itself. 1 Over-assessmer. i and wholesale
farming had aggravated the mischief. Though government had
established a business-like system for keeping the accounts of such
revenue as was actually received, this was but a trifle compared with
the weighty problem that was still unsolved.
The diwanni adalats relieve the sombre colours of the picture, and
in them the cultivator found a real protection and assistance at the
hands of those collectors whose work received such scanty acknow-
ledgment : but the day of the collectors was to be short. In April,
1773, the court of directors sent orders to the governor and council to
recall the collectors from their districts and to adopt other measures
for collecting the revenues. These orders were similar to those issued
in 1769 abolishing the supervisors; the directors apparently distrusted
their junior officers, and were nervous lest private trade should
engross their time. These orders were considered by the president
and council on 23 November, 1773. 2
The board drew up a detailed temporary plan in order to give
effect to these instructions, to be "adopted and completed by such
means as experience shall furnish and the final orders of the Hon'ble
Company allow”. (1) A committee of revenue at the presidency was
formed consisting of two members of the board and three senior
Servants below council who were to meet daily and transact the
necessary business assisted by the rai raian; (2) the three provinces
were divided into six divisions, each under a provincial council
consisting of a chief, assisted by four senior servants of the Company :
in Calcutta the committee of revenue above mentioned was to carry
out the duties of such a council; (3) each district, originally a
collectorship, was placed under the control of an Indian revenue
officer (diwan), except in districts entirely let to a zamindar or
farmer, who was then empowered to act as diwan; (4) occasional
inspections were to be made by commissioners specially selected by
the board for their knowledge of Persian and "moderation of temper”
The selection of these commissioners was to be unanimous;
an objection made by a single member of the Board to any proposed as want-
ing these requisites shall be a sufficient bar to his rejection without any proof
being required to support it;
(5) the various collectors were to make up their accounts and hand
over charge to Indian deputies who were empowered to hold the
courts of diwanni adalat, but appeals in all cases were allowed to the
provincial sadar adalat now constituted to form a link between the
1 Letter from C. Bentley, collector of Chittagong, dated 10 July, 1773. Re-
venue Board Proceedings, 17 August, 1773, pp. 2620-39.
2 Idem, 23 November, 1773, pp. 3453-77.
## p. 419 (#447) ############################################
PROVINCIAL COUNCILS
419
worse.
mufassal and headquarters diwanni courts; (6) with a view to check-
ing private trade the chiefs of the provincial councils were given a
salary of 3000 sicca rupees per mensem, and had to take an oath 1
not to engage in private trade.
The changes, necessitated by the directors' orders, were for the
The collectorship as a district unit of the revenue adminis-
tration was retained, but the employment of Indian diwans instead
of European collectors deprived the Company of an increasing
knowledge among its European servants of the country, the state of
the revenue, and the methods of collection; it checked the growth of
a spirit of responsibility and of public service among the junior
officers; and it diluted the European element in the district collections
to such an extent as to render it negligible. The whole scheme, for
which the directors must bear the responsibility, is tainted with the
inference that, provided the stipulated revenue was received, the
method of collecting it did not much matter.
The proceedings of the Board of Revenue from 1773 to 1776
record a monotonous list of large deficits, defaulting zamindars,
absconding farmers, and deserting ryots. The provincial councils, like
the collectors before them, protested that the country was over-
assessed; the diwans proved incapable and unbusinesslike, and were
the subject of a circular letter of complaint issued by the board to
the provincial councils.
The new system was only in force for six months before the
Regulating Act made further changes, but its proceedings display all
he signs of impending collapse. The council of Patna sent in a
moving description of the distress in their province. Anticipating
Philip Francis, they definitely recommended a settlement in perpe-
tuity, because no satisfactory collections could be made except on
that basis of stability which only a lengthy tenure furnishes.
"It remains', they write, “that we should suomit to you our sentiments
on the measures calculated to produce a remedy. It has been successfully
practised by the Hindostan Princes that where a particular district has gone
to ruin to give it to a Zamindar or any other man of known good conduct for
a long lease of years or in perpetuity at a fixed rent not to be increased should
ever the industry of the renter raise an unexpected average to himself. . . . . "
The board in their reply considered the suggestion to be too hazardous
for experiment.
Other events were now impending. On 19 October, 1774, Clavering:
Monson, and Francis arr. ved in Calcutta. Of the three new members
of council the ablest was Francis, whose malicious and petulant
character needs no description here, but whose ability and grasp of
the intricate revenue problem in Bengal, although not free from error,
3
1 Revenue Board Proceedings, 16 March, 1774.
2 Idem, 5 July, 1774, pp. 5425-6.
3 Idem, 29 January, 1773, pp. 627-33.
## p. 420 (#448) ############################################
420
REVENUE ADMINISTRATION OF BENGAL, 1765-86
was remarkable, even if due allowance is made for his alleged
indebtedness to the "coaching" of John Shore.
The Supreme Council soon offered a most unfortunate example of
disunion to all the subordinate officers of the Company, and the same
spirit appeared in the provincial councils; thus was created a spirit
of partisanship throughout the entire service, which encouraged in
farmers, zamindars, and tenants the hope that profit might be
obtained by supporting one side or the other; but in spite of these
evils, the new council brought into the administration of the revenue
a vigorous and, on the whole, healthy spirit of enquiry. Abuses were
brought to light which under a more easy-going régime would have
remained dormant. The most noticeable result of the new change was
the position of the governor-general. Hitherto Hastings had exerted
an overwhelming, almost dictatorial, control over his council, whose
proceedings for the years 1772-4 show a general compliance with
the governor's desires, and the greatest reluctance to oppose him.
This authority was now openly disregarded. The new members of
the council came out prejudiced, if not against individual servants of
the Company, against the personnel and the Company's service in
general; but allowing for their wholesale suspicion, it must be con-
ceded that the time was ripe for a complete investigation into the
methods of collecting the revenue, and for some radical changes in
that administration.
On 21 October, 1774, the new Board of Revenue met for the first
time and the governor-general explained in detail the mode of
collecting the land revenue, and the lately introduced system of the
provincial councils, and he recommended a continuation of the
system, at any rate for the present, as the season of year was soon
approaching in which the heaviest instalments of the revenue were
due for payment. The board agreed to the suggestion, partly because
they wanted to see the existing system at work, and partly because
they realised the force of the argument for a temporary continuation
of the existing system, but “they do not mean to preclude themselves
from such future alterations as . . . some mature deliberation may
suggest to them". In revenue matters, as in others, the new councillors
soon displayed their intolerance, and the first difference was between
the governor-general and Clavering over a complaint made to the
former by the rai raian against Joseph Fowke. It is impossible to
relate here in detail the many cases of friction and open quarrelling
which occurred during the new administration; this was not always
produced by the quarrelsome attitude of the new arrivals. Hastings
and Barweil were also intolerant. The rejection of certain officers
proposed by the governor-general for promotion drew a protest from
Barwell who alleged that “good and, zealous servants had been
deprived of normal promotion”; a policy, he contended, that would
create faction throughout the service and "involve the policy and
connection of the state with the different powers of Hindostan".
