mahajun found him unequal to cultivate his
land as he was wont, he demanded a speedy
settlement of his claims. Of course this could
not be done, and the usual result followed.
The ryot was expelled, sick and
broken-hearted, to seek a chance home and a little
charity from neighbours. He had wandered
from village to village with his remaining
child; and at last, finding himself at the point
of death, had crawled back to die within sight
of his once happy, though humble, home. He
had died where he hoped, by his own rice
fields; he had breathed his last under the
shade of trees which his own hand had planted;
there we had found him, his bony fingers
still grasping a few remaining grains of the
precious store of rice, which he held even in
death for his poor child's meal — the last he
could give her. I need hardly say the orphan
was not uncared for.

The day following, I gathered equally
unmistakeable proof of the misery prevailing
amongst the ryots, of wretchedness and
poverty, which is a bar to any attempt at
improvement amongst them, and blights every
bud of hope for the future. We had halted
in a cool and shady dell, near which stood a
small mud hut, such as one meets by scores
through the cultivated districts of Bengal.
I wanted a draught ot water, and preferring
to take it from a rippling stream close by, I
left my palanquin, as did my companion.
When nearer the little cabin, we perceived the
owner seated by the door, staring vacantly
upon the wide green fields before him. He
was clad as miserably as ryots usually are; if,
indeed, a narrow slip of dirty cotton rag
wound round their loins, can be called clothing
He was emaciated in the extreme, and his
grim gaunt visage was rendered even more
ghastly by a profusion of thickly-matted
beard and hair. A few sickly, rickety-looking
children were amusing themselves
under the shade of some trees near the patch
of rice. To our inquiry as to why he was not
at work at that hour of the day, he replied
that it was useless for him to work; the
more he toiled the poorer he became. How
so? we asked. He looked around as if fearful
of being overheard, and then said in a low
voice, "Mahajun takes all."  We inquired
why that was allowed; to which he answered,
"He is rich; I am poor; what can I do? "
Our conversation drew from him, by the aid
most potent of some copper coins, that he had
his jumma raised several times on various
pretences, to say nothing of abwabs: once,
when the zemindar was at a loss for an
excuse, he pretended to sell his zemindari to
another, who, in such a case, is always
supposed and allowed to have a right to re-assess
the rents of the holdings, and so the occasion
was made. Yet, it is expressly stated in a
Government minute, dated February 3rd,
1790, that, "whoever cultivates the land, the
zemindar can receive no more than the
established rent."

Native landholders, and such gentry, are
much wiser in their generation than
Governors-General, and they have for the last
fifty years agreed that the aforesaid " minute "
is sheer waste paper, and treat it as such
accordingly. The miserable-looking ryot need
not have protested as he did, that he ate but
barely enough to keep him alive—his looks
told the tale of starvation. Wild roots, seeds,
and fruits, were their wonted meal: rice they
seldom got, save during the ripening of their
crops; and even then their mahajun forbade
them to touch it, lest his claims should suffer;
and so the miserable man crawled out at night,
on hands and knees, and stole a scanty meal
for his famished children. The mahajun, he
knew, falsified all the accounts—but what
could he do? Go to the courts?  Poor men
could do nothing there. All evidence is taken
down by the amlaho, or native registrars:
the English magistrate decides the case upon
the evidence taken in writing by these men,
who are notoriously bribed—and so money
carries everything there. It seemed a hopeless
case, indeed, for that poor ryot; and, as
we left him, could but call to mind the sad
fate of the Khodkhoot ryot of the previous day;
and I wondered whether the Honourable
Court of Directors had ever seen one of these
their subjects and fellow-men, and whether
they should not have one preserved for their
museum in Leadenhall Street. It would form
a striking and instructive object, if placed
beside the mummy of a sleek, oily-skinned
zemindar!

It is quite true that the above evils, in that
particular shape, extend only over certain
portions of India. But misery as great
prevails even where " the permanent settlement "
does not extend to.  In the Bombay Presidency,
for instance, the Government assess
the lands for taxation annually. For a
district of about seventy-six thousand square
miles, there are twelve English collectors,
who, with their assistants, are expected to
value the crop on every separate plot of
ground belonging to some eight millions and
a half of inhabitants. Nearly all this work is
at the mercy of the native assistants, who
fleece the small cultivators to a fearful extent.
The abomination of the corrupt amlahs of
small courts are alike everywhere: in every
part of the country the ryot is a miserable, an
ignorant, and a degraded being; a helpless
tool for the zemindars to use, and when worn
out, to be flung aside into the nearest jungle,
and there die like a wild beast!

Not many days ago, at a public distribution
of prizes to young students of the Honourable
Company's College, at Haileybury, about to
embark for India, the deputy-chairman
addressed the future rulers of our Indian
empire in an eloquent and sensible speech.
He told them, truly enough, of the importance
of the duties they were about to enter
upon; of how many million destinies they
were shortly to rule over; and how much