such as a rise in prices, improved communication, etc., and to what amount the enhancement may go the ryot cannot tell.  And hence we find that the representatives in the Mysore Assembly have repeatedly argued that it is owing to the uncertainty as to what the rise of rent may be at the close of each thirty years’ period that improvements are not more largely made, and have therefore prayed for a permanently fixed assessment.  Now I am not prepared to say that, for the present at any rate, it would be wise to grant a fixed assessment on all lands, but I am quite sure that it would be wise to grant, for the irrigable area watered by a well dug at an occupier’s expense, a permanent assessment at the rent now charged on the land.  The Government, it is true, would sacrifice the rise it might obtain on the land at the close of each lease, but, as a compensation for this—­and an ample compensation I feel sure it would be—­the State would save in two ways, for it would never have to grant remissions of revenue on such lands, as it now often has to do in the case of dry lands, and with every well dug the expenditure in time of famine would be diminished.  Such a measure, then, as I have proposed, would at once benefit the State and draw out for profitable investment much capital that is now lying idle.  There is nothing new, I may add, in this proposal, for it was adopted by the old native rulers, who granted fixed tenures on favourable terms to those making irrigation works at their own expense.  An English-speaking Mysore landholder once said to me, “I will not dig wells on my lands under my present tenure, but give me an assessment fixed for ever, and I will dig lots of wells.”  The present landed policy of the Indian Government[3] is as shallow as it is hide-bound.  It wants, like a child, to eat its cake and still remain in possession of the article.  It is most anxious to see private capital invested in land, and it still wants to retain the power of every thirty years indefinitely augmenting the land revenue on general grounds.  Surely it must be apparent to minds of even the humblest calibre that these two things are utterly incompatible!

I may mention that there is a strong party in India in favour of granting at once a permanent assessment at the existing rate of rent for all lands, and in reference to this point it may be interesting to give the following passage from a letter I once received from the late Prime Minister of Mysore, Mr. Rungacharlu, the minister who started the first Representative Assembly that ever sat in India: 

“As you know,” he wrote, “I hold decided views on the subject, and the withholding of the permanent assessment is a serious injury to the extensive petty landed interests in the country, and is no gain whatever to the Government.  Nearly the whole population of the country are agriculturists, and live in one way or another upon the cultivation of the land.  The effect of a permanent settlement