’And you have gone on subdividing your inheritances here, as elsewhere, no doubt, till you have hardly any of you anything to eat?’

’True, we have hardy any of us enough to eat; but that is the fault of the Government, that does not leave us enough, that takes from us as much when the season is bad as when it is good.’[7]

‘But your assessment has not been increased, has it?’ ’No, we have concluded a settlement for twenty years upon the same footing as formerly.’

’And if the sky were to shower down upon you pearls and diamonds, instead of water, the Government would never demand more from you than the rate fixed upon?’

‘No.’

‘Then why should you expect remissions in the bad seasons?’

’It cannot be disputed that the “barkat” (blessing from above) is less under you than it used to be formerly, and that the lands yield less to our labour.’

‘True, my old friend, but do you know the reason why?’

‘No.’

’Then I will tell you.  Forty or fifty years ago, in what you call the times of the “barkat” (blessing from above), the cavalry of Sikh freebooters from the Panjab used to sweep over this fine plain, in which stands the said village from which you are all descended; and to massacre the whole population of some villages, and a certain portion of that of every other village; and the lands of those killed used to be waste for want of cultivators.  Is not this all true?’

‘Yes, quite true.’

’And the fine groves which had been planted over the plain by your ancestors, as they separated from the great parent stock, and formed independent villages and hamlets for themselves, were all swept away and destroyed by the same hordes of freebooters, from whom your poor imbecile emperors, cooped up in yonder large city of Delhi, were utterly unable to defend you?’

‘Quite true,’ said the old man with a sigh.  ’I remember when all this fine plain was as thickly studded with fine groves of mango-trees as Rohilkhand, or any other part of India.’

’You know that the land requires rest from labour, as well as men and bullocks, and that, if you go on sowing wheat and other exhausting crops, it will go on yielding less and less returns, and at last not be worth the tilling?’

‘Quite well.’

’Then why do you not give the land rest by leaving it longer fallow, or by a more frequent alternation of crops relieve it?’

’Because we have now increased so much that we should not get enough to eat were we to leave it to fallow; and unless we tilled it with exhausting crops we should not get the means of paying our rents to the Government.’

’The Sikh hordes in former days prevented this; they killed off a certain portion of your families, and gave the land the rest which you now refuse it.  When you had exhausted one part, you found another recovered by a long fallow, so that you had better returns; but now that we neither kill you, nor suffer you to be killed by others, you have brought all the cultivable lands into tillage; and under the old System of cropping to exhaustion, it is not surprising that they yield you less returns.’[8]