The consequence to the Government will be less serious than might at first appear.  Under a system of limited settlements of the land-revenue, such as prevail over all our dominions, except in Bengal, the Government is in reality the landlord; and our land-revenue is in reality land-rent.* We alienate a portion of that rent for limited periods in favour of those with whom we make such settlements, and take all the rest ourselves.  On an average, perhaps, our Government takes one-sixth of the gross produce of the land; and the persons, with whom the settlements are made, take another sixth.  The net rent, which the Government and they divide equally between them, may be taken, on an average, at one-third of the gross produce of the land.  The cultivator would, I believe, always be glad to take and cultivate land, on an average, on condition of giving one-third of the gross produce, or the value of one-third, to be divided between the Government and its lessee; and the lessee will always consider himself fortunate if he gets one-half of this third, to cover the risk and cost of management.

* I believe our Government committed a great political and social error, when it declared all the land to be the property of the lessees:  and all questions regarding it to be cognizable by Judicial Courts.  It would have been better for the people, as well as the Government, had all such questions been left to the Fiscal and Revenue Courts.  There is the same regular series of these Courts, from the Tuhseeldar to the Revenue Sudder Board, as of the Judicial Courts, from the Moonsiff to the Judicial Sudder Board; and they are all composed of the same class of persons, with the same character and motives to honest exertion.  Why force men to run the gauntlet through both series?  It tends to make the Government to be considered as a rapacious tax-gatherer, instead of a liberal landlord, which it really is; and to foster the growth of a host of native pettifogging attorneys, to devour, like white ants, the substance of the landholders of all classes and grades.

Where the soil of a particular village in a district deteriorates, an immediate reduction in the assessment must be given, or the lands will be deserted.  If the Government does not consent to such a reduction, the lessee must sustain the whole burthen, for he cannot shift it off upon the cultivators, without driving them from the lands.  The lessee may sustain the whole burthen for one or two years; but if the officers of Government attempt to make him sustain it longer, they drive him after his cultivators, and the land is left waste.  I have seen numerous estates of villages and some districts made waste by such attempts in India.  I have seen land in such estates, which, when unexhausted, yielded, on an average, twelve returns of the seed, without either manure or irrigation, and paid a rent of twenty shillings an acre, become so exhausted by overcropping in a few years as to yield