famished, and with hardly a rag to their backs. Mr. Tucker, himself a Director, and Deputy-Chairman of the Court of Directors, asks, "Whether it be possible for them to believe that a government, which seems disposed to appropriate a vast territory as universal landlord, and to collect, not revenue, but rent, can have any other view than to extract from the people the utmost portion which they can pay?" and adds, that "if the deadly hand of the tax-gatherer perpetually hover over the land, and threaten to grasp that which is not yet called into existence, its benumbing influence must be fatal, and the fruits of the earth will be stifled in the very germ."
Yet this is the constant system; and the poor ryots who cultivate farms of from six to twenty-four acres, but generally of the smaller kind, requiring only one plough, which, with other implements and a team of oxen, costs about 6l., are compelled to farm not such as they chose, but such as are allotted to them; to pay from one-half to two-thirds of their gross produce. If they attempt to run away from it, they are brought back and flogged, and forced to work. If after all, they cannot pay their quota. Sir Thomas Munro tells you, "it must he assessed upon the rest." That where a crop even is less than the seed, the peasantry should always be made to pay the full rent where they can. And that all complaints on the part of the ryot, "should be listened to with very great caution." Is it any wonder that Indostan is, and always has been full of robbers? Is this system not enough to make men run off, and do anything but work thus without hope? But it is not merely the work: look at the task-masters set over them. "A very large
