ing to the intrinsic capabilities of its various portions, and placed in one of nine or more classes, the whole work being carried out by a trained native staff under strict European test and supervision. The final ‘assessment’ was the personal work of Goldsmid, Wingate, or some other of the ‘superintendents’ whom they instituted. Individual villages were not separately dealt with, but, after careful appraisement of climate, agricultural skill, distance of markets, means of communication, and past range of prices, a maximum rate was fixed for groups of villages, from which the rent for each field could be deduced by means of the classification. The assessment was then guaranteed against enhancement for thirty years, and all improvements effected during the term were secured to the holder. He could relinquish or increase his holding, and had a right to continue his tenure at the end of the term upon accepting the revised assessment to be then imposed.
This system, formulated in ‘Joint Reports’ by Goldsmid and Wingate in 1840, and by them and Davidson in 1847, was firmly established by acts of the Bombay legislature in 1865–8 and incorporated in the Bombay revenue code of 1879. It has long since been applied to the whole of the lands in the Bombay presidency which pay assessment to government, and has been extended to innumerable ‘exempted’ landholders and chiefs at their own request. The Berars and the native state of Mysore have also adopted it. Everywhere the rents have been made less burdensome, cultivation has extended, the revenue has improved, and content has been diffused among the people.
In 1865 Sir Bartle Frere inaugurated a memorial rest-house, erected by subscription, at Decksal, near where Goldsmid's survey had been begun. He spoke emphatically of Goldsmid's nobility of character, ‘playful fancy,’ and ‘inexhaustible wit,’ and asserted that neither Sir James Outram nor General John Jacob had a more absolute control over the affections of the natives. With reference to the survey and assessment, he said ‘the name of Mr. Goldsmid will live, in connection with that great work, in the grateful recollections of the simple cultivators of these districts long after the most costly monument we could erect to his memory would have perished.’
[Official correspondence on the Revenue Service and Assessment of the Bombay Presidency, 1850; Survey and Settlement Manual, compiled by order of the Government, Bombay, 1882; Land Assessments of India, Bombay Quarterly Review, July 1855; The Deccan Ryots, by H. Green, 1852; Bombay Times, 20 Feb. 1855; Speech by Sir Bartle Frere, Governor of Bombay, 4 Oct. 1864; personal knowledge.]
GOLDSMID, Sir ISAAC LYON (1778–1859), financier and philanthropist, of Jewish race and religion, was born in London on 13 Jan. 1778. His father, Asher Goldsmid, a bullion broker, was brother of Abraham Goldsmid [q. v.] Isaac Goldsmid, after a careful education, entered the firm of Mocatta & Goldsmid, bullion brokers to the Bank of England and to the East India Company. As bullion broker he was then, ipso facto, a member of the Stock Exchange, where up till 1828 only twelve Jewish brokers were admitted. He married, on 29 April 1804, Isabel, daughter of Abraham Goldsmid, his father's brother. As a financier Goldsmid gradually rose to considerable eminence and ultimately amassed a large fortune. His most extensive financial operations were connected with Portugal, Brazil, and Turkey, and for his services in settling an intricate monetary dispute between Portugal and Brazil he was created by the Portuguese government Baron da Palmeira in 1846. Goldsmid was, however, much more than a mere financier. The main effort of his life was spent in the cause of Jewish emancipation; he was also a prominent worker for unsectarian education and social reforms. ‘He was closely allied,’ says Mr. Hyde Clarke, ‘with the utilitarian and, at that time, radical school.’ He took a prominent part in the foundation, in 1825, of University College, then called the University of London. While success was still doubtful, Goldsmid gave the necessary impetus by a prompt acquisition of the desired site in Gower Street ‘at his own risk and that of two colleagues, Mr. John Smith and Mr. Benjamin Shaw, whom he persuaded to join in the responsibility’ (University College Report for 1859). In 1834 he gave energetic help in the establishment of the University College or North London Hospital, and served as its treasurer from 1839 till 1857. With Mrs. Elizabeth Fry and Peter Bedford, Goldsmid was a zealous fellow-worker for the reform of the penal code and the improvement of prisons. Robert Owen, the socialist, in his autobiography, speaks of his long intimacy with Goldsmid and the interest he displayed in the system of New Lanark (Life of Robert Owen, 1857, i. 150).
The cause of Jewish emancipation had Goldsmid's entire devotion. Through his unflagging energy the Jewish Disabilities Bill was introduced by Sir (then Mr.) Robert Grant [q. v.] in 1830. The bill was thrown out in the House of Commons on its second reading, but was reintroduced in the reformed parliament in 1833, when it was passed by large ma--
