The political results of the permanent settlement were equally disastrous. In l822, Sir Thomas Munro, then Governor of Madras, examined in a characteristic minute the causes of the frequent disturbances of the peace which occurred, and attributed much of the disorder to the attempts of Government to enforce the rights of traders and other speculators who had lent money to the zamindars and proprietors on the security of their estates. He wrote: —
'They are not dishonoured, they think, by their possessions falling into the hands of Government, but they consider themselves disgraced by seeing the abodes of their ancestors become the property of a low trader. As the Regulations now stand, we must, whenever a sowcar obtains a decree against a zamindar for a part or the whole of the zamindari, support him by force both in getting and maintaining possession of it; and hence we are every day liable to be dragged into a petty warfare among unhealthy hills, where an enemy is hardly ever seen, where numbers of valuable lives are lost from the climate, and where we often lose but never gain reputation.'1[1]
He was emphatically of opinion, none the less, that the great hope for the future lay in the gradual extension of the area of the Government land. 'No zamindari once forfeited for rebellion should ever be restored. All estates falling in should invariably be kept and annexed to the Circar lands.'
Nor did the permanent settlement bring peace and plenty to the cultivators. Few of the zamindars interested themselves personally in the management of their estates; they entrusted everything to the care of managers, whose policy it was to render their masters entirely dependent on them and to prevent their interfering in the administration. There was no system of management; the only object was to extort from the ryots the utmost possible amount of revenue. A second middleman was often introduced by renting villages annually or for a term of years, preference being given to such proposals as ensured the highest amount of rent and afforded security for its punctual payment, and little regard being had to the class of persons tendering or the influence rack-rents must have on the resources of the villages. In adverse seasons all that could be taken of the ryots' produce was claimed on the part of the zamindar, and in ordinary years the demand purposely exceeded their means. The deficiencies of bad years were made up in good ones, and in both the ryot was left only a bare subsistence.
The inherent evils of this system were soon exaggerated by a succession of natural calamities which is described in more
- ↑ 1 Arbuthnot's Munro (London, 18881), i, 213.
