it would be difficult to devise a Civil institution better calculated to add to the happiness and prosperity of the people.'
Respecting these arrangements, he bore in mind that those co-partners, who objected to this joint responsibility, were entitled by law to escape therefrom by claiming that their shares should be partitioned off; but so attached were the co-partners in the mass to their Village system that such partition was hardly ever claimed.
Further, the system of joint responsibility in the village had, he thought, one particular advantage in this wise. It prevented the land of any among the brethren being sold to a stranger for default in payment of the Land Revenue. The sale of land by authority, on any account whatever, was, he knew, alien to the practice, if not to the principle, followed by Indian nations. Nevertheless, a civilized Western Government must needs introduce the sale of land for debt, on plain principles of reason. If land were liable for anything, it must be so for the Land Revenue assessed on it, and be sold for unpaid arrears in the last resort, even though the purchaser might be a stranger. He, like all other Governors, had to execute this law in extreme instances, failing all other means of recovering the revenue. But the trouble would be averted in the villages where joint responsibility prevailed, because there the share of the defaulting brother would be bought in by the brethren. They would pay up the amount due from him, and take over his fields, which would remain in the family or in the
