evidence to show their retention of it; so between the two there was doubt. Now, to which of these was the benefit of this doubt to be given? inasmuch as that would just decide the balance. Some authorities, for demonstrable reasons, would give this benefit to the Tálukdár; others would, for reasons equally demonstrable, give it to the Village Community. Thomason would consider this ancient Community entitled to the benefit of this doubt; and the wide controversy is narrowed to that point. Impartial and well-informed History must decide whether he was right or not — securus judicabit orbis.
He had to steer through a narrow strait, so to speak, of contention, with a threatening rock on either side. One rock was the danger of lowering the territorial aristocracy as a national and social force, the other rock was the danger of subverting the rights of the proprietary classes. Of this latter danger he certainly kept his administration clear. Whether he kept it equally clear of the other danger relating to the Native aristocracy, will be a question decided differently by those who incline either to the territorial or to the proprietary view; by those who belong either to one party or to the other; for in India, as in other countries, schools of opinion exist in respect of Oriental policy. Some would say that he was specially a friend to the middle and humbler classes when their interests clashed with those of the upper classes. Such a supposition, however, did him but scant justice, for he was a man of all-embracing sympathy. He
