have suffered. It is in a high degree conducive to their happiness, and to the enjoyment of a great portion of freedom and independence.'
Notwithstanding the advantages offered by the system of Village Communities, the early British administrators in Hindustán were less successful probably than their brethren in some other parts of India. Temporary settlements of the revenue were made in a perfunctory manner; the land tax was collected without proper information of the rights and liabilities of individuals.' Originally there was one supervising Board of Revenue at Calcutta for the whole Bengal Presidency, but afterwards a separate Board was allowed for the Upper Provinces. The first man who really tried to effect a reform in these Provinces was Holt Mackenzie in 1822: and he procured the passing of a law which was the precursor of the laws afterwards embodied as the magna charta of the rural people. The next step was taken in 1833 by the Governor-General, Lord William Bentinck, in a conclave held at Allahábád, on which occasion proceedings, legislative and executive, were determined, ending in the measure afterwards known to history as the Settlement of the North-Western Provinces.
The task thus undertaken was immense, beyond any of that nature which had been essayed previously in India. The principal points of the country, containing more than seventy thousand square miles, were to be fixed with absolute precision by the Grand Trigonometrical Survey. A scientific
