increase the proportion which it claims of the rent of the land throughout large tracts of India without giving good grounds for reproach. In the Administration Report of the Punjab for 1872-73 I wrote as follows:—
'The Sikhs often actually took as much as one-half the gross produce of an estate, besides a multitude of cesses; our demand never exceeds one-sixth, is frequently not more than an eighth, a tenth, or a twelfth, and in some cases not more than a fifteenth of the average gross produce valued at average prices for a period of twenty to thirty years.'
The Customs Revenue in the latter days of Ranjít Singh realized Rs. 1,637,000, and the cost of collection was Rs. 110,000, or nearly 7 per cent. Duties were levied, under forty-eight heads, on almost every article of common use, without any attempt to discriminate between luxuries and necessaries, or to assess lightly the articles used by the poor, such as fuel, grain, or vegetables. The mode of collection was extremely vexatious, the country being covered with custom houses, at which merchants were treated with the utmost insolence and oppression. An article paid duty on being taken into a town, a second time on being taken to the shop, and a third time on re-export.
The following extracts from Settlement Reports have been collected by Mr. Ibbetson, and printed in his admirable Census Report for 1883. They express vividly and clearly the Sikh method of administration, and taken from various districts and different
