LAND REVENUE ADMINISTRATION.
outside its limits. In 1769 this was placed under the existing Chief and Council at Vizagapatam. They found that the land of the district was then divided into the two classes already described; namely, that under the zamindars and the havíli land. The former, practically all of which had become tributary to, or was in the hands of, the Rája of Vizianagram, they assessed at a fixed sum, 'very inadequate to his receipts,' and the latter, in accordance with customary practice, they leased out to a renter, who for several years was Sítaráma Rázu, the brother and díwán of the Rája of Vizianagram.
The Chief and Council, it is clear, were corrupt and inefficient; and under their charge the country retrograded rather than improved. The administration of the havíli land was especially lax, and the Rája's under-renters were allowed to juggle with the commutation rates of produce in a way which absorbed much of the ryot's profits. In 1776 the Madras Government despatched a Committee of Circuit consisting of five of the Council (which then contained nineteen Members) to enquire into the state of the Northern Circars, and the revenue system there, including the suitability of the payments made by the zamindars. The Committee had made some progress when, in February 1778, Sir Thomas Rumbold (who is said to have begun life as a waiter at White's Club) became Governor of Madras. He ordered that the zamindars should be sent for to Madras, where the information required could be at once obtained and details of peshkash settled with them in person. A considerable number of them came to the Presidency accordingly and there, says Mill's history, 'in every case the Governor alone negotiated with the zamindars and regulated their payments; in no case did he lay the grounds of his treaty before the Council; in every case the Council, without enquiry, acquiesced in his decrees.' Sir Thomas Rambold was charged with having conducted these negotiations corruptly, and in 1781 he and two Members of his Council were dismissed while several others were degraded.
The Committee of Circuit was revived in 1783 and continued its labours until 1788. Its report of 1784 on this district has already been referred to. This condemned the existing system in the strongest terms. Referring to the zamindari land, it spoke with indignation of the oppressions of Sítaráma Rázu, the díwan of Vizianagram, which had resulted in the ryots having to hand over to the Circar all their paddy and subsist on the coarser grains, to suffer constant ejectment from their holdings and to resort to borrowing from money-lenders to pay their kists, which
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