VIZAGAPATAM.
fell due before the crop was ripe; and it wound up by saying 'not-withstanding the abundant advantages enjoyed by Government, we have discovered no traces in return of protection, assistance, or attention to the cultivation. The villages are composed of wretched hovels, the people meanly clothed, and meagre through the extremes of labour and hard fare, the soil in many parts overrun with shrubs and the tanks in the very worst repair.' The account of the administration of the havíli land was even more unfavourable, and Mr. Oram, one of the most active of the members of the Committee, was appointed in 1787 to superintend the administration of this independently of the Chief and Council.1[1] A few months afterwards, he was succeeded by special European Collectors, who managed the havíli under the immediate orders of the new Board of Revenue which had been established the year before. They rented out some portions of it and managed the rest under amani, receiving the assessment in kind. The old abuses and irregularities consequently some-what decreased and the ryots advanced in prosperity. In 1792,however, these Collectors were partly subordinated to the Chiefs in Council, and the natural result was ' continual collisions of authority and of opinions between the Board of Revenue and the provincial establishments.'
In the same year Lord Cornwallis, then Governor-General, advocated with characteristic energy the total abolition of the Chiefs in Council in the Northern Circars and the substitution throughout that area of Collectors subordinate to the Board of Revenue. He said — 'It is now thirty years since the Company became possessed of the Circars; and at this moment their influence is very little, if at all, better established than it was the first day. The zamindars still keep the same troops and exercise the same authority, within their respective districts, The oppressions they commit are, we believe, in no way abated; and their engagements to the Company are as ill-performed as they have been at any period.'
In 1794, accordingly, the Chiefs and Councils were abolished by a proclamation (which, after the fashion of those times, improved the occasion by a lengthy homily on the reciprocal duties of Collectors and zamindars) and Vizagapatam was arranged into three 'divisions' each under a Collector.
Meanwhile, in 1793, the Vizianagram estate, which comprised almost all the present district except the havíli land, had been sequestrated for arrears (see p. 50), and in 1794 the Rája of Vizianagram had been killed at the battle of Padmanábham.
168
- ↑ 1 Fifth Report, ii, 19,
