The ryotwar system of Madras was principally followed out by Colonel Heade and Sir Thomas Munro. Under this system, the peasant himself, the cultivator or fanner, is regarded as the pro prietor of the soil, subject to the payment of the Government demand. The position which the Madras ryot holds is somewhat Rimihir to that of the feuars of Scotland, whose feu is held in perpetuity, subject to a permanent feu-duty ; with this difference, that iti Scotland the rent or t3x or feu le permanent, or for a long Imte of 999 years, but in Madras the amount charged is settled annually. And this has given rise to the term Annual Settlementa in Madras, as the system introduced by Lord Cornwallis has been named Per manent Settlements, the latter leaving the fanner entirely at the mercy of the landlord, as was the Ca8C until after the middle of the 19th century, when Government passed Acts to protect the ryots. The Madras ryot can increase or diminialt his holding annually, and has thus all the benefits of a per petual lease, without its responsibilities, inasmuch as he can at any tinae throw up his lands, but he cannot be ejected so long as he pays his dues. He also receives assistance by remission of assess ment in unfavourable seasons. The practical dis advantages of the ryotwar system consist in the annual meddling and supervision required on the part of Government for valuation of cultivated lands. The advantages are this, that as the laud furnishes in India the great bulk of the revenues, and as the taxes of a country must ever be regu lated by the wants of the State, the annual collec tion affords the best opportunity for realizing moneys for State purposes.
In the North-Western Provinces the lands were acquired principally in consequence of Lord Wellesley's Mahratta wars, but the settlement of their land revenues was commenced and com pleted between 1834 and 1844, principally by Mr. Robert Mertens Bird. It is called the village system or settlement, and has been acted on, in the belief that the village community consists of the descendants or representatives of those by whom the village was, at some remote time, con quered or reclaimed from waste. In most cases these are a part, and in some form the whole, of the agricultural population of the vilktge ; but the ordinary peasants or cultivators are descendants of persons who have settled in the village with tho permission of the proprietors. But some of them have by grant or prescription acquired a fixity of tenure, while others have remained tenants-at-will. The village proprietors formed prescriptively the municipal government of the village,—a fact of great importance, 3-illage government being the only institution properly so called which the Hindus possessed. The time occupied in thus settling the N.W. Provinces was about ten years, and the expense incurred in it was upwards of 2500,000. It comprehended a detailed survey of a country about 72,000 square miles in extent, containing a population of inore than 23,000,000, producing a land revenue exceeding X4,000,000. Tho proprietary rights, as ascertained and recorded at the survey, were confirmed in perpetuity ; but the Government assessment was fixed for twenty, and in some cases for thirty years.
The Panjab Settlement was on leases for terms of years, usually shorter than in the N. W. Provinces, and the cess does not exceed one-fifth of the gross value of the produce in rich tracts, and one-sixth or one-eighth, or even less, in poor. In the Bombay
Presidency the Madras ryotwar system was intro duced after the Mahratta wars terminating in 1818 ; but since a recent survey, the land, culti vated and waste together, is divided into fields of an extent cultivable by one yoke of bullocks, and on each field the Government demand is fixed for a period of years, at a very moderate rate. While the contract is binding on the Government, the ryot, on his side, can throw up his engagement at pleasure, and he is not required to pay the assess ment for any year on any field which he has not cultivated or undertaken to cultivate in that year. This assessment holds good for a term of thirty years. The ordinary rates vary in different dis tricts, from 4a. 6d. an acre in the rich black-soil lands of Gujerat, to 10d. an acre in the hills of the Konkan. In the Madras Presidency, a great improvement was introduced in the year 1837, by ruling that the land tax should not be increased becauae on such land a more valuable article was cultivated; and in 1855 an entire revision of fhe Madras cess was undertaken and carried out during the administration of Lord Harris.
Nearly two-thirds of the revenue of India con sists of the rent, or cess, or tax on land ; tho second in atnount is from opium, a third is from salt.
The land in the south of India belongs firstly to the family, secondly to the village community. Joseph bought up the whole land of Lower Egypt for the king; every man sold his field, and the whole soil, except that which belonged to the priests, into which class he bad himself been adopted by marriage, then became tho property of the crown. He then made a new division of the land, allotted out the estates to the husbandmen to cultivate, and gave them seed to plant, and required them for the futim to pay one-fifth part of the crop, as a rent, to the royal treasury. Thus did that Asiatic minister, copying the customs of the east, make the king the landlord of the whole country except the estates of the priests ; and the land was then held by what is now known in Asia as the ryotwar tenure. In Asia, generally, the landholders are tenant-proprietors at a changeable rack-rent of about one-half of the crop ; whereas the Egyptians paid a fixed and low rent of one fifth. The Egyptian landholder was therefore rich enough to have peasants or slaves under him, while the Indian ryot is himself the peasant-pro prietor. This rent was in the place of all direct taxes.
Throughout the Bundi territory by far the greater part of the land is the absolute property of the cultivating ryot, who can sell or mortgage it. There is a curious tradition that this right was obtained by one of the ancient princes making a general sale of the crown land, reserving only the tax. In Bundi, if a ryot become unable, from pecuniary wants or otherwise, to cultivate his lands, he lets them; and custom has established four annas per bigha for irrigated land, and two minas for gorma, that dependent on the heavens, or a.share of the produce in a similar proportion, as his right. If in exile, from hatever cause, he can assign his share to trusteehi and the more strongly to mark his inalienable right in such a case, the trustees reserve on his aceOktut two seers on every maund of produce, which is tmphatically termed ' huk bapota ka bhom,' the diles of the patrimoiaial soil.—Tod's Rajasthan, ii. p. 540 ; Sharpe's History of Egypt, i. p. 36 ; Carneyy ; Imp. Gaz. iv.