always been a paramount duty. When we acquired the Diwání of Bengal in 1765, our first object was to realise the revenue by annual or quinquennial assessments.
Later acquisitions have impressed on our administrators the necessity of fixing the Government share of the produce on more definite principles, of collecting it by easy processes, of ascertaining the rights and interests of all classes from the superior landlord or tenant-proprietor down to the tenant-at-will, and of stereotyping these rights by a permanent and trustworthy record. It has- been justly remarked that until the Land Revenue has been fixed and the Settlement concluded no other improvement should be attempted, or, if attempted, would be likely to succeed. It is vain to look for contentment and acquiescence whether in a foreign or an indigenous rule, or to set about any of those moral and material works which denote progress and civilisation, until the mass of the agriculturists know for certain in what proportions, at what periods of the year, at what places, and under what conditions or guarantees, they are to contribute to the Exchequer that portion of the harvest which they admit to be its due. No one in India, except under a special grant of exemption from the ruling power, has ever imagined that he could hold his Táluk or his allotment without paying something for it.
All these considerations were not so fully appreciated by the servants of the East India Company under Warren Hastings and Cornwallis as they
