interests were — like the provisions enacted by the Permanent Settlement in the interest of the Bengal ráyat — seriously inadequate. Subsequent legislation has been undertaken with the view of securing the Oudh peasantry from oppression. But their security is still far from being complete. All that can be said is that Lord Canning took up the matter at a point at which one experiment had signally failed. His own experiment must be pronounced to have been, in its ultimate results to the occupants of the soil[1], a failure; as regarded the grave and pressing necessities of the moment, it was a brilliant success.
Another announcement, made at a Darbár which Lord Canning held a few days later at Cawnpur, was received, with heartier acclamation. The rule against adoption, which had brought several princely families to a close, on the failure of natural heirs, was for the future to be relaxed, and the right of adoption to be recognised by the British Government as affecting sovereignty as well as property. Every reigning family in India breathed more easily for the news that the Government had discarded a policy which doomed many of them, sooner or later, to extinction. Compliments, congratulations, thanksgivings filled the air. It was now evident that the British Government, whose designs against caste and religion had created
- ↑ Oudh has now only about 15,000 'occupancy tenants,' i.e. tenants with certain privileges as to permanency of tenure and non-enhancement of rent, as against two and a half millions of tenants at will, who are, practically, without any protection.
