land tax, few can deny that a heavy consolidated impost on the first exertions of any species of industry absorbing the whole or nearly the whole of its profits is ruinous and impolitic. It becomes an effectual bar to the creation of that produce on which the future exertions might be profitably employed and through the medium of which individual wealth and public revenue may be increased to an almost inconceivable extent. A land tax of this nature was sure to blast the very production of that wealth which industry would have otherwise brought into being. The land tax was so heavy that the system of tax prevailing in India might well have been called a near approach to the single tax system.[1]
While the land tax prevented the prosperity of the agricultural industry the customs taxes hampered the manufactures of the country. There were internal customs and external customs, and both were equally injurious to trade and industry. The internal customs[2] were made
- ↑ The ratio of the land revenue to the total revenues of India was as given below:—
Ratio. Year. Ratio. Year. Ratio. 1792—3 1817–8 1842–3 to 50·33 to 66·17 to 55·85 1796–7 1821–2 1846–7 1797–8 1822–3 1847–8 to 42·02 to 61·83 to 56·06 1801–2 1826–7 1851–2 1802–3 1827–8 1852–3 to 31·99 to 60·90 55·40 1806–7 1831–2 1855–6 1807–8 1832–3 Average for 64 years to 31·68 to 57·00 54·07 1811–2 1836–7 1812–3 1837–8 to 52·33 to 59·05 1816–7 1841–2 - ↑ Mr. Trevelyan, who closely studied the system, was so much horrified by its injurious effects that he wrote "although we now have ocular demonstration of its existence, yet when it has once been abolished the world will find it difficult to believe that such a system could have been tolerated by us for the better part of a century."—System of Transit and Town Duties in the Bengal Presidency, p. 6.
