388 NORTH-IVESTERN PROVINCES AND OCDH. ascertained proceeds, was determined on by the agreement of the landlord and the cultivator. Though grain rents were not without their advantages, the chief being that they varied with the season, and were a self-acting system for adjusting the rent to the produce, it is probable that the agricultural community has largely benefited by their conversion into cash. With cash rents, which are not liable to vary from year to year, the tenant is certain of enjoying the whole of the increased produce which is due to his own exertions. With grain rents, half of this is taken by the landlord, and half the loss comes out of his pocket, even should the tenant refuse to cultivate altogether. There can be little doubt that, with the introduction of cash rents, the share of the produce paid by the cultivator has very much diminished. When grain is paid, half of the produce goes to the landlord ; and with an assessment at half assets, the State would be entitled to a quarter. The Famine Commission estimates the Government revenue in the North-Western Provinces at only 7.8 per cent., or one-twelfth, of the total value of the crop. Where the assessment represents one-half of the rental, the latter would therefore amount to one-sixth of the gross produce; and allowing for cases of under-assessment, it is not likely to be more than a fifth in the place of the half which the landlords would have obtained under a system of grain payments Money rents paid by both occupancy and non-occupancy tenants in the North - Western Provinces are approximately 7s. per acre; while in Oudh the tenants-at-will pay iis. The farm of an occupancy tenant is on an average 25 per cent. larger than that of a tenant-at-will, and he usually holds the best land in the village. These two facts combined enable him to pay in some Districts a higher rate of rent, and at the same time to be better off than the tenant-at-will. The area of farms varies with the density of the agricultural population, and it is on this, rather than on the rate of rent paid, that the wealth of the agricultural classes depends. As regards agricultural capital, in every part of the Provinces it is the cultivator who provides the whole of the expenses of cultivation. The cattle with which the land is ploughed are his own; the water for irrigation is drawn from the well belonging to him; and the ploughs and other implements of agriculture are his own property. The seed he either saves from his last year's crop or buys from the village graindealer. The mill in which he crushes his sugar-cane, and the pans in which the sugar is made, either belong to him or are hired from men who make a business of letting them out. The only part of the agricultural capital belonging to the landlord is the cost of some of the wells, and even these are more often constructed by the cultivators themselves.
