Lord Canning’s proclamation in relation to Oude,* some 
important documents in reference to which we published on 
Saturday,” has revived the discussion as to the land tenures of 
India—a subject upon which there have been great disputes and 
differences of opinion in times past, and misapprehensions in 
reference to which have led, so it is alleged, to very serious 
practical mistakes in the administration of those parts of India 
directly under British rule.**? The great point in this controversy 
is, what is the exact position which the zemindars, talookdars or 
sirdars, so called,” hold in the economical system of India? Are 
they properly to be considered as landed proprietors or as mere 
tax-gatherers? | 

It.is agreed that in India, as in most Asiatic countries, the 
ultimate property in the soil rests [with] the Government; but 
while one party to this controversy insists that the Government is 
to be looked upon as a soil proprietor, letting out the land on 
shares to the cultivators, the other side maintain that in substance 
the land in India is just as much private property as in any other 
country whatever—this alleged property in the Government being 
nothing more than the derivation of ttle from the sovereign 
theoretically acknowledged in all countries, the codes of which are 
based on the feudal law and substantially acknowledged in all 
countries whatever in the power of the Government to levy taxes 

4 The Times, No. 22986, May 6, 1858.— Ed. 

No. 5343, June 5, 1858.— Ed. 

on the land to the extent of the needs of the Government, quite 
independent of all considerations, except as mere matter of policy, 
of the convenience of the owners. 

Admitting, however, that the lands of India are private 
property, held by as good and strong a private title as land 
elsewhere, who shall be regarded as the real owners? There are 
two parties for whom this claim has been set up. One of these 
parties is the class known as zemindars and talookdars, who have 
been considered to occupy a position similar to that of the landed 
nobility and gentry of Europe; to be, indeed, the real owners of 
the land, subject to a certain assessment due to the Government, 
and, as owners, to have the right of displacing at pleasure the 
actual cultivators, who, in this view of the case, are regarded as 
standing in the position of mere tenants at will, liable to any 
payment in the way of rent which the zemindars may see fit to 
impose. The view of the case which naturally fell in with English 
ideas, as to the importance and necessity of a landed gentry as the 
main pillar of the social fabric, was made the foundation of the 
famous landed settlement of Bengal seventy years ago, under the 
Governor-Generalship of Lord Cornwallis °°*—a settlement which 
still remains in force, but which, as it is maintained by many, 
wrought great injustice alike to the Government and to the actual 
cultivators. A more thorough study of the institutions of Hindos- 
tan, together with the inconveniences, both social and _ political, 
resulting from the Bengal setthement, has given currency to the 
opinion that by the original Hindoo institutions, the property of 
the land was in the village corporations, in which resided the 
power of allotting it out to individuals for cultivation, while the 
zemindars and talookdars were in their origin nothing but officers 
of the Government, appointed to look after, to collect, and to pay 
over to the prince the assessment due from the village. 

This view has influenced to a considerable degree the settlement 
of the landed tenures and revenue made of late years in the 
Indian provinces, of which the direct administration has been 
assumed by the English. The exclusive proprietary rights claimed 
by the talookdars and zemindars have been regarded as originat- 
ing in usurpations at once against the Government and _ the 
cultivators, and every effort has been made to get rid of them as 
an incubus on the real cultivators of the soil and the general 
improvement of the country. As, however, these middlemen, 
whatever the origin of their rights might be, could claim 
prescription in their favor, it was impossible not to recognize their 
claims as to a certain extent legal, however inconvenient, arbitrary 

and oppressive to the people. In Oude, under the feeble reign of 
the native princes, these feudal landholders had gone very far in 
curtailing alike the claims of the Government and the rights of the 
cultivators; and when, upon the recent annexation of that 
kingdom,°*” this matter came under revision, the Commissioners 
charged with making the settlement soon got into a very 
acrimonious controversy with them as to the real extent of their 
rights. Hence resulted a state of discontent on their part which led 
them to make common cause with the revolted Sepoys. 

By those who incline to the policy above indicated—that of a 
system of village setthement—looking at the actual cultivators as 
invested with a proprietary right in the land, superior to that of 
the middlemen, through whom the Government receives its share 
of the landed produce—the proclamation of Lord Canning is 
defended as an advantage taken of the position in which the great 
body of the zemindars and talookdars of Oude had _ placed 
themselves, to open a door for the introduction of much more 
extensive reforms than otherwise would have been practicable— 
the proprietary right confiscated by that proclamation being 
merely the zemindarree or talookdarree right, and affecting only a 
very small part of the population, and that by no means the actual 
cultivators. 

Independently of any question of justice and humanity, the view 
taken on the other hand by the Derby Ministry of Lord Canning’s 
proclamation, corresponds sufficiently well with the general 
principles which the Tory or Conservative party maintain on the 
sacredness of vested rights and the importance of upholding an 
aristocratic landed interest. In speaking of the landed interest at 
home, they always refer rather to the landlords and rent-receivers 
than to the rent-payers and to the actual cultivators; and it is, 
therefore, not surprising that they should regard the interests of 
the zemindars and talookdars, however few their actual number, 
as equivalent to the interests of the great body of the people. 

Here indeed is one of the greatest inconveniences and 
difficulties in the Government of India from England, that views 
of Indian questions are liable to be influenced by purely English 
prejudices or sentiments, applied to a state of society and a 
condition of things to which they have in fact very little real 
pertinency. The defense which Lord Canning makes in _ his 
dispatch, published to-day,” of the policy of his proclamation 

of Oude”, The Times, No. 23000, May 22, 1858.— Fd. 

against the objections of Sir James Outram, the Commissioner of 
Oude, is very plausible, though it appears that he so far yielded to 
the representations of the Commissioner as to insert into the 
proclamation the mollifying sentence, not contained in the original 
draft sent to England, and on which Lord Ellenborough’s 
dispatch* was vased.°° 

Lord Cannimg’s opinion as to the light in which the conduct of 
landholders of Oude in joining in the rebellion ought to be viewed 
does not appear to differ much from that of Sir James Outram 
and Lord Ellenborough. He argues that they stand in a very 
different position not only from the mutinous Sepoys, but from 
that of the inhabitants of rebellious districts in which the British 
rule had been longer established. He admits that they are entitled 
to be treated as persons having provocation for the course they 
took; but at the same time insists that they must be made to 
understand that rebellion cannot be resorted to without involving 
serious consequences to themselves. We shall soon learn what the 
effect of the issue of the proclamation has been, and whether 
Lord Canning or Sir James Outram was nearer right in his 
anticipation of its results.