rate, it would be wise to
grant a fixed assessment on all lands, but I am quite sure that it would
be wise to grant, for the irrigable area watered by a well dug at an
occupier's expense, a permanent assessment at the rent now charged on the
land. The Government, it is true, would sacrifice the rise it might obtain
on the land at the close of each lease, but, as a compensation for
this--and an ample compensation I feel sure it would be--the State would
save in two ways, for it would never have to grant remissions of revenue
on such lands, as it now often has to do in the case of dry lands, and
with every well dug the expenditure in time of famine would be diminished.
Such a measure, then, as I have proposed, would at once benefit the State
and draw out for profitable investment much capital that is now lying
idle. There is nothing new, I may add, in this proposal, for it was
adopted by the old native rulers, who granted fixed tenures on favourable
terms to those making irrigation works at their own expense. An
English-speaking Mysore landholder once said to me, "I will not dig wells
on my lands under my present tenure, but give me an assessment fixed for
ever, and I will dig lots of wells." The present landed policy of the
Indian Government[3] is as shallow as it is hide-bound. It wants, like a
child, to eat its cake and still remain in possession of the article. It
is most anxious to see private capital invested in land, and it still
wants to retain the power of every thirty years indefinitely augmenting
the land revenue on general grounds. Surely it must be apparent to minds
of even the humblest calibre that these two things are utterly
incompatible!

I may mention that there is a strong party in India in favour of granting
at once a permanent assessment at the existing rate of rent for all lands,
and in reference to this point it may be interesting to give the following
passage from a letter I once received from the late Prime Minister of
Mysore, Mr. Rungacharlu, the minister who started the first Representative
Assembly that ever sat in India:

"As you know," he wrote, "I hold decided views on the subject, and the
withholding of the permanent assessment is a serious injury to the
extensive petty landed interests in the country, and is no gain whatever
to the Government. Nearly the whole population of the country are
agriculturists, and live in one way or another upon the cultivation of the
land. The effect of a pe