Rights of State and private land owners in
land and its produce- In India the State has always claimed a share of the
produce of the land from the persons in whom it recognized a permanent right to
occupy and till it or arrange for its tillage.[1]
It [2]is
needless to discuss the various ways in which in which this the right of the
ruler to his share and the right of the occupier to hold the land he cultivated
and pass it on to his children both formed part of the ancient customary law of
the country, however, the latter might occasionally be denied in practice by an
unjust Government.2
2. Ownership
of land in India. Land revenue not a land tax. Broadly speaking individuals
exercising a permanent right of the king described above subject only to
payment of the dues of the State have been recognized by us as. “owners” or
“proprietors”, but it would be a mistake to assume that these words, as used in
India, imply all that they do in England. The share of the State, which we call
the land revenue, is not a land tax3 It is more analogous to rent,
and in early settlement literature it was so described, the Government being
represe noted as surrendering to the landowner a small portion of the rent. The
land revenue to is therefore “the first charge upon the rents, profit, or
produce” of an estate or holding, and, until it has been paid, they cannot,
without the previous consent of the Collector, be taken inexecution of a decree
obtained by any private creditor. (Land Revenue Act, XVII of 1857, section 62).
3. Rent
under native system of assessing land revenue. Native rulers sometimes took
their share in kind dividing the crops with the cultivator on the threshing
floor (batai). For certain crops, known as zabti, which it was inconvenient to
provide, e.g., cane and poppies; fixed money rates were charged per bigha or
Kanal. At other times the State
officials resorted to appraisement (kan
or kankut), estimatin[3]g
the amount of the Government share of the crops, and usually taking its value
in money Numerous cesses (abwab) were levied in addition to the land revenue
proper (mal).
A
prudent or ruler forbore to make the burden too heavy to be borne, and it is
obvious that the collections were roughly adusted to the character of the
seasons, and pressed much less heavily than a fixed cash demand equal to the
average of the fluctuating amounts realised would have done. Rent in the usual
sense of the word hardly existed in the districts now included in the
North-Western Provinces or in the cast of the Punjab. The small land-holder was
content to win a bare subsistence from the soil which he tilled with his own
hands; the large landholder was at most able to obtain from the cultivator some
trifling fraction of the crop, say one seer in the maund, as an acknowledgement
of his superior title. As Mr. Thomason remarked in the valuable sketch of teh system of land
revenue administration prevalent in the North-Western Provinces1, prefixed to his “Directions for Settlement
Officers.” “Undoubtedly traces are often to be found of the existence and
exercise of a proprietary right in the land on the part of individuals. But so
long as the sovereign was entitled to a portion of the produce of all land and
there was no fixed wait to that portion, practically the sovereign was so far owner of the land as to be able to exclude
all other persons from enjoying any portion of the net produce. The first step,
therefore, towards the creation of a private proprietary right in the land was
to place such a limit on the demand of the Government as would leave to the
proprietors a profit, which would constituting a valuable property. Native
Governments seldom recognise proprietary right as constituting a claim on the
part of proprietors to engage for the village at a fixed sum. Ordinarily the
collections are made direct from the actual cultivators either by the officers
of Government or by some farmer or assignee of the Government share of the
produce.”
These
statements are not fully applicable to the state of things which existed in
many parts of the Punjab proper under Sikh rule. There the leading men or malikhs were often strong enough to
maintain a real proprietary right in the soil, to exact considerable grain does
besides services of value from the cultivators, and to engage exclusively for
the revenue whenever a cash assessment was introduced.
4. Policy
adopted of a moderate cash assessment fixed for a term of year. A civllad
Government like our own naturally prefers to commute its claim to a part of the
produce of the soil into an annual money payment fixed for a term of year.
British officers gradually learned that, if land revenue was to be collected in
this shape with any sort of regularity, the dernand must be pitched well below the native standard. The tendency to
moderation was reinforced by considerations of humanity and belief that the
best way to promote the extension and improvement of agriculture was to render
the land a source of increasing profit to its owners by limiting the land
revenue and making it incapable of enhancement for a considerable period. This
policy is especially associated in the northwest of India with the names of
Robert Merttins Bird and James Thomason, and the first administrators of the
Punjab brought into this province the lessons learned in their school.
5. Twofold
object of settlement. To assess
the land revenue is the primary object of a settlement. It is necessary at the
same time to decide who shall pay the sums assessed or, in technical language,
with whom the settlement shall be made. To permit an individual to contract to
pay the land revenue is usually an acknowledgement that he possesses a
proprietary right in the soil, and the drawing up of lists (khewats)showing the landowners in every estate, the extent of each
man’s right, and the amount of revenue for which he was primarily responsible,
involved in our early settlements a determination for the first time of the
ownership of every parcel of land in the country. It soon became evident that
there were other persons who had rights in the soil besides those who could
claim the offer of a settlement, and the advisability of making a complete
record of all rights and liabilities connected with the land, including even
those of tenants from year to year, was recognized. A settlement, therefore,
consists of two main branches.
(a) the
assessment; and
(b) the
framing of a record of rights.
6. Purpose of hand-book. It is purpose of the following pages to show haw
these two operations are now carried out in the Punjab. But, as the present
system has been slowly built up by the experience of nearly one hundred years
in the North-Western Provinces and the Punjab, a historical sketch of the
development of settlement policy may be usefully given as an introduction to
the principal subject of this hand-book. But first will be briefly noticed the
political changes of the first half of the Jamna to the Sutlej, and across the
Sutlej to the Bias, and culminated in 1849 in the downfall of the Sikh kingdom
and the formation of the new Province of the Punjab.
Historical
CHAPTER II
The making of the Punjab
Territories included in the Punjab when
absorbed. The territories now included in the Punjab were, with a few
exceptions, absorbed in the British Empire between 1803 and 1849.
I. The
Delhi and Bhatti Territories.
8. Acquisition of Delhi and Bhatti
territories. The first tract to be
conquered was the last to be anneed to the province. After the battle of
laswari in November, 1803, Caulat Rao Sindhia, by the treaty of Sirji
Anjengaum, ceded to the East India Company and its allies all his territories
between the Jamna and the Ganges and also those situated to the north of the
possessions of the Rajas of Jaipur and Jodhpur and the Rana of Gohad. the
latter comprised the present districts of Gurgaon, Delhi, Rohtak, Hissar, tahsil panipat and pargana Karnal in the Karnal District, and tahsil Fazilka in Ferozepore. In 1805 Lord Cornwallis was sent out
from England to reverse Lord Wellesley” policy by within life jagirs and partly in grants in
perpetuity to native chiefs and others who had taken our isde in the recent
troubles.
9. History of these territories from 1803
to 1858. Grandually by the
eschew of life jagirs and the
confiscation of other grants from disloyalty most of the territory came under
the direct rule of the paramount power, the last and most important cases of
confiscation being caused by the events of the mutiny of 1857. Relics of the
policy adopted in 1805-06 Karnal, in 1803 the territory beyond the Ghaggar,
which from 1858 to 1884 formed the Sirsa District, now divided between, now
divided between Hissar and Ferozepore, was a wild desert tract Known as
Bhattiana or the Bhatti territory, and no effective control was exercised over
it till 1818[4]. Down to
1832 the Delhi territory was controlled by the Residency. But Regulation V of
that year, which abolished the office of Resident and annexed the Delhi
territory to the jurisdiction of the Sadr Board and Courts of Justice at
Allahabad, enjoyed the Commissioner of the Delhi territory and all officers
acting under his control, ordinarily to “or form to the principles and spirit of
the regulations” in their his control, ordinarily to antinistration. After the
Multiny the Delhi division of the North-Western Provinces was in 858
transferred to the Punjab, and formed into the Delhi and Hissar divisions,
which embraced the six districts of Delhi, Gurgaon, Panipat, Rohtak, Hissar and
Sirsa.
II. The Cis-Sutlej and Hill States
10. Cis-Sutlej and Hill States taken under
protection- The Mahrattas were
unable to set up again in any permanent shape the sway of Delhi over the
territories lying to the north and west of Karnal and stretching from the Jamna
to the Sutlej, which had been wasted from the Moghal Empire by the Sikhs after
the battle of Sirhind in 1763. There was a few important States in this tract,
but the rest of it was parcelled out in an extraordinary fasnied among
confederacies of Sikh horsemen, each of whom held a very petty share, Several
of the Sikh chiefs fought against us under the Mahratta standard in 1803, and
some of them had to be chastised again next year when Holkar was threatening
our newly acquired authority to the west of the Jamua. An amnesty was
peroclaimed in 1805, and for a few years, in pursuance of the policy which
sought to restrict our obligations be yound the Jamna, the Sikh States between
that river and the Sutlej were left to themselves. But they were too weak and
divided to resist the steady pressure of Ranjit Singh, who was bent on
establishing his supremacy over all the followers of Guru Govind Singh. It is
needless here to trace the causes and course of the long negotiations between
the Maharaja and Sir Charles Metcalfe in 1808 and 1809[5].
Suffice it to say that the appeals of the leading Cis-Sutlej chiefs for British
protection at last met with a favourable response, and December, 1808, Ranjit
Singh was warned that by the issue of the war with the Mahratta these chiefs
had come under our protection, and informed that the British Government could
not acknowledge his title to any territory acquired by him between the Sutlej
and the Jamna after the first reference ot their decision of the question of
his right to make corquests to the south and east of the former river. The
Maharaja was within an ace of declaring war, but in the end his statesmanlike
instincts got the better of mortified amebition. On the 25th April, 1809, he
signed a treaty pledging himself to make no encroachment on the territories of
the Cis-Sutlej States. The compact so reluctantly made was faithfully observed.
By a proclamation, dated 3rd may, 1809, “the chiefs of malwa and Sirhind” were declared
to be under the protection of the British Government and secured “in the
exercise of the same rights and authority within their own possession” as they
had hitherto enjoyed. They were exempted from tribute, but bound to assist any
Brit ish troops passing through their country, and to aid with their forees in
repelling invasion. Two years later a proclamation, dated 22nd August, 1811,
announced the determination their subjects. At the same time attempts by ona
chiefor confederacy to seiae the property of the south and east of the Sutlej
came under our protection.
11. Development of protection into dominion. It was impossible that the relations between the
paramount power and the protected
chiefs embodied in the proclamations of 1809 and 1811 should be
permanently maintained. They were in fact issued under ami apprehension, it
being imagined that” a few great chiefs only existed between the Jamana and the
Sutlej, and that on them would devolve the maintenance of order.” (Cunning
ham’s “history of the Sikhs", page 152). Matters were complicated by the
fact that or territory gradually became much intermixed with the possessions of
Sikh cheifs and confederacies in consequence of the escheat of estates and
shares in default of heirs. During the first Sikh war in 1845 the open
disloyalty of some chiefs and the neglect of tohers to fulfil their obligations
under the proclamation of 1809 brought matter to a head. In decalring was the
Governor-General announced that the possessions of Maharaja Dalip Singh on the left
bank of the Sutlej were annexed. At the end of the war the estates of the Raja
of Ladwa and Rupar Sardar, and a number of villages belonging to the Nabha
State were confiscated, and the Kapurthala Chief was deprived of all his
territory to the south of the Sutlej. In 1847 the remaining chiefs, with nine
exceptions, the principal being the Patiala, Jind, and Nabha Rajas, were
reduced to the status of jagirdars, and
stripped of their criminal powers, while the obligation of feudal service was
commuted into a money payment. In 1849 in jagridars
were drprived of their civil powers and made amenable to our courts, and
finally in 1850 orders were issued that all their estates not already settled
at their request or at the request of the zamindars
should be assessed. The Cis-Sutlej territory was thus at last reduced to the
condition of an ordinary British possession.
12. Administration of the Cis-Sutlej and Hill
States before 1849 :– The
Residentat Delhi had charge of all our political relations with protected or
independent States in the north-west of Inida. In 1821 he was replaced by a
Governo-General's Agent, and a St. perintendent of the Protected and Hill
States was appointed, who had his headquarters at Amabla. In 1840 the
Superintendent made way for a Governor-General's Agent for the North-West
Frontier who was also stationed at Ambala. After the first Sikh war the at
histration of the Cis-Sutlej States was entrusted to a Commissioner, whose
charge Completed the four districts of Thanesar, Amabala, Ludhiana, and
Ferozepore. The Ci-s-Sutlej Commissioner was sometimeds under the order of the
Agent of theGovernor-General, North-west Frontier, at Lahore, and somethimes
directly under the Foreign Department of the Government of India. When the new
Province of the Punjab was formed in 1849 the Cis-Sutlej Commissioner's charge
was included in it. In 1862, the Thanesar District was broken up, part of it
being transferred to Panipat, with which it formed the new Karnal District, and
part of Ambala.
III.
The Jullundur Doab; Kangra and Hazara
13.
Annexation of Jullundur Doab and Kangra :– The death of Ranjit Singh in 1839 was followed by
anarchy in the Skih State. In 1845, the selfish intriguers who ruled at Lahore
in the name of the child Maharaja Dalip Singh, fearing the Khalsa army which
they were powerless to control, yielded to its cry to be led across the Sutlej
in the hope that its length would be broken in its conflict with the Company's
forces[6].
In the war which ensued the valour of the Sikh soldiery was rendered useless by
the treachery on incapacity[7]
of its leaders, and Lahore was occupied
in February, 1846. By the 3rd and 4th Articles of the Treaty signed on the 9th
of March, 1846. By the 3rd and 4th Articles of the Treaty signed on the 9th of
March, 1846, Maharaja Dalip Singh ceded all the Bias and the Indus, including
Kashmir and Hazara. Kashmir and Hazara were made over to Gulab Singh for a
payment of seventy-five lakhs; but next year he induced the Lahore Darbar to
take over Hazara and to give him in exchange territory near Jammu. The tract
between the Bias and the Sutlej was formed into the Commissionership of the
Trans-Sutlej States, and put in charge of Mr. John Lawrence. It was divided
into the three dirstricts of Jalandhar, Hoshiarpur, and Kangra. Three years
later these districts and Hazara become part of the new province of the Punjab.
IV. The Punjab
west of the Bias
14. Annexation of the Punjab west of the Bias
in 1849 and administration of the province down to 1859 :– After the Wazir Raja Lal Singh had been banished
for instigating Sheikh Imam-ud-din to resist the occupation of Kashmir by Gulab
Singh, an agreement was executed in December, 1846, between the British
Government and the Principal Sikh Sardars, by which a Council of Regency was
appoinhted, which was to be controlled by a British Resident siationed at
Lahore. Henry Lawrence was the first Resident, but his brother John more than
once officated for him. They had under them a staff of able assistants, and one
of the duties on which the latter were employed when the second Sikh war broke
out in 1848 was the makin of summary settleemnts in the different districts
under the control of the Darbar. On the 21st of February, 1849, the Khalsa army
was finally broken in the battle of Gujarat ; on the 30the of March the
proclamation annexing the Punjab was read at Lahore, and Lord Dalhousie's
despatch, dated 31st March, put the Voernment of the province under a Board of
Aministration consisting of the two Lawrences and Charles Greville Mansel. The
Board was abolished in February, 1853, and its powers vested in a Chief
Commissioner, under whom the principal administrative officers were the
Judicial Commissioner and the Finanacila Commissioner. John Lawrence, the first
and only Chief Commissioner of the Punjab, became its first Lieutenant-Governer
the Ist of January, 1859.
V. Subsequent
Changes
14-A. Formation of the North-West Frontier and
Delhi Provinces — In November,
1901, the districts of Hazara, Peshawar, and Kohat, the Bannu and Marwat tahsils
of Bannu and the Trans-Indus part of Dera Ismail Kha, with the exception of the
Vehoailaka, were separated from the Punjab and formed into the North-West
Frontier Province. On the Ist October, 1912, when the capital of India was
removed to Delhi, the Delhi tahsil and the Mahrauli thana of Ballabgarh werr
separated from the Punjab and formed into the Delhi Province.
Development
of Settlement policy in the North-Western Provinces down to the period of the
annexation of the Punjab
15. The Punjab Settlement system brought from
North-Western Provinces — The
Settlement system of the Punjab was in its inception of the system of the
North-Western has been less in the provinces[8]
as it stood in 1849, and it is a curious fact that the deviation from that
model has been less in the province which adopted it than in the province which
gave it brith. In his despatch establisling the Board of Administration Loard
Dalhousie indicated that a Revenue Code for the newly conquered territory would
be found" in the four printed circulars of the Sadr Board of Revenue,
North-Western Provinces, and the pamphlets published under the orders of the
Lieutenant - Governor."
The
pamphlets referred to were Thomason's "Directions for Settlement Officers
and Collectors", which appeared in three parts between 1844 and 1848. But
quite as imprtant as these written instructions was the fact that the revenue
policy of the Punjab was moulded by officers who had administered districts and
made settlements in the North-Western Provinces. Of the three first memebrs of
teh Board of Administration, two, John Gawrence and C.G. Mansel, were civilians
trained in assessment and revenue work under Bird and Thomason, and, when
Mansel left he was succeeded by Rober Montogomery, who eleven years earlier had
settled the Allahabad District. Altogether nineteen of the best of Thomason's
officers were sent to the Punjab, and they brought with them some of this way
obtained ready-made a system which had been gradually evolved by the labours of
many able officers in the districts between the Jamna and the Ganges, and a
sketch of the growth of its settlement policy would be incomplete without a
brief account of the process by which the model it adopted took shape in its
original home.
16. Early settlements in North-Western
Provinces, 1801 to 1822. – The
"ceded provinces" and the "conquered provinces" as the
districts now included in the North-Western Provinces were called, came under
British rule in 1801 and 1803, respectively. As regards their revenue management
they were till 1831 under the Board of Revenue at Calcutta; and it was the
intention of Government to give them after ten years a permanent settlement.
Meanwhile tow triennial settlements and one quadrennial settlement were to be
made, and thereafter the permanent settlement "was to be concluded with
the smae persons (if willing to engage, and if no others who have a better
claim should come forward) for such lands as might be in a sufficient state of
cultivation to warrant the measure on surely terms as Government shall deem
fair and equitable."[9]
These early settlements were very rough and ready
proceedings. There were no field drvey maps, no reliable returns of the
cultivated area or of the crops grown, and no trust worthy records from which
the profits of the landholder could be deduced. A Collector here and there
might attmept to estimate the net produce of the land by calculating the value
of the gross outturn and deducting the expenses of cultivation. But the
ordinary procdure followed in the early years of the century was that desribed
by Mr. Thomason's Chief Secreatry, Mr. John Thornton, in Volume XII of the
"Calcutta Review" : "The early settlments..............were
effected in a very easy and cursory way. The Collector sat in his office at the
sadr station. attended by his right-hand men. The Kanungos, by whoem he was
almost entirely guided. As each estate came up in succession, the brief record
of former settlements was read, and the..............fiscal register for ten
years immediately preceding ten cession or conquest was inspected. The kanungos
were then asked who was the zamindar
of the village. The reply to this questio pointed sometimes to the actual bona
fide owner of one or of many estates, sometimes to the headman of the village
community; sometimes to a non-resident Saiyyid of Kayath, whose sole possession
consisted in the levying a yearly sum from the real cultivating proprietors,
and sometimes to the large zamindar or
talukdar , who held only a limited interest in the greater portion of his
domain. Occasionally a man was siad to be zamindar
who had lost all connection for years with the estate..........thought his name
might have remained in the kanungo's books.
As the dicta of these officers were
generally followed with little further enquirey it may be imagined that great
injustice was thus perpetrated. Then followed the determination of the amount
of revenue. On this point also reliance was placed on the daul or estimate of the kamungo
checked by the accounts of past collections and by any other offers of mere
farming speculators which might happen to be put forward at the time Mistakes
of course occureed, and it was often necessary to readjust the demand even
during the currency of the short lease then granted, but, on the whole this
part of the system succeded betten than might have been expected."
17. Rights of peasant owners over-ridden by
farmers, talukdars and sadr malguzars.– One great evil in these settlements was the extent to which engagments were
taken from farmers. This was soon recognised to be an abuse, and was partially
corrected as time went on. But a real dislike on the part of the landholders to
undertake resp. sibility for the payment of of a cash assessment frequently led
to the offers of talukdars and farmers being accepted. Even where owners
engaged, this as a rule only menat that a few of the leading landholders had
been admitted as sadr malguzars and
allowed to make what arrangements they could for collecting from their
co-parceners, who were styled in the revenue literature of teh day the
'under-tenants'. There was no recored to show what the rights and liabilities
of these co-parceners were. The sadr
malguzar was called zamindar, and was treated as if he was the sole
proprietor of the estate, however small his actual share might be. If once an
engagement had been taken from him, the other landholders were only permitted
to engage with his consent at a subsequent settlement. The rights of large
bodies of peasant owners were thus over-borne and were in imminent danger of
destruction.
18. Vicious system of collection.- Bad as the process of assessment, the means
employed for collection were far worse. The most drastic process known to the Revenue
Code was constantly and indicriminately applied when villages fell into
arrears, and the abuses of the sale law became the scandal of the
administration. If the sadr malguzar made
default the whole patti or estate for
which he had engaged was put up to auction, and all private rights of ownership
annulled in fagour of the puchaser, who was very free quently the tahsildar or one of his underlings.
Indeed, we are told that “by some strange misapprehension the rule applicable
to cases of sale for arrears of reyenue appears to have been extended not only
to the sales of estate under decrees of court for private debts, but even to
the private transfers of the sadr
malguzars.”[10] The
powerful machinery of a civilized Government was rapidly breaking up communities
which had survived the crushing exaction of the petty tyrannies which it had
replaced. The extent of the evil may be gauged by the extraordinary nature of
the remedy applied with very partial successar 1821. In that year a commission
was apointed with power to annual, should equity require it, any public or
private transfer of land which had taken place before the 13th of September,
1810.
19. Over-assessment and bad revenue
management in Delhi territory. In
those parts of the Delhi territory which came under our direct management
during the first quartest the century, things were not a whit better. In the
5th Chapter of the Karnal Settlement. Report Mr. Ibbetson has drawn a dark
picture of the gross over-assessment and fiseal mismanagement which prevailed
in Panipat down to 1824, and which was only acually corrected in the next 18
years. A similar tale of over-assessment and the breaking down of villages is
told in Mr. John Lawrence’s report on the settlement of the Rewari gargana of
the Gurgaon District which he made in 1836. One reason which he gives for he
amposition of extravagant demands is significant. He says- “The parana was in
the first instance greatly over-assessed. The majority of the largest and
finest villages were in the possession of persons of wealth and
infulence.........These people were set one against another in order to raise
the revenue, and in consequence of the feuds which exmeed among them, this was
but too easily accomplished. Each endeavoure to outbid the other and enhance the
assessment of his rival. This had the effect or raising prodigiously are
revenue of all these villages.”
Was
parhaps forunate that a great part of the Delhi teritory did not come under our
direct revenue management till wiser mathjods had been learned by pain
experience.
20. Protection of rights of peasant owners. The last object was secured by providing that the
fact that a person had not hitherto joined in the settlement lease should be no
bar to his being admitted to engage in
future, and by taking power in those cases in which the oareners did not become
jointly responsible to make what we should now call a subsetlement[11]
with them determining exactly the amounts which they should pay to the farner talukdar, or sadr malguzar. At the same
time their interests were nrotected from fisljkd in canseqnence of the defauit
of the sadr maiguzar.
22. Record of rights to be framed after
exhaustive local enquiry.- A
very minute enqure arding the extent of the rights and interest of every person
sharing in the sqsr of the soil was to be made, and the rates of rent
demandable from all resident whether possessing the right claimed. His
decision, even when upheld by the Board of Revenue was not indeed final as the
defeated party might bring a regular civil in th zillah Court. But an immense step forward was taken when disputes
regarding rights in land were in the first instance submitted to an
officer whose duties forced him temake
a careful study of the peculiartities of Indian tenures, and who could hear the
cases line villages in the prese of the assembled brotherhood. It is the great
merit of Holt madenzie’s scheme that it moved every part of settlement work
from the kachahari to the camp.
1. See the opening words of the first cluase of Regulation XXXI of 1803; "By the ancient law of the country the ruling power is entitled to a certain proportion of the annual produce of every bigha of land"
2. In the ealry statement of 1846 an old Sikh bluntly remarked to the Government official that the land tax (?) belonged to Government but the land to the people" – Cust's Revenue Manual, page 5.
3. 3. "The land revenue of Indiam as of all eastern countries, is less to be regarded as a tax on the landowners than as the result of a kind of joint owinership in the soil or its produce, under which the latter is divided in unequal and generally undefined proportions between the ostensible proprietors and the State."
[5] See Griffin's Punjab Rajas, pages 95-122.
[6] Their policy was indicated by the old Sikh motto – " throw the snake into your enemy's bosom….The snake was the evilly-disposed, vilent yet powerful and splendid Sikh army. It was to be flung upon the British and so destroyed. "Memoris of Alexander Gardener Colonel of Artillery in the service of Maharaja Ranjit Singh., pages 261-2". Compare Gough's "The Sikhs and the Sikh Wars",. page 60
2. See "The Sikhs and the Sikh Wars" page 65 asnd 133.
[8] Now the united Provinces of Agra and Oudh
[9] Holt Mackenzie's Memorandum, paragraph 7.
[10] Holt Mackenzie's Memorandum, paragraph 571.
[11] Compare Sir Willam Muir's remarks as to an early settlement of part of Bandelkhand, which become notorious in the North-Western Proviences : "The Settlement of Mr. Warning resembles an auction in which the highest bidder was sure of his object." (Muir's Settlement Report of Kalpi pargana, para 29