ABSTRACT
We may conclude from chapter four, unsurprisingly, that the 1885 Act originated in colonial perceptions. Noteworthy in the debate was the paucity of direct justification for the favourable prognosis—the future comfort—which was promised as a result of the reforms. Instead, alongside the cases made for historical legitimacy and present poverty and oppression, an adverse trajectory was presented: the fate of tenants since the permanent settlement. This appeared as a professedly factual account, but contained an implied counterfactual (what would have happened if tenant rights had been preserved by law), which reduced the need to verify either the past ruin and its causes, or the future promise and its means. At issue, instead, was the subject of this chapter, the role of law and custom—as explanations or as remedies for present conditions, and in relation to a goal of improvement. Considering these questions, which appeared in several guises, this chapter will further trace the impulse to legislate, as the outcome of colonial perceptions.
