ABSTRACT
We have brought our narration to the year of the departure of Mountstuart Elphinstone from India. The land assessment in every Province of India was felt at that time to be excessive, not only by the people, but also by the Company's servants and revenue officers. In Madras, the revenue officers had told Dr. Francis Buchanan, as we have seen in Chapter XII., that the heavy Land – Tax impeded agriculture and the prosperity of the people, and Sir Thomas Munro gradually reduced the rate from one-half to one-third the gross produce, which last was still an excessive tax. In Northern India, Sir Edward Colebrooke and successive Governor-Generals had implored the Court of Directors, in vain, to redeem the pledge given by the British Government, and to permanently settle the Land-Tax, so as to make it possible for the people to accumulate wealth and improve their own condition. And in Bombay, Elphinstone had viewed with concern the rapid growth of revenue in several Districts, and Chaplin's decision to fix it at one-third the gross produce was calculated to give little relief. Throughout the continent of India, except where the Land-Tax had been permanently fixed, the people groaned under the assessments of the new rulers of the country. The Directors were deaf to representations, and the servants of the expressed their opinions with bated breath, and were powerless to afford relief.
