ABSTRACT
From this overview we now move to more detailed consideration of particular positions on the tenancy reform, a series of comments on illustrative texts, the most important being the Digest of C.D. Field, an anonymously-published two-volume compendium called The Zemindary Settlement of Bengal, the Report of the Rent Law Commission of 1880, the two-volume report by the Government of Bengal from 1881, various government despatches (especially from Ripon's government in March 1882), and the later legal analyses by Finucane and Rampini, and by Finucane and Ali. 1 These sources reflect and typify the intense controversy that surrounded the introduction of the 1885 Tenancy Act.
