14 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
revenue returns were merged together without any attempt at distinction. Any student of finance, therefore, has to pass over the entire period ending in 1814 when by an Act of Parliament the Company was compelled to keep separate accounts of Finance and Commerce.
With this caution we will now turn to the heads of Revenue.
(1) The Land Revenue
In spite of the early industrialization in parts of India, the country as a whole maybe classed as an agricultural country and land, today as in former times, furnished the state with a major part of its revenue.
The British Government rightly or wrongly established the principle of state landlordship versus the principle of private property and regulated its land revenue system in keeping with that policy.
There are different systems of land revenue in India : It may be well to describe them in the words of Parliamentary Blue-Books.
(I) The Zemindary Settlement of Cornwallis
The most obvious feature of advantage in this system is the facility of collection, as it is a much more simple thing to obtain the revenue of a large district from a certain moderate number of Zemindars or contributors, than it is to perform the collection in details by the officers of the government themselves, and another advantage undoubtedly is the greater degree of certainty in the result of 1831 C. 3339.
This system of land tenure arose thus : When the East India Company came into possession of the revenues of the Dewanee of Bengal, Behar and Orissa, they found the land revenue collected through the mediation of officers (subhedars) under the Mohamedan government, who had charge of districts sometimes of more, sometimes of less extent, with various titles, such as Zemindars and Talookdars, and who paid the revenue into the treasury in one sum, for which they were found managing considerable districts whose obligations consisted in paying a certain annual amount to the Government. Many of them held their districts or estates under this condition hereditarily. [2. cf.