Local self-government, municipal and rural, in the form in which it now prevails in India, is essentially a product of British rule. Village communities and trade gilds in towns existed previously, but these were only rudimentary forms of self-government. The beginnings of municipal government occurred in the Presidency towns. Apart from these the act of 1850 respecting improvements in towns initiated consultative committees. In 1870 Lord Mayo delegated to local committees the control over these improvement funds. But the system at present in force is based upon legislation by Lord Ripon in 1882, providing for the establishment of municipal committees and local boards, whose members should be chosen by election with a preponderance of non-official members. The large towns of Calcutta, Bombay and Madras have municipalities of this character, and there are large numbers of municipal committees and local boards all over the country. There are also Port Trusts in the great maritime cities of Calcutta, Bombay, Madras, Karachi and Rangoon. Land Settlement. As the land furnishes the main source of Indian revenue, so the assessment of the land tax is the main work of Indian administration. No technical term is more familiar to Anglo-Indians, and none more strange to the English public, than that of land settlement. No subject has given rise to more voluminous controversy. It will be enough in this place to explain the general principles upon which the system is based, and to indicate the chief differences of application in the several provinces. That the state should appropriate to itself a direct share in the produce of the soil is a fundamental maxim of Indian finance that has been recognized throughout the East from time immemorial. The germs of rival systems can be traced in the old military and other service tenures of Assam, and in the poll tax of Burma, &c. The exclusive development of the land system is due to two conditions,--a comparatively high state of agriculture and an organized plan of administration,--both of which are supplied by the primitive village community. During the lapse of untold generations, despite domestic anarchy and foreign conquest, the Hindu village has in many parts preserved its simple customs, written in the imperishable tablets of traditions. The land was not held by private owners but by occupiers under the petty corporation; the revenue was not due from individuals, but from the community represented by its head-man. The aggregate harvest of the village fields was thrown into a common fund, and before the general distribution the head-man was bound to set aside the share of the state. No other system of taxation could be theoretically more just, or in practice less obnoxious to the people. Such is an outline of the land system as it may be found at the present day throughout large portions of India both under British and native rule; and such we may