fancy it to have been universally before the Mahommedan conquest. The Mussulmans brought with them the avarice of conquerors, and a stringent system of revenue collection. Under the Mogul empire, as organized by Akbar the Great, the share of the state was fixed at one-third of the gross produce of the soil; and a regular army of tax-collectors was permitted to intervene between the cultivator and the supreme government. The entire vocabulary of the present land system is borrowed from the Mogul administration. The zamindar himself is a creation of the Mahommedans, unknown to the early Hindu system. He was originally a mere tax-collector, or farmer of the land revenue, who agreed to furnish a lump sum from the tract of country assigned to him. If the Hindu village system may be praised for its justice, the Mogul farming system had at least the merit of efficiency. Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb extracted a larger land revenue than the British do. When the government was first undertaken by the East India Company, no attempt was made to understand the social system upon which the land revenue was based. The zamindar was conspicuous and useful; the village community and the cultivating ryot did not force themselves into notice. The zamindar seemed a solvent person, capable of keeping a contract; and his official position as tax-collector was confused with the proprietary rights of an English landlord. The superior stability of the village system was overlooked, and in the old provinces of Bengal and Madras the village organization has gradually been suffered to fall into decay. The consistent aim of the British authorities has been to establish private property in the soil, so far as is consistent with the punctual payment of the revenue. The annual government demand, like the succession duty in England, is universally the first liability on the land; when that is satisfied, the registered landholder has powers of sale or mortgage scarcely more restricted than those of a tenant in fee-simple. At the same time the possible hardships, as regards the cultivator, of this absolute right of property vested in the owner have been anticipated by the recognition of occupancy rights or fixity of tenure, under certain conditions. Legal rights are everywhere taking the place of unwritten customs. Land, which was before merely a source of livelihood to the cultivator and of revenue to the state, has now become the subject of commercial speculation. The fixing of the revenue demand has conferred upon the owner a credit which he never before possessed, by allowing him a certain share of the unearned increment. This credit he may use improvidently, but none the less has the land system of India been raised from a lower to a higher stage of civilization.