During the latter half of the eighteenth century the rights of the joint village proprietors in Southern India faded away under the tyranny of Asiatic rulers, but the hereditary officials, artisans, and professionals still survived. Few, if any, joint village proprietors in their full entirety could be found in any villages under the Nawab's officials; whilst those within the Company's Jaghir had been duly respected and preserved by the British officials. Under such circumstances it was proposed to settle the revenue of the Carnatic territory, acquired in 1801, with individual ryots or landholders under what was afterwards known as the ryotwari system. [Sidenote: Perpetual settlement ordered.] Lord Wellesley, however, interfered, and ordered that perpetual settlements should be concluded with zemindars. Somehow this zemindari settlement had a fascination for British statesmen of the period. It was believed that the creation of an aristocracy of landlords would guarantee the permanence of British rule in India. Accordingly, Lord Wellesley was deaf to all arguments in favour of a ryotwari settlement, and threatened to remove any public servant in the Madras Presidency who should hesitate to carry out his orders. [Sidenote: No zemindars.] Madras had no alternative but to submit. There were zemindars in the Telugu country to the northward, which had been conquered centuries previously by the Mohammedan Sultans of Golconda; and with these zemindars it was easy to conclude a perpetual settlement. But there were no zemindars in the Tamil country to the southward. [Sidenote: Zemindars created.] In this extremity there was no alternative but to manufacture zemindars. Accordingly zemindars were created in the Madras Presidency by the old Bengal process of grouping villages together, selling them by auction, and treating the lucky buyer as a zemindar. But the new zemindars failed to pay the stipulated revenue. The groups of villages were again brought into the market, and as Lord Wellesley had left India, the estates were bought in by the Madras government, and the revenue resettled with individual ryots or cultivators.[24] [Sidenote: Military bond-holders.] In Malabar and Canara on the western coast the proprietors of land did not live in villages. They were landholders of the old military type, clinging to their lands with hereditary tenacity, employing serfs or slaves to cultivate them, and paying no revenue except feudal service and homage to their suzerain. Eventually Malabar and Canara were conquered by Tippu of Mysore, and the landholders were compelled to pay revenue, or to surrender their lands. [Sidenote: Thomas Munro: ryotwari settlement.]