The average Indian official does not agree with Lord Salisbury. He prefers the rent theory to the tax theory, and when the cultivator has been allowed his subsistence off the holding, together with what the official estimates as profit, the rent is taken in the name of revenue, but under the excuse of rent, and I have often heard officials urge the theory of land nationalization in their defence. It is, however, as I said, a nationalization in which the conditions of political and economic freedom are absent. The new assessment, which in Bombay lasts for thirty years, depends almost entirely on the discretion of the Settlement Officer. His decision is supervised by higher authorities, but it usually stands, and the only fixed rule for his guidance is that he may not increase the revenue of a Taluka (group of villages) by more than 33 per cent., nor that of a single village by more than 66 per cent., nor that of a single holding by more than 100 per cent. This leaves him plenty of margin, and in fifteen large districts of the Bombay Presidency we find that the average increase was 30·4 per cent. at the last assessment (1899).[23] This increase is assessed, not on the yield of the ground, but on the “capabilities” of the ground, and “capabilities” are calculated upon the quality of the soil, the average rainfall, the market, the railway, and other elements of “unearned increment.” Mr. Vaughan Nash’s account of the matter expresses what happens:— “The officer appointed to value the land and fix the assessment has made his shot—I use the expression advisedly—at the average crop, and has determined the demand which is to hold for the next twenty or thirty years; and in theory it is understood that the cultivator is to enjoy not less than half the profits of his farm, beside the privilege of subsisting on its produce.... At the end of the assessment period the authorities make another shot; and now mark what happens. They find that since their last valuation prices have advanced, new railways have been made, cultivation has been intensified—or might be intensified, under a little pressure; and, after the due application of tests of all kinds, geological, botanical, hydrographical, meteorological, arboricultural, etc., it is discovered that land and farmer can bear an extra 30 per cent. or so on the old assessment.”[24]