"If the landlord objected to the assessment on trees as old and past bearing, they were, one and all, ordered to be cut down, nothing being allowed to stand that did not pay revenue to the state. To judge of this order, it should be mentioned that the trees are valuable, and commonly used for building, in Malabar. To fell all the timber on a man's estate when no demand existed for it in the market, and merely because its stream of revenue had been drained, is an odd way of conferring benefits and protecting property."[71] "Having myself," says Mr. Rickards, "been principal collector of Malabar, and made, during my residence in the province, minute inquiries into the produce and assessments of lands, I was enabled to ascertain beyond all doubt, and to satisfy the revenue board at Madras, that in the former survey of the province, which led to the rebellion, lands and produce were inserted in the pretended survey account which absolutely did not exist, while other lands were assessed to the revenue at more than their actual produce."[72] "Fifty per cent. on the assessment is allowed," says Mr. Campbell,[73] "as a reward to any informer of concealed cultivation, &c.; and it is stated that there are, 'in almost every village, dismissed accountants desirous of being re-employed, and unemployed servants who wish to bring themselves to notice,' whose services as informers can be relied on." A system like this, involving the most prying supervision of the affairs of each individual, and in which, in settling the tax to be paid, "the collector takes into consideration the number of children [74] to be supported, makes the poor ryot a mere slave to the collector, and with the disadvantage that the latter has no pecuniary interest in the preservation of his life, whereas the death of a slave, who constitutes a part of the capital of his owner, is a severe loss." The tendency thus far has been, as we see, to sweep away the rights not only of kings and princes, but of all the native authorities, and to centralize in the hands of foreigners in Calcutta the power to determine for the cultivator, the artisan, or the labourer, what work he should do, and how much of its products he might retain, thus placing the latter in precisely the position of a mere slave to people who could feel no interest in him but simply as a tax-payer, and, who were represented by strangers in the country, whose authority was everywhere used by the native officers in their employ, to enable them to accumulate fortunes for themselves.