1 COLLECTION OF THE REVENUE 61
2 the supposed two-thirds reaches the coffers of the State,
3 and a very meagre proportion remains with the culti-
4 vator, while the bulk is swallowed up by the grasping
5 official middlemen who stand between State and culti-
6 vator. Moreover, under the present system of robbery
7 and oppression much less is produced than would be
8 the case under a better order of things. It is no ad-
9 vantage to the assami to get the most he can out of the
10 fertile soil, for any surplus over what is sufficient to
11 allow him a bare subsistence is wrung from him by the
12 tax-farmers, who, at the same time that they plunder
13 the peasant, embezzle the revenue due to the State.
14 It is the work of our Settlement Officer to put a
15 stop to this official extortion, to hold forth inducements
16 to the assami to extend the cultivation of the land by
17 giving him the fruits of his labour, to assess the revenue
18 that shall be paid by each district, and to see that the
19 State be not defrauded of its dues — in short, to largely
20 better the condition of the cultivators while augment-
21 ing the receipts of the Maharajah's treasury and en-
22 abling the country to pay its way.
23 The revenue of Kashmir is for the most part col-
24 lected in kind ; it is only in the neighbourhood of the
25 towns that the State receives its due in specie. Mr.
26 Lawrence has abolished some of the more absurd forms
27 of payment, and maize and rice are the only substitutes
28 for cash now received in the districts near the capital.
29 It had been the custom to exact quantities of bulky and
30 perishable commodities, such as apricots, the difficult
31 transport of which across hundreds of miles of moun-
32 tain tracks resulted in enormous waste. Sometimes
33 new and arbitrary requisitions are suddenly made, ap-
34 parently for the sole object of giving trouble to the
35 peasantry. Such poetic taxes as love-philters and