§ MR. SETON-KARR (St. Helens)I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for India whether the Lieutenant Governor of Bengal, in his letter of 6th July last to the Government of India on the Behar Cadastral Survey, declared that one of the results of the Survey would be to enhance the rents of the landlords to an extent varying from 12 to 15 per cent., and admitted that the tenants would probably suffer from the enhancement of their rents; whether the Lieutenant Governor now states, in a recently published Minute, that the main object of the Survey and Record-of-Rights is to protect the tenants from the improper enhancement of their rents by the landlords; and whether the Secretary of State can state the grounds (if any) on which these two statements can be reconciled?
* MR. GEORGE RUSSELLThe Government of Bengal never stated that the Survey would
Enhance the rents of the landlord to an extent varying from 12 to 15 par cent.1554 The statement in the letter referred to was to the effect that the experience acquired in the settlements already executed under the Act showed that on the average the Zemindars might count on realizing a return of from 12 to 15 per cent.—not on their total rental—but on the cost to them of the Settlement operations. This would be effected partly by the greater ease with which rents would be recovered, and also by the direct gain in cases where the tenants were found to lie holding more laud than they were paying for. The statement in the letter of 6th June is thus not inconsistent with Sir A. MacDonald's Minute, which is included in the Return lately laid on the Table.