This is in effect a tax
upon the industry of the inhabitants; since there is scarcely a
field of grain in the province, I might say not one, which has not
been preserved by the incessant labor of the cultivator, by digging
wells for their supply, or watering them from the wells of masonry
with which this country abounds, or from the neighboring tanks,
rivers, and nullahs. The people who imposed on themselves this
voluntary and extraordinary labor, and not unattended with expense,
did it in the expectation of reaping the profits of it; and it is
certain that they would not have done it, if they had known that
their rulers, from whom they were entitled to an indemnification,
would take from them what they had so hardly earned. If the same
administration continues, and the country shall again labor under a
want of the natural rains, every field will be abandoned, the
revenue fail, and thousands perish, through the want of subsistence:
for who will labor for the sole benefit of others, and to make
himself the subject of vexation? These practices are not to be
imputed to the aumils employed in the districts, but to the Naib
himself. The avowed principle on which he acts, and which he
acknowledged to myself, is, that the whole sum fixed for the revenue
of the province must be collected, and that for this purpose the
deficiency arising in places where the crops have failed, or which
have been left uncultivated, must be supplied from the resources of
others, where the soil has been better suited to the season, or the
industry of the cultivators more successfully exerted: a principle
which, however specious and plausible it may at first appear,
certainly tends to the most pernicious and destructive consequences.
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