The Legal Member had built, and bolstered, and embroidered, and
amended that Bill, till it looked beautiful on paper. Then the Council began
to settle what they called the "minor details." As if any Englishman
legislating for natives knows enough to know which are the minor and which are
the major points, from the native point of view, of any measure! That Bill was
a triumph of "safe-guarding the interests of the tenant." One clause provided
that land should not be leased on longer terms than five years at a stretch;
because, if the landlord had a tenant bound down for, say, twenty years, he
would squeeze the very life out of him. The notion was to keep up a stream of
independent cultivators in the Sub-Montane Tracts; and ethnologically and
politically the notion was correct. The only drawback was that it was
altogether wrong. A native's life in India implies the life of his son.
Wherefore, you cannot legislate for one generation at a time. You must
consider the next from the native point of view. Curiously enough, the native
now and then, and in Northern India more particularly, hates being over-
protected against himself. There was a Naga village once, where they lived on
dead AND buried Commissariat mules .
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