The official account is different. According to apologists of the Strachey school, over-population caused by the security of our rule is the sufficient reason of all distress, and it is possible that this may be correct of Bengal and other districts enjoying more prosperous conditions than those of which I am now speaking. But as applied to the Deccan it is manifestly untrue. For nothing like the whole area of cultivable land is taken up, and the population is scanty rather than excessive. The causes of distress and famine must be looked for rather in the growing impoverishment of the existing population, than in its numerical excess--in its enforced idleness during part of the year, and in the disappearance of the whole class of large proprietors who in former times used to lay up stores of grain to keep their peasantry alive in the droughts. It is my opinion, in common with that of the most intelligent native economists, that a permanent settlement of the revenue, such as there is in Bengal, would do more by the creation of a wealthy class of landowners in the Deccan, towards mitigating the periodical famines there, than any other form of legislation could, or the covering of the country with a whole network of railroads.
Other modern grievances of the peasant are, first, the new Forest Laws. These were introduced some years ago in consequence of the growing famines which, it was argued, were caused by the irregularity of the monsoon rains, which in their turn were caused by the denudation of the forests. Admitting as true all that can be said of the necessity of strong measures to prevent destruction in these, and to increase the area of vegetation, the _modus operandi_ seems to have been needlessly violent, and most injurious to the people. One would have supposed that so wide an object as the regulation of the rainfall would have been provided for out of Imperial funds. But this was only done in part. The bulk of the loss fell on individual peasants. Wherever I went in the Madras and Bombay presidencies I heard of common lands enclosed and rights of pasture withdrawn, and this without any compensation at all being given to the possessors. The plea seems to have been that, in the days of the Mohammedan Empire, the Mogul was lord of all uncultivated lands, and that therefore, although time and custom had intervened for generations, the land might be resumed. The effect in any case has been disastrous. The leaves of trees are largely used in India for manure, and the supply is now cut off. The pasture has been reduced and cattle are dying of hunger. Where wood had been free from time immemorial, so much a load now has to be paid. In the Ghauts of Bombay matters seem to have gone farther still, and after the great famine of 1877-78 Sir Richard Temple had whole districts enclosed, evicting the ryots and destroying their villages. The ryots in turn set fire to the forests, and but for his timely resignation of office it is said the whole country would have been morally and physically in a blaze. I know that the ill-feeling caused by his high-handed action--which reminds one of that attributed to William Rufus when he enclosed the New Forest--has left behind it memories bitter as those in Ireland to this day. Bad or good, necessary or unnecessary, the Forest Act has much to answer for in the present state of discontent among the peasantry.