Any improvement in cultivation produced an immediate increase of taxation, so that any exertion on the part of the cultivator would benefit the Company, and not himself. One-half of the gross produce [66] may be assumed to have been the average annual rent, although, in many cases it greatly exceeded that proportion. The Madras Revenue Board, May 17th, 1817, stated that the "conversion of the government share of the produce (of lands) is in some districts, as high as 60 or 70 per cent. of the whole."[67]
It might be supposed that, having taken so large a share of the gross produce, the cultivator would be permitted to exist on the remainder, but such is not the case. Mr. Rickards gives [68] a list of sixty other taxes, invented by the sovereigns, or their agents, many of which he states to exist at the present day. Those who have any other mode of employing either capital or labour, in addition to the cultivation of their patches of land, as is very frequently the case, are subject to the following taxes, the principle of which is described as _excellent_ by one of the collectors, December 1st, 1812:--
"The Veesabuddy, or tax on merchants, traders, and shopkeepers; Mohturfa, or tax on weavers, cotton cleaners, shepherds, goldsmiths, braziers, ironsmiths, carpenters, stone-cutters, &c.; and Bazeebab, consisting of smaller taxes annually rented out to the highest-bidder. The renter was thus constituted a petty chieftain, with power to exact fees at marriages, religious ceremonies; to inquire into and fine the misconduct of females in families, and other misdemeanours; and in the exercise of their privileges would often urge the plea of engagements to the Cirkar (government) to justify extortion. The details of these taxes are too long to be given in this place. The reader, however, may judge of the operation and character of all by the following selection of one, as described in the collector's report:--'The mode of settling the Mohturfa on looms hitherto has been very minute; every circumstance of the weaver's family is considered, the number of days which he devotes to his loom, the number of his children, the assistance which he receives from them, and the number and quality of the pieces which he can turn out in a month or year; so that, let him exert himself as he will, his industry will always be taxed to the highest degree.' This mode always leads to such details that the government servants cannot enter into it, and the assessment of the tax is, in consequence, left a great deal too much to the Curnums of the villages. No weaver can possibly know what he is to pay to the Cirkar, till the demand come to be made for his having exerted himself through the year; and having turned out one or two pieces of cloth more than he did the year before, though his family and looms have been the same, is made the ground for his being charged a higher Mohturfa, and at last, instead of a professional, it becomes a real income tax."[69]
