CANARA

CANARA, a province of Hindustan, extending from the twelfth to the fifteenth degree of north latitude. It is a narrow strip of territory, running along the western coast of India, 200 miles in length by thirty-five in breadth; and is hemmed in on the east by the great ridge of the Ghaut Mountains. It is bounded on the north by the province of Bejapoor, on the south by Malabar, on the east by Mysore and the Balaghaut territories, and on the west by the Indian Ocean.

Canara is a corruption of Karnata, the table-land above the Ghaut Mountains. It is a rocky and uneven country, where cattle are scarce, and where, even when they can be procured, they cannot always be employed; where every spot, before it can be cultivated, must be levelled by the hand of man; and where even the land that has been brought under cultivation, if it be neglected for a few years, is soon broken into deep gullies by the heavy torrents of rain which fall during the monsoons. The land is divided into small properties, and the country flourishes from the minute attention bestowed by each proprietor on his own little spot. It is not likely that Canara will ever become a manufacturing country, as it does not produce the necessary materials, and also on account of the heavy rains, which oppose insurmountable obstacles to all operations which require to be carried on under a clear sky. But these same rains give it a never-failing succession of rice crops, which are exported to Malabar, Goa, Bombay, and Arabia. "Canara," says Sir Thomas Munro,¹ "produces nothing but rice and cocoa nuts; its dry lands are totally unproductive, so that the little wheat or other dry grain that is raised is sown in the paddy fields, where the water has been insufficient for the rice. It produces hardly any pepper. The sandal wood for exportation comes all from Nuggar and Soonda. The soil is perhaps the poorest in India. The eternal rains have long washed away the rich parts, if ever it had any, and left nothing but sand and gravel." In another letter he observes, "there is hardly a spot in Canara where one can walk with any satisfaction, for the country is the most broken and rugged perhaps in the world. The few narrow plains that are in it are under water at one season of the year; and during the dry weather the numberless banks which divide them make it very disagreeable and fatiguing to walk over them. There is hardly such a thing as a piece of gently rising ground in the whole country. All the high grounds start up at once in the shape of so many inverted tea-cups, and they are rocky, covered with wood, and difficult of ascent, and so crowded together that they leave very little room for valleys between." It was in ancient times in a very flourishing state, while it remained under its Hindu sovereigns, principally owing to the moderate land tax to which it was subjected. An increase was made of fifty per cent. to this tax under the Bednore family, besides many smaller additions, making twenty per cent. more. But all these taxes were easily paid by the

inhabitants; and the country, if it did not advance in population and wealth, fully maintained the position to which it had attained. Canara was conquered by Hyder in 1762; and at that time it was a highly improved country, filled with industrious inhabitants, who enjoyed a greater degree of prosperity, and were more moderately taxed, than the subjects of any native power in India. But no sooner was its conquest completed than Hyder ordered an investigation into every source of revenue, for the purpose of augmenting it wherever it could be done. These exactions were augmented by his son Tippoo, who was determined to relinquish no part of his father's revenue, and whose policy it was to hold one part of the proprietors and husbandmen liable for the deficiencies of their neighbours. The effect of these violent regulations was to hasten the extinction of all the ancient proprietors of the soil, and to deteriorate the value of the lands until they became unsaleable. In this manner the agriculture of the country was heavily oppressed; and Canara, when it came into the possession of the British, had completely fallen from its ancient prosperity. It is said, in the report of the principal collector of Canara,² "the evils which have been accumulating in the country since it became a province of Mysore have destroyed a great part of its former population, and rendered its inhabitants as poor as those of the neighbouring countries." The value of landed property has been greatly reduced; and those lands which are worth any thing are reduced to a very small portion, and lie chiefly between the Cundapoor and Chundergherry rivers, and within five miles of the sea. But it is only here and there even in this tract that lands are to be found which can be sold at any price. There is scarcely any saleable land even on the sea-coast to the northward of Cundapoor, or any where except on the banks of the Mangalore and some of the other great rivers. The inland tracts near the Ghaut Mountains are generally waste and overgrown with wood. By the oppressions of its conquerors the population of the country has been diminished about one third; and the value of property has been reduced in an equal proportion. "It may be said," observes the principal collector, in his report, "that this change in the condition of the country was brought about by the invasion of Hyder; by the four wars which have happened since that event; by Tippoo himself destroying many of the principal towns on the coast, and forcing their inhabitants to remove to Jumalabad and other unhealthy stations near the hills; by his seizing in one night all the Christian men, women, and children, amounting to above 60,000, and sending them into captivity into Mysore; by the prohibition of foreign trade; and by the general corruption of his government in all its departments." These circumstances, according to the opinion of the collector, accelerated the change; "but they probably," he adds, "did not contribute to it so much as the extraordinary augmentation of the land rents." "Whole villages," says Colonel Munro, who after the conquest of the country was appointed by the Company to survey it, and to reclaim it from its wild and unsettled state, "have in some places been abandoned by the owners, from the exorbitance of the assessment; in others they are barely able to keep their ground and to subsist; in others the rent is so moderate that the lands are saleable."³

When Canara was ceded to the British, it was placed under the management of Colonel Munro, by whose vigilance and activity order was gradually restored in the

country, which had long been distracted by the wars and violence of the rajahs and petty chieftains; the people rejoiced in the protection they received, and the land revenue was punctually realized. A great improvement is also said to have taken place in the condition of the people, which has been exhibited in the dress, in the mode of living, and in an addition to their personal comforts. This may possibly be true; and the British government, under which law and order were maintained, must have improved the condition of the great majority of the inhabitants. But the greatest blessing which the British could have conferred on the country would have been a remission of the heavy and ruinous taxes laid on it by Hyder Ali and his son Tippoo Saib. Here, however, they appear to have hesitated; for they have always been too eager to raise a large revenue. Extortion has still been the erroneous policy of their government; nor have they ever been so intent on protecting the people as on taxing them. A permanent settlement of the land tax is generally recommended by the Company's revenue collectors, as the approved remedy for all the evils which afflict the country. But the permanency of a tax, if it be exorbitant, is its worst evil; and the first care of an enlightened government ought to be to lower the tax to a moderate standard; that is, to exact from the country no more than may be necessary for the support of its civil establishments. But the Company have always evinced the greatest reluctance to reduce taxation. Thus the collector of Canara, in his report, states, that "had such an assessment as that introduced by Hyder and Tippoo existed in ancient times, Canara would long ago have been converted into a desert." Yet in the face of this observation he says, "However much I disapprove of the numerous additions made to the ancient land rent by Hyder and Tippoo, I did not think myself at liberty to depart widely from the system which I found established, as it is the same which exists in all the provinces the Company have acquired in the last and former war. I have made no other reductions in the assessment of Tippoo Sultan than such as were absolutely necessary in order to insure the collection of the rest." The high assessment is considered by Colonel Munro, whose enlightened and comprehensive mind qualified him to be the legislator of those newly conquered countries, as the great check to population; and he conceives that, under the system which he proposed, "cultivation and population would increase so much that, in the course of twenty-five years, lands, formerly cultivated, amounting to star pagodas 5,55,962 (yielding a tax of about L.222,000), would be retrieved and occupied, together with a considerable portion of waste never before occupied;"¹ and it is observed,² that if the exigencies of government allowed of so great a sacrifice as the remission of twenty-five or even fifteen per cent. on the existing tax, "we should consider the measure highly advisable, and calculated to produce great ulterior advantage." But it is added, "if the exigencies of the Company's government do not permit them to make so great a sacrifice, if they cannot afford to give up a share of the landlord's rent, they must be indulgent landlords." The whole rent of the soil was thus absorbed by the government tax, under the effects of which great part of the country lay desolate; yet it is doubted whether the exigencies of the government will allow of any remission of this exorbitant exaction. In Canara, however, remissions to a certain extent did take place, extorted partly by the necessities of the country, and partly by the earnest re-

presentations of Colonel, afterwards Sir Thomas Munro; and owing to this and the equal protection of the British government, the country soon began to revive from the state in which it had languished under its former tyrants. The tax is still about sixty per cent. of the landlord's rent, and about one third of the gross produce; and it is clear that such an exorbitant tax must impede the improvement of the country, and confine cultivation within comparatively narrow limits. The judicial and revenue system introduced by Lord Cornwallis into Bengal was afterwards extended to the ceded countries, and to Canara among others, where it produced the usual effects that attend every violent subversion of the existing order of things; and was followed by disorder and misery, and a great increase of crimes. Strenuous exertions have been since made to correct this error, and to bring back the country to its former state.

The principal trading ports in the province are Mangalore, Ankala, Onore, Cundapoor, Barkoor, and Becul. These were formerly flourishing places, but they have fallen into decay with the ruin of the country. Several of them contain only a few beggarly inhabitants. Honaver, once the second town in trade after Mangalore, has not a single house; and Mangalore itself is greatly decayed. The trade, of which Mangalore is the chief emporium, is not extensive. It exports to Arabia cardamums, coir, pepper, moories, poon spars, rice, sandal-wood, oil, betel-nut, ghee, and iron; to Goa, and to the Mahrattra countries, in considerable quantities, rice, horn, grain, and tobacco. The imports from Arabia are dates, brimstone, salt, fish, and horses; from Bombay, brimstone, sugar, horses; and from the Mahrattra countries, horses, shawls, blue cloths, &c. (Fifth Report of the Select Committee on India Affairs, Appendix: Reports of the Revenue Collectors, Munro, Thackeray, Lord W. Bentinck, and F. Buchanan; Travels in Mysore; Hamilton's East India Gazetteer.)