Storia do Mogor 255.1.3

255.1.3

Besides, all the cultivators give sureties to the king. These sureties are usually given by one village for another. Thus the poor cultivators live on in hope. For, ordinarily, the rajahs or kings appoint fresh officials every year to lease out the village lands. These men, in order to get them taken again by the cultivators, make fresh promises, including that of governing justly and rationally. Then they advance the cultivators something to induce them to cultivate the land carefully. After the man has ploughed and sown, and is engaged in working the land, he is no longer free to remove elsewhere [118]. In this way they recover from the peasantry by consent or by force whatever they have lent them. This is the tyrannical system with which the rajahs or kings of these countries rule over the country people. These well deserve such treatment from their pride and their contrariness, for, if they were treated otherwise, it would be their entire ruin ; they would all kill each other, as is demonstrated by experience among those of them who have anything to lose.