Civil Disobedience in Indian Tradition, with Some Early Nineteenth Century Documents c6.s3.51

c6.s3.51

19. We think it necessary upon an occasion on which we have to recommend so particular an attention to the opinions and even to the prejudices of the natives to desire that you will at the same time take every proper opportunity to assert the principle laid down by Lord Cornwallis in his instructions to the Board of Revenue, 11th June 1790, namely 'that the imposition and collection of internal duties has from time immemorial been admitted to be the exclusive privilege of Government', a principle which he fully established and expressly reserved as a right upon the promulgation of the permanent settlement and the abolition of the sayer duties when he emphatically announced in section 8 clause 8 of Regulation I in the year 1793 that 'a full compensation having been granted to the proprietors of land for the loss of revenue sustained by them in consequence of the abolition of them (the sayer duties) he declared that if he should hereafter think it proper to establish the sayer collections or any other internal duties and to appoint officers on the part of Government to collect them no proprietor of land would be admitted to any participation thereof or be entitled to make any claim for remissions of assessment on that account'.