Civil Disobedience in Indian Tradition, with Some Early Nineteenth Century Documents c6.s3.90

c6.s3.90

The heavy expenditure attendant upon the system of internal administration under the Bengal presidency which induced the Court of Directors to prepare the paragraph that has been expunged respecting the sayer duties has led the Board at the end of the draft to call the attention of the Governor General in Council to the policy of realising an additional revenue by an extension of the stamp regulations in the manner proposed in those paragraphs, and by the adoption of an extended system of taxation with respect to betel and tobacco. These are articles of luxury and of general consumption, and a small duty upon them, operating throughout the provinces, might, under proper regulations, be gradually improved into a very productive source of revenue. The Board express themselves with the more confidence upon this subject in consequence of the opinion recently conveyed by the Government of Fort St. George in their Revenue Letter of the 29th February 1812, wherein, adverting to the contingency of remissions becoming necessary under the system of village leases, they observe that ‘whatever may be the amount of those occasional remissions, the reinstitution of the licences for the sale of betel and tobacco’ which, as they state, ‘was in the opinion of Col. Munro relinquished without any adequate reasons, would certainly produce a revenue more than sufficient to cover these eventual remissions’; and they add that they had in view the immediate re-establishment of them.