FULL account of the Grants of Rothiemurchus is to be
found in the entertaining memoirs of a Highland Lady, edited by Lady
Strachey, wife of Sir Richard Strachey, in 1898. They were branches
of the Clan Grant, owned an extensive district with a moderate
rental, and held what has been Very fairly described as “ rather a
high position among the lesser Barons of their wild country.” In the
last century John Peter Grant, the first who bore those Christian
names, was born in 1774. He went to the Bar in England, and
exchanged this branch of the profession for that of a Scotch
Advocate. He stood for Parliament in the Liberal interest, and sat
as Member for Great Grimsby and for Tavistock. In 1827 Charles Wynn,
the President of the Board of Control, appointed him a Puisne Judge
of the Supreme Court of Justice at Bombay. Owing to serious
differences with the Governor, Sir John Malcolm, which are given at
length in Kaye’s life of that soldier statesman, Mr Justice Grant
resigned his appointment, went round to Calcutta where he practised
for some time at the Bar, and eventually became a Puisne Judge of
the Supreme Court at that Presidency. He was the father of two sons,
of whom the eldest, William Patrick, became Master in Equity at
Calcutta, and John Peter Grant, the second son, is the subject of
this memoir. Born in 1807, he entered the Bengal Civil Service in
1828. He was educated at Eton and at Haileybury. On arriving at
Calcutta he passed through the College of Fort William, and was
appointed to the Upper or North West Provinces. In those days all
communication between Lower Bengal and the Upper Provinces was
either by boat or by palanquin. Young Grant, with other friends,
went up by river via the Sunderbunds, and in after years he used to
relate that on reaching Rajmahal on the Ganges in one month he was
congratulated by his friends in Calcutta on his speedy and
prosperous journey. At the present time the transit by rail to Tin
Pahar, whence there is a short branch line to Rajmahal, occupies a
few hours.
Grant served as Assistant and Joint Magistrate for
three years in the districts of Bareilly and Pillibhit, in the
province of Rohilkand. At that time Mr Henry Boulderson was carrying
out the Settlement of the Land Revenue in those provinces on an
elaborate scale, and under this very experienced officer Grant
gained an insight into village life, and a grasp of the principles
regulating the assessment and the collection of the Land Revenue,
which he never lost. It is true that his training in district work
did not last more than three years, and that he could not lay claim
to an intimate familiarity with the intricate details of a Village
Settlement such as enabled Robert M. Bird and James Thomason to
complete operations, which in every province of India are the very
foundations of all order, progress, and reform. But, in 1832, the
late Mr R. D. Mangles, who eventually became a Director of the East
India Company, and sat as M.P. for Guildford, offered Grant a post
in the Board of Revenue in Calcutta. It may be assumed that Mr
Mangles had already discerned the branch of the Service best
calculated for the development of Grant’s talents. Other
appointments soon followed. Grant served in the Secretariat under
Sir William Hay Macnaghten and the late Mr H. T. Prinsep, was Member
of a Committee on Prison Discipline, was Secretary to the Indian Law
Commission, of which Lord Macaulay was the President, and eventually
was made Accountant to the Government of Bengal and Junior Secretary
to the Government of India in the Financial Department. In March
1841 Grant proceeded to England on furlough, and did not return to
India till the autumn of 1844.
One episode in his early service, previous to
furlough, must not be passed over. Lord Cornwallis, in his great
measure, the Perpetual Land Revenue Settlement of Bengal, Behar, and
part of Orissa, effected in 1793, had reserved to himself and his
successors power to pass Regulations for the protection and welfare
of all ryots, cultivators, and subtenants; as well as to institute
an enquiry into the validity of all tenures claimed by their owners
to be held rent-free. The first of these important pledges was not
redeemed till the Administration of Lord Canning in 1857. But laws
for resuming, assessing, or exempting rent-free tenures from
taxation were passed, at intervals, between the years 1819 and 1830,
and when Grant came down to Calcutta, in 1832, as before stated,
these operations were in full swing under officers specially
selected for the purpose. As may be easily conceived, a tardy
enquiry into the validity of rent-free tenures, created by Emperors,
Nawabs, and Rajas with a lavish and wanton hand, generations before,
caused no small amount of discontent and irritation among the
Zamindars and other holders of land. Such grants were of all kinds,
and the lands so exempted varied from a very few acres to estates of
considerable extent Brahmans and priests, astrologers and pundits,
dependents and favourites, all shared in the beneficence and the
capricious favour of superior landlords ; and grants were made for
the maintenance of Hindu temples and idols, and for Muhammedan
shrines and mosques, as well as for purely secular purposes. Much
excitement was caused and no little confusion. Title-deeds had been
lost or destroyed by fire and climate. Rent-free tenures, especially
those of small extent, had been sold or had passed to others than
the original grantees. Oral evidence was not forthcoming in many
instances, and was naturally distrusted when offered to the Special
Tribunals. The whole subject was fiercely discussed in the public
Press by some of the ablest writers of the time; one party
vindicating the right and duty of the Government to avail itself of
a neglected source of revenue undoubtedly its own, and the other
expatiating on the cruel hardship of subjecting the holders of
rent-free tenures to a severe scrutiny, forty years after the
Perpetual Settlement had been promulgated and confirmed. In the
progress of the discussion there appeared a series of letters, so
clear in statement, so severe in logic, so broad in view, as to
place the unknown author on a level with the foremost of the
controversialists. Eventually, it became known that the writer was
Grant, the young Secretary.
As the Resumptions proceeded, the Government modified
the severity of parts of the law, and exempted from enquiry plots
and tenures of moderate extent. The total annual increase to the
revenue was barely forty lacs of rupees, while the expenditure had
amounted to more than four times that sum, or one crore and twenty
lacs.
Grant, in his later years, and with all his ripe
experience, was inclined to doubt whether, if the Government had
foreseen the result, and could have weighed the gain in revenue
against the loss of popularity and credit, it would have resorted to
any such measure at all. |