14/18 The law of evidence was codified by Sir James FitzJames Stephen in the Indian Evidence Act of 1870. This proposition, in the editor's opinion, truly states the theory of land tenures in India, and it was a generally accurate statement of actual fact in the author's time. Since then the long continuance of settled government, by fostering the growth of private rights, has tended to obscure the idea of state ownership. The modern revenue codes, instead of postulating the ownership of the state, enact that the claims of the state--that is to say, the land-revenue- -are the first charge on the land and its produce. The Malabar coast offers an exception to the general Hindu role of state ownership of land. |