John Edward Power Wallis, C.J.

1. This case raises a question of considerable importance as to what constitutes private land under the Madras Estates Land Act, 1908. The Subordinate Judge has decided the question very largely with reference to speeches made while the Bill was passing through the Council, in which private lands were said to represent lands which were granted free of assessment by the Mahomedan Government to the Zamindars as part of their remuneration for their services. However this may be, what the Court has to see is whether the land in question comes within the definition in Section 3(10) of the Act, where private land is said to mean "the domain or home farm land of a landholder by whatever designation known such as Kambattam Khas Seri, or Pannai."

2. Here it may be well to note that the word domain in this connection is explained by Webster citing Shantore as meaning " the land about the mansion home of a Lord and in his immediate occupancy". Section 185 prescribed certain rules evidence as to whether any land is a private land or not, and provides that land shall be deemed not to be private land until the contrary is shown. That it is the intention of the legislature that this should be strictly proved is also to be gathered from the provisions of Section 183 as to ascertaining ,and recording whether any land is a private land in which the Revenue officer is directed to disregard any agreement or anything contained in any compromise, or in any decree proved to his satisfaction to have been obtained by fraud or collusion, and not to register the land as private unless it is proved to be such by satisfactory evidence of the nature prescribed in Section 185. Under that section regard is to be had to the local custom, and to the question whether the land was before the first day of July 1898 specifically let as . private land, and to any other evidence that may be produced. Then we have the proviso, "Provided that all land which is proved to have been cultivated as private land by the landholder himself by his own servants or by hired labour with his own or hired stock for twelve years immediately before the commencement of this Act, shall be deemed to be landholders private land ".

3. Mr. Govindaraghava Aiyar very properly relied on the fact that this provision is enacted by way of proviso to the body of the section and not by way of exception, and argued that it should not be construed as inconsistent with the body of the section, and therefore that the fact that the land had been so cultivated by the proprietors would have been evidence that the land was private land apart from the proviso. This is no doubt a sound principle of construction and was recently applied by the , Privy Council in Mahaprasad Singh v. Ramani Mohan Singh (1914) 27 M.L.J. 459 at 466 but it is scarcely necessary to rely upon it because it is expressly provided in the body of the section that the fact that the land has been let as private land is evidence of its being such, and the case of its being cultivated as such by the owner himself is of course much stronger. For the respondent, however, it is contended that once it is shown that the land in question was at one time ordinary ryoti land or seri as it is called in the district in question, evidence that subsequently it has been dealt with as private land, though admissible under Section 185, is of no avail, because by virtue of provisions of Section 8, which are retrospective the land must be taken not to be private land, unless the conditions of the proviso to Section 185 are satisfied. As to this it may be observed that, if this be so, the proviso should rather have appeared as an exception to Section 8.

4. Now it is well settled that retrospective enactments must be strictly construed, and it is therefore necessary to examine carefully the provisions of Section 8 to see if they really have the result contended for. Sub-section (1) provides that whenever be fore or after t