Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 4.djvu/122

 that the minor repairs, devolving on the people, should be deferred until the farmer's unoccupied season. Yet he made it a criminal offence for a farmer to suffer his land to lie fallow, and if a man fled leaving his taxes unpaid, not only the members of his "group," but also his family and all that harboured him or assisted his escape, became involved in the penalty. The Tokugawa were at once more practical in promoting agriculture and more considerate in their attitude towards the present. They carried out extensive works of irrigation and riparian improvement; they inculcated precautions against famine; they encouraged reclamation for rice-growing purposes; they forbade farmers to become merchants; they enacted that, in the event of a man's being prevented by sickness from tilling his land, the members of his "group" must do it for him, and, like the Meiji Government of modern times, they undertook enterprises officially which seemed beyond the reach of private initiative. The annals contain, also, numerous instances of instructions issued to provincial deputies to treat peasants benevolently; to save them from loss; not to borrow money from them or to engage in business with them; to pay direct the daily allowances (in rice) of all persons officially employed instead of paying through middle-men whose extortions sometimes reduced the employé's share to only ten per cent of his due; never to take for them-