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 — INTRODUCTION.

Ixiii

absorbing interest of any that can be asked.

Some provisional absolutely essential for intelligent action, and a few facts at any rate are clear beyond the possibility of controversy. It can hardly be doubted that the interests of the finest class in the country, that of the nobles and warlike yeoman proprietors, have been injuriously affected. Sales of land are of alarming frequency. Landlords who remain are struggling with difficulties that tax them to the utmost, and a large number of the greater estates, with an annual income of £400,000, have only been saved from certain ruin by the generous and politic action of Government in taking their debts upon itself. The subject was alluded to with the following remarks in the ^nnual report of 1873 It is owing to our system that tlie thousands who formerly aided the soil with their earnings sent from afar are now living on it a dead burden where they answer

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were formerly an active support. It is owing to our system that girls are reared in hundreds, not only to be so many more mouths to feed, but to involve their fathers still deeper in debt to meet their marriage expenses. It is owing to our system that men are no longer allowed to kill themselves by scores in agrarian quarrels ; that the march of famine and epidemic disease is checked ; that quinine is being brought to the door of every fever-stricken sufferer ; and that in every district there are sanitary measures in progress which have for their object the mitigation of disease and the prevention of death. Owing to these causes the population which have only the land to look to for their support are annually becoming more and more numerous. The consequences are not difficult to foresee. When the land cannot yield more than is sufficient for the mouths dependent on its produce, it follows that nothing is left wherewith to meet the demands of the State, which claims one-half of the rental, or any other demand. From whatever quarter the demand is made the people are unable to meet it, and the land, which is the security for the claim, must be transferred in satisfaction of what is due on it.

All this is quite true. The stimulus to population derived from our leaden peace, and the annihilation by the same cause of one of the principal sources of livelihood, are among the most unavoidable difficulties with which both the landowning classes and our Government are obliged to contend. But the large estates are threatened as well as the small, and it cannot be said that the taluqdar who owns five hundred villages owes his ruin to the increasing numbers of his family or the loss of his employment. He would more probably complain of the inexorable regularity of the demand, which claimed the utmost that his property could pay on fixed days and without making any allowance

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for his private necessities or the circumstances of his estates. would point out that formerly he met a lower taxation at the

him to pay ; that he present demand if the the would very probably be able to satisfy he was not driven to and same allowances were made to him, which he was certain ql borrow at a ruinous interest money times

when

it

was most convenient

for