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152 able. While he exercised all his considerateness in mitigating hardships, yet difficulties must have arisen among some of the Village Communities in the enforcement of their joint responsibility for the default of weak brethren; so much so, that by opponents the system was stigmatized as one of 'compulsory joint-stockeries,' it being proverbially easy to give to any plan an unfavourable name. This went so far that in 1848 the Board of Revenue made some representation on the subject to his Government, which caused him to pen a memorable reply. He cites in extenso the passage from Metcalfe which has already been quoted in chapter VI, and then subjoins his own view in these words, written in September, 1848: —

'Unless the joint responsibility be merely nominal it must ordinarily be maintained. It is a principle maintained by all former Governments. It is one, the justice of which the people never dispute, and it is one of which distinct traces have been left in many of the customs which prevail in the Village Communities. It greatly promotes self-government, and renders unnecessary that constant interference with the affairs of individual cultivators on the part of the Government Officers, which must otherwise exist — it saves them from much expense which would otherwise fall upon them, and it facilitates their union lor many purposes of municipal economy, which could not otherwise be effected. The efforts of the prosperous and industrious members of a Community will often he directed to stimulate the idle, to assist the unfortunate, and to give additional value to the labours of their thrifty brethren. Property being minutely divided, and each proprietor clinging with the greatest tenacity to his patrimony,