Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/475

 LAND REVENUE IN MADRAS 45a has been estimated in terms of grain has of course been under- estimated, if I am right in believing that the commutation rate ought to have borne closer relation to ruling prices. The past forty years have seen a vast rise in the wages of labour, causecl by the constant demand for navvies on the great works of com- munication and irrigation which have been pushed forwart1 during the period which has covered Southern India with a net- work of railways. There has been much emigration to the Mauritius and south-eastern Africa, to the West Indies, to Burmah and the Straits, and an ever increasing demand for both permanent and occasional labour has arisen upon the tea, coffee, cinchona, and cocoa plantations in Ceylon as well as in Southern India. The increase of the employment for labour wherein cash wages are paid has been enormous. One of the signs of the increase of the wage fund is the steady expansion of the excise revenue, which everywhere in India accompanies industrial development. If estimates of cultivation expenses must be made it must be remembered that such expenses will tend to increase. For the purchase money of his holding the farmer is not in the settlement calculations allowed any interest. Those who forty years ago considered this question found land a drug in the market (at least if it were unimproved). At the present clay land, speaking generally, will fetch thirty years' purchase of its present assessment. The individual cultivator with whom we Settle may or may not have bought his holng; but its price forms a part of his capital whether he did so or not: he' can and does pledge the holding as security for the advances which, in all districts, the money-lending class will always make to farmers. The registra- tion books accessible in the office in every county show the actual prices paid for land sold and rents paid for land hired; there is also a mass of evidence in the records of rent suits and partition suits, and in the costs of taking up lands for public purposes. make no doubt that it would be as easy to frame a just estimate of the selling value of land of the various classes as of the costs of cultivating the same, and on re-settlement this ought to be done. In the next place the excessive deductions from the market price of grain on account of the cost of placing it in its market, and the low rate at which the factor was believed to pay the farmer, may have been less unreasonable forty years ago when trade was undeveloped and the country roadless. Since that day the growth of towns has been remarkable, markets have sprung up where none existed, and machinery of the best type for expressing