•176 



THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 



[September r, 1883. 



that of the resicleut populatiou will be serious em- 

 birrassmeut for the GoveiDnie.it, ami impoverishment 

 for tlie Islands themselves. How the evil is to be 

 remeilietl it is not very easy to say ; but, at all events, 

 a ca»e has been maile out fur parliamentary inquiry 

 as ti) whether, by the continuance of the Knoumbered 

 K'tat-18 Court, the existence oi a resident propriet- 

 ary ■ ■lass should be rendered increaeiu^ly difficult.— 



l^COlKlllUll. 



THE CAUSES OF PLANTING DErEESSION. 



(Paiier read by Hon. J. L. Shand before the Vikoya 



Planters' Associntion. ) 



Forty years ago, if Ceylon had had a Governor, who, 

 preferring the ease and comforts of the viceregal resid- 

 ency to the iuconvcuiency and difficulties experienced in 

 travelling with the then limited means of locomotion and lack- 

 ing sympathy with tlie people, he ruled over, was contented 

 to acquire a knowlt-dge of them from a perusal of the 

 uiemorials and petitious he received, had been asked by the 

 Secretary of State ** AVho are tliese coffee planters who are 

 beginning to agitate Ceylon V tiie answer might have been 

 " They are a turbulent hill trilje probably of Bohemian or 

 Bulgarian origin constantly on the borders of insurrection 

 but showing vague signs of a crude civilization byarest- 

 li ss hankering after roads, bridges and other visionary 

 impossibilities." 



But as time passed on the numbers and strength of 

 this hill tribe increased: they purchased land; iu the face 

 of great difficulties theyimporlel labor and cultivated it; 

 1 hey opened up large tracts of country ; the roads and 

 bridges which had apptared impossibilities were constructed; 

 they pro^nded, in great measure directly by an export duty 

 upon the coffee they grew, the ftmis fur the construction 

 of the Colombo-Kautly l^ailway, which often being talked 

 about fortweuty years was opened in 1867, and which even 

 iu these times of depression is a soiurcc of net revenue 

 to the colouy of £1,000,000 per annum. The product they 

 cultivated soon became and still continues the st^iple export 

 of the island, and as is shown by the customs returns and 

 land sales in sjiite of the vicessitudes to which cotf ee-plant- 

 ing has always been exposed they steadily and rapidly in- 

 creased the revenue of the islaud and became a power 

 in the state. Time will not allow me to follow the history 

 of the coffee enterprise in Ceylon : the variations to which 

 it has been subject are fully accorded in ** Ferguson's 

 Handbook" and proceed to some extent from the same 

 causes which have brought about our present depression, 

 and whether it is the relation of cause and effect, it is 

 remarkable, how the several periods of jjlantiug poverty 

 and prosjjcrity have been attended by similar cycles of 

 apathy and activity on the part of the Government of 

 the island. ^Vll previous crises seem to have been brought 

 about by the opening up of land uusiutable for 

 coffee, extravagant outlay, the low price of produce, and 

 the whole withdrawal ot ilue creibt; and we may partially 

 attribute our present difficulties to the two first causes. 

 "We cannot blame the price of produce, for it has ruled 

 liigher for the last ten years than the most sanguine would 

 have dared to predict; nor can we blame the withdrawal 

 of credit, for money is abundant, and it is clearly the failure 

 of our land to produce coffee crops which has caused 

 our financial difficidties, and this present, as 1 shall show after 

 wards, a far gloomier but at the same time a far more hope- 

 ful side to the pictmre than any prenous ci'isis, and it 

 is in great measure dependent upon om-selves which side we 

 shall look upon. 



About twenty years ago some adventurous men began 

 to take up land in these districts : I say adventurous 

 advisedly, because most of the older and more experienced 

 men shook their he.ads aud said soil and climate rendered 

 these lands rmsuitable for coffee cultvu-e and black bug 

 would prevail, auii though some of the early ooened 

 estates in Dimbula had yielded good crops, this opinion 

 seemed justified. Several planters who lived on the con- 

 lines of what now forms these districts and knew the 

 land preferred seekini^' investments in the drier Laggala 

 country, and there is a notable instance of an old planter, 

 who persuaded by a younger and more sanguine man to 

 enter into ijartnership iu purchasing a block of laud, and 



who, has been living for many years in comfort on the 

 proceeds of this land, has told me that when he saw his 

 first clearing he expressed the opinion that it might grow 

 potatoes, certainly not coffee; but wonderful results attended 

 the Labour (jf these pioneers : they got crops beyond their 

 1 most .sanguine expectations ; the climate which had been 

 pronounced unsuitable seemed suddenly to change(attributed 

 by many to the felling of forest), and to become all that 

 could be wished for. Incited by the opening of the Kandy- 

 Colombo Hallway, by the confidence and credit afforded by 

 niprchants and hankers, and by tlie immense stinnilus of 

 1873, when the price of coffee was nearly doubled, pur- 

 chasers, flocked eagerly to take up land (in spite of leaf- 

 dKsease which first appeared iu 1809, aud which had over- 

 spread the country), until £20 per acre for forest, and 

 £100 an acre for coffee land in bearing, became almost 

 standard valuations which were fully justified by the re- 

 turns coffee laud was giving and which would have been 

 borne out if it had fulfilled early promise. 



It woukl be presumptuous for nie in the.se limits to 

 account for the collapse of coffee upon which cynics and 

 plnlosophers form out weekly columns but I shall touch 

 upon what I consider a few'conducive points : — 



1st.— The EXCESSIVE price paid for crown lauds enabled 

 Government to bolster up a false revenue and treat as income 

 money realized by the sale of laud alienated in perpetuity. 

 If the price of land had never exceeded ElO per acre we 

 might not yet have had a museum or a new lunatic 

 asylum, or several other ofiices and buildings which might 

 be dispensed -n-ith, but the position of both state and 

 individual would have been far healthier. 



It was not generally the capitalist who paid R200 per 

 acre for forest, but the man who traded upon credit, 

 and this means not ouly a direct ilraiuage from the land 

 of both for purchase aud jiayment of future interest 

 mone^ which should have gone to develop it, but also 

 the apeninjf of all land suitable, for no borrower can 

 aft'ord to pay K200 per acre for forest aud leave it stand- 

 ing idle. 



The price of coffee property is, of course, regulated by 

 the price and quantity of suitable forest land in the market, 

 and the steady drain from the isl.aud of money to pay 

 interest o n borrowed money has prevented land having 

 justice done to it and has done much to precipitate 

 inattcrs. _ The high price of land and the injudicious open- 

 ing occasioned thereby, over-speculation and extravagant ex- 

 penditure caused by too liberal facilities for obtaining credit, 

 may be classified together, and this extravagance was not 

 confined to the purchase ot property but extended 

 to cultivation so much so that for years the cultivator 

 who crammed in most manure, who'erected the largest 

 buildings, cut the finest roads, who spent most money, 

 ignonng fiuaucial position or results, was accounted tlie 

 best planter ; but iu spite of all the cruel things now said 

 about coffee the men in this aud other districts who 

 brought with them mouey enough to justify of their 

 purchasing property, who neither traded nor lived beyond 

 their means, who have been guided by experience and 

 not negligent of their interests, have as a rule found good 

 investments and are iu the position now of being able by 

 the cultivation of other products on land where coffee 

 has ceased to be remunerative to steadily increase the 

 value of their properties. 



2nd. — Any careful observer of the weathee (and we are 

 fortunate in having in Dikoya one whose observations have 

 been very extensive) inclines to attribute much of ihe 

 failure of the last five crops to insufficient heat and 

 untimely raius, aud there cau be no doubt that, just as the 

 climat« for some years took a favorable turn and coffee 

 yielded fruit beyond expectation, so we are now suffering 

 from a corresponding period of unfavorable seasons, which, 

 added to the fact that owing to periodical attacks of leaf- 

 disease coffee is more suspectible to the action of the 

 ■Weather than formerly, has compelled many reluctantly to 

 stop the application of manuie.s, of which ver large quant- 

 ities were for years applied without the lasulf of a 

 proportionate increase of crop yield. The monsoon we are 

 now undergoing is such a complete change from the 

 months of cold damp sunless weather -which have been 

 familiar to us of late years that we may look for a change 

 whic i must befor the better. 



3rd.— A.M.MAL PESTS have also done much harm, an 



a 



