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to the growth in other directions of the empire, money 

 has had to be raised in ways which, however equit- 

 able in principle, are opposed to the traditions and 

 repugnant to the feelings of the people. 



Were our land revenue now only thirty instead 

 of twenty-two millions, our expenditure might be pre- 

 cisely what it is, and yet no one, malcontent or other- 

 wise, would ever have grumbled. All the money we 

 needed would have been obtained by what the people 

 consider constitutional and legitimate means, and so 

 long as we adhered to old-established lines and intro- 

 duced no new forms of taxation (and we should have 

 needed none had our land revenue been what it should) 

 we were welcome to spend all we got and, for all the 

 masses cared, how we pleased. 



That our land revenue has not kept pace with the 

 general development is due to two causes : — 



The first, mistakes in system, already alluded to — 

 mistakes now irremediable. 



The second, our absolute neglect, though sole or 

 part proprietors of the major portion of the land, to 

 attempt the smallest improvement on a primitive sys- 

 tem of agriculture, stereotyped two thousand years 

 ago, when the conditions and requirements of the 

 country were utterly unlike what they are now, and 

 when scientific method was undreamt of. 



So long as we hold the country and see a fair pro- 

 spect of continuing to hold it for another quarter of a 

 century, it can never be too late to repair this second 

 error, and the sooner we boldly face the necessity of 

 doing this, and take action on a scale commensurate 

 with the greatness of the task, the sooner we shall 



