[ 35 ] 



on ; look round on all possible sources of income 

 and say Lvhere there is any hope of such a material 

 increment as, in the face of an ever-falling exchange, 

 would relieve our anxieties on this score. 



From the opium revenue, long threatened, but like 

 threatened men living long, we can at best expect no 

 permanent material increase. Insolvent as we are, an 

 Imperial policy demands the reduction of our customs 

 duties. Stamps and excise might each yield some 

 trifling increment, but the former at a greater cost, 

 perhaps, where the true interests of the people are 

 concerned, than it would be worth. Three or four 

 extra millions might be on a temporary emergency 

 extracted from salt, without much local . dissatisfac- 

 tion, but only in direct opposition to the policy which 

 the Grovernment have so earnestly avowed. Lastly, 

 by additional direct taxation, a couple or even three 

 millions extra might be raised, but not without creat- 

 ing the most widespread discontent that any accident 

 might develop into a costly outbreak or series of 

 outbreaks. 



We have really only the land to look to, and here, 

 though we have for generations steadily refused to 

 see it, the gold lies thickly for the gathering. 



It is one of those incomprehensible instances of de- 

 termined national blindness of which history records 

 too many similar examples, but it is a fact that, land- 

 lords of an estate, let on comparatively short leases, 

 with a gross rental of seventeen millions,* with the 



* I exclude about four and a half millions, the revenue derived 

 from permanently settled and quit-rent estates. 



3 * 



