AGRICULTURAL REFORM 

 IN INDIA. 



Recent and oft-recurring famines have revived, to a 

 slight extent, the feeble interest which has occasionally, 

 in past times, been evinced in regard to agriculture in 

 India. 



Some few people are found who ask whether im- 

 proved husbandry might not do much to mitigate the 

 intensity and limit the areas of these calamities. 



Others, looking to India's present impecuniosity, to 

 the difficulties involved in any very material reduction 

 in her present expenditure, to the urgent necessities 

 that must arise in the future for increased expendi- 

 ture, to the comparatively slow growth of existing 

 sources of revenue and the apparent impracticability 

 of opening out new sources that her populations 

 would accept without dangerous dissatisfaction, en- 

 quire whether the time has not come for a careful 

 reconsideration of our management of the land of the 

 country. The land revenue in all historical periods 

 has been the main financial resource of every succes- 

 sive Grovernment, Hindoo or Mahomedan. We have 

 done much for the country, have enormously increased 



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