[ 64 J 



whole provinces (like Guzerat and Berar, owing to the 

 abnormal profits from cotton during the American 

 war) have similarly cleared themselves. 



Fools are scarce nowhere, but only show our ryots 

 how to free themselves from the toils of the money- 

 lender and how to keep out of his books, and none 

 need fear that the great mass of them will long remain 

 plunged in their present comparative misery; for 

 misery of a kind it is. 



A very happy natured, contented race, as a whole, 

 are our village husbandmen, and they have their little 

 amusements and festivals, and when harvests are very 

 good, pretty much all that, with their simple habits, 

 they need. The picture is not all black, or how could 

 we or any one hold the country ? But withal their 

 lives are very hard and toilsome, and through it all too 

 many are pressed with debt. Good crops ease the pain 

 a little, and the village merry-making brings a tem- 

 porary forge tfulness, but the sore is always there, and 

 except in very good seasons multitudes for months in 

 every year cannot get sufl&cient food for themselves 

 and their families. They are not starving, but they 

 are hungry, they get less than they want and than 

 they ought to have. 



ISTo doubt they make the best of it, and keep cheer- 

 ful under pressure that would crush men of more 

 advanced races, but this very child-like nature involves 

 dangers, and we may see from the Deccan riots and 

 sporadic cases occurring constantly everywhere, that 

 quite independent of the necessities of agricultural 

 reform, and quite apart from the duty of ameliorating 

 a lot on the whole so unenviable, cogent political reasons 



