L 73 ] 



And perhaps our man is sold up, and tHe banker 

 buys his land, and takes possession, and then — now 

 and then the inherent love of his ancestral lands, his 

 strongest passion, is too strong for the poor homeless 

 wretch, and one evening in the dusk, when the unwary- 

 usurer, who has paid a visit to the village to see his 

 new purchase, is wending his way homewards, there is 

 a rush and the heavy thuds of a club, and the gallows 

 ends the tragedy which our blundering philanthropy 

 has so elaborately prepared. 



And similarly, be it noticed, though it is a digres- 

 sion, that our laws and courts have set landlord against 

 tenants, and converted too many of both classes into 

 sad rogues. In the old days there was no talk of 

 tenants-at-will, and tenants with occupancy rights, and 

 so on. No doubt every landholder, where such really 

 existed, could evict any tenant he chose, and if a man 

 seduced his neighbour's wife (they were poor ignorant 

 creatures), or otherwise insulted or offended the com- 

 munity, evicted he was, but custom barred, and far 

 more effectively than any British law or court, any 

 arbitrary exercise of this power, and the landlord who 

 might any day have to defend his Penates against a 

 Maratha inroad, an imperial functionary, or a band of 

 dacoits, was obliged to keep good friends on the whole 

 with the mass of his cultivators, on whose strong arms 

 the safety of his property and the honour of his house 

 might, at any moment, become dependent. 



Both classes here, again, were bound together by 

 ties of mutual obligation and inter-dependence, but 

 we, with our ill-starred mania for exact systems of 

 law, have dissolved the bonds, and have converted 



