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bound to outgrow the existing revenue, snip and patch, 

 botch and tinker as you will. 



The only source from which you can derive that 

 large increase of revenue which the empire must have 

 hereafter if it is to continue to flourish, or even exist, 

 is the land ; and from the land this increase is not 

 to be got so long as throughout wide provinces all 

 classes of agriculturists are crippled by poverty and 

 debt. 



Some parts of the country are comparatively free 

 from this blight. No measures that we decide to take 

 need be universal in their application. In no two 

 provinces, probably, would the remedy take precisely 

 the same form, but broadly speaking, what is neces- 

 sary wherever this disease has gained much ground, 

 is to remove all cases connected with the money and 

 grain transactions of agriculturists as such * from the 

 cognisance of the regular courts, and secure the ad- 

 justment of all these by local tribunals. 



Natives of known probity and fair intelligence (and 

 in every province there are thousands of these, igno- 

 rant enough of law, but thoroughly able to settle 

 fairly a money question between two other natives, 

 when they have the real facts before them), such 

 natives, we say, would be selected, many no doubt 

 from our huge revenue establishments, and sent as 

 judges, from village to village, to settle up, with the 

 aid of the village elders, every case of debt of the 



* Perhaps one in a thousand agriculturists is a trader as well 

 as an agriculturist. With these and their trade transactions we 

 need not concern oui'selves. 



