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the lower substrata of the people hardly know what 

 money is. Their transactions, though nominally 

 regulated by the circulating medium, are almost en- 

 tirely carried on by exchanges. They literally have 

 nothing but the land, and their interest in that 

 generally consists only in the right to live on it a 

 right often limited by the will of their Zemindar, 

 or what is a more secure tenure, the custom of 

 the country. Their crops are almost invariably 

 under hypothecation to the money lender of the 

 village, or in remote regions to the lord of the 

 soil. In the North West, in Awadh, the Panjab, 

 and some parts of Central India, the people are 

 better off; but in some parts of the Madras 

 Presidency the condition of the people is not so 

 good. Throughout India generally the raiyat, can 

 seldom call the crop his own. The cities and 

 large towns are, it is quite true, full of busy people 

 well to do, rich merchants and opulent bankers, 

 who carry on much trade; yet, though efforts 

 have, for some time, been made by the Govern- 

 ment to improve their condition, by diffusing 

 more widely amongst them the means of obtaining 

 education, the peasant proprietors and cultivators 

 of the soil, if generally happy and contented, are 

 still as ignorant as they are poor, and live in a state 

 of society little, if at all, removed from that in 

 which their forefathers lived a thousand years ago. 

 I need hardly say, it is very primitive. 



