286 



ever, in view of the small returns and the risks ^^^ and trouble 

 in the management, landed property has been somewhat los- 

 ing its attractions as a field for investment ; and if banking 

 institutions under the guarantee of the State are established, 

 many persons, who invest money in land, would take 

 shares in banks, thus still further lightening the pressure on 

 land to the manifest advantage of the cultivating classes who 

 will be enabled to obtain lands for cultivation on easier terms 

 than heretofore. There can be no doubt that, in this coun- 

 try, an immense quantity of money is either hoarded or con- 

 verted into ornaments. The net imports of gold into India 

 between 1565 to 1835 or during a period of 270 years was 

 112 millions sterling, while the net imports in the 56 years 

 from 1835 to 1891 was 140 millions. The net imports of 

 silver from 1850 to 1891 was 302 millions Ex. 317|- millions 

 Rx. of silver were coined in the Indian mints from 1835, 

 being nearly 15 rupees per head of the population; but of 

 this quantity, Mr. Harrison (in his article in the Economic 

 Journal for June 1892) estimates that only 166 millions 

 Rx. or 5*8 rupees per head is now in circulation, the remain- 

 der being either hoarded or converted into ornaments. The 

 practice of hoarding is gradually going out except in rural 

 tracts, but that of investing money in jewels is probably on 

 the increase. Sir David Barbour collected information in re- 

 gard to the quantity of gold and silver hoarded, more especi- 

 ally in Upper India, for the use of the Royal Commission on 

 the value of precious metals. He estimated the quantity of 

 gold and silver hoarded since 1835 at something like 300 



"^ The same tendency has been noted as being observable among the small pro- 

 prietors in France whose one passion was the acquisition of land. Guyot, in his 

 Principles of Social Economy, observes : " The bourgeois proprietor is beginning to 

 Bee that, if the land which serves him as an investment has its advantages, it has also 

 grave disadvantages for a man who looks for a return without troubling himself about 

 it. The pride he once took in treading his own soil is beginning to disappear. The 

 rail roads are making him a traveller and breaking up his attachment to a particular 

 spot. He finds personal property far more convenient than land, which involves drain- 

 ing and planting and legal pi-oceedings ; or houses which he must look after and keep 

 in repair, and with the tenants of which he cannot always keep on good terms. So he 

 goes to the stock-broker, instead of the notary, and takes in a Railway Company or 

 miub, or buys into the rentes fonciere, a company baaed on the observation of this very 

 psychological fact to which I have been drawing attention." Mr. Jenkins, in his Beport 

 on the Agriculture of France, writes of peasant proprietors : " It must, nevertheless, be 

 admitted that the French peasant has, for some years past, been learning to look for 

 an investment of his capital elsewhere than in land. The national loan, after the 

 termination of the Franco-German war, was to him the alphabet of the language of 

 investment in anything but land. The hoards of thousands of farmers were dug op 

 from the ground, hoisted from the well, cut out of the mattress, pulled down the chim- 

 ney, and in fact, brought to light from all sorts of secret places to enable M. Thiers to 

 get rid of the hated Prussians. A considerable proportion of the peasants, I am 

 assured, looked upon the subscription to the national loan as a patriotic act for which 

 their only reward would be the disappearance of the invader. In course of time, they 

 found that this ' subscription ' brought them an annual interest, that t^e principal sum 

 had a fluctuating value, and that they had the right to sell their own investment and 

 buy their neighbours.' They thus learnt to speculate and now the French peasants 

 are among the most eager Bpeoalators in the world in a small way," 



