GROWTH OF LANDLORD CLASS 16 



cultivation, bat can let oat much of his land. If still 

 ambitious, he will continue to save and buy more land ; and 

 ultimately he will live solely on the rents of his small estate. 

 The sons brought np to hard work may follow his example 

 and greatly extend the family estate ; but tJieir sons brought 

 up to an easy life are content with living on the proceeds of 

 their father's savings. 



There is another way in which the landlord class deve- 

 lops where no law prevents it. When the land is fertile, the 

 cultivator can in ordinary seasons expand his income by 

 greater labor, or some one else in his place can do so. The 

 bania or maliajan trades on this fact and advances money to 

 the cultivator on mortgage of his holding. Many ot such 

 loans are not repaid, and the land falls into the hands of men 

 of the merchant and financial class who rarely make good 

 landlords. The latter form of encroachment on peasant 

 proprietorship has been to some extent retarded by Land 

 Alienation Acts ; but, as in the Punjab, if the trading 

 castes are excluded from the proprietorship of land there 

 soon arise money-lending individuals amongst the cultivating 

 classes, and the same result ultimately ensues. Throughout 

 the ryotwari tracts of India, and the great canal colonies, 

 tta gradual formation of a landlord class is going on, 

 wherever the lund is sufficiently fertile ; and it may be 

 doubted whether any law can stop it. Even if rents were 

 made irrecoverable at law, this would not prevent a man 

 letting his land to villagers whom he knows to be trustworthy 

 men and whose interest it would be to pay the rent regu- 

 larly lest they should be turned out as tresspassers. Farming 

 through tenants who are nominally partners is also another 

 device which no law can prevent. Hence it appears to me 

 impossible for any law to prevent the growth of a landlord 

 class where the economic conditions permit it, when the one 

 essential condition is satisfied, namely, that there is a large 



