92 AGRICULTURAL INDEBTEDNESS 



the debts thereon £15,952,492, or 39 per cent. The 

 value of the land increased from 1856 by 65 per cent., 

 and the debts by 128 per cent. In one division of the 

 canton the debts were 55 per cent, of the capital value 

 — that is, practically the whole area was pledged to 

 nearly its full mortgage value, since two-thirds of the 

 estimated value is generally the mortgage value. 



' For Italy the figures are very heavy. On January 1, 

 1888, the registered mortgage debt bearing interest was 

 above £328,000,000, in addition to registered charges 

 ("hypotheques legales ") of above £71,000,000. These 

 latter are claims upon property not susceptible of 

 interest, such as dues for construction, supply of 

 material, etc. The interest on mortgages proper is 

 very heavy. " It has been contracted under peculiarly 

 onerous conditions, and so heavily burdens the soil 

 as to form one of the chief evils from which agriculture 

 suffers " (M. Claudio Jannet). " Often the interest on a 

 loan representing only half the value of the land 

 absorbs the profit of the whole " (" Inchiesta Agraria" 

 s.v. " Venetia"). The pages of Mr. Beauclerk (" Rural 

 Italy ") are full of the accounts of rural usury and in- 

 debtedness ; so also M. E. de Laveleye in " Letters 

 from Italy," and numerous others. 



' In Denmark the indebtedness has steadily increased 

 for the last forty years, the increase being chiefly due 

 to the " cost of purchase and the laws of inheritance." 

 Indebtedness to the amount of 40 per cent, of the 

 capital value is called normal, but it is now about 

 50 per cent. This is the value relative to the capital 

 value, but the absolute amount is said to have in- 

 creased six- or seven-fold in the last forty years ; 

 hence, as in Switzerland, a greatly increased value 

 of the land has been followed by a still greater 

 burdening of that value. The similarity in the pro- 

 portion — viz., 40 per cent. — is also noteworthy. Now, 

 since money-lenders and banks in Europe seldom 

 advance money to more than half of the estimated 



