ii 4 AGRICULTURAL INDEBTEDNESS 



turists are recommending protection, subsidies, land 

 banks, and other infallible panaceas. 



1 In France the mortgage indebtedness is so great, 

 and the rate of interest so high, that the French 

 peasant can, in general, only live by a frugality and 

 parsimony, and by certain family restrictions which 

 do not usually commend themselves to general imita- 

 tion. 



1 In the United States the statistics of the Census of 

 1890 show that in many, even of the largest States, 

 about half of the farms are mortgaged to their full 

 mortgage value — that is, one-half of their supposed 

 market value — and that the rate of interest is nearly 

 8 per cent. 



1 It is, then, clear that free mortgage is not without its 

 dangers, and the example of Prussia is peculiarly 

 interesting for Indian students, for it is exactly 

 paralleled in this country, where, on a sudden, an 

 ignorant peasantry not only obtained absolute owner- 

 ship of the soil, subject only to State dues, but, equally 

 suddenly, found that land attained an enormous rela- 

 tive money value, owing to the fall in money, to foreign 

 trade, to the development of communications, and the 

 like. A great development of the mortgage habit at 

 once resulted, to be followed, as in Europe, by the 

 cry for State aid, for the establishment of land banks 

 and the like. 



' It is easy to be wise after the event, and it is herein 

 that the study of European facts is so important to 

 Indian reformers and administrators, that it helps to 

 give that wisdom which may come from national object- 

 lessons. It teaches at least that the agrarian problem 

 is common to all countries, and that it is not to be 

 treated by any single panacea. What seems to be the 

 cause of the disease is often only a symptom, and no 

 radical cure can be effected by its removal. It may 

 disappear only to break out in unexpected form and 

 place. Abolish feudalism, or even the landlord, and 



