3?o 
THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 
[Dec. r, 1894. 
of the Colony— some of whom (like Sir Arthur 
Gordon who had a scheme for reducing and modi- 
fying its incidence.) had come to Ceylon with a 
strong wish to abolish the paddy rents, but had 
seen cause, in the live or six years of 
their stay, to agree that it would he wiser, in 
the interests of the people themselves, to 
continue the levy. All the greater triumph there- 
fore for Mr. Wall and his party of supporters; 
and no one grudged him, in return, the gold medal 
of the Cohden Club, on the terms on which lie had 
earned it, namely by his labours to secure the 
abolition of an undoubted food-tax in Ceylon. 
But, it is absolutely necessary to mention that 
Mr. Wall ignored — while the Cohden Club post- 
poned their dealing with — the remaining and 
corresponding food-tax of the Colony, namely the 
Customs duty on imported grain which affects 
one-half the natives of Ceylon, just as the 
paddy rents affected the other half. So thai the 
curious result arrived at was, that Mr. Wall, — 
a son of Manchester, born and bred in a Free Trade 
atmosphere, the writer in 1867-8 of Speculum,' 
a worker iji connection with the Cobde.i Club,— 
by doing away with the internal grain tax in 
Ceylon and leaving the Customs duty, actually 
established Protection. Mr. Wall, we believe, 
would strenuously deny our proposition ; but 
any one interested can see the facts in the 
Ceylon Customs returns — how rice mown in the 
Eastern Piovince of the island is shipped free 
of tax to the Northern Province, there to 
compete with Indian rice which pays Customs 
duty ; and how in all the markets of the 
South Western part of the island, Ceylon and 
Indian rice are sold together, The fact, there- 
fore, of " Protection " being established with the 
direct countenance, if not active aid, of the Cobden 
Club is to our mind undeniable and must be noted 
by the future impartial historian of the Colony ; 
just as he will note that from 1st January 1892, 
Lord Knutsford and Governor Sir Arthur Havelock 
arranged that one-half the natives of Ceylon should 
eat free> and one-half eat taxed, rice. On t he other 
hand, it must be acknowledged that Mr. Wall made 
out a strong indictment against the paddy rents for 
the corruption and oppression attending their 
collection through native headmen of various 
grades, such being the accompaniment in a more 
or less degree, of all direct taxation collected 
through natives in an Oriental land. As to results, 
opinions differ greatly on two very important 
points, namely, rirst, whether the bulk of the rent 
remission has gone to benefit the mass of the 
poorer cultivators in whose interest abolition was 
urged, or into the pockets of well-to-do landlords 
and money-lending middlemen and trauers who 
virtually control the crops ; and, secondly, whether 
the result of abolition has been to lead to the local 
* See our former quotations. 
extension of rice cultivation and increased produc- 
tion. On both these points. Mr. Wall and our- 
selves would, probably, give opposite opinions. Our 
information so far is unfavourable undei both hea Is; 
While Mr. Wall and the friends of '• abolition '' 
would argue and demonstrate according to their 
light and information that in the interests of the 
peopleat large, the abolition has proved a gnat suc- 
cess. Time and an impartial Official Inquiry under 
a new Governor, alone can settle this moot point. 
An Oriental people whose idea, in many district! 
at least, is that the abolition of a tax, means 
to them so much less occasion to work, and 
who regard the Civil Scn ant and headman much 
in the light of taskmasters or schoolmasters to keep 
them at work, obviously cannot be judged in the 
light of Western experience. .Another tent w hic h 
ought to be almost infallible .should be found in our 
Customs accounts : — if the local production of rice 
is increasing, through the abolition of the paddj 
rents, the importation of rice from In liaought inevi- 
tably t< fall oft'. So far- with the experience of two 
years it has not done so There we leave the mat- 
ter. It w as impossible not to deal at some length 
with a subject so closely associated with the 
later years of Mr. Wall's public life in Ceylon. 
As j- urnalist, he was fmther instrumental in 
starting a local Society for the prevention of 
cruelty to animals, which, unfortunately, is not 
so well supported as it might and ought to be. 
Mr. Wall's health began greatly to fail in the 
autumn of 1894 and friends became very 
anxious about him. On loth October he 
was removed from Nuwara Eliya to Colombo 
where, at the residence of Dr. Kynsey. c.M.G , 
he hovered between life and death for some 
weeks ; but the most unremitting care, medical 
attention and careful professional nursing resuh 
ted in his being so far restored as to be ena- 
bled to tike the voyage home to England to 
join his family. He embarked on the P. & O. 
S.S. "Valetta'on November 9th, and landed at 
Plymouth on 4th December. He left England 
originally a young man of 26 and returned finally 
a patriarch in his 75th year. At that advanced 
age and with an enfeebled constitution, Mr. Wall's 
lifework, at any rate in Ceylon, may be said 
to be closed, and it is fitting that a notice of 
his strenuously active, kneenly intellectual and 
very varied career as I lanter, Meichaut, Politi- 
cian and Journalist should be embodied in, and, 
indeed, should close our first series of the 
PLANTING PIONEERS OF CEYLON. 
It only remains to mention that Mr. Wall was 
twice married, his first wife dying in Ceylon on 
July 19th, 1857, leaving him with a family of five 
daughters; while by his second marriage (Mrs. Wall 
happily surviving with her husband' in England) 
there have been four daughters and five sons. Most 
of the daughters are married and all the sons 
are actively employed in the Army, the Medical 
Service, South Eastern Railway, Education or 
in the Straits — so that curiously enough not 
one of them has sought or found a career in 
his father's adopted land, Ceylon. In our record 
of Mr. Wall's literary work, besides a great 
deal of newspaper writing, circulars and pam- 
phlets on a variety of topics— many bearing on 
the practical work of the tropical planter— we 
ought not to forget two volumes of his, of a 
more thoughtful and even philosophical character: 
— one being on " Good and Evil " written in 
England at a time when Mr. Wall was threatened 
with blindness; and the other on the "Natural 
History of Thought." 
