82 COLONEL T. HOLBEIN HENDLEY, C.I.E., ON RESEMBLANCES 
men into the ranks of the Native Army, and thus the pressure 
on the wells is relieved. 
We have, in the regulations of the year of Jubilee, full 
recognition of the inviolable heredity of land, under which 
every man came into his own again. It would be fortunate 
if land in India could be redeemed in a similar way, as the 
Jubilee regulations were wonderfully well adapted to check the 
improvidence and extravagance of Orientals, who, in times of 
scarcity or of difficulty, or in order to meet their views of the 
demands of honour, or more correctly speaking pride, at times 
of marriage or for funeral feasts and such like emergencies, will 
mortgage or sell nearly all they possess in order to raise 
money. Improvidence of this kind is too often encouraged by 
the money-lender, and not unfrequently under British law 
ancient families are ruined, and, it is to be feared, are often 
rendered disloyal, because they attribute their downfall to the 
■Government, which, in the East, is held responsible for 
everything. The real blame is, of course, due to the causes 
which I have mentioned, and to the cleverness with which our 
laws are worked by the unscrupulous. Under native adminis- 
trations the money-lender dare not claim too much, and in one 
state, with which I am acquainted, he is checked by the 
existence of a regulation that will not allow him to recover 
from the heirs of an estate, on the death of its owner, more 
than a certain proportion of its value, I think about 5 per cent. 
A year of Jubilee would certainly make it impossible to obtain 
heavy loans, especially when the year of redemption drew 
nigh, and would put an end to much extravagance. The 
Sabbatical year of the Jew had, moreover, much the same 
effect as a rotation of crops of allowing land to lie fallow at 
suitable intervals. In India the village system of agriculture 
has much the same results. 
Very little is said in the Bible about house property, but 
there is a curious text in the Book of Job which interests me. 
Amongst the wicked are those of whom it is said, “ In the dark 
they dig through houses, which they had marked themselves 
in the day time: they knew not the light.” (Job xxiv, 16.) 
One day 1 went into a picture-dealer’s shop, and found him in 
great trouble. He said he had been robbed of all his savings 
and of much of his stock, and he pointed to the back wall 
through which a great hole had been dug by which the thieves 
had entered. Surgeon-General Bellew tells us that this is a 
•common practice in Afghanistan, and that if, as sometimes 
happens, the thief is caught while he is entering the room 
