anks,
to be found in so many parishes, have, by the easy access they afford to
loans, beguiled many into a needless borrowing of money, subsequently
squandered.'

Over and above these facilities for borrowing money from public
institutions, the yeomen farmers are undoubtedly heavily in debt to
local storekeepers, and to merchants and traders in the towns. In fact
the great bulk of the landed proprietors have been borrowing in every
direction as much as they could raise by mortgage or by bill. Owing to
the excellent system of registration that exists in Norway, there is no
difficulty in ascertaining the extent to which the charges on real
property in rural districts have increased between the years 1876 and
1880. It appears from the Reports of the Prefects that, between those
dates, the balance of mortgages newly effected over those extinguished
in rural districts amounted to a sum of about four millions sterling.
The State Mortgage Bank is bound not to advance more than six-tenths of
the value of land and buildings (forests excepted), and it is supposed
that the loans have so far not exceeded four-tenths of the value of
mortgaged property; but as the yeomen farmers generally contrive to
borrow on second mortgages, it may safely be assumed, that their estates
are charged with interest at 4-1/4 to 6 per cent. on a considerable part
of the nominal value of what is not purely forest land, in addition to
an annual repayment of 3 per cent. of the capital borrowed from the
State Mortgage Bank. The forests, on the other hand, have been largely
used up in paying the interest and capital on those loans, either by
cutting them down, or by leasing or pawning them to traders, or to
yeomen who have been able to keep their heads above water and to profit
by the economic distress of the great majority of their
fellow-landowners. The difficulty experienced by that majority in
meeting the payment of interest and capital, especially at a time when
the value of agricultural produce has been considerably diminished by
American competition, and when also the competition of American and
Baltic timber has simultaneously reduced the profits of the forest
industry to a point that hardly repays the felling of trees, is clearly
shown from the statistics of forced sales, of auctions and of distraints
in the rural districts, and from an accompanying increase in the number
of lawsuits before Courts of First Instance. It appears from the
Reports of t