the means to cultivate a large portion of
the land, and could derive no advantage from it even if the
means were available.'

The yeomen farmers, being therefore in a distressed condition, and
their children and best hands forced to leave their homes in order to
cultivate the fruitful soil of America, to the growing detriment of
those who remain to till the soil of Norway--those farmers, he points
out with great force of argument, must have the same protection which is
accorded to the industrial classes, if agriculture is to be saved from
final ruin. In fact, this remarkable letter points to an agitation in
favour of the imposition of a 'fiscal duty,'[19] on corn, food of all
kind, cattle, dairy produce, &c.; and supports this conclusion with the
argument used by Prince Bismarck on the second reading of his recent
Corn Duties Bill:

'The trade of the Baltic will suffer nothing from protective
duties. As regards agriculture, I am opposed to all
legislation against the subdivision of land ... but if you
want to have small occupiers of land, you must vote for
duties on corn.'

Account must at the same time be taken of the heavy and increasing
charges that fall on landed property for the administration of rural
districts in Norway. While the inhabitants of the rural communities
contribute towards the support of the Central Administration only in the
form of Customs and Excise duties, stamps, succession duties, and
contributions towards the construction of highways, the burthen of local
administration, justice, police, prisons, the Church, public
instruction, poor relief, sanitary service, parochial roads, posting
stations, interest on communal loans, &c., falls on their landed
property. This self-assessed and self-imposed burthen has naturally been
growing more heavy, from year to year, under the exigencies of modern
progress. Thus, while the total communal expenditure in 1853 was
167,000l., it had risen to 497,000l. in 1880, or 197-1/2 per cent. About
one half of the requisite resources is derived from a tax on the
cadastral value of real property; the remaining half is raised by a tax
on capital and income. In 1880 the communal impositions on land
represented a taxation of about 6s. 7d. per head of the rural
population. That the whole of the communal expenditure is not covered by
taxation is apparent from the fact, that in the same year the rural
districts had increased the amount o