1s. 8d. per acre of crop and is being steadily reduced in
relation to the gross revenue of the country--but they say nothing about
the exactions of the native landlord, who has, for instance in Bengal,
monopolized at the expense of the peasantry almost the whole benefit of
the Permanent Settlement. Some very significant facts with regard to
_rayatwari_ landlords were brought out in a debate this year in the
Legislative Council of Madras, when Mr. Atkinson, in reply to one of his
Hindu colleagues who had been denouncing the Government assessments in
certain villages, produced an overwhelming array of figures to show
that in those very villages the rents exacted by native landlords varied
between eight and eleven times the amount which they paid to Government.
Nor do Indian politicians say much about the native moneylender, who is
far more responsible than the tax-gatherer for the poverty of the
peasant. Still less do they say about the extravagance of native
customs, partly religious and partly social, which makes the peasant an
easy prey to the moneylender, to whom he is too often driven when he has
a child to marry or a parent to bury or a Brahman to entertain.
Indebtedness is the great curse of Indian agriculture, and the peasant's
chief necessity is cheap credit obtained on a system that will not cause
him to sink deeper into the mire. Here again it is not Indian
politicians, but the British rulers of India who have found a solution,
and it is of such importance and promise that it deserves more than mere
passing mention.

It has been found in the adaptation to Indian requirements of the
well-known Raffeisen system. Sir William Wedderburn was, I believe,
actually the earliest advocate of this movement, but the first practical
experiments were made in Madras as a result of exhaustive investigation
by Sir Frederick Nicholson and in the United Provinces when Sir Antony
(now Lord) MacDonnell was Lieutenant-Governor, and one of the many
measures passed by Lord Curzon for the benefit of the humbler classes in
India, with little or no support from the politicians and often in
despite of their vehement opposition, whilst Nationalist newspapers
jeered at "a scheme for extracting money from wealthy natives in order
that Government might make a show of benevolence at other people's
expense," was an Act giving legal sanction to the operations of a system
of co-operative banks and credit societies. It found a healthy basis
ready