AGRICULTURE AND REVENUE 267

shed amongst his betters. The wonder is, not that there
should be poverty in the land, but that there should not
be an increase in crime out of all proportion to the
increase in population. In Ceylon, where a single cocoanut
 tree is possibly the disputed possession of fifty co-heirs,
it is said that about one murder per diem represents the
average rate of mortality arising directly from family
disputes over small inheritances.
An increase of say twenty million souls in ten years
represents the success of the Indian Government in
dealing with those periodic visitations which in the days
of the Moghuls thinned the population, and ensured there
being room enough for all. Wild animals alone have
so far defied the Government, and maintain a loss to
humanity that is appalling, from whatever point of view
it is considered. Twenty-one thousand people lost their
lives from snake-bite in 1897, and four or five thousand
more from wolves, tigers, and other animals; but such
numbers tell little in a sum total of millions, and do not
affect the difficult question of providing for the wants of
such an increase in population as Indian statistics deal
with,
There is no doubt a vast sum of human misery
distributed through the lower agricultural classes of
India. There are districts where insufficient food is
the normal condition of the people, and there is not a
single district probably where the indebtedness of the
ryot is not a notorious evil. But this will always be the
case in India, just as it is, under other conditions, in
London and all over-populated places. Improvidence is
not to be removed by legislation. Against this we must
set the gross accumulation of wealth and prosperity in
India. Who are the people who chiefly benefit thereby ?
The answer, in India, is that it is the well-to-do classes ;
the merchants and middlemen, the bunniah and shopkeepers,
 and in certain districts (especially Bengal) the
large landowners who appropriate most of it.
Still, it must be apparent to every one who has lived
long in India, who has moved about the country and