The fact, nevertheless, cannot be denied, though it is an unpleasant admission, that a large proportion of the immense agricultural population of India have remained miserably poor. Indian, politicians ascribe this poverty to the crushing burden of the land revenue collected by Government--a burden which has been shown to work out only to about 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.