It is difficult in a great country like India where wages are so small and the cost of living is so insignificant compared with our own country, to judge accurately of the condition of the laboring classes. The empire is so vast and so diverse in all its features that a statement which may accurately apply to one province will misrepresent another. But, taking one consideration with another, as the song says, and drawing an average, it is plainly evident that the peasant population of India is slowly improving in condition. The scales of wages have undoubtedly risen; there has been an improvement in the housing and the feeding of the masses; their sanitary condition has been radically changed, although they have fought against it, and the slow but gradual development of the material resources of the country promises to make the improvement permanent. The chief source of revenue in India from ancient times has been a share in the crops of the farmers. The present system has been handed down through the centuries with very little modification, and as three-fifths of the people are entirely and directly dependent upon the cultivation of the land, the whole fabric of society has been based upon that source of wealth. The census gives 191,691,731 people as agriculturists, of whom 131,000,000 till their own or rented land, 18,750,000 receive incomes as landlord owners and the remainder are agricultural laborers. The landlord caste are the descendants of hereditary chiefs, of former revenue farmers and persons of importance to whom land grants were made in ancient times. Large tracts of land in northern India are owned by municipalities and village communities, whose officials receive the rents and pay the taxes. Other large tracts have been inherited from the invaders and conquerors of the country. It is customary in India for the landlord to receive his rent in a part of the crop, and the government in turn receives a share of this rent in lieu of taxes. This is an ancient system which the British government has never interfered with, and any attempt to modify or change it would undoubtedly be resisted. At the same time the rents are largely regulated by the taxes. These customs, which have come down from the Mogul empire, have been defined and strengthened by time and experience. Nearly every province has its own and different laws and customs on the subject, but the variation is due not to legislation, but to public sentiment. The tenant as well as the landlord insists that the assessments of taxes shall be made before the rent rate is determined, and this occurs in almost every province, although variations in rent and changes of proprietorship and tenantry very seldom occur. Wherever there has been a change during the present generation it has been in favor of the tenants. The rates of rent and taxation naturally vary according to the productive power of the land, the advantages of climate and rainfall, the