When population and wealth diminish it is always the rich soils that are first abandoned, as is shown in the Campagna of Rome, in the valley of Mexico, and in the deltas of the Ganges and the Nile. Without association they could never have been brought into cultivation, and with the disappearance of the power to associate they are of necessity allowed to relapse into their original condition. Driven back to the poor soils and forced to send abroad the product, their wretched cultivator becomes poorer from day to day, and the less he obtains the more he becomes a slave to the caprices of his landlord, and the more is he thrown upon the mercy of the money-lender, who lends _on good security_ at three per cent. per month, but _from him_ must have fifty or a hundred per cent. for a loan until harvest. That under such circumstances the wages of labour should be very low, even where the wretched people are employed, must be a matter of course. In some places the labourer has two and in others three rupees, or less than a dollar and a half, per month. The officers employed on the great zemindary estates have from three to four rupees, and that this is a high salary, is proved by the fact that the police receive but 48 rupees ($23) per annum, out of which they feed and clothe themselves! Such are the rewards of labour in a country possessing every conceivable means of amassing wealth, and they become less from year to year. "It could not be too universally known," said Mr. Bright in the House of Commons, two years since,