3. The rates of pauperism and emigration prove that the agrarian population has not, as prophesied by Mr. Laing, kept 'within the bounds of possible modern existence.'
4. The taxation of landed property, for local purposes, has greatly increased, particularly under the head of Poor Relief; and
5. The distressed condition of the yeoman farmer in Norway is strongly attested by his heavy and growing indebtedness. He may now, in fact, be classed with the proverbially derided Fife laird, owning 'A wee bit of land, a great lump of debt, and a dookit.'[22]
Such being the result of our enquiries into the economic condition of the great bulk of the yeoman farmers of Norway, the ideal fabric reared by Mr. Laing at a time when the Norse old world was still asleep, falls utterly to the ground, and there remains but one of his statements that we can with any advantage submit to the earnest attention of our readers, namely, that 'A single fact brought home from such a country is worth a volume of speculations.' We go further and say, that facts in relation to the question of land tenure collected in any other part of Europe are of equally inestimable value; and they have already been supplied in great abundance from Belgium, France, Germany, Italy and Switzerland.[23] Nothing can truly be more fatal to the successful solution of such intricate problems than the relief of the agricultural distress of England and Scotland, or the satisfaction of the alleged earth-hunger of the Celtic population of Ireland, than to initiate legislation on the hypothesis that circumstances alter cases, and that our own country can with impunity be withdrawn from the operation of economic laws that have asserted their supremacy throughout the entire Continent of Europe.
As history repeats itself, so are the laws of civilized development both general and inexorable. Even in the extreme case of Russia, it has been proved, in an article we published a few years ago,[24] that a heavy and ruinous price has been paid for the emancipation of the serfs on a Socialistic and partly Communistic basis, and on the erroneous assumption, that the continued existence of the 'Mir' (the ancient village community even of India) was an institution indigenous to the country itself, and therefore worthy of being perpetuated by legislation. Millions of a rural population, freed from personal servitude, were chained anew to the land by the indebtedness incurred in the expropriation of the lords of the soil. The allotments, averaging ten acres, parcelled out among them in 1861, were estimated to be sufficiently large and productive to provide not only for their support, but also, firstly, for the payment of the 'redemption dues' with which the allotted lands were charged for a limited period of years at an average rate of only 1s. 9d. per acre, and secondly, for the punctual payment of the moderate poll-tax, which the exigencies of the State required them to contribute. Those expectations began to vanish soon after they had been formed, and at the present time we see the previously rich agricultural plains of Russia, abandoned, as they almost wholly are, to the slovenly husbandry of a rude and greatly demoralized peasantry, deteriorating from year to year in the quality of their produce, and thereby opposing less and less impediment to the successful competition of other corn-growing countries.[25] The great fall that has taken place in the value of Russian cereals is apparent from the fact that, notwithstanding the depreciation of the paper currency of the country to the extent of about 25 per cent. since the serfs were emancipated (and nearly 37 per cent. from the par value of the standard rouble), the corn-grower in Russia actually receives for his produce, in paper money, some 40 per cent, less than he obtained for it when the currency was less debased.
Despair, and the absence of that restraint which education, and the moral elevation inseparable from it, are establishing in other European countries, have driven the rural inhabitants of entire districts, and even provinces, into habits of drunkenness stronger and more general than those which existed before the autocratic creation of 'peasant proprietors' in Russia.
Among the earliest measures adopted in Russia during the present reign was that of a reduction and partial remission of the 'redemption dues,' which, on the 1st of January, 1885, represented the interest and sinking fund on nearly 113 millions sterling,[26] expended by the Government in the partial expropriation of the now ruined landlords of the country.[27]
During the year 1884, alone, those reductions and remissions inflicted a loss of 1,135,000l.[28] on the Imperial Treasury. The most recent measure of alleviation has been the total abolition of the poll-tax[29] (to be completed by the end of the present year); and, consequently, the State-contribution of at least 85 per cent. of the population of Russia is being limited to the excise duty on drink, an item of revenue with which the Imperial Government cannot possibly dispense, since it brings in a sum more than adequate for the maintenance of the imposing military forces of the Empire.
Simultaneously, 'Peasant Land Banks' have been established by the State in order to facilitate the purchase of still more land by the ex-serfs. The Minister of Finance was authorized in 1882 to issue annually for that purpose a sum of 500,000l. in bonds, bearing 5-1/2 per cent. interest. But, by the 1st of January, 1886, these banks had already advanced over three millions sterling to 785 Communes, 1576 'partnerships,' and 359 individual peasants, representing an aggregate number of 112,765 householders. On loans for 24-1/2 years the interest and sinking fund, payable by the borrowers, amount to 8-1/2 per cent., and on those for 34-1/2 years, to 7-1/2 per cent., the lands purchased by such means remaining inalienable until the extinction of the mortgages, except with the consent of the mortgagees, i. e. the banks. The effects of this new departure in the direction of providing small landed proprietors with State funds, will no doubt soon be apparent.
Whether, therefore, we examine the experience of a civilized, orderly, home-ruled country like Norway, with a steady, laborious, and, we may almost say, abstemious, population in many respects akin to our own, or that of a State still at an immensely distant stage of social development,—and under a very different form of Government,—the salient results of bolstering up, by means of State loans, or of artificially creating, equally at the cost of the State, a numerous body of small landed proprietors, have been strikingly identical in regard to the ultimate economic condition of the agrarian classes.