weather leads to universal scarcity which amounts to famine for
the mass of the population, which affects all classes, and which
is sure to be followed by pestilence. Lastly, the malaria noticed
above as following the monsoon gives rise to special disorders
which become endemic in favouring localities, and travel thence
to all parts of the country, borne upon the winds or propagated
by pilgrimages and other forms of human intercourse. Such are the
awful expedients by which Nature checks the redundancy of a
non-emigrating population with simple wants. Hence the
construction of drainage and irrigation-works has not merely a
direct result in causing temporary prosperity, but an indirect
result in a large increase of the responsibilities of the ruling
power. Between 1848 and 1854 the population of the part of
Hindustan now called the North-West Provinces, where all the
above described physical features prevail, increased from a ratio
of 280 to the square mile till it reached a ratio of 350. In the
subsequent sixteen years there was a further increase. The latest
rate appears to be from 378 to 468, and the rate of increase is
believed to be about equal to that of the British Islands.

There were at the time of which we are to treat few
field-labourers on daily wages, the Metayer system being
everywhere prevalent where the soil was not actually owned by
joint-stock associations of peasant proprietors, usually of the
same tribe.

The wants of the cultivators were provided for by a class of
hereditary brokers, who were often also chandlers, and advanced
stock, seed, and money upon the security of the unreaped crops.