Is even a
greater evil than too high a rate, as it is apt to encourage
speculators in land, who do much injury to a colony by locking up
large tracts in an uncultivated state, to take the chance of a
future rise in the price.
This evil might easily be avoided by retaining the present bona
fide price of the land per acre, qualified by an arrangement that
one-half of the purchase money should be expended in the
formation of roads from the land in question. This would be of
immense assistance to the planters, especially in a populous
planting neighborhood, where the purchases of land were large and
numerous, in which case the aggregate sum would be sufficient to
form a carriage road to the main highway, which might be kept in
repair by a slight toll. An arrangement of this kind is not only
fair to the planters, but would be ultimately equally beneficial
to the government. Every fresh sale of land would ensure either
a new road or the improvement of an old one; and the country
would be opened up through the most remote districts. This very
fact of good communication would expedite the sales of crown
lands, which are now valueless from their isolated position.
Coffee-planting in Ceylon has passed through the various stages
inseparable from every "mania."
In the early days of our possession, the Kandian district was
little known, and sanguine imaginations painted the hidden
prospect in their ideal colors, expecting that a trace once
opened to the interior would be the road to fortune.
How these golden expectations have been disappointed the broken
fortunes of many enterprising planters can explain.
The protective duty being withdrawn, a competition with foreign
coffee at once reduced the splendid prices of olden times to a
more moderate standard, and took forty per cent. out of the
pockets of the planters. Coffee, which in those days brought
from one hundred shillings to one hundred and forty shillings per
hundred-weight, is now reduced to from sixty shillings to eighty
shillings.
This sudden reduction created an equally sudden panic among the
planters, many of whom were men of straw, who had rushed to
Ceylon at the first cry of coffee "fortunes," and who had
embarked on an extensive scale with borrowed capital. These were
the first to smash. In those days the expenses of bringing land
into cultivation were more than double the present rate, and, the
cultivation of coffee not being so well understood, the produce
per acre was comparatively small. This combination of untoward
circumstances was sufficient cause for the alarm which ensued,
and estates were thrust into the market and knocked down for
whatever could be realized. Mercantile houses were dragged down
into the general ruin, and a dark cloud settled over the Cinnamon
isle.
As the after effects of a "hurricane" are a more healthy
atmosphere and an increased vigor in all vegetation, so are the
usual sequels to a panic in the commercial world. Things are
brought down to their real value and level; men of straw are
swept away, and affairs are commenced anew upon a sound and
steady basis. Capital is invested with caution, and improvements
are entered upon step by step, until success is assured.
The reduction in the price of coffee was accordingly met by a
corresponding system of expenditure and by an improved state of
cultivation; and at the present time the agricultural prospects
of the colony are in a more healthy state than they have ever
been since the commencement of coffee cultivation.
There is no longer any doubt that a coffee estate in a good
situation in Ceylon will pay a large interest for the capital
invested, and will ultimately enrich the proprietor, provided
that he has his own capital to work his estate, that he gives his
own personal superintendence and that he understands the
management. These are the usual conditions of success in most
affairs; but a coffee-estate is not unfrequently abused for not
paying when it is worked with borrowed capital at a high rate of
interest under questionable superintendence.
It is a difficult thing to define the amount which constitutes a
"fortune:" that which is enough for one man is a pittance for
another; but one thing is certain, that, no matter how small his
first capital, the coffee-planter hopes to make his "fortune."
Now, even allowing a net profit of twenty per cent. per annum on
the capital invested, it must take at least ten years to add
double the amount to the first capital, allowing no increase to
the spare capital required for working the estate. A rapid
fortune can never be made by working a coffee estate. Years of
patient industry and toil, chequered by many disappointments, may
eventually reward the proprietor; but it will be at a time of
life when a long residence in the tropics will have given him a
distaste for the chilly atmosphere of old England; his early
friends will have been scattered abroad, and he will meet few
faces to welcome him on his native shores. What cold is so
severe as a cold reception? - no thermometer can mark the degree.
No fortune, however large, can compensate for the loss of home,
and friends, and early associations.
This feeling is peculiarly strong throughout the British nation.
You cannot convince an English settler that he will be abroad for
an indefinite number of years; the idea would be equivalent to
transportation: he consoles himself with the hope that something
will turn up to alter the apparent certainty of his exile; and in
this hope, with his mind ever fixed upon his return, he does
nothing for posterity in the colony.
