Macedonia.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XXXXV, Issue 259, 1 December 1903, Page 4

Macedonia.

THE UNHAPPY AGRICULTURISTS. The chief hardships of which the farmers have to complain may be briefly set forth here, in the Macedonian provinces, as everywhere else throughput the Turkish dominions, the land js farmed oil the metayer system. The farmer does not own his farm, and 'nevertheless does not pay rent for it to the feudal Jord whose property it is, but hands him a percentage on the earnings of the year. At the same time it should be said that the feudal lord, or Beg, : himself provides such cattle and agricultural implements and other necessaries as injiy be required, and in an infinity of instances, given goodwill on both sides, the system works well.

The flaw in it, however, is in what follows. Every tiller of the soil in Turkey must pay to the State a grain tax known as the vargui, or dime. This is not in itself'-a hardship, but has become so- by reason of the method of its incidence. The Government farms out the tax—a vice that was more than a little resjHMisible for the great French revolution—and the fanners, or tahsildurs, look to make their account on their contract. As often as not, the tax-farmer is himself the feudal lord reigning over huge estates. The system has determined that tha amount of the tax due should be estimated on the outstanding crop, and until the valuation has been made the fanner dare not put a sickle to his gram.

And here comes in the hardship. in these mountainous lauds the rains generally hang hard on the heel* of the harvest, and are apt then, that the peasant farmer, with his fields of corn ripe and heavy in oar, is forced to make frequent and vain appeals to the tax-master to visit and value his harvest. The tax-master, on the other hand, delays so far as he may, with the natural result, seeing, that we are deatog; with the Orient, that the hapless farmer is force* finally ' to! bribe him to attend, and thus to save the crops. e.^ Ut^ CTil is not th « r e ended. Should the value of tho grain be, 2d an oke on the ground, and 6d an oke in the market some twenty miles distant, the tax-farmer constantly, as the peasants have frequently informed me, gives an arbitrary valuation some 20 or S Per cent, higher than that which can be realist ; and inasmuch as the dime is paid in cash and not in produce, the producer not only i£s es .« f T^ h by the false estimate.Tut is further mulcted by his feudal IW who estimates the proportion due to him on the tahsildar's valuation