The government can borrow at 4 per cent., and will lend at 6, which is
not a bad beginning for a national bank. The water-wheels can be
constructed in a few weeks, and their effect would be IMMEDIATE; there
would be no doubtful interval of years, but the very first season would
leave the cultivator in a position to repay the loan; at the same time,
the government would reap the direct benefit of a certain revenue from
the irrigated and assured production of the land.
This is no visionary theory; the fact is already patent in the few farms
belonging to wealthy land-owners that I have already described, as
exhibiting the simple power of a few water-wheels to produce abundance,
while upon the margin of such verdant examples the country is absolutely
desert, parched and withered by a burning sun, yielding nothing either
to the owner or to the revenue, while at the same time the water-supply
is only four or five yards beneath the feet of the miserable proprietor,
who has neither capital nor power to raise it to the surface.
There is no necessity for the government to embark in any uncertain
enterprise, neither should they interfere with the native methods of
irrigation; and above all things, no money should leave the island to
fill the pockets of English contractors in the purchase of pumps, or
other inventions. All that is required by the Cypriote is capital; lend
him the money at 6 per cent.
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