is so extreme, that the revenue is there the least, and is collected with the greatest difficulty; and there, too, it is that the power of association has been most effectually annihilated. Passing to the northwestern provinces, more recently acquired, person and property become comparatively secure, and the revenue increases; but when we reach the Punjab-until recently subject to the rule of Runjeet Singh and his successors—we find that, tyrants as he and they have been represented, the village communities, and the beautiful system of association, have remained untouched. Officers of all kinds are there more responsible for the performance of their duties than are their fellows in the older provinces, and property and person are more secure than in any other part of India. Gang robbery is rare, perjury is unfrequent, and, as Mr. Campbell assures his readers, a solemn oath is "astonishingly binding." "The longer we possess a province," he continues, "the more common and general does perjury become ;" and the stronger, consequently, becomes the evidence of the fact that the feeling of responsibility towards God and man declines with the decline of individuality and the diminution of the power of association. That feeling grows, everywhere, with the growth of the power to maintain commerce, and it declines, everywhere, as man is made the mere instrument to be used by trade. The "hill tribes” of India are remarkable for their "strict veracity,” as little falsehood" being, says Colonel Sleeman, "spoken in the village communities," as in any other part of the world with equal area and population.*

In the newly-acquired provinces, the people read and write with facility, and they are men of physical and moral energy, good cultivators and understanding well both their rights and their duties; whereas from the older ones education has disappeared, and, with it, all power to associate together for any useful purpose. In the new provinces, commerce is large, as is shown by the following facts, representing the population and post-office revenue of Bengal, the N. W. Provinces and the Punjab, placed in the order of their acquisition by the Company :

We have here presented the remarkable fact, that, in the country of the Sikhs, so long represented as a scene of grasping tyranny, eight millions pay as much postage as is paid by fifteen millions in Bengal, although in the latter we find Calcutta, the seat of all the operations of a great centralized government. That such should be the case is not extraordinary, for the power advantageously to employ labor diminishes with the approach to the centre of British power, and increases as we recede from it. Idleness and drunkenness go hand in hand with each other, and therefore it is that Mr. Campbell finds himself obliged to state that "intemperance increases where 'our rule and system has been long established;"* while Captain Westmacott tells his readers that in places the longest under our rule, there is the largest amount of depravity and crime."

Calcutta grows, the city of palaces, but poverty and wretchedness grow as commerce is more and more sacrificed for the promotion of the interests of trade. Under the native rule, the people of each little district could exchange with each other giving food for cotton, or cotton cloth, paying nobody for the privilege. Now, every man must send his cotton to Calcutta, thence to go to England with the rice and the indigo of his neighbors - before he and they can exchange food for cloth, or cotton; and the larger the quantity they send, the greater is the tendency to decline in price. Centralization grows daily, and every stage of its growth is marked by increased inability to pay the taxes, and increased necessity for seeking new markets in which to sell cloth and collect what are called rents and the more wide the extension of the system, the greater is the difficulty of collecting revenue sufficient for keeping in motion the machine of government. This it was, that forced the representatives of British power and civilization into becoming traders in that pernicious drug, opium, by means of which the people of China are taxed, annually, to the extent of nearly twenty millions of dollars, and not less than half a million of lives. "The immolations of an Indian Juggernauth," says a recent writer, "dwindle into insignificance before it ;" and yet for the maintenance of this trade it was that the towns and cities of China were sacked, and their people ruined, even where not exterminated. Trade and war have, however, * Modern India, p. 394.

gone hand in hand with each other from the commencement of the world, and all their triumphs have been obtained at the expense of commerce.

*

§ 7. The gross land revenue obtained from a country with an area of 491,448 square miles, or above three hundred millions of acres, is 151,786,743 rupees, equal to fifteen millions of pounds. sterling, or seventy-two millions of dollars. What is the value of private rights of property, subject to the payment of this tax, or rent, may be judged from the following facts:- In 1848-49, there were sold for taxes, in that portion of the country subject to the permanent settlement, 1169 estates, at something less than four years' purchase of the tax. Further south, in the Madras government, where the ryotwar settlement is in full operation, the land "would be sold" for balances of rent, but "generally it is not," as we are told, "and for a very good reason, viz. that nobody will buy it." Private rights in land being there of no value whatsoever, "the collector of Salem," as Mr. Campbell informs us, "naïvely mentions 'various unauthorized modes of stimulating the tardy,' rarely resorted to by heads of villages, such as 'placing him in the sun, obliging him to stand on one leg, or to sit with his head confined between his knees.'"†

In the Northwest Provinces, "the settlement," as our author states, "has certainly been successful in giving a good market value to landed property;" that is, it sells at about "four years' purchase on the revenue." Still further north, in the newlyacquired provinces, we find great industry, "every thing" being "turned to account;" the assessment to which the Company succeeded on the deposition of the successors of Runjeet Singh-more easy; and land more valuable.§ The value of land, like that of labor, therefore increases as we pass from the old to the new set

* Campbell, p. 377.

† CAMPBELL: Modern India, p. 359. That torture of various kinds is one of the established modes of collecting revenue, is a fact admitted by the Company, and one to which the attention of the British Parliament has recently been called. It being one, however, whose existence grows out of the necessity of the case, no remedy can be applied. The poverty of the people grows daily, and with that growth the difficulty of collecting revenue increases and whatever may be the disposition of the governors, they must, under such circumstances, claim a constantly increasing proportion of the constantly decreasing products of land and labor.

Ibid. p. 332.

Ibid. p. 345.

tlements, being precisely the reverse of what would be the case if the system looked to the extension of commerce; and precisely what should be looked for in a country in which commerce was being sacrificed to trade.

With the data thus obtained, we may now ascertain, with perhaps some approach to accuracy, the value of all the private rights in the land of India. In no case does that subject to tax appear to be worth more than four years' purchase; while, in a very large portion of the country it appears to be worth absolutely nothing. There being, however, some tax-free lands, it is possible that the whole may be worth four years' purchase — giving two hundred and eighty-eight millions of dollars, or sixty millions of pounds sterling, as the value of all the rights in land acquired by the people of India in the thousands of years it has been under cultivation. The few people that have occupied the little and sandy State of New Jersey, with its area of 6900 square miles, have acquired rights in, and on, the land that are valued, subject to the claims of government, at one hundred and fifty millions of dollars; and those of the few that have occupied the little island on which stands the city of New York, would sell for almost twice as much as could be obtained for all the proprietary rights to land in India, with three huudred millions of acres and ninety-six millions of inhabitants!

§ 8. "Under the native princes," says Mr. Campbell, "India was a paying country." Under absentee rule, it has ceased to be so, and for the reason, that under that rule all power of combined action has been annihilated, by aid of the system that looks to compelling the whole people, men, women, and children, to work in the field-producing commodities to be exported in their rudest state. Every act of association being an act of commerce, whatever tends to destroy the former must destroy the latter. The internal commerce of India declines steadily, and the external one amounts to but fifty cents per head, and by no effort can it be increased to any extent. Cuba, exporting to the large amount of twenty-five dollars per head or almost fifty times as much as India-takes of cotton goods from Britain four times as much per head; and this she does because it is a part of the policy of Spain to bring about combination of action, and to enable the

planter and the artisan to work together; whereas the policy of the former looks to the destruction, everywhere, of the power of association, and thus, to the annihilation of the domestic commerce upon which, alone, the foreign one can be built. Centralization is adverse to commerce and to the freedom of man. Spain does not seek to establish centralization. Provided she receives a given amount of revenue, she is content to permit her subjects to employ themselves at raising sugar, or making cloth, and thus to advance in civilization; and by this course it is that she is enabled to obtain the aid she needs.

The people of Jamaica-having never been permitted to apply their spare labor even to the refining of it are obliged to export their sugar in its crudest state; and the more they send, the lower is the price, and the larger the proportion taken by the government; but the poor negro is ruined. Spain, on the contrary, permits the Cubans to engage in whatsoever pursuits appear to them likely to afford a return to labor and capital; and, as a necessary consequence of this, towns and cities grow up, and capital is attracted to the land, which becomes from day to day more valuable. The power to resort to other modes of employment diminishes the necessity for exporting sugar, and when exported to Spain, the producer is enabled to take for himself nearly the whole price paid by the consumer, the government claiming only a duty of fifteen per cent.

"Vast heaps of humanity, festering in compulsory idleness, encumber the soil of India,"* because the Hindoo, like the negro of Jamaica, is shut out from the workshop. If he attempts to convert his cotton into yarn, his spindle is taxed to the extent of all of the profit it might yield him. If he attempts to make cloth, his loom is subjected to a heavy tax, from which that of his wealthy English competitor is exempt. His iron ore and his coal must remain in the ground, and if he dares even to collect the salt which crystallizes before his door, fine and imprisonment are the reward of all his labor. He must raise sugar to be transported to England, there to be exchanged, perhaps, for English salt. For the sugar, arrived in that country, the workman pays at the rate perhaps of forty shillings a hundred, of which the govern ment claims one-third, the ship-owner, the merchant, and others, * CHAPMAN: Cotton and Commerce of India.