Pnaroahs, her merchants had introduced Indian ware into the countries bordering on the Mediterranean Sea. Nor were the walls of China or the wild plateaux of Central Asia totally innocent of Indian merchandise. Her country crafts had anchored in many a friendly Australasian port; and America, long before the Empire that gave birth to her discoverer had been established, afforded safe harbours to many an adventurous Indian vessel. A country with such proud antecedents in this line. ought to be the last to murmur or wage any war against free trade. What, then, has India now to complain of against one of the greatest civilising levers of modern days is the question in the discussion of which we will interest ourselves in this chapter.

India is a vast country which necessarily produces much and consumes much. All that she produces is not consumed, and all that she consumes is not produced, in India. Much of what she produces is sent out to foreign countries in exchange of much that she brings in from them. The law of exports and imports is the kernel of political economy. This clearly understood, we shall find some satisfactory explanation of the unhappy position we now find ourselves in,

Before the year 1860, our export and import trade tended towards an equality. It is the nature of all commerce to gravi tate towards an equilibrium, for Ricardo has most conclusively proved that the equation of international demand is the law of international trade. But since 1860, our ex

ports have been increaing by leaps and bounds, while the imports have not been able to keep pace with the former. The following table exhibits the inequality caused by the excess of the exports over the imports:

A very favourable balance of trade this, the British free trader will tell us, for his political economy teaches that the profits of a country vary inversely with its demand for imported goods. Nothing could be more satisfactory, will cry out the Indian dabbler in the science of economics, for India has much more to sell to the foreign markets than she needs buy from

them. Yes, satisfactory as far as abstract theories of political economy go. But when we remember that, in order to meet all those payments of ours which are fixed in gold, we have now to send about 66 percent. more produce to England than were required of us 30 years ago, that for this balance of trade no adequate return is made to India, that the home charges of an alien Government and the remittances of alien officials generally secure this ever-inceasing excess of exports over imports, and that, under our existing relations with England, this excess, as Mill reminds us, is bound to be permanent,-when we remember all these, we see the absurdity of the notion that 'an excess of exports over imports shows increasing wealth.' Far from it; for it means our impoverishment, means the drainage of

so much of our wealth to England-and for what in return? In the language of no less an authority than the Marquis of Salisbury, 'much of the revenue of India is exported without any equitable equivalent in return.'

If India had been independent, and England and India had not stood in the relation of the conqueror and the conquered, the ruler and the ruled, probably there could have been nothing more pleasing to shout hallelujahs at than this so-called. 'satisfactory balance of trade.' Though, it is true, from one-third to about one-half of this trade balance is received by India in hard cash, this surplus, as matters stand at present, is ultimately drained to England and other European countries, in some shape or other, and leaves India poorer by so much. Of this drainage we shall have occasion to