UNCONSCIOUS ASSUMPTIONS IN ECONOMICS. 531 



impression which was left on my mind on the occasions when I have 

 had the opportunity of traveling far afield. A quarter of a century 

 ago it was my good fortune to spend a few months in India, and to get 

 some insight into the extraordinary contrasts between Britain and her 

 great dependency. At that time many of the changes which had 

 revolutionized English industry and internal traffic were beginning 

 to make themselves felt throughout India. Eailway communication 

 was being opened up in all directions, and cotton spinning was carried 

 on at mills in Bombay and in Hyderabad in the Deccan. The results 

 of the age of mechanical invention had begun to invade the changeless 

 civilization of the east. Still the persistence of the old order was also 

 noticeable. The village community, as an exclusive group, with the 

 headman who supervised all transactions with the outer world, forced 

 itself upon my attention when I attempted to hire a pony to visit the 

 cave at Karli. I passed a granary in Kathiawar where the officials 

 of a native state were measuring out the crop and collecting the revenue 

 in kind. The highly developed gild system at Ahmedabad was the 

 very image of much that I had read of regulated industry in medieval 

 towns. On every side it seemed as if the survivals of the past had been 

 preserved in the east, so as to make the story of bygone ages in the west 

 alive before my eyes. On the other hand, the transition from the old 

 to the new, which had gone on steadily in England for centuries, seemed 

 to be ready to sweep over Hindustan like a flood that would disintegrate 

 existing institutions, while it showed little constructive power. And 

 when I heard discussions on the incidence of taxation, the pressure of 

 the salt tax, or the impossibility of imposing an income tax, I at least 

 realized that the conditions were strangely unlike those of which a 

 chancellor of the exchequer would have to take account in England. 

 The mechanism of society is entirely different; the expedients which 

 would make for convenience and equality and inexpensiveness in Eng- 

 land would not necessarily be feasible in India at all. 



Five years ago I had occasion to reside for some months in the 

 United States, and once again I came away with a strong impression 

 that the mechanism of society was very unlike that with which I am 

 familiar in England — the differences were more subtle, but not less 

 real, than those between English and Indian economic life. Through- 

 out the states there are few vestiges of past history; the alleged relics 

 of Norse invasion have disappeared under the solvent of critical in- 

 vestigation; and though frontier life has been till lately an abiding 

 factor in American civilization, comparatively little influence has been 

 exercised by the native races on the economy of America to-day. The 

 English stock, with grafts of many kinds, has had a clear space in 

 which to grow. In India the conflict of the past and the present 

 seemed to be the dominating condition, but in America there had been 



