224 TRANSACTIONS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. [VoL. VIE, 
beyond certain very narrow limits, or to protect her sources of wealth 
from spoliation. This is an evil situation for any nation. What country 
in the world would not become impoverished by a century and a half 
or two centuries of foreign rule and foreign exploitation such as India 
has been subjected to, with all power of self-protection denied her people? 
Not that the rule has been bad because it has been British, but because 
it has been forergn. Any other foreign rule would have been as bad—pro- 
bably worse. Not that the exploitation has been bad because it has 
been British, but because it has been exploitation,—exploitation of a 
subject people who had no power, by a dominant people who had all 
power. As Macaulay said: ‘‘The heaviest of all yokes is the yoke of the 
stranger.” 
HEAVY TAXATION. 
An important cause of India’s impoverishment is heavy taxation. 
That taxes in India are heavy has sometimes been denied. But here is 
an easy test. Turn to England and Scotland. Scotchmen and English- 
men groan under the weight of their taxes; but the taxation of the people 
of India is three times as great according to their income as that of the 
people of England, and four times as great as that of the people of Scot- 
land. And this means very much more than three or four times as great 
hardship, because the income of the Indian people is so much more meagre 
and inadequate to begin with. 
Take a single item of taxation, that on salt. Salt is a necessity to 
the people, even to the very poorest. They must have it or suffer the 
most serious physical consequences. What is the tax which for many 
years has been imposed on salt? Two thousand per cent. on its value! 
That is to say, for every cent’s worth of salt the poor Indian labourer has 
eaten he has had to pay the government twenty cents for permission to 
eat it! Of course such a tax has been well nigh prohibitory to millions 
of the people. They have been compelled to reduce the amount they 
have consumed to the very lowest minimum; and as a result serious 
diseases have often been entailed. Recently the tax has been slightly 
reduced, but it still remains so high as to be a severe hardship to the poor 
and a menace to their health. 
The attention of the government has been called again and again to 
the very heavy taxation of the people, and every possible means has been 
tried to secure amelioration, but without result. For many years the 
settled policy has been, not to lessen the burden of taxation upon the 
peasant except under the most extraordinary circumstances, but constant- 
ly to seek opportunities for increasing it. 
