154 



It cannot be done ; and thus ends the great question 

 of the redemption of the land revenue of India, for 

 the year 1861. 



It is quite excusable, I admit, English politicians 

 having taken, as in England, the Government 

 securities as an index of the value of money. I 

 have been myself eighteen years in India, and my 

 avocations and predilections have kept me in 

 constant intercourse with the natives of the country : 

 yet, I am daily learning some new phase of native 

 character, some, to me, novel features in their 

 various systems of Economy, social, religious, and 

 political. There is unfortunately a wide gulf 

 between the Hindoo and the Englishman, which 

 nothing but time and education will suffice to 

 bridge. It is perfectly intelligible, then, that 

 Europeans in India should not have minute and 

 accurate information on all points relating to the 

 social philosophy of the people, and but an imperfect 

 acquaintance with the principles on which they 

 transact their business ; but it is inconceivable to 

 me how any one who has resided in the interior of 

 the country, even for a short time, and who has had 

 opportunities of obtaining the smallest insight into 

 the existing state of the country, could have sup- 

 posed, for an instant, that a people so proverbially 

 alive to their own interests so quick, in general, in 

 making a bargain, should all at once become so 

 intensely stupid, as to be willing to pay nearly three 

 times its actual value for anything, much less for a 



