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196 



It is quite true that population in India is very 

 unequally distributed ; so much so, that while enor- 

 mous tracts of country are waste and wholly without 

 inhabitants, population in others, is, as it were, lumped. 

 The characteristics of the people, their love of father- 

 land and place of birth, caste restrictions and preju- 

 dices, famines, inundations, poverty, ravages of dis- 

 ease, and of wars all these have combined to assist 

 in maintaining- in the midst of large provinces un- 

 surpassed in fertility of soil and natural capabilities 

 by any country in the world, a stag-nation unknown 

 in Europe. Thus, in the province of Assam, the 

 soil of which will literally produce any crop in luxu- 

 riant abundance, population is not only so sparse 

 that six millions of acres are waste ; but in populated 

 districts the people are so indolent and lazy, that the 

 productive powers of the soil are, comparatively 

 speaking, allowed to lie almost wholly dormant. 



Assam was once apparently a flourishing- and well 

 populated Province. The developer now, as he 

 wields his axe, frequently comes upon ruins of con- 

 siderable extent buried in the jungle of dense forests. 

 The remains of noble building's too, which are to be 

 found scattered here and there, attest that the people 



due allowances for the clearness of money, except in times of 

 dearth, it is comparatively cheap. Cultivation throughout 

 India is low, and large tracts of land are waste. We require 

 no other data to satisfy us that population is not in excess of 

 the productive powers of the soil. In China, where population 

 is really excessive, we find cultivation at the highest point, and 

 emigration very active. The laws of nature are always a very 

 safe guide. 



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