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purpose. From the days of the Phoenicians, the 

 wealth of India has been proverbial. Nor can there 

 be any doubt that India is an extremely rich coun- 

 try. From time immemorial, streams of gold, bro- 

 cades, precious stones, muslins, spices, fibres, dyes, 

 &c., &c., have been flowing- from India to Europe, 

 which have enriched the merchants of Venice, Genoa, 

 England, and those of other countries through whose 

 hands they passed. There could be no mistake about 

 these thing's. People saw them. Persons again who 

 came to India, beheld mighty Kings and Princes, 

 clothed in rich garments glittering with precious 

 stones, living in all the pomp and splendour of 

 Oriental state. All this indicated immense riches. 

 Yet the people were very poor. They had no Capi- 

 tal. The country was in short, at once, the richest, 

 and the people the poorest on the face of the Earth. 

 How shall we explain the paradox how reconcile 

 the existence of immense wealth, with the absence of 

 any Capital ? Nothing is easier. All Capital is the 

 result of saving. In India, one class excepted, 

 from the highest to the lowest, no one saves. All 

 spend often more than they can call their own. 

 The King* who bestows largesses with an open hand 

 and dies in debt, is lauded in prose and verse as a 

 noble and generous monarch. The King who de- 

 parts this life leaving a full Treasury, is satirized as 

 a mean spirited miser. And the voice of the Nation 

 oncurs in the verdicts of these poets laureate. The 

 oneclass alluded to are the Mahajan and Bunneea, 



