376 



THE WONDERFUL CENTURY. 



constant craving for fresh markets by the influential 

 class of merchants and manufacturers. Hence the enor- 

 mous fiscal burdens under which the natives of our In- 

 dian Empire continue to groan; hence the opium 

 monopoly and the salt tax; hence the continued refusal 

 to carry out the promises made or implied on the estab- 

 lishment of the Empire, to give the natives a continually 

 increasing share in their own government, and to govern 

 India solely in the interest of the Indians themselves. 



It is the influence of the two classes above referred to 

 that has urged our governments to perpetual frontier 

 wars and continual extensions of the Empire, all adding 

 to the burdens of the Indian people. But our greatest 

 mistakes of all are, the collection of revenue in money, 

 at fixed times, from the very poorest cultivators of the 

 soil; and the strict enforcement of our laws relating to 

 landed property, to loans, mortgages, and foreclosures, 

 which are utterly unsuited to the people, and have led 

 to the most cruel oppression, and the transfer of num- 

 bers of small farms from the ryots to the money-lenders. 

 Hence, the peasants become poorer and poorer; thou- 

 sands have been made tenants instead of owners of their 

 farms ; and an immense number are in the clutches of the 

 money-lenders, and always in the most extreme poverty. 

 It is from these various causes that the periodical 

 famines are so dreadful a scourge, and such a disgrace to 

 our rule. 1 The people of India are industrious, patient, 



1 These facts, together with our most cruel and wicked robbery of 

 the rayats, or cultivators, constituting three-fourths of the entire 

 population, by changing the land-tax to a rack-rent as exorbitant and 

 impossible of payment as those of the worst Irish and Highland 

 landlords, have been long known, and have been again and again 

 urged by the most experienced Indian administrators as the funda- 



