165 



be provided with the shoulders of an 

 Atlas/* 



If, in the mean time, outsiders come ; by all means, 

 encourage them, help them, and give them every 

 facility for helping themselves, provided at the same 

 time, they help India ; but good precautions must 

 be taken to ensure that they discharge both duties. 

 To cover India with thousands of foreign middle- 

 men, who should take the place of the native money 

 lenders, as I have seen proposed, would certainly 

 effect a change : but I am not so certain that that 

 change would be for the better. On the contrary, it 

 might, indeed, most probably, it would induce a very 

 much worse state of things than that which at 

 present exists ; for, whether true, or whether false, 

 the native cultivators would always believe that these 

 middlemen were backed by the whole weight and 

 power of the Government ; and there is no reason 

 to assume that evils which existed for years under 

 a somewhat similar system with Indigo, in Bengal, 

 would not be perpetuated with other crops. The 

 money lender is undoubtedly in some respects a 

 great evil : but he is also in some respects a great 

 good. Could Government be the means of scattering 

 far and wide over the country a system of small com- 



* Instruction in the Oriental Languages considered, specially 

 ft regards the East India Civil Services, and as a National 

 Question p. 22. 



