olv 



weight and not by measurej any attempt to bring about this result 

 by coercive measures, rendering penal the sale of salt by measure 

 in the thousands of petty bazaars throughout the Presidency, will 

 be attended with great risk of oppression to the poorer classes of the 

 population whose interests are intended to be safe-guarded ; and the 

 Government cannot undertake legislation of this kind with a light 

 heart. This question is intimately connected with the scheme for 

 the introduction of greater uniformity in the measures and weights 

 in use in this Presidency, which, I believe, is now under the consider- 

 ation of Government. If it is decided to take action in this direction, 

 the measure will, I presume, be adopted tentatively in the larger 

 towns at first and gradually extended to rural tracts, the duty of 

 enforcing the regulations prescribed being entrusted to popular 

 bodies, such as Municipal Councils and Local Fund Union Panchayats. 

 However this may be, there is the fact that light salt finds greater 

 favour with the trade than heavy salt, and this fact gives the former 

 a higher \alue. Under the monopoly system, it was in the power of 

 the subordinate ofiicers of the department to sell the light salt to 

 their friends and benefit them, while heavy salt fell to the lot of 

 others. No doubt the heaps were sold in the order of the numbers 

 assigned to them, but information as to which heaps contained light 

 salt was not easily procurable by all intending purchasers, and it 

 would be nothing strange if particular persons succeeded in getting 

 the light salt to the exclusion of others. It comes then to this, viz., 

 that, whereas under the monopoly system the additional, it may be 

 adventitious, value borne by light salt was appropriated either by 

 accident or by design by certain favored persons among purchasers, 

 under the excise system it is enjoyed by the person who is justly 

 entitled to it, viz., the producer. 



7. While the monopoly system on the one hand throws upon 

 Government the serious responsibility of adjusting supplies^ to demand 

 with reference to the evershifting conditions of trade, it deprives 

 Government of the only means of judging whether and when, such 

 an adjustment is necessary, as it substitutes an artificial for a natural 

 price which, under ordinary circumstances, serves as an unerring 

 index pointing to the necessity of increasing or contracting supplies. 

 This is an evil of great magnitude, and now that owing to the 

 extension of communications and the cheapening of the cost of 

 carriage, almost all parts of the country have been brought into trade 

 relations with one another and rendered sensitive to trade influences, 

 it seems to me to be perfectly idle for a Government department to 

 undertake the duty of regulating salt production. To put the same 

 thing in another way. The salt trade cannot be isolated from trade 

 in other commodities, because salt is generally brought inland as a 

 return load by traders who take grain or other articles to the coast, 

 and a change in the demand for those articles reacts on the demand 

 for salt. In private trade under natural conditions the adjustment 

 of supplies to demand is automatic, that is to say, traders and 

 manufacturers who may know nothing about the causes in tho 

 changes in the conditions of supply and demand all over the country 

 of any commodity, set about making arrangements for increasing or 

 diminishing supplies by simply taking as their guide the rise or fall 



