HAPPY INDIA 45 



they are at the present time, because then the corn- 

 fields of the United States had a surplus of corn 

 to send to Europe, and the cornfields of Canada 

 had not been so much developed, the cornfields of 

 Russia had a surplus which they sent to the rest 

 of Europe, also the population of India was less, 

 and these things depressed prices ; but at the prices 

 ruling then, the small earnings of the Indian peasant 

 did not enable him as a rule to buy sufficient food 

 for health and strength. He could hardly afford 

 to buy any clothing, and for the most part he lived 

 and lives in mud huts, with a very rough kind of 

 thatching to keep out the rain. There has not been 

 known to any Englishman such a condition of 

 poverty since the early forties of the nineteenth 

 century, when the agitation for the repeal of the 

 British corn laws was at its height, which led ulti- 

 mately to the Act repealing the duty on imported 

 corn in 1846, which took full effect in the year 1850. 

 But the British pauper is far better fed than the 

 average Indian peasant. He is not only better 

 fed, but better housed and better clothed. This 

 extreme poverty of the Indian peasant is not the 

 result of a failure of the rain, not the result of a 

 famine due to failure of the crops, but is the ordinary 

 condition of a large proportion of the Indian peasants. 

 When there is a famine, great numbers of them die. 

 Mr. Digby entirely disproves the accuracy of the 

 optimistic statements of some Secretaries of State 

 and Governor- Generals and of some of the figures 

 given in some Government books of agricultural 



