Ootacamund and Anglo-Indian Life 349 



the leisured class must be proportionately rich, because 

 wealth can only be divided between those who labour 

 and those who do not. 



To look only at the vast and costly remains of the 

 ancient buildings in India is to see into what degrada- 

 tion the lower classes had fallen. The Taj, for ex- 

 ample, employed twenty thousand workmen every day 

 for twenty-two years before it was finished a mere 

 tomb for a king's wife the cost of which no wealth 

 could have met had the labourers been fairly paid. 

 Meanwhile, the upper classes were rolling in unlimited 

 wealth and ostentatious prodigality, instanced by the 

 old Mogul Palace in Delhi, and the treasure, amounting, 

 it is said, to twelve million pounds sterling, which Nadir 

 Shah looted from its walls. 



Unequal distribution of wealth was, then, the first 

 great result of the cheapness and abundance of the 

 national food. It followed that, on the one hand, 

 poverty provoked contempt, and the lower classes 

 were condemned by the physical laws of their climate 

 to a degradation from which they have never escaped ; 

 while, on the other hand, wealth produced power, and 

 bred luxury, intoleration, and despotism. 



The great body of the people derived no benefits 

 from the national improvements ; hence, the basis of 

 the progress being narrow, the progress itself was in- 

 secure, and when a race of kings died out, the nation 

 could not reconstruct itself ; unfavourable circum- 

 stances arising from without, as a matter of course the 

 whole system fell. 



