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1 12 Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. [March, 1910. 



noniically of a congeries of petty local markets, for the most 

 part independent of each other ; and there might, and did, 

 co-exist in the same year unexampled plenty in one District 

 with dire famine in the next. 



The difference in prices from 1860 onwards is inost marked. 

 The fluctuations, whether as between one place and another in 

 the same year, or between one year and another in the same 

 place, are far less pronounced, but the general level of prices 

 is decidedly higher than it was during the first half of the 

 century. This has often been assigned to monetary causes. 

 It appears, however, that there exist in the altered conditions 

 affecting the food supply itself causes which would produce 

 this result. 



We have seen how r in the first part of the century each 

 locality was dependent on its own crops. There must have 

 existed most intense local famines. The improvement in com- 

 munications naturally led to the gradual linking up of the dis- 

 connected petty markets, and so rendered available a surplus, 

 which often in former years must have rotted in the granaries, 

 to alleviate distress in places of scarcity and famine. Sup- 

 posing now we could by some mysterious means, the evolution 

 of which we leave to the imagination of Mr. H. G. Wells, 

 plump down the surplus exactly where it is most wanted. We 

 should then eliminate the extreme differences of price between 

 one place and another. The general level of prices would, 

 however, remain unaltered. Now railways and bullock-carts 

 actually do this, but they do not do it free of charge, and 

 they do not always do it without delay. In fact the distri- 

 bution of the surplus costs something, and that something must 

 enter somewhere into the price. In other words the general 

 level of prices will be raised. In this view of the matter, 

 then, it is possible that the higher level of prices that obtained 

 from 1860 onwards is in part attributable to the cost of moving 

 surplus crops from places of plenty to places of scarcity. 



We come then to the closer consideration of the second 

 half of the 19th century, an era characterised, as we have 

 seen, by the formation of large markets , mutually sympathetic, 

 as also by the linking up of Indian with European, American, 

 and Australian markets. India has taken her place among 

 the nations which engage in International Trade proper. In the 

 days of John Company there were, no doubt, large exports 

 and also considerable imports, but the conditions of trade were 

 for the most part monopolistic, and the risks were so great, 

 and the profits so well proportioned to the risks, as to remove 

 this kind of trade altogether outside the category of modern 

 International Trade. Moreover, under the aegis of the Pax Brit- 

 tanica, which, for the first time in history, gave India im- 

 munity from the larger type of invasion from without, and 

 from the internecine warrings of local chieftains — population 



