NO. 37. — 1888.] INDUSTRIES OF CEYLON. 



333 



disposal of the entire income of the country. Hence the 

 fruit of industry was consumed, wasted, or converted to 

 reproductive use as capital, according as the taste and temper 

 of the sovereign for the time being might determine. One, 

 animated by beneficent ideas, might devote the labour of the 

 people, the resources of the country, and the energy of his 

 own character to the construction of an useful work ; another, 

 more vain and selfish, might neglect such work, and, like 

 Cheops, apply the national wealth and sinew to a stupendous 

 pyramid, for no higher purpose than to calculate his horoscope, 

 or to perpetuate the memory of his personal vanity. Wisdom 

 or folly, fanaticism or pride, by turns directed the ever- 

 varying aims and objects to which the labour of the people 

 was applied ; and the same fitful and uncertain policy 

 determined their condition. The history of Ceylon and its 

 industries under native dynasties is a record of such alter- 

 nations, in which great achievements were succeeded by 

 ruinous lapses, in periods of fitful duration, when the condi- 

 tion and even the numbers of the people must have fluctuated 

 between wide extremes. Such have been the general results, 

 as attested by history, wherever the resources of a country 

 have been concentrated in the control of despotic rulers. 

 Though the interests of both rulers and people ought theo- 

 retically to be identical, seeing that the surplusage produced 

 by the latter is the measure of the means of the former, yet 

 in practice it has proved that pride, ambition, and greed have 

 generally prevailed over the dictates of policy and reason. 

 Hence, instead of progress of wealth and happiness and the 

 blessings of contentment extending to all classes, the natural 

 results of the principles and conditions of native despotism 

 have been the ruin and desolation which are to be seen in the 

 countries so governed. The ruined tanks, and the unhappy 

 people who still cling to the expiring remains of the grand 

 enterprise they represent, are the natural consequences of the 

 system pursued by native despots, whereby the wealth and 

 capital of the country were concentrated in one hand, subject 

 to one will, and were not available for individual enterprise. 



