113 
BRITISH ASSOCIATION. — 1S35. 
Oil Wages in India . By Lieut.-Colonel Sykes. 
Colonel Sykes read a statement of the rate of wages in India 
measured in kind, and also measured in rnonev. He enumerated 
some of the various places in which he made his inquiries, for the 
purpose of showing that towns and villages the most distant from 
each other were chosen to prevent the mistake of adopting local 
rates as if they were of general operation. Labourers in India are 
seldom paid in money, except when grain is very dear, a custom 
obviously injurious to the labourers. Wages in India are very low. 
When paid in money, three rupees (rather less than six shillings) is 
the usual monthly pay of a labourer in agriculture, without food, 
clothes, lodging, or any other advantages. The cause of the low 
rate of wages of labourers in India appears to be the small quantity 
of useful work they do. The author states, that when in the Poona 
colleetorate on the 16th of Februarv 1829, he overtook twelve or 
fourteen men and women with bundles of wheat in the straw on 
their heads. On inquiry, he found they had been employed as la¬ 
bourers in pulling up a field of wheat. Their wages had been five 
sheaves for every hundred gathered: two or three of the men had 
got five sheaves each, the majority only four, and none of the women 
more than three. Five sheaves, thev said, would vield about an im- 
perial gallon of wheat, and would sell for about threepence-halfpenny 
sterling. 
At the end of his paper the author formed some tables, in which 
he placed in juxtaposition the rates of wages paid to different classes 
of artificers, servants, and labourers under the British government 
in 1828, and Peshwa's government in 1814?; and also the prices of 
grains, pulses, and other articles of the ordinary consumption of 
labourers under the British government and under the Peshwa’s 
government at the same periods, viz. 1814 and 1828. 
These tables show a marked improvement in the wages of all 
classes of labourers, although grain became from 20 to 50 per cent, 
cheaper under the British than under the Peshwa government. 
This increase has been greatest in the wages of the lowest classes of 
labourers. 
Remarks on the Statistics contained in the Ordnance Survey of the 
Parish of Templemore. By C. Babbage, P.R.S., Sfc. 
To discover those principles which will enable the greatest num¬ 
ber of people by their combined exertions to exist in a state of phy¬ 
sical comfort and of moral and intellectual happiness, is the legitimate- 
object of statistical science. 
To effect this object, religious, moral, and practical instruction are 
necessary; and to enable us to reason from the sound basis of ex¬ 
perience, we must patiently collect and classify those facts which 
affect the well-being of mankind. These facts have been so col¬ 
lected lor one district of Ireland on an extensive scale in the present 
