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same time it arranged to admit British goods
at a nominal tariff. By 1837 the work had
been practically accomplished; but, inspite of
that, no efforts were spared to stamp out the
last flicker of industrial progress. In 1879,
at the bidding of Lancashire manufacturers,
the Home Government deliberately imposed
a tax to cripple the newly-born cotton industry
at Bombay; and in 1896,50 alarmed was it
by the increasing number of mills that, again
in obedience to Lancashire, it imposed an
excise duty on all cotton goods produced
in India, “taxing even coarse fabrics with
which Manchester had never competed and
never would compete.” Mr. Romesh Dutt
uses mild language when he states:-“As an
instance of fiscal injustice the Indian Act of
1896 is unexampled in any civilized country
in modern times." Its result was seen in the
fact that inside a single year the output of
yarn dropped by 160 million pounds, and
Hindu workers died like flies of sheer starva-
tion.
Such measures would paralyse progress in
any country, but aimed against the poorest
people in the world, they constitute a crime
that brands the names of the perpetrators
with undying infamy. The idea still lingering
in some quarters that leads people to talk of
“the wealth of Ormuz and of Ind," and
imagine with Milton that
“the gorgeous East with richest hand
Showers on her kings barbaric pearl and gold,”
is one of the most baseless assumptions of
modern times. Even the official reports of
the Indian Government, which naturally
strive to make the best of a bad case, do not
venture to put the average income per head
of the population at more than ,-5 2 per annum,
while in Great Britain it is ;545, and in
Canada and other colonies 1:48. Twopence
a day is a fair average wage for an agricultural
labourer. The last commission of inquiry,
held in 1888, into the economic condition of
the people, and the results of which the
Government did not dare to publish, tell a
terrible tale. They were placed before the
world in a volume, “P7’o5]:cron5 "Brz'lz'slz Izzdizz,
which is the most scathing indictment ever
penned of the fruits of bureaucratic adminis-
tration. The Commissioner of Fyzabad
states-
"It has been calculated that about 60 per cent.
of the entire native population are sunl; in such
April 18th, 1907.
abject poverty that, unless the small earnings of
child labour are added to the small general stock by
which the family is kept alive, some members of the
family would starve.
‘Hunger,’ writes the Deputy Commissioner of Rai
Bareili, ‘as already remarked, is very much a matter
of habit, and people who have felt the pinch of
famine-as nearly all the poorer households must
have felt it-get into the way of eating less than
wealthier families.’
‘I believe,’ writes the Commissioner of Allahabad,
‘there is very little between the poorer classes of
the people and semi-starvation; but what is the
remedy?”
Yet on these unfortunate people is imposed
a load of taxation that grows heavier year by
year. How terribly it presses upon them is
shown by Mr. Romesh Dutt in his invalu-
able I1za’1'a 27; Me Vz't!orz'(m Age, 21 volume
which does for India what Miss Murray's
Commertizzl Relatzbzzs did for Ireland, and by
reference to official statistics and incontrover-
tible facts shatters into the dust the fabric so
lovingly built up by generations of salaried
panygerists. Mr. Dutt writes :-
“The average income of the [Indian] people of
all classes, including the richest, is forty shillings per
year, against ,-642 a year in the United Kingdom,
. . . In the United Kingdom, with its heavy
taxation of ,4f,‘x44,ooo,ooo (excluding the cost of the
late war), the incidence of the tax per head of a
population of forty-two millions, is less than 53 IOS.
The proportion of this tax on the eamings of each
individual inhabitant ($2) is only x]8 in the pound.
The Indian taxpayer, who earns little more than his
food, is taxed 40 per cent. more than the taxpayer of
Great Britain and Ireland.”
Nor is the taxation employed for the benefit
of India. The Land Revenue, a potent in-
strument of oppression skilfully manipulated
to keep the bulk of the people permanently on
the starvation line, yields a large sum, and
this goes not to Indian purposes but to balance
the drain of home charges which, though
veiled under specious names. are essentially
the tribute levied from a conquered nation.
It does not take much knowledge of economics
to see that a country in which manufactures
are not permitted to develop, in which agri-
culture is crippled by over-taxation, and where
close on half the annual revenue is remitted
as tribute without a return, cannot hope to
attain success.
Even if there is a surplus on the right side
the Indians have a poor chance of gaining
anything from it. It goes to pay for military
adventures, and two good harvests inevitably
usher in a new border campaign. The native
