the purposes of money, except in so far as they were surreptitiously or illicitly coined into rupees; while the issue of rupees from the Government mints practically ceased. (4) That but for the Government interference, the imports of silver into India during the three years 1895-7 would have reached (at the same rate of increase as before) 170,000,000 ounces, equal to an addition of over 500,000,000 rupees to the circulation; so that the action of the Government has diminished the monetary supplies of Indian merchants by the enormous sum of over Rs.500,000,000 in three years, the paralysing effect of which upon Indian trade may be better realised by merchants in Great Britain if they consider the consequences to themselves of the loanable capacities of British bankers being suddenly reduced in the same term by £500,000,000. For at least £1 is employed in Great Britain for every rupee employed in India. We can now perceive that the Indian Government, in trying to protect itself from the unpreventable consequences (so far as it is concerned) of the value of the British money unit being falsified against it, has deliberately set itself, by the course it is pursuing, to injure every class but moneylenders of the vast community committed to its charge, to rob depositors, to oppress cultivators, intensifying the burthen of their ever-imminent scarcities, to hamper merchants, and all this for the sake of a completely fallacious saving on remit. tances, which one year's increased famine expenditure goes far towards consuming. While the British Government, in being a consenting party to the further extension of the British money unit to another and still poorer 250,000,000 of people, is preparing final ruin for British farmers, who, starting from wheat and returning to it in the necessary rotation of crops, will henceforth have to compete in their home markets for home money units with Indian wheatgrowers, the most impoverished cultivators in the civilised world. CHAPTER VIII NO TRADE WITH NEARLY TWO HUNDRED MILLIONS OF THE INDIAN PEOPLE-EXCEPT IN ONE ARTICLE IN A Pressing Question at Every Renewal of the Charter to the Sir Thomas Munro, Sir John Malcolm, and Mr. Rickards, on What Becomes of the Imports into British India? Who British and Europeanised-Indian Requirements: 171,000,000 Analysis of the Imports, Item by Item. Actual Trade (apart from Cotton Cloths) of un-Europeanised Why India Did Not Take Advantage of the Spinning-Jenny England's Policy towards India Dominated by Commercial James Mill Locking the Door against Indian Advancement India's Exports: Whose Are They? Analysis of Every A Twenty-Nine Years' Comparison Yields Woful Results. A Famine Success' which shows, in Three Divisions of the Appendix: Condition of the Silk-Weaving Industry in Madura, Southern India. N the days preceding each renewal of the Charter of the East India Company-notably the renewals of 1793, 1813, and 1833-no questions were asked of the witnesses, by learned Counsel representing the East India Company, more persistently, than such as related to INDIANS NOT LARGE BUYERS 245 the probability of the natives of India becoming purchasers of English manufactured goods. The prevailing opinion was that expressed by Sir (then Colonel) Thomas Munro, afterwards Governor of Madras, who, taken as a whole, was one of the very best men India has known. On the 12th of April, 1813, he was under examination. In the event of a free trade,' he was asked, 'are you of opinion there would be any considerable increased demand for British commodities or manufactures among the natives of Hindostan ?' 'I do not think,' he said, 'there would be any considerable increase of the demand for European commodities among the natives of India.' Reasons for this opinion were given. For a cause which, shortly, will be apparent, those reasons may be stated. 'At our principal settlements,' continued Col. Munro, 'where we have been longest established, the natives have adopted none of our habits, and scarcely use any of our commodities, the very domestics of Europeans use none of them; there are a few natives at Madras, and some other places, who sometimes purchase European commodities, and fit up apartments in an European style, to receive their guests, but it is done merely, I believe, in compliment to their European friends, and what is purchased in this way by the father, is very often thrown away by the son; the consumption does not extend, but seems to remain stationary: I think there are other causes of a more permanent nature than the high price, which preclude the extension of the consumption of European articles in India; among those causes, I reckon the influence of the climate, the religious and civil habits of the natives, and more than anything else, I am afraid, the excellence of their own manufactures. In this country, people who know little of India, will naturally suppose, that as the furniture of the house and the table require so much expense, a great demand will likewise be made among the natives of India for the same purposes; but a Hindoo has no table, he eats alone upon the bare ground; the whole of what may be called his table service consists of a brass basin and an earthen plate; his house has no furniture; it is generally a low building, quadrangular, rather a shed than a house, open to the centre, with mud walls and mud floor, which is generally kept bare, and sprinkled every day with water, for coolness; his whole furniture usually consists of a mat or a small carpet, to rest upon; if he had furniture, he has no place to keep it in, it would be necessary to build a house to hold his furniture; he likes this kind of house, he finds it accommodated to the climate, it is dark and cool, and he prefers it to our large buildings; again, the food of the Indian is simple, and is entirely found in his own country; his clothing is all the manufacture of his own country, we cannot supply him, because while he can get it, not only better, but cheaper, at home, it is impossible that we can enter into competition in the market.' Again, in regard to woollen manufactures, Colonel Munro said : I do not think that there is any great probability of extending the consumption of the woollen manufactures of England in India, because the natives have already coarse woollens of their own, which answer all the purposes for which they require them better than those of England do; there is hardly a native of India who has not already a large piece of woollen, as it comes from the loom, which he uses something as a Highlander does his plaid, he wraps it round him to defend him from the weather, and he sleeps upon it, and it is so much cheaper than anything which can be made in this country, that until we can very greatly reduce the price of our woollens we shall never be able to find a market in India for it. The thermometer in the greater part of India, in the interior, is for many months in the year generally as low as from forty to sixty in the morning, and the cold is as much felt as it is in this country, except during hard frost; the natives require warm clothing, but they have all their own coarse woollens, and many of the richer sort, who do not use those woollens, employ in their room quilted silk and cotton, which is both warm and light. These descriptions reveal India as a wholly selfcontained country, not needing any outside supplies. It will at once be remarked that this prophet and Sir John Malcolm, and Mr. Rickards, and, practically, all the witnesses of that early period who spake in like manner, have been proved by events to be mistaken in their forecast. 'Look,' it will be said, 'at the continually growing imports into India, and, in them see the natives of India won over to a need of our goods and to the purchase of them.' Be it so. The import list may, with advantage, be examined. And in its examination, and in the analysis which follows its examination, it should be distinctly borne in mind that European articles are not avoided or discarded because they would not be appreciated. The contrary is palpable to every resident in a Presidency or |