No. It is only because he is debarred by the struggle to keep himself alive, that he does not marry; and what is the consequence? Under present circumstances we find there is far too much of an absolutely promiscuous, and, in many cases, unnatural intercourse carried on, in total disregard of consequences, which come under our gaze in the shape of hundreds and thousands of practical orphans, diseased from birth, educated in profligacy, and having nobody to provide for them.

The state of our streets and parks is too well known to need emphasizing; but what is this the result of? It is because the prohibitive penalties against such intercourse are by no means sufficiently strong, and because institutions are wanting such as we see in foreign countries. Let there then be such institutions countenanced by Government, and inspected by Government officials, and let there be penalties imposed to repress those who selfishly venture to gratify a momentary wish at the expense of a defenceless posterity.

The suggestion I make has been tried in garrison towns and for no known reason abandoned, and statistics present a woeful tale of the subsequent increase of the diseases I deprecate, as compared with a previous decrease achieved by the trial of the system.

I think that these two suggestions are worthy of consideration at the hands of our Government. I think something should be done at once, and I think if we strike at these two evils with the firmness that is only too necessary, we shall be able to look forward with greater hopes of success to a generation of beings on whom Lord Brabazon's excellent suggestions of drills and gymnastics may be expected to work with far more advantage and speedy effect.

Before concluding these remarks, it may be as well to acknowledge that one is well aware that these suggestions may meet with much opposition. Those who will support my first suggestion will, I believe, be the very persons who will oppose the second, and I am anxious to try and point out that this would be not unattended with some inconsistency.

The line of argument they use is, I believe, this, in some fashion. They say that there are among "concrete entities" such things as morality and immorality, and that, such being the case, no amount of legislation can do away with immorality. We are accustomed to believe that immorality is only so when the consequences of what is called immorality are vicious. And if we can only succeed in arresting the vicious consequences, we contend that we do away with immorality. I would venture to suggest to these persons that unless they have a sounder argument upon which to base their objection, it would be almost as well that they should modify their views. No doubt in ancient times it was very well to assert the theory of concrete entities and to carry it

through, but the reasoning man will easily see that change of times and circumstances must have a great effect on one's opinions. "Change of circumstances" forms the mainspring of most of the arguments put forward now-a-days to support the radical alterations so much in vogue, and, indeed, we must acknowledge that times and manners have altered very much. The alteration proposed in the present state of the law are no such great radical measures after all, and yet if ever the plea of urgency could be put forward, it is now.

Natural forces are still unabated, and must find their outlet, and it is plain to all with what far greater difficulties it has to cope. We must remember the hardness of modern conditions of life and the trials to which passions are subjected. It seems, if ever there were a reasonable ground for inquiry and alteration in the existing laws relating to the subject, it were here.

By the proposed law we should undoubtedly obtain more healthy children and fewer unhealthy ones. We should then have a generation to start upon, where Lord Brabazon's exercises would have a chance of working with some good result, and we should have the satisfaction of seeing a strain established that would have the incalculable, and now-adays almost unknown, advantage of being free from those diseases which we all agree are the chief reason why our physique in town is on the wane.

I am, Gentlemen,
Yours faithfully,

ERNEST E. JAMES.

DEAR SIRS,

The Poverty of India.

TO THE EDITORS OF THE "NATIONAL REVIEW."

In the August number of the Contemporary Review may be observed an article by Mr. Dadabhai Naoroji, on the subject named above. It is a lesson that no well-wisher of that strange far-off Empire ought to neglect any fair opportunity for urging on the people of England. But there may be a danger on the other side, in passionate over-statements. The cost of the necessaries of a rural existence in that warm climate and on that facile soil, is so inconceivably small as to give money a purchasing power far beyond what can be imagined in our country; and what sounds like abject poverty may be little worse than a modest competence when transposed into an Oriental key. In the time of the Emperor Akbar you could buy an average sheep, or six bushels of

wheat, for two rupees. The monthly pay of a cadet serving for a commission in the army was Rs. 25 a month, out of which he had to keep a horse. Even in our days-after an enormous importation of bullionthe pay of a policeman is not more than, say, three shillings a week; and the wages of an unskilled labourer average less than threepence a day in the more remote and purely agricultural regions.

From another point of view one can perceive that Mr. Dadabhai has somewhat over-stated his case; comparing the United Kingdom with British India as to revenue and population, he argues that the average individual in the latter must pay 5s. 8d. a year out of an income of less than 40s., making an incidence of 14.3 per cent. on the annual income. By a similar calculation-dividing the yearly revenues by the number of the population-he brings out a percentage, for the United Kingdom, of no more than 6.92 on the income. It is obvious that to pay nearly six shillings to the State out of a yearly income of only six times that sum is a most crushing, not to say impossible, burden. But, in fact, the most hopeless imbecile who, in his lucid intervals, has glimpses of the obvious, can see for himself that no such being as this average contributor could exist. He is like Voltaire's Homme aux quarante écus, a purely imaginary being. In the first place, because everyone in India has a wife, and usually a family of children, most of whom aid the resources of the joint concern, whatever it be—and it is chiefly agriculture. Next, because the revenues of British India are largely derived from sources other than taxation. And, lastly, because of what does come from taxation there is hardly any part that is obligatory on the poor.

It may be interesting to notice the proportions borne to the gross revenues of British India by some of the principal items of which it is composed :

Per cent. of Gross Revenue.

Land Revenues (the share of the rent taken by the State in conformity with ancient usage observed in most Asiatic countries) Opium (a product of land bought by consumers, principally foreigners)

Stamp Revenue (only paid by men of business and litigants)
Excise (paid by those who use intoxicants)

Customs (paid exclusively by the rich, chiefly Europeans)
Assessed Taxes (variable, but now about)

.

Salt Tax (the only tax paid by all may be regarded as a poll

31.0

13.5

4.5

5.1

1.8

0.1

8.8

These per-centages are taken from Mr. James Cotton's Decennial Report, from which it further appears that-inclusive of the land re

venue*-there are about forty millions of the gross revenue (over seventy millions) which are not derived from taxation of any kind; being yielded by tribute from foreign States, produce of State-forests, public works, the post offices, the land, and other economic sources. And the salt tax, as pointed out in the report, is the only item whose payment is not optional, and it falls upon Indian mankind at a rate of less than 74d. per head by the year." That is all that the poor man, the labourer, has to pay; and it represents a per-centage on a yearly income of 40s. of less than 1.1 per cent. This is probably the lowest rate of taxation prevailing in any country possessed of a civilized administration and a powerful army. (The average incidence is not 5s. 8d. but 1s. 9d.)

It has been already observed that agriculture is the principal occupa tion of the rural population. The great mass of that population subsists not on wages but on lands held on a sort of metayer system. There is a small class of semi-pauper workmen, whose average daily wage is about the tenth of a rupee; but the food of such a man does not cost more than the sixteenth, and his wife and children commonly earn something besides. The class above these--the metayers-probably hold, on an average, five or six acres of land apiece; and the value of its produce -estimated in wheat-is about Rs. 150 a year, communibus annis. Taking off a tenth of this as rent, and allowing for price of seed and replacement of stock, one sees that the family cannot have more than Rs. 100 a year to live upon; but that sum is equal, in its command of the necessaries of life, to £50 a year in England-a close shave, especially if many of these poor people are-as is to be feared-in debt. But it is not quite so bad as Mr. Dadabhai seems to think; and it is not owing to taxation. Sevenpence-halfpenny is not a large sum, even when multiplied by five-which we may probably assume to be the average number of an Indian household. Secondary wants are hardly felt by the villagers; house-rent, firing, and raiment form items of very small expense in their simple lives. It is probable that the incomes of the people are larger, and their expenses smaller, than those of the natives of adjoining States not under the British Government; and those States have always been administered without a Poor Law.

man.

Mr. Dadabhai is a native, I believe, of India, though his sentiments of loyalty and the purity of his English would do credit to any EnglishBut he probably has but little personal experience of rural life in Hindustan, and it is for that reason that I have ventured to qualify his facts and analyze his explanations, in the hope of showing that the

*The land revenue is rather a boon to the contributor than a tax; being a seignorial right taken by all Eastern Governments. They usually profess to take the whole surplus produce; the British have limited the demand to one-half. So far as land-holders pay this, the taxpayer escapes.

poverty of India is by no means exceptional in Eastern countries, and is not owing to taxation or bad government.

That the peasantry of India, and the artizans of its towns, should rise in the scale of human desires and habits is, in many respects, to be desired. Especially ought all who care for them to desire that they should be secured against periodical scarcities, caused by drought, before which their scanty resources so often break down. That is, indeed, the great problem of modern Indian administration. These periodical famines are no new thing, being the necessary consequence of a system of cultivation wholly dependent on the rain-fall. Under the Moghul Emperors there were many such visitations, and about fifty years ago, the country locally known as "Hindustan was the scene of a fearful calamity of the kind. The rains have failed since, but never with such fatal results. Not only is there a great breadth of tillage due to snow-fed canals, and always safe, but the road and railway communication is now sufficiently advanced to protect the inhabitants against any failure of food that is not absolutely universal over the entire peninsula, which is never the case. Still prices are, now and then, suddenly enhanced by such causes; and then, I fear, the bulk of the people suffers atrociously.

Thus, as you will see, I am not asking for an attitude of idle optimism; but only endeavouring to put the evil before you in its true dimensions, and without unnecessary colouring, which, in the long run, can only do harm. It does harm to any cause to be the subject of exaggeration. The peasantry of Hindustan is one of the most patient, industrious, well-disposed communities with which I am acquainted. In the last century that peasantry was exposed to every evil that could flow from war and anarchy. "So reduced," says an eye-witness, "was the actual number of human beings, and so utterly cowed their spirit, that the few villages that did continue to exist (at great intervals) had no communication with each other; and so great was the increase of beasts of prey, that the little communication that remained was often cut off by a single tiger known to haunt the road" (Skinner's Memoirs). In the estates of the Begam Sumroo-which lapsed to the British Government on that lady's death in 1836-the peasant-farmers were so totally rack-rented, that the presence of armed soldiers in the fields was necessary to force them to cultivate, and the first thing the British authorities did was to reduce the land revenue from seven lakhs of rupees to five. Since then the refugees, who had emigrated under the Begam's administration, have returned; wages have risen 150 per cent.; in one fiscal union alone, 9,000 acres have been added to the

* This was recorded by the late Sir H. M. Elliot, at that time employed in the neighbouring district of Meerut, as having been seen by himself