When Mr. Keir Hardie was in India he satisfied himself that the standard of living among the working classes in India has been deteriorating. This is interesting psychologically, and one would like to know by what means Mr. Keir Hardie attained to satisfaction on such a great and important question. Doubtless he had the ungrudging assistance of Mr. Chowdry. The poverty of India has for a good many years been a handy weapon, like the sailor's belaying pin, for everyone who wanted to "have at" our administration of that country; and if "a lie which is half a truth is ever the blackest of lies," then this one must be as black as Tartarus, for it is indubitably more than half a truth. The common field-labourer in India is about as poor as man can be. He is very nearly as poor as a sparrow. His hut, built by himself, is scarcely more substantial or permanent than the sparrow's nest, and his clothing compares very unfavourably with the sparrow's feathers. The residue of his worldly goods consists of a few cooking pots and, it must be admitted, a few ornaments on his wife. But a sparrow is usually well fed and quite happy. It has no property simply because it wants none. If it stored honey like the busy bee, or nuts like the thrifty squirrel, it would be a prey to constant anxiety and stand in hourly danger of being plundered of its possessions, and perhaps killed for the sake of them. Therefore to speak of a Hindu's poverty as if it certainly implied want and unhappiness is mere misrepresentation born of ignorance. In all ages there have been men so enamoured of the possessionless life that they have abandoned their worldly goods and formed brotherhoods pledged to lifelong poverty. The majority of religious beggars in India belong to brotherhoods of this kind, and are the sturdiest and best-fed men to be seen in the country, especially in time of famine. But the Hindu peasant is not a begging friar, and may be supposed to have some share of the love of money which is common to humanity; so it is worth while to inquire why he is normally so very poor. There are two reasons, both of which are so obvious and have so often been pointed out by those who have known him best, that there is little excuse for overlooking them. The first of them is thus stated in Tennant's _Indian Recreations_, written in 1797, before British rule had affected the people of India much in one direction or another. "Industry can hardly be ranked among their virtues. Among all classes it is necessity of subsistence and not choice that urges to labour; a native will not earn six rupees a month by working a few hours more, if he can live upon three; and if he has three he will not work at all," Such was the Hindu a century ago in the eyes of an observant and judicious man, studying him with all the sympathetic interest of novelty, and such he is now.