Again, India suffers from a tax which prevents the export of rice except on a tariff which is sometimes as high as 14½ per cent. on the value of the rice. This not only handicaps India in its exports when compared with other countries, but it drives the natives to grow less remunerative crops of oilseeds for export, and the result of this is that, when famine arises, there is no surplus food which might be retained from exports, and thus prevent the painful scenes of starvation and distress that India has witnessed of late years. To take off the tax would prevent depletion, for no foreign country could compete with the demand which failure of crops in any part of India would inevitably cause. There is about £32,000,000 of English capital invested in Indian manufacturing industries, of which £18,000,000, or more than one-half, is invested in indigo, tea, coffee, jute, cotton, sugar, coal and iron industries, and how are these thriving? Everywhere throughout Bengal you see the ruins of English Indigo factories. Coffee and tea are struggling hard for existence. Planters are ruined, and their estates bought at depreciated rates in times of depression. This enables the industries to survive with some show of prosperity in good times. Agricultural industries, such as coffee or tea, draw off surplus population, and employ them on land that would otherwise be uncultivated. Coal is doing fairly, but not nearly so well as it might do if our manufacturing industries prospered. Cotton manufacture sprung up under a protective tariff, and appeared to be prospering; but selfish Manchester called aloud for the sacrifice of the industry. The tariff was removed, and the industry is left to struggle for life, or perish, as it may. Several capitalists who have embarked capital in cotton manufacture on the faith of this tariff, have lost their money. Everywhere in India, you may see evidences of native iron manufacture crushed out by Free Trade, with nothing but slag heaps remaining to testify to former prosperity. The splendid native iron being superseded by cheap worthless iron of English manufacture. Many attempts have been made by English capitalists to revive, or start, fresh iron industries, but they have one and all been crushed out for want of a little fostering protection. The latest attempt nearly succeeded, but the modest request for a little help was sternly refused:--What!!! Foster your industry? What sacrilege to advocate the violation of every principle of Jugernāth!!! and so the helpless babe was thrown under the relentless wheels of Jugernāth. There was a crunch,--a faint moan from the ruined shareholders,--and then all was over. Hurrah for Jugernāth!! Pereat India!!! FOOTNOTES: [98] “India is suffering seriously in several ways, and is sinking in poverty.” (Poverty of India, by Dadabhai Naoreji.) [99] “India is, on the whole, a very poor country: the mass of the population enjoy only a scanty subsistence.” (Lord Lawrence, 1864.)