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INDIA

“ practising a wise moderation.” The Marathas, the native
rulers of Bengal, and the Sikhs, took one-half or more.
The demands of our Government are regulated on different
principles altogether to those of native rulers. The latter
often hardly recognised the existence of a private property
in land, and deemed themselves entitled to the whole of
the surplus profit after the expenses of cultivation had
been paid. Thus the cultivator was considered as “entitled
 to a bare existence; everything else went to the
State.” “Instead of sweeping off the whole or the greater
part of the surplus profits of the land our Government
never takes more than a fixed share, which falls at an
average rate of from 3 per cent. to 8 per cent. of the
gross out-turn.”
There is, however, no need to enlarge on the advantages
 of a government which has brought to India a
reign of law, order, and justice, and which ensures that
every man shall at least possess his goods in peace, and
be able undisturbed to develop such instincts as he
possesses for the betterment of his own condition in life.
But the very efforts that are made by the State to improve
those conditions amongst the poorer class of natives (tee.
the 75 per cent. who gain their living direct from the
land) lead to difficulties, if not to actual political dangers
such as were unknown, or uncared for, in the time of
the Moghuls. Civil war, famine, and pestilence are either
suppressed altogether or met with the full resources of
a civil organisation, and so successfully combated that
but comparatively few lives are lost in the conflict. The
direct result is an enormous increase of population. The
Indian native (whatever his nationality) looks on the
business of reproduction as one of the great ends of
existence, and so long as his environment supports him,
he sets about it without a thought of political economic
results, The owner of a few square yards of paddy field,
or of half a cocoanut tree, will leave his scanty property
to be divided amongst a dozen children with exactly the
same results, in a minor degree, that have filled the pages
of history with perpetual records of civil strife and blood.