MINERALS

335

at a cost which was practically nothing to the landowners.

That wealth which first made India the ¢ desire of
men’s eyes” long before the days of Soliman ; which has
been the curse of the country from the attraction it
offered to countless hordes of warlike savages who have
swarmed eastwards and southwards from high Asia; and
finally has assured to the civilised nations of mediaeval
Europe commercial pre-eminence so long as Indian trade
was in their hands, was distributed chiefly in Indian soil.
And, although much of it has disappeared from the surface
 of that soil, there is no reason to suppose that its
sources have been seriously impaired. The peninsula of
India is a vastly old, but not an exhausted, country, and we
must look to other reasons than the gradual emptying out
of her natural treasuries to account for her loss of prestige
in that particular phase of economic development which is
associated with production of precious metals and minerals.
One great reason is the enhanced cost of labour now
that all men are free, and the undoubted necessity for
digging deeper and employing more expensive mining
agencies in order to secure quick returns. Native chiefs
of ancient times were content with the accumulation of
the small gatherings that were effected by thousands of
men searching over the surface of large areas. The
English shareholder wants a definite percentage on the
cost of tapping the original sources of supply—by which
process alone can sufficient quantity be realised to render
the enterprise a paying one.
But the chief reason, no doubt, is the fact that other
and newer countries have developed a wealth of resources
such as India never possessed, and the most that India
can now claim is the modest (and somewhat doubtful)
position of being able to “ pay her way.” There is doubtless
 still a vast and almost immeasurable store of wealth
hoarded above ground in that country which at present
lies idle and takes no place in any scheme of commercial
economy. India is still enormously wealthy, but her wealth
is that of the miser.