Asiatic Quarterly Review (Full Title: The Imperial and Asiatic Quarterly Review, and Oriental and Colonial Record): Volume XIII, No. 26 [‎449v] (23/238)

236 Is State-aided Education m any Shape
poverty is the character of the people, their ignorance and
superstition, their deep divisions of caste and creed, their
apathy and lack of enterprise. I not only concede, but
would strongly insist, with Pope, on the relative smallness,
among all the ills that men endure, of the part that Govern
ments can—cure. “ Cause or cure ” are the poet’s words ;
but it is hard to fix any limit to the evil that may be caused,
not only by a malignant, but by a benevolently fussy and
meddlesome Government. However that may be, no such
general considerations will avail to exempt a Government
from its own specific share of responsibility for acts of its
own tending to aggravate the suffering of its subjects ; and
under this head must surely be reckoned the impoverishment
of the largest, poorest, and most laborious class of tax
payers by means of the land assessment and the salt duty.
Whatever else tends to produce poverty, most certainly the
direct abstraction of wealth must do so, and more particularly
when the money abstracted represents hard manual labour,
and is a portion of what is needed for bare subsistence.
I was amazed to read lately in a special article of the
Times, that undue leniency of assessment discourages indus
try. I should have thought it hardly disputable that the
strength of the inducement to exertion must be diminished
by every prospective defalcation from the fruits of labour. It
may be otherwise where a little labour will suffice to satisfy
all the felt wants of a savage ; but I never yet heard of the
Indian raiyat to whom that description would apply.
The assurance of the Famine Commissioners that the
assessments are low or moderate everywhere except in
Bombay, would be more convincing if it were not confessedly
based on the selling value of the gross produce, without any
reference to the cost of production. For all that appears
to the contrary, this might be so great as to leave no room
for any Government demand, however moderate. For the
same reason one of the chief points in Lord Curzon’s reply to
Mr. Dutt seems irrelevant to the real issue. My argument,
however, does not require me to go beyond his lordship’s