But its second and more permanent effect would be to increase the number of the class of skilled labourers, which the patient, sober, and ingenious population of India is fitted to supply in so great abundance, if due encouragement be given; and further, to drive capitalists to the substitution of machinery for brute human labour to a greater extent than is the practice now.
The ultimate result would, therefore, be to render the existing stock of labour doubly productive; the fruits of this increased productiveness being divided in proportions more or less equitable between the labourers and capitalists.
I believe that the Railway expenditure is already exercising a sensible influence of this salutary character. Bodies of navvies are becoming attached to the companies, who follow them from place to place, and render them comparatively independent of the local supply of labour; and above all, by calling forth native talent in the form of skilled labour, they are imparting that kind of education which will, I believe, do more for the elevation of the masses than any other which we can provide in India.
* * * * *
To H. S. Maine, Esq.
Camp, Hodul: February 25, 1863.
[Sidenote: Special legislation.]
While I entirely concur in the opinion that the onus probandi rests, and rests heavily too, on the proposers of exceptional or particular legislation, an assumption runs through ———'s letter to you which I am by no means prepared to admit. He assumes that in such matters as those with which we are now dealing, this particular legislation must be in the exclusive interest of the landlord, and calculated to increase in his hand powers which may be abused, and the abuse of which is restrained by moral influences which operate less strongly where landlords and tenants are of different races than where they are homogeneous. He cites, strangely enough, Ireland, where these moral influences, which are of themselves generally sufficient in England and Scotland, are supplemented by wholesale evictions on one side and murders on the other. But the law of landlord and tenant is, I believe, the same in Ireland as in England, and it is quite possible that a little particular legislation, which would have given either of the parties the protection of positive law against injuries which can now be redressed only by a rude process of reprisals (one outrage balancing another until the account is squared), might have proved ultimately a benefit even to the party against which this particular legislation seemed to be, in the first instance, directed.
The planters say, we have a grievance attributable to special circumstances arising out of our relations with our ryots; unless you give us a special remedy to meet our special grievance, we fall back on our general powers as landlords. Are we quite sure that in refusing the special remedy, we are consulting the interest of the weaker party, viz. the ryot?
Of course, this is all general. There will remain the questions: Is there a grievance at all? Is it one which has any claim to a special remedy? I quite agree that the onus of answering these questions satisfactorily rests on the advocate of special legislation.