“But if there was not enough, I would rather make the king of Candy go without than these poor people who belong to us. We ought to take care of them first.”
“The government likes to take care of itself before either its own people or the Candians. There is salt enough for every body here, and for half India besides; and large quantities are destroyed every year, to keep up the price, while many are dying for want of it, and those who live can get nothing better than coarse dirty salt which the beasts in your grandmama’s farm-yard would turn away from. If we could count the numbers of Hindoos who die in India for want of the salt which their own country produces, we should find that a fearful reckoning awaits the Company there, as there does the government here; a fearful balance of human life against a high price for salt.”
Alice thought that if the ghosts of these poor natives could haunt the authorities, such an army of shadows would soon prevail to secure for their surviving countrymen the food which Providence had made to superabound before their eyes. She knew how shocked and sorry government was that a woman here and there burned herself when her husband died; but when government burned the salt which was left, in order to keep up the price, Alice thought, and so did her father, that government was destroying more lives than ever perished on piles kindled by native hands.
“But pepper, papa: the king of Candy can grow his own pepper in his own woods, I suppose; for it seems as if it would grow any where here, as long as there are trees for it to hang upon. I see the pepper vine dangling in the woods, wherever I go; and the monkeys throw the red clusters at each other.”
“The monkeys may gather them, but the men and women may not, unless they are employed to do so by the government. The monkeys cannot pay for pepper, and some of the people can; therefore the people who cannot must go without, or steal, and run the risk of being punished.”
“Poor people!”
“Miserably poor, indeed. If they were allowed to grow as much pepper as they pleased, and sell it to any part of the world where it is wished for, they would have a great deal of money wherewith to buy things which the government could sell much more profitably than pepper. Then we should see mats, strewed with pepper-corns, spread in many a nook of the thickets which the panther and the snake now have all to themselves; and many a child would be heard singing among the vines, which now moans its little life away in its half-starved mother’s arms. The same may be said of cardamoms. There is no one in these eastern countries who would not eat cardamoms if he could get them; and there are endless tracts where cardamoms would grow; and yet very few of the natives can obtain them to eat. Cardamoms grow wherever vegetable ashes are found in this country. The plant naturally springs up on the very spots where other precious things have been burned before the people’s eyes; but the plant must be rooted up, or its capsules left to be avoided as forbidden fruit, unless offered to the government for sale. But government gives so low a price for cardamoms, that the people have little heart to cultivate the plant.”
“But what does the government do with cardamoms?”
“It sells them; but not to half so many people as would be glad to buy. If government would let the people freely sell cardamoms, government would have a people rich enough to pay more in taxes than government will ever make by selling cardamoms.”
“But you said the people might not have cinnamon. How can any body prevent their getting it? Look all round, papa. As far as we can see on this side and on that, and a great way before us, it is one wood of cinnamon.”