History of Civilization in England, Vol. 1 of 3

by Henry Thomas Buckle

[108] See, in Mill's History of India, vol. i. p. 317, the report of a committee of the House of Commons in 1810, in which it is stated that the ryots paid ‘the heavy interest of three, four, and five per cent. per month.’ Ward, writing about the same time, mentions as much as seventy-five per cent. being given, and this apparently without the lender incurring any extraordinary risk. Ward on the Hindoos, vol. ii. p. 190.

[109] Compare the table in Loudon's Encyclopædia of Agriculture, p. 778, with Mavor's note in Tusser's Five Hundred Points of Husbandry, p. 195, Lond. 1812, and M'Culloch's Statistical Account of the British Empire, 1847, vol. i. p. 560.

[110] This is the estimate I have received from persons well acquainted with French agriculture. The rent, of course, varies in each separate instance, according to the natural powers of the soil, according to the extent to which those powers have been improved, and according to the facilities for bringing the produce to market. But, notwithstanding these variations, there must be in every country an average rent, depending upon the operation of general causes.

[111] Owing to the immense supply of land preventing the necessity of cultivating those inferior soils which older countries are glad to use, and are therefore willing to pay a rent for the right of using. In the United States, profits and wages (i.e. the reward of the labourer, not the cost of labour) are both high, which would be impossible if rent were also high.

[112] See Rammohun Roy on the Judicial and Revenue Systems of India, 1832, pp. 59–61, 63, 69, 92, 94. At p. 69, this high authority says of the agricultural peasantry of Bengal: ‘In an abundant season, when the price of corn is low, the sale of their whole crops is required to meet the demands of the landholder, leaving little or nothing for seed or subsistence to the labourer or his family.’ In Cashmere, the sovereign received half the produce of the rice-crop, leaving the other half to the cultivator. Moorcroft's Notices of Cashmere, in Journal of Geog. Society, vol. ii. p. 266.

[113] Heber (Journey through India, vol. i. pp. 209, 356, 357, 359) gives some curious instances of the extremely low rate at which the natives are glad to work. As to the ordinary wages in India in the present century, see Journal of Asiatic Society, vol. i. p. 255, vol. v. p. 171; Rammohun Roy on the Judicial and Revenue Systems, pp. 105, 106; Sykes's Statistics of the Deccan Reports of the British Association, vol. vi. p. 321; Ward's View of the Hindoos, vol. iii. p. 207; Colebrooke's Digest of Hindu Law, vol. ii. p. 184. On wages in the south of India, the fullest information will be found in Buchanan's valuable work, Journey through the Mysore, Canara, and Malabar, vol. i. pp. 124, 125, 133, 171, 175, 216, 217, 298, 390, 415, vol. ii. pp. 12, 19, 22, 37, 90, 108, 132, 217, 218, 315, 481, 523, 525, 562, vol. iii. pp. 35, 181, 226, 298, 321, 349, 363, 398, 428, 555. I wish that all travellers were equally minute in recording the wages of labour; a subject of far greater importance than those with which they usually fill their books.

On the other hand, the riches possessed by the upper classes have, owing to this mal-distribution of wealth, been always enormous, and sometimes incredible. See Forbes's Oriental Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 297; Bohlen, das alte Indien, vol. ii. p. 119; Travels of Ibn Batuta, p. 41; Ward's Hindoos, vol. iii. p. 178. The autobiography of the Emperor Jehangueir contains such extraordinary statements of his immense wealth, that the Editor, Major Price, thinks that some error must have been made by the copyist; but the reader will find in Grote's History of Greece (vol. xii. pp. 229, 245) evidence of the treasures which it was possible for Asiatic rulers to collect in that state of society. The working of this unequal distribution is thus stated by Mr. Glyn (Transac. of Asiatic Society, vol. i. p. 482): ‘The nations of Europe have very little idea of the actual condition of the inhabitants of Hindustan; they are more wretchedly poor than we have any notion of. Europeans have hitherto been too apt to draw their opinions of the wealth of Hindustan from the gorgeous pomp of a few emperors, sultans, nawabs, and rajahs; whereas a more intimate and accurate view of the real state of society would have shown that these princes and nobles were engrossing all the wealth of the country, whilst the great body of the people were earning but a bare subsistence, groaning under intolerable burdens, and hardly able to supply themselves with the necessaries of life, much less with its luxuries.’

[114] Turner, who travelled in 1783 through the north-east of Bengal, says: ‘Indeed, the extreme poverty and wretchedness of these people will forcibly appear, when we recollect how little is necessary for the subsistence of a peasant in these regions. The value of this can seldom amount to more than one penny per day, even allowing him to make his meal of two pounds of boiled rice, with a due proportion of salt, oil, vegetables, fish, and chili.’ Turner's Embassy to Tibet, p. 11. Ibn Batuta, who travelled in Hindostan in the fourteenth century, says: ‘I never saw a country in which provisions were so cheap.’ Travels of Ibn Batuta, p. 194.

[115] The Sudras are estimated by Ward (View of the Hindoos, vol. iii. p. 281) at ‘three-fourths of the Hindoos.’ At all events, they comprise the whole of the working classes; the Vaisyas not being husbandmen, as they are often called, but landlords, owners of cattle, and traders. Compare Institutes of Menu, chap. ix. sec. 326–333, in Works of Sir W. Jones, vol. iii. pp. 380, 381, with Colebrooke's Digest, vol. i. p. 15, from which it appears that the Vaisyas were always the masters, and that the Sudra was to ‘rely on agriculture for his subsistence.’ The division, therefore, between ‘the industrious and the servile’ (Elphinstone's History of India, p. 12) is too broadly stated, and we must, I think, take the definition of M. Rhode: ‘Die Kaste der Sudras umfasst die ganze arbeitende, oder um Lohn dienende Classe des Volks.’ Relig. Bildung der Hindus, vol. ii. p. 561.

[116] ‘Either be banished with a mark on his hinder parts, or the king shall cause a gash to be made on his buttock.’ Institutes of Menu, chap. viii. sec. 281, in Works of Sir W. Jones, vol. iii. p. 315. See also Ward's View of the Hindoos, vol. iii. p. 67.