Commercial Marts.
Pali was the entrepôt for the eastern and western regions, where the productions of India, Kashmir, and China, were interchanged for those of Europe, Africa, Persia, and Arabia. Caravans (kitars), from the ports of Cutch and Gujarat, imported elephants’ teeth, copper, dates, gum-arabic, borax, coco-nuts, broadcloths, silks, sandal-wood, camphor, dyes, drugs, oxide and sulphuret of arsenic, spices, coffee, etc. In exchange, they exported chintzes, dried fruits, jira,[[12]] asafoetida from Multan, sugar, opium (Kotah and Malwa), silks and fine cloths, potash, shawls, dyed blankets, arms, and salt of home manufacture.
Caravans.
Decay of Commerce. The Opium Trade.
We then put an arbitrary value upon the drug, and forced the grower to come to us, and even take credit to ourselves for consulting his interests. Even admitting that such price was a remunerating one, founded upon an average of past years, still it is not the less arbitrary. No allowance is made for plentiful or bad seasons, when the drug, owing to a scarcity, will bear a double price. Our legislation is for “all seasons and their change.” But this virtual infraction of the faith of treaties is not confined to the grower or retailer; it affects others in a variety of ways; it injures our reputation and the welfare of those upon whom, for benevolent purposes, we have forced our protection. The transit duties levied on opium formed an item in the revenues of the princes of Rajputana; but confiscation guards the passes of the Aravalli and Gujarat, and unless the smuggler wrap up his cargo in ample folds of deceit, the Rajput may go without his amal-pani, the infusion of this poison, dearer to him than life. It is in vain to urge that sufficient is allowed for home consumption. Who is to be the judge of this? or who is so blind as not to see that any latitude of this kind would defeat the monopoly, which, impolitic in its origin, gave rise in its progress to fraud, gambling, and neglect of more important agricultural economy. But this policy must defeat itself: the excess of quantity produced will diminish the value of the original (Patna) monopoly, if its now deteriorated quality should fail to open the eyes of the quick-sighted Chinese, and exclude it from the market altogether.[[15]]