SIR ANDREW FRAZER.
Of the total amount raised from taxation each year, about forty per cent is raised from land, and the rate is so heavy that the people can not save enough when the crops are good to feed themselves when the crops are bad. More than ten per cent of the total tax is collected on salt, which now pays about five-eighths of a cent per pound. This is not only a heavy rate when compared with the original cost of the salt; but it is especially burdensome to the poor. The salt tax has been as high as one cent a pound, and when at that rate materially reduced the amount of salt consumed by the people.
LORD CURZON.
The poverty of the people of India is distressing in the extreme; millions live on the verge of starvation all the time, and one would think that their very appearance would plead successfully in their behalf.
The economic wrong done to the people of India explains the political wrong done to them. For more than twenty years an Indian national congress has been pleading for a modified form of representative government—not for a severing of the tie that binds India to Great Britain, but for an increasing voice in their local affairs. But this request can not be granted. Why? Because a local government, composed of natives selected by the people, would protest against so large an army, reduce the taxes and put Indians at lower salaries into places now held by Europeans. It is the fear of what an Indian local government would do that prevents the experiment, although two other reasons, both insufficient, are given. One of these is that the Indian people are not intelligent enough and that they must be protected from themselves by denying them a voice in their own affairs. The other is that the Indians are so divided into tribes and religious sects that they can not act harmoniously together. The first argument will not impress any unprejudiced traveler who has come into contact with the educated classes. There are enough well informed, college trained native Indians, not to speak of those, who, like our own ancestors a few centuries ago, have practical sense and good judgment without book learning, to guide public opinion. While the percentage of literacy is deplorably small, the total number of educated men is really considerable, and there are at this time seventeen thousand students above the secondary schools and studying for the B. A. degree. There is not a district of any considerable size that has not some intelligent men in it, and these could be relied upon to direct the government until a larger number are qualified to assist. It is true that native princes have often seemed indifferent to the welfare of their subjects—Princes who have lived in great luxury while the people have been neglected, but to-day some of the native states vie with those controlled by European officials in education and material advancement. And is not the very fact that the people are left under the government of native princes in the native states conclusive proof that in all the states the government could be administered without the aid of so large a number of Europeans?
The second argument is equally unsound. To say that the Indians would necessarily fight among themselves is to ignore the progress of the world. There was a time when Europe was the scene of bloody religious wars, and our own country is indebted to the persecution of the pilgrims in England for some of its best pioneers. There has been a growth in religious tolerance during the last century, and this is as noticeable in India as elsewhere. Already the intellectual leaders of all the sects and elements of the Indian population are mingling in congresses, conferences and public meetings. Already a national spirit is growing which, like the national spirit in England and America, disregards religious lines and emphasizes more and more the broad social needs which are common to all; and with the increase of general education there will be still more of unity and national sentiment. Those who make this argument also forget that as long as England maintains sovereignty it will be impossible for religious differences to lead to war and that differences in council and in congress would strengthen rather than weaken her position.