accumulation of wealth. See two interesting passages in
Bibliothec. Hist. lib. ii. vol. ii. pp. 49, 50, 108, 109. But of the economical laws of distribution he, like all the ancient writers, was perfectly ignorant.
101
An able and very learned apologist for this miserable people says, ‘The servility so generally ascribed to the Hindu is never more conspicuous than when he is examined as an evidence. But if it be admitted that he acts as a slave, why blame him for not possessing the virtues of a free man? The oppression of ages has taught him implicit submission.’ Vans Kennedy, in Transactions of the Society of Bombay, vol. iii. p. 144. Compare the observations of Charles Hamilton in Asiatic Researches, vol. i. p. 305.
102
The impossibility of having a standard of value, is clearly pointed out in Turgot's Réflexions sur la Formation et la Distribution des Richesses, in Œuvres, vol. v. pp. 51, 52. Compare Ricardo's Works, pp. 11, 28–30, 46, 166, 253, 270, 401, with M'Culloch's Principles of Political Economy, pp. 298, 299, 307.
103
Smith's Wealth of Nations, book i. chap. ix. p. 37; where, however, the proposition is stated rather too absolutely, since the risks arising from an insecure state of society must be taken into consideration. But that there is an average ratio between interest and profits is obvious, and is distinctly laid down by the Sanscrit jurists. See Colebrooke's Digest of Hindu Law, vol. i. pp. 72, 81.
104
Ricardo (Principles of Political Economy, chap. vi. in Works, p. 65) says, ‘whatever increases wages, necessarily reduces profits.’ And in chap. xv. p. 122, ‘whatever raises the wages of labour, lowers the profits of stock.’ In several other places he makes the same assertion, very much to the discomfort of the ordinary reader, who knows that in the United States, for instance, wages and profits are both high. But the ambiguity is in the language, not in the thought; and in these and similar passages Ricardo by wages meant cost of labour, in which sense the proposition is quite accurate. If by wages we mean the reward of labour, then there is no relation between wages and profits; for when rent is low, both of them may be high, as is the case in the United States. That this was the view of Ricardo is evident from the following passage: ‘Profits, it cannot be too often repeated, depend on wages; not on nominal but real wages; not on the number of pounds that may be annually paid to the labourer, but on the number of days' work necessary to obtain those pounds.’ Political Economy, chap. vii., Ricardo's Works, p. 82. Compare Mill's Principles of Political Economy, vol. i. p. 509, vol. ii. p. 225.
105
I take the estimate of Mr. Elphinstone (History of India, pp. 225–228) as midway between Sir William Jones (Works, vol. iii. p. 56) and Mr. Wilson (Rig Veda Sanhita, vol. i. p. xlvii.).
106
Institutes of Menu, chap. viii. sec. 140–142, in Works of Sir W. Jones, vol. iii. p. 295. The subsequent Sanscrit commentators recognize nearly the same rate of interest, the minimum being fifteen per cent. See Colebrooke's Digest of Hindu Law, vol. i. pp. 29, 36, 43, 98, 99, 237, vol. ii. p. 70.
107
In Colebrooke's Digest, vol. i. p. 454, and vol. iii. p. 229, Menu is called ‘the highest authority of memorial law,’ and ‘the founder of memorial law.’ The most recent historian of India, Mr. Elphinstone, says (Hist. of India, p. 83) ‘the code of Menu is still the basis of the Hindu jurisprudence; and the principal features remain unaltered to the present day.’ This remarkable code is also the basis of the laws of the Burmese, and even of those of the Laos. Journal of the Asiatic Society, vol. ii. p. 271, vol. iii. pp. 28, 296, 332, vol. v. p. 252.
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
