most direct application, would be employed in this task?  And why is it otherwise in India?  Because labour is so cheap that necessity, the mother of invention, does not stimulate the ingenuity of man here as it does there.

Far from deprecating the introduction of capital, I should be delighted to hear that the amount to be spent in India this year was to be three times what it promises to be.  I do not say to be spent by Government, for to this there are objections, altogether irrespective of the question of the amount of labour available.

    The first effect of this enlarged expenditure would no doubt be to
    raise the wages of labour.  This would be in itself a blessing, for
    which I should thank God.

But its second and more permanent effect would be to increase the number of the class of skilled labourers, which the patient, sober, and ingenious population of India is fitted to supply in so great abundance, if due encouragement be given; and further, to drive capitalists to the substitution of machinery for brute human labour to a greater extent than is the practice now.

The ultimate result would, therefore, be to render the existing stock of labour doubly productive; the fruits of this increased productiveness being divided in proportions more or less equitable between the labourers and capitalists.

I believe that the Railway expenditure is already exercising a sensible influence of this salutary character.  Bodies of navvies are becoming attached to the companies, who follow them from place to place, and render them comparatively independent of the local supply of labour; and above all, by calling forth native talent in the form of skilled labour, they are imparting that kind of education which will, I believe, do more for the elevation of the masses than any other which we can provide in India.

* * * * *

    To H. S. Maine, Esq.

    Camp, Hodul:  February 25, 1863.

[Sidenote:  Special legislation.]

While I entirely concur in the opinion that the onus probandi rests, and rests heavily too, on the proposers of exceptional or particular legislation, an assumption runs through ------’s letter to you which I am by no means prepared to admit.  He assumes that in such matters as those with which we are now dealing, this particular legislation must be in the exclusive interest of the landlord, and calculated to increase in his hand powers which may be abused, and the abuse of which is restrained by moral influences which operate less strongly where landlords and tenants are of different races than where they are homogeneous.  He cites, strangely enough, Ireland, where these moral influences, which are of themselves generally sufficient in England and Scotland, are supplemented by wholesale evictions on one side and murders on the other.