When a healthier state of mind shall awaken an appetite for comforts and conveniences, and create necessities unknown to his fathers, then degrading poverty will no longer be possible as the common lot.  And it was to be hoped that the British rule would in time have this happy effect.  Tennant evidently thought that it had begun to do so even in his day.  “The existence,” he says, “of a regular British Government is but a recent circumstance; yet in the course of a few years complete security has been afforded to all of its dependants; many new manufactures have been established, many more have been extended to answer the demands of a larger exportation.  We have therefore conferred upon our Asiatic subjects an increase of security, of industry and of produce, and of consequent greater means of enjoyment.”

It is therefore a very grave charge that Mr. Keir Hardie brings against the British Administration when he says, a century after these words were written, that the standard of living among the Hindu peasantry has deteriorated.  Happily there does not appear to have been a close relation between facts and Mr. Keir Hardie’s conclusions during his Indian tour, so we may continue to put our confidence in the many hopeful indications that exist of a distinct improvement in the ideal of life which has so long prevailed among our poor Indian fellow-subjects.  The rise in the wages of both skilled and unskilled labour during even the last thirty years, especially in and near important towns, has been most remarkable.

It is more to the point to know what the labourer is able to do and actually does with his wages, and here the returns of trade and the reports of the railway companies, post office and savings bank have striking evidence to offer.  They are published annually, and anyone, even Mr. Keir Hardie, may consult them who likes his facts in statistical form.  For those who live in India there are abundant evidences with more colour in them.  Some thirty years ago, or more, there was a steamship company in Bombay owning two small steamers which carried passengers across the harbour.  By degrees it extended its operations and increased its fleet until it had a daily service of fast steamers, with accommodation for nearly a thousand third-class passengers, which went down the coast as far as Goa, calling at every petty port on the way.  The head of the firm retired some years ago, having made his pile.  Seldom has a more profitable enterprise been started in Bombay.  And whence did the profits come?  From the pockets of Hindu peasants.  The Mahrattas of the Ratnagiri District supply most of the “labour” required in Bombay, and for these the company spread its nets.  And by their incessant coming and going it amassed its wealth.