and demand for labour would, of course, be of great advantage to the estates which survived.  And what would largely accelerate the decrease of cultivation would be the fact that if the exchange is forced up all confidence in the Government will naturally be shaken.  For how can producers have any confidence in a Government which, instead of levying on the country as a whole the increased taxes it requires, seeks to attain its financial ends by manipulating the currency in such a way as to reduce to the producers the prices of the commodities they grow for export?  And if the gold value of silver is to be forced up to 1s. 4d., and with the declared possibility of its being forced up to 1s. 6d., what is more likely than that the Government may persevere with this disastrous policy whenever it again finds itself in financial straits?  And is it not evident that the present financial policy of the Government, and the possibility of its being further pursued, must give that shock to confidence which will at once repel capital and injure credit?  And is it not equally evident that if the gold value of the rupee can be forced up in the manner proposed, the first effect of this will be shown in a large decline in the demand for labour?  Now, as pointed out in the chapters previously alluded to, the results of an increased employment of labour are quite different from what they would be in England, where an increase of employment given to labourers merely means an increase of comfort amongst the working classes, and of the profits of the shopkeepers with whom they deal.  For in India, the introduction of capital to be spent in labour in the rural districts means a social revolution, as large numbers of the labourers set up as cultivators the moment they have saved enough capital to do so.  In some cases they give up working for Europeans, in others they combine agriculture with occasional months of work on the plantations, or other sources of employment; the whole lower classes of the people are thus elevated, and this tells at once on the finances, enabling (1) rents to be more easily paid, and (2) because the finances improve as more land is brought under cultivation.  Now, not only would a large diminution of employment take place in connection with coffee-planting were exchange forced up, but the same cause would act on the growers of pepper, cardamoms, and other products, and the prosperity of the province would be thrown back, and the same kind of result would obviously occur in any part of India which grows articles for export.

But there is yet another result from this truly far-reaching measure, as Sir David Barbour justly calls it, which to my mind is the most important of all—­the bearing of it on famines; for we all know that the population is rapidly increasing, and that of all apprehensions which haunt the minds of those responsible for the safety of India, those as regard famines are by far the greatest.  And here I must ask the reader