ty! Hindu
charity is proverbial, but it is blinder than love itself. Such a body of
worthless consumers would tax even a wealthy land. To India it is a
dreadful burden and drain.

Add to this the insane passion for jewels which consumes both high and
low. Millions of rupees' worth of gold flows into the country annually,
and most of it is melted and converted into personal adornments for women
and children. For this purpose nearly one-half million goldsmiths,
according to the last census, are employed and make a comfortable living
at an annual expense of ten million dollars. This is a much larger force
of workmen than that of all the blacksmiths in the land.

The litigious spirit of the people is also phenomenal. It is doubtful if
any other people on earth spend, relative to their means, more in legal
processes than the Hindus. In view of all these facts, Sir W. W. Hunter's
statement that "The permanent remedies for the poverty of India rest with
the people themselves" is eminently true. It is further emphasized by the
remarks of Sir Madhava Rao, K. C. S. I., one of the very few statesmen
whom India has produced among her own children: "The longer one lives,
observes and thinks," he says, "the more deeply does he feel there is no
community on the face of the earth which suffers less from political evils
and more from self-inflicted, self-accepted, or self-created, and
therefore avoidable, evils than the Hindu community."

Famine is an oft-recurring and most perplexing evil with which India has
always been familiar. In times past, it was the gaunt Avenger which
decimated the people and which kept down the population within the range
of tolerable existence. The god of dirt and insanitation carried away the
unneeded residue left by famine. Famine is one of the very few evils
before which human power stands helpless. The government has done very
much by irrigation schemes and by the building of railways to mitigate
this evil. By famine funds and relief works it strives, as it did the last
famine, to reduce the mortality and suffering arising from these seasons
of drought. But the constant penury of the people, and the fact of their
always living upon the verge of hunger and want, make it almost impossible
to save many from the terrible result of such visitations. Perhaps there
is no other thing, at present, which occupies more of the time and thought
of the Imperial Government than this; but, to drive entirely away this
h