if less money is
spent on labour, less will be spent in improving and developing the
agricultural resources of India, in digging wells and other
famine-preventing works; and that if the labourers fail to find the amount
of employment they can now readily obtain, the greater will be the
financial burden thrown on the hands of the State in times of famine and
scarcity? And must it not be equally evident to anyone possessed of the
humblest form of human reason that the Government had far better exhaust
every taxational resource before embarking on a course which, if the
anticipations of Government are realized as to silver, will be ruinous to
the country, and which, at a vast direct and indirect cost to the people,
will only, as I have shown, afford a comparatively speaking trifling
financial relief to the State? But it is time now to pass to other points
connected with the measure. And first of all let us glance at the evident
political results that must arise from it.

From what has been previously said, it is evident that the Government has
arrayed against itself every class in India excepting its own civilian and
military servants, and to these we have only to add, not another class,
but only a small proportion of the mercantile class. With the exception of
some just complaints they had to make as regards charges[67] that had been
unjustly thrust on the Indian Exchequer, and which I myself made in the
"Times" and elsewhere long before the Congress was even thought of, the
agitators of the Congress had no serious grounds to go upon. But who can
say that now? Up till lately there was no cause for discontent. India has
never been more prosperous, and has never shown greater, or nearly as
great signs of progress, as she has within the last twenty years. Not only
has the demand for labour been abundant, but in many instances it has
exceeded the supply. The rates of wages had largely increased, and were
producing, as I have previously shown, an accelerated quickening of
attention to the development of the resources of the soil. All that the
country wanted was to be let alone, and if the financial conditions
required increased taxation, no agitator could have successfully
complained of this, seeing that it could only have been imposed on account
of that cheapening of silver which has been one of the great causes
(railways were the other) of the increased prosperity which all classes
have enjoyed in recent years. But, if the Go