to _four times the amount of the
annual rent of their lands_. They have also a great variety of crops;
and it is very rare that more than one or two of them fail, or are
considerably affected, the same season. If they fail in one district
or province, the deficiency is very easily supplied to a people who
have equivalents to give for the produce of another. The sea,
navigable rivers, fine roads, all are open and ready at all times for
the transport of the superabundance of one quarter to supply the
deficiencies of another. In India, the reverse of all this is
unhappily to be found; more than three-fourths of the whole
population are engaged in the cultivation of the land, and depend
upon its annual returns for subsistence.[16] The farmers and
cultivators have none of their stock equal in value to more than
_half the amount of the annual rent of their lands_.[17] They have a
great variety of crops; but all are exposed to the same accidents,
and commonly fail at the same time. The autumn crops are sown in June
and July, and ripen in October and November; and, if seasonable
showers do not fall during July, August, and September, all fail. The
spring crops are sown in October and November, and ripen in March;
and, if seasonable showers do not happen to fall during December or
January, all, save what are artificially irrigated, fail.[18] If they
fail in one district or province, the people have few equivalents to
offer for a supply of land produce from any other. Their roads are
scarcely anywhere passable for wheeled carriages at _any season_, and
nowhere _at all seasons_--they have nowhere a navigable canal, and
only in one line a navigable river.

Their land produce is conveyed upon the backs of bullocks, that move
at the rate of six or eight miles a day, and add one hundred per
cent. to the cost of every hundred miles they carry it in the best
seasons, and more than two hundred in the worst.[19] What in Europe
is felt merely as a _dearth_, becomes in India, under all these
disadvantages, a scarcity, and what is there a _scarcity_ becomes
here a _famine_. Tens of thousands die here of starvation, under
calamities of season, which in Europe would involve little of
suffering to any class. Here man does everything, and he must have
his daily food or starve. In England machinery does more than three-
fourths of the collective work of society in the production,
preparation, and distribution of man's physical enjoyments, and i