should distinctly recognise. Who, then, are the ratepayers in those districts where distress specially prevails, where coal-mines are unworked, where iron foundries are silent and furnaces blown out, where factories are shut up, where half-time prevails and spreads week by week-and finally, where strikes and lock-outs are the order of the day, and workmen by thousands persist in resisting any reduction of wages, and refuse 208. a week because they cannot obtain 228.? These ratepayers consist mainly of three classes-the retail tradespeople, the shopkeepers, whose profits have been deplorably cut down or swept away by the prevalent distress and the consequent curtailment of their custom, and who, moreover, are sadly impoverished by the credit they are virtually forced to give, and which frequently eventuates in hopeless loss;—the mill-owners, the iron founders, the colliery proprietors, and other captains of industry,' whose gains have, for some years, been exchanged for losses, and who see their property -the result of a life of toil-rapidly drained away, and ruin perhaps staring them in the face;-and the owners of cottage-property, who can obtain no rent from the occupiers, who indeed are often the proximate causes or instruments of the disastrous scene.

'

Now let us sum up all these facts, none of which will be denied, and which I believe to be stated without undue colouring or exaggeration, and draw from them a succinct conception of the position of which they are the salient features. According to the existing law, or to the usual understanding and the practical administration of that law sanctioned and sustained by the prevailing sympathies of the community, all labouring families, however numerous-all the working classes in whatever branch of industry-are entitled to be maintained at the expense of the property of the locality in which they happen to reside as soon as they become undeniably destitute or unable to earn a livelihood for themselves, however that destitution may originally have been caused or aggravated, and however prolonged the period during which it may continue. At the same time the vast extent and variety of these industries, their singular complexity and close and intricate connections, render it possible (and by no means infrequent) for disturbance in one branch to entail stagnation in others, and perhaps for a few scores or hundreds of dissatisfied artisans indirectly to deprive many thousands of their usual employment and their daily bread—and in such a fashion or under such peculiar circumstances as to render it practically impossible to ignore or refuse their claims to gratuitous subsistence out of the income or the earnings of their neighbours; nay, further, that it has become feasible, and not wholly unexampled, for special classes of artisans, by dexterous and well-understood if not openly avowed combination, so to assist each other vicissim in their conflicts with their employers as to render resistance on the part of these employers enormously diffi

cult, costly, and perhaps ruinous, however righteous and even obligatory this resistance may have become. So that, strictly and practically speaking, those disputes between masters and men about the division of the wealth created by their joint exertions, which have of late been so frequent, so angry, and so obstinate, are carried on under conditions intrinsically and manifestly unfair; inasmuch as not only are the masters heavily weighted in the conflict by the enormous costliness of their fixed plant, but are further weighted (often actually, always potentially) by the liability of having to furnish their antagonists with the means of continuing the strife ad libitum. It is as though the defenders of a beleaguered fortress were compelled to furnish their assailants with powder and ball when their own supplies fell short; or, to vary the similitude, as if the besiegers were bound to send daily supplies of food and ammunition into the city to enable it to hold out the longer-modes of proceeding, either of which would be regarded as alike grotesquely inequitable. It is scarcely too much to say that the present state of the law and practice virtually give to discontented, grasping, or ambitious artisans-so far at least as the necessaries of life are concerned -a command over the property of their fellow-citizens which has a sinister resemblance and approach to the pretensions of Socialism; and this at a time when those very artisans are perversely engaged in sapping the foundations of that property and waging war against the prosperity of those fellow-citizens. And we have not been left without warning how possible it is, not only on the Continent but even in sober England, for dreamers, demagogues, and agitators-often rather shallow than distinctly designing or ill-disposed-to organise the masses when distressed and unemployed, and direct their hostility against the most firmly established institutions of the land.

As it is, no doubt, the actuality of the position-so undeniably inequitable and even monstrous, when thus laid before the world in its simple nakedness-is materially mitigated by one important consideration, viz. that the sustenance legally claimable by and commonly supplied to the destitute is much below what they could have earned by regular industry, and therefore would never be grudged where the destitution resulted from inevitable circumstances and not from their voluntary act. But, on the other hand, the position of the employers is strengthened, it would seem, enormously, by the consideration, equally relevant and equally notorious, that they never reduce wages and thereby give occasion to the struggles in question, unless when they have worked without profit or at an actual loss for considerable periods of time-that is, have long handed over to the operatives the whole or more than the whole of the joint earnings of their workmen and themselves. Nevertheless, when we have given both these facts the full consideration which is their due, the problem which it behoves the public to ponder

and, if possible, to probe and solve, while there is time, remains grave, complicated, and imminent. I have been more bent on stating it than on attempting, here at least,2 to offer a solution. Its gravity and its complexity will be obvious as soon as it is fully realised. Its proximity will, I think, be plain to all who have watched and studied adequately the lessons which the very serious industrial distresses and conflicts of 1878 were suited to convey. These are not yet over, nor are their lessons yet laid to heart; and the warnings they are fitted to convey will be most adequately comprehended by those who realise at once the increasing influence of the operative classes in the political arena, and the warm sympathy which, in spite of their grievous misguidance and their perverse mistakes, their condition still commands among the thinking and stirring classes of the nation.

W. R. GREG.

* I cannot but think, however, that some useful suggestions to guide our consideration of this subject may be gleaned from two very interesting papers that have recently appeared in this Review. The first describes the system which prevails in France in dealing with the poor and destitute, from which we may gather how completely our neighbours across the Channel seem to evade the special difficulty I have pointed out in these pages as well as some others, by starting from a sounder principle. They have had, and still have no doubt, embarrassments of their own, some of them grave enough; but the particular question regarding relief to the families of workmen on strike seems never to have arisen, nor to be even contemplated as possible. The second article, on National Insurance,' pub. lished in the November number, though open to many objections and requiring to be carefully pondered, will, I believe, when thoroughly matured and cleared of some apparent omissions and defects, be found to contain the outlines of a scheme which may open a way out of many of our graver difficulties.

GA

buTHE BANKRUPTCY OF INDIA.

FIVE months have passed since an attempt was made to show, in the October number of this Review, that if a large amount of official evidence and the testimony of facts and figures are deserving of credit, the people of India, as a whole, are getting poorer and poorer under our administration. Our public works, on which such enormous sums of money were expended, have been, and even still are, carried on at a dead loss to the population; and the unfortunate tax-payers are too frequently forced to borrow at usurious rates to pay the interest which the Government has guaranteed on these unprofitable investments. This by itself is a very serious matter where the bulk of the people are so miserably poor. Famines have proved conclusively that the gravest poverty exists in almost every district. During the past twenty years they have been very numerous, and the plan which is now adopted, of making the poorer classes of one province pay to keep alive the mass of the famine-stricken people in another— this process being reversed when the former suffer in turn-cannot fail in the end to bring about a terrible catastrophe. For there is grave reason to believe that the soil of India is undergoing steady deterioration in many districts, owing to a variety of causes. The liability to famine is therefore increasing whilst the power to support dearth is becoming less. Consequently droughts that formerly produced only a scarcity, now result in wholesale sacrifice of population and animals.

As to taxation, it has undoubtedly increased largely within the last twenty years, and in the opinion of men of unquestioned authority is now so heavy upon the great mass of the inhabitants, that any additions to the present burdens would not only be harmful to the people, but positively dangerous to the continuance of our rule. Above all, the constant drain from India due to a foreign administration, on account of the enormous home charges and excessive cost of European agency, renders the accumulation of capital almost out of the question, and this—the gravest and, from some points of view, most hopeless feature in the whole story of our connection with the country-is growing at an increasingly rapid rate. Such, in brief, is a summary of the situation. A very poor people heavily taxed in proportion to their means, suffering constantly from scarcities which

the lack of savings converts into famine, a deteriorated soil, unprofitable public works, and over all a constant drain of tribute to a foreign state almost sufficient of itself to account for the growing impoverishment.

There have now been printed three official answers to the paper which contained these statements, and gave the evidence on which they were based. One of these, by Sir Erskine Perry, was published in the December number of this Review, another by Mr. John Morley, written upon materials furnished by Sir John Strachey and other leading Indian officials, appeared in the Fortnightly Review for the same month, and a third official statement was put forward anonymously in Fraser's Magazine, likewise in December. Now it is at least certain that we have in these three articles the full force of the official case. Sir Erskine Perry is a member of the Indian Council, and has been connected with India, in one capacity or another, for nearly forty years. Sir John Strachey is the present Finance Minister, and he has risen to that important office through all the different grades of the Indian Civil Service. 'D.' the writer in Fraser, is likewise an official. As, also, two full months elapsed, there was plenty of time to lay the India Office under contribution to prove conclusively that increasing prosperity which would completely overthrow the whole argument on the other side.

But whatever else has been shaken, certainly the general impoverishment of the people is admitted only too fully.

It is worthy of remark also that not one of these writers touches the origin and history of famines, save in the most perfunctory way. If, as I contend is the case, the last twenty years have been chiefly remarkable for the number and the severity of the famines in various parts of India-if, as is admitted by Sir John Strachey himself, the cost of providing against these recurrent misfortunes must be regarded as a permanent charge against Indian financeif they impoverish and weaken not only the population which they decimate, but those portions of the country which contribute to support the sufferers, surely it was the business of one at least of these official apologists to place on record his opinion as to the unprecedented frequency of these terrible events. What has Sir Erskine Perry to say to this? Not a word. What explanation does Mr. John Morley offer, in his forcible and lucid style, of so fatal an outcome of our system of government? The subject does not interest either himself or his official clientèle. At any rate, not two sentences are devoted to the matter. D.' is equally reticent, though he piles up figures on minor points with wearisome assiduity.

Surely then we have here a very significant and sinister omission. Consider this: Although eleven millions sterling are now put as the cost of the famine in Southern India; although the Government, when it appreciated the facts, strained every nerve