Gold, Sport, and Coffee Planting in Mysore | Page 8

both. If Ceylon establishes a mint, tea-planters there will have advantages over their rivals in India.
Coffee planters of India and Ceylon will he prejudicially affected in their competition with silver-using countries. Evil effects of the measure on the trade, manufactures, and railways of India.
The measure rotten from financial, political, and economical points of view.
The Viceroy and the supporters of the measure have admitted that it must be injurious to the producers of India. Sir William Hunter's admirable survey of the former and present financial condition of India.
The Viceroy has publicly declared that cheap silver has acted as "a stimulus" to the progress of India.
The unfair action of Lord Herschell's Committee. Not a single representative of the producing classes examined. But the majority of witnesses were dead against the monetary policy of the Government. The Currency Committee reported against the weight of the evidence. The most important points not inquired into at all by the Committee.
The Indian Government and Currency Committee financially panic-stricken, and in dread of effects of repeal of Sherman Act. The financial condition not such as to warrant panic. Taxational resources not exhausted.
Sir William Hunter's statement proves that the financial conditions were full of hope. The dread that the repeal of the Sherman Act might reduce rupee to 1s. Examination of the subject on that supposition.
By a rate of 1s. a rupee the Government would lose about seven millions on its home remittances, and the people of India gain fourteen millions on their exports. Mr. Gladstone's Government adopted Home Rule Bill, and Currency Measure in one year. Both forced on by tyrannical action. Gladstonian action as to Opium Commission equally tyrannical.
The monetary measure a policy of protection for the benefit of the silver-using countries that compete with India.
Some of the evils the measure, if successful, must cause. The Indian Finance Minister declared that "it ought not to be attempted unless under the pressure of necessity." No necessity arisen. An independent body wanted to efficiently check the Government. The Duke of Wellington's opinion.
India and Mexico compared. Mr. Carden's Consular Report.
Cheap silver advantageous to Mexico. The losses to the Government and railways which arise from gold payments are, comparatively speaking, a fixed quantity, while the gain to the people from cheap silver, produces consequential benefits far beyond reach of calculation. These remarks equally applicable to India. Wanted, a Government that can see this.

CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY.--PROGRESS IN MYSORE.
As I now turn my thoughts back to the year 1855, when, being then in my eighteenth year, I sailed for India to seek my fortunes in the jungles of Mysore, it is difficult to believe that the journey is still the same, or that India is still the same country on the shores of which I landed so long ago. But after all, as a matter of fact, the journey is, practically speaking, not the same, and still less is India the same India which I knew in 1855. For the route across Egypt, which was then partly by rail, partly by water, and partly across the desert in transits, the bumping of which I even now distinctly remember, has been exchanged for the Suez Canal, and the frequent steamers with their accelerated rate of speed have altered all the relations of distances, and on landing at Bombay the traveller of 1855 would now find it difficult to recognize the place. For then there were the old fort walls and ditches, and narrow streets filled with a straggling throng of carts and people, while now the fort walls and ditches no longer exist, and the traveller drives into a city with public buildings, broad roads and beautiful squares and gardens, that would do credit to any capital in the world, and sees around him all the signs of advanced and advancing civilization. Then as, perhaps, he views the scene from the Tower of the Elphinstone College, and looks down on the beautiful city, on the masts of the shipping lying in the splendid harbour, and on the moving throngs of people to whom we have given peace and order, what thoughts must fill his mind! And what thoughts further, as on turning to view the scene without the city he sees on one side of it the tall chimneys of the numerous mills which have sprung up in recent times, and which tell of the conjunction of English skill and capital with the cheap hand-labour of the East--a combination that is destined, and at no very distant period ahead, to produce remarkable effects. But I must not wander here into the consideration of matters to which I shall again have occasion to refer when I come to remark on the wonderful progress made in India in recent years owing to the introduction of English skill and capital, and shall now briefly describe my route