The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1878-09-28

The Hindustani sepoy requires daily
to keep him in health on duty: Thirty
two ounces of wheat flour, two ounces
OF clarified butter, four ounces OF peas,
four ounces ofvegetables, one-half ounce
OF salt and pepper, with an occasional
pint of milk. A Bengalee laborer re-
quires the same, substituting rice for
wheat flour. What does he get? AS has
been said, usually one meal day only,
of little rice, with what is called veg
etable curry-that is six or eight ounces
of pot-herbs, cabbage, etc., and one
half ounce of oil-for the whole family.
And this was the ordinary daily food.
Is it any wonder that, when bad wear
comes, these poor creatures are stricken
down in large numbers, and that large
numbers die? 1t would be a wonder if
itwere notso. Prosperity among the Ben
galees is believed to mean two or three
cooked meals of coarse rice, about a
pound day, and dhdH. In the best of
times vegetables or fish curry are added.
But the salt tax makes salt-a necessa-
ry of life to vegetarians even more than
to us meat-eaters-so dear that imper-
fectly cured fish is often the cause of
disease. And every year tons of fish
are wasted for want of cheap salt in the
midst of people starving for want of it.
Fish, mere drug in Bengal, is rare
luxury. In Dude the cultivators are
even worse off than in Western Bengal
Eastern Bengal is somewhat better off
now. The ryots have found their power.
In the irrigated districts of Sind, this is
the highest prosperity of the good COM
Portable Mohammedan ryot; a pound of
flour, or the most comfortable may
even have two, one for dinner and one
for supper-that is luXury-clarifed
butter, salt, little chopped onion or
chill. He makes hole in the flour,
kneads it all up with his hands, makes
little fire and cooks it. This is not
such bad diet; but then he has nothing
else. He Is not so desperately in the
hands of the money-lender as is the
Deccan cultivator. This is prosperity
this is. Now compare these with the
English laborer. And first, the Hindoos
here spoken of use no liquor as a bever-
age. could point out town in En-,
gland where men can earn wages OF
ten shillings a day, and drink it all
away. Ay, and the women, too. A
woman said, Il think no more of my
money than of flea in a churchyard. .
They are not a penny the better for it
either in clothes, lodging, bedding, OF
any of the decencies, comforts, or true
interests of life. But we will speak, no
of such as these, who have no future
but the work-house, the prison, the
grave, in this world, as one of their owl
selves said, and what in the next? and
who might have, oh! how good future
if they knew their real interests W.
will speak Of the sober English laborer
the family man, with the gallon of bee
a week the half pound of tea, sugar
tobacco, untaXed salt, good water, ant
the rest, and the Hindoo living on in
ferior grains for the most part, and too
little of them; Il little vegetable curry
little salt-too little-and his very
salt, it has been said, is taxed The tal
now amounts to f7 a ton, the salt itsel
being worth twelve shillings and si2
pence a ton in India. The people max,
earth-salt," by washing the earth anC
boiling the food in the salt water, ant
for this miserable product they are pun
ished. Manufacturers are strangled b.
,, the tax on salt, such manufactures a
bleaching, making of glass, glazing
extraction of metals from ores, satin!
of provisions, agriculture and the feed
, ing of animals, are hindered and liv,
stock die of disease from want of salt
, Fish is ruined by being cured with earth
salt. The food of the poor require
more salt than the better diet of tn
rich but no man could live withou
a nine pounds of salt per annum. Tn
smuggling of salt was enormous, an,
, necessitated great increase of Police
: A tower commands the salt works, oc
! cupied by policeman all day. Moat
!, surround the works, patrolled by pc
! licemen all night; workmen are searche,
: to prevent them from carrying off sal
in their pockets. The French gabeH
, was ga law of CONSUMPTION against tn
well-being of man, a law entailino mis-
cry on unborn generations" Can Indi
q become prosperous under it ?-MiS
. Nightingale, IN Nineteenth Century.
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