The Port Gibson reveille., 1910-02-24
6
Cattle
Farm"
BY ohar1ea Ferguson

pIS SIS ~ ySs SS yAr sas s&s ss S&SSAS p6S "a
John Stuart Mill said that India il
"England's cattle farm"
He meant of oourst, that England
j keeps India as farmers keep COWS
not for the good of the COWS, but
{ for the sake of the milk.
The other day it was announced
that the English had granted to In
dia the embryo of a constitution. A
minority of the Viceroy's Council and
Of the various provincial legislatures
Is to be made up Of persons elected
! by the people-only nobody must be
elected that the English don't ap
prove Of.
Like the Cars personally conduct.
ed Dumas, the representative of bod
les of India will be carefully safe
guarded from the intrusion of those
that really represent the governed.
There is a growing party in India
that has serious objections to the way
the farm is being run. Therefore the
English Government, in it's fresh
constitutional arrangements, has ia
ken pains that this party-called
'the New Nationalist Movement =
shall, so far as legislatures are con-
cerned, continue to be as dumb as
driven cattle are.
Said Lord Curzon, the late Viceroy
turning a fine oratorical period at
the great. Delhi Durbar in 1901
Powerful empires fourished here
while the Englishmen were still
wandering painted in the woods, and
while the British colonies were a
wilderness and jungle. India has
left a deeper mark upon the history,
the philosophy and the religion OF
mankind than any other terrestrial
unit in the universe"
Yet. naturally enough, the English
doubt the capacity of the Indian peo-
pie for self-government.
The English came to India at mo-
ment when the mighty Mogul Empire
was breaking up-a moment of in
ternal weakness and dissension. And
she has done her best to perpetuate
that weakness.
Still. it is notorious that the best
local governments in the empire are
those in which the natives have the
freest hand.
In the nearly autonomous States OF
Baroda and Mysore the people are
far more prosperous and progressive
than in the States where the Eng
lish have their own way.
Consider, for example, the matter
of education. Mysore, it is said
spends per capita for schools three
times as much as British India.
In Baroda education is universal,
gratuitous and compulsory. While
throughout British India the school
ing is of the crudest-and even so.
the spelling book reaches only one
child in twenty.
Thus a century and a half of Brit
ism tutelage has not improved the
natural gifts of any Asiatic-for self
government.
England means well, no doubt. And
is scrupulously conscientious in its
administrative arrangements. There
is no graft But the cows are milked
to death.
There is no t7ibute-of the kind
that the Romans were wont to wiring
from their proconsular dependencies.
For the worlds conscience will not
permit the cDau looting Of provinces
nowadays.
Nevertheless, India is Englands
cattle farm-and the farming pays
prodigious revcuues.
India is not British colony; it
is an ensIaved State.
English nabobs grow rich there.
And the Iudian people indescrib- |
ably poor.
There are millions, of people in In |
dia who have never in their lives had
a Square neal''-but they all pay
the gruelling salt tax, just as if they
had the Cruel.
The British taxes amount to
third of the average income, and this
comes hard, seeing that the average
income is about six dollars a year.
India is as fertile as the United
States. And food is cheap there,
even in famine years-if one only
have money to buy.
Famine in India is largely an i'm
ported English fashion. 1t is coming
to be more and more the rage.
In the second quarter Of the last
century half million people got
themselves officially registered as
starved to death; in the third quar-
ter there were five million, and in
the last quarter twenty-five million.
In 1850 the average income was
twice what it is now.
India was once great manufac-
turing country. It supplied medieval
with fancy goods. The Eng
lish have destroyed these manufac-
tories by SO adjusting the excise and
tariff taxes as to make India an ex-
cellent market for the made stuffs of
Leeds and Sheffield.
The Indian Government is the
most expensive in the world. 1t
furnishes lucrative posts for multi
tudes of the English gentry, who
might not otherwise be able to earn
a living.
India is the general rendezvous
and training ground for British sol
diers. The major part of the army
Of the whole British Empire is bill
letted upon a people whose average
income is-as has been said-six dol
lars a year.