OCR Rendition - approximate

178 IDEAS ABOUT INDIA. would be directly touched by it. If it were possible to levy import duties and a tax on incomes, the agricultural poor might be relieved, but hardly in any other way. I offer these suggestions for what they may be considered worth. The prime measure, however, of agricultural reform, on which all native India seems agreed, is the granting of a permanent revenue settlement to every province, such as was ninety years ago granted to Bengal, and limiting thereby the preposterous claim of the Government to all ownership in land. This right of State ownership has worked everywhere, or nearly everywhere, its full natural result of impoverishment and disaffection ; and Bengal, which has been exempted from its action, has alone remained prosperous. It is impossible for me in the limits of space imposed upon me to argue out this great question here. But I4intend to return to it on a future occasion; and it will be sufficient for me now to say, that the -value placed by native opinion on a fixed revenue settlement is the cause of the strong agitation actually in progress against the Bengal Rent Bill. This measure, in spite of Lord Ripon's immense popularity, is decidedly unpopular, and native politicians see in it a first blow struck at the prosperity of the only province which has hitherto escaped the universal drain of wealth into the Imperial coffers; nor am I without reason to believe that so it was intended, not by Lord Ripon, but by some of his advisers. At present, however, I only state the fact that a permanent settlement of the land revenue is urgently demanded by all India. To sum up, Indian economists are in favour first of import duties on manufactured goods such as are imposed in Australia and other colonies ; secondly, of a shifting of the financial burden as far as possible from the agricultural poor to the commercial rich, and thirdly, of a renunciation by the Government of its indefinite claims upon the land. These views will probably be considered preposterous in England, where we have cut and4 dry principles of economy in contradiction to them. But it is certain that all native opinion is against us, and that our present system is bringing India very near to ruin. Surely, there must be something wrong in a state of things which has produced the spectacle of a Government, after having absorbed to itself the whole land rent of a country, still finding itself constantly in financial shifts. The Government of India, as landlord, does practically nothing for the land. All is squandered and spent on other things ; and the people who -till the soil are yearly lecoming poorer and more hopeless. This I call the agricultural danger, and if it is not one I again ask where the flaw in my reasoning lies. At least it is a reasoning held by ninety-nine out of every hundred educated and intelligent Indians. MEASUREMENT OF CHARACTER. I no not plead guilty to taking a shallow view of human nature, when I propose to apply, as it were, a foot-rule to its heights and depths. The powers of man are finite, and if finite they are not too large for measurement. Those persons may justly be accused of shallowness of view, who do not discriminate a wide range of differences, but quickly lose all sense of proportion, and rave about infinite heights and unfathomable depths, and use such like expressions which are not true and betray their incapacity. Examiners are not, I believe, much stricken with the sense of awe and infinitude when they apply their foot-rules to the intellectual performances of the candidates whom they examine; neither do I see any reason why we should be awed at the thought of examining our fellow creatures as best we may, in respect to other faculties than intellect. On the contrary, I think it anomalous that the art of measuring intellectual faculties should have become highly developed, while that of dealing with other qualities should have been little practised or even considered. The use of measuring man in his entirety, is to be justified by exactly the same arguments as those by which any special examinations are justified, such as those in classics or mathematics ; namely, that every measurement tests, in some particulars, the adequacy of the previous education, and contributes to show the efficiency of the man as a human machine, at the time it was made. It is impossible to be sure of the adequacy in every respect of the rearing of a man, or of his total efficiency, unless he has been measured in character and physique, as well as in intellect. A wise man desires this knowledge for his own use, and for the same reason that he takes stock from time to time of his finances. It teaches him his position among his fellows, and whether he is getting on or falling back, and he shapes his ambitions and conduct accordingly. " Know thyself " is an ancient phrase of proverbial philosophy, and I wish to discuss ways by which its excellent direction admits of being better followed. The art of measuring various human faculties now occupies the attention of many inquirers in this and other countries. Shelves full of memoirs have been written in Germany alone, on the discriminative powers of the various senses. New -processes of inquiry are yearly invented, and it seems as though there was a general light-nirP- up of the sky in front. of the path of the anthropometric experimenter, which betokens the approaching dawn of a new and interesting science. -Can we discover landmarks in character to serve as bases for a survey, or is it altogether too indefinite and fluctuating WILFRID SCAWEN BLUNT.