N.B.—Seven-eighths of the traffic still go by a very bad navigation of 470 miles, three times the distance by rail, and taking six weeks on an average.
Is not the Government of India too much like aDispensary Government. dispensary, which does all that man can do to cure when too late to do anything to prevent?
IV.
These facts speak loud: I have no need to add myAre we to pay out of current revenue? poor words. He who runs may read.
What is the answer given by modern 'financial policy' or impolicy? That we must only do what we can pay for out of current revenue, or at least what will pay for itself at once.
[Instead of interest enough not being taken in India, too much, it would seem, is taken—an ignorant, unsound interest. So much the worse for India.]
It seems like going back 500 years: to the times when our beds were our banks, and we took out of our old stocking, hid in the mattress or in a hole in the floor, enough for a miserable sustenance day by day, careless of whether we starved or died 100 days hence.
Christ himself tells us not to bury our talent in a napkin, but to put it out to interest.
'Sound Indian finance' appears to be what Plato calls 'wanting to have money safely kept and not used,' or 'justice useful' and 'money useless.'
Is it not as though we said: It is 'unsound financialOr by loan? policy' to live unless you have money in your stock-