I should be
delighted to hear that the amount to be spent in India this year was
to be three times what it promises to be. I do not say to be spent by
Government, for to this there are objections, altogether irrespective
of the question of the amount of labour available.

The first effect of this enlarged expenditure would no doubt be to
raise the wages of labour. This would be in itself a blessing, for
which I should thank God.

But its second and more permanent effect would be to increase the
number of the class of skilled labourers, which the patient, sober,
and ingenious population of India is fitted to supply in so great
abundance, if due encouragement be given; and further, to drive
capitalists to the substitution of machinery for brute human labour to
a greater extent than is the practice now.

The ultimate result would, therefore, be to render the existing
stock of labour doubly productive; the fruits of this increased
productiveness being divided in proportions more or less equitable
between the labourers and capitalists.

I believe that the Railway expenditure is already exercising a
sensible influence of this salutary character. Bodies of navvies are
becoming attached to the companies, who follow them from place to
place, and render them comparatively independent of the local supply
of labour; and above all, by calling forth native talent in the form
of skilled labour, they are imparting that kind of education which
will, I believe, do more for the elevation of the masses than any
other which we can provide in India.

* * * * *

_To H. S. Maine, Esq._

Camp, Hodul: February 25, 1863.

[Sidenote: Special legislation.]

While I entirely concur in the opinion that the _onus probandi_ rests,
and rests heavily too, on the proposers of exceptional or particular
legislation, an assumption runs through ------'s letter to you which I
am by no means prepared to admit. He assumes that in such matters as
those with which we are now dealing, this _particular legislation_
must be in the exclusive interest of the landlord, and calculated to
increase in his hand powers which may be abused, and the abuse of
which is restrained by moral influences which operate less strongly
where landlords and tenants are of different races than where the