ted enormously by the high price of the staple during
the American war. Silver was poured into the country (literally) in
_crores_ (millions sterling), and cultivators who previously had as much
as they could do to live, suddenly found themselves possessed of sums
their imagination had never dreamt of. What to do with their wealth, how
to spend their cash was their problem. Having laden their women and
children with ornaments, and decked them out in expensive _sarees_, they
launched into the wildest extravagance in the matter of carts and
trotting bullocks, going even as far as silver-plated yokes and harness
studded with silver mountings. Even silver tyres to the wheels became
the fashion. Twelve and fifteen rupees were eagerly paid for a pair of
trotting bullocks. Trotting matches for large stakes were common; and
the whole rural population appeared with expensive red silk umbrellas,
which an enterprising English firm imported as likely to gratify the
general taste for display. Many took to drink, not country liquors such
as had satisfied them previously, but British brandy, rum, gin, and even
champagne."

A few pages further on the author tells us of the ruin by debt and
drunkenness of the families which had indulged in these extravagances.
The fact is that to keep for to-morrow what is in the hand to-day
demands imagination, purpose and self-discipline, which the Hindu
working man has not. He is the product of centuries, during which his
rulers made the life of to-morrow too uncertain, while his climate made
the life of to-day too easy. No outward applications will alone cure his
poverty, because it is a symptom of an inward disease.

When a healthier state of mind shall awaken an appetite for comforts and
conveniences, and create necessities unknown to his fathers, then
degrading poverty will no longer be possible as the common lot. And it
was to be hoped that the British rule would in time have this happy
effect. Tennant evidently thought that it had begun to do so even in his
day. "The existence," he says, "of a regular British Government is but a
recent circumstance; yet in the course of a few years complete security
has been afforded to all of its dependants; many new manufactures have
been established, many more have been extended to answer the demands of
a larger exportation. We have therefore conferred upon our Asiatic
subjects an increase of security, of industry and of produce, and of
consequent greater m