t
stands in no need of this daily food to sustain its powers; they are
independent of the seasons; the water, fire, air, and other elemental
powers which they require to render them subservient to our use are
always available in abundance.

This machinery is the great assistant of the present generation,
provided for us by the wisdom and industry of the past; wanting no
food itself, it can always provide its proprietors with the means of
purchasing what they require from other countries, when the harvests
of their own fail. When calamities of season deprive men of
employment for a time in tillage, they can, in England, commonly find
it in other branches of industry, because agricultural industry forms
so small a portion of the collective industry of the nation; and
because every man can, without prejudice to his status in society,
take to what branch of industry he pleases. But, when these
calamities of season throw men out of employment in tillage for a
time in India, they cannot find it in any other branch, because
agricultural industry forms so very large a portion of the collective
industry of every part of the country; and because men are often
prevented by the prejudices of caste from taking to that which they
can find.[20]

In societies constituted like that of India the trade of the corn-
dealer is more essentially necessary for the welfare of the community
than in any other, for it is among them that the superabundance of
seasons of plenty requires most to be stored up for seasons of
scarcity; and if public functionaries will take upon themselves to
seize such stores, and sell them at their own arbitrary prices,
whenever prices happen to rise beyond the rate which they in their
short-sighted wisdom think just, no corn-dealer will ever collect
such stores. Hitherto, whenever grain has become dear at any military
or civil station, we have seen the civil functionaries urged to
prohibit its egress--to search for the hidden stores, and to coerce
the proprietors to the sale in all manner of ways; and, if they do
not yield to the ignorant clamour, they are set down as indifferent
to the sufferings of their fellow creatures around them, and as
blindly supporting the worst enemies of mankind in the worst species
of iniquity.

If those who urge them to such measures are asked whether
silversmiths or linendrapers, who should be treated in the same
manner as they wish the corn-dealers to be treated, would ever
collec