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20 ECONOMIC INQUIRIES AND STUDIES
speedy alteration in the character of the people, the pro-
spect seems inevitably to be that in India from decade to
decade larger and larger masses of the semi-pauperized
or wholly pauperized, the landless classes, as Sir James
Caird calls them in the Famine Commission report,
will grow up, requiring State subventions to feed them,
and threatening all attempts to reform Indian finance,
while raising social and political difficulties of the most
dangerous kind. It seems certain, then, that India for
many years to come will be an increasingly danghous
problem for our statesmen to deal with-the more
dangerous perhaps because any change in the character
of the people, bringing with it increased energy of pro-
duction and increased strength of character altogether,
will also bring with it a rise in the scale of living, tend-
ing to make the masses discontented instead of sub-
missive to their lot. Whatever course events may take,
our rule in India must apparently for generations be-
come a problem of increasing difficulty and complexity.
The problem is analogous to what seems to lie before
a government like that of Russia, with this difference,
that the government is in Russia a native institution,
whereas in India it is that of an alien nation governing
a host of subject races.
I sh:,!.ll be told, perhaps, that if statistics suggest
problems like this, they are only making us uncom-
fortable before the time: the evils apprehended are
purely speculative. But in the case of India this can-
not be said. The actual creation of a famine fund is a
proof that the evil is imminent. The fund is created
in order to secure that large numbers of people are
kept alive in times of famine, millions being in this
way semi-pauperized. The prospect is that before long
there may be millions to be kept alive in non-famine
and famine years alike, people without land or means
of living, and without the possibility of being employed
as labourers. Thus the difference between the present
condition of things and what seems imminent, unless,
as I have stated, there is an unlooked-for change in