Democratic Sentinel, Volume 12, Number 39, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 October 1888 — THE MAGNITUDE OF INDIA. [ARTICLE]

THE MAGNITUDE OF INDIA.

Ancient Nations, Great Cities, and an Enormous Population. For eighty years, at least, says the Fortnightly Review, writers have endeavored to bring home to Englishmen the vastness of India, but, so far as ean be perceived, they have failed. The Briton reads what they says, learns up their fingers, and understands their descriptions, but fails, for all his labor, to realize what India is—a continent as large as Europe west of the-Vistula, and with 30,000,000 more people, fuller of ancient nations, of great cities, of varieties of civilization, of armies, nobilities, priesthoods, organizations for every conceivable purpose from the spreading of a great religion down to systematic murder. There are twice as many Bengalese as there are Frenchmen, the Hindostanees, properly so called, outnumber the whites in the United States; the Mahrattas would fill Spain, the people of the Punjab with Scinde are double the population of Turkey, and I have named but four of the more silent divisions. Everything is on the same bewildering scale. The fighting people of India, whose males are as big as ourselves, as brave as ourselves, and more regardless of death than ourselves, number at least 120,000,000, equal to Gibbon’s calculation of the population of the Roman Empire. There are 400,000 trained brown soldiers in native service, of whom we hear perhaps once in ten years, and at least 2,000,000 men who think their proper profession is arms, who w ; ould live by, arms, if they could, and of whom we in England never hear a word. If the Prussian conscription were applied in India we could, without counting recruits or landwehr, or any force not' summoned in time of peace, have 2,500,000 soldiers actually in barracks, with 700,000 recruits coming up every year—a force with which not only Asia but the world might be subdued. There are tens of milions of prosperous peasants whose hoardings make India the grand absorbent of the precious metals; tens of millions of peasants beside whose poverty fellahs, or Sicilians, or Connaught men are rich; millions of artisans, ranging from the men who build palaces to the men who, nearly naked and almost without tools, do the humblest work of the potter. Every occupation which exists in Europe also exists in India. The industry of the vast continent never ceases, for India, with all her teaming multitudes, with a population in places packed beyond European precedent, imports nothing either to eat or drink, and, but for Europeans, would import nothing whatever. She is sufficient to herself for eveiy thing save silver. Amid these varied masses, these 250,000,000 whose mere descriptions would fill volumes, the tide of life flows as vigorously as in Europe. There is as much labor, as much contention, as much ambition, as much crime, as much variety of careers, hopes, fears, and hatreds. It is still possible to a moneyless Indian to become vizier of a dynasty older than history, or finance minister of a new prince whose personal fortune in hard cash is double that of the late Emneror William, or abbot of a monastery richer than Glastonbury ever was, owner of an estate that covers a county, head of a firm whose transactions may vie Avith those of the Barings and Bleichroders. One man, Jute Persliad by name, fed and transported the army which conquered the Punjab.