The shaddock, the plantain, and the jack-fruit, might be seen growing

within these enclosures, the little walks being spread with a covering

as bright and as curiously variegated as any mosaic pavement, and as

soft as the richest carpet. Moss,—the scarlet, crimson, brown, yellow,

green, moss of Ceylon,—“the jewellers’ sorrow,” as it is there called,

from its beauty surpassing any which the combinations of the lapidary

can produce, was tufted beneath the stems, and spread under the feet.

Instead of thieves of the air, hovering in awe of the scarecrow which

flaps and nods in an English breeze, here were four-footed pilferers

peeping with longing looks from neighbouring tree-tops, or swinging

themselves down from a convenient branch, or pushing out what looked

very like a human hand, to pluck, or to grub up whatever might be within

reach, while the switch of the owner was absent. Instead of the lowing

of cows from the farm-yard, and the cawing of rooks from the rustling

trees, and the cackle of geese from the bare pond on the common, there

was the chit-chat of monkeys, the screaming of parrots, the timid step

of the gazelle among the dry twigs, and the splash of teal and wild

ducks from the pool beneath the mangroves. Alice was obliged to be

content with tracking the deer with her eye; but at the sound of water,

she must turn aside and see whence it came, notwithstanding the fear

with which her father ever approached, or allowed any belonging to him

to approach, water in these swampy wildernesses. Just for one moment he

thought his little daughter might be permitted to look around her; but

when he had penetrated a little farther into the shade, he repented of

his compliance. A fallen tree had intercepted the course of the tiniest

rivulet that ever was seen, and had formed a pool, which had spread and

spread, till it had made an island of one tree after another, and was

now canopied with a green shade, and mantled with the lotus, and fringed

with the bull-rush, from among which rose the cry of waterfowl, and

rainbow visions of gigantic dragon-flies. Notwithstanding all this

beauty, Mr. Carr repented of having penetrated these shades, so heavy

felt the air, and so oppressive was the moist smell of decaying

vegetation. A woman was stooping in the grass, too, whose looks did not

reassure him. Fever or hunger had sunk her cheek, and given such languor

to her gait and gestures as to destroy the grace which co-exists to a

remarkable degree with the indolence of demeanour which distinguishes

the natives of the country.

“That is very like one of grandmama’s hens,” observed Alice, as the

tawny lady disentangled a fowl from the snare in the grass, and held the

fluttering bird against her bosom. “I could almost fancy that was one of

the fowls I used to feed in the poultry-yard.”

“Look at the cock, and you will see the difference,” replied her father.

“See what a lofty, steady flight he takes half way up that tree, whose

lowest branch would allow your grandmama’s sycamore to stand under it.

Look at the gay, glossy plumage of each fowl, and tell me if you ever

saw such on an English cock and hen. These are the jungle-fowl you have

heard me speak of as a great blessing to the natives. I hardly know what

some of them would do for food without jungle-fowl.”

“That woman looks as if she had not been eating any,” observed Alice.

“She looks as if she had had nothing good to eat this long while.”

So thought Mr. Carr; and he stopped to ask her if the trees under which

she dwelt were fruitful? Marana (for it was she) replied, that her

husband and she could generally get cocoa-nuts when they were hungry,

but that they had sickened many times under this diet, during the short

time that they had been in the jungle. Her husband’s strength had

wasted, and she had had the ague; and it was but seldom that she could

snare a fowl.

Did not her husband bring home game, or earn money, or grow rice?

He brought home little game, for want of means to take it. He could not

grow rice, as he had neither land nor seed; and as for earning money,

how was it possible for a stranger to do so, when so many residents were

already unemployed?

“It is true,” replied Mr. Carr, “that the gardens are very full of

people, some of whom make more show of working than do any good; but

still——”

Marana was too courteous to interrupt his speech; but when he had paused

for some time to think, she declared that her husband must not be

supposed to desire to have anything to do with the Challias, or

cinnamon-peelers. Rayo was of the fishermen’s caste.

“Well, you must settle it between you which is the highest caste. If you

differ among yourselves on such a point, a foreigner cannot be expected

to decide it. But why does your husband, being a fisherman, come to live

here? Why does not he try his chance among the pearl fishers?”

“There are too many there, as well as in the gardens,” replied Marana.

“Too many for what?” inquired Alice. “There cannot be more men than

pearls. Why cannot they take it in turns to fish? And then, if only one

pearl was paid to every man, there would be plenty left for the rich men

who do not fish.”

“Ay; but then captains and merchants from many nations would come: and

that is just what our government does not like. A French merchant would

carry away pearls, and leave silk dresses behind him, or money, with

which the Cingalese might lay out rice-fields and cotton plantations, or

stock meadows with cattle. The Dutch captain would go to some

neighbouring countries for grain, and would be paid in pearls. The

Russian would bring leather and corn, and carry away pearls. The

Englishman would bring iron, and clothing of cotton, and a hundred

comforts besides, and would make a profitable bargain of pearls.”

“But this would be a good thing for everybody,—for the ladies who want

more pearls, and for these poor people, who want employment, and food,

and clothing.”

“But the government must then leave off paying as little as it likes to

the pearl-fishers, and being the only party to sell the fair white

pearls of Ceylon to all the beautiful ladies in the world who can afford

to obtain them.”

“But there are plenty of princes and great men who would give away more

pearls as presents, if they could get them; and there must be plenty of

beautiful ladies who cannot get pearls, because they are very dear. I

should like to give these people a boat, and send them out to fish

pearls for some of the ladies, who would give a little less for their

pearls, but quite enough to make Rayo rich,—to buy him a rice-ground.”

“Though the fisher and the buyer are ready, and the boat may soon be

had, Rayo must do without his rice-ground. The government will not give

him leave to sell pearls to anybody but themselves, and they will not

pay enough to buy a rice-ground.”

At the first sound of buying and selling, Marana had disappeared within

the cottage. She came forth again with her right-handed chank, which she

offered to Alice for sale, with a sad and imploring look.

“It is a pity you should sell this shell,” observed Mr. Carr. “It is a

very valuable one, as you ought to know.”

“It is.”

“Then keep it,—it may be a little fortune to you some day.”

“We want rice, and my husband’s clothing is old.”

“Well, food and dress are of more importance than any shell, to be

sure.”

Than any shell but this, Marana thought; but when the idea arose of the

hag, and her threat of leprosy, and of the curse which might now pursue

Rayo, she doubted whether anything could be more important to her than

this charmed shell. Whether the curse had not already lighted upon Rayo,

she was doubtful; for never man was so changed. He was as smooth and

courteous in his manner to strangers as formerly, and as fond of her as

he had ever been; but he was not the indolent, careless, light-hearted

youth he had been when she had first known him on the coast. He did not

work, for there was no work for him to do but to scramble up a tree and

down again when he wanted a cocoa-nut; but he prowled about the

neighbourhood, and seemed to have some purpose which lay nearer to his

heart than his wife. Marana hoped that he was not bewitched or doomed;

but it always alarmed her to meet him unawares in the thicket, and to

see how full his mind was of some thought which the hardships of the day

and the fever of the night could not banish.

While Alice was handling the shell, and longing more and more for it, as

she observed the solicitude with which Marana watched her mode of

playing with it, a rustling was heard in the wood, and Rayo himself

burst from the covert, with a rude sort of basket in his arms, which

seemed to be filled with the fruit of the cinnamon shrub. At the

unexpected sight of a stranger, he turned quickly, and deposited his

load in the long grass behind him. While his back was turned, his wife

made a rapid sign to her visiters to hide the chank, and say nothing

about it, which sign Mr. Carr obeyed by pocketing the shell, and

slipping into Marana’s hand gold, which made a warm blush visible on her

dark cheek, and lighted up her dim eyes with a momentary gleam. She had

never held so much money in her hand at one time before; and the idea of

the hag vanished for the instant before the image of a basket of

steaming rice, stewed with cardamoms or peppercorns.

“We must have a lamp,” half-whispered Marana, observing that Mr. Carr

sent a searching glance after the acorn-like fruit that was turned over

in the grass. “And if Marana is not anointed, how should her husband

love her?”

This was a question which Mr. Carr’s European habits unfitted him for

answering. He asked if there was no method of obtaining the oil of the

cinnamon fruit but by pilfering from the garden? None, for poor

creatures so weak as these peasants, who could not penetrate into the

interior for such purposes. The garden was close at hand; the cocoa-nut

oil, with which the oil of the cinnamon fruit was to be mixed, hung

overhead; and the temptation was too strong to allow of Mr. Carr’s being

very angry. He asked how the oil was made to serve the purpose of a lamp

during the dark nights, when it became the office of the invalids to

watch and nurse each other? Marana produced her lamp,—half the shell of

a cocoa-nut, supported on a stick of ebony, which was stuck into a

little block of calaminda wood. On the surface of the oil which the

shell contained, floated a little wick, formed from the pith of a rush.

Nothing could be more primitive; few things more elegant; and the

materials were such as would in few other countries have been found in

the habitation of persons in want of proper food.

Alice was bent upon purchasing the lamp also; and small was the price

demanded, however Marana might wonder at her husband’s demand not being

so much as disputed. Busily did she attempt to fulfil her task of making

another lamp, and bruising the fruit from which the oil was to be

drained, while Rayo seemed to have a sudden fancy for making torches.

Meantime, Mr. Carr cleared the jungle; and, seeing that the sky was

blackening towards the west, as if with the first storms of the monsoon,

turned his horse’s head homeward, bestowing many a thought on the

natives whom he saw in field, garden, jungle, and road,—all obsequious,

and looking up to every Englishman they met, as if impressed with

profound gratitude, while most were poor and comfortless, and it was

certain that all were injured by the nominal protection of their

country. Even Alice, occupied as she was with looking about her for

homage, and with planning an exhibition of her two treasures to her

mother, could not wholly forget the sunken countenances of those who

appeared to be pining in the luxuriant region which she had just left,

and where Nature seemed to intend that all things should flourish.

CHAPTER IV.

NIGHT IN THE JUNGLE.

Almost all who lived to the west of Adam’s Peak looked with glad eyes to

the lowering sky which hung over the sea like a leaden canopy. The rains

came late this year; the rice-fields languished; the verdure seemed to

crave of the light clouds which floated around the mountaintops that

they would descend in showers. There was now a prospect of rain in

abundance, and all looked for it with impatience but Marana, to whose

troubled spirit the moaning of the rising wind in the trees, and the

dull roar of the distant sea spoke of hags riding the blast, and curses

cradled in the clouds. As she sat this evening at the door of her hut,

weaving a basket of cane which her own hands had cut, dried, and split,

she glanced up uneasily to the sky, where the twilight was being rapidly

quenched by the rolling vapours, and started at every fire-fly that

brushed past her, as if it had been a spark from the electric mass which

over-hung the entire region. When it was no longer possible to pursue

her occupation, for want of light, she crossed her arms, and remained

seated on her threshold. It was not that she watched for the flitting

forth of the bat; nor to see the gaudier winged creatures of the wood

nestle in the brakes; nor to see the moonbeams piercing a way for

themselves through the curtain of foliage till they kissed the modest

lotus that slept on the bosom of the water; nor to mark the vigilant

stars resume their watch, rising, some like mute sentinels, others in

full constellation like trained bands, to look down from their blue

height upon all that moved and breathed below. There was no visible

kindling of golden fires in the firmament this night; no winging home of

a belated bird; and the water-lilies were left to themselves. It was to

watch for some opening in the clouds which might let down air and light,

that Marana still sat abroad. She felt half stifled with heat, and with

a vague fear, and dreaded kindling a light, and closing the entrance for

the night.—Rayo was still behind the dwelling, tying up bunches of

cocoa-nut leaves to burn, and splitting resinous woods into torches.

When the twilight expired, he was there. When the black darkness had

descended a full hour, he was lighting himself through the wood with one

of his new torches.

“It is time to close the door against the panther,” said he to Marana,

before he set forth. “Spread the mat and sleep, when you have prayed to

St. Anthony for me.”

“And you? will you not kneel to pray on the same mat?”

“I have a prayer to say some way off which no one may overhear. So go

in, and trust to my returning,—before day-break, if not in darkness.”

“O, do not bring any more curses, Rayo, by taking what is not ours. Here

is money to buy grain in the harbour, and——”

“Money!” exclaimed Rayo. “Your friend Amoottra must have brought you

money. Does it not taint your fingers with leprosy, Marana?”

She let the money fall in a fit of horror; but when her husband laughed

a laugh which must have been highly offensive to any hag who might

happen to be within hearing, Marana conjured him to do nothing to remind

the foe of her expecting victim. Rayo had superstition enough in him to

induce him to take the hint, though not sufficient to prevent his

searching for the dropped money by the light of his torch, and being

very glad to pick it up from the brown, crumbling turf where it had

fallen. In vain Marana entreated to be permitted to carry the torch for

her husband. In vain she urged the desirableness of her being at hand to

sing the “Hail!” to the first burst of the season’s thunder. She was

commanded to pray and sleep, and dream of the verdure which might

possibly have overspread the rice-fields before the morning.

She ventured, however, to steal out on the track of Rayo’s footsteps.

The risk of falling in with a leopard or a tiger-cat while she carried

no torch was nothing in comparison with the uncertainty as to what was

being done or undergone by her husband. She had been his companion on

the raft one night, and in his flight through the woods on another; and

now he went out alone, and in silence as to his object. She feared that

this reserve argued something more than care for her health; some

desperation of design too great to be confided even to her. She blamed

herself for all. Some immediate misfortune was, she believed, to follow

her impious act of the morning; and all her husband’s sins, from his

withdrawal of confidence from her, to whatever act he might be now about

to perpetrate, must be answered for by her. She went out to watch, as an

unpractised magician may be supposed to await the results of his first

spell, in a state of expectation made wretched by horror and fear.

She followed Rayo’s steps at such a distance that she could not herself

have been perceived, if he had chanced to look behind him; but the torch

which he carried before him marked the outlines of his figure very

distinctly, as the light was reflected from the roof of foliage upon his

anointed limbs, from which nearly the last remains of his garments were

dropping in rags. When he emerged from the shade, on reaching the ditch

which surrounded the cinnamon garden, he slackened his pace, as if

meditating the method by which he might go straightest to some fixed

point which he had in his eye. He turned to the left. Marana turned to

the left likewise, keeping under the shadow of the wood. He stopped, and

looked up to the sky. She could not so raise her eyes, for the heavens

at that moment opened, and let out a flood of lightning, from which a

self-condemned person like herself could not but shrink. Again and again

came the lightning, sustaining the awful alternation by which the

landscape appeared one moment wrapt in midnight darkness, and the next

in noon-day glare. Crashing thunder then came, peal upon peal, driving

her from her perilous station under the trees to a more open part of the

jungle, where she stood fearfully glancing about her in a sort of

expectation that every object within sight would rise up against her,

and come crowding about her; for the thunder was enough to waken the

dead, and no suspicion crossed her mind that this storm was not

especially directed against herself. Rayo’s operations did not seem to

be impeded by it. He had crossed the ditch while Marana had covered her

eyes, and in the intervals of the lightning, the dancing spark of his

torch might be seen wandering, like a will-o’-the-wisp, at a greater and

a greater distance. It was not long before it became evident to his wife

whither and for what purpose he was gone. Little puffs of dun smoke

arose, like fire-balloons, from behind the dark-leaved shrubbery which

he had entered. A delicious scent pervaded the region as the fire

spread, like airs from heaven finding their way among blasts from hell.

It was plain that Rayo was setting fire to the bark which was in course

of being harvested.

What might be his fate if he fell into the hands of the challias, Marana

dared not think. If he could but creep away under the bushes, and leave

it to be supposed that lightning had been the agent of mischief, she

could rejoice as heartily as he in the discomfiture of the presumptuous

challias, and the loss suffered by the strangers who, under the pretence

of protection, were perpetually employed in rifling the land of its

treasures, and depressing the condition of the natural owners of those

treasures. She would have rejoiced to see every twig in this vast garden

consumed, if such destruction could avail to drive away the Honourable

Company who, by right of purchase, interfered to limit the production,

restrict the commerce, and therefore impoverish the condition of those

from whom they derived their wealth. If this Company could but be driven

from its monopoly, so that every man might plant cinnamon in his garden,

and sit under its shadow with none to make him afraid, he who this night

carried the fire-brand might be set up for worship on a higher eminence

(if such could be found) than Adam’s Peak, and be feasted and garlanded

daily, instead of, like the holy Footmark, once a year.

What Rayo’s fate was it was impossible to conjecture, all watching and

listening being now baffled by the commotion of the storm. Smoke arose

after awhile in a second place, then in a third, thus marking the

progress of the incendiary. There were only a few spikes of clear flame

visible. Each heap of bark must be presently consumed, and the shrubs

were too moist to be in danger of more than a singeing from the fire.

The most obvious thing to the anxious wife was to follow her husband;

and more than once she attempted to move: but, at first, her wasted

limbs failed her, and then she thought she perceived tokens of an

approaching earthquake. A wind like this had often, in her recollection,

brought down some massy distant tree, whose fall shook the ground for

many a rood; but now, either many such trees were falling, or some other

cause prolonged the vibration. She expected an earthquake, during which

the hag would arise, or she herself be swallowed up by some chasm that

would open beneath her feet. Suddenly the shaking ceased, and a flash

disclosed to her a horrible vision at hand which explained all. Fiery

eyes blazed, and white tusks gleamed over the tallest of the shrubs

which grew to the left of the place where she stood. She had just seen

the twisting of the lithe trunk which could carry her up twenty feet in

an instant, and she now heard the snuffing and snorting before which

every living thing within many furlongs must be quaking like herself.

She felt before the elephant like a worm in the path of a cruel

schoolboy,—as certain that the ponderous tread would be directed to

crush her; and when the next gleam showed the bulky head and shoulders

of this moving mass veering round to face her, she could only pray that

she might be annihilated by one tread, instead of being made fatal sport

of high in the air.

Rayo proved her unintentional deliverer. The fire he had kindled did not

catch the green shrubs; but some flakes were carried off by the wind,

and fell among the parched grass near the outskirts of the plantation.

There were in an instant rivulets of fire running beneath the stems,

joining and parting, according to the quantity of fuel which lay in

their way. Every morsel of oily bark casually dropped the day before,

now sent up its tiny jet of blue flame; the dried twigs snapped and

kindled, and the gleaming ditch was the boundary-line between the

darkness and the light. This fire was as unwelcome to the wild elephant

beyond its reach as to the burnished snakes that came wriggling out into

the blaze as their holes grew too hot to hold them. He turned short

round with a troubled cry, and distanced the scene at his quickest trot,

wakening the birds as he brushed their covert in his passage, and

leaving far behind the scared elk that burst a way among the stems, and

the hyænas that hushed their cry and skulked in the thickets. To the

mind of a Cingalese, the elephant of Ceylon is the most majestic of all

animals, the elephants of all other countries being reported to

acknowledge its supremacy by a salam; but this emperor of the beasts was

now put to flight by the same means that made the gazelle palpitate in

its hiding place among the grass.

The alarm was soon at an end. The canopy of clouds descended, lower and

lower, till there seemed small breathing space left between them and the

earth, and then burst, quenching the lightning and the flame at once,

drowning the thunder, and threatening to plunge the island in the sea.

When the sheet of water had descended for a while, the ditch overflowed,

the snakes raised themselves on end, the waters found their way into the

lair of every couchant beast, and dripped from the plumage of every bird

on its perch. To wade through the jungle in this pitchy darkness

immediately after the dazzling apparition of the cinnamon garden had

vanished, was impossible. Marana remained clinging to a tree, the

creepers from which dangled wet in her face, till she heard the sound of

a quiet laugh through the flash and downpour. “Here is the hag, at

last,” thought she, expecting to feel the loathsome touch which she was

persuaded she must encounter sooner or later. Her agonized cry for mercy

produced another laugh, but a kindly one. It was from her husband.

“Rayo! what a storm!”

“St. Anthony rides the monsoon this year,” replied Rayo. “Do you know

what the lightning has done in the garden? The Company have been praying

for the monsoon for their neighbours’ sake. In the morning you will hear

how they complain of it for their own.”

“Was it all the storm, Rayo?”

“They will tell you so in the morning. Come home now. I will take you by

a path where the waters cannot beat you down like the dragon-fly, nor

carry you away like the squirrel that is caught far from its hole. But I

forbade your coming abroad. You were afraid to await the hag under a

roof, I suppose. If she must come, I wish it might be in the morning.

She would see in the garden that which would make her so merry that she

would forget you.”

“Can you say your prayers to keep off the curse to-night, Rayo? Dare

you?”

“O, yes; and quickly, that I may sleep, and be early ready to see the

Challias collect in the garden.”

In the morning, before Marana’s long ague-fit had given place to sleep,

her husband was on the spot of the late cinnamon harvest. The sky was

not clear of clouds, large masses still being in act of rising from the

east; but a mild sunshine burnished the scene; the rose-coloured peaks

of the distant mountains,—the fresh-springing verdure of the fields

which were so lately brown,—and the multitudes of winged creatures that

flitted, hovered, and sailed in the balmy air. All was as fair in the

interval of the storms as if no storm had ever been. It was much more

wonderful to Rayo to see no signs of storm in the faces of those who

were most concerned in the loss of the cinnamon. Mr. Carr looked not

only free from anger towards the lightning to which he attributed the

destruction, but satisfied and pleased at the existing state of things.

“The lightning has saved the Company from the curses of the people,” he

heard Captain Cinnamon whisper to a modelier of the garden. “There was

too good a crop this year; and if some of it must be burned, it was very

well that accident should do it.”

“And that accident should have burned more than the Company would have

dared to destroy in the face of the natives. Now they may put their own

price upon their bark; and a pretty price it will be, to judge by Mr.

Carr’s pleased face.”

“Not that he wishes ill to the natives, or to the eaters of cinnamon in

other lands. But he is thinking of the good news he has to send to his

employers.”

Rayo rolled himself in the sand when he thus learned what was the result

of his enterprise.

CHAPTER V.

MATERNAL ECONOMY.

If the drought had been confined to the western coast of Ceylon, its

effects would have been very deplorable, from the poverty of the people,

though, from their being in the habit of the regular importation of

rice, they were more sure of some extent of supply than if they had been

dependent on their own scanty crops. But this year, the drought extended

to some of the districts of the neighbouring country, from which rice

was annually imported to a large amount. This again, would have mattered

little, if the inhabitants had had the means of purchasing from a

greater distance; but these means could not be within the reach of a

colony whose productions were monopolized by the mother country.

Hundreds of thousands of the inhabitants of Ceylon who, if allowed the

usual inducements to an accumulation of capital, would have been in

common times purchasers of the innumerable comforts which the world

yields, and in the worst seasons placed far above the reach of want,

were reduced by a single delay of the monsoon to such a condition as

rendered it doubtful whether they would ever be purchasers of anything.

Again, want of capital was the grievance from which all other temporal

grievances arose in this region of natural wealth and super-abundant

beauty; and this want of capital was caused by the diversion of labour

from its natural channels, through the interference of the evil spirit

of monopoly.

Streams ran down from the mountains; and on either side of the streams

were levels which lay waste and bare for want of irrigation; and on the

banks of these streams lived a population which subsisted on unwholesome

and unseasoned or deficient food. These waters could not be made useful,

these plains could not be fertilized, these people could not be fed,

because the natural wealth of the country was not permitted to create

capital to the inhabitants.

The cotton-tree might be met with growing luxuriantly wherever the hand

of man or of nature had caused it to take root; yet those who lived

within reach of its boughs hid themselves in the woods for the

scantiness of their clothing, or went without some other necessary, in

order to furnish themselves expensively with cotton-cloth which had been

woven four thousand miles off. That it should be woven where it was, and

sold where it was, was well; but that the purchasers should not have the

raw materials to exchange for the wrought, or something else to offer

which should not leave them destitute, spoke ill for the administrators

of their affairs.

Potters’ clay abounded in the intervals between soils which offered

something better; and here and there a rude workman was seen “working

his work on the wheel,” as in the days of Jeremiah the prophet, and

marring the clay, and making another vessel, as it seemed good to the

potter. It would have seemed good to him to make better vessels, to

improve his craft, and bring up his children to the art, and supply

households at greater distance with utensils, and get wealth and

contentment, but that he had no money to spend on improvements, and that

if his children tried to get any, they could find no free scope for

their enterprize.

Herds of buffaloes were seen feeding amidst the rank vegetation of the

hills, and many a peasant would have gone among them, morning and

evening, with his bottle of hide slung over his shoulder; and many a

maiden with her vase poised upon her head, if a free commerce in ghee

had been permitted with the Arabs who must drink a cupfull of it every

morning, and with the multitude of dwellers in the Eastern Archipelago,

who want it for anointings, for food, for sacrifice, and other purposes

which now cost them dear. But the buffaloes might graze in peace, the

peasants being permitted to sell ghee only to those who could not buy,

or who did not consume ghee.

There were cocoa-nut fibres enough to spin a coir rope which might

measure the equator; but coir was so taxed, as soon as it became rope,

that the government need have little fear that any one would buy but

itself and those who could get no cheaper cordage.

Chay-root, yielding the red dye which figures on Indian chintzes, spread

itself far and wide through the light dry soil near the coast. How it

should hurt the British government that all nations should have red

roses on their chintzes had not been satisfactorily explained; but it

was the will of that government that few should do so. The government

bought up every ounce of chay-root which its Cingalese subjects were

obliging enough to sell. There was much loyalty in thus furnishing

chay-root; the diggers being paid a good deal less than half the price

which the government demanded from its purchasers.

The fragrance of spices was borne on every breeze; shells of various

beautiful forms were thrown up by every tide; tortoiseshell might be had

for the trouble of polishing, and ivory for that of hunting the

elephant; arrack flowed for any one who would set it running from the

tree; canes to make matting and baskets were trodden down from their

abundance; the topaz and the amethyst, the opal, the garnet, the ruby,

and the sapphire, jet, crystal, and pearls, were strewed as in

fairy-land; the jack-wood, rivalling the finest mahogany, ebony,

satin-wood, and the finely-veined calaminda, grew like thorns in the

thicket; yet the natural proprietors of this wealth, to which the world

looked with longing eyes, were half-fed and not clothed; and their

English fellow-subjects, located in a far less favourable habitation,

were taxed to afford them such meagre support as they had.

The world had rolled back with the Cingalese. Monuments were before them

at every step, which showed that their country had been more populous

than now, and their forefathers more prosperous than themselves. They

were now too many for their food—too many for the labour which their

rulers vouchsafed to call for; yet they were but a million and a half on

a territory which had sustained in more comfort a much greater number,

without taxing a distant nation to give unproductive aid to a puny

people, and before the advantages of national interchange had been fully

ascertained. There were traces of times, before the English artizan was

called upon to contribute his mite to his tawny brother over the sea;

before the government complained of the expense of its colony; before

murmurs arose about the scanty supply of cinnamon, while the Honourable

Company was claiming compensation for an over-supply; before the rulers

at Columbo began to be at their wit’s end to find means for keeping up

their credit; before the expenditure of the colony so far exceeded its

revenue, as that the inquiry began among certain wise ones, where was

the great advantage of having a colony which, however rich in name and

appearance, cost more than it produced: there were traces of happier

times, when the world seemed to have been wiser, however younger, than

at present; or when the Cingalese had been under a wiser sway than that

which was now calling upon them for perpetual submission and gratitude.

The Dutch might have been hard task-masters; but it was now felt that

the English were yet more so; and however much submission might be

yielded, because it could not be refused, there was small room for

gratitude, as any one would have admitted who could have drawn an

accurate comparison between the condition of the foreign and the native,

the producing and the commercial, population of the western portion of

the island during this season of hardship.

The Dutch-built houses, inhabited by foreign agents, displayed all their

usual luxuries; carpeted with fragrant mats, gemmed with precious

stones, perfumed with spicy oils, and supplied with food and drinks

purchased by native produce from foreign lands. The huts of their

humbler neighbours, meanwhile, were bare alike of furniture and food,

and, for the most part, empty of inhabitants. The natives of eastern

countries seem to find consolation in the open air in times of extreme

hardship; not only laying their sick on the banks of rivers, but

gathering together in hungry groups by the road-side or by the

sea-shore, in times of famine, gazing patiently on the food which is

carried before their eyes, and waiting for death as the sun goes down.

Such were the groups now seen on the shores of the Lake of Columbo, and

in many an open space among the spoiled paddy-fields, while the

foreigners, from whom they were wont to receive their pittance, were

engaged with their curries, their coffee, and their meats from many

climes. Thus was it during the day; while at night the distribution of

action was reversed. The foreigners slept at ease in their cooled and

darkened apartments, or, if they could not rest, had nothing worse to

complain of than a mosquito foe, while their native neighbours were

silently forming funeral piles along the shore; silently bringing more

wood and more from the thickets, as others of their caste dropped dead

at length; silently laying out the corpses; silently watching them as

they turned to ashes, and placing the limbs decently as they fell

asunder; silently ranging themselves so that the funeral fire played in

their dark eyes, and shone on their worn and lanky frames; silently

waiting till the morning breeze puffed out the last flickering flame,

and dispersed the handful of white ashes, which was all that remained of

the parent who had murmured his blessing at sunset, or the wife who had

whispered her farewell at midnight, or the infant whose breath had

parted at the summons of the dawn. Silently were these rites performed;

insomuch that any chance-watcher in the neighbouring verandah heard no

other interruption to the splash of waters than the crackling of flames,

and would not have guessed that bands of patient sufferers were gathered

round this fearful sacrifice to the evil spirit of monopoly—a sacrifice

as far from appeasing the demon as from testifying to the willing homage

of his priests. There were not among the gentle Cingalese any of the

fierce passions which this demon commonly delights to unleash among his

victims; none of the envy, jealousy, and hatred with which the

desperately miserable enhance their desperation and their misery.

Instead of jostling one another, these sufferers sat side by side;

instead of gnashing their teeth at each other, they were altogether

heedless of neighbourhood; instead of inflicting injuries, they merely

ceased to confer mutual benefits. No aged man complained of violence,

but sank down disappointed, when he found the water-pot—placed for the

traveller’s refreshment—empty by the wayside. No wearied woman murmured

at being dislodged from the sheltered bench on the bridge; but neither

did those, who had niched themselves there to seek forgetfulness in

sleep, stir to make way for a fellow-sufferer. No child was driven from

its chance meal by a stronger arm than its own; but neither was there a

look or a word to spare for the little ones (more tenacious of life than

their parents), who crept from their dead mother to their dying father,

trying in vain to suck life from the shrunken breasts of the one, and to

unclose the fixed eyes of the other. Some who remained in their

habitations in the woods, if less destitute, were not less miserable. If

the sight and scent of the bread-fruit were too strong for the fortitude

of some, they ate under the full conviction that they were exchanging

famine for leprosy. Whether the belief in this effect of the fruit was

right or wrong, those who believed and yet ate suffered cruelly for the

want of rice. If a follower of Brama, in passing a ruin, saw a cow

browsing on some pinnacle, and, in a fit of desperation, called the

sacred creature down to be made food of, he found himself gnawed by the

consciousness of his inexpiable crime, as fearfully as by his previous

hunger. An ample importation of rice—such as might always be secured by

the absence of restrictions on commerce—would have saved to these the

pangs of conscience, till a better knowledge had had time to strike root

and ripen for harvest, as it would have spared to others the agonies of

hunger while their rice-grounds were awaiting the latter rains, and

preparing to become fruitful again in their season. As it was, all were

prevented making the most of their own soil from want of capital; and,

while rendered dependent on the importation of grain, were denied the

means of insuring that importation. By the exorbitant taxation of some

of their articles of produce, and the prohibition to sell others to any

buyer but the government, the Cingalese were deprived of all chance of

securing a subsistence, and of all inducement to accumulate property.

Mrs. Carr did not know that she had ever enjoyed her way of life more,

on the whole, than since she had come to Ceylon. She liked lying down

for the greater part of the day, and being sure of seeing something

beautiful from the verandah when she could exert herself to look abroad

from it. She liked being fanned by the punkah, and waited upon by five

times as many servants as she wanted, and amused by Alice, and flattered

by her husband’s station; none of the trouble of which devolved upon

her. But she did not know whether some friends of hers liked the place

so well; she thought not, by Mr. Serle’s grave manner, and the new

expression of fear and anxiety in Mrs. Serle’s open and happy

countenance. Mr. and Mrs. Serle were American missionaries; members of

the little band of philanthropists who, setting the example of charity

towards their Cingalese brethren, were met and cheered by the open hand

of charity at every turn, till they were fairly established in the

society and in the hearts of those whom they came to civilize and bless.

“I am glad you did not ask our advice about coming,” observed Mrs. Carr

to the missionary’s wife: “we find it very pleasant in Ceylon; but I do

not know whether you find it as pleasant as we do; and it would have

been a disagreeable thing to have misled you. I am glad you did not ask

our advice.”

“Mrs. Serle comes to lead such a different kind of life from yours, my

dear,” observed her husband, “that any advice from you could have helped

her little. You see and enjoy all the natural advantages of the place,

which are very great indeed: Mrs. Serle comes to do what she can towards

remedying the misery of the people, which is quite as remarkable in its

way.”

“And I beg to say that I enjoy the natural advantages of the place,”

replied Mrs. Serle; “I like your Adam’s Peak at sunrise, and your gay

insects, and your flowery jungle, and your pine-apples as well as any of

you. I do not wish to be the less sensible of these things because the

people claim my compassion.”

“Not the less, but rather the more,” observed her husband, “that the

misery of the people may be the more quickly remedied. When we find

starving men in a paradise, our next business is to find out whose fault

it is that they are starving.”

“They are the laziest people here,” drawled Mrs. Carr; “you will hardly

believe till you have been here as long as we have——”

“My dear love,” interrupted her husband, “Mr. and Mrs. Serle have seen

far more of the people already than you can pretend to know, living

within doors as you do.”

“O, but I assure you, I can tell Mrs. Serle such things as she will

scarcely believe. The laziness of the people is really such as to make

me wonder. Alice, love, come and tie my sandal. O, thank you, Mrs.

Serle. I did not mean to trouble you, I am sure.”

Mrs. Serle did not need convincing as to the indolence of the Cingalese.

It was quite as evident in them as in Mrs. Carr. Neither was she much in

the dark as to the causes of this indolence. The probability of a remedy

was the almost hourly subject of conversation between her husband and

herself.

“You are very much wanted, you see,” observed Mrs. Carr; “I am sure it

is a most happy thing for the poor people of this country that so many

strangers come to see them and do them good. So many Dutch, formerly;

and now so many English; and you and your friends from America.”

“I hope you think the obligation mutual, my dear?” said her husband;

“You must not forget how many Dutch and English have made their fortunes

here. I say nothing about the Americans; for our friends here have a

very different object, I fancy.”

“O, it is an advantage to both parties, no doubt,” observed the lady; “I

should never have had such an amethyst as this, in my cross, if Ceylon

had not belonged to us, I dare say.”

“And I should only have been like any other young lady, instead of

having seven servants when I go out,” remarked Alice.

“And our friend Belton would not have had that beautiful place of his at

South Point to live in,” added Mr. Carr: “yet I hear complaints—terrible

complaints—from the Company, about their losses in the cinnamon trade.”

“And I from some members of your government, about the expense of the

colony,” said Mr. Serle. “Now, if the people are acknowledged to be in a

low state, if the government complains of the expense of the settlement,

and if the Honourable Company cannot always make its cinnamon trade

answer, who gains by Ceylon being a colony?”

“It is usually supposed to be an advantage to an uncivilized country to

be chosen for a settlement by a civilized set of people,” replied Mr.

Carr.

“And I have no doubt that it is so, any more than I doubt the advantage

to the civilized country of having some foreign half-peopled region to

which her sons may repair, to struggle, not in vain, for a subsistence.

I can never doubt the policy of persons of different countries agreeing

to dwell together in one, that they may yield mutual assistance by the

communication of their respective possessions and qualifications. If

this assistance be yielded in a spirit of freedom, without any

tyrannical exercise of the right of the strongest at the outset, this

intercourse is sure to grow into a mutual and general blessing of

incalculable value. If abused, by the sacrifice of the many to the

supposed gain of the few, the connexion becomes an inestimable curse.”

“To the natives, certainly,” replied Mr. Carr. “We may observe that the

prosperity of colonized countries is not to be measured by circumstances

of climate, natural fertility, position, and so on, but by the policy

pursued in their government. In the dreariest parts of our American

colonies, for instance——I do not know whether you are acquainted with

Canada?”

“I am; and with Nova Scotia likewise.”

“Well; in no part of those colonies are the natural wealth and beauty to

be met with which distinguish Ceylon; and in no part, I hope, are the

labouring inhabitants to be found in so wretched a state as are too many

here.”

“Nowhere; and I do not see that the circumstance of the labourers here

being partly natives, and the rest, races long settled in the country,

makes any difference in the estimate, while it is certain that they are

affected by the common motives to industry and social improvement.”

“The people here are open to such motives. Witness the growing ambition

of the cinnamon peelers, in proportion as their services are in request,

and are rewarded with regularity. The Challias hold up their heads now,

and dispute precedence with other castes; and so would other labouring

castes, if they had encouragement to do any better than crouch beneath

the cocoa-nut tree, live upon what it may yield, and die when it yields

no more.”

“The Nova Scotian is a far more prosperous man than either the native or

the settler of Ceylon, though the Nova Scotian is not yet so happy as a

perfectly wise government would allow him scope to become. He is not,

like our neighbours here, prevented from selling one kind of produce

where he pleases, while he is discouraged in the preparation of another

kind by excessive taxation. The Nova Scotian can prepare his fish, and

carry it where he likes for sale.”

“How rejoiced would our people be to have the same liberty with their

pearls and their spice!”

“Yes: but the Nova Scotian has his trammels too, though they are far

less grievous. He envies his neighbours of my country,—of the United

States, as much as the Cingalese may envy him. When he has sold his fish

in the wide market which the Brazils afford, he may not take in exchange

any Brazilian article that will be most wanted in Nova Scotia. There are

many Brazilian commodities which your government will not allow its

American colonies to purchase; so that its Nova Scotian subject must

return with something of less value, or go home by a round-about way,

exchanging and exchanging, till he finds an article that he may lawfully

carry. My countryman, meantime, makes the best of his way home with a

cargo of something that Brazil wants to sell and the States are ready to

buy. This freedom from impediment in his traffic gives him the advantage

over the Nova Scotian, as the comparative freedom of the Nova Scotian

does over the Cingalese.”

“And this countryman of yours, or his father, was a fellow-subject of

mine. Truly, he seems better off than when we were under the same king.”

“And how is your country the worse for his being no longer your

fellow-subject,—for his country being no longer a British colony? Do you

buy and sell less of each other? Do you steal one another’s trade? Does

not America rather deal the more largely with you, the wider and more

rapid is her traffic with the rest of the world?”

“Your argument would go to prove that we should be better without

colonies; but what will our merchants say to our parting with markets

into which we can empty our warehouses?”

“As to being better without colonies,—we agreed just now that colonies

are good things both for the natives and the settlers, while the one

class wants to be civilized and the other to find a home of promise. Let

this connexion be modified by circumstances as time rolls on, the child

growing up into a state fit for self-government, and the mother country

granting the liberty of self-government as the fitness increases. If the

control be continued too long, if the colony be not admitted to

understand, and allowed to pursue its own interests, its interests must

languish, and it will become a proportionate burden to the mother

country. It will have only the wages of ill-paid labour, or the scanty

profits of feeble speculation to exchange for the productions of the

mother country, instead of a store of wealth gathered by commerce with

the whole world. Which is worth the most to England at this moment,

Ceylon, her servile dependency, or any province of her band of

commercial allies,—our United States,—I leave your merchants to say.”

“It is true, we get nothing now in taxes from your States; but we get

incalculably more as the profits of trade; while the heavy taxation of

Ceylon will not nearly pay its own expenses, and the mother country must

defray the remainder.”

“So much for keeping colonies for the sake of their trade. This notion

involves two assumptions; that the colony would not trade with the

mother country if it were no longer a colony, and that colonial monopoly

is a good to the mother country.”

“The very term ‘colony trade’ involves the notion of monopoly: since, if

there were no monopoly, the distinction would be lost between that and

any other sort of free trade.”

“Well; if the exclusive trade with the mother country be the best for

the interest of the colony, the colony will continue it, after the

compulsion is withdrawn. If it be not for the interest of the colony,

neither can it be so for the parent; since the interest of the seller

demands the prosperity of the customer; and the welfare of the whole

demands the welfare of its component parts.”

“Indeed, our colonies are too often used as a special instrument of

forcing the means of production into artificial channels, to serve the

selfish purposes of classes, or companies, or individuals.”

“Thereby ruining the interests of these self-same classes, companies,

and individuals. If any class of merchants can succeed in making

themselves the only buyers of any article from a colony, or the only

sellers of any article in it, they may for a time dictate their own

terms to their slaves: but not for long. They may stock the market at

home with precious things which they get as cheap as stones and straws

in the colony; but their mutual competition will soon bring down the

price to the common rate of profit. And if not,—if the merchants agree

upon a price and keep to it, the colony will not long fulfil its part in

this unequal bargain. A losing bargain must come to an end sooner or

later; and labour being discouraged, and capital absorbed in the colony,

the merchants will inevitably find their supplies fall short.”

“I was going to ask,” observed Mrs. Serle, “why the colony need act in

such a bargain? If it had any spirit, it would refuse to traffic.”

“Its power to do so depends on the nature of its supplies from the

mother-country. If it derives only luxuries, it may resist oppression by

declining to receive the luxuries of the mother-country, and it may defy

oppression by devising luxuries for itself. In these cases, the

mother-country sustains a pure loss of the trade. If the colony is

dependent for necessaries, it can defy the oppressor no further than by

using the smallest possible quantity. Few people discern much value in

the trade of a country whose population barely lives. Such a commerce

will not repay the trouble of maintaining a monopoly.”

“It does seem to me, certainly, that if any compulsion is used at all,

it should be to oblige the colony to sell to none but the parent. If it

can buy cheaper elsewhere, so much is saved of the resources of the

empire. It would be a loss to the British empire to have Ceylon buy its

wine from London alone, if wine might be obtained cheaper from Madeira.

The extra price which the carriage and the profits of the middlemen

would demand, would be just so much withdrawn from the customer’s means

of production and of future purchase.”

“And the case is no better when the prohibition regards selling from the

colony. If the colonial article produces just the ordinary profits of

stock, the purchasing country takes needless trouble in enforcing the

monopoly. If less than the ordinary profits of stock, the article will

cease to be produced. If more, the purchaser may feel perfectly secure

of being thanked for her custom, instead of its being necessary to

intrude it by force of law. All this applies as well to a trade-driving

government, or an exclusive company, as to a general body of merchants;

the only difference being that such a government or company, having a

more despotic power by the absence of competition, the tyranny may be

consummated sooner, and the mischief wrought more effectually. Your

government keeps its pearl-fishers, and your Honourable Company its

spice-gatherers, impoverished more effectually than a general body of

British pearl and spice merchants could have done.”

“Yet the general body of merchants can carry on the work of

impoverishment with tolerable vigour and success, even upon a dependency

so near at hand as to have great facilities for remonstrance. In the

case of Ireland, towards the close of the last century, they contrived

to rivet the chains of monopoly for a few years longer, after having

done wonders in beggaring the Green Island.”

“They were helped by the country gentlemen there, my dear,” replied Mrs.

Serle, who was an English woman, “and by the manufacturers and

shipowners and others. I remember how my grandfather used to talk after

dinner about the ruin which would come upon us all if the Irish,—with

their low wages and light taxation, were allowed to get their own sugar

from the West Indies, and to pay for it with some articles of their own

produce. And my uncle Joe and the curate used to agree that we were

quite kind enough already to Ireland in giving her permission from year

to year to send beef and butter to our colonies, and to clothe her own

troops, then serving in America, with her own manufactures. The squire

and the clergyman and the shopkeeper in the next village got up a

petition to parliament against letting the Irish have any more trade,

lest they should spoil ours.”

“And Liverpool expected to dwindle into a fishing village again, and

Manchester that her deserted factories would become the abode of the owl

and the bat; and Glasgow pleaded an hereditary right to the sugar trade

which Ireland must not be permitted to invade. Where this right came

from it was for Glasgow to say; but, in enforcing it, Glasgow seemed

much tempted to sink audacious Ireland into the sea. It is a pity, my

dear, that your grandfather did not live to see Liverpool at the present

day, after ten times as much having been granted to Ireland as was then

asked for. In proportion as the commerce between England and Ireland has

grown into the similitude of a coasting trade, the prosperity of

Liverpool and many another English town has increased, while the

resources of Ireland (however deplorably cramped by bad government to

this day) have steadily though slowly improved. The same fears, the same

opposition, were excited, I think, Mr. Carr, when a relaxation was

proposed in some departments of your Company’s monopoly, and with the

same results.

“Yes. There was an idea, some time ago, that nothing remained to be done

in the way of traffic with India. It was thought that the private trader

could find no new channels of commerce, and that India could not benefit

in any way by a change.”

“Can anything equal the presumption of human decisions on untried

matters!” cried Mr. Serle. “Did your Company really amply supply the

whole of India with all that Hindoo hearts and Mahomedan minds could

desire? Was nothing more wanted by a people who died by thousands in a

year for want of salt; who fell sick by hundreds of thousands for want

of clothing, habitations, and the wholesome arts of life, and who

groaned by millions under privation and excessive toil? If your Company

thus reported itself the faithful and wise steward, giving to the people

under him meat in their season, I, for one, would have besought, in that

day as in this, to have him cast out. His weeping and gnashing of teeth

would have been unheard amidst the shout of joy when the door closed

behind him.”

“Well, but he was not cast out,” said Mrs. Serle. “He was only compelled

to relax his rule. Was there any rejoicing?”

“Much, very much, my dear. The direct commerce between England and India

has already been more than doubled. Private traders have proved that

there were still desirable articles that India had not, and that more

and more became invented and wished for in proportion as people are

allowed to minister to each other. I question whether any man will be

again found between this and doomsday to say that India cannot want any

thing more, and that there is nothing left for anybody out of the

Honourable Company to do.”

“The persuasion arose,” observed Mr. Carr, “from the character of the

people,—their wants being so simple and few, their domestic habits and

pursuits so uniform, and their resort to the productions of their own

country so invariable, that they did not seem to need anything that

foreigners could give.”

“Shut an infant into a dungeon, and bring him out when he is twenty,”

said Mrs. Serle, “and, if he has never tasted anything but bread and

water, he will want no other food than bread and water. If his dress has

always been sacking, his ignorant choice will be of sacking still,

though broadcloth be lying beside it. But have patience with him till he

has tasted beef and wine, and seen every other man of twenty dressed in

broadcloth, and by the time he is thirty, we shall hear no more of his

simple tastes, and of his resort to primitive productions. Our

ancestors, Mr. Carr, had a very simple taste for acorns of native

growth: they resorted to native productions,—wolf-skins,—for clothing;

their pursuits were uniform enough,—picking up acorns and hunting

wolves;—they gathered round their murderous wicker deity, as the Hindoos

round the pile of the suttee; and the one people venerated the mistletoe

as the other glorifies cow-dung: nevertheless, here are we at this day,

you dressed in broadcloth, and I in silk, and both of us philosophizing

on civilization. Why should it not be the same with the Hindoo in due

time?”

“And before so many hundred years as it took to civilize the Britons,”

observed Mr. Carr. “The exports from Great Britain to the countries east

of the Cape have quadrupled since the relaxation of the monopoly; and

the difficulty now is for traders with India to find returns for the

variety of goods demanded by India. Formerly, England paid in gold and

silver; now we pay in iron, copper, and steel, in woollens and cottons,

and in a hundred other articles, of which few Hindoos dreamed a century

ago. India sends back indigo,—the best of a very few articles which may

be imported into Great Britain by individuals. Whenever the day shall

arrive for the Company’s monopoly of China to be abolished, tea,

mother-of-pearl, and nankeens, will afford a larger variety, India will

make a new start in the career of civilization, and Great Britain a

mighty acquisition in her foreign commercial relations.”

“In all the cases you have mentioned,” observed Mrs. Serle, “the

restrictions have been imposed with a view to the welfare of the

mother-country, and at the expense of the colony. Are there not cases of

a reverse policy?”

“Many; but here, as in many cases, the reverse of wrong is not right.

Whether it be attempted to enrich the parent at the expense of the

child, or the child at the expense of the parent, a great folly is

perpetrated, if, by letting both alone, they might enrich each other.

Perhaps the most flagrant instance of this kind of impolicy is the

management of the British timber trade. Your government, Mr. Carr, loads

Norwegian timber with excessive duties, that the inferior timber of

Canada may have the preference in the market. By this means, not only is

Norway deprived of its just right of priority, and Britain of a useful

customer, but Canada is tempted to neglect some very important processes

of improvement for the sake of——”

“Of pushing the lumber trade,” interrupted Mr. Carr. “I am aware that

the Canadians carry their felling, squaring, and floating of timber a

great deal too far, to the injury of agriculture, and of the condition

of the people in every way. I am aware that any depression of this

artificial timber-trade, however felt by individuals, is a decided gain

to the colony at large. Great Britain has, in that instance, made a

sacrifice in a wrong place.”

“And what a sacrifice! If no partiality were shown, Great Britain might

have unexceptionable timber from Norway, and from Canada a supply of the

corn she so much needs, instead of the indifferent wood, from the use of

which her houses and her shipping are suffering. Let her still procure

wood from her colony, which may serve the inferior purposes for which

its texture fits it; but to refuse European timber, and persist in

building frigates and dwelling-houses which shall hold out only half as

long as they might last for the same money,—the people crying out all

the while for Canadian wheat,—is a policy whose wisdom is past my

comprehension.”

“Such is generally the result, it seems to me,” observed Mrs. Serle,

“when one party is grasping, and a second self-denying, in order to

exclude a third. The matter generally ends in the injury of all three.

If they would only follow the old saying, ‘Live and let live,’ all would

do well,—all would do best.”

“Where is that rule so violated as here?” said Mr. Serle, looking abroad

from the verandah upon the approach of a fleet of barks with firewood,

for the nightly sacrifice to the Moloch of monopoly. “Your colonial

government here, Mr. Carr, manages to live,—to sustain itself by shifts

and devices; but as to letting live, let the extinguished fires on the

shore, and the cry of the jackal in the woods, bear their testimony.”

“And your evening countenance,” added his wife. “I almost dread to see

you come home from visiting your neighbours.”

“Mamma said yesterday,” observed Alice, “that she wished Mr. Serle would

stay away, unless he would look as merry as he used to do. She says——”

“My dear love, what can you be thinking of?” cried Mrs. Carr, now roused

to something like energy of manner.

“She is thinking of your happy exemption from beholding the signs of

suffering which are daily brought before my eyes in the pursuit of my

vocation,” mildly replied Mr. Serle. “But if I were to stay away till I

saw nothing to make me look grave,—if I were to stay away till I saw the

men grow honest, and the women cheerful, and the children comely,—till

there were no struggles of poverty by day, or of death by night,—I fear

we should both be grey-haired before we could meet again.”

Mrs. Carr did not mean anything, by her own account; and the group were,

therefore, left to ponder the full significance of the missionary’s

words.

CHAPTER VI.

BLITHE NEWS.

Few indeed were the places in the island where there were no struggles

of poverty by day, or of death by night. In Rayo’s hut, the poverty

struggle seemed to be drawing near its close, and that of death

impending. There needed the agency of no hag to touch the dwellers in

the jungle with leprosy; no curse from above to make them feel as

outcasts in their own land. The sunny days and starlight nights of the

dry season were full of dreariness. Rayo, now the victim of leprosy in

its most fearful form, passed the day in solitude,—now creeping from his

mat to his threshold, and there finding that his swollen limbs would

carry him no farther; now achieving with much toil, his daily walk in

search of the honeycomb of the hollow tree, or of any windfall of the

fruit he could no longer climb to reach. The pitcher-plant grew all

around his hut, and regularly performed its silent service of preparing

the limpid draught to satisfy his feverish longing; but the monkeys were

now too strong for him; and often, in a state of desperate thirst, he

saw a pert ape, or an insolent baboon, twist the green cup from its

tendril, and run up a tree with it, or upset the draught before his

eyes. If ever he got far enough to look out upon the open landscape, it

stirred his spirit to see the herds of buffaloes on the hill-side, and

the proud vessels on the distant main, bringing luxuries from many a

clime; feeling, as he did, that the food and the wine thus exhibited to

him would have preserved him from his disease, and kept Marana, in all

her youth and strength, by his side. If he met a countryman, with whom

to speak, his tumultuous thoughts were not calmed; for he heard tell of

the high price which cinnamon bore this season, on account of the lucky

damage done by lightning to the crop. To him and his countrymen it

signified little whether the Honourable Company were enabled to ask the

prices of such a scarce season as this, or whether they sought from

government a compensation for the loss occasioned by an over-supply;

Rayo and his countrymen had no part nor lot in the harvests of their

native island; but Rayo had in the concerns of the rulers the deep stake

of unsatisfied revenge. As often as he became sensible of a new loss of

strength, as often as any of the horrible symptoms of elephantiasis met

his consciousness, he drew sharp and brief inferences respecting the

philosophy of colonization, which might have been worthy the ear of a

British parliament, if they could have been echoed so far over the sea.

Marana, meanwhile, was hurrying northwards with all the speed of which

her wasted frame was capable. She pushed on eagerly by day, now in heat

and now in damp, and halted unwillingly at night under the shelter of

some rest-house provided for travellers of a different caste. When she

looked upon the withered garlands that dangled from the corner-posts,

and longed for the draperies of cotton by which healthier persons than

herself had been sheltered from the night-dews, she too felt,—though of

a milder and more placable nature than her husband,—that some one had

stepped in between them and Providence, and turned their native paradise

into a dreary wilderness. She had heard strangers marvel at the absence

of singing-birds in her native glades at noon, and among the bowers of

the banian, when the sinking sun peeps beneath its arches, and she had

accounted for it to such marvellers, by tales of the wars between the

serpent and his feathered prey; but to her it seemed strange that none

should ask why the warblings of human gladness were so seldom heard in a

region whence their outpourings should echo to heaven. If asked to

account for this silence also, she would have told of the wily and

venomous agency of monopoly, which wages war against the helpless, from

generation to generation, till the music of joy is forgotten in the

land.

Marana’s spirits rose as she approached the northern parts of the

island, and, leaving woods and hills behind her, entered upon the level

and sandy region, whose aspect never changed but as the sea, which was

its boundary, was gleaming or grey, as the heavens were clear or

clouded. The bare shore near her father’s dwelling was above all

beloved; and she stopped for an instant to listen to the tide as it made

itself heard above her throbbing pulses, before she stole across the

well-known threshold.

The cottage looked as it used to look, except that there were no remains

of the household decorations which the neat-handed love to prepare in

countries where decoration requires no expenditure but of skill. Her

mother-of-pearl shells, her embroidery of fish-bones, her tufts of

many-coloured sea-weed, had disappeared; and instead of these, there

were more snake skins, a new set of sharks’ fins, and a larger variety

of inexplicable charms. Her father slept upon his mat, a ray of

moonlight falling across his brow from a chink in the frail roof of his

cottage.

Marana was afraid to waken and alarm him while there was no more light

than this in the cottage. She refrained till she had caught a handful of

fire-flies, and fixed them in her hair,—there being no sign of fire in

any neighbouring cottage. This done, she bent over the Charmer, and

charmed away his sleep. He gazed at her long; and, common as was the

sight of his dark countrywomen crowned with a green flame, the figure

before him was so like one which he had often expected to see in vision,

that the repeated sound of her voice was necessary to assure him that it

was indeed his daughter.

“You are flying before Amoottra, my child, or she has already laid her

hand upon you. Not the less shall your head rest on my bosom.”

Before she could rest, Marana said, she must confess her impiety in

parting with her charm, and obtain another. She sorely repented having

sold the chank. The gold it brought was presently consumed; and what was

gold in a country where it could not be made to reproduce itself, or

answer any purpose beyond delaying want for a time? She would take any

vow Father Anthony should prescribe, not to part with any other charm.

“Father Anthony will tell you,” replied her father, with a smile, “that

it is better to grow and sell cinnamon than to get a charm blessed, and

then part with it.”

Marana prayed her father not to mock her,—not to speak of forbidden

traffic to one who was deep in sin already. She was told in reply that

growing cinnamon was not one of the crimes on which the heavens frown,

but an act which the will of man makes innocent or guilty. It was now

the will of man to pronounce it innocent, and every man in Ceylon might

have his cinnamon garden, and go unharmed by the powers of the earth or

of the air.

But how had this miracle taken place? And was it so with pearls?

“The pearl banks are still sacred, my child; but, as for the spice, it

is no miracle that the owners are tired of their losses. Much gold must

they pay to the Challias, and much more must they risk on the seas; and

when the spice is landed in their own country, the buyers complain that

any thing that grows upon a common tree should be worth so much. Three

years since, even the rich would not buy half that was prepared, though

much was burned, as usual. Then the king gave up some of his share of

the price, and immediately there were three eaters of cinnamon where

there was one before; and, instead of the king losing, the people gained

by more of them being able to consume the spice. What wonder, after

this, if more cinnamon is permitted to be grown, that more may eat, and

more grow rich by selling it?”

“But who will buy it of us, father?”

“Come and see, at the next fishery. Any man of whatever nation, who

wishes to buy of you, may do it in the open market, and no punishment

shall follow to him or you.”

“And if Rayo had a boat, father, and carried spice to any ships he might

meet upon the sea, would not that be a crime?”

“A crime no longer, Marana. He may take dollars from the Spaniard, and

silk from the Italian, and cotton from the Englishman, and iron from the

Russian, and grain from the American, and no one will ask him how he got

his wealth, or threaten those who exchange with him. I will go with you,

and plant and bless your first shrub with my own hands.”

“Rayo’s hands are too feeble to dig, and he cannot kneel for your

blessing,” observed Marana, mournfully. “Will there be any more burning

of cinnamon, father?”

“Never more till all people in every land shall have had their fill, and

the cinnamon twigs with which we light our fires shall be used unbarked

through their abundance. Why should there be destruction of any good

thing when the many are to decide what price they will give, instead of

the few what price they will take?”

This was the best news Marana had yet heard, and her father had no more

to tell. While he was moving about, preparing for the exercise of his

art, and leaving his mat for his daughter’s repose, he told of poverty

and sickness among his neighbours, to whom it mattered not whether the

fishery proved a rich or a ruinous one. In the former case, they derived

none of the benefits; in the latter, they could scarcely be starved down

to a lower point than they were sure to reach in the intervals of the

seasons. His representations were confirmed to Marana when she went

abroad in the morning to seek Father Anthony, and accost any friends she

might meet by the way.

Old Gomgode, her father-in-law, lay on the beach, glancing about him

with his restless eyes for something to feed his inquisitiveness. There

was no inducement at present to go to sea in search of curiosities,

there being no fair at this season, and none of his neighbours being

wealthy enough to make purchases when each had no thing to do but to

secure his own scanty provision for the day. Gomgode’s sole employment

was asking questions of any one he could meet, and longing for the sight

of an unaccustomed face.

He started up as he recognized Marana’s form, though wasted, and her

gait, though feeble and spiritless. When he had asked a multitude of

questions,—where was Rayo? how was Rayo? why did not Rayo come? and so

forth, he was struck dumb by the tidings of his son’s afflictions. He

silently pointed to the cottage where Neyna, his daughter, might be

found, and lay down on his face to importune the saints with prayers for

his children;—for Neyna, who was awaiting a dowry he could not earn for

her; for Marana, who was likely to be a widow before she was a mother;

and for the sufferer who was pining in his distant solitude.—Before his

prayers were ended, Father Anthony had joined him, and was uniting in

his intercessions when the young women appeared to ask the priest’s

blessing.

Marana had not found Neyna in the cottage, but bathing with her

companions in a reedy pool behind the dwellings. There was something

left among these maidens of the sportiveness which seems to belong to

the most refreshing exercise of bathing, and which was Marana’s wont in

her younger days. There was now a song and now a laugh; now a conspiracy

to empty all the waterpots at once on the head of one, and then the

chace of a dusky beauty among the rushes,—of Neyna, who had forgotten

for the moment her hopelessness of a dowry. She was startled by the

apparition of a stranger, intercepting her with outstretched arms in her

flight, and recovered her gravity at the first recognition of Marana’s

faint smile. The other girls wrung out their dripping hair, and came up

from the water to crowd round their old companion, to ask tidings of the

rich land to the south, where, if there were no pearl-banks, there was

every other wealth of nature; where, as the songs of their dancing-girls

told them, life under the cocoa-nut trees was all that could be desired;

where thousands of yards of cotton might be had from abroad, and

hundreds of thousands of bags of rice were landed from foreign fleets.

Marana pointed to her tattered garment, and let fall that it was long

since she had tasted rice.

Why did she not seek relief from the English? she was asked. Did not the

English come to provide for and protect the natives? Had not the English

cotton enough to tapestry Adam’s Peak, and could not they purchase the

rice grounds of the globe?

“We,” said they, “are too far off from this fountain of wealth and

mercy. The English come for our pearls once a year, and then they see us

gay, and observe that our shore is spread with wealth. They do not know

how little of this wealth is ours, or suspect what our hunger and

nakedness are when they withdraw the light of their faces. But you live

in that light, and yet you are wasted and sorrowful.”

“The English themselves complain,” answered Marana. “When there is a bad

cinnamon harvest, the Government complains that the richer of our

countrymen pay no dues, and that feeding the poor is a costly burden.

When there is a good cinnamon harvest, the Company complains of the

abundance, and burns half the crop; so that the strangers are always

complaining, and the labourers of the country are always poor. This is

the way with us in the south.”

“And with us in the north. Why then did the English come? And why now do

they not go away?”

This question was too puzzling for any maiden of them all to answer, and

they hastened to refer it to Father Anthony.

“Would you have me go away?” inquired he, smiling. “Shall I set the

example to my countrymen, and leave you to your woods and waters in

peace?”

“You do not forbid our fishing in our waters; you do not bark and burn

our woods; you do not live upon our wealth, paying us only a pittance

for getting it for you. Why, therefore, should you go?”

“My children, you speak as if the English settlers were thieves. You

speak as if it was nothing to have wise and skilful strangers come to

teach you the arts of life. You speak as if you forgot the protection

afforded to you by the government of the mother country, and the expense

incurred by her for your support.”

“Who is it that robs us, not only of our spice and our pearls, but of

all that many another country would give us for our spice and our

pearls, if it be not the English?” cried one.

“Are we the happier for their wisdom and their skill?” cried another.

“And as for the arts of life, do we need strangers to teach us to lie

beneath the fig-tree, and sleep away our hunger?”

“From what do they protect us?” asked a third. “If they will go away, we

will protect ourselves against their returning; and our own expenses we

can bear as soon as ships from every land may come to trade on our

shores.”

Father Anthony reminded them of the social institutions which had been

established among them, with the entire good-will of the natives: but

his pupils were obstinate in the opinion that slavery could not be said

to be abolished while labourers were dependent for daily bread on the

arbitrary will of a monopolizing party; and that, excellent as was trial

by jury, the prevention of the manifold crimes which spring from

oppression would be still better.

“If the English were to withdraw their protection,” said Father Anthony,

“would you forbid them your shores?”

“They should be more welcome than they have ever been yet,” declared the

old fisherman. “Let them land here, and we will spread white cloth for

them to tread upon, and carry them on our shoulders to Columbo. If they

will buy our pearls, the Dutchman, and the Frenchman, and the Spaniard

shall all stand back till the English are served, and the money that we

shall receive in our fairs and our markets shall buy the merchandise

that comes from Britain. We have dealt with the English so long, that we

would deal with them rather than with people of strange tongues and

ways, if they would but traffic as fairly as other people.”

“Why, then, should the English go? Why should they not live in the

houses they have themselves built, and walk in the gardens they

themselves have planted?”

“Let them do so—the merchant, and the priest, and the judge, and the

labourer—if there be British labourers here. Of these we can make

countrymen and friends. But we do not wish for rulers, if they make us

poor, and so tempt us to wickedness. We do not wish for soldiers, if we

must give our daughters’ dowries to maintain them. And as for the

government agent, who takes our pearls, and the Company, that forbid us

to grow cinnamon for anybody but themselves, if they will go, we will

work hard, and soon make a beautiful ship to carry them away.”

“Then it is not the English you object to, but some of their conduct

towards you? Let us hope that the time will come when you will live

together, not quarrelling for the possession of what Providence has

given to all, but finding that there is enough for all.”

“Why do not the wise English see this?”

“Many of them do. The wisest of the English see that there is little

honour or advantage in calling any colony a possession of her own, if it

would bring her profit instead of loss by being her friend, instead of

her servant. The wisest among the English see, that to make a colony

poor is to make it unprofitable, and that colonies cannot be very rich

while they are dependent. To protect and cherish a colony till it can

take care of itself, is wise and kind; but to prevent its taking care of

itself, is folly and crime. It is as if every man here should keep his

grown up son in the bondage of childhood. Such fathers and such sons can

never be prosperous and virtuous.”

“Who prevents the wise among the English from acting wisely?”

“Some who are not so wise. Though it may be clear that all England and

all Ceylon would be more prosperous if the trade of Ceylon were free,

some few would cease to make gains which they will not forego. Some hope

that their sons may be made soldiers, if there should be a war in the

colony, and others expect that a brother or a cousin may be a judge, or

a priest, or a servant of the government.”

“But there cannot be many such.”

“Very few; but those few have been enough to burden England with

expensive colonies up to this day. They are few, but they are powerful,

because the many do not know what a grievance they are submitting to.

The selfish are few; but it does not follow that all others are wise, or

England would leave off maintaining colonies expensively for the sake of

their trade, when she would trade more profitably with them free.”

“Why do the people not know this?”

“It is strange that they do not bestir themselves, and look abroad, and

judge.”

“Where should they look?”

“To the east or to the west, as they please. In the east they may see

how their trade has been more than twice doubled since they have allowed

some little freedom of traffic; and they are told every year how

expensive is this island, where no trade is free. They might know that,

with the greatest natural wealth, this island is among the least

profitable of their colonies. They might know that its total revenue

does not pay its expenses, and that no making shifts, no gathering in of

money from all quarters, can prevent its being a burden to them and to

their children, if they persevere in their present management.”

“And what may they learn by looking westward?”

“That the States of America are a source of much greater wealth and

power to Great Britain now than when she had a ruler in each of them.

She is saved the expense of governing at a great distance, and has more

trade with America than when she called it her own. Also, the colonies

that she still holds in the west are an enormous expense to her—as

fearful a burden as America is an advantage. Besides the loss which the

mother country incurs for the sake of the colonies, (and which loss does

those very colonies nothing but harm,) there is a direct expenditure of

upwards of a million and a half in time of peace, for the apparatus of

defence alone. How much more there is laid out in times of war, and in

the necessary expenses of a government far from home, the people of

England can never have considered, or they would long ago have

permitted, ay, encouraged, Canada and Jamaica to govern themselves.”

“If the English will but let us take care of ourselves, they may,

perhaps, learn a new lesson about the places in the west.”

“I am happy to tell you that a beginning is already made. There is only

one among you—your father, Marana—to whom I have yet told the news.

Every man may now plant cinnamon in his garden, and sell it to

whomsoever he pleases. The news will not be long in flying round the

world, and then more and more will ask for cinnamon continually; your

countrymen will grow a greater quantity, and obtain a larger variety of

comforts in exchange.”

“Then you will have to preach to us as they say you preach to the

strangers,—against gay dresses, and rich food, and too much love of

gold,” said the old man, chuckling.

“And if so, less against theft, and fraud, and hypocrisy, and

indolence,” replied the priest. “There will be little stealing of chanks

when all may fish them; little false bargaining when bargains shall have

opportunity to become fair; little pretence of penitence hiding a

mocking heart, when there is room for real thankfulness, and for a sense

of ingratitude to a bountiful God; and much more industry when the

rewards of industry are within reach. However true it may be that mortal

men sin while they are mortal men, it is certain that they change their

sins with their outward state, and change them for the better as their

state improves.”

“Some tempters from above must be worse than others, I suppose,” said

Gomgode; “but it is surprising to think that our rulers have power to

send away the worst, that some less bad may come in.”

Marana hoped that her husband might benefit by the change. If his

elephantiasis could but turn into some disease less dreadful, how would

she bless the relaxation of the cinnamon monopoly!

Father Anthony could not encourage his dear daughter to look for such a

result as this. But there were no bounds to the mercy of God towards one

who repented,—as it was to be hoped Rayo did. Father Anthony would

journey southwards with Marana and her father, to visit and console and

pray with his unhappy charge, Rayo. He was ready at any moment to set

forth.

Marana’s ecstacies of gratitude and joy were checked only by the fear of

what spectacle might meet her in her hut on her return, and by the

mournful farewells of Neyna and her young companions, to whom no

immediate prospect of a dowry was opened by the new change of policy.

They regarded Marana as about to enter a land of promise whither they

would fain follow her; unless, indeed, some similarly precious

permission respecting the pearl banks should arrive, and convert their

dreary shore into a region of hope and activity. They silently received

their priest’s parting blessing and injunctions as to their duties

during his absence, and then watched him on his way. Setting forth

laboriously on his mission of charity, he looked, indeed, little like

one of the intruding strangers whom they had been taught to wish far

from their shores.

CHAPTER VII

UP AND DOING.

Marana scarcely knew what to hope or fear when she had cast the first

hasty glance round the hut in which she expected to find her husband.

Rayo was not there, and she dreaded to inquire where he was; whether his

ashes had been given to the winds, or whether some of these winds had

brought him vigour to go abroad into the neighbouring wood. All the way

as she came, sights and sounds of pleasure had been presented to her,

and she had endeavoured to share the satisfaction of the priest and of

her father at seeing the bustle of the country people in clearing their

ground for the growth of the long-forbidden shrub; and the joyous

parties returning from the thickets with the young plants which, when

improved by cultivation, were to form the foundation of their wealth;

and the dancing girls spreading the news through the land. She had

striven to thank her saint with the due devotion when Father Anthony

spread the blessing around him as he travelled; but the dread of what

might be awaiting her at home had borne down her spirits. A circumstance

which had occurred the day before had alarmed her grievously at the

moment, and now explained only too clearly, she apprehended, the

deserted state of the hut. She had stolen out early to bathe, and when

she came up out of the water, she found that a thievish bird was flying

away with her necklace, the symbol of her married state. It was true

that a shout from her father had caused the necklace to be dropped, and

that it was at this moment safe; but was not the pang which shot through

her yesterday prophetic of the worse pangs of to-day? Whether her father

believed that his spells could bring back a departed spirit, he did not

declare; but he now hastened to utter them on the threshold, while

Marana flitted about the hut, taking up first the empty cocoa-nut from

the floor, then the dry skin which was wont to hold oil, and then the

mat on which it was impossible to tell by the mere examination whether

any one had slept on the preceding night.

While she was sinking, at length, in utter inability to inquire further,

the priest, who had walked a little way into the jungle on seeing that

nothing was to be learned within doors, approached the entrance with a

smile on his countenance. No one thought of waiting till the charm was

ended. The three went forth; and, not far off, in an open space to which

sunshine and air were admitted, appeared a group of people, whose voices

sounded cheerily in the evening calm.

Mr. Carr was on horseback, with Alice before him, watching the

proceedings of the others. Mr. Serle was digging a hole in the newly

prepared soil, while Rayo stood by, holding the young cinnamon shrub

which was about to be planted. Mrs. Serle was busy, at some distance,

training the pepper-vine against the garden fence.

“Stop, stop!” cried the broken voice of the Charmer; “I have a vow,

Rayo,—a vow! I have vowed to plant and bless the first cinnamon shrub in

your garden.”

“And my blessing is yours, my son,” added Father Anthony.

“And mine has been given already,” observed the missionary, smiling.

“When was ever any property of your Honourable Company so hallowed?”

Mrs. Serle inquired of Mr. Carr, with a smile, as she turned away to

avoid seeing the meeting of Rayo and Marana.

“Property is sacred in the eye of God and man,” replied Mr. Carr,

gravely.

“So it has been ever agreed between God and man,” said Mrs. Serle.

“Therefore, whenever that which is called property is extensively

desecrated, the inevitable conclusion is that it is not really property.

The time will never come when this island will rise up against Rayo’s

cinnamon plantation, even if it should spread, by gradual and honourable

increase, to the sea on one side, and to Candy on the other. As long as

it prospers by means which interfere with no one’s rights, Rayo’s

property will be sacred in the eyes of his country. But the whole island

has long risen against your monopoly gardens. There have been not only

curses breathed within its shade, and beyond its bounds, but pilfering,

and burning, and studious waste.”

“I think it is a pity, papa,” said Alice, “that the Company did not get

a Charmer to charm the great garden at the beginning, and a Catholic

priest to give it a blessing, and then it would have been as safe as

Rayo’s is to be.”

“Nonsense, my dear,” was Mr. Carr’s reply. He was full of trouble at the

responsibility which would fall upon him if the opening of the cinnamon

trade should prove a disaster.

“The same charm and blessing will not suit, I believe, Alice,” replied

Mrs. Serle. “The charm is, in fact, against hopeless poverty and its

attendant miseries,—a lot which the Honourable Company has never had to

fear. The blessing is, in fact, on the exchange of fraud and hypocrisy—

the vices which spring from oppression,—for honesty,—the virtue which

grows up where labour is left free to find its recompense. The

Honourable Company——”

“Has never found its recompense, in this instance, I am sure,” said Mr.

Carr. “We are heartily tired of our bargain; and not all that we have

obtained from Government, from time to time, to compensate for

fluctuations, has prevented our losing very seriously from our cinnamon

trade. We have been thoroughly disappointed in our markets, and cannot

open any fresh ones. I hope now——”

“O, yes! You will do well enough now, if you will manage your concerns

as economically as private traders, and put yourselves on equal terms

with the people of the country. There can be no lack of a market when it

is once known that every one may sell and every one buy that which every

body likes.”

“I believe so; and that there will henceforth be no such considerable

fluctuations as there have been while there were fewer parties

interested in checking and balancing each other. Still,—convinced as I

am that we have done wisely in abolishing this monopoly,—I cannot but

feel it to be a serious thing to witness so vigorous a preparation for

supplying the new demand.”

“It is indeed a serious thing to see a new era established among a

people to whom we stand in the relation of a secondary Providence. It is

a serious thing to have the power of lifting up the impotent who have

long lain hopeless at this beautiful gate of God’s temple, and to see

them instantly paying the homage of activity and joy. But this is surely

not the moment to distrust the exercise of their new strength, and to

fear its consequences.”

“Will poor Rayo ever be able to walk like other people, do you think,

papa?” inquired Alice.

Mr. Carr had no hope of cure; but it was not an uncommon thing for the

victims of this disease to live on for many years, without much pain, if

well fed and taken care of. So great a change had already taken place in

Rayo since something had been given him to do and to hope for, that it

seemed very probable that he might revive much further, and prune his

own vines, and bark his own shrubs for many a season to come. He must be

assisted to erect a cottage on the dry soil of his new garden, instead

of remaining in the damp nook which had been the home of his poverty. He

must be assisted to obtain wholesome food till the next cinnamon

harvest, after which it might be hoped that he would be able first to

supply his simple wants, and then to afford to let them become more

complex.

“He is gone to confession with the priest,” observed Mrs. Serle, as she

watched the two proceeding towards the hut, while Marana’s beads hung

from her hand. “Henceforth, Mr. Carr, let Rayo’s sins be his own: but I

think the Honourable Company can hardly refuse to take his past offences

on themselves, however long they have made him bear the penalty.”

“Certainly, if we strike out of the catalogue of crimes,” said Mr. Carr,

“all that are originated by institutions, and by social customs, against

which an individual can do no more than protest, but few will remain for

which any Christian priest will dare to prescribe individual penance. If

the heads of colonial governments at home were fully and perpetually

aware of this, under what solemn emotions would they step into their

office!”

Perhaps Father Anthony was such a Christian priest as Mr. Carr had just

spoken of, for he returned from hearing Rayo’s confession with a

countenance full of mildness, and a voice full of pity. Marana no longer

detected under her husband’s submissive manner the workings of passion

which had often terrified her; and, in addition to this, and to the

decided improvement she witnessed in his health, she had the

satisfaction of learning from her father that he had so far recovered

his confidence in his own spells that he was sure the charmed shrub

would prosper, and would avail better to make Amoottra keep her distance

than any chank in the Indian seas.

The rest of the party were about to go in search of rice or other good

food. They had been too much struck by their accidental meeting with

Rayo in the wood,—too deeply touched by witnessing his feeble attempts

to pluck up the cinnamon suckers,—to think of leaving him to his own

resources in his present state of health. As they were quitting the

enclosure, and looked back to see how the slanting sunbeams lit up the

eyes of the care-worn family, the two priests of a religion of promise

assured one another that the time was at hand when here every man should

sit under his vine and his fig-tree, and none should make him afraid.

_Summary of Principles illustrated in this Volume._

Colonies are advantageous to the mother-country as affording places of

settlement for her emigrating members, and opening markets where her

merchants will always have the preference over those of other countries,

from identity of language and usages.

Colonies are not advantageous to the mother-country as the basis of a

peculiar trade.

The term ‘colony trade’ involves the idea of monopoly; since, in a free

trade, a colony bears the same relation as any other party to the

mother-country.

Such monopoly is disadvantageous to the mother-country, whether

possessed by the government, as a trading party, by an exclusive

company, or by all the merchants of the mother-country.

It is disadvantageous as impairing the resources of the dependency,

which are a part of the resources of the empire, and the very material

of the trade which is the object of desire.

If a colony is forbidden to buy of any but the mother-country, it must

do without some articles which it desires, or pay dear for them;—it

loses the opportunity of an advantageous exchange, or makes a

disadvantageous one. Thus the resources of the colony are wasted.

If a colony is forbidden to sell its own produce to any but the

mother-country, either the prohibition is not needed, or the colony

receives less in exchange from the mother-country than it might obtain

elsewhere. Thus, again, the resources of the colony are wasted.

If a colony is forbidden either to buy of or sell to any but the

mother-country, the resources of the colony are wasted according to both

the above methods, and the colony is condemned to remain a poor customer

and an expensive dependency.

In proportion, therefore, as trade with colonies is distinguished from

trade with other places, by restriction on buyers at home, or on sellers

in the colonies, that trade (involving the apparatus of restriction)

becomes an occasion of loss instead of gain to the empire.

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London: Printed by WILLIAM CLOWES, Duke-street, Lambeth.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

A TALE OF THE TYNE.

BY

HARRIET MARTINEAU.

LONDON:

CHARLES FOX, 67, PATERNOSTER-ROW.

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833.

CONTENTS.

Chapter Page

1. No News from the Port 1

2. News from the Port 22

3. Grown Children’s Holiday 44

4. Epistolary Godliness 66

5. Nothing but a Voice 78

6. Sleeping and Waking 108

7. Loyalty Preventives 121

A TALE OF THE TYNE.

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CHAPTER I.

NO NEWS FROM THE PORT.