. My life-work;. most important political consequences follow from the recog-nition of this fact. I have taken some pains to form an estimate ofthe wealth in India, and have been startled at the result. The ableFinance Minister, Sir Evelyn Baring, now Lord Cromer, estimated theaverage income of the people at 27 rupees per head in 1882. Therupee was then worth about 15. 8d. : now it is fixed at is. 4^. LordCurzon now (1901) estimates the average income at 30 rupees, or £2per head ; and that of the agricultural po]-)ulation, which is 80 percent, of the whole, at 20 rupees, or £1 6s. Sd. per head
. My life-work;. most important political consequences follow from the recog-nition of this fact. I have taken some pains to form an estimate ofthe wealth in India, and have been startled at the result. The ableFinance Minister, Sir Evelyn Baring, now Lord Cromer, estimated theaverage income of the people at 27 rupees per head in 1882. Therupee was then worth about 15. 8d. : now it is fixed at is. 4^. LordCurzon now (1901) estimates the average income at 30 rupees, or £2per head ; and that of the agricultural po]-)ulation, which is 80 percent, of the whole, at 20 rupees, or £1 6s. Sd. per head. This wouldgive 462 millions sterling as the aggregate income of the 231 millions *of people in British territory. Sir Robert Giffen, our best statist, ina recent article in the Times, puts the aggregate income of the United India, including liurmah, contains, by the last Census, 294 millions of people,of whom 231 millions are in British territory. o en . INDIAN PROBLEMS 199 Kingdom at 1,500 to 1,600 millions, or £2)7^ P^r head. I must add,however, that the most intelligent natives I met put the income ofIndia at less than those figures. Mr. Dadabhai Naoroji, than whomthere are few better statists in India, puts the average income at only20 rupees per head, or at the rate of is. 4d. per rupee, equal to 308millions sterling for British India. These very low estimates are con-firmed by much collateral evidence. The average rate of wages upcountry is from 2 to 4 annas for common labour, or say, at thepresent value of the rupee 2d. to 4^. per day—not a tenth of what ispaid for the same class of labour in England. In districts remotefrom European travel it is even less. Then the income-tax tablesshow a marvellously small area of high incomes. It is well knownthat a penny on the income tax produces about two and a half millionssterling in England, and the assessment commences with incomes of£160 per annum. In India the same rate, commenc
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