Page:Life or Death in India.djvu/62

 ; to borrow in order to build, or to trade, or to farm; you must not make railways except you can pay for them out of your income, nor telegraphs, nor any means of communication by steam or water?

Is not this reversing the whole principle which has given England her unparalleled success in trade and manufacture—her greatness, as a nation, over the whole globe?

Unless you have money in your stocking to do it, we say in India, don't do it; you must not utilise the money in your neighbour's stocking. You can't eat roads, or railways, or canal-banks this year, though they may bring you a hundred-fold produce in twenty years. Be not fools who spend their money, unless, having £100 in your mattress, you can see £110 for every £100 in your mattress before Christmas. Eat what you can grow in your garden; you can keep your own money safer than anybody else can use it for you.

Is it 'extravagance' to provide for ten years hence, or even, as this famine has but too fatally proved, for one short year hence, what we are to eat then?—or die of starvation—unless we can provide with the money now in hand?

Is it 'sound finance' to let a man starve a year hence, and live this year by eating up all he has?

Is it cheap to let him die, too dear to make him live, if you have to provide for his next year's food on borrowed capital, even if that capital returns cent. per cent. in future years; and even if—not borrowing it—you spend next year millions where you would