In such seasons of distress, we often, in India, hear of very
injudicious interference with grain dealers on the part of civil and
military authorities, who contrive to persuade themselves that the
interest of these corn-dealers, instead of being in accordance with
the interests of the people, are entirely opposed to them; and
conclude that, whenever grain becomes dear, they have a right to make
them open their granaries, and sell their grain at such price as
they, in their wisdom, may deem reasonable. If they cannot make them
do this by persuasion, fine, or imprisonment, they cause their pits
to be opened by their own soldiers or native officers, and the grain
to be sold at an arbitrary price. If, in a hundred pits thus opened,
they find one in which the corn happens to be damaged by damp, they
come to the sage conclusion that the proprietors must be what they
have all along supposed them to be, and treated as such--_the common
enemies of mankind_--who, blind alike to their own interests and
those of the people, purchase up the superabundance of seasons of
plenty, not to sell it again in seasons of scarcity, but _to destroy
it_; and that the whole of the grain in the other ninety-nine pits,
but for their _timely interference_, must have inevitably shared the
same fate.
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