, is made
by Government; where capital is nowhere concentrated in great
commercial or manufacturing establishments, there can be no upper
classes in society but those of office; and of all societies, perhaps
that is the worst in which the higher classes are so exclusively
composed. In India, public office has been, and must continue to be,
the only road to distinction, until we have a _law of primogeniture_,
and a _concentration of capital_. In India no man has ever thought
himself respectable, or been thought so by others, unless he is armed
with his little 'hukumat'; his 'little brief authority' under
Government, that gives him the command of some public establishment
paid out of the revenues of the State.[7] In Europe and America,
where capital has been concentrated in great commercial and
manufacturing establishments, and free institutions prevail almost as
the natural consequence, industry is everything; and those who direct
and command it are, happily, looked up to as the source of the
wealth, the strength, the virtue, and the happiness of the nation.
The concentration of capital in such establishments may, indeed, be
considered, not only as the natural consequence, but as the
prevailing cause of the free institutions by which the mass of the
people in European countries are blessed.
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