Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, or the Central and Western Rajput States of India v2.c28.s3.t1.124

v2.c28.s3.t1.124

Decay of Commerce. The Opium Trade.—Commerce has been almost extinguished within these last twenty years; and paradoxical as it may appear, there was tenfold more activity and enterprise in the midst of that predatory warfare, which rendered India one wide arena of conflict, than in these days of universal pacification. The torpedo touch of monopoly has had more effect on the Kitars than the spear of the desert Sahariya, or Barwatia (outlaw) Rajput—against its benumbing qualities the Charan’s dagger would fall innocuous; it sheds no blood, but it dries up its channels. If the products of the salt-lakes of Rajputana were preferred, even at Benares, to the sea-salt of Bengal, high impost duties excluded it from the market. If the opium of Malwa and Haraoti competed in the China market with our Patna monopoly, again we intervened, not with high export duties, which we were competent to impose, but by laying our shackles upon it at the fountain-head. “*Aut Caesar, aut nullus*,” is our maxim [168] in these regions; and in a country where our Agents are established only to preserve political relations and the faith of treaties, the basis of which is non-interference in the internal arrangement of their affairs—albeit we have not a single foot of land in sovereignty—we set forth our *parwanas*, as peremptory as any Russian ukase, and command that no opium shall leave these countries for the accustomed outlets, under pain of confiscation. Some, relying on their skill in eluding our vigilance, or tempted by the high price which these measures produce, or perhaps reckoning upon our justice, and upon impunity if discovered, tried new routes, until confiscation brought them to submission.