Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Calcutta ? that is, over 31,000 chests ? which would increase the revenue to 3,000,000. And this includes a part only ? perhaps two-thirds ? of the opium raised in India, and, of course, not all the government revenue from this source. In Malwa, a province lying in the central part of India, the cultivation of the poppy and the manufacture of opium, are carried on under very different management. This province is subject in its government to native princes, and the cultivation of the soil is therefore entirely beyond the East India Company's control. Here, the poppy is cultivated, and opium is manufactured as freely as rice and wheat are cultivated, without any restraint or interference on the part of government agents. The question with the farmers, therefore, is simply one of profit, whether they will raise a crop of the poppy, or of rice or wheat. Here opium is bought and sold in all the market-places, just as grain and other productions are; and it is estimated that 7000 to 8000 chests are annually consumed in Malwa and the adjacent provinces. But their principal market is the city of Bombay, some 400 to 500 miles distant from Malwa. And in order to reach this market, all their opium must be transported over land this distance, and pass through certain territories of the East India Company. For the mere privilege of passing through these lands, the company levy a tax, or transit duty, so called, of 400 rupees on every chest of opium. Formerly this tax was only Us. 200; it was then raised to Us. 300, and in 1847 increased again to Us. 400. And in all probability within a few years, when the East India Company shall find it for its interest, a still larger transit duty or tax will be exacted. The law on this point is rigidly enforced, as all opium found within the bo...