PASSAGE II
Now
let us turn back to inquire whether sending our capital abroad, and consenting
to be taxed to pay emigration fares to get rid of the women and men who are
left without employment in consequence, is all that Capitalism can do when our employers,
who act for our capitalists in industrial affairs, and are more or less
capitalists themselves in the earlier stages of capitalistic development, find
that they can sell no more of their goods at a profit, or indeed at all, in
their own country.
Clearly
they cannot send abroad the capital they have already invested, because it has
all been eaten up by the workers, leaving in its place factories and railways
and mines and the like; and these cannot be packed into a ship’s hold and sent
to Africa. It is only the freshly saved capital that can be sent out of the
country. This, as we have seen, does go abroad in heaps. But the British
employer who is working with capital in the shape of works fixed to British
land held by him on long lease, must; when once he has sold all the goods at
home that his British customers can afford to buy, either shut up his works
until the customers have worn out their stock of what they have bought, which
would bankrupt him (for the landlord will not wait), or else sell his
superfluous goods somewhere else: that is, he must send them abroad. Now it is
not easy to send them to civilised countries, because they practise Protection,
which means that they impose heavy taxes (customs duties) on foreign goods.
Uncivilised countries, without Protection, and inhabited by natives to whom
gaudy calicoes and cheap showy brassware are dazzling and delightful novelists,
are the best places to make for at first.
But
trade requires a settled government to put down the habit of plundering
strangers. This is not a habit of simple tribes, who are often friendly and
honest. It is what civilised men do where there is no law to restrain them.
Until quite recent times it was extremely dangerous to be wrecked on our own
coasts, as wrecking, which meant plundering wretched ships and refraining from
any officious efforts to save the lives of their crews, was a well-established
business in many places on our shores. The Chinese still remember some
astonishing outbursts of looting perpetrated by English ladies of high
position, at moments when law was suspended and priceless works of art were to
be had for the grabbing. When trading with aborigines begins with the visit of
a single ship, the cannons and cutlasses it carries may be quite sufficient to overawe
the natives if they are troublesome. The real difficulty begins when so many
ships come, that a little trading station of white men grows up and attracts
the white ne’er-do-wells and violent roughs who are always being squeezed out
of civilisation by the pressure of law and order. It is these riffraff who turn
the place into a sort of hell in which sooner or later missionaries are
murdered and traders plundered. Their home governments are appealed to put a
stop to this. A gunboat is sent out and inquiry made. The report after the
inquiry is that there is nothing to be done but to set up a civilised
government, with a post office, police, troops, and a navy in the offing. In
short, the place is added to some civilised Empire. And the civilised taxpayer
pays the bill without getting a farthing of the profits.
Of
course the business does not stop there. The riffraff who have created the
emergency move out just beyond the boundary of the annexed territory, and are
as great a nuisance as ever to the traders when they have exhausted the
purchasing power of the included natives and push on after fresh customers.
Again they call on their home government to civilise a further area; and so bit
by bit the civilised Empire grows at the expense of the home taxpayers, without
any intention or approval on their part, until at last, though all their real
patriotism is centred on their own people and confined to their own country,
their own rulers, and their own religious faith, they find that the centre of
their beloved realm has shifted to the other hemisphere. That is how we in the
British Islands have found our centre moved from London to the Suez Canal, and
are now in the position that out of every hundred of our fellow-subjects, in
whose defence we are expected to shed the last drop of our blood, only eleven
are whites or even Christians. In our bewilderment some of us declare that the
Empire is a burden and a blunder, whilst others glory in it as a triumph. You
and I need not argue with them just now, our point for the moment being that,
whether blunder or glory, the British Empire was quite unintentional. What
should have been undertaken only as a most carefully considered political
development has been a series of commercial adventures thrust on us by
capitalists forced by their own system to cater for foreign customers before
their own country’s needs were one-tenth satisfied.
46.
It may be inferred that the passage
was written:
[1] when Britain was still a
colonial power.
[2] when the author was in a bad mood.
[3] when the author was working in
the foreign service of Britain.
[4] when the author’s country was
overrun by the British.
47.
According to the author, the main
reason why capitalists go abroad to sell their goods is:
[1] that they want to civilise the
underdeveloped countries of the world by giving them their goods.
[2] that they have to have new
places to sell their surplus goods
[3] that they actually want to rule
new lands and selling goods is an excuse.
[4] None of the above.
48.
Why do the capitalistic traders
prefer the uncivilised countries to the civilised ones?
[1] Because they find it easier to
rule there.
[2] Because civilised countries
would make them pay protection duties.
[3] Because civilised countries
would make their own goods.
[4] Because uncivilised countries like the
cheap and gaudy goods of bad quality all capitalists produce.
49.
According to the author, the habit
of plundering strangers:
[1] is usually not found in simple
tribes but civilised people.
[2] is usually found in the barbaric
tribes of the uncivilised nations.
[3] is a habit limited only to
English ladies of high position.
[4] is a usual habit with all white
skinned people.
50.
Which of the following may be
called the main complaint of the author?
[1] The race of people he belongs to
are looters and plunderers.
[2] The capitalists are taking over
the entire world.
[3] It is a way of life for English
ladies to loot and plunder.
[4] The English taxpayer has to pay
for the upkeep of territories he did not want.
Nice blog Thank you very much for the information you shared.
ReplyDeleteWeb Development Internship in Bangalore
Website Designing Internship Internship in Bangalore
Internship Program