MONEY NOT ALWAYS THE ROOT OF EVIL.

Hot Lakes Chronicle, Volume 2, Issue 125, 5 June 1895, Page 3

MONEY NOT ALWAYS THE ROOT OF EVIL.

Captain Touughusband, lately Assistant Besideut at Chitral, gave a lecture at the Metropole on March 12. He said that he found that the principal evil in the mountains outaide hie station was the want of desire for money. The mountaineers secluded from mankind amid their hills have never used any, and have consequently no idea of tho value of coins. They took the rupees for ornaments, and were greatly aggrieved when asked to carry loads up the hills and were paid only in silly bits of silver. As thereßritish Government wanted a good deal of work done, and was reluctant to employ forced labour, it was necessary to train the people to the love of money. Hawkers, therefore, were brought up from the plains, and when the people found that they could obtain things they wished for with rupees, they began to deeire! them, and therefore to work willingly for wages, and to trade. The absence of the desire for money was, in fact proof with the Chitralis not of virtuous instincts, but of savagery, which, now that money has been introduced will gradually disappear. It is probable, by the way, that tho simplicity of the Chitralis is a result of retrogression, a kind of civilisation having dropped off them in their centuries of seclusion, as it would drop off from men who were hopolcssely imprisoned.