diffidence and distrust. His statements unfortunately agree with those from official sources. Read, for example, Mr. Robertson's paper on 'Agriculture in Madras' delivered before the Society of Arts. What do we find, always bearing in mind that Mr. Robertson speaks with official authority? This: that whilst the land is inadequately manured and the breed of the cattle deteriorating; whilst a process of desiccation is going on owing to the removal of forests and jungle; whilst we make no advance in agriculture and encourage no beneficial change—whilst all this deterioration and stagnation is steadily observed, there is over it a system of exacting the revenue the most costly known, and one, besides, which directly discourages improvement in every direction. Yet the proportion of exhausting crops is enormous and increasing. Can we wonder that, all this being so, the productive powers of the soil are calculated to have decreased thirty per cent. at least in thirty years? Here, then, we see the catastrophe which was laughed at as the alarmism of the ignorant once more directly foreshadowed by the evidence of an expert. But I say again that Bombay and Madras are no exceptional cases, that the same phenomena are to be observed throughout our territory. In the North-West Provinces likewise the land does not, as of old, give forth its abundance, and in Oude, the Punjab, and the Central Provinces we are steadily working up to the same result. And yet we are still content to discuss. The present higher administration of India is entirely European. There are those who vigorously contend that this is in the eternal fitness of things; that to alter or modify it gravely in any way would be ruinous, to point out its infinite deficiencies is little short of unpatriotic. The trifling promise of improvement already made is even objected to, though for years we have been pledged to employ more natives in every department. But the drawbacks to the present arrangement can never be too frequently urged until a distinct and final change is brought about. Unlike former conquerors of India we do not live in the country, and, as a consequence, we take out of it each year more than the people can afford. The total net revenue of India is under 40,000,000l. a year. Not less than 20,000,000l. worth of agricultural produce-more than the entire net income derived by the Government from the land revenue—is sent out of India every year without any direct commercial equivalent. Just think what this (and it is an underestimate by nearly fifty per cent.) really means. It means that year after year, in dearth and in plenty, in drought and in flood 20,000,000l. is taken from perhaps the poorest people on the earth to bring to us here in England (or to invest in unremunerative public works); it means that so many millions more are condemned to starvation at the next scarcity; it means that during the twenty years we have governed India 400,000,000l. have been so applied. Call this payment for good administration, gloss it over in any way you please, need we look further for the cause of the growing impoverishment of India? Not a single Englishman would say so if last year, not to speak of years before, 67,000,0007., the agricultural rent of the country, had been sent hence to the Continent for nothing. Yet 67,000,000l. to England is literally a fleabite compared with what 20,000,000l. is to India. F But the worst is to come. The interest, the pensions, the home charges which go to make up this amount have hitherto, in great part, been met by the proceeds of loans contracted here for other purposes. But further borrowing simply intensifies the drain, and is at last seen to be ruinous. In future, consequently, there will be little or no set off. Is it not, then, the business of every man to attempt to stop this open artery which is draining away the life blood of our great dependency? For let us never forget that all this produce is sent away without any reference whatever to the will of the people of India themselves. Quite apart, therefore, from any question of abstract justice to a subject race, it is of the last importance that only so many Englishmen should be employed in India as are absolutely needed for purposes of security and supervision of natives, and that we should not pay ourselves, out of Indian penury, interest which has never been earned, and pensions in excess of what is needful. For the one great need of India is capital, and that capital we now drain away. We absolutely refuse, however, to make use of the highest native talent even to serve ourselves in a position where it could not fail to be useful. The ablest Finance Minister India has ever yet seen was a Hindoo, and he was employed by a Mahommedan emperor whose grandfather conquered India. If we cannot rise to the magnanimity of an Akbar, we ought at least to use in some way the greatest financial capacity the country affords. Hindoos understand accounts just as well as ourselves; they are naturally saving, and beyond all question they know where their countrymen feel the pinch of taxation better than we do. Let us therefore take advantage of their knowledge for our own sakes. But hitherto it has been useless to urge this. For twenty years Europeanisation has been the one great panacea for all evils, and its effects we have only now begun to see. What Englishmen formerly did in India is, as I have said, open to all. None can forget, or would if they could, the glorious work done by Outram among the Bheels, by Edwardes on the Indus border, by the Lawrences, by Mountstuart Elphinstone, by Sleeman, by Meadows Taylor, by Metcalfe and Malcolm, by Shore, Monro, and Macleod. But these great men worked through native channels; they raised the people under their control by personal intercourse, by endeavouring to understand and enter into native ideas, native fears, hopes, ambitions, even amusements. The "We are even averse from examining natives as witnesses on the affairs of their own country. But three native witnesses were examined before the great Committee of the House of Commons on Indian Finance. Yet, if the warnings they gave had been attended to, we should have reformed abuses in time to avert disaster in more than one district. Of course no one supposes that native evidence in regard to our rule is to be implicitly relied upon, but we ought at least to have some check upon the statements of officials as to their own capacity. t time for all this in our own territory seems almost to have gone by. Circumstances have entirely changed. The young men who go out to India no longer look upon the country as their home, no longer are able to get so near to the people as their predecessors. They go out at a later age, theoretically far better acquainted with the people they have to govern and it would not be difficult to name individual competition wallahs who have distinguished themselves by personal self-sacrifice for the good of those whom they rule --but with their minds in England rather than in India. With every wish to do their work thoroughly, to improve those for whom they are responsible, they soon find that they form part of an inexorable machine which grinds minutes, reports, and judgments out of them to such an extent that they have no time for friendly intercourse with the natives.5 Here are some of the duties which fall upon a district officer, that district officer who is called by Dr. Hunter the real ruler of India. He is Collector of the land revenue. Registrar of the landed property in the district. Judge between landlord and tenant. Ministerial officer of the courts of justice. Treasurer and accountant of the district. Administrator of the district excise. Ex-officio president of the local rates committee. Agent for the Government in all local suits to Referee in local public works. Manager of estates of minors. Magistrate, police magistrate, and criminal judge. As Buston Head of police. Ex-officio president of municipalities. The all-important question of raised or increased assessment or The late James Geddes was a notable instance of a man who may be said to have sacrificed his career and even his life to the welfare of the people he went out to rule. He preferred to state what he believed to be the truth rather than to attain to the highest offices by falling in with the prevailing opinion. A Bengal civilian of the first capacity, he ventured to doubt the beneficence of the system he was called upon to administer. He died a few months ago at the early age of forty, broken down by overwork and disappointment. Though his views may have been exaggerated and his suggestions not very practicable, no nobler character ever honoured the Indian services by participating in their work. 5 There is in fact no real revenue administration. The collector, especially in Oude and the Punjab, is a tax-gatherer and nothing more; he is compulsory jack-ofall-trades whose days are spent in inditing countless reports on all miscellaneous matter of great or small importance upon which the local government of the day sets, or is forced to set, great store; he has to draw up portentous memos on conservancy, municipalities, drains, and self-government all the morning; his afternoons are occupied with his appellate work; and an odd half-hour or so, as leisure permits, is with difficulty snatched for the real work of a collector, namely the disposal of the revenue reports those papers which have to do with the future prosperity or ruin of whole villages. (Our Land Revenue Policy in Northern India, by C. J. Connell, Bengal Civil Service.) remission—namely, the very hinge on which the whole welfare of the district hangs must be perfunctorily rushed through, while a proposal for a new latrine has taken up hours of valuable time.' Overwhelmed, in short, with clerk work about matters of no moment, the collector has no opportunity for thoroughly getting to the bottom of his duties. Can any one wonder that, in such circumstances, the commonplace man is content to go on in the ordinary humdrum way; and that the man of ability, when he does get to the top of the tree, has all the ardour for reform taken out of him, and is only eager to get home? How can either acquire that intimate knowledge which is so essential, whilst he is hearing cases or compiling reports? The pressure of the bureaucracy is ever on him, and sooner or later he has to give in. This, perhaps, is one of the most perplexing points in the future of our connection with India. Although India has known no other rule than ours for at least three generations, we are getting further and further from the people, and are less intimate with them than This arises from various causes, some of which cannot be removed. But the excess of office work certainly does much mischief, and the constant transfers and frequent furloughs do more. On this serious difficulty the following remarks from a private letter to me may be interesting: we were. It is in general sadly true that Englishmen in India live totally estranged from the people among whom they are sojourning. This estrangement is partly unavoidable, being the result of national customs, language, and caste. But on the whole there is no doubt, I think, that it might in great part be removed if Englishmen would make up their minds (but how can they be ordered to do so ?) to assume a less contemptuous attitude. Some natives in some respects are (it must be admitted) contemptible; but not all, or nearly all. We may say that while there is fault on both sides, the greater fault is on our side, because we have not performed a duty-clearly laid upon us by the nature of our position in India-of striving to understand the natives. The English contempt proceeds in the main from English ignorance, and English ignorance is accompanied, as so often happens, by English bluster. Those who have known the natives well have generally liked them, even loved them, and their love has been returned with a remarkable wealth of unselfish affection. That natives are worth the effort of knowing, no humane person can doubt; but because with the difference of language and habits it does take some effort to know them, most Englishmen keep aloof. This tendency to aloofness is greater than it used to be, and is, I fear, increasing. This is a great misfortune. Some think that the increased tendency comes from an increase of Europeans of a lower social order than those who formerly came to India. It may be so: if so it can only be regarded and deplored as a new (but necessary) order of things. Certain it is the natives consider the Sahib is not what he used to be-certain, too, that English rule is not popular. This is the great social calamity attending our Raj in India. For it is not easy to dictate a remedy. Nothing can be effected by preaching or exhortation. The examples of Englishmen placed in high office may do and have done something to foster good-will between the different races; but the respect due to high office necessarily involves some formality, and forbids the expression of cordial sentiments. On the whole, nothing tangible can be achieved till the ordinary Englishman begins by treating the ordinary native as worthy to be known, and treats him, when found worthy, as an equal and a friend. But that happy day has not come yet. The army of the damned nigger' philistines is strong. I may add that my friend, who is an Englishman and an official, takes a much more favourable view of the present condition of India than I do. Without, however, going further into detail, is it not abundantly clear that, so far as the main principles of our future administration are concerned, what we need is to remove from our own officials this excessive pressure of bureau work, and from the natives the excessive pressure of Europeans and European ideas, and European taxation above them? This can only be done by gradually reconstructing an improved native administration. The highest posts must, under one name or another, be in our hands so long as we remain in the country; but when we once admit that more native administration is desirable on all grounds, we shall have really begun that reorganisation which must be the work of the future. The chief points to be always kept in view, indeed, in addition to relentless economy in India and at home, should be decentralisation, European supervision, native administration. Decentralisation, because it is utterly impossible-it is the root of many great grievances now-to rule well and tax fairly many nations and peoples on one distinct and definite plan. European supervision, because we have no intention whatever of leaving the country, and that is the best way of applying our superior knowledge. Native administration, because in this way alone shall we stanch in part the drain of produce, and give to the more capable natives that outlet for their capacities without which they will never be content, because also in this way alone shall we give free scope to those native arts and manufactures which at present are being crushed out under our system. Thus will the great provinces into which India is divided be prepared very gradually but very surely for that self-government which will be the noblest outcome of our rule. That India might be benefited by the English connection is undoubted; but it will be by guidance and help, not by stunting all spontaneous growth under a dead weight of Europeanisation. In the direction of finance the absolute need for reform is more generally acknowledged than elsewhere, and it is now recognised that a new departure is required more especially in regard to the departments of the Army and Public Works. The Afghan war, when all accounts are completed, will probably cost a good deal more than 20,000,000l. Full accounts have not been made up for two years. Even when the English taxpayer has assumed his full proportion of this inordinate amount, the situation will be sufficiently serious. But to take the Public Works first. The Committee appointed by the House of Commons last session fully confirmed the criticisms which I ventured to make upon the management of that department nearly two years ago. A more damaging statement, calmly worded though it is, it would be difficult to find, or, it may be added, a more direct contradiction to the optimist statements of successive Secretaries and Under-Secretaries of State for India. For from that report it appears that up to the date of the inquiry 95,000,000l. had been spent upon guaranteed |