forwarded of other districts. In the North-West Provinces, in fact, the main difficulty was that there were not stores of food to the amount calculated upon, relief-works were not started early enough, and the people died of what was, after all, a moderate scarcity.

But it is urged that the selling price of land in both the Punjab and North-West Provinces has largely increased during the last twenty years, and the Lieutenant-Governors of these two great provinces gave this at Calcutta as irrefragable evidence of the increased prosperity of the people. This by no means follows. In Ireland, under the system of cottier tenancy, precisely the same phenomenon was to be observed. The competition for holdings increased and the prices of the goodwill rose, but the people were getting poorer all the time. This, therefore, by itself, is no proof of growing welfare, and no other than official opinions are given as to the improvement in the appearance of the people. What does not yet seem fully understood is that it rests with a foreign Government, whose subjects are dying so largely of starvation, to prove that the foreign rule is in no sense the cause of this terrible state of things. It is no answer to these famine-stricken people to put forward merely ex cathedrâ opinions on their well-being. To say we must spend 19,000,000l. on the army to keep the country, to urge that we must remit 20,000,000l. worth of agricultural produce to Europe without return for the services we render, sounds but poor reasoning to the miserable cultivator, who is tottering to his death for the want of that very exported food.

6

'D.' seems to have appreciated this in some degree, and has devoted himself to showing that the condition of the people is improving, in spite of what has been said. One or two instances of his method will suffice. For example, the reassessed districts chosen in Bombay, so far from being taken at random,' are among the most prosperous in the province. To prove how dangerous it is to rely upon this official gentleman's figures, I need only take the table of the increase of cattle in Bombay, p. 790. It is said, and I do not dispute the statement, that the amount of agricultural stock held by the cultivators is to a certain extent some test of their prosperity. Beyond all question, if it could be shown that the number of cattle owned by the people in Bombay had increased in numbers without any deterioration in quality, this would be by itself one strong indication of enhanced well-being. 'D.' gives the number of cows, bullocks, and buffaloes at 5,723,066 for 1871-2 and 7,113,376 for 1876-77, thus showing the enormous increase of 1,390,310 in the five years. But on turning to the Bombay Administration Reports for these two years, I find to my astonishment that the 5,723,066 given for 1871-72 are the figures for cows and bullocks only, no buffaloes at all being here reckoned, whereas to the total for 1876-77 buffaioes to the number of no fewer than 1,603,900 are

added. The figures for 1876-77 are wrong also by 100,000, the correct total being 7,013,376, and not 7,113,376. The true totals for cows and bullocks in Bombay are 5,723,066 for 1871-72 and 5,409,476 for 1876-77. Thus, instead of the increase of 1,390,310 claimed for Bombay in the five years, there is a decrease in that period of no less than 313,590! What the result of the famine has been, I do not stop to inquire, for after this I think I need not check 'D.'s' investigations further. I said, however, that bullocks were decreasing in number and going off in quality. I will establish this proposition in another quarter. At p. 22 of the Deccan Riots Report, presented to Parliament last session, is to be found a comparison of the census of 1843 with that for 1873 for 219 villages of the Ahmednuggur Collectorate. What do I read? That during these thirty years the cows have decreased by 2,000, and the sheep and goats by 16,000. To those who desire to go deeper into this question, let me recommend the remarks of the late Mr. Carpenter at pp. 69 and 76 of the same Report on the effect of the enhanced assessments. In spite of the great impulse given by the American cotton famine, even Bombay is now again on the downward path. 3

I have dealt with these mistakes at some length, for they go to the very root of the matter. When the whole official evidence of prosperity thus tumbles to pieces at the first touch of examination, surely Englishmen at home must be satisfied that the affairs of their Indian Empire need the gravest consideration, and that mere official declarations must no longer pass unchallenged and unchecked. There are times and seasons in the affairs of nations, when responsibility is forced home to those who have neglected, evaded, or abused it-and these that we live in are of them. The process hitherto in favour for the regeneration of India has been tried and found wanting. We have now to retrace our steps, and render our noble dependency a gain and a strength to the whole Empire, by a wider policy, resting upon native growth under European guidance, not upon the mistaken methods of wholesale Europeanisation.

It is this Europeanisation which is, in fact, at the bottom of all the growing impoverishment. We are not only promoting a system of absenteeism on a scale such as has never been seen before, but there has been until lately an ever-increasing tendency to employ Europeans in India itself. The large European army, to begin with, takes a vast sum from the pockets of the people; but this expenditure, though it might be greatly reduced, cannot be, of course,

3 The Deccan Riots Report gives, at paragraph 73, an account of the contraction of cultivation, which is a singular commentary on the official view now put forward. It is worthy of note also that, where the revenue or rental has been paid in kind, this contraction is not going on.

Mr. John Morley says the cost of the army marine &c. is 17,000,000l. and not 'nearly 19,000,000l.' He has omitted to add to his calculation the full proportionate

removed. In the railways, however, and elsewhere, every European employed takes so much from a native, and still further impoverishes the country by his remittances home. Each new machine that is imported has the same effect-that of requiring more European attendants; and the value of these improvements, so far as the people of India is concerned, is thus heavily handicapped from the outset. What was the effect of Irish absenteeism in aggravating Irish poverty is now a matter of history. The rent of Ireland was remitted in the form of agricultural produce to the absentee landlords, instead of being spent among the people or in improving the estates. Taking the view that the land-tax of India is also rent, we have the same phenomenon upon an almost inconceivably greater scale. All the pensions, all the remittances, all the payments for the expensive and unnecessary establishments here at home, represent so much deducted from the produce of the soil and the possible capital of India, to maintain foreigners. Instead of training natives for the works of engineering, in which they have always excelled, we maintain a costly establishment to provide yet more young Europeans to deplete the country. There is not even work for them to do but still the revenues of India are laid under contribution to protect their vested interests.

To go into the details of the various charges would take more space than could be here afforded India pays for all, and, being wholly unrepresented, cannot effectively complain. If these salaries were paid to natives, they would keep the money in the country; and the frightful economical drain, which is producing such deadly effects on the people, would be so far stanched.

What an absurdity, then, is it to talk of taxes levied and used in this way as if there were any similarity between a government of this sort and a native rule, or the rule of foreigners who lived in the country! It is true that we exact less land-tax than the native rulers, but we cannot take so much. A native rajah who receives his land-tax in kind, and spends it on the spot in supporting the relatives and friends of those from whom it is taken, can deduct a much larger percentage without harm than a foreign government which exacts its tax in money, irrespective of the season, and uses it to pay foreign agency, or to remit to a distant country. Sir William Sleeman, whose work Sir Erskine Perry quotes loss on exchange for home charges, and a portion of the cost of the strategical railways. These bring the amount up to that which I have stated.

5

5 In his despatch of August 8, 1878, to Sir Henry Layard, Lord Salisbury insists upon the modification of the Turkish system of farming the revenue and a substi. tution of 'the arrangement known in India as a settlement.' The tithe system ... is condemned by universal experience, and will scarcely find an advocate.' By December 4, 1878, the Turks having pointed out, in the meantime, that such a reform had better be tried in the first instance in a peaceful province, Lord Salisbury had changed his mind on this point. He admits that the introduction of the settlement ⚫ would be attended with many difficulties even in the hands of a highly skilled

with high approval, pointed out all this most forcibly more than forty years ago; and it is at least worthy of consideration, that the very men, who, like Sir William, knew most of the natives, and took the largest share in bringing about those reforms which all readily admit to be advantageous, were most bitterly opposed to that unreasoning Europeanisation of the country which has landed us in our present terrible difficulties. It is useless to argue that a Government is doing well for a people who are suffering, as the natives of India have been suffering, under our rule. Say what we may to the effect that one-third of the total gross exports meeting with no return represents merely interest on capital supplied by England to India in one form or another, India may still pay too dear for her advantages. Granted that English administration is good in itselfand this I certainly do not for a moment dispute-we have here too. much of it for the interest both of England and India.

It so happens that there is a direct example of the effect of the two methods-the one of appointing a very few Europeans merely to superintend and improve the native administration, and gradually introduce an improved system suited to the people; the other to pitchfork Europeans into every office of consequence, and force departments and public works upon the country almost without calculation as to their effects. In Mysore the two plans followed one after the other. Sir Mark Cubbon administered that province of 5,000,000 people with four Europeans, at a cost, for the European agency, of 13,000l. a year. He used his influence as far as possible to check the abuses and foster the advantages of the native local administrations, encouraged the construction of public works by the natives themselves, insisted on light taxation, and abstained from continuous petty intermeddling. What was the result? In 1861-62, though Mysore had suffered from short monsoons and consequently bad average harvests since 1853, the people were, beyond all question, in a state of the greatest prosperity. Distraint for land-tax had become almost unknown. Notwithstanding all this attention to the welfare of the people, the surplus for the year was 105,000l., and there were no less than ninety-six lakhs of rupees or nearly one million sterling in the treasury. These were, indeed, the golden Administrator; and under the conditions which prevail in Turkey, it must be introduced gradually and with precaution. If the assessment is fixed too high, or if, in countries subject to failure of crop, it is not modified by a sufficiently elastic system of remission, it may be productive of great misery, and may end in fixing upon the peasantry the rule of the local usurer, which has been found to be more oppressive than even that of the tithe-farmer.' Whence did Lord Salisbury derive this result of settlement? Beyond all question from India, where our rigid inelastic system has been too often 'productive of great misery' and has ended 'in fixing upon the peasantry the rule of the local usurer.' Surely this admission on the part of the Minister for Foreign Affairs, who had only just quitted the India Office after four years of almost absolute rule, ought to teach a little modesty to some of our AngloIndian officials.

days of Mysore, and the cultivators were living in comfort, almost in wealth. There were drawbacks, of course, but they were small compared with the benefits; and to this day the people look back with bitter regret to the happiness they experienced under that light and considerate rule.

But soon after this the new methods were commenced in full force. The European agency cost 90,000l. a year instead of 13,000l.; public works were pressed on with vigour; the régime of desk-work and bureau administration was the order of the day; the surplus disappeared, and the reserve in the chest was soon drawn out. Mysore, which, under Sir Mark Cubbon's gentle sway, had been the most prosperous foreign state under our control, went steadily from bad to worse. The condition of the cultivators became deplorable; the soil deteriorated, so that, as Mr. Harman's report shows, the matter has become one of the gravest consequence; and now a drought has swept away so large a proportion of the population that positively the officials whose well-meant earnestness has contributed so largely to the catastrophe fail in their efforts to number the dead.

All this has taken place within a few years, and under the very eyes of men, now in England, whose evidence the Government can obtain and verify with little trouble. It is not that European administration is necessarily ruinous. That we can see from the admirable result of Sir Mark Cubbon's careful administration. It is not that public works are not highly beneficial. These, when judiciously made out of savings, enhance, and ever must enhance, the well-being of a lightly-taxed population. But when European agency and public works are alike overdone; when foreign salaries and foreign systems are imposed upon the population to an extent which savours of the very fanaticism of so-called improvement, then, as we see, the result is starvation, ruin, and death-a famine-stricken people and an exhausted soil.

Happily, Lord Cranbrook's despatch of November 7, in answer to Lord Lytton, shows that there is an inclination to remedy this great evil. But, as the Secretary of State for India himself points out, his predecessors for years past have insisted as strongly as himself upon the employment of natives in the Government service, and yet very little has been done in this way. I fear that, until a law is passed to the effect that only certain great superior offices shall be held by Europeans, and all other appointments, covenanted and uncovenanted, the berths now held by Englishmen in railways, engineering works, and, in short, every department, shall be filled up by qualified natives as the present holders drop off and leave the country-until this is done, no permanent good will be wrought. The influence of the Government should be exerted for the future, not as heretofore to find additional employment for Europeans, and thus intensify the fatal drain from the resources of India; but