without creating clear additional paying power in return.' To Lord Mayo himself belongs the credit of insisting on a more economical construction of the large system of lines which had been proposed by Lord Lawrence, the introduction of the narrow or metre gauge, of thus reducing the charge to 5,000l. a mile; the policy of direct construction by the State instead of through the medium of a company having been adopted. He declared positively that we must either have cheap railways or none at all. The expediency of having recourse to a narrow gauge had been faintly shadowed out by Lord Lawrence, but the struggle of enforcing this economy, and of carrying reforms apparently antagonistic to the interests of powerful companies of which the headquarters were in London, and not without Parliamentary influence, of shutting them out from a profitable field, fell to Lord Mayo. He was equal to the occasion. The practical knowledge and experience of the subject which he displayed were as marked as his determination to enforce his views was resolute, and his action was prudent and conciliatory. The application of the policy of railway extension was at the same time pushed in the States under native rule by a liberal diplomacy. Co-operation from the princes of India for the general improvement and for advancement of commerce throughout the peninsula was secured. A crown was thus put on the efforts and the work of the Viceroy in his great designs for ensuring the food, for relieving the taxation, and for improving the moral existence of the community at large, whether under British or native rule, by his thorough searching but economical systems of agricultural and irrigational development, and of intelligent railway extension. It remains to notice an arrangement which has an important financial bearing, while its political character was of a kind to excite much discussion and feeling in India generally, but more especially in the governing class. That which through a misnomer has been called the Decentralisation of Finance may be thus briefly described. Till recently it had been the custom of the subordinate governments to estimate for their local or domestic wants, such as police, jails, education, registration, medical, printing and Civil Public Works, and to draw on the Supreme Government simply for as much as they could obtain from it. It was a constant struggle between the two autho

*In 1856-57 the capital expenditure of the guaranteed railways was 13,404,2361. In 1870-71 the guaranteed capital had risen to 91,102,810., the loss to the State in the payment of interest being not less than 1,834,8117.

rities. An insubordinate, a captious, or an exacting inferior was likely to prosper better in enforcing demands than one of milder pretensions. Economy on the part of the superior became extremely difficult, if not impossible. Grants were adjusted by a series of compromises. Expenditure constantly grew in consequence. A wholesome check as supposed to exist in the immediate control was practically shown to be non-existent.

It was at length determined by Lord Mayo to throw the responsibility of finding ways and means and of expenditure within certain well-defined limits on the spending minor governments, certain funds and resources being assigned to them for the purpose, with the liberty to propose further local taxation for the consideration of the Supreme Government if they found it necessary. This subject had been much discussed in previous years. It had been rejected before Lord Mayo's time because of the unwillingness to part with the immediate control and power of veto on every kind of expenditure, however insignificant. The financial department was not willing to part with power, with direct superintendence of the most trivial character. It had been in vain to argue that the control had failed, that the veto had proved impotent, that the arms of the financial department were turned against itself. Till Lord Mayo scanned the problem which was to be solved, the truth escaped the supreme authority in India that the minor governments were too important, the areas they administered too large, their wants too numerous and varied to admit of their affairs being treated in the direct fashion proper for magistracies and collectorates. He was the first to apply the principle of seeking the co-operation of the minor governments in the application of the finances and the responsibility of raising taxes for local purposes, instead of compelling, or rather attempting to compel them, to move in certain grooves, and in matters of domestic concern to be ever thinking of a superior will. The policy which thus commended itself to him has proved admirably successful. The economy he so ardently desired has followed as he expected on the appeal to proper motives of action. But that which was hardly looked for with like confidence has also followed. So far from there being a tendency to increased taxation for local purposes in the several governments and provinces, the very contrary is seen. Thrift is practised because the obligation of finding resources additional to the assignments is thrown on the spending power. No more need be said, except that the complete success, as unanimously testified by the several authorities interested, is a rare testimony

to the sagacity and the decision with which the project of the reform was entertained, as the complement to the series of financial and administrative arrangements which with his diplomacy have put a distinctive character on the Viceroyalty of Lord Mayo. The application of administrative reform with a view to financial relief; the execution of a policy which should have the effect of promoting an interest in general economy, in providing highly-placed and important local authorities with motives for sparing instead of drawing on the public purse, of causing them to feel the responsibility before the people for their collections and their outlay; the determination to force the expenditure for purposes of reproduction and development in various ways, to move within limits marked out alone by a strict necessity and surrounded by the conditions of early reimbursement, designate Lord Mayo as perhaps the first Indian Ruler who has brought to India large and systematic ideas of finance, who was able to apply his principles in a truly scientific as distinguished from a merely empirical sense. It is easy to say, Be economical. Live within your means. But in the concerns of a vast empire to do this involves the most difficult problems. The question is How? Lord Mayo distinctly showed in theory and practice the means and the end. His successor reaped the results. Deficits had disappeared. Lord Northbrook has had wherewithal to meet the Bengal Famine. He has abolished the income-tax, a very doubtful operation,* which had already been reduced in Lord Mayo's last year. Of this income-tax he disapproved in its existing shape. That he considered should be altered; but, as declared by him a few days before his death,

With Sir John Strachey we believe that this trenchant dealing with the income-tax, the second change of the kind in the course of eight years, was injudicious. It revived uncertainty, and just at the time that the income-tax had been reduced to points at which it pressed neither on classes nor individuals, and that it had come to be tolerated as in England through force of habit, the Government of India divested itself of the only means at its disposal for reaching the incomes of classes which, being possessed of great wealth, entirely evade contribution to the expenses of the State. Thus is further relief of the customs rendered very difficult, whether as regards foreign trade or the duties on salt which operate as a poll-tax on the native population of India. But it is the uncertainty and change of system of which we complain. Just as we saw unwillingly the reimposition of the income-tax in India in 1868, so do we view its subsequent abolition in 1873, and for the same reason, that in neither year were the reasons sufficiently strong to justify an important and vital change in the financial system.

there were other fiscal reforms affecting the salt duties, and touching the interests and the feelings of the masses infinite in number, which should be considered before the income-tax was done away with; that tax which is only felt by the highly prosperous classes, British and Native, but is more particularly resented in India by the official section of the former.

It

But in this we see Lord Mayo and his policy at once. was for India, for the community, the people at large, that he thought and spoke and laboured. Thus he writes:

'I believe we have not done our duty to the people of this land. Millions have been spent on the conquering race, which might have been spent in enriching and in elevating the children of the soil. We have done much, but we can do a great deal more. It is, however, impossible, unless we spend less on the "interests" and more on the people.'

And again on another occasion:

The welfare of the people of India is our primary object. If we are not here for their good, we ought not to be here at all.'

His policy with regard to education was based on the same popular principle. While recognising the necessity of encouragement to the highest standards, he demanded the widest possible diffusion of education among the masses. Like his predecessor, he found that much had been accomplished towards the former object, but that, especially in Bengal, the development of the lowest class of education had been neglected, and that in its instruction and the encouragement of a vernacular literature lay a prime duty of the British Government. With similar object he took the Mohammedan population under his protection, which, for want of education according to their proper conditions, was sinking rapidly in the scale of the classes composing the great Indian community, and was generally viewed with distrust and suspicion.

We are compelled to stop, and to abstain from further detail in allusion to the characteristics of Lord Mayo's administration, and to the principles by which his conduct was guided. Enough has been said to show how cordially he worked on the lines traced by the great men who had preceded him in his office, and more especially by Lord Lawrence, and with what effect he put the stamp of originality on his own work in the development of the policy thus handed over to him under the several heads of administration. It was remarked before he relinquished his office in Ireland that he appeared in some measure to be reaching a point of difference with his party in the consideration of Irish questions; that he was inclining to

what is known under the name of Liberalism.' We can well believe it. If, as we understand Liberalism, it means to recognise Progress as the condition demanded for human institutions; if it means respect and love for man in his weakest and feeblest form as well as in his strength and prosperity; if it means a want of sympathy with class interests, but an ardent, a consuming desire to promote the happiness and the comfort of the greatest number; if it means respect for political justice, and equity towards foreign powers and allies, and in the treatment of feudatories; if it means the deliberate preference of the common advantage to private motives; then it must be confessed that, as shown by his Indian career, Lord Mayo belonged to Liberalism in the best and widest sense.

The motto of Par le peuple et pour le peuple' may be allpowerful in many European countries, and more especially in our own. But Lord Mayo well knew that in India, in the presence of the strong, conquering British race, amid the systems of commerce and law, of education and religion, installed with whatever goodwill and purity of design by an alien government, the people is wellnigh powerless to make itself heard; and that in providing for its protection and welfare, for shielding its weakness, for its advancement in civilisation, the head of the State and the rule he sanctions must do in India what is done for themselves by stronger races in other climes.

To this end, then, were all his energies directed. For this purpose were applied his far-reaching experience of men and things, his vigilant supervision, his incessant activity of personal movement, his engrossing labours in the cabinet. On this account was especially illustrated that force of individual character and vigorous self-assertion which, if little suspected by the public before his nomination to the Viceroyalty of India, was not slow to attract to him the gaze of the empire thus committed to his charge, and distinguished him among his countrymen as one sagacious in council, decisive in action, and a successful ruler of men.