Rulers of India: The Earl of Mayo Part 6

There was another Government which was only too happy to accept the friendship thus offered. If {123} Russia could intervene as the ally of Afghanistan, and consolidate a sovereign power in that State, she would not only pose as the arbiter of Central Asia, but would also establish a commanding influence on the very frontier of India. Lord Lawrence, before he left India, recognised this fact. In the summer of 1868, Sher Ali, by a desperate effort, regained the throne, and entered Kabul in triumph. In September, 1868, he finally drove his rival claimants out of the country. Meanwhile Sir Henry Rawlinson had penned in England his memorable Minute of the 20th July, 1868. 'The fortunes of Sher Ali are again in the ascendant,' he wrote. 'He should be secured in our interests without delay. Provided he is unentangled with Russia, the restoration of his father's subsidy, and the moral support of the British Indian Government, would probably be sufficient to place him above all opposition, and to secure his fidelity; and it may indeed be necessary to furnish him with arms and officers, or even to place an auxiliary contingent at his disposal.'

During the last four months of his rule, Lord Lawrence pondered deeply over these words. On the 4th of January, 1869, he sent a Despatch to the Secretary of State, which may fitly be regarded as the political testament of the wearied Viceroy. 'We think that endeavours might be made to come to a clear understanding with the Court of St. Petersburg as to its projects and designs in Central Asia, and that it might be given to understand in firm, but {124} courteous language, that it cannot be permitted to interfere in the affairs of Afghanistan or in those of any State which lies contiguous to our frontier.' 'Then we think that our relations to the Court of Teheran should be placed entirely under the Secretary of State for India, and that we should be empowered to give to any _de facto_ ruler of Kabul some arms and ammunition and substantial pecuniary a.s.sistance, as well as moral support, as occasion may offer, but without any formal or defensive alliance.'

'I cannot bring my mind,' wrote Sir Stafford Northcote, then Secretary of State for India, 'to the proposal that we should subsidise first one, and then the other, according as accident brings up Sher Ali or Abdul Rahman to the head of affairs.'

Nine days after Lord Lawrence signed his political testament, Lord Mayo reached Calcutta. On the new Viceroy devolved the heavy responsibility of carrying out the transition policy, somewhat vaguely indicated by his predecessor, in such a way as to disclose no break in the continuity of the Indian Government. In March 1869, the Amir Sher Ali, who had meanwhile consolidated his power in Afghanistan, came in state to India to pay his respects to the new Governor-General. I do not propose to record the splendours of the Ambala Darbar. All well-managed Darbars are imposing, and form an oriental edition of the Field of the Cloth of Gold. I had the privilege of being a guest of the Viceroy at the historical gathering of troops, Native Princes, and British {125} administrators which encamped on the Ambala Plain. But if I were to enter on the spectacular aspects of an Indian Viceroy's career this book would swell far beyond the limits a.s.signed to it. My business is with the less imposing but more permanent work actually accomplished. From the moment the Amir crossed our frontier he was received with a magnificence of hospitality which deeply impressed him. At Lahor he let fall the words, 'I now begin to feel myself a King.'

Sher Ali came to India with five distinct objects in view. He desired, in the first place, a treaty. In the second place, he hoped for a fixed annual subsidy. In the third place, for a.s.sistance in arms or in men, to be given 'not when the British Government might think fit to grant, but when he might think it needful to solicit it.' In the fourth place, for a well-defined engagement, 'laying the British Government under an obligation to support the Afghan Government in any emergency; and not only that Government generally, but that Government as vested in himself and his direct descendants, and in no others.'[1] Finally, he cherished a desire that he might obtain some constructive act of recognition by the British Government in favour of his younger son, Abdulla Jan, whom he brought with him, and whom he wished to make his heir, to the exclusion of his elder son, Yakub Khan, who had helped him to win the throne.

[Footnote 1: Minute in Council, by the Hon. Sir John Strachey, G.C.S.I., sometime acting Governor-General, dated 30th April, 1872.]

{126} In not one of these objects was the Amir successful. The first four were distinctly negatived; the fifth was not, I believe, even permitted to enter into the discussions. Lord Mayo adhered to a programme which he had deliberately put in writing before he left Calcutta. Yet, by tact and by conciliatory firmness, he sent the Amir away satisfied, and deeply impressed with the advantage of being on good terms with the British Power. 'We have distinctly intimated to the Amir,' he wrote, 'that under no circ.u.mstances shall a British soldier cross his frontier to a.s.sist him in coercing his rebellious subjects. That no fixed subsidy or money allowance will be given for any named period. That no promise of a.s.sistance in other ways will be made. That no treaty will be entered into, obliging us under every circ.u.mstance to recognise him and his descendants as rulers of Afghanistan. Yet that, by the most open and absolute present recognition, and by every public evidence of friendly disposition, of respect for his character, and interest in his fortunes, we are prepared to give him all the moral support in our power; and that, in addition, we are willing to a.s.sist him with money, arms, ammunition, Native artificers, and in other ways, whenever we deem it desirable so to do.'

These may seem but small concessions compared with the expectations which the Amir had formed. But they were all that Lord Mayo deemed it right to grant, and he granted them in such a way as to {127} render the Amir a firm and grateful friend during the whole of his Viceroyalty.

The Amir, on his return to Kabul, initiated English improvements with an amusing prompt.i.tude. He forbade his troops and the inhabitants to wear arms between 10 P.M. and 4 A.M. He appointed night watchmen, and a judicial officer to hear pet.i.tions from the citizens. He established post offices. He subst.i.tuted cash payments for the old practice of paying the Government servants by a.s.signments of land or revenue. He ordered the shoemakers of Kabul to sell off all their old stock, and to make boots according to the English pattern! He dressed himself in the English costume of coat and pantaloons, and directed his officers to do the same! He organised a Council of State, composed of thirteen members, as a const.i.tutional body for advising him in all departments of the administration. He remitted the more terrible forms of punishment, and pardoned several ancient enemies.

In short, he did what in him lay to establish good government and win the confidence of his people. Rapid reforms, however, are usually short-lived. The most promising of them, namely, the subst.i.tution of cash payments for a.s.signments on the revenue, was so violently opposed by the official cla.s.s in Afghanistan, from the great _Sardars_ downwards, that, so far as I can learn, it was never really introduced.

'Surround India,' wrote Lord Mayo, shortly after the Ambala Darbar, 'with strong, friendly, and independent States, who will have more interest in {128} keeping well with us than with any other Power, and we are safe.' 'Our influence,' he says in another letter, 'has been considerably strengthened, both in our own territories and also in the States of Central Asia, by the Ambala meeting; and if we can only persuade people that our policy really is non-intervention and peace, that England is at this moment the only non-aggressive Power in Asia, we should stand on a pinnacle of power that we have never enjoyed before.'

Lord Mayo's next object was to open conciliatory relations with Russia by honestly explaining the real nature of the change which had taken place. He accepted Russia's splendid vitality in Central Asia as a fact neither to be shirked nor condemned, but as one which, by vigilant firmness, might be rendered harmless to ourselves. The formal relations between the Courts of St. James and St. Petersburg are of course conducted by the Foreign Office in England. But Lord Mayo's travels in Russia had given him an insight into the strong personal element in the working of the Russian official system, and had made several of the Russian Ministers his warm friends for life.

Without interfering, therefore, with the regular relations between the two Courts, he thought it might be advantageous that an unofficial interchange of views should take place between the high officers connected with the actual administration of Asiatic affairs.

He therefore took the opportunity of a distinguished Bengal Civilian going home on leave, to authorise him, {129} if it met with the concurrence of Her Majesty's Ministers, to give a.s.surances to the leading Russian officials of his peaceful policy, and to enter into frank and friendly explanations on Central Asian affairs. Sir Douglas (then Mr.) Forsyth reached St. Petersburg in October 1869. The result of the confidential interchange of opinions which followed was the acceptance of Lord Mayo's view that the best security for peace in Central Asia consisted in maintaining the great States on the Indian frontier in a position of effective independence. Efforts were also made to prevent the recurrence of those unauthorised aggressions by Russian frontier officers, which had kept Central Asia in perpetual turmoil. Of these efforts it may be briefly said that they were successful during the term of Lord Mayo's Viceroyalty.

In the interviews of Sir Douglas Forsyth with the Russian Minister of War and the Minister of the Asiatic Department it was agreed that Russia should respect as Afghanistan all the Provinces which Sher Ali then held, that the Oxus should be the boundary line of Sher Ali's dominions on the north, and that both England and Russia should do their best to prevent aggressions by the Asiatic States under their control. Lord Mayo lost no time in securing for Sher Ali the guarantee of a recognised boundary against the Amir's neighbours in Central Asia. In 1871 the Russians, however, raised grave objections to Badakshan being included within the Afghan line. This question was settled by friendly negotiations {130} in 1872. In January, 1873, Count Schouvaloff arrived in London to personally express the Emperor's sanction to the disputed territories being recognised as part of Afghanistan. Subsequent delimitations have given precision to the frontier. But practically it may be said that Afghanistan, as territorially defined by Lord Mayo in 1869, remained substantially the Afghanistan of the following twenty years.

Having thus placed the affairs of Afghanistan on a satisfactory footing, Lord Mayo turned his attention to the great territories which stretch southward from it along our Sind Frontier and eastwards to Persia. He found that our relations with these territories, loosely named Baluchistan or Khelat, were perplexed by two distinct sets of complications--one external, the other internal. The first referred to the frontier between Baluchistan and Persia. This had never been settled, and had for generations formed the arena of mutual aggressions and sanguinary raids. The internal complication arose from the ill-defined position of the Khan or Ruler towards his n.o.bility. According to one party in Khelat, the Khan is the Sovereign of the State; according to another, he is the head of a confederacy of Chiefs. The net result was, that what between wars of extermination on the Persian Frontier, and the internecine struggle between the royalist and oligarchic parties within the State, Baluchistan knew no rest, and might at any moment prove a troublesome neighbour. Her internal rebellions and {131} her border feuds rendered it very hard to discover with whom the actual authority rested, or how far it extended, and made it difficult for the British Government to take measures for the consolidation of the t.i.tular ruler's power.

Lord Mayo vigorously addressed himself to the solution of both the external and the internal problem of Baluchistan. His action led to the demarcation of a political boundary between Afghanistan and Persia; which practically put an end to the aggressions of the latter. He displayed not less vigour in trying to help Baluchistan to evolve from her conflicting factions a stable and permanent central power. The task proved a most difficult one. Each of the great parties in Baluchistan had a real basis of right on which to found its claims. The n.o.bles could show that they had frequently controlled the Khan, and compelled him to act as the head of a confederacy of Chiefs rather than as a supreme ruler. The Khan could prove that although he had from time to time succ.u.mbed to his rebellious barons, yet that he had only done so after a struggle, and that he had exercised his royal authority whenever he again found himself strong enough.

The question resembled the worn-out discussion as to whether England was or was not a limited monarchy under the Plantagenets. The const.i.tutional difficulties in Baluchistan were embittered by wrongs both great and recent on both sides; and at the time of Lord Mayo's death, its consolidation into a {132} well-governed kingdom yet remained to be accomplished. He lived, however, to see his efforts bear fruit in a period of unwonted rest to its unhappy population, and to place the whole problem in a fair train for settlement. Before his sudden end, he had the satisfaction of being able to authorise a high British officer to act as arbitrator between the Khan and the tribal Chiefs.

Due north of India, beyond Kashmir and the Himalayas, another State made pressing claims on Lord Mayo's attention. This State was known as Eastern Turkestan. It owed its origin to one of those revivals, partly religious, partly political, which at that time threatened to dismember the Chinese Empire. The Panthays had proved the efficacy of such a revival by the establishment of an independent Muhammadan State in the south-west of China. The Chinese Musalmans of the Desert of Gobi on the far north-western frontier followed their example, and ended by raising their rebellion to the dignity of a holy war. The Chinese authorities were expelled and all who supported them were ma.s.sacred. In 1864 the new Musalman Power, composed of very heterogeneous elements, found itself in possession of Eastern Turkestan. After a further struggle among the victors, Yakub Kushbegi, a brave soldier of fortune, emerged in 1869 as the Ruler of the vast central territory which stretched eastwards from the Pamir Steppe to the Chinese Frontier, and from the British-protected State of Kashmir on the south to {133} the Russian outposts on the Shan and Muzart ranges on the north.

In January, 1870, an envoy from the new Ruler arrived in India to solicit, _inter alia_, that a British officer might accompany him back on a friendly visit to his master. Lord Mayo consented to send Mr. Douglas Forsyth on one express condition--that in no sense was the visit to be a mission, nor was it to have a diplomatic object.

Mr. Forsyth was to abstain from taking part in any political questions, or in any internal disputes, further than repeating the general advice already given to Yakub's envoy by Lord Mayo: namely, that Yakub would best consult the interests of his kingdom by a watchful, just, and vigorous government; by strengthening the defences of his frontier; and above all, by not interfering in the political affairs of other States, or in the quarrels of Chiefs or tribes that did not directly concern his own interests. Mr. Forsyth was to limit his stay in the country, so as to run no risk of finding the Himalayan pa.s.ses closed by the winter's snow, and of thus being detained in Yarkand till the following year. He was to collect full and trustworthy information concerning the nature and resources of Eastern Turkestan and the neighbouring countries, their recent history, their present political condition, their capabilities for trade, the Indian staples most in demand, their price in the Yarkand market, and the articles which could be most profitably brought to India in exchange.

{134} Mr. Forsyth, on his arrival in the Yarkand territory, found that Yakub had not yet succeeded in consolidating his dominions. He scrupulously abstained from being drawn into political discussions of any sort, and after a brief halt at the southern capital, Yarkand, to refit his camp with provisions and beasts of burden, he returned to India. He brought back complete information regarding the most practicable routes across the Himalayas, the industrial capabilities and resources of the country, its recent history, and the actual position of its Ruler. From first to last he made it clearly understood that his mission was of a purely tentative and commercial character.

As a part of the same policy, Lord Mayo opened up a free trade-route through the Chang Chenmu valley by a treaty with Kashmir, and placed the transit of Indian merchandise across the Himalayas on a securer basis. The traffic which will pay the cost of carriage across the snowy alt.i.tudes of Central Asia can never seem great, when expressed in figures and compared with the enormous sea-borne exports and imports of India. But it is a very lucrative one to certain cla.s.ses in the inland and warlike Province of the Punjab, whose population we were trying to habituate to peaceful industry by every ameliorating influence of wealth and commerce.

I have now described the measures which Lord Mayo took in pursuance of his fixed resolve to create a cordon of friendly and well-governed States on our western and northern frontier, from Baluchistan on {135} the Arabian Sea, round by Afghanistan, to Eastern Turkestan. He acted in the same spirit to his neighbours along the north-eastern and south-eastern borders of the British dominions. Towards Nepal he maintained an att.i.tude alike firm, friendly, and dignified, and consolidated the satisfactory relations which he found existing with that State. On the north-east of Bengal he may be said to have created a frontier, by means of the Lushai Expedition, and to have given to those long distracted regions a period of quiet and peace.

Proceeding farther south, we find him equally busy in Burma, restraining the warlike propensities of the king, developing trade relations, and enforcing respect for the British Power. But the hard work of his foreign policy lay on the western and north-western frontier, and I have given so much s.p.a.ce to its narration, that I must close this chapter without branching out into less essential details.

{136}

CHAPTER VI

LORD MAYO'S FINANCIAL REFORMS

The financial history of Lord Mayo's Viceroyalty divides itself into two parts. The first narrates the resolute stand which, at the outset of his administration, he found himself compelled to make against deficit. The second records the measures by which, after grappling with the immediate crisis, he endeavoured to reform certain grave defects in the financial system, and to bring about a permanent equilibrium between the revenue and the expenditure of India.

When Lord Mayo received charge of the country the financial position stood thus. The conquests and accretions of a century had left behind a British Indian Empire nearly equal in size to all Europe less Russia, with a population of close on 200 millions in our own Provinces, and 50 millions in the Feudatory States. The cost of creating that Empire was represented in 1869-70 by a Public Debt of 102 millions sterling; together with another debt of 91 millions sterling expended on the guaranteed railways and other productive public works. Of the Public Debt, aggregating 102 millions, about 52 millions may {137} be taken as the charges of establishing the British Power in India, and 50 millions as the price of reconquering and reorganising the Empire after the Mutiny of 1857. The 102 millions represented, however, not alone the cost of wars and conquests. For the English in India had to construct for themselves the whole fabric of a civilised government. That material fabric included roads, public offices, barracks, courts, jails, schools, hospitals; and this vast outlay explains in part the frequent financial deficits to which I shall presently refer. The other debt of 91 millions represented the cost of constructing 4265 miles of opened railway, and of defending great tracts from famine by ca.n.a.ls.[1] The two debts aggregated a capital of 193 millions sterling laid out in conquering, establishing, and organising the British India of 1869-70, the first year of Lord Mayo's rule. The revenue amounted to 509 millions of rupees, then equivalent to over 46 millions sterling: namely 33-1/2 millions of taxation from the people, or about 3_s_. 4_d_. per head, and 12-1/2 millions from opium, public works, &c., not of the nature of actual Indian taxation.[2]

[Footnote 1: To facilitate reference by the reader I take the above figures as given in the Parliamentary Abstract, Twenty-third Number, 1889, p. 300. But in the subsequent and more detailed statements (except in direct quotations from State Papers), I convert the rupee for the sake of accuracy at 1_s_. 10_d_., its value at the time.

Where my figures seem to differ from those in certain of the Blue Books, the explanation usually is that the Blue Books take the rupee at its nominal value of 2_s_.]

[Footnote 2: For details of this calculation, see my larger _Life of Lord Mayo_, vol. ii, p. 6: 2nd Ed., 1876.]

{138} Alike in regard to the amount of the Public Debt of British India and to the burden of taxation upon the people, the finances of that country may seem to compare favourably with those of almost any State in the world. But a nearer examination discloses a different aspect. Small as were the demands of the Treasury upon the tax-payer, it had been found impossible to augment them to the level required for the maintenance of efficient administration. Several of the highest of our Indian authorities believed that it would be perilous to do so. The half-century which preceded Lord Mayo's arrival in India had presented a long series of financial shortcomings. Of the fifty-five years beginning with 1814-15, and ending with 1868-69, only sixteen had shown a surplus, while thirty-nine had been years of deficit. The total of the surplus amounted to about 12-1/2 millions sterling; the deficits exceeded 75-1/2 millions of pounds. The period immediately preceding Lord Mayo's arrival was, if possible, even more discouraging. The last three years from 1866 to 1869, had left behind deficits aggregating 5-3/4 millions sterling. This was for 'ordinary'

expenditure alone. If we add the outlay on 'extraordinary' (or reproductive) public works, the total excess of expenditure over revenue in the three years preceding Lord Mayo's first Budget amounted to the vast sum of 11 millions sterling.

Nor was the chronic inadequacy of the Revenue the gravest source of disquietude. The Budget estimates, although framed with the utmost care which the then {139} existing system allowed of, were constantly falsified by the results. During the two years from 1867 to 1869 the Budget estimates had shown a surplus aggregating over 3-1/2 millions, while the actual results disclosed a deficit aggregating close on 3-1/2 millions. Lord Mayo was thus called to deal not only with a chronic deficit, but with a financial system which allowed of an aggregate error in the Budget estimates to the extent of 7 millions sterling on the wrong side during the two years preceding his rule.

Lord Mayo found therefore three financial tasks imposed on him. He had first of all to attack the immediate deficit: amounting to 2-1/2 millions in the year immediately preceding his rule. In the second place he had to reform the whole financial system, which allowed of the Budget estimates being annually falsified by the actual results.

In the third place he had to devise and to enforce measures of economy sufficiently stringent to place the finances on a sound footing for the future. With how resolute a will he carried out this work, the following pages will disclose. But before entering on that memorable struggle I may briefly exhibit its results. The subjoined statement shows more forcibly than any words of mine what those results meant to India. The three years preceding Lord Mayo's rule had left a deficit of 5-3/4 millions in 'ordinary' expenditure alone.

In the very first year of his rule he established an equilibrium in the finances of India, and produced a small surplus. The three years which followed his reforms {140} left an aggregate surplus of 5-3/4 millions, and that period of surplus was only interrupted by the Behar famine two years after his death.

_Bird's-eye view of the results of Lord Mayo's Financial Administration._

+---------------------+----------------------+---------------------+ Years of Deficit. Year of Equilibrium. Years of Surplus. (Before Lord Mayo's (Lord Mayo's first (After Lord Mayo's arrival.) year.) Reforms.) +---------------------+----------------------+---------------------+ pounds pounds pounds 1866-7 2,307,700 1869-70 108,779 1870-1 1,359,410 1867-8 923,720 1871-2 2,863,836 1868-9 2,542,861 (Surplus in 1872-3 1,616,888 --------- Sterling.) --------- 5,774,281 5,840,134 Total deficit of Total surplus for three years reduced three years reduced to Sterling. to Sterling. +---------------------+----------------------+---------------------+

The four continuous years of surplus which thus resulted from Lord Mayo's measures had only one precedent during the period from 1842 onwards, for which the Parliamentary Abstract gives the returns. That single precedent is found in the years 1849 to 1853, under the rule of the great Governor-General, Dalhousie. Nor has there been any subsequent example of four consecutive years of surplus since Lord Mayo's Viceroyalty down to the present date (1891).

Sir Richard Temple, the Finance Minister, was like Lord Mayo in his first year of office. Warned by the disappointments of his predecessors, Sir Richard Temple framed a very cautious Budget for 1869-70, {141} and estimated for a small surplus of 48,263 pounds. It soon appeared, however, that no amount of caution would avail to prevent the falsification of the Budget estimates under the system upon which they were then made up. The first symptoms which caused Lord Mayo alarm was the discovery that the cash balances in the treasuries proved lower than had been estimated by his predecessor.

Lord Mayo's anxiety increased as the actual facts of the financial year previous to his accession, 1868-69, became finally known. Item after item turned out worse than had been expected, until the deficit of 889,598 pounds, as estimated in March, 1869, grew to the vast sum of 2,542,861 pounds, as ascertained from the completed accounts a few months later.

Nor did the disastrous discrepancy appear only in the Actuals of 1868-69. Circ.u.mstances occurred to raise a suspicion in Lord Mayo's mind that the same fate might be in store for the finances of the current year, 1869-70. His inquiries led him to order a re-examination of the whole Budget estimates. These estimates, viewed in the light of the actual results of 1868-69, disclosed an inevitable deficit of 1,650,000 pounds for the current year 1869-70, in place of the surplus of 48,263 pounds, as announced by the Budget in March. Lord Mayo's perplexities were increased by the circ.u.mstance that Sir Richard Temple, after duly delivering the Budget for 1869-70, had found himself compelled to proceed to England on six months' leave. Sir Richard's experience and knowledge were not {142} therefore available at the moment when the Viceroy, in his first months of office, found a new abyss of deficit suddenly open under his feet. Fortunately he had the aid of Mr., now Sir John, Strachey, who was carrying on the duties of Finance Minister during Sir Richard's absence.

The disclosures which the last paragraph speaks of with smooth cert.i.tude, revealed themselves in 1869 only glimpse by glimpse, and amid a wide divergence of opinion on the part of the responsible advisers of the Government. It required the resolute exercise of his individual will to enable the new Viceroy to tear the truth out of the conflicting accounts, and to get at the whole facts of the situation. 'I am beginning to find,' he wrote to a friend, as early as May, 1869, 'that our finances are not in as comfortable a state as they ought to be. The enormous distances, the number of treasuries, and the complicity of accounts as between each, render accurate forecasts and rapid information almost insurmountably difficult. The waste of public money is great, and I have been obliged to take strong measures, and say some very hard things about it.'[3]

[Footnote 3: The Earl of Mayo to Sir Stafford Northcote, 16th May, 1869.]

Each week found the Viceroy poring with a deeper anxiety and a graver face over the accounts. As he probed into their hollow places, he found one estimate after another break down beneath his scrutiny. His letters and papers during that summer disclose, scene by scene, and with a painful tension of personal {143} responsibility, the slowly developing drama of deficit; but throughout every line breathes a firm resolve that, cost him what it might in ease and popularity, he would establish and maintain equilibrium in the finances of India.

Three months after the letter above quoted, he wrote to Sir Henry Durand: 'I have just received information which leads me to believe that in two items of revenue alone, we may look for a decrease of half a million in the first quarter of 1869-70. Now it is our clear duty to do all that we can to meet this. _I am determined not to have another deficit,_ even if it leads to the diminution of the Army, the reduction of Civil Establishments, and the stoppage of Public Works.

The longer I look at the thing, the more I am convinced that our financial position is one of great weakness; and that our national safety absolutely requires that it should be dealt with at once, and in a very summary manner.' 'I should be sorry,' he wrote to the Duke of Argyll, 'to say how much I feel the hard lot that is now cast upon us, to recover the finances from a state of deficit. But unless we have a war, which G.o.d forbid, we will do it.'

Lord Mayo mapped out for himself two distinct methods of dealing with the situation. In the first place, he resolved that the circ.u.mstances were so grave as to demand immediate measures for meeting the impending deficit without waiting to the end of the Financial Year.

In the second place, he determined to attack the permanent causes which {144} had led to deficit, and to prevent their recurrence by a systematic readjustment of the finances.

The first step taken by Lord Mayo and Sir John Strachey was to reduce the overgrown grant for Public Works by about 800,000 pounds,--a measure suggested and carried out with unsparing faithfulness by Colonel, now Lieut.-General, Richard Strachey, then Secretary to the Government of India in the Public Works Department. Other Departments, equally important and equally clamorous, had augmented their expenditure at a rapid rate. In fact, the ten years which had elapsed since the dominions of the Company pa.s.sed to the Crown had seen the administration rendered more efficient in many ways; and the cost of the improvements, however admirable they were in themselves, had in the aggregate become too great for the revenues to bear. In addition to the reduction of 800,000 pounds for Public Works, Lord Mayo found himself compelled to curtail temporarily by 350,000 pounds the grants to the spending Departments which had received so rapid a development during the decade since India pa.s.sed to the Crown. The whole saving amounted to 1,150,000 pounds during the current year 1869-70.