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Indian Debt is a distressing record of financial unwisdom and injustice; and every impartial reader can reckon for himself how much of this Indian Debt is morally due from India.

The last items of the Home Charges are the Civil and Military Charges. This needs a revision. If Great Britain and India are both gainers by the building up of the British Indian Empire, it is not fair or equitable that India alone should pay all the cost of the maintenance of that superb edifice. It is not fair that all the expenses incurred in England, down to the maintenance of the India Office and the wages of the charwoman employed to clean the rooms at Whitehall, should be charged to India. Over forty years ago one of the greatest of Indian administrators suggested an equitable compromise. In a work on Our Financial Relations with India, published in 1859, Sir George Wingate suggested that India should pay all the expenses of Civil and Military Administration. incurred in India, while Great Britain should meet the expenses incurred in England, as she did for her Colonies. Is it too late to make some such equitable adjustment to-day? India's total Civil and Military Charges, incurred in England, come to 6 millions-a sum which would be considerably reduced if it came from the British taxpayer. Is it too much to expect that Great Britain might share this burden, while India paid all the Civil and Military charges incurred in India?

These are the plain facts of the economic situation in India. Given these conditions, any fertile, industrious, peaceful country in the world would be what India is to-day. If manufactures were crippled, agriculture overtaxed, and a third of the revenue remitted out of the country, any nation on earth would suffer from permanent poverty and recurring famines. Economic laws are the same in Asia as in Europe. If India is poor to-day, it is through the operation of economic causes. If India were prosperous under these circumstances, it

would be an economic miracle. Science knows no miracles. Economic laws are constant and unvarying in their operation.

The evils suggest their own remedies.

The Excise tax on Indian mill industry should be withdrawn; the Indian Government should boldly help Indian industries, for the good of the Indian people, as every civilised Government on earth helps the industries of its own country. All taxes on the soil in addition to the Land Revenue should be repealed; and the Land Revenue should be moderated and regulated in its operation. The Public Debt, unjustly created in the first instance, is now an accomplished fact: but an Imperial Guarantee would reduce the rate of interest; and a Sinking Fund would gradually reduce its volume. Civil and Military Charges, incurred in England, should be borne, or at least shared, by Great Britain, as she shares them in the case of her Colonies. Civil charges in India should be reduced by a larger employment of Indians; military charges in India should be repressed with a strong hand; and India should pay for an army needed for her own requirements. All further extension of railways from StateLoans, or under guarantee of interest from the taxes, should be prohibited. Irrigation works should be extended, as far as possible, from the ordinary revenues. The annual Economic Drain from India should be steadily reduced; and in carrying out these fiscal reforms, representatives of the people of India,—of the taxpayers who are alone interested in Retrenchment in all countries,should be called upon to take their share, and offer their assistance.

"The Government of a people by itself," wrote John Stuart Mill, "has a meaning and a reality, but such a thing as government of one people by another does not, and cannot exist. One people may keep another for its own use, a place to make money in, a human cattle farm for the profits of its own inhabitants." This state

ment contains a deep truth. Large masses of men are not ordinarily impelled by a consideration of other peoples' interests. The British voter is as fair-minded as the voter in any other country on earth, but he would not be a British voter, and he would not be human, if he did not ordinarily mind his own interests and secure his own profits. Parliament carries out the mandates of voters; the Indian Secretary, a Member of the British Cabinet, cannot act against the joint wishes of the Cabinet. The Members of his Council are appointed by him, and do not in any sense represent the people of India. The Viceroy of India is under the orders of the Indian Secretary of State; and the Government of India is vested in his Ordinary Council, which, in the words of Sir William Hunter, is an "oligarchy," and does not represent the people. The Members of the GovernorGeneral's Council are generally heads of spending departments, and "the tendency is," as Sir David Barbour said before the Indian Expenditure Commission, "ordinarily for pressure to be put on the Financial Department to incur expenditure. It is practically pressure. The other Departments are always pressing to spend more money: their demands are persistent and continuous." Nowhere in the entire machinery of the Indian Government, from the top to the bottom, is there any influence which makes for Retrenchment, any force which represents the taxpayer. Fiscal reforms are impossible under this Constitution. If Retrenchment is desired, some room must be found, somewhere in the Constitution, to represent the taxpayer's interests..

The Indian Empire will be judged by History as the most superb of human institutions in modern times. But it would be a sad story for future historians to tell that the Empire gave the people of India peace but not prosperity; that the manufacturers lost their industries; that the cultivators were ground down by a heavy and variable taxation which precluded any saving; that the

revenues of the country were to a large extent diverted to England; and that recurring and desolating famines swept away millions of the population. On the other hand, it would be a grateful story for Englishmen to tell that England in the twentieth century undid her past mistakes in India as in Ireland; that she lightened land taxes, revived industries, introduced representation, and ruled India for the good of her people; and that the people of India felt in their hearts that they were citizens of a great and United Empire.

ROMESH DUTT.

LONDON, December 1903.

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