dozen of the richest men under his government, and simply confining or torturing them until the requisite sums were paid down. We are in India some little way in advance of such a vigorous exhibition of absolute power, and we are yet far behind that purer and milder state of society where weekly announcements are made through the public papers that A. B., or X. Y. Z., stricken by conscience, has paid in his dues of income-tax to the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

The bill which Mr. Harington has introduced to the Legislative Council at Calcutta, and which has been referred to a select committee, has for its object the Taxation of Bankers, Merchants, and Trades and Professions. That the latter do not contribute, and that they ought to contribute, is what we have been arguing above. The bill will no doubt pass in some shape and with certain modifications; but we must object strongly to the principle which would exempt all the servants of Government from the proposed tax on professions, while the servants of companies or individuals are to be liberally assessed. The day for class privileges has passed away. Nor do we think the classification of the bankers or merchants eminently happy; and we have yet to see by what machinery and under what penalties to defaulters the tax is to be collected. The rough estimate of the proceeds is given at one million and a half per annum. Indian industry can bear this with ease; but the point is-will it be realized?

It will be said that it is easy to knock down or to start objections, but not so easy to build up. Still we have indicated the salt and the stamps as sources of additional revenue, and the sea customs the Government of India has already taken means to increase, the only objection to the measure being that the burdens will fall on Europeans quite as much as on natives-on the Europeans who bore the brunt of the unequal struggle, losing relatives, homes, friends, and fortunes in the trial, and not on the natives, who exhibited virulent hostility or stood aloof with folded hands.

There are, however, some fresh objects of taxation which are well

worth a trial. Tobacco, as well as salt, is an object of universal consumption. When a native gets up in the morning, or is tired or heated, he has recourse to his hookah. It is a luxury which has become a necessary with high and low. It would be impossible, under a well-organized system, for the tobacco plant to escape detection, either in the field or in the shop. There are two or three ways in which such a tax might be raised. One would be to license the right to grow the plant. But for this the agency of a large number of native officials must be employed, to scour large tracts of country, and to pounce on every plot of ground under tobacco cultivation. A second method would be to allow no tobacco to be sown, grown, and dried, except on account of Government, and to introduce the whole machinery of agents, storehouses, driers, and packers, exactly as we now have in the monopoly of opium, into certain tobacco-growing districts, making a selection of the most favourable localities, and barring all cultivation absolutely in all others. But the introduction of such an elaborate system would be attended with a great outlay, and the prohibition to cultivate in particular districts would enhance the cost of the article when transported to such places from a distance, and the tax would press with very unequal force. What is required is a speedy replenishing of the Exchequer, with as little of outlay and as little of hardship as possible. The third, and it seems to us the simplest, method is to tax or license all shops or warehouses where dried tobacco is sold wholesale or retail. The article, like all others of national consumption, is sold only in bazaars or in open markets. The clusters of well-raised and decent native houses, which are dignified by the title of bazaars, are well known to all the officials of every district. Shops are but rarely found scattered through the purely agricultural villages. The times and places of sale can be ascertained with comparative ease, with a moderate degree of activity and care on the part of the servants of Government, with severe fines imposed on sale without license,

and, perhaps as a necessity in this case, with suitable rewards to those who inform against unlicensed dealers, a very important addition would be soon made to the revenue. The sale of the article is, we say, confined to particular places, and kept in the hands of certain castes, so that there is less fear that the sale would disappear from wellknown bazaars, and reappear unexpectedly in strange hands in others. A mere license is free from the character of inquisitiveness which natives attach to a tax on incomes, or on heads or houses, such as has once or twice in our Indian history, at Benares and Bareilly, produced serious disturbance. It has also the merit of being indirect as regards the masses, and it would come home to every one.

Were this attempt once successful, we think that further attempts might easily be made to extend the system of licensing to trades, shops, and dealings in other articles. Not one of these proposed taxes need last a day longer than the imperative necessities of the Treasury shall demand. It would also be extremely conducive to the peaceful administration of the Empire were no single individual permitted to carry arms without a license. The disarming of the population has been vigorously carried out in some provinces, but we wish to see the carrying of arms without license made penal throughout the length and breadth of the land. India, ready to bristle with guns and pikes and artillery, concealed in wells and jungles, will to us, in peace, never be anything but a source of anxiety. And the Indian population, were it all armed to the teeth, will, on the other hand, never give us any effective aid against any invasion of Calmucks or Cossacks.

It has also been proposed to establish a tax on marriages, as well as on successions. It is true that every one marries in India, and many more than once; and that marriages are generally matters of notoriety, at which sums are squandered far beyond the ordinary means of the bridegrooms. But considering the interference with social and religious usages which such a tax would entail, and the delicate nature of the

541

subject, as well as the probabilities of serious discontents, we should hope that this tax would not be attempted until all other resources had failed. A succession, like a legacy duty, has many recommendations in its favour. The call is made on men flushed with the fulfilment of their expectations, and probably then less unwilling to disburse than at any other period of their lives. In successions to landed estates, the rate payable on an ascending scale can be easily ascertained. In successions to personal or moveable property, or to profitable trade or business, the rate would be more guesswork, and the subject of the tax more liable to concealment and fraud. But we believe that natives might be made to understand that their only safety lay in a regular and prompt tender, by affixing heavy penalties to cases of delayed notice of succession. A tender of money on such occasions would be not dissonant from the Oriental notion of nuzzurs. A present from an inferior to a superior on gala days is a matter of active principle in the East; and nothing but the rigid and unswerving integrity of the services, both civil and military, has prevented the frequent acceptance of offerings made by individuals with a view to their own private ends. Were a determined and vigorous Government to insist on a succession duty from all its subjects of a certain rank, position, or means of livelihood, and to announce its readiness to compound for minute and troublesome inquiries on payment of a certain sum down, visiting recusancy with fines, or forfeiture of the property in gross cases of deliberate concealment, we are tolerably confident that considerable yearly additions might be made to the revenue. The tax would only require that determination, combined with tact and persuasion, which so many of the servants of the Old East India Company know so admirably how to display.

A considerable increase to the income of the State may also be expected from public works: directly, from works of irrigation, such as the Great Ganges Canal, the canal in the Bari Doab-the Madras ani

cuts, as they are technically termed -and others; and indirectly, from the railways, which, though retarded by climate and by the mutiny, are yet advancing at a steady pace, which promises to girdle the Indian peninsula in a space of four or five years more. But the truth is that

these additions will come in but slowly, and that there is ample room for another mutiny between that time and the present. To speak plainly, the greatest help to the finances, as well as the greatest relief to the mind of the administrative statesman, must come from the reduction in the huge, irregular, expensive, fickle, faithless, and unnecessary Native army.

No taxes that we can lay on the people, none that industry could bear or trade could despise; no reductions that we could hope for in other departments, were we to grind the working men down to a bare subsistence, would afford onequarter the relief to the Exchequer that may be expected when the Native army is reduced within proper limits. At present we have a huge army of regular and irregular levies, and a half-disciplined force of mili tary police. Fifty or sixty thousand Europeans holding the forts and magazines, and keys of the country, with a Native army of twenty-five, or at most thirty thousand troops, ought to be ample to maintain the country in peace and quiet. The length to which this paper has extended renders it inexpedient to commence a discussion of the footing on which the permanent military establishment of the Queen of India should be placed; but one thing may be predicated without dogmatism, which is, that we shall have no guarantee for lasting tranquillity until the important cities of India are connected by railroads; until the turbulent and excitable populations of India are left with nothing but clubs and sticks; and until a compact and well organized force of Europeans be ready to move at an hour's notice to combine with a Native army of reasonable proportions, in order to put down popular disaffection, or can hold in check or annihilate the Native army itself. Twenty committees, sitting for twenty years

each, will teach us no deeper lesson than the events of 1857. The Bengal army, though the work of disbanding has commenced, was this year as large as the old army. The Sikhs loudly boast that they recovered the Empire for us. The condition of the Bombay army was, we know, unsound. The army of Madras, considering what it has to protect, is ridiculously out of all due proportion. We can preserve intact the rights of the officers, and find plenty of employment and use for them. What we wish to be rid of are Pandies in any shape, or in large masses.

In concluding this paper we must make some allusion to the condition of the Civil Service, the large salaries of which have been repeatedly quoted as capable of reduction. The service is well paid, and successive Governors-General have borne unqualified testimony to its complete efficiency; while in the late mutinies many a civilian dropped the pen which he had wielded with ability, to take up the sword and to wield it as well. Necessity, however, has no law; and in canvassing the possibilities of relief to the Treasury, the Secretary of State may not unnaturally consider the Civil Service as too highly paid. We have, however, lately seen some figures and statistics which show that the various members of that service are not too highly paid for the revenue which they collect, the interests which they watch over, and the size of the districts which they rule. On the contrary, the proportion of the salaries to the work and to the wealth of the Indian provinces, is considerably less than in Ceylon or in any other Crown colony whatever. It may be urged, too, that it would be extremely hard to visit either civilian or officer with a reduction of salary as a reward for gallant exposure of life, limb, and property, and to make them suffer for a rebellion which they contributed to quell. Such men have devoted themselves to India at an early age, and at best can only hope to retire thence after between twenty-five and thirty years of active service, with a moderate competence. Fortunes are made no longer; and any heavy re

1859.]

duction pressing on the service in general will seriously curtail the power to retire and the prospects of independence. Even the pension of £1000 a year to which men are entitled after twenty-five years' service, is twothirds provided by deductions from the salary of each individual, and by the contributions of members who die after long service without ever claiming their pensions. Nothing is more erroneous than to suppose that, of the sum of £1000 the Government pays even one-half. The contributions of Government at this moment, and for some years past, average for each person only £291. With regard, then, to reductions, Lord Stanley, whose conduct at the head of Indian affairs has on most occasions been beyond praise, declared in his place that such reductions ought to be prospective, and that you could not touch vested interests and guaranteed rights. Any such attempt would indeed be a grievous injustice to the old servants whom the Directors nominated; and, in a greater measure, to the new men who were first invited, just five years ago, by tempting offers and in glowing language, to compete for places which would make them honourably independent for life.

Reductions in particular offices are being made as opportunities occur; but if men of education and integrity are to be procured for the Indian service, we believe that no more vital error could be committed than a general lopping away of emoluments. We speak with a view to prospective measures, and on this point one fact is worth a dozen prophecies. Against the repeated and deliberate assertions, that fit persons can be secured for India at a cheaper rate-that the sons of gentlemen are ready to jump at life service in the East-we will set the following result of offers made to society at large by the Civil Service Commission. We take our statistics from an article in the Times of the 19th of May last. Twenty appointments to the Indian Civil Service being thrown open for competition, the number of competitors was sixtyfive. Now we all know what each

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of these men must have been told about the noble field for talent and the splendid rewards of the East, and how many more must have refused to listen to such offers. About the same time eight writerships in the Indian department in England, the salary of which rose from £80 to the magnificent sum of £200 a year, were thrown open, and attracted no less than 339 competitors-eight from the universities, sixty-two from the public schools, and all the sons of naval and military officers, clergymen, barristers, solicitors, clerks, physici. ns, surgeons, merchants, farmers, and artificers.' Argument on these comparative results would be superfluous. Men will do anything at home rather than face exile, heat, separation, loss of friends and of health, to be abused and misapprehended when working like slaves in India, to be ignored utterly when at length they return home.

No saving in finance will compensate for the lack of talent or for the loss of integrity which would follow inevitably on a less attractive service. The money that must be had can best be procured by increasing taxes already in existence, and by making trade, industry, and commerce, now untaxed, to contribute their dues, as well as by reductions in a cumbrous and unwieldy army which has cost us one fearful sacrifice and may rear its head to cost us a second. Nor is it impossible to restore the credit of the Indian Government which the mutinies and financial mismanagement have somewhat rudely shaken. Indian insolvency is at present only a bare possibility, but in that event England could hardly repudiate the debt of the Company without endangering her hold on the Empire and dishonouring her fair name. The surest way to obviate any such unpleasant contingency would be for the Imperial Parliament to guarantee the payment of interest on the debt, which it can do now with ease and dignity, and without danger; and which in an insolvency, the probabilities whereof are increased by its recusancy, it could not refuse to do without discredit and shame.

NN

S.

ON

the day during which the events recorded in our last chap. ter were taking place, the good sorrel horse, with the instinctive sagacity peculiar to his kind, must have been aware that some trial of his mettle was imminently impending. Never before in the whole course of his experience had the same care been bestowed on his feeding, watering, and other preparations for an appointed task; never before had Dymocke so minutely examined the soundness of every strap and buckle of his appointments, inspected so rigidly the state of his shoes, or fitted the bit in his mouth and the links of his curb-chain with such judicious delicacy. Horses are keenly alive to all premonitory symptoms of activity, and the sorrel's kindling eye and dilated nostril showed that he was prepared to sustain his part, whatever it might be, in the impending catastrophe. Dymocke, too, had discarded the warlike air and pompous bearing which he usually affected; he had considerably shortened his customary morning draught, and as he was well known to be a man of few words and an austere demeanour, none of his fellow-servants dared take upon themselves to question him when he left the stable-yard in a groom's ordinary undress, and rode the sorrel carefully out as it were for an airing.

Patrolling!' quoth Dymocke to himself, as he emerged from the park-gates, and espied at no great distance two well-mounted dragoons pacing along the crest of a rising ground, and apparently keeping vigilant watch over the valley of the Nene below. A picket!' he added with a grim leer, and a pat on his horse's neck, as the sun glinted back from a dozen of carbines and the same number of steel breastplates drawn up near a clump of trees, where the officer in command flat

tered himself he was completely hidden from observation. 'Well, they've no call to say nothing to me,' was his concluding remark as he jogged quietly down towards the river-side, affecting as much as possible the air and manner of a groom training a horse about to run for some valuable stake-a process sure to meet with the sympathies of Englishmen, whatever might be their class and creed, and one which even the most rigid Presbyterian would be unwilling to embarrass or interrupt.

It was a good stake, too, that the sorrel was about to run for a stake of Life and Death, a match against Time, with the course marked out by Chance, and the winning-post placed by Destiny. The steed was sound and trim, his condition excellent, his blood irreproachable: to use the language of Newmarket, would he stay the distance and get home?

There was a marshy meadow by the river's brink, which even at this dry season of the year was moist and cool, grateful to the sensations of horse and rider. As the sorrel approached it he snorted once or twice, erected his ears, and neighed long and loudly. The neigh was answered in more directions than one, for dragoons were patrolling the road in pairs, and no less than two outposts of cavalry were distinctly visible. It seemed as though the war had broken out afresh. Dymocke rode quietly round and round the meadow, apparently attending solely to his horse, and an inde fatigable angler, who ought ere this to have caught every fish in the Nene, looked up in a startled manner for an instant, and resumed his sport with redoubled energy and perseverance.

Meanwhile a goodly cavalcade was approaching the half-ruined bridge of Brampton, which here spanned the Nene, and which,