the difference in the duty across the intermediate province of Orissa, he could render smuggling unprofitable, without a preventive line."

To carry out a change in the railway policy of India, according to a scheme sketched by Lord Lawrence, was one of the tasks to which Lord Mayo applied himself; and in this he had, like his predecessor, the valuable advice of one to whom much of the reform is due, General Richard Strachey. Under the former system the money was raised on the credit and authority of the State, with a guarantee of five per cent., thus involving no risk to the shareholders, and sacrificing, on the part of Government, every chance of profit, while risking every chance of loss.

power, ruling at enormous disadvantages, principally by the force of character and by administrative skill. As long as the natives of Hindostan believe that whatever power might follow us, native or European, will tax them more heavily than we do, we are safe. Should the other feeling prevail, we will lose our hold on the country. There is no real patriotism in India. The great mass of the Hindoos have always been accustomed to be ruled by a foreign power. If the foreign power is just and wise, it is the form of government that suits them best. In our circumstances in India, we cannot therefore dig deeply into the people's pockets. Therefore, I say, let us have railways that will pay, or nearly pay; or no railways at all, if their effect will be to add £100,000 or £150,000 every year to the permanent burdens of the State. But we can make railways that will add little or nothing to the burdens of the State; and we can also make railways at £5,000 a mile that will not only pay, but do all we want. . . . With regard to the breadth of gauge, we adhere to our former opinion. We do not believe that for many years we can hope to obtain any amount of traffic that would justify the extra outlay of £2,000 a mile for standard gauge; and further, we feel that if we do not adopt a narrow gauge now, all hope of getting cheap railways for India would be closed for ever. I believe the evils of the breadth of "The comparison between the cost of guaranteed gauge on long lines, where light traffic can only be and of State railways, as above given, is not, how-anticipated, are exaggerated; that as far as native ever, quite a fair one," says his biographer. "For although it accurately states the expense of the two systems to the Indian Government, it compares lines of different intrinsic value. The guaranteed railways were made on the five-feet-six-inch gauge, or nearly a foot broader than that of the English lines. Several of the State railways have been made on a narrower gauge of three feet three inches. Their permanent way is less solid, their rails and their rolling-stock lighter, and a large part of the saving is due to these causes, irrespective of their more economical construction."

Under the new system which was inaugurated, the Indian Government borrows its railway capital at four per cent., thus saving £100,000 yearly on every ten millions. The old system involved double management, with a cost of construction that averaged £17,000 for every mile; under the new there is but one controlling power-Government has the work done by contract, and hence the cost of construction, on the narrow gauge state lines, is less than £6,000 per mile. While Lord Mayo thus inaugurated a new railway system for India, he carried out with vigour the schemes which had been formed by such predecessors as the Marquis of Dalhousie and Lord Lawrence.

Indian traffic is of much lighter nature than what we find in Britain, while the ample river and canal facilities compel the railways to carry passengers and goods at moderate rates.

"The alternative, as regards India," wrote Lord Mayo, "is this, cheap railways or none; and I would rather do without railways altogether than incur the future risk of that annual increase of expenditure, and consequently of taxation, which I have stopped, and which is our only real danger in India. It is true that the people are lightly taxed; and so they ought to be. We are an alien

passenger traffic is concerned, no evil whatever will result; and that as regards corn, oil-seeds, coal, and salt, the inconvenience will be small, and the expense of transhipment will hardly exceed the cost of twelve miles of haulage. For the carriage of soldiers and horses there will be no difficulty, as after long railway journeys they must eat and rest, which they can always do at the change. There will undoubtedly be some difficulty as to munitions. of war and all military stores; but it will be absurd to suggest that we should spend two millions of money for this object only. What we should aim at is the provision of such railway communication as will provide for present wants, with a power of such increase as will give facility for considerable augmentation, if it is hereafter found necessary. This, I believe, we have done, and more than this we ought not to do."*

The chief aim of the Viceroy was to form a distinct system of narrow-gauge lines, that would all work in connection with each other, penetrating into the heart of the greater provinces within the trilateral formed by the broad-gauge lines. Bombay, * "Life of the Earl of Mayo."

CANALS AND CANAL CESS.-EDUCATION.-AGRICULTURE AND MINERALS.

IN 1872, the Earl of Mayo turned his attention to exchequer. Lord Mayo thought to prevent this the Ganges Canal, which was extended, and, after a deficit for seventeen years, ceased to be a burden to the State. He also inaugurated a new system of irrigation, starting from the Ganges near Alighur, to water the whole lower quarters of the Doab, from Futteghur to Allahabad. At the same time, by the waters of the Sardah Canal, the eastern half of Rohilcund and the western quarters of Oude were placed alike beyond the perils of drought and consequent famine. He had plans prepared to water the arid tracts westward of Delhi from the resources of the Jumna, while the Lower Jumna Canal was carried into those districts which are eastward of the city. With a view to a complete system of irrigation, works of equal importance were carried from the Soane river through the province of Behar; and the seaboard of Orissa, which had been so seriously stricken by famine in 1866, was placed beyond all chance of a recurrence of that evil, by a splendid system of canals and other means of communication with adjacent districts. Further to the south, the works on the Godavery, a noble and magnificent river (computed to be 900 miles in length), were in full progress; and in the remote west, he had projects formed for the irrigation of "the drought-stricken districts of Scinde." Upon the single item of canals for Orissa, the Government, from December, 1868, to December, 1871, laid out a sum equal to the total revenue derived during the same period from the entire province.*

It was clear that, however necessary to prevent the recurrence of famine, unless these vast works were made to pay interest for the cost of their construction, they would seriously embarrass the Hunter's "Orissa," vol. ii.

by a compulsory water-rate. In common with his chief advisers, he maintained that a local community, for whose local welfare a canal had been found an absolute necessity, should not be permitted to throw the cost of its construction on the uninterested ratepayers of a distant province; and that, whether the said local community delayed to use the water-as the Indian peasant has an obstinate antagonism to innovation, he might delay to use it for years-it should, nevertheless, be compelled to pay the yearly interest on that which is, in the strictest sense of the term, a local public work; just as a householder would have to pay the municipal water-rate, whether he used the water or not. To obviate irritation, Lord Mayo carefully adjusted the burden of the canal cess, providing that it should not be levied on the husbandman until he had neglected to use the water during five complete years after it had been brought to his fields, and only in places where it could be proved that the cultivator's net profits would be increased by the canal, after paying the irrigation-rates. He insisted that there should be a clear gain to the ryot from taking the water before the Government should be permitted to charge him for it. "So liberal a condition," says Dr. Hunter, was never attached to a similar work intended for the local protection of a town against natural calamities. Science can only presume a benefit to the general body of citizens from water-works, for which municipal rates are charged; but before Lord Mayo would give the Government power to levy the canal-rate at all, he insisted that the benefit to each individual should be absolutely ascertained."

The Canal Act for the Punjaub reduced these principles to the form of law.

are preserved and whose wealth is augmented by | of Commissioners, "at least one of whom should these works, to contribute in fair proportion to the cost of their construction. .. I ask, is it right or fair that works constructed for the exclusive benefit of the Punjaub or the North-west should be paid for out of the pockets of the people of Madras and Bombay? It was this early adoption of the principles which I now advocate that has led to the successful administration of the enormous sums borrowed from the State, or on municipal security, for agricultural, civic, maritime, and other undertakings in Britain."

not be an officer of the Government," whose duty it would be to certify, as an independent Board of Audit, with the public as witnesses, that the sum raised for the construction of the public works had been applied in accordance with the conditions under which loans for them were made.

Mere material development was not the only problem Lord Mayo had before him in India. Like all his predecessors, and every European it general, he found how hard it was to grapple with the formidable barriers erected by caste, originating The great accumulation of debt, consequent to in one of the most ancient fictions of Hindoo

mythology, to which, as a classification, the Portuguese first gave that name. According to Menu, the Brahmin, since he sprang from the mouth of the Deity-the most excellent part-is, by right, chief of the whole creation. Next in order, but at a vast distance, stands the Cshatriya, whose descent marks him out as a soldier and a defender of the people. The Vaisya represents the industrial class, herdsmen, and others; while to the Sudra, the supreme ruler, it is said, is assigned the duty of serving, but without derogation, the before-mentioned classes. In time, caste became more fully and firmly identified with professions and trades. To every caste a particular occupation is exclusively assigned; thus, all are regarded as hereditary, and are transmitted from father to son in the same tribes and families: thus, it is easy to see that, the number of castes being as unlimited as that of the modes of employment, enumeration of them would be equally difficult and superfluous. Hence, the horror at losing caste is an almost insuperable obstacle to the spread of the Christian religion. The barriers of caste have conduced to exclude one class from the sympathy or regard of another-even to preventing, in many instances, inter-marriage-and to cripple the growth "of that local public opinion which, more than any written law, regulates an Englishman's conduct to his neighbours."

of rural life, our system of regular justice has immensely strengthened the hands of the educated and wealthy classes in the struggle which goes on, in a densely-populated country, between the rich and poor. At the same time, our system of public instruction had, in some parts of India, supplied an excellent education to the opulent and upper middle classes at the cost of the State, and made scarcely any provision for the education of the masses."

The educational differences which he found between the different provinces of our Indian Empire attracted the attention of Lord Mayo soon after his arrival. For example, we are told, that in Bombay he found schools in plenitude, and public instruction sown on an ample and popular scale; while in the provinces of the North-west the native village seminaries were flourishing under the Lieutenant-Governor, Sir William Muir, K.C.S.I., whose administration encouraged and developed the character of their teaching. In Lower Bengal the system was different. The University of Calcutta had set the fashion for the whole schools of the province, and the influence of its able and highclass professors prescribed the mode of teaching therein; hence the wealthy and titled classes of the Indian community had educational facilities afforded them such as no other part of India enjoyed; but this was a triumph effected by the Bengal system at the cost of the primary education of the humbler and poorer masses.

From long before the days of Mahmoud of Ghizni, the powerful have oppressed the weak in India. In every village the capitalist and the usurer have been hated from time immemorial, and The upper-class schools had risen, but upon their lives and properties have been at the mercy the ruins of the old native village schools. If the of any sudden ebullition of popular wrath. The parents of children were in good circumstances, British District Officer does not now permit such and able to pay for their education, the State came outbreaks, or prevents them if he can. "He brings forward and saved them the expense; while the to trial the slayers of a Bombay soukar," says Dr. old native schools received no encouragement Hunter, "a North-western baniga, or a Bengalee whatever; and "the village teacher, who from mahajan, as ordinary murderers, and hangs them. generation to generation had gathered the children On the other hand, the British District Officer will of the hamlet into his mat hut, and taught them to not allow the native landholder to recover his rent trace their letters on the mud floor, found himself by the summary process of imprisoning defaulting deserted by his paying pupils. He and his fathers tenants in his vaults, or by tying them on tip-toe by had been accustomed to teach their little stock of their thumbs to the wall. For the old processes of knowledge to all comers of decent caste, and to agrestis justitia, whether carried out by the rich or live by the offerings of a few of their wealthier by the poor, we have substituted uniform codes of disciples. They had looked upon the instruction procedure for both. The powerful now oppress of youth as a religious duty, and regarded their by due course of law; and the weak now evade office as a priestly one." oppression, or combine to ruin their oppressors, by a dexterous use of our courts. The husbandmen of Lower Bengal have, more than once, shown that two can play at going to law, and that in a country of petite culture no landholder can stand against a sustained conspiracy of his innumerable tenantry to withhold their rent. . . In the ordinary course

But now, under the new régime with its paid district schools, the youths who could pay were swept away to the classes opened by Government, and the old village gurumahasay, or schoolmaster, found his occupation well-nigh gone-a sore trial to temper and to faith, especially when he could see but too well that the practical result of the