TH 
 OF LORD CUR 
 
 AN OPEN LETTER 
 
 TO 
 
 THE EARL OF ROSEBERY 
 
 By 
 C. J. O'DONNELL 
 
 THIRD EDITION
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. 
 
 (i.) Sir William Wedderburn, Bart, ex-M.P., in THE SPEAKER. 
 "The superficial observer might, from the title of this 
 book, suppose that it was a personal attack on Lord 
 Curzon. But this would be a mistake. The book is an 
 attack, not on an individual, but upon a system ; it is a 
 condemnation of the extravagance, the oppressiveness, 
 the obscurantism, the corruption and the general folly of 
 ' Imperialism.' The writer's statements are concise, his 
 style bright and racy, and those who do not desire to live 
 in a fool's paradise should read his vigorous exposition of 
 the methods, by which the fabric of our Indian Empire is 
 being undermined." 
 
 (ii.) THE BOOK OF THE MONTH (July) by Mr. W. T. Stead in the 
 REVIEW OF REVIEWS. " This book is a dynamite bomb 
 which, if it exploded in the right place, might burst the 
 Indian Empire as it now is into irremediable ruin. ... If 
 what he says is true, instead of being proud of our Indian 
 Empire we ought to cover our heads with shame when 
 we hear it named. Instead of being our glory it is our 
 shame." 
 
 (iii.) THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW. " There is no lack of know- 
 ledge in this uncompromising indictment. . . . Whether 
 we agree with the author or not, his book is worth reading 
 as an exposition of an honest though unpopular view of 
 Indian administration, written by one who has given the 
 greater part of his life to the work."
 
 (iv.) THE ATHEN^UM. "A healthy counterstroke to official 
 optimism. . . . The whole book should be read by all 
 interested in Indian administration." 
 
 (v.) MORNING POST. "A rattling attack on the self-confident 
 young Statesman." 
 
 (vi.) DAILY NEWS. "This book contains certainly very grave 
 charges." 
 
 (vii.) VANITY FAIR. "On the question of taxation, the writer 
 states a case ably and strongly." 
 
 (viii.) LIVERPOOL POST. " A trenchant yet courteous criticism." 
 
 (ix.) LIBERTY REVIEW. "The array of facts and the opinions of 
 distinguished statesmen and administrators, collected in 
 the book, forcibly arrest one's attention." 
 
 (x.) THE PRESBYTERIAN. "The arraignment is thorough and 
 absolute." 
 
 (xi.) REYNOLDS' NEWSPAPER. "A very powerful indictment of 
 the showy, but ineffective, Government of India. 
 . . . Unanswerable." 
 
 (xii.) LANCASHIRE POST. " High taxation is a greater source of 
 danger. . . . Impoverishment." 
 
 (xiii.) THE NEW AGE. " An amount of explosive force that can 
 hardly fail to wake up some readers." 
 
 (xiv.) MORNING ADVERTISER. " Deserves to be read carefully. It 
 is written in a moderate, reasonable way." 
 
 (xv.) PRIMITIVE METHODIST. "A book like the one before us is 
 deserving of a warm welcome." 
 
 (xvi.) NEW INDIA (Calcutta). "That these indictments are essen- 
 tially true must be admitted by every impartial judge of the 
 present Indian administration."
 
 THE FAILURE OF LORD CURZON
 
 THE FAILURE OF 
 LORD CURZON 
 
 AN OPEN LETTER TO THE 
 EARL OF ROSEBERY 
 
 C. J. O'DONNELL 
 
 ("TWENTY-EIGHT YEARS ifr" INDIA") 
 
 THIRD EDITION 
 
 1 God give us men. A time like this demands 
 Great hearts, strong minds, true faith and willing hands : 
 Men, whom the lust of office does not kill ; 
 Men, whom the spoils of office cannot buy ; 
 Men, who possess opinions and a will ; 
 Men, who have honour, men who will not lie." 
 
 OLIVER WINDEI.I. HOLMES 
 
 LONDON: T. FISHER UNWIN 
 PATERNOSTER SQUARE 1903
 
 (All rights reserved.)
 
 fso 
 
 L 
 
 PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION 
 
 THE Report of the War Commission has been a cruel 
 disillusionment. Yet four years ago were we not 
 blessed with a Cabinet of All the Talents ? A dis- 
 tinguished Irishman in vain warned the English 
 people of the true position of affairs in South Africa. 
 Can an unknown writer hope to obtain more success 
 when drawing attention to failure in India? Sir 
 William Butler was condemned, as he himself bluntly 
 puts it, as " a fool or a knave." The "Imperialist" 
 Press did not hesitate to attribute disloyalty to the far- 
 sighted general. I have dropped anonymity because 
 the same intelligent journals can see in it only a cloak 
 for personal feeling. 
 
 The recent extension of Lord Curzon's term of 
 office has been acclaimed by nearly the whole London 
 Press, Liberal as well as Conservative, as the fit 
 reward of great services done for the State. The 
 Press of India takes a very different view. The 
 Pioneer is undoubtedly the premier journal of the 
 English race in India, and finds it necessary to point 
 out that Lord Curzon's Viceroyalty has been rather an 
 
 vii 
 
 398G96
 
 Preface to the Third Edition 
 
 undistinguished period, and that, although accom- 
 panied by much and multiform display, it will not 
 bear comparison with the administrations that have 
 gone before it. 
 
 " Loyalty to predecessors equally devoted to the 
 country," it wrote a few weeks ago (August 14, 1903), 
 " should prevent people in India from acquiescing in 
 the undiscriminating adulation that the English Press 
 is disposed to pour on the present ruler of India to 
 their detriment. In point of fact if the Viceroyalty is 
 looked at dispassionately it would seem to be a time of 
 manifold stir indeed but of no achievements that we can 
 put in the first rank of importance. There is no great 
 historical landmark like the acquisition of Burma to 
 distinguish it. There has been nothing to compare 
 with Lord Dufferin's handling of the Public Service 
 question, which quietly settled a host of thorny matters 
 upon lines that have held good for eighteen years, and 
 which seem more and more to become part of the 
 settled principles of the Administration. Or, again, 
 have we seen in the last few years any idea equal in 
 originality to the institution of the Imperial Service 
 troops ? Or has there been any measure that is likely 
 to produce such a lasting effect upon Indian public life 
 as Lord Lansdowne's popularisation of the Legislative 
 Councils, the results of which may be seen growing 
 year by year ? Or has there been any crisis of late 
 years comparable in gravity, in the discernment and 
 decision that it demanded, and in the complete success 
 of the remedy, to the currency situation in 1893 when 
 it was taken in hand by the same Viceroy ? " 
 
 This passage may be taken as the expression of the 
 
 viii
 
 Preface to the Third Edition 
 
 views of cultured Englishmen in India. Excepting 
 the Durbar and its theatrical surroundings, which were 
 an abomination to Anglo- Indians, "a levelling down 
 to Asiatic tawdriness," Lord Curzon has done little. 
 He has, indeed, appointed commissions on education, 
 police, irrigation, &c., but reform is still in the clouds. 
 There have been grandiose schemes of water supply, 
 costing some thirty millions sterling. Millions also 
 are to be expended on great thoroughfares opening up 
 Calcutta, and millions on police. But where is the 
 money to come from ? There has, in fact, been much 
 eloquence and imagination, written and spoken, but 
 "no achievements." 
 
 The opinion of native society on Lord Curzon's 
 extension is expressed unmistakably in the Bengali, 
 which is the foremost organ of its race in India, being 
 edited by the Senior Indian Member of the Bengal 
 Legislative Council and the most influential native 
 politician in our Eastern Empire, the Honourable 
 Surendranath Banerjee. 
 
 "Whilst we applaud," it wrote on August n, 1903, 
 "the motives and admire the enthusiasm of the 
 Viceroy, we must be permitted to repeat the com- 
 plaint which we have so often urged in these columns, 
 viz., that His Excellency has not, so far, won by his 
 measures or by his policy the confidence and the 
 esteem of the Indian people. On the contrary, there 
 is a wide-spread feeling of unrest and dissatisfaction in 
 the country. No Viceroy was less fettered by con- 
 ventionalities or was more capable of a bold initiative 
 than Lord Curzon. But unfortunately there has been 
 no Viceroy within living memory who within the term 
 
 ix
 
 Preface to the Third Edition 
 
 of his office has created a more wide-spread feeling of 
 disappointment Great things were expected of His 
 Excellency when he landed at Bombay and delivered 
 that fine speech in reply to the address of the Cor- 
 poration, the echoes of which still seem to linger in 
 the air. . . . 
 
 " The news of the Viceroy's extension of service has 
 indeed been received with a chorus of applause by the 
 English Press. Lord Curzon, we know, is a past 
 master in the art of winning journalistic applause. 
 But the English Press is more or less under official 
 influence in its views regarding Indian affairs, and we, 
 who are on the spot, have no reasons to share its con- 
 gratulations, unless indeed there is a distinct change 
 of policy in the future measures of Lord Curzon's 
 Government. . . . 
 
 " A policy of reaction is visible in many of those 
 measures which affect the interests of Local Self- 
 Government and the great question of the wider 
 employment of the people in the public service. If 
 the future is to be judged from the past if the 
 coming years of Lord Curzon's administration are 
 to represent a still wider amplification of the policy 
 of the last four years, then all that we can say is 
 that an administration which it was confidently 
 hoped would be the most brilliant Viceroyalty, 
 would be writ on the pages of history as a dismal 
 failure and the saddest disappointment the Indian 
 people had ever experienced." 
 
 Vernacular newspapers in Bombay, Madras, and 
 Upper India repeat the same regrets for the failure 
 of a statesman, from whom much was expected, and
 
 Preface to the Third Edition 
 
 who has it in him to do, perhaps, great things, if he 
 could rise to some nobler ideals than those of a 
 prancing " Imperialism." 
 
 I have been much blamed for treating the present 
 administration of India from so personal a standpoint, 
 but I have been forced to adopt this line of contro- 
 versy. " The undiscriminating adulation of the 
 English Press," which the Pioneer justly stigmatises, 
 has attributed everything done in India during the 
 past four years to an individual. Moreover, I have 
 no desire to attack the Government of India as an 
 institution. An autocracy is the only form of ad- 
 ministration possible in that country at the present 
 time, but the autocrat must be level-headed, experi- 
 enced, patient and strong, whilst grateful for advice. 
 Lord Curzon has none of these qualities, though 
 clever, even brilliant, sympathetic and just. Per- 
 haps it may be that India needs a Viceroy with a 
 reputation and a position already established, like 
 Lord Dufferin or Lord Northbrook, and not a push- 
 ful, ambitious young " Imperialist " with his future to 
 make. 
 
 My criticisms of Lord Curzon may seem querulous, 
 but a short consideration of his action in regard to the 
 Ninth Lancers may show that they are well founded. 
 It was typical of his attractive as well as of his un- 
 statesmanlike characteristics. His fierce indignation 
 against an absolutely fiendish murder was unmixedly 
 admirable. One feels one is dealing with a man with 
 his heart in the right place. The greater, then, is the 
 regret that the method of punishment adopted was 
 unjudicial and unwise. The crime was committed at 
 
 xi
 
 Preface to the Third Edition 
 
 an hour when all the troops, except a few stray drunken 
 wanderers, were in bed asleep. Inquiry had this 
 initial difficulty to contend with. Still, some informa- 
 tion might have been arrived at if searching investi- 
 gation had been immediately made. And here comes 
 in the real criminality, not of the regiment, but of the 
 commanding officers. Although the victim of the 
 outrage lay some days in hospital dying, no adequate 
 inquiry was attempted. Had the men responsible for 
 this neglect been severely dealt with the majority of 
 Englishmen in India would have applauded an act 
 of unquestionable justice. Lord Curzon preferred 
 an indiscriminate chastisement, which included even 
 officers in England enjoying a brief holiday, well 
 earned in South Africa. The sense of wrong to 
 these war-worn men diverted sympathy from the 
 murdered native, and at the Delhi Durbar English 
 ladies and gentlemen most unwisely, but most patri- 
 otically, cheered a regiment with a special and recent 
 reputation for gallant conduct on the field of battle. 
 Many blame this "disgraceful" display of race pre- 
 judice, but it was not less natural than that the Indian 
 Press should misunderstand the demonstration. 
 Another faggot was added to the fire of racial feud. 
 Justice, however well-intentioned, may, if ill-balanced, 
 produce deplorable results. 
 
 England was never more in need of statesmen on 
 whom she can rely. She has suffered deeply during 
 recent years from the vagaries of " Empire-building 
 Imperialists." An impartial Commission on Indian 
 affairs would produce a report hardly less painful 
 than the Blue Book, which the recent dissection of 
 
 xii
 
 Preface to the Third Edition 
 
 the War Office has given birth to. If such a Com- 
 mission were appointed there are scores of Englishmen 
 of Indian experience, servants of the Crown, adminis- 
 trators, judges, merchants, lawyers, and journalists, 
 who are ready and eager to give evidence. 
 
 C. J. O'DONNELL. 
 
 75, QUEEN'S GATE, LONDON, S.W. 
 September 15, 1903. 
 
 PS. Lord Curzon is at the present instant passing 
 into law not in Calcutta but in the hole-and-corner 
 legislature at Simla an Official Secrets (Amendment) 
 Act, much more stringent than anything known in 
 England. It makes offences under it non-bailable, 
 and alleged offenders liable to arrest without a 
 magistrate's warrant. An extraordinary provision in 
 it confers certain judicial powers on " the commanding 
 officer of the nearest military station " ! The native 
 Press denounces this drumhead legislation as an 
 attempt to terrorise it into silence on foreign affairs. 
 
 Lord Curzon is about to visit the ports on the 
 coast of the Persian Gulf, where we have no dominion. 
 He is simply giving Russia overt warning of what his 
 mischievous ambition is, viz., to establish a British 
 protectorate over southern Persia. That would be 
 a more expensive game than the conquest of the 
 Transvaal and more unprofitable. The Christians of 
 Macedonia need expect little aid from St. Petersburg 
 so long as the chief advocate of a hostile policy on 
 her southern frontier is Viceroy of India. Mr. 
 
 xiii
 
 Preface to the Third Edition 
 
 George N. Curzon long ago explained how Japan 
 might have its share in assailing the territories of the 
 Tsar. Time to develop such plans, and not any 
 44 parochial " domestic reforms in India, is perhaps 
 the motive of Lord Curzon's desire for an extension 
 of office. It will be little short of a marvel if he does 
 not manoeuvre the Empire into some dangerous 
 situation. Lord Salisbury is dead, and Mr. Balfour 
 is not much of a restraining force. 
 
 October i, 1903. 
 
 XIV
 
 PREFACE 
 
 THE author has adopted anonymity, though quite 
 aware that it is the thinnest of screens, if there is 
 any wish to pierce behind it. The fact of a twenty- 
 eight years' acquaintance with India suggests some 
 knowledge of the matters he discusses, whilst, after so 
 long an exile, his name would be recognised by few. 
 Moreover, in political controversy the author favours 
 an impersonality similar to that which enables a 
 journalist to leave his facts and arguments to speak 
 for themselves. He desires to draw attention not to 
 his own opinions, which are expressed with hesitation, 
 but to the long array of weighty quotation, which he 
 adduces, the statements of men like Sir George Win- 
 gate, Sir Richard Garth, Sir Ashley Eden, Sir William 
 Wedderburn, Sir Steuart Bayley, Sir Charles Rivaz, 
 Sir John Jardine, Sir W. W. Hunter, and a score of 
 others, Governors and Imperial Councillors, Judges 
 and Chief Commissioners. He would also solicit 
 the fullest consideration for the unbiassed evidence of 
 high-class journals, the Englishman of Calcutta, the 
 Pioneer of Allahabad, Capital, and many others. 
 
 xv
 
 Preface 
 
 Since this book went to the printers the Indian 
 Budget for 1 903-4 has passed the Legislative Council. 
 It introduced two modifications of taxation. The tax 
 on every maund of salt, 82 Ibs., has been reduced 
 from 40 to 32 pence one penny less in every 10 Ibs., 
 which is about the annual consumption of each 
 individual Indian. One penny a year will not 
 seriously lighten their burden, but it represents the 
 present ideal of " Imperial " munificence to the poor. 
 The second change raised the lower limit of annual 
 income, liable to income tax, from 500 to 1,000 
 rupees, an appreciable benefit to an already well-to-do 
 class, the small tradesmen, whose contributions to 
 revenue are always small. The average income of 
 the town labourer is about 50 rupees a year, under 
 ^4, whilst that of his agriculturist fellow is roundly 
 half of that pittance. 
 
 The most prominent feature, however, of the new 
 budget is the continued increase of military ex- 
 penditure. The charges under this head have 
 been : 
 
 In 1899-1900 ;i4 I 65743 
 
 1900-1901 14,265,525 
 
 1901-1902 14,786,342 
 
 1902-1903 16,234,900 
 
 1903-1904 16,352,300 
 
 The last figures represent the amount to be expended 
 by the Army Department during the current year, 
 but there are other items of strictly military outlay, 
 which raise the total to ^17,907,699. 
 
 The Indian public, European and native, protest 
 
 xvi
 
 Preface 
 
 against the enormous increase from nine millions 
 
 o 
 
 sterling in 1875, and Lord Curzon has found it 
 advisable to beat the Jingo war-drum. In his speech 
 in Council he declared that " The geographical posi- 
 tion of India will more and more push her into the 
 forefront of international politics ; she will more and 
 more become the strategical frontier of the British 
 Empire." To talk of a "position" pushing anything 
 anywhere may be intelligible to an " Imperialist," but 
 to a sober-minded citizen, wishing to safeguard the 
 grandest heritage of empire we possess, it would seem 
 that the geographical position of India, her supreme 
 defensive asset, ought to keep her outside the sphere 
 of foreign intermeddling. Walled in by almost im- 
 penetrable mountain ranges, some of the highest and 
 most rugged in the world, her position is one of quite 
 exceptional security. Unfortunately, the "Imperialist" 
 would never get his beloved wars if our armies and 
 our diplomacy did not habitually seek fields of con- 
 tention outside our natural boundaries. Had one- 
 tenth part of the enormous sums wasted in Afghan 
 wars and Black Mountain expeditions been em- 
 ployed in fortifying the frontier and its passes, 
 it would by now be impregnable, and a Russian 
 general would find Cape Town as easy to reach as 
 Delhi. 
 
 But Lord Curzon's ambition is to be an " Empire 
 Builder," as your hot Tory calls the pushful and pug- 
 nacious idols of his admiration. He does not want 
 any long spoon in dealing with the Tsar and his 
 armies. His dream is a real, big, hand-to-hand fight 
 somewhere anywhere. Constantinople or Corea 
 
 xvii B
 
 Preface 
 
 might do, but the plains of Persia would suit him 
 nicely. With famine following famine in nearly every 
 province of India, and desolating plague everywhere, 
 who will deny that we have at last found a truly 
 " Imperialist " Viceroy ? 
 
 The recent debate in the House of Lords (May 5, 
 1903), proves that Persia is the new objective of 
 " Imperialist " fatuity. Nothing on earth can pre- 
 vent Russia from making her way to the sea. The 
 desire to do so is about as statesmanlike as was 
 our late attempt to bribe the Shah by so valuable a 
 present as the ribbon of the Garter. The commerce 
 of Central Asia must flow down to the Indian Ocean 
 by means of one or more railways as surely as a river 
 of water down a mountain side. We may delay the 
 inevitable by a great war and by again putting our 
 millions on the wrong horse, but would it not be 
 wiser to depend on our navy and on sea power for 
 supremacy in the Persian Gulf ? A land struggle 
 with Russia would not be less expensive than our 
 late avoidable war in South Africa ; say, ^250,000,000 
 sterling. If ^10,000,000 were expended in making 
 Kurrachi or Bombay and Aden really first-class naval 
 bases, we might laugh at any European Power, Russia 
 or Germany or France, that sought to oust us from 
 our position in Eastern waters. Even if we spend 
 ^25,000,000 we would still have permanent value 
 for our money, instead of squandering, probably in 
 one year, ten times the amount in a bloody war with 
 little certainty of ultimate success. The total value 
 of our trade with the Gulf ports in 1901 was only 
 ,2,300,000 and our profit, at 10 per cent, less than 
 
 xviii
 
 Preface 
 
 a quarter of a million sterling, a turnover and a profit 
 far smaller than many London business houses can 
 boast of. " Imperialism " is one long drawn out 
 amazing folly, and Lord Curzon is its prophet in 
 Asia. 
 
 THE AUTHOR. 
 
 PS. The following statistics of plague mortality are 
 evidence of the terrible calamity now oppressing India 
 and still being sedulously concealed from the know- 
 ledge of the English people: 1896 1,700 deaths; 
 1897 56,000 deaths ; 1898 1 18,000 deaths ; 1899 
 135,000 deaths ; 1900 93,000 deaths ; 1901 274,000 
 deaths; 1902 577,000 deaths ; 1903, three months 
 roundly, 250,000 deaths. Assuredly these are fitting 
 days for Durbar festivities ! 
 
 XIX
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PACK 
 
 PREFACE . . . . * v 
 
 THE NEW EFFICIENCY "DISMALLY BELIED" . . i 
 
 A Great Inheritance The Efficiency Policy Lord Curzon's 
 Debut The New Pretensions A Restless Upsetter A 
 Threefold Failure "A Vainglorious Hope " " Dismally 
 Belied" Lurid " Statistics '' Half a Million or Four Millions. 
 Which? Fair Treatment The British Soldier A Rogue 
 Patriotism The Limits of Well-Being The Indian Merchant 
 lightly Taxed Prosperity on a 55 per cent. Income-Tax 
 To Stem the Tide of Misstatement. 
 
 FAMINE AND TAXATION . . . . -15 
 
 A Deeper Acquaintance A Remarkable Petition Its Prayer 
 Summarised The " Equitable Basis " of a 55 per cent. Income- 
 Tax Taxation or Drought Excessive Growth of Taxation 
 "Extravagantly Heavy" Enhancements Sir George Win- 
 gate's Angry Protest " The Yoke of British Misgovernment " 
 "Stupidity," "Greed" Mr. Caird's Protest "The Enor- 
 mous Increase " Lord Ripon's Attempt at Reform 850,000 
 Farmers Sold out of House and Home Cent, per cent 
 Enhancements 65 per cent, the Government Limit go per 
 cent, the Basis of the Permanent Settlement " Their Inability 
 to pay more " (Sir Richard Temple) " Extreme Depression 
 and Misery " (Sir Ashley Eden)" Traditional Oppression " 
 (Sir Steuart Bayley) Pauperisation Forty-five per cent, of 
 the Population Short of Food One Meal a Day the Normal 
 Diet Obscurantist and " Confidential " " Ruined Beyond 
 Redemption " " Nakedness and Starvation." 
 
 XX
 
 Contents 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE PILING UP OF TAX ON TAX A TRAGEDY . . 40 
 
 Lord Curzon as the Protagonist of Taxation " A very Vital 
 Question " The Extortion of the Famine Arrears How to 
 Reward Honesty "Fair play and Public interest" Disre- 
 garded A Lieutenant-Governor without One Day's Ex- 
 perience "The Safe Men" "A Double Wrong" Coinage 
 Restriction not Prosperity " The Piling up of Tax on Tax " 
 An Increase of 30,000 Men in the Army " The Richest 
 Nations " Surpassed Blundering into Truth The Ruin of a 
 Great Industry Taxation the Destroyer The Bleeding of 
 an Unrepresented People Lord Curzon ignored "Weak 
 Enough." 
 
 THE UPROOTING OF SELF-GOVERNMENT A FIASCO . . 51 
 
 Want of Sympathy Educated Indians and Self-Government 
 The Success of an Indian Corporation The Plague Scare 
 A Speech and its Consequences Money freely Given 
 The Difficulties of Sanitation New Legislation and New 
 Governors The Uprooting of Self-Government Lord 
 Curzon's Reform an Utter Fiasco A Noisome City given 
 over to " Culpable Neglect " The Surroundings of an 
 Hospital " Confusion worse Confounded " " Seething Dis- 
 content " The Most Ill-balanced Mind. 
 
 THE UPROOTING OF POPULAR EDUCATION A FAILURE . 65 
 
 A Far-fetched Idea Intense Indignation " Striking at the 
 Root of Education " " To Narrow the Popular Basis " " A 
 Matter of Life or Death " " Revolutionary Proposals " A 
 Political Motive Suspected Closing the Door against the 
 Higher Castes The Use of Fees to Choke Education The 
 Exclusion of the Poor Student "A Death-Blow to Muha- 
 madan Progress " To Make Education Expensive Lord 
 Curzon Climbs Down " Let Art and Science, Learning Die." 
 
 THE " IMPERIALIST " AND THE ANCIENT PRINCES OF INDIA 
 
 A SAD COMEDY . . . . -74 
 
 Great Feudatories as Schoolboys An " Independent " Chief ! 
 An " Altogether Inexpedient " Policy " Sapping the Foun- 
 dations of All Confidence " " This Policy of Chaperoning " 
 "Who is Mainly to Blame ?" " Poor, Sad-Hearted, Voiceless 
 Souls, Bejewelled and Bedecked" Solemn Treaties An 
 Almost Intolerable Affront Epicene " Imperialism " 
 Bankruptcy The Law as an Outsider. 
 
 xxi
 
 Contents 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE FLOUTING OF EXPERIENCED ADVICE A BETISE . 86 
 
 Stultification "To Moderate the Ardour" of Sir Henry 
 Fowler A Sturdy Scot and Lese Majesit. 
 
 THE PUNISHMENT OF HONEST ADVICE A WRONG TO INDIA . 90 
 
 A Feeble " But " " Practically Selling These People" A 
 Cruel Mortality A Bad, Bad Thing. 
 
 THE UPROOTING OF HONEST DEALING A WRONG TO 
 
 ENGLAND . . . . . 95 
 
 Impossible in any Free Country A Really Honest System 
 " Beneficent and Profitable" Fears Our Own Courts of 
 Justice " High Prices " and " Extortion " The Encroach- 
 ments of the Tax-Gatherer Veiled Compulsion. 
 
 THE UPROOTING OF A PEASANT PROPRIETARY REACTIONARY 
 
 RECKLESSNESS . . . . . .102 
 
 " In No Way Inferior " to the English Freeholder Destruc- 
 tion of the Tenants' Rights An Emphatic Protest Against 
 Confiscation The People Driven to the Money-lender 
 Reactionary Recklessness Drink the Mainstay of " Im- 
 perialism. 
 
 xxn
 
 To THE RIGHT HONOURABLE 
 THE EARL OF ROSEBERY, K.G., K.T., D.C.L., LL.D. 
 
 THE NEW EFFICIENCY " DISMALLY 
 BELIED" 
 
 MY LORD, 
 
 It is some fifteen years since I had the honour 
 to be presented to you in India, when you were good 
 
 enough to listen to my views on some 
 inheritance, matters of public interest. You were then 
 
 the strong right arm of the Liberal Party, 
 the man chosen to take up the great inheritance of 
 Gladstone, and to give a new life and a wider exten- 
 sion to the principles of well-ordered Liberalism. 
 There were some in India in those days, who hoped 
 that a personal acquaintance with our great Eastern 
 Empire might induce you to take a keener and more 
 informed interest in Indian affairs than purely home- 
 bred politicians have given to the most important of 
 Imperial topics. 
 
 Your Lordship has enunciated vigorously the
 
 The Failure of Lord Curzon 
 
 Doctrine of Efficiency and proclaimed that thorough- 
 ness is the very root of national greatness. Unfortu- 
 nately what efficiency really means is a 
 matter that ma Y be very differently inter- 
 preted. A very few months ago, before 
 the trained statesmanship of Sir Antony MacDonnell 
 was placed at Mr. Wyndham's disposal, the man in 
 the street might not unreasonably conclude that a 
 dormitoryful of plank-bedded M.P.'s formed his acme 
 of efficiency. Has it not been suggested that, when 
 Mr. Brodrick deported Lord Kitchener safely to a 
 Himalayan hill-top, the ways of efficiency were made 
 straight for army corps on paper and the latest 
 fashion in military clothes? 
 
 I have taken the great liberty of addressing your 
 Lordship in order to ask your attention to a still 
 more notable example of misdirected 
 ^dS?" 1 " efficiency. In Far India Lord Curzon 
 is busy in making a clean sweep of every 
 principle, on which Indian polity has been built 
 up. He is, in fact, an efficient of a very notice- 
 able kind, an eager, hard-working man of quite 
 phenomenal activity, interfering in every department, 
 with which he is least acquainted, and flouting the 
 advice of every one of experience, European and 
 native alike. L-ord Curzon's cttbut in India was the 
 most promising, even brilliant, that man could desire. 
 All classes hastened to welcome him. The most 
 cynical were taken by the idea of this almost boy 
 politician already arrived at such a pinnacle of 
 authority. Europeans, even those who ought to have 
 known better, were glad of a change from Lord Elgin's 
 
 2
 
 The New Efficiency 
 
 homely Scotch ways. They had forgotten that what 
 India needs and always will need is patient level- 
 headedness. There are lots of brains in India, but 
 there are keen ambitions too, and there is no field 
 in the Empire, where a pushful man, clothed on in 
 " patriotism," can, if unchecked, do himself more good 
 and his country more injury. The natives also 
 welcomed Lord Curzon. That so young a man should 
 have risen by what seemed his unaided ability to the 
 power and far more than the power that centred in 
 the throne of the Moghuls, was a picture that stirred 
 their imagination. Aided by a not ineffective elo- 
 quence, with great beauty standing by his side and 
 surrounded by the glamour of much wealth, the new 
 Viceroy was the cynosure of most eyes as he landed 
 at Bombay. 
 
 The dream did not last long. Even the more giddy 
 
 of the dominant race soon began to draw comparisons 
 
 between the new pretensions, the striving 
 
 pSensins. after effect ' the A - D - C -' S always in evi- 
 dence, the ever-present, often out-of-place, 
 pageantry, the bounding exuberance of a vainglorious 
 personality, and the courtly yet simple manners, which 
 made Government House a centre of noble refinement 
 in the days of Lord Dufferin and Lord Lansdowne. 
 I will not waste many words on this side of Lord 
 Curzon's new regime. It is enough to say that it was 
 typical of the man, a man, who for five long years 
 would hold in his hands the singularly delicate 
 mechanism of Indian administration. It showed that 
 he had mistaken the society, of which he had 
 suddenly become the head. The Anglo-Indian is 
 
 3
 
 The Failure of Lord Curzon 
 
 surfeited with shows and gaudiness and, though ill- 
 informed Europeans are still ignorant of the fact, the 
 native of India, at least the only Indian, whose opinion 
 is worth conciliating, is quite as contemptuous in 
 regard to the spectacles, which Lord Curzon would 
 wish to make our daily meat. 
 
 Lord Salisbury recently poured out in words of 
 
 cultured rebuke his pity on those, who would settle 
 
 the affairs of the world in the poor span 
 
 ^wetter* ^ tne i r short lives. There were many, who 
 
 thought that Mr. Chamberlain was not 
 
 absent from his Lordship's mind, when uttering these 
 
 words. In India we half hoped that the wise advice 
 
 was addressed in part at least to our disturber, for 
 
 it is as a would-be reformer, as a restless upsetter 
 
 of things long established that every thoughtful 
 
 statesman must condemn the present Viceroy. 
 
 I will endeavour in the following pages to show 
 amongst other things 
 
 (i.) That Lord Curzon in a short four 
 A Famire 0ld vears nas offended beyond forgiveness the 
 
 educated classes of Indians. 
 
 (ii.) That, though continually face to face with 
 famine, he has refused to take the most experienced 
 advice, whilst his policy is pushing the mass of the 
 agricultural population lower and lower in the slough 
 of misery and starvation. 
 
 (iii.) That, although most conciliatory in language, 
 he has initiated a manner of dealing with native 
 princes, which must engender discontent. 
 
 Had Lord Salisbury read the first page of the 
 preface to the two pretentious volumes, which the Hon. 
 
 4
 
 The New Efficiency 
 
 George N. Curzon, M. P., issued in 1892 on "Persia 
 
 and the Persian Question," he might have 
 
 "A appreciated how mentally unfit the present 
 
 Vainglorious _f. r . . . . J .. r r 
 
 Hope." Viceroy is for the understanding ot a great 
 and complex empire like India. " This 
 book," Mr. Curzon wrote, " which is the result of 
 three years' almost uninterrupted labour, of a journey 
 of six months' duration to the country concerned, as 
 well as of previous travel in adjacent regions, and 
 of communications maintained ever since with the 
 most qualified resident authorities in Persia, is issued 
 in the not, I hope, vainglorious hope that, until super- 
 seded by a better, it may be regarded as the standard 
 work in the English language on the subject to which 
 it refers." The extraordinary suggestion that a work 
 based on a bare six months' personal knowledge of 
 the country should supersede all previous descriptions, 
 many by men, who had passed a lifetime in Persia, 
 is, like his " vainglorious " ostentation in his present 
 high office, characteristic of Lord Curzon. 
 
 It would be entirely foreign to my present purpose 
 to criticise these volumes on Persia. Still it is in- 
 teresting to give an instance of their value 
 "SaSS 7 as a "standard" authority on Persian 
 affairs. In discussing railway projects in 
 the north of that country, Mr. Curzon enveighed 
 against " the ineptitude of Russian policy." " Person- 
 ally," said my Lord High Critic, very much in the 
 style in which more recently he has dealt de haut en 
 has with Indian administrators, " I do not think that 
 the Russian diplomats are wise in their generation." 
 How these trained tacticians in Eastern politics must 
 
 5
 
 The Failure of Lord Curzon 
 
 have enjoyed the "personal" and valuable opinion of 
 the brilliant and amusing youth, who was quite pre- 
 pared to teach them their business after a "journey 
 of six months' duration to the country ! " It would 
 now be unprofitable to waste space on an examination 
 of Mr. Curzon's proofs of Russian soft-headedness, 
 but it is worth noting that Mr. H. J. Whigham, the 
 very capable special correspondent of the Morning 
 Post, in a letter published in that journal on J-.- 27th 
 of last September, had the ineffable " ineptitude " to 
 say that Russian policy in regard to Persian railways 
 has been marked by the patient foresight proverbial 
 in Muscovite diplomacy, whilst as to Lord Curzon's 
 views, he dismissed them with the curt and cruel 
 remark that "no forecast of events could possibly have 
 been more dismally belied." It is a matter of open 
 knowledge that Lord Curzon's opinions in regard to 
 China and the cosmopolitan politics, which revolve 
 round Pekin, as set forth in his " Problems of the Far 
 East," have been as painfully slapdash and unreliable 
 as his " standard " lucubrations on Persia. 
 
 Before entering on a detailed examination of the 
 many points, in which Lord Curzon's administration 
 
 of India has been a failure, I would ask 
 "statistics." y our Lordship to consider a short passage 
 
 from one of his most recent minutes. Last 
 year he published a defence of famine policy in India. 
 I may at once say that no such defence was needed. 
 The relief of famines in India during the past quarter 
 of a century form one of the most noble pages in the 
 history of the British nation. There are many, who 
 regard the excessive demands of land taxation as a 
 
 6
 
 The New Efficiency 
 
 cause of famine, but no one denies the splendid charity 
 and efficiency of the system of relief developed by 
 Lord Curzon's predecessors, " I have looked up," he 
 wrote, "the statistics of the last great famine that 
 occurred in Bengal, while the province was still under 
 native administration. This was in the year 1770." 
 Statistics in 1770 amidst the utter debacle 01 native 
 government, which made our conquest a matter of a 
 single battle ! This minute was specially intended for 
 our home consumption and was in fact laid before 
 Parliament, and I am quite sure nine-tenths of English 
 readers admired the industry of the " Great Viceroy." 
 Lord Curzon's "statistics," none of which were quoted, 
 showed that " the streets of the cities were blocked up 
 with promiscuous heaps of the dead and dying; 
 even the dogs and jackals could not accomplish their 
 revolting work," and similar rodomontade. " Disease 
 attacked the starving and shelterless survivors, and 
 swept them off by hundreds of thousands. Before the 
 end of May, 1770, one-third of the population was 
 officially calculated to have disappeared." Who were 
 the officials, and where are their reports? A few 
 unreliable guesses are extant, but not a single statis- 
 tical figure. I know Bengal well and gravely doubt the 
 whole lurid picture. Warren Hastings reported in 
 1772, when statistically discussing the outturn of the 
 land revenue, that "the net collections of 1771 
 exceeded even those of 1768," up to then a record 
 year. 
 
 Lord Curzon's object was to compare this dread 
 state of things with the success of his own measures 
 in the preceding three years. Here again a com- 
 
 7
 
 The Failure of Lord Curzon 
 
 parison is uncalled for. The British Government has 
 poured out millions in magnificent profusion 
 a or l of charity, but Lord Curzon must be un- 
 F 1 wS i ? nS ' reliable and must be inaccurate. "What 
 the actual mortality may have been," he 
 wrote, " it is impossible to tell with complete accuracy. 
 At a later date the forthcoming census will throw 
 useful light upon the problem." Poor Viceroy! even 
 the industry which could unearth the " statistics " of 
 1770 was not equal to the task of discovering in 1902 
 the figures of the census taken in February, 1901. I 
 think the exact distance of the Census Commissioner's 
 office in Simla from Government House is one mile 
 and a quarter, and that admirable official had pub- 
 lished " completely accurate " figures in October, 
 1901, and practically accurate figures in March of that 
 year. Perhaps the census figures did not quite fit in 
 with Lord Curzon's theory, which arrived at "an 
 excess mortality of half a million in British India more 
 or less attributable to famine conditions." In the same 
 month that this estimate of famine deaths was laid 
 before Parliament, the Census Report of the Central 
 Provinces, one of the minor administrative divisions 
 of the Empire, by Mr. R. V. Russell, showed a 
 decrease of 832,000 in population, chiefly due to 
 famine, whilst Mr. Enthoven's report on the Bombay 
 Census summarised a lengthened and truly statistical 
 examination of the population in these simple but 
 terrible words : " Thus it seems that the grand total 
 mortality ascribable to special causes in the Presi- 
 dency, for the areas where such special causes have 
 operated freely, must have been in round figures about 
 
 8
 
 The New Efficiency 
 
 3,000,000," of which it is known that 268,890 deaths 
 or a little more than one-fifteenth part was due to 
 plague, the immense balance being caused by starva- 
 tion. I will discuss at much length at a subsequent 
 page the whole question of poverty, especially in 
 Bombay. Here I wish only to emphasise the hope- 
 less unreliability of Lord Curzon in statistics as in 
 politics. "No forecast" could be "more dismally 
 belied." 
 
 I hope that your Lordship will recognise in these 
 pages a desire to treat Lord Curzon fairly, to recognise 
 his undoubted good qualities of heart, as 
 Treatment. we ^ as n * s unquestionable ability. I 
 regard Lord Curzon as a kindly man and 
 a very clever man, who, unfortunately, in the desire 
 to emulate the " Imperialism " of Mr. Chamberlain, 
 has trodden under foot every principle of sober states- 
 manship and very often justice, tact, and foresight 
 in dealing with a vast population, which our taxation 
 has brought to the verge of ruin. 
 
 There is another point also, on which I would 
 venture on what may seem a prefatory apology. I 
 feel the difficulty of criticising those of 
 one's own household. I shall have to 
 speak with much outspokenness of the 
 calamitous results of taxation, due to a policy of 
 military adventure, as well as to excessive military 
 budgets. I do so with the full knowledge of what 
 India owes to the British Army, and with a friendly 
 admiration for the finest body of troops in the world. 
 It is the power of the sword, which secures to the 
 people of India the great blessings of peace and order, 
 
 9
 
 The Failure of Lord Curzon 
 
 which were unknown through many weary centuries 
 of turmoil, bloodshed, and pillage before the advent of 
 the British soldier. After the consolidation of the 
 Empire in 1849, by the final defeat of the Sikh Con- 
 federacy, our army was for a long time a defensive 
 force and kept within the limits, which a poor though 
 populous nation could afford. For the past quarter of 
 a century, however, an offensive war policy has grown 
 up and is making demands in the form of taxation that 
 is the chief agent in the pauperisation of India. I 
 also gladly put it on record, as the experience of many 
 years of Indian service, that the British soldier in 
 India is, on the whole, admirably well-behaved. 
 Lord Curzon has done a great public service by his 
 severity in the rare cases of brutal wrong-doing that 
 have come to his notice, but, taking it all in all, no 
 body of troops similarly circumstanced have ever 
 treated a conquered people with greater humanity. 
 I know that the great majority of officers feel that an 
 Englishman can be guilty of no more cowardly act 
 than to ill-use men of the weak, servile castes, from 
 whom domestic servants are mostly drawn. 
 
 "Imperialism" has been defined as the policy ol 
 doing unto others what you would die rather than 
 have done to yourself, a kind of rogue 
 patriotism, that regards the love of country, 
 one of the noblest of human feelings, only 
 as a commercial asset and a cloak for international 
 dishonesty. I am convinced that there is no policy 
 more abhorrent to your Lordship, and that by Liberal 
 Imperialism you mean a firm protection of the greatest 
 Empire in the world, guided by the old Liberal prin- 
 
 10
 
 The New Efficiency 
 
 ciples of honour in politics, respect for your neigh- 
 bour's goods, and veneration for the fair name of your 
 country. I have written in the hope, "the vain- 
 glorious hope," I quite allow, of making it clear to 
 Liberals who are not quite satisfied with that good old 
 title, that they must be Liberals first, and should never 
 forget that, when God gave empire to England, it 
 was not in order to fleece subject races nor in order 
 to build up great armies at the cost of such a mass of 
 human misery as the slow starvation of millions and 
 millions of people in India involves. 
 
 That there is prosperity in India in certain areas I 
 would be the first to admit, and I may illustrate the 
 
 fact by a simile. Your Lordship will readily 
 ofweujtetaig. remember the position of our armies in 
 
 South Africa during the second year of the 
 recent war. They held all the lines of railway and 
 most of the towns and villages, whilst out on the veldt 
 the Boer ranged at large. So it is in India. Civili- 
 sation and an appreciable degree of comfort mark the 
 cities and hamlets along the railroads and main high- 
 ways. The commercial activity of many markets, the 
 sleek native trader and sleeker European merchant, 
 the smartly dressed railway servants, the grain-laden 
 carts, and the general appearance of well-being, are 
 noticeable on every side in such localities. The ordi- 
 nary traveller, the three-months-in- India tripper, is 
 naturally deceived. But out on the veldt, not only in 
 remote villages but in the suburbs of the towns, the 
 huts of the peasantry are squalid and empty, oppressed 
 by a dire poverty, which all the highest authorities on 
 Indian administration feel to be the most anxious 
 
 ii c
 
 The Failure of Lord Curzon 
 
 question of the future. Two-thirds of the Indian 
 population, some 200,000,000 of human beings, are 
 made up of ever-hungry cultivators and day labourers. 
 
 If there is inexorable need of heavy taxation, then 
 place it on the shoulders of those, who can bear it, of 
 those, to whom it does not mean starvation 
 The I ndian merchant is not heavily assessed ; 
 indeed, it is doubtful whether he is called 
 on to support his fair share of the public 
 burdens. But this is a wide question, which cannot 
 be discussed here. My chief thesis in the following 
 pages is that the agricultural classes, who are sunk in 
 poverty, are taxed beyond all reason, and that the 
 present Government of India is continuing and accen- 
 tuating a desolating policy. If this is Little Englandism 
 one may well be content to accept the implied oppro- 
 brium. It was not " Imperialism " that won the 
 loyalty of India, but a truer ideal of greatness, which 
 seems to be in much danger of being lost to English 
 politics. 
 
 During the past few years that is, during the vice- 
 reign of Lord Curzon the Tory Press in England 
 _ .. and Scotland has given prominence to 
 
 Prosperity on ^ J ' 
 
 a 55 per cent, frequent articles describing the growing 
 
 Income-tax. . 
 
 prosperity of India. An abounding revenue 
 is chiefly pointed to as evidence of a happy Indian 
 people. The average silly newspaper reader in this 
 country gulps down such statements without inquiring 
 how a well-filled treasury maybe obtained. He never 
 inquires what percentage on income does Indian 
 taxation represent. He knows quite intelligently that 
 a shilling in the pound income-tax is in England a 
 
 12
 
 The New Efficiency 
 
 heavy burden. It means 5 per cent, of his income 
 gone to maintain the army and navy. In a period of 
 national stress and danger he bears it like a man, and 
 rejoices that his " great sacrifice " supplies the sinews 
 of war. Would he glory in "an abounding revenue," 
 " a prosperous treasury," if year by year he had to pay 
 even 5 per cent, income-tax ? How "prosperous " he 
 would feel if it was not only 5 per cent, were taken 
 from him every year, but 10 per cent. ! What a gay 
 and contented and aboundingly loyal subject the Briton 
 would be if the tax rose, not to 10, but to 50 per cent. ! 
 And yet it is a fact that in " Prosperous India" the 
 annual taxation on land over nearly all its provinces is 
 equivalent to at least a 55 per cent, income-tax. 
 
 I would beg your Lordship to please not throw this 
 little book into the waste-paper basket. Its literary 
 style may deserve such a fate, but not its figures. 
 Please read on half a dozen pages, and you will find 
 that a great number of very distinguished Indian 
 officials and Anglo-Indian journalists proclaim the 
 accuracy of my statements. 
 
 It is high time that an attempt should be made to 
 stem the tide of misstatement, to combat the well- 
 organised conspiracy on the part of the 
 
 To stem the . , 
 
 tide of Mis- " Imperialist" Party in England to mislead 
 
 statement. , , f .. . , 
 
 the people 01 this country in regard to 
 the economic condition of the people of India. I 
 would, therefore, venture to invite your Lordship's 
 very special consideration to the following chapter. 
 Although an one-sided statement an one-sidedness, 
 which I freely confess to it presents a view of the 
 Indian picture, which should not be concealed from the 
 
 13
 
 The Failure of Lord Curzon 
 
 English public. Your Lordship will, I am convinced, 
 agree with me that the language used is studiously 
 moderate. My whole desire is to lay before my 
 fellow-countrymen not my own views, which they 
 may reasonably question, but the opinions, the 
 reports, the well-considered statements of British 
 officials of the highest class, as well as the hardly less 
 authoritative comments of the English Press in India, 
 every journal quoted being of admittedly strong Con- 
 servative and Governmental leanings.
 
 FAMINE AND TAXATION 
 
 ENGLISHMEN are not unnaturally nor unreasonably 
 proud of many of the results of their administration of 
 
 the vast Indian Empire during the century 
 Acquaint- that has just passed away. Not unnaturally, 
 
 also, the system of government, which has 
 been brought to such perfection in Hindustan, is 
 offered as a high exemplar to other nations with some- 
 what similar territories to administer. A system, 
 which has built up the great commercial centres of 
 Bombay and Calcutta, which has spread a great net- 
 work of railways throughout the land, and which has 
 given such evidence of high civilisation in colleges and 
 schools and hospitals, must deserve imitation. These 
 great benefits are, indeed, so patent, lying as they do 
 on the very surface, that they must attract the notice 
 of every traveller and of even every casual reader of 
 the daily Press. There is, however, a knowledge 
 that is not so easily arrived at, which is acquired 
 during long residence in India, and which comes from 
 a deeper acquaintance with the country and its inhabi- 
 tants. The fact is that this attractive, even splendid, 
 superstructure of administration is based on a poverty, 
 often a misery, amongst the masses of the people, 
 which would be incredible if it were not attested by
 
 The Failure of Lord Curzon 
 
 witnesses of the highest repute. Taxation, rendered 
 necessary by the same " Imperialist " furor that now 
 exists in England, over-taxation of the most grinding 
 kind, is eating out the life of the Indian races, and 
 surely preparing for the English nation one of the 
 most heartrending problems ever offered to man for 
 solution, viz., the government of hundreds of millions 
 of people always on the brink of starvation. 
 
 In order to attract attention to a matter of the 
 utmost imperial importance it is undesirable to draw a 
 highly coloured picture, though some of the 
 quotations in the following pages are not 
 wanting in vigour of expression. The first 
 opinion, which I beg to lay before your Lordship, is 
 certainly a very quietly worded one, and none the 
 less effective for that reason. It is a memorial or 
 petition presented at the beginning of last year to 
 the Secretary of State for India by a body of retired 
 Indian officials, for the most part men of special 
 distinction, of great experience, and of the highest 
 authority. Of the gentlemen, who ventured to offer 
 advice to a Secretary of State, the most noticeable is 
 Sir Richard Garth, late Chief Justice of the High 
 Court of Calcutta, and formerly a well-known Con- 
 servative Q.C. in England. Four of them have been 
 Members of the Council of the Viceroy or of local 
 governors. Most of them have held or passed above 
 the grade of Commissioner of a Division, which in 
 executive rank is next to that of a Governor of a 
 Province, a division being a sub-province with a 
 population varying from five to sixteen millions of 
 inhabitants. The memorial ran thus : 
 
 16
 
 Famine and Taxation 
 
 To THE RIGHT HONOURABLE LORD GEORGE FRANCIS HAMILTON, 
 M.P., HER MAJESTY'S SECRETARY OF STATE FOR INDIA, 
 INDIA OFFICE, WHITEHALL, S.W. 
 
 MY LORD, 
 
 In view of the terrible famines with which India has been lately 
 afflicted, we, the undersigned, who have spent many years of our 
 lives among the people, and still take a deep interest in their 
 welfare, beg to offer the following suggestions to your Lordship in 
 Council, in the hope that the Land Revenue administration may be 
 everywhere placed on such a sound and equitable basis as to secure 
 to the cultivators of the soil a sufficient margin of profit to enable 
 them better to withstand the pressure of future famines. 
 
 2. We are well aware that the primary cause of famines is the 
 failure of rain, and that the protection of large tracts of country by 
 the extension of irrigation from sources that seldom or never fail has 
 been steadily kept in view and acted on by the Government for 
 many years past ; but the bulk of the country is dependent on direct 
 rainfall, and the pinch of famine is most severely felt in the uplands, 
 where the crops fail simply for want of rain. The only hope for 
 the cultivators throughout the greater part of India is therefore that 
 they should be put in such a position as to enable them to tide over 
 an occasional bad season. 
 
 3. To place the cultivators in such a position, we consider it 
 essential that the share taken as the Government demand on the 
 land should be strictly limited in every Province. We fully agree 
 with the views of Lord Salisbury, when Secretary of State for India, 
 as set out in his Minute of April 26, 1875 : 
 
 " So far as it is possible to change the Indian fiscal system, it 
 is desirable that the cultivator should pay a smaller proportion of 
 the whole national charge. It is not in itself a thrifty policy to 
 draw the mass of revenue from the rural districts, where capital 
 is scarce, sparing the towns, where it is often redundant, and 
 runs to waste and luxury. The injury is exaggerated in the 
 case of India, where so much of the revenue is exported without 
 a direct equivalent." 
 
 4. Without going into tedious detail, we consider it very advisable 
 that, in those parts of the country in which the Land Tax is not 
 permanently settled, the following principles should be uniformly 
 adhered to: 
 
 17
 
 The Failure of Lord Curzon 
 
 (a) Where the Land Revenue is paid directly by the cultivators, 
 as in most parts of Madras and Bombay, the Government demand 
 should be limited to 50 per cent, of the value of the net produce, 
 after a liberal deduction for cultivation expenses has been made, and 
 should not ordinarily exceed one-fifth of the gross produce, even in 
 those parts of the country where, in theory, one-half of the net is 
 assumed to approximate to one-third of the gross produce. 
 
 () Where the Land Revenue is paid by landlords, the principle 
 adopted in the Saharanpur Rules of 1855, whereby the Revenue 
 demand is limited to one half of the actual rent or assets of such 
 landlords, should be universally applied. 
 
 (c) That no revision of the Land Tax of any Province or part 
 thereof should be made within thirty years of the expiration of any 
 former revision. 
 
 (</) That when such revision is made in any of those parts of India 
 where the Land Revenue is paid by the cultivators direct to the 
 Government, there should be no increase in the assessment except in 
 cases where the land has increased in value (i) in consequence ot 
 improvements in irrigation works carried out at the expense of the 
 Government, or (2) on account of a rise in the value of produce, 
 based on the average prices of the thirty years next preceding such 
 revision. 
 
 5. Lastly, we recommend that a limit be fixed in each Province 
 beyond which it may not be permissible to surcharge the Land Tax 
 with local cesses. We are of opinion that the Bengal rate of 6^ per 
 cent, is a fair one, and that in no case should the rate exceed 
 10 per cent. 
 
 We have the honour to be, 
 Sir, 
 
 Your obedient Servants, 
 24, PALACE COURT, W., 
 
 2Qth December, 1900. 
 
 (Signed) 
 
 R. K. PUCKLE, 
 
 Late Director of Revenue Settlement, and 
 Member of the Board of Revenue, Madras. 
 J. H. GARSTIN, 
 
 Late Member of Council, Madras. 
 J. B. PENNINGTON, 
 
 Late Collector of Tanjore, Madras. 
 18
 
 Famine and Taxation 
 
 H. J. REYNOLDS, 
 
 Late Revenue Secretary to the Government 
 of Bengal, and late Member of the Legis- 
 lative Council of the Governor-General of 
 India. 
 RICHARD GARTH, 
 
 Late Chief Justice of Bengal. 
 ROMESH C. DUTT, 
 
 Late Offg. Commissioner of Orissa Division 
 in Bengal, and Member of the Bengal 
 Legislative Council. 
 C. J. O'DONNELL, 
 
 Late Commissioner of the Bhagalpur and 
 
 Rajshahi Divisions in Bengal. 
 A. ROGERS, 
 
 Late Settlement Officer and Member of 
 
 Council in Bombay. 
 W. WEDDERBURN, 
 
 Late Acting Chief Secretary to the Govern- 
 ment of Bombay. 
 JOHN JARDINE, 
 
 Late Judge of the High Court of Bombay. 
 J. P. GOODRIDGE, 
 
 Late B.C.S., and formerly Offg. Settlement 
 Commissioner, C.P. 
 
 The essence of the prayer or rather advice offered 
 
 is contained in the fourth paragraph, the three first 
 
 being explanatory or introductory. Put 
 
 summSd. snortl y it urges upon the Government of 
 
 India that the following principles should 
 
 be adopted in its revenue demands "in order to place 
 
 the cultivators in such a position as to enable them 
 
 to tide over an occasional bad season " 
 
 (i.) That, where land revenue is levied direct from 
 the farmers or cultivators, the demand should not 
 exceed one-half or 50 per cent, of their net profit 
 after disbursing the cost of cultivation.
 
 The Failure of Lord Curzon 
 
 (ii.) That, where land revenue is levied from land- 
 lords, the demand should not exceed one-half or 
 50 per cent, of the rental obtained by them from their 
 tenantry. 
 
 (iii.) That a settlement should have a currency of 
 thirty years, and 
 
 (iv.) That local taxation on the land should not 
 exceed a further 5 per cent. 
 
 In other words, whether taxation, imperial and 
 
 local, is derived directly from the landlords or from 
 
 the tenantry it should not exceed an income- 
 
 The "Bqult- tax O f rr p er cen ^ It is difficult tO under- 
 able Basis" of J JJ r 
 
 a 55 per cent stand how even this limit can be " a sound 
 
 Income-tax. . .111 . ,, i i , 
 
 and equitable basis which would "secure 
 to the cultivators a sufficient margin of profit to 
 enable them to withstand the pressure of famine." 
 Yet this is the prayer. The fact is, as I will show, 
 more staggering. The tax gatherer is rarely satisfied 
 with exacting this enormous tribute. 
 
 The history of the Land Tax assessment in Bombay 
 is especially interesting, as Bombay has been for 
 years the by-word of India for perennial 
 f amme an d pestilence. The Census taken 
 in 1901 proved that the population of the 
 Bombay Presidency has fallen by three millions, 
 although myriads immigrated from the neighbouring 
 Native States in order to share in the relief measures, 
 recently carried out in ample degree. The official 
 explanation is that the calamities, from which this 
 great province is suffering, are the work of Providence, 
 the Indian Office attributing them to the shortcomings 
 of the rain god alone. The progress of the assess- 
 
 20
 
 Famine and Taxation 
 
 ment of the Land Tax suggests a more mundane 
 origin. 
 
 The dominions of the Mahratta sovereign passed 
 under British rule in 1817, the then land revenue, 
 which was assessed in lump sums on each 
 Excessive village community, being 80 lakhs of 
 Taxation, rupees, a lakh being 100,000. The follow- 
 ing year it was raised to 115 lakhs, and 
 in 1823 to 150 lakhs, already nearly double the native 
 assessment of six years before. In 1825 a detailed 
 assessment was attempted, separate settlements being 
 made with the individual farmers. Writing nearly 
 seventy years later, the Government of Bombay in 
 its Administration Report for 1892-93, page 76, gave 
 the following description of the operations of that 
 time : " Every effort was made lawful and unlawful 
 to get the utmost out of the wretched peasantry, 
 who were subjected to torture in some instances 
 cruel and revolting beyond description if they could 
 not or would not yield what was demanded. Numbers 
 abandoned their homes and fled into neighbouring 
 Native States ; large tracts of land were thrown out 
 of cultivation, and in some districts no more than 
 a third of the cultured area remained in occupation." 
 In 1836 another settlement was commenced and 
 completed in 1872, with a total assessment of 203 
 lakhs or an increase of 35 per cent. In 1866 the 
 leases of 1836, which were of a 30 years' currency, 
 began to fall in, and another settlement was com- 
 menced, and is still proceeding. Up to March 31, 
 1899, only 13,369 out of the 27,781 villages in the 
 province had been resettled, their revenue being 
 
 21
 
 The Failure of Lord Curzon 
 
 enhanced from 144 lakhs to 188 lakhs, or a further 
 increase of 30 per cent. In 1896 a few of these 
 new leases began again to come to their limit, and 
 a last settlement was attempted only to be brought 
 to a standstill by famine. Still 78 villages round 
 Poona were resettled, their taxation being increased 
 from 103,530 rupees to 133,590 rupees or again by 
 30 per cent. 
 
 The enormous enhancements of the second settle- 
 ment led to serious riots and disorders in 1877, 
 and a Commission was appointed to 
 inquire into their causes. It consisted 
 
 ^ a J uc ^& e ' two revenue officials from the 
 North- Western Provinces, and two revenue 
 officials from Bombay. Only the first three can 
 be regarded as independent ; the two latter being 
 subordinate to the Bombay Government, whose 
 revenue administration was substantially on its trial. 
 The Pioneer, which is the most Conservative 
 journal in India, and, in fact, is ordinarily regarded 
 as the mouthpiece of the Government, 1 summarised 
 the conclusions of the Committee in these words : 
 " Of the five members of the Committee, three " (the 
 independent members), " namely, the judicial and 
 the two North- West members, reply that it (the 
 final element of distress that broke the ryots' heart) 
 must be looked for in the revised land revenue 
 assessments, in themselves extravagantly heavy." 
 "The arguments of the majority," it continued, "form 
 a grave indictment against the Bombay Revenue 
 
 1 Its proprietors have been knighted in recognition of their 
 services. 
 
 22
 
 Famine and Taxation 
 
 Survey. Briefly they may be thus summarised : 
 The enhancements made at the recent revision 
 were, judging by all known standards, excessive. 
 Viewed in conjunction with the status of those, 
 on whom they were imposed, they were ruinous. 
 They were framed, finally, for the most part 
 on conjectural and merely arithmetical data, much 
 of which seems wrong. As to the excessiveness 
 of the assessments, it is shown on the Survey figures 
 that the enhancement, as imposed originally, ranged 
 in different talukas (sub-districts) from 33 to 66 
 per cent. On individual villages it was often doubled ; 
 on individual holdings it was constantly more than 
 doubled." 
 
 "The assessment," added the Pioneer, "is judged 
 from its own mouth ; and we find it imposing en- 
 hancements of 38 per cent, in the face of 
 admitted depression, or forcing 77 per cent, 
 down the throats of the local officers." 
 The local officers were the District Officers of 
 Bombay, experienced members of the India Civil 
 Service. It is often thus in India. The almost all- 
 redeeming feature of maladministration is that it is 
 ever battled against loyally and often successfully 
 by brave-hearted Englishmen, whose local experience 
 and sympathies have not been blinded and blunted 
 by the so-called necessities of finance. Indeed, I 
 would venture to say that there are few countries 
 where officials have risked more than in India for 
 the sake of the truth that is distasteful in high 
 quarters. One distinguished Bombay officer, Sir 
 George Wingate, did not mince matters : " What 
 
 23
 
 The Failure of Lord Curzon 
 
 must have been the state of things," he angrily 
 exclaimed, " which can compel cultivators, proverbially 
 patient and long-suffering, accustomed to more or 
 less of ill-usage and injustice at all times, to redress 
 their wrongs by murder, and in defiance of an 
 ignominious death to themselves? How must their 
 sense of justice have been violated ? How must they 
 have been bereft of all hope of redress from law or 
 Government before their patient and peaceful natures 
 could be roused to the point of desperation required 
 for such a deed ? " 
 
 The Government organ, the Pioneer, in a second 
 
 article, was not less outspoken : " Worried by the 
 
 revenue survey," it wrote, " for heavily en- 
 
 " The Yoke of , 
 
 British Mis- hanced public payments, enslaved by his 
 private creditor, dragged into court only to 
 have imposed upon him the intolerable burden of 
 fresh decrees, without even the resource of flight, 
 which was open to his forefathers before the kindred 
 scourge of Holkar, the Deccan ryot accepted, for the 
 third of a century, with characteristic patience and 
 silence, the yoke of British misgovernment. For 
 thirty years, as we now learn from the papers pub- 
 lished, he had been at once the scandal and the 
 anxiety of his masters. Report upon report had been 
 written upon him ; shelf upon shelf in the public 
 offices groaned under the story of his wrongs. If 
 any one doubts the naked accuracy of these words, 
 let him dip into the pages of Appendix A (Papers 
 on the Indebtedness of the Agricultural Classes in 
 Bombay). A more damning indictment was never 
 recorded against a civilised Government. From 1844 
 
 24
 
 Famine and Taxation 
 
 to 1874, successive Administrations have been ap- 
 pealed to, have been warned, or have been urged. 
 Each, in its turn, has replied as the present will 
 doubtless answer to the late Committee's importunities 
 with a suave sigh of non possumus. The hospitalities 
 of Dapooree or Ganeshkhind (the palaces of the 
 Bombay Governor) have for thirty years been lavished 
 in graceful and generous profusion ; while the ryot, 
 who paid for them, lay hard by in enforced and 
 ruinous idleness, a debtor in the Poona gaol ; or ate 
 at their gates in the field, of which the fruits had once 
 been his own, the bitter bread of slavery." 
 
 It is true that this seems the language of exaggera- 
 tion ; yet, after making every allowance for the 
 
 influence of a just indignation, it is im- 
 ""SeedT" possible to deny that the history of this 
 
 century presents few more lamentable 
 pictures of maladministration by a European nation 
 than does this paragraph from one of the most 
 Conservative journals in the Empire. " So," it con- 
 tinues, " the survey officers (of the land revenue) 
 came and went, adding each his thousands and tens 
 of thousands to the public assessments. Marwaris 
 (money-lenders) swarmed up, in ever-increasing flights, 
 from the far north-west, and settled down on the 
 devoted acres. Decrees of the courts flew like arrow- 
 flights into the thickest of the population, striking 
 down the tallest and the most notable. Stupidity, 
 blindness, indifference, greed inability, in a word, in 
 all its thousand forms settled down, like the fabled 
 harpies, on the ryot's bread, and bore off with them all 
 that he subsisted upon'' Kindly Englishmen may 
 
 25
 
 The Failure of Lord Curzon 
 
 well rub their eyes and ask if there is not some 
 mistake. Can this possibly be a description of the 
 work of a Conservative British Government by a 
 Conservative British journal ? Surely it must be 
 Turkish misrule in Asia Minor that was thus de- 
 nounced, and still the official explanation of famine 
 in Bombay continues to be an insufficient rainfall. 
 
 Mr. James Caird, C.B., Member of the Famine 
 Commission of 1878, writing to the Secretary of 
 
 State for India on October 31, 1879, 
 "protest! 8 a ft er describing the poverty of India and 
 
 how the famine of the preceding two years 
 had cost Bombay and Madras five millions of lives, 
 continued : " The pressure on the means of subsist- 
 ence is rendered more severe by the moral dis- 
 organisation produced by laws, affecting property and 
 debt, not adapted to the condition of the people. In 
 most parts of India, as shown by the late proceedings 
 in the Legislative Council on the Deccan Ryots 
 Relief Bill, and as is plain to any careful observer 
 in the country, the people are not only dissatisfied 
 with our legal system, but while the creditor is not 
 much enriched, the debtor is being impoverished by 
 it. Those British officials who see this, feel them- 
 selves powerless to influence a central authority Jar 
 removed from them, subject to no control of public 
 opinion, and overburdened with details, with which 
 it is incapable of dealing." The Central authority, 
 which will not listen to the local British officials, is 
 the Indian Office and the Viceregal Government at 
 Simla, which is controlled by " Imperialistic " influ- 
 ence, and ever in want of money for military railways, 
 
 26
 
 Famine and Taxation 
 
 frontier wars, and schemes of reorganisation. The 
 debt of India increased between 1875 an< ^ 1900 from 
 ^95,000,000 to ^199,000,000, and the military 
 charges from roundly 120 millions to 230 millions 
 of rupees. 
 
 I need not describe the state of things in Madras 
 
 o 
 
 and the Central Provinces in detail, but a few facts 
 in regard to their revenue assessment prove 
 
 " The & 
 
 Enormous that the load of taxation is in their case 
 quite as heavy as in Bombay, and that it 
 has been enhanced, mercilessly screwed up during 
 recent years in quite as unjustifiable a degree. Again 
 I quote a Conservative journal, the Englishman, of 
 Calcutta, the foremost newspaper of the capital 
 of India. On February 17, 1880, it wrote : 
 " The late Madras famine has raised the question 
 as to what the Government has done to protect the 
 agriculture of Southern India, in return for the 
 revenue raised from it. On the one hand, there 
 can be no doubt that the Madras revenue has been 
 very greatly increased since India passed to the 
 Crown. In that year, 1858-59, the land revenue of 
 Madras was under 3^ millions sterling, and its average 
 during the previous five years had been under 
 3! millions. In 1876, the year before the late 
 famine, it was 4 \ millions ; and this may be taken 
 as its lowest average at the present time, excluding 
 seasons of dearth. Twenty years of British rule 
 have, therefore, increased the Government demand 
 upon the agriculture of Madras by over one million, 
 or one-third of the whole land revenue paid by that 
 Presidency to the Company in 1858. There are not 
 
 27 D
 
 The Failure of Lord Curzon 
 
 wanting those who affirm that this increased taxation 
 had much to do with the late calamity. The husband- 
 men were less able, according to this view, to bear the 
 strain of bad seasons, in consequence of the enormous 
 increase in the revenue taken from them? A 30 
 per cent, increase in thirty years brought famine and 
 riot in Bombay. A 33 per cent, increase in twenty 
 years in Madras naturally had no better results. 
 
 Lord Ripon made an attempt to stop these reckless 
 
 enhancements, and in 1883, with the full support of 
 
 the Governor of Madras and his Council, 
 
 Lord Ripon'a .... . ... , . ... 
 
 Attempt laid down the principle that in Districts, 
 which had once been surveyed and assessed 
 by the Settlement Department, assessments should 
 undergo no further revision, except on the sole 
 ground of a rise in the prices of agricultural produce. 
 The Secretary of State in London kept the question 
 hanging over till the retirement of Lord Ripon, and 
 then in 1885 vetoed his most proper proposals. Land 
 revenue enhancement is still progressing merrily, and 
 another half million sterling has been added during 
 the past twenty years. During the past two years, 
 that is, since the beginning of the present century, 
 there have been enhancements of land tax in 
 Malabar of 84, 85, and 105 per cent, in different 
 revenue sub-districts. 
 
 The results are what might be expected, and in 
 in 1893 the Hon. Mr. G. Rogers, of the 
 Indian Civil Service, and Member of the 
 Bombay Council, writing to the Under 
 Secretary of State for India, declared : 
 "In the eleven years from 1879-80 to 1889-90 
 
 28
 
 Famine and Taxation 
 
 there were sold by auction for the collection of 
 land revenue the occupancy rights of 1,963,364 acres 
 of land held by 840,713 defaulters, in addition to 
 personal property of the value of Rs. 29,65,081. Of 
 the 1,963,364 acres, 1,174,143 had to be bought in 
 on the part of Government for want of bidders, that 
 is to say, very nearly 60 per cent of the land 
 supposed to be fairly and equitably assessed could 
 not find purchasers, and only the balance of 779,142 
 acres was sold. The evils of the Mahratta farming 
 system (in Bombay) have been pointed out in my 
 ' History of the Bombay Land Revenue,' but I doubt 
 if that system at its worst could have shown such a 
 spectacle as that of nearly 850,000 ryots (heads of 
 families) in the course of eleven years sold out 
 of about 1,900,000 acres of land." Roundly one- 
 eighth part of the entire agricultural population was 
 sold out of house and home in little more than a 
 decade. Not only were their farms brought to auction, 
 but their poor personal belongings, their plough cattle 
 and their cooking utensils, their beds and everything 
 but their scanty clothes were sold to provide money 
 for mostly "Imperialist" adventure. The picture is 
 incomplete till it is remembered that these eleven 
 years of " denudation " immediately followed the 
 terrible famine of 1877-78, during which Madras 
 lost three millions of its inhabitants by starvation. 
 The case of the Central Provinces is even worse. 
 
 cent, per cent. Thirt Y P er cent - enhancement would be 
 
 Enhance- considered merciful there. Only last year 
 
 the Hon. B. K. Bose, a Member of the 
 
 Viceroy's Council, stood up in the presence of Lord 
 
 29
 
 The Failure of Lord Curzon 
 
 Curzon and stated that : " Proceedings with a view to 
 a second new Settlement are also in progress in Bilas- 
 pur and Raipur. These districts, especially the former, 
 were very hard hit during the last famine. They are 
 no less so this time. They were both newly assessed 
 only about ten years ago / The enhancement in Bilas- 
 pur was 1 02 per cent, in some groups and 105 per 
 cent, in others." And there was no denial. " The 
 Great Viceroy " and his Council sat silent. Did they 
 even listen ? Their thoughts were probably far away, 
 devising " Imperialist " schemes of new railways into 
 Persia or China. Other districts were hardly less 
 severely dealt with. The enhancement on the pre- 
 vious revenue demand was in some groups of villages 
 in Saugor District, 68, 48 and 53 per cent. ; in 
 Jubbulpore District, 86, 77, 64, 62 and 50 per cent. ; 
 in Seoni District, 97, 95 and 92 per cent. ; in 
 Hoshungabad District, 96, 87 and 69 per cent., and in 
 Raipur District 98 and 82 per cent. Moreover, the 
 currency or term of the settlement was shortened from 
 thirty to twenty years. The assessor will soon be 
 at work again. The population in this comparatively 
 sparsely peopled province of India, instead of increas- 
 ing 10 or 12 per cent, as in happier parts of India, 
 fell off by nearly one million souls during the past 
 ten years. 
 
 The spirit in which the local and supreme Govern- 
 ments went to work in the assessment of the land 
 revenue of the Central Provinces may be 
 
 65 per cent .... . . , r i ir 
 
 the Govern- ludffed by the single fact that the former 
 
 ment Limit. J .11 11 r t. 
 
 autnonty calmly asked the sanction ot the 
 Viceroy in Council to its making it a general principle 
 
 30
 
 Famine and Taxation 
 
 of the assessment that the share of the State should be 
 65 per cent, of the landlord's rental! Such a sugges- 
 tion raised no indignation in the Simla mind, though 
 the Government of India, in its letter No. 397, dated 
 May 31, 1888, had " some hesitation in allowing in any 
 case so high a percentage as sixty-five to be taken." 
 Nevertheless it did grant the permission in some cases, 
 and made 60 per cent, the maximum rate in all other 
 cases. It is difficult to imagine the terms of reproba- 
 tion that our landed magnates would apply to such 
 principles of taxation, if applied to England, and in the 
 Central Provinces of India, on top of these confiscatory 
 revenue demands, there are local rates to be paid by the 
 land to the extent of 1 2f per cent, of the land revenue, for 
 various purposes, chiefly for the maintenance of public 
 works. In other words, between 65 and 70 per cent, 
 of the landlord's rental, if it were all collected, is 
 absorbed by the State. As it never is all collected, 
 the Central Provinces proprietor is about the most 
 " distressed landlord " to be found in the world. How 
 gladly would he change places with the most afflicted 
 of his Irish fellows! It is alleged that in order to 
 live he screws and screws his tenantry, who starve 
 and starve and die by myriads. 
 
 I think I can claim to have avoided any strong 
 
 language or vigorous adjectives of my own. The 
 
 highest officials supply them both freely. 
 
 90 per cent. & . rr J _ 
 
 the Basis of Bengal is blessed I use the word advisedly 
 
 manent is blessed by whatis called the Permanent 
 
 Settlement, that is to say, over a hundred 
 
 years ago the land revenue to be paid by each estate was 
 
 fixed in perpetuity. The first demand was, it is true,
 
 The Failure of Lord Curzon 
 
 ruinous, being ten-elevenths or a little over 90 per 
 cent, of the rental of each estate. The landlords of 
 those days simply collapsed by the gross. The old 
 nobility was sold up and disappeared over three- 
 fourths of the country, wealthy merchants from 
 Calcutta buying up their estates in every District. 
 The new landlords are now an opulent body. Not so 
 their tenantry. Down to 1859 there was no law to 
 protect them and rent enhancements went on amain. 
 Even since then the rent law has been a dead letter in 
 many parts. This is particularly true of the great sub- 
 province of Behar, the scene of the famine of 1874, 
 and of equally severe calamities during the past five 
 years. The landlords may argue that it was the 
 ruinous taxation they were at first subjected to that 
 drove them to rack-renting. It certainly was mal- 
 administration on our part to allow their exactions to 
 reach the pitch they did. 
 
 Sir Richard Temple wrote in 1875, " Undoubtedly 
 
 the condition of the peasantry is low in Behar lower 
 
 than in that of any other peasantry, with 
 
 "Their in- , , . r> i r 
 
 ability to pay equal natural advantages. Behar is m fact 
 the garden of India, peopled by 25,000,000 
 of singularly thrifty peasants. " Rents," he explained, 
 "including therein the innumerable cesses, by which 
 they are supplemented, are limited in the case of the 
 majority of agriculturalists by little else than their 
 inability to pay more." 
 
 Sir Ashley Eden succeeded Sir Richard Temple in 
 1877, and was not long in discovering that "The 
 tenants are said to have no rights, to be subject to 
 the exactions of forced labour, to illegal distraint 
 
 32
 
 Famine and Taxation 
 
 and to numerous illegal cesses, while the collections 
 are made by an unscrupulous host of up- 
 
 Depression country bailiffs. There can be no doubt 
 36ry ' whatever that the combined influence of 
 zemindars and ticcadars (land speculators) has ground 
 the ryots of Behar down to a state of extreme depres- 
 sion and misery." Indeed, his indignation broke out 
 into fresh anger when he described the tenantry of 
 Behar as "poor, helpless, discontented men, driven 
 about from village to village by the extortion of under- 
 lings or the exactions of irresponsible under-farmers 
 tenants who never know whether they will possess 
 next year the land they occupy this, and who feel that 
 any attempt to grow more profitable crops will only 
 end in increased demands." " The ryots of the richest 
 province of Bengal are the poorest and most wretched 
 class we find in the country." 
 
 Sir Steuart Bayley, whose name will be long 
 
 remembered with affection by the people of Behar, 
 
 when Commissioner of Patna, one of the 
 
 "Traditional t wo great administrative divisions of Behar, 
 
 Oppression." => .... 
 
 declared that " the traditional oppression 
 ever used towards the ryots is really of the most grind- 
 ing nature in many parts." Entering more into 
 particulars, the same officer added, " Taking the 
 districts south of the Ganges first, I have in the sub- 
 divisional officers' reports a series of the strongest and 
 most sensational descriptions of the poverty and misery 
 of the ryot. It is strange to find from the two neigh- 
 bouring sub-divisions of Behar and Nowada similarly 
 strong denunciations of the oppression habitually 
 exercised by the zamindar towards the poorer class of 
 
 33
 
 The Failure of Lord Curzon 
 
 ryot, and of the wretched condition of the latter, when 
 we consider that one of these sub-divisional officers is 
 a Bengali Brahmin and the other a Muhamadan of 
 Behar, who speaks of a system with which he must 
 have been familiar from his youth. ' A cultivator not 
 in debt,' writes a Shahabad officer, ' is viewed with 
 dislike and suspicion, and debt is their common 
 burden. Fifty per cent, of the cultivators are in debt 
 for grain lent by their landlords, and 40 per cent, 
 are in debt to mahajans (village merchants and 
 bankers) for either grain or money.' The Collector of 
 Sarum adds his testimony thus : ' The zamindars, 
 whenever they have a substantial share in a village, 
 are, as a rule, oppressive ; and on the estates of many 
 of the larger zamindars, perhaps, the least consideration 
 for the tenantry is shown.' Sir George Campbell 
 declared : ' Nowhere have the rents of a peaceable, in- 
 dustrious, and submissive population been more screwed 
 up than in Bhagulpore. It was the same action of the 
 zamindar that was leading to rebellion in the Sonthal 
 pergunnahs.' ' Even a Lieut-Governor can let himself 
 go when he is describing the exactions of landlords in 
 Bengal. He is generally more reticent when taxation 
 by Government produces similar results in Bombay 
 and Madras. 
 
 A new rent Bill was passed, excellent in its provi- 
 sions for Eastern Bengal, where alone in wide India 
 the farmers are prosperous, but ineffective 
 
 Pauperisation. . r . 
 
 in Behar, and the state of Behar is still a 
 menace to the country. The relief of the great 
 famine there in 1874 cost the Indian Empire eight 
 millions sterling. It would be unfair not to admit 
 
 34
 
 Famine and Taxation 
 
 that there has been much improvement in the methods 
 of the landlords, but, as in Bombay, the pauperisation 
 of the tenantry has been so thorough that ameliora- 
 tion seems to be almost beyond hope. A few years 
 ago the district officers of Behar were called on for a 
 special report on the economic condition of the agri- 
 cultural population. Their replies may be epitomised 
 in one short sentence. They found that nearly half 
 the population, some twelve millions of people, in this 
 minor province of India, during many months of the 
 year live or die on one meal a day. 
 
 In 1893 Mr. G. A. Grierson, C.I.E., probably the 
 best authority in connection with everything relating 
 to the Behar Province, published " Notes 
 on the District of Gaya," one of the largest 
 districts of Behar. Reviewing this book 
 in May of that year, the Pioneer described 
 it as " an admirably faithful and complete picture, not 
 only of the physical features, but of the economic 
 and social conditions of the District. In this latter 
 respect the little volume is a wonderfully complete 
 exhibition of the real India not the India as it 
 appears to the casual visitor in his swallow-flights 
 across the continent ', but the India of the Millions." 
 After discussing the arguments set out in this work 
 the Pioneer concluded thus : " If we sum up the facts 
 Mr. Grierson thus puts before us regarding the various 
 sections of the District population, the conclusion we 
 arrive at is certainly not encouraging. Briefly, it is 
 that all the persons of the labouring classes, and 10 
 per cent, of the cultivating and artisan classes, or 
 45 per cent, of the total population, are insufficiently 
 
 35
 
 The Failure of Lord Curzon 
 
 clothed or insufficiently fed, or both. In Gaya 
 District this would give about a million persons without 
 sufficient means of support. If we assume that the 
 circumstances of Gaya are not exceptional and there 
 is no reason for thinking otherwise it follows that 
 nearly one hundred millions of people in British India 
 are living in extreme poverty." 
 
 The Chief Magistrate of Patna, another Behar 
 
 District (Mr. G. Toynbee, C.S.I.), afterwards senior 
 
 member of the Board of Revenue and a 
 
 One Meal a 
 
 day the member of the Viceroy's Council, stated a 
 
 Normal Diet. r , r , , . , . , 
 
 tew years before that the conclusion to be 
 drawn is that of the agricultural population a large 
 proportion, say 40 per cent., are insufficiently fed, 
 to say nothing of clothing and housing. They have 
 enough food to support life and to enable them to 
 work, but they have to undergo long fasts, having for 
 a considerable part of the year to satisfy themselves 
 with one full meal in the day." Sir Alfred Leth- 
 bridge, K. C.S.I., declared that "in Behar the Dis- 
 tricts of Muzafarpur and Sarun and parts of Dur- 
 bhunga and Chumparan are the worst, and there is 
 an almost constant insufficiency of food." The popu- 
 lation of these four districts is ten millions. 
 
 It may be asked why so few opinions or reports 
 later than those of ten or twenty years ago, are found 
 
 to quote from. Simply because, if written, 
 
 Obscurantist 
 
 and"c<mfl- they are no longer published. An obscu- 
 
 dential." . r 11 r 
 
 rantist system has been in lull force since 
 the Forward Policy on the frontier became the dream 
 of the Pushful Indian "Imperialist." "An Inquiry 
 into the Economic Condition of the Agricultural and 
 
 36
 
 Famine and Taxation 
 
 Labouring Classes," instituted in 1887-8 by Lord 
 Dufferin, was printed and circulated as "confi- 
 dential"! It was not till 1891, after being once 
 refused, that it was laid before the House of Com- 
 mons, and even then the volume relating to Madras 
 was withheld. The " Imperialist" Party want money, 
 and not the opinions and protests of mere Civilian 
 Administrators. The day was when in the writing 
 of thoughtful, well-considered, and detailed reports 
 lay the surest road to high preferment. All that is 
 now changed, and the recent orders of that arch- 
 " Imperialist " Lord Curzon, by which anything but 
 the meagrest notes is condemned, have finally 
 closed the door to public information. The bureau- 
 crat rules supreme in India, and enforces silence on 
 all. The only evidence we have that the condition of 
 agricultural India has not recently improved, and an 
 honest man can ask no better, is that famine is more 
 widespread than ever, and the land revenue is being 
 steadily enhanced. We know this much. Lord 
 Curzon will take care that no official, however high 
 placed, dare attribute starvation to anything but the 
 failure of rain. 1 Like Mr. Chamberlain, whose 
 characteristics he shares in a large degree, he would 
 do doubt regard it as unpatriotic and certainly as 
 officially criminal, to express anything but the Govern- 
 ment theory of things. 
 
 Grievous as is the question of South Africa with 
 the enormous outlay it has involved, serious as is 
 the future of China and the great trade possibili- 
 
 1 When I wrote this sentence the Hon. Mr. Donald Smeaton 
 had not been " Stellenbosched " for doing exactly this thing. See 
 pages 41-3. 
 
 37 
 
 398U9G
 
 The Failure of Lord Curzon 
 
 ties of England in that country, tenfold more 
 important is the condition of India. It 
 beyond* ls ra pidly becoming a land steeped in 
 Redemption." perennial poverty, and unless some strong 
 and early steps are taken, the English 
 people will find itself face to face with annual famines, 
 due chiefly to the exactions of the State, to the 
 oppression of the poor by the " Imperialist Empire- 
 Builder." The taxation on Indian landlords and on 
 the Indian tenantry must be radically overhauled 
 and greatly reduced. The evil is fortunately at 
 present confined in its worst form to Southern and 
 Central India, to Bombay, Madras, and the Central 
 Provinces. But the pressure of the land revenue is 
 severe in the North -Western Provinces, in Oudh, and 
 in the Punjab. In spite of bad seasons and bad rainfall 
 they have up to now suffered from true famine only 
 over small areas. Mortality from starvation also has 
 been low. There are not wanting, however, many 
 signs that impoverishment, pauperisation in fact, has 
 made much progress. Let us be warned in time by 
 the example of Bombay. Space permits me to make 
 only a single quotation to prove this fact. Mr. S. S. 
 Thorburn, recently Revenue Commissioner of the 
 Punjab Province, in 1891, under the orders of his 
 Government, carried out a house-to-house investigation 
 of the condition of the peasantry in " four tracts or 
 circles covering an area of about one thousand square 
 miles and supporting an agricultural population of 
 300,000 souls in 535 villages." His conclusion was 
 that " in the four selected circles quite half the old 
 agriculturalists are already ruined beyond redemption in 
 
 38
 
 Famine and Taxation 
 
 126 villages," their farms having passed into the 
 hands of money-lenders, whom he asserted " our 
 system is making the masters of the village com- 
 munity." " Borrowing to pay land revenue " Mr. 
 Thorburn places in the forefront as the primary cause 
 of the farmers seeking the aid of the money-lenders. 
 So severe is the drain of the land-tax that it leaves 
 the tenantry without capital to carry on farming, and 
 the second cause assigned by Mr. Thorburn for 
 borrowing is to obtain the means to buy seed grain ! 
 I could quote many equally authoritative opinions 
 regarding " the thin line which divides large masses of 
 people " (in Oudh and the North-Western 
 Nakedness Provinces) " from absolute nakedness and 
 
 and .,, T . .. , , r 
 
 starvation, starvation. Is it or is it not the duty of a 
 patriotic Englishman to try to get at the 
 bottom of this pitiable state of things and seek for 
 a remedy, though that remedy may involve a great 
 reduction of land revenue? Even the least polemi- 
 cally minded of men see reason to believe that the 
 administration of the War Office was largely to 
 blame for failure in South Africa. May it not be 
 the part of an intelligent citizen to inquire whether the 
 policy of the India Office is quite guiltless in face of 
 disaster in Bombay ? 
 
 39
 
 '. THE PILING UP OF TAX ON TAX" 
 A TRAGEDY 
 
 IT may be reasonably asked : What has Lord 
 
 Curzon done in connection with land taxation that 
 
 he should be blamed ? He did nothing, 
 
 L as r to C e but he wrote a g reat deal in defence of it. 
 tagonistof Perhaps he thought that it would never do 
 
 Taxation. 
 
 if the memorial of the distinguished Indian 
 officials I have quoted were to go forth uncontradicted. 
 There is a good strong dash of Jingoism in every 
 Briton, but there is a stronger element of sound 
 humanity in our race and if the truth reached the 
 English people no amount of beating of the Jingo 
 drum would prevent them from insisting on financial 
 reform. It was essential to engineer a prosperity 
 boom, however unjustified, and so, especially during 
 the past two years, the Tory Press, and often, through 
 ignorance, the Liberal Press, have been going into 
 ecstasies over the "wealth of India," as proved by her 
 great "surplus revenue." Lord Curzon it is, who has, 
 in his minutes and budgets, supplied the material for 
 these mis-statements. It is necessary, therefore, to 
 further study how this "abounding" revenue has been 
 arrived at and what it really means. 
 
 In the debate on the budget in Calcutta last March, 
 
 40
 
 " The Piling up of Tax on Tax " 
 
 the Hon. Donald Smeaton in his speech in the Legis- 
 lative Council said : 
 
 " Que^on!^ 1 "According to the Accounts of 1900-91 
 over sixty lakhs of land revenue and rates 
 were realised from Bombay, the Punjab and Madras 
 in excess of the collections of 1899-1900, the year of 
 famine, and these sixty lakhs were largely arrears in 
 provinces where there had been either famine or 
 deficient rainfall arrears which apparently should not 
 have been demanded at all. And this brings to my 
 mind a very vital question lately raised, whether the 
 intensity of recent famines is, or is not, largely due 
 to poverty caused by the operation of our land revenue 
 system as a whole ? " 
 
 This means that the surplus was in large part 
 
 obtained by a procedure, which it is very difficult to 
 
 condemn in temperate language. An im- 
 
 T ^ Ex ? rt i on rnense sum of money, which had accumu- 
 
 OI uilG A clIIllIlO 
 
 Arrears. lated as arrears of land revenue the 55 
 per cent, income-tax during a period of 
 severe famine and plague, was ruthlessly extorted in 
 the year following the famine, in addition to the 
 excessive current land revenue. This is exactly the 
 procedure, which in Madras in the years following 
 the famine of 1877 caused ruin to nearly a million 
 families. To describe revenue so obtained as an 
 evidence of wealth is to say the thing that is not, and 
 Lord Curzon's Government must bear the blame of 
 throwing dust in the eyes of the English people. 
 
 I beg your Lordship will pardon me a short digres- 
 sion. It is only to tell you the reward that Lord 
 Curzon had in store for the Hon. Mr. Smeaton. 
 
 4 1
 
 The Failure of Lord Curzon 
 
 In May last the term of office of Sir Frederick 
 Fryer, Lieut. -Governor of Burmah, came 
 Sward to an enc ^' anc ^ public opinion nominated Mr. 
 Honesty. Smeaton, who had served in that province 
 for twenty years, as his successor. The only 
 way to jockey this distinguished public servant out of 
 his rights was to give Sir Frederick Fryer an exten- 
 sion of office, so as to keep Mr. Smeaton out beyond 
 the period of thirty-five years' service, after which an 
 Indian civil servant is bound by a stringent rule to 
 retire. Lord Curzon is alleged to have stooped to 
 this device, a mean ungrateful device, to injure a 
 man who had served his country so long. 
 
 The Pioneer, discussing the question of the succes- 
 sion to the Lieut.-Governorship, writes : 
 
 " It is also known that the Burmah public 
 have long ago given their vote in favour of 
 one of these candidates, who has for years 
 been identified with the Province. Mr. 
 Donald Smeaton, the Financial Commissioner, has 
 twice officiated as Chief Commissioner, and he has 
 represented Burmah on the Supreme Legislative 
 Council for four years. Moreover, Mr. Smeaton's 
 thirty-five years end next November, so that, failing 
 his succession to Sir Frederick Fryer in May next, his 
 services will be lost altogether to the Province. The 
 fact that in the Supreme Council Mr. Smeaton has 
 always given his opinion fearlessly and independently 
 ought to have told in his favour rather than against 
 him. A Province requires a Governor who will 
 frankly give his views regarding what is required in 
 its best interests, even if these views do not happen to 
 
 42
 
 " The Piling up of Tax on Tax v 
 
 harmonise with those of the higher powers. In all 
 the circumstances of the case the extension of Sir 
 Frederick Fryer's tenure of office just long enough 
 to make it impossible for Mr. Smeaton to come 
 into competition for the succession, is apt to raise 
 doubts whether in this instance considerations of 
 fair play, the public interest, and the opinion of 
 the Province chiefly concerned have been given due 
 weight." 
 
 In such language does a most Conservative journal 
 stigmatise conduct which it is charity to describe as 
 unworthy of the Representative of the Emperor of 
 India. 
 
 Sir Frederick Fryer got his extension and Lord 
 Curzon, with entire disregard of the claims of the 
 
 most experienced and trusted of Burmah 
 wi^out^ne officials, appointed Mr. H. Barnes, the 
 Experience Foreign Secretary, to be Lieut. -Governor. 
 
 Mr. Barnes is an admirable official in his 
 line, and has done excellent political service on the 
 Afghan frontier, but has never served one day in 
 Burmah, which lies a couple of thousand miles away 
 from the scenes where his official life has been spent. 
 
 The displacement of honest, experienced officials is 
 one of the fine arts of " Imperialism." I will have 
 
 to show later on how Sir Henry Cotton, 
 "Men/' 6 K. C.S.I., the Chief Commissioner of 
 
 Assam, lost the Lieut.-Governorship of 
 Bengal for honestly drawing the attention of the 
 Viceroy to the underpayment of coolies on the tea 
 gardens in Assam. Not many years ago, but before 
 Lord Curzon's time, it was a matter of open know- 
 
 43 E
 
 The Failure of Lord Curzon 
 
 ledge that Sir A. MacKenzie was passed over for the 
 same appointment, because, as Chief Commissioner of 
 Burmah, he had strongly protested against the policy 
 of the Government of India in regard to opium shops, 
 which he considered led to their increase in his juris- 
 diction. No official can hope for high preferment in 
 India and at the same time criticise even in the most 
 moderate manner the policy of the Supreme Govern- 
 ment. He becomes at once what is known as an 
 "unsafe man." 
 
 Mr. Smeaton was not alone in pointing out that the 
 
 surplus revenue of last year was no evidence of Indian 
 
 wealth. The Hon. Mr. Gokhale, the mem- 
 
 "wr^ng!" 6 b er f r Bombay in the Legislative Council, 
 
 began his speech in these words : 
 
 " Your Excellency, I fear I cannot conscientiously 
 join in the congratulations which have been offered to 
 the Hon. Finance Member on the huge surplus which 
 the revised estimates show for last year. A surplus of 
 seven crores of rupees is perfectly unprecedented in 
 the history of Indian finance, and coming, as it does, 
 on the top of a series of similar surpluses realised when 
 the country has been admittedly passing through very 
 trying times, it illustrates, to my mind, in a painfully 
 clear manner the utter absence of a due correspondence 
 between the condition of the people and the condition 
 of the finances of the country. Indeed, my Lord, the 
 more I think about this matter the more I feel, and I 
 trust your Lordship will pardon me for speaking some- 
 what bluntly, that these surpluses constitute a double 
 wrong to the community. They are a wrong in the 
 first instance in that they exist at all that Govern- 
 
 44
 
 " The Piling up of Tax on Tax " 
 
 ment should take so much more from the people than 
 is needed in times of serious depression and suffering ; 
 and they are also a wrong, because they lend them- 
 selves to easy misinterpretation, and, among other 
 things, render possible the phenomenal optimism of 
 the Secretary of State for India." 
 
 Mr. Gokhale then proceeded to show that it is not 
 prosperity but currency laws, protecting the value of 
 silver coin from the effects of over-produc- 
 tion of bullion in America, that yield these 
 Prosperity. sur pluses. " A slight examination of these 
 surpluses suffices to show that they are 
 mainly, almost entirely, currency surpluses resulting 
 from the fact that Government still maintains the 
 same high level of taxation which they considered to 
 be necessary to secure financial equilibrium when the 
 rupee stood at its lowest. Now we all know that a 
 rise of 3d. in the exchange value of the rupee 
 from 1 3d. to i6d. means a saving of between four 
 and five crores of rupees to the Government of 
 India on their Home charges alone, and I think 
 this fact is sufficient by itself to explain the huge 
 surpluses of the last four or five years." 
 
 The vaunted surpluses are due not to prosperity but 
 
 to the enhanced value of the rupee, whilst taxation is 
 
 maintained at the high rate necessary before 
 
 "The Piling . & . . 1 
 
 up of Tax on the recent quinquennium of famine in order 
 to meet a depreciated currency. There is no 
 prosperity, but an excessive merciless taxation, which 
 takes from the miserable peasantry three-fifths of the 
 profit of their fields, besides laying heavy burdens on 
 the salt and sugar and fish they eat, on the cotton they 
 
 45
 
 The Failure of Lord Curzon 
 
 wear, on the oil they burn, and 5 per cent, on every 
 article of European manufacture they use, umbrellas, 
 knives, lamps, brass for their utensils and iron for their 
 ploughs. Such " prosperity " was never seen in the 
 world. All the above-mentioned taxation is new, 
 being imposed during the past sixteen years. " Such 
 continuous piling up of tax on tax," cried Mr. Gokhale, 
 "and such ceaseless adding to the burdens of a suffer- 
 ing people is probably without precedent in the annals 
 of finance." I may here mention that it has recently 
 come to my notice that Sir William Hunter, the dis- 
 tinguished Indian historian, when a member of the 
 Viceroy's Council in 1879, declared that "the Govern- 
 ment assessment does not leave enough food to the 
 cultivator to support himself and his family through- 
 out the year." 
 
 The need of this taxation began eighteen years 
 
 ago, in 1885, by an increase in the strength of the 
 
 army by 30,000 men, in spite of the 
 
 An increase of protests of two out of the five members 
 
 30.000 Men in r 1 ir- > r* -i i i 
 
 tneArmy. of the Viceroys Council, one being the 
 then Finance Member. How just their 
 protest was is proved by the fact that the great Army 
 Commission of 1879, under the presidency of Sir 
 Ashley Eden, had declared the then army amply 
 strong to repel any aggression by Russia, even "with 
 Afghanistan as her ally." 
 
 How the current revenue is spent was explained 
 with unconscious candour by Sir Edward Law, the 
 present Finance Minister, in his budget statement 
 last March. 
 
 " It must be remembered," he wrote, "that India is 
 
 46
 
 " The Piling up of Tax on Tax " 
 
 defraying from revenues the cost of undertaking both 
 
 re-armament and the reform of military 
 
 "The Richest reorganisation in important departments. 
 
 surpassed. I believe that this is an undertaking 
 which has not been attempted by other 
 countries without the assistance of loans in some 
 form or other. Even in England extraordinary 
 military requirements for fortifications and barracks 
 have been met by loans for short terms of years, 
 repayable by instalments out of revenues. If, pro- 
 fiting by a period of political tranquillity, we can 
 accomplish this task without the raising of a loan and 
 the imposition of a permanent burden on future 
 generations, I think that we shall be able to congratu- 
 late ourselves on having done that which even the 
 richest nations of Europe have not considered it 
 advisable to attempt." 
 
 The taxation of one of the poorest nations on earth 
 is kept up to concert pitch in order to re-arm and 
 equip an army beyond the needs of India in a manner 
 the richest nations of Europe would be ashamed to 
 attempt. I am sure Sir Edward Law is quite uncon- 
 scious of the sufferings, the starvation, that result from 
 his budgets. It is typical of the topsyturvydom of 
 " Imperialism" in India that this very capable gentle- 
 man had not one day's experience of an Empire so 
 vast when he undertook to administer her finances. 
 It may be alleged that the present Indian army 
 is not in excess of Indian requirements. 
 
 ? 1 " n ^f The London Standard disposed of this 
 
 into Truth. 
 
 assertion with succinct clearness a few 
 months ago. " Ladysmith," it wrote, "we should 
 
 47
 
 The Failure of Lord Curzon 
 
 remember, was defended mainly by regiments which 
 had been embarked in India. It was an Indian 
 general, commanding native troops from India, who 
 relieved the Legations at Peking ; and it was from 
 native regiments that our Chinese contingent of 
 occupation was supplied. Since the beginning of the 
 war in South Africa more than 13,000 British officers 
 and men had been sent to that country from India, 
 and they were accompanied by over 9,000 natives, 
 principally followers and attendants. To China there 
 were forwarded from India 1,300 British officers and 
 men, some 20,000 native troops, and 17,500 native 
 followers. Such is the scale on which India, at the 
 shortest notice, and without dislocating her establish- 
 ments, can contribute towards the military capabilities 
 of the Empire beyond her own frontiers" 
 
 That is just it. India, starving India, is being used to 
 feed, train, and equip great bodies of troops for employ- 
 ment outside India. Excellent Standard / One has 
 only to lie in wait for your Jingo journalist, and forthwith 
 you have him on toast. He never intentionally studies 
 accuracy, but he often blunders into downright truth. 
 
 I would beg to draw special attention to one of the 
 results of recent taxation. During the past twenty 
 years there has been a great revival of the 
 me Ruin of cotton industry in Bombay, and scores of 
 industry, mills have sprung up in the Western Presi- 
 dency. Their ruins will probably form a 
 monument to Lord Curzon's neglect to relieve them 
 from the taxation that is killing them. The Hon. 
 Mr. Moses, a Government-appointed and European 
 member of the Legislative Council, early in 1902 
 
 48
 
 cc 
 
 The Piling up of Tax on Tax" 
 
 stated in the Bombay Chamber of Commerce that no 
 less than fourteen mills have recently gone into 
 liquidation, some of them, " brand new ones," being 
 sold at auction for a third of their original cost. Mr. 
 Moses plainly stated that this important and most 
 promising industry had been "brought to the brink 
 of bankruptcy " in consequence of recent taxation. 
 
 Since then six more mills have passed into the 
 liquidators' hands, and only three out of 163 mills 
 paid any dividend last year. Ten million 
 sterling, mostly owned by native share- 
 holders, are invested in this industry. In 
 its prosperous days, not very long ago, nearly two 
 millions of people derived their maintenance from the 
 manufacture of cotton in the Bombay Presidency. As 
 the mills close their doors, this large population is 
 being driven back on the land and to agricultural 
 employment, which has for years been synonymous 
 with famine. A European merchant, with the 
 approval of the great commercial community of 
 Bombay, lays the blame of this state of things on 
 Government, or, in other words, on the Viceroy, Lord 
 Curzon. The taxation-ruined industrial labourer must 
 now strive to take his scanty bread from the peasant, 
 whom tax-created famine and poverty-created plague 
 have made the object of world-wide pity. 
 
 The orgie of military expenditure in recent years 
 in England was bound to have its echo in 
 India, and it has been received with as 
 
 re peop e ie! ed l^ 6 cont ent in Anglo-Indian as in native 
 
 circles. It was suddenly announced a year 
 
 ago that a large demand would be made on the Indian 
 
 49
 
 The Failure of Lord Curzon 
 
 Exchequer, but I had better simply quote Capital, the 
 organ of European commerce in Calcutta. 
 
 "It seems," that very capable journal remarked, 
 " that the Home Government proposed to foist 
 upon the Indian people a charge of ,786,000 
 (Rs. 1,17,90,000) in the shape of additional pay to 
 the British soldiers stationed in this country. This 
 increase of pay has been the outcome of the war 
 in South Africa, where troops from India saved the 
 situation in Natal in the early part of the conflict 
 a conflict with which the Indian people had nothing 
 whatever to do, and in a country, too, where the 
 natives of this Empire are denied the full rights of 
 citizenship, and where a Hindu has actually been 
 fined for walking on the pavement. The Indian 
 Government should resist this impost tooth and nail." 
 The Indian Government has no teeth or nails except 
 for the native taxpayer. 
 
 " There is another charge," Capital continued, 
 " that is to be hung round our necks, if Lord Curzon's 
 Government is weak enough to submit to it, viz., a 
 sum of ,548,000 (Rs. 82,20,000), being j IDS. for 
 each soldier sent to India as the cost price of 
 recruiting and training him. A more unjust im- 
 position could not be made, and it is one which 
 could only be thrust upon a people having no 
 representative institution. The British Army is 
 raised at home for Imperial purposes. The troops 
 are liable to be sent anywhere. A regiment may 
 have seen years of service in other parts of Greater 
 Britain before it comes to India, and yet it is 
 proposed to charge the original recruiting and train- 
 So
 
 " The Piling up of Tax on Tax " 
 
 ing charges of the soldiers to the Indian Exchequer. 
 The whole thing is ridiculous," and shameless. 
 
 Thus an amount of money almost equal to the 
 
 total land revenue of Bombay has been added to 
 
 the Military Budget of India by two strokes 
 
 Lord Curzon - , . , , _ r 
 
 ignored, of the pen without the Government, far 
 less the people of India, being consulted. 
 There is, however, nothing new in this procedure. 
 The Pioneer, in protesting against this discourteous 
 and cavalier manner of treating the Indian Govern- 
 ment, writes " past experience " shows that this 
 treatment is habitual. " There is an interesting 
 enclosure in a despatch sent Home by the Govern- 
 ment of India in 1890, 'showing the annual charges 
 and certain initial charges which have been imposed 
 upon Indian revenues in consequence of orders by 
 the War Office, issued in all cases without the con- 
 currence of the Government of India, and in some 
 cases without that of the Secretary of State having 
 been previously obtained.' The statement shows 
 somewhere about one million sterling added in this 
 way to the Indian Budget between 1864 and 1894." 
 
 Lord Curzon, the unfaithful steward of the Indian 
 
 people, " is weak enough to submit " to this impost 
 
 being hung round their necks. He might 
 
 enougJ" resign if his action with regard to the 
 
 Ninth Lancers were disapproved by the 
 
 Home Government, but his amour propre does not 
 
 suffer in the least when extra and intolerable burdens 
 
 are imposed on the unhappy people committed to 
 
 his care, without his being shown the poor courtesy 
 
 of being asked if they can bear them. Vce, Vce victis.
 
 THE UPROOTING OF SELF-GOVERN- 
 MENTA FIASCO 
 
 THAT Lord Curzon is a man of varied intellectual 
 gifts is beyond question. His University career was 
 
 a brilliant one and he, no doubt, brought 
 sympathy. awa y with him very much of the useless 
 
 knowledge, unpractical culture, and intel- 
 lectual vanity that distinguish so many Balliol gradu- 
 ates. In the ways of business men he was and 
 is a child. Quick, eager, and highly intelligent, 
 he is without that kindly patience, that tactful art 
 of give and take, which is the root of all successful 
 statesmanship. With the training of a scholar it 
 was at least to be expected that he would have a 
 sincere sympathy with men of education, though in 
 his eyes their education was infinitely inferior to his 
 own. Yet it was the best in India, and that is a 
 fact which he should not have overlooked. 
 
 Down to about a quarter of a century ago the 
 educated natives of India, the M.A.'s and B.A.'s 
 
 of the very presentable Universities of 
 
 Calcutta and Bombay, had practically no 
 Government v i ce m government, even in municipal 
 
 administration. A few Indians were, no 
 doubt, appointed to councils and boards, but they 
 
 52 

 
 The Uprooting of Self-Go vernment 
 
 were rarely selected by Government for their 
 
 education or ability, but for their social position 
 
 and especially for their " reliability," their readiness 
 
 to support the powers that be in all things. This 
 
 state of things was at the time necessary, and I 
 
 have no desire to criticise it or indeed to withhold 
 
 approval. The day of representative institutions 
 
 had not arrived and autocratic methods were, beyond 
 
 question, the sole possible system in India. Still 
 
 it was according to English ideals a transition state. 
 
 The change came in 1876, when Lord Northbrook 
 
 was Viceroy, and the Legislature passed a law, which 
 
 entrusted the Municipal administration of 
 
 The success Calcutta to a Corporation of 75 members, 
 
 of an Indian 
 
 corporation, two-thirds or 50 of whom were elected by 
 the ratepayers and one-third nominated by 
 the local Government. The Chairman, who has 
 always been a member of the Indian Civil Service, 
 and usually a very senior and distinguished repre- 
 sentative of that highly-trained and highly-educated 
 body, was also appointed by Government. It is not 
 pretended that the new administration was perfect, or 
 that its reforms were radical, but it did much good 
 work. In consequence of European complaints, 
 Government appointed a Commission of Inquiry in 
 1884, which, whilst pointing out many shortcomings, 
 admitted much progress. As evidence of substantial 
 advance three facts may be mentioned. This Govern- 
 ment Commission, presided over by the Hon. Mr. 
 Beverley, a Judge of the High Court, found that (i.) 
 the length of sewers had extended between 1876 and 
 1884, that is, in eight short years, from 86 miles to 
 
 53
 
 The Failure of Lord Curzon 
 
 187 miles, and (ii.) the supply of water to the town 
 had increased from 6J millions of gallons a day to 20 
 millions of gallons, seven-eighths of which were filtered 
 water, whilst (iii.) gas-lamps had increased from 2,718 
 to 4,488 in number. 
 
 The new Municipality, though needing legitimate 
 criticism and advice, had proved its right to survive, 
 
 and its sturdiest defender was its Govern- 
 ^scaSf 16 m ent - appointed Chairman, Sir Henry 
 
 Harrison. Things went on in their old 
 way again for many years till the ravages of plague 
 in Bombay about 1898 not unnaturally started a scare 
 in Calcutta. The European merchants saw their 
 commerce threatened by what seemed to them ruin. 
 I for one entirely sympathised with them. If the 
 markets of Europe were closed against their plague- 
 infected exports, it would be a more than serious 
 outlook for most of them. A few sporadic cases of 
 plague in Calcutta added to the terror. The local 
 English Press nearly lost its head, but the local 
 Government kept cool in a very trying time. The 
 newspapers teamed with excited articles and hysterical 
 letters, describing the insanitary condition of native 
 premises, and the Lieut.-Governor was urgent in 
 his warnings to the Corporation. This body at first 
 took the well-meant advice in good part, and large 
 sums of money were cheerfully voted and rapidly 
 expended in cleansing the town. 
 
 Unfortunately a time came when the Government 
 lost its patience and the Municipal Commissioners lost 
 their temper. At the ceremony of laying the founda- 
 tion-stone of some new drainage works, the Lieut. - 
 
 54
 
 The Uprooting of Self-Government 
 
 Governor, Sir Alexander MacKenzie, who had been 
 asked in recognition of his high office 
 A speech to perform this honorific task, went for 
 consequences, the Commissioners in a slashing speech, 
 which roused extreme bitterness. His 
 entertainers, who had just presented him with a loyal 
 and complimentary address in a handsome casket, 
 were told that their city was " a disgrace to the 
 Empire," and that, whereas English town councils 
 were made up of " shrewd, capable men of business," 
 the municipal body in Calcutta talked instead of 
 working, whilst, horribile dictu, he broadly hinted 
 there were far too many lawyers amongst them, 
 "whose individual stake in the town is small." He 
 quite forgot that these lawyers were the representatives 
 of the great native landlords and merchants, who, as 
 in England, rarely appear in person on vestry boards. 
 But for the unfittingness of the occasion and the 
 personalities the lecture might have done good, but 
 these were things not to be borne. The Com- 
 missioners, in meeting assembled, gave vent to their 
 wrath, their " respectful but emphatic protest " against 
 a speech, " involving a grave misapprehension of the 
 facts." The offence was all the greater in their eyes 
 as they had in former days held up Sir Alexander 
 MacKenzie as a model official, and he had in truth 
 been one of the best friends of the natives of India 
 who had ever visited its shores, though rather "short" 
 with them in his latter years of ill-health. He had 
 also shown in the outset of his speech that he was 
 quite cognisant of the good work done by the 
 Corporation. 
 
 55
 
 The Failure of Lord Curzon 
 
 " I have elsewhere sought," he said, "to vindicate 
 the Commissioners from the charge of having dealt 
 
 inadequately and perfunctorily with this 
 Mon ^f ve ^ eely drainage question. There has been delay, 
 
 no doubt, in prosecuting these extensions 
 of the system, but the delays have not, as was thought, 
 been inordinate, and the wisdom of caution in under- 
 taking such costly and gigantic operations is vindicated 
 by a comparison between the original estimates and 
 those of the scheme as now sanctioned. The Munici- 
 pality has, I am afraid, many shortcomings to answer 
 for. But I must say this, that I have never been able 
 to agree that it has shown niggardliness, or been 
 backward in sanctioning money for either water- 
 supply or drainage." 
 
 They had raised in loans in eighteen years for 
 improvements as much as 1 10 lakhs of rupees, a vast 
 
 sum in a very poor country like India. It 
 The was really the executive under its Govern- 
 
 Difficulties of .... , , . r ., . 
 
 sanitation, ment-appomted chairmen that had tailed. 
 Not that I mean to blame any of the very 
 capable men who have held this office. They had 
 done their best, but the task of immediately intro- 
 ducing modern sanitation into a populous, very 
 extended, and far from affluent Eastern city, is one 
 that is practically impossible, unless at an outlay that 
 is a hundredfold prohibitive. The thing will probably 
 be done within the present century, but such a task 
 takes time as well as money. Was it not the other 
 day that a great medical authority described the 
 " homes of the poor in the East End of London " 
 as "less comfortable and less healthy than the lair 
 
 56
 
 The Uprooting of Self-Government 
 
 of a wild beast ? " " In the Metropolis of the world," 
 he wrote " tens of thousands " of Englishmen and 
 women live in "pestilent human rookeries," in "courts 
 reeking with poisonous and malodorous gases," in 
 rooms approached by " dark and filthy passages, 
 swarming with vermin," in "dens of intolerable 
 stench " in which " the sickly air " is polluted by 
 deadly exhalations from " the putrifying carcasses of 
 animals or viler abominations still." A horrible 
 picture, but neither the King nor the Prime Minister 
 have placed the blame exclusively on the shoulders of 
 the Lord Mayor and Corporation of London. 
 
 It may be asked, Where does Lord Curzon come 
 
 into this quarrel ? I hasten to state. When Sir 
 
 Alexander MacKenzie was " answered 
 
 legislation back" by the Calcutta town Commissioners 
 
 Governors ^ e at once had recourse to the big stick, 
 with which an Indian Governor always 
 punishes the recalcitrant. He proceeded to make a 
 new law for the clipping of municipal wings. One of 
 the greatest weaknesses of Indian administration is 
 the facility of legislation. Reform is a grand thing, 
 but when a Lieut. -Governor has simply to draft a new 
 enactment and send it to a Legislative Council, as it is 
 called, made up of his own nominees, there is grave 
 danger of scamped and hasty work. I do not say 
 that this remark applied to the new Municipal Bill. 
 There is no doubt that the Corporation would have 
 been none the worse for a little tightening up. It has 
 been said that English town councillors often need 
 such tonics. In Calcutta it is absolutely true that the 
 executive was urgently in want of wider and stronger 
 
 57
 
 The Failure of Lord Curzon 
 
 powers to deal with insanitary conditions. The new 
 legislation, which had Lord Elgin's full support, gave 
 these powers, but did not interfere with the constitu- 
 tion of the Corporation. Before the Bill could 
 develop into a permanent enactment there was 
 a change of Viceroys, and Lord Curzon succeeded 
 Lord Elgin. Sir Alexander MacKenzie also had to 
 retire through ill-health, and his place as Lieut. - 
 Governor was taken by Sir John Woodburn, an able, 
 just, and tactful man, beloved of all classes, who at 
 once proceeded to carry out the wise policy of Lord 
 Elgin, which maintained unimpaired the representative 
 character of the Town Council. 
 
 A new Viceroy of ordinary good feeling and 
 intellectual modesty would have hesitated before 
 interfering with legislation, which had been 
 full 7 thought out and laid down by his 
 
 Goverxument predecessor. An " Imperialist" rarely has 
 these qualities. So Lord Curzon imme- 
 diately set to work to uproot the principles of self- 
 government, which had been developed and matured 
 by Lords Northbrook, Dufferin, and Elgin, and by 
 half a dozen strong and capable Lieut. -Governors. 
 Still worse, he did not hesitate to introduce the racial 
 difficulty in all its animosity. The Jingo is always 
 pre-eminent in creating bad blood. The Municipal 
 Council of Calcutta had continued since 1876 to 
 consist of 75 members, 50 of whom were elected 
 and therefore representative, the remaining 25 being 
 Government nominees. The former were mostly 
 Indians, the latter mostly Europeans. By a stroke of 
 his pen Lord Curzon reduced the representative 
 
 58
 
 The Uprooting of Self-Government 
 
 members to 25 and destroyed representative govern- 
 ment in the capital of India. The official chairman's 
 casting vote permanently gives the majority to the 
 official or European or English element. The 
 resultant bad language in the native Press requires 
 a stringent Press law to keep its racial denunciations 
 in order. So folly begets evil. Twenty-eight Indian 
 members of the Corporation immediately resigned, and 
 these men were the representatives of the wealth of 
 Calcutta, which, so far as its landlords go, is practically 
 a Hindu town. They were also mostly men of 
 authority and education, honourable members of the 
 Bengal Legislative Council, graduates of the English 
 Universities, leading barristers and doctors, the most 
 prominent men of Asiatic blood in Calcutta. The 
 bland "Imperialist" quite expects that these gentle- 
 men, who made no secret of the fact that they felt 
 themselves outraged, should be exuberantly loyal. 
 They are loyal, but look forward to a day when Lord 
 Curzon's mischievous Indian career is at an end 
 before they trouble the Viceroy with further ex- 
 pressions of their loyalty. The King would get them 
 in an overflowing tide if he should ever visit India ; so 
 would any Prince of the Royal Family. 
 
 It may naturally be asked whether success has 
 
 attended Lord Curzon's policy of administering 
 
 Calcutta without the support of its leading 
 
 Lord Curzon's citizens. I may mention that the principal 
 
 " Reform " an -.-. , i ri ~ . , , 
 
 utter Fiasco, buropean merchants and non-omcials have 
 
 always eschewed municipal boards. They 
 
 nave respectfully but firmly declined nomination by 
 
 Government. Their great commercial interests 
 
 59 F
 
 The Failure of Lord Curzon 
 
 demand all their time. They are birds of passage 
 and own little property in Calcutta. Who will blame 
 them if they devote all their attention to " business " 
 and hasten to enjoy their hard-earned fortunes in 
 a climate more congenial to Europeans than Bengal ? 
 They think they have performed their whole municipal 
 duty when they emit an odd grumble at inefficiency in 
 their favourite journals. These representatives of 
 Western opinion in Calcutta have been growling 
 more than ordinarily of late and their theme is, alas ! 
 the shortcomings of Lord Curzon's emasculated cor- 
 poration. The foremost organ of Europeans in 
 Calcutta is the Englishman, an unquestionably high 
 class and capable newspaper, though ultra-Tory in its 
 views of things Indian. On the 24th of last July 
 (1902) it published an article, from which the follow- 
 ing passages are extracts : 
 
 "The last annual report of the Calcutta Municipal 
 
 Corporation showed a most satisfactory state of affairs. 
 
 All the things that had been done during 
 
 A Noisome 
 
 city the year were duly set forth, if not with 
 
 given over . . . . . 
 
 to "Culpable a nourish of trumpets, at least with a very 
 audible note of triumph, at great works 
 accomplished. But the worst of annual reports is that 
 they rather lay stress on what has been done than on 
 what has been left undone. There is a very big speck 
 in the sun of the Calcutta Corporation. If it lays out 
 public parks and erects wash-houses on the one hand, 
 on the other hand it neglects the work of conservancy 
 and drainage in a manner that is scandalous. The 
 European community of Calcutta is too apt to consider 
 that the state of the wards in which it lives is typical 
 
 60
 
 The Uprooting of Self-Government 
 
 of the whole town. But European Calcutta forms but 
 a very small section of the city. Those who are 
 inclined to think that the Municipality is doing fairly 
 well, should pay a visit to certain wards outside their 
 own. At the present moment we would draw attention 
 to the locality loosely known as Bhowanipur. It is 
 by no means as bad as some wards that might be 
 named, but it is bad enough to reflect the greatest 
 discredit on the whole municipal body. Those using 
 the electric tramway to Kalighat may catch fleeting 
 glimpses of open and noisome drains and tanks 
 covered with floating scum of the filthiest description. 
 Occasionally their nostrils are assailed by odours that 
 may herald every description of zymotic disease. But 
 in order to see the locality in all its hideousness it 
 behoves one to alight at Kansaripara Road and make 
 a short tour among the lanes and streets to the 
 eastward. Frequent and bitter complaints from the 
 residents of this locality having reached us, a repre- 
 sentative of the Englishman was deputed to make 
 an investigation. What is stated here, therefore, is 
 the result of personal inquiry. Not only is it not 
 exaggerated, but many details have been omitted as 
 being impossible to print. The very first thing that 
 strikes an observer is that at some time or other 
 the locality has been properly surveyed and drained." 
 (Query by the Native Commissioners, ejected by Lord 
 Curzon.) " Masonry drains run through every street, 
 and have apparently a natural outfall. It is not, 
 therefore, a question of either an immense outlay 
 of money or of insuperable physical difficulties. There 
 are no physical difficulties in the way and the out- 
 
 61
 
 The Failure of Lord Curzon 
 
 lay of money apparently has already been made. 
 What is in evidence is the most culpable neglect. 
 
 " The locality of which we are speaking is bounded 
 
 on the north-west by the new Presidency General 
 
 Hospital. The hospital has been built on 
 
 surroundings t ^ ie most modern lines. No expense has 
 
 of an been spared. It is idle for the local 
 
 Hospital. . 
 
 Government to spend its money freely in 
 building a hospital, if the locality is left by the 
 Municipality to breed disease. And, as we have 
 said, it is not a question of money. It is merely a 
 question of energy. The drains are there. They 
 only need to be properly cleansed. A few thousand 
 rupees and a few score men would do the business in 
 a week. Thereafter a very small establishment, if 
 properly supervised, would suffice to keep the drains 
 in order." Again, it is the Municipal executive and 
 not the Council-men who are at fault. 
 
 Capital is, as I have stated before, the principal 
 commercial journal of Calcutta and absolutely English 
 
 in every respect. In last June it wrote : 
 "Confusion "The plain truth is that the administra- 
 
 Worse ,. f \ ** \ * r 
 
 confounded." tion of the Calcutta Municipality is confusion 
 worse confounded, because we have not a 
 responsible business man at the head. As a con- 
 sequence the executive is needlessly worried, work is 
 needlessly piled up, and every one is dissatisfied. 
 
 "Now this is not a healthy state of affairs. It is 
 certainly not in the interests of this City that it should 
 continue. Our information is that most of the depart- 
 ments of the Municipality are a seething mass of 
 dissatisfaction and discontent." 
 
 62
 
 The Uprooting of Self-Government 
 
 The native Press is equally outspoken. One journal 
 sums up the position in these words : 
 
 " That the feeling against the Corporation 
 is very bitter, is a stubborn fact ; and we 
 state it not to bring any opprobrium upon 
 that body. The general impression is that the 
 Corporation was placed in the hands of the European 
 Commissioners, so that they might lord it over the 
 Indian ratepayers and fill the Municipality with 
 European and Eurasian employe's. This impression 
 may or may not have any foundation in fact ; but 
 there is no doubt of it that the vagaries and high- 
 handed proceedings of the Corporation have created 
 alarm and consternation, and it is seething discontent 
 from one end of the town to the other." 
 
 It cannot be said that this is a satisfactory state of 
 things after a three years' trial of the new administra- 
 tion, and whom have we to thank for 
 The Most playing the mischief with the affairs of a 
 
 Ill-balanced r . 
 
 Mind. Capital City of a million inhabitants? It 
 cannot be the natives, on whom blame is 
 so readily thrown, if it is at all possible to do so. 
 They have been extruded from the management of 
 their own town, with which they were so intimately 
 acquainted. Or is it the meddlesome Viceroy, who, 
 after a bare three months in India, contrary to the 
 advice of his experienced predecessor, Lord Elgin, 
 set to work to harass the wealthiest and most 
 progressive inhabitants of Calcutta ? His expecta- 
 tions of reform have been as " dismally belied " as 
 were his pronouncements on Persian railways after a 
 " six months' journey to the country concerned." 
 
 63
 
 The Failure of Lord Curzon 
 
 Impatient or neglectful of advice, short-sighted and 
 impetuous, Lord Curzon's cleverness only leads him 
 into a morass of failure. Yet it is extremely probable 
 one of these days, if the Conservatives continue in 
 power, that the most active and ill-balanced mind 
 now in the service of the State may be chosen to 
 guide the affairs of our vast empire in some great 
 department of administration, War or Foreign Affairs. 
 
 64
 
 THE UPROOTING OF POPULAR 
 EDUCATION A FAILURE 
 
 THE destruction of Municipal Self-Government was 
 the initial bfaise of Lord Curzon's Indian career. The 
 
 latest display of his worritting activity has 
 Tdea. ' been quite as fatal to the good relations of 
 
 Government with the educated classes of 
 India. One of His Excellency's idiosyncrasies is 
 that he thinks himself quite fitted to be an Educa- 
 tional Reformer. It is a common weakness of your 
 high and dry Tory, with a wide knowledge of ancient 
 literature and a narrow acquaintance with the modern 
 conditions of progress. The educational system of 
 India has been the slow growth of a century of 
 careful development by good and great men, by 
 pious scholars like Duff and real statesmen like 
 Canning. The amusing egotist, who now governs 
 India, immediately dashed to the opinion that in 
 education as in municipal administration his great 
 predecessors were quite backward folk and that the 
 educational millennium was only awaiting the advent 
 of a certain superior person. The far-fetched idea 
 that got into his unstable head is summarised and 
 rejected in a few words in a leading article in the 
 Pioneer of the 8th of August of last year, and it must 
 
 65
 
 The Failure of Lord Curzon 
 
 be remembered that this very capable journal is 
 generally so pro-Government as to be practically the 
 organ and often the mouthpiece of the Viceroy. 
 " Lord Curzon's ideal," it wrote, "seems to be to 
 bring the Indian University into line with the system 
 at Oxford and Cambridge. This is an idea, which is 
 alluring to all Englishmen, but it is quite impracticable 
 in the present stage of education in India, even if it 
 were really desirable a very wide question. Colleges 
 cannot be rooted out of the localities, in which they 
 have grown and from which they have drawn their 
 support, and be planted down hundreds of miles away 
 round a University. The absence of means alone is 
 sufficient argument against this scheme." " Rooted 
 out" are very significant words, but they are the only 
 effective description of the Viceroy's attempt to 
 destroy the indigenous colleges that have grown up 
 all over India in nearly every big town. 
 
 Lord Curzon's procedure was thiswise : He made 
 a clever speech, based on a very imperfect knowledge 
 of his subject and indicating various crude 
 indJgSion. v i ews - He then appointed a commission 
 of inquiry, consisting of seven members, 
 five being Europeans, mostly officials from the 
 entourage of the Viceroy, one Musulman a nobody 
 and one Hindu of distinction. This unrepresenta- 
 tive body in due course produced a majority report, 
 which, considering its constitution, was naturally only 
 a lengthy exposition of Lord Curzon's expressed ideas 
 and utterly subversive of the existing system of higher 
 education in India. How intense was the indignation 
 aroused amongst the progressive section of Indians it 
 
 66
 
 The Uprooting of Popular Education 
 
 would be difficult to exaggerate. I give the words of 
 three men of distinction, who have all been chosen by 
 Government at different times to be members of the 
 Legislative Councils. The Hon. Dr. Mahendra Lai 
 Sarcar, the foremost native scientist in India and the 
 most senior member of the Senate of the Calcutta 
 University, uses language that must appeal to every 
 right - minded Englishman. There is downright 
 pathos in the old man's words : 
 
 " I have told you," he said, " often and often that 
 
 we are enjoying under the rule of this nation more 
 
 liberty, more freedom of thought and 
 
 "Striking at . } 
 
 the root of action, than we ever enjoyed under our 
 own. But alas ! that I should live to see 
 this liberty ominously being threatened in a matter, 
 which has been the greatest blessing under British 
 rule. Without imputing any motives to anybody, I 
 cannot but observe, and it breaks my heart to do so, 
 that the recommendations of the Commission seem to 
 me to strike at the root of general education and to 
 discourage the study of science." 
 
 The Hon. Raja Piari Mohan Mukherjea, the 
 chairman of a great meeting of protest at the 
 
 Calcutta Town Hall, remarked : 
 the Popular "All that I desire to say is that the 
 recommendations of the Commission being 
 admittedly such as to greatly narrow the popular basis 
 of high education, it is the duty of every well-wisher 
 of the country to avail himself of all constitutional 
 means to get those recommendations set aside." 
 
 The Hon. Norendra Nath Sen, the Editor of the 
 Indian Mirror, said : " The matter under discussion 
 
 67
 
 |, failure of L 
 
 ord Curzon 
 
 to-day may, without exaggeration, be fitly described 
 as one of life or death to the aspirations and 
 
 " A Matter of r ,, 
 
 Life or progress or our countrymen. 1 he recom- 
 mendations of the Universities Commission 
 may spell life to a few, but they mean death to count- 
 less aspirants after not only fame and fortune, but for 
 very subsistence. They threaten the existence of 
 more than half the colleges in India." 
 
 It would be easy to quote from a score of Indian 
 
 journals in condemnation of Lord Curzon's policy. It 
 
 would be impossible to find even one 
 
 " Revolu- 
 tionary vernacular journal defending it. I will 
 
 Proposals." . , .. i i 
 
 quote only two. Ihe Bengali, which is 
 edited by a most capable educationalist, himself the 
 Principal of a very successful indigenous college, the 
 Hon. Surendra Nath Banerjea, a member also of 
 the Bengal Legislative Council, in very moderate 
 language condemns the crudity of the new policy. 
 
 "If a number of persons," it writes, "deputed to 
 perform an important public duty, had deliberately 
 set themselves to the task of framing revolutionary 
 proposals, they could not have done better or worse 
 than the Universities Commission. With all possible 
 respect for these gentlemen, we are bound to say that 
 they proceeded as if they had a tabula rasa upon 
 which they might inscribe anything they pleased. 
 The great middle class of England are wealthy, and 
 can afford the heavy educational expenses of the 
 Public School and of the University. The middle 
 class in India are poor, and for reasons, which it is 
 needless to inquire into, are poorer now than they 
 were fifty years ago. To transplant the English 
 
 68
 
 The Uprooting of Popular Education 
 
 system into their midst, without reference to existing 
 conditions and the totally different circumstances of 
 the two countries, would be a piece of political 
 unwisdom, which we trust the present rulers of India 
 will permit us not to associate with their names." 
 
 New India, an organ of the most educated class, 
 
 that is, of men who have generally completed their 
 
 studies in Europe, plainly accuses Lord 
 
 Apolitical , r j L 
 
 Motive Curzon of the intention of reducing the 
 number of educated Indians for political 
 reasons. 
 
 " Since some time past," it states, " the Government 
 of India has been seeking to do something to check 
 the ' unhealthy over-growth ' of University education 
 in India. This education, they think, is a source of 
 political danger. It turns out the official exponents 
 of this policy have repeatedly said an army of dis- 
 contented young men every year. It is creating an 
 army of half-educated, unemployed, and consequently 
 disaffected persons in the country." 
 
 New India makes a very important point by 
 
 showing that the policy of educational starvation 
 
 would hit not the lower classes as it would 
 
 D?or S A?aSt in Europe, but the high castes, who supply 
 
 the Higher n i ne teen - twentieths of the University 
 
 Castes. ^ > t 
 
 students in India. 
 
 " However," it remarks, "we may condemn it and 
 try to break it down, caste is still a potent factor in 
 India; and nothing is likely to create deeper and 
 more widespread discontent than interference, direct 
 or indirect, with the inborn caste sentiment of the 
 people. Education alone will, we think, some day 
 
 69
 
 The Failure of Lord Curzon 
 
 pull this barrier down. Where the sentiment has 
 already been weakened, it is education that has done 
 it. To close the doors of this education against the 
 people of the higher castes, and to compel them 
 through pressure of economic forces, to seek occupa- 
 tion not in harmony with their caste feelings, would 
 be to sow the seeds of a mighty revolution in the 
 peaceful Indian soil. Let the Government understand 
 this, before they make any attempt to curtail the 
 present educational opportunities of the people." 
 
 In this connection I would ask your Lordship to 
 
 pardon a long quotation from the dissent of the Hon. 
 
 Justice Guru Das Banerjea, a great lawyer, 
 
 The use of who has been Chief Justice of the High 
 
 Fees to Choke ^ r /- i 11 i T T 
 
 Education. Court of Calcutta and the solitary Hindu 
 member of this University Commission, 
 which has been playing ducks and drakes with the 
 educational future of a couple of hundred millions of 
 his co-religionists. The most egregious of the pro- 
 posals of this body, the one believed to be dearest to 
 Lord Curzon and his retrograde appointees, ran thus : 
 
 " Fees must not be fixed so low as to tempt a poor 
 student of but ordinary ability to follow a University 
 course, which it is not to his real interest to 
 undertake." 
 
 I commend this wisdom to Mr. Andrew Carnegie's 
 notice. It is pitiable that it should be left to a native 
 of India to refute it. 
 
 "Speaking," wrote Mr. Justice Banerjea, "with all 
 respect, I must say I am wholly unable to accept the 
 reason as sound. Whether it is to the real interest 
 of a poor student of but ordinary ability to follow 
 
 70
 
 The Uprooting of Popular Education 
 
 a University course, it is for him and for those 
 
 immediately interested in him to decide. 
 
 The Exclusion Others may give him proper advice : but 
 
 of the Poor TT . '. L - -r i 
 
 student, no University would be justihed in im- 
 posing any restriction, such as a prohibitive 
 fee, for the sole purpose of preventing him from 
 entering it, if he satisfies all other ordinary tests of fit- 
 ness. Youths of ordinary ability are often found to 
 develop considerably their mental powers later and by 
 slow degrees. The principle of excluding students 
 from University education by a fee limit is open to the 
 further objection that it will, on the one hand, exclude 
 not only the undeserving but also the deserving poor 
 students, while, on the other hand, it will fail to exclude 
 the undeserving rich students." 
 
 One more quotation and I am done. Speaking at 
 
 the Town Hall meeting, Moulvi Abul Kasim, B.A., 
 
 delegate from the Burdwan Muhamadan 
 
 "mow t?" Association, thus referred to an important 
 
 Muhamadan aspect of the question : 
 
 Progress." r * 
 
 " In the resolution, gentlemen, you call 
 attention to some of the most prominent recommenda- 
 tions of the Commission as being open to the gravest 
 objection. All these recommendations mean in one 
 form or other the closing of the door of high education 
 against the middle classes. If these recommendations 
 would seriously affect the progress of the Hindu boys, 
 they would be ten times more injurious to the Moslem 
 youth. Poverty, you have been told, gentlemen, is 
 no crime, and it is an admitted fact that the Indian 
 Mussulmans are a very poor community ; I may warn 
 you, gentlemen, that if these recommendations are
 
 The Failure of Lord Curzon 
 
 given effect to, it would be a death-blow to the spread 
 of high education among the Mussulmans and to 
 Muhamadan progress in general." 
 
 Condemnation could not be more widespread or 
 more vigorous. Mussulmen and Hindus, Buddhists 
 and Sikhs, there is no one to say a word of approval 
 for the Balliol -cum- Eton policy of restricting educa- 
 tion to the rich, the good old Tory policy of keeping 
 the people in ignorance. 
 
 There could be no better index of the fatuity of the 
 Government policy, which the Indian people interpret 
 into a deliberate intention to kill the exist- 
 To Make ing seats of education, than a suggested 
 Expensive, rule that no college should be affiliated to 
 the University unless it was possessed of a 
 chemical laboratory, in all countries a highly expensive 
 adjunct to an educational establishment. Although 
 the University of Cambridge includes as many as 
 seventeen Colleges, only two of these are supplied with 
 a chemical laboratory. Expensive as the institution 
 of a laboratory is, its up-keep is still more so. It is 
 only human that the Bengali Press regard this sugges- 
 tion as only a minor device in the plan to make educa- 
 tion so expensive as to be brought within the reach 
 only of the few and the wealthy. 
 
 I am glad to say that since the foregoing paragraphs 
 were written Lord Curzon has climbed down, an 
 operation which, when performed by a 
 cUmbs Cl ?own. Viceroy, is not as balm of Gilead to a sen- 
 sitive British subject. Still, it is a pleasure 
 to be able to say that our thoughtless, off-at-a-tangent 
 Satrap has found grace and, it is generally believed, 
 
 72
 
 The Uprooting of Popular Education 
 
 will do little harm and less good to the cause of educa- 
 tion in India. The indigenous colleges will not be 
 'destroyed and the fees will not be raised. Lord 
 Curzon's connection with this all-important subject has, 
 in fact, been flighty and weak where it has not been 
 also mischievous. It is impossible for him to ride off 
 on the apology that he is not responsible for the 
 recommendations of the Commission. No one attempts 
 this futile excuse in India, where there is no shirking 
 the fact that the Viceroy had clearly indicated his 
 views and that the five salaried official members did 
 little but reproduce and expand them. Such pro- 
 ceedings sap the loyalty of a conquered people, and 
 the loyalty of the Indian people is a thing worth pre- 
 serving. It is of that intelligent, practical order 
 that we are striving to instil into the Boer nation. 
 The Indian peoples have long known that it is a good 
 thing to live under the British Crown. I do not think 
 many Englishmen who try to appreciate the facts set 
 out in these pages will be quite satisfied that this 
 healthy loyalty can long survive a few doses of such 
 disorganising statesmanship. 
 
 It would be unjust to conclude this chapter without 
 
 expressing my own personal belief that Lord Curzon, 
 
 far from wishing to injure education in 
 
 "Let Art and India, was filled with the best intentions- 
 Learning Die." paved throughout with them and glowing 
 with eagerness to raise the Universities of 
 the East to some distant approach to the "superior" 
 culture and exclusiveness of his beloved Balliol. 
 
 Let art and science learning die, 
 But leave us still our old futility. 
 
 73
 
 THE "IMPERIALIST" AND THE AN- 
 CIENT PRINCES OF INDIA A SAD 
 COMEDY 
 
 THE few people in England, who take an interest in 
 
 such things, were amazed a couple of years ago by the 
 
 announcement that Lord Curzon had issued 
 
 Great Feuda- an edict to the Native Princes of India, 
 
 tories as 
 
 schoolboys, forbidding them to visit Europe without 
 His Excellency's permission ! That ukase 
 never saw the light of public print and has, it is 
 believed, been secretly withdrawn, but it also was 
 typical of the spirit, in which Lord Curzon approached 
 his great task, the flightiness, with which he offends 
 great and powerful classes under the influence of some 
 whim, some sudden idea, some ill-conceived, ill- 
 thought-out policy. That pressure should be put, 
 if necessary, on our great feudatories not to with- 
 draw themselves often or for long from their wide and 
 populous dominions, is quite right, but there are 
 certain courtesies usual between grown-up gentlemen. 
 One cannot help asking what idea had Lord Curzon 
 of his office, great as it undoubtedly is, that could 
 justify him in requiring puissant princes, like the 
 Maharaja of Gwalior, or the Nizam of Hyderabad, 
 truly the sons of kings, to ask for permission, like 
 schoolboys, before taking a holiday or visiting an 
 
 74
 
 The " Imperialist " and Ancient Princes 
 
 European surgical specialist. Such conduct is no 
 more calculated to rouse loyalty in high places, than 
 did the knocking of Calcutta Self-Government about 
 their ears awaken gratitude in the minds of some of 
 our most educated fellow-subjects in Bengal. 
 
 A better evidence of the High and Mighty Policy 
 now in favour is afforded by a document, of 
 which the leading provisions are quoted 
 below. It is rather lengthy, but any cur- 
 tailment would spoil the picture of the beau 
 ideal of an Indian chief, as limned by the master- 
 hand that is now consolidating our Empire in the 
 East! 
 
 "Whereas" it runs, "the status and position with 
 reference to the British Government of the Political 
 State of Seraikella in Chota Nagpore has hitherto 
 been undefined and doubts have from time to time 
 arisen with regard thereto, His Excellency the Viceroy 
 and Governor-General in Council is pleased to grant 
 to you Raja Udit Narain Singh Deo Bahadur 
 the following Sanad with a view to assuring you 
 that the British Government will continue, as long 
 as you remain loyal to the Crown and abide by the 
 conditions of the Sanad and of your other engage- 
 ments with the British Government, to maintain you 
 in the position and privileges which you have here- 
 tofore enjoyed or which are now conferred upon 
 you : 
 
 "SANAD. 
 
 " You Raja Udit Narain Singh Deo Bahadur, son 
 of Raja Chakradhar Singh Deo Bahadur, are hereby 
 
 75 G
 
 The Failure of Lord Curzon 
 
 formally recognised as the Feudatory Chief of the 
 Seraikella State, and you are permitted as heretofore 
 to generally administer the territory of the said 
 Seraikella State, subject to the conditions, herein- 
 after prescribed. In like manner your heirs and 
 successors shall become entitled to your privileges 
 and liable to your obligations, provided that no succes- 
 sion shall be valid until it has been recognised by 
 His Excellency the Viceroy and Governor-General in 
 Council. 
 
 " You shall conform in all matters concerning the 
 preservation of law and order and the administration 
 of justice generally within the limits of your State 
 to the instructions, issued from time to time for your 
 guidance by His Honour the Lieutenant-Governor of 
 Bengal. You will appoint such officers and pay them 
 such emoluments as, on full consideration of the cir- 
 cumstances and of such representations as you may 
 wish to make, may, from time to time appear 
 necessary to His Honour the Lieutenant-Governor 
 of Bengal, for the proper hearing of cases and 
 administration of justice in your State. 
 
 " You shall levy no tolls or duties of any kind 
 on grain, merchandise, or other articles passing into 
 or out of or through your State without the per- 
 mission of His Honour the Lieutenant-Governor 
 of Bengal. 
 
 "You shall consult the Commissioner of Chota 
 Nagpur in all important matters of administration, 
 and comply with his wishes. The settlement and the 
 collection of the land revenue, the imposition of taxes, 
 the administration of justice, arrangements connected 
 
 76
 
 The " Imperialist " and Ancient Princes 
 
 with excise, salt and opium, the concession of mining, 
 forest, and other rights, disputes arising out of any 
 such concession, and disputes in which other States 
 are concerned, shall be regarded as specially im- 
 portant matters, and in respect to them you shall 
 at all times conform to such advice as the Com- 
 missioners may give you. 
 
 " The right to catch elephants in your State is 
 granted to you as a personal concession and as 
 a matter of favour ; but this concession is liable 
 to withdrawal whenever it may seem desirable 
 either on account of abuse or for other reasons, 
 and it will not be necessarily granted to your 
 successor. 
 
 (Signed) " CURZON OF KEDLESTON, 
 
 " Viceroy and Governor-General 
 of India." 
 
 The nobleman to whom this "letter of appoint- 
 ment " is addressed is one of the minor feudatories 
 of Chota Nagpur, in East Central India, 
 gfth'er^n- and is the legitimate heir of chiefs, who 
 ex ?oiic ent " held absolutely independent sway centuries 
 before the British conquest of India. 
 There is something ludicrous as well as impo- 
 litic in Lord Curzon's supercilious "permission" to 
 this princelet "to generally administer" his own 
 State and property. The policy of interference and 
 control, set out in such detail in this document, is 
 in entire conflict with our policy in the past, and 
 sets at nought our solemn engagements. In a letter, 
 addressed by the Foreign Secretary to the officer, who 
 
 77
 
 The Failure of Lord Curzon 
 
 was sent in 1818 to settle the affairs of the Chota 
 Nagpur Chiefs, the Government of India observed : 
 " It is the decided opinion of the Governor-General 
 that any attempt to introduce the direct authority 
 of the British Government into the internal administra- 
 tion of these provinces will be altogether inexpedient, 
 and indeed not quite free from question in point of 
 equity." In the same communication, the Govern- 
 ment of India referred to the services which the 
 Chiefs had rendered to the British Government 
 by resisting the invasions of the Mahrattas, and 
 urged that they should be treated with justice and 
 liberality. In 1823 and again in 1875 sanads were 
 granted to these chiefs, fully confirming their authority 
 within their States and guaranteeing their ancient 
 independence. Nothing has occurred to justify in- 
 terference with their old-time rights, nothing except 
 the fact that there are " new conditions " as your 
 " Imperialist " calls them. Their country is being 
 opened up by railways and is known to contain 
 coal, gold, and other minerals in payable quantities. 
 As in South Africa, so in India your Balliol man 
 has his own interpretation of the principle of sic vos non 
 vobis. 
 
 The following extract from the ' ' seditious " Press 
 
 of India, discussing Lord Curzon's new departure, 
 
 shows how much needed is a strict en- 
 
 " Sapping the r - , . 
 
 Foundations forcement oi the rress Act : 
 
 O ftdence*~ " Are ancient obligations," writes the 
 
 Bengali of Calcutta, "to be scattered to the 
 
 winds in the presence of new conditions? To say that 
 
 they may be disregarded, is to lay down a most 
 
 78
 
 The " Imperialist " and Ancient Princes 
 
 dangerous doctrine, which would sap the confidence of 
 the rulers of Native States in the British Government. 
 The treaties with the great States of Hyderabad, 
 Gwalior, and Baroda were concluded under circum- 
 stances, which no longer exist. The condition of things 
 has changed ; and are the treaties with these great 
 Feudatories to be disregarded on that account ? And 
 if not, we ask why should there be one law for 
 the great Native States and another for the petty 
 States ? The policy of the Government in relation to 
 the petty States of Chota Nagpur, as embodied in this 
 Sanad, is calculated to sap the foundations of all 
 confidence in the declarations of the Government. We 
 trust, it will be abandoned. The rulers of these 
 States have not shown that they are unequal to cope 
 with the altered conditions. No charges of mal- 
 administration have been brought against them. The 
 new policy is absolutely without any justification 
 and is in violation of the recognised policy of the 
 past." 
 
 His Highness the Gaikwar of Baroda pursues 
 a related line of argument in a little book, recently 
 published, called " Famine Notes." 
 
 "This Policy r 
 
 of chap- " It is, however, a pity," he writes, " that 
 the British Government is so fond of cen- 
 tralisation and so strictly compels Native States 
 to ask for its sanction in matters where they 
 ought to be entirely free to make their own 
 arrangements, even if necessary, in concert with 
 other neighbouring Native States. If Native 
 States are to be preserved in all their vitality, it 
 is necessary to give them greater freedom, and 
 
 79
 
 The Failure of Lord Curzon 
 
 promote in them habits of self-reliance, and to stop 
 this policy of chaperoning done out of mistaken 
 kindness. Some blunders are preferable to imbecility 
 and want of timely decision. The tendency of the 
 British Authorities in their treatment of Native 
 Administrations, in periods of famine, seems at times 
 too assertive of supremacy. This proclivity tends 
 to create a gulf between the native governors and the 
 governed, and all manly interest in the pursuits of 
 good and consistent rule is discouraged." 
 
 Mr. Gribble of the Madras Civil Service, in an 
 article in East and West last May (1902), is more 
 out-spoken. 
 
 "Wno is r 
 
 Mainly to " Again," he writes," it is often said that 
 
 Blame?" , . -11 TVT -r 
 
 even in his capital the JNIative rnnce cares 
 for little beyond the luxuries and pleasures of his own 
 palace and zenana, and that he loves best to shut 
 himself up with a case of champagne and a troup of 
 dancing girls. This charge is certainly not correct as 
 a general one, but if it were true, who is mainly to 
 blame? The Prince has no chance of taking a 
 prominent share in the affairs of the world. The Pax 
 Britannica prevents him from using his sword. Even 
 in his own dominions, he is scarcely allowed a voice in 
 the Government, and is provided with a Minister, 
 sometimes against his own choice, who does the 
 governing, whilst he has little more to do than to sign 
 the decrees." 
 
 The native Prince is a mere figurehead with no 
 real authority, except when he meekly obeys the 
 dictation of the British Resident. There are many 
 highly intelligent men in England, who approve this 
 
 80
 
 The " Imperialist " and Ancient Princes 
 
 form of tutelage, and it may be admitted that there 
 was a time when it was patently necessary, 
 "Poor, sad- but there is grave political danger in its 
 continuance. There has been a plethora of 
 g usn m our newspapers over the presence 
 Bedecked." o f th e great feudatories at the Delhi Durbar. 
 It may interest some Englishmen, who have 
 not lost the sense of foresight, to learn how educated 
 India regards these high-placed noblemen. The most 
 influential native paper in Calcutta dismisses them 
 with a contemptuous reference to them as " bejewelled 
 and bedecked Princes and Chiefs poor, sad-hearted, 
 and voiceless souls playing the gilded automata 
 at the behest of the inevitable Residents and Agents." 
 Is it wise to make these influential men the object of 
 contempt or pity to their fellow-countrymen ? I fear 
 we are playing with fire in India all round, and 
 Lord Curzon, with his gewgaws and fanfare, is not 
 the man to see or understand the gravity of the 
 situation. 
 
 There is nothing more admirable and nothing more 
 politically wise than the courtesy and hospitality, 
 which the British people and aristocracy 
 Treaties, extend to Indian noblemen visiting this 
 country. This well-bred treatment makes 
 some amends for pranks such as Lord Curzon played 
 on them at Delhi. I fear many Englishmen overlook 
 what the real relations are between the great feuda- 
 tories of India and His Majesty the King-Emperor. 
 These princes are by solemn treaties very much more 
 allies than subjects, and, though their high estate has 
 been greatly curtailed, the great gentlemen, who last 
 
 8l
 
 The Failure of Lord Curzon 
 
 century represented the Sovereign, from Wellesley to 
 Dalhousie and Canning and Mayo and Dufferin, 
 never failed to preserve the recognition of this fact. 
 They did not forget that there was a time when the 
 alliance of the Nizam or the Scindia, the masters of 
 tens of thousands of troops disciplined by French and 
 Italian officers, was a matter of the utmost moment to 
 the British supremacy. Are we to forget that in 
 the grim days of the mutiny no one of these men 
 flinched ? 
 
 The manner of recognising the still semi-in- 
 dependent position of the descendants of the former 
 rulers of India has always been the ex- 
 An Almost change of State visits, accompanied by 
 
 Intolerable ... ,. . r . J 
 
 Affront. salutes oi artillery. 1 here is no point 
 on which up to now there has been a more 
 unbending punctilio. With the enormous develop- 
 ment of British authority, these compliments are the 
 sole surviving acknowledgment of a proud, even 
 glorious, past. If there were any signs of recalcitrancy 
 against our hegemony, one might understand a 
 change of policy, but the Indian princes are loyal 
 with an exuberance of loyalty the Duke of Norfolk 
 can hardly emulate. On what grounds, then, with 
 what motive did Lord Curzon make use of a great 
 festival of loyalty, held to do homage in a special 
 degree to the King-Emperor, to refuse these visits of 
 high courtesy, these saluting salvoes of well-earned 
 honour, and put an almost intolerable affront on the 
 Princes of India? I do not exaggerate the fact. The 
 language of the Native Press was loud and angry 
 in protest. It was stated that several of the great 
 
 82
 
 The " Imperialist " and Ancient Princes 
 
 feudatories tried hard by various excuses to avoid 
 going to Delhi, and subjecting themselves to such 
 a slight. The feeling was so strong that some ex- 
 planation had to be attempted. It was urged that the 
 distances were so great between the Delhi camps that 
 His Excellency might overtire himself! Why then 
 was not a representative, the Lieutenant-Governor 
 or the Senior Member of the Supreme Council, sent? 
 The extreme estimate of the area of the land occupied 
 by the Durbar at Delhi was eighty square miles, a space 
 measuring ten by eight miles. Where there is a will 
 there is a way. I was at the Delhi Durbar in 1876, 
 when the title of Empress was assumed by her 
 late Gracious Majesty, and I well remember how 
 the Earl of Lytton performed this tiring duty. Day 
 after day for a week the firing of salutes went on 
 during several hours, whilst the Viceroy received and 
 returned visits. The little State processions went by 
 every half hour, each prince receiving the full honours 
 of his rank. All the show and splendour were not 
 reserved for the glorification of one too prominent 
 individual. 
 
 I have so far avoided much reference to the Delhi 
 Durbar itself and its unpardonable waste of public and 
 private money, because, knowing the dire 
 straits of the India of the Millions, I cannot 
 trust myself. It would need the pen of a 
 Juvenal to adequately portray the degradation of 
 English manners involved. Perhaps Rudyard Kip- 
 ling may find his " Imperial " ideal in the circus 
 cavalcade headed by an English nobleman, dressed 
 " in a sky-blue court uniform " (was it mousse/me de 
 
 83
 
 The Failure of Lord Curzon 
 
 sole Pompadour with Imperial purple lace insertion ?) 
 and "splendidly mounted on a richly caparisoned 
 elephant, the decorations on whose trappings included 
 figures emblematic of Justice and Plenty." Imagine 
 the keen exhilaration it caused Lord Kitchener to 
 trundle along in such a show, and believe me that 
 these epicene apings of the follies of the Moghul 
 sovereigns in the days of their vicious and shameless 
 decadence are offensive to every intelligent and 
 cleanly minded man, European or Indian. It is a 
 big score to the Nonconformist Missionary Societies 
 in India, Wesleyan and Baptist, that their organs 
 besought their co-religionists to avoid Lord Curzon's 
 Babylonish ceremonies. 
 
 A single fact will bring home to your Lordship's 
 
 mind the real meaning of the whole pagan rout. The 
 
 last official report on the condition of the 
 
 Bankruptcy. f r , r j 
 
 state of one of the most prominent feuda- 
 tories at the Durbar declares that it is temporarily 
 bankrupt, unable to meet its debts three causes being 
 categorically assigned : (i) the recent famine, (2) the 
 expenses of the Coronation at Westminster, and (3) 
 the still heavier outlay at Delhi. There will be cruel 
 wringing of the peasants' loins the misera contribuens 
 plebs over many a broad acre in Feudatory India, 
 to pay for peacocking " Imperialism " at Delhi. Lord 
 Curzon's Finance Minister was quite gay in his last 
 budget, when announcing that last year's imports of 
 costly jewellery and precious stones exceeded by fifty- 
 nine lakhs those of the preceding year. Your modern 
 " Imperialist " is built in a truly heroic mould. 
 
 An incident of a seemingly personal kind but of 
 
 84
 
 The " Imperialist " and Ancient Princes 
 
 really much political significance has not attracted the 
 notice of the Jingo Press. There was no 
 a?outsider. room in the Viceroy's camp for the Chief 
 Justice of the High Court of Calcutta, the 
 foremost functionary of the Law in India of that Law 
 which is the mainstay of Indian loyalty. The Law 
 does not bulk very large in the eyes of the Pushful. 
 Popinjay " Imperialism " naturally preferred to sur- 
 round itself with a mob of titled sightseers and 
 millionaire foreigners. Lord Curzon forgets that the 
 Indian is a loyal subject because our courts of law 
 give him justice and protection, unless when, as I will 
 show later on, an " Imperialist " Government, in its 
 mad pursuit of revenue to waste on ambitious follies, 
 passes special legislation to oust him from these 
 supreme rights.
 
 THE FLOUTING OF EXPERIENCED 
 ADVICE A B&TISE 
 
 I HAVE pleasure in recognising that in one particular 
 
 Lord Curzon's policy has undoubtedly been well 
 
 advised. I refer to his withdrawal of the 
 
 Stultification. , . . , __ , TTT 
 
 outlying garrisons on the North- Western 
 Frontier and his evident recognition of the true 
 meaning of the military collapse, known as the Tirah 
 Expedition. But in doing the right thing he cannot 
 leave well enough alone. Having thrown overboard 
 the so-called Forward Policy and its brood of petty 
 tribal wars, he must proceed to stultify himself by 
 destroying the only effective check on " Imperialist " 
 adventure on the frontier. He has formed a new 
 sub-province, which has been withdrawn from the 
 control of the civil government of the Punjab and 
 placed in the hands of a so-called military-civilian, 
 who deals directly with the Supreme Government. 
 To a theorist, like Lord Curzon, this seems a very 
 admirable arrangement, till it is remembered that the 
 Supreme Government is and has always been an 
 "Imperialist" junta, in which the dominating War 
 Party has for a quarter of a century been trying to get 
 rid of the Punjab civil control, but under strong 
 Viceroys like Lords Lansdowne, Dufferin, and Elgin 
 
 86
 
 The Flouting of Experienced Advice 
 
 it hopelessly failed. It is a noticeable fact that up to 
 the present viceroyalty the Finance Member has 
 always been a distinguished civilian, a man of peace. 
 Three years back, however, Sir Clinton Dawkins, the 
 last civilian and now the well-known partner of Mr. 
 Pierpont Morgan, was succeeded by Sir Edward 
 Law, an ex-artillery officer, who, as your Lordship 
 may remember, glories in pouring out the revenues of 
 India on armaments in a reckless fashion " which 
 even the richest nations of Europe have not con- 
 sidered it advisable to attempt." 
 
 We have very recently been involved in one of our 
 periodic punitive or raiding excursions into Waziristan. 
 It was immediately before the first of these 
 ti Ardour" foolish excursions, engineered by the ori- 
 f FowS" 7 g inal " Liberal Imperialist," Sir Henry 
 Fowler, that the Punjab Government did 
 its last service to peace on the frontier. All the 
 civilian members of the Viceroy's Council, Sir Charles 
 Pritchard, Sir Antony Macdonnell, and Sir James 
 Westland, protested againt the Fowler War, but 
 their hands would have been nerveless but for the 
 high authority and experience of the Punjab Gov- 
 ernment. These very distinguished men, all of them 
 of over thirty years' service in India, the very flower 
 of the Indian Civil Service, put it on record in their 
 Minute of Protest that 
 
 " It is evident that the Lieutenant-Governor of the 
 Punjab does not anticipate any great difficulties if our 
 establishments are kept within our present frontier 
 line, and if, at the same time, due precautions are 
 taken to prevent the provocation of collisions with 
 
 87
 
 The Failure of Lord Curzon 
 
 the tribesmen and to moderate the ardour of those 
 of our civil and military officers who are eager for an 
 advance" 
 
 The "Imperialist" Party in Simla have not for- 
 given the fact that events proved that the then 
 Lieutenant-Governor was right and, though 
 A sturdy scot Lord Curzon has withdrawn the outlying 
 
 and " Lese . i i i 
 
 Majesty." garrisons, he has, with that strange con- 
 trariness, frequently found in clever but 
 weak men, permanently thrown out of doors the great 
 knowledge and experience of the Chief of the Punjab 
 Administration. "I, George Curzon, am much the 
 wisest person in the world on frontier affairs and am 
 only irritated by the conceited ideas of the Punjab 
 people regarding their superior experience. I'll just 
 clear them out and see that my successors are not 
 worried by civilian interference. The idea that the 
 opinion of a mere Lieutenant-Governor some indi- 
 vidual without any Foreign Office culture, should 
 have any weight in high politics is clearly intolerable." 
 To make things smoother and to show how superior 
 " Imperialist " good manners are, the whole of the 
 correspondence with the India Office on the subject 
 of the new Frontier Province was carried to a con- 
 clusion without the Lieutenant-Governor being once 
 consulted. This high official, a sturdy Scot, a long- 
 headed loyal servant of the Crown, protested vigor- 
 ously against the discourteous exclusion of himself 
 and successors from a field of action peculiarly theirs, 
 and was promptly told, with the minimum of civility, 
 that it was impossible for the Viceroy to breathe the 
 same air as such a rebel and, if he did not keep silent, 
 
 88
 
 The Flouting of Experienced Advice 
 
 it would be necessary to turn him and his Government 
 out of Simla to some minor hill station, where he 
 might in loneliness reflect on his presumption. It is 
 a wonder he was not sent down to the plains to frizzle 
 into humility. One awful crime is known in Europe 
 to breathe a word against Kaiser Wilhelm's fancies. 
 A deeper guilt is possible to India. To have a 
 doubt of Lord Curzon's wisdom is a blacker lese 
 majest^. The Lieutenant-Governor retired and some 
 very senior civilians resigned, and we have had two 
 petty frontier wars since and much waste of treasure, 
 carefully kept out of sight. 
 
 89
 
 THE PUNISHMENT OF HONEST ADVICE 
 -A WRONG TO INDIA 
 
 THE question of coolie labour in tea gardens in 
 Assam is a complex one, which it would be impossible 
 
 to discuss in detail in these pages. I need 
 A<< ^ut!" e only state here that, soon after this industry 
 
 began its prosperous career, the Indian 
 Government, under mercantile pressure, was so unwise 
 as to help it by means of a special Act, which enables 
 the planter to obtain labourers at fixed wages for a 
 term of years, under a registered indenture, the breach 
 of which is punishable by the criminal law. The 
 question of the sufficiency of these wages has recently 
 become urgent. I am again glad to recognise that 
 Lord Curzon's humanity, which is a quality of heart 
 that he possesses in a high degree, ranged him on the 
 right side in the controversy. He fully recognised 
 that, whilst the price of food had, according to the 
 statistics carefully prepared by Government, advanced 
 44 per cent., the wages of the tea coolies had been 
 stationary for a quarter of a century and are at the 
 present moment practically starvation payment. He 
 sanctioned the necessary corrective legislation, but 
 there is often a feeble " but " where Lord Curzon is 
 concerned he suggested an " amendment to the effect 
 
 90
 
 The Punishment of Honest Advice 
 
 that the operation of the wage clause of the Bill 
 should, for special reasons, namely, the present condi- 
 tion of the industry, be postponed for two years," 
 which, " in practice will mean that the enhancement 
 will not commence to take effect until the close of the 
 third year from now," in fact, till his own term of 
 office as Viceroy has expired. At best this is cruel 
 kindness. The knife must be applied to the tea 
 industry. Although originally one of the soundest 
 branches of Indian commerce and still excellently 
 managed in most parts, it is being well-nigh ruined by 
 over-production. As the result of many years of 
 prosperity, of high prices and low wages, new gardens 
 have been planted and old gardens extended with 
 utter recklessness and even now some million pounds 
 of tea are being annually added to the already exces- 
 sive output. Many gardens have been kept going 
 simply because the rate of wages is so extremely low. 
 I do not intend to elaborate this subject. I merely 
 ask attention to the fact that, in the year 1902, it was 
 
 found necessary to pass legislation, of 
 
 "Practically which, in the words of Sir Charles Rivaz, 
 
 people." K. C.S.I., Member of the Viceroy's Council, 
 
 a singularly capable man, the least likely to 
 exaggerate the facts, " the main object was to remedy 
 the abuses and malpractices, which have sprung up in 
 connection with the system of assisted emigration to 
 the labour districts of Assam." " The consequence 
 was that a horde of unlicenced and uncontrolled labour- 
 purveyors and recruiters sprang into existence who, 
 under the guise of assisting 'free emigration,' made 
 large illicit gains by inducing, under false pretences, 
 
 91 H
 
 The Failure of Lord Curzon 
 
 ignorant men and women, chiefly in the most back- 
 ward districts of Bengal and the Central Provinces, to 
 allow themselves to be conveyed to Assam, and by 
 practically selling these people to the planters for the 
 purpose of being placed under labour-contracts in that 
 province." This long sentence might be summarised 
 in three words, " State-organised slavery." 
 
 The parent of the new legislation for improving 
 wages was Sir Henry Cotton, the Chief Commissioner 
 of Assam. He gladly gave recognition to 
 BfortaSty. tne g reat improvement in tea management 
 in his province. There is no repetition of 
 the painful charges of ill-usage, including flogging, 
 made by Sir John Edgar in 1875. He found "the 
 managers of gardens humane and kindly-hearted 
 gentlemen," but the supposed exigencies of manufac- 
 ture had kept wages at a dangerously low rate. The 
 Pioneer admitted that " the strongest argument in 
 favour of his views, which is brought forward by Mr. 
 Cotton, is the mortality among Act-labourers. Though 
 a good deal better than that shown by the decennial 
 average, the death-rate in 1900 was 43*5, which is, he 
 says, not only much higher than that among the 
 general population, but compares unfavourably with 
 the death-rate among non-Act coolies, 26-2 per 
 1,000." 
 
 Sir Henry Cotton showed how the tea planters 
 were cutting their own throats, the coolies they were 
 able to obtain being " the very scum and 
 riff-raff of the labour market." No one can 
 doubt but that higher wages would buy a 
 stronger, healthier, and more effective labour force. 
 
 92
 
 The Punishment of Honest Advice 
 
 How has Lord Curzon treated Sir Henry Cotton ? 
 With his habitual weakness. The tea industry is the 
 most powerful in Bengal, and it made the Calcutta 
 journals ring with denunciations of the Chief Com- 
 missioner. This gentleman had spent nearly thirty 
 years of his service in that province, and held in it 
 the highest offices next to the Lieutenant-Governor- 
 ship, being for six years Chief Secretary and Member 
 of Council. His great abilities, as well as his 
 intimate acquaintance with Bengal, added to an 
 exceptional popularity, marked him out as the next 
 Lieutenant-Governor. Lord Curzon knighted him 
 and let him retire on the expiry of his term of 
 service. In fact, the important office of Lieutenant- 
 Governor of Bengal was kept vacant for several 
 weeks after the deeply-lamented death of Sir John 
 Woodburn, and his successor, a gentleman who had 
 not served one day in Bengal, was not appointed till 
 two days after the retirement of Sir Henry Cotton had 
 been gazetted. As in the case of Mr. Smeaton and 
 Burmah, to use the words of the Pioneer, the transac- 
 tion "is apt to raise doubts whether fair play, the 
 public interest, and the opinion of the province chiefly 
 concerned have been given due weight." Jingo 
 organs may wax eloquent over Lord Curzon's strength, 
 but we Anglo-Indians know him better. He collapsed 
 before a commercial outcry just as he climbed down 
 when the educated Indians made it clear that they 
 would not have his education "reforms " at any price. 
 He has been in the one case weak and wrong as in the 
 other he was weak and right, the want of backbone 
 being the dominating feature of both policies. It 
 
 93
 
 The Failure of Lord Curzon 
 
 only remains again to observe that it is a bad, bad 
 thing, but a grievous fact that only a very rare official 
 in India can hope for high promotion, unless he is 
 blessed with official blindness in fact, unless he is a 
 " safe man " without zeal and without convictions.
 
 THE UPROOTING OF HONEST DEALING 
 A WRONG TO ENGLAND 
 
 HAVING done the wrong thing on both the western 
 and eastern frontiers, in the Punjab and in Assam, 
 one might hope that a kindly fate 
 impossible in would save Lord Curzon from error in 
 country. Southern India. The virus of "Im- 
 perialism " does not so readily let its victim 
 rest. In Madras the Viceroy has placed upon the 
 statute book an absolutely unjust Water Cess Act, 
 which has deeply offended that province and which 
 would be impossible in any free country. When 
 the new law was still a Bill under discussion in 
 the Legislative Council, the Hon. Mr. G. Ven- 
 cataratnam made the following remarks, which suffice 
 to shortly introduce the facts : 
 
 " Under the existing law," he said, " Government 
 
 stands only in the position of an Irrigation Company. 
 
 Government supplies water for irrigation 
 
 A Reaiiy only to those who apply for it. Water is 
 
 Honest ill i i 11 
 
 system. sold by the acre irrigated, and the only 
 
 principle recognised for charging differential 
 
 rates is, that the value of lands of different classes 
 
 would be affected in different degrees, according as 
 
 they are capable or not of bearing sugar-cane, rice, 
 
 95
 
 The Failure of Lord Curzon 
 
 garden stuffs, and the more valuable kinds of crops 
 generally. If self-interest induced the ryot to purchase 
 water, he purchased it ; otherwise not. As stated 
 by the Hon. Mr. Grose at the Meeting of this Council, 
 on the 22nd January, 1895, 'the rate of the water- 
 cess is determined on the principle that a fair 
 commercial value should be put on all water supplied.' 
 This is the system which has been in force till now in 
 the Godavery and Kistna Deltas." In other words, in 
 the pre-Curzon era Government dealt absolutely 
 honestly with its subjects and tenants. Such a 
 state of things was clearly offensive to the "Im- 
 perialist " conscience. 
 
 " Under the existing law, the supplier of water 
 cannot fix the rates too high, for the demand falls 
 
 as the price rises. In other words, the 
 "Beneficent maximum gross income is obtained by 
 profitable." making rates low enough to develop 
 
 a good volume of traffic. Accordingly, 
 Sir Charles Wood " (Secretary of State for India 
 in the Ministries of the great Liberal premiers, Lords 
 Aberdeen, Palmerston, and Russell), " laid down as one 
 of the cardinal principles of policy 'that the water 
 rate should be so adjusted that even the land which 
 benefits least by the application of water will yield 
 to the cultivator an increased profit fully sufficient 
 to enable him to pay it.' One of the great reasons 
 for the extensive use of canal irrigation in this country 
 has been its cheapness, and the manner in which the 
 price of the water has been adjusted to the crops 
 grown. Under a system of voluntary sale, the 
 interests of the supplier and of the purchasers of water 
 
 96
 
 The Uprooting of Honest Dealing 
 
 are identical. The system has produced excellent 
 results in practical working and the Hon. Mr. Alfred 
 Deakin truly says that 'taking all things into con- 
 sideration, it may be questioned if there is a more 
 beneficent or more profitable public work in the world ' 
 than the Godavery Irrigation System." 
 
 This was certainly a condition of affairs that most 
 
 men would hesitate about setting out to uproot. That 
 
 was not the view that commended itself 
 
 Dismantling. . _ . . , 
 
 to our "restless upsetter of things long 
 established." It was, however, necessary to find a 
 fulcrum for the crowbar of the political dismantler. 
 It was, therefore, discovered that there was a certain 
 amount of leakage and percolation in the irrigation 
 system, and that lands, which did not pay cess gained 
 some advantage from the moisture. On the other 
 hand, it is alleged that ill-made channels often 
 water-logged lands that were low lying and 
 even flooded them in the rainy season. As usual 
 Government initiated new legislation, which is 
 described as follows by Mr. G. Vencataratnam : 
 " The old system was very simple in practice and 
 
 easily understood. Now we are asked to 
 
 FearsOurOwn * ... . 
 
 courts of abandon this self-acting system m favour 
 
 Justice. f 1*1 r i 
 
 of one, which removes us from the region 
 of fact into that of speculation. The first change 
 proposed is, that Government shall be empowered 
 to levy any water-rate it thinks fit (!), under such 
 rules as it may prescribe, alter or amend from time 
 to time, whenever water, by direct or indirect flow 
 or by percolation or drainage, from any river, stream, 
 channel, tank, or work belonging to, or constructed by 
 
 97
 
 The Failure of Lord Curzon 
 
 Government, from or through adjoining lands, or 
 otherwise, irrigates any land under cultivation and 
 such irrigation is beneficial to and sufficient for 
 the requirements of the crop on such land. The 
 second change is, that the opinion of the Collector 
 shall be final on the point whether such irrigation 
 is beneficial to and sufficient for the requirements 
 of the crop ; that he shall be the sole interpreter of 
 the rules under which he professes to act (!!) ; and 
 that his inquiry shall not be a judicial proceeding. 
 The third change is, that the Civil Courts shall 
 be divested of jurisdiction (!!!) to question any 
 assessment made by the Collector under the Act." 
 Now that is a pretty dish to set before an unrepre- 
 sented taxpayer. It is manifest that the third of these 
 provisions is such that none but a reactionary Viceroy 
 would sanction. If a London Water Company sug- 
 gested such a policy even the Times might be trusted 
 to say that it was playing the game rather low down. 
 
 "The option of refusing irrigation has been the 
 
 only safeguard open to the cultivator against any 
 
 injustice or inequality in the imposition 
 
 "High Prices" of water-rates which rates it is left to the 
 
 and "Ex- 1-1 
 
 tortion." supplier of water to fix at his pleasure. 
 When you give power to the supplier of 
 water to charge any rate on any land according to his 
 own view of the benefit caused by such water, without 
 regard to the volition of the cultivator, it may be 
 imagined what the consequences of such a drastic 
 change will be. The supplier can enforce his own rates. 
 It will no longer be to his interest to get cultivators 
 to take water for irrigating a great many acres, but to 
 
 98
 
 The Uprooting of Honest Dealing 
 
 get a maximum price for a few acres. His policy will 
 be one of high prices rather than large sales. You 
 will place the cultivators absolutely at the mercy of 
 the supplier. Water will no longer be an article, 
 which the cultivator may or may not purchase, 
 according as it benefits his land or not. In short, 
 the price paid for water will be converted into a tax 
 or forced contribution, just like income-tax. Every 
 land-holder who has the misfortune of owning land 
 in the vicinity of an irrigation channel or of a drain 
 natural or artificial will be completely at the mercy 
 of the village officers, Revenue Inspectors, and Delta 
 Superintendents, who will have large opportunities 
 for extortion," and no court of justice can do him 
 justice. A system, that has admittedly been a 
 blessing, whilst conducted on the free contract 
 principle, is now viewed with dread by a numerous 
 body of land-holders, who can obtain no redress 
 from the courts of law. There is nothing more 
 urgently needed than a scientific water supply in a 
 country so often stricken by drought as India 
 is, but "Imperialist" wisdom, lost in dreams of 
 "broadening the basis of taxation," makes irrigation 
 hateful to the very persons, who ought to be most 
 interested in its success, as a preliminary to its 
 extension. 
 
 The important fact is that there is no limit to 
 
 the encroachments of the Government tax- 
 me Encroach- gatherer on the rights of native pro- 
 Tax-Gatnerer. prietors. The Collector discovers that field 
 
 B derives some moisture from an irrigated 
 
 O 
 
 neighbour, field A, and promptly demands water-rate 
 
 99
 
 The Failure of Lord Curzon 
 
 from its owner, who naturally, as he has to pay for 
 it, forthwith takes a full supply. Presto, there is 
 a wider development. The observant and eager 
 official is quite sure that fields C, D, and E, which, 
 with A, bound field B, are also beneficiaries by 
 percolation and they also are subjected to water 
 taxation, and there is no remedy for the plundered 
 proprietor in the courts of law. The unctuously 
 upright " Imperialist " is no doubt horrified when 
 the landlords of Madras smile sadly at the idea that the 
 administration of Lord Curzon is an incarnation of 
 justice. I would even venture to think that there 
 is something slightly incongruous between their 
 exclusion from the courts of law and the admirable 
 Message of His Majesty the King-Emperor at 
 the Delhi Durbar: "'To all my subjects throughout 
 India I renew the assurance of my regard for their 
 liberties and of my respect for their rights." 
 
 I may mention that there was an enhancement 
 of 25 per cent, in the water cess in Madras in 1894, 
 
 followed by some relinquishments of water 
 compulsion, agreements by the peasantry. Since then 
 
 there has been a persistent attempt to 
 introduce compulsion, a proceeding, which, if straight- 
 forward, might arouse attention. The end has been 
 arrived at by a manoeuvre, a subterfuge, which may 
 commend itself to " Imperialists," but is abhorrent 
 to the most elementary ideas of fair play. I should 
 mention that before the water cess was increased 
 in 1894, irrigation works in Madras had long been 
 a first-class financial success, paying often 12 per 
 cent, interest. The money derived from the enhanced 
 
 100
 
 The Uprooting of Honest Dealing 
 
 cess was needed not for the extension of irrigation 
 in Southern India but for " Imperialist" outlay on 
 the Afghan frontier, probably to start a village-burning 
 foray into Waziristan. Your Lordship will remember 
 that Sir Henry Fowler became Secretary of State 
 for India on the 3rd March, 1894, and a very perfect 
 type of the new-fangled Liberal he was. An old- 
 fashioned Liberal may well ask whether the absence 
 of just dealing, which the above-narrated proceedings 
 nakedly display, is not a wrong to England as well 
 as to India, a grievous wrong to our national 
 character. 
 
 IOT
 
 THE UPROOTING OF A PEASANT PRO- 
 PRIE TARY RE A CTIONAR Y RECK- 
 LESSNESS 
 
 A STILL more unjustifiable inroad on the rights 
 of native property in Bombay has signalised the 
 Viceroyalty of Lord Curzon. About 
 eighteen months ago he gave his assent 
 
 the English to a new Amending Act, which in a couple 
 
 Freeholder. ... , . 
 
 of sections has destroyed an ancient 
 Peasant Proprietary, the very thing we are seek- 
 ing to set up in Ireland. When the Bombay 
 Presidency passed into our hands in 1817 at the 
 end of the Mahratta War, a British Commissioner, 
 the Hon. Mountstuart Elphinstone, a scion of 
 a noble Scotch family, was appointed to report on 
 the tenures in the conquered territories. His most 
 important conclusion is given in these words: "A 
 large portion of the farmers are the proprietors of 
 their estates, subject to the payment of a fixed 
 land-tax to Government." The Collector of Poona 
 also reported that the " Bombay cultivator is in no 
 way inferior in point of tenure to the holder of the 
 most undisputed freehold estate in England." The 
 Collector of Ahmadnagar wrote at the same time 
 that this tenure " has existed in this part of India 
 from time immemorial, and when I have asked 
 
 102
 
 The Uprooting of a Peasant Proprietary 
 
 about the period of its establishment, I have been told 
 I might as well inquire when the soil was made." 
 Mr. Commissioner Chaplin in 1822 declared that 
 the farmer " is, together with his heirs, entitled to 
 hold his tenure by sale, gift, or mortgage, and, without 
 previously obtaining the permission of the Govern- 
 ment." We took over from the native rulers a 
 yeomanry, who owned the fields they tilled and whose 
 sturdiness was proved on a hundred battle-fields by 
 the hardy soldiers, whom the conquering Peshwas 
 led all over India. We now govern one of the most 
 inert and famine-stricken populations in the world. 
 It has been left to Lord Curzon, after nearly a 
 century, during which their rights were never 
 questioned, to destroy their immemorial position as 
 freeholders. 
 
 Our first act was to disregard the fixed nature 
 of the land-tax, although twenty years before we had 
 introduced this very fixedness of revenue 
 Destruction of from land into Bengal by the great and 
 ^Right? 8 w i se l aw - known as the Permanent Settle- 
 ment. The results, the ruinous results in 
 Bombay of subsequent enhancements have been 
 described in preceding pages. The heritable and 
 transferable rights of the Bombay farmers were, how- 
 ever, left to them and fully recognised by the legisla- 
 ture. As late as 1879 the Bombay Land Revenue 
 Code (Bombay Act V. of 1879), declared in section 
 73 that " the right of occupancy shall be deemed an 
 heritable and transferable property." Act VI. of 1901 
 has destroyed both rights, a new section amending the 
 earlier law laying it down that " the occupancy or 
 
 103
 
 The Failure of Lord Curzon 
 
 interest of the occupant in the land shall not be 
 transferable without the previous sanction of the 
 Collector." The land revenue official can exclude 
 from succession a son, a purchaser, or a creditor, with- 
 out assigning any reason and without his decision 
 being called in question by a court of law. As in 
 Madras, so in Bombay Lord Curzon seems to doubt 
 the legality as well as the justice of his proceedings, 
 and forearms himself by slamming the doors of the law 
 courts in the face of the injured native proprietor. 
 
 When this extraordinary measure of confiscation 
 was being finally passed, a protest of the most sig- 
 nificant kind was made. " Then followed," 
 writes a native journal, " a scene, which 
 
 against con- w ju b e memorable in the annals of the 
 
 ncation. 
 
 Legislative Council of Bombay. On the 
 result of the voting on the motion being declared, Mr. 
 Mehta, Sir Bhalchandra Krishna, Messrs. Parekh, 
 Khan, and Gohkale left the Council Hall before the 
 Bill was read a second and a third time and passed. 
 This is the most emphatic protest which the non- 
 official members could have entered against the 
 extraordinary course of legislation, upon which the 
 Bombay Government is embarked." Your Lordship 
 will, no doubt, notice the manner in which this 
 plundering legislation was driven through the Council 
 at a single sitting, the Bill being read a second and a 
 third time almost without taking breath. How Mr. 
 Balfour must yearn for such rules of procedure! It is 
 to the credit of the native members of the Council 
 that they declined to take part in the unseemly 
 performance. 
 
 104
 
 The Uprooting of a Peasant Proprietary 
 
 The justification for these extreme measures is 
 
 said to be to prevent the farms being mortgaged to 
 
 money-lenders, who foreclose and become 
 
 me people proprietors of the land. Time alone can 
 
 Driven to the , f , . ... 
 
 Money-lender, prove how far this policy is a wise one. 
 
 Native politicians hold that it is the last 
 step in the ruin of the peasantry. The overwhelming 
 taxation the 55 per cent, income-tax has for half a 
 century driven the people to the money-lenders. It 
 will be interesting to observe the result of cutting 
 off this source of financial supply. 
 
 Still after making every allowance for the necessity 
 of protecting the State-beggared farmers from the 
 harpies of usury it may well be questioned whether 
 any one but a past master in reactionary recklessness 
 would attempt to arrive at this excellent object by 
 a policy of wholesale uncompensated confiscation. 
 It ought to be fairly easy to formulate legislation 
 intended to restrict the alienation of land to money- 
 lenders, but to your " Imperialist" the Indian, like the 
 Kaffir, is merely a human machine, without rights, 
 whom God has created to pay taxes, to work in gold 
 mines, and generally to make himself financially 
 useful to the Pushful. 
 
 I could easily add to the list of matters, in which 
 Lord Curzon has hopelessly failed to do his duty. 
 
 His scamping of the coolie question in 
 of Assam is equalled by his neglect to deal 
 
 w ^ t ^ le P amnj l question of intoxicants, 
 
 liquor and drugs, in that Province and 
 throughout India. In Assam English tea planters 
 have for years been on their knees begging Govern- 
 
 105
 
 The Failure of Lord Curzon 
 
 ment to remove or even supervise the excise system 
 that is poisoning their labourers. The revenue from 
 liquor alone in Assam has increased by 250 per cent, 
 in the past ten years, The day a tea garden is opened 
 a Christian Government sets up a drink shop at its 
 gate, the liquor being made at a Government 
 distillery and found on analysis to contain seven 
 times more fusel oil than the worst unrectified 
 Scotch whiskey. And so it is all over the Empire. 
 The total excise revenue has risen from ,1,755,000 in 
 *&75 to ,4,239,000 in 1901. It would be possible 
 to maintain an entire army corps in Kabul for six 
 months with the increased annual revenue, and this 
 knowledge is joy to the " Imperialist " conscience. 
 An English M.P. some years ago counted 126 men 
 and women dead drunk on opium in a single den 
 in Lucknow. He was a Nonconformist and rather 
 horrified. The unreasonable man might have foreseen 
 that the proceeds of that shop in one year probably 
 paid for the caparisoning of a dozen State elephants at 
 the Delhi Durbar. For, of such things is the 
 Kingdom, the Heaven, of the " Imperialist." 
 
 I am, 
 Your Lordship's very humble servant, 
 
 TWENTY-EIGHT YEARS IN INDIA. 
 
 UNWIN BROTHERS, LIMITED, PRINTERS, WOKI.NG AND LONDON. 
 1 06
 
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