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other directions, where Imperial interests are not concerned; and there every sagacious Minister will be sure to make them, sometimes perhaps against his better judgment and so everybody is kept in good humour, and India is milked for the sustenance of England. What Mr Laing says about the day being past "in which England can consider India as a milch cow, which to draw for a little here and a little there in order to round an English budget, or to ease an English estimate," looks very well in a printed speech. Past, indeed! It appears to us to have just begun. The Council of India, under the new military system, can never protect the revenues of India as the East India Company did under the old. It is not their fault. It is the tendency of the system to cause them to be overborne, and to swamp India, as we have said, with a flood of Imperial selfishness. Nothing can be more significant than this matter of the depôts. It is only part of the system that is, and is to be. In vain may Indian commissions report and recommend; in vain may Indian finance-ministers make speeches pregnant in fact and powerful in argument; in vain may Indian Governments, with the same force of logic and of rhetoric, write weighty despatches to the Secretary of State, pointing out the urgent necessity of economy in England as well as in India. So long as a Government, existing by the sufferance of a parliamentary majority, has the means of making things pleasant at home by imposing unjust burdens upon India, those burdens will be imposed, and the military expenditure of the Indian Government will never be brought within reasonable bounds.

Our time and space are both at an end. We wish that we could look hopefully into the future of the Indian service. We can no longer write of the Indian army; that we must regard as dead and buried. But work must still be done in India; and one great question is, Whether

VOL. XC.-NO. DXLIX.

the workmen will ever be what they were before? A great deal depends upon first appointments. People may condemn the so-called "nepotism" of the Court of Directors of the East India Company, but whether the youths whom they sent out were selected on public or on private grounds, they developed in time the right stuff, and might have done honour to any patrons in the world. This question of first appointments is now stated to be under the consideration of her Majesty's Government. At present all appointments to the British army are, of course, made at the Horse Guards, and, we believe, only by purchase. We should conceive it to be a mere matter of course that this would continue to be the normal state of things, if it were not that something of a parliamentary pledge was given, when the East India Company was abolished, that a certain share of Indian patronage should be given to the children of Indian officers. Whether any provision has been made, or is likely to be made, for carrying out this promise under the new system, we do not at present know; but however statesmen of a certain class may sneer at Indian traditions, and desire to see them obliterated, we know nothing of more importance to the permanence of our rule in India than that they should be maintained. As long as they are maintained-as long as the men to whom we must trust to do our work in India have a hereditary and abiding interest in the country and in the people-it will be done well; but the accidents of party and place— the waifs and strays of ministerial or courtly patronage-are not likely to do it well. It is because we do not expect again to see upon the stage such men as our Lawrences, Outrams, and Nicholsons that we tremble for the future of India. Brave and excellent men may go out to India-as, in past times, some of our bravest and best have gone out,

"To shed a dozen drops of blood, And straight rise up a lord"but they will go only as tourists

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go, for a "ramble or a "scamper," and stay if something turns up. They will not, as the Company's officers did of old, take root in the soil. It is not to be disguised that India is not a desirable place of residence. Life in India, especially military life, is full of suffering, privation, and danger. Men are reconciled to it only by the consideration that Indian service is their profession, and that, whether they like it or not, they must adhere to it, or be cast desolate and unprovided for upon the world. The recent mutiny in India has not rendered it a more desirable place than it was before; and we scarcely think that men drawn from the classes which at present recruit the commissioned ranks of the royal army will turn their thoughts from general service to a life of continual exile in the East. If anything were done -and perhaps something may be done to maintain the traditions of Indian service of which we have spoken above, we should still have some hope of the great Staff corps

being kept up to the present point of efficiency, and of the real, substantial work of India being well done as in the old time. But will not the selfishness which makes India pay for English reserves, make India pay also the wages of servants selected by the Imperial authorities?

These are the two great dangers, or rather the one great danger-Imperial Usurpation, which threatens the Future of India. Of course, it was to have been expected as a necessary result of the extermination of the East India Company. We do not think that we have exaggerated the evil, but we heartily hope that we have. We are not of the number of those who

"Would rather that the Dean should die, Than their prediction prove a lie." We cordially hope that he may live in undiminished vigour and prosperity for many a year, and many a long century, in spite of the forebodings which at present sit so heavily upon us.

THE EPIC OF THE BUDGET.

THE Budget has passed, and the session is practically at an end. We can sum up the result in a single sentence. As patriots, hardly anybody is satisfied; as partisans, nearly everybody is pleased. The finance and statesmanship of the session are disliked even by the supporters of the Ministry, and are not to be justified even if they should prove to be successful. On the other hand, the Tories may as heartily rejoice in their momentary defeat as the Whigs do in their unexpected victory.

Victory would have been embarrassing to the Tories. Although they form the strongest party in the state, and could sustain a government much stronger than the present one, still, if they desire permanence of power, it is their interest to wait until their forces are further increased, and until their opponents are further reduced. Their star is in the ascendant, and their future is certain. It is better not to precipitate an event which cannot be long delayed, and which must instal them in office with irresistible power. This policy is rendered particularly desirable by a variety of circumstances, of which we shall mention only two. The first is, that the Whigs, from a long enjoyment of the spoils of office, cannot bear to be deprived of what they regard as their perquisite, and conduct their opposition with unusual virulence. By foul means, if not by fair, by dodges, by calumnies, by unnatural coalitions, they will move heaven and earth to get back to their places. We know of few things more disgraceful than the manner in which the opposition to Lord Derby's first and second administrations was carried on. We do not blame the Whigs for it as if it were all owing to Whiggism-it is much more due to officialism. We dare say that the Tories, though they have never been so fond of

scandal as the Whigs, might, after having been long habituated to office under Lord Liverpool, have treated their rivals in somewhat of the same spirit at the period of the Reform Bill, if their ranks had not been effectually broken by the extension of the franchise. Unless the power of the Whigs is in like manner dispersed, the Tories on reaching the Treasury benches must face not a fair opposition, but a conspiring faction. That the Whig ranks have little cohesion, and must in the course of nature be so dispersed, cannot admit of a doubt. We anticipate a great triumph for our party, and much of it will be due to the shortsighted policy of the Whigs, which taught them to grasp too eagerly at office, and to grudge their rivals a fair trial. Their greed rendered them repulsive to the country, and it also deprived them of that healthy discipline of opposition in which they might have recruited their strength and closed their ranks. Their position now is such that they must speedily fall to pieces, and great will be their destruction. Any attempt to hasten that destruction will give them a rallying point in a sense of danger. The case cannot be better put than in an illustration suggested by one of the most sagacious of the Tory leaders. He is reported to have said that the Tory Opposition is now as it were the heir to a decrepid old grandfather, who must soon die and leave the heir in undisputed possession. But if, not content to wait, the young man should murder the old one, he would certainly not improve his prospects.

The other circumstance to which we referred is connected with the foregoing. Considering the tactics of the party who style themselves Liberal, it would not have been pleasant for the Tories to accept of office as the result of a victory which, however fairly won, the

vituperative genius of the Whigs would have stigmatised as mercenary. Lord John Russell's characteristic clap-trap declaring that it were better for ten Ministries to perish than for one to be guilty of a corrupt compact with Irish members, and Lord Palmerston's more polished insinuations against the integrity of the Opposition, clearly enough indicate what we should have to expect had the Government that night been in a minority. It is really curious to see with what facility the so-called Liberal party impute the most sordid motives, and the most immoral conduct, to their adversaries. They themselves are immaculate, they alone have. honour, they alone have principles. Not wishing to judge them harshly, we may grant that they are not insincere in bringing false charges of corruption against Conservatives. They make the false charges merely in that blindness of self-conceit which to them, as a party, is the most fatal of delusions. They see that Toryism is winning, but they do not understand it; they are living in a fool's paradise of confidence in themselves, and, like old women who have not sense enough to account by natural causes for a given result, they fly to the hypothesis of witchcraft and devilry. The success of the Tories is due to Satanic influence; they have a compact with the Evil One; they have sold themselves for power. Mr Disraeli especially is in constant communication with the Prince of Darkness. These ridiculous accusations, we repeat, are the sure signs of decrepitude and senility. But we must also repeat that they are most difficult to encounter, and that, like all superstitions, they have a wonderful tenacity. It would have been a godsend to the Whigs if they had been ejected from office through the exertions of Father Daly. How the penny papers would have rung the changes upon Irish brass! How the hustings would have been edified with sermons on Tory corruption! It

would be demonstrated, if not in a very clear, yet in a very pungent manner, that the Tories should have ceased their opposition to the paperduties the moment that they heard of the determination of the Irish members to support them. It was criminal enough in them to have so much sympathy with Ireland as to subsidise the Galway line of packets. It would be doubly criminal in them to reap the natural reward of their sympathy in the votes of Irish representatives. It is so difficult to deal with such calumnious charges, and the Whigs are so unscrupulous in their accusations, that it is a positive relief for us to know that our party is not encumbered with a victory which those who excel in slander could misrepresent.

These are party considerations, to which we refer chiefly because they explain much that may appear anomalous in the debates upon the Budget. For example, nothing can be more amusing than the contradictory statements of the Opposition as to the question, Whether there is or is not a surplus. In reality there is no surplus. It is only by a juggle of words that the figures which Mr Gladstone read off at the end of his financial statement could be so denominated. Yet whereas the rank-and-file of the Tory party denied the existence of a surplus, the leaders chose to admit it. The Chancellor of the Exchequer made a great deal out of this contradiction, and pretended to discover that the Opposition were at loggerheads. The explanation of the mystery must be clear to all except those Whigs who, judging others by themselves, cannot imagine that any body of gentlemen should be so insane as not to desire office. For the reasons we have stated, the Tory leaders were unfeignedly anxious to defer to next session their advent to power. They were content that the Government of Lord Palmerston should remain undisturbed, and desired only to see Mr Gladstone out of it; or if that were too much, to have his Budget recti

fied. But this being their object, it was impossible for them to deny the surplus, for such a denial would have implied a vote of no confidence, and involved a change of Ministry. The rank-and-file of the party might deny it, for they were supposed to be speaking each merely his individual sentiments. If the leaders denied it, they committed their party to a life-and-death struggle with the Ministry. To those who can look upon politics as a game, nothing can be more interesting than the situation. It is a fine intellectual study. The game was played on both sides with masterly skill. The Whigs carried the day in the House of Commons. But we believe that their success has been dearly bought, for they have lost ground in the country.

Although we may appear to waste time in slaying the slain, and showing for the thousandth time the fallacy of the surplus, yet, for the sake of what follows, we must, in a few sentences, remind our readers of the facts. Now the first objection to the surplus is that, be it what it may, it is produced by the simple process of adding to the National Debt. The deficit on last year was no less than £2,560,000. Mr Gladstone met that enormous deficiency by reducing the balance in the Exchequer to £1,500,000, by absorbing to the extent of £600,000 the fund devoted to loans on public works, and by the issue of Exchequer bonds, amounting, after certain deductions, to £460,000. Putting the two former items together, we may say roundly that he reduced the balances in the Exchequer £2,100,000, and that he added to the debt of the country £460,000. But he constructed his new Budget without any reference to this old one. He had a surplus the year before last, and he carried that surplus to the credit of last year. With all his contrivances he had a deficit last year, and instead of carrying it to the debit of the present year, he charged it to the permanent debt of the country. Well might Mr Hub

bard say, that such conduct is characteristic of a spendthrift, who, whenever he has a surplus, spends it, and whenever he has a deficit pays it out of capital. Mr Gladstone's defence is that he only did what was usual. That is an odd defence for a man to make who professes to be the great reformer of finance. He will spend his surplus and he will pay his deficit out of capital because it is the custom. We deny, however, that there is any fair precedent for the course which he has adopted. There is no instance of a Chancellor of the Exchequer postponing a debt created by his own tampering with the revenue, and postponing it for the purpose of making further reductions in the revenue. The only case in point which Mr Gladstone could fix upon was that of Sir George Lewis, who at the conclusion of the Russian war manipulated the Budget of 1857, proposing in it a large reduction of taxation, without reference to the considerable deficit of the previous year. It is not a case in point, however. That was a deficit produced, not by a failure of revenue, but by an extraordinary war expenditure. All our National Debt is made up of war expenses. But the principle is new to us that a deficit in the revenue of one year is to be added to the National Debt at the time when the revenue of the following year is equal to the discharge of it.

Nor is it only on this ground that the reduction of the paper-duties was to be regarded as an act of financial profligacy. Mr Gladstone counts upon receiving £750,000 as part of the Chinese indemnity. He also counts upon not having to pay another £750,000, being that part of the Chinese vote of last year, which has not yet been called for, and being a sum quite separate from the £1,000,000, voted in the present year for the Chinese war. In point of fact, that £750,000 voted, but not expended, last year, does not show at all in the estimates of the current session. Here, then, in

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