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THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT OF INDIA.
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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the Chief Commissioner should le a permanent officer of tie highest rank of departmental Ministers , with an increase of salary corresponding to his increase of rank and responsibility . It will be observed that these changes would very materially elevate two departments which have hitherto been
thoroughly subordinate to the Treasury , especially one . The Treasury has of late years become so completely a political department , that it cannot conveniently be expected to fulfil purely ministerial or accounting duties ; and the proposed Board of Audit , in its new form , has become a decided ' -want of the day . '
Two other changes recommended hj the Committee constitute the most important items in their xeally striking plan . They propose that the Board of Audit , as reconstructed , should no longer communicate with . Parliament through the Treasury , but should do so direct . They also propose that a select Committee should be annually appointed by the Speaker ; and that before that committee the accounts for the past year should be laid .
"We have now sketched the general plan p roposed by the Select Committee ; we leave it for a week under the consideration of our readers ; perhaps they may anticipate us in discovering the magnitude of the proposed Beform Bill . We shall hereafter endeavour to show how great would be the political advantages both in an economical and a political sense .
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In Paris they are preparing for a further downfal of the spurious commerce that has been grafted on the mewiy-developed high commerce of ^ France . Ernst week we saw the Societe de Credit Mobilier recalling its truant directors , and forbidding them to retire ; and notwithstanding his ' notarial act , ' M . Ahj > b , £ has been denied a retreat from his responsibilities . How often it happens that men plunge into positions from which they cannot draw back ! The recruit hears splendid accounts of adventure in . the Eastern seas ; he
THE ROMANCE O ¥ CREDIT . hoit w . mik £ s , kxbjef director op the caisse ¦ Ofe ^ EAtE DEB CHEMINS » B FER , TENDERED HIS RESIGNATION , AND HOT IT WAS NOT ACCEPTED .
joins a free roving ship ; he does procure pistols , daggers , earrings , and other trinkets , but rinds a good allowance of blows and no small risk to life , and he wishes to retreat . No such thing ; desertion is not allowed . The captain , indeed , may resign his post ; but the threat to do so , instead of creating anger in the crew , sometimes creates alarm
Amongst the preparations for coming events , nothing has been more significant , if it can be clearly interpreted 3 than the remarkable dramatic scene at the extraordinary meeting of shareholders of the Caisse Generale des Chemins de Fer , on the 10 th of September , which we find fully reported in the Courrier de Paris of the 15 th .
This company was originally established for five objects : first , the publication of the Journal des Chetnins de Ifkr j and you would think from its title that it was only a newspaper company , or at most a railway company ; but it is by no means limited to that object . Its second object is the purchase , sale , and exchange of securities , public or private , Erench or foreign , the dealing in the shares of jointstock companies , and in the operations of credit ; also subscription to the same objects , agency iu loans for public works , &c . In other words , all the operations of banking . The society started with a capital of 48 O , 00 OZ ., in shares of 20 ? . each .
. Now it is to be presumed that this company has not been getting on so Bplendidly as it used , and through its leader it has been subjected to divers disagreeable remarks . Amongst others , a M . Jaoqitot , who has been , driving a brisk trade in defamation under the alias of ' Eotg&ne de Miiiecourt , ' had shown tip M . Mibks in rather a heightened literary photograph of that eminent
financier . This was very daring , for M . MiEiis . although not . so big a man as Attguste Thukneyssen , the director of the Credit Mobilier , who has lately been made bankrupt by the absconding of his nephew with a default oi GOOjOOOZ . —although not absolufcelya Perkibe in the magnitude of his property and operations—belongs essentially to the class of * Associated Capitalists . ' The libel , however , seems to havo touched the heart of Miniis .
At nil events , he astonished the shareholders in the Caisso General © des Chemins do Fer by announcing his resignation ; and the extraordinary mooting was summoned to accept that abdication . His speech ia a perfect model of eloquence for the purpose . It is Hudson made poetical ; David WAnuiNGh-ToN" with an . infusion of sentiment ; Hugh
The Local Government Of India.
in March , last that Mr . Smith first heard from the Governor of Bengal that the village police are in a permanent state of starvation —that they are generally thieves and robbers , or leagued with robbers and thieves , that when any one is spoiled in a village , the first person suspected is the watchman , and that the simultaneous arrest of all the policemen in the province might do more to prevent plunder and pilfering than any other measure ? These faets were known years ago ;
but it -was no part of the official scheme to deal with , practical grievances , which , however , have opened an abyss between us and millions of the natives of India— -we say millions , because it is false to represent the entire region as similarly maladministered . The Akbarry and Ferris systems—the one promoting drunkenness , the other discouraging social intercourse—have been left untouched by the Right Honourable Veknon-. He has approved of fresh changes in the
everzemindar . Our successive ' settlements' have been repeatedly xmBettled , and the last is by many regarded as the most inefficient . "We have neglected the army and the people , and when a tremendous ^ conflict arises in the heart of our Indian Empire , to search in all directions for the cause ; and we find that , although the Board of Control has had repeated warnings , and the power to act , it has done nothing but vindicate its prerogative of arTogance , neglect , and incapacity .
shifting tenure of land , to vex the ryot and destroy his confidence ; he has stimulated the feverish impotence of the missionaries , and he has passed over , unrepr « hended , an official proclamation in which the natives of India nave been insulted as ' the heathen . ' Now , this must never occur again . Let Bangalore preachers take pariahs into their pay , but do not give them the sanction of our example for publishing in India the contempt of the English for the Indian creeds . These are
points of local administration which it might be worth the while even of a President of the Board of Control to study . They may appear insignificant , like the affair of the cartridges ; but when a Roman soldier killed a cat at Alexandria , and the multitude tore him to pieces , the Roman Government dared not punish the murderers , for it knew that a spring had been touched which might explode the country under the feet of its conquerors . It ia necessary to reiterate the truth that ,
THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT OF INDIA .. The incubus of India is the Board of Control . It has at length reduced tbe Court of Directors to a state of utter inefficiency and humiliation . It is a signal mistake to suppose that the Directors can initiate the Blightest legislative , financial , political , or military innovation upon their own responsibility , lieadeuhall-street is the back-slum of Cannon-row . The President of the Board of Control exercises an absolute veto upon the measures of the Court , but the Court has no
power over the measures of the Board . Suppose Mr . Veiinon Smith to have determined , with the consent of his colleagues , upon any plan of reform , wild or weak , inefficient or impossible , he forces ifc upon the East India Company , and the Company cannot avoid sanctioning it , knowing it to be impossible , inefficient , weak , or wild . It is not long , -we believe , since it could justly be said of the Court of Directors that nowhere in the
world could be found twenty-four men more uniformly armed with the resources of knowledge and statesmanship than the gentlemen round the East India Table . But the main objection to the perpetuation of the Companyis , that we have paralyzed it , and substituted something worse in its place . Its resuscitation is now impracticable . The tfcangeof 1854 put a finishing stroke to its degradation , and ratified the asceirdancv of tWo
Board of Control . At the head of that Board « ja subaltern of the Whigs , a man whom no premier would have ventured to anako Home j 3 ecr < jti \ Ty , but who has been permitted in India to run riot in . innovation . And what nas been the result of Mr . Veuhon Smith ' s local reforms ? Has ho improved the condition ot the native civilian , the hopeless sub ormnatethe instrument
, of taxation and punishment , who is liable to be dismissed and denounced as a criminal , without trial , inquiry or redress ? A hitter feeling on this sulnect imsbeen engendered , and the subject has been frequently pressed upon tho Board of Cou-• SSi \ 5 mil 0 Vftti < m ha < l taken another way , wta Mr . Vkknon Smith was occupied with » js oxaltted theories . The hnnd in tho lemon giovo waved away all remonstrance . Was it
for what is done or not done in India , the Board of Control is supremely responsible , and that local maladministration in one set of provinces is the more inexcusable whilst other provinces are admirably governed . We see an Englishman presiding over a district larger than some European states , and regulating its affairs with remarkable precision and success . In another , the chief official , ignorant of his duties , neglects the real
requirements of his post , but harasses the people by incessant meddling . In a third , he gives himself no trouble whatever , and becomes what it was predicted to Timotjb that the warrior of Samarcand would become under the melting Bengal sun . He draws his salary ; he has a stately house ; he is waited upon by a train of servants in white robes and whiteand-crirnson turbans ; and all the time his muushia and chanrasis are cheating and goading the people .
Whenever it is proposed to reform the local administration of India , an outcry is raised against dangerous expenditure . But India in reality has cost us nothing . It has enriched an immense class of families . It supplies a vast commerce . It gives employment ; to thousands of Englishmen , and theae Englishmen too often , under the guarantee of that covenanted system which debases the Indian service into one of the narrowest of
monopolies , belmvo with perfect impunity , ai \ k » lk tho efforts of sincere reformers . Civil and military officers prefer a quiet life at cool ( stations to fatiguing assiduity ; the Commissariat preys on the revenue- ; native corruption is winked at in order that European irregularities may not be exposed ; justice is eontty , alow , and uncertain ; taxation is certain , heavy , and oppressive . In eighty years wo have not been able to devise an organization for protecting the ryot against the
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No . 391 , September 19 , 1857 . J THE LEADED ___^ 903
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Sept. 19, 1857, page 903, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2210/page/15/
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