and ten rupees on various trades and professions; an income-tax on all incomes above £20 per annum; and a tax on native-grown tobacco, corresponding, as nearly as might be, with the existing customs duty on the imported article. A portion only of this programme was ever carried into execution ; but Mr. Wilson's Budget is, none the less, memorable in the chronicles of Indian administration as having enunciated principles which have since been accepted canons of financial policy. The abolition of export duties on Indian products, such as tea, hemp and jute, gave an enormous impulse to local industries; while the reduction of import duties, even in a moment of emergency, was an emphatic recognition of the essential unsoundness of a prohibitive tariff and of the evils thereby entailed upon a country's commerce. A great manufacturing system has, since the Mutiny, grown up in India in the bracing atmosphere of free trade; while twenty millions' worth of Manchester cloths and yarns find their way annually to the homes of the Indian population.
Another point of importance, as to which Mr. Wilson's Budget sounded no uncertain note, was the claim, put forward in influential official quarters, for the exemption of Madras and Bombay Presidencies from the additional taxation necessitated by the Mutiny, on the ground that their armies had not shared in the insurrection. Mr. Wilson treated this narrow and unstatesmanlike pretension with the contempt which it deserved. The Indian Empire must, he pointed
