Lord Curzon has done grand work in the direction I am advocating. He has examined nearly every part of the administrative machine, and has been able to inaugurate measures for remedying its defects. Owing to the adoption of the Currency Commission's recommendations, he has enjoyed an overflowing treasury. The prosperity of the last few years has raised the revenue of India to a sum that ten or fifteen years ago would have been looked upon as impossible. His predecessors have hankered after police and other reforms, but an empty exchequer made it impossible for them to realize their wishes. Lord Curzon fell on happy times and took advantage of them. But it must be remembered that the ample surpluses which enabled him to remit taxation and to improve the administration in much-needed directions are absolutely dependent on the agricultural prosperity of the country—in other words, on the continuance of seasons of abundant and well-distributed rainfall. For that reason I look with some apprehension on the great increase of recurring expenditure which some of the measures, especially on military reorganization, impose on the people. It will not do for every Viceroy to come out with a series of costly reforms which he pledges himself to execute. The financial question is the main one.
Seeing, then, that we have made ourselves responsible for the happiness and prosperity of this great territory, it may be asked. What have we done for India? In the first place, I would answer. We have given her peace. For the past century the King's peace has been established over the area under our dominion, extending with that area until now it overshadows the whole peninsula. The people were rending each other in pieces before the rise of the British dominion. Hindus against Mohammedans, province against province, chief against chief. Gangs of mercenaries and brigands were living on the peasantry, fighting on whichever side paid them best. The state of the country in the middle of the eighteenth century, after the invasion
