limited to £50 a-year to officers of all grades. That many officers, disheartened and disgusted, were eager to retire, was certain; but it may be doubted whether the additional £50 pension would in many cases have stimulated men to retire, who would not have retired without it. It always appeared to us to be a mistake. To offer men of all ranks and ages the same annual addition to their pensions, seemed to indicate a misunderstanding of the business, for which it was not easy to account. The elder officers were those whose retirement was most desired, and yet to them the least additional inducement was held out. The premium should have taken the shape of a percentage upon the legitimate pension of each rank. To give an annuity of £50 to a man aged forty, is to give much more than the same annual amount to a man at sixty, looking at the matter both from the donor's and the recipient's point of view. It was patent, therefore, that a rateable addition to existing pensions should have been offered in the first instance. That it will eventually be offered we see little room to doubt. It has been recommended by the commission appointed in Calcutta to consider the practical details of "amalgamation," that, starting from a minimum addition of £100 a-year to retiring pensions, the rates of increase should rise from that point in proportion to the amount of legitimate pension claimable for different periods of service; and we believe that this recommendation has the concurrence of the Government of India. It now rests with the Secretary of State in Council to sanction or not to sanction it. We have no doubt that, if retirement of a large body of officers at the present time be a desideratum, this is the way to accomplish it. But it is not to be denied that, when we consider the principle on which such a scheme is based, there are very grave objec

tions to it.

What it is proposed to do is, to offer a premium for the withdrawal of a large amount of knowledge and experience from the country, in order to make way for new and untried men. We are, in fact, endeavouring to detach men from the Indian service, just as they have come, or are becoming, valuable servants. Having paid for them in their crude or apprentice state, we are getting rid of them as skilled workmen, and entailing upon the revenues of India the cost of a greatly increased pension-list. But it is to be said, on the other hand, that these men, feeling themselves, as it were, swamped and absorbed, certain that they can never again occupy their old position, being mere burdens and excrescences upon the new system, can never again become good, earnest-minded, because hopeful, public servants. It is painful to contemplate such a state of things; but we fear that there is no help for it. And on the whole, perhaps, it is better that men should not remain in the service after they have lost all heart and hope-all energy in and affection for it. Let us provide for as many as we can, in such a manner as to render it unlikely that they will regret the change; and having done that, let us give the rest the option of retirement on liberal terms, the principle being that of compensation for loss of prospects. It appears to us that there is only a choice of evils, and that the greater evil of the two is the continuance on the strength of the Indian army (in what position we do not exactly see) of a number of discontented officers, chafing under a sense of injustice. We admit that the alternative is a melancholy one, but it is inherent in the scheme of "amalgamation;" and we cannot help thinking that, the extinction of the Indian army having been devised, the best thing that now can be done is to make our old Indian officers as comfortable in their retirement as the re

venues of India can afford to make them.

"As the revenues of India can afford"-" Ay, there's the rub." Everybody knows that India's great difficulty, at the present time, is of a financial character. The mutiny cost an immense sum of money, by increasing expenditure on the one side, and diminishing revenue on the other; and the Government were obliged to borrow largely to make up the deficiency. There was no help for it. It was a matter of life and death; it was no time for grudging or stinting. The British army was hired freely for the suppression of the Indian mutiny. Nobody complained when India was called upon to pay for it. India, whatever may be her offences, has always paid freely and cheer fully. England has often thrown burdens upon her not properly her own, but has never been asked to bear her burdens. But although India, being in difficulties, consented to pay for extrication from them, there was no reason why she should pay all her life for the expensive remedies demanded only by a crisis -why the critical state should grow into the normal condition of affairs. But England having discovered the benefit, in time of peace, of employing a large portion of her military forces in India at the cost of the Indian revenues, will not willingly abandon an advantage of so palpable a kind. It being admitted that more European troops are required in India, England avails herself of the admission to lighten her own burdens. And why not? it may be said. If an arrangement can be made advantageous alike to the empire and the dependency, why grudge the former her share of the benefit?

The answer is, that if the arrangement were advantageous alike to India and to England, no one would grudge England her share of the advantage. But the arrangement is one which, however economical seen from the English point of

view, is, so far as India is concerned, wasteful and extravagant in the highest degree. If India, requiring the aid and protection of so many thousands of fighting men, were called upon to pay for them when serving her, there might be little to say financially against the arrangement. But the complaint is, that she is called upon continually to pay for a large body of fighting men who are not serving her. It is the waste of service that she deplores and resists. The system of garrisoning India with troops of the Line involves the maintenance of a large body of unserviceable troops at sea, on their passage to and from India. This is wasteful and extravagant, but it may be said that, as they are on their way to and from Indian service, and England has no benefit from them, India ought to pay the charge. But over and above the number of men who will be drawing pay on the high seas, there will be another large body, comprising the depôt companies of regiments in India, in garrison at home, which, although essentially a part of the available resources of the empire, are made a charge upon the Indian revenues. This does not appear to be just; and the appearance of injustice is greatly aggravated by the fact, made known to us in recent official correspondence laid before Parliament, that the Secretary of State for India in Council has protested against the inordinate strength at which these depôt companies are now kept up in time of peace, but has not succeeded in turning aside from their purpose the authorities of the Horse Guards and the War Office. Their object, of course, is to make the army estimates as pleasant as possible, and to lubricate the path of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, by making India contribute largely to the military defence of the British Isles. The authorities in India, no less than the Indian authorities at home, have remonstrated against this in

justice. The Governor-General says truly, in a published despatch, that if the income of India is to be made to balance its expenditure, there must be the strictest economy in England as well as in India; and Mr Laing has repeated this with emphatic reference to the case of the depôts, in his speech on the introduction of his budget. We hear by every mail of great reductions of military expenditure in India. We have always believed such reduction to be feasible without any diminution of the real strength of the empire. But it is disheartening to the Indian authorities, both abroad and at home, to know that all their efforts to bring the military expenditure of India within manageable compass are thwarted by the efforts of the Imperial authorities to throw upon India the burden of supporting as large a part of the British army as they can make any sort of pretence for casting upon the distant dependency. The struggle thus commenced between Imperial and Indian interests is no light matter. Hitherto, it must be acknowledged that those who have supported the former have been far more unscrupulous, and we may add more successful, than the Indian functionaries, who, somehow or other, always contrive to be beaten in these encounters. Indeed, when we come to think more of it, there is nothing surprising in this. The Indian Minister is but one against many, and what can he do against the combined influence of the whole Cabinet, backed by the Court?

We have alluded above to Mr Laing's observations, in his budget speech, upon the depôt system, which enables the Imperial Government to misappropriate, in so unjust a manner, the revenues of India. We shall do well to quote his words. "It is perfectly manifest," said the speaker, "that the officers and men belonging to Indian regiments in depôt at home are as much a reserve for England as for India. In the event of any sudden and serious

danger threatening England, there is no doubt that these troops would be available there, and it is not fair that India should pay the full cost of the reserve establishments in England under such circumstances. The day is past when England can consider India as a sort of milch cow, on which to draw for a little here and a little there in order to round an English budget or ease an English estimate. Strict and impartial justice must be the rule in all money matters between England and India, if England wishes to get a return for her capital, which will soon amount to £100,000,000, invested in Indian securities and railways, and if she wishes to see India become every day more and more the best source of supply for her raw produce, and the best market in the world for her staple manufactures." "These be brave words"-let him stick to them. India could wish nothing better than that Mr Laing should go home and become Chancellor of the Exchequer in place of Mr Gladstone. But such just and honourable notions as these, we fear, would not long resist the contact of Downing Street. It is one thing to enunciate such truths in Calcutta, another to vaunt them in Westminster. An Indian journal, commenting on this passage in Mr Laing's speech, says "These are memorable words; and if Mr Laing will persevere in the course he has marked out for himself, his mission to this country will be one of the happiest events that has ever befallen it. We honour him for the courage with which he has spoken upon this invidious subject. We do not forget that it is easy for the journalist to say that which it requires much moral courage in the statesman to avow. If Mr Laing will really identify himself with us and we hail the evidence his speech affords that he intends to do so-then will his mission to India be fruitful of more blessing to both lands than any appointment the mother country has yet made." But the difficulty does

not lie in saying such things as these--the courage is not demanded for such utterances-in Calcutta. The difficulty arises, the courage is demanded, when the speaker returns to England, and faces his old colleagues in Whitehall. That kind of language won't do at the Treasury. We really shall honour Mr Laing very much if he makes such notes as these reverberate from Charing Cross to the Houses of Parliament, shaking the Horse Guards on their way. But if he returns among us rampant with such heterodoxy as this, will not some means of silencing him be quickly found? Will he be suffered to speak out authoritatively in such a strain? We think it extremely doubtfulso doubtful that, unless he be converted on his passage home, it seems not improbable that on his arrival he may be silenced by making him one of the custodians of the Indian House in the Council of India, or by some equally effectual means of reducing him to harmlessness and quietude, if any means so effectual could be found.

It is the fashion to write and to speak scornfully of what is called an imperium in imperio. But if the old East India Company was correctly described by these words, we must say that an empire within the empire is sometimes a serviceable institution. As long as there is a separate purse, it seems to be not so very preposterous that there should be a separate power. There was something intelligible in Mr Company's separate purse, and in his separate powers. We could attach some clear and distinct meaning to the words, “The Revenues of the East India Company." But now that the revenues have become the revenues of the Crown, and the imperium in imperio a department of her Majesty's Government, it appears to us that the anomalous state of things which it was said that the extinction of the Company would remedy has been intensified and perpetuated. The resistance of the

East India Company to unjust attempts upon the revenues which they administered was a reality. It was not always successful, because the adroitness of an English Cabinet might sometimes bring about an evasion of the spirit of the law, whilst maintaining its letter. Every one, for example, knows that the war in Affghanistan was undertaken mainly for Imperial purposes, and at the suggestion of the Crown Ministers. Every one knows, therefore, that the revenues of the empire ought to have borne the pecuniary burden in whole or in part. But the fifteen millions of money which those calamitous operations cost were paid out of the Indian treasury, because the war was undertaken from India, and under the immediate direction of the Governor-General. When at a later period the blunderings of some of the diplomatic servants of the Crown involved us in a war with Persia, the Company, warned by that great Affghan spoliation, put matters on a right footing before they lent their aid, and exacted an Imperial guarantee for the payment of half the expenses of the war. The Company had interests distinct from those of the Empire, and, what was of still more importance, distinct from those of the Government of the day. It mattered not to them whether Whigs or Conservatives were in office. If they made a stand against unjust encroachments, they stood for India, and for India only. They were not embarrassed and perplexed by any considerations of party. But now the home Government of India is a department of her Majesty's Government. The Secretary of State for India is a member of the Cabinet, and the Council of India is made up of fifteen lesser ministers of the Crown. The India Office is indeed only a part of the great machinery of Imperial Government, and we cannot expect from it the independent action which characterised the East India Company. There is some