The Roman Catholics claimed 963,059; the Anglican Church, 353,712; the Protestant denominations, 138,200.

The Anglican establishment includes the Bishops of Calcutta, Madras, Bombay, Lahore, and Rangoon. There is a Roman Catholic Bishop of Bombay.

British India being under direct British Tariff, &c. government, the commercial system of the mother country prevails; that is to say, there is general free trade, with very few exceptions. The only import duties now levied are on arms and ammunition, intoxicating liquors, opium, and salt. The cotton duty was removed a few years ago, with the result that the volume of export trade in Indian yarn and piece goods has increased 400 per cent. in the last ten years.

The gradually increased efficiency of the material administration of India, especially since the establishment of the imperial régime, may be illustrated by comparing the sums of money expended on works of public utility— railroads, turnpike roads, canals, irrigation works, &c.— during the past thirty or forty years. The total expenditure of the country has more than doubled within this period. Before the Mutiny it was under thirty millions sterling, and up to 1854 the sum spent on public works was never more than a million in one year. In ten years it had risen to £7,000,000, and it now approaches £24,000,000 gross, with a return of over £16,000,000 earned income.

The revenue derived from customs and excise, opium, salt, and land, amounts to very nearly £44,500,000, of which the land tax represents rather more than half, and about two-sevenths of the entire revenue, The collection

of this tax is very costly, and the cost appears to have been steadily increasing, whilst the gross yield is almost stationary. The mode of collection varies in different parts of India. There is the fixed settlement of about 200,000 square miles of land, brought about in the time of Lord Cornwallis. There is the village assessment, under which the actual collection from the zemindars is left to the local authorities; and again there is the ryotwari system, by which the large proprietors and notables pay the Government levies, and recoup themselves by charging the ryots. The land-tax is estimated at about 2s. per head on the whole population of India. The zemindars and village communities hold about 157,000,000 acres-chiefly in the Punjaub, North-West Provinces, Madras, Central Provinces, and Oudh. The ryotwari landholders occupy about 115,000,000 acres-chiefly in Bombay, Madras, Central Provinces, Berar, and Lower Burmah.

The last few Indian budgets have shown a normal expenditure of over £76,000,000. In 1885-6 there was a large deficit, and in the two succeeding years a small surplus. The cost of the army approximates to £20,000,000 ; the total cost of collection exceeds £8,000,000; and the interest on debt approaches six millions sterling. The aggregate (funded and unfunded) debt of India is about £175,000,000, having increased in the past ten years by over £44,000,000.

The great work which recent administrations claim to have done in India-apart from the tentative enlargements of popular liberties which mainly distinguish the viceroyalty of Lord Ripon-is that of consolidation and centralization. The power of initiative in the control of all Indian questions, alike of internal administration and of external

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policy, now rests, not with the Secretary of State's Council, but with the Secretary of State himself. The despatches to India issue under his single signature and in his name. 'I have considered in Council,' he says, 'the facts of the case,' and then he proceeds to give his decision thereon. He may not only overrule his Council, but he and the permanent officials under him can to some extent regulate what individual questions shall be submitted to his councillors." (Compare with the Netherlands Constitution— especially as regards the reference to the consideration in Council.)

"While the control of India has thus been consolidated in the hands of the Secretary of State, the Government of India has been firmly gathered up into the hands of the Viceroy. Apart from cases of emergency or high importance, in which the Viceroy may by law act independently of his colleagues, modern practice has rendered the Governor-General in Council a more compact and automatic body than it was under the Company. . . . Each member of Council has now become a Minister in charge of a separate department, and responsible directly to the Viceroy for its work. Matters of routine seldom go beyond the member in charge; questions of more importance are generally settled between the member and the Viceroy. Only when they differ, or when points of special interest or of public policy are involved, does the Viceroy circulate the papers to his colleagues. . . The consolidating forces which have thus reorganized the control and the government of India make themselves equally felt in the administration. At the beginning of the Queen's reign the district

*See a very able article on "The India of the Queen-Consolidation," in The Times of Nov. 10, 1887.

officer was the one conspicuous figure in the internal management of the country. Far-off things called boards and councils and governors were known to exist, but their existence was scarcely realized by the people. The head of the district, or 'collector,' was a king in his own right, and his subjects troubled themselves with few speculations as to the ultimate sanctions on which his authority might rest. One by one his prerogatives have been curtailed by the Provincial Governments."

It is thought by some that the centralization has been carried too far, and even that the tendency of recent years has been in the wrong direction. The authority already quoted points out that the district officer still stands as the visible representative of British rule to the people. "The administrative machine seems to work with a smoothness and rapidity formerly unknown. Mistakes are more easily corrected; misconduct is more promptly checked; from a cheaper judicial agency equal results are obtained. Whether good work will be equally encouraged, honest workers as firmly supported, and the individuality of the administrators as usefully developed, time alone can show. Any forecast is complicated by the circumstance that, while the initiative. of the collectors has been curtailed, a new administrative mechanism of rural unions, district boards, and municipal bodies has been created. It may seem to the next generation that the decay of the district officer was merely a natural stage in the growth of local self-government."

It is possible to believe that the tendency of British government in India is frankly and continuously in the direction of safe concessions of native home rule. The principles involved in such concessions have been more than once affirmed by the Imperial Government during the

past half-century. Thus in an Act passed in the year 1833 it was laid down "that no native of the said territories (India), nor any natural born subject of His Majesty resident therein, shall, by reason only of his religion, place of birth, descent, colour, or any of them, be disabled from holding any place, office, or employment under the said Government." And the Proclamation of the Queen in Council to the Princes, Chiefs, and People of India, in 1858, included the following passage:-"We hold ourselves bound to the natives of our Indian Territories by the same obligations which bind us to all our other subjects. . . . And it is our further will that, so far as may be, our subjects, of whatever race or creed, be freely and impartially admitted to offices in our service, the duties of which they may be qualified by their education, ability, and integrity, duly to discharge."

Amongst the political controversies of the 1887. day which have raised points of constitutional form-which have sprung from or tend to modify the characteristic government of the country-we may distinguish two classes, differing from each other in their origin and tendency. There are, first, the questions which seem to grow naturally out of the complex Constitution of the British State, the necessary developments which it is possible to control or delay, but not possible altogether to defeat; and there are the questions which arise between Great Britain and foreign Powers when the interests of a British colony or dependency are affected, and when the refusal of the mother country to make the quarrel her own would weaken if it did not break the bond of imperial

union.