Commission, not to need any destructive
activity on the part of the Bureaucracy to prove their unwillingness to
pass it, for the Report protects them in their privileged position.

We may add to Gokhale's tests one more, which will be triumphantly
passed, the success of the Bureaucracy in increasing the cost of
administration. The estimates for the revenue of the coming year stand
at L86,199,600 sterling. The expenditure is reckoned at L85,572,100
sterling. The cost of administration stands at more than half the total
revenue:

Civil Departments Salaries and Expenses L19,323,300
Civil Miscellaneous Charges 5,283,300
Military Services 23,165,900
___________
L47,772,500
___________

The reduction of the abnormal cost of government in India is of the most
pressing nature, but this will never be done until we win Home Rule.

It will be seen that the Secondary Reasons for the demand for Home Rule
are of the weightiest nature in themselves, and show the necessity for
its grant if India is to escape from a poverty which threatens to lead
to National bankruptcy, as it has already led to a short life-period and
a high death rate, to widespread disease, and to a growing exhaustion of
the soil. That some radical change must be brought about in the
condition of our masses, if a Revolution of Hunger is to be averted, is
patent to all students of history, who also know the poverty of the
Indian masses to-day. This economic condition is due to many causes, of
which the inevitable lack of understanding by an alien Government is
only one. A system of government suitable to the West was forced on the
East, destroying its own democratic and communal institutions and
imposing bureaucratic methods which bewildered and deteriorated a people
to whom they were strange and repellent. The result is not a matter for
recrimination, but for change. An inappropriate system forced on an
already highly civilised people was bound to fail. It has been rightly
said that the poor only revolt when the misery they are enduring is
greater than the dangers of revolt. We need Home Rule to stop the daily
suffering of our millions from the diminishing yield of the soil and the
decay of village industries.

***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CASE