him on the particular
point raised. But if he says to me, 'I know that it would be wrong in
me to do this as an official, but I do it in my private character,' I
can have no discussion with him; because I deny that it is possible to
establish any such distinction in the East, and I am inclined to
distrust either the honesty or the intelligence of the man who
proposes to act upon it.

* * * * *

_To Sir Charles Wood._

Simla: March 19, 1863.

[Sidenote: Financial credit.]

I am as desirous as you can be, perhaps even more desirous, to give no
excuse for the charge of cooking accounts, or making things look
pleasanter than they ought, because I am quite confident, that if we
can keep the peace and show an unimpeachable balance-sheet, we shall
soon have more capital sent to India than we know what to do with. I
could not help giving, a few days ago, a hint concerning my Canadian
experience on this point. When I was appointed to Canada, the first
Canadian official to whom I was introduced was the Finance Minister,
who was walking about the streets of London with L60,000 of Canadian 6
per cent. debentures in his pocket, which nobody would take. In 1849,
two years later, the Montreal merchants drew up an elaborate address
recommending annexation to the United States, alleging as one of their
principal reasons that so long as they remained colonists, they could
obtain no credit in England for public objects, and citing, in proof
of this allegation, the fact that in the United States several
thousand miles of railway had been constructed, in Canada only thirty
miles. Within three years from the date of this address, we had 2,000
miles of railway in Canada in course of construction, and our
Government debentures (6 per cent.) were selling in London at 119,
higher than those of the United States Government; in fact, we had
more credit than we could always employ properly. Now, how was this
change effected? Simply by showing a good balance-sheet, an improving
country, and a contented people, and leaving capitalists to draw their
own inferences from these phenomena. I do not despair of seeing a
similar state of things in India; and it was with the view of giving
an impulse in this direction that I stated publicly, at Benares the
other day, that we must look