t, and
further delays arise whenever some modification in the original indent
is required. Nowadays merchants in India keep for ordinary purposes of
trade such large collections of samples that in nine cases out of ten
Government Departments could settle at once upon what they want and
their orders would be carried out both more quickly and more cheaply.
The maintenance of these antiquated regulations, which are very
injurious to Indian trade, is attributed by Indians mainly to the
influence of powerful vested interests in England.

The time would also seem to, have arrived when, with the development of
Indian trade and industry, private contracts might with advantage be
substituted for the more expensive and slower activities of the Public
Works Department. Work done by that Department is bound to be more
expensive, for its enormous establishment has to be maintained on the
same footing whether financial conditions allow or do not allow
Government to embark on large public works expenditure, and when they do
not, the proportion of establishment charges to the actual cost of works
is ruinous. When the Calcutta Port Trust and other institutions of the
same character put out to contract immense works running every year into
millions, why, it is asked, should not Government do the same? Some
works like irrigation works may properly be reserved for the Public
Works Department, but to mobilize the Department whenever a bungalow has
to be built or a road made by Government, is surely ridiculous.

Indian opinion is at present just in the mood when reasonable
concessions of this kind would make an excellent impression; and, if
they are not made spontaneously, the enlarged Indian Councils will soon
exert pressure to obtain them.

CHAPTER XXIII.

THE FINANCIAL AND FISCAL RELATIONS BETWEEN INDIA AND GREAT BRITAIN.

When Lord Morley introduced his Indian reforms scheme, a section at
least of the party to which he belongs supported it not only on general
grounds, but more especially in the belief that it would strengthen the
hands of the Imperial Government in dealing with the hide-bound
officialism of which the Government of India is in the eyes of some
British Radicals the visible embodiment. None of them, probably,
anticipated that the boot would be on the other leg. If the Government
of India have sometimes sacrificed Indian interests to British
interests, it has been almost exclusively in connexion with the
financ