-Kong and Singapore, to bear the whole cost of British moral
rectitude. The Imperial Council did not confine itself, either, to
criticism of what had happened. Sir Vithaldas Thackersey had probably
every Indian and many official members with him when he made the
following very clear intimation as to the future:--"We are prepared to
bear our burdens, and all that we ask is that the country should be
allowed greater freedom in choosing the methods of raising revenue. I am
unable to see how it will be injurious to the interests of Government if
this Council is allowed a more real share as regards what articles shall
be taxed and what duties shall be paid."

It is upon such questions as these that the voice of the enlarged
Councils will in future cause much more frequent embarrassment to the
Imperial Government than to the Government of India, and I shall be much
surprised if they have not to listen to it in regard to various "home
charges" with which the Government of India have from time to time very
reluctantly agreed to burden Indian finance at the bidding of Whitehall.
The Indian Nationalist Press has not been alone in describing the recent
imposition on the Indian taxpayer of a capitation allowance amounting to
L300,000 a year to meet the increased cost of the British soldier as
"the renewed attempt of a rapacious War Office to raid the helpless
Indian Treasury," and even the increase in the pay of the native
soldier, which Lord Kitchener obtained for him, does not prevent him and
his friends from drawing their own comparison between the squalor of the
quarters in which he is still housed and the relatively luxurious
barracks built for Tommy Atkins under Lord Kitchener's administration at
the expense of the Indian taxpayer. It is no secret that the Government
of India have also frequently remonstrated in vain when India has been
charged full measure and overflowing in respect of military operations
in which the part borne by her has been governed less by her own direct
interests than by the necessity of making up with the help of Indian
contingents the deficiencies of our military organization at home. It
was no Indian politician but the Government of India who expressed the
opinion that:--

The Imperial Government keeps in India and quarters
upon the revenues of that country as large a portion of its
army as it thinks can possibly be required to maintain its
dominion there; that it habitually treats that