DISCRETIONAL RELIEF FUND.]
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expenditure he considers immediately necessary or desirable on campa in and near the city,
and a sum of money will be allotted for the purpose. Further application can be made as
necessity arises. The actual amount expended each week should be reported to the Plague
Commissioner on a bill for countersignature by the Plague Commissioner, supported by the
necessary vouchers and by certificates that the rates have been examined and that the expen-
diture has been incurred.
For the regulation of the expenditure on Discretional Relief a separate Resolution,
No. 6230—6328-P., dated the 34th instant, has boon issued, and it is only necessary to note
hero that of the total grant of three lakhs of rupees, one and a half lakhs are being reserved
provisonally for the City of Bombay, the rest being made available for the Presidency
proper.
In respect of paragraph 4 of the Government of India letter, it is only necessary
to explain that the officers intended are those belonging to the Indian Civil Service, the
Indian Staff Corps, the Indian Medical Service, the Royal Army Medical Corps, and the
superior (i. e., gazetted) officers of the Forest, Survey, Customs, Salt and other
Departments, including doctors and nurses procured from England. Apparently pay-bills
for September payable on the 1st October would be debitable to Government, and the
Accountant-General should be asked to state whether this is admissible.
His Excellency the Governor in Council desires cordially to acknowledge the
particular assistance which the Government of India have been pleased to grant in anticipa-
tion of the whole case of the financial position of the Local bodies being laid before them.
Government desire to express their regret that owing to the delay in the receipt of reports,
they have been unable as yet to give the Government of India the information needed, and
they desire again to call special attention to the circular of the General Department, No.
5085, dated the 10th September 1898. Each officer to whom that circular was addressed
will intimate at once the date on which he expects to be able to despatch his report in regard
to each Municipality or Local Board, in respect of which his report has not yet been fur-
nished. Collectors will be good enough to remember that any further delay will cause very
great inconvenience to His Excellency the Governor in Council and to the Government of
India, who are anxious that the settlement of accounts in respect of past operations should
not be longer delayed.
(Sd.) A. WINGATE,
Acting Chief Secretary to Government.
It will be seen from the above documents that the control of this large fund was vested
solely in the Plague Commissioner, who was directly responsible to Government for its proper
and judicious disbursement.
The enormous amount of good that can be done by the wise expenditure of such a fund,
affecting, as it does, the entire Presidency, can with difficulty be realised : the amount
expended in thousands of cases being out of all proportion to the happiness conferred.
The thousands of sufferers, who have, by its means, been tended by relative or friend ;
the still larger number of such sufferers to whom it has afforded comforts and luxuries,
unhoped for and otherwise unattainable; the thousands of mourners who have by it been
enabled to give to their nearest and dearest a funeral in harmony with their feelings and
their creed ; and the numbers whom on recovery it has saved from starvation and misery,
all testify to the incalculable good it has done, the vast influence it has exerted. It may
even be said that to it is due the fact that the distrust and hatred of plague hospitals is
to-day a thing of the past.
Besides the methods of relief above mentioned, which more particularly influenced the
people's attitude towards hospitals, other methods of using it have had in a general way
perhaps as great an effect. Amongst such methods may be mentioned—
(1) Compensation, (2) subsistence allowance, etc. ; these terms being comprehensive
and more fully described below.
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