The Press.
London, England, 1856-02-09 00:00:00

OUR INDIAN REVENUE.

THERE is hardly a richer country in the world
than Turkey, unless it he Hiudoostan. It is
most beautifully endowed with the harbours
necessary for commerce, the food adapted for
sustenance, and the products fitted to ex-
change for the manufactures of other lands.
At the same time there is no country in the
world, except perhaps India, in which so little
advantage is taken of what Nature has done.
The harbours are neglected—roads to them are
left unmade. In the midst of a corn and fruit
growing country there is frequent famine, and
the trade is but a miserable fraction of that
which might le carried on. The Government
is poor, the revenue is scarcely a tittle of what
it ought to be, and everything is left to go to
rack and ruin. Ask people in England how
this is, and they will tell you that it is the
Mussulman religion that causes it all. Go to
the spot, and you will find that it arises
simply from this, that the whole revenue
management of the country is in the hands of
the Armenian Seraffs. The Sultan may wear
the insignia of royalty on his tarbousch, re-
ceive ambassadors at audiences, and go in
state to the mosque on Fridays ; but he is not
the ruler of Turkey for all that. He is as
dependent as a child upon the body who have
the entire management of the accounts. How-
ever largely his Pachas may-talk in public. they
are in private as completely the puppets of
the Seraffs, who pull the strings, as the chairs
at the India house are the puppets of their
secretary, or as Sir CHARLES WOOD used,
when President of the India Board, to be the
puppet of Sir JAMES HOOO. The higher Turks
are not insensible to the evils that arise from
this state of things ; they do not fail to see
how grossly their country is mismanaged ;
they know that the public revenues are plun-
dered to enrich an interest that has no sym-
pathy with them. But whenever any attempt
at reform is made the latter speedily quash
it, partly by bribery, partly by secret influ-
ence, and partly by spreading the most
exaggerated stories of the difficulty of collect-
ing the revenue, the intricacy of the accounts,
and the impossibility of anyone undertaking
the business who has not a large capital of
his own to draw upon to replai'e the deficits
which according to their showing annually
take place. In the end such arguments
always prevail. The Turk, one of Nature's
gentlemen, is more given to spending than to
saving, to fighting than to account-work. and
sinks daily deeper and deeper into the slough
from which he wants but energy and moral
courage to extricate himself.
We, too, have our Turkey, in the shape of
India, neglected, plundered, and fast going to
ruin. We, too, have our Seraffs in Leadenhall-
street, to whose mercies, notwithstanding all
we have seen of them, we still commit it.
MACAULAY, in his late volumes, tells the his-
tory of their early corruption, and of the
sums which, after the Armenian practice, were
so largely lavished on the Ministers of that
day. The enormous Indian fortunes brought
home towards the end of the last and in the be-
ginning of the present century show the use
that was habitually made of the power which
was thus obtained; and even now, though
the opportunities be fewer, and the scandal
therefore less, it is not uncommon to meet
cases in which the money amassed in the ser-
vice in India, or while sitting in the Direction,
or by Indian Government contracts, could
only have been made in the most illegitimate
of ways. Whenever the country, however,
talks of inquiry, and thinks of change, the old
Armenian arguments spring forth to the tip
of every Director's tongue ; and we are told of
difficulties so enormous that they alone can
overcome them, and of deficits so vast that