The Press.
London, England, 1856-05-24 00:00:00

AUDIT OF INDIAN ACCOUNTS.

IN the House of Lords, on Monday night, the
question of having an independent audit of
Indian accounts was again alluded to by Lord
ELLENsoaouon, and a hope was expressed by
him that the Ministry would take some steps
to secure this most important object. The
utter confusion exhibited in the returns of
revenue and disbursements transmitted to
Parliament from the India-house was given as
a sufficient reason for urging this matter
on the Ministry's attention, but there is ano-
ther and a more important ground, which has
been more than once stated. This is the ex-
treme inadvisability—to say the least of it—
ot leaving the disbursement and the audit of
revenues so vast in the hands of the same
persons. In respect to the public revenues of
Great Britain there is an independent audit,
but in respect to the public revenues of India,
which are now held in trust for the Crown,
there is no check upon expenditure whatever,
and Parliament has really no means of knowing
whether any, and what, reliance is to be placed
upon the accounts that are annually laid upon
its table. Under such circumstances, the
only possible means of verification lies in the
seeing whether they bear upon the face of
them a general appearance of consistency and
correctness. But, judged by this standard, no
accounts ever wore a stronger appearance of
having been tampered with than these do ; and
if they be not really amenable to the charge,
we can only say that the Company is most un-
fortunate in its choice of the persons to whom
it intrusts their preparation.

At the same tine there do appear to us
irresistible grounls for thinking that the con-
fusion which generally pervades them is not
the casual result of ignorance or error on the
preparers' part It bears, on the contrary, the
appearance of having been purposely adopted
by the Directors to exhibit in the light best
suited to their interests the results of their
own and their Governor-General's acts. Lord
DALHOUSIE, for instance, is very popular with
them; Lord ELLENBOROUGH was the reverse;
and we see accordingly a totally different plan
pursued for showing the financial results of
their respective annexations, the Punjaub
and Scinde. In a late article we made, on
the very highest authority, a specific charge
of their having for the same purpose mis-
stated the accounts of Pegu, by debiting a large
item of outlay for military purposes there to
the wholly separate Presidency of Madras.
Indeed, we see this kind of thing going ou at
every turn. Some little time ago, for instance,
the annexation policy was strongly denounced
in the House of Commons, and a return was
called for with a view to show the vast extent
to which it had been carried. But in this re-
turn the gross and net revenue of Pegu were
both given as unknown ; and in eight out of
the ten other instances of provinces annexed
the net revenue was also set down as un-
known, the only net revenue returned as
known amounting merely to twenty-six thou-
sand pounds. But when the point is to mag-
nify to the greatest extent the additional re-
venue gained for the empire by this policy, the
united incomes of the annexed provinces are
stated at millions, and Pegu is said, after all
charges, military and civil, being deducted, to
produce a surplus to our coffers of above a
hundred thousand pounds.
Now, we have no wish whatever to set
bounds to the flights of fancy in which Indian
politicians, or any other politicians, may
choose to indulge. It is fairly open to the
enthusiastic admirers of any statesman or of
any system of policy, whether Eastern or
IVestern, to set forth his or its merits in the
fairest possible light. The highest arts of
colouring may be legitimately used in such a
service, according to the rules of morality
which find most general acceptance among