The Sun.
London, England, 1864-07-22 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TIMES.—It would seem as if India and the Colo-
nies had in the last few years changed places with
each other. For a long time the whole attention of
those who feel it their duty to object to little wars
and nip the germs of future expenditure in the bud
was directed almost exclusively to India. That fer-
tile soil produced with truly tropical fecundity a
rich undergrowth of troubles of alt sorts, a jungle in
which every Minister was sure to be more or less
entangled, while a succession of deficits excited no
unreasonable alarm for the future destinies of the
empire. On the other hand, deep sleep and imper-
turbable tranquillity seemed to have descended on
the placid realm over which the Secretary for the
Colonies presided. From the end of the last Cape
war to the beginning of the troubles in New Zea-
land, the Colonies had enjoyed uninterrupted repose.
Now, however, the Maori war and the Ashantee
war, and possibly another Kaffir war, sorely try the
temper of the British Legislature ; while there is
no point of the horizon where the weather is so rair
as Indio. The annual statement of the Indian Budget
last night, which seems to be connected indissolubly
with the introduction of the Appropriation Bill,
presents a gratifying picture of progress, economy,
and improvement. Whichever way we turn we meet
with the most convincing proofs that we have at
last hit upon a plan which is destined to develops
to the utmost the industrial capacities of India, and
to preserve the wealth which she creates for the
purposes of rs production. Within the last five
years India has exchanged a deficit of fourteen
millions for a surplus of several hundred thousand
pounds, end that in spite of a deficiency in the
article of opium alone of no less than £1,600,000.
The Income Tax is, indeed, a failure. The Indian
trader is .not proof against the temptation which
the virtue of the English trader has not been alto-
gether able to resist, and it is announced that the tax
is to be abolished as a part of the general revenue,
and only retained for the purposes of local taxation.
The Government salt monopoly in Bengal has also
been abolished ; but the result does not seem to be
that the natives avail themselves of those boundless
supplies of salt which they were said to possess
but rather to throw the whole trade, so far as the
Presidency of Bengal is concerned, into the hands
of the Cheshire salt manufacturers. An immense
duty is imposed on imported salt without exciting
the slightest domestic competition. A cry is very
netrarelly raised for the reduction of this tax, and it
certainly does seem very hard to burden one of the
first necessaries of life with so enormous an impost.
On the other hand, the water-drinking, rice-eating
coolie is very apt to escape from taxation altogether,
unless it is levied either on the salt which is neces-
sary for his health, or on the Manchester piece-
goods which supply his scanty clothing. We have
succeeded in greatly raising the condition of the
Indian poor; we have obtained for them money, but
we have not been able to teach them how to spend
it. Tney are still lamentably thficient in that first
distincion of advancing civilisation, the innumer-
able and complicated wants of the European. They
will not drink tea, nor use sugar, nor wine, nor
tobacco, and eo oar best excuse for continuing the
enormous salt duty is that, unless we tax salt, they
would attain an absolute immunity from taxation.
Meanwhile the land revenue, the ;great reliance of
Indian finance, is increasing in the way we would
have it increase, not by the raising of the assessment,
but by the greater breadth of land which is brought
into cultivation. The measures for decentralising
the Legislature of India by the establishment of
minor Councils in the three Presidencies, and the
admission of natives to the Council of the Governor-
General, have fully answered expectation. The
Legislatures have made useful laws, and the natives
have shown not only ability—which they were sure
to do—bur self-confidence and independence, which
were by no means so certain. In the Courts of Jus-
tice barristers and civilians work together with the
best resurts, t he barristers teaching the civilians law,
and the civilians giving the barristers information
as to the manners, customs, and local peculiarities
of the Datives. The two codes of procedure—civil
and criminal—have got rid of arrears and reduced
the length of causes from an average of three
months to en average of eight days. The first of the
codes is formed on the principle of examining the
parties before the judge instead of making use of
written pleadings. The second has abolished an
inthettnent, and substituted for it the name of the
crime charged, and a reference to the article of the
code by which it is forbidden and punished. No
doubt the great prosperity in India, and the rise in
the price of labour and other commodities are due
mainly to that rise in the price of cotton of which
Sir Chas. Wood somewhat ungratefully complains
for having raised the price of food and injured the
prosperity of native manufactures. These are small
matters when compared with the immense influx of
capital and diffusion of comfort among the lower
class of the community which have arisen so sud-
denly from the creation of this new and lucrative
market. Whatever be the injuries that the Anse.
ricen civil war has done to Lancashire it has unques-
tionably regenerated India, but this process would
not have b"en so sudden nor so complete had not a
wise and provident Government prepared the way
for this new burst of prosperity by piercing the vest
interior with railroads, by putting the finances in
order, and by employing persons able not only to
adapt English institutions to Indian use, but to in-
vent new principles to meet Indian wants when the
principles' already known seemed not to be fit for
the purpose. The picture of foreign policy in India
is as gratifying as that of domestic improvement.
We have at last learnt in India that indifference
which we are endeavouring to learn in Europe.
Three sons of Dos!. Mohammed Khan are fighting
for the possession of the Afghan throne, and we in
former times should have had our favourite and our
enemy, and been busy with intrigues to support the
one and supplant the other. As it is we look on with
perfect indifference at the unnatural conflict, ready
to enter into friendly relations with the conqueror,
and to give the conquered, if he escape the sword or
bowstring, an asylum within our dominions. Surely
this is better than the costly folly of 25 years since.
We have unintentionally excited the jealousy of
one Hill Tribe while chastising another, and suf-
fered severely in consequence, while in the wild and
mountainous region of Bhootan our Envoy has been
insulted and our complaints scornfully rejected.
Time was when this would have led to a war, but
now we content ourselYes with occupyingthe passes
by which Bhootan is connected with the rest of the
world, and trust to this kind of land blockade to
bring our refractory neighbours to reason. Such is
the outline of the Indian Budget. Its statements
are not only gratifying in themselves inasmuch as
they tell of peace and prosperity, but also from the
promise they give that our Government wilt be
conducted on principles which render that prose
perity durable.
HERALD.—The Bill for the Relief of the Casual
Poor, just brought into the House of Commons by
Mr. Villiers and Mr. Gilpin, as a
.Goverment mea-
sure, suggests a remedy for the crying abuses of the
present system which, though right in principle,
is defective in its details. It is but common justice
that the eastern metropolitan districts should be
freed from the burden under which they labour,
from being impelled to relieve the vagrants of other
districts, as well as the resident poor of their own ;
and the only means by which the undue pressure on
them could be alleviated is by the plan we suggested
in a former article on the subject—a rate in aid--
whether derived from a trifling tax, levied on those
who are able to take public amusements, to which
admission is paid for, or by a general tax on ail
classes, those who cannot afford indulgence in pub-
lic amusements as well as those who can. For our-
selves we should prefer the French method of obtain-
ing the necessary revenue; first, because it would
be levied trompersons who could afford to pay ; and
.
pees. because
.could be collected without difficulty
and would be willingly paid by those called upon
i to contribute to t. The demand of an extra six-
pence for the entrance to a theatre of his family of
six persons would never be resisted by Peter-
families, when ho reflected that his own and his
children's amusement might contribute, even in
a small degree, to alleviate the sufferings of the
homeless and forlorn. A tax of some descrip-
tion is absolutely necessary, and therefore the
measure proposed must be gratefully accepted in lieu
of a better one; but when we come to examine the
manner in which the money raised is to be sppro•
printed we conceive that the mode of its application
is altogether objectionable. One of the greatest
and best founded objections against the present
method of relieving the casual poor is, that it affords
no check on what may be termed perpetual veg-
. ram, ; and that, besides supporting those who really

require assistance, from unexpected or unmerited
adversity, the different unions are compelled to main-
tain a body of the worst description of miscreants,
who, taking advantage of the asylums afforded then:lt
make a regular round of visits to each, returning at
night, moat frequently, to those in which they re-
ceive the best treatment, while passing their days
in the streets, lounging about in idleness or occu-
pied in the commission of crime- It is clear that
this class of persons should be diminished or
got rid
of, either by forcibly sending them to their ova
parishes, if in the country, or by keeping them in
the workhouses of their own unions should they h°
chargeable in the metropolitan districts. The terror
of restraint and the certainty of being obliged to
labour for their subsistence might deter them from
having recourse to casual relief, and drive them to
seek some honest employment by which they could
win a livelihood ; but the plan proposed by the
Government measure for defray ing the expenses ,
their support is one very likely to increase instead of
diminishing the evil of systematically practised car
rancy. Censured as they have hitherto been for
their harshness of manner and cruel rejection 01
applicants, with the object of lessening the rate °f
their districts, the poor law officials will most likely
err in the opposite extreme, and be but too liberals
in the hope of acquiring popularity at the expense
of others. Admissions will be obtained wish less
difficulty and on a larger scale. The dietary will
be of a more liberal description, and this IEI%O
of admission and increase of comfort will give a
new impetus to the demand for both, and n°
doubt largely augment the numbers of a class ft°lll,
which society in general suffers. The " tramp'
taking his rounds as usual, and returning after
what he calculates a reasonable interval, will again
present himself and be again received by the
masters, who may take a malicious pleasure in,
thus teaching the public the cost of unlimited
benevolence. To this source of additional expense
must be added the certainty of a considerable
additional outlay, in the employ,nent of an extrl
staff of clerks at bead-quarters, and the increase 0f
officers at the workhouse, or augmented allowances
to those already there, as compensation for the
additional labour imposed upon them in keeping,
complicated and difficult accounts. By the bill
now published no power is given to the officers Or
the unions to detain the habitual claimants for
casual relief, either for the purposes of sendiug
teem home or compelling them to remain in the
houses; and so they will be obliged to dismiss and
!eave them at liberty to betake themselves else'
where. On a former occasion we ventured to sur
gest that casual relief should only be administered
in separate establishments—say, one for men End
another for women, or more if necessary, in diffe-
rent parts of the metropolis. This wunid prevent
the possibility of the habitual vagrant's carrying
on his present rotatory system, because he could
obtain admission nowhere else; and it would enable,
the cut horitise to detect imposition, and to compel
those walking spectres who shock foreigners in our
streets, to betake themselves to the houses they
have a right to enter, instead of trading on the
compassion of persons ignorant of their devices to
excite sympathy or their unwillingness to accept
the public support to which the law entitles that.
The method of relieving casual distress which we
propose would be less expensive thee that eta-
bodied in the Government measure; it would ce
less complicated in its details, and mote efficacious
in diminishing, if it did not altogether eradiestet
the evil of permanent vagrancy in London. House:
suitable for its purposes could easilybe found 9:
low rents in the districts where they won d
68
most required ; and we trust that its advantages
may not be lost eight of as the Ministerial bill
passes through the house.