The Sun.
London, England, 1862-12-12 00:00:00

tINANCES OF INDIA.

the most eager philanthopists find fault with if it ceased in
Northern India, and the cultivation were, as in Malwa, left
to the public, under strict Excise laws. Now that the Em-
pire has attained, except in Burmah, its natural limits and
is at peace, with railways spreading on all sides, what is
needed is that more money be spent on internal adminis-
tration. Still the perusal of these reports leaves on our
mind a conviction, the truth of which we see every day
around us, that never, even in all her colonies, has England
done so mighty a work or shown so much noble disinterest-
edness and wisdom as she has done and is doing in India.
Everywhere there seems to be contentment and rapid pro-
gress. The rise of prices has been even more wonderful
in India than in other countries during the last ten years,
and the silver which every mail pours into Bombay for
cotton threatens to make it serious. If we except Madras,
where the Governor is said to do nothing, and which is
generally looked on as the " Sleepy Hollow" of India, sel-
dom have our provinces been governed at one time by
men so able and popular. Lord Elgin has still his reputa-
tion to make, and till he has seen India with his own
eyes he cannot be expected to declare himself. But in
British Burmah, of which Colonel Phayre is Chief Com
missioner ; in Assam, of which Major Naughton, an
old Cabul hero, is Commissioner ; in Bengal, of which Mr.
Beadon is Lieutenant-Governor ; in Oude, of which Mr.
Yule is Chief Commissioner; in the North-Western Pro-
vinces, the Lieutenant-Governorship of which Mr. Edmon-
stone will resign neat March ; in the Punjab, where Sir R.
Montgomery has yet 18 months' tenure of office, in Bom-
bay, where Sir B. Frere is most popular ; and in the Cen-
tral Provinces, where Mr. R. Temple is trying to bring
order out of chaos; in all these, and they constitute the
whole of India, except the south, a work is going on with
an earnestness and a success which we can only pray no
internal commotion nor external war may arrest or mar.
Two days ago, the fourtt anniversary of her Majesty's
proclamation on the death of the East India Company, the
new rupee was issued and the word " Company" for ever
obliterated. The following statement of the tax receipts
for the quarter ending July last shows the immense increase
from stamps :

(From the Times Correspondent.)

In Bengal, with its Government settled for a century,
and its fixed assessment of the land tax, we expect only pro-
gress, if we except the transition evils of the indigo districts
still seething under a tenant-right struggle. Looking, first
of all, at the revenue, and remembering that the population
is at least 40,000,000, the total receipts were £14,132,350,
and the disbursements £4,903,410. If we deduct the ma-

nufacturing charges for the two monopoly articles—salt
and opium—the absolute administrative expenditure will
be under three millions sterling. Thus Bengal contri•
butes nearly nine and a quarter millions sterling of a
surplus to the imperial expenditure on the army. Ot
the income more than a third is derived from land, the
revenue of which has increased from £3,758,970 two
years ago to £4,130,700. Excise duties give £567,890.
Customs yield £2,732,322. The consumption of salt bas
increased 64 per cent, in the last 20 years, leaving now
about 320,000 tons a year. In that period the "price
has never fluctuated till lately, but wages have
doubled, so that salt is now cheaper than ever it was,
and, if necessary, the rate of duty-6s. on 801 b—might be
raised. Opium, which yielded a revenue of £2,206,120 in
1845, and£3,317,605 in 1860, this year gives £2,468,422, on
account of the increased price paid to the grower. Stamps
on litigation and trade promise to be the most fruitful of
all recently increased taxes, giving £552,753 in Bengal, and
£98,776 additional in Calcutta. But perhaps the best test of
taxable wealth is the income tax. Calcutta alone is assessed
at £194,515 annually, while Bengal is assessed at £449,889.
I have said that the absolute administrative expenditure of
Bengal proper is only three millions sterling. Hence the
miserable sums spent on education, justice, and public
works, the three most important objects of our Government.
As to the first only £BO,OOO was spent out of more than
£14,000,000, or 0.556 per cent. distributed over 40,000,000;
the State thus pays less than d. a-head, instead of 9d., as
in England. Under Government inspection there were only
879 schools, with 52,895 scholars. Of these 0n1y244 schools,
and 19,396 scholars, were under the State directly. While
England was 1 in 7 or 8 at school, in the most civilised of
Indian provinces there was one school to a population of
45,506, and one scholar to 756, while each scholar cost 30s.
a. head, paid by the State. A more liberal extension of the
grant-in-aid system, as contemplated by Sir C. Wood's ad-
mirable despatch of 1854, would show different results for
the same money, but private effort is almost discouraged.
There was spent on law and justice £532,360, and on police
£397,400. The lowest class of judges are so miserably paid
that their decisions cannot be trusted, and hence a system
of appeals in criminal cases as well as civil cases, which
is ruinous to litigants and overwhelms the files of the courts
with arrears often three years old. In the one month of
March last 92,172 cases were pending on the first day in the
civil courts, 13,480 were instituted, and 78,412 were still left
pending on the last day. The number of persons tried for
-criminal offences was 122,619, and of these 81,553 were
punished, 47 were sentenced to death, 194 to transportation,
4,147 to imprisonment from six months to life, 11,372 to im-
prisonment for less than six months, 1,371 flogged, and
51,969 fined. The amount spent on public works from im-
perial funds was £533,600, and to works of internal improve-
ment from local funds was £93,980. The sum of £144,500
was devoted to salaries and departments.
The population of Madras is 22,500,000 and the area
132,090 square miles, or hardly one-third less than Bengal,
which has 185,926 miles. Here we have the ryotwarry
system of assessment, in which every villager or peasant
pays direct to Government, and this has ever been a mill-
stone round the neck of Madras, keeping down its popula-
tion, revenue, and trade, and virtually placing its adminis-
tration, so far as the peasantry come into contact with it,
in the hands of natives who used to torture and oppress.
But a persistent lightening of the assessment has of late
brought land into cultivation, so that the land tax has in-
creased half a million since 1857. The total revenue last
year was £6,083,883. Of this 68 per cent, was from land,
or double the per-centage in Bengal; 51 from Excise duties,
14 1-sth from salt, 31 from Customs, nearly 5 from stamps,
and 21 from income-tax. The value of the trade is only a
third of that of Calcutta, and a fourth of that of Bombay.
The city of Madras is assessed for income tax at only
£281,901—a third the amount in Calcutta. Of the whole
revenue 10 per cent. was spent on public works—a much
larger sum than is allowed to Bengal, though it has double
the population; 31 per cent., or £251,121 was devoted to
salaries and departments. But Madras seems to have done
more for education in the way of numbers, £54,286, having
733 schools with 29,194 pupils, of whom one-half were
Hindoos, and only 923 Mahommedans, while 4,132 were
girls. The sum of £334,444 was spent on police, and
£211,778 on law and justice. For this Madras disposed of
only 185,651 civil cases, and 234,339 persons tried, acquit-
ted 47 per cent.
When we turn to what have been hitherto called non.
regulation provinces, we find in them a struggle to meet
their expenses, as was to be expected. As a rule, they are
the most recently annexed provinces, and demand
a large military force, while our good government has
not yet had time to develope their wealth. No one expects
the Punjab to pay any more than Malta, since it guards our
most dangerous and extensive frontier down which each
successive conqueror has poured. Thus the revenue of the
Punjab is £3,047,083, and after civil disbursements there is
a surplus of £1,400,318. But this is less than the military
expenditure by nearly a million. If we charge the Punjab,
_ _

Income-tax Stamp Stamp receipts
collections. collections. in 1858-59.
Rupees. Rupees. Rupees.
Government oi India 3,13,846 20,732
B
N.-n Aral estn. Provinces 13,01,759 .. 5,62,356 .. 2,10,566
Punjab
Central Provinces
Madras
Deccan (estimated) 4,800 .. 15,000 .. (t)
Bombay ...

Total

THE WAR IN AMERICA.

(From the Times' Special ,Correspondent.)
NEW YORK, Nov. 28.

Gen. Burnside has not had a long lease of popu-
larity. He has scarcely had time to recopise the
fact that he was really in command of the Army of
the Potomac when he has discovered that this great
position has great drawbacks, and the inevitable
discount of power and glory in this republic is not
only detraction, malice, hatred, envy, slander, but,
worse than all, the popular expectation of the im-
possible. The impatience of the Government is so
great, and the violence of th. 3 Exterminators, Abo-
litionists, and Ultra-Republicans so frantic that his
delay before Frederickburg has loosened the tongues
and invigorated the pens of a host of unfriendly
critics, some of whom accuse him of pant of capa-
city and some of want of heart in the cause. "How
is it," inquires one, " that we never begin to make
war in earnest ? In Heaven's name what are we
about ? If this is Burnside's first performance we
shall soon be hoping for his last. Why did he not
shell the town unless the Confederates desisted from
their works ? It would almost seem as if the cause
of the Union deprives every military leader of his
brains." The impatient critic forgets, what Burn-
side is likely to remember, both as a gentleman and
a soldier, that civil war is a war against brothers,
that to shell a town while the women, the children,
the sick, the impotent, and the aged are in it is con-
trary to decency, humanity, and civilisation, and
that, as the sole object of the present hostilities is
the restoration of the Union, it would have been
alike bad in policy and in generalship to have
shelled and set fire to a wooden city like Frederick-
burg for the sake of vengeance, unaccompanied by
the defeat of the Confederate army. All the oppo-
nents of M'Clellan seemed to be of opinion that it
only needed another general in his place to march
on to Richmond and capture it, after a battle more
or less bloody. Some of them, perhaps, have sense
to see by this time that the achievement is not
so easy as they imagined; that the President will
not be able to congratulate the country upon it
in his message to Congress next week ; and that,
if Burnside do not go into Winter tinarters at Acquia
Creek or Fredericksburg, a muctt worse fate may
befall him.

like all other provinces, with only its internal garrison,
which amounts to £828,242, there will be an excess of re-
venue available for Imperial purposes to the extent of
£637,718. This, however, is a mere matter of account, for,
wherever else our Eastern Empire may be weak with im-
punity, it must be strong in the Punjab. More than a half
of the whole revenue, or £1,822,065, is derived from land,
£62,374 from excise, £98,477 from income-tax, £72,592 from
frontier customs, £613,263 from salt, and £95,627 from
stamps. Of the whole, £556,640 is devoted to public works,
£63,349 to salaries, £177,797 to law and justice, £336,522
to police, and £21,908 for Imperial funds to education. In
the Punjab there are 1,982 schools, with 52,840 scholars,
each costing the State £4 a head in the normal schools to
£2 4s. in the district and sd. in the commune schools.
Unler justice, 96,451 civil suits were disposed of out of
99,365 on the file, involving nearly half a million of money.
The average value of each suit was £5 ; the average cost,
7s. 6d. ; and the average time occupied in each case 19 days.
It is proposed to introduce family councils into the Punjab,
domestic disputes being so common. The honorary civil
judges, who are natives, disposed of 2,085 suits in 13 days
each, to the satisfaction of Government. There were
brought to trial 41,263 criminal cases, of which 296 were
pending at the close of the year. There were 45 capital
sentences. There was one crime to every 274 persons.
The population is about 15,000,000, with an area of 100,406
square miles, omitting the native States, which have a
similar area and half the population. The Punjab report
is full of interesting information on Central Asia and its
trade, and records no little progress in the opening up of
roads, extension of railways, increase of trade, development
of new staples, and general prosperity.
Turning to British Burmah, we come into contact for
the first time with the Indo-Chinese races and Buddhist
faith. We have the three provinces of Arracan, Pegu, and
Tenasserim, extending along the east coast of the Bay of
Bengal for 900 miles, and having a total area of 90,000
square miles. The King of Burmah is thus hemme in on
one side, and on the other the French are making advances
from Saigon. We have no proper boundary, and our fron-
tier is ever desolated by robbers, so that the time when all
Burmah will be English is probably not far distant. The
land is a glorious one for rice and timber, cutch and petro-
leum, all of which are exported from its three harbours of
Akyab, Rangoon, and Moulmein to the:value of £6,000,000
sterling annually. Yet this fine country has a population
of not quite 2,000,000 only, and its cultivated area is only
1,608,108 acres. Notwithstanding, so successful has been
our government that we raise a million sterling of revenue,
and although the people are more heavily taxed than any
other of our subjects they are too prosperous to feel it. The
land yields £265,671, and so abundant is fine soil that the
people will not take leases, but move from place to place,en-
riched by the virgin wealth of the land. Here alone, too,
have we a capitation tax, which is very popular, yielding
£173,304 a year. Customs give £206,508; excise, which
is doing much evil, £79,012: fisheries, £50,657; and mis-
cellaneous taxes, £187,614. Next to the Punjab, British
Burmah is the most progressive of our recent acquisitions;
Oude follows, thenScinde, and the second finest cotton-field
in India, the Central Provinces, has only this year begun
to smile, under good government, after eight years of neg-
lect. For its population British Burmah has more Eng-
lish settlers
on the coast
The than
Chinese,any oth
torpz atorfe settling in
utof
the Presidency
large numbers, the Shans pour in over the frontiers, the
Burmese flee from oppression, and thus the country is in-
creasing in resources. The result of Col. Phayre's mission
to the King of Ava,to obtain a commercial treaty,is eagerly
looked for. Last year 33,731 civil suits were disposed of,
and 784 left pending ; 14,739 crimes were committed.
Education is entirely in the hands of missionaries, assisted
by grants in aid, andis chiefly confinedhr Seas,
is
tti o
have
the rude
become K a r
lie ns,
eithousandscivilised,
ando whom,
raisef
funds
as
in
to h e
South
send
c
heathen tribes.
thantribe any others.Asarupleeetplale in
e BurmeseAs
iaa,na beirrpenega
bettercmuhteaehrusgthot in
y et
the Buddhist monasteries. The military establishments
have of late been so much reduced that British Burmah may
be said to be self-supporting.

It appears from the letters which appear in the
New York Times, Tribune, and World that the
Army of the Potomac is not in the best of spirits.
The roads are knee deep in mud and slush. The
rations are in arrear, and the pontoon boats, that
were to have arrived on the banks of the Rappa-
hannock simultaneously with General Burnside,
have been despatched from Washington overland,
65 miles through vi!lanous roads, when they might
have been floated down the Potomac to Acquia
Creek, only eight miles distant. This has been one
of the chief causes of the delay in crossing the Rap-
pahannock,—a delay which the Confederates have
turned to the best account in fortifying their posi-
tion and sending for and receiving reinforcements.
" The delay," says the Tribune, "may cost us
thousands of lives, and prolong the campaign for
several weeks." The crossing of the Rappahannock
at this point will be so formidable a task that Ge-
neral Burnside will probably order a flank move-
ment above or below the city, while he attempts
to keep the main body of the Confederates in play
at the front.

However that may be, General Burnside's present
position inspires so much anxiety that the President,
according to his wont, has betaken himself per-
sonally to the General's head-quarters to ascertain
what is the matter. Superstitions people say that
on every previous occasion when the President has
visited a General in his camp a mishap to the army
has followed ; and hence they now indulge in
auguries of evil. People who are not superstitious
have similar misgivings of future calamity, which
they justify on the more rational ground that the
President is not only the nominal, but aspires to be
the real Commander-in-Chief ; and in that capacity
interferes with and alters arrangements which he
does not comprehend. On this occasion, however, Mr.
Lincoln will, doubtless, have been made to under-
' stand by General Burnside that it is the War Depart-
ment at Washington, and not the General or his
army, which renders victory difficult, or impossible ;
and that the army of the Potomac has been stopped
at the Rappahannock, for the want of supplies, am-
munition, and means of transport. Why the Presi-
dent,opinion, persists in retaining Mr. Stanton in office
isone inof t shpei tme of s
t curious
problemsnglypronounced public
of the day ; for
not only has the Minister brought a mountain of
odium on his own head, and on that of his master,
by his insolence of demeanour and his arbitrary
arrests of unoffending citizens, but he has flagrantly
mismanaged the department in every branch and
detail. His intrigues for the Presidency, which he
is pretty certain never to attain, and his jealousy of
every man in civil or military life who is or threatens
to become prominent enough to aspire to that high
office, occupy his mind too exclusively to allow him
time to devote himself to those little matters of
routine on which the comfort, and, it may be, the
safety, of the army depend. A ludicrous instance
of the blundering of his department is reported this
the
fits of spasmodic energy
the Government, but which
very
was announced from
f
Washington, with a loud flourish of patriotic
morning.
which
speedily
periodicallyeedlnilyens euafflict
be subside,
it
trumpets, that the army was forthwith to be weed-
ed of all drunken, cowardly, incompetent, and
notthat a list of nearly
1,00
up, all of whom were
to be summarily dismissed the service ; not after
toho of rotuhgemhlyha loyal
d been officers;
drawn
trial and conviction by courts-martial legally ET-
pointed, but by the simple act of the President on
the recommendation of the Secretary of War. M-
; this was not justice it certainly looked like vigour ;
•,

There is not much that the most captious critic
could find fault with in the administration, the history of
which is recorded in these reports. The sole blot is the
peculiar character of the Excise establishment, which sacri-
fices morality to revenue, while crime is increased and more
is spent on gaols, courts, and police than is thus gained.
Even the opium monopoly would be divested of much that

SUN, LONDON, FRIDAY EVENINA _DECEMBER 12, NU

! and, es the public was in the mood to applaud
vigour, and demanded 'nothing better, the an-
nouncement excited no displeasure any where ex-
cept in the ranks of the Conservative or Demo-
cratic party, who are patiently storing up these
things in their memory. A few days ago the first
batch of between 70 and 80 names was published, all
of them officers from the rank of Lieutenant to that
of Colonel, who had been summarily dismissed the
army and branded, without trial, with one or more of
the dishonourable epithets which no true soldier can
bear and live. Upon investigation it has turned
out that many of these maligned heroes have been
killed in battle, and that others have been honour-
ably discharged on account of wounds and loss of
limbs in the service.
Under such circumstances it is not at all wonder-
ful that the army is melting away, and that the
" glory" to be gained either in its lower or upper
ranks has no longer its former attractions for the
imagination of youthful or mature soldiers. In-.
deed, the question may well be asked—what is the
Federal Government to do for an army if the war
be protracted under such management into the year
1863? The " million of men" under arms—of which
stump orators and imaginative journalists are so
fond of speaking—have no tangible or real exist-
ence, as I endeavoured to show in a recent letter;
and, as the statement is certain to be contradicted
with the usual amount of vituperation that Ame-
rican journalists employ whenever an Englishman's
opinion is concerned, I shall endeavour to support
it by such corroborative evidence as the New York
press from time to time affords. The correspondent
of the Tribune at General Sigel's headquarters at
Fairfax Court House, in a letter dated on the 23d
inst., states that he met " two Federal soldiers on
the Alexandria turnpike road, and questioned them
whither they were going. Their faces brightened as
they i eplied, we are going home to fight no more.'
. . . Numbers of the soldiers, misunderstanding
the matter of patrolling, are actually desirous of
being captured in order to avoid fighting, and also
for the purpose of going home, as they suppose they
will be allowed to do. . . . The matter of
bounties also induces men to desert for the purpose
of re-enlisting, to obtain a second pecuniary re-
ward of patriotisin (?). So numerous have these
different cases ,become that to-day there are from
150,000 to 200,000 deserters from the armies of the
Union. A large number of them are at home in
the North, with and without pretext, and their
friends and neighbours do not give the infor-
mation which should send these cowards and pol-
troons back to the army." This is the narra-
tive of a Republican journal. The World, the able
organ of the triumphant Democrats, gives similar
testimony. In its editorial columns of yesterday it
states that " reports from all parts of the North
agree in representing the draughted men as desert-
ing by wholesale. In a camp of 1,200 near Harris-
burg, Pennsylvania, all save 400 have deserted. Out
of the 8,000 draughted in Maryland not 1,500 will
be available. In Ohio not more than one in ten of
the draughted men is to be found in the ranks."
The volunteers who enlist for the bounty money
and the unwilling conscripts thus appear to be
equally unreliable. Both systems have failed, and
should the war be protracted from the inability of
either belligerent to achieve a decisive victory, the
Northern Government must either resort to a sys-
tematic and inexorable conscription like that of the
Soath, or give up the contest. Will the North sub-
mit to such a draught ? That is, or speedily will
be, the question for Mr. Lincoln to answer. He
may, perhaps, tide over the disagreeable necessity
of confronting it until spring, while the Federal
gunboats are trying their chances in the swollen
rivers or before the vulnerable cities of the Southern
seaboard; but after that time he must meet it in
one way or another, under the heavy penalties of
defeat or anarchy.
One of the most frightful incidents of this wretched
war, and one that reflects the highest disgrace upon
a Federal officer in high command, has just been
brought under the notice of the Federal authorities
by the Southern President. It appears that one
Andrew Allsman, a Unionist in Missouri, who had
rendered special services to the Federal army as a
guide, was taken prisoner by the Confederate Gen.
Porter during an attack on a place calle Palmyra,
within the limits of that State. General M'Neil,
the Federal officer in command, on learning
the, capture of so useful a person, wrote to Ge-
neral Porter, demanding the return of Allsman
alive and unharmed, within ten days, and threaten-
ing, unless the demand were complied with, to
hang ten Confederate prisoners who were then in
custody. It does not clearly appear that General
Porter ever received the message, or that Allsman
was alive at the time, or that he is dead now ; but on
the expiration of the term specified the ten hostages
were publicly shot, not hung, by order of General
M'Neil, whose defenders allege that two if not three
of them were notoriously bad characters and one a
proved murderer. The circumstances haying excited
the indignation of the people of Missouri, and been
freely commented upon in the local papers, fell
under the notice of the Confederate Executive at
Richmond. Mr. Jefferson Davis took immediate
action, and under date of the 17th inst. instructed
General Holmes, the Confederate officer in command
of the Trans-Mississippian Department, to ascertain
whether the facts were correctly repotted, and if
so to demand of the Federal Government the imme-
diate surrender of General M'Neil. If the General
be not surrendered, he is ordered " to execute the
first ten United States' officers who may be captured
and fall into his hands." As it is not to be supposed
that the Federal Government will accede to any
such requisition, a new horror will be added to the
old, and ten innocent men will be sacrificed to the
memory of Allsman, who, for all that any one
knows to the contrary, may be yet alive. President
Lincoln is pre-eminently a merciful man. Would
it not be well in him to justify his reputation in
this respect, by forbidding all his Generals to take
the lives of their prisoners until he shall have had
an opportunity of examining the circumstances,
and executing, if it so please him, his undoubted
prerogative ? And if he cannot deliver General
M'Neil to the mercy of Mr. Jefferson Davis--a
solution of the difficulty which is not to be thought
of—might he not with great propriety dismiss or
severely reprimand that officer in such terms as
would prevent every other Commander from imita-
ting, under any amount of provocation, the savage
example ?

General Butler has had another acces de furie,
which some of his numerous friends in the North
designate by the more agreeable titles of " whole-
some rigour" and "consummate sagacity." He has
issued, under date of the 9th inst., an order se-
questrating all the property in the district west of
the Mississippi which the Federal troops have lately
occupied. He alleges that the plantations and other
property in that region are mainly held by disloyal
persons, and has determined to confiscate every acre
and every slave in it of which the real or reputed
owner will not take the oath of allegiance, or cannot
clear himself of the imputation of treason. The
district comprises the parishes of Assumption, St.
John, St. Charles, Terrebonne, St. James, St. Mary,
Lafayette, St. Martin, St. Landry, and Lafourche,
and covers an area of 8,716 square miles. Accord-
ing to the annual report of 1861 it contained at that
time a population of 51,236 whites and 73,379
slaves. The latter were valued at 38,040,470 dais.
This is vigour, with a vengeance, But there is a
vigour which accomplishes its purpose, and a vigour
which fails, because, like the " vaulting ambition''
of the poet, it oversteps the mark at which it aims,
As all the vigorous acts of this remarkable tyrant
have hitherto erred on the side of excess, it remains
to be seen whether this " order" will not add an-
other drop to the overflowing cup of Southern
hatred and determination, and whether the ungal-
lant General has not, as in previous cases, done more
harm than good to the cause which he has at heart.
,When Louisiana was sold to the United States in