Last Saturday's Times contained a long letter from Mr. Hynd-
man, in which he expatiated on his favourite topic that our adininistration of India Was a "dead failure." Between 1879 and to-day, he says, there have been more and worse famines than hate been known before in the king kistory of Hindustan. Only the Protected and Border States are not impoverished by our rule. We have allowed native irrigation works to decay, and expended vast sums on unproductive works of our own ; we have arbitrarily increased the Land- tax ; and the proceeds of this burdensome taxation go to maintain at extravagant salaries a host of alien and unnecessary officials. We would call attention to these state- ments, which have been repeated often enough, because of the admirable and convincing way in which Mr. Theodore Morison replied to them in the Times of Tuesday. He shows that the mortality for the famine of 1769 was ten millions, for that of 1876-78 five and three-quarter millions, and for that of 1899-1900 only one and a quarter millions, although the crop failure in the last case was the most extensive that has been known. Mr. Hyndman argued that the high death. rate was due to impoverishment from British rule ; but in the Protected States, which as hypothesi are not so im- poverished, the population in the last decade declined by 5.47 per cent., while in British territory it rose 482 per cent. On the taxation question his exposure is equally effective. Reckoned in gold, the total land revenue has declined since 1875, though it is now collected over a far larger area.
Previous page
