28 OCTOBER 1876, Page 3

The Calcutta correspondent of the Times makes the astounding statement

that the grand ceremonial at Delhi to announce to India that Queen Victoria is Empress will cost £500,000. At a time when public works are stopped for want of money, and the Government fears the loss of a tenth of its revenue from the decline in silver, half a million is to be thrown away for no pur- pose whatever, except to gratify Lord Beaconsfield's love of the grandiose. Not a tenth per cent. of the population of India can see the ceremonial, and not ten per cent. will even hear of it ; yet a sum sufficient to educate a province is to be flung away on moving soldiers, entertaining Princes, and paying the useless people who minister to pageantry. It is too bad.