The Indian Government appears to be addressing itself to the
reduction of its financial embarrassments with great energy. It has, in the first place, told the whole truth to its people, in a special gazette, that truth being that the deficit in the year ending March, 1869, was £2,273,362, and that the deficit next year will be 11,727,402. The Government has already raised the salt tax in Madras and Bombay 70. per maund (80 lb.), and is about to double the income-tax for the half-year, while it at the same time reduces the allowance for public works by 1800,000, and expects to knock a million off the expenditure on the army and the police. All this is well ; but it will all be useless if the Presidencies again expend £331,000 "without sanction," as they did last year, if the Govern- ment persists in living up to its income, and if the Chancellor of the Exchequer is allowed to offer such prosperity budgets. Almost 'every branch of revenue is short of the estimate by hundreds of -thousands.
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