In regard to minor Indian industries, hints have, I am assured, too frequently been sent out from England that the claims of British industry to Government support must not be forgotten.  Even now no change has been made in the regulations which compel the Government of India to purchase all articles not wholly or partly manufactured in India through the Stores Department of the India Office.  The delay thus caused in itself represents a serious loss, for it appears to take an average of nine months for any order through that Department to be carried out, and further delays arise whenever some modification in the original indent is required.  Nowadays merchants in India keep for ordinary purposes of trade such large collections of samples that in nine cases out of ten Government Departments could settle at once upon what they want and their orders would be carried out both more quickly and more cheaply.  The maintenance of these antiquated regulations, which are very injurious to Indian trade, is attributed by Indians mainly to the influence of powerful vested interests in England.

The time would also seem to, have arrived when, with the development of Indian trade and industry, private contracts might with advantage be substituted for the more expensive and slower activities of the Public Works Department.  Work done by that Department is bound to be more expensive, for its enormous establishment has to be maintained on the same footing whether financial conditions allow or do not allow Government to embark on large public works expenditure, and when they do not, the proportion of establishment charges to the actual cost of works is ruinous.  When the Calcutta Port Trust and other institutions of the same character put out to contract immense works running every year into millions, why, it is asked, should not Government do the same?  Some works like irrigation works may properly be reserved for the Public Works Department, but to mobilize the Department whenever a bungalow has to be built or a road made by Government, is surely ridiculous.

Indian opinion is at present just in the mood when reasonable concessions of this kind would make an excellent impression; and, if they are not made spontaneously, the enlarged Indian Councils will soon exert pressure to obtain them.

CHAPTER XXIII.

THE FINANCIAL AND FISCAL RELATIONS BETWEEN INDIA AND GREAT BRITAIN.

When Lord Morley introduced his Indian reforms scheme, a section at least of the party to which he belongs supported it not only on general grounds, but more especially in the belief that it would strengthen the hands of the Imperial Government in dealing with the hide-bound officialism of which the Government of India is in the eyes of some British Radicals the visible embodiment.  None of them, probably, anticipated that the boot would be on the other leg.  If the Government of India have sometimes sacrificed Indian interests to British interests, it has been almost exclusively in connexion with the financial and fiscal relations between the two countries, and often against the better judgment and sense of justice of Anglo-Indian officials.  In this respect the enlarged Indian Councils will lend far greater weight than in the past to any representations which the Government of India may make at Whitehall.