m revenue to India can
scarcely be over-estimated. It is, next to the land tax, the largest item
in the revenue. It forms one-seventh of all the revenue of India. It is
the most easily collected and the most productive tax ever known. It, and
it only, by its marvellous increase, has enabled a series of Chancellors
of the Indian Exchequer to tide over the difficulties occasioned by
unexpected wars and disastrous famines. It has given the Indian Government
the power to carry out innumerable sorely-needed reforms in the
administration of justice, in the promotion of education, in the
organization of the police and the post-office, in the reduction of the
salt tax, and in the furtherance generally of public works; and this will
seem no exaggeration when it is stated that in the last twenty years opium
has poured into the Indian treasury the colossal revenue of L134,000,000
sterling.

Do away with this revenue and we sacrifice all chance of carrying out
these reforms to a successful conclusion, and cripple our whole
administration in India. But it behoves us to consider how the deficit
_could_ be met, if it became necessary. And we may here again remark that
it is to the utmost degree unlikely that the British tax-payer will put
his hand into his own pocket in order to help India out of her
difficulties. Nor, if England _did_ offer to meet the deficit, would that
be a good precedent to establish. A gift of L20,000,000, which the
anti-opiumists speak of, would not nearly cover India's loss. It would
cost three times that sum in ten years, _i.e._ if the present rate of
revenue be maintained, as there is good reason to suppose that it
will.[130] How, then, could the loss be made good?

The expenditure, civil and military, might be curtailed by doing away with
the separate establishments of the Bombay and Madras Presidencies and
centralizing the whole in Bengal. But this curtailment of the civil
expenditure could not bring much relief, as it only amounts to L10,000,000
as it is. A reduction of the military establishments, besides being a
danger in the face of Russia's advance towards India, would necessitate a
corresponding diminution of the independent native armies, a step which
would be unpopular if demanded by our Government. However, this will be
necessary if the opium revenue be cut off.

Among other possible expedients for increasing the revenue or lowering the
expenditure are a cessation of ordinary, as distinguished f