'I have found a vast economic disturbance, caused partly by the selfish commercial policy of the English Government, partly by the no less selfish expenditure of the English official class. I have found the Indian peasantry poor, in some districts, to starvation; deeply in debt, and without the means of improving their position; the wealth accumulated in a few great cities and in a few rich hands, the public revenues spent to a large extent abroad, and by an absentee Government. I have been unable to convince myself that India is not a poorer country, now, than it was a hundred years ago, when we first began to manage its finances. I believe, in common with all native economists, that its modern system of finance is unsound, that far too large a revenue is raised from the land, and that this is only maintained at its present high figure by drawing on what may be called the capital of the country, namely, the material welfare of the agricultural class; probably, too, the productive power of the soil. I find a large public debt and foresee further financial difficulties. 'Again, I find the ancient organisation of society broken up, the interdependence of class upon class disturbed, the simple customary law of the East replaced by a complicated jurisprudence imported from the West, increased powers given to the recovery of debt, and consequently increased facilities of litigation and usury. Also, great centralisation of power in the hands of officers daily more and more automatons and less and less interested in the special districts they administer. In a word, new machinery replacing, on many points disadvantageously, the old. I do not say that all these things are unprofitable, but they are not natural to the country and are costly and out of all proportion to the good. India has appeared to me in the light of a large estate which has been experimented on by a series of Scotch bailiffs who have all gone away rich.' In another place he says with equal frankness:-- 'India seems to me just as ill-governed as the rest of Asia. There is just the same heavy taxation, government by foreign officials, and waste of money that one sees in Turkey. The result is the same; and I don't see much difference between making the starving Hindoo pay for a cathedral at Calcutta and taxing Bulgarians for a palace on the Bosphorus. Want cuts up all these great empires in their centralised governments.'