'Every shilling that is taken for unnecessary military expenditure,' he wrote in 1870, 'is so much withdrawn from those vast sums which it is our duty to spend for the moral and material improvement of the people. I admit to the full that a complete and an efficient military organisation is the base and foundation of our power here. We are bound to see that every officer and man is fit for immediate service, and that every arm and every military requisite is maintained in a state of the utmost efficiency. I believe that in the proposals which have been made, these principles have been strictly adhered to.' A single sentence of the last Despatch which Lord Mayo lived to issue on the subject of army reform will fitly conclude this branch of my narrative. 'We cannot think that it is right to compel the people of this country to contribute one farthing more to military expenditure than the safety and defence of the country absolutely demand.' {171} CHAPTER VIII LORD MAYO'S INTERNAL ADMINISTRATION The Mughal Government in its best days was a peripatetic one. Its camp was its capital, and the abandonment of that method marked the commencement of the false system of centralisation which in part led to the dismemberment of the Delhi Empire. Lord Mayo realised this fact, and by a well-planned system of tours he made himself acquainted with the separate provinces under his rule. He laboured hard to learn, not only each different system of local administration, but also the character and qualities of the men who conducted it. His genial presence and love of sport, combined with indefatigable powers for real work, won for him the affection, as well as the confidence of the District Officers throughout India. But no one who did not actually accompany him knew the fatigue of body and mind which he went through on the 21,763 miles of his Indian journeys, nor can realise the serious risks which he ran by rapid riding over bad roads or along precipices in the {172} hill tracts. The only trip which was proposed to him for pleasure merely, he at once rejected. It was a matter of daily occurrence, that, rising at five o'clock, spending the whole day in travelling, receiving officials or Native Chiefs, and inspecting public works, Lord Mayo sat up half the night transacting business with his Foreign, or Private, or Military Secretary. In these tours he saw much to praise, but also much to amend. The great Department of Public Works had during the previous twelve years rushed to the front of the spending departments in India. In its rapid development, it had to draw its officers from the Staff-Corps, or wheresoever they could be obtained, sometimes with little regard to their previous training for their new duties. Blunders and extravagance had been the result--a result which had been the despair of Lord Mayo's predecessors, and had given rise to grave scandals in the Public Press.