Part 7 (2/2)

Mayo's Rule.

Year of equilibrium;

1869-70

50,901,081

his first year of

50,782,413

office.

1870-71

51,413,685

Years of Surplus;

49,930,695

his last two years

1871-72

50,109,093

of office.

46,984,915

+---------+------------+----------------------+--------------+

Lord Mayo did not live to see the permanent fruit of his labours. But I cannot conclude this brief sketch of them more fitly than by a letter which the Financial Secretary to the Government of India wrote to me three years after Lord Mayo's death, when his work had been tested by the touchstone of time.

'Lord Mayo's close personal attention to financial questions never flagged. He had by decisive measures established steady surplus for chronic deficit; he had increased the working power of the Local Governments, while checking the growth of their demands upon the Imperial Treasury. He had established a policy of systematic watchfulness and severe economy. The time was now coming when the results of all his exertions and sacrifices were to be gathered; when the Viceroy would be able to gratify his nature {157} by granting relief from the burdens which he had reluctantly imposed. Lord Mayo was occupied with such questions on the very journey which ended so fatally. He had reason to hope that effective remission of taxation would soon be practicable, but he was still uncertain what shape it ought to take. It should never be forgotten that the welcome measures of relief which the Government subsequently found itself in a position to effect, were possible only in consequence of Lord Mayo's vigorous policy of retrenchment and economy.

'He found serious deficit, and left substantial surplus. He found estimates habitually untrustworthy; he left them thoroughly worthy of confidence. He found accounts in arrear, and statistics incomplete; he left them punctual and full. He found the relation between the Local Governments and the Supreme Government in an unsatisfactory condition, and the powers of the Local Governments for good hampered by obsolete financial bonds. He left the Local Governments working with cordiality, harmony, and freedom, under the direction of the Governor-General in Council. He found the Financial Department conducted with a general laxity; he left it in vigorous efficiency.

And if the sound principles be adhered to, which Lord Mayo held of such importance, and which in his hands proved so thoroughly effective, India ought not again to sink into the state from which he delivered her.'

{158}

CHAPTER VII

LORD MAYO'S MILITARY POLICY

The Mutiny of 1857 left on the hands of the Government of India two great armies--a vast shattered wreck of Native Troops, and a European Force, fewer in numbers, but admirably equipped, hardened by a fierce struggle, and organised on the basis of constant readiness for war.

In the year preceding that memorable lesson, the Native army had numbered 249,153 men; the European regiments 45,522. The teaching of the Mutiny resulted in the reduction of the Native army to nearly one-half, and in the increase by over one-half of the British troops.

In 1862, after all apprehension of renewed hostilities had disappeared, and the armies rested on their new peace footing, the Native force consisted of 140,507 officers and men, the European troops of 75,337. Under the vigorous Government of Lord Lawrence from 1864 to 1869, as the civil administration grew more effective, and the country settled down into a.s.sured internal tranquillity, it was found possible to make further reductions, {159} which left the Native army on the 1st April, 1869, at 133,358 of all ranks, and the European force at 61,942.

This was the situation when Lord Mayo reached Calcutta. But exactly a fortnight after his arrival, the Duke of Argyll, as Secretary of State for India, penned a Despatch which gave a fresh impulse to questions of Indian military reform. His Grace pointed out that notwithstanding the numerical decrease in the forces since the Mutiny, the expenditure on them had increased from 12-3/4 millions sterling in 1856-57 to over 16 millions in 1868-69. He also referred to the fact, that while a new and costly system of police had been organised, the expectations of army retrenchment based upon it had borne no fruit. The Despatch concluded with a hope that the Viceroy would devise means to bring down the army military expenditure in India by a million and a half sterling.

Lord Mayo found that army retrenchment might be effected by two distinct lines of approach,--by economy in the military administration, and by numerical reduction of the forces. Each of these subjects again divided itself into two great branches, the former into retrenchments in the Staff, and retrenchments in the Army Departments; the latter into reductions in the European troops, and reductions in the Native army. He ascertained that retrenchments aggregating 79,000 pounds were possible without any sacrifice of efficiency in the Staff and the Military Departments; and he stringently carried them out. {160} But when he came to reductions in the European troops and in the Native army, he found that the questions involved were of a more complex character; and as his views on these points have been sometimes misunderstood, I shall endeavour to state them in his own words.

As regards the European troops, he believed that he had not one man too many in India. In a private letter to one of Her Majesty's Ministers, after urging his plan of retrenchment, he writes thus: 'One thing, I implore, may not be done, and that is the removal of a single British bayonet or sabre from India. We can, I believe, reduce our military expenditure by a million, without giving up one of the little white-faced men in red.' 'We are strongly impressed with the belief,' he wrote, in his public Despatch a few weeks later, 'that we have not one British soldier too many in this country. We should most strongly object to any reduction of their number, because we are convinced that such a step could not be taken without endangering and weakening authority, one of the mainstays of British rule.'

Nevertheless, he proposed to reduce the charges for the European troops by half a million sterling. This, too, without decreasing the total rank and file by a man, or the pay of either officers or men by a s.h.i.+lling. He proved that a chief cause of the increased military expenditure, of which the Secretary of State so justly complained, arose from the fact that European regiments in India had gradually declined from their full {161} effective strength, so that a larger number of separate regiments were required to give an equal total of fighting men. He proposed, by strengthening each regiment, to keep the same total of fighting men, and to reduce the number of separate regiments. He would thus get rid of the costly organisation of eleven extra European regiments, and of the heavy drain on the Indian Treasury which the needless number of regimental headquarters involved. The rank and file would be slightly increased, the pay of officers and men would remain the same. The Indian military authorities believed that efficiency would not be lessened, while the abolition of the superfluous regimental headquarters and similar charges in the British cavalry and infantry alone would yield an annual saving of 297,220 pounds. A corresponding, but not quite identical, reform in the artillery would add a further saving of 271,542 pounds sterling a year. Total saving in European troops, 568,762 pounds.

In Lord Mayo's minutes on proposed retrenchments in the Native army, two considerations constantly came to the surface. First, that the lengthy, exposed frontier of Northern India, with the fierce elements of internal disquiet within it, rendered any substantial reduction of either Native cavalry or Native infantry in Bengal impossible.

Second, that the separate _esprit de corps_ of the Madras and the Bombay Native armies would resent reductions which fell exclusively upon them, and left the Bengal Native army untouched. The Viceroy and {162} the Commander-in-Chief were most anxious to avoid wounding the _amour propre_ of any one of the three gallant bodies of men who make up the Native army in India; but their paramount duty--a duty which ranked above all local considerations--was so to shape their reductions as not to impair the defences of British India.

After long and earnest discussion with his military advisers and the Local Governments, Lord Mayo submitted the following proposals to the Secretary of State.

As regards Native artillery, Lord Mayo's Government followed out the accepted policy of dispensing with Native gunners, and his proposals were readily sanctioned by the Secretary of State. He abolished two Bengal batteries (namely the Eurasian Battery in a.s.sam, and one light field battery of the Punjab Frontier Force); the Native Company of Artillery in Madras; and one Native company of artillery in Bombay.

Total reductions of Native artillery, four batteries or companies; annual saving, 17,003 pounds.[1]

[Footnote 1: Sanction conveyed in Despatch from Secretary of State to Governor-General, No. 23, dated 27th January, 1870, par. 10.]

Regarding the cavalry and infantry in the Bengal Native army, the Viceroy came to the conclusion (as demonstrated by his military advisers) that not a man could be spared. But with their consent he found that a considerable saving could be effected by reducing the number of separate regiments, and bringing up the strength of the remainder to a more efficient standard. He proposed, therefore, a reduction of one regiment of Bengal Native cavalry, and {163} one of Bengal Native infantry, raising the rank and file in the other regiments so as to maintain the same total of rank and file in the Bengal Native army. Annual saving 27,200 pounds a year.

As regards the Madras Native army, he acted on the decision of the Governor (Lord Napier of Ettrick), confirmed by the opinions of the Commander-in-Chief in India (Lord Sandhurst), and of Major-General Sir Henry Durand. 'In the Madras Presidency,' its Governor had written, 'it is my opinion that the cost of the army far transcends the wants of the country.' Indeed, Madras had for years sent her redundant troops, amounting to one regiment of Native cavalry and five of infantry, to do duty at Bengal stations. This proved to be an extravagant arrangement. Thus a regiment of Madras cavalry, with a strength of only 300 privates, cost 22,937 pounds a year, while a regiment of Bengal cavalry cost only 21,963 pounds for a strength of 384 privates.

The waste was intensified by the 'family system' of the Madras sepoys, who are accompanied by their wives and children--a system which may be suitable for a stationary local army, but which produces many evils if such corps are moved to other Presidencies. For example, the Commander-in-Chief had lately had to represent the difficulty which would arise with a Madras cavalry regiment, if the Bengal plan were enforced of sending it out into camp, in event of an epidemic of cholera. The Madras corps in question had only a strength of 202 fighting men at {164} headquarters, and were attended by no fewer than 1296 women, children, and followers.

Lord Mayo proposed, therefore, that henceforth the Madras regiments should be kept to their own Presidency. This would enable him to reduce five regiments of Madras infantry, and one of Madras cavalry, then serving at Bengal stations (or a number equal to them). He also found he could safely dispense with three other regiments of Madras infantry. Another separate regiment of Madras cavalry would be saved by incorporating three into two. Total reduction of the Madras Native army--cavalry, 2 regiments (1 dispensed with, and 1 reduced by incorporating 3 into 2); infantry, 8 regiments reduced out of 40.

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