260 



checking the measurement. His educated countrymen 

 have done little to remedy this state of things. 



3. The appointment of a Minister of Agriculture and 

 Commerce. There are plenty of well paid Government 

 agents for collecting the revenue, but there is not one 

 whose special function would be to attend to the vital ques- 

 tion of Agricultural Statistics, the state and prospect of 

 the crops, model farms, and agricultural education, all of 

 which tend to increase the revenue. The Association of Ze- 

 mindars, called the British India Association, has petitioned 

 Government to appoint a Minister of Agriculture. The 

 famine showed the need of such an official; what was 

 everybody's business was no- one's ; one man in that office 

 might have saved Bengal from much of the evil conse- 

 quences of the famine. 



4. Officials should see more of the people and peasantry . 

 The tendency at present is to load officials with red tape, 

 leave them up in office, where all information regarding 

 the masses reaches them through cooked-up reports, or 

 from the ignorant surmisings of native clerks, who have 

 no means of knowing the actual state of the district; 

 book-learned they may be, but little acquainted with the 

 people ; this is a crying evil, it was one of the causes of 

 the mutiny. 



I throw out the above hints, the discussion of them can 

 do no harm ; if they be found impracticable, the ventila- 

 tion of the question may suggest other modes of action. 



Yours truly, 



JAMES LONG. 



^X 



Calcutta, March 8th, 1867. 



