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mental way throughout his many years of service in 

 India as a District Officer, and who was fairly conversant 

 with all the then more modern German and English 

 writings on the theory and practice of agriculture. 



The Secretary of State remarked (replying as it were 

 ofl&cially to what Lord Mayo had written to him on 

 this subject privately or demi-ofl&cially) that the next 

 head of the Department was to be chosen for his 

 knowledge of revenue and not of agricultural matters. 



It will be seen, therefore, that, as constituted, this 

 Department never was, and never was intended by 

 the Home Government to be, a Department of Agri- 

 culture. Lord Mayo hoped to convert it into this, 

 but with his death India lost the warmest, most com- 

 petent, and, at the same time, most influential advo- 

 cate for agricultural reform, j^o change, such as he 

 contemplated, has ever been made in the constitution 

 of the Department, and succeeding administrations 

 have only made the official bonds more rigid, and con- 

 verted its chief more and more thoroughly into a mere 

 desk-tied Secretary. 



A Secretariat is under no circumstances the form 

 of organisation best suited to the promotion of agri- 

 cultural development. Still even a Secretariat might 

 do much if it possessed three needful adjuncts : 



(1.) Competent advisers, not tied to an office, but 

 able to move about, collect and digest the necessary 

 facts, and put schemes before it in a shape in which 

 sound decisions can be arrived at. 



(2.) A qualified agency, either of its own, or belong- 

 ing to administrations subordinate to it, to give effect 

 to its decisions. 



