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tliinking that " there can be no two opinions as to the ver^ great 

 advance made by the country " during this period, but supposes that 

 no one in his senses ever asserted the contrary. To this it is perhaps 

 sufficient to reply that there are persons — intelligent and well-meaning 

 persons too — who, mainly because they have not had facilities for 

 studying the question in all its details, have asserted the contrary for 

 the last 20 years and more ; and an inquiry as to whether there is 

 any, and, if so, what truth in their statements is by no means super- 

 fluous. The reviewer's idea is that, having regard to the effects of 

 improved and cheaper internal and external communications which 

 should have stimulated enormously its greatest industry, viz., agricul- 

 ture, a much shorter period should have been taken for review, and 

 that no more suitable period could be found than the last 20 

 years. It is, of course, easy to object to any period that might be 

 taken, either on the ground that it is too long or too short ; but the 

 reasons for taking a period of 40 years are sufficiently obvious. For 

 one thing, a period of 20 years is far too short to gauge the effects 

 of economic forces in operation, of new laws, institutions, methods of 

 Government and administrative measures in any country, and it is 

 emphatically so in a country in which a great famine occurs once in 

 1 00 yearSj and scarcities of greater or less intensity every 12 years 

 or so, and in which the institutions and the habits of the people change 

 slowly. The reviewer admits that the disastrous famine that occurred 

 7 years after the commencement of the period which he contends 

 should have been taken for review was the severest known during the 

 present century, that it threw back the Presidency " to an enormous 

 extent," and that such a visitation is not ascribable to the defects 

 of British administration. Barely 13 years have passed since this 

 catastrophe occurred, and it would clearly be absurd to select this 

 period specially for gauging the effects of British rule on the condition 

 of the population. The middle of the century, on the other hand, is a 

 suitable starting point in every way for the pm*poses of a comparison 

 such as that proposed to be instituted. During the first quarter of the 

 century the efforts of the British Grovernment were directed towards 

 introducing order and tranquillity in the territories newly acquired and 

 in carrying out land settlements. The second quarter witnessed the 

 acute agricultural depression, — due, in the main, to the substitution of 

 a regime of cash payments for one of barter and the insufficiency of the 

 currency to meet requirements under the altered condition of things, — 

 the effects of which I have endeavoured to describe in the Memoran- 

 dum. The East India Company was at its wit's end to find the where- 

 withal to carry on the administration of the country and the wars 

 which were undertaken under the pressure of necessity or otherwise for 

 the consolidation of the Empire ; the initiation of improvements on an 

 extensive scale during this period was, therefore, out of the question. 

 It was about 1850, then, that almost every species of reform and 

 improvement had its commencement — the construction of railways, 

 roads, anicuts and canals, the establishment of schools and Universities, 

 the constitution of Legislative Councils and the enactment of Codes of 

 Laws, the reorganisation of the Police and the Magistracy, the revision 

 of revenue establishments, the abolition of restrictions on trade, the 

 settlement of lands held on favorable terms but uncertain or doubtful 

 titles, the alleviation of burdens on land, and a host of other reforms ; 



