'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 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.'
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 assured internal tranquillity, it was found possible to make further reductions, 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 12¾ 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 were possible without any sacrifice of efficiency in the Staff and the Military Departments; and he stringently carried them out. 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.'