But Lord Mayo's work of conciliation was not confined alone to the princes, it embraced also the peoples of India. One of the most historical sections of the community, the Muhammadans, had gradually sunk into the degeneracy incident to an ex-ruling class. The educational and administrative measures of the fifteen years preceding 1869 accelerated their downward progress, and practically cut them off, throughout large parts of India, from any fair share in the public employments which were once their almost exclusive birthright. Lord Mayo had been deeply impressed both in Russia and in his native Ireland by the political dangers arising out of such an excluded class. The measures which he initiated formed an important step towards reconciling the Muhammadans to our system, and of adapting that system to their needs. For this task of conciliation, conciliation alike of the princes and peoples of India, Lord Mayo had special gifts. For, to use the words of the Earl of Derby, 'it was with him not a matter of calculation, but the result of nature.'
In regard to the foreign policy of India, Lord Mayo arrived at a juncture when the pre-existing methods had come to their natural termination. Lord Dalhousie's annexation of the Punjab in 1849, by throwing down the Sikh breakwater between British India and Afghánistán, brought closer the boundaries of Russian and English activity in the East. Our Asiatic relations with Russia passed definitely within the control of European diplomacy, and during the next twenty years the Indian Foreign Office pursued a policy of laissez faire towards its transfrontier neighbours on the north-west. This policy, deliberately adopted and justified at its inception by the facts, had manifestly ceased to be any longer possible, shortly before Lord Mayo's arrival. The dangers of isolation were become greater than the risks of intervention. The task set before Lord Mayo was to create a new breakwater between the spheres of English and Russian activity in Asia.
We shall see how he accomplished this task by a cordon of allied States along the north-western frontier, and by securing the concurrence of Russia to the system of an intermediate zone. Lord Mayo's foreign policy formed the true historical complement of Lord Dalhousie's annexation of the Punjab. Instead of the old Sikh breakwater on the Indian edge of the passes, he constructed a new breakwater on their further side, against movements from Central Asia. 'Surround India,' he said, in words which I shall again have to quote, 'with strong, friendly, and independent States, who will have more interest in keeping well with us than with any other Power, and we are safe.' On the basis thus established by Lord Mayo in 1869, the modern policy of British India towards Central Asia has been built up.
In his internal administration Lord Mayo had to encounter two imperative, and at first sight, irreconcilable necessities. The one was the necessity for consolidation, the other was the necessity for decentralisation. The new India which Lord Dalhousie had conquered and annexed, could only be made a safe India by rendering the resources of each part available for the protection of the whole. It could no longer be mainly held from the sea-board. Its security depended on a network of strategic positions, several of them a thousand miles inland, which had to be firmly connected by railways with each other and with the coast. Lord Dalhousie clearly discerned this, and in his far-reaching scheme of empire, consolidation formed the necessary complement of conquest.
Lord Mayo came to India after the long strain which succeeded the Mutiny had passed away, and it fell to him to give a more complete development to his illustrious predecessor's views than had up to that time been practicable. Indeed, before his arrival, it was become apparent that under the then existing system, an adequate rate of progress in railway extension could only be attained by an outlay which exceeded the resources of Indian finance. Under Lord Mayo's orders a new system of State Railways was inaugurated—a system which has filled in the gaps left in the railway map of India as contemplated by Lord Dalhousie, and which is now bringing about an era of railway development throughout India such as Lord Mayo himself would scarcely have ventured to hope for.
During the five years preceding Lord Mayo's first year of rule, 1869-70, only 892 miles of new railway had been opened.1 During the five years which followed 1869-70, no fewer than 2013 additional miles were opened.2 The old system of Guaranteed Railways had from its commencement in 1853 opened only a total of 4265 miles during the seventeen years ending 1869-70. Under the new system of State and Guaranteed Railways inaugurated by Lord Mayo, the total rose to 15,245 miles in 1887-88.
1 Parliamentary Abstract, 1865-66 to 1869-70, inclusive.
2 Idem; 1870-71 to 1874-75, inclusive.
But while Lord Mayo strongly realised that the public safety in India demanded consolidation, he perceived that financial solvency depended on decentralisation. Up to his time the expenditure of the most distant provinces was regulated from Calcutta. In the greater India handed down by Dalhousie this task had grown beyond the power of any single central bureau. The result was an annual scramble by the Provincial Governments for the Imperial grants, and a chronic inability on the part of the Central Government to estimate its real income and expenditure for either the current or the coming year. In the proper chapter the disastrous consequences of this state of things will be duly set forth. It suffices here to state that the measures devised by Lord Mayo and his counsellors put an end to that state of things for ever.
By those measures he re-organised the finances of India on a broader basis of Provincial independence and Provincial responsibility, subject to a clearly defined central control. He awakened in each Local Government a new and keen incentive to economy—the incentive of self-interest. He found chronic deficit; he left a firmly established surplus. At the same time he reformed relations of the Provincial treasuries with the Central Government so as to secure that the Budget estimates should thenceforth be a trustworthy forecast of the resources of the year. All this he accomplished without impairing the efficiency of the central control, or depriving the Central Government of any power which it could really exercise with advantage.