IMPERIALISM V. FEDERALISM 95
opposite view of the question should not Bengal bear her share of the cost of the troops located in the NorthWestern Provinces, the Punjab and Central India, which guard her from such invasions as those of the Rohillas, the Mahrattas and the Pindaries of former times ? These are all questions which would require solution if each were to have a financial system of its own.” [1]
and in his opinion the question was impossible of solution.
But the Imperialists went further than this and argued that, even if it were possible to distinguish and localize the charges and the revenues into provincial and central, it was inexpedient to do so. Under the existing system of finance, they held that
“the Imperial Government, disposing of financial resources of the whole of India, can carry those resources at once where they are most needed. There are objects which have a truly national importance, though they may appear chiefly beneficial to a particular district. There may be evils, necessities and dangers in particular districts, which it is the duty of the supreme Government to correct and remedy at the charge of the whole. The creation or improvement of a part may have a national importance, though the expenditure on it may seem unfairly beneficial to a particular locality. A road, a canal, a railway from a cotton district or a coffee district, or a tea district, may have a vital significance to the whole people and commerce of India; and yet the expenditure on such a work be out of all proportion to the present revenue of the district which it is destined to develop..... or the supreme Government may find it necessary to lay out, for moral and social purposes, larger sums on recently conquered, savage, or dissatisfied provinces than the revenues of those provinces seemed to warrant, in order to remove causes of disturbances or dangers, and to force those provinces into some degree of harmony with the long settled, pacified, reclaimed portions of the Empire..... The old provinces of the Empire conquer the new provinces. The old are bound in duty to civilize what they conquer. We have no right to
Minute dated November 22, 1867, op. cit., pp. .104-7.