96 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
annex a country and then throw it on its own resources. Conquest has its own duties as well as its rights.”
“I venture to demur,” wrote Lord Napier of Merchiston, President of the Council of Madras,” to the policy of those who would restrict the benefits of the supreme Government to its receipts, and who would measure out in a parochial spirit to every province appropriations proportional to its specific returns. On the contrary, it ought to be a satisfaction to the rich to help the poor; to the old to protect the young ; to the good to improve the bad; for thus all can co-operate in building up the glorious fabric of a—United India. Such ends can only be attained by a Central Government disposing of the financial resources of a whole Empire” [1]
It is evident that arguments or sermons such as the above by themselves could never have supported the cause of the Imperialists. Notwithstanding the emphasis laid upon the difficulty of separating the revenues and charges into Imperial and Provincial, it must be conceded that the task was by no means so insuperable as the Imperialists made it out to be. The difficulty of apportioning the military charges could have been easily obviated by centralizing the military and making it a charge of the Central Government. On the same basis all those services charged to a particular Presidency or Province, but which from their nature benefited the whole Empire, could have been easily incorporated into the budget of the Central Government. Similarly it was possible in practice to allocate the existing sources of revenue between the Central and the Local Governments. The Central Government could have been allowed to retain for its use such sources of revenue the locale of which extended beyond the limits of a Presidency or the maximum yield of which depended upon a uniform administration of the same throughout the country. While on the other hand the Provincial Government could have been allowed to appropriate such sources which were restricted in their locale or the yield of which depended upon local vigilance. For instance, the customs duties could have been easily made a central resource, not only because their incidence was wider, but because they required a common and uniform policy of legislation and administration. The opium revenue could have been treated
1 Cf. his Minute dated February 15, 1868, para. 9, op. cit., pp. 186-90.