IMPERIALISM V. FEDERALISM 97
as a central source of revenue, and the same treatment could have been granted to the salt revenue. Of course it would have been difficult to effect a separation of the sources of revenue in such a way as would have granted to each of the several Governments concerned resources adequate to meet the charges devolving upon them. A certain adjustment of funds by contributions from the provinces to the Central Government or from the Central Government to the provinces would have been inevitable; neither could it have been possible to obviate the adoption of principles more or less arbitrary in the matter of apportionment of revenues or of charges. But admitting the difficulties and arbitrariness involved in the problem of separating the Imperial Budget into a Central and several Provincial Budgets, it must still be said that it was quite capable of satisfactory solution. Colonel Chesney in response to the challenge thrown out by the Imperialists had made a notable attempt to distinguish the existing heads of charges into Imperial and Provincial. In his Indian Polity he says :
“The items of Imperial expenditure for which
contributions would be required consist apparently
of—(1) the Home Establishment and charges disbursed
by the Secretary of State ; (2) interest on Indian debt;
(3) Establishments of the Government of India ;
(4) Diplomatic establishment; (5) Army ; (6) Imperial
Services—Post Office and Telegraph Department ;
(7) interest guaranteed on railway capital; to which must
be added (8) grants in aid to some of the poorer provinces
(which do not at present pay their expenses).”
This and other efforts convinced the Imperialists that their argument from practicability was bound to fail. Consequently they shifted their emphasis from the argument from practicability to that from expediency. Expediency furnished a better ground for attacking the Federal plan. Can a Federal Government be as efficient as the Imperial Government ? Can its credit be as high ? Can its prestige be as great as that of the existing Imperial system ? It must be premised that it was fresh in the minds of the people that it was the Imperial system with a strong power of control that had saved the country to the British from the hands of the mutineers of 1857. The survival value of the Imperial system had been proved in the struggle. By a clever manoeuvre the Imperialists turned to e authorities and asked them to consider what had sustained the