THE COMPROMISE 103
needs of improvements, hitherto neglected, and the contracting scope for economy, combined to demand an ever-increasing scale of taxation. The dangers of increased taxation by an alien Government of a people not interested in obtaining the amenities of life, much less at the cost of a tax, were uppermost in the minds of the three great financiers who were sent out from England in succession to rehabilitate the finances of India on a sound and stable basis. They realized that unless bounds were set to these demands for improved administration and improved material and moral conditions, the immediate benefits of which were enjoyed more by the European than the native population, taxation howsoever high would be inadequate for financial solvency, besides being dangerous to the political stability of the Empire. Under the existing system of barren uniformity and pedantic centralization their object was thought to be impossible of achievement; for the Local Governments, on which alone the Central Government could depend for economy, rendered at best to that Government not only a cold and languid support in financial vigilance and reform, but too often exhibited a passive resistance, and even countenanced evasions of regulations intended to be conducive to economy. The only way to make Local Governments economical in their ways was to give them the power and responsibility of managing their own affairs. As a matter of administrative experience the financiers had found that while some of the branches of revenue and expenditure were truly imperial, there was a wide field of both of them which was properly local in character, and ought to have been entrusted to Local Governments. They were convinced that there could be no standard of economy until the requirements of the Local Government were made absolutely dependent upon known means, and nothing they thought would serve to make known to the Local Governments the means available for their outlay than to carve out from the Imperial purse a separate purse of definite magnitude for the use of Local Governments and to throw on them the responsibility of meeting their demands and maintaining an equilibrium in their finance.
Thus they were led to the same conclusion as the Federalists. However, to make the plan acceptable to the Imperialists, they