ADMINISTRATION AND FINANCE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 45
people of England having no control over Indian expenditure, it is impossible to say to what lengths of unimagined extravegance they would not go : and in endeavoring to save India, may we not go far towards ruining England ?”
Not only was there no warrant for Mr. Bright to magnify this danger so much, but he failed “to see that the people of England would have very soon ceased to neglect the affairs of India, and would have obtained a real control over Indian expenditure, if some share of the liability of the Indian Debt had been thrown on them.”
The discussions were all abortive and did not even recompense the breath that was wasted and in no sense did the natives get any relief from “the direful spring of woes unnumbered.”
Let us now see what the Act willed for the future. Section 55 said, “excepting for preventing or repelling actual invasion of her Majesty’s Indian possessions, or under other sudden and urgent necessity, the revenues of India shall not, without the consent of both Houses of Parliament, be applicable to defray the expenses of any military operation carried on beyond the external frontiers of such possessions by her Majesty’s forces charged upon such revenues.”
With profound respect for the intellect of Mr. R. C. Dutt, one, however, cannot understand on what ground does he characterise this section as “one salutary financial provision”. That it was an improvement over the financial administration of the East India Company no one can doubt. But it is by no means salutary in that the revenues of India have been spent outside India for nonIndian purposes, even after the Act. The fatal error lay in this,—the excepting clause in the above section which sanctions the expenditure of Indian revenue outside of India omits the vital word previous. The clause in order to be salutary in effect ought to run—“the revenues of India shall not, without the previous consent of both Houses of Parliament, be applicable etc......” and not in the way it does. An unknown writer says, “in all probability that essential proviso was comprised in the original draft, but afterwards eliminated by the