54 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
monograph may otherwise be said to possess. My regrets are with regard to only a few of them. I have specified a date as to when Local Decentralization of Finance commenced in India; but I feel that that date may not be the earliest and that there may be a date earlier than that one given by me. I wish I had settled that point finally. But that would have been a task analogous to that of searching for a needle in a haystack, and it is doubtful whether the value of that result would have been commensurate with that labour. Besides, although I am not confident of my date, my feeling is that later researches may after all confirm my statement. Another matter which I have not dealt with, but which I would have liked to have dealt with, was the inter-relation of Provincial and Local Finance. This l had originally planned to do, but left pursuing it because I found that the chief subject I was dealing with, namely, the Provincial Decentralization of Imperial Finance, began to be overlaid by facts and arguments not germane to that topic. These shortcomings will, however, be removed by a supplementary monograph on Local Finance in British India, which is well under way and which I hope to publish before long. Occasional repetitions may also be pointed out as a defect of this monograph. That they should be avoided is all very well. But where economy in the words of explanation are likely to obscure, repetitions such as are unavoidable must be justified, for the interests of clarification should always outweigh the tedium they involve.
I cannot conclude this preface without thanking Mr. Robinson, the Financial Secretary at the India Office, for many valuable suggestions and for the loan of many important documents bearing on the subject. I am also thankful to Prof. Cannan, of the University of London, who has read the rough draft of a small part of the manuscript. My debt to Prof. Seligman, my teacher at Columbia University, is of course immense : for from him I learned my first lessons in the theory of Public Finance. I am obliged to my friend Mr. C. S. Deole for assistance afforded in the dreary task of reading the proofs.
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