COST OF THE INDIAN WAR.

Otago Witness, Issue 390, 21 May 1859, Page 6

COST OF THE INDIAN WAR.

The year of mutiny 1837-58 cost the empire in round numbers nine and a half millions sterling. That at least is the official statement, but so extraordinary are some of the items of the account that we are tempted to disbelieve even a blue-book. It will be perceived that the decrease in the land revenue is just £2.000,000, being £200,000 more than the actual loss on the land revenue of the North-West, -which amounted to £1,800,000. This and the loss on the salt in the same presidency formed the only serious revenue losses of "the year, and 50 per cent, even of these are made up from the increased profit on opium. A fact more indicative of the strength of our revenue system we have rarely seen. In a convulsion such as has seldom been recorded in history, with the NorthWest Provinces "actually lost" the revenue declined by a sum less than 7 per cent, upon the gross income of the State, less by hundreds of thousands than the revenue loss produced in England by the recent monetary panic! The fact is a pWant one for the holders of Indian fun;!?. The revenue which passed almost unscathed through 1357 will scarcely be affected by anything short of our expulsion. It is fortunate'tliat it is so, for the evpenditure shows four great items of increase. The civil expenditure has increased by a million and a half principally from carrying to that account Ihe £1,174,659, the cish actually taken by the mutineers from the tieasuries. The military expenditure, notwithstanding the disappearance of the old army and the pension list, has been enlarged by four millions and a quarter, the cost of military buildings by half a million, and the home expenditure by two millions and a half. The total of excess over last year, after stopping public works, is se\ en millions. Nor can this represent the whole truth. No outlay had in this year been made for property destroyed, for compensation, or for the new police corps three most serious items. The expenditure for police, indeed, had scarcely increased a pound. Nor apparently had the transport bill been paid. The whole charge had been put down at £770,000, or about £!9 a head — an impossibility. Even if part of the cost of transport were paid out of the next item — " Payments on account of Her Majesty's troops serving in India, £1,175,000,'' the total will not be in excess of the truth. Taking the whole account, however, as it 6tands, as a fair representation of the fact, it justifies the foreboding of our correspondent " C." We lost last year nine millions and a half. This year we have as much to lose, minus the cash stolen, but ]>his the pay of about 70,000 new levies and police, phn some 600 new statF appointments, plus the rehabilitation of nearly exhausted arsenals. There is ten more millions added to the former. Add at least five millions for property to be renewed, for compensation, and for accounts left unadjusted, and the mutiny, c\en if it ends this cold weather, has added 25 millions to the debt. That is, at 5 per cent., £1,250,000 added to the permanent burden. Add the cost of 45 extra battalions of Europeans, or say, with our new masses of English cavalry, not less than £3,500,00, a-year. Add the £900,000 of the old deficit in 1557, and we have increased interest oi debt, £1,250,000: increased military cost, £3,500,000 old deficit, £900,000 ; total," £5.050,000. In other words, a deficit of five millions and a-half, to be met by the surplus of Oude, when it comes, and the profits of the half-dozon jaghires and pensions forfeited bdbre Lord Stanley restored Dhar. — Friend of India.