Asiatic Quarterly Review (Full Title: The Imperial and Asiatic Quarterly Review, and Oriental and Colonial Record): Volume XIII, No. 26 [‎450v] (25/238)

238 Is State-aided Education in any Shape
which favours the well-to-do native favours a fortiori the
still richer and more influential Anglo-Indian. On either
view we have to take account of the fact that the pressure
of taxation is more severely felt, owing to its inequitable
adjustment, than would appear from the bare statement of
its ratio to average income ; consequently the need for
retrenchment is so much the more urgent.
My next point is that the
Need for Increased Expenditure
in certain directions is also urgent, thus further strengthen
ing the case for abolition of superfluous departments. The
cheapest of civilized Governments ” is not only not cheap,
if by “ cheap ” is meant “ unburdensome to the subject,” but
is also very imperfectly civilized, if by that adjective is
implied that civil rights are efficiently protected and justice
accessible to all who need it. We have learnt lately, on the
high authority of Mr. Thorburn, that in the Punjab “the
Sarkar has failed in the first duties of a Government j” that
more agrarian outrages are committed in one year in certain
districts of that province than in Ireland during the worst
period of Land League domination; and that the civil judges
are so overburdened with work that they can think of
nothing but clearing their files without attempting to get at
the real merits of disputes between raiyat and money-lender.
Not in the Punjab only, but all over India, we should have
heard less about the necessity for reactionary legislation
against freedom of contract, had the simple remedy been
nrst tried of providing a sufficiency of gratuitous, accessible,
and trustworthy Small Cause Courts, so as to enable the
poor and ignorant to litigate on equal terms with the rich
and astute. But if this is a counsel of perfection, incom
patible with the present financial straits, at least the urgency
of police reform, which cannot be accomplished without
money, is notorious and officially admitted.^
Then there is the work of codification at a standstill, a
xwv. UUU..CU biausncs snow an increase of crime durii
decade, concurrently with increased expenditure on education. ~