perhaps, in cases where the offenders are exceedingly popular with the natives, or are in very high powerful positions, or the party sinned against is very much disliked.
Some sneers have been indulged in of late, even in Parliament, at the alleged industry of members of the Supreme Council and other officials to be found at Simla, as if a certain amount of hospitality and of mingling in society were incompatible with leading a laborious life. But if we except the soldiers and regimental officers, it will be found that most of the English in India, be they civilians, staff-officers, educationalists, surgeons, merchants, missionaries, or editors, are compelled to live very laborious days, whether they may scorn delights or not. A late Indian governor, accustomed to parliamentary and ministerial life in England, used to declare that he had never been required to work so hard in London as he was in his comparatively unimportant presidency town. "Every one is overworked in India," was remarked to me by an Oudh director of public instruction, who was himself a notable instance of the assertion; and I have often had occasion to notice how much overtasked Indian officials of the higher grades are, and that in a country where the mind works a good deal more reluctantly and slowly than in Europe, and where there is very little pleasure in activity of any kind for its own sake. It is absurd to suppose that the immense task of Indian government can be accomplished by the handful of Englishmen there, without the greatest strain upon their individual energies. Not only have they to do all the ordinary work of a European government — they have also themselves to fill the greater number of judicial, revenue, and educational appointments, to construct public works, to direct the police, to accomplish great part of the work of governing which, in this country, is performed by hundreds of thousands of county gentlemen and city magnates; and, over and above all that, it is expected that they shall save the Indian people from the consequences of famine, and be able to show every year that they have elevated that people in the scale of humanity. The supervision of all this arduous labour — the performance of a certain share of its details — the sitting in judgment on numerous appeal-cases of the most various and complicated kind — the management of our relationships without the Indian peninsula — the settlement of important questions of the most difficult kind — and by far the greater share of the immense responsibility of governing an alien empire of nearly two hundred millions of people, — all this, and much more, falls upon the supreme government, whether it be located at Calcutta or at Simla; and to compel it to remain nearly all the year in the unhealthy delta of the Ganges, would be to burden it with a good deal more than the straw which breaks the camel's back.
It is obvious at Simla that the supreme government has selected for its summer residence about the best place to be found among the outer Himáliya. The duties of the government of India will not allow that government to bury itself in the interior of the great mountains, where much more healthy spots are to be found, or to select any place of residence far distant from railway communication. As it is, the viceroy, with his staff, and all the members of council, and the secretaries to government, could be at Ambála, on the great railway-line, in about twelve hours after leaving Simla, or even less on a push; and fifty hours by rail would take them to Calcutta, or sixty hours to Bombay. They are in close proximity to the Panjáb, and have the railway from Ambála to Lahore and Múltan, with steamers from the latter place down the Indus to its mouth or to Kotri, from whence there is a short line of railway to the port of Karáchi. Delhi, Agra, and all the great cities of the north-west are within easy reach. They are in much closer proximity to any cities and districts likely to be dangerous than they would be at Calcutta, and are also much nearer to the places which give rise to difficult questions of policy. In old times it was different; but now, with the rail and telegraph going over the land, it is of little importance in which of a hundred places the Indian government may be situated; but it is of great importance that its members should not be unnecessarily exposed to the depressing and destroying influence of the Indian hot season and rains. It only remains to remove the headquarters of government from Calcutta to some more central position, such as Agra or Allahabad; and I fancy only financial considerations stand in the way of that being done, for it would involve the erection of a number of new government buildings.
Society everywhere in India labours under very great disadvantages, and va-
