British Work in India. By R. Carstairs. (W. Blackwood and
Sons.)—This is a thoughtful and carefully elaborated work on British rule in India, on what it has done, ought to do, and can do. Defects of the present system are criticised in a temperate fashion, and valuable suggestions are made, especially in the direction of local government and the meeting of India's greatest needs, a regular supply of water and good roads. A very common average of rain is thirty inches ; but as it all falls in a rainy season of three months, it wants husbanding. Husband it properly, and you save the five or six millions pounds which are lost every year for want of it—(in famine years the loss is of course much greater). Mr. Carstairs has no high opinion of the scheme for an Indian parliament. He sees three difficulties in the way, —(1), It is not the Oriental method of government, which is kingship ; (2), there would be no room for the British rule under the scheme ; (3), the Indian peoples are not of the same fighting value. Seventy millions of unwarlike Bengalis could only over ride the wishes of a third of the number of fighting-men of the North-West, so long as they were both under the hand of a stronger power than either. The chapter on the "Defects of the Law Courts" seems well worth considering. There are, says Mr. Carstairs, too few magistrates (ono to half-a-million inhabitants in Bengal, to give round numbers), and these without local know- ledge or prestige ; there is no public prosecutor, too few courts, too few lawyers, an inefficient and untrustworthy ministerial staff, and an executive staff equally defective. The chapter that follows deals with possible reforms. A useful book this, though of cows() we cannot pledge ourselves to all the views which are propounded in it.
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