Lord Elgin, the retiring Viceroy of India, delivered his farewell
speech on Monday, January 2nd, to the Bengal Chamber of Commerce. It was, of course, a review of his administration, and though deprived of some of its interest by excessive reticence, contained a few points worth attention. Lord Elgin began by defending the annual emigration of officials from the plains to Simla, hinting that even in India a great capital might not be the best place to station the Executive, but pronounced emphatically for the retention of Calcutta as the centre of legislative action. He refused to discuss the currency question while a Committee was sitting in England, but expressed his personal views with sufficient clearness. He rejected the idea of further taxation, intimated a hope that exchange would remain stationary, and declaring that the need of India was cheap capital from Europe, maintained that the country would "reap a large balance of advantage" from "throwing in its lot with the countries using a gold standard." He was no railway enthusiast, but he believed in railways, and he thought that the present system, under which hundreds of railway schemes were examined every year, would ultimately produce great good. He was inclined to give guarantees up to the rate at which Government could borrow, but still hoped that capitalists would at last be found who would risk the construction of railways at their own expense.
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