QUESTION II. WHAT SHARE OF THE ADMINISTRATION WITHIN THE COLONY IS CONDUCTED BY REPRESENTATIVES OF THE HOME GOVERNMENT, AND WHAT SHARE IS INTRUSTED TO THE NATIVES IN CONJUNCTION WITH REPRESENTATIVES OF THE HOME GOVERNMENT? The fact that the native population in the tropical colonies of the world is many hundred times as great as that representing the home government either by birth or direct descent illustrates the importance of this question. To answer it there must be taken into account not merely the number of each class now actually employed in the various successful or unsuccessful colonies of the world, but the duties assigned to each, or at least to each class. This question of the division of labor and official duty between the natives and representatives of the home government becomes more important year by year as the control of the great nations of the temperate zone is extended more and more over tropical territory, where methods of government have not made the advance which characterizes those of the temperate zone. The indisposition of the native of the temperate-zone countries to locate permanently in or colonize, in the proper sense of the term, the tropical territory brought under control of his government adds to the necessity of relying to a great extent upon native cooperation in the details of administration and enforcement of law. At the same time the ever-increasing facilities for communication by wire and by mail, and for transportation of military forces in case of necessity, renders it practicable to administer government in territory of this character through a smaller number of representatives of the home government as these facilities for quick communication multiply. This question, like all other questions pertaining to the management of colonies, can probably be best answered by a study of the methods adopted by the countries which have had long experience in colonization, and which may properly be supposed to have adopted their present methods as those best suited, not alone to their convenience as a nation, but to the welfare of the people whom they are thus governing. SMALL EUROPEAN POPULATION IN TROPICAL COLONIES. In the self-governing colonies it goes without saying that practically all officers are either natives of or descended from natives of the governing country. In all newly acquired territory it is also apparent that government must be temporarily conducted through the military or through officers with semimilitary power, who receive their instructions from the home Government and are supplied with a sufficient force to execute these laws and regulations. It is especially with reference to the tropical territory which has been a sufficient length of time under the temperate-zone governments to enable them to settle upon and adopt a permanent form of administration and determine the share of the administration which shall be allotted to the natives that this inquiry is made. Here again the experiences of England, Netherlands, and France in the East and West Indies, respectively, afford the most important and valuable lessons. IN THE BRITISH COLONIES. In India, according to Sir George Chesney, "there are now altogether only about 750 British officials (excluding English officers in the police), including military men in civil employment and a few others engaged in civil administration, or about one to every quarter of a million people. Besides these the higher judicial and executive service comprises about 2,600 officials, of whom, according to the latest returns, only 35 are Englishmen not domiciled in India. Four-fifths of these are Hindoos; the remainder are Mohammedans. Under this class comes the subordinate civil service of India, including about 110,000 persons, with salaries of about 100 rupees and upward, of whom 97 per cent are natives of India." The International Geography, edited by H. R. Mill, New York, 1900, has the following: "Taking into account the 75,000 British troops and all the professional and mercantile population of that race, the proportion is 1 Briton to 3,000 Indians. In the service of the state, irrespective of the 800 British officials occupying the more responsible posts, and the whole of the subordinate staff, which is Indian, no less than 97 per cent are natives of the country." The Statesman's Year-Book of 1901 says that "nearly all the civil judges and a great majority of the magistrates of original jurisdiction are natives of India, while in Bengal, Madras, and Bombay the proportion of natives sitting in the appellate courts is considerable;" and adds that "the Indian army now consists of 74,000 European and 140,000 native soldiers." In Ceylon the total number of English is but about 6,000 and the population 3,000,000. In the Malayan Peninsula the proportion of English to natives is about the same. In the Dutch East Indies, where 35,000,000 natives are governed,'the total number of male "Europeans and persons assimilated to them" was in 1896, according to the Statesman's Year-Book, but 35,000, and as a large share of these are engaged in mercantile and financial pursuits or the management of plantations, it is apparent that the number of officials who are natives of the governing country must be relatively small, and that a very large share of the details of government of these 35,000,000 people must necessarily be in the hands of natives. In the West Indian colonies, also, a comparatively small proportion of the officials are natives of the governing country. In Jamaica, for instance, according to the Colonial Office List, only 2 per cent of the inhabitants are white; the remainder are chiefly of African descent, four-fifths being pure Negroes. In British Guiana, out of a total population of 180,000, less than 5,000 were Europeans other than Portuguese, including all occupations and representatives of the various European countries. In British Honduras, out of a total population of over 31,000, about 500 are of European descent. No. 4 7 1237 IN THE FRENCH COLONIES. The French distribute their own officials more liberally in the colonies in proportion to the population than do the English or Dutch, and this is commented upon by some students of and writers upon colonial subjects as disadvantageous rather than otherwise. Mr. Poultney Bigelow, in his Children of the Nations, 1901, calls attention to the fact that in French Guiana the official head was changed on an average more frequently than once in two years during the forty-six years from 1817 to 1863, and that in a population numbering only 20,000 altogether there were 1,000 government officials, and this not counting soldiers or sailors. "The Frenchman," he says, “is a brave soldier and his fellow-citizens have a penchant for detailed administration. They conquer and they govern, but they do not colonize. When they govern they govern too much. They are suspicious of native initiative and distrustful of colonial self-government.” Prof. Henry E. Bourne, writing in the Yale Review of May, 1899, on French methods in Indo-China and French colonial methods in general, says that the administration of justice is too often intrusted to Frenchmen unacquainted with the language, customs, and local traditions of the colony or community in which they are located, and that appointments are too frequently made through favoritism. Added to these defects, he says, "was the equally great evil of the multiplication of places. Ten years ago the officeholders formed a large part of the whole French population of Cochin China. The under-secretary in charge of the colonies declared in 1891 that the total appropriation for public works, 80,000 francs, was in that year spent in salaries. As the colonial council for Cochin China was elected by officeholders and contractors-that is, practically all the Frenchmen in the colony-it voted high salaries and fat contracts. The Annamites in Cochin China are regarded as subjects, not as citizens. Their function is to pay taxes and to obey French officers. They enjoy no political rights, unless the management of their communities may be so regarded. The deputy who sits in the Chamber for Cochin China does not represent them. He represents merely the 4,000 Frenchmen in a total population of over 2,000,000. * * As in the last days of the Roman Empire the Germans brought into southern Europe their law as a personal possession and privilege, and still allowed the Romans to be judged according to their own laws, so the Frenchman has carried into Indo-China his codes and liberties, his right to local self-government and to representation in the French Chamber of Deputies without thereby disturbing the social organization, customs, and laws of the Annamites. Probably the little French communities and the larger native communities will long exist side by side almost distinct social entities.” * M. de Lanessan, the present French minister of marine, and formerly governor-general of French Indo-China, in his work, Principes de Colonisation, says on this subject: "Generally speaking, it may be said that in the French colonial possessions very little regard has been shown for the interests of the native people. Imbued with the spirit of the Roman jurisprudence, which lies at the base of all the institutions of the mother country, we have shown no greater regard than that of transferring to our colonial possessions the whole administrative and judiciary machinery of the mother country, without asking ourselves whether the natives for whose benefit we professed to work would not find in this machinery simple tools of oppression and exploitation. Not to mention the old colonies, such as Guadeloupe, Martinique, and Reunion, where a new race formed by a mixture of the black and white required political administration and judicial institutions better adapted than ours to their special conditions, we have introduced in colonies such as Cochin China and Senegal, where the native population is more numerous and altogether distinct from the European races by customs, religion, etc., an organism which seems to have been constructed in such a way as to crush the native. What else are the colonial councils of Senegal and Cochin China, with the preponderance in them of European members and their considerable power as regards the assessment of fiscal charges and expenditures, but organs of exploitation of the natives?” OBJECT LESSONS IN THE EAST INDIES. Five colonies in the East Indian group and three in the West Indies seem especially valuable "object lessons" in the details of colonial management in the Tropics. These are India, Ceylon, Malayan Peninsula, Java, and French Indo-China in the East Indies, and Jamaica, Barbados, and Trinidad in the West Indies. It seems not improper, therefore, to present detailed statements of the methods of administering the government in each of these and the share intrusted to the natives. For this purpose statements made by distinguished writers and students, chiefly men of practical experience in these colonies, have been selected. Sir W. W. Hunter, a gentleman of lifetime experience in regard to the government of India as an officer of the British Government, and the compiler of an extremely valuable series of volumes on India, is an author accepted the world over; while Gen. Sir George Chesney's long experience in India and the high qualities of his work, Indian Polity, give him equally high rank as an author on methods of government in India. Sir John Strachey has also had long experience in India, and his volume, India, is highly commended by students of this subject. The works of these three distinguished students of India have been relied upon for a definite and detailed statement of the government of India and the share of the natives therein. Regarding the government of Java, and the respective share of Europeans and natives therein, the supply of literature is abundant and excellent in quality. The spectacle of a handful of Europeans governing 35,000,000 people in a small and densely populated island with such remarkable success, financial and otherwise, has attracted students of this subject from all parts of the world. English, French, German, Dutch, and American writers have in turn visited, studied, and written upon the methods of government in Java. In some cases additional value has been given to these studies by the fact that the men who engaged in them had previously had long experience in India as officers of the British Government, and were thus enabled not only to study with great care the Dutch methods in Java, but to contrast them with those of the English Government in India. This is especially true of the work of Mr. Henry Scott Boys, formerly of the British Government in India, from whose Notes on Java liberal quotations are made. To these are added extracts from the excellent studies of conditions in Java by Mr. Basil W. Worsfold, an Englishman of long experience and observation in the Orient; M. Jules LeClercq and M. Chailley-Bert, whose works on Java are the result of personal visits to and studies of the institutions and methods of that island, and Prof. Clive Day, of the American Economic Association, whose excellent studies on the labor problems, published in the Yale Review, and on Dutch colonial finance, published in the proceedings of the American Economic Association, have attracted great attention, and received the commendation of officers of the Dutch Government as valuable aids to studies of conditions in that island. From the excellent writings of Sylvester Baxter, also in the Yale Review, and those of Mr. L. B. Clarence on Ceylon, in the British Empire Series, additional information has been obtained regarding the Orient. For French Indo-China the works of M. de Lanessan, already referred to, and the article by Prof. Henry E. Bourne, published in the Yale Review, have been chiefly relied upon. For the Malayan Peninsula, which is looked upon as an especially important field of study by reason of the similarity of its population, climate, and conditions to those of the Philippines, a statement by Lieut. Gen. Sir Andrew Clarke, who extended the British Government over the native states in that peninsula, furnishes much detailed and valuable information, as does also a carefully prepared review published in the New York Tribune. For details regarding the governments of the West Indian Islands, especially those which may be considered the most important examples, statements from the British Colonial Office List, the writings of Sir Charles Dilke, the excellent work of Prof. Robert Chalmer, of Oriel College, Oxford, on colonial currency, and the report of the British commission which in 1897 investigated conditions in the British West Indies have been relied upon. THE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA AND SHARE OF THE BRITISH AND NATIVES, RESPECTIVELY, IN ITS ADMINISTRATION. The system of government of British India and the share of the natives therein may be described as follows: The general direction of the government is in charge of the secretary of state for India, assisted by a council of ten members, nine of whom must have resided at least ten years in India and not left India more than ten years prior to the date of their appointment. These officials are located in London and all of their work with reference to India is performed from that stand point. This council has no initiative authority, but conducts the business relative to India subject to the direction of the secretary of state for India, an important part of this duty being to act upon all grants and appropriations of the revenues of India, both in India and elsewhere, no grant being valid without their favorable action. Meetings are held at least once each week. The supreme executive authority in India is the governor-general, or viceroy, aided by his council, which consists of five appointed members, and the commander in chief of the Indian army. The work of government is divided into seven departments--home, foreign, finance, military, public works, revenue, and agriculture--and one of these departments is assigned to each member of the council, the foreign department being under the personal direction of the governor-general. All these are Englishmen appointed by the home Government. For legislative work the governor-general's council is enlarged by the addition of sixteen additional members, Englishmen, nominated by the governor-general. This council has power, subject to certain restrictions, to make laws for all persons within British India, and all British subjects in the native states of India. For administrative work, India is divided into eight great provinces, with a governor, lieutenant-governor, or chief commissioner at the head of cach; these officials being Englishmen of long experience in India, subject to the approval of the home Government. The governors are appointed by the home Government, the lieutenant-governors and commissioners by the governor-general of India. Only two of these officials are designated as governor-those at the head of the great provinces of Madras and Bombay. Four others are styled lieutenant-governor-those of Bengal, Punjab, Burma, and the Northwest Province. The other two, styled commissioners, are respectively at the head of the Central Province and Assam. A new province has just been created on the northwest frontier and will be under charge of an agent of the governor-general. These officers become members of the governor-general's council when it sits in the province over which they preside. Each of the governors and lieutenant-governors has a legislative council, which assists him in framing laws and regulations for the province. These councils are in part nominated by the lieutenant-governor and in part named by the municipal corporations, rural boards, and commercial bodies of the province. Each of these eight great provinces is divided into districts, at the head of which is placed by appointment a "collector magistrate," or "deputy commissioner," an Englishman, who is the executive officer of the district and is responsible to the governor of the province for the administration of the district. He carries on the government through assistant magistrates, and a superintendent and assistant superintendent of police, also Englishmen. In some districts there is also a judge, while in others the magistrate collector also acts as judge. There are about 250 of these districts in all of British India, and they thus have an average population of about 1,000,000 people each, though no fixed unit of population is applied in determining their boundaries. The district is thus the administrative unit of British India. The governor-general of India, the governors and lieutenant-governors of the provinces, the "collector magistrate," or "deputy commissioner," at the head of the districts, their assistants, and the superintendents of police and their assistants are Englishmen; the additional thousands who carry out their orders and attend to the details of the administration of law and the preservation of order are natives. Next below the collector magistrate, or deputy commissioner, the head of the district, are the deputy collectors, all natives of India; the "tehsilders" who have charge of the "tehsils," or wards, into which the district is divided, and have in most cases magisterial powers, and they too are all natives. The police, except the district superintendent and his assistant, are also natives. The system of Indian law provides a judge's court for each district, with "munsiff," or lower courts, from which appeals may be made to the judge's court of the district, and from that to the high court of India, and in certain cases to the judicial committee of the privy council in London. A large number of the judges of the courts in the districts are also natives of India. Still below the district organizations, are the municipal governments in the cities and towns, and the local boards in the rural districts. There are 750 towns which have municipal organizations, in charge of the water supply, sanitation, roads, drains, and markets. They impose and collect taxes, expend money for local purposes, make improvements, and enact by-laws. In all rural tracts, the local boards are in charge of roads, schools, and hospitals.. The members of these municipal organizations and the rural boards are natives of India, and are elected by vote of the taxpayers. The police of India, which, exclusive of the village watch, number about 150,000, are all natives, aside from the district superintendent and assistant superintendent above referred to. Aside from this machinery of British India is that of the "native states," which contain 70,000,000, or about 24 per cent of the population of all India, and have an area of 655,000 square miles, or 42 per cent of the total area. The control of the British Government over these varies in degree and is administered through a "resident," or agent, an Englishman, who resides at the seat of government of the native state and aids or advises the native prince at the head of the government and his ministers and councils in the framing and administration of law. These princes or rulers of the native states are not permitted to maintain a military force beyond a fixed limit; to make war or peace with other states, or send ambassadors, and no European is permitted to reside at their courts without special permission of the British Government. In case of misgovernment of the state by the prince, the British Government in its treaties with them reserves the power of dethronement. No accurate statement has been made of the total number of officials in India, or of the proportion who are natives of England and India, respectively, but some idea of the immense total of officers of all kinds and the small percentage which the English must form of that total may be obtained by an examination of the following statement from the 1891 census of India, which shows the number of persons dependent for support upon official position. The census does not attempt to state the actual number of officeholders or of persons engaged in specified occupations, but instead gives the "total population supported by" each occupation. This statement shows the total number of persons supported by the various occupations under the term "Administration" to be 5,600,153, and with the very liberal estimate of 5.6 persons for each family would give a total of 1,000,000 officials in the various groups and classes enumerated. When it is considered that the same census showed in India only 100,551 persons of all ages who were born in England, the small proportion of English officials will be apparent. OCCUPATION OR MEANS OF LIVELIHOOD. Order 1. Administration Suborder 1. Civil service of the State.. 1. The viceroy, governors, and other heads of administration of provinces and their families. 3. Officers of government and their families... 4. Clerks, inspectors, etc., and their families.. 5. Constables, messengers, warders, etc... 6. State service (unspecified) Suborder 2. Service of local bodies. 7. Local and municipal inspectors, etc...... 8. Local and municipal clerical establishments.. 9. Local and municipal menials, etc...... Suborder 3. Village service...... 10. Village headmen (not returned as agriculturists) 11. Village accountants (not returned as agriculturists). 12 Village watchmen and other menials (not returned as agriculturists) India. 5,600.153 2,395, 162 30 111, 742 42, 272 573, 253 1,447, 478 220,387 118, 135 5, 178 32, 689 80.268 3,086, 856 349,559 452,986 2,284, 311 Commenting upon the share of the native in the administration of law in British India, Gen. Sir George Chesney, K. C. B., M. P., in his work, Indian Polity, 1894, says: "The civil administration of India is in fact carried on by native agency, supervised by a small body of Englishmen. During the last twenty-five years, notwithstanding the additions of territory made, the covenanted civil service has been reduced by 22 per cent, and, excluding Burma, the condition of which is for the time exceptional, there are now altogether (omitting English officers in the police) only about 750 British officials, including military men in civil employ and a few others, engaged in the civil administration, or about one to every quarter of a million people. Besides these the higher judicial and executive service comprises about 2,600 officials, of whom, according to the latest returns, only 35 were Englishmen domiciled in India. Four-fifths of these are Hindus, one-half of them being Brahmans; the remainder, save a few Sikhs, Parsis, and unspecified classes, are Mohammedans. Under this class comes the subordinate civil service, including about 110,000 persons of salaries of 100 rupees and upward, of whom 97 per cent are natives of India." SIR GEORGE CHESNEY ON THE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. Sir George Chesney, in his "Indian Polity," describes the government of India as follows: THE LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL. In Bengal thirteen of the twenty members of the legislative council are to be nominated by the lieutenant-governor, of whom not more than ten are to be officials of the government. The nomination of the remaining seven is delegated as follows: The municipal corporations of the cities and towns in the province will recommend two members; the district (rural) boards of the province will nominate two; one nomination each has been given to the Corporation of Calcutta, the Association of Merchants, and the University of Calcutta. For the purposes of the election, the municipalities and district boards are grouped in eight divisions, corresponding with the geographical charges of the official commissioners of divisions into which the province is divided, and two groups of each class, or four groups in all, will elect one member each. A seat in the council being held for two years, each group will thus get its turn once in eight years. The votes of each municipality are valued in an ascending scale according to its income, a municipality with an income of 5,000 rupees having a single vote, one with an income of 250,000 rupees and upward eight votes. The various district boards have all equally a single vote. Each municipality or district board, as the case may be, which takes part in the election of the year, sends a delegate to the appointed place of meeting within the division, where the election is carried out by ballot, repeated if necessary until some one of the nominated candidates obtains a majority of the whole number of votes. The candidates nominated must be residents in that part of the province for which the election is being held. The procedure adopted in Madras is somewhat more simple. Here also the governor makes thirteen nominations, of which not more than nine may be of official persons; the nominations (or rather recommendations for the nomination) of the remaining seven councilors have been made over to the Corporations of Madras, Chamber of Commerce, and University of Madras, one each, while the municipal and district boards throughout the province are divided for the purpose of the election into two groups respectively, each nominating one candidate. Each municipality and district board has only a single vote, without regard to size or income. For the council of the governor-general the nominations to four seats have been made on the recommendation of the nonofficial members of the four provincial councils; a fifth nomination has been given to the Calcutta Chamber of Commerce. Before describing the system of district administration carried on throughout the country, in the efficiency of which the interests of the people are mainly concerned and on which the security and efficacy of the British government in India is mainly dependent, some account of the centralized departments may first be given. DEPARTMENTS UNDER THE SUPREME GOVERNMENT. It has already been explained that the government of India retains the direct control of various branches of the civil administration, the business of which is distributed among the following departments: I. Finance and commerce: Under the administration of the financial member of council, whose functions correspond with that of the English chancellor of the exchequer, the secretary of the department holding a position analogous to that of the secretary of the T treasury. The head of the executive department of finance and account is the comptroller and auditor-general, in whose office all the accounts of the country are brought together and compiled, who is responsible for the proper working of all the account departments throughout India, and is also the final authority for the disposal of all departmental or interprovincial differences of account. The comptroller-general is also the currency commissioner, and in this capacity exercises the functions which are performed for the British Government by the Bank of England.` The civil accounts of each province are dealt with by an accountant-general, with one or more deputies and assistants, who also conducts the detailed audit of all the civil expenditure. The proceedings of the accountant-generals are supervised by traveling inspectors, who report to the comptroller-general. THE POSTAL SYSTEM. The post-office, an imperial service under the finance department, is administered by a director-general. Under him come the postmaster-generals of provinces, either civil servants or departmental officers advanced for good service, who form one body for the purposes of promotion and are available for transfer from one province to another. The Indian postal rates are the cheapest in the world. A letter can be sent from one end of the country to the other-from Peshawur to Mandalay (3,000 miles)—for half an anna, value a halfpenny. DEPARTMENTAL SERVICE. II. The department of revenue and agriculture, which deals with the business denoted by its title, administers also the following departments: Survey of India department. This carries on three great branches of survey: (1) The great trigonometrical survey, or general measurement of the country. This has been practically completed within India, but is now being carried on to the extensive regions on the northwest frontier and in Burma which have recently come under British rule. (2) Various topographical surveys. (3) The revenue survey, for recording superficial areas and tracts as the basis of land-revenue settlements. HOME DEPARTMENT. III. This department, which, with that of revenue and agriculture, is administered by the available civilian member of the governor-general's council, deals with all the business coming up to the government of India other than the special affairs already detailed and public works, and is the general medium of communication with the provincial governments and secretary of state, as well as the department in which all business relating to the government collectively is dealt with, as, for example, rules for the conduct of business between the departments. PUBLIC WORKS. IV. Public works, the administration of which forms another department of the Supreme Government, includes construction of roads and canals, supervision of railways, etc. This department also administers the telegraph department (with a director-general at the head). This is a more appropriate arrangement than to place it, like the post-office, under the home department. The telegraph lines being carried in many parts through uninhabited forests and over wild mountain ranges, their construction and maintenance present greater difficulties than the transmission of messages. SIR W. W. HUNTER ON THE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. Sir W. W. Hunter, in his 1892 edition of The Indian Empire, says of the details of administration in India: Alike in regulation and nonregulation territory, the unit of administration is the district-a word of very definite meaning in official phraseology. The district officer, whether known as collector-magistrate or as deputy commissioner, is the responsible head of his jurisdiction. Upon his energy and personal character depend ultimately the efficiency of our Indian government. His own special duties are so numerous and so various as to bewilder the outsider, and the work of his subordinates, native and European, largely depends upon the stimulus of his personal example. His position has been compared to that of a French préfet, but such a comparison is unjust in many ways to the Indian district officer. He is not a mere subordinate of a central bureau, who takes his color from his chief and represents the political parties or the permanent officialism of the capital. The Indian collector is a strongly individualized worker in every department of rural well-being, with a large measure of local independence and of personal initiative. As the name of collector-magistrate signifies, his main functions are twofold. He is a fiscal oflicer, charged with the collection of the revenue from the land and other sources; he is also a revenue and criminal judge, both of first instance and in appeal. But his title does by no means exhaust his multifarious duties. He does in his smaller local sphere all that the home secretary superintends in England and a great deal more, for he is the representative of a paternal and not of a constitutional government. Police, jails, education, municipalities, roads, sanitation, dispensaries, the local taxation, and the imperial revenues of his district are to him matters of daily concern. He is expected to make himself acquainted with every phase of the social life of the natives and with each natural aspect of the country. He should be a lawyer, an accountant, a surveyor, and a ready writer of state papers. He ought also to possess no mean knowledge of agriculture, political economy, and engineering. * *The municipalities at present existing in India are a creation of the legislature; indeed, a recent branch of our system of administration. Their origin may be traced, not directly to the native panchayat, but to the necessity for relieving the district officer from certain details of his work. The panchayat, or elective council of five, is one of the institutions most deeply rooted in the Hindu mind. By it the village community was ruled; the headman being only its executive officer, not the legislator or judge. By it caste disputes were settled; by it traders and merchants were organized into powerful guilds, to the rules of which even European outsiders formerly had to submit. By a development of the panchayat the Sikh army of the khálsá was despotically governed when the centralized system of Ranjit Singh fell to pieces at his death. * The village organization was impaired or broken up under Mughal rule. Municipal institutions have developed under the British rule in place of the old Hindu mechanism or rural government, which had thus worn out. Police, roads, and sanitation are the three main objects for which a modern Indian municipality is constituted. In rural tracts these departments are managed (in different provinces) by the collector, or by one of his subordinate staff, or by a local fund board. Within municipal limits they are delegated to a committee who, at first, derived their practical authority from the collector's sanction, implied or expressed. Except in the larger towns the municipalities can scarcely be said as yet to exhibit the attributes of popular representation or of vigorous corporate life. But the local government acts, which received a new impulse during Lord Ripon's viceroyalty, have strengthened the rural and municipal boards. As education advances, they will be further developed. In 1882-83 the municipalities in British India, exclusive of the three presidency cities, numbered 783, with 12,923,494 inhabitants. In that year the municipalities of Calcutta, Bombay, and Madras governed a population of 13 millions; the members of the three municipal bodies numbered 171, of whom 93 were elected. Increased life and vigor has been given to municipal institutions in India by the extension of the elective principle under the local self-government acts (1882-1884). In important places the majority of the municipal bodies are elected by the local taxpayers, but in certain small towns all, and in every town some, of the administrators are nominated by the Government or have seats ex officio. In Upper Burma alone there are no elected members in the 16 municipalities, which, despite the recent date of the annexation, have already been constituted. The 758 municipalities, excluding the presidency towns, of which British India consisted in 1890-91 of 10,585 members, of whom 5,848 were |