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464 merous reservoirs, the largest irrigation system in the world has been constructed in India. The effect of these great productive works has been to augment and distribute the national wealth; they have perceptibly modified the aspect of the country, and the habits of the people. The capital invested in these undertakings by the state has been, for the most part, obtained from loans, which were raised at low interest on the credit of the British government. The public debt of India to England has been sometimes represented as an intolerable burden, yet probably no incident of the connection between the two countries has been of greater advantage to India than this expenditure of many millions on the development of its natural resources.

In 1877, the assumption of Queen Victoria of the title of Empress of India, declared before a grand assemblage of chiefs and notables at Delhi, gave public form to the fact of sovereignty, and the magnificent durbar of King Edward in 1902, at which the king was represented by the Viceroy, and which was perhaps one of the most gorgeous Oriental pageants of all time, again attested the recognition of supremacy.

For India, therefore, the last fifty years have been pre-eminently an era of consolidation by laws and administrative reform. The British government may now be described as a highly organized machine, so powerful, and so complicated in its functions, that scientific management and control of them is indispensable, and accordingly their superior direction has been hitherto retained in English hands. Foreign dominion must