Page:Lord Amherst and the British Advance Eastwards to Burma.djvu/52

 the guilty had very much less chance of escape than now. For though the police system was in its infancy the English barrister was almost unknown in the mofussil.

The operations in Burma cost fifteen millions, and as the total revenue for 1822-3 had been little more than twenty-three millions it will be easily understood that the result was grave financial disorder. Lord Hastings had left a surplus of over three millions, and Lord William Bentinck before he resigned restored the equilibrium. But the interim was full of anxiety. The loans by which Lord Amherst met the liabilities of the Government were of course a permanent burden; but it was accounted, politically speaking, an encouraging sign that native bankers were so ready to make advances.

In spite of this grave impediment to progress, it is hardly too much to say that engineering as a branch of State policy began with Lord Amherst. The traveller to-day along the course of the Jumna, when he looks out on a landscape of rich cultivation, does not always remember that the scene as left to us by the native lords was a barren wilderness. Not that the Mughals had been negligent in the matter either of Roads or Irrigation. The works they had constructed remained to remind us of our duty, though in the prevailing anarchy they had become almost useless for want of the necessary repair. Under Lord Minto and Lord Hastings something had been done to make inquiries and surveys. The water of Ali Mardan's