Page:Viscount Hardinge and the Advance of the British Dominions into the Punjab.djvu/69

Rh of a rupee in Bombay and one rupee in Madras. Lord Hardinge struck off the odd fraction, bringing the duty in Bengal down to three rupees.

This is not the place to consider the incidence of the salt-tax, which has frequently formed a subject for discussion in the Imperial Parliament as well as in India. Suffice it to say, that it forms the one impost which every inhabitant of the country must pay; and that, from the nature of the case, it falls with special severity upon the poorest classes. It was this consideration that influenced Sir H. Hardinge in sanctioning the reduction. It had previously been contemplated while Mr. W. Wilberforce Bird was Deputy-Governor of Bengal; but had then been postponed through fear of tampering with a branch of the revenue which yielded more than two millions sterling in Bengal alone. The reduction of one quarter of a rupee per maund was estimated to produce a loss of about £120,000.

Seldom has a just financial policy been followed by more favourable results. The reduced rate was originally guaranteed until April, 1849. But before that time arrived, Sir Henry's military reductions after the close of the Sikh War had so much improved the Indian finances that he was able to give up a further quarter of a rupee in 1847, and to leave it to his successor to make a similar reduction again in 1849. The varying rates of the salt-tax were not finally equalised until 1882, when a uniform duty of two rupees per maund was fixed for the whole of India.