India, its administration & progress / Sir John Strachey.

  • John Strachey
Date:
1903
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: India, its administration & progress / Sir John Strachey. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    19/552 (page 11)
    has now been carried out, and the delay of which has involved India in incalculable loss. If the Weights and Measures of India are still in a condition of mischievous chaos, it is because, through the powerful influence of ignorant prejudice, the Act which he introduced and carried through the Legislature, and which is still on the Statute Book, has remained a dead letter. He presided over the first of the Commissions which have taught us the true principles upon which Indian famines can be combated. I suppose that no two men had greater opportunities, through a long course of years, than my brother and myself of obtaining knowledge regarding India. For many years we took part, often in close association, in its government, and it would be an affectation of humility to profess that this part was not an important one. There is hardly a great office of the State, from that of Acting-Viceroy, Lieutenant-Governor, or Member of Council downwards, which one or other of us has not held, and hardly a department of the administration with which one or other of us has not been intimately connected. The book of which my brother and myself were the joint authors was dedicated by us to the public servants of all classes, the results of whose labours for India we had endeavoured, in some measure, to record. Whatever may have been done by viceroys, and governors, and great commanders, the soldiers and civilians whose names have hardly been heard in England have done much more in building up the splendid fabric of our Indian Empire. It is by the everyday work of adminis- tration that the real foundations of our power have been maintained and strengthened, and the steady progress