productive expenditure. It is a policy which, acting on my own strong convictions, and in full concurrence with Her Majesty's Government, I am determined to reverse.'
The long series of measures by which Lord Mayo reorganised the Public Works Department lie beyond the scope of this volume. It must suffice to say that by stringently applying his principles 'of first finding the money, and improved supervision,' he not only effected a large saving during his own Viceroyalty, but rendered possible the subsequent expansion of the Department without financial disaster to the country.
Having thus reduced the expenditure to the utmost limit compatible with good work, Lord Mayo directed his earnest attention to the protection of the people against famine. He rejected at the outset a proposal which a Commission had made, of something very like a Poor Law for India. 'Having been engaged all my life in the administration of a Poor Law in one of the poorest countries in Europe, I may say ... first, that ordinary poverty in India does not need for its relief a poor-law system; secondly, that any sum which could be locally levied to relieve such famines as have from time to time occurred, would be ludicrously inadequate.'
At the same time he solemnly accepted the responsibility of the British Government to prevent wholesale death from starvation. He believed, also, that the Government had in its hand the means for accomplishing this object. 'By the construction of railways and the completion of great works of irrigation,' runs
