The Academy, 17th June 1876.

A very thoughtful and exhaustive project has been put forward by Dr. J. Forbes Watson, the Director of the India Museum, for the foundation of an Imperial Museum for India and the colonies. In his pamphlet on the subject (published by Allen and Co.) Dr. Watson proposes to bring the India Museum and Library beneath one roof, and to render both these precious storehouses of information more directly available for study and research, by enabling them to serve as means of illustration for the purposes of an Indian Institute to be established under the auspices of the Asiatic Society. He points out that with regard to the colonies there exists at present only the nucleus of similar collections, but that there would assuredly be no difficulty in amplifying these, and, with the aid and combination of the Colonial Institute, in rendering a like service to the colonies. In advocating this scheme, Dr. Watson enters into a very full exposition of the advantages which the possession of the colonies and India confers upon the mother country, and this part of the pamphlet will be found to form a very complete answer to those who have at any time doubted the expediency of retaining our hold on these dependencies. Dr. Watson devotes some space to urging the desirableness of a central site for such a museum, and concludes with much force in urging the selection of the. space of ground bounded on three sides by Scotland Yard, the Thames Embankment, and Whitehall Place. We heartily agree with Dr. Watson that the superiority of such a position over any other that has as yet been proposed is manifest. The only point in his interesting pamphlet which we wish might have been rather more fully discussed is the question of the relative proportions in which England, the colonies, and India should be called upon to contribute towards the expenses of this undertaking. The great practical advantages derivable by England render it clear that her share should be no nominal one, while the continual increase in wealth of the colonies (an increase due. to various causes not operating in the case of India), enables them to contribute liberally. But a country like India, with few natural resources, with an agricultural population, mainly steeped in the most abject poverty, inadequately represented, and both from its distance and its strangeness possessing little or no hold on the sympathies of Englishmen, ought not in common justice to be called upon to do more than render available her existing collections. This argument should appeal all the more irresistibly to us when we consider that never during the English occupation of India has India occasioned a charge of a single penny to the English Treasury; and that at the present time a Conservative Ministry is ominously combined with the champions of Free Trade to deprive India of an important source of revenue in the interests of the English manufacturer.