EAST INDIA (REVENUE ACCOUNTS.)

HC Deb 14 August 1890 vol 348 cc1016-79

Considered in Committee.

(In the Committee.)

*(8.45.) THE UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE FOE INDIA (Sir J. GORST, Chatham)

I think I may congratulate the Committee of the House of Commons on being at last in a position to spare a few hours for the consideration of Indian Finance. I have noticed that there is a Motion in the name of the hon. Member for Northampton, regretting the late period of the Session at which the accounts relating to the Revenues of India have been presented. But I will not waste the precious time which we now have at our disposal in the expression of hypocritical regrets at the delay that has occurred. I am quite aware that the neglect of India by the House of Commons has its advantages as well as its disadvantages, but, whether it is good or no, it is one of the conditions under which India has to suffer. Those who are responsible for the affairs of India must make up their minds not only to indifference on the part of the House of Commons, but, also to the absolute inability on the part of this House to pass the most ordinary and necessary Departmental measures; a state of things that is varied now and then by a sort of fierce Parliamentary search-light which is thrown upon every detail of Indian administration, however insignificant. These being the conditions under which we are placed, now that I have the opportunity of addressing the Committee of this House on the subject of Indian Finance, I have nothing but a dull and prosaic tale of prosperity to unfold. The formal resolution which it is my duty to move in Committee tonight has reference only to the completed accounts of the year 1888–9. Those accounts began in March, 1888, with a deficiency of Rx698,000, and are now closed with a surplus of Rx37,000. That is not a bad result. The causes of that improvement were fully explained by me 12 months ago, and I will not waste the time of the Committee by repeating what I then said. The interest of the Committee to-night will, no doubt, be rather concentrated upon the year 1889–90, of which we have the revised estimate before us, although the accounts have not yet been closed, and on the Budget estimate of 1890–1, of which only four months have as yet gone by. Now, the revised estimate of 1889–90 tells the same tale of continued improving financial prosperity which signalised the year 1888–9. The surplus which was estimated in the Budget of March, 1889–90, was Rx106,000, but in August last year, when I addressed the House of Commons on this subject, I was able to announce that this estimated surplus had actually increased to Rx693,000. In the statement made by Sir David Barbour, in March last, in India, that surplus had grown to Rx.1,810,000, and the surplus which I am able to declare to the Committee tonight will be seen from the figures on page 7 of the estimate I have circulated, to be no less than Rx2,677,000. Great as this surplus is, it gives a very inadequate idea of the real improvement which has taken place in the Indian Revenue, because, in March last, the Government of India, seeing how great the surplus was likely to be, took active steps to diminish that surplus by a voluntary arrangement, by which they postponed from the year 1889–90 to the year 1890–91 a very large item of receipts, namely, the sum of Rx490,000 which was to be paid by the Provincial Governments as a special contribution to the Imperial Exchequer, and they also appropriated the sum of Rx433,500 to what the Government call the Famine Grant, annihilating in this way Rx923,000 of their surplus. Therefore, if the revised Estimate had been framed on the same basis as the original Budget, the surplus which Sir David Barbour had to declare in March last, would have been Rx2,733,000, while the surplus we should have to announce tonight would have been Rx3,600,500; this is a very satisfactory result. Well, Sir, the Committee would probably like to hear from me in the first instance some observations on the cause of this extraordinary financial improvement, and I may state that it is not in any degree due, as might perhaps have been supposed, to the alteration in the rate of exchange. The rise in exchange began at the end of July, and during the greater part of the year the rupee was actually lower in value than was calculated in the Estimate. The original Estimate was Is. 4.38d. per rupee, and the actual result realised was only Is. 4.55d.—a very slight rise. The real cause of the enormous improvement that has taken place has been partly increased revenue and partly diminished expenditure, the gain on the value of the rupee only amounting to Rx200,000, which, in a surplus of Rx3,600,500, is a very small fraction. Of the increased revenue, some part may not be considered as being a real advantage to the finances of India. This, I think, is very well illustrated by the fact that the greatest part of the increase in the net revenue is attributable to the item of opium. The improvement in the opium revenue of last year was no less than Rxl,076,000, but of that sum only Rx300,000 was derived from the improved price at which opium was sold in Calcutta. I suppose that, even from a moral point of view, we must rejoice in the high price of opium, and, from a financial point of view, Rx300,000 must be regarded as satisfactory. But I have to state that no less a sum than upwards of Rx700,000 in the improvement of the opium net revenue arose from the fact that the Government of India spent that much less in the purchase of opium. The Committee are aware that the Government purchase all the opium grown in Bengal at a fixed price, and sell it to the highest bidders. Last year there was a great failure in the opium crop of Bengal, and, therefore, the Government could not purchase the usual quantity; consequently, they spent Rx700,000 less than they had anticipated; and, although this has swollen the surplus of the present year, I am not certain that, in the long run, it will add to the prosperity of Indian finance. I will endeavour to give the Committee some idea of what an unstable item in Indian finance the opium revenue is. Last year the estimate made was Rs.1,070 per chest, and the highest price realised was Rs.1,215 per chest; every difference of Rs.100 per chest in the sale of this Bengal opium makes a difference to the Revenue of Rx570,000. The Committee will, therefore, understand how the hopes of Indian Finance Ministers go up and down with a small rise or fall in the value of opium per chest. Opium is the item in the net Revenue in which the greatest improvement has been shown, but if hon. Members will do me the honour to look at the Statement I have circulated they will see that every head of the Revenue has shown an increase, and the increase, in addition to the opium, has amounted to Rxl,637,400. Beyond this there is an increase in the Railway Receipts of Rxl66,800, making a total improvement iii the receipts of the Government of India of no less than Rx2,880,300, which, apart from the opium, is satisfactory. Nothing ought to encourage the hopes of Indian financiers more than the fact, which can be verified by reference to the accounts, that the Land Revenue of India shows a steady increase—an increase not caused by any over-renting of the lands. The Government of India is most careful never to perform that operation which is known elsewhere as rack-renting. The land is fairly rated to the Revenue, and the rating is seldom more than one-half the net value of the rent of the land. The Army charges have been reduced by Rx341,200. The defensive works by Rx410,900; interest by Rx229,800 and other expenditure by Rx367,900, making a total reduction of expenditure amounting to Rxl,349,800. I warned the Committee that the increase of receipts is not always a financial advantage. A great deal of this expenditure is not saved; it is only postponed. The whole of the sum will have to be spent, but not spent in the current year but left over to swell this year's expenditure. So it is with the Army. A great deal of the saving in the Army charges is due to the fact that stores, guns, and other material supplied by this country, have not been purchased; therefore, the charge is saved in the year ending the 31st of March last, but only to re-appear as additional charge in this year. The total improvement has been Rx4,230,100, but of that par belongs not to the Imperial but to the Provincial Governments, because, as I explained at some length to the Committee last year, the receipts am expenditure of the Imperial and provincial Governments are put together in these financial statements, and, in order to estimate what the real financial position of the Imperial Government of India is, it is necessary to detach the Provincial part, both of receipts and expenditure. Detaching the Provincial improvement, which amounts to Rx.735,900, the improvement in the Imperial finances is left at Rx3,494,200. When that is added to the original Budget surplus of Rxl06,300 it makes the true surplus Rx3,600,500. Then, Sir, as I explained a short time ago, Rx923,500 has been given up by the postponement of the Provincial contributions to the following year, and by the allotment of a large sum to the reduction of the debt under the head of the famine grant, leaving the final surplus of 1889–90 Rx2,677,000. There we take leave of the year 1889–90, and now I come to the year which is now current, 1890–91. When Sir David Barbour brought in his statement, in March of the present year, he estimated the surplus of the year at Rx270,400. It has now grown, as is stated at page 8 of the Financial Memorandum which I have circulated, to Rxl,870,400, and that growth of the surplus of the present year is entirely due to the alteration in the rate of exchange. In the Budget estimate of Sir David Barbour the exchange was taken at Is. 4.55d., or about Is. 4½d., and so far as the year has now proceeded—four months—the rate realised has been very nearly 1s. 6d. In the Statement which I have circulated, I am taking the exchange value of the rupee for the year at Is. 6½d., and 1s. 6½d. throughout the year would give a surplus of Rxl,870,400. Now, the Committee must not be too certain that that estimate of Is. 6½d. will be realised. In order to realise it, the Council bills during the remainder of the year will have to stand at an average of not less than 1s. 7d. It is, no doubt, true that the rate of exchange to-day is considerably over 1s. 7d., in fact it has touched 1s. 8d., and is now about Is. 7¾d., but with so doubtful, so uncertain a thing to deal with as the exchange value of the rupee, he would be a very hardy and bold financier who would venture to make quite sure that the advance in the rupee which has been maintained for the last two months past will continue to he maintained during the rest of the year. I said the improvement was entirely due to this rise in the exchange. Not only is it entirely due to the rise in the exchange, but if it had not been for this rise I should have had to tell the Committee to-night that the financial position of affairs was worse by no less than Rx560,000 than in March last. The advantage that accrues to the revenues of India from the alteration of the estimated value of the rupee from 1s. 4½d. to 1s. 6½d. is no less a sum than Rx2,160,000. This gain to the Revenue has not only increased the surplus to the sum I have mentioned, but it has wiped out a deficiency of Rx560,000, which would otherwise have had to be announced to the Committee to-night. This Rx560,000 is made up thus: In the first place, there is a loss of Rx40,000 on opium. The price has gone down below the low price estimated in March last; it has gone down so low as Rsl,040 per chest. The price of the Bengal opium has gone down, and the duty on the Malwa opium has been reduced; so, altogether, there has been a reduction in the estimated Revenue of Rx40,000. The railway receipts are worse by Rx320,000. Now that reduction in the estimated receipts from railways is, I believe, thought by many people to be due to the same cause that has induced a rise in the value of silver. Even bi-metallists think a rise in the value of silver will destroy a great deal of the Indian export trade; I do not myself share the gloomy, or, perhaps, joyous anticipations of the bi-metallists, but whether the trade will afterwards re-adjust itself or not, I do not think there is any doubt that the effect of the sudden rise in the value of the rupee is to check for the moment the export trade, and the reduction of the railway receipts is due to that check in the export trade of India. Some people say that check is permanent, others believe that the trade will adjust itself to any change that may arise, but, whichever theory is correct, there certainly is a temporary reduction. There is a further charge of Rx200,000 under interest. That is not in reality bad, because it arises from an offer the Government of India have made to convert the 4½ per cent, rupee loan which matures in 1893 into a 4 per cent. debt. It is expected that about half the holders will convert, and if that is the case the Government will have to pay in advance ½ per cent. on the amount of their holdings for three years, which is represented by this extra charge of Rx200,000 for interest. That is a charge on the Revenue of the present year, as it is paying at once money that would otherwise be distributed over the next three years. The Committee will now see that, although there is at the present moment a prospect of a large surplus of Rxl,870,000, it is not a surplus that can be calculated on with anything like certainty. I thought it my duty to inquire what would be the effect of a rise or fall of a penny in the rupee above the rate taken in the Estimate. Of course the Committee will see that the amount of the rise or fall on the penny depends on the value of the rupee, but at the rate of Is. 6½d. per rupee the rise of a penny over the whole year, to 1s. 7½d., would be a gain to the Revenue of Rx930,000, nearly a million per annum, and the result of a fall of a penny, if the rate realised were 1s. 5½d. instead of 1s. 6½d., would cause a loss to the Revenue of Rxl,050,000. With the value of the rupee fluctuating with the exchange it would be rash, to say the least of it, to declare with certainty that the surplus I am announcing tonight will actually in the end be realised. Now, Mr. Courtney, the Government being in possession of this surplus would have before it two possible courses. One would be the remission of taxation, and the other would be the restoration of that mode of disposing of the surplus, which goes by the name of the Famine Grant, or Famine Insurance Fund. Now, I should like to be allowed to say a word or two to the Committee about this Famine Fund, because there is nothing in the world so simple as the transaction in itself, but by the abuse of names, it has been made as mysterious and as unintelligible to the ordinary intellect as the terminable annuity at home. Now, first of all, this insurance is not a material insurance, but a financial insurance, and it is based on a rough calculation that the consequences of famine in India are to impose on the people of India a burden of Rxl5,000,000 in every 10 years, That burden represents partly the debt incurred by reason of the necessity of spending enormous sums of money when a famine does occur, and partly the loss of Revenue which is caused in a famine year and for several years succeeding; the famine. On the best estimate which the Indian financiers can make the burden is represented by Rxl5,000,000 once in every 10 years. Now, instead of burdening the taxpayers of India with the sum of Rxl5,000,000 every 10 years, it is thought more prudent and better to burden them with Rxl,500,000 every year; and, therefore, the Government of India many years ago resolved that it would create a special surplus of Rxl,500,000 a year; that is to say, it would take out of the pockets of the taxpayers Rxl,500,000 supplied for the service of the year, instead of imposing on them the burden of Rx15,000,000 once in every 10 years. The working of that plan will be seen in a moment. If the Rxl,500,000 were applied exclusively to the payment of debt, you would then reduce your Indian debt by Rxl,500,000 a year till you came to the end of the 10 years, and then you would have a burden of Rxl5,000,000 all at once thrown on it; but, as the Government of India is a continual borrower for the purpose of making railways and irrigation works, the whole or part of that Rxl,500,000 special surplus has been applied to purposes for which money would otherwise have been borrowed, applied not in the reduction of debt, but in the avoidance of debt which would be incurred for productive works, and that has the effect of keeping down the debt exactly in the same way as if actually applied to the re-payment of debt. But this special surplus has never been hoarded; it has never been invested, it has never been kept as a sort of purse which could be drawn on in the event of a famine. It has always been spent year after year. Ever since I have been Under Secretary of State for India, the Government have never been able to calculate on this special surplus of Rxl,500,000 without putting on additional taxation, and they have never thought it right to put additional taxation upon the people for the purpose of raising this Rxl,500,000, to be applied to the reduction of the debt. But it would be a great mistake if the Committee were to suppose that during the last two years no sums have ever been applied out of Revenue to the extinction of debt, and to the construction of railways and irrigation works. I had a statement prepared by the Financial Secretary to the India Office, which is a continuation of the Return moved for by the hon. Member for Northampton, which was presented to the House of Commons at Midsummer last year, and I see from this Return that since the year 1886–87, when the so-called Famine Grant is supposed to have been first seized, the sums which have been paid out of the Revenues of India for famine relief, for the construction of protective railways and protective irrigation works, and for the reduction of debt—purposes to which the Famine Grant has always been applied—have been as follows:—In 1886–87 Rx461,000; in 1887–88 Rx376,000; in 1888–89 Rx508,000; in 1889–90 Rxl,066,000; and in 1890–91 Rxl,033,000: making in the five years a total spent, for the purposes to which the Famine Grant is applicable, of Rx3,444,000. The surplus of these five years applied in the avoidance of debt was Rx2,628,000, so that altogether there has been spent in the five years for the reduction of debt, and for the prevention of debt, no less a sum than Rx6,072,000, or an average of Rxl,214,000. I think that for five years, with the nominal Famine Grant suspended—according to the hon. Member for Northampton the Secretary of State for India had laid hold of the Famine Grant—that is not such a bad result. The Committee must remember also that in the two years about which I am talking—the years 1889–90 and 1890–91—besides these two sums of Rxl,066,000 and Rxl,033,000, the whole of the surplus, Rx2,677,000 and Rxl,870,000, will be applied to the avoidance of debt, and, therefore, in these two years there will be applied to the reduction of debt not merely a surplus of Rxl,500,000, but a surplus of considerably more than Rx3,000,000. Now, do I suppose that after this statement which I have made the character of this transaction will be better understood and more readily admitted? No, I am not so foolish. I believe that men's minds are so tied and bound by the name "Famine Insurance Fund" or "Famine Insurance Grant" that they will still consider it to be a Fund. Mephistopheles remarked on the inveterate propensity of the human race when listening to mere words to believe that there was some real sense underlying them. I do not know that this House could have a more conspicuous example of that propensity to which Mephistopheles drew attention than the fact that the hon. Member for Northampton who is so sensible, and sees things so clearly, still talks about the Famine Insurance Fund having been seized upon by the Secretary of State and the Government of India as if they had robbed the people of it. I see that Sir David Barbour, in a speech which he made in India in March last, said he conceived the "only method of safeguarding our surplus is to call it a Famine Grant." So be it; but, if he saves the surplus by calling it the Famine Grant, he must not mind others saying it does not exist because it is called the Famine Grant. The Committee will observe that, in order to keep up the special surplus to the amount of one and a half millions, no less than Rx.957,200 more would have to be appropriated next year. You have nearly half a million to add to the appropriation for the present year, and you will lose besides a sum of nearly half a million from the provincial contributions, so that it will take nearly a million—Rx.957,200—of the present surplus to make up the Famine Grant to its normal condition, and leave only a surplus of Rx.913,200. It is quite clear, with the uncertainty of the surplus, that it would be impossible to apply it to the reduction of taxation. [An hon. MEMBER: The Salt Tax.] The Salt Tax —the increased Salt Tax—is an impost which the Secretary of State and the Government of India have pledged themselves to remove at the first opportunity. The cost of removing this extra half rupee on the Salt Tax is Rx.1,500,000—the exact amount of the Famine Insurance Grant. If the hon. Member for Northampton will give up the Famine Insurance Grant, and if the Government of India were willing to give up this surplus, then the extra Salt Tax might be at once removed, but they have thought, and I think rightly, that the first duty of the Government upon the return of this financial prosperity is to restore the special surplus, Famine Grant, or whatever you like to call it, and that the remission of the extra Salt Tax, important as it is, must wait until that is restored. I will inform the hon. Member who is anxious about the Salt Tax as to the result of the increased tax. The consumption, which had been slightly reduced in 1888–89, after the imposition of that extra half rupee, has now gone up again to more than the figure of 1886–87. Bengal is the only province in India in which there is a reduction, and that reduction is not attributable to the increased Salt Duty, because, if hon. Members will refer to page 21 of the East India Financial Statement, they will see a table of the prices of Liverpool salt in Bengal, which shows that it is the action of the Salt Syndicate and the freight rates which is accountable for a considerable part of the enhancement in the value of salt, and that an increase of price has taken place, exclusive of the duty, of about four or five annas per maund. While the extra tax is, nodoubt, one which ought to be removed, and which shall be removed as soon as it is financially proper to do so, I think the figures to which I have referred hon. Members will encourage them and encourage the Government of India to look, in the first place, to the restoration of the Famine Insurance Grant.

MR. A. O'CONNOR (Donegal, E.)

Is that to be the first reduction?

SIR J. GORST

I cannot here, in the House of Commons, pledge the Government of India. I can only say the Government of India have determined that the first use to be made of the surplus realised and counted upon shall be to restore the Famine Insurance Grant to its normal dimensions, and I can only refer the Committee to the declaration which I have, by the authority of the Secretary of State, made in the House, to the effect that the enhancement of the Salt Duties is only to be regarded as a temporary measure rendered necessary by financial exigencies, and that a reduction to the old Salt Duty of two rupees per maund will take place as soon as it is financially possible. I will not detain the Committee by any comment on the statement which I have made. I think the Committee will agree with me that the state of the finances of India, as disclosed in the Papers which I have laid on the Table, is encouraging and satisfactory, and, though it would be extremely foolish to indulge in visions of enormous surpluses and great reductions of taxation, at all events we may contemplate the future of Indian finance with hope and cheerfulness. (9.37.)

Motion made, and Question proposed, That it appears, by the Accounts laid before this House, that the Total Revenue of India for the year ending the 31st day of March 1889 was Rx.81,696,678; that the Total Expenditure in India and in England charged to Revenue was Rx.81,659,660; that there was a Surplus of Revenue over Expenditure of Rx.37,018; and that the Capital Outlay on Railways and Irrigation Works was Rx.l,638,001, besides a Capital Charge of £10,336,049 involved in the Redemption of Liabilities."—(Sir John Gorst.)

*(9.53.) MR. BRADLAUGH (Northampton)

I think the statement of the Under Secretary for India was characterised by even more than his usual ability, and by even more than I expected of that charming kind of competence which, in a lesser orator, might be described as audacity. I feel flattered by the right hon. Gentleman's reference to what he was pleased to say I described as the Famine Fund, although I am sure the right hon. Gentleman's memory helped him as to the source from which I got that title. That source is the speeches and Despatches of the various Governors, and especially of those of the Viceroy, who initiated what is called the Famine Fund. The right hon. Gentleman said he would refrain from wasting the time of the Committee in hypocritical regrets at the lateness of this Debate. If I thought strong language would have any effect either upon the right hon. Gentleman or the Government which he so ably represents, I would be inclined to use it on this occasion, for I think it is disgraceful in the extreme that the Indian Budget Statement, which in 1873 was considered important enough to occupy three days of the time of the House, should be brought on after the Report of 48 Votes in Supply has been agreed to. I presume, however, it is the intention of the Government to shorten from year to year the time at the disposal of the House for the investigation of the affairs of 270,000,000 of people directly or indirectly subject to British rule. I do not wonder that the right hon. Gentleman thought that any expression of regret on his part would be hypocritical, for he must have well remembered that the leader of the House more than once distinctly promised that the Indian Budget should be taken this Session at an earlier date than before. But his Statement has been made to the House after the Appropriation Bill has been brought in and passed through its first stage. There was a remarkable absence from the speech of the right hon. Gentleman this year of any such specific allusions to legislation as helped to ornament his speech last year, for where then he audaciously put upon the House the blame for want of legislation, he must have well remembered that the whole of the blame rests this year upon the Government, and has been in breach of an absolute pledge, frequently admitted by the First Lord of the Treasury and held out to me as an inducement not to raise a discussion on Indian affairs at that stage of business when it would have been inconvenient to the Government—the Address at the beginning of the Session. There has been no attempt to submit to the House those legislative proposals to which the right hon. Gentleman so vaguely alluded. Now, I shall have the support of the hon. Baronet the Member for Evesham (Sir R. Temple), who takes as much interest in these matters as any Member of the House, and in the estimation of those who honour him in Bombay, much more interest than some, who was himself prevented from carrying out the intention he had formulated by the pledge given to introduce into the House a measure based on elective principles which if carried would obviate the necessity of discussing financial proposals here at all, for they would be discussed in elective, Viceregal, or other Councils in India by men understanding what was submitted to them. To discuss the affairs of 270,000,000 of people with such support given from the leaders of our Party as that Bench shows—[the Front Opposition Bench was empty]—and that strong array of the Conservative Party opposite is enough to warrant my Motion on the Paper that the late date of presentation of Accounts and Papers relating to the revenues of India renders it impossible to satisfactorily examine and discuss the Indian Financial Statement. Last year the explanatory statement of the right hon. Gentleman, to which he did so much injustice in one of his moments of forgetfulness as to describe it as simply his speech, was circulated two and a half months before it came on for discussion. Then anyone who paid attention to it had time to examine the matter; but I appeal to the Committee whether it is possible to deal with these millions of tens of rupees hurled at our heads this evening with anything like intelligent criticism. Last year a Statement, which is issued annually, and is by Statute required to be issued at a particular time of the year, was issued before this annual explanation, and enabled the House to check the matters submitted by the right hon. Gentleman and to correct errors into which he had fallen by following blindly the information submitted by permanent officials. This Statement, called a statement, exhibiting the moral and material progress and condition of India, is not even now in the hands of Members. And why not? I see by the Votes this morning—I think I must be mistaken—some record of a document having been laid on the Table last night, but I went into the Library and found nothing of it there except an endorsement and some blank sheets of paper. I ask, why is this Statement withheld? It should have been laid on the Table before. The Statute 21 & 22 Vict., cap. 106, sec. 53, says that the financial accounts are to be laid before Parliament during the first 14 days of May, and such accounts shall be accompanied by a statement prepared from detailed Reports from each Presidency and district in India in such form as shall best exhibit the moral and material progress and condition in each Presidency. Why has this Statute been disobeyed? The English Law Officers are not in their places. I do not know whether the Irish Attorney General can assist me, but clearly a misdemeanour has been committed by somebody. I do not say the Under Secretary is criminally responsible, but certainly somebody is, for having disobeyed an exact statutory command. Common decency requires that these matters, absolutely necessary to the understanding of the accounts of India, should be put into the hands of Members at least at such a time as will enable them to examine and master them. If I did not know the thoroughly frank and confiding nature of the right hon. Gentleman the Under Secretary, I should imagine that he had withheld it for the purpose of preventing me from making the same use of it as I did last year; but I know that is impossible, and I know that his legal advisers at the India Office would not have permitted him to wilfully to break the Statute, even if his personal inclination tempted him to do so, which is a perfectly untenable position. I may ask the Committee, I think, to express disapproval; and if the offence is repeated next year, I shall have to ask the House to express disapproval of this absolute disregard of the law by the Indian Government entrusted with its enforcement and maintenance. It is true, as urged by the right hon. Gentleman, that this semblance of Parliamentary indifference to Indian affairs has arisen since the Imperial Government has been charged with the administration of Indian affairs. When the East India Company had its charter Parliament and the Government of the day were jealous in the extreme, and inquiry after inquiry was held—not a sham, but real inquiry— but to-day it is pretended—I will not say it of the right hon. Gentleman because he is not capable of any pretence that does not represent his real official feeling; but I have come to know that official knowledge and exact knowledge are not always the same; it is pretended now that Parliamentary inquiry would embarrass the Government and prevent the Viceroy and the Secretary of State doing what is wanted. But it was not so when the East India Company had its charter. Parliament then held inquiry, and the result was good to India and not harm. If the Government break their promises, at least they should abide by the law, as less important persons have to do. I do not know what excuse will be made for the delay in issuing the explanatory Memorandum, but the right hon. Gentleman must feel that it is simply absurd to present to the House on the very day upon which his statement is made a huge mass of figures from which he selects only a few to embellish as he does everything he touches with fine figures of speech and quotations from classical authors, such, for instance, as his reference to Mephistopheles. There is one thing which the Under Secretary has not dealt with in his Financial Statement. It is only a small matter, but I clear it away before I come to greater ones. We heard a reply to a question, and we gathered from what are called the usual sources of information that considerable pressure had been put on the Government from their own side of the House to render some pecuniary assistance to make some payment—I will not say to give some reward to Mr. Crawford. I asked the right hon. Gentleman to state the nature of the special payments mentioned on page 35 of the explanatory statement. I cannot suppose they have any reference to the matter.

SIR J. GORST

No.

MR. BRADLAUGH

That is what I expected; but I ask because we have an explanatory statement that does not explain what we want, and elucidates much that is already quite clear. But let me tell the right hon. Gentleman that a very strong feeling on this account exists in India against any attempt being made to divert any portion of the money raised by taxation of the Indian people to rewarding a man who, whatever you say of the case, has clearly been guilty of corrupting justice in the worst fashion, and in resentment of the action of the Government, in direct opposition to the wishes of Lord Reay, who, addressing the people on the eve of his departure, made use of words such as had never before been used by a man in his position. He said that in order to influence the Government to keep their promise he had even gone the length of tendering his resignation, or doing something equivalent to it. I will not enlarge on this, for I fear I may bring myself, Sir, under your displeasure. Now I come to a much less exciting topic, the announcement made by the Chancellor of the Exchequer early in the Session that he would abolish the Silver Plate Duty, and I come to that in connection with the trade and manufactures of India. To be effective in India it must be accompanied by some such measure as the abolition of hall-marking. On July 15 I put a question on the subject.

THE CHAIRMAN

I do not know how this concerns the finances of India.

MR. BRADLAUGH

I will not attempt to trespass on your ruling, Sir; but may I suggest that the silver manufacturer in India is possibly connected with the Income Tax, and thus affecting income affects the finances of India? Judging from your gesture, I find you do not accept my construction. I will content myself with saying that if I had been in order, I would have read to the Under Secretary a letter from the Private Secretary of the Viceroy containing a statement of information which the right hon. Gentleman said he had not got on July 15, as having reached home in the month of May. But I pass on to railways, just asking, because the same query bears on other matters, is there any juggle in the use of the word "official"? Is it possible that information sent home does not always reach the right hon. Gentleman? Is it possible that information sent home does not always reach the right hon. Gentleman? Is it possible that either on railways, on hall-marking, or on anything else, letters could come from the Viceroy of India, that the substance of those letters could be communicated by the Viceroy to other people than the Members of the Government of India, and that yet the Under Secretary of State for India could stand up in that House and officially deny any knowledge of them?

SIR J. GORST

I have no knowledge of the private correspondence of the Viceroy.

MR. BRADLAUGH

I did not suppose the right hon. Gentleman would have knowledge of private correspondence of the kind. The question, however, is whether, when letters were written by the Viceroy to the Secretary of State in Council, the contents of which were communicated, by the direction of the Viceroy himself through his private secretary, to third parties, the contents of such documents were so little within the knowledge of the Under Secretary of State for India that he felt entitled to say that the Secretary of State knew nothing about them. If that is so, I submit that we discuss Indian affairs under considerable difficulty. When the right hon. Gentleman replies, I will ask him for some explanation of the policy of the Government in relation to railways. He has been reticent on this question, though I have addressed searching questions to him. I will ask him whether the Secretary of State received from the Viceroy of India a Despatch dated November last which referred to the outlines of the terms on which the Secretary of State proposed that Railway Companies should, under the new policy, in future be established? (1.) A company is to be formed having an English domicile, whose share capital in sterling will amount to that proportion of the whole capital required that would, in the ordinary course, be expended on the purchase of stores and plant and on other charges in England. This proportion may, it is said, be taken approximately at one-third of the total cost of the railway. (2.) The remainder of the capital required would be supplied by the Government of India. (3.) Interest in sterling at such rate as may be agreed upon (we hardly suppose that a rate much less than 4 per cent. will be accepted) on the company's share capital would be a first charge of the net earnings. (4.) The remainder of the net earnings would be made over to Government to defray the charges of interest on the Government share of the capital until the interest charges at 4 per cent, (or at whatever rate of interest the capital is raised) on that capital are fully met. (5.) The surplus profits, after the payments indicated in (3) and (4) have been made, would be divided between the Government and the company in certain proportions. Were these proposals submitted to the Viceroy a year ago, and did the Government of India reply that the practical effect of this policy on the future expenditure on railways, interpreted in figures, would be something of this kind? Supposing that we raise in India a sum of, say, 2¼ crores of rupees for railway construction—a sum equal to half that amount, or a little over one crore, equal to about two-thirds of a million sterling—would be added to meet English expenditure and would be raised in England, partly through the shares of the new company, partly as far as State railways are concerned) by loans raised by the Secretary of State. Did the Government of India say that it could not admit that in return for this diversion of State funds into the hands of others we shall obtain any of the real advantages which follow on the encouragement of private enterprises? The assistance intended to be given to a company thus constructed is nothing less than a sterling guarantee of interests on the company's share capital in a new form, and it is a guarantee which is practically charged on the Revenues of India. It is hardly likely that the Government of India would propose, or that any company would accept, the construction of a line with such poor prospects of traffic that the net earnings would not produce more than 1 per cent. on the capital invested. It is, however, evident that if the company's shares are not to exceed 33 per cent. of the whole capital that net earnings amounting only to 1 1-3 per cent. on the whole capital would be sufficient to provide 4 per cent. on the share capital of the company, which would be virtually guaranteed interest at that risk. And did the Government of India go on to say— We should thus have repeated one of the chief evils of the old guaranteed system. From the time the undertaking paid 1 1-3 per cent. until it paid over 4 per cent., and this in the case of our secondary lines, would probably be the situation during the whole of the firs period of the contract—there would not be the slightest inducement for the company to economise. They would be secure in the receipts of interest at 4 per cent. guaranteed on the net earnings, while there would be no hope of their receiving more until surplus profits were declared. From first to last the position of the shareholders would be the same as that of the shareholders of the Madras Railway Company. And did the Indian Government add— We are far from wishing to discourage tru private enterprises when it can be properly so called. By private enterprise we mean such companies as the Bengal and North Berber Railway Company or the Delhi Halka Company, which was created for the construction, not for the working, of the line. To these the only assistance given by Government was the free grant of land, and in their financial success the Government of India is as little directly concerned as in that of a tea or jute manufacturing company. To all companies raised on these terms, subject to the broad lines of policy we have before referred to, we consider that every possible encouragement should be given. While, however, these are our feelings with regard to the encouragement of genuine private enterprise, we do not extend to them proposals for the creation of companies which would have a very limited interest in the concern from which they take their name, which would contribute only a small portion of the capital at an unnecessarily high rate of interest, yet on what is really absolute security, and which for the rest of their capital would have to draw from the Government Treasury funds in the management of which the State could there after have but little influence, and from which it probably would get a very poor return. Moreover, the creation of a new class of companies fostered by a new kind of guarantee will necessarily be inimical to the extension of real private enterprise, as no promoter will be willing to accept greater risk than is involved in the new terms? I ask for categorical answers on these points. When I asked last year my questions were avoided; when I repeated specific questions this year I got no answer; and I can only tell the right hon. Gentleman that if the Government of India is conducted without laying upon the Table of this House the Papers which would really instruct the House as to what is happening, they cannot wonder that the air is full of rumours of jobbery, and that it is suggested that particular favourites get particular advantages; and no such rose-coloured speeches as we have heard to-night will be sufficient to hinder inquiry upon these points. This is a matter which we know has been discussed in the Viceregal Council of India; and in the East India Financial Statement laid upon the Table of this House in compliance with the Statute, we do get some references—not very many—which enable us to learn something about the matter. We find that the kind of questions which I have pressed upon the right hon. Gentleman to-night were, though not quite in the same distinct fashion I admit, pressed, as would be seen by page 89 of the Statement. The hon. Sir A. Wilson, a member of the Council, expressed his regret that no definite policy was put forward by the Government with regard to the future construction of railways. The hon. Charles Elliott in reply said, as will be found on pages 96 and 97, that— To answer the question put by Sir A' Wilson as to what the railway policy of this Government is would require a full exhaustive statement; which he was not prepared to give. But now I ask the attention of the Committee to the curious coincidence between the language used by Sir Charles Elliott and the passages about which I have challenged the right hon. Gentleman to say "Yes" or "No" to my allegation that they are part of a Government Despatch, either official or unofficial, or a Letter from the Viceroy of India to the Secretary of State in Council. I am unable to distinguish between documents which are official or unofficial when they end in burdening the country with heavy expenditure. Sir Charles Elliott says— It cannot be denied that it is not economical to raise money at 3½ per cent. through the agency of companies when it can be raised by the State at 3 per cent., as is the case now. And I say this shows that it had been proposed to raise money through the agency of companies, if not in the express words (and I feel tolerably sure it was in the express words that I have given), at any rate to the effect that I have alleged to this Committee. Sir Charles Elliott goes on to say— Therefore it is not the policy of the Government to encourage the creation of any more companies on terms corresponding to those I have just mentioned; and I ask the Under Secretary for India to say whether the policy of the Secretary of State in Council is identical with the policy of the Viceroy in Council, or whether the policy of the Viceroy in Council is one thing and the policy of the Secretary of State in Council another. I ask the Secretary of State to say what railway proposals have been considered by him in Council in England which the Government of India at Simla have rejected, or with which they have disagreed; and I will ask him, also, what is the need of the Secretary of State in Council to meddle in the job of raising money in connection with railways by companies who are to be protected by the Government of India, but of which the taxpayer is to bear the burden and the loss. But I would also ask the right hon. Gentleman, before I pass to the other portion of the railway question, whether there is any part proposal, or any part proposals which the Secretary of State in Council has made to the Government of India which the Government of India have accepted, or whether there are any modifications transmitted by the Viceroy to the Secretary of State in Council which have been accepted here; and if he will state what they are. It is no use talking about secrecy in these matters. When they are sufficiently known to be the subject of discussion in all circles interested in them, and when I am able to challenge the Secretary of State in a matter of this kind, perfectly sure that if a Committee of this House were granted to me I could put my hands upon the document giving the precise reference to it, so that there can be no doubt about it—it is perfect nonsense to talk about the matter being secret, and about the Secretary of State being hindered carrying out his duty effectively. The only thing hindered is the effectuation of any job. Now, in connection with the railways there is one point about which I ask an answer. General Trevor is reported to have said recently that— The idea in high Government circles in India is to discontinue metre gauge construction, with the intention, eventually, of again obtaining a uniform gauge throughout India by gradually changing the existing metre gauge lines into broad. This reversal of policy will, he says— Involve a tremendous waste of public money, probably about £20,000,000, as the change will cost about £3,500 a mile, and outside Burma there are over 6,000 miles of metre gauge road.

SIR J. GORST

Will the hon Gentleman say from what he is quoting?

MR. BRADLAUGH

I am quoting from a Report furnished to me of a speech made by General Trevor at a recent railway meeting. I will take, for the purpose of this Debate, the responsibility of using General Trevor's words as a question to the right hon. Gentleman, and I will ask him what is the policy of the Government.

SiR J. GORST

Will the hon. Gentleman kindly tell me whether that railway meeting was in London or in this country.

MR. BRADLAUGH

I fancy it was not. I fancy it has been twice reported, and from the source from which I take it, I think it was not in this country. I am not sure of that, but I am content to take it. The fact of whether it has been said at some railway meeting in this country or not is of no importance to the question I put, which is, whether the Government do intend this metre gauge change, and whether it is true that the expenditure will be an enormous expenditure bringing in no additional Revenue and giving no help to the unfortunate people of India who have to bear the cost? I now come to the Famine Fund. I listened to that portion of the speech of the right hon. Gentleman with considerable interest, as I had read with considerable interest the speech of Sir David Barbour, from which he has quoted; and there is this one advantage in the sudden interruption which occurred when I rose to address the Committee that I was able to refresh my memory by a reference to the eloquence of the right hon. Gentleman upon this subject last year. His view then upon the Famine Fund was not quite the view with which he has entertained, as he always does when he speaks to a Committee of this House, us this evening—the view that it is the paramount duty of the Government to restore this Famine Grant. I do not know whether there is any mysterious or miraculous advantage in the substitution of the word "grant" for "fund," or how that which is taken in taxation from the people of India becomes a grant to them if they do not get it; but that is a trifling matter. The right hon. Gentleman to-night is content to call it a Famine Insurance Grant, and it is so sacred a matter that there is to be no reduction in taxation, no remission of the Salt Tax until it is restored. But did this Famine Grant or Fund ever exist? Last year the right hon. Gentleman the Under Secretary of State assured us that it never existed. He said:— There was an intention on the part of the Indian Government to create such a fund, but that intention has never been carried out. Now, what a monstrous farce it is one year to tell the Committee that the Member who seeks to describe, in the words of the Viceroy and Financial Minister for India, a fund in relation to famine as a Famine Fund, is so wrong that there never was a fund, but that there was only an intention to create it, which was never carried out; and then, this year, when they have got money in their pockets, to say, "It is our solemn and paramount duty to keep every farthing we have got because we are going to devote it to the restoration of that fund, which had been misapplied and misplaced!" I ask the right hon. Gentleman—I know his acuteness is sufficient for anything—to reconcile the Under Secretary for India to-night with the Under Secretary for India who addressed the Committee last August. I cannot help being gratified. I feel sure that nothing I could say in any fashion influenced the conduct of the Viceroy in Council in India or the conduct of the Secretary of State in Council here. What has happened, though post hoc is not propter hoc; and what I said ought to have been done, and told the Committee last 'year had not been done, but ought still to be done, is now to be done, and I am quite sure that when the Viceroy in Council determined on doing it no report of a speech in Hansard, which may have got out to India, had been in any way helpful to them, and that it was only from their inner consciousness of what was right and just that they arrived at the conclusion which, however ineffectually, I had endeavoured to submit to this House. Now, in the statutory Financial Statement, Section 3, paragraph 17, it was admitted that there had been a slight departure from the original policy of the Government in relation to the famine surplus, and the course was decided upon which the Under Secretary of State has explained to the Committee this evening. It is a comfort to hear from him that the surplus which the Government has now at its disposal enables them even to be partially honest, and I do not want in any fashion to say any words other than those of real congratulation. I will not attempt to express any hypocritical regret that they have not been as honest as they should have been in the past; anything in the direction of honesty will be welcome. But I would suggest to the right hon. Gentleman there are two points of remission in taxation, and not one, as he said, to which the Government of India might give some attention, and I would suggest that one is in relation to the Income Tax. I pray the pardon of the Committee for detaining it so long; but, unfortunately, this is the only one occasion in the year when one has any opportunity of speaking on the subject. There is a very strong feeling in India that it would give great relief. I am not prepared to say how it would affect the figures—it must, therefore, be subject to that criticism that the minimum of the Income Tax might be raised, so that incomes less than 1,000 rupees should not be affected by that tax. It is alleged that in incomes less than 1,000 rupees there is oppression in the collection. On that there are Reports within the knowledge of the Under Secretary of State, and I will not dwell upon the matter longer than to bring it under the notice of the right hon. Gentleman. But I must press him upon the question of the Salt Tax. I intended to have referred to the reduction of the consumption of salt in Bengal, which is 355,000 maunds less in the closed year than in the year before, and 722,000 maunds less than in 1886-7. I wish to call the attention of the right hon. Gentleman to the fact that the falling off was attributable to two causes: One the increased Salt Duty, and the other the increased price created in India by the salt monopoly. I have called attention to that because it gives me an opportunity of denouncing the infamy that is perpetrated under cover of the law by registering companies for the purposes of a huge monopoly. As long as private capital is left in the contest, to the ordinary working of the laws which govern all matters of trade and agriculture may be left the fair levelling of cost of production without powerful combinations being allowed to associate together in a way which the law did not permit until the Joint Stock Companies' Act of 1865 was passed, and when Limited Liability Companies were formed for the first time. I say great care should be taken in registering such companies, and when they are registered they should be brought under the notice of the Law Officers of the Crown when it is found that they were registered for purposes avowedly illegal under the decisions of the High Courts in this Realm. By the decision in "The King v. Norris," reported in the second volume of Lord Kenyon's Reports——

THE CHAIRMAN

Surely the hon. Member will see that he is now travelling outside the scope of the subject before this Committee.

MR. BRADLAUGH

I respectfully submit not, Sir, because in page 21 of the East India Financial Statement, 1890–91, which was laid on the Table of this House by the Government, they deal with the increased duty, and the price of salt increased by the English syndicate, and I submit, with all respect now, Sir, I am entitled to criticise this statement, and the conduct of the Government in relation to it. On a point of order, I respectfully submit that to you, Sir.

THE CHAIRMAN

I cannot see how it is relevant to the subject before the Committee.

MR. BRADLAUGH

I will read the words of the Financial Statement, so as to make my point clear, because I am afraid I have not made it sufficiently clear, Sir; I am reading from paragraph 22, page 21, of the Statement which was laid on the Table— The only province in which consumption has not fully recovered is Bengal, and there the imposition of the increased duty has not been the only cause of the falling off, which is largely attributable to the increase in price resulting from the action of the English Salt Syndicate and the higher level of freights. I respectfully submit to you now, Sir, I am entitled to see how the English Salt Syndicate has managed to increase the price, and I am entitled, if it be illegal, to show to the Government how it is illegal, and to press upon the Government that it is their duty to put an end to the illegality.

THE CHAIRMAN

That is clearly outside the scope of this discussion.

MR. BRADLAUGH

The moment you say that, Sir, it is, of course, my duty to accept, as I always do, with the most profound respect, the ruling you give, but it then becomes my duty to appeal to this Committee, when it is sitting as a House and not as a Committee, to give at least once a year, as by the old custom always was given, some opportunity during which a representative of the defenceless native may put before the Parliament of England his criticisms of the official statements of the Government, and to know if he cannot get some redress for the grievances which he pointed out. Now, Sir, passing from that, which I have not the right to allude to after the intimation from you, Sir, I come to the question of the Salt Duty. When Sir Evelyn Baring was Finance Minister in 1882, in his financial speech for the year he said that— The tax-paying community in India was exceedingly poor, to derive any very large increase of revenue from so poor a population would be unjustifiable. Since then the Salt Tax has been increased, and I appeal to the Government, with their present surplus, to make some effort at its reduction. In 1886 the Finance Minister, in his speech on the Income Tax, described the mass of the people as— Men whose income, at the best, is barely sufficient to afford them the sustenance necessary to sustain life. We all know the important part of consumption that salt plays in connection with vegetable foods by which the Indian does sustain life. The ominous words of the Under Secretary of State for India prepared the Committee for the statement that the reduction in the Army expenditure this year was a reduction to be equalled, or more than equalled, by increased expenditure, either in the year that is to come or at some near period; but what I say to the Government, have less arms and more full bellies. Let these unfortunate people, for whom the Under Secretary of State pleaded with an eloquence that would have moved anyone, have their wants supplied. He quoted them to show the desperate state of the Mussulman cultivator under a Hindu ruler. Let him quote, as I ask him to do, from the Reports of the Government officials—showing the conditions of Mussulman cultivators under English rule. Let the Secretary of State in Council consider this which he regarded as a sufficient justification for the depositions of an Indian Prince. The right hon. Gentleman delivered in his speech to the Committee an encomium on the fairness of the English Land Revenue. He cannot have read the Reports made by an English official, Mr. Thorburn, who occupied a high position in the Punjab for the last 25 years, and who tells us that the effect of our Land Revenue system in the Punjab upon the Mussulman—those Mussulmen for whom, in the case of Kashmir, the Under Secretary of State for India was moved—is so bad that it has such an oppressive bearing upon the people, and that nothing but a complete change in the manner of the collection of the English Land Revenue can prevent an outbreak, in which blood must be shed, and which will take terrible bloodshed to quell. Last year the right hon. Gentleman used language totally dissimilar to what he has used this year about the Salt Tax. He then said that Lord Cross regarded it as not a desirable tax, and that he assented to it with reluctance, but tonight he says we must wait until the duty of the Government has been performed, and until he has achieved the restoration of the Famine Fund of £1,500,000——

SIR J. GORST

I call it a special surplus.

MR. BRADLAUGH

The right hon. Gentleman is not the Indian lexicon. It was the officer who initiated this fund who called it a Famine Fund, and it was the officer who sent this message to the House of Commons who calls it a Famine Insurance Grant. I do not say all the names given by officials are not wrong. At any rate, I can only take choice amongst the official words, and to leave the Committee to criticise them. I regret if I said anything that made the right hon. Gentleman uneasy. I must call it a Famine Fund, which, according to the right hon. Gentleman, last year was never subscribed, and which he now practically admits has been made away with, and which is now to be restored, and then the Salt Tax shall be removed. I have already trespassed a long time on the Committee, but there is one matter to which I would wish to allude in connection with the Army expenditure. The right hon. Gentleman says that the Army expenditure has been lessened. I wish he could say the same with regard to human life which has been lost. With regard to this military expenditure, which includes the Chin Lushai expedition, I desire to draw the attention of the Committee to the terrible loss of life as to which I have put several questions during the Session. I select only one British Regiment, the King's Own Scottish Borderers, from which 14 officers and 500 men formed part of the expedition; of these, one officer and 122 men died from sickness, six officers and 120 men were invalided from sickness, leaving a remainder of seven officers and 163 men only to return, and of these one officer and 10 men have since died. I appeal to the Government to put a stop to this sacrifice of human life. I had intended to quote from the Report of Mr. Maconochie, upon the state of the agricultural population in the Punjab, so piteous in its details, and so shocking in its facts, that, putting it side by side with the speech made by the right hon. Gentleman himself as to the agricultural population in Cashmere, one naturally wonders how the mote was so easily seen, and the beam entirely unrecognised. I have no right to, and I should submit myself to your displeasure, if I made any allusion to the incapacity of the Government here to carry the smallest measure of legislative reform in this Session. I probably have no right to reproach them for their neglect of duty. I can only submit it to the Committee in this dry and poor statement.

THE CHAIRMAN

I understand that the hon. Member proposes to submit to the Committee an alternative to the Resolution formerly moved by the Under Secretary of State. There has been up to this time no example of an Amendment proposed in Committee to a Resolution of this kind, and, it has been said that no attempt has ever been made to submit such an Amendment, so that while there is no precedent in favour of the proceeding it may be said that there is no precedent against it. I cannot say that it is not a fair Parliamentary reply to say that this late period of the Session renders it difficult to examine the accounts, but I desire to safeguard the Committee against its being supposed to be in order to submit any abstract Amendment as an alternative.

MR. BRADLAUGH

I may say that, after your intimation, Sir, I will not submit my Amendment, so as not even to provoke a semblance of precedent.

*(11.3.) SIR ROPER LETHBRIDGE (Kensington, N.)

I think the Government may be congratulated on the admirably clear and lucid statement which has been submitted to us tonight by my right hon. Friend the Under Secretary for India—a statement which was not only interesting and instructive in itself, but which was satisfactory to the Committee, and will be satisfactory to the country from every possible point of view. Allow me to make one observation, following upon those which have been submitted to the Committee by the hon. Member for Northampton, with regard to the restriction that is placed now—by the ruling of the Chair, and also by the action of the House, in consequence of the alteration of the rules of procedure—upon this annual Debate. I entirely agree with the hon. Member for Northampton in feeling the utmost regret that the old system has been departed from which subsisted for so many years in this House whereby, on one night at least in the year, it was open to every Member interested in India to bring forward and submit to this House, on the Motion that Mr. Speaker do leave the Chair, any questions connected with the interests of India which he might think ought to be discussed in this House. It is not generally known that that rule now no longer exists, and that there is not a single opportunity during the whole Parliamentary year when a Member of this House has a right to submit to the House questions of general Indian interest as apart from the finances of India. Turning to the Financial Statement, the first thought that will occur to most of us is the question whether the Government of India is really using its years of prosperity in such a way as will enable it to pass through what will undoubtedly come, namely, years of adversity—whether the fat kine of the present cycle will provide adequately for the lean kine that are to follow. I believe the answer to that question may be in the affirmative. I think this Committee will feel that the provision which is being made by the Government of India for the recurrence of famine, or the recurrence of pestilence, or the recurrence of war, is, on the whole, a sufficient one. The right hon. Gentleman has not alluded to many of the measures which have been taken during the past year with these various objects in view. He has not referred, for instance, to the expenditure that has been incurred, and that has been rightly incurred, in those sanitary provisions which do guard, to a great extent, our Empire in India from the recurrence of pestilence. The sanitation of India is year after year receiving more and more attention. It is not too much to say that the Medical Department of India is one of the very first of all scientific bodies in the world in this respect, that it does provide most efficiently against the recurrence of those pestilences which at one time devastated India. The past year has seen serious attempts made in India, and supported in the highest quarters in this country, to grapple with such a scourge of the country as leprosy. And that is a point which certainly deserves our congratulatory remarks. With regard to the provision that has been made by the Government of India for providing against the recurrence of famine, I do think some further remarks ought to be made in reply to those that have fallen from the hon. Member for Northampton. The Report of the Famine Commission that was appointed some years ago, which will be in the remembrance of many Members of this House—a Commission which was adorned by the presence of Sir James Caird, one of the first authorities on such subjects—clearly taught the Government of India how it might best provide for the recurrence of famines. It pointed out to the Government of India, that by expenditure on such public undertakings as railways and irrigation works, it might make provision that would be valuable in times of famine. And the hon. Member for Northampton has been really, it seems to me, tilting at a windmill, when he talks about this Famine Fund as something which has been got at by the Government, merely because the Government has spent its famine surpluses upon railways or irrigation works, or other famine protection works of that kind. These are the very methods which Sir James Caird and the Famine Commissioners told us were the only possible methods by which the Government of India could possibly, in any way, provide against the recurrence of famine. That is prevention, and prevention is better than cure. I hope the Government of India and Her Majesty's Secretary of State will take full advantage of this present prosperity, that is so largely caused by the favourable rates of exchange, to push forward and carry out those Government works of public utility which alone can provide against the horrors of famine. The hon. Member for Northampton has spoken of a certain discussion which appears to have been carried on between the Secretary of State and the Government of India, and probably between various Members of the Government of India, and the advisers of the Secretary of State, as to the means by which railway enterprise and extension may best be carried out in India; and the hon. Member has spoken as if he had discovered some mysterious mare's nest. Why, the hon. Member may rest assured that this discussion, on which he has spoken with so much mystery, is nothing more than the discussion of the old, old question that has been debated over and over again in India and elsewhere, and that will always be debated, namely, the question whether if, is better to carry out such works by State control, by State monopoly, and by the purse of the nation, or by private enterprise. The same question, in its other aspects, may, as we all know, be discussed in the form of land nationalisation, and in every form of Socialism. In the Legislative Assembly of Calcutta Sir Alexander Wilson discussed the policy of the Government of India with regard to railway extension. He is President of the Chamber of Commerce of Calcutta and leader of the mercantile community in India, and he appears to have thought railway extension was best carried out by private enterprise and private capital. Sir Charles Elliott, being an official of Public Works and a Member of Council, was inclined to take the view that the Government should undertake those works, and that it would be cheaper and more economical for the Government to do so. And he pointed out what is very reasonable, namely, that whereas the Government would have to guarantee something like 4 per cent. to the Railway Companies, they could borrow money at 3 per cent., or even something less. Still it must be remembered that in the long run Government control and monopoly is apt to become an extravagant method of management. The cast iron method of a Government Department cannot be made so strictly economical as management by private mercantile firms. Therefore, it is arguable that private enterprise is more economical in the long run than State control, even if the State can obtain capital at a some what lower rate of interest. That, I maintain, is the whole story of the discussion between the Governments, of which so much has been made by the hon. Member for Northampton. I do hope, in spite of these discussions, in spite of the attempts to make it appear that the Government of India take one view and the Secretary of State another view in reference to railway extension, I hope they will not be deterred from taking advantage of the clear opportunity presented to them by the fortunate turn in exchange produced by the American silver legislation, to push forward these great works of public utility, whether it be by State construction or by encouragement to private enterprise, which will do so much for the country. I think we may fairly give credit to the Government of India for having prepared during this year's prosperity, and the prosperity of past years,, not only for the possible recurrence of famine and pestilence, but also for that of war. Never since I can remember anything of India has there been more confidence felt, whether in this country or in India, in the administration of the military affairs of that country. And it is matter of congratulation on all sides that that distinguished soldier, who is now at the head of the Army in India, Sir Frederick Roberts, has been requested to remain some time longer at that post which he has adorned, in the discharge of those duties which he has carried out so efficiently. I foresee in India that there will be great possibilities to economise our military charges in this way, and I will explain to the Committee why I think so. We now spend large sums in maintaining great bodies of men in various cantonments, apparently doing little else than watching the armies of our feudatories. The ever increasing loyalty of the Feudatory States of India is a matter which ought to afford us the highest satisfaction. It has been proved beyond doubt by the loyal offers of those Feudatory Princes to provide for the Empire at large against any foreign foe, and also by their more recently expressed willingness to arrange their military affairs in such a way as to enable the Government of India to withdraw those troops in favour of feudatory troops, or at any rate no longer to regard them as simply a watch upon feudatory armies. Attention has been called, by a question in this House to-night, to the fact, recorded in a recent telegram in the Times, that a large sum of money will be saved in military expenses to the Empire at large in the dominions of the Maharajah of Mysore; and I was glad to hear the answer of my right hon. Friend to that question. I have no doubt the zeal of Mysore in this respect will be imitated in the various other Feudatory States. It should be a great matter of satisfaction that the rendition of Mysore to the ancient Royal Family of that State has been so successful that British capital and enterprise are going into Mysore as easily and as confidently as into any other part of India. The Government is to be congratulated, not only on the favourable state of the finances in the past year, but also on the favourable prospects for the future. The prosperity of last year was perhaps largely owing to the advantage gained with regard to opium, which my right hon. Friend has described as of a gambling nature. But the prospect for the future is a far more secure one, founded, as it is, on the American silver legislation. It is, I think, a very remarkable coincidence that this change in the prospects of the Government of India, from the improved position which silver has taken in the markets of the world, has been exactly synchronous with the resolution come to by the Government of India, and expressed in this House by my right hon. Friend in March last, to consider favourably the hardship suffered by their Uncovenanted Civil Servants in consequence of the loss by exchange. While a few thousands of pounds were lost to the Government of India by their just action in this matter, the improvement in exchange has been rolling back, not merely thousands, or even hundreds of thousands, but millions into their coffers. Sir, before I sit down I desire emphatically to express my own gratitude, and the gratitude of those I represent in this matter, both to the Government and to the Select Committee—to the Government for the justice of their action, and to the Select Committee for the care they have taken in investigating the claims of these men. I believe it is the unanimous feeling of the whole of the so-called Uncovenanted Civil Servants of India, that the Government had acted in this matter, not indeed generously—that would not perhaps have been right—but certainly justly throughout. It is a great gratification to them that the Select Committee specially laid it down for the guidance of the Government, that no distinction in the way of pay and pension should be made between Indian-born and English-born servants of Her Majesty; both when domiciled in England would draw their pensions in the currency of this country. Mr. Courtney, I am confident that in the increased and extended co-operation of Indians and Englishmen in India will be found to be the truest solution of all our difficulties there, and the surest foundation of the continued greatness, prosperity, and happiness of the British Empire in India.

(11.28.) MR. MAC NEILL (Donegal, S.)

I heartily sympathise with the observations made by the hon. Gentleman who has just sat down in reference to the Uncovenanted Civil Servants of India. For the most part these Indian Civil Servants were more tax consumers than tax producers. My remaining observation will be on the condition of the people and their sufferings from the malady of irresponsible officialism. The hon. Member opposite justly gave the Government of India credit for doing everything in their power to stamp out this evil malady in Eastern lands, but there are many others which every friend of India will try to stamp out. Here we have in this statement millions on millions of money levied from people who have no voice whatever in its control. My right hon. Friend said I was anxious for a revolution in India. I wish nothing of the kind; but if I were, I think I should have my right hon. Friend as an unconscious collaborateur with me, for he has stated that in this matter he regards the House of Commons, the ultimate Court of Appeal, with general indifference. I am sorry to think that is the case. An hon. Friend of mine told me he only a few days ago refused to obtain a ticket of admission for an Indian gentleman who wished to hear the Indian Budget discussion, because he was ashamed of the way Indian matters were conducted in the House of Commons. This document is very instructive, and at the same time very sad. My contention is, that from generation to generation the Indians have been odiously, mercilessly, and villainously robbed. The persons who are subjected to this extortion are no fewer than 270,000,000, and they inhabit a country seven times larger than Great Britain—a country which is as large as Europe, with the sole exception of Russia, and the mention of Russia reminds me of the statement of Mr. John Bright, that the Government of India was a pure and simple despotism. Out of these 270,000,000 there are no fewer than 40,000,000 who have never known what it is to have a satisfying meal, and from these people this money is ground, more especially in the shape of the Salt Tax. These 40,000,000 of people live on one meal a day, and the effect of the increase of the Salt Tax by eight annas deprived these people of any food for an average of eight days during the year. That is a very scandalous, a very villainous, and a very horrible state of circumstances. Let us see what is the poverty of the people, viewed with reference to their taxable ability. Our exports to Australia average £14 or £15 a head of the population of the colony, while our exports to India only reach 1s. 6d. a head, and it has been computed that the average income of the Indian native, including the few highly paid native officials, is 1½d per diem. There is a very interesting statement in the Finance Report issued by the Supreme Council in March, 1889. There is some increase in the Indian Railways—about 600 miles; but in the United States the increase was 12,000 miles. If the Government only took up this matter of railway enterprise with energy, there would be an enormous increase. However, I will say it is not, in my humble judgment, the most productive of the works in India. It has been computed that out of every shilling spent in railway enterprise, 8d. makes its way to England. In my view, preference should be given to works of irrigation, which would be more permanent and of greater advantage for the cultivation of the land. Railways may come afterwards. The right hon. Gentleman took a somewhat airy view of the Famine Fund, and he preferred to call it an emergency fund. Lord Lytton instituted it. Did he apply it to the wants of the starving poor? He did nothing of the kind. He pinched it and applied it to the Burmese Expedition.

SIR R. TEMPLE (Worcestershire, Evesham)

Lord Lytton had nothing to do with the Burmese Expedition.

MR. MAC NEILL

I beg pardon. It was the Afghan War. It was applied to the war in Afghanistan. Let me show the Under Secretary how the Salt Tax is regarded in the Legislative Council. Two Members of that Council protested warmly against the Salt Tax and the Income Tax. I am bound to say the two gentlemen were not European Members, but natives, who, in spite of the officialism and the manner in which natives are socially corrupted, had some regard for the suffering of their people. One of these gentlemen, Mr. Nulkar, said— As regards the Salt Tax, I wish to draw the attention of your Lordships' Government to the extreme hardship and privation from which the great bulk of the Indian population suffers in consequence of the enhancement of the Salt Duty, which was sanctioned two years ago. It was sanctioned on January 19, 1888, and was the direct Act of Lord Cross.

SIR J. GORST

It was passed like all other taxes by the Legislature of India. No doubt it was approved by the Secretary of State.

MR. MAC NEILL

If I may talk so of the Indian Legislature, the more shame to them for passing it. I wish they had a Plan of Campaign out in India. Mr. Nulkar continued— I am no believer in statistical conclusions either way, when they are based solely on a comparison between issues or exports and imports of salt within short corresponding periods. A better and more trustworthy proof of the privations to which the poor are reduced in parts of India is furnished by the new laws which have had to be passed, preventing the use of salt earth and similar substance for edible salt, because men do not resort to such extreme devices unless they are hard pressed to do so by the high rate which the Salt Tax has now reached. That reminds me of the Irish peasants collecting lettuce during the famine, only they were allowed to collect lettuce and were not put in prison for it. I may remind the House that in 1882 Mr. Kynaston Cross stated that the reduction in the Salt Tax was equal in its effect to the repeal of the Corn Laws in England. I would like to see the person who would attempt to re-enact the Corn Laws, and yet we are preying on the vitals of the starving poor of India. I come to the Income Tax. The poorest man who pays Income Tax in this country has at least £150 a year. In India they pay Income Tax on £34, and the cost of its collection from the people, who are utterly unable to pay it, is at least 25 per cent. Mr. Hossein, another member of the Legislative Council, says— In the full belief in the justice of the cause I have undertaken to advocate, and in the moderation of my request, I earnestly implore that Your Excellency's Government will be pleased to grant the relief I have asked for by taking an early opportunity to exempt all annual income below 1,000 rupees from the operation of the Income Tax Law. That is, that Income Tax should in future be charged on £68, instead of £34; and the Viceroy and Sir David Barbour were much affected by the request. Sir David said he would consider it, and also the circumstances as regards the difficulty of collecting the tax. I wish, again, to direct the attention of the House to the contemptuous disregard of promises made by the British Government, again and again, to give the natives a fair chance of the official appointments of their own land. They have been deliberately excluded from all those appointments, and that exclusion necessitates a vast increase of expenditure because the appointments are given to Europeans, when they could be equally well, possibly better, filled by natives, at at least one-third of the expense. Of course, I do not say the natives could fill every appointment. A Departmental Committee of the India Office, in I860, reported that— The difficulties offered to a native living in India, and residing in England for a time, are so great that as a general rule it is almost impossible for a native successfully to compete at the periodical examinations held in England. Were this irregularity removed, we should no longer be exposed to the charge of keeping promise to the ear and breaking it to the hope. The hon. Member for Northampton read a letter of Lord Lytton's three years ago, stating that the British Government, having had their choice between forcing the natives out of employment and cheating them, deliberately determined to cheat them. Here are the statistics of natives in high Government offices. Out of 2,357 appointments in the higher Uncovenanted Service, natives of India hold 188. The effect of a thing like that on the revenues of India is simply enormous, having regard to the fact that natives can do the work at one-third of the cost for which Europeans, however economically the Service may be conducted, can discharge the duties. The right hon. Gentleman is correct in stating that five natives passed the last examination, but, according to this memorandum I have got, although five natives passed the Civil Service Examination this year, only 12 have succeeded in, doing so during the past decade. I would direct the attention of the right hon. Gentleman to page 6 of this financial statement, paragraph 6, because it is there that Sir David Barbour speaks in animated language of what the right hon. Gentleman calls the financial and moral considerations, placing the financial considerations first. Sir David Barbour there says:— The chief improvement in the current year appears under the head of Opium. There is an increase of Rx.286,400 in Opium Revenue; there is a decrease of Rx.708,800 in Opium Expenditure. The total improvement under Opium is consequently Rx.995,200. In the Budget Estimate the price of Bengal opium was taken at Rs.1,070 a chest. It has proved to be Rs.1,136. I will not speak of the effects of the opium on China, though I believe I should be technically right in doing so upon this Budget, as a portion of the revenue is obtained through forcing opium down the throats of the Chinese at the point of the bayonet. This is what our moral Government has done. I would say this, that the English Government are the first dominators and rulers of India who have derived, as we do now, a solid monetary gain from the vice of the people. Opium was drunk and smoked before our time, but it was in contradiction of the religious rights of the people, and was put down in one State, Burma, though it now flourishes under our rule. In that State to sell, drink, or smoke opium was punished by death. Perhaps it may be asked, in reference to this opium traffic in India, what difference there is between that and the alcoholic traffic here. There is a very considerable difference, because our Government in India are the proprietors of the traffic, whereas in the other traffic or trade a man carries it on at his own expense; and in India the Government, by purchasing the crop, put an artificial value upon the production of opium for revenue purposes. It has been stated, and will possibly be stated by the hon. Baronet the Member for Evesham (Sir R. Temple), who knows a great deal about the subject, that this Indian tax on opium is simply a device to restrict the indiscriminate use of opium. I say that is not so. The best lands have been taken out of cultivation for the purpose of producing this opium, and the Government are directly engaged in trafficking in the sin and sufferings of the people of India for the purposes of raising revenue. By this traffic the people of India are demoralised. The lands under cultivation of the poppy are no fewer in British India than 500,000 acres, and, strange to say, for the successful cultivation of opium nothing but the best land is used. I will take the hon. Baronet the Member for Evesham as a witness. In 1869, in reply to a question, he stated that we should extend the cultivation and ensure a plentiful supply, because if we did not the Chinese would do it themselves, and they had better have our good opium rather than their own indifferent opium. What is the meaning of good opium? It means strong opium, and indifferent opium means weak opium. Out of 300,000,000 of Chinese, only 1,000,000 use our opium, and that because it is forced upon them. The increase in the consumption of opium of late years is very great, and Canon Wilberforce, in a great speech on his return from India, declared that the opium was prepared in double strength in order to poison our Indian fellow subjects. There is something perfectly horrible in throwing temptation in another man's way for gross and filthy gain. I can understand a man being influenced by passion, but when men deliberately traffic, as the Government of these people have done, upon, the sins and sufferings of those under their charge, then such conduct appears to me to be too infamous to characterise. Yet this is the conduct of the Government of India in the present day. You know yourselves what opium is, because you refuse to allow opium cultivation in Bengal on account of its disastrous effects. Just for one moment let me refer to the famines. We know that India is the land of famines. The hon. Member for Evesham knows that, for he headed a relief fund on the occasion of one famine in which no fewer than a population as large as the City of London succumbed. Statisticians have computed the loss of life from war from 1793 to 1887 in Europe was 4,500,000; the loss of life from famine in India from 1802 to 1879 was no fewer than 14,000,000. The charge I make against the Government is that of diverting 500,000 of acres of the best land in India from the growth of cereals to the growth of opium for the mere purpose of revenue. I wish to say something about opium in Burma. As I have said, under the old Burmese Government, the man who sold, drank, or smoked opium was sentenced to death; and, in regard to Burma, you are now demoralising these people for the sake of gross metallic gain. The opium dens are increasing in numbers every year, because they mean a source of revenue to the Government. In British India these dens number no fewer than 10,000, and Mr. Caine, who was in India the year before last, has given a terrific blow to the traffic by the harrowing picture of the scenes he had witnessed in these dens. I have witness after witness—missionaries, medical men, travellers, and English clergymen, like Canon Wilberforce—who say the people of India would give anything to be rid of the traffic. I want to show what effect financially the opium has on the revenue, and that we cannot rely upon it. We have got the authority of the greatest financier of the time that the opium traffic in India is undoubtedly precarious. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian ten years ago, on the Indian Budget, said, speaking of the opium trade in India— None of us, I hope, in this House view this matter with indifference. I am certainly of opinion that opium revenue, instead of being a sound foundation, is a slippery and dangerous part of our Indian revenue. Last year a Motion was brought forward in reference to compulsorily forcing it upon China, and the Under Secretary of State for India then got up in his place and said that the opium trade in India was necessary, because Persia was growing very good opium. In the time of the noble Lord the Member for Rossendale (the Marquess of Hartington), it was said that if the opium revenue failed India would be in a state of bankruptcy. If that be so, if you are corrupting them, and guaranteeing there should be certain famines at certain specified times for the depopulation of the country, I cannot congratulate you upon your Indian rule. In listening to the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Under Secretary of State for India, and then to that of my hon. Friend, I was forcibly reminded of what a great Indian citizen said to me. He said that I am the best person to defend the cause of India. If they could not have an English Member, then they should have an Irish Member, for he had seen in his own country the evils under which the people of India suffered, injustice promoted by malice or by class hatreds. But the mean arts of the past will no longer avail. You gained India by what I would call successful Pigottism. You got it by murder and by fraud. Are you going to keep it by demoralisation and starvation? You may do so for some time, but the people of India will soon become alive to their own interests, and will seek to govern themselves according to their own principles and for their own land.

*(12.10) SIR R. TEMPLE

I shall not detain the Committee long at this late hour, but I must offer a few remarks upon the speech which has just been delivered by the hon. Member for Donegal. I do not doubt his good intentions, but I am sure the Committee knows the exuberance of eloquence in which he has just indulged. I wondered whether the hon. Gentleman, as he resumed his seat, reflected that he is a citizen of the British Empire, and that he was addressing his countrymen regarding an Empire founded by them. Before I proceed to answer some of the hon. Member's points, I feel bound to offer some words of explanation as to my own part in the famines of India. The hon. Member has got hold of the wrong end of the story. I have been concerned in three famines. The first was in Bengal, and there I really commanded, and practically no lives were lost. The second was in Bombay, and there, too, I had the command. On that occasion, despite much success, there was some loss of life. But the causes were mainly pestilence and scourge, over which we had no control. In the third case, at Madras, would the hon. Member be surprised to know that I never commanded there at all? I certainly was employed as a counsellor and adviser during the early stages of that famine, but I had no administrative authority. I stayed but a short time, and during that time the famine had made but little progress. Afterwards, the famine became intensified, and I cannot undertake to answer for what occurred, though the authorities struggled bravely against a distress prolonged over two years. But I look back with thankfulness to the success which, under Providence, was vouchsafed to us in the saving of life on the two previous occasions. Blessed results were obtained by enormous efforts and sacrifices on the part of the Government, of myself, and of my officers. As my time is short, I will deal for one moment with the allegations of the hon. Member regarding the opium traffic. I understand him to raise no particular objection to the Bombay system, because there the opium goes straight to the port of exportation. His objection is against the Bengal system. Now, Sir, this subject has been debated four times in this House of Commons, and four times it has been answered terque quaterque, and now, though I answer it for the fifth time, it is like slaying of the slain. The pictures which the hon. Member has painted for Bengal simply represent parts of the fiscal system. Nothing would be easier than by a stroke of the pen to assimilate the system to that of Bombay. But the results would be two-fold. First, there would be a loss of revenue; and, secondly, there would be a great deal of smuggling and illicit consumption among our own Indian people. Now, to avoid those two objections or evils this Bengal system has been devised. If misrepresented unintentionally, or if described under radical misconception, the system can be construed as having a bad appearance. But to any person who understands the case, and who looks into the administrative particulars, its real merits will be apparent. Now as regards the Chinese trade, I entirely adhere to the passage of my writing which he has quoted. As for our encouraging the taste for opium among the Chinese, the House may recollect that the Chinese themselves are the main producers. They produce about five times the amount that India produces, and the Indian production bears the same proportion to that of China that the champagne of France bears to all the other wines of France and Spain put together. And as to the allegation that we are converting good lands, that could be sown with grain, for the purposes of opium, does the hon. Member remember that the Chinese are determined to have this drug, and that they are prepared to pay very highly for it, and that its cultivation and production is very profitable to the Bengal peasant.

MR. MAC NEILL

Profitable?

SIR R. TEMPLE

Yes, most profitable; and if our system were swept away to-morrow, still there would be this cultivation, still the poppy fields in the spring would bloom with the flowers white, pink, and purple. And as it would be untaxed, probably it would be extended. In the absence of our preventive system it would be also impossible to prevent our Indian people consuming the drug. Still the traffic would continue; still there would be the opium clippers or steamers plying between Calcutta and the Chinese ports. Then, Sir, there are one or two other points in the hon. Member's speech that I ought to answer. Does the House recollect that touching, that moving piece of statistics which he detailed to the House about 40,000,000 people in the Indian continent being insufficiently nourished? Well, 40,000,000 sounds a large number, but, after all, that is only one-eighth of the Indian population, so that, even if that figure was correct—and I deny its correctness—it would amount to one person out of eight who was insufficiently nourished. I venture to say that in the Metropolitan area more that that proportion would be found of persons insufficiently nourished. But where does he get that 40,000,000? About 10 years ago, in the famine times, that figure was mentioned in a statistical estimate by Sir William Hunter. But that was a general statement of his opinion. He was a highly qualified officer. He was in this case a statistician mainly. I do not disparage him, but that was only his individual opinion, based on no particular details or any special data, and it was never accepted by any authority in India, and was never admitted by the Government. Thus it was an estimate to be taken as such, and not a known fact to be quoted against the Indian Government in this House. Then the hon. Member quoted from a Report in regard to salt earth, as if that were a proof of misery. But that was in the nature of smuggling. Those who got that salt out of the salt earth have it free of taxation. It is only a proof of their sagacity. Again, Sir, the hon. Member told us that the minimum of income for Income Tax assessment in India was £34, and he contrasted that with £150, the minimum in this country. But, Sir, inasmuch as the value of labour is four times greater in this country than it is in India, a man who really had £34 of income annually would be better off in India than the Englishman on £150 is in England. But how does the hon. Member get that £34? He gets it, I see, by taking the Indian minimum of rupees—500—and reducing it to the pound at the rate of 1s. 4d. exchange. But really the minimum income was more like £50 when the Income Tax was fixed. I remember very well that 500 rupees was taken as £50, and it was £50 then according to the exchange, and it will soon be £50 again. But, Sir, that comparison, I submit, is insufficient, because the income is not in pounds at all. The man knows nothing about pounds. He subsists upon the rupees, and upon that standard his income is more like £50 than £34. I say, therefore, that, according to this comparison, the minimum in India is really more favourable to the Indian people than the minimum in England is to the English people. So much for that. Then there are one or two points in the very interesting speech of the hon. Member for Northampton. I am much obliged to him for the kind expressions he used towards me personally. But, subject to your good ruling, Mr. Courtney, I shall hardly be able to say a word about one matter regarding which he indirectly challenged me, namely, the elective principle for the natives in the Legislative Councils. I am prepared to avow and adhere to, both inside and outside Parliament, every word that I have ever uttered or written on that subject, and I hope that some day in this House I may have an opportunity of explaining the rough and ready plans which. I had formed for carrying out that object. But may I remark on what the hon. Member said about the salt in Bengal? He pointed to a reduction in two successive years of the quantity of salt consumed in Bengal, but that was in the quantity of the English salt.

MR. BRADLAUGH

On the total salt.

SIR R. TEMPLE

On the English salt, Sir.

MR. BRADLAUGH

I was careful to say the total salt.

SIR R. TEMPLE

The explanation is this. The hon. Member has got hold of the consumption of salt as given in the Calcutta Returns. And what has happened is this, that, owing to certain commercial speculations, the price of English salt in Calcutta had risen, and consequently there was a diminution of the consumption. But, at the same time, the supply was kept up by salt which came down to Bengal from Northern India. So that the result is not so much a variation on the total amount of salt consumed, but a variation in the source of supply. The people of Bengal have consumed much the same as they formerly consumed, but instead of getting it wholly from England, they got it only in the main from England and partly from other sources. The House has heard the moving description given from a certain book by Mr. Thorburn regarding the Moslem peasantry in the Punjab. The hon. Member seemed to consider the conditions described in that book as worse than those of Kashmir, which were described in this House as justifying the deposition of the Native Prince. But what was the case? The book only showed that certain sections of the Punjab population are deeply in debt; that they are constantly renewing their bonds to the money-lenders, and that at each renewal they had to submit to terms more and more usurious. That is regrettable, and I trust that it will be the subject of special and remedial legislation, just as similar evils which were experienced under my rule in Bombay were remedied by legislation. But these evils are very hard for Kings, or Governments, or Parliaments, to cure. What is the real cause? It is just this: The Moslem peasants under British rule have been invested with proprietary rights in land—rights which they had never possessed before. That land had risen in selling value from year to year; and the consequence was that its owners, finding that they had real security to offer, ran into debt for the sake of marriage festivities and other social extravagances. This is one of those evils which bring no shame whatever to the British Government. Much is said by the hon. Member about Mr. Maconochie. He was an excellent officer, and his Report is said to have revealed destitution among the people. I do not find anything of the kind, and I do not know to what Report the hon. Member was alluding.

MR. BRADLAUGH

I referred to page 3 of the Report, which was laid upon the Table last year. I did not read it, being anxious not to take up time, but it contained matter much stronger than any given in my summary.

SIR R. TEMPLE

I have just been looking into the Reports of Mr. Maconochie, and they seem satisfactory, on the whole, regarding the condition of the people. There are other officers who have reported, and I find they generally say that, on the whole, the people are fairly well nourished. May I add one word about the Famine Insurance Fund to which the hon. Member has again adverted? This Famine Insurance Fund is a highly technical and curious expression which, in my opinion, ought never to have been invented, and I am quite sure that those Indian Authorities who invented it would never have done so if they had foreseen that it would be turned to such purposes of argument as it has been on previous occasions in this House. It was merely a Resolution on the part of the Government of India that they would provide such a sum as might be applied to the reduction of debt and the construction of works to prevent famine, to the extent of about £15,000,000 in each decade. That was a large undertaking, and I contend that successive Viceroys did really endeavour to act up to it, though some years have been so full of requirements for Imperial defence that in these years they have not been able to carry out their intentions. But in the course of these 10 years they will be found to have very nearly fulfilled every intention, and to have set aside a sum not much less than £15,000,000 for these purposes; and I say that, on the whole, they have done very well. And now, Sir, before resuming my seat, let me congratulate my right hon. Friend the Under Secretary of State upon the Statement he has been able to make to us. He has shown to us that India, despite the depreciation of the rupee, and despite the vast expenditure incurred out of revenue for military operations and for famine relief, is incurring year after year a capital outlay from State resources by money borrowed partly in India and partly in England, under circumstances which combine in one hand State administration with private enterprise. It shows, also, that much has been done for Imperial defence. The hon. Member said it was better for the people that they should be saved the cost of keeping up a large Army. Supposing we did not keep Armies in India, and British rule were upset, what would become of the people then? Why, they would be pillaged and devastated by fire and sword. The Statement showed, further, that, despite all that may be said by hon. Members opposite, the people of India bear the lightest taxation, perhaps, of any people in the world—far lighter than they ever knew under their own Native dynasties. As to the Salt Tax, it is absolutely the only tax paid by the masses of the people, and per head it is so small that it is hardly possible to represent the incidence in figures. The people themselves have a resourcefulness in famine which is wonderful, and which would hardly be shown by any European nation in similar circumstances. Then they evince an aptitude to strike in with enterprise whenever they have a chance. Look at the way they filled up the gap in the Cotton Trade during the American Civil War. Look, also, at the way they have seized the chance of assisting in the food supply of the United Kingdom. Year by year they are advancing in education. I may call the hon. Member for Northampton to bear witness of that. He has been to Bombay, at all events, and he has seen a grand scene of progress and education and enlightenment. I have no doubt the pious Hindoos in the Congress there almost worshipped him. They believe in the transmigration of souls, and I almost think they must have imagined that the souls of some of the mythological heroes had migrated into the stately form of the hon. Member for Northampton. I shall resume my seat with much gratitude to the House for the attention with which they have listened to me, but I might have done better if I had had more arguments to answer—if the hon. Member had only started a few more hares for me to hunt. As it is, I feel like the old lion perishing for lack of prey.

*(12.38.) MR. SEYMOUR KEAY (Elgin and Nairn)

I am glad the hon. Baronet is going to remain in his place, because I think I shall be able to start one or two more hares than he expects. I do not wish to make the slightest semblance of an attack upon the hon. Baronet, because I have always known him, both in India and in this House, as a first-class official optimist. I am, therefore, not surprised at the character of the speech he has just delivered. He stated, truly, that he left Madras before any great number of deaths had occurred through the Madras Famine of 1877–78. But I feel it my duty to tell the Committee that the hon. Member, when he made the recommendations, to which he himself has alluded, before he left Madras, unfortunately made among these recommendations one, namely, that the allowance to be paid to the famishing creatures who came to the relief stations should be restricted to one pound of grain per day, and the enormous number of deaths which subsequently occurred were traced to the smallness of the famine ration that the hon. Baronet had prescribed. Public opinion placed on the shoulders of the hon. Baronet a great share of the responsibility for the disasters that occurred after he left Madras. I would not have alluded to this point had he not alluded to it himself. Then there was a remark which fell from the hon. Member for North Kensington (Sir Roper Leth bridge) on a different subject altogether, but it is one to which I think it is very necessary to allude. It is this: In counselling the Government of India and the Secretary of State to make what he considered to be a fair use of the Army in India, he said that there were large forces of British troops at present locked up in the Native States, which had been placed in these States for the purpose of watching the Native Princes. He even alluded to the largest of all these forces, which is stationed in the cantonment of Secunderabad, a place in the neighbourhood of which I have spent the best part of 28 years. The hon. Member himself has had a long Anglo-Indian career, and I am rather surprised that he should have brought so little knowledge to bear on the subject as to have made the statement which he did. In the first place, the statement he has made is a decidedly unfounded reflection upon these Native States. It is a gross reflection upon them to say that they need, or that the British Government think they need, large forces of British troops to be kept at their capitals for the purpose of watching them.

SIR ROPER LETHBRIDGE

I am sure the hon. Member does not wish to mis-represent me. I said nothing of the kind, and I certainly intended to imply the very opposite of what the hon. Member has now imputed to me. What I did say was that in the bad past there had been times when large bodies of our troops were locked up in the utterly useless occupation of watching with hostile intent the armies of our feudatories, but I put it that now the loyalty of the feudatory States—I specially mentioned Mysore, but I might also have mentioned Hyderabad—that the loyalty of these feudatories was so recognised that the forces which were formerly locked up in this useless allocation will now be set free to be occupied in a different way.

MR. SEYMOUR KEAY

The hon. Gentleman has substantially repeated the statement I made. The hon. Gentleman admits that he had suggested that in past days there were certain large British forces placed in their capitals and elsewhere for the purpose of watching the native States. The hon. Gentleman ought to know that all these large British forces kept in native States were originally placed there under special Treaties, that the Native Princes not only sought, but paid for them, in most cases by capitalised sums, for the purpose of securing their protection against their own domestic enemies. Now, I do not know how the hon. Member can possibly assert that when a native State made a payment like that, and when the British Government were in consequence bound to place a body of well disciplined troops in that State for the purpose of protecting it from its internal and domestic enemies, I do not know how he can assert that at any time the British troops were set to watch the Native Princes and their armies. Moreover, it is perfectly clear that the forces in question are absolutely locked up in the places in which they are located, because we have in our pockets at this moment the whole capitalised sum which has been paid for the providing of these forces for all time. It is quite clear that if these troops were removed, the first thing to be done would necessarily be to restore to the Native Princes the capitalised amount which we now hold belonging to them, and in virtue of which we keep these troops at their disposal. But, at the risk of detaining the Committee, I think it will be positively my duty to call the attention of the Under Secretary to a few points to which I think it is desirable that the attention of the Committee should be directed, as I believe, for the first time. The right hon. Gentleman began his speech by telling us that it would not be very long or very difficult of understanding, because it dealt with what he called a kind of general level of prosperity. I wish, for my part, that I could at all endorse the views of the right hon. Gentleman on this matter. But I think, by anyone who knows India, this will be taken to be the most important point of all on which the right hon. Gentleman himself rests the principal part of his case. I warn him that in what I am about to say I shall call on him to travel far outside the brief which has been furnished to him by the India Office. He told us that the Land Revenue is so mild in its incidence that it only amounts to one-half of the net produce of the soil.

SIR J. GORST

I said net rent.

MR. SEYMOUR KEAY

It is just the same.

SIR J. GORST

No; I specially corrected that. I meant the net value of the rent.

MR. SEYMOUR KEAY

I had not the good fortune to be in the House when the right hon. Gentleman used the words, and I am indebted to an hon. Member for telling me what the words were. Now, I take it that he means net rent or net produce in the same sense as is used in all Indian Revenue Reports. An attempt is made to discover, in the first place, what is the gross produce of the land. There is, then, an attempt made to deduct from this gross produce the expenses which the cultivator has had to pay, and then the Revenue Departments consider that a certain amount is left in his pocket out of which they desire to take a half, leaving the other half in his possession. Now, what I want to bring specially before the attention of the right hon. Gentleman is this. I want to say—if there were time, I could easily prove—that instead of the Land Tax at present enforced being only one-half of the net rent, it is immensely more; I hold that sometimes it oversteps it so much that in many parts of India the cultivators are at present living on the little capital that they possess, and are gradually getting more and more into the hands of the usurer. I want to explain to the right hon. Gentleman how he is deceived in this matter by the official documents. First of all, there is an absurd attempt made to find out the gross produce of a holding or of a district. There is what is called a crop experiment made by the district officer. The officer goes down and he looks at a holding. He picks out a field which, in his judgment, appears to be an average field, with growing corn upon it. Then he picks out a few square yards of what he thinks an average kind of growing corn, and he then orders that the corn on these square yards should be cut and threshed out and measured. The result, of course, is obvious. They thresh out the corn which is cut from these few yards, and they multiply the result by the whole extent of the field. That is the absurd way in which they get at the gross value of the holding. But they have now got to deduct some reasonable amount for the sustenance of the family, in order to find what is the net rent. This, again, is done in the most grossly unjust manner. I can point the right hon. Gentleman to proofs that, in nine cases out of ten, instead of allowing to the Indian cultivator a deduction for produce that he and his family would reasonably eat, they make him an allowance which is little more than one-seventh of the true cost of cultivation. On an average holding of 10 acres they allow for the sustenance of half a man and one bullock during nine months, instead of allowing for the sustenance of one man, one woman, with, on an average, three children, and two bullocks during the 12 months of the year. By deducting this mock sum from the supposed gross rent the net rent is arrived at, and all I can say is that the calculation is as absurd as that which the Chief Secretary for Ireland made in regard to the Irish Land Purchase Bill. He said the net rent was the gross rent after the deduction of the local rates only without any other outgoings, and the Indian Government, through their officials, have made as absurd a definition as between gross rent and net rent. The third way in which the Indian cultivator is mulcted is in regard to the prices at which he is supposed to be able to dispose of his produce. How do our Revenue Departments fix these supposed prices? They take the whole of the villages, small and great, throughout the whole district, some of which villages only consist of a few houses, some of which have no corn growing at all, and they take the price which obtains at these up-country rural villages, where there is no corn growing, and where the price of grain is, therefore, very high. They then take the price of grain in the large markets, where there is a plethora of it, where it naturally, therefore, sells cheap, and where, in point of fact, the mass of the crops are disposed of at low prices. They then take the united prices of the whole of these villages and districts, small and great, and add them together, and if there are, say, 30, they simply divide by 30, and say that they have got the average price of corn. These are statements which, if I may venture to say so, have never been made in the House before, and I trust the importance of the subject will be my excuse for having ventured for so long a time as I have done to trespass upon the patience of the Committee.

*(1.0.) MR. PROVAND

India, Sir, has, it must be remembered, no representatives in this House; and, therefore, it becomes the business of all the Members to give attention to Indian interests. India has a Budget in which the Revenue and Expenditure approximate to the Revenue and the Expenditure of the United Kingdom, and is brought in during the last days of the Session, when the strength of the House is probably not a quarter of its ordinary strength, and when only a few hours of the night can be given to its discussion. There are in this House at least two or three score Members who take an interest in India, either from past or present connection with that country. There are Members who belong, or formerly belonged, to the Civil and Military Establishments, and Members who are, or have been, connected with India through commerce. Perhaps I should most strongly object to the fact that this Return we have had to consider before coming here to-night has only been issued to-day, and the statement of the right hon. Gentleman the Under Secretary for India, although remarkably clear, does not make up for the opportunity which has been denied to us of going over the figures in this elaborate explanatory statement before we came to the House to listen to the discussion. I would say a word or two of congratulation to the Indian Government on the position in which they find themselves this year, especially as that position is different from the experience of many past years. Since 1873, I may say, the normal Indian Budget has shown a deficit from one cause or another, but chiefly by loss from exchange; whereas the improved position on the present occasion is due to a profit on exchange. The Famine Fund, of which we have heard something, but not as much as is necessary, is very largely a question of book-keeping. We have heard from several speakers comments on the Salt Tax, which presses severely on the poorest people. The Revenue from this source has increased 7 per cent. in a single year, as a consequence of the increased duty, and to this we have to add the increased price the people of India have now to pay in consequence of the cost of the salt itself being raised by the combination of salt mine-owners in Cheshire, and by the increased rates of freight which have had to be paid during the last year or two. Therefore, we hope that the advisers of the Indian Government will give their attention to doing something in their improved financial position to lessening the Salt Tax rather than to promise that they will provide for the Famine Fund which has never, so far as we have heard, been anything more than a question of book-keeping. I would make one remark as to what fell from the hon. Gentleman, the Member for Donegal, who made a terrible statement as to the circumstances attending the connection of India with this country. There is no doubt that the early wars in India—the wars of Clive and others—tell many a story which it would be better could not now be told against us. There was a great deal of ruthless and bad behaviour on our part at the time, but there is no man who reads the modern history of India, and compares it with what it was before our subjugation of the country, who can come to any other conclusion than that the position of the populations of India has been immensely improved in every respect since we have taken charge of it. Before that time the population was kept down chiefly by two causes—famines and wars. And, indeed, the wars were not wars in the sense in which we understand the term in Europe now; they were simply butcheries of entire populations by some ruthless conqueror who found enough troops to follow him. Another remark fell from the hon. Gentleman with reference to our connection with China as regards the opium traffic. He stated that the traffic was forced upon China by us. Well, the only foundation for that statement is that we undertook, in 1842, what is known as the Opium War; but since then there has been no compulsion of any kind, and the Chinese Authorities could stop the importation of opium at any moment. The matter has been one of open negotiation, and the cultivation of opium has increased enormously in China, notwithstanding the importation of the Indian article, and although the Chinese Government passes all sorts of laws against it. The Mandarins themselves post up large yellow notices, saying that this or that must not be done with opium, but, nevertheless, it is cultivated year after year in exactly the same way. If we did not send an ounce of opium to China it would merely increase the planting of poppies in China; and the Chinaman, instead of getting fine opium from India, would have to put up with the inferior quality which he cultivates himself. I would add to my remarks one protest. We are going to meet in three months—we are going to change our habits—and I trust the Under Secretary for India will see that the Indian Budget is brought on at an earlier period of the next Session. The explanatory statement we have had to-day should, I understand, have been circulated three or four months ago, and I have no doubt it was made up in India early enough to have permitted that we should have it in this House in plenty of time for this Debate. Therefore, I hope that next Session the same state of things will not occur again, and that we shall not have to wait until the end of the Session for the discussion of this important subject.

(1.20.) SIR W. PLOWDEN

I do not intend to discuss this matter at any great length. I have risen for a particular purpose. The hon. Member for Northampton, in the course of the speech which he delivered, spoke about the necessity for reducing our armed forces in India in order to fill the bellies of the unfortunate natives, but the hon. Baronet the Member for Evesham retorted where would the bellies be if our Armies were reduced? While the Government are attentive enough in some respects, I say they are not paying due regard to the proper arming of the country. We understand the Viceroy and his Council requested four years ago that the batteries of artillery in India should be re-armed. The present nine-pounder muzzle-loading gun is entirely inferior to the guns that could be brought to bear against it in any campaign by any European Power. This inferiority might have a most disastrous effect upon the Indian Army. It is essential that they should be supplied with more powerful guns. It was stated on a previous occasion that 96 guns of the new pattern would be furnished, but I should like to ask how many batteries have been furnished with the new gun? I do not believe all the batteries of the country are armed with it, and it is a matter of the greatest importance to the country. I believe that the gentleman who is in charge of the forces in India will be one of the first to appeal to the Government of this country to carry out this absolutely necessary proceeding. I believe it is very much to the discredit of the War Office in this country that such a state of things should exist, but I hope the matter will be remedied as soon as possible.

(1.25.) SIR J. GORST

With regard to the remarks of the hon. Member who has just spoken, I desire to say that the Government of India have been in communication with the Government of this country on the subject of procuring the guns to which the hon. Member has referred, but it has been found impossible by the War Department to supply them as rapidly as the interests of India would appear to demand. I will not detain the House at this hour of the night by making another speech. There are one or two questions to which I think I ought to reply. In the first place, it was not my fault, nor was it the fault of the leader of the House (Mr. W. H. Smith), or of Her Majesty's Government, that this Debate did not occur at an earlier period of the Session. What would the House say if, a month or two ago, the exciting business that was then occupying the time of the House had been, interrupted in order that the Indian Budget might come on? With regard to the complaints made as to the delay in getting documents ready, I wish to say that last year I made a great effort to have all Papers connected with Indian finance ready as soon as possible. The documents were laid on the Table very early, but what was the consequence?—the Debate was delayed, the figures were corrected, and they did not prove to be of as great advantage as was anticipated. This year I did not press the authorities in India or in the India Office to hasten the production of the Papers. With regard to the particular Report referred to by the hon. Member for Northampton, I have to say that every effort was made to produce that Report as early as possible, and it was actually in the hands of the printer early in June; and if it was not produced in time it was not my fault, or the fault of any of my officials, but of the printer, over whom we have no control whatever.

MR. BRADLAUGH

It was only laid on the Table in dummy last night.

SIR J. GORST

Yes, formally, but it was in the printers' hands. The other document referred to is the explanatory Memorandum. That Memorandum is simply a printed statement, made in accordance with what has lately been the custom of the India Office for the purpose of saving a good deal of the time of the House. It has been laid on the Table of the House by myself, in pursuance of the practice recently adopted by the First Lord of the Admiralty and of the Secretary of State for War, so that they should not have to make a long statement, such as was the custom in the introduction of the Army and Navy Estimates. I may be asked why I did not lay it on the Table of the House last June. The Committee will remember that what happened last year was this. We had three sets of figures to consider—first, with reference to the Financial Statement in reference to India in March last year; then the figures of my explanatory Memorandum, which were laid on the Table of the House early in June; and then the figures which were brought forward on the day that we were discussing the Bill; and hence, with regard to my Memorandum, I believe that, so far from it being explanatory, it was confusing. There are one or two questions which the hon. Member for Northampton has put to me with regard to the case of Mr. Crawford. He has asked to be compensated in regard to some part of the costs to which he was subjected, and the matter is now under the consideration of the Government of India. No decision has as yet been arrived at. I am also asked about the expression on page 12 of this Statement, namely:— Including capital expenditure on steamboat service and suspense account, but excluding other indirect charges, which refers to furlough and pension charges not taken into account in the railway estimates. The hon. Member for Northampton has read to me what purports to be an extract from a Despatch from the Government of India to the Secretary of State, and he challenges me to say categorically whether such a Despatch has been delivered or not. To that challenge I say I decline to reply, and I decline for this reason: If what the hon. Member has quoted is an official Despatch, the possession and knowledge of it can only have been obtained by the commission of an act which is a criminal offence under the laws of India, and, therefore, I decline to say whether what purports to be an extract from a Despatch is or is not authentic. With regard to the question of the extension of the Indian railways, I may say that a correspondence is at present going on between the Secretary of State and the Government of India on the subject. No conclusion has as yet been arrived at, but when the correspondence is brought to a conclusion, if the hon. Member will move that the documents be laid on the Table of the House I shall be happy to produce them. The same remark applies to the question of the broad and narrow gauge. I understand that what the hon. Member (Mr. Bradlaugh) quoted to the House was the excited language of the chairman of a narrow gauge railway, in a speech which he delivered in the City of London. This gentleman drew a most alarming picture of the dreadful results that would follow any interference with the narrow gauge railways. There, again, there is a correspondence going on between the Secretary of State and the Government of India with reference to the question of the gauge, and it is not the first correspondence of the kind. As many years ago there was a battle of gauges in this country, so now there is the same thing in India. As you may readily suppose, there are questions raised as to which is the best gauge. That correspondence is also going on, and when it is brought to a conclusion I shall be happy to produce it. I protest against the practice, which is followed very largely in discussions in this House on the affairs of the Government of India, of communicating the contents of confidential documents, as has been done in this discussion. I do not think I ought to delay the House by answering any of the more general observations of the hon. Member for Northampton. As regards the statements about the distress of the people of India, it is the easiest thing in the world to pick out one or two isolated cases of poverty and distress, but I think it is most unfair to represent that as the general condition of the people of India. No one knows better than the hon. Member for Northampton, so conversant with the affairs of India as he is, that the general condition of the people of India, as the hon. Member for Glasgow (Mr. Provand) has stated, has greatly improved under English rule; and anybody who represents the results of English rule as disastrous to the people of India must be very ignorant of the actual state of matters. Now, I think I have answered everything which has been put forward by the hon. Member for Northampton, and I do not think there are any other statements I should take notice of except those of the hon. Member for Elgin. The hon. Member has given us an interesting account of the disgracefully incompetent manner in which the revenue and survey officers discharge their duties. I cannot answer that now by replying to all the details he brings forward, but I should be very much astonished if the body of English, Irish, and Scotchmen who constitute the Civil Service of Bombay was so incompetent as he represents. He says that the method of taxation is based on a miscalculation, and that the rents are shamefully over-valued by the erroneous and ridiculous manner of arriving at the basis of taxation. I can only say that such accusations as that, if they are to be made at all, should be made in the Council of the Government of Bombay. There are independent members of that Council, and if there is any gentleman in Bombay who would wish to take up this subject the Governor of Bombay would place him upon the Council, where he could point out anything so melancholy, if it existed, as that which has been pointed out by the hon. Member. As to the hon. Member for South Donegal, I do not think he has such a bad opinion of this House as one would naturally gather from some of the things he says, and I do not think that the Member for Elgin has such a bad opinion of the House either, but I believe that these stock speeches have been made rather too often in the interests of an Association which is trying to carp at and criticise anything the Government of India does. I hope that such extremely violent charges as these gentlemen have made will not be received with credulity, but will be valued according to their real worth.

*(1.45.) MR. SEYMOUR KEAY

I have avoided rising to interrupt the right Gentleman, but with regard to his last remark, I do not think anybody in this House who knows my past career will say that I speak in the interests of any Association or any body except the people of India, for whom I have suffered, and willingly suffered, a great deal, without seeking or receiving a shadow of remuneration in the slightest degree. The right hon. Gentleman has stated very candidly, and just as I expected he would, that it would be impossible for him on the spur of the moment to go into the details which I have endeavoured to give to the Committee with reference to the revenue and survey officers, but he expresses surprise that I should lay such charges against a body of men who constitute the Civil Service of India. I have not brought charges against them; I have only given, a faithful description of the false arithmetical methods under which they perform their duties. It is not their fault; they are bound to perform their duties in the way I have described. But I want to ask the right hon. Gentleman one question, and I think I have a right to press for a reply. Let it be granted that he rejects my data on which I have based my conclusion that the ryot has to pay the whole—aye, and more than the whole—of his net rent to the Government. I now ask: how does he himself arrive at the conclusion which formed the key-note of his speech, and on the correctness of which, I hold, the whole welfare and the very existence of our Empire hangs—that the land revenue of India at present consists of only one-half of the net rent of the soil? The right hon. Gentleman has given no vestige of information as to how he arrives at this result, and he will surely see the imperative need of his placing the Committee in possession of whatever reasons he has for adhering to his view, as against all the counter arguments which I have adduced.

*(1.48.) MR. MORTON (Peterborough)

I rise as a new Member to complain of the late period at which we receive these Accounts. I do not consider that the right hon. Gentleman the Under Secretary for India has made a very good excuse as to why we have not been asked to consider these matters earlier. He has said that we were so excited earlier in the Session that we were not in a fit humour to consider the welfare of 250,000,000 of Her Majesty's subjects, and in another matter he has blamed the printers, and says that he is not responsible for them. But surely it was possible in a great city like London to have these documents printed much sooner than he says it was. Then the right hon. Gentleman who brings this important subject before us at a late hour of the Session has even avoided detailed answers to the arguments on this side. He did not answer to the criticism on the opium question. It was a trade which is a disgrace to this country, and we should be ashamed that we are making money out of the degradation of the people of another country. And he might also have told us whether in the near future the Government are going to consider whether they should reduce the tax upon salt. Again, no reply was made to the statements about the employment of natives in connection with the Government Offices in India. I understand that though natives come at great expense to this country and pass examinations, yet they do not get employed in the Government of their country.

SIR J. GORST

No, no.

MR. MORTON

I understand there are a few exceptions.

SIR J. GORST

If the hon. Member would read the Report of the Public Service Commission, he would see that they are largely employed.

MR. MORTON

I understood there were about 150 employed out of 2,000. That is a very small number. From information which I have from outside, I gather that the natives are not employed in the service of the country, as they ought to be, and not at all unless they come to this country and pass examinations.

SIR J. GORST

No, no.

MR. MORTON

I have looked over these Accounts, but it is impossible, with them only a few hours in our hands, to consider the statement carefully. I wish, however, to call attention to the net revenue and the gross revenue. The gross revenue is stated at £85,000,000, and the net revenue at under £50,000,000. Then there is £15,000,000 or £16,000,000 unaccounted for, which appears to be the cost of collection. That may explain why the Government should employ Indian labour. The employment of Europeans is very expensive, and this accounts for where these £15,000,000 or £16,000,000 go. Nor is that the whole of the expense, for besides this there is £12,000,000 for the Civil Departments. Why was the cost of collection so great in India? Why, by employing Europeans. I am satisfied that in the near future you will have to consider the whole Government of India. As soon as we get rid of the Irish difficulty the question of India will have to be taken up. The great Empire of India will never be properly governed until the people of India have a voice in the Government of their country.

*(1.52.) THE UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (Sir J. FERGUSSON, Manchester, N.E.)

I have gone very closely into this question while in India, and nothing can be more surprising—not to use a stronger expression—to anyone who knows about assessment—particularly the assessment of Western India—than the statement that it is over-assessed, as the hon. Member for Elgin says. He questions the accuracy of the statement that the assessment of India is on the basis of half the net rental. But that is precisely what it is in North-Western India, where land is generally sub-let. I take the case of Bombay, which I know best, but I know that it is so in other parts of India too. The assessment there is much less than half the value of the land; for when sub-let it yields twice, thrice, and even five times the amount. Then the hon. Member who has just spoken (Mr. Morton) talked about natives not being employed in the Government Service. Why, there are many thousands of natives so employed.

MR. MORTON

As Civil Servants?

SIR J. FERGUSSON

Particularly in Revenue Departments. Natives are chiefly employed in the Revenue Survey, and in the other Services they are also extensively employed. It is only in the highest ranks of superintendents that Europeans are employed. For general purposes the appointments of revenue officers, and all those officials that come in contact with the natives, are held by natives.

*(1.55.) MR. SEYMOUR KEAY

I do not think that any hon. Gentlemen on either side of the House need imagine I shall detain them long. But I wish to call attention to the supposed reply given to me by the Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs. I thought I had misunderstood him at first when he said he had risen to tell me that the Government demand was half of the rent. I suggested to him net rent, which I fancied was what he meant, and I had hoped that he had accepted the correction. It would, at all events, have represented what the Government meant, although very far from what the actual figures bring out. I have offered to put in the right hon. Gentleman's possession proofs of what I said. But the right hon. Gentleman has shown no desire for proofs. I may, however, mention the name of Sir W. Wedderburn, who was a distinguished officer of the Bombay Government. Hon. Gentlemen representing the purely official element in India may laugh, but Sir William Wedderburn has put his case in print. He has proved his part of the case down to the ground, and no one has ventured to contradict him. I am surprised that the right hon. Gentleman should instance the North West Provinces of India—in other words, the provinces where there are landlords, and where the land is let to tenants, which is a very different thing. He speaks of a country 1,000 miles north of Bombay. And he says that we know what the net rent is, because it is half what the land lets for. This is evidently worse and worse, for land, unfortunately too often, lets at its gross rent; and the right hon. Gentleman thinks he has answered me by telling us what the Government of India themselves would never allege for a moment, and all because he appears ignorant of the fact that the mass of the ryots of India, including those of Bombay, whom the right hon. Gentleman governed for five years, are peasant proprietors under Government, and that therefore, as there is no tenancy, there can be no letting value, as alleged by the right hon. Gentleman. I now fervently hope that the right hon. Gentleman the Under Secretary for India, to whom we have a right to look for a substantiation of the leading statement of his Budget Speech, will give the Committee some explicit statement as to how the Government arrived at the calculation that the land revenue incidence is light, that it takes the half of the net rent merely and leaves the other half to the cultivators. To know how he arrives at this calculation will not only be interesting to the Committee, but infinitely more interesting to the scores of millions of cultivators of the soil who now stagger under the burdens which I have described.

Question put, and agreed to.

Resolution to be reported to-morrow.