§ MR. CONYBEAREI beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for India what remissions, if any, were made by the 1049 Lieutenant Governor of the North-West Province of Oudh to the State tenants in 1877–8, when the average price of food was more than one-third higher than the average of the six preceding years; and whether he can state how far there is any connection between the high prices ruling in 1887–8 and the fact that the recorded death-rate in India in that year was the highest known?
*SIR J. GORSTThe answer to the first question is that the remissions in 1877–8 were 214,315 rupees. At the end of the year 282,000 rupees were held over uncollected, of which 104,563 rupees were eventually remitted. In reply to the second question, I have to say that the connection between high prices and high death-rate must be a matter of opinion. The high death-rate of 1887–8 was chiefly caused by cholera and fever.