§ MR. D. NAOROJI (Finsbury, Central)I beg to ask the Secretary of State for India, that as Lord Cromer has stated with regard to his statement of 1882 about the annual average income per head, that though he was not prepared to pledge himself to the absolute accuracy of a calculation of this sort, it was sufficiently accurate to justify his conclusion that the taxpaying community was exceedingly poor, and that thus the calculation being sufficiently accurate, whether he will grant the Return for which a Motion stands on this day's Paper, as such Return is the only means of forming a fairly correct idea of the material condition of British India; and, whether, if he be unwilling to grant as a Return the details of Lord Cromer's calculations, as asked in the first part of the Motion, he will give an opportunity to the hon. Member for Finsbury of personally inspecting them?
MR. GEORGE RUSSELLConsidering that the statement to which my hon. Friend refers was confessedly founded upon uncertain data, and that any similar calculation which might now be made must be founded on equally uncertain data and might probably be misleading, the Secretary of State is unable to agree to my hon. Friend's Motion.