§ MR. HOWELLI beg to ask the Secretary of State for India whether he is aware that the Amalgamated Society of Engineers have branches of that union in British India; whether he is 1039 aware that the society periodically equalises its funds, and, that, in so equalising the funds of the union, in the transmission from Bombay of the sum required, £153, to the Greenonk branch, there was a loss by exchange of £73 19s. 5½d., or within £5 0s. 1d. of one-half the total; and whether anything can be done so to adjust the currency of British India and the United Kingdom as to prevent such losses?
§ THE UNDER SECRETARY FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (Sir EDWARD GREY, Northumberland, Berwick)There is no information in the India Office as to the matter to which my hon. Friend's question refers; but it is unfortunately true that losses upon remittances from India have occurred and do occur, and no measures for preventing them have hitherto been found practicable.