§ On going into Committee on East India Revenue Accounts (Indian Budget):—
§ MR. SWIFT MACNEILL (Donegal, S.)To move, That this House views with grave disapproval the fact that famine, plague, and pestilence in India have been seized by the Indian Government for an attack on the freedom of the press in India, and for the revival of the system of arrest of British subjects in India under the law of lettre de cachet, and the indefinite imprisonment without trial of persons thus arrested; and desires to place on record its conviction that the only safe foundation for government in India is to be sought in the extension to British subjects in India of the full privileges of the British Constitution.
§ SIR WILLIAM WEDDERBURN (Banffshire)To move, That looking to the condition of the masses of the Indian people and their grievous sufferings during the present year, this House desires to express its deep sympathy in their distress, and trusts that Her Majesty's Government will institute a detailed and searching Village Inquiry into the causes which blight the industry of the cultivators and render them helpless to resist even the first attacks of famine and pestilence.
§ MR. SAMUEL SMITH (Flintshire)To call attention to the great loss and suffering caused to India by plague, famine, and earthquake, and to the desirability of the Homo Government endeavouring to mitigate that distress by making a grant to the Indian Government for additional relief to the sufferers; and also to the need of more effective representation of Indian opinion in the Government of the country, so that greater economy may be practised in military expenditure, and more attention paid to internal reforms, especially in the Direction of larger irrigation works 83 and more extended elementary education.
§ SIR MANCHERJEE BHOWNAGGREE (Bethnal Green, N.E.)To move, That this House views with concern the fact that the old industries of India are fast disappearing without being replaced by new ones to any appreciable extent, with the result that its vast population has to largely depend on the imports of foreign manufactures for even the most ordinary articles of every-day use, a circumstance to which is mainly due the condition of poverty under which large sections of the people of India still labour; and that, inasmuch as the present system of education, among other causes, has had a tendency to divert the energies of the people from the preservation and development of industrial pursuits, this House is of opinion that an inquiry should be held, by such means as the Government of India consider advisable, with a view to ascertaining and suggesting measures for remedying the evils indicated.
§ MR. JAMES STUART (Shoreditch, Hoxton)To call attention to the reply of the Government of India to the Dispatch of the Secretary of State of the 26th day of March last, relating to the health of the Indian army; and to move, That this House disapproves of the repeal of the Cantonment Act Amendment Act of 1895.