§ Order for Committee thereupon read.
§ Motion made, and Question proposed, "That Mr. Speaker do now leave the Chair."
§ THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR INDIA (Lord GEORGE HAMILTON,) Middlesex, Ealingrose to make the annual statement as to the finances of India. He said,—I think it would be for the convenience of the House that I should make my statement on the Motion that you, Sir, leave the Chair. As there are a number of Motions on the Paper, some of them important, it is clear it would be better that the House should have an authoritative statement on the finances rather than that we should occupy the earlier hours of the sitting discussing matters which, however important they may be, are scarcely relevant to my statement. When last year I had the honour of making the annual Indian financial statement in this House, I was able to associate it with a series of very satisfactory results. For the first time for some years the Secretary of State was able to point to realised surpluses of income over expenditure for the first two of the three years he was dealing with, and as regards the third year there was a reasonable prospect of the outcome of that year becoming even more satisfactory than the ascertained results of the two preceding years. I was also able to show that Indian credit had never before been so high, and that we proposed to associate with this increased power of borrowing an enlarged scheme of reproductive public works. A statement such as I was then able to make would, if it had come from the mouth of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, have been an almost certain herald of some remission of taxation in the forthcoming financial year. I warned the public against putting 417 any such optimistic interpretation upon my speech. I pointed out that the sources of taxation in India were few, and could not be increased; that, independent of the ordinary emergencies to which all civilised Governments may be subject, there were in India special dangers and difficulties which might, almost without warning, cause a sudden and heavy drain upon her treasuries. I, therefore, indicated that whilst some remission of existing taxation might be possible, if no untoward events intervened, no permanent remission of any individual tax would be safe or desirable. All subsequent speakers, with scarcely an exception, accepted these views. At the time I spoke I had just received an unpleasant intimation from India that the meteorological phenomena of 1897 curiously resembled those of the great famine year of 1877–78, and, although I did not feel justified in giving publicly substance to these shadowy predictions, they were present in my mind during the whole of that Debate. Unfortunately, they have been more than verified. The famine of 1896–97 has affected a larger area, and scarcity has been felt by a larger proportion of the population, than in any similar visitation of which we have record in this century. But it did not come alone. Plague with all its attendant horrors and miseries fastened on the west coast of India, and thus the Government have had to deal simultaneously with two of the most terrible scourges that can assail humanity. It is difficult to dissociate the losses caused by these two separate visitations, so as to accurately apportion to each the loss entailed by it upon the Exchequer. Putting on one side the loss of life, the misery, and the suffering inflicted upon the community, as well as their personal pecuniary losses, we calculate the actual financial loss caused by these disasters to the Government Treasury alone for the two years 1896–97 and 1897–98 at about Rx. 12,000,000. Great as this sum is, it excludes all advances, amounting to about Rx. 2,000,000, which we believe will be recoverable. Neither does it include any estimate of the loss and ruin caused by the earthquake in Bengal and Assam, as that calamity has occurred so recently and has affected so large a territory that we have no reliable estimate of the approximate damage. Therefore in the statements of revenue 418 and expenditure with which I am about to deal, covering three years' finance, the House must remember that, in addition to frontier war expenditure, famine and plague have placed a drain of no less than 12 crores upon the Indian Exchequer, and that the whole of this loss has been met out of Indian treasuries within the space of two years, and without the imposition of any additional taxation.