THE MARQUESS OF CLANRICARDE,in calling the attention of the House to the subject of Indian finance, said, he did not intend to enter into a detailed exposition of the character and amount of the taxation of our Indian empire, but only to remind their Lordships that it was high time for Parliament to consider that subject. Agreeing with Sir Robert Peel in the opinion that Indian credit was, in fact, English credit, and Indian debt English debt, he had been much surprised to find, upon referring for information to the Indian financial accounts laid before Parliament every year in pursuance of the Act of 1834, that on no occasion had it been thought necessary to print and deliver those accounts to that or the other House of Parliament. It was also a remarkable fact, that although educational and a variety of other questions were entered into by the Committee of 1852–3, yet into this great question of finance they did not enter; and he would therefore trouble their Lordships with a few figures, derived from sources that were accessible, showing the progressive state of the income and expenditure of India, both positively and relatively. In 1834, the general revenue of India amounted to £18,016,918. He would not quote its increase during successive years, but in 1851–2 it appeared, before a Committee of the other House, that the income had increased to £25,536,634, being an increase of £7,519,716. He offered no opinion upon the question whether the increase of revenue indicated the increased prosperity of the country; but of this increase £4,860, 479 was from old sources, and £2,311,237 from territories that had been acquired in the interval between 1834 and 1851. In those seventeen years the increase of debt was £12,912,607; the total debt on the 1st of May, 1834, was £38,986,720; on the 1st of May, 1851, the total debt was £51,899,327. The increase of the annual income being £7,500,000, and the increase in the debt being £13,000,000, there was nothing very alarming in that state of things unless their Lordships should think that the debt had been increased by unprofitable expenditure. It appeared, however, that £5,000,000 of the £13,000,000 of increased 634 debt had been laid out in public works. During seventeen years there had only been a surplus in five years; in twelve years there had been a deficiency. He was a Member of the Government which selected and sent to India Lord Dalhousie as Governor General. That noble Marquess was selected entirely because, under all the circumstances, he was considered the best man that could be sent; and his conduct had fully justified the selection. Under such a Governor General the finances of the country would not have gone on in an unsatisfactory state, unless there was something in the system of Indian government which was beyond the control of the Governor General, and it therefore behoved Parliament to examine very narrowly into this subject. In 1848–9, the excess of expenditure over revenue was no less than £1,473,115. In that year the expenditure was increased by the operations in the Punjab. In 1849–50, there was a surplus of revenue over expenditure of £354,837; in 1850–1, a surplus of £415,866; in 1852–3, a surplus of £424,257; in 1853–4, there was a deficit of £2,044,117; in 1854–5, a deficit exceeding £2,500,000. The deficit in the years above quoted was £6,066,442, and the surplus £1,725,725, leaving a balance of deficit of £4,334,727. He was afraid that the account of the revenue and expenditure of the year ending this month would also show a deficit. If the revenue and expenditure were so badly managed under such an administrator; and if, at the end of six years, the deficit had been increased by upwards of £4,000,000, the state of Indian finance demanded the grave consideration of Parliament. The total charge in 1854–5 was £22,915,160. The total income in 1854–5, was only £20,371,450, being a diminution since 1851 of £5,165,184. There was, therefore, nothing satisfactory in the aspect of Indian finance at the present moment. But, as our territory had been much increased lately by annexation, it might be expected that the new territory would be productive of a large increase of revenue. He would not go into the general question of annexation, but he had endeavoured to extract from the papers before the House the value of the different territories annexed of late years. The total revenue of the five recent annexations to our Indian empire was £2,346,980. In three of them, Scinde, Sattara, and the Punjab, there was a surplus of expenditure over 635 income of £389,521; and in the other two, Nagpore and Pegu, there was a surplus of £242,585; the balance being; £146,936 deficit. These figures did not include many military and civil charges. This was a subject which demanded inquiry, to ascertain whether the expenditure could be brought within the revenue, or the revenue raised so as to give a fair surplus over the expenditure. In the Madras Presidency, Lord Harris proposed to reduce the land tax one-third. That tax yielded £3,033,000, so that there would be a future decrease of revenue from this source of about £1,011,000. Therefore, the revenue which had fallen from £25,000,000 in 1851 to £20,000,000 in 1854, was still further to be reduced by the amount of more than a million. It was impossible to suppose that Lord Harris would propose the diminution of the land tax if he did not consider the ryotwarry system, under which it was collected, most detrimental to the country, and he believed that to be the case. But no Governor or Government could enter upon a course of material improvement, unless the financial condition of the country was in a tolerably sound state. It was said that the Government of India must make railways, that they must advance money to construct canals for the purpose of irrigation, and that they must promote other improvements; but they could not expect the Government to do those works, unless the expenditure was reduced within the income of the country. He was sure no Indian Government could of itself make the changes which he believed were necessary to effect these objects. Not only must it be done by the authority of the Home Government, but by the direction of the Ministry, and under the pressure of Parliament. Any Governor General who attempted to make large reductions of establishments would become so unpopular that he would lose all power in India. The Home Government must coerce the Indian Government into that course of action which, upon deliberation, was considered most desirable. He had stated generally the facts which justified his directing their Lordships' attention to this subject, and he hoped the Government would be able to produce the specific accounts of the total disbursements of the Indian Government for military expenditure, distinguishing payments made on account of Her Majesty's European troops serving in India from those made for the Indian army—specifying, as 636 far as possible, the military charges incurved in the lower provinces of Bengal, in the North-Western Provinces, in the Punjab, in Scinde, in Pegu, and in the territories of Madras and Bombay Presidencies. The noble Marquess concluded by moving—.
That the Accounts respecting the Annual Territorial Revenues and Disbursements of the East India Company for Three Years (1851–52, 1852–53, 1853–54,), according to the latest Advices, with a Statement of the same for the succeeding year partly estimated (delivered on the 13th of March last), be printed.
THE DUKE OF ARGYLLsaid, the Government had no objection to the production of the paper moved for by his noble Friend, but it would be difficult to estimate the exact proportion of the military charges which belonged to each of these provinces. It would be easy to give the military charges for the different presidencies and for the North-Western Provinces, and if a more detailed return could be made it should be prepared. Probably, with that assurance the noble Marquess would be satisfied. As far as he could gather from the speech of the noble Marquess, his object in moving for these papers had reference to the general question of annexation, but he would guard the House against the inference that because large military expenditure was incurred in particular frontier provinces for the protection of the whole empire the whole of that expenditure was to be carried against the income of those provinces, and the result taken as conclusive with respect to the general question of annexation. He did not anticipate from the terms of his Motion that his noble Friend would have gone into a general statement of the financial condition of India, and into that statement he declined to follow him. Whatever might be said as to the financial position of India, it could not, he thought, be very unsound, because at the present moment the Indian Government could, on its own credit, borrow almost any amount of money at the rate of not more than 4½ per cent. With regard to the excess of expenditure over income during recent years, it had, to a great extent, arisen from the carrying on of extensive public works. Some of these works might not be immediately productive, but they were matters of the first importance, without attention to which we could not hope for the progress, either moral or economical, of India. He should, for his own part, be glad to see continuous attention given by Parliament to Indian 637 affairs, believing that the greatest advantage would result from it.
§ LORD MONTEAGLEurged upon those who were charged with the government of India the importance of affording to the Legislature regular and detailed information as to the affairs of that empire, in order that Parliament and the country might not—as they were at present—be dependent upon the result of desultory Motions moved by noble Lords or by Members of the other House for a knowledge of the condition and prospects of India. The periodical renewal of the East India Company's Charter had the very useful result of presenting an occasion for the discussion of Indian affairs, for which the Government and other persons interested in the management of our Indian empire, were forced to prepare themselves. He hoped that the Government would not be carried away by the idea that everything must be right in India because of the rate of interest at which the Indian Government could borrow money. They might rely upon it that the Indian Government would not have been able to borrow money at so low a rate if capitalists in India were not perfectly aware that there was a distinctly implied moral guarantee on the part of this country. He hoped the Government would use every effort in their power to furnish Parliament with correct information as to the financial condition of India. His object was to get such returns annually made as should enable Parliament to see how far its intentions had been carried into effect by the local government of India.
THE DUKE OF ARGYLLsaid, the Government were disposed to give every information which any noble Lord might call for. His noble Friend the President of the Board of Control had recently made arrangements for the production of more complete returns than any which had yet been laid before Parliament, and made upon a better system than that which had been recommended by their Lordships' Committee. He had also added to the library of the House of Commons a very large number of detailed reports from various local commissioners, which were too voluminous to be presented in the shape of Parliamentary papers.
§ THE EARL OF ELLENBOROUGHdoubted whether the Government of India was able to raise money at 4½ per cent. The Four per Cents were now at 16 per cent discount, which was lower than they 638 had been at any time since immediately after the news of the great disaster at Cabul. When he went to India, he found them at 16 per cent discount, but he left them at par, and he left, the revenue greater by £1,000,000 a year than it was when he went, after paying all the interest of the money he borrowed. No doubt there had been appearances of greater prosperity since, although the prosperity of the country during the time he was there was very great, for the exports and imports increased 22 per cent in two years. He was glad that their Lordships' attention had been called to this subject, for the finances of India must always be a matter of great anxiety. He did not, however, share in the apprehensions entertained by the noble Marquess in consequence of the fall in the revenue in one particular year; because even our own revenue varied very much, and the revenue of India must vary much more extensively. He must candidly confess that when he was in India, although he had gone through all the sources of revenue and had calculated them as carefully as possible, with the valuable assistance of the gentleman who was then at the head of the finances of India, and had looked forward with equal care and minuteness to the future expenditure, he had never been able to see daylight, and never could say certainly whether there would be a surplus of revenue over expenditure. Since then there had been various annexations of territory. It had been said at first that the Punjab would be a valuable acquisition, but he believed experience had modified the expectation. It had always been his opinion that the last great increase of territory which would yield any material addition to the revenue was made by Lord Clive when he annexed Bengal. That was an annexation of a rich country which required very few troops to retain it, while the others were annexations of poor countries which required very large military establishments. He would except Scinde, however, which might be called a beneficial acquisition—not that the direct revenue derived from it was sufficient to cover the expenses of the military establishment and the civil government, but because the possession of it enabled us to realise our opium revenue, and to put a stop to the smuggling of opium from the central provinces, which had materially interfered and competed with our opium trade with China. He believed the finances of India were at the present moment in an extremely difficult 639 position; but he entertained the greatest hopes of their improvement from the able and honest exertions of the noble Lord who had recently gone out to undertake the government of the country. He believed that that noble Lord went out with the best possible intentions. He was an able man; he would listen to those who would give him information, and he had the power of weighing the value of the information he acquired and of applying it to the best advantage. From the personal intercourse he had had with the noble Lord before his departure, he believed that no man ever went to India with a more earnest desire to make his government generally beneficial to the people of India and creditable to this country.
§ THE EARL OF HARROWBYobserved that the development of the internal resources of India by means of public works afforded the prospect of a great improvement in the financial condition of the country.
§ THE EARL OF ELLENBOROUGHwished to bring under the notice of their Lordships a circumstance which prevented the Indian Government raising money at a low rate of interest for their own purposes. He alluded to the guarantee of 5 per cent interest given by the Government of India for making railroads in India; and, that being the case, no one, of course, would buy the Four per Cents at par, when, with an equally good security, 5 per cent could be obtained by advancing money for the railroads.
§ Motion agreed to.
§ House adjourned to Thursday next.