§ Order of the Day for the Second, Reading read.
EARL DE GREY AND RIPON, in moving the second reading of this Bill, said the necessity for the loan which it gave power to contract did not arise from any deficiency of income or excess of expenditure in India, but simply from the state of the cash balances in the home Treasury. Those who were acquainted with Indian 1387 matters would be aware that, speaking theoretically there was no mode by which the Home Treasury could be supplied except by remittances from India; but, of late years since the establishment of the railway system, the Indian railway companies had been accustomed to pay into the Home Treasury the sums necessary for the execution of their works; and money Was advanced to them in India by the Indian Government so that between the two there had always been balances in the Home Treasury which rendered actual remittances from India unnecessary. At the end of the financial year 1860 these balanees amounted to £2,220,000; but owing to short payments by the railway companies and the state of the money-market during the past year, at the end of the last financial year, tire balances had fallen to a little less than £370,000! In addition to that, owing to the state of the cash balances in India, the Secretary of State bad thought it advisable, in order that the railways now in the course of construction in India should not be stopped, to remit the sum of £1,000,000 sterling to India. The estimated amount of expenditure in England on Indian account for the Current year was £9,500,000; the estimated expenditure on railways £8,000,000 composed of £6,000,000 to be spent in India, and £2,000,000 at home, so that, If it were borne in mind that two terns expended for railway purposes in India was the only form in which a remittance to this country would be looked for, there would remain £3,500,000, at least; of home expenditure on Indian account to be provided for in this country. In order, therefore, to meet the demands which would thus be made on the Home Treasury his right hon. Friend found it necessary to apply to Parliament for authority to borrow the sum of £4,000,000 in this country, and to give him that authority was the object of this Bill.
§ Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House on Monday next.