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and substantial relief to the famine-stricken and unrepresented cultivators of India.

The total debt of India the last twenty-five years is shown in the two tables given below. In the first table the Indian Debt is shown in tens of rupees. In the second table it is converted into pounds sterling as shown in recent numbers of the Statistical Abstract.

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There is need for the creation of a sinking fund to reduce this debt in years of peace. There is need for the co-operation of representative Indians in reducing debt

and expenditure. There is need for introducing a popular element in the financial administration of India. The Governor-General's Council consists of able, experienced, and conscientious men, but they represent, nearly all of them, spending departments. They feel the needs of their departments, they urge additional expenditure; there is no counter-influence making for retrenchment. Retrenchment is not possible in India, or in any other country in the world, unless the taxpayers have some voice in the national expenditure.

In no department of the Indian administration are representative Indians better qualified to take a share than in the department of Revenue and Finance. They see and they feel the operation of the Land Tax and of every other tax. They live among their agricultural countrymen, know their troubles and their difficulties, and can voice their wishes and their views. They have a strong and almost a personal interest in effecting retrenchment. They have an inherited and traditional aptitude, excelled by no nation on earth, for accounts and finance. Their entire exclusion from the control of administration has not been attended with happy results. In no department has Indian administration been less successful owing to this very exclusion of popular influence than in revenue and finance.

A Finance and Revenue Board, including some Indian members elected by the Legislative Councils of the larger Provinces, could materially help the Finance Member and the Home Member of the Governor-General's Council in their arduous and difficult work. And the admission of some qualified Indians, appointed by the Government, to the Councils of the Secretary of State and the Governor-General would make the administration better informed and more in touch with the

interests of the people. All British interests, all sections of the British community, have influence on the Indian administration. It is just, and it is expedient

that the Indian people should have some voice and some share in that administration which concerns them more than any other class of people. In the absence of this popular element in the Indian administration, all the influences at work make for increased taxation and increased expenditure, and for the sacrifice. of Indian revenues on objects which are not purely Indian; no influences are at work which make directly for reduction in expenditure and taxes, and for relieving the burdens of our unrepresented population. The evidence of distinguished Englishmen, given before the Expenditure Commission, and quoted in a previous chapter, proves how Indian money is often spent. The facts which we shall lay before our readers in the next chapter will show how such expenditure affects the material condition of the Indian people.

CHAPTER XIV

INDIA IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

WE propose in this concluding chapter to place before our readers some figures relating to India at the commencement of a new century. The figures have been compiled from the last published number of the Statistical Abstract, issued in the present year, 1903.

The Area and Population of India, according to the Census of 1901, are shown in the following tables.

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Revenues and Expenditure.-The gross revenues of British India in 1901-2 amounted to £76,344,526. Deducting Railway and Irrigation Receipts, the nett revenues of British India were £53,580,985, or in round. numbers 53 millions sterling. The population of British

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India being under 232 milions, the taxation per head of population is very nearly 4s. 8d. per head.

The income of the people of India, per head, was estimated by Lord Cromer and Sir David Barbour in 1882 to be 27 rupees. Their present income is estimated by Lord Curzon at 30 rupees. Exception has been taken to both these estimates as being too high; but we shall accept them for our present calculation. 30 rupees are equivalent to 40 shillings; and the economic condition of the country can be judged from the fact that the average income of the people of all classes, including the richest, is 40 shillings a year against £42 a year in the United Kingdom. A tax of 4s. 8d. on 40 shillings is a tax of 2s. 4d. on the pound. This is a crushing burden on a nation which earns very little more than its food. In the United Kingdom, with its heavy taxation of £144,000,000 (excluding the cost of the late war), the incidence of the tax per head of a population of 42 millions is less than £3 10S. The proportion of this tax on the earnings of each individual inhabitant (£42) is only is. 8d. in the pound. The Indian taxpayer, who

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