IV.

CONTINUED NEGLECT.

SINCE the last of the three previous chapters was written, more than six years have elapsed-six eventful years in the history of our connection with India. Unfortunately the promise of reform given immediately after their publication by a Conservative Government has not been fulfilled. The cost of the two Afghan wars, with the exception of £5,000,000, as well as a large portion of the cost of the war in Egypt, has been thrown upon the revenues of India; the economies made at that time in the extravagant Public Works Department have been entirely neglected, and all the old shameful jobbery and nepotism goes on as before; the recommendations of the Famine Commission and the warnings of Sir James Caird have passed almost unheeded; the endeavour of Lord Ripon, trifling as it was, to give the natives a greater share in the government of their own country, was defeated by the selfish clamour of official and non-official Anglo-Indians; a war of annexation of the old unscrupulous type has been carried on in Burmah, for the benefit of Anglo-Indian placemen and mercantile adventurers, with the consent of both parties; the debt has been enormously increased without protest; there is still an outcry for the further "development" of our

great dependency by English capital, ruinous though such development has been shown to be; and last, not least, 10,000 men have been added to our already costly military establishment in India.

Meanwhile, owing to this policy of deliberate indifference, the impoverishment of the agricultural population has become more terrible; and the bankruptcy of India, which eight years ago had been recognised only by the late Mr. Geddes, Mr. Dadabhai Naoroji and myself, as one of the most threatening features of our future economical history, is now looked forward to with alarm even by Finance Ministers, and is being seriously dealt with as a difficulty of the day. No wonder. Deficit succeeds deficit with monotonous regularity, and the efforts made by the clique of Anglo-Indian bureaucrats in Parliament and in the press to hide away the facts from their long-suffering countrymen, are no longer quite so successful as they

were.

Unfortunately, Englishmen of the working classes have not yet understood the importance to them, even from a selfish point of view, of the well-being of the people of India. A starving ryot cannot buy even Lancashire cotton goods. Yet we deliberately destroy one of our best markets by impoverishing our own customers. Who benefits by the vast wealth derived annually from India without return? Not the English workers assuredly. Go to Blackburn, Oldham, Rochdale, and other headquarters of the Indian cotton-trade; are the factory hands there so well off? Not they. They work in bad conditions of existence for low wages, while those who buy

their goods are going from bad to worse. More pressing than ever then is the need that the plain facts should once more be set out.

FINANCE.

The official statement of a nation's finances may often be no very accurate test of its real economical position. Much may be done in the way of cooking figures, much more may be effected by the careful squeezing of the people, which tends to obscure the real state of the case below. Thus it is possible for unscrupulous financiers, by means of loans and other devices, to tide over the evil day of reckoning for many years. Nevertheless, the mass of the people may be getting poorer, in spite of all the apparent prosperity, and the eventual collapse will only be the more dangerous from the determination to evade the publication of the truth. This is precisely the case with India, though a careful analysis of the successive Budgets is by itself enough to cause uneasiness. That the country is heavily taxed, notwithstanding all the nonsense talked by interested panegyrists, has already been clearly shown. Close on £75,000,000, taken in one form or another for State purposes from a people whose total gross income is put at £300,000,000 on a fair, and at £400,000,000 by an optimist calculation, is in itself a statement sufficiently startling to arrest the attention of all save those who deliberately refuse to understand. On the same lines the annual taxation of Great Britain and Ireland would be £300,000,000; and even this would be much less heavy in proportion, in the same way that £250 a year out

of an income of £1,000 a year is a trifling matter compared with the sacrifice of £7 10s. on £30 a year. Nor does the fact that a portion of the revenue is derived from the proceeds of the railways lessen the pressure; for the sums thus taken in the form of profit are remitted to England to pay interest, and thus constitute as distinct a deduction from the gross produce as the amounts taken from India to pay away in pensions.

India, therefore, is very heavily taxed in proportion to its means. Taking the average income per family of five persons at £8, then £2 is taken for the purposes of government. But as Bengal is not so heavily taxed as other districts in proportion to its wealth, the weight of taxation over the rest of India is heavier than this. It is true that of late years the salt tax has been slightly reduced in some districts and equalised all over India; true, too, that the cotton duties have been removed in the sole interest of the Manchester manufacturers. But these measures have certainly not produced any marked improvement in the condition of the people ; nor do the statements of successive Finance Ministers, that each fresh deficit is the result of unforeseen causes, alter the fact that they are at their wits' end to make both ends meet, or disguise the disagreeable truth that the debt of India is perpetually growing, while the imposition of much heavier taxation is practically out of the question.

For all the time the main heads of revenue, excepting the receipts from public works, remain practically stationary. Land, salt, opium, excise stamps, certainly do not show that elasticity which

would justify us in the continual borrowing to which we resort. Simultaneously the fall in the price of silver occasions an increasing loss by exchange, which has at length frightened the Government of India into advocating some attempt to raise its price by artificial means. Any sudden emergency must be met, of course, by additional loans, and these emergencies, in a great empire like India, form the rule rather than the exception.

Nor is there any reason to hope that the Home Charges which occasion this loss by remittance will decrease. If the rupee is reckoned at 25., and the home charges amount to £17,000,000 or £18,000,000, which is now the average, it needs no great arithmetician to discover that a fall of the rupee to an average value of 1s. 6d. or even IS. 4d., calls for a remittance of upwards of onethird more if the same ratio is kept up; and that, consequently, the "loss" in any given year may amount to £6,000,000 or £7,000,000. How far our economical relations with India tend to aggravate this serious disturbing element in our calculations it is unnecessary to enlarge upon again here; but, taken in connection with the possibility of a check to the opium revenue, not the most enthusiastic optimist can deny that the situation is exceedingly perilous. Nor should we overlook the complicated character of our foreign exchanges, which any shake in this quarter might altogether unhinge.

The present Finance Minister having a deficit, notwithstanding the imposition of the income-tax, speaks with positive dread of the effects of a con