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him, and he has given them his answer. | who are already rich; it extracts a much He has told the gentlemen who waited larger sum from the people than it passes upon him that he thinks they greatly into the Exchequer; it is, undoubtedly, over-rate the effect of the duties in in- disadvantageous to this country; and it ducing competition. Now, no one knows is contrary to that Free Trade policy much more of the principles which re- which we advocate in every foreign gulate finance than the noble Lord; no country, and which is at the root of all one certainly in the other House knows commercial success. better than the noble Lord what is the amount of inducement required to coax capital to flow into new undertakings. The noble Lord has been Chairman of one of our great railway companies, and as such it has been his business to inform himself on these points; but does he seriously mean to say that he thinks the practical guarantee of a preference dividend of 6 per cent per annum by the Indian Government to the Bombay spinner is no inducement to capitalists to place their money in such undertakings? Because that is what it practically comes to, and had not the deputation which waited upon the noble Lord been mostly composed of " grave and reverend signiors" I should have suspected the noble Lord of mildly chaffing them, when he told them what was exactly tantamount to saying so. But the noble Lord went on still further, and said that we must expect competition, and that any interference by the Indian Government would be hardly fair. We do expect competition; a fair, free, and open competition we welcome, from whatever source it may come; but this is no fair, or free, or open competition. It is not competition we object to; it is the weight we have to carry in the race, which gets heavier and heavier to bear the longer we have to carry it. But the noble Lord said it would hardly be fair to the Indian Government to interfere. We think it grossly unfair, and we think that this interference should cease at the earliest possible time. At the end of one of the interviews, the noble Lord is reported to have said that if these duties were really protective they were indefensible. Now, I have tried to show that they are protective, and I hope that next year when I bring this question forward, the House will agree that, being protective, they are, as the noble Lord says, indefensible, and ought to be repealed. It appears to me, further, that this protective policy which we support in India is not to the advantage of that dependency, because it taxes the poorest of the people in order to put money into the pockets of those

SIR WILFRID LAWSON said, he must congratulate the noble Lord the Under Secretary for India and the hon. Member for Hackney (Mr. Fawcett) upon the good attendance of hon. Members, considering the advanced period of the Session and the heat of the weather. It was a better House than he expected, and than he saw five years ago when the attraction was much greater. The hon. Member for Wick, with his strong head, said this country was governing India with too strong a hand. He (Sir Wilfrid Lawson) was anxious that justice should be done to the people of India. With regard to the opium trade, the Government of this country raised a large revenue from it, and by a system that was one of the most outrageous and disgraceful that was ever perpetrated and forced upon a people. When they came to consider the 200,000,000 of people in India and the 400,000,000 in China, who were all God's subjects, it would surely be wiser not to impose this opium upon them, and to turn the Chinese into allies. As it was this policy of ours made us hated throughout China and in other parts of the East, and he was not sure that it had not a great deal to do with the complications that had taken place in our relations with Burmah. From what he heard, the merchants of this country were pushing this opium trade too much upon the people of India and China. If he asked for information on the subject he could not get it. If a war broke out, and he asked for information, they said—“Oh, oh! it is not for the interest of the service to give you information at this moment;" and when the war was over, if you asked for information they said— 'Oh, oh! the war is all over now, and the information would be of no use to you." He would now refer the attention of the Committee to the opinions of eminent medical men respecting the effects of opium on the human frame. The late Sir Benjamin Brodie, a distinguished physician, described its effects on the constitution as most injurious, an opinion which other medical men also

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entertained and expressed; and he (Sir Wilfrid Lawson) had that day heard from a gentleman who had been 30 years in China most distressing consequences resulting from our forcing the opium trade on the Chinese; and yet those who dealt in the article said, when remonstrated with-"Oh, the Chinese will have it." "We do not make wickedness-we only live by it," was the motto upon the rogue's escutcheon all over the world; but it was a disgraceful motto for this country to adopt. He (Sir Wilfrid Lawson) must say that it was a disgrace to England that her merchants should carry on such a trade. It was all very well for the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer to say that it brought in revenue, and that spirits brought in a large revenue; but with regard to the Chinese, he (Sir Wilfrid Lawson) was sure that if England went on in the way she had been going on by forcing the opium trade upon the people of that Empire, some very serious disaster would befall her in the East. He remembered a Resolution having been moved in this House on the subject of the opium trade with China, and that the then Prime Minister made a speech against the Resolution, and said no action could be taken in the question of the duty resulting from opium without inquiry. He would like that the noble Lord in his reply should give some hope that he would institute a careful inquiry, with a view to see whether the evils which had been condemned did not really exist. He feared the system would involve us in trouble, difficulty, and perhaps bloodshed, unless it was speedily put a stop to. When that time came, those responsible for Indian affairs would be to blame who had not carefully and calmly looked into the matter, and done something to stop a system which was not only degrading to our national honour, but most injurious to the best interests of this country.

MR. FAWCETT said, he was afraid, from what they had heard from the present and from the late Under Secretary for India, that there was very little chance of the Indian Budget being brought on in the early part of the Session. Under those circumstances, a private Member would have to take the matter into his own hands, and, as the Session went on, raise separate discussions upon each of the topics which it

concerned. In that case, every one who had paid any attention to Indian affairs would agree with him that there was no subject more worthy of careful consideration by Parliament than the functions discharged by the Indian Council. No one had a higher opinion of Members of the Council than he had, but the Council itself was the greatest disappointment in connection with the Government of India. Why the able men who were Members of the Council had not done more to protect the finances of India he could not understand. It had been conclusively shown by the hon. Members for Cambridge and Kirkcaldy that nothing but confusion arose by separating ordinary from extraordinary expenditure. The most serious danger connected with our Public Works policy was, that we did not understand what works would pay; and if we were to embark on a great public policy of that sort, one of the first things we ought to do was not to carry out those works simply by engineers of English training, but to bring to bear upon them the ability which existed amongst the Natives, among whom there had been some of the most accomplished engineers in the world. As to irrigation works, the noble Lord must have forgotten the statement of the Secretary of State at Manchester, who said there was scarcely an irrigation work which returned a fair interest upon outlay, except irrigation works based on native undertakings. The noble Lord further said that irrigation works were accompanied by serious disadvantages. Many of those works had been so unskilfully constructed that good land had been converted by them into morass, and it was now necessary to drain this land. Moreover, the Natives would often not use the water when brought to their doors, and it had been proposed to make them pay an irrigation tax whether they used it or not. At present, confuse the matter as we liked with regard to ordinary and extraordinary expenditure, we could not get over the fact that by the policy which was now being pursued we were adding to the Debt of India at the rate of £3,500,000 a-year; and these works, which might not prove remunerative, would pile up serious financial difficulty in a country where an additional tax even of £1,000,000 could not be imposed without causing great discontent. In con

clusion, he must be allowed to express his determination that if the Government did not move for the re-appointment of the Select Committee next Session, he should certainly take upon himself the responsibility of doing so.

MR. GRANT DUFF said, that he trusted the success of that night's experiment would not embolden Her Majesty's Government always to bring in the Indian Budget so near the 12th August. It had certainly been one of the best attended, and also one of the most interesting Indian discussions, to which he had listened on any occasion of the kind. The points on which he thought the Committee was most to be congratulated were the ex parte, but very clear and able statement of the Manchester case by the hon. Member for Bolton (Mr. J. K. Cross); that portion of the speech of the hon. Member for Kirkcaldy (Sir George Campbell), which dealt with the unjustly light taxation of the wealthier classes in India; and the excellent speech of the noble Lord the Under Secretary of State for India. The things in that speech which give him (Mr. Grant Duff) most satisfaction were the remarks about the import duties, the announcement as to the good terms on which the recent loan had been raised, and the hope that was held out of a speedy end to the Salt Line-one of the most disgraceful anomalies in administration which existed in any civilized country. With reference to a remark which fell from the hon. Member for Hackney (Mr. Fawcett) it was his (Mr. Grant Duff's) impression that the hon. Member altogether overrated the genius hitherto shown by the Natives of India for engineering. They had shown very great genius at many periods of their history for architecture, but by no means much genius for engineering. [Mr. FAWCETT: The Madras Irrigation Works.] His remarks applied to the Native genius for engineering

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that was, of course, the Native acting under Native, not under European superintendence. In conclusion, he would say that if the noble Lord had any figures which would confirm the impression which he (Mr. Grant Duff) received in India, that the Rajpootana system of State Railways was promising to pay extremely well, he (Mr. Grant Duff) would be glad if they could be produced on this or some other occasion.

LORD GEORGE HAMILTON said, he wished to say a few words in explanation and by way of reply. His hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Mr. Smollett) had referred to the question of irrigation works, and had given one or two instances in which such works had lamentably failed. If the Government were going to construct irrigation works on the same principle as those to which he had alluded, his argument would be valid; but it was in consequence of that failure that the Government were constructing irrigation works on a different system. The hon. Member for Hackney had said that his (Lord George Hamilton's) figures did not agree with certain statements which had been made by the Secretary of State for India. His (Lord George Hamilton's) figures were taken from a Return which had only just arrived from India, and which was, therefore, more accurate than any statement which had been previously made. He fully admitted that the expenditure with regard to Public Works in India must be carefully looked into. If the irrigation works did not pay, of course they ought to be stopped; but the Government had reason to believe that those works would pay. The hon. Member for the West Riding (Mr. Beckett-Denison) had asked by what means Staff officers who were drawing pay and doing no duty would be got rid of. Upon that subject what the Government had done was this -they had allowed those officers to retire on the pension to which they were entitled, and, in addition, to receive a sum in commutation for the Colonel's allowances, to which, after 38 years, they would be entitled. As to Cooper's Hill College, he admitted that its growth must be carefully watched. As the hon. Member for Kirkcaldy (Sir George Campbell) had pointed out, the unequal incidence of taxation in India was the one great blot upon the system. If the hon. Member could suggest any plan by means of which the rich and poor could be called upon to contribute in exact proportion to their fair liability, he would promise that it should be very carefully considered by the India Office and by the Government in India. To the hon. Member for Bolton (Mr. J. K. Cross), he would say that, without entering into a discussion upon the alterations of the tariff, he was quite certain that

The Committee divided: - Ayes 21;

the Secretary of State would not sacrifice |
any legitimate sources of revenue merely Noes 66: Majority 45.
in deference to a cry got up in England.
With regard to the relations between
India and Burmah, referred to by the
hon. Baronet the Member for Carlisle
(Sir Wilfrid Lawson), he could only say
that any difficulties which had arisen
were not due to the opium traffic, and
that, as time progressed, the likelihood
of a satisfactory settlement became more
and more certain. The morality or im-
morality of the opium traffic was not
legitimately under discussion; but, as
the question had been raised, he must
be permitted to say that, unless stronger
reasons than had yet been urged were
urged against the traffic, the Govern-
ment would not be justified in giving up
for an idea so important a source of
revenue. With regard to the Amend-
ment which had been moved, it was no
new policy which the Indian Govern-
ment were now carrying out.
Indian Government were now construct-
ing Public Works under far more favour-
able conditions than during recent years,
and if ordinary care was taken he be-
lieved none of the disastrous results
which the hon. Member for Cambridge
had predicted were likely to take place.

Original Question put, and agreed to.

before this House that the total Revenue of Resolved, That it appears by the Accounts laid India for the year ending the 31st day of March 1874 was £49,598,253; the charges in India, including the collection of the Revenue, Interest on Debt, and Public Works ordinary, were £1,156,535, the value of Stores supplied to £42,094,995; the charges in England (including India) were £7,873,574; the Guaranteed Interest on the Capital of Railway and other Companies, in India and in England, deducting net Traffic Receipts, was £1,437,352, making a total charge for the same year of £51,405,921; and there was an excess of Expenditure over Income in that year amounting to £1,807,668; that the charge for Public Works extraordinary was £3,553,307, and that, including that charge, the excess of Expenditure over Income was

The

MR. KINNAIRD said, the Amendment, if carried, would practically be a Vote of Censure upon Lord Northbrook, as well as upon the Government, for it was his policy they were carrying out; and he thought the House would hesitate to pass a Vote of Censure upon a Viceroy who had shown so much ability in the Government of India, and had brought it through such a crisis as the late Famine.

MR. FAWCETT said, scarcely a single word had been said of Lord Northbrook, except in approbation of him, and it was not fair, at the last moment, to put such an interpretation upon the Amendment, and say that it was a vote of Want of Confidence in Lord Northbrook. He wished simply to express by his vote an opinion as to the way of keeping the accounts and the financial policy of the Indian Government, and nothing was further from the intention of himself and those who agreed with him to express anything like a personal censure.

£5,360,975.

House resumed.

Resolution to be reported upon Wednesday.

HOUSE OCCUPIERS DISQUALIFICA-
TION REMOVAL BILL.-[BILL 164.]
(Sir H. Drummond Wolff, Sir Charles Legard,
Sir Charles Russell, Mr. Callender, Mr. Ryder.)

THIRD READING.

ADJOURNED DEBATE FURTHER ADJOURNED.

Order read, for resuming Adjourned. Debate on Question [7th August], "That the Bill be now read the third time."

SIR H. DRUMMOND WOLFF said,

it was hopeless to go on with the Bill during the present Session. He would, therefore, move that the debate on the third reading be adjourned for one week.

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Adjourned Debate be further adjourned till Monday next."-(Sir H. Drummond Wolff.)

MR. MONK said, it would be much better to take the usual course, and to move that the Order be discharged. He would move an Amendment to that intent.

Amendment proposed, to leave out all the words after the word "That" to the end of the Question, in order to add the

Question put, "That those words be words "the said Order be discharged,"

there added."

-(Mr. Monk,)-instead thereof.

Question, "That the words proposed | to meet that day (Tuesday); and, under

to be left out stand part of the Ques-
tion," put, and agreed to.

Main Question put, and agreed to.
Debate adjourned till Monday next.

INCREASE OF THE EPISCOPATE
BILL.-[Lords.]-[BILL 110.]
(Mr. Beresford Hope.)

COMMITTEE.

Order for Committee read.

MR. BERESFORD HOPE moved that the House go into Committee on this Bill on Wednesday next.

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House will, upon Wednesday next, resolve itself into the said Committee."-(Mr. Beresford Hope.)

SIR CHARLES W. DILKE moved, as an Amendment, that the House go into Committee that day week.

Amendment proposed, to leave out the word "Wednesday," in order to insert the word " Monday,"-(Sir Charles W. Dilke,)-instead thereof.

Question put, "That the word 'Wednesday' stand part of the Question."

The House divided :-Ayes 50; Noes 27 Majority 23.

that impression, his hon. and learned Friend the Member for Limerick had intended to address the House that day, and would leave town on Wednesday. He was surprised at the deviation of the Government from its promise.

MR. W. H. SMITH explained, that when he had made the announcement that the House would sit at its usual hour to-morrow, he was under the impression that the Royal Assent would be given by commission to certain Bills; but it was now found that assent could not be given. Seeing that there was no Business of any kind on the Paper for to-morrow, he trusted that the House would adjourn, at it rising, until Wednesday.

House at rising to adjourn till Wednesday, at Two of the clock.

SELECT COMMITTEES.

Ordered, That every Select Committee having power to send for persons, papers, and records, shall have leave to report their opinion and observations, together with the Minutes of Evidence taken before them, to the House, and also to make a Special Report of any matters which they may think fit to bring to the notice of the House.

Ordered, That the said Resolution be made a Standing Order of the House.--(Mr. Raikes.)

SUPREME COURT OF JUDICATURE ACT

MR. EDWARD JENKINS moved (1873) AMENDMENT (NO. 2) BILL [Lords].

that the House should resolve itself into the said Committee on Friday.

MR. SPEAKER ruled that this Amendment could not now be put.

Main Question, "That this House will, upon Wednesday next, resolve itself into the said Committee," put.

The House divided:-Ayes 53;.Noes 24: Majority 29.

Committee deferred till Wednesday.

PARLIAMENT-ADJOURNMENT OF THE

HOUSE.

MR. W. H. SMITH said, that, as he found there was no Business on the Paper for to-morrow, he would beg to move that the House, at its rising, do adjourn until 2 o'clock on Wednesday.

MR. O'LEARY said, he must oppose the Motion, because it had been settled by the Government that the House was

Lords Amendments to Commons Amendments to be considered forthwith.

Resolved, That this House doth agree to the Amendments made by the Lords to the Amendments made by this House; and do not insist on the Amendments to which the Lords have disagreed.

REGIMENTAL EXCHANGES REGULATIONS.

Address for "Copy of the Royal Warrant and of the Regulations respecting Exchanges between Officers of the Army, made subsequent to the passing of the Regimental Exchanges Act, 1875.”—(The Marquess of Hartington.)

UNION WORKHOUSES.

Return ordered, "of the number of men, women, and children in the several Union Workhouses on the 1st day of January 1875 (or on any previous date for which the Return could be made), distinguishing the number professing to belong to the Church of England and the number belonging to all other religious communities."-(Mr. Hubbard.)

House adjourned at a quarter after
One o'clock till Wednesday.

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