The Sun.
London, England, 1859-08-08 00:00:00

THE INDIAN FINANCIAL STATEMENT.

(From the Derbyshii e Courier.)
Let no man in Egland think that he is not in-
terested largely and directly in the state of India.
Our Indian Empire is fast becoming
" Too great to keep, or to resign."
It will require all the efforts of sound statesman-
ship to carry us safely- through our Indian difficul-
ties. Our financial difficulties are great and urgent.
They embrace and involve all other difficulties.
We will at present offer a few remarks on them.
The statement made in the house, on Monday
last, by. Sir Charles Wood, the Secretary for India,
was briefly this :
The mutiny broke out in May, 1858.
In the last complete year of peace, ending April
30, 1857, the debt of India was £59,462,000, the
annual interest £2,525,000, the military expendi-
ture was £12,561,000. In 1857-58, the total ex-
penditure was £40,226,000, and the revenue
£31,706,000, leaving a deficit of £8,520,000. In
1858-9 the expenditure amounted to £48,500,000,
and the revenue to £33,800,000, being a deficit of
£14,700,000. The deficit, therefore, for these two
years—from May, 1857, to May, 1859—was
£22,220,000. This deficit was provided for by bor-
rowing in India,during these two years, £10,556,000,
and in England,Lll,s62,ooo,altogethe, £22,118,000.
The debt in India, on 30th April last, amounted to
£81,580,000 ; the increase in two years being, as
stated above, £22,118,000.
Sir Charles Wood estimates the expenditure for
1859-60 at £46,130,500, and the revenue at
£35,850,000, leaving a deficit of £10,280,000. " I
nm afraid," adds Sir Charles, " that beyond that
there may be a further sum." Altogether, with
£2,000,000 additional for railways, there will be at
least a total deficit of £12,500,000 for
.the year
1859-60.
To meet this, there remains to be received on
account of a former loan in India £,2,000,000, and
£4,800,000 was borrowed in England by Lord
Stanley ; the remainder, £5,700,000, Sir C. Wood
hopes to raise by a new loan, taking power to raise
£7,000,000 to allow of a margin.
The issue of this borrowing will be that at the
end of the year the Indian debt will amount to
£95,836,600, the interest of which will be the sum
of £3,900,000. _

The debt which was £59,462,000 in 1857, will be
£95,836,000, in 1860.
" I should deceive the house," says Sir C. Wood,
" if I were to hold out to them that any great re-
ductions can be made in the civil service. To stop
public works would be a suicidal policy. It is in
the military expenditure alone that any great sav-
ing can be made. The military expenditure of
India before the mutiny was £12,000,000 annually,
and it is now £21,000,000, being an increase of
£9,000,000."
Almost while the Indian Secretary was speaking,
intelligence arrived of renewed disturbances in
India, not now among the native troops, but among
the English regiments. This mutiny, for it is
nothing less, has arisen from the parsimonious at-
tempt at saving on the transference of the services
of our European troops from the East Indian Com-
pany to the Imperial Government. We shall have
to do with a bad grace what we might have done
with a good one in the way of recognising the ser-
vices of our brave troops in India. All idea of sav-
ing in the reduction of the military expenditure of
India must be considered, for the present, hopeless.
We must then, says Sir C. Wood, " if we do not
mean to lose our Indian Empire, be prepared to as-
sist the finances of that country." Mr. Crawford,
the member for the City of London, tells the Go-
vernment that there are " seven millions of Indian
Bonds out payable at one year's notice, and not less
than 15 millions of debentures payable in 1863 and
1864," and that " debentures are overdone—the
last debentures not having been taken up by the
great companies, and other ordinary purchasers of
such stock, but by the Stock Exchange," and that
the speculators having been " bitten" are not likely
to come forward again. Lord Stanley evidently
thinks that an imperial guarantee of future loans
will be necessary.
It comes to this, therefore, that if we determine
to retain India we must make ourselves responsi-
ble for the money necessary to meet the increased
and increasing expenditure of that country. Mr.
Bright, as usual, does the finding fault. He is
against an imperial guarantee, he nibbles at a re-
duction in the civil service, he is opposed to the
necessary military expenditure. There is not one
statesmanlike or practical suggestion of any value
in the vague, inconsequential declamation which
he inflicted on the house. Mr. Bright has already
told his distressed constituents that they had better
emigrate to America, and he is now prepared to tell
the British Government in India that they had
better emigrate to England.
Let every Englishman reflect that under the
present financial system 'you must ultimately tax
England to save India. If you borrow without a
guarantee you borrow at a ruinous rate of interest,
and you must pay that interest ultimately by in-
creased taxation. British India cannot pay it ; she
must, therefore, repudiate her obligations, or we
must pay it for her. If you determine to borrow
with 4 guarantee, be assured the sum guaranteed
will lie required from us.
With a debt of £800,000,000 at home, and a d3bt
of £100,000,000 in India, with a general convic- ,
tion that our national defences require great andl
increased expenditure, with France menacing us at
our doors, and the United States jealous of our
maritime superiority and ready to take advantage
of England's difficulties, who can look at our finan-
cial future without serious apprehension ? What
Sir C. Wood said on Monday is not the less true
for being trite. "It is not necessary to remind the
-Committee of what vital importance to all countries
is the state of their finance. If the financial state
be good, there are no dangers that the country may
not confidently face ; if the financial state be bad,
there are few dangers she can hope effectually to
overcome."

As to Indian finance, both Mr. Crawford and
Mr. D. Seymour referred to the banking system.
Mr. Crawford thought that " the time had ar-
rived when some improvement in the banking
affairs of India might be introduced." Mr. D.
Seymour pertinently, observed that it was " inex-
cusable in a commercial people to employ the time
of our soldiers in conveying silver from Gne end of
the country to the other. Banking was greatly on
the increase in India, and if Russia could find the
means of sending her paper into every corner of
the country, surely it was possible for us to do so."

Now observe, as under the present system, bank-
ing expands, so is the danger of a monetary crisis.
The more you increase banking, the greater expan-
sion you give to credit, and the more you develope
the commercirl energies of India, the more dreadful
and ruinous will be the financial collapse at the
next monetary crisis in England. We have it in
our power to establish a sound and beneficial mone-
tary system in India. In addition to the inconve-
nient and barbarous money, the silver rupee, or two
shilling piece, now exclusively in use, we might
establish gold sovereigns and half sovereigns, repre-
senting ten rupees and five rupees each. In order
to make this circulation really useful, the gold
money should pass for a. trifle more than its intrin-
sic value. By this means it would be preserved, as
other silver money in England is preserved, from
exportation, hoarding, or melting. It would be
retained in the discharge of its proper office as
money, that is, in the distribution of commodities
from one hand to another, and in the liquidation of
debts. Our silver coins are neither melted nor ex-
ported, because an ounce of silver worth ss. 2d. is
coined into money representing ss. 6d. ; this frac-
tional difference preserves our silver money from
being demonetised or withdrawn from circulation.
The same cause preserves our copper coins. But our
gold coins being intrinsic value to a fraction, being
tied down to the inevitable £3 17s. 100. an ounce,
*re subject to be melted by the goldsmith and ex-
ported by the foreigner. And when our gold coins
are Nvithdrawn, we all know that our paper money
is violently contracted, the whole system of cheques
and bills of exchange collapses, ruin paralyses corn-
memo, and destitution and famine seize upon the
poor.
John Bull likes to have itso, because
y Question."
he " can-
not understand the Currenc
uestiono.ut
how easy
it have again, and again, pointed
it would be to introduce a better state of thinc,sin7
India. The financial state of India is so bad thato
it can scarcely be worse. Let the experiment be
tried there. It was tried and succeeded in this
.country from 1797 to 1815. Improve upon this
system, if
you can, in India. If you determine to
have an expensive, extravagant, monetary
system,
adopt gold coinage in addition to silver, with this
essential improvement on our own sovereign, that
you coin the Indian sovereign of fractionally less
weight than ours, and thereby secure it from melt-
ing and exportation.
If you determine to reject the antiquated and
barbarous system of metallic money, which Peel
ignorantly palmed qn his ignorant and prejudiced
countrymen, adopt a paper currency, the money of
commerce and civilisation. Let this paper money
be receivable for the local and imperial taxes. It
will, of course, buy an elephant, the honour of
_a_
nabob, the oath of a Hindoo, and an ounce of gold
—at the market price.
But if you stumble at the Pons Asinorum of the
currency question, and protest against inconverti-
bility, let the Indian Government engage, which
they may safely do, to exchange the notes which
they issue into gold or silver at the market price.
These notes will then be truly convertible; and not
the vile impostors which our Bank of England
notes prove to be at every time of panic.
Guy Fawkes would not have projected the blow-
ing up of the Parliament had he taken his seat for

Birmingham, and Nana Sahib would never have
headed the Indian mutiny with his pockets_full of
national paper money.

THE MOCK PEACE.

(From the Times.)
A cold thrill of disappointment ran through the
Italian Peninsula when the outlines of the conver-
sation which passed between the two Emperors at
Villafranca became known. The same southern
exaggeration of mind and feeling_ which had led
the Italians to see in the French Emperor a species
of military Messiah, who was at length, and after
so many years of weary suffering, to free them
from their worse than Egyptian bondage, threw
them, when he proved untrue to their expectation,
into premature despair. The open looks of love
and veneration which had greeted his onward pro-
gress were converted into glances of hatred and
execration on his homeward path. Once they
came out to bless him, now they cursed him as he
passed by. But a few weeks back no name had
been pronounced, from Mont Cenis to the Straits of
Messina, with such passionate fervour of devotion
as that of the Emperor Napoleon ; now the name
of " traitor" was coupled with that of Louis Napo-
leon from the Po to the Neapolitan frontier. It
must be confessed even by that ingenious gentle-
man who writes from the Tuileries, and has ever
at hand an epigram to excuse a wrong, that the
expectations of the Italians had been raised to a
point of madness by the Emperor Napoleon before
he began his campaign. The " Anguish of Italy"
was the motto on his banner, and the pretext of
the war. He would have found Europe in arms
against him had he simply professed that he was
going to Italy for selfish, or even for French pur-
poses. The cruelties exercised by a combination
of the Austrian and Papal systems throughout
the Italian Peninsula had been so extreme, and of
such long continuance, that a man could not look
his fellow-man in the face and profess to stand
forth as their defender. We might judge the
attempt to redress this miserable state of things
useless or impossible, but we could not do battle
against any man who fought in such a cause.
The French Emperor was well aware of this.
Let us, however, presume that he really was in
earnest when he took the cause of Italy in hand,
—let us suppose, further, that ultimately at Villa-
franca he made the best terms he supposed to be
possible for the Italians—he can scarcely be sur-
prised if he has disappointed the expectations
which he himself had raised. He could not hope
that the wild Italian blood would not be raised to
fury when the terms upon which he had treated
were knows. It was not probable that 26,000,000
people, who had been taught by his own lips to
look to him for a perfect deliverance from spiritual
a.:d political slavery, should quietly acquiesce in a
result which meant, at the best, that they must
work out their own independence for themselves,
and, at the worst, that they were to be handed back
to their former task-masters in more pitiable plight
than before. We desire to put the best, and not
the worst, construction upon the conduct of the,
French Emperor. If this be done, the Italians will
in the end be brought to see that if Louis Napoleon
is not a being of supernatural power and benefi-
cence' at least he has shown himself substantially
their benefactor and friend.
All, however, depends upon the course which the
negotiations affecting Central Italy may ultimately
take. We cannot bring ourselves to think that the
Emperor of the French will prove himself so un-
true to his plighted faith as to throw the three
Duchies and the Legations down at the feet of
their former masters, to undergo what extremities
of suffering and cruelty triumphant vindictive-
ness may dictate. The Emperors of France and
Austria could not come to any settlement
upon the affairs of these provinces, for they
were not the seat of war ; nor, save so far as
the action of the contingents from the Duchies
were concerned, were they even mixed up with
the war. Tuscany by herself has as good a right
to change her form of government as France.
What is the value of the Emperor Napoleon's
own title to the throne of France, if the Tuscan
people are not free to choose their own rulers ?
What is true of France or Tuscany is true in
principle of Parma and Modena, the only dif-
ference in the cases being that the military power
of the last named States is comparatively in-
significant. The Papal States were specifically
acknowledged to be neutral ;—France and Austria
have no more right to dictate to the inhabitants
who shall rule over them than they have to parcel
out the British Islands or the United States of
North America, and to appoint their own Viceroys
over the Heptarchies of their own creation. Leav-
ing right out of the question, and considering only
what France will do, it is incredible that the
French Emperor should first lead the inhabitants
of Central Italy to destruction, and then turn his
back upon them. If Tuscany, Parma, Modena, and
the Legations rose in arms, it was because he en-
tered Italy at the head of a French army, protest-
ing that his purpose was to purge the Peninsula of
the Austrians from the Alps to Reggio. It is al-
ready no slight thing to draw back so far as to de-
clare that, at all events, Venetia and the district of
the four famous fortresses are to be resigned to the
old intruder ; but this may be inevitable—it may
be one of the hard necessities of war. This cannot,
however, apply to the provinces of Central Italy ;
and we are bound to admit that if the independence
of these is secured, and Lombardy and Piedmont
are consolidated into a compact and solid kingdom,
the Emperor Napoleon will have been no mean be-
nefactor of the Italians. Allow ten years to pass
over such an arrangement without any fresh visi-
tation from the French or Austrian armies, and
Italy is as much answerable for her own fortunes
as England or France.

(From the Horning Post.)
" By the margin of Zurich's fair waters," as the
song says, the Conference in re Italy is to assemble
this day to give effect, if that be possible, to the
bases of peace agreed upon at Villafranca. We are
riot very sanguine as to the results. The parties to
those bases assumed rather hastily the consent of
Italy to their adoption, whereas neither the peace
nor the conditions of it have given satisfaction to
the Italian people. The belief that the hour of
Italy's emancipation had come prevailed through-
out the peninsula. It raised the hopes of _ the
captive in the dungeon, it lighted with
promise the cottage of the poor, it brightened the
prospects of the merchant and trader, it shook
the nerves of the tyrant of Naples, sealed the abdi-
cation of the Austrian Dukes, and carried an uneasy
misgiving into the innermost sanctuary of the
Vatican. As the French army swept all before it,
and by a succession of brilliant victories gave free-
dom to Lombardy and strung Venetia to the tightest
tension of Yearning suspense, there was not an
Italian who -did not believe that heaven had at last
avenged his country's wrongs, and that by the
rising star of Napoleon he and his fellow-patriots
would be led forward to a pitch of social and poli-
cal renovation which should compensate them for
years of endurance, and gift them with liberty and
independence for all time to come. Like sudden
death on the eve of a bridal, or shipwreck in sight
of the desired haven, was the news of a hasty
peace to the expectant people of Venetia and the
hopeful subjects of Central Italy. Probably the dis-
appointment would have been less had not their
previous expectations towered so high. But they
counted, in their enthusiasm, upon receiving their
liberty at the hands of France, and suddenly they
find that Austria is to be a party to their future,
not as a defeated foe, but on equal terms with their
deliverer. Knowing as they did the heartless
enmity of that Power, it is not surprising that hope
died and sullen discontent took the place of buoy-
ant expectation. We speak of Italy as a whole.
Lombardy, indeed, has cause enough to rejoice over
what the fortune of war has given her. But her
exultation is painfully balanced by the gloom that
has settled like a cloud of hopeless impenetrability
over the sister province of Venetia. If the one has
gained freedom, the other is but more helplessly
confirmed in slavery. These two equate each other,
and the rest of Italy is where it was.
And it is about the rest of Italy that the diffi-
culties of the settlement will arise. We do not wish
to throw cold water on the Conference. We shall
be glad if it can adjust matters out of hand to the
satisfaction of all parties. But we cannot help
seeing probabilities, and it is a part of our vocation
to examine them. When the Treaty of Villafranea
was given to the world, we pronounced that, with-
out great modification, it would not work. We are
still of that opinion, and we fully expect that
the deliberations at Zurich this week will confirm
us in those convictions. We will assume that there
will be no difficulty about the annexation of Lom-
bardy to Sardinia. But upon other points there
will be, there can be, nothing but difficulty. Take
the question of thereturnof the Dukes of uscany
and Modena and the Duchess of Parma. One or
them has formally abdicated in favour of his son,
the others have simply fled. It remains for the
people themselves to restore or abolish these dynas-
ties. There is no doubt in which direction the
Popular feeling at the pre n t moment runs ; and,
although the fugitive
princese are straining every
nerve to rule once more over the people that detest
them, the chances are altogether against their suc-
cess. What becomes, then, of that part of the
treaty that proposes their restoration
reinstateiou?Franctehean.de
Austria are alike pledged not t
royal personages vs et armis. The people of thoses
three Duchies are now voting on the question ; and
it is more than probable that an immense prepon-
derance will be found in favour of union with
Piedmont. There are
eduincogent
opot is
prepared
political reasons
why
tte.
this should be ; and if Piedmont