The Sun.
London, England, 1861-09-20 00:00:00

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pitalist and the cultivator. They regret to say that on these
subjects, so momentous to the interests of India, they have
received no satisfactory assurances of immediate reform.
In connection with the question of tenure there is one point
on which they desire to offer a few remarks. The associa-
tion is informed that about one-third of the soil of India
may be classed under the head of waste lands, and so little
of this vast tract has ever been offered to the public in fee•
simple that no sufficient inducement has been offered to the
British capitalist to embark in agricultural pursuits. They
are furtherinformed on unimpeachable testimony, that aeon-
siderable part of this waste land is immediately available for
cotton cultivation, and they submit that by selling that at
its own disposal in fee-simple the GOvernment would,
while deriving a large accession of revenue, offer a material
inducement to the employment of European energy and
capital in the country. They confess their great surprise
that a course attended with such obvious advent ges, and
which was distinctly recommended in 1858 by Lord Stanley,
the then Secretary of State for India, should not have been
long since adopted. In cases where private rights intervene
the influence of the Government might readily bring about
a sale on terms which would insure a speedy reclamation of
the land from its present unproductiveness.
" These are briefly the points on which the association
solicit your services. They have only, in conclusion, to as-
sure you that in the fulfilment of your arduous and impor-
tant mission, and especially in promoting any measures for
extending the cultivation ,of Indian cotton, you may fully
rely on the active support of the Cotton Supply Association.
" Signed on behalf of the Association,
" JOHN CHEETHAM, President.
EDMUND ASHURST, Vice-President.
S. 0. SUTTON, Interim Secretary."
Mr. FERGUSSON called attention to the prohibi-
tory duties at present levied upon cotton cloths ex-
ported to India, which he calculated, with the
charges for freight, insurance, &c., amounted to a
protection in favour of natives equal to 30 per cent.
He knew this was a delicate question in the finan-
cial difficulties besetting the Indian Government.
He contended that the people of this country ought
not to be taxed to this extent for the support of a
dependency. He estimated the loss of British mer-
chants through the measure of Mr. Laing's prede-
cessors at a million and a half sterling. There was
a class of orders from native merchants called " in-
dents," which he was told had fallen off since the
duty was raised to the extent of 75 per cent.
Mr. LAING, who was warmly cheered on rising,
returned his most sincere thanks for the kind man.
ner in which he had been personally referred to. As
he thought nothing could be in worse taste than
for a public man to have the appearance of blowing
his own trumpet, and as, moreover, the arduous
task in which he was engaged was not yet fully ac-
complished, he preferred as speedily as might be
to pass on to those more general topics on which he
was expected to address them. Of course, it would
be borne in mind that he was only one member
of a Government sitting at Calcutta, 10,000 miles
distant, and he could not, therefore, be understood
as committing the Government, either at home
or in India, by anything he might say. He was
placed in the alternative of speaking with a great
deal of official reserve, or, if he spoke frankly, as
he should wish to do, and as he believed would be
most acceptable—(cheers)—it must be taken
merely as an expression of his own sentiments
whatever they might be worth. He most heartily
agreed in what had been said of the great duties
and resporsibilities resting on the Government and
people of England with regard to India. He
briefly recounted the wonderful progress of our
dominion in that country, till it had expanded from
the Black hole of Calcutta into an empire bounded
only by the Himalayas and the ocean, and to the
consequent necessity of suppressing the mutiny of
that army of our own creation by means of which
we had conquered India. That danger was hap-
pily overcome, and there seemed but one obstacle
left before the era of warfare in India should ter-
minate, and the era of peaceful progress begin in
earnest. That obstacle was the financial crisis. For
years and years a deficit had gone on accumulat-
ing, until at last it became a question, almost
from month to month, whether the Government
could continue to pay its way. This was an ob

stacle to further improvement, and, perhaps, the
main reason why many of those useful re-
forms which had been urged to-day had been
suspended or hindered. When he arrived in
India, hardly nine months ago, nothing could
well be more g!comy than the financial prospect.
In the three preceding years some 38 millions had
been added to the national debt, and an official cir-
cular had just b,?.en issued admitting a deficit for the
current year of over six millions. The very gravity
of the danger, perhaps, proved the means of extri-
cating the Government from this position, because
through it they were enabled to carry out some
very large measures of reduction which were sure
to encounter much opposition and difficulty. The
French saying, " Aide-toi, et le Ciel t'aidera," was
never better exemplified than in this case. The
moment the Government applied themselves in
earnest to the work of reduction the tile seemed to
turn, and they had a complete run of luck. The
rains fell in the very nick of time, so that the famine
which had threatened to be so overwhelming was
confined within the limits that were not so very
important financially, though of course it was pto
ductive of much individual suffering. The price of
opium ran up to an unprecedented height, and
other sources of revenue turned out more produc-
tive than had been anticipated. The result was that
in April he was enabled to present a budget in
which the deficit (previously only reduced to about
five millions by taking into account the proceeds of
income-tax and the other new taxes imposed by
Mr. Wilson) was met and an additional expendi-
tuie of X 500,000 on roads and communications was
provided for by, in round numbers, about three and
and a half to four millions of reduction in expendi-
ture, and a million and a half in almost impercep-
tible additions to indirect taxation. It would indeed
be too much to assume that all the estimates of the
budget would be completely realised, and that the
financial crisis was completely at an end. In a coun-

try where many of the sources of the revenue was

so extremely speculative, like opium, where such
very important changes were being carried out,
where, above all, the system of budget and esti-

mates was completely new, and the financial ma-
chinery had to be made to his hand, so to speak,
by a finance minister who was himself new to
the country and to his work, it would be absurd
to say that there was not a wide margin of uncer-
tainty. At the same time, he should mislead this
meeting if he did not state that he felt the greatest
possible confidence that the crisis was so far sur-
mounted as no longer to be seriously formidable, or

stand in the way of other measures of improvement.
(sear.) It was mainly with a view to realise his

Own estimates that he was going back to India, at

some amount of inconvenience perhaps, for a short
time. (Cheers.) He should not wish the meeting
to run away with the idea that all Indian estimates
were quite delusive, and that Indian finance was
wrapped in impenetrable mystery. There was one
simple test by which we could always tell pretty cer-
tainly how they were going on. This was the state
of the cash balances in India. As they had no loans
open, and every penny borrowed in England was ap-
plied to the construction of railways, and he did not
pretend to have discovered the philosopher's stone,
it stood to reason that if they spent at a greater rate
than they received, the balance at their banker's
must run down, and vice versa. Now, since the
reductions were commenced in earnest at the begin-
ning of the year, the cash balances in India had in-
creased by more than £3,000,000. He did not mean
that there was an actual surplus of £3,000,000 in

six months, because temporary exceptional circum

stances would account for a good deal of it; -but he

referred to this with considerable confidence as

proving that, on the whole, they could not be far off
from a substantial equilibrium. The greater outlay

on communications which was desired, and the re-

duction of tariff on imports, all depended on finan-
cial improvement. It was in further economy and
reductions we must seek the means of meeting those
necessary demands, for he thought we had nearly
reached the limit of taxation in India. He would
mention, as another reason for confidence, that an

,