we recollect how insufficient are the statements which he has from
India, the right hon. Gentleman has given us as clear an account of the
finances of India as it was possible for him to do, and looking at them
in the most favourable point of view we come to this conclusion:--We
have what we have had for twenty years, only more rapidly accumulating,
deficit on deficit and debt on debt.

The right hon. Gentleman told the Committee that when he left the
Government of India, I think in 1855, everything was in a most
satisfactory condition. Well, it did happen in that year, perhaps by
some of that kind of management which I have observed occasionally in
Indian finance, that the deficit was brought down to a sum not exceeding
150,000_l_. [Sir C. Wood: 'There was a surplus of 400,000_l_.'] The
deficit, I believe, before the mutiny was 143,000_l_. But, if the right
hon. Gentleman will allow me to take the three years preceding the
mutiny, I think that will give a much fairer idea of the real state of
the case, and it is not the least use shutting our eyes to the real
state of the case, because some day or other it will find us out, or we
shall find it out. The real state of the case in the three years
preceding the mutiny, 1855, 1856 and 1857, ending the 30th of April, is
a deficit of 2,823,000_l_., being an average not very far short of
1,000,000_l_. a-year. That is the state of things immediately after the
right hon. Gentleman left office. I do not in the least find fault with
him. He did not make the deficit, but I merely state this to show that
things are not at the moment in that favourable state which the right
hon. Gentleman would induce the Committee to believe. Keeping our
attention to that period, there is another point of view, which is also
very important. It appears to me that any Government must be an
excessively bad Government which cannot defray its expenses out of the
taxes which it levies on its people. We know, and every one has for