there a bad Government whose finances were in good order? Where was
there a really good Government whose finances were in bad order? Is
there a better test in the long run of the condition of a people and the
merits of a Government than the state of the finances? And yet not in
our own time, but going back through all the pages of Mill or of any
other History of India we find the normal condition of the finances of
India has been that of deficit and bankruptcy. I maintain that if that
be so, the Government is a bad Government. It has cost more to govern
India than the Government has been able to extract from the population
of India. The Government has not been scrupulous as to the amount of
taxes or the mode in which they have been levied; but still, to carry on
the government of India according to the system which has heretofore
prevailed, more has been required than the Government has been able to
extract by any system of taxation known to them from the population over
which they have ruled. It has cost more than 30,000,000_l_. a-year
to govern India, and the gross revenue being somewhere about
30,000,000_l_., and there being a deficit, the deficit has had to
be made up by loans. The Government has obtained all they could from the
population; it is not enough, and they have had to borrow from the
population and from Europeans at a high rate of interest to make up the
sum which has been found to be necessary. They have a debt of
60,000,000_l_.; and it is continually increasing; they always have
a loan open; and while their debt is increasing their credit has been
falling, because they have not treated their creditors very honourably
on one or two occasions, and chiefly, of course, on account of the
calamities which have recently happened in India. There is one point
with regard to taxation which I wish to explain to the House, and I hope
that, in the reforms to which the noble Lord is looking forward, it will
not be overlooked. I have said that the gross revenue is
30,000,000_l_. Exclusive of the opium revenue, which is not,