forsooth. If that 5 per cent. import duty were taken off, the Lancashire mill-owners solemnly assured the Secretary for India that the poor ryot should get the full benefit of it. This iniquitous impost was crushing the very life out of him. One deputation expressed themselves as greatly concerned about the land revenue of India, lest it should be diminished in consequence of so many of the natives devoting themselves to agriculture. There was nothing for it, Lancashire said, but the abandonment of the cotton duty. And the Secretary for India quite acquiesced. It was a most impolitic duty, he said, and he promised that it should be taken off as soon as possible; but unfortunately it was not possible to do so just at present, as it brought in something like a million sterling a year to the treasury. Anything, however, that the government could do short of this, should be done to encourage England's most important industry.

The Secretary for India was as good as his word. True, he did not take off the tax on manufactured cottons, but he did the next best thing for Manchester—he imposed a tax on the Indian mill-owners. When the new Indian tariff of 1875 appeared, it was found that the duties on manufactured cottons were only slightly reduced, but that a new and altogether unlooked-for tax of 5 per cent. was imposed on raw cotton imported into India. Every one asked what could be the meaning of this new tax, seeing the public, so far as they had been taken into the confidence of the government, had been

asked to consider only what duties it would be advisable to remove. The explanation was not far to seek. It appears that the local mill-owners could not compete with England, even in the Indian market, unless they used along with the short-stapled native, a long-stapled imported, cotton. A tax of 5 per cent. on the longstapled imported cotton would, therefore, effectually handicap the local manufacturers, and to that extent would act as a protection to the Lancashire mill-owners. The most extraordinary part of the matter was the secrecy and bad faith of the Indian government throughout the whole affair. A pretence was made of consulting the mercantile classes in India with regard to the alterations proposed, and the opinions of the Chambers of Commerce, both at Calcutta and Bombay, were asked and given; but from first to last, the idea of imposing a tax on raw cotton, or any new tax whatever, was never mooted by the government, and never dreamed of by any section of the community in India. The question of the abolition of the duty on manufactured cottons was fully discussed, and public opinion was pretty equally divided on the subject. The people of India were therefore quite as much surprised at this new impost as were the local manufacturers; but when its true meaning was understood, surprise was turned into indignation, and the journals that had heretofore been its staunchest supporters became the bitterest in their condemnation of the course adopted by the government. It was felt on all hands

that the conduct of the government in this matter was perfectly indefensible, and that nothing but the most abject subserviency to Manchester could have dictated

such a policy. It was openly stated that this duty was imposed solely with a view to injure the Indian manufacturers, and preserve for Manchester a continuance of the monopoly; it was characterised as a wicked device of an alien, despotic, or ignorant government, and the Bombay Chamber of Commerce, and other public bodies in India, publicly protested against it as an unjust and impolitic restriction on the manufactures of India, and contrary to that sound principle of the commercial policy of England, and of other enlightened nations, which requires the state to give every encouragement to the free importation of the raw materials necessary for the development and extension of native manufactures.1

1 The Calcutta Englishman of August 5th, 1875, said:-"If the details given in the telegram which we publish this morning are correct, the new Tariff Bill is about as infamous a measure as ever a sub. servient Legislature sought to impose upon a voiceless people. An import duty on raw material is, under any circumstances, one of the worst modes of raising the revenue that can be devised. But the duty which the government is about to impose on a particular quality of raw cotton, imported into this country, is nicely calculated to produce the greatest amount of injury that could possibly be inflicted by such an impost. The present Viceroy is too acute an economist not to know what the effect of such a measure must be; and it is impossible to resist the conviction that it is for the sake of the injury it will inflict on India, that the measure is proposed. The Manchester men have been sharp enough to foresee that they would lose more than they gained by a reduction of the duty on coarse goods, unless measures were at the same time taken to prevent the Indian mills from shifting their competition to the finer classes. The Government of India, too, no doubt foresaw that

The absence of all moral principle on the part of a competitor is the second condition of success. The If the chief, or, as the deductionists main- second tain, the sole end of competition is the ob- of success.

condition

if they went on abolishing the import duty on one class of cotton goods after another, this item of revenue must gradually be extinguished. They have therefore hit upon a device as effectual as it is wicked—we can apply no milder term to it ;—a device which will at once increase their revenue and protect the Manchester manufacturer. They have put a prohibitive duty on the raw material necessary to enable the Indian mills to spin the finer counts of yarn and weave the finer makes of cloths, and thus secure to Manchester a continuance of her present monopoly of these classes of goods. None but an alien government, or a despotic and ignorant government bent on filling its coffers for the nonce at any cost, would have adopted such a course as this. No free people would have thus drawn the knife across their own throats. In the shadow of this enormity, the proposition to recoup the revenue for the reduction of duties which fall on the community at large, by raising those which fall chiefly on a section of them already heavily taxed, appears so small as scarcely to justify complaint. As to the merits of the Bill, they are so completely eclipsed by its iniquity, that they cease to invite comment."

The Bombay Gazette, which, up to this time, had been a warm supporter of the government proposals, said, on the 10th of August: :-"The only subject of regret connected with the new Tariff is, that the reasons which Lord Northbrook undoubtedly could give for putting a duty of 5 per cent. on long-stapled cotton are not generally known. That duty is a new feature in the Customs Tariff for which no one outside the Viceroy's Council was prepared, and is a very objectionable imposition, but we should probably be charging Lord Northbrook falsely if we imputed to his Lordship, as the Englishman does, a secret object of desiring to inflict an injury on India in this way. What the motives were which induced Lord Northbrook to make this extraordinary imposition we cannot, of course, say, but he must have perceived that it would be impossible for any importation of the long-stapled cotton to be made under a 5 per cent. duty by manufacturers in India, and that, therefore, they would be so heavily weighted that competition with Manchester would be useless; in other words, he would be assisting Manchester by

tainment of the maximum of wealth with the minimum of expenditure, it is not likely that a competitor will

protective duties, a policy she could never dare to adopt herself. Look at the matter whichever way we may, we can only account for this false move that Lord Northbrook has made by supposing him to have been under the influence of a specially evil genius in thus marring the otherwise excellent changes he has made in the Customs Tariff; and we are glad to know that the Bombay Chamber of Commerce has already taken steps to protest publicly against the imposition of the new protective duty.'

The memorial of the Bombay Chamber of Commerce to the Viceroy, Lord Northbrook, is an able document, and puts the case on behalf of India with great force. It sets forth

'That such a duty is contrary to sound principle and good policy, being imposed in restraint of the manufactures of India, and injurious to the general interests of the country.

"That it is wholly without precedent in the commercial history of any enlightened country, and has avowedly been adopted 'in order to place the Indian manufacturer upon the same footing as the importer of piece-goods and yarns.'

"A duty imposed, in the interests of the English manufactures, for the purposes only of prohibiting the people of India from extending and improving their own manufactures, is a measure which, in the existing state of the native industry, is, your Memorialists respectfully submit, unjust and oppressive, and can only result in permanent injury to the country.

"That it brings little or no additional revenue to the State, nor, with the slow progress of Indian manufacture, is there any likelihood of its doing so for many years.

"That the Government of India has again and again promulgated that the duties on imported piece-goods and yarns are levied for revenue purposes only, and not for the protection of any industry. The policy which the English Government, under similar circumstances, adopted, was to replace the sacrifice of the revenue, when Customs duties were abolished in the interest of the consumer by the imposition of direct taxes.

"That there is nothing in the recent commercial system of England, which, either by precedent or analogy, can be held to warrant the imposition of such a duty. Excise duties on manufactures are