According to the London journals, Indian stock and _ railway 
securities have of late been distinguished by a downward 
movement in that market, which is far from testifying to the 
genuineness of the sanguine convictions which John Bull likes to 
exhibit in regard to the state of the Indian guerrilla war; and 
which, at all events, indicates a stubborn distrust in the elasticity of 
Indian financial resources. As to the latter, two opposite views are 
propounded. On the one hand, it is affirmed that taxes in India 
are onerous and oppressive beyond those of any country in the 
world; that as a rule throughout most of the presidencies, and 
through those presidencies most where they have been longest 
under British rule, the cultivators, that is, the great body of the 
people of India, are in a condition of unmitigated impoverishment 
and dejection; that, consequently, Indian revenues have been 
stretched to their utmost possible limit, and Indian finances are 
therefore past recovery. A rather discomfortable opinion this at a 
period when, according to Mr. Gladstone,’ for some years to come, 
the extraordinary Indian expenditure alone will annually amount 
to about £20,000,000 sterling. On the other hand, it is asserted — 
the asseveration being made good by an array of statistical 
illustrations—that India is the least taxed country in the world; 
that, if expenditure is going on increasing, revenue may be 
increased too; and that it is an utter fallacy to imagine that the 
Indian people will not bear any new taxes. Mr. Bright, who may 
be considered the most arduous and influential representative of 

a W. E. Gladstone’s speech in the House of Commons on June 7, 1858, The 
Times, No. 23014, June 8, 1858.— Ed. 

the ‘“discomfortable” doctrine, made, on the occasion of the 
second reading of the new Government of India bill, the 
following statement: 

“The Indian Government had cost more to govern India than it was possible to 
extort-from the population of India, although the Government had been by no 
means scrupulous either as to the taxes imposed, or as to the mode in which they 
had been levied. [...] It cost more than £30,000,000 to govern India,for that was 
the gross revenue, and there was always a deficit, which had to be made up by 
loans borrowed at a high rate of interest. [...] The Indian debt now amounted to 
£60,000,000, and was increasing; while the credit of the Government was falling, 
partly because they had not treated their creditors very honorably on, one or two 
occasions, and now on account of the calamities which had recently happened in 
India. [...] He had alluded to the gross revenue; but as that included the opium 
revenue, which was hardly a tax upon the people of India, he would take the 
taxation which really pressed upon them at £25,000,000. Now, let not this 
£25,000,000 be compared with the £60,000,000 that was raised in this country. Let 
the House recollect that in India it was possible to purchase twelve days’ labor for 
the same amount of gold or silver that would be obtained in payment for one in 
England. This £25,000,000 expended in the purchase of labor in India would 
buy as much as an outlay of £300,000,000 would procure in England. [...] He 
might be asked how much was the labor of an Indian worth? Well, if the labor of 
an Indian was only worth 2d. a day, it was clear that we could not expect him to 
pay as much taxation as if it was worth 2s. [...] We had 30,000,000 of population in 
Great Britain and Ireland; in India there were 150,000,000 inhabitants. [...] We 
raised here £60,000,000 sterling of taxes; in India, reckoning by the days’ labor of 
the people of India, we raised £300,000,000 of revenue, or five times a greater 
revenue than was collected at home. Looking at the fact that the population of 
India was five times greater than that of the British Empire, a man might say that 
the taxation per head in India and England was about the same, and that therefore 
there was no great hardship inflicted. But in England there was an incalculable | 
power of machinery and steam, of means of transit, and of everything that capital 
and human invention could bring to aid the industry of a people. In India there 
was nothing of the kind. They had scarcely a decent road throughout India.” ? 

Now, it must be admitted that there is something wrong in this 
method of comparing Indian taxes with British taxes. There is on 
the one side the Indian population, five times as great as the 
British one, and there is on the other side the Indian taxation 
amounting to half the British. But, then, Mr. Bright says, Indian 
labor is an equivalent for about one-twelfth only of British labor. 
Consequently £30,000,000 of taxes in India would represent 
£300,000,000 of taxes in Great Britain, instead of the £60,000,000 
actually there raised. What then is the conclusion he ought to have 
arrived at? That the people of India in regard to their numerical 
strength pay the same taxation as the people in Great Britain, if 
allowance is made for the comparative poverty of the people in 

No. 23029, June 25, 1858.— Ed. 

India, and £30,000,000 is supposed to weigh as heavily upon 
150,000,000 Indians as £60,000,000 upon 30,000,000 Britons. 
Such being his supposition, it is certainly fallacious to turn round 
and say that a poor people cannot pay so much as a rich one, 
because the comparative poverty of the Indian people has already 
been taken into account in making out the statement that the 
Indian pays as much as the Briton. There might, in fact, another 
question be raised. It might be asked, whether a man who earns 
say 12 cents a day can be fairly expected to pay 1 cent with the 
same ease with which another, earning $12 a day, pays $1? Both 
would relatively contribute the same aliquot part of their income, 
but still the tax might bear in quite different proportions upon 
their respective necessities. Yet, Mr. Bright has not yet put the 
question in these terms, and, if he had, the comparison between 
the burden of taxation, borne by the British wages’ laborer on the 
one hand, and the British capitalist on the other, would perhaps 
have struck nearer home than the comparison between Indian and 
British taxation. Moreover, he admits himself that from the 
£30,000,000 of Indian taxes, the £5,000,000 constituting the 
opium revenue must be subtracted, since this is, properly 
speaking, no tax pressing upon the Indian people, but rather an 
export duty charged upon Chinese consumption. Then we are 
reminded by the apologists of the Anglo-Indian Administration 
that £ 16,000,000 of income is derived from the land revenue, or 
rent, which from times immemorial has belonged to the State in its 
Capacity as supreme landlord, never constituted part of the private 
fortune of the cultivator, and does,in fact, no more enter into 
taxation, properly so called, than the rent paid by the British 
farmers to the British aristocracy can be said to enter British 
taxation. Indian taxation, according to this point of view, would 
stand thus: 

Aggregate sum raised ................05 £30,000,000 
Deduct for opium revenue ............ 5,000,000 
Deduct for rent of land.................. 16,000,000 

Taxation proper ...... £9,000,000 

Of this £9,000,000, again, it must be admitted that some 
important items, such as the post-office, the stamp duties, and the 
customs duties, bear in a very minute proportion on the mass of 
the people. Accordingly, Mr. Hendriks, in a paper recently laid 
before the British Statistical Society on the Finances of India,’ tries. 

a The Economist, No. 772, June 12, 1858.— Ed. 

to prove, from Parliamentary and other official documents, that of 
the total revenue paid by the people of India, not more than 
one-fifth is at present raised by taxation, i. e., from the real 
income of the people; that in Bengal 27 per cent only, in the 
Punjaub 23 per cent only, in Madras 21 per cent only, in the 
North-West Provinces 17 per cent only, and in Bombay 16 per 
cent only of the total revenue is derived from taxation proper. 

The following comparative view of the average amount of 
taxation derived from each inhabitant of India and the United 
Kingdom, during the years 1855-56, is abstracted from 
Mr. Hendriks’s statement: 

Bengal, per head, Revenue .................. £0 5 0...Taxation proper. £0 1 4 
North-West Provinces ..........ccceseeeeeeee 3 5...Taxation proper. 0 7 
IMAG TAS. siauschy Vestas svessponnsauviteteensgtintonsnseees 4 7...Taxation proper. 1 0 
OMDAYy oc5s0s6rstin es htetets Sates ihe veatareieant 8 3...Taxation proper. 1 4 
Punt Jat bei say, cecsesesaiaeaeetierdvesevctaansscansabess 3 3...Taxation proper. 0 9 
United Kingdom ............:ccccccesseesrceeees - -...Taxation proper. 110 0 

For a different year the following estimate of the average paid 
by each individual to the national revenue is made by Gen. 
Briggs*: 

In England, 1852 siccctssi ctarccssisanssiecx £119 4 
En France ..cisssiisieets baidie ve ecveseeehienss 1 12 0 
Un: Prussia eccicciceeescseetesseacdieweSie eas - 0 19 3 
Pn Wndiay 18548 awateest coined’ 0 3 8}, 

From these statements it is inferred by the apologists of the 
British Administration that there is not a single country in Europe, 
where, even if the comparative poverty of India is taken into 
account, the people are so lightly taxed. Thus it seems that not 
only opinions with respect to Indian taxation are conflicting, but 
that the facts from which they purport to be drawn are themselves 
contradictory. On the one hand, we must admit the nominal 
amount of Indian taxation to be relatively small; but on the other, 
we might heap evidence upon evidence from Parliamentary 
documents, as well as from the writings of the greatest authorities 
on Indian affairs, all proving beyond doubt that this apparently 
light taxation crushes the mass of the Indian people to the dust, 

and that its exaction necessitates a resort to such infamies as 
torture, for instance. But is any other proof wanted beyond the 
constant and rapid increase of the Indian debt and the accumula- 

4 The Economist, No. 772, June 12, 1858.— Ed. 

tion of Indian deficits? It will certainly not be contended that the 
Indian Government prefers increasing debts and deficits because it 
shrinks from touching too roughly upon the resources of the 
people. It embarks in debt, because it sees no other way to make 
both ends meet. In 1805 the Indian debt amounted to 
£25,626,631°; in 1829 it reached about £34,000,000 ”; in 1850 
£47,151,018°; and at present it amounts to about £60,000,000. By 
the by, we leave out of the count the East Indian debt contracted 
in England, which is also chargeable upon the East Indian 
revenue. 

The annual deficit, which in 1805 amounted to about two and a 
half millions, had, under Lord Dalhousie’s administration, reached 
the average of five millions. Mr. George Campbell of the Bengal 
Civil Service, and of a mind strongly biased in favor of the 
Anglo-Indian administration, was obliged to avow, in 1852, that: 

“Although no Oriental conquerors have ever obtained so complete an 
ascendency, so quiet, universal and undisputed possession of India as we have, yet 
all have enriched themselves from the revenues of the country, and many have out 
of their abundance laid out considerable sums on works of public improvements. 
..From doing this we are debarred. ...The quantity of the whole burden is by no 
means diminished” (under the English rule), “yet we have no surplus.” 4 

_In estimating the burden of taxation, its nominal amount must 
not fall heavier into the balance than the method of raising it and 
the manner of employing it. The former is detestable in India, 
and in the branch of the land-tax, for instance, wastes perhaps 
more produce than it gets. As to the application of the taxes, it 
will suffice to say that no part of them is returned to the people in 
works of public utility, more indispensable in Asiatic countries 
than anywhere else, and that, as Mr. Bright justly remarked, 
nowhere so extravagant is a provision made for the governing 
class itself.‘