Asiatic Quarterly Review (Full Title: The Imperial and Asiatic Quarterly Review, and Oriental and Colonial Record): Volume XIII, No. 26 [‎528r] (180/238)

Proceedings of the East India Association.
393
once more confronted with another of those oft-recurring tests of the
sincerity and firmness of the well-founded principles on which we are
striving to adapt Western constructive methods to the transition phase of
modern Indian peoples. My own conviction is that, in spite of these
occasional ebb-tides, that test will stand the strain. Just one word as to
Sir Roland Wilson’s device and argument for restraint of the noble plan of
Indian public instruction,—retrenchment. Really, the disproportion of this
relief for the impecuniosity of India is too grotesque for argument. It is,
indeed, as he admitted, a mere “ flea-bite ” as compared with the monster
“leech” which from 1876 to 1882 sucked away one hundred millions of
India’s resources to be worse than wasted outside of India altogether; and
which, judging by certain incidental remarks in the paper, the honourable
Baronet seemed to have forgotten, or regarded with childlike acquiescence.
Sir Roland Wilson’s Reply.
By express request of the Chairman, owing to the lateness of the hour, I
reserved nearly the whole of my reply, and I find that, in addition to the six
speeches delivered at the meeting, there are two other written contributions
subsequently sent to be dealt with. So much the better. I propose to take
up the various criticisms in the order of the various points in my paper
to which they relate, rather than in the purely accidental order of the
speeches.
1. The Facts about Indian Poverty. —Mr. Thorburn seems to think that
the figures of Lord Curzon and Mr. Digby are equally worthless, and that
nobody knows anything about the matter. Does he mean, also, that it is
a waste of time to try to find out the truth ? If so, few people will agree
with him; for it would imply the abandonment of all hope of ever framing
a rational Budget. Mr. Rees, who followed Mr. Digby, would have been
saved, by more careful attention to that gentleman’s remarks, from the
mistake of treating i^d. a day as the Curzonian estimate of the average
cultivator’s income. Mr. Digby had pointed out that the Viceroy esti
mated the agricultural income at 17 s - a y ear > or seven-eighths of a penny
a day, being only half a farthing more than his own estimate. The same
mistake, by the way, was made by Lord George Hamilton in the House of
Commons. For the purpose of my argument, the general average income
—taking rich and poor, agriculturists and non-agriculturists, together was
the important matter, and it was a considerable concession on my part, for
the sake of simplifying the discussion, when I accepted Lord Curzon’s ^2
per annum instead of the or thereabouts indicated in the diagram on
p. 2 of Mr. Digby’s book. The more optimistic estimate was, however,
quite bad enough to prove the urgent need for retrenchment. The protest,
made by Mr. Rees and endorsed by Sir C. Stevens, against my laying stress
on the contrast between the weekly ^2 of a London artisan and \\\& yearly
f2 of the average Indian taxpayer—or, as I might have put it, the yearly