The first making division of the Session has been taken
by Mr. Fawcett. He moved on Tuesday that the Select Committee of Inquiry into Indian Finance should be reappointed. The Govern- ment resisted, alleging that the inquiry proposed was too wide, that the Committee would require the evidence of officers who could not be spared, and that Lord Salisbury, and Sir John Strachey, the Finance Minister, could do better without inter- ference. The Government, however, said Lord George Hamilton, would concede a smaller Committee, to inquire into some well- defined division of the vast subject. Sir George Campbell supported Mr. Fawcett, in a speech in which he showed that five successive Viceroys had five times altered the very bases of Indian financial arrangements, and expressed his earnest desire for some permanent system ; but the Government triumphed, by a majority of 50. Mr. Smollett proposed an amendment prohibit- ing new public works, which was, of course, withdrawn, but which enabled him to make a coarsely able speech, in which he attributed the deficits to the Department of Public Works, which cost /1,500,000 a year, and spent £5,000,000. Unfortunately he accused the Department of cooking accounts, and thereby en- abled Lord George Hamilton to make a showy but nonsensical protest on behalf of an absent Service. Mr. Smollett did not accuse the Department of corruption, but of calculating profits for canals without reckoning the cost of old canals which they had utilised, and every Service is " absent " when criticised in the House. Is the House to condemn no public servant who is not a Member of it ?
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