27 JANUARY 1894, Page 24

THE INDIAN TROUBLE.

WE hate writing on any part of the silver question—the article must be so dull for those who feel no dis- position to understand the matter; but the recent proceed- ings of the India Office are too important, and to economists too interesting, to be passed without remark. It is evident from Lord Lansdowne's speech in Calcutta, on Tuesday, from the extraordinary telegrams between him and Lord Kimberley—telegrams which read as if a spendthrift and his lawyer were corresponding on the means of raising the wind—and from the recent announcement as to the sale of bills in London, that the effort to raise the value of the rupee has on one point broken down. The Government of India cannot, as it hoped, regulate the rate of exchange. The experiment looked promising for a moment; but, as usual, unexpected factors inter- vened. The Indians liked, instead of disliking, the cheap- ness of silver, just as French peasants like cheap renter; and there was, says Lord Lansdowne, a wholly unexpected and " huge " import of the metal. Of course, every hun- dred pounds' worth of silver sent from here diminished the demand in London for India Council Bills by a hundred pounds, and the sales, therefore, shrunk at the rate of some £5,000,000 a year. Then the low value of the rupee had acted as a law of Protection would have done in India,— the native growers and manufacturers paying wages in the cheap metal and receiving pay in the dear one, and when that low value ceased, the Lancashire exporters saw their opportunity. They sent out millions' worth of textile fabrics, and of course the extra quantity, besides half- ruining the Indian mills, acted as a huge remittance to India. Nobody wanted India Council bills to remit ; nobody would buy them at the fixed price ; and the India Office found its till nearly empty. As that meant the bankruptcy of a department, Parliament came to its relief with permission to borrow up to ten millions in gold ; but Lord Kimberley, who is a much stronger Minister than the public quite recognises, saw that this was only a momentary relief, and insisted that he must sell Council bills for what they would fetch, which is guessed to be—and only guessed to be—ls. 21d. on the rupee. If, however, even that price cannot be obtained, the India Office must still sell, or find its till empty in July, and consequently, though the Office still bargains and threatens the dealers, exchange must be left at last to its market level.

There is no discredit to anybody in this result. The experiment had to be made, as even Lord Herschell's Com- mittee admitted, if only because the Indian Government was determined it should be, and it failed, as all such experiments fail, from unexpected causes. The failure, however, compels the Government to ask the experts for another plan, and we do hope those gentlemen in answering will this time attend to the following piece of advice. Let them narrow their minds a bit. They are not asked to settle the question of bimetallism, or to discuss a gold standard for India, or to bother about the ratios of the precious metals, but to sug- gest some way in which the Government of India, which has plenty of revenue in India, can remit a million sterling a month to London without unbearable losses. We say a million sterling a month, though the India Office wants about £16,000,000 a year, because the remaining .4,000,000 could be easily obtained here by selling cheap bills, or drawing slowly on the new gold loan of £10,000,000. Now, surely the problem, as we state it, cannot be wholly beyond the range of financiers' intellects ? We make no absurd pretension to help them clear sight of a time when it could not have paid its pen- to a decision, but even we, as entire outsiders, may sions or even its own clerks. We impute no mismanage- venture to apply one test to the problem. What would a ment, for there is none ; but there is puzzlement, and great house in India—say, Rothschilds—if it wanted to those responsible must get clear of it, or there will be remit a million sterling a month to Europe, do ? Surely disaster. If a bad event happens in India, where bad it would first of all buy all bills payable in Europe events, as Lord Dalhousie said, ought always to be ex- in gold, with its stores of silver ; and this not only in meted, the Local Government will have to pay a pike fur Bombay and Calcutta, but in Shanghai and Batavia, both money recalling the days when Mr. Rattray accused them of which trading centres use silver, and remit largely to of fraud for offering less than 8 per cent. London and Amsterdam. Then the house would buy all the gold it could, and remit that, and would probably find, as Sir R. Temple found, that the Indian gold AUTOMATIC COMPENSATION FOR INJURIES. market was unexpectedly large. South India is pro- MR. BALFOUR has done what is often said to be ducing gold now, and India has for ages been buying, impossible. In the speech delivered by him to a hoarding, and using gold. Those purchases being still popular audience at Manchester on Tuesday, he made a insufficient, the house would make up the sum wanted real contribution to the controversy in regard to the by remitting any produce sure of sale by auction, say, Employers' Liability Bill. Political pessimists tell us saltpetre, indigo—both almost monopolies of Bengal that public speaking has degenerated into mere rhetorical —tea, and even wheat and tobacco, of which latter clap-trap, and that no one who speaks to a great public article the French Government, with its monopoly to meeting ventures to do anything but deal in vague manage, might be a large and willing purchaser. There generalities or appeals to party passion. All idea of solid may be objections to that plan, of which we can see reasoning has, we are told, to be abandoned by the man nothing ; but there is certainly no impossibility in it, and who wishes to make a speech to which his constituents if it succeeded, the India Office would cease to be con- m ill listen. He can only succeed in gaining their attention fined 'to a single market as it now is,—a market, by plying them with a coarse and highly spiced mixture 'too, which India suspects—we fancy unjustly—to be of flattery, invective, and bombast. We quite admit that manipulated by a ring of bankers and bullion-dealers. this is the compound to which our public meetings are it would feel itself quite independent, and might usually treated, but we deny that there is any necessity betake itself in security to a task which it must for its exhibition. That our view is the true one can be attempt some day,—that of slowly arranging to pay for proved by a speech such as that delivered by Mr. Balfour everything, pensions included, in India, leaving all on Tuesday. He was speaking to a typical popular gather- claimants to get their money home in their own way. ing, in a constituency entirely inhabited by working men, Private agents, we may depend on it, will be a great deal and yet he.never once descended to the arts of the verbal sharper and less bound by red-tape than the India Office conjurer. He placed a great practical problem before his has been, and will continue to be. It is this necessity of audience, and discussed it with them freely and thoroughly. getting a huge annual sum from India to pay for pen- His trust in the good sense of the people was amply sions, State dividends, Railway dividends, and stores rewarded, and he was enabled to put before the country purchased here, and not a currency dispute, which, so to certain considerations in regard to the payment of com- speak, strangles the India Office, and makes it impatient or pensation for injury to workmen which are of the utmost frightened under a fall in silver which, it must not be for- importance. gotten, makes the fortune of the Indian producer. " Cheap Every one who has a head to think and a heart to feel silver a nuisance," said a Mysore coffee-planter recently, must agree that the ideal arrangement would be that "why, I pay sixpence and get ninepence. That suits me every person injured in the work of industrial production, at all events." The effort to control exchange has failed, no matter what the cause, should receive compensation. and the true course now is, we believe, to remit from the Under the new Employers' Liability Bill, however, very Indian side as much as possible of the money wanted. little indeed will be done to bring about so desirable a There is one other point which we desire, for the second state of things. The Bill, in effect, only makes the em- time, to press on the attention of the India Office. They ployer liable to pay compensation when the injury done are dreaming, we believe, that the export of cheap silver to the workman was due either to the fault of the em- to India, which, as Lord Lansdowne admits, has been one ployer in not providing proper machinery and proper main cause of the defeat of their experiment in safeguards, or to the carelessness of a foreman or of a exchanges, will rapidly fall off—perhaps cease altogether. fellow-workman, provided that the injured man did not They may be right, but they are bound to reckon on the contribute to the injury by his own negligence. This possibility that they are under a delusion. There are means that to make good a claim for compensation the sixty millions of households in India, and in every one of injured man has got to make out that there was careless- them uncoined silver is an object of passionate desire, not ness on the part of others, and no contributory negligence only for its value, but its look, as the one pretty thing, on his own part. But the cases of injury in which any which, while it sets off women and children and household such allegations could be sustained are comparatively few utensils, also indicates respectability, and resources in number. The majority of cases are those in which against the next occurrence of a family wedding. Those the workman, by his own carelessness, has caused the willing purchasers will go on buying, as we believe, while accident. To say this does not imply any special reek- silver is cheap, and the extent of their demand must lessness on the part of the workmen. Every one must always from their mere numbers be enormous, large know instances of how men, usually perfectly steady enough to affect even the world's present glut of the and wide-awake, will, in a moment of forgetfulness, metal. Those purchases tend, of course, to keep up the do something which will bring on them the most terrible price of silver, which, indeed, without that demand for injuries. One may know exactly how to adjust a set of India and China, would sink out of sight, but they library-steps, and may have been accustomed to use them also operate to kill the demand for other forms of with perfect safety for twenty years. Some day, however, remittance from London. The Indian Government it may happen that one is absurdly careless in their use, now admits this publicly, and the India Office, in and the result is a tumble and a sprained ankle. This is considering how to get its annual revenue sent over, the sort of thing which is liable to happen only on a, larger must take the Indian demand for cheap silver as one scale in every factory. Men incur terrible injuries by primary factor. They have not fully recognised it yet, what looks like deliberate folly. These cases are often, as and until they do, they will not be convinced that they Mr. Balfour pointed out, among the most pathetic that must supplement their system of selling cheques on the occur. But since no one is to blame but the injured man, Indian Treasuries by direct remit tances from the other side. no compensation can be claimed. Under the circumstances, The key of their great difficulty lies there, and the busi- it might be supposed that a Government anxious, as are ness of the experts is to help them to fit it to the lock. the present Government, to stop the evils which arise The question of the proper standard of currency can wait, when a workman is killed or injured, and yet no com- but that of remittances is urgent to the point of danger. pensation can be claimed, would have done their best to It is almost a disgrace that the Indian Government at encourage any agency under which compensation would home with nearly twenty millions lying unused in India, be paid, no matter who caused the accident. Yet the and its credit actually higher than that of France, should present Government actually propose to discourage by law be, as it was when Sir William Harcourt spoke, within those agencies through which compensation has been paid