The Duke of Argyll presented the Indian financial statement to
the House of Peers on Thursday. Twelve peers attended to listen to it. The main fact of the speech was that there had been another muddle in Indian accounts, and that owing partly to blun- ders in arithmetic, partly to reductions, and partly to the rise in some items of revenue, the deficit for 1869-70, which was believed to be £1,500,000, had disappeared, and had been re- placed by a surplus of £200,000. That is to say, Lord Mayo has telegraphed that statement, and if the receipts are added sip right in all the Presidencies, which is improbable, and nobody has forgotten an expenditure of a million or so, which is unusual, then the surplus exists. The Duke, however, sees danger in the coming year and defends the income-tax, which he says, if imposed on landlords as well as traders, might be made permanent. We greatly fear if he has issued that order he will hear something from the Zemindars of Bengal hitherto so faithful, on whom he is putting not only the income-tax, which may be fair, but " ceases " for education, which are direct additions to the land- tax which we solemnly pledged the public faith not to increae. Those ceases are placed specially on the land, not, like the income- tax, on receipts from every source, which is precisely what we engaged not to do. We shall have to copy the American Con- stitution in the next Regulating. Act, and forbid the Indian Legislature to pass any law dissolving the obligation of a contract.
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