Rightly or wrongly, every Indian believes that the Excise duty was imposed upon India for the selfish benefit of the British cotton manufacturer and under the pressure of British party politics.  He believes, as was once sarcastically remarked by an Indian member of the Viceroy’s Legislative Council, that, so long as Lancashire sends 60 members to Westminster, the British Government will always have 60 reasons for maintaining the Excise duty.  To the English argument that the duty is “only a small one” the Indian reply is that, according to the results of an elaborate statistical inquiry conducted at the instance of the late Mr. Jamsetjee N. Tata, a 3-1/2 per cent Excise duty on cotton cloth is equivalent to a 7 per cent duty on capital invested in weaving under Indian conditions.  The profits are very fluctuating and the depreciation of plant is considerable.  Equally fallacious is another argument that the duty is in reality paid by Englishmen.  The capital engaged in the Indian cotton industry is, it is contended, not British, but almost exclusively Indian, and a large proportion is held by not over-affluent Indian shareholders.

There is nothing to choose between the records of the two great political parties at home in their treatment of England’s financial and fiscal relations with India, and English Tariff Reformers have as a rule shown little more disposition than English Free Traders to study Indian interests.  In fact, until Mr. M. de P. Webb, a member of the Bombay Legislative Council, published under the title of “India and the Empire” an able exposition of the Tariff problem in relation to India, very few Tariff Reformers seemed even to take India into account in their schemes of Imperial preference.  I hope, therefore, to be absolved from all suspicion of party bias in drawing attention to a question which is, I believe, destined to play in the near future a most important—­perhaps even a determining—­part in the relations of India to the British Empire.

One of the first things that struck me on my return to India this year—­and struck me most forcibly—­was the universality and vehemence of the demand for a new economic policy directed with energy and system to the expansion of Indian trade and industry.  It is a demand with which the great majority of Anglo-Indian officials are in full sympathy, and it is in fact largely the outcome of their own efforts to stimulate Indian interest in the question.  There is very little doubt that the Government of India would be disposed to respond to it speedily and heartily on the lines I have already briefly indicated.  Will the Imperial Government and the British democracy lend them a helping hand or even leave a free hand to them?  If not, we shall assuredly find ourselves confronted with an equally universal and vehement demand for Protection pure and simple by the erection of an Indian Tariff wall against the competition of imported manufactures.  I need hardly point out how the