“Railways, both military and commercial, have been greatly extended.  Notwithstanding these extraordinary expenses, there were, during the twenty-five years which followed 1862, fourteen years of surplus and eleven years of deficit, yielding a net surplus of Rs. x 4,000,000.  In 1889 the public debt of India, exclusive of capital invested in railways, showed a reduction since the mutiny period of Rs. x 26,000,000.  The rate at which India can borrow has been reduced from 4 or 5 per cent. to a little over 3 per cent.  The revenue of India, exclusive of railways and municipal funds, has grown between 1856-57 and 1886-87 from Rs. x 33,378,000 to Rs. x 62,859,000, and in 1891 it had increased to Rs. x 64,000,000, or, including railway and migration receipts, to Rs. x 85,750,000; and this increase is due to the growth of old revenue rather than to new taxation.  Further, whilst the rent or land tax paid by the people has increased by one-third, the produce of their fields has more than doubled, in consequence partly of higher prices and partly of increase in cultivation.  Further, in 1891 there were nearly 18,000 miles of railway open, carrying 121,000,000 of passengers and 26,000,000 tons of goods, and adding a benefit to the people of India calculated as far back as 1886 at Rs. x 60,000,000.  Further, the Indian exports and imports at sea, which in 1858 were about Rs. x 40,000,000, amounted in 1891 to about Rs. x 200,000,000, and the produce thus exported has increased in quality and variety no less than in amount.”

What evidences of “a fatal and stunting arrestation of development”!

[70] This extraordinary assumption must evidently have been founded on another, if possible still more wonderful; namely that the American Government was composed of individuals so short-sighted that they would fail to take the precautions which men of ordinary common sense would be sure to adopt with the view of preventing, as far as possible, a sudden fall in the value of silver.  But the American Government, as we know, naturally diminished its purchases of silver, and as no one supposes (except perhaps the Indian Government) that it can be so silly as at once to lose money and create a gratuitous disturbance by suddenly flooding the market with the silver accumulated, we see that, since the repeal of the Sherman Act, the price of silver, so far from having gone down, as anticipated by the Viceroy, has even slightly gone up.