XX

THE FISCAL QUESTION IN INDIA

"The Spectator,” July 19, 1913

Sir Roper Lethbridge says that his object in writing the book which he has recently published (The Indian Offer of Imperial Preference) is to provoke discussion, but “not to lay down any dogma.”  It is related that a certain clergyman, after he had preached a sermon, said to Lord Melbourne, who had been one of his congregation, “I tried not to be tedious,” to which Lord Melbourne replied, “You were.”  Sir Roper Lethbridge may have tried not to dogmatise, but his efforts in this direction have certainly not been crowned with success.  On the contrary, although dealing with a subject which bristles with points of a highly controversial nature, he states his conclusions with an assurance which is little short of oracular.  Heedless of the woful fate which has attended many of the fiscal seers who have preceded him, he does not hesitate to pronounce the most confident prophecies upon a subject as to which experience has proved that prophecy is eminently hazardous, viz. the economic effect likely to be produced by drastic changes in the fiscal system.  Moreover, his pages are disfigured by a good deal of commonplace invective about “the shibboleths of an obsolete Cobdenism,” the “worship of the fetish of Cobdenism,” and “the bigotry of the Cobden Club,” as to whom the stale fallacy is repeated that they “consider the well-being of the ‘poor foreigner’” rather than “our own commercial interests.”  Language of this sort can only serve to irritate.  It cannot convince.  Sir Roper Lethbridge appears to forget that, apart from those who, on general party grounds, are little inclined to listen to the gospel which he has to preach, there are a large number of Unionists who are to a greater extent open to conviction, and who, if their conversion can be effected, are, in the interests of the cause which he advocates, well worth convincing.  These blemishes—­for blemishes they unquestionably are—­should not, however, blind us to the fact that Sir Roper Lethbridge deals with a subject of very great importance and also of very great difficulty.  It is most desirable that it should be discussed.  Sir Fleetwood Wilson, in the very statesmanlike speech delivered in the Indian Legislative Council last March, indicated the spirit in which the discussion should take place.  “The subject,” he said, “is one which in the public interest calls for consideration, not recrimination.”  It would be Utopian to suppose that it can be kept altogether outside the arena of party strife, but those who are not uncompromising partisans, and who also strongly deprecate Indian questions being made the shuttlecock of party interests, can at all events endeavour to approach the question with an open mind and to treat it dispassionately and exclusively on its own merits.