of Sir Gangadhar Chitnavis’s view on this point.  “There is,” he said, “much room for the development of India’s other resources, and it has yet to be shown that there is no room for further economies in our administration.”  In the meanwhile, it would tend to the elucidation of the subject if Sir Roper Lethbridge and those who agree with him would lay before the world a carefully prepared and detailed estimate of the financial results which they consider would accrue from the adoption of their proposals.  We are told, for instance, that raw jute to the value of L13,000,000 is exported annually from Bengal, of which only L3,000,000 worth is worked up in Great Britain, and that “a moderate duty” on this article would produce two millions a year.  The prospect of obtaining a revenue of L2,000,000 in the manner proposed by Sir Roper Lethbridge appears at first sight somewhat illusory.  In the first place, the tax would, on the basis of Sir Roper Lethbridge’s figures, amount to 20 per cent, which can scarcely be called “moderate.”  In the second place, unless an equivalent export duty were imposed at British ports it would appear probable that the process of re-export for the benefit of “the lucky artisans of foreign protected nations” would not merely continue unchecked, but would even be encouraged, for those artisans would certainly not be supplied direct from India with the duty-laden raw material, but would draw their supplies from the jute sent to the ports of the United Kingdom, which would have paid no duty.  Is it, moreover, quite certain that a duty such as that proposed by Sir Roper Lethbridge would be insufficient, as he alleges, “to bring in any competing fibres in the world”?  These and other cognate points manifestly require further elucidation.

The third argument adduced by Sir Roper Lethbridge is based on the allegation that India is in a specially favourable position to adopt a policy of retaliation.  It is unnecessary to go into the general arguments for and against retaliatory duties.  They have been exhausted in the very remarkable and frigidly impartial book written on this subject by Professor Dietzel.  It will be sufficient to say that here Sir Roper Lethbridge is on stronger ground.  The main argument against retaliation in the United Kingdom is that foreign nations, by stopping our supplies of raw material, could check our manufactures.  We are, therefore, in a singularly unfavourable position for engaging in a tariff war.  The case of India is wholly different.  Foreign nations cannot, it is alleged, dispense with the raw material which India supplies.  There is, therefore, a good prima facie case for supposing that India has relatively little to fear from retaliation on their part.