Page:Allan Octavian Hume, C.B.; Father of the Indian National Congress.djvu/109

 At this time the financial condition of India was very critical. The Viceroy, Lord Lansdowne, described the situation in the following terms : " To leave matters as they are means for the Government of India hopeless financial confusion ; . . . for the taxpayers of India the prospect of heavy and unpopular burdens ; and for the country as a whole a fatal and stunting arrest of its development." Under these circumstances, a letter (dated ist July 1894) was addressed, on behalf of the Committee, to Mr. Henry Fowler, then Secretary of State for India, containing a searching criticism of Mr. Westland's Budget ; and the subsequent proceedings in the House of Commons, followed by the debate on the Indian Budget, resulted in Mr. Dadabhai Naoroji's motion for a Parliamentary enquiry, which wrung from Mr. Fowler the appointment of the Welby Royal Com- mission on Indian expenditure and the apportionment of charge between India and the United Kingdom.

At the elections during the ten succeeding years of Tory domination the Indian Parliamentary Committee lost many of its most active members. But at last the wave of reaction spent its force ; the tide turned ; and at the General Election of January 1906 the Tory Govern- ment was wrecked, and power came into the hands of the most democratic Government, and the most demo- cratic House of Commons, that had existed since the Reform Act of 1832. With a House of Commons so favourably constituted, no time was lost in reviving the Indian Parliamentary Committee. At the invitation of Sir W. Wedderburn, a company of Members of Parlia- ment and others interested in Indian affairs, met at breakfast on February 28th 1906, at the Westminster Palace Hotel ; and afterwards a Conference was held " with a view to reconstitute the Indian Parliamentary Committee, and generally to consider what action may