Page:The opium revenue.djvu/33

 we are glad to print here, for the consideration of members of Parliament, the following important letter from a distinguished authority on Indian subjects, Sir Arthur Cotton: —

Dorking, June 14th, 1875.

I regret that I was so knocked up that I could not attend your Committee Meeting. I wished to have brought some points before the Committee with reference to the argument that we cannot do without the opium revenue, six and a quarter millions.

1st.—We must prepare to do without it. For the cultivation in China is so extending that the price of Indian opium must fall. And this is therefore a most pressing question for the Indian Government any how.

2nd.—The present net revenue doesn't represent the loss there would be if opium were not cultivated. "We have to deduct from it the amount that would be paid by the same population when employed in other cultivation.

The area cultivated for opium is 750,000 acres, and the population employed, I calculate, about one and half millions.

The net value of this produce per acre is 80 Rupees per annum, and the gross value about 100 Rupees. The gross value per annum of such superior land would be I suppose at present about 20 Rupees (?) as dry land, and 50 Rupees as irrigated.

The taxes paid by one and a half millions at 2½ Rupees, the present average, would be £375,000, which deducted from the opium revenue would leave about £5,900,000 for the loss, if opium were given up. The question then is, how to make up for this loss.

In Madras the three irrigated districts pay a revenue of £600,000 a year, on an average, £350,000 above the average of dry districts, so that seventeen districts so improved would make up the £5,900,000.

3rd.—The population is rapidly increasing, and the Government must keep in view the increased production of grain. As it is the famines show that the production of grain is hardly sufficient.

4th.—Against the opium revenue must be set part of the expenditure in meeting famines, in the last, 6 millions; and probably not less than an average of a million a year ought to be calculated upon as the loss from the mere cost of keeping the people alive, besides all the loss of taxes.

5th.—The revenue of India is steadily increasing, probably at an average of about a million a year, as matters are now conducted.