your defense of the increase in the cotton duties in India and over your concern for India and Indian industries, but you are mistaken if you think that anyone in India is likely to be taken in by your hypocritical professions. Pardon me, sir, I mean no insult when I say "hypocritical professions." The practice is a part of a modern statesman's job. He has to create a certain atmosphere before he can make his people believe that what he does is the only correct thing to do. Your cotton duties, sir, afford no relief to the Indian poor. It would not have hurt me much, if you had forced or induced the Rajas and the Maharajas, the bankers and the capitalists to contribute even more than 100 million pounds to the war expenses, as it is they who have grown fat, if anyone in India has, under the British regime, but to force the Indian ryot and the Indian wage earner to do it and to continue to pay for it for years to come out of his scanty daily rations is the climax of cruelty. Then the unkindest cut of all is that it should come from you, whom we had associated with feelings of kindness, and pity, for the poor and the workmen. Your Government has called it a free and spontaneous gift of the people of India! If the members of your cabinet, if the Secretary of State for India, if the Governor General of India and his ministers of the Executive Council, are the people of India, then truly you are right and we wrong. If they are not the people of India, as they are not, then it is a gift by yourself to yourself, of other peoples' money. Again, the statement that the measure was unanimously approved of by the Indian members of the council is a _diplomatic lie_. You know that the matter was settled between your Cabinet as represented by the Secretary of State for India and the Viceroy's Executive Council (which includes only one Indian member nominated by you), before it was announced in the Legislative Council. You know also, sir, and if you don't, you ought to, that the Indian Legislative Council has no power under the law to make any changes in the budget. The budget is entirely beyond their purview. The members can only extol it or criticise it. They can propose resolutions disapproving of some of its provisions which can amount to nothing more than pious wishes even if passed. But the official majority in the Council guarantees the defeat of any hostile resolutions by non-official members. Re this loan-cum-gift transaction, the non-official members of the Legislative Council put a seal on their mouths because they thought it was useless to incur the risk of being called disloyal for a matter which was reported to them as a _fait accompli_ and which they could not in any way change or modify; yet two of them did raise a sort of feeble protest. IT IS NOT A GIFT BY THE PEOPLE OF INDIA