[1] Mr. Brunyate spoke as follows:—“Many here will remember the arguments used on behalf of the tea–planting industry. At that time India and China had been competing together for years on the same footing as regards currency. It was argued that the disturbance of the exchange, the appreciation of the rupee and the depreciation of silver, might not only result in India’s ascendancy in regard to tea being wrested from her, but in the entire and irretrievable ruin of the tea industry. I am quoting the words actually used by the Darjeeling Planters’ Association in 1892. In the year before the closing of the Mints India exported 115 million pounds of tea to foreign countries, and by 1909 had a little more than doubled that amount. Almost exactly the same arguments were used in regard to the cotton industry, and here I must enter into more detail. What the mill–owners feared, and had excellent reason for fearing, was an enormous depreciation in silver. This actually took place. In 1892–93, the year before the Mints were closed, the average value of silver per ounce was nearly 40d. The next year it fell to 33⅓d.; the year after to about 29d.; and it stayed at or below 30d. for some years. Surely here were the conditions in which a disastrous stimulus to production in China might have been expected. The so–called bounty in this case was not 2 per cent but 25 per cent. It was not a temporary decline which might be counterbalanced by other causes in the course of a single month. It continued for years, and as we all know silver has not since returned to a price anything like 40d. an ounce. In addition, just before the closing of the Mints occurred there had been considerable overtrading, and the mills had actually been working short time for some months before to enable the Chinese markets to dispose of their accumulated stocks. There was, as a matter of fact, a fall in exports in 1893–94 partly due to the dislocation arising from the changes in our currency system and partly to the existing glut of the Chinese market. The exports picked up, however, in 1894–95, and it would appear that the adjustment of prices and wages in China to the extraordinary new conditions began very quickly, for I find it stated that by the first month of 1894 the mills were again working steadily and profitably. I may perhaps give the actual figures. In 1891–92 the exports of yarn had been 161 million pounds. In 1892–93 the inflated year just preceding the closing of the Mints, they rose to 189 million pounds. In 1893–94 they fell (as I have said) to 134 millions, but went up again the following year to 159 millions. In 1902–3 and 1903–4, though by this time the value of silver had now fallen to 24d., the exports were about 250,000,000 pounds, and in 1905–6 they reached the record figure of 298 millions. In the last two or three years there has been a falling off, owing to various causes, but the amount exported in 1908–9 was as much as 235 millions, and in