te the education of their girls only up to an age and
up to a standard at which it can do little good, or, according to their
point of view, little harm."

NOTE 22

THE THEORY OF THE "DRAIN."

The Master of Elibank, then Under-Secretary of State, included in his
Indian Budget speech on Aug. 5, 1909, a brief but effective refutation
of the "drain" theory:--

"If the House will allow me, I wish to digress for a moment to deal with
a charge that is constantly made, and has recently been repeated, to the
effect that there is poverty in India which is largely due to the
political and commercial drain on the country year by year, the
political, it is asserted, amounting to L30,000,000 and the commercial
to L40,000,000. These figures have been placed even higher by those who
wish to blacken the Indian Administration in order to bolster up a
malicious agitation against this country. I think it is incumbent upon
the representative of the Indian Government in this House to deal with
the statement. I may at once say that it has no foundation in fact.
(Hear, hear.) Its origin is to be found, no doubt, in the fact that
India makes annually considerable payments in England in return for
services rendered, such as the loan of British capital; but there is no
justification for describing these payments as a drain, and their amount
is only a fraction of the figures which I have just quoted. Let me deal
first with the question of amount. As the method by which India makes
her payments in England is that she exports more than she imports, all
calculations as to the amount of payments must necessarily be based on
the returns of Indian trade, which show by how much the Indian exports
exceed her imports. If the trade returns are examined for 1904, 1906,
and 1906, after making due allowance for the capital sent to India in
connexion with Government transactions, the average excess of exports
over imports, or in other words payments by India to England for
services rendered, is L23,900,000 per year during the three years that
have been mentioned. This payment is made up of, first, L21,200,000,
being the average annual amount of the Government remittance during
three years, which corresponds to the alleged political drain of
L30,000,000; and, secondly, L2,700,000, the average annual amount of
private remittances during the same period, which total has been most
carefully examined and corresponds to the alleged commercial drain of
L40,000