ce and work of the Crown in
India. By those, too, who take part in the immense work of commercial
and non-official life in India. We are overheard by great Indian
princes who are outside British India. We are overheard by the dim
masses of Indians whom, in spite of all, we shall persist in regarding
as our friends. We are overheard by those whom, I am afraid, we must
reluctantly call our enemies. This is the reason why everybody who
speaks to-day, certainly including myself, must use language that is
well advised, language of reserve, and, as I say again, the fruit of
comprehensive consideration.

The Budget is a prosperity Budget. We have, however, to admit that
a black shadow falls across the prospect. The plague figures are
appalling. But do not let us get unreasonably dismayed, even about
these appalling figures. If we reviewed the plague figures up to last
December, we might have hoped that the horrible scourge was on the
wane. From 92,000 deaths in the year 1900, the figures went up to
1,100,000 in 1904, while in 1905 they exceeded 1,000,000. In 1906
a gleam of hope arose, and the mortality sank to something under
350,000. The combined efforts of Government and people had produced
that reduction; but, alas, since January, 1907, plague has again
flared up in districts that have been filled with its terror for a
decade; and for the first four months of this year the deaths amounted
to 642,000, which exceeded the record for the same period in any past
year. You must remember that we have to cover a very vast area. I do
not know that these figures would startle us if we took the area of
the whole of Europe. It was in 1896 that this plague first appeared in
India, and up to April, 1907, the total figure of the human beings who
have died is 5,250,000. But dealing with a population of 300,000,000,
this dire mortality, although enormous, is not at all comparable with
the results of the black death and other scourges, that spread over
Europe in earlier times, in proportion to the population. The plague
mortality in 1904 (the worst complete year) would only represent,
if evenly distributed, a death-rate of about 3 per 1,000. But it is
local, and particularly centres in the Punjab, the United Provinces,
and in Bombay. I do not think that anybody who has been concerned in
India--I do not care to what school of Indian thought he belongs--can
deny that measures for the extermination and mitigation of this
disease have occupied