I think everyone on this side of the House, and I hope most hon. Members in other parts of the House who desire to see in Indian affairs a continuity of policy between one Government and another, will have heard with considerable pleasure the speech which the hon. Gentleman has just made. He has given, on the second occasion on which he has spoken in the House, an effective reply to the complaint which had been made from the benches behind him. I only regret that the hon. Member for Dartford (Mr. Mills), who seconded the Resolution, was not in the House to hear the arguments of the hon. Gentleman. In answer to the point made by the Mover of the Resolution, I am going to refer to what has already been done to improve labour conditions in India. The hon. Member, who made a most striking speech, to which testimony has been paid from all quarters of the House, made a reference to the Government of which I was a Member, and said that questions had been put to us about the conditions of labour in India, and that some of the answers which we had given showed an appalling state of affairs. It suffices now to say, and I think that it is a fact which he should know, that those improvements, to which the Under-Secretary has just referred, which have placed India in a better position, from the point of view of modern industrial hygiene, than any other Asiatic country, were initiated when a wicked Conservative Government was in office in this country.

It is true that the matter was primarily a matter for the Government of India. It is true that the Indians themselves, through their Ministers and representatives, have more than the major part of the control over these matters, but it should be noticed that these improvements which have taken place—and it was an honest mistake of the Mover to suppose that nothing had been done—were done when the late Government were in power in this country. The Under-Secretary stated, and it is a fact, that, after all, the real problem in India was the problem of the land. India is an agricultural country, and an agricultural country to a greater extent almost than any other country, at any rate any other country of its size, in the whole world to-day, and he referred to some of the reasons why the problem of the land is so difficult and why the poverty of the people is so great.

One of the reasons, undoubtedly, is the pressure of population which has been growing year by year, and which has grown especially since the British connection with India, because since that British connection steps have been taken to deal with the appalling famines and diseases which formerly devastated that country. Then there is the fact, which it is as well should be known to some Indians and to other extremists who would deny to this country any share in the benefits to India during the last 100 years, that some of the poverty is due to the terrific taxation, and to the draining away of the rights of the cultivators which went on in India before the days of British occupation, from which the land has never recovered. But the condition of affairs is primarily due to what the Under-Secretary very frankly stated, having regard to his position and to the position of his Government, as the lack of capital on the land in India. It was with the greatest pleasure that all of us on this side of the House heard such an admission from a member of the Government, and realised that, at any rate, capital is sometimes considered by some members of the Government to be an advantage. Some hon. Member opposite said that it was remarkable how with responsibility there comes a sense of responsibility. Never has that very true statement been better exemplified than in the frank and very sincere admission of the Under-Secretary of State to-night.