Item 2a - Letter from Ramsay MacDonald to Ernest Gowers

3 Lincolns Inn Fields, London, W.C.—If he has been unjust to Dane he is sorry, but Dane’s letter [A4/8/2b] contains a good deal of ingenuousness, and if it had been given to him in India when he was investigating the subject he would have cross-examined him on some points and sought evidence on others. It is not true that Dane impressed on him that the [land] tax was in the form of a rent; rather he himself introduced the subject by asking whether that would be Dane’s defence; but the Viceroy arrived at that point, and they could not discuss the matter further. Dane’s defence of his Government made him smile: it may be true, but the attacks on it MacDonald heard in his investigations did not come from the quarters or for the motives Dane suggests. He would like to discuss with Dane the pros and cons of the ‘peaceful nature of his province’. His book contains no suggestion that Dane’s revenue is the heaviest in India. Financial reformers in India generally seize on the taxation imposed in the Chenab colonies and similar irrigation areas, and he mentioned the Punjab to show that he had their own arguments in mind. On reviewing his notebook he can say that if what Dane says about the tree is true, he was grossly misled by a trusted Government representative. There is, however, a general complaint in Simla that the houses of officials are unnecessarily large and expensive to maintain. Sir O’Moore Creagh, the Commander in Chief, and Sir Guy Fleetwood Wilson, the financial minister, both complained to him of the needless expenditure placed on them by their predecessors’ extravagance, which the Government of the time should not have allowed. He returns the letter.