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those principles are yet much misunderstood , and that those , relations affect very deeply the vitality of our commerce , and the amount of our national strength . If- * rar really take place , and continue as long as now seems probable , our changed position will render India more important to us than ever ; we shall need it tooth as a customer supplying the elements of re-• oorces which protracted warfare will require , and as a faithful political member of the confederacy which frill not be too strong for its part in the coming
untie of right . If war could possibly be averted without prejudice to right , then the interests of peace , Caxcelyless grave though less , clamorous than the necessities of war , would call for these investigations b ^ means of consequences nothing else can avert . Korrwould an intervening period of war require or justify the postponing of those vital , and , therefore , gradual efforts and reforms which returning peace hwald find already in operation , or for want of which e ^ eii ; peace itself will be fraught to us with but half its ' competence-. ofblessings .
r It affords some gratification to know ; that our relations with India now receive an amount of attention on the part of the general public which was not conceded to them only a few years ago . This general afiid popular attention has a necessity from which no ability of merely official management , however great , can absolve us ; bat it is as yet rather a vague and indistinct belief that there is . sometfajingimportant ** in the matter , than a clear and intelligent apprehension of what is required to beidone , of the way to do it , or of the results to be ejected ;; The progress . made , however , is in the rigtit directions It is no longer supposed , that India ^ tt-peculiar world , inhabited by its own abnormal bluman nature , subject to unintelligible moral iottosyncracies and foreign , intellectual laws : we to that its
h * v # therefor ^ ceased ; believe politics and 4 ts ' industrial condition are beyond our own comp ^ heiw ion . ; j ^ We flnd ^ indeed , we have yet very much to learn , and scarcely less to ' unlearn ; still , having at faaiigth ftdmittea India within ; our conceptions of the geaeral humanity , we are ho longer without canons of / $ udgment , ¦ however ; difflcult it may be to apply them . Many of us can reinember the time , now passing away or past , wheoi it was supposed that Ioaia ^ cpuld only be dealt with by men who , besides a sufficient knowledge of facts , had acquired also aj peculiar jargon of thought , and when , therefore , it was necessary that toe -world outside , should let tlfte matter alone * of
^ This unfounded assumption the special and mysterious character of Indian affairs is of very long standing , and was maintained for generations by the fcttidamental principle of our Indian policy . Our Indian commerce originated in the very hist days of ISuzabetb ; and received its character from those of Jlaines , when monopolies were . the great abuse of the day , the chief characteristic of the times ; To prosper , it was then held on all hands to be necessary to shut out all others from the field . It is true that even
tnen those tendencies of human nature which issue in free trade did not fail to assert themselves with more or less effect , and that at a later period Cromwell essayed to establish an open trade with the East , and ' was only foiled in doing ; so by the political situation of the time . Tet India was practically sealed to the public of England , as far . as law could seal it , from the earliest formation of the East India Company in 1600 , dovmto 1813 , or more properly to 1833 . The extent , however , of our conquests in India from 1800
to 1817 , the urgency for greater outlets for British manufactures which arose during the same period , the increase even of such interests as the law then permitted to exist , and subsequently the extension of intercourse attributable to steam navigation , brought about a state of things of which the commercial relaxations of 1813 , and the final opening of the trade in 1833 , were but the consequences put into legal form . England in general now knows more of India than ever she knew before ; but the traces of two C&ituries of exclusion still in great part remain .
Jn this matter , or in any other we may discuss , we are hot about to visit the East India Company with baaty , still less with exclusive blame , any more than ' ire should charge on the present manufacturers of ^ Lancashire the ultra-Protectionist doctrines of their grandfathers . Until of late , monopoly was universally believed in as the specific of commercial success ; and the East India Company , at any given date , was but nn homogeneous section of the men of the time . Jievertheless it is perfectly true that even our present relations with India still remain deeply and disadvantageou 8 ly affected by the former exclusive
privithe Company ' s services contain , men of the most enlarged views , -who willingly aid any effort for the improvement of the country whoever may make it , yet they also have still in them some officers who exhibit a restlessness under the extension of private enterprise which can only be derived from the notions of former times . It would carry us too far from our present object to show that the recent changes in the constitution of the East India Company , to the lowering of its power preparatory to its final extinction , are a consequence , not of proved . misapplication of power on its part , but of the absence of that popular support which cannot be invoked for the nonce in the hour
of extremity , and which it had failed to lay up for itself as time went on . Men who had been labouring conscientiously and with success within its unvisited and un ventilated bounds , were , surprised , in the day of trial , to find that nobody cared to continue or even to acknowledge their services . It falls , not from having done wrong , but from possessing no friends , —no such friends as openness of discussion and widespread participation in its doings could alone create ,
—openness such as it has often employed extraordinary official cleverness to evade . Hence we have this strange spectacle—a body whose acts , when fairly and closely examined , will bear comparison with those of any other government in the world , falls as though it was condemned on the heaviest charges , while yet , in fact , it is substantially unaccused . Its final resistance was ludicrously feeble , for it had no supporters ; and its fate is little lamented , for its merits are almost unknown .
If our industrial enterprises in India are to be engrafted on this governmental system , they cannot escape the operation of the same causes of decay We do not , however , now pursue this remark , or farther dwell on the sensitive seclusion to which we have adverted ; they present particular cases of the evil we shall have to discuss under other aspects . "We wish just now rather to call attention to the fact ? that our knowledge of India has increased with oar intercourse , —that that intercourse has increased
either from causes altogether independent of the Government , or from proceedings of the Government ( such as extended conquest , &c ) , not intended to have any such effect , —that the difficulties still preventing a sufficient knowledge of India are those arising from the gross imperfection of the means of intercourse , —and that that imperfection , although yet far from being removed from the means of transit between England and India , chiefly lies at present iu the internal transit of India itself .
Turther , since the remedy of political evils depends on the intelligence of the public opinion from which the Government springs , —since the Government of India mainly springs from , and is ultimately controlled by , the public opinion of England , and not so much by that of India itself , —and since the knowledge which England possesses of India is limited and distorted through want of the means of intercourse , it seems at once easy and safe to conclude that to remedy the want of the means of internal transit is to take the first necessary step to the political improvement of India . But there is much more to be said . If public opinion in England is yet but half awake in respect of India , it is because England has no such extended interests in India as
due means of internal transit alone can create . If the industrial productiveness of India contrasts so remarkably to its discredit with that of other countries , and is so disproportionate to its own population and capabilities , it is clear that the chief primary cause now in operation is want of the means of internal transit . If our own commercial intercourse with India is small beyond endurance , and even beyond safety to our own commercial system , the fact is distinctly traceable and has been traced * to the want of means of internal transit . And if amongst all our commercial wants there is one more urgent than another , a want which India can Bupply but does not , —that of cotton , —we still have only another consequence of the same absence of the tnenns of internal transit . !
To day these statements sound like truisms : not long ago , however , they were disputed , and sometimes derided . First it was said India needed no roads , for they would be useless ; then that they could not be made , or would not pny , then that in some parts at least India had them . We remember one of the most eminent and estimable of the older servants of the East India Company , then its Chairman , making a public statement respecting cotton in India ,
which shewed that with all his advantages , he had missed the truth of the question , and that his official colleagueVwere unable to correct him . We have advanced , however , beyond all this . Public attention ia now fixed to some extent on the necessity both for means of transit , and for other territorial works in India ; and the East India Company has adopted the results of investigations , which shewed where in India we can , nnd where we cannot obtain suitable cotton . We have now at least some definite
leges of the East India Company ; and it is no less true or important that the exclusive tendencies of that Company have not ceased with the cessation of its mercantile character . It changes its men but slowly , and its habits more slowly still ; and while we gladly admit that on subjects not immediately lelated to any present discussion it affords information when sought of it with a liberality of which the public in general have little idea , it is still true that it shrinks from publicity in its actual discussions and transactions as sensitively as though it were still a trader ; nor is the Board of Control , as yet , any advance on the Company in this respect . And while
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• Cotton and Commerce qf India . By J . Chapman . Chap . v . t Roporfc of tho Bombay Cotton Committee of 18 ^ 7 , printoc » s Parl pap ., No . 712 , of 1847 .
objects before us ; and the purpose of these papers will be to inquire what are the obstacles which impede the realisation of those objects , and which give so tardy a march to Indian improvements in general . The following brief summary of those obstacles , as wo view them , may assist our readers in estimating the relevancy and importance of the details we shall hare to discuss ; for - previous distinct enunciation of each of them seems requisite for bringing out the force of the facts by which their complicated and entangled effects are exhibited . We conceive then that the facts remediable by England , which principally hinder the progress of India , are as follows : —
1 . A tendency and attempt to govern all India minutely from one centre ; a tendency and attempt which , although forced on the British Government by the circumstances of its position , and within due limits highly advantageous to all India , is airtended with serious difficulties , and endangers the "failure of the Government even in some of its own . proper and untransferable duties ; while the principle on which it proceeds is wholly inapplicable to indus ~ trial undertakings , except to their eventual ruin .
2 . A tendency in manyylndian officers to incorrect generalisation for all India from local facts , unavoidably induced by their position ; officers by whom the Indian Government , according to its routine , - most - officially consent to be guided if it act at all , and by whom , through this tendency , it is in perpetual danger of being misled and disappointed . 3 . A peculiar principle in Indian finance , inherited with the empire from its former rulers , and deeply rooted in the habits of the people , through which it is difficult , if not very dangerous , for the Indian Government either to take on itself the risk of new enterprises , or to guarantee the risk of them to others .
4 . A tendency to place in the hands of a Government so situated , the supreme control of operations essential to the industrial elevation of India ;—operations foreign to the duties and obligations of any Government , and beyond the power of this particular Government to direct , stimulate , or render effective;—a tendency certain to issue hereafter as it has already issued in perplexing , thwarting , and delaying these vital undertakings . ' 5 . A mistaken view of the land-tax of India , through which , while doctrines are admitted subversive of the future liberties of India , duties are now attributed to the Government which really do not deolve on it , and which it is in no condition to fulfil .
6 . The absence of laws in India which may facilitate the undertaking of territorial works by private or joint-stock capital , and may define the rights of the different parties concerned in their construction , management , and use . 7 . Erroneous conceptions in England of the state of the whole question , through which the classes alone able to rid the subject of its practical difficulties , stand aloof from all effort beyond that of blaming the helpless Government .
Probably we cannot discuss these facts and their consequences better than by a review of the books and documents which have most recently thrown light on the condition and movement of India . Tor this purpose we will take Colonel Cotton's recent book on " The Public Works of Madras , "—the ' Reports addressed to the Chambers of Commerce of Manchester , Liverpool , Blackburn , and Glasgw , by their Commissioner , the late Alexander Mackay , Esq ., "—the Parliamentary Papers on Indian Railways , —and the book of the late Sir Charles Napier , entitled , " Defects , Civil and Military , of the Indian Government . " To these may be added facts from other sources , including some relating to the history of Indian Railways not yet made generally available for public information .
The facts to be discussed force on us the conviction that it is in vain to expect a complete remedy for the ilia admitted on all hands to exist , except in the entire and final severance of the public works of India from its Government , as matters under their control in the view of profit . We shall thini it necessary to point out the true relation of Government to those works , the very serious connection of those works with the interests of'Great
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A " STRANGER" IN PARLIAMENT . Again last night was exemplified one of those anomalies of our humorous constitution which perpetually present themselves every session—the House of . Lords and the House of Commons debating the same subject at the same time , and two or three Ministers , in different places , giving different shades of the Cabinet version of the same question . Sir John Walsh and Mr . French ask on a Friday , in the Commons , the identical question ( about the transport of cavalry ) which a colonel , the Earl of Cardigan , puts on a Thursday , in tho Lords ; and , in the sunae dreary way , a L « orcl Beaumont , ' a vory promising young man in tho sense that his voice is always breaking , went last night over the whole ground , on foreign i ) olicy , previously
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IS 4 THE LEADER , [ Saturday ,
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Leader (1850-1860), Feb. 25, 1854, page 184, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2027/page/16/
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