The Press.
London, England, 1857-06-27 00:00:00

THE INDIAN COTTON DEBATE.

THE proposition of the Member for Stockport
for an inquiry into the causes which impede
the application of skill and capital to the
development of the laud in India was worthy
of a better fate than was announced for it on
Thursday night. It was then stated that on
Tuesday next, to which evening the debate
had been adjourned, it would be impossible to
continue it, owing to the number of other
motions on the paper for that night ; while
there would not be another evening available
till the 23rd of July, which for all practical
purposes was far too late. NVell might Lord
ADOLPHUS VANE TEMPEST express his indig-
nation at this mockery ; but the Premier,
when appealed to, refused to give an earlier
night. Of course, the progress of the exposure
of the Government's shortcomings in relation
to India would have proved most damaging to
it; and hence their eagerness to close the
inquiry as soon as they could. But though
the debate lasted only a single evening, it was
long enough to show the line of defence that
the India Board and the India-house are
prepared to take. The speeches of Mr.
MANGLES, the Chairman of the Company, and
of Mr. DANBY SEYMOUR, the Secretary of the
India Board, were explicit enough on this
point. The last was a painful exhibition,
considering the place among Indian Reformers
which he once held. The transition was too
abrupt from leader of the Ind an Reform
Society to official defender of Indian mis-
government in every shape ; and the only
result will be that his advocacy will afford as
little real support to the cause which he has
joined as his secession will occasion regret to
that which he has left. His explanation of his
change of character was curious in the ex-
treme. He had not varied, he said, but the
whole system in India had done so ; and the
monstrous evils which had called forth his
harangues in 1853 and 1854 had since his
joining the India Board (most miraculously
ceased.

The defence offered by Mr. MANGLES was of
another kind. Roads, he said, had been made,
more were in progress, and the Manchester
men were not to sit down and call upon Jupiter
to help them, if they wanted cotton, but to set
their shoulders to the wheel and help them-
selves. Now we confess, for our parts, that
we cannot see any analogy between the posi-
tion of the waggoner in the fable and the
manufacturers of Manchester in the present
case. As far as we can understand the matter,

they do not want Jupiter—that is Nature—to
help them, at all, for they are perfectly satis-
fied with everything that Jupiter has done.
He has given an admirable soil to India, a
•

JUNE 27, 1857.

climate not unhealthy, though hot, abundance
of capital to its people, and an equal
abundance of labour to turn that capital to
use. If, therefore, the Manchester men had

none but Jupiter and the natives of the country
to deal with, they would be quite content ;
for Jupiter has endowed those natives with all

the sense that is necessary to induce them,
when not prevented by the Company, to supply
the English market of their own accord with
all that the English market wants. Jupiter
leaves the soil free to man to make what use
of it he likes; and the tenure he grants is not

year•to-year one, but as long as this world
lasts. If man sets to work to make roads, he
does not send down a flight of Memories to

stop the proceeding, on the ground that road.
making is an attribute of the Sovereign of the
Gods. If man digs canals, or makes bridges,
or sinks wells, or lays out large sums in ren-
dering the soil available for the richer kind of
crops, Jupiter does not appropriate the fruits
of such outlay and labour to himself. If Man-
chester, we repeat, had only Jupiter to deal
with, it would not complain ; but, unhappily,
it has to combat human folly, not to repine at
eternal fate. It is with Midas, in short, instead
of Jupiter, that it has to do.
The true solution of the present state of
India was summed up in a sentence by
Lord STANLEY, when he called to mind
the fact that while the Company were the
landlords in India, they made none of that
outlay which in every country was looked for
from the lords of the soil. If the Company
would or could do this, there could of course
be no objection whatever, we imagine, to their
retaining the possession of the soil in their
own hands. If they would make roads and
cross-roads, and farmhouses and farm-build-
ings, and pay for fences and irrigation and
drainage, where required—if, in short, they
would find money as in England for every-
thing connected with agriculture beyond the
mere tillage of the soil, then, of course, there
could be nothing to urge against their insist-
ing on retaining their tenures as they now
stand. But, if they neither will, nor by any
possibility can, find a tentk part of the
hundreds of' millions sterling which such a
system would require, there is, of course, no
alternative for them but to make way for
private capitalists both able and willing to
make this outlay, without which it is utterly
impossible to develop the resources of the
land. It would be as absurd to expect the
cotton manufacturer to build his mill on a
piece of ground which he held only as tenant
at will, as to expect the cotton-grower to invest
in land, under a similar tenure, the money
necessary to bring into proper working order
a cotton-growing estate. Does any one in his
senses suppose that the agricultural develop-
ment of England would have been a bit better
than that is of India, if the only land tenure
in England were a year-to-year tenancy at a
mekrent from the Crown?
It has been said that the Indian Govern-
ment has done, or is doing, all it can do in the
promotion of railroads and other public works.
But supposing these to be of ten times, or
even of a hundred times, the extent they are,
or are ever likely to be, they will still leave
the question regarding the development of the
soil's resources where it stood, unless an
alteration be made in the tenure of the land.
We do not mean to say that railroads and
canals are not good things, but they will
confer a very partial benefit unless accom-
panied by the sale or long leasing of the land.
If, for instance, there were ten great roads,
such as that from Calcutta to Lahore, and ten
great canals, like that of the Ganges canal, in-
tersecting India instead of one, how could they
be made available by the land occupiers in the
country without opening up communications
in the shape of cross-roads and smaller canals
leading to the respective estates ? We had an
admirable sea route to Balaklava during the
war, but the six miles of mud to the camp
made it of no effect. In England, what would
be the use to the agriculturists of the different
roads lying between the different leading
cities, if it were not for the country cross-
roads as well ? But these all cost money, and
money far exceeding in the aggregate the cost
of the great trunk roads; and who, we