The Press.
London, England, 1854-03-11 00:00:00

THE PRESS.

to the lowest point, a vast amount of traffic is
actually prevented from taking place by the
impossibility of making profits cover transit
expenses. Here Colonel Cotton's work fails to
supply the requisite evidence, though that
evidence is not far to seek in India. A printed
comparative statement of the prices of similar
articles in various towns of India would do
more to expose the utter want of internal
communication than columns of figures and
volumes of reasoning. From our own know-
ledge of the extraordinary diversities of price
which prevail in a small tract of country, we
join in Colonel Cotton's emphatic expression
of opinion lam satisfied that the money
"now paid for transit, and lost for want of
" it, in India is equal to the whole amount of
" taxation."
But where is the remedy to be found? Not
in railways—especially not in railways con
structed after the European model, for heavy
engines and high speed. Increase of speed
without reduction of price is, in a commercial
point of view, useless. " If India is to advance
" in anything, she must have cheap transit,
" really cheap transit, at rates one•tenth or
" one-twentieth of those now prevailing."
This may be done to a certain extent by cheap
lines of rail ; but canals and improved river
navigation are the chief points to look to.
Hitherto they have been (except in the one
instance of the Ganges Canal) neglected on
behalf of more costly, more plausible, but pro-
bably less productive undertakings. They
have in the East the double advantage, of im-
proving agriculture by irrigation, as well as
trade by supplying the means of carriage. It
is a fallacy to imagine that railroads and water
carriage are mutually destructive. English
canals continue to pay, notwithstanding the
7,000 miles of iron road we have laid down,
and the 280 millions spent thereupon. In truth,
they interfere with one another little, if at all.
High-speed lines are too costly to carry most
kinds of merchandise ; while canals are too
slow for passengers and light traffic, where the
value of the article conveyed greatly exceeds
its bulk. But let us hear Colonel Cotton on
this subject:—

If, instead of taking hold of a little strip of the country,
and setting ourselves to ascertain whether a railway will
pay, we take the whole country from the Himalaya to Cape
Comorin, and consider what it requires, and how the greatest
advantage may be obtained in the least time, there will be
no sort of doubt as to the main point, that grand railways
will not answer our purpose. No one is more sensible
than I am that complete railways are the most perfect
communications, and are invaluable in an advanced country
where there is a vast number of people whose time is ex-
tremely valuable ; and to this we hope India will come in
time ; but what is most wise in a rich man is utter ruin to
a poor one; and to lay 100 miles of railway, and leave
10,0./0 miles of trunk lines unimproved, is beyond all pos-
sible reach of doubt as great a mistake as could be made.
If we want fine railways as soon as possible, the best way
to obtain them is to take the shortest eourse to throw open
the country, in order to rremove the insufferable burden
under which it now groans, and allow it to put forth its
energies. Every mile of railway costa not only what is ex-
pended on it, but what is expended also on the cost of
transit on the fifty miles of land transit for which as much
river navigation might be substituted. Thus, if instead of
spending 10 lass on the Godavery, the improvement of that
line be delayed for twenty years, and ten miles of fine rail-
way executed instead, there would be a loss on only 50,000
tons carried by land from the basin of that river at 60 rupees
a ton the 400 miles, of 30 lace a year for twenty years, or
600 lass. So that the actual cost of the railways, great as
it is, is a mere trifle in comparison of the loss that it causes.
And this calculation of 600 lacs in money is a trifle com-
pared with the full amount of loss to this vast tract that
will thus remain closed against all the refreshing influences
that a free communication through it would inevitably
bring in. Who can form an estimate of the mischief thus
done ?
The moral of Colonel Cotton's teaching, in-
culcated again and again in every variety of
form, is this—" Will you lavish vast sums in
" producing the most perfect kind of commu-
" nication over a small space, at a rate of ex-
" penditure wholly unremunerative ; or will
" you be content with improving existing
" modes of travelling, and adding to them
" where necessary, with the certainty of an
" ample immediate return?"—
The great difference between England and India in this
respect has certainly not been considered in planning the
railways. Both the proportion of wealthy people whose
time is of considerable value is prodigiously less than in
England, and also the average value of goods carried is very
much lees. The fact is, that while a very high speed in a
country so wealthy and so far advanced as England is of the
\ cry greatest importance, it is in a poor country like India
very secondary to cheapness. It is just the same with in-
dividuals. If.* poor man insists upon travelling tptickl7