The Express.
London, England, 1846-12-09 00:00:00

government, why should Biscay and Guipuscoa
despair? The Carlists were indeed beaten by the
Constitutionalists, when they were in the first years
of freedom, but so were the Miguelites by the Span-
ish Constitutionalists. But now Liberalism is out of
fashion. out of hope, and beyond tolerance, in both
sections of the Peninsula. Statesmen are no longer
obliged even to affect respect for constitutionalism.
Power and authority are left to he disputed and
struggled for by persons, not principles. And when
persons throw off principles, the public, not without
reason, soon becomes indifferent to both.

EVERY new arrival from the United States tends to
strengthen the opinion that the cotton crop of 1846
will be deficient. The state of the receipts of cotton
at the American ports, an.' of the exports to Great
Britain at the time the Britannia was despatched,
compared with the state of receipts and exports at
the corresponding period in 1845 and 1844, scarcely
leaves room for a doubt on this head:
Receipts. 71111.
1846
1845
1844
more is true that recent letters from America speak
more favourably, or rather less unfavourably of the
picking of the crops, but the actual arrivals and ex-
ports are more to be regarded than such vague state-
ments. The stock of cotton in this country, too, ap-
pears to be lower than usual. The stock at Liverpool
on the 27th of last month was 512,620 bags on the
28th of November, 1845, it was 914,060. This
aspect of affairs cannot but dictate caution to the
cotton manufacturers, and affords no very pleasing
prospect to the operatives.
The periodical shortcomings of the cotton crops in
the United States, considering the numbers in this
country who are dependent for their subsistence on
the manufacture of this raw material, render it highly
desirable that our supplies of it should be drawn less
exclusively from one quarter. Of the six millions and
a half of hundredweights of cotton imported into Great
Britain in 1815, upwards of five millions and a half
came from the United States. Of the remainder,
British India sent us about half a million, Brazil
rather less than two hundred thousand. and Egypt
about one hundred thousand hundredweights. Were
our supplies drawn in anything like equal proportions
from these (or other) countries, in years when the cot-
ton harvest of one was deficient, the surplus crops of
the rest might compensate for the shortcoming. It is
not likely that the northern and southern hemispheres,
America and Asia, would be visited by bad harvests
in the same year. By increasing the number of mar-
kets whence cotton can be procured, by deriving our
supplies from,widely distant regions, we minimise the
danger of sudden chanrs from year to year in the
quantity and price of this indispensable commodity.
This consideration, and also the reflection that the
continual expansion of continental and American, as
well as British cotton manufactures, may, ere long,
press hard upon American powers of production, has
of late directed attention to the means of increasing
the production of cotton in our Indian dominions.
There can be little doubt that India is the most promis-
ing quarter. The abolition of slavery in our West
India colonies has given a death-blow to
cotton cultivation there. Long before the period
of emancipation, with every new regulation
introduced to shield the slaves from excessive toil,
manual labour was withdrawn from less remunera-
tive branches of industry to concentrate it upon the
more remunerative. Cotton was the first to feel the
effects of this. In 1786 upwards of fifty thousand
hundredweights of cotton were imported into this
country from our West India colonies (from the
United States none was imported for several years
after this date) ; in 1845 our imports of cotton from
the West Indies were under twelve hundred and fifty
hundredweights. With the high rate of wages and
the inadequate supply of labour to which the West
India islands are at present subjected, it is vain to
look for any extension of cotton cultivation there ;
and the obstacles now thrown in the way of the
African slave trade render the prospect of in-
creased supplies from Brazil equally out of
the question. In Egypt and all countries
subjected to arbitrary rulers, and where the
comparatively enlightened despotism of to-day may
be succeeded by the crassest ignorance to-morrow,
it is in vain to look for such a steady development of
any branch of industry as car, be safely relied upon.
To India alone, of all the countries capable of pro-
ducing cotton—to India, with its population so dense
as to render free labour as economical and productive
as slave labour, and with its English government—
can we turn with any reasonable expectation of in-
creased supplies of that article.
Yet the past history of Indian cotton cultivation is
the reverse of encouraging. The attention of the
Indian government was directed to the means of im-
proving the cultivation in India as early as 1788.
Active measures were taken then, and have been at
various periods since, to increase its production and
improve its quality with a view to its becoming a
staple export to Europe. 'f he first exportation of
cotton from the United States to Great Britain took
place in 1791. In;that year about one hundred and
seventy hundredweight was shipped. In India the
government has been exerting itself to promote the
cultivation of cotton, and the export remains at the
best stationary; in the United States the matter has
been left to the unaided enterprise of the citizens,
and the exportation has increased from one hundred
and seventy to five millions and a half of hundred-

weights.
For the startling difference of these results, there
seems only one assignable cause. Labour—continu-
ous, effective labour—is as cheap, if not cheaper, in
India than in the cotton-growing states of the
Union. The soil and climate of India are quite as
well adapted for the growth of cotton as the southern
states of the Union. But in the United States, the
cultivation of cotton has been conducted by landed
proprietors acting for their own interest; in India
it has been left in the hands of natives who have no
proprietary right in the soil. In Bombay, and the
greater part of Madras, thecultivators are tenants of the
Company ; in Bengal and part of Madras they are as
tenants of the Zemindars, to whom the right of pro-
perty has been transferred in consideration of a com-
muted property-tax, still worse off. It is very doubtful
whether any cotton growers in India could compete
with the Anglo-American proprietary planters of the
Union, except English landowners. The article of
Indian produce in which the greatest and steadiest in-
crease has taken place of late years, is indigo ; and
the successful cultivation of indigo in India, dates from
the time when the planters were, by some legal homu
poem', enabled to become virtual proprietors of lands.
It is only from English colonists in India that we en-
tertain any hope of an efficient cotton cultivation ; and
to induce English settlers to undertake the task,
the Indian Government must allow them to
acquire land in full property. The industry
of Englishmen requires to be stimulated by the pos-
session, or the prospect of acquiring freeholds; they
cannot work with any heart as mere tenants of an
absolute government.
As we observed on a former occasion, this change
in the policy of the Indian government presupposes
an entire revision of its present financial system. But
though innovations in its modes of raising revenue
might occasion some trouble, there can be little doubt
that they would ultimately prove equally beneficial
to the government and its subjects. At present the
land revenue, and the opium and salt monopolies, are
the sources whence thrce.fourths of the Indian
revenue are derived. The land revenue is collected
at an expense varying from 12 to 15 per cent.; the
others at the enormous rates of 27 and 42 per cent.
In this calculation the immense amount of petty local
oppression and extortion, which escapes undetected
from the peculiar manner in which the land revenue
is collected, is necessarily left out of view. India
may some day compete with the United States as a
cotton-growing country, but an entire revolution in its
land tenures and modes of taxation will be required to
prepare it for the competition. It is by searching ad-
ministrative reforms of this kind, not by the child's
play of experimental or model farms, that the Anglo-
Indian government can promote the development of
their territorial resources.

The articles of sonic of the London journals, in
which the unconstitutional personal interference of

the King of the French in eine affairs of the state has
lately been so severely censured, have revived in
Paris the so-often at itated question of personal
government, and Le Si7rle took up the subject in a
powerful article on Monday. The laws of September,
however, impose a restraint on discussions of this kind
in the press, and it is probable that it will become a
matter of debate in the Chambers. The question has
plbo tiesn revived at k'a►ris,in consequence of the cir-