The Express.
London, England, 1853-05-12 00:00:00

LONDON, THURSDAY, MAY 12.

OUR despatches,—received in anticipation of the
Overland Mail—again tell the old story of battle and
slaughter, and again echo the discontents of our Eas-
tern fellow-subjects respecting the government of
India. The question, how our greatest dependency
shall henceforth be ruled is serious enough, as every-
body admits, but some branches of the subject, at
least, are very simple. Let us examine, for example,
one of these involving no points of real difficulty, and
in which a few wise steps well taken would at least
indicate to the natives of India the existence of some
real interest in their welfare, and give some proof
da desire to promote it.
Amidst all the differences of opinion that perplex us
about Indian affairs there is one point on which the
agreement is so unanimous that it ought to be aworld's
wonder if we do not arrive at some practical action
upon it, and soon. There is no doubt whatever in
any quarter about the deficiency of internal commu-
nication in India. Any talk of doubt would be non-
sense when the fact seems that there is only
one good road in all that vast country,—
to which may now be added the fragments of rail-
roads begun, viz.: twenty-five miles from Bombay
to Tannat, and the first stages of the proposed rail-
way from Calcutta to somewhere (some people do
talk of Delhi for the other extremity ; but the work
would occupy a century at the rate at which it is
now proceeding). This is actually all. Throughout
that country, whose dimensions stagger the imagina-
tion of us islanders, these are the roads. If any-
body asks what is done in the absence of more, the
answer is, the rich people are carried by human
bearers,"—by men who flounder through mud in
the lower levels, and sand in the higher; and poor
people stay in the same place all their lives. More-
over, their commodities stay in the same place, except
where opportunity serves for a few boats to float
down the rivers, or for bullocks to pace on, step
by step, their weary journey of hundreds of miles,
the goods they carry being the more injured the fur-
ther they go. And yet there is no country where
more natural facilities for transit exist. All along
the broad level strip which constitutes Malabar,
there are no natural impediments; yet, in the rainy
season, every town and village is isolated from every
other. On the high table land of the Deccan, there
is no reason why there should not be a network of
roads, running through cotton and tobacco fields,
which might rival the collected southern states of
America. There is the valley of the Nerbudda,
skirting that table land to the north, with a great
navigable river running through it. There is the
great basin of the Ganges, with its glorious
vegetation, and comparatively rich culture,
where the inhabitants are raised by geological
circumstances above all the other inhabitants
of India in intelligence and the arts of
life. They want only a group of railways to enrich
them and us. There is no obstacle, all the way from
Calcutta to Delhi, except the nullalis, sometimes dry
and sometimes full of torrents, and one wide river.
A steam ferry must compass the river difficulty, and
engineering skill has overcome greater obstacles than
the nullahs. Already might a wide district have
become active and enriched, if the existing fragment
of railway bad been begun at the Delhi end, and
been carried to Allahabad. There are no serious
engineering difficulties there; and that swarming
country would have furnished traffic to carry on
the enterprise with vigour and speed: whereas that
tract is bid to wait its turn, a century hence. Again,
to the northwest, there are whole states, composed,
for the most part, of sandy plains, where it is
as easy to make a railroad as between Cairo and
Suez. Even the ghats which separate the table

land of the Deccan from the Malabar plains cannot
be despaired of while there is a railroad over the
Alleglianies, and now over tho much more difficult
Semarang mountain between Vienna and Trieste, 1
where the zigzag of rails, fourteen miles long, ascends
parallel with the horse road, and where overland
travellers to and from India may take a lesson as to
what may be dono with the ghats. Such are the
, geographical facilities in a vast country where la-
, hour is cheaper than in any other part of the world;
where the people are unrivalled for their hereditary
skill in such arts as they know ; and where the power
of producing and consuming is absolutely unbounded.
There, where labour is to be had without limit
at two annas per day, where the cotton manu-
facture has, from time immemorial, surpassed all
that our best machinery can produce, and where
Bishop HEBER found the desire for comfort and
luxury as unbounded as the natural means of pur-
chasing them, all is spoiled for want of means of
communication.

Why should this be? No causes are assigned but
thaw which are clearly remediable. The GovEßNox-
GENERAL of INDIA has no power in finance matters ;
and he declares this kind of enterprise to be there-
fore out of his line. The Company plead that they
are in debt for their wars, while nobody denies that
their wars might be paid for on the spot, if
the productive resources of the country were
developed. The wars cannot be paid for, for
want of this development; and the development
cannot take place on account of the costly wars.
Why is not this vicious circle broken through?
Why do not capitalists solve the difficulty, and
open up this mine of wealth, pecuniary and moral?
Some of them have put their hands to the Calcutta
railroad to begin with. Why does it not get on ?
It is asserted that the Company's guarantee is a hin-
drance, and no help. Leadenhall-street stops the
way. If the Company would do the work, and properly
—well and good. If private enterprise were left un-
trammelled, it would prosper, as it does in undertak-
ings of far less promise. As it is, under this neu-
tralising junction of powers, the road creeps on as
slowly as possible. There is the double line, very
grand, finished in most costly style, creep-
ing on, inch by inch: whereas, if it were in
American hands, a single line, rough and ready,
would have cut through hundreds of miles
of swamp and sand, as the South Carolina Railway
has mowed for itself a path through the primeval
forest, and reared for itself a scaffolding of piles
through the swamps, where the night traveller is
stunned with frog concerts, alternating with the deep
silence of the pine barrens. And there, in the valley
of the Ganges, are the villagers on the rising
grounds, watching for the first sight of the road, and
sitting poor and idle in the midst of fertile lands,
while the Carolina negrocs are in slavery producing
the cotton that the Hindoos would grow for us with
hope and thankfulness, if we would only open their
way to a method and a market.
There are people who say that they would not—
that the conservatism of caste is a sort of natural

obstacle that can never be overcome. The opinion
of Europa is, generally, very different from this.
We English are apt to believe that there is some-
thing in human nature underlying even the institu-
tion of caste, and we have facts enough before us to
justify the conviction. Within ten years from the
opening of trade in 1833, the value of British and
Irish exports to India and Ceylon increased from
two millions and a half to nearly six millions and a
half. Bishop Ileeen's journals tell of the strong dis-
position of both Hindoos and Mahomedans in India
to imitate English habits of civilisation. In remote
provincial towns he saw—all these many years ago—
jackets and trousers, shoes and stockings, round hats,
English furniture, French devices and mottoes on
jewellery, English hardware, crockery, writing-
desks, and arms : and he anxiously insisted on
the certainty, from what ho saw, that the Hin-
doos were like other people in stretching out their
hands to obtain good things, when such thicgs
were placed within their reach. If he had dreamed
of railways, he would have said more, and, if pos-
sible, more strongly. Before 1813, the Company said
the power of demand in India was exhausted : and
they were instantly convicted of mistake when com-
merce by sea was thrown open to private enterprise.
And any one who now says that commerce by land
is rendered impracticable by habits of caste, would
be in like manner convicted of mistake, if railroads
were run through the country as rapidly as in Ame-
rica. As soon as the inhabitants, who sit down, poor
and listless, in isolated swarms, following hereditary
methods of tillage, for want of stimulus and occasion
to do better, find that well grown and well dressed
cotton is necessary to purchase English comforts and
English finery, and that it will infallibly purchase
them, they will grow and dress their cotton well ;
and it is by railways that we must teach them this ;
and many another lesson which will follow upon
this material instruction. We need not rest our
conviction upon analogy, or fall back upon conjec-
ture. There are facts to guide us. The Govern-
ment of Bengal has established district post-offices ;
and in the remotest districts, where the business has
been well managed, the inhabitants have rushed to
the offices and used the new means of communication
with eager zeal. As to the commercial readiness,
every steamer that starts on tho Bengal rivers leaves
behind half the freight that is offered. There were
three river companies some time ago. Now, in re-
liance on the railroad, two are given up,
and commerce is baulked not only pre-
vented from increasing, but actually repressed in
the degree that we have said. Something must be
done to prevent the people being disappointed of
their rail. Now is the time for this all-important
matter to bo attended to. We are about to legislate
for India. Indian questions are many, and very
serious, and some of them extremely difficult. We
repeat that the one matter on which all parties are
agreed is the supreme need of internal communica-
tion throughout the whole extent of that great de-
pendency; and now is the time for Parliament to
look to it that a way is opened for that need to be
supplied.

Ix the bad old times of Tory despotism, when no
man with less than five hundred a year independent
of the world dared to advocate liberal principles ;
when it was thought—as the blindfolded author of
the "History of Europe" still thinks—that popular
education is anarchy, and that the wisdom of the
humble Many is the destruction of the exalted Few ;
when consequently an author, having no public,
placed a starving dependence upon patrons ; when
Grub-street was his habitat ; when HOGARTH'S
picture of the Distressed Poet was still a truth; when
Scotch literature was really cultivated on a little oat-
meal, and the tradition of famishing English
genius chocking itself with a penny loaf was,
from its great probability, implicitly believed ;
when political writers were called " creatures" of my
Lord This or my Lord That ; when to be mentioned
ass literary man was to be pictured as a threadbare,
timid, underfed person—an object for pity and gen-
teel alms : in such times a certain member of the
class, DAVID WILLIAMS, a Unitarian minister,
bethought him that if the patrons of literature
would club their influence and their money. to form a
fund for the relief of the grovelling miseries to
which exalted talent was then subject, literature
itself would be benefited. By the exercise of great
enery, self-denial, and unflinching perseverance,
Mr. 'WILLIAMS established, in the year 1790, the
Literary Fund Society, for affording assist-
ant* to authors of genius and learning who
may be reduced to distress by unavoidable calamities,
or deprived, by enfeebled faculties or declining life, of
the power of literary exertion. Mr. WILLIAMS ;Liao
contemplated further uses for the Fund : he sketched
out the formation of a library of printed books;
the collection of valuable manuscript records respect-
ing literature; the establishment of a reading-room
as a common centre o professional communication ;
and a college for decayed and superannuated genius.
How this admirable sketch has been handled since
the death of the founder may be learnt firstly from
the Royal Charter granted to the Literary Fund
Society in 1818; secondly, from the printed statement
of its affairs up to October 1,1852; and lastly, from
our own report of the proceedings of the anniver-
sary festival held yesterday, and which may be read
in another part of this sheet. From these sources it
can be plainly demonstrated that instead of the dis-
tinct outline broadly traced for future guidanc iby
DAVID WILLIAMS having been filled up, it has been
shorn and obliterated to the extent of frustrating
some of his best intentions, and of rendering the fund
nearly effete and useless to the present generation of
literary men. The Literary Fund Society of to-day
possesses neither manuscript collections nor library;
it offers to literary men in professional activity uo

centre of intercommunication, and provides no
honourable retreat for age and infirmity. The
consequence is, that, having narrowed its pm-
poses down to the single practice of giving secret
charity to only a portien of the class for which help
was at first intended (namely, to such distressed mem- I
bets of the community solely as have written "a I
book "), it never can and never does disburse one-half
of its annual income amongst the objects
contemplated by the founder—namely, " men of
learning and genius;" for many men of learning I
and genius have never written "a book." But whether I
they have or have not written a book, thanks to
the spread of education, and of social and politi-
cal liberty, literary men of real "learning and genius"
are now,; as a class, seldom in want of temporary
charity. What they do want at the present time
is • precisely what DAVID Wati.ots wished to
give, and the Society withholds—the library and
the honourable provision for old age. What the
Society does give is, we arc bold to say, in a
majority of cases misapplied. Many an individual
writes "a book" who hi neither learning nor
genius, and who no more belongs to the literary
prqlession than a bricklayer is an architect. The
book may have been the accident—possibly the misfor-
tune—of his life, and may have brought upon him
(we will not say deservedly) the distress, from which
he claims—and obtains—relief from the Literary
Fund. The Society, therefore, stands confessed—
when bared of the glaring tinsel of after-dinner
oratory—as an institution holding alms in trust fur
people who do not require them, and distributing
alms in secre4 among persons who do not deserve
them.

Few orators flash and dazzle that sort of tiose-

more successfu:ly around post-prandial ears than
Mr. DISRAELI. Among his other flourishes last
evening he declared that the manner in which the
Fund is administered is wise, discreet, and satis-
factory. That this was a mere figure of speech,
a few facts and a little arithmetic will prove.
From the liberal support of the public on the
one hand, and from the contraction of its usefulness
by Mr. WILLIAMS'S successors on the other, the In-
stitution now possesses a reserve not far short of
40,0001., and an annual income of 2,000!. Of 14,000/.
accruing from all sources during seven years ending
in 1832, the existing dispensers of the fund could only
manage to bestow 9,332/. amongst applicants for re-
lief; leaving some 4,8001. to be added to capital after
deducting expenses of management. Of this residue,
the modest sum of 909/. only was funded ; while
offices, officers, and other chatges were allowed to
cost 3,9001. !

To elucidate this:monstrous fact more fully, we turn
to theAthencrion:—.. We may fairly assume,7l says that
journal, " that the trustees receive the rents without
cost to the Society,—that the bankers receive the
dividends, as they receive other people's dividends,
without charge. If so, then, to receive 904!. dona-
tions and subscriptions, and to draw 43 benevolent
drafts, costs annually a trifle more than 5581." Pur-
suing this calculation still further, it results that the
benevolent committee (who are good enough to meet
for the benefit of the literary world exactly nine
times a-year, and no oftener) draw ou an average,
43 benevolent drafts a-year, at an average of 314 a
draft, and that the cost is, on the average, more
than 131. 4s. Bd. for each and every benevolent draft
of 311.!

The lameness of Dr. ltussimes attempt to glose li
over this extravagance at the dinner was too glar-
ing, even for the good-natured p itience of a com-
pany of COM: IETS. They would hardly listen. The'
society, he declared, was bound to have expensive
apartments in which to meet nine times, and to draw
an average of 43 drafts a-year, because somebody had
left to the society 1971. per annum to be spent in
rent; and, asked the Doctor, would it be honest to
divert the bequest from that object?—forcing upon
his auditors the answer of the shoeless ostler, who,
I being taxed with frunkeuness, replied, "If a
gentleman gives me a shilling to drink
his health, and I go and buy} boots with it,
should I be an honest man'" Dr. RUSSELL
also opined that the remuneration of the Secretary—
who has to prepare the business for, and to attend
nine committee meetings per annum—is not too great.
We aiffer with the Doctor. Although we hear on
all sides that, personally, the Secretary of the
Literary Fund is an accomplished and zealous gen-
tleman, yet it is no fault of his if all that cao
be said of him as secretary (or of any secretary of
a society so mis-managed), is, that, having nothing to
do, ho lives rent free, and is paid 2001. a year for
doing it.
In truth, as now dispensed, the Literary Fund is
no help to literature (with which it has really very
little to do, in spite of Mr. DISRAELI'S flourish about
the authors " distinguished, some illustrious," who
had profited by it), or to literary men. Before it can
be rendered beneficial to either, the intentions of the
founder must be carried out; which they can only be
by a thorough reform.