The Express.
London, England, 1850-01-15 00:00:00

ght elprefio.

OUTGOING MAILS.
TM West India Mails. ezcladiag Bermuda, Havansab,
Parma, Bosuns, New Orleans, and Melia°, sad including
Mal fez Madeira, St. Juimde-Nicenami, New Grenada,
Cull, and Fora,will be made up oa ha. 17.
The male 904 Lisboa, Opals, sad Gibraltar will be made
up as Jan.
The maila fa/Gibraltar, Malta, Grams, the Isola Islands,
111791. Oqfaa, India, sad Mao, Ma Southampton, will
la made op is lhe maim/ al Jaa. 19.
Tao mei MI Marseilles, to tbs Moditerreneaa, 'rept,
Cegloa, IsMe, Hoag-Hoag, Le., will be made up on the
wealag of Jas. 24
Tle midis far British Nadi Swim sad the limited
&WS will be awls up is the sewing of Jae. 26.
Tbe ail far Madge* elto Brazils, ad Baena Agree,will
le mule up an the 'amiss of Feb. 4.

'WIGS WATER AT IPEDO3I SEIDEL
rDo —llemies, R. Ea— Aftmom. 31. 1133.
illawr-3313WAR IR Wm Yams. a I. 3 .6

LONDON, TUESDAY, JANUARY 13.

Tus leading munfaeturers and merchants of
Manchester are (Msg. as we said on Friday, to hold
a conferees" at which their representatives are ex-
pected to attend, on the subject of India—more par-
ticularly is connexion with the production of mum
for exportation and on the ceases of the disappointed
expectation as to its increase, which were formed
there some yeses ago. Hitherto considerable reliance
bas bees pieced in that city on the exertions made by
the Bast India Company and by the Indian govern-
ment to improve and extend its cultivation in their
territories. But as, substantially, those exertion.,
whatever they may have been, have proved fruitless,
there is agrowing dipped :tson in Manchester to with-
draw the reliance so placed ; to trust lees to intercourse
with and to the interference of the Director', and to
examine for themselves the reasons why the supply
of cotton heat India is so precarious and iergniticant.
This disposition is an encouraging symptom ; for it
is unworthy of our great manufacturers to be
ehillyehallying wi:h • government which, ob-
viously, is either ignorant of the means to achieve the
end it proton**s to have in view, or, worse still, know-
ing the means, is indisposed, or afraid, to use them.
The dependence of this great manufacturing country
on any one nation, bat more particularly on a
nation aiming, as MEMIDITIes Report to Congress
shows the United State-do, at manufacturing rivalry,
for the "apply of the raw material of its staple product
is a very serious consideration. Such depend-
ence is intimately coenicted with the material
prosperity, the Hernial tranquillity, aid eves
the financial solvency of the kingdom. Ths
great seats of our cotton manufactures are inhabited
by nearly four millions of people; the bulk of whom
rely, more or less, on the cotton trade for main-
tritium, and subsistence. The declared value of all
our exports for 1849 was 54,000,800 i.. and of that
great sum no less than nearly 25,000,0001. repre-
sented cotton fabrics and yarns; leaving only
29,000,000!., or little more than one-half, for the
value of all our other exports. As it is by means
of exports that we are enabled to impoit, and as
the duties derived from imports in 1549 reached
18,895,0001.; it is, probably, t o exeggeretior to say
twit for 8,000,000/. of that amount, the trea-
sury is directly indebted to the expo.tation of
cottons and yarns ; and in a similar degree is the
'zoo enriched by the cotton trade. From tneee
figures may, then, be learnt how deep an interest
this country has in elite edieg the *runes whence 1
its supplies of the raw material, `cotton, are obtained ;
with what painful anxiety all rational men annual!,
took to the cot on crop of the Uni:ed Sates; and hoar
etbstantial a benefit India would oozfer on England
wire it to mitigate our dependence on America.
At present any sensible variation in the pri-e of
American cotton at cts the happiness or discomf,rt of
millions of our woikicg ; and if that pri,A, rise
greatly, its increase places in jeopardy the tranquillity
of the most energetic and inflammable por. tons of
our population, and, by diminishing their meths
of cousamption, and reducing the g. neral
ability of the c intry to export, it hazards
the revenue. The Indian cotton question is, there-
fore, for England a great internal, as well as a
great external, question ; it connects the safety of Eng-
lithd with the improvement of India. High motives
these for examining it with stern impartiality and
with the utmost indifference as to the effect our con-
clusions may have on the existing frame-work of our I
Indian government ; for the matter really at issue is,
not the reputation of Leadeehall-street, but the well-
being of England and of India.
It anyone ever entertained noubts that the highest
interests of England are involved in this ques-
tion, the report of Mr. MEREDITH, the American
Fecretary of the Treasury, will dispel them. For
taus he urges his countrymen to manufacture them-
selves the cotton they grow :
If we sow omen cotton of the value of about 66,000,000,
the same cotton, when converted into elofh, would Dicke an
export at some 264,000.000, or some 245,000,000 atter des
ducting the 15,000,000 or 20,0,0,000 which woui4 be n.
quired for our home risvuniption (in addition to the p irtion
of oar {-resent manufactures consumed at home), ante our im-
ports would he thereby in Ilk, manner increased. England,
at this moment, derives a large portion of her power from
spinning sad weaving our cotton. When we shall .pin and
wee,' it ourselves, nabs our own iron, and manuiactare oar
other staples, we shall have transferred to this country. the
great metros of wealth. commerce, civilisation, and political
as well as moral anal intellectual power.
The growth of Indian cotton is, therefore, a ques-
tion of self-defense and self-preservation for England.
Atte- this warning, to remain willingly dependent on
the United States is a suicidal policy. Bat indep'ndenoe
is not to be achieved by foolishly turning to the aid Gl'
hapf civilised negroes of Guinea ; it is to be found only
by doing justice and pursuing righteousness to the
ryots of India.
It is undeniable that vast tracts of country in India
am excellently adapted to the cultivation of the cot-
ton plant ; that the climate is generally suitable
to its growth; that the pint itself is indigenous
to the country ; that it was formerly cultivated
to a very large, and is still grown to a considerable
extent for internal consumption; that the population
of India in these districts is teeming, civilised, and in-
&latrines ; and that, though somewhat prejudiced
and suspicious, it is eminently teachable and accessible
to all those influences that elsewhere follow profitable
industry. "The common people of India," writes one of
the American cotton planters, sentoat by the East India
Company, from whose journal we shall have occasion
to quote largely, "if properly taught must be the re-
gtnerators of India ; that is, the low cute people."
Writing from the ootton country of the north-western
provisos, he says:
Time is mach to be dose to reader this lamas. tract of
really benstiful country a bison's/ to the people and profit-
able so the owner: of et was in efnerion it would 80074 be a
ease ifold et luxuriant cultivation.
Ards—
To redeem this tract would be a gigantic undertaking;
bee erg was in Aatrrico, tasked of Adis, a fine yea,s
meld ses rho plotegA us Mt Wok of re.
How is it, then, that India, with a suitable soil,
vetlontojenial climate, with an industrious people
to the culture, cannot export cot-
ton In any considerable quantities? With every
lateral and every human advantage, why is
it that laths allows as to be depen-
dent on America P For the last ten years the East
India Company his been professing to encourage the
growl of the pleat for exportation—now sending out
American planters, then exporting the most perfect
machinery; sow procuring the finest seed, then estab-
lishing experimental plantations ; yet the end of all
these offsets would have been the total abandon-
ment of its experiments and interference the
other day, but for fear of Manchester. Nor do we
know that the abandonment would have been a
matter of regret; foe in these experiments, and in the
encouragement they have professed to give to cotton
cultivation, the Indian government appears to have
tried every means, ears and except those likely to be
successful.
Cotten cultivation, to be extended in India, must
be profitable to the cultivator ; and this is exactly
what the Indian government has never attempted
to make it. More than a half century ago, Mr. Baas,
the Commercial Resident of Dacca, then the seat of •
cotton manufacture which has long since disappeared,
thus recorded his experience for the benefit of the
East India Company, of which he wee subsequently
himself a direetor :
The gala of rearing cotton Is about sallisiont to allow a
bus subsistence to tae husbandman, and set more. In
feet, he has ao inducement to attempt to get more, for the
Zunisear would probably sunlit from his. And this mast
limitless till each time as settling the largest jams's, and
lemming the least balenes,alaU mars to be the highest
pelat of ellslal reputable; tilt the denude of govmmsmt
ups& the lamb shall be Mews sad Lumina sad laws
'ball petted the individual agairst esemkteal, FAA same-
tale stens& to hiatus the release.