The Sun.
London, England, 1865-01-24 00:00:00

WESTERN INDIA.

(From the Correspondent of the Times.)

BOMB" 'Dec. 30; 1864.

I question if any city or community in'the worldhas ever
presented so extraordinary an aspect as Bombay during the
commercial and social revolution through which it is now
passing. The suddenly discovered gold did far less for Mel-
bourn,:thay that deluge of silver which has for the past
four years flowed over Bombay with so mighty a current.
The social anomalies mad, I fear, also, the general demora-
lization were less marked in the English colony than in this
Indian city, which a sudden, and probably temporary tide
of prosperity has caused to aspire to ba the Liverpool of
the East.

The rise of prices which during the past 15 years has
taken place all over the world has been especially marked
in India. No country with a similar trade and revenue
had so contracted a currency, but the effect on prices was
not felt till the influx of English settlers which followed
the mutiny. There was no corresponding increase in the
necessaries of" life consumed by Englishmen in India, while
the natives themselves, as they grow in wealth, developed
new wants. It is my experie3ce that in Calcutta during
the last 10 years prices hare mst doubled. The rise was
felt most severely there by the large class with. fixed
incomes, because Calcutta was -he base of the mutiny cam-
paigns. In the single matter of house rents it was met
partly by an extension of the American system of living
in clubs and boarding-houses, and partly by the erection of
some new squares and streets of European houses. Not
till the outbreak of the American war was the rise felt in
all its intensity in Bombay. The community there was
limited and had been very c, slow." But in proportion to
the delay of the tide of increase ui reaching Bombay has
been its violence, so that the western city now far exceeds
Calcutta in the expense, difomforts, and even positive
hardship of living. Up to Ig6o the sum- paid by Europe
for the whole cotton export of India. was not above
seven millions sterling annually. In 1860-61 the
import of bullion into Bombay alone, chiefly in
payment for cotton, was only six and a half millions.
But in 4he three yearl's/fiC4hat time official returns state
the import of gold an. CMYerht4sl2tombay alone at upwords
of 40 millions sterling, and if we add the imports of the
year just closed we have a sum of not less than 60 millions
sterling poured in hard cash into one city. If we take all
India, we find that Europe now pays her nearly 40 millions
sterling a year, of which more than one-half is in bullion,
for cotton, which five years ago sold at not more than seven
or eight. What is the result of this in the city of Bombay ?
In Calcutta the trade is almost entirely in the hands of
Europeans, and the Bengalees play but a subordinate part.
Hence there is a wider social gap and less friendly inter-
course between the two classes. But in Bombay, owing
chiefly to the presence of tasteless race like the Parsees and
to the physical advantages of the island, the lion's share of
the trade is in the hands of natives, and they associate with
English gentlemen on terms of more pleasing equality
than is the case with their more refined but less wealthy
countrymen in Bengal. Hence many Parsee and Hindoo,
and a smaller number of English (or rather Scotch) mer-
chants find themselves possessed of sums which are reckoned
by millions, and speak with contempt of so petty an amount
as 'a lac Of rupees, or £lO,OOO. Hindoos and Parsees, who
were a year or two ago petty brokers or miserable shop-
keepers, are now millionaires. The most remarkable in-
stance of this is a. Hindoo named Premchund Roychund,
lately a subordinate clerk in an English house on £3O a
year. By daring speculation he has amassed about two
millions sterling. Again, Rustonjee, the second and ablest
son of the first baronet, Sir Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy, has be-
come the millionaire of Bombay, though his ancestral for-
being reckoned at 2/ mil-
tune was not large, his capital

lions sterling, and if the present price of cotton continue
for two years there is every likelihood of this sum being
doubled. These are only two out of 20 whom I might
name. The same is true on a smaller scale, because the
partners are honourable men in the English sense, of such
Scirtch houses as Messrs. Nicol and Co., and Ritchie,
Stewart, and Co. These are the great merchant
princes, but all the subordinate commercial
hopses and traders have their share. Nor is the
wealth confined to the merchant who acts as middleman
between the peasant grower of cotton and the Liverpool
buyer. Next to those of Madras the ryots of the Bombay
Presidency were the most miserable in India, burdened
with a weight of hereditary debt to which each generation
added, and the veriest bond slaves of the native usurer,
who bought their crops at his own price. Now, the mass
of the peasants are rolling, comparatively, in wealth, and
the occupation of the usurer is gone. Except that vile here-
ditary debt, the fruit of superstition, to set a limit to which
a wise insolvent act will soon be passed in the ryots'
favour, the agricultural class here, in point of comfort, put
ours inEngland to shame. While all are, according to their
ideas, comfortably clothed, housed, and fed to the full, the
majority indulge in the most whimsical tastes, one priding
himself on his fine breed of bullocks, for which he has paid
five times the old price, another rejoicing in his riding
horse, and a third—this is really the case—having no better
means of displaying his wealth than by making the tires of
his cart wheels of the silver England finds such difficulty
in sending to us. So far has this gone that in a festive,
idolatrous procession lately, a worthy farmer—he can no
longer be called a peasant—thought he could not better
show his wealth than by carrying enormous bags of ru-
pees at the end of poles. In this Presidency, once so waste,
and yielding comparatively so little to the revenue, there
is not now an acre of culturable soil unemployed.- Even
in Kandeish, the only country which has not recovered
from the blighting effects of Mahratta devastations, I have
just witnessed the spectacle in an obscure village of a crowd
of peasants squatting around two agents from Bombay,
one with 40,000 rupees and the other with 30,000, paying
for the growing crop at enormously high rates.
What has been the effect of this wealth ? How have
the educated classes used it ? Neither the Parsees nor
Hindoors have forgotten that her Majesty recognised the
splendid liberalities of the late Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy by cre-
ating him a baronet ; so the nouveaux riches are in the habit
of lavishing lacs of rupees on public objects. Premchund
Roychund, for instance, has given, I believe, at least a tithe
of his two millions in donations to the University, the
Cyclone fund, and several Hindoo charities. Indeed, if we
do not inquire into motives so narrowly, we cannot with-
hold the tribute of our admiration from such princely gene-
rosity as that of which Bombay has been and is still the
scene. It is well—and on this principle Governor Sir
Bartle Frere most wisely acts in his laudations of the givers
—that wealth so suddenly and almost without effort ac-
quired should pay its quota for the good of the public. Is
it not calculated that the combined wealth of all the rich
men of Bombay is little under 80 millions sterling, and that
in an island with only a fourth of the population of Lon-
don (816,000) ? Hence Bombay, which as a city is little
Better than Madras, being contemptible when compared
with Calcutta, bids fair to be changed into a great commer-
cial capital, into a real Liverpool. Never were English
merchants so public-spirited in reclaiming land, building
docks, wharves, piers, warehouses, and sawmills, and in
furnishing all the appliances of a great port ; never were
Asiatic millionaires so lavish. Sir Bartle Frere is quite
equal to the occasion ; he is the Louis Napoleon and M.
Haussman of Bombay and Poonah in one. So great is the
demand for ground in the business part of the city—land
selling at from £3O to £5O a square foot, as if the Chatham
and Dover Railway were the purchasers—that Sir Bartle
Frere has demolished the useless ramparts of the old fort.
As Bombay has not a public edifice worthy the name, ex-
cept the Town-hall, he is about to commence on some of
the sites• thus gained a series of great public offices, with
new streets, hotels, a university, hospital, and a great
palace of justice, the whole of which will cost some two
millions sterling, and occupy from seven to ten years in
building ; and this will not cost the Imperial Treasury a
penny, for the sale of public lands in the island will realise
a much larger sum. So at Poonah. That the old capital
of the Mahrattas, 120 miles off, will never grow to be the
capital ;of India, in spite of Mr. Grant Duff's threatened
annual motion on the subject, the first glance at its barren
expanse and some experience of its heat even in December
convinced me. But it is intended to 'be the great military
capital of the Deccan and the Western Presidency. On the
site of the old Kirkee village, which overlooks more than
one battlefield famous in history, a great fort will soon rear
its head, with all such departments attached as the arsenal,
gunpowder, and gun carriage factories. Below lies the
artillery cantonment of Kirkee, with the Governor of Bom-
bay's new palace rising beyond. Four miles to the south
is the Poonah camp, and between cantonments and camp
is a high piece of ground where the Deccan College is being
built, to tempt the cast-bound
inyteuntehploafee,thlieuMetahterausttae
asanresgujidenneceß.°Nmo-
Ithaonstbd°twhaerhdverasieee, trojenoy, will
bhuoipleddhbimsy teolio
one who has seen all the Presidencies as I have done can
believe that Calcutta, commanding the Ganges and Brahma-
bo countryna
ye ht ea sl
pootra valleys, with undeveloped Assam and Burmah to the
east, will ever cease to be both the political and commercial
capital of India which it has grown to be ; but it is high
time, for its own sake, that Bombay should be cleared of
its miserable hovels and bungalows ; its filthy streets and
disgraceful consequences ; its scandalous hotels, and utter
absence of the comforts of civilisation, and made worthy
of its rising trade and enormous wealth. This Sir Bartle
Frere is doing with all his might and with much wisdom.
Ten years hence it will be impossible to recognise the
place.
I am in duty bound to allude to the dark side of the
social and commercial revolution which is going on with
such rapid strides in Bombay. There are two results—
while the rich are becoming richer the poor and the
becoming fast demora-
class with fixed incomes are daily becoming
osculation, so that there is
pliozoecirer ;.byanuud
hetletivrich are