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

WESTERN INDIA.

(Front the Correspondent of the Times)

BOMBAY, Dec. 30, 1864

I question if any city or community in the world has 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-
bourne than that deluge of silver which has for the past
four years flowed over Bombay with so mighty a current.
The social anomalies and, I fear, also, the general demora-
lization were less marked in the English colony than in this
Indian city, which Q. sudden, and probably temporary tide
of prosperity has caused to aspire to be 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 grew in wealth, developed
new wants. It is my experience that in Calcutta during
the last 10 years prices have just doubled. The rise was
felt most severely there by the large class with fixed
incomes, because Calcutta was the 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 "slow." But in proportion to
the delay of the tide of increase in reaching Bombay has
been its violence, so that the western city now far exceeds
Calcutta in the expense, discomforts, and even positive
hardship of living. Up to 1860 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 the three years since that time official returns state
the import of gold and silver into Bombay 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 themserves possessed of sums which are reckoned
by millions, and speak with contempt of so petty an amount
as a lad 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 Jainsetjee Jejeebhoy, his be-
come the millionaire of Bombay, though his ancestral for-
tune was not large, his capital being reckoned at 2f mil-
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
Scotch houses as Messrs. Nicol and Co., and Ritchie,
Stewart, and Co. These are the great merchant
princes, but all the subordinate commercial
houses 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, conaaratively, wealtbi and
an; crcc-^ap,ebivn of the usurer is gone: Except that vile here-
ditary debt, the fruit of superstition, to set a limit to which
a wise insolvent net will soon be passed in the ryots'
favour, the agricultural class here, in point of comfort, put
ours inEngland to shame. While an 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
Roychund,
0a
ft i
lavishingn gh m a
forbaronetlassnestfa nr
n;
instance,
so e
hase
etheo
given,n pnh linouveauxlc believe,
richesele objects.y
Hindoors have forgotten that her Majesty recognised the
splendid liberalities of the late Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy by ere-
, a
arte
Premchundinthe
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
its head, with all such departments attached as the arsenal,
one battlefield famous in history, a great fort will soon rear
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 caste-bound youth of the Mahratta
country to board, as in Oxford, in one place, if not to use
one hall, and where, too, it is hoped by too sanguine Born-
bayite
who s that
has ten all Viceroyhimself
assellf ahraevseidednocnee.
canN
believe that Calcutta, commanding the Ganges and Brahma-
o
n
willPr ilesbiudendc Presidencies
t valleys, with undeveloped Assam and Burmah to the
east, will
oea theee the
ever cease to be both the political and commercial
capital of India which it has grown to be; but it is high
poora,
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
class with fixed incomes are daily becoming
poorer ; and the rich are becoming fast demora-
lized unhealthy speculation, SO that there is

good reason to fear a terrible retribution. It should
be known, in England that it is impossible for a
married man to live in Bombay on a thousand a year ; that
Englishmen are separating themselves from their wives and
families for years, because they cannot afford to keep them
in Bombay ; that there aro many subalterns, and even cap-
tains of her Majesty's army, who live like poor curates, in
a country where so to live is death, who, in sober truth,
cannot afford to have butcher's meat on their tables more
frequently than once a week. If it took ten years for prices
to double in Calcutta, in Bombay they have quadrupled in
four years. The non-producing poorer classes cannot get
grain. Last year (1863-4) a new trade sprang up between
Calcutta and Bombay, the latter taking nearly a million
sterling's worth of grain from Bengal. • Yet the •Bombay
Commissioner of Customs states the alarming fact that
while "the importations of grain into Bombay have been
32 per cent. in quantity below the importations of the pre-
ceding year, they have exceeded the latter in.value by 200
per cent. Everywhere along the north-eastern division of
the Great India Peninsula Railway I have seen grain wait-
ing for transit to Bombay, but the single line of rail is as
unequal to the traffic hereas it is in the case of cotton on
the south-eastern branch. And even if this grain`were sent
it would be as a drop in the ocean, while its despatch causes
famine prices in the interior. It is the official class, how-
ever, which suffers most. I have spoken of military officers,
but the political danger from the poverty of civilians is
greater, for their reduced status brings them into contempt
with the natives who once looked up to them with awe.
It induces the younger and abler to leave the service for
merchandise, and it tempts those who remain to dabble un-
worthily in the share-market. Would you believe it, that
several of the leading rich natives of Bombay lately, in the
simplicity of their hearts, proposed (indirectly) to
Government, not only to memorialise the Governor-
General on the subject, but to help to
,abate the
evil out of their own pockets ? Hence the cry now to
keep the income-tax, which Sir C. Trevelyan is deter-
mined to abolish, substituting local imposts that will
fall mainly on the poor. Tile best men- are tempted
away from official employment till the uncovenanted ser-
vice is deserted. It is the ablest and youngest who go ;
but even those whose pensions would otherwise keep them
are induced to leave.. One doctor lately declined a tempt-
ing offer on this ground. " What is the value of your pen-
sion capitalised ?" he was asked. On naming the sum it
was given to him ten times over by the simple addition of
a cipher, and he ceased to be a Government servant. On
his own responsibility Sir B. Frere added to the salaries of
the menial servants of the State an increase proportionate
to the price of grain, on the same principle which is adopted
with our Sepoys. But he has hitherto failed to induce the
supreme Government to sanction an increase to the higher
branches of the service, for it would amount to more than
half a million sterling in Bombay alone. Nor can we won-
der at this refusal, for any increase must be general all
over India, and we can only hope Sir C. Trevelyan will
sacrifice vanity to justice, and give at least some relief,
otherwise administration in India will come to a dead lock.
What with the rise of prices, and the unnecessary irritation
caused by the mode of carrying out the military and medi-
cal amalgamations, the discontent of all classes of officials
in India has reached a dangerous height, and the effect of a
knowledge of this on the natives is deplorable.
The other evil result of this sudden wealth is unhealthy
speculation. I enclose a Bombay share list, and would es-
pecially direct your attention to the thirty banks, land re-
clamation, and financial companies, the fruit of the past
year chiefly. Every day a new company enters the mar-
ket, and there is a rush for shares, with endless heart-
burnings and counter accusations. Hardly one. of these
companies has paid a dividend, yet the shares sell at
premiums which the maddest speculator never dreamt of,
and which can never make a return to the victims who
will be caught in the reaction that is impending. The
best, and to my mind almost the only hopeful, scheme
is the Elphinstone Land and Press Company, established
long before the present mania by Messrs. Nicol and Co.
Its object is to reclaim 1,200,000 square yards of
fore-shore at the busiest part of the harbour, and on the
ground, after giving a large part to Government to accomo-
date the railway, to build presses, wharves, docks, and
warehouses, like those of Liverpool. To reclaim each
square yard costs from 16s. to 20s. ; but each yard already
reclaimed lets on an annual lease at from 10s. to 14s. Hence
a dividend of 7 per cent. or even £14,800, the fabulous
premium to which each £l,OOO share has risen. Need we
wonder that a scheme which proves such a mine of wealth
has imitators both bad and good ? The slightest knowledge
of arithmetic would prove, if men were not corrupted by
the laoPa -LA sAtadzie gain. that-irkeNt /if the pa., eornpanies
shares, at their present premium, will involve a terrible loss:
but at present men in Bombay do not think of such con-
temptible things as dividends. They buy shares cheap to
sell them dear; they too often lend their good names to
plans which are hollow, and make use of their knowledge
to get out of tho showy edifice they have erected before it
falls and engulfs others in its ruin. The demand for ground
in Bombay is so great, and the fact that it will soon be the
railway focus of India is so favourable to it, that most of
these land reclamation schemes would be blessings to the
island if they were conducted in a healthy and honourable
market. As it is, I have seen no sadder sight than the
al fresco Bombay share market under a tropical sun. It is
far worse than the London betting circles, watched by
policemen, "behind the brewers,„!! and elsewhere.