The Sun.
London, England, 1860-09-10 00:00:00

THE

MR. ANI)REa'S ROUTE VIA
EUPHRATES AND THE INDUS.

•
On the banks of the Thames stands the city
whose in-dwellers rule the earth by commerce and
the productions to which commerce gives rise. The
in-dwellers of London are the kings of commerce,
the lords of true human progress. And amongst
the items of this commerce not the least important
are the leaders and rulers furnished to nations
whose rulers and lawgivers are not of indigenous
growth. Inland from the mouth of the Indus lies
a huge territory fertile in the growth of working
men and rich products, over which, by various cir-
cumstances, some disreputable and others reputable,
and mostly the latter, we have acquired the right,
sanctioned by a positive duty, to rule ; for although
it may not be the best of all possible governments
that exists in India, it is the best that India has
ever experienced, and one that nolndian ruler could
replace without restoring the ancient savagery and
the laws of mere brute force. The basis or all law
—force, physical and mental--has been tested (no
long time back) with innumerable odds of num-
bers against English rule, and we have come off
victorious ; and the Indian Peninsula is hence-
forth as much a part of the British Empire
as is Lancashire. We have, up till now, had
our supplies of cotton chiefly from the slave
labour of the United States. We are to go on
increasing our supply from India in virtue of
the railways we are opening up, and thereby
finding employment, not for slaves, but for
Indian men and women, as free as their intel-
lectual and moral condition will permit, and
with no impediments save those of climate to being
on equality with Englishmen. But we must not
shut our eyes to the fact that there was once a time
when the spun and woven fabrics of cotton were
all the products of the Indian loom, and that it was
from the brains of Watt, and Crompton, and Ark-
wright, and men of that stamp, that the steam-
engine and power-looms came forth, so multiplying
individual power that the 3d. a-day rice-fed Indian
workman was driven out of the market. But the
time is coming when cotton Lancashire, so far as
capital, machines, and masters are concerned, will
move itself to India, for the simple reason that there
the manufacture is indigenous, while in England it
is exotic, and that while workers in England are
not to be found under ls. 6d. or 2s. a-day, they are
to be found in India at 2d. to 3d. And thus will
disappear the periodic panic thought, " What will
become of England and her mass of cotton workers
should American slavery disappear P " Thus will
English commerce re-establish itself on a firmer
basis than ever, and the indigenous staple of English-
born men shall grow yet stronger by their liberation
from employments belonging to delicate taper
fingers and an etiolating atmosphere. When our
ships shall bring to Europe cotton in fabrics instead
of in bales, with all the arts of machinery added to
the enormous aptitude of millions of cheap-workers,
our fellow-subjects, our prosperity will be placed
on a basis that no amount of envy in rival nations
can undermine.

The value of a country for commercial purposes
consists in its roads by land or water, other things
being equal. But for its internal roads,
the great highroad of the sea would be of
comparatively little value to England. For a
long time the ocean was the only English high-
way to India, though some few travellers occa-
sionally made their way by land. But facile transit
through Europe, the Mediterranean, and Egypt,
gave rise to the " Overland Route." The enter-
prising and ill-requited Waghorn improved the
route, and stopped French monopoly by finding
out an improved track through Germany, with an
outlet at Trieste. But the Red Sea was the high-
way, and thepower of France has been systema-
tically directed to get possession of Egypt in order
to levy toll on our Indian transit. The Suez Canal
has been a mere pretext for a French colony, with
ulterior views.
We believe it was Lord Gleneig who first set
afloat the idea of an alternate route by the Eu-
phrates, the shortest way to India. At that time
railroads were not—as passenger and goods lines
on the large scale. But out of this has grown
gradually the proposition of a railway communica-
tion with India, which will in time become a fixed
idea; and the Euphrates railway is the portion to
be first made, i. e. a railway from the port of Se-
leucia, situate in a nook of the Mediterranean be-
hind the island of Cyprus, to the first navigable
portion of the Euphrates river, the railway ulti-
mately to be carried to the port of Bassora, on the
Persian Gulf, steamers from thence stretching across
to the port of Kurrachee, near the mouth of the
Indus. We have the choice, in leaving Eng-
land, of going through France, or Germany to
the Mediterranean by asking leave with a passport,
or of going round by the Straits of Gibraltar with-
out asking leave. It is not likely that we should
consent to pay a French toll for permission to pass
through Egypt under any circumstances; but were
Egypt an English colony, it would not be the best
highway to India. It may be objected that the
territories ate not ours. Still they belong legally
to a very old ally of ours, and one certainly as faith-
ful as our ally across the Channel. But he is a
weak ally, whose dominions are falling from him.
Well, we must help him to govern his dominions
so long as he holds them ; and when he can hold
them no longer we must either inherit them, so far
as our necessities require, or at least take care that
no new owner takes possession to impede our path.
We can, if we will it, prevent any chance of this
by conferring such obligations on the inhabitants
along the line, that they may serve as well as our
own colonists. The line will pay directly by virtue
of its local traffic—indirectly, as a highway to
India. The line passes through a fertile but scarce-
cultivated land, the seat of ancient civilization, half
peopled with an intelligent race of men, full of
energy, which goes into peculation chiefly because
it
us lefttry .
n, without a market for
Arabs we hold to be at least
without The race oc
of
p. atio
equal, if not superior, to the modern Greeks in di
in-
telligence, and superior to them in honour and good
faith. " I fear the Greeks though bringing gifts in
their hands," said the Trojan of old. Byron says of
the Greek in the pbem—
Unlike the honest Arab thieves so brave,
He would have hospitably cured the stranger,
And sold him instantly when out of danger.
If we make this Euphrates line, we shall attach
to us—possibly, in the future, make our own fellow-
subjects—a race of indomitable freemen, who will
garrison that river against all interlopers loving
war and aggression better than commerce. It is by
this process of bettering the condition of those we
go amongst, that our power and influence extends,
and by which we root out the anarchy generated
by conscienceless despots. The wild Highlanders
of Scotland were tamed and civilised by the process
of finding them employment; and wild tribes of
India have been civilised by the same process. All
that we read of in the palmy days of the Moors o
Spain, excelling in arts and arms, may be repro-
duced, under English auspices, in the countries
lying between the Mediterranean and the Persian
Gulf. Did not Layard, with small means at his
disposal, create a corps of attached workmen simply
by digging amongst ruins; and so, doubtless, will
Lesseps, till such time as they discover that not
commerce but conquest is the ultimate aim of those
who push forward Lesseps as Mr. Staunton " struts
a pawn" on the chessboard.
Nothing but a shadow prevents this work from
being done—the shadow of French intrigue, which
is busy with the impracticable process of trying to
convert the Mediterranean into a French lake.
If war must come, we can doubtless carry it on
as before ; but the realiy weakest ruler
at the present time is the French Empetor.
Writers may talk of his inscrutable purposes,
but it does not require much discern-
ment to detect in him a compound of Cagliostro and
Fourrier—a huge sham, which will collapse when-
ever the universal mistrust which surrounds his
[ mysticism shall open into the light of day. Of
real work, productive work, work that changes the
face of a nation, work that builds up a permanent
character and reputation, he has done nothing. Re
deteriorates national industry and wastes national
resources, while he destroys national morality.
When we compare the results of his career with that
of Garibaldi—the one greeted with universal mis-
trust, and the other with universal love and rever-
ence—we recognise in the one moral weakness which
saps physical power, and in the other moral strength
which creates a constant growth of physical power.
The one is a bandit chief, the other a leader of free-
men—the one ephemeral, the other permanent. As
surely as the elder Napoleon was defeated in the
East by our fathers, so surely will his successor
melt away as a shadow when confronted.
this '
We have been led into digression because we
feel strongly the absurdity of
stopping any repro-
ductive work of peace in fear of a shadow which
has no reality. And this very work of peace is
also the truest defence in war. With English war
ships at Vie port of Seleucia and in the Persian Gulf,
the railway connecting the two might become a
moving land fortress, garrisoned by some new Wil-
liam Feel and his bluejackets, with the labour of
moving their batteries taken off their hands, and
with their bands free to fight them. If the Go-
vernment be wise, they will not let slip the chance
of making a permanent highw y to that India which
will in process of time become to us an enormously
enlarged Lancashire,— &Janice' Alagazine.

The number of strangers at present in Paris is
so large that some of the hotel-keepers are obliged to hire
rooms out of their houses in order to lodge their customers.
There is a large attendance at the theatres and exhibitions,
but the evenings have become so cool that open air amuse-
ments find few frequenters.