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

MR. AN'eRETI,'S ROUTE VIA THE

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

Ln-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 of 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 ? " Thus will
English commerce re-establish itself on a firmer
basis than ever, and the indigenous staple of English-
born men shall grew 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 en 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 Waghora 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 the power 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 Glenelg 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 c ommunica-
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 hint.
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 becetuse
it is left without occupation, without a market for
industry. The race of Arabs we hold to be at least
equal, if not superior, w the modern Greeks in in-
telligence, and superior W them in honour and good
faith. " I fear the Greeks though bringing Wilts in
their hands," said the Trojan of old. Byron says of
the Greek in the poem--
Unlike the honest Arab thieves so brave,
He would have hospitably cureGl 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 proce-s of bettering the condition of those \We
go amongst, that our power and influence textends;,
and by which we root out the anarchy generated.
by conscienceless despots. The wild Highl anders
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 he repro-
duced, under English auspices, in the co untries
lying between the Mediterranean and the rersisn
Gulf. Did not Layard, with small means at his
will
disposal, create a corps of attached workmen simply
by
digging amongst ruins; and so, doubtless,.
Lessees, till such time as they discover that not
commerce but conquest is the ultimate aim of th use
who push forward Lesseps as Mr. Staunton " stru is
a pawn" 'on the chessboard.
Nothing but a shadow prevents this work from
being done—the shadow of French iwtrigue, 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 really weakest ruler
at the present time is the French Emperor.
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. lie
deteriorates national industry
and wastes national
destroys
resources, while he
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-
his successor
od.
men—the one ephemeral, the other permanent. As
nwt o `v
t el
ydigression on willr
because we
surely es the elder Napoleon was defeated in the
ma tells
vtt
eabwhyaa
vyo
euabrsefaeantshhleeadrdsoi, so surely
rn
confronted.
nte
And this.
feel strongly the absurdity. of stopping any repro-
avre.rylveiroitrhk of peace
airs
repro-
ductive work of peace in fear of a shadow which
has no reality.
ma and in the Persian Gulf,
the railvva.y connecting
ashlsiopsthaet
eps ot rdefence
l eiun
the two might become a
movine. land fortress, garrisoned by some new Wil-
hr
abnadttsefrrieees ttaok efing
fight
tff t o
them.e i r hlaintdhse, and
itb their hands free to fight them. If the Go-
limit Feel and his blue-jackets, with the labour of
vTveiortvnhinnitgeinletthirbeie 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 enorwously
enlarged Lancashire.— echanics' Magazine.
care-

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.