The Sun.
London, England, 1857-11-09 00:00:00

in 1847-8, declared in his evidence before the
Lords' Committee " we do not so much want the
money, but we want a certainty that
if we should want it,. we should get it !" This
is the key to the entire grievance—notes or bul-
lion to a vast amount are hoarded, in order to
provide for possible contingencies, or to enable
the possessors to acquire property at little more
than half its actual value. For these purposes,
men will disregard all the platitudes of the Times,
or the propriety of providing only for their wants,
and not for their fears. Indeed, where sauve qui
peut becomes the ruling motive, ordinary prudence
requires that every commercial man should make
timely provision for any probable or even possible
demands, while the greed of gain, the auri sacra
fames, equallystimulates the'speculator to husband
his resources, and " keep ready money in his
purse," in order to be prepared to take advantage
of the extraordinary bargains that may be antici-
pated. " Self-preservation" and " acquisition"
are powerful influences, which cannot be ex-
cluded, but will always prevail whenever a suit-
able opportunity arises.
We earnestly invite attention to a letter,
headed, " Who is to blame this time 1" and
signed " Civis Britannicus," which will be found
in another part of oar impression. Our respected
correspondent truly states that we are the only
metropolitan journal which has boldly and con-
sistently argued the probability of the occurrence
of the present crisis, and as boldly and consis-
tently suggested and demanded a remedy." We
have interpolated the word " metropolitan," in-
asmuch as an esteemed provincial contemporary,
the Derbyshire Courier, has been a faithful and
efficient co-operator through good report and
through evil report, not only when public atten-
tion was directed to the all-important topic, but
also when the unflinching assertion of our princi-
ples exposed us to the sneers and ridicule of shallow-
pated fools, or interested disciples of the Mercator
school. It was so in reference to the Free-trade
when we stood almost alone, before Mr. COBDEN
had emerged from obscurity, or Mr. BRIGHT
had achieved a political character. We fearlessly
urged the great truths of economical science, and
insisted on the science of free and unrestricted
competition. When the victory was all but
achieved, others came round and endeavoured to
bear off the spoils to the exclusion of those who
bore the brunt of the encounter, and who never
for a moment hethtated or relaxed in their exer-
tions. But onus seminat alter metat is an old
occurrence, and we cannot wonder that persons
are always to be found ready to seize the prize
that others have earned.

Our correspondent pertinently inquires, " who
is to blame 1" Not the industrial parties, who
on this occasion have certainly not been overtrad-
ing or dealing in accommodation paper. They
have not entered into wild speculation, have not
dabbled in time bargains, hold no shares in
banks or railways, or other speculative companies.
They have stuck to their legitimate business, and
what is their reward ? They may get a compli-
ment from the Commissioner in bankruptcy, and
a high class certificate, But these will be but poor
consolations for blighted prospects, and the neces-
sity of de novo, when their energies are impaired,
and they are falling into the sere and yellow leaf,
when they ought to be thinking of enjoying the
fruits of their indefatigable and honest exertions.

We have pointed out, like our correspondent,
the inconsistency of "free-trade, and a fettered
currency." They are totally incompatible ;if any
kind of " protection " could be tolerated, it cer-
tainly is not protection to usurers and money
lenders, to those who take advantage of the wants
of the community to realise unholy profits at the
expense of the industrial classes, and who would
have the majority of the people enduring the most
bitter privations, provided they could revel in
unwonted luxuries or accumulate heaps of useless
gold which they had not the hearts to spend or to
enjoy. It is not for them that we would con-
vert the creators and producers of national wealth
into unprofitable consumer; or close up factories
or mills, or cause them to work half-time. Nor
should we join in the impious cry of " over pro-
duction " so long as the hungry required food or
the naked clothing. Separate our internal commerce
from our foreign trade. Let gold be treated as a com-
modity for which a premium must be paid when
the demand exceeds the supply. Our merchants
can easily calculate the effect of a possible pre-
mium, which will not affect them by any means
so severely as an exorbitant rate of interest. It
may for a time check the importation of foreign
goods, but it will allow domestic matters to con-
tinue tranquil. it will also unquestionably pre-
vent the possibility of parties exporting gold in ,
order to realise large profits for themselves, care-
less of the effects on the welfare, happiness, and
prosperity of their fellow-subjects.

What would the share-taking public say to a
railway prospectus which offered a handsome
profit on their investment the very first year
after the first sod was cut, and the first barrow-
load wheeled by my Lord OUT-Or-THE-WORLD,
anxious to bring his acres within reach of profit.
able civilisation ? They would naturally enough
pass it by as Railway Quackery, and think it quite
enough if railway projectors endeavoured to at-
tract old maids and footmen from the Three per
Cents. by offering to return four or five per cent.
per annum, to keep the investor in ready money
till the line was completed. The works of a
public company covering expenses of formation as
they were in progress, repaying handsomely the
public who used the works, the shareholders who
constructed them, and affording a handsome revenue
to the Government too, would be certainly treated
as a very pretty dream ; but the shares would
hardly be marketable on the Stock Exchange.
Yet the public has long had before it the
demonstration that such a thing is possible; it
has had the demonstration which capitalists prefer,
beyond all others, that it has been done, and that
the scope is ample, for millions on millions to be
embarked in such works. Col. ARTHUR COTTON'S
facts and reasonings have been three or four years
before the world ; they have never been de-
nied, indeed the gentleman whom Lord DAL-
HOUSIE appointed to investigate and report upon
the Colonel's statements reported that, though on
some minor points and calculations he might
differ from him, yet that the Colonel "argues
from sound principles and that his plans fdr the
improvement of communications at small coat in
some localities by means of canals and rivers, and
in others by an inferior class of railway are emi-
nently deserving of attention." Probably the
public generally have forgotten Colonel ARTHUR
and his " Public Works in India," if so, it is
high time that attention should be called to his
book, and his carefully sustained reasonings.
The commercial paradox to which we have just
alluded has been abundantly verified in irrigation
works in India, and within the last few years too.
They have paid for their construction as they pro
ceeded.

In the great irrigation works undertaken, after
Jong delay, on the Godavery, in the very year of
their commencement, the Government at once re-
ceived an increased revenue, the increase CZCCedillg
the 5414 expended on th works ot and the increase

has continued, during their progress, to reimburse
the capital and to leave additional revenue to the
Government ! In many other works the imme-
diate returns have been of the same character,
and in all that time have paid a splendid percentage
for whatever sum the Government saw fit to in-
vest. In Rajpootana, at Marwarree, the expen-
diture of 24,0001. in tanks increased the revenue
by 11,0001., or 47 per cent., and as the people
are computed to have gained two-thirds more, the
total profit on the works was one hundred and
forty-one per cent. In Ajmere the expenditure
of 38,0001. increased the revenue by 10,0001.
in the fourth year of their execution. In the
Madras Presidency the profit to the Government
has averaged not less than seventy per cent., and
a list is now before us of thirteen of the best
works, in which the profit varies from seventy-
eight to two hundred and sixty per cent., giving an
average of one hundred and thirty-one per cent.
We believe that a case of failure is hardly known.
In every instance which we have noticed, the
profits have been so large, that but for the un-
deniable evidence of receipts into the Government
Exchequer, and of the enrichment of the natives,
we confess we could not have given credit to the
statements.

The mystery begins, however, to vanish, as
soon as we look at the facts of the case. At
first blush there are two great mysteries. How
such profits can be made anywhere in the world by
steady industry and legitimate use of capital ; and
how, if they can be made, there has not been a
gambling rush at them, like the railway mania,
or the emigration to the goldfields. The first
question is soon answered by remembering all we
have heard of tropical cultivation. It is the re-
verse of our own. Water, whioh we drain from
our fields at a vast expense, is there the very life
of vegetation. The sun is never wanting, and
drought is the danger, moisture the blessing. Egypt,
as we all know, " casts her bread upon the waters,"
and depends for her support upon an irrigation for
the more part natural. From the earliest records
of the East, our own Sacred Oracles, we find water
the great object of desire to the Oriental agricul-
turist ; and it is to this day the real Golconda, or
the "diggings" of India. Follow travellers
where we will, even through the Zahara itself,
the intertropical regions are redundant with vege-
tation almost fabulously luxuriant, wherever it is
blessed with the presence of water.
India is not only no exception to the general
rule, but probably its most splendid illustration.
Give water to the land, scorched otherwise by a
vertical sun, and it literally teems with life.
There is hardly anything which it will not grow.
The vegetable products which we most want here,
flourish as they do hardly anywhere else. Rice,
sugar, indigo, and ooTroN itself, may be grown
in almost any conceivable quanties—of many
products two crops may be obtained in one
season, and of those which can be
grown, no spot on earth can produce
them so cheaply. Wheat itself could be furnished
in quantities and at a price which would make
both the Yankees and the English landlords pro-
test that Indian irrigation would be their ruin.
The irrigation too can be accomplished at such a
marvellously small cost. Water for irrigation by
the works constructed already in Madras, has been
obtained at one-fiftiethpart of its value ! Such at
least has been the result of the Godavery irriga-
tion, where the works have been on a large scale,
but very heavy and expensive, though as we have
already observed, remunerative from their com-
mencement. Labour, measured not by wages, but
by work done, is so extraordinarily cheap, and the
facilities so great from the nature and number
of the streams, and- the sites for tanks, that
hydraulic works can be executed on very low
terms indeed. Another cause of cheapness is
that canal and river navigation are at little
additional cost obtained in connexion with the
irrigation ; but we must defer the question, Ca-
nals versus Railways, till another occasion.
But how then have these sources of wealth been
hidden so long from the British public ? The
answer is not far to seek, Leadenhall-street
can answer it. It has locked or veiled
India to all but the civil service, as far
as lay in its power. Secrecy has been the
protection of its miserable traditional Indian
policy ; a policy inherited from the times of the
close and rigid monopoly of the commercial com-
pany, whioh undertook to govern, for gain, the
millions of India. Englishmen have been kept as
much as possible out of India ; above all, as far
as practicable, they have been hindered from ac-
quiring property in land, or fixed property of any
kind. The policy of the Compauy has been the
narrowest and meanest conceivable. Its one ob•
ject has been to screw revenue from the miserable
peasants. The one great merit of Civil Service
gentlemen has been to give the Revenue screw one
turn more. Not one thought was ever bestowed on
enabling the Ryots to pay the revenue. Hence, in-
stead of inviting English capital, of devising every
kind of security for an investment of it in
the improvement of the country, and
of thus raising up a population able to
bear any reasonable amount of taxation,
the one object has been to keep India as a close
borough for the Civil Service, and to squeeze
out of the bodies and souls of the wretched pea-
santry enough to pay handsome salaries to offi-
cials, and large dividends to the company. Even
since 1853 this system has been adhered to as far
as practicable.

Light must now break in. The mutiny has
blown away the official fog. The Leadenhall
blind will be torn away. The DORINS and
GRANTS, and all the harpies, who have lived
on India without living for it, will be con-
signed to well-merited oblivion, the man
who can do something for India must
and will be brought forward ; and Eng-
land will see with surprise that there are water-
mines of wealth in India, which will throw into
the shade the gold mines of California and Austra-
lia. In a very few years' time Indian revenue and
expenditure will be equalled ; not by dangerous
retrenchments, nor by torturing the starving
Ryots, but by enriching the now wretched tax-
payers, through irrigation and canals covering the
country, and constructed by English commercial
Companies. To this end the Company must be
annihilated, and a Queen's Government confer the
best protection they can on British capitalists,
engineers, and merchants. We noticed a very
promising beginning in this line the other day,
and shall keep it under notice. They have
secured Colonel COTTON'S co-operation—itself a
guarantee of success.

His Royal Highness the Dnke of Cambridge leaves
town to-day on a visit to her Majesty, at Windsor Cats le,
and will remain there until WKineeuay.
Their Royal Highnesses the D achess cf Cambridge at d
the Princess Mary will, early in the ensuing month,
honour the Duke of Newcastle by their company, at
Clumber Park, Notts.
His Excellency, the Ambassador of France and the
Countess de Pereigny are expected to arrive at the Em-
bassy to-morrow morning, after an absence of some du
ration in Paris.

His Excellency the Netherlands Minister is expected
in town to-day from Yorkshire, where his Excellency
has been on a visit for some days.
The Countess Chreptowick is daily expected at Ches.
ham House, from Paris.
The Duke and Duchess of Gratou arrived in town
a few days since, trout Wakefield Lodge, Stony Strat-
ford.