The Sun.
London, England, 1861-06-01 00:00:00

PRICE 4D. STAMPED, SD.

GROWTH OF COTTON IN INDIA.

There is a cry for cotton. The destiny of the
world hangs on a thread. Clotho in the form
of a Lancashire witch holds the distaff; Lachesis
twists and twirls, and weaves and nets ; Atropos,
from the Northern States, swarthy, haggard, and
sullen, threatens to cut the thread with her bowie-
knife, and quench the star of England.. Never
did so much depend on a mere flock of down.
Certainly the supply is seriously imperilled, for
there are many chances against it. The war itself
must affect the crop by the withdrawal of money
and superintendence. A blockade may or may not
be effective, but it must add to the expense ; for
evasion is a circuitous, risky, and extortionate pro-
cess.
If the war goes on the negroes will certainly
run off, or take matters into their own hands.
Any how, if things go ever so well, there must be
a great interruption to business and a sense of in-
stability for some time. The great disproportion
of the Southern whites, compared with the North-
ern will compel the abstraction of every available
white man for the war, which is already main-
tained by a rigorous conscription. It is impossible
that a difficult and delicate cultivation can be kept
up in such circumstances. There must be a great
falling-off, which will be felt nowhere so much as
in England. When Mr. Beecher Stowe went about
England with his wife trying to persuade people
to desist from wearing slave-grown cotton, it was
little thought that we might soon have 'no choice
in the matter. Cotton has its turn for calamity.
We have had the potato rot, and the vine disease,
and all sorts of casualties in wheat, and fruit, and
hops, but cotton had escaped pretty well hitherto.
It is now suffering from the blight of political pas-
sions. Not moth and rust, not grub, and fly, and
fungus, Nit a fratricidal war, drains its strength,
and th-eatiais to extirpate the precious plant from
the soil. So we have even the House of Lords in
a panic. They know that three or four millions of
our people depend on the fibre, and pay no inconsi-
derable part of our taxes. They look to the East
and West Indies, wherever the climate will bear
the little plant that plays so large a part in Eng-
land's prosperity. They propose to take in charge
the mighty work of clothing the human race and
securing the manufacture for this country. There
is an almost paternal anxiety in their tone. They
are too careful for the morrow, and take too much
thought how we shall be clothed and fed. We
might share their solicitude did we not know the
wonderful elasticity of this cultivation, which
covers a province in a few years. Over and over
again Providence has smiled at the terrors of
commerce. When the Russian war broke out
one of the questions in everybody's mouth was
" Where shall we get our hemp ?" We got jute
from India instead, and now jute holds its own
against hemp. We shall either get plenty of cotton
or we shall learn to do without it.

So what is to ba done ? The Marquis of Tweeddale
calls the attention of Government to the cultivation
of cotton in India, the making of roads, and all the
other ways by which India, which now grows
cotton enough to clothe 200,000,000 of people, may
do the like for the rest of the world. It is a very
old calculation that, if India clothes a fifth of the
human race, she can with a little more trouble and
skill clothe half; and the best division of labour is
that India should grow the cotton, and England
should spin and weave it into cloth. Any
year this century there have been memorials sent
up by this or that enthusiast to this or that autho-
rity, up to the Governor-General, praying for the
encouragement of cotton. But the roads were
always bad; the means of conveyance were
bad ; the cleaning bad ; the implements were.
bad ; the plant itself bad ; and everything was so
bad that it was a matter of demonstration cotton
must pay if there was the most moderate improve-
ment in these respects. If so much is achieved with
so little system, what may we not expect with the
application of our energies and talents to the ob-
ject? But the Anglo-Indian authorities, Lord
Ellenborough among them, are against the pur-
chase of soil in India and the establishment of free-
holds. They warn the British capitalist not to bury
his money in the land, but to keep it free for culti-
vation, carriage, and manufacture. This must depend
upon arguments peculiar to India, for all over the
world nothing tends so much to the improvement of
the soil and the establishment of works upon it as
its absolute possession by wealthy, enlightened,and
enterprising men. In England there is many an
acre that would not be worth a pound under a
limited tenure which becomes worth £3O or £5O
as soon as it is really a man's own, to do what he
likes with. When Indians tells us this is im-
possible, or very unadvisable in India, we are
tempted to ask, what have they to say in favour
of the present state of things ? Are their objections
more than the expression of a certain phase of
national development ? For centuries almost every
man whose opinion was worth anything would have
objected to the full emancipation of the soil, to the
formation of good roads, to canals, to the extension
of manufacture in England; and now we find that
the advice was certainly wrong, and that these
things are not only useful, but a sort of necessity,
or rather gifts of Providence which it bahoves us
to accept at the earliest opportunity.
Perhaps this is a case where the disease must
work its own cure. If the American war, and
blockade, and bankruptcy, and loss of slave labour
should raise the price of cotton wool as much as is
feared, and if this staple is made to pay the cost of
the war on both sides by an immense export duty, we
shall then see the pressure which is to make India
do its part in the family of nations. Dearth is the
great stimulus of industry, whether in corn, wine,
or cotton. Dearth will soon test the value of any
calculations as to the friendliness of climates and
the capacity of soils. Lord Brougham tells us that
the British West Indies will grow any quantity of
cotton. We shall see whether it be so when the
American blockade has doubled the price, and left
us uncertain whether to keep the mills open.
Unless the " United States" settle their differences,
or agree to disagree, and divide the land between
them, they will see the great Indian Peninsula
fretted with railways and canals, and discharging
at every outlet piles of cotton worthy of Charleston
or New Orleans. As to the West Indies, the pro-
ducing power of Jamaica must depend on the popu-
lation, and on the inducement it may have to do
regular work. It is not generally believed to be a
formidable rival to the Southern States. But who
shall say what changes will not take place in the
course of the next few years ? Here wehave;lndia
re-conquered, the Chinese Empire in the process of
dissolution, the Old World sick at heart, and now
the United States at the end of their brief history.
All the countries of the world are newly opened, and
all the currents of population set flowing here and
there, where a vacuum is to be filled, an accumula-
tion discharged, or a channel to be found. Under
these circumstances neither cotton nor any other
cultivation will be tied to one spot. It will follow
labour, capital, and enterprise. After what we
have seen of its growth in the States, in Egypt, and
even in India, we will not venture to say where next
it will establish itself.—Times.

THE BANK ROBBERY AT PORTS-

MOUTR.

COMMITTAL OF THEAKSTONE.
It will be remembered that in the month of
March last, Charles Edwin Theakstone, aged 47
years, a clerk in a responsible position in the Branch
Bank of England at Portsmouth, absconded from
his situation with a large -stll3l of money. He left
a note behind addressed to a fellow clerk, in which
he stated that he intended to destroy himself. A
reward of £lOO was offered for his apprehension by.
the Bank, but nothing was heard of his where-
abouts till Monday, the 27th of April, when two
of the London detectives, named Webb and Hug-
gett, succeeded in tracing the offender to No. 24,
Palace-place, Lambeth, where, on being discovered,
he attempted suicide by cutting his throat with a
razor. He was taken to the Westminster Hospital.
There he has remained until Thursday, when be
was brought down to Portsmouth, and was ex-
amined before the magistrates of the borough,,Toeos:
yes-
terday, on a charge of embezzling the sum of
on the
of England.
the2othof Alarch last, the property of the
e
two
ohoef prisoner so
gaolne r
warders,was led
and
do courtppar
appeared
pt po o rbtee d b
in
ya
very weakly and depressed state.
head
upon his
to remain seated, and rested his He was allowed
hands
Evidence during
havingnearly b
et
ehne Ngv
ihvoelne oi fn thes
support
ppproorcte eodfi ntghse.
prosecution,
Mr. LOW, on behalf of the defence, said he had
nothing to offer on this occasion further than there
had not been a prima facie case made out. He
was, of course, aware their 'worships could do no
other than commit his unfortunate client to the
SePssriioosnsijer' who reserved his defence, was then
committed for trial at the next Borough Sessions in
the usual way.

Advices from Italy state that the harvest this
year,the gathering of which in Naples and Sicily will com-
mence in the course of a week or two, promises to be of
the most favourable cllnr3cter.