The Sun.
London, England, 1857-06-22 00:00:00

Indian product requiring care and skill, so long as
t'ley remained in the exclusive hands of the natives
of India. Such was the case with sugar, indigo,
silk, and lac, until their preparation was un de: taken
by Europeans, and the value of these articles now
exported cannot be estimated at less than
15,000,0001., a property, the greater part of it, thel
creation of English skill, enterprise, and capital.
Europeans have not engaged in the culture of cotton,
which no doubt they would have done had they found
it profitable, and the consequence is that Indian cot-
ton is a barbarous article. It is not the only one
that is in this state when neglected by Europeans.
Tol,as,co, for example, has been cultivated in India
for 250 years, and many of its soils and climates are
as well adapted for it as those of Maryland or Cuha.
Although universally produced it is a wretched
article, so unfit for exportation that it hardly shows
its face in an English price current. The value of
all the crude tobacco imported into England in
1855 was 1,303,0001., of which British India sup-
plied 171. worth.: The value of cigars furnished
by the Spanish possessions of Cuba and the Philip-
pines in the same year was 237,447/. ; that of Bri-
tish India was 4831. ! In consequence of Irish
famine and free trade, maize came to be a new im-
port into England, a few years back, and ready
America supplied us in 1855 with this corn to the
value of 1,171,5001., our whole imports amounting
to the value of 2,640,251/. Of this British India
did not furnish a single bushel.
Although Indian industry is incapable of pro-
ducing for exportation commodities demanding
skill and care in preparation, it produces freely
enough such as are the mere product of crude and
cheap manipulation, or which can be raised on land
too poor to be applied to the production of bread-
corn, or which the forests yield, or which there is
no market for at home. Thus, although oppressed
by a pernicious monopoly, it produces opium to the
yearly value of 2,000,0001. We have at this mo-
ment before us a list of no fewer than 24 articles
unknsown to Indian commerce before the abolition
of the monopoly, and the aggregate value of which
imported into England in 1855 was no less than
3,500,0001. They consist of such commodities as
cocoa-nut husks, oil seeds, a kind of coarse hemp
(corconts junccea), sheep's wool, coarse but useful,
hides, cocoa-nut oil, gutta percha, Indian rubber,
gambier, and tallow. Such commodities as these,
it will appear at once, demand no skill ; wherever
skill and care are required for the pro luction of
commodities suited to the European market, the
Hindus will be found unequal to their production.
The Chinese canmakefine sugar andfinet-ilk without
European help, but not the Hindus. Among such
new commodities as those above referred to, those
demanding skill are all of Chinese manufacture,
such as Malay tin, sago, gambier, and the good
sugars of Siam, Java, and Manilla.
For impeovement in the growth of Indian cot-
ton the Manchester interest is disposed to lay
mighty stress on irrigation, but this is quite a mis-
take on their part. Cotton is a dry-field, not a wet-
field culture, and there are, indeed, few useful
plants that thrive so well with little moisture.
When land is made amenable to permanent irrri-
gation (an expensive process) its productive powers
are increased five-fold, nay even up to ten-fold,
when the water supply is ample and ifs sources
perennial. The most valuable crops only will then
be cultivated, and rice, within the Tropics and near
them, will be sure to have the preference, even on
lands but partially irrigated. Cotton will only
follow rice, as a second crop within the year, as do
sesame, pulses, and such like plants—save all
crops, as it were. This is Indian husbandry, and
Manches'er possesses no magician's wand to
change it.