The Sun.
London, England, 1845-10-06 00:00:00

brienin
K. 41

LONDON. MONDAY. OCTOBER 6, 1846.

The last advices from India tend to confirm, in their
fullest extent, the most sanguine anticipations we have
ever formed of the speedy diffusion, throughout that
magnificent country, of railroads. The most anxious
and profound attention of the enlightened Governor-
General—a man whose career in developing the arts
and realising the blessings of peace seems destined, to
eclipse even that of his military renown—is
_constantly
devott d to extending and multiplying the application of
steam power to facilitate the communication between all

the "countries, nations, names, and languages" which
compose our continental empire in Asia. We need
not dwell for a moment on the physical, geographical,
and political accidents of surface, extent, and institu-
tions, Which are so many reasons why India requires
nothing so much as a well digested anksubstantially con-
sti tiered scheme of railways in order to eliminate her

resources in new and multiplied channels, and to an
extent not yet witnessed even in the palmiest periods Of
her eventful history. Such a scheme we need not doubt
that the administrative genius of Sir HENRY HAR.
DIRGE will successfully superintend, and usher into exe.
cution. Without this marvellous application of modern
science, on a grand scale, the almost innumerable diffi•
eulties interposed by natural or artificial obstacles scat-
tered over an area of enormous territorial extent, and
the still more formidable impediments established by
the force of habits consecrated by the lapse of from two
to three thousand years—by the power of prejudices to
Iv Melt superstition has ascribed a character of sacred
and unimpeachable permanency—those difficulties we uld
have operated, for ages to come, to the same bad results
which they have produced for ages past. Differencesofcaste'
of usages, of popular feeling—the extreme remoteness
of even the most wealthy and enlightened districts from
one another—the perils of the journey between them ag-
gravated by bad and imperfect high roads, and by the
want of all unity of action in the sources of internal go •
vernment and protection ;—these have been among the
main causes which have hitherto effected a more com-
plete isolation of one province of Hindostan from ano-
ther than that which separates Hindostan from the
Andamans. Of the of e hundred millions of people who
sojourn over the vast countries comprised under the vague
designation of India, at least one-fourth are iil supplied
with salt, and occasionally great sufferers from the want
of it. Yet there is no country under heaven which pro.
duces that great necessary of life with more facility,
or might le made to raise it in larger quantity. Not
to mention its salt lakes, its salt desert even,
(the ",ilutin," extending over a square of about
240 miles in the Got.jerat), or the plains
of salt that occur north and west of the north
shore's of the Indus, the ircdigious extent of the Malabar
anti Coromandel coasts is dotted with natural reservoirs

^'•tllised by the intense beat of the sun, and

of salt,
with ar ificial "pans" so,.

' works, in which the mann-
----ied on by

facturing and purifying processes are

native industry and capital. Enormous quantities oz
salt are annually made, again, in the huge alluvial tract
called the " Sunderbunds "—sand islands forming the
Delta of the Ganges, at the north-easternmost extremity
of the Indian Peninsula. Now it is not enough to ac-
count for the scarcity of this invaluable condiment to
say that it is occasioned by the Government monopoly
of salt—by that duty which, together with the " Land''
and " Sayer"—the " Ayeen" and " Akbarry" revenues—
have, during so many years, formed so large an item in
the financial resources of the East India Company. In
some of the tributary States, which are among the great