How to achieve Success.

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Corn Law to put forth all their strength in the new agitation. All that is required now is strong unfaltering will on the part of the men of Lancashire. It is useless for them to speak of the apathy of Government, or of the hostility of the East India Company, as an insuperable obstacle. Nothing but want of union or want of earnestness can hinder the new League from achieving all that is required in order to make India the best field for the growth of cotton and the best market for English manufactures.

One of the main causes why Manchester has not been able to make any sensible progress hitherto in the solution of the Indian cotton cultivation question, has been because it has only taken it up by fits and starts. Hence that mass of imperfect and conflicting evidence on the subject, with which newspaper readers have been dosed for the last ten or twenty years. Instead of giving a clear and comprehensive statement of the thing wanted, and the means by which it could be obtained-as was done by the Anti-Corn-Law League-most of the writers and speakers on the cotton question have been too anxious to make out a case for or against the Government, or the East India Company. For our own part, we entertain very decided opinions regarding the share of blame which ought to fall upon the shoulders of the great corporation in Leadenhall-street. True to its strong Conservative instincts, as every corporation must be, the East India Company has used all its power and influence to thwart the schemes of all who have attempted to introduce reforms of any kind into the country which they govern. But the Company is not omnipotent. If any gross charge can be brought against the Indian Government, the people of England will readily listen to it, and if that charge can be clearly substantiated, the newspaper press will not be backward in making it known throughout the length and breadth of the land. All that is wanted in such a case is merely the union of a few determined men, to begin the work of agitation, and carry it on till they have created a public opinion, powerful enough to bring the Indian Government to reason. If the Cotton Supply Association will only take up the matter in earnest, they will not have much difficulty in obtaining a sufficient amount of popular support for any legislative measure they may require.

Mr. Cheetham, M.P., who presided over the first meeting of the Association, remarked on that occasion, that it was useless to ask for the reappointment of a parliamentary committee to inquire into the resources and wants of India, as the ground had been so carefully travelled over by the Committee which Mr. Bright moved for and presided over in 1848. What we now require,' said Mr.

Cheetham, 'is not talking so much, as action.' But in order to render action effective, a large amount of both talking and writing is still required. When we remember how many years have elapsed since Sir Thomas Munroe condemned the system of land tenure as one of the worst evils under which India labours, and how little progress we have made toward a reform of that evil, it requires no small amount of faith to believe in the possibility of a speedy triumph. But great changes must be preceded by long and arduous labour on the part of those by whom the public mind is prepared for their accomplishment. In giving his evidence respecting the demand for English manufactures in India, Sir Thomas Munroe made the following remarks, which deserve to be diligently pondered over by all who take any interest in India reform.

"The small demand for our manufactures arises solely from the inability to consume them. If the existing mode of taxation should be abandoned, the country, instead of rice and dry grains, would be covered with plantations of betel, cocoa-nut, sugar, indigo, and cotton, and the people would take a great deal of British manufactures, for they are remarkably fond of them. They are hindered from taking our goods, not by want of inclination, but either by poverty or the fear of being reputed rich and having their rents raised. When we relinquish the barbarous system of annual settlements, when we make over the land either on very long leases or in perpetuity to the present occupants, and when we have convinced them, by making no assessments above the fixed rates for a series of years, that they are actually proprietors of the soil, we shall see a demand for European articles of which we have at present no conception.'

Mr. Mangles, the present Chairman of the East India Company, is unable to view the land tenure question in that light. Instead of looking upon the present system of rack-rent, with all its abuses, as an enormous evil, he would like to see it rendered still more stringent. In his evidence before the India Cotton Committee, he says:-'The rent of land has never been 'private property in India. The Government of India, like any government, may be an unfaithful trustee, but I hold that the land revenue of India, if there were a republic in India to'morrow, belongs to the community of right, for the purposes of good government, including irrigation, and roads, and canals. If there was the freest Government in the world, it would be for public purposes, and if you give that, or any part of it, gratuitously to the person who happened to be a cultivator of 'the soil, or to have certain rights in connexion with the soil, you would rob the other classes of the soil. If the Government, as trustees, take this money and waste it in foreign wars, or

Has the Company done its Duty?

443 waste it in any other way, they are, pro tanto, unfaithful trustees. It is a great public fund, like the tithes in this country, appropriated to the national church, any diversion of which would be a robbery of the parties to whom it belongs. It is in that point of view, and because I wish to see other impolitic taxes 'abolished, that I wish to see the land revenue maintained in its 'full integrity, and, if it can be justly done, increased.' Such is the theory of the Chairman of the East India Company regarding the system of land tenure. He holds that the land revenue belongs to the community as their right, and that it ought to be employed in making roads and canals, and in the construction and maintenance of works of irrigation. No one will quarrel with Mr. Mangles on that head; but in what manner has the Indian Government fulfilled its duty to the community? During the last one hundred years it has executed works of irrigation for about four millions of acres, in a country comprising an area of about 800 millions of acres, the greater part of which requires irrigation. The state of the roads may be inferred from the fact that the freight of cotton from Berar to Bombay, on pack bullocks, is 10 d. per ton per mile. The Court of Directors allow, that were the valley of Berar connected with Bombay by railway, Lancashire could get all the cotton she requires for 24d. per pound, land and sea charges included. The distance is only about four hundred miles, and as the cost of constructing railways in India is only about 5000l. per mile, the cost of such a line would not exceed 2,000,000l. It is more than four years since the question was first agitated, but only fifty miles of the proposed railway have yet been constructed. In this, as in a thousand other instances, the Indian Government has been an unfaithful trustee in its management of the revenue which belongs to the community. When Mr. Mangles was examined before the Indian Cotton Committee, in 1848, he was asked how much revenue the Company had received from India during the previous fourteen years. In reply, he stated that about 300,000,000l. had been received, and out of all that vast sum only 1,400,000l. -little more than 1d. per 1.-had been spent on roads, works of irrigation, and public works.

But whatever may be said regarding the apathy of the East India Company, or of the unwise manner in which it has expended its 28,000,000l. of annual revenue, we must not forget that the spinners and manufacturers of Lancashire are mainly to blame for the present alarming crisis in the cotton trade. At the last annual meeting of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce, a short discussion took place regarding who was to blame for the slow progress which the Indian-cotton-cultivation question

had made, from which it appears that they have some misgivings on this head. Mr. Hugh Mason, in adverting to a statement of the President of the Chamber of Commerce, that repeated applications had been made to Parliament, but they had all failed, remarked that Mr. Bazley should have gone further, and shown the cause of their failure. They ought to have gone 'to their representatives in Parliament, and secured their support; 'but there was not one Member in the House of Commons 'who could be found to take up the question of obtaining an increased supply of cotton.' This statement was denied by Mr. Simpson, who reminded his fellow-manufacturers that 'Mr. Bright 'had, upon every possible occasion, enforced upon the attention of the Indian Government the necessity of giving this question 'their serious consideration.' But what did the Indian Government care for the warnings and remonstrances of Mr. Bright, or any other member of the House of Commons, so long as there was no formidable agitation of the question out of doors? Mr. Bright understood this very well, as is evident from the following letter of his, in 1853, to a correspondent in India who had expressed his disappointment that the Government did not intend to make any real change in the administration of the Indian empire :

'You were in expectation of sweeping changes in the Charter Act, but to your horror and amazement' you find nothing is to be done. You seem to be as ignorant of England as we are supposed to be of India. Nothing can be done with or for India until some great event -calamity, it may be-shall compel it to be done. In Parliament, nobody cares or knows anything about India. Hobhouse, never fit for much for any practical purpose of good government, and in his old days more old and slow than most old men, has been your ruler from 1846 to 1851, and he is succeeded by Herries, who could never have been tolerated except as the successor of Hobhouse. If a debate is attempted, nobody attends to it; if returns are moved for, they are seldom made, and, if made, are purposely so made as to be quite incomprehensible; if a question is asked, we are dodged to the Court of Directors and back to the Board of Control, and between them are unanswered and laughed at; if a charge is made, Hogg is at hand to deny it; and this is done with security when the proof is often only in the hands of the Court or the Board, or hidden in a waggon-load of papers. The people of England truly know nothing of India, except that hundreds of families among them profit by its patronage; and these families, powerful in political parties here, will give no help to any attempt to unveil the hidden mysteries connected with Indian affairs. The Whigs are much like the Tories in this matter; neither party wishes to undertake a great question of this kind; both are deep in patronage and jobbing of every sort, and unhappily there is no statesman in England at this moment who has sufficient reputation, power,

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or position, to enable him to grapple with the great Indian abuse. The enormous expenditure of the India Government, in India and at home, deceives or corrupts almost everybody; and they who are neither deceived nor corrupted are not powerful enough to overcome it. I confess I see no remedy at present. You have a Government without responsibility, spending taxes which it does not pay, and turning the interests of a few hundred millions of people to the profit of a small section of the English people.'

Mr. Bright laments that there was no statesman in England, in 1853, with sufficient reputation, power, or position, to enable him to grapple with the great Indian abuse; but he shows in this very letter that the state of parties at that period was such as to render it impossible for any statesman to carry a great measure of India reform. Whigs and Tories, as he tells his correspondent, were both alike. Neither party wished to undertake a great question of this kind.' Who can feel any surprise at this apathy of the Whigs and Tories? Has it not always been so with every great question, so long as the people out of doors remain quiet? No one who knows anything of the history of parties and public opinion in Great Britain, will ever expect to find either Whigs or Tories commencing a great agitation. But was there no other party in the House of Commons in 1853? What had become of the independent Free Trade party at that critical juncture? Were the men who carried the Anti-Corn-Law agitation on to a victorious conclusion so careless about Indian affairs as to leave the mismanagement of our vast empire, with its 150,000,000 of inhabitants, to the tender mercies of the Right Hon. J. C. Herries and Sir James Hogg? Considering how deeply many of the members from the manufacturing districts, and their constituents, were interested in the question of cotton cultivation in India, and how important it was that that branch of the question should be thoroughly discussed, we must confess that we feel much greater surprise at the remarkable silence of the men of Lancashire in 1853, than at the carelessness and unconcern of the two great aristocratic parties in the House of 'Commons, who had no such weighty interests at stake.

6

'liament,' says Mr. Bright, nobody knows or cares anything about India. As for the Lancashire constituencies, they had, unfortunately, plenty of American cotton, at moderate prices, at that period, and had no disposition to embark in the agitation of India reform, or any other question, merely from patriotic motives. Their motto was, that every man ought only to attend to his own affairs, and they are now reaping the consequences.

But it is not merely as regards their apathy in 1853, when the Charter Act was under discussion, that the spinners and manu