bullocks by the quantity of water available
for their consumption on the road.

We, in England, can scarcely conceive such
a state of internal commerce, accustomed, as
we have so long been, to excellent roads,
canals, and railroads. Let us imagine all the
railroads, all the canals, and all the turnpike-
roads, with the exception of about twenty-miles
out of London, destroyed; that between
London and the present manufacturing districts,
lay a stupendous range of mountains, only to
be passed at all at one or two narrow defiles;
add a tropical climate, burning droughts at
one period of the year, at the other deluges of
rain, turning the dry watercourses of the hot
season into impassable torrents; and we have
a country somewhat resembling that between
the port of Bombay and the cotton-growing
district. If, then, over such a country, all
produce for shipment at the port of London had
to be conveyed on the backs of animals, horses
or bullocks, it is quite evident that the
present enormous traffic would dwindle away to
such a minimum, that in a very few years the
records of the former enormous influx of goods
would become quite incredible. Towns and
villages, now carrying on a brisk exchange
with London, would be compelled to resign
foreign luxuries, to consume their own
produce, and be as much as possible self-supporting.
To take a simple case, it is quite certain
that scarcely any number of horses could be
arranged so as to carry the number of
passengers who are now daily carried through
England by railway, because with animals, as
you increase the number, you increase the
difficulty of feeding them.

At present it is calculated, by Mr. Chapman,
that one million eight hundred thousand
bullocks traverse the few routes practicable
across the Ghauts, in carrying the traffic
between the interior and Bombay, of which one
hundred and eighty thousand convey cotton.
These animals travel in single file, at the rate
of three miles an hour, over tracks worn by
the feet of their predecessors, depending for
food and water on what can be picked up on
the way, sometimes delayed by torrents
swelled with the melting of the mountain
snow, sometimes struggling through morasses,
sometimes driven mad by heat and drought,
sometimes struck down in thousands by an
epidemic, and left to rot on the roadside,
polluting the air and poisoning the water, to
the grievous damage of the droves that follow
in their track.

Under such opposing circumstances, it is not
extraordinary that our commerce with India
makes slow progress. Reforms of laws and
of rules, improvements of docks and piers
on the coast, will do little towards establishing
a steady commercial barter of raw
material for manufactured goods between
England and India, until we have tapped
the interior, where the great agricultural
districts lie.

The Indian village system, which presents
the most ancient municipal system in the
world, is especially calculated to encourage
isolation, and foster self-supporting
communities, after the fashion, although not with the
results, communistic writers would desire to
see established in Europe. Each village is a
sort of republic, ruled by the Patel or headman,
the Chougula his assistant, and the
Koolkurnee, or accountant, with some others.
Besides these, the village maintains, as public
officers, a band of artisans; these, where the
village can afford it, number twenty-four.
The carpenter stands at the head, next comes
the blacksmith, the goldsmith and assayer of
coins, the shoemaker, the potter, the barber,
the leather ropemaker, the butcher, the
washerman, astrologer, bard, dancing-girl,
water-carrier, &c. The remuneration, beside
a piece of land, is by a stipend in grain from
each cultivator, in return for which,
customary services are performed. The
carpenter and blacksmith are required to repair
and construct implements, wells, and other
matters connected with cultivation. This
system, as is well expressed by the author,
from whom we have abridged these details—
stereotyped the India of the day—to lead the
Indian people, bound hand and foot, by
custom and precedent, on the path of material
improvement. Precept is insufficient, they must
be taught by example. They are more ready
to copy what they see to be useful, than is
usually imagined, but books will not teach
them. Let them see how well an improved
plough works, and they may be led to try it,
and to imitate it.

The grand instrument for effecting a peaceful,
profitable, social, commercial and agricultural
revolution in India, will be the railroad
—that divining rod of the nineteenth century
—which not only discovers treasures, but
creates them.

In this country we have seen the railroad
stimulating conveyance and interchange,
opening mines and creating ports, but the
effects were not startling, because we already
lived in the atmosphere of commercial bustle
created by the most perfect system of
turnpike roads and canals in the world. In the
United States of America, the railroad has
performed an additional task: piercing
primæval forests, and passing over deserts
and morasses, to reach fertile land for
agriculture, and favourable sites for ports, carrying
with it the population to till the soil, and
build the city created by the power of steam.
It is as a coloniser that the railroad has
played the greatest part in America; receiving
and distributing the overflowing emigrant
millions of Europe. In India there is, as in
America, an ample supply of fertile waste
land; there is an even greater degree of
isolation than existed in the United States,
between the sea-ports and the interior, before
the introduction of the steam-horse, and
colonists are not needed to execute the works
or cultivate the land, because millions of the