native inhabitants would only be too happy to
find constant work for little wages.

If these railroads could be constructed
between the cotton-producing districts in the
interior and the port of Bombay, the present
minimum cost of conveying cotton by bullocks,
(with all the risk and uncertainty,) of
fourpence per ton per mile, would be exchanged
for a fixed charge of twopence three farthings
per mile, with security, certainty, and
capability of delivering any quantity. As the
Hindoo peasantry can afford to sell cotton of
a quality equal to that which forms seventy-
five per cent, of the English consumption, at
from one penny farthing, to one penny three
farthings per pound; as land and labour are
both plentiful in that district; a large increase
of cotton cultivation would be certain,
thousands would be able to live well and clothe
well, who are now half-naked and half-
starved. The chief tax in India is the land-
tax, the rent, in fact, paid to the Government.
Wild land, cultivated, would become subject
to tax, and thus, without an increase in the
expenses of Government, Indian revenues
would increase. But, not only revenues,
imports would increase, too; out of every
ninepence of British manufactures consumed
in India, fourpence consists of cotton goods.
Thus then we arrive by railroad at a
perpetual circle of prosperity. Commencing with
a large growth of cotton, which affords the
British manufacturer a constant ample supply
of the staple on which the livelihood of some
million and a half of our population depends,
comes employment for shipping; while, buying
what we so much need, we create in the
cotton cultivators new customers for the
goods, of which they supply the raw materials,
as well as for the mixed goods of Yorkshire,
and the hardwares of Sheffield and
Birmingham. But it is not only cotton
cultivators that will benefit from the construction
of railroads in India; sugar, rice, indigo and
grain, would all find employment for labour
and a market; and salt, so much needed by
the vegetarian Hindoos, would be distributed
in the interior, much to the benefit of the
Government revenues.

At present, every ten or fifteen years, some
district of India is ruined by famine; grain
rises to such a price, that, while many die of
hunger, those who survive have transferred
all their substance to a few rich grain-
merchants and money-lenders, and have to begin
the world afresh. Yet the same want of
roads, that destroys one district in a failing,
ruins another by an abundant harvest, for
then grain sinks to so low a price, that the
wretched cultivators are obliged to fly to the
usurers for assistance to pay their land-tax.

During the last famine at Agra, the Government
was obliged to employ and feed sixty
thousand persons in the city, and thirty-seven
thousand in the district: the demand for grain
to feed these paupers, in Agra alone, was about
thirty tons per diem. The cattle by which the
grain was to be brought, were incapable of
travelling, and dying for want of forage. At
this fearful period, at Goodwana, a distance of
about four hundred miles from Agra, as much
of the finest grain was to be bought for two
shillings as would have cost, even if of the
coarsest kind, sixteen shillings in the latter
city. Thus, from the want of other than hack
bullock conveyance, a price affording room
for cost of carriage, at the rate of from
ninepence to tenpence per mile, was insufficient to
procure grain to stay the horrors of famine;
as, owing to drought, there was no forage on
the road to sustain them, the mere feeding
of the bullocks consumed half the grain
en route.

More evidence might be accumulated, but
the corn, salt, and cotton cases are alone sufficient
to prove the absolute necessity of improving
the means of conveyance in India. To do
this, the railroad would be at once the cheapest
and most effective,

Two railroads are now in progress on
opposite sides of the Peninsula—one from a point
near Calcutta, for a distance of about one
hundred and twenty miles, to certain coal-
mines; the other from Bombay, for about
thirty-five miles, toward a place called Callien.
Both are being constructed under a guarantee
of five per cent. from the East India Company.
Neither can be considered of much importance
in their present dimensions, except as model
lines for the instruction of native labourers
and engine-drivers; as instruments for the
development of the resources of India, they
are quite insignificant. That which should
be, if we were wise, an extension of the Liverpool
and Manchester Railway, a great cotton
line, stops short of the Passes of the Ghauts, at
a distance of one hundred and twenty miles
from the cotton country. This thirty-five
miles will cost half a million sterling; to
complete the scheme of two hundred miles, would
cost about two millions; to unite Bombay with
the Bay of Bengal, traversing the principal
intervening cities, would cost seven millions.
In the work to which we have so often
alluded in the course of this article, a mass of
evidence seems to prove that what we call the
cotton line from Bombay, constructed according
to Mr. Robert Stephenson's estimate at
fifteen thousand pounds a mile, would pay
private speculators a high rate of interest, if
the present goods traffic were merely doubled,
without taking the passenger traffic into
consideration at all. It is to be hoped that
private enterprise, which has done such
glorious things on land and sea for England,
will not again commence sowing accumulations
of capital broadcast in Spanish Bonds,
South American Mines, and Mississippi Loans,
without first investigating the resources of
our vast Indian empire, where millions of
peaceful, docile, intelligent husbandmen are
willing and able to become our customers, if
we will only enable them to carry to market
the staples of indigo, sugar, and cotton, of