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 . 24, 1861.] the hand of Nature has so lavishly scattered her gifts, and where British wealth and intelligence exert so much of their powerful and life-giving influence. It is indeed mortifying to find how greatly this inferiority is attributable to causes which have, as I have hinted, their easy and simple remedies. Then, again, until the improved method of cotton culture in India can be made to appear as remunerative as that of indigo, sugar, and grain; until a system of irrigation has been completely effected, and economical means of transportation to the sea-board (which on an average implies a distance of from 100 to 300 miles) have been devised, to turn the attention practically to ginning and cleaning, packing and carrying, is perhaps somewhat premature. Although, doubtless, the last of these objects will in some measure be achieved by a further development of the system of railways now in rapid progress, a cheaper mode of transit seems necessary to enable the Indian grower to compete upon fair terms with the Western world. The Americans send down their corn and cotton by the Mississippi, one thousand miles, at one-twentieth the cost of railway carriage. Look at the only machinery for the conveyance of the precious burden now existing in India, and contrast it with the unapproachable advantages just mentioned. A country cart and pack bullock, or, as the case may be, a pack-horse but little swifter than a bullock, travelling along a rough track which admits of a speed of not more than from two and a half to three miles per hour. The charge made for this means of transport is not, as might be expected, absolutely heavy, but it adds, nevertheless, very materially to the selling price of the cotton when arrived in Liverpool, and causes grave inconvenience on the score of delay. With respect to the former, it has been calculated that on Indian cotton two-thirds of its value, as paid by the English purchaser, goes to defray the cost of transport in and from the country producing it. The Great Indian Peninsular has proved itself the first railway company to introduce into an Indian cotton district the peculiar facilities of its system of intercommunication. With the slight exception of an interruption of nine miles at the Thull Ghât, there now exists a continuous line of 107 miles, extending from Bombay to the vicinity of the cotton plantations of Berar. Then, if cotton is to come down the Ganges, much embarrassment is occasioned by the paucity of steam-vessels and the consequent uncertainty attending its shipment. In the absence of this mode of conveyance, barges, impelled by one large square-sail, are frequently resorted to, but with a reluctance which their ricketty condition and the inefficient crews with which they are manned account for without further explanation. The indolence and carelessness of the parties to whom the merchandise is by this method consigned, generally levy in effect a heavy penalty of risks and losses upon the exporters (a distinct class from the growers), as the price of their imprudence. A slow way and a sure way have no natural alliance in this instance, for as the barges, never very safe, are on these occasions always overloaded, and accordingly very dangerous, the cotton not unfrequently suffers shipwreck; and even if so fortunate as to escape this calamity, the damage it sustains is more or less serious in regard to its market value. This disparity in the whole freight, as between India and America, is a question in which the success of enterprise in the East is very chiefly involved. It has been calculated that, whereas from America this charge upon the article varies between ½d. and ⅞ of a penny per lb., the expense incurred in this way between Madras and Liverpool, should be reckoned at a minimum of 1d.

For complete success in furthering the conduct of this distant traffic, nothing is more desirable than the annihilation of as much space as modern resources can at their utmost accomplish. The six or eight months elapsing between the purchase of the commodity in India and its arrival in England, involves the chances of such fluctuations in the home market as subject the buyer in India to the liability of very grievous loss. And, principally in consequence of the American monopoly, these oscillations in price are enormous—sometimes 50 per cent.; a variation which a more extended field of supply would effectually check and regulate. Hence it is thought by many that a joint-stock company, or some large capitalist, could alone prove equal to confront this shock of fluctuations—fluctuations so liable eventually to terminate in difficulties which, though perchance only temporary, might press too heavily to be resisted. A certain amount of risk might be run by the Manchester manufacturers, and the impulse given to the production of cotton wool in India would recoil advantageously on those who imported it. The cultivators, speculating for the general good, would like to pre-arrange a remunerative price without reference to the vicissitudes of the home market, and be thus freed from that damping, deadening, paralysing condition which enjoins them to send their cotton some thousands of miles, and receive for it just what the prices ruling in the Liverpool market shall at the moment determine. This is certainly the normal principle of trade; but might not India, under the peculiar circumstances of the case, be for the moment dealt with exceptionally? It is perhaps true, that so long as American cotton does not sink below 4d. per lb. in Liverpool, India can compete with Transatlantic producers. But it is well known that samples of good Indian cotton have brought as much as 5d. per lb. in our markets, though at times when the best American staples were selling at 1s. .and 1s. 2d.; so that, assuming that the superior quality of the latter will doubtless always give them the leading place in the price-list, it is more than probable that the demand for inferior sorts at 4d. or 5d. may be, upon the whole, sufficiently steady to encourage the enterprising to make every exertion on behalf of our eligible Eastern dominions, whose growers can contrive to dispose of their produce profitably at this moderate rate. India has certainly every right to be regarded not only as the mother of the manufacture, but as the parent soil upon which this celebrated shrub was originally reared and propagated. The backward position she at present occupies in regard to the quality of