expect that agencies would be established in the country so long as the only mode of travelling was in palanquins carried on men's shoulders, and produce carried on the backs of bullocks; but the moment there was a prospect of river communication there would be agencies established in Berar. Indeed, he had repeatedly had applications made to him, knowing that he took some interest in the question, from persons who were desirous of ascertaining when the Godavery would be opened. Indeed, a company had actually been formed for growing cotton in that part of India. Why, then, was not this river opened? The Marquess of Dalhousie recommended it; the East India Company had ordered the works to be commenced years ago; he believed that every manufacturing town in Lancashire had petitioned the House in favour of it; and depntations without end had waited on the Secretary of State for India. Last year he himself accompanied about half a dozen; but it was very unfortunate that the right hon. Gentleman did not take the same broad and enlightened view of the importance of opening this river that the Marquess of Dalhousie had done. It was to be feared that the right hon. Gentleman looked upon this as merely a Lancashire crotchet, which was pressed by a few importunate and troublesome individuals. But if the right hon. Gentleman desired authority, he would refer him to the very able report of Colonel Baird Smith-and he was a great authority. He stated that "the single limit to the growth of produce and the sale of our manufactures in India is the extent of roads and of river navigation." There were, to the everlasting disgrace of the Government, few roads in India, and scarcely a navigable river, and their limited extent had arisen from the practice of the East India Company, of carrying on public works only out of surplus revenue. They had always waited till they had a surplus revenue, a rare occurrence, before they finished any public work. There were works now in India, to au enormous extent, begun but not finished. The Ganges canal, for instancea work of which they used to hear a great deal of boasting in that House-was not yet finished. Two years ago, because a few thousand pounds were not judiciously expended on the Ganges, there was a famine in India, and the loss to the Government from that famine would have paid ten times over for the outlay that was re

quisite to finish that work. That-he was going to call it stupid-system of the East India Company of putting works off till they had a surplus revenue caused them to cost three or four times as much as they otherwise would. But what was most surprising was, that in that enlightened agein the nineteenth century—the right hon. Gentleman defended this system as the perfection of human wisdom. A deputation waited upon him two years ago, pressing him to borrow £300,000 for the opening of the Godavery. He was borrow. ing £5,000,000 or £6,000,000 for railways; but he appeared to think that the borrowing of £300,000 additional for the opening of the river Godavery would upset his financial arrangements, and endanger the revenue of India. He would give the House an illustration how things were conducted in India. In 1858 there was a Committee of this House, before whom a very able man, Captain Haigh, was summoned. That gentleman had been sent by the Government to examine the Godavery, and he stated that there was no difficulty in making the river navigable. Before he left England to return to India, he addressed a very able letter to the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for India, pressing upon him the importance of immediately proceeding with that great work. Captain Haigh solicited that he might be allowed to purchase £7,000 worth of tools whilst in England. That was in 1859. They were sent out to India; but when they got there, they were of no use, as he had no money to employ any one to use them. It was not until November of the following year, 1860, that the engineer received a communication that £30,000 was placed at his disposal to proceed with the work, and he forthwith proceeded to collect the necessary workmen to commence ; but it was not easy in that district to procure the men qualified for the work, and he had to go 200 miles for some of them. At length, at considerable labour and expense he succeeded in collecting them together, and he had just begun the work, when he received a communication to inquire whether he had spent the £30,000 which had been granted to him, stating that it was only a grant for the financial year ending in April, and that all that was not expended was to be returned as a balance unexpended. He had expended in the five months about £7,000, and the remainder he had to restore; the consequence was that he was obliged to dismiss the men

The great obstacle to the growth of cotton in India was the want of a permanent tenure of land in that country. That impediment not only prevented cotton from being grown well, but obstructed the material interests of the country. He adhered to the opinion which he had expressed in a former debate on the subject, that the alleged boon of waste lands in fee simple lately given to Europeans was neither more nor less than a mockery and a delusion. A permanent settlement of the soil on the principle of the Cornwallis settlement in Bengal was the one thing needed in India. He had often heard it remarked, both in and out of the House, that Manchester said a great deal, but did little. Manchester was frequently taunted in this way. It was said, "Why don't you go to India yourselves? or, why don't you send persons to India to get cotton, when it can be obtained there in any quantity?" Now, he did not think the Manchester people exposed themselves to these taunts. The hon. and gallant Member for Aberdeen (Colonel Sykes) was constantly taunting his Friends around him in this way-"Why don't you do for cotton what others have done for indigo?" The hon. Member had mentioned persons who went out without money-mere adventurerswho were then superintending indigo plantations which extended over many square miles, and contained enormous populations; and he said, "Why don't you do for cotton what these gentlemen have done for indigo, both in its growth and in its improvement? That was, no doubt, a specious and plausible argument; but it was entirely fallacious. His answer was this-that in the indigo-producing districts in India there was a permanent settlement of the land. In the settled provinces of Bengal, an English gentleman could hold land in any quantity, either as proprietor, or as copyholder under the proprietor; and what he complained of was, that no such system prevailed in the cotton-growing districts. In Dharwar, Surat, and other districts where cotton was largely produced, the Government was the sole owner of the soil, and no European could obtain land whereon to grow cotton on any terms whatever. That was his grievance. The Government had a monopoly of the soil, and his advice was, that the monopoly should be wrested from them. To obtain a permanent settlement of the soil on the Cornwallis principle was a necessity for India. If that was given, no interference VOL. CLXVII. [THIRD SERIES.]

ought to take place between the proprietor either as to what he sought to grow, or the tenant as to what he should produce. He ought to be allowed to produce either cotton, silk, or indigo, or what he pleased, and then he would have nothing to fear. Having laid down these general principles, he would next call the attention of the House to the opening of the Godavery River. Those were not the best-or, at any rate, not the most judicious-friends of India who were constantly urging on the Government, in a time of embarrassment, to engage in large works, which, it was said, would be productive; but which, in his opinion, would be productive of nothing but great embarrassment and disappointment. It would not be out of place to inquire, how did the Godavery scheme originate? Was it taken up by the Government after due inquiry into the merits of the plan? Did the British officers in charge of our interests at Hyderabad or Nagpore press upon the Government the opening up of that new work? Nothing of the sort occurred. The scheme emanated from the brain of an enthusiastic engineer --an officer of the Madras Engineersnow Sir Arthur Cotton. That gentleman had kept his plans dangling before the public in the most pertinacious way. was an officer of immense zeal, but possessed very little discretion. His plans and estimates were less reliable than those of any engineer on the face of the globe, and that was saying a great deal. That officer, by dint of perseverance, and by means of his satellite, Captain Haig, had persistently kept his scheme before the Madras Government, and had, to a considerable extent, coerced them into approval of plans which they highly disapproved. In the same way when the matter flagged in India a pressure was brought to bear in that House upon the Secretary of State for India, and hon. Gentlemen wished "to concuss" him into support of a scheme which would be attended with vast expense, and which most experienced men in India entirely disapproved. What was the river Godavery? It took its rise near Poonah, and, flowing in an easterly, and then a south-easterly direction, cast its waters into the Bay of Bengal. From the earliest times in the history of India that river had never been used for purposes of commerce. Timber had very rarely been floated down the river Godavery to the sea, and for the very sufficient reason that the valuable teak

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forests, of which so much had been said, did not exist on the banks of that river. It would be time enough to lay out a great sum of money on the river when these forests had been discovered. The engineers declared that the Godavery could be opened up for a small sum for four hundred or five hundred miles, and for a space of eight or nine months in the year. He disbelieved all these statements, and he would tell the House why. It was within his own knowledge that in 1853 a small Government steamer, the Pottinger, sailed up the river in June. She started when the first freshes of the year came down, and steamed from three hundred to three hundred and fifty miles into the interior of India. In the middle of July the Pottinger went aground; and although the freshes were then at the highest, she lay high and dry for twenty or twenty-five days, without a drop of water under her. If that could happen in the month of July, what possible ground was there for supposing that when the monsoon ceased the river would be open for navigation for three or four months in the year? The Government had made no inquiries on that subject, but had received the statements of those enthusiastic engineers for gospel. If they had sent competent and unbiassed persons to take the depth of the river, and the rise and fall of the water, they might have ascertained these all-important facts. Supposing, however, that the Godavery was opened for navigation during eight months in the year, who was to navigate it? He believed that no sane man would think of running steamboats for passenger or goods traffic at his own risk. People talked of the millions and millions worth of produce which would ascend and descend the river; but that produce only existed in their imagination. The supporters of the scheme pointed to the profit of two steamboat companies on the Ganges, which they said divided 50 and 60 per cent, and which dividends would be excceded by those made on the Godavery. He knew something of both those Ganges navigation companies. They were established about the year 1840, and he would assert that they had been eminently unsuccessful, and that the shareholders had lost the greater part of their capital. He was aware that during the insurrection in the Upper Provinces in 1858-9 the Government hired all their vessels at fabulous freights, whereby the companies were enabled to make considerable profits. On

the whole, however, these companies had been unsuccessful; but, if they had been as profitable as the Madras engineers pretended, what comparison was there between the Ganges and the Godavery? The Ganges ran through the most fertile provinces in India; had been the channel of trade for countless ages; and had upon its banks capital cities inferior to none of the towns of continental Europe-Benares and Allahabad, and other capital cities of 200,000 and 300,000 inhabitants. But from the Rajamundry district to the confluence of streams at Wurdah there was not only not a single city, but not a town or a village of any size on the whole of the banks of the Godavery? The country was entirely desert. It was the most unhealthy district in India, and it was inhabited by tribes who practised the rites of human sacrifice. It had been proposed to transport 5,000 coolies from the state of Travancore, to work at the barriers. Now, a more mad proposition never emanated from the brain of any human engineer, and the Government did not approve of it. He firmly believed that every one of these coolies, if they had been brought, would have died from the unhealthiness of the locality. Then it was said that to improve the navigation of the Godavery would be to open up the fertile valley of Nagpore. But Nagpore was, on the contrary, a sterile country. Under the dynasty lately supplanted by the Marquess of Dalhousie the income of that country, including its land rent, did not exceed £400,000 a year. Under the Commissioners of the Indian Government he did not believe the revenue exceeded £350,000, while its expenditure, including the cost of its military occupation, was not much less than £500,000. Since there was no prospect of any private person running steamers at his own risk, the Government, if the works were executed, would be compelled to keep up a flotilla, and to force a traffic that did not now exist, and that source of expense would go on for twenty-five years at least. He was not the only person who thought that the Godavery was not a well-considered scheme. The first letter in the despatches recently laid before Parliament was one from the Secretary of State for India to the Governor General, dated January 26th, 1860. In the eleventh paragraph of the letter it would be seen that the British resident at Hyderabad, Colonel Davidson, was of opinion that the scheme was neither feasible nor advisable.