صور الصفحة
PDF
النشر الإلكتروني

valuable productions, getting its grain and provision from neighbouring provinces."

"I

It appears from the parliamentary reports I examined, that the importation of sugar from India has trebled in the last nine years. have no doubt," says the estimable Zachary Macauley, "that sugar could be produced in India, profitably, at a penny a pound." Towards the end of the first quarter of 1841 the increased quantity of India sugar in the London market brought the price down to 128. the cwt.*

But as the chief dependance of the Southern States is upon cotton, it is a question of more interest for us to inquire what effect the compe

tition of the India planters will have upon this great production.

This matter the South

should look to. Montgomery Martin, again observes, "Cotton every where abounds; but sufficient care has not been bestowed, so as to render it, as in America, a triennial instead of an annual, or on the picking and cleaning it for export. The Decca cotton is unequalled, and the Sea Island cotton, from Saugur Island, near Calcutta, promises to be a valuable article for export. The East India government have made several attempts for the extensive introduction of the cotton-plant in Guzerat, near the Persian Gulf, which seems well adapted for its culture." Royle says "the best cotton is procured from the coast of Coromandel." A writer who has resided long in India, says, "The natural internal navigation is most extensive. There are vast tracts of land so near the Hooghly, Ganges, and other large navigable rivers, that, without the delay of making roads, the produce can be brought to Calcutta, at the moderate cost of transportation of from four to ten shillings a ton. The presidencies of Madras and Bombay likewise contain land capable of growing cotton to an illimitable extent.”

* I have recently received a letter from a gentleman in London, in which he states that there will probably be two million cwts. of sugar imported this year from India.

"Rangoon," says the London writer already referred to, "at the mouth of the great River Irawaddy, ships large quantities of raw cotton of superior quality to Calcutta and other places, which is cleaned and wrought by hand into the

finest muslins that are ever seen in Europe." This part of India, I am told by several gentlemen who have traversed it, is very similar in climate and situation to the Delta of the Mississippi, and could supply an immense quantity of cotton of the best quality. A newspaper, published at Bombay in 1839, remarks, "We have shown in a former number that, until 1830, we derived no agricultural produce whatever from the fertile plains of Berar (600 miles from the coast), and supplied that district with but a single article, salt, which, owing to the almost impassable state of the roads, was conveyed from this city on the backs of bullocks. In that year, one of the native salt merchants tried the experiment of conveying back to Bombay, upon his returning bullocks, some of the cotton which abounds in that country; the experiment was completely successful, and next year (1831) 10,000 loads were received from that one district by the same rude conveyance. In 1836, 90,000 loads were received from the same province; but the roads were so bad that it imposed an additional cost of 80 per cent upon its original price. The resources of that district are so great that government have appropriated £30,000 to construct a road." They have also resolved to make a road from Bombay to Agra, which lies in the very heart of the cotton districts. Other surveys have been ordered, and it will not be long before the means of transportation by great roads will exist, wherever it cannot be carried on by water. Herodotus tells us, that when he wrote his celebrated history (more than 2200 years ago) cotton was grown in India. It has been used for ages by the millions of that immense country, and yet some of our most respectable journals have attempted to prove that its cultivation in India "is yet a problem!" Secretary Woodbury informs us "that the production of cotton in India in 1791 was 150 million pounds, and in 1834, 185 millions." The secretary was as safe in making this statement, as he would have been in saying, that in some weeks more than 100 barrels of flour are shipped from the Genesee Mills. It is well known that India consumes a much greater amount herself than the secretary supposes her to raise. She furnishes cotton for her own consumption, the entire supply of China, and a large surplus goes to England. In 1831 the imports of India cotton into England were 75,627 bales; in 1835, 116,153 bales; and in 1840, 216,784 bales. Of rice, the imports in 1835 were 66,000 bags; in 1839, 97,000; and in 1840, over 100,000! During the last nine years, the importation of Brazilian cottons into England has fallen off more than 70,000 hales; and several instances have occurred, within the last eighteen months, in which the arrival of East India cotton has materially lowered the price of the American article in Liverpool; in one instance to the extent of no less than three cents on the pound! It is a fact, too well known almost to be told again, that the Bengal indigo long since drove the Carolina article out of the market.

2. India not only possesses great resources, but the power of the British empire is being combined to develop them; and a great variety of most auspicious circumstances have conspired to produce this result. It has ever been peculiarly the policy of Great Britain to depend upon her own resources, for the wants and the luxuries of life. For a long time she has

« السابقةمتابعة »