HC Deb 17 July 1857 vol 146 cc1713-30
MR. WATKIN

said, he had, he believed in deference to the wish of the House, last night postponed his Motion in reference to the Indian Railways, and he now rose to move it. The question had a vital bearing upon the subject of India, and was, in fact, evidence in that important case which would shortly be debated—bearing upon the state and prospects, the successes and the mistakes, of our policy and our empire in the East. He repeated his statement already made to the House that had that system of arterial railway communication, which had been projected by private enterprise and approved by the East Indian Company, been completed, as he should prove it might, and ought to have been before now, the same mail which brought the news of the insurrection in India would have also conveyed the intelligence of its summary conclusion and signal chastisement. He could call in evidence to prove this, the opinion of high military authorities in that House, who would bear him out in stating that had the railway communication which had been projected upon paper, and was now in progress, been completed, the forces of the Crown and of the India Company could have been directed in such overwhelming numbers and with such rapidity upon the mutineers, that instead of that confidence which our temporary weakness had produced—and the results of which had covered us with shame—panic, flight, and submission must have been the result. What had happened? A mutiny or revolt had taken place—unexpected but organized and sudden. One day's licence, unchecked and unpunished, had scattered the flame of revolt over a district of hundreds of miles in length; and we were now to be contented, while the rebels held Delhi, with the fact that a small band of our troops had been able to take six-and-twenty field guns outside the walls. This revolt had disturbed the public mind at home and abroad. It had damaged our prestige with our Allies and our enemies alike, and its repression now, in the plentitude of its licence, would entail a cost of millions, and an annual increase of our taxation for a long time to come. He again repeated that had these railways been completed as long ago as they ought to have been, the mischief would have been crushed in the bud. He should be told that this was a mere practical question—so many miles of railway. So it was. But these practical questions were at the foundation of all political success. Success in anything was the mere reflection of labour and of forethought, and the fashion to contemn practical questions had over and over again, and most signally in the Crimea, led to national disaster and defeat. In India we were holding a vast country by concentration and prestige. The population were becoming every day more instructed in the secrets of our weakness as well as in the causes of our power. If we refused to progress in organization, as they progressed in knowledge of us, that measure of comparative superiority which had enabled us to rule, would bit by bit disappear, and when once the conviction of our power had become weakened in the native mind, we should never again be able to hold the country with a handful of Europeans, directed from Leadenhall Street or Cannon Row. Railway communication meant both industrial development and military strength. It meant that power to concentrate men and guns, on one point from all other points, and in all seasons, which made a small army in India more powerful than a large one. Let the House consider the case of troops coming as they now were from the seat of war in Persia. Those troops now would come in all probability by Bombay, and then overland, or would be sent round to depôts by Calcutta and the Ganges, and thence be marched to the scene of operations. He would not now speak of the route of the Indus. The representatives of the East India Company in that House would not deny that had these railways been completed from Bombay to Delhi, these troops would have been before Delhi equipped and in order of battle in three days from leaving the ship. Would any one of the Members representing India get up in his place and say, that by any route or means whatever these troops could now be conveyed in thirty days? He believed that, according to circumstances, and to the weather, and the route, it might be thirty days, or it might be ninety; and if a thousand men were sent by the present slow and uncertain routes, disease and loss of life always accompanied the march, which need only be long enough to decimate the contingent. Here was the whole question. India, then, had been imperilled by the delay of her railways. Now, railways were first brought before the India Company and the Board of Control in 1843. Parliament had chosen to assume a portion of Indian responsibility by allowing a third of the India Board to be nominated by Government. The India Board was, therefore, two-thirds commercial, and one-third governmental. Hence the Treasury Bench became responsible. Railways were first completed in England in 1830; they progressed in America and in other parts of the world; but, he repeated, they were only thought of for India in 1843. The India Company met the proposition not only with remonstrance, but with positive resistance—and at last, forced to bend to the progress of the age, they encountered the innovation by a system of suicidal interference and control which must be fatal to the rapid progress of any industry. Knowing what he did, it was not matter of surprise to him that, dating from 1843, 1857 should only witness the completion of 358 miles of railway in India! Yes, 358 miles were all; and over that small length of opened railway he supposed the Board of Control would to-night sing a song of triumph. There could be no question as to the importance of these works, especially in reference to the cultivation of cotton. Even the Chairman of the East India Company, the hon. Member for Guildford (Mr. Mangles) stated before Mr. Bright's Committee, in 1848, that, sooner than they should be delayed, they should be constructed at the public expense. Well, then, the works being so important that the hon. Member would have actually constructed them out of the Company's own funds, how was it that they had been delayed? If the House would refer to the map which he held in his hand, they would see that the arterial lines proposed for India were, first, the East India Railway, from Calcutta along the valleys of the Ganges and the Jumna. This line was first considered in 1845, was first guaranteed by the India Board in 1849, and again in 1854, and only 121 miles, out of a total in progress, or to be made, of 950 miles were opened. Then there was the Great India Peninsular, gazetted in 1843, guaranteed in 1849, and again in 1853; 88 miles only opened, and 1,103 miles in operation, but not yet opened. Then the Madras Railway, gazetted in 1849, guaranteed in 1852, and a further extension in 1855; 73 miles only opened, and 827 more still to open. There were also the Scinde and the Bombay and Baroda. There were also as projects the Oude, the Great Southern, the Eastern, Bengal, &c. But the arterial system shown on the map extended from Madras on the south-east to Cochin on the south-west coast of India, and going north-west to a junction with the Bombay line, and kindred systems extended northward to Delhi and on to Lahore. Then the East Indian came from Calcutta north-west, to a junction with the north line; while a central line would come east and west, and an arm of the system penetrate to Nag-poor. All the Presidencies, all their more important ports and all the military centres were thus to be put in communication. Was he wrong, then, in stating that had these lines been made, troops and stores could have been poured from every portion of India to the seat of mutiny, and the revolt would not have been a month old in success as it was at the date of the last accounts? Why should not these lines, so tardily projected, have long ago been finished? Look at our own country and America. Before a single sod was cut in India we had 6,000 miles of railway open in England, and 8,856 in the United States. In America, with its population of 27,000,000 souls, 26,000 miles of line were now in active work. In the United Kingdom we had 8,307 miles with a population of 30,000,000, while in India, under the parental rule of the India Company, and of the Board of Control, its partner, we had only, at the date of the last accounts, 358 miles of single line open for traffic with a population of 150,000,000 souls. He repeated, why was it? Why even our colony of Canada with its 3,000,000 of people had beaten all India. In 1853 it sanctioned the Grand Trunk Railway; in October, 1856, 853 miles of that railway were actually open and at work for traffic, and Canada had now to boast of some 1,500 miles of railway, while India, that mighty empire, rejoiced over 358. The causes of delay and of failure, for delay was failure in India, could be easily understood. First, there was the original opposition and unaccountable blindness of the India Board in 1843 and 1844. The Board actually turned out the Bill for the Great Indian Peninsular in that House. And here he might allude to an opinion from the hon. Member for Whitby (Mr. Robert Stephenson) who had so much interested the House that evening in reference to the proposed Canal across the isthmus of Suez. In a Report on the Great Indian Peninsular in 1847, Mr. Stephenson said— It is much to be regretted that in dealing with the subject admitted to be of so great importance to cotton-growing India and to cotton-manufacturing England, and in the pursuit of which the conduct of the railway company has shown them to be persevering and sincere, that the East India Company should not have felt it prudent to follow the example so recently shown by Her Majesty's Government, both in prompt attention to the proposals made and in the liberality of the terms accorded. It is quite impossible to advise the Great Indian Peninsular Railway Company to limit themselves under terms such as those now offered by the East India Company, since to do so would be to expose themselves to almost certain losses, not arising necessarily out of the undertaking itself, and to bring utter discredit upon the whole cause of railway communication in Western India. Then there were the obstacles presented through the passive resistance of a party at the India House, which heretofore had resisted all improvement; and more important still, there intervened that system of minute interference and control, and of ironbound routine, which forbad all rapidity and all energy. Then, again, the contracts of the Indian House with the Railway Companies were not framed so as, in any case, to ensure rapid execution or simple and cheap construction. They guaranteed a fixed per centage upon the cost, and they fixed no time to complete, instead of giving a guarantee upon a fixed or maximum sum and stipulating for a fixed time for completion. Thus they found original opposition, passive resistance throughout, red tape and routine, and defective schemes of contract. Again, the India Company, in the present state of its finance, seemed to have a direct interest in keeping the monies of the railway companies in hand rather than in having them rapidly invested in productive works. The Indian railway companies were too large; they had become monopolies; and they were money lenders to the India Company. Let him call attention to some of the facts. The East India Railway had opened 121 miles of line only; it had issued, however, twenty-one half yearly Reports. It had called up £6,700,000; it had laid out in works £5,900,000, and it had a balance in the hands of the India Company of £847,000. Then the Madras Railway Company had opened seventy-three miles; had issued ten half-yearly Reports, had called up £2,313,000, had spent £1,340,000, and had, to quote its Report, "in the hands of the Honourable East India Company," £970,000. Then the Great Indian Peninsular which had issued fifteen half-yearly Reports, and had opened eighty-eight miles of line, had called up £3,039,000, had expended £1,424,000, and had in the hands of the East India Company £1,600,000. Thus the East India Company had possession, in its own till, of nearly £3,500,000 sterling belonging to three Indian Railways—enough to com- plete 600 miles of line of itself—and thus in these times of Indian disaster we possessed 358 miles of opened railway, when 1,000 might have saved us. He had quoted England, Canada, and the United States of America. Was there any radical difficulty in making railways in India? Remarks had been made in that House about cheap railways in India. Some comparison existed between the cheapness which meant inefficient, and the cheapness which yet enabled permanent, construction. Railways could be made cheaply in all countries; it was a question of land and of the nature of the ground. In the United States railways were cheapened often by the use of timber, which was the material of a good part of the country. In India, generally speaking, timber was not the cheap material for railways which it was in America. The cheap material for all railways was, practically, the material on the ground. That material was in India brick-clay and stone, as in America it was often timber. Thus cheap railways in India need not involve timber structures, and cheapness and permanence might be synonymous terms. Now, in America there was not much to pay for land and less for Parliamentary expenses and law, while in England we paid dear for both. In India, Companies had no law to pay for, and the land was to a great extent given to them. The material, with the exception of iron and metals, which both in America and in India were mostly derived from this country, was found on the spot or in the country itself. Then as to labour, in India, it was paid for by pence a day, while in America and in England it was paid for by shillings; and the labour of India was more cheap and more docile than that found in America. Now, apart from the faulty construction of the contracts with the railway companies, and the excessive magnitude of each company's operations—1,200 or 1,500 miles being conceded to one single company, where the energies of two or three companies ought to have been called into play—also for financial reasons—the vexatious and absurd routine of Indian inspection and control was enough to account for much of the difficulty. The India Company claimed the entire surveillance, almost the entire management. They checked, and controlled, and criticised, and the work was impeded accordingly. That interference was most injurious. We sent out hard-working and experienced engineers from this country, and they met with obstruction and contumely. Who did they find to control them? Why, military engineers, whe had never seen a railway before in their lives. These men were, perhaps, excellent military engineers—men who ought to have been at Sebastopol, for at all events they could not have disappointed the country more than the engineers who were sent there—and these men ordered, and countermanded, and interfered, and stopped the pay, and made confusion quite confounded. These men had issued the most ridiculous orders. At the beginning some of them had actually ordered gradients of one foot in 1,000 to be made level—and long and expensive banks were now to be seen across the "paddy fields," on the Ganges, in consequence of this most ridiculous order. Then later on, and within the last year or two, an engineer on the Madras line had ordered a return gradient of one in 120 and one in 140 to be amalgamated and made one in 130, which was done, and the result was an excess of expenditure of some thousand pounds, three months' delay, and, after all, a worse line for practical working. These were two instances out of hundreds.

But the interference and routine began from the beginning. For instance:—first, the Secretary of the East India Board is ex-officio a director of all the lines, and has a veto in England. Suppose he approve, then the India Company's Direction, and, after them, the Board of Control may disapprove. These three bodies can, therefore, each veto all the appointments of the Railway Boards. Suppose an Engineer appointed under this system where the line is executed by the railway company and not by contract. He requires materials to be sent from England:—First, he applies to the Agent or Committee in India; then the Agent goes to the Government Consulting Engineer; the Consulting Engineer goes to the Governor in Council; and, if he approve, the application comes back to—1. Your Consulting Engineer—2. Your Railway Agent: who sends on to (1) the Board in London; who, (2) send on to the Consulting Engineer, who, if he approve, gets tenders, and the Board (3) send it on to (4) the India Company's Board, who send it on to (5) the Board of Control, and (6) so back to India. This was the course in England. In India all the plans and drawings of works were submitted (1) to the Government Engineer, who (2) submits to the Local Government, who approve or discuss before the work is begun. All this is done in long letters, and in true red-tape style, hanging up work, often for months and years. Now, he declared unhesitatingly that if such a system were adopted in this country, or in America—if it were employed in our banks, or our commercial houses, or in any large trade—the business of the country could not be carried on, and the word "progress" would soon be obliterated from our vocabulary. Referring again to the Madras Report, he found in this book hundreds of pages filled also with small details, down almost to the glazing of a window, some most startling facts. The military engineer in this case was a Colonel Pears, no doubt a good millitary engineer, but clearly quite unaccustomed to the employment and utilization of labour as a commercial question. The gallant colonel was at sea when he attempted railways. The Madras Railway, slow as had been its progress, had been held up as an example, and its staff of engineers would have long ago completed the works if they had been let alone. But, in fact, they had been in a state of chronic mutiny ever since they were placed under Colonel Pears. [The hon. Member then read some instances of intermeddling, among them the case of the removal of two bath-rooms or water-closets, which would have cost about £20, which proposal after going through a long routine was finally "approved by the right hon. the Governor in Council."]

But he had a Report before him from a gentleman well-known in England and in India, namely, the Chairman of the Scinde Railway, which further illustrated the system. In the third Report of the Directors of the Scinde Railway Company it was stated that the Company had been three years in progress, that there was a paid-up capital of £332,000 lying idle, of which £218,000 was in the hands of the East India Company. Nine miles had been surveyed and levelled, when the authorities stopped the proceedings because they had not decided on the exact route to be adopted! Nine lines surveyed (now a tenth) three years time lost, and the India Company in possession of the money! The Reports of other Indian Railway Companies also stated that immense sums of money have been paid up; that a large portion was in the hands of the East India Company; and that a vast deal of money is actually uselessly dispersed over India, in half-finished and straggling works, owing to the suicidal system adopted. He ventured to assert again, and on authority which could not be disputed, that if the India Company would give free scope to the engineering staff, and say to the Railway Companies "complete your lines without more interference," that in two, or at most three years, every one of the arterial railways of India could be completed. The causes of failure were still at work. The evil continued. The East India Board expended itself in orders, and did not see them carried out. That Board was not yet awake to the dangers surrounding our empire. They were talking when they ought to be acting. There was here a mere physical task to accomplish. Was it to be done? It was easy of execution. If so, and in view of the grievous injury of past delays now so painfully realized, a deep responsibility would rest upon the India Company, on the Railway Companies themselves, and on that House, if every effort were not now made in the right direction. He need not recur to the advantages of railways in a military point of view. That part of his case was admitted, and as to the development of the industrial resources of the country, the Chairman of the East India Company had himself made it a matter of boast in that House, that when once the railway system was at work, heavy articles of produce, the result of native labour, cotton for example, could be conveyed so cheaply, that instead of it costing, as it now did, twice as much as the value of the cotton on the place of its growth to carry it down to the sea, the proportions of cost would be then inverted. In fact, India had, physically speaking, all that was necessary for a rapid and full development, except the means of locomotion and of transit. Cease to keep from her those means, and she would, in spite of mismanagement, and of internal disorders, rise in the industrial scale, and the very measures which promoted her prosperity would consolidate our power. He concluded by moving:— Amendment proposed, to leave out from the word "That" to the end of the Question, in order to add the words "the slow progress of the East Indian Railways involves danger to the Military occupation of India, and retards the development of the industrial resources of that country," instead thereof.

MR. GILPIN

seconded the Motion.

MR. VERNON SMITH

said, he hoped the House would not be led away from the question immediately before it (that the Speaker leave the Chair in order to go into Committee of Supply) into a long discussion of Indian railways, which might be in place at the proper opportunity, but was intrusive on the present occasion. He did not think the hon. Gentleman was correct in saying it was a fit subject for the interference of the House. The Government had always considered it as a question of private commercial enterprise; and, with regard to any impediments by the Court of Directors or the Board of Control, the House should recollect the slight fact of the Indian Government guaranteeing five per cent. upon a very large outlay. Under those circumstances they would materially neglect their duty if they did not exercise some supervision over the expenditure of the money. In some instances it appeared that the railway companies contemplated the squandering of money in the most lavish manner, and the Indian Government were, therefore, completely justified in exercising the most minute supervision. The beginning of railways in India was in 1849, and the amount of capital upon which the Government had guaranteed interest was £30,230,000. Nearly £12,000,000 had been already expended, and the whole guarantee of interest might prove a considerable charge on the Indian Exchequer. It was perfectly true that the Indian Government had declined to guarantee some smaller lines at present; and in that judgment the Government at home entirely concurred, as it properly thought that the great trunk lines should be first finished. The means of conveying troops throughout the whole of India would undoubtedly be a great advantage at the present moment; but the charge which had just been made against the Indian Government by the hon. Member for Yarmouth (Mr. Watkin), was inconsistent with the complaint preferred a few nights ago by the hon. Member for Stockport (Mr. Kershaw), that the Indian Government had devoted the railways in that country to military and political, and not to commercial purposes. The complaint of the hon. Member for Stockport might, perhaps, be plausibly advanced against the Indian Government, but that Government was not at all open to the reproach of the hon. Member for Yarmouth. It had confined itself to the construction of certain trunk lines, and those lines had made more rapid progress than was exhibited in the same time in England at the beginning of railways. So far from the Indian Government wishing to keep the money which had been lodged in their hands by the railway companies it would be only too glad if the companies would receive possession of it and make the railways as fast as they could. The companies would have every assistance from him in the prosecution of their undertaking. It was their own fault that so little progress had hitherto been made. The impediments which the hon. Member for Yarmouth said had been thrown in their way arose from a proper supervision of an expenditure of which no small part was borne by the Indian Government, but in all other respects the Government was ready to allow them to proceed at any pace they pleased, and, as far as he was concerned, the more progress they made the better. If the Indian Government had undertaken to construct the railway itself, complaint might fairly have been made that it was not going fast enough; but the construction of the lines had been left entirely to private companies, and it was their duty to proceed as rapidly as they could. His own opinion was, that if, at the commencement of the railways, there had been a Board of Supervision to look after the whole of them, and take care that they were made more for the public advantage than for private profit, a better state of things would have existed now; but the appointment of such a board would have been met with a great outcry, and, therefore, the task of constructing Indian railways had been intrusted to private companies. Matters having been so arranged, he denied the position of the hon. Member for Yarmouth, that any impediment had been thrown in the way of the private companies by the Indian Government, which, on the contrary, desired nothing more than the speedy completion of the railways it had guaranteed to so large an amount. He trusted that hon. Members would be content with that assurance, and, without continuing the debate any further, would allow the House to go into Committee of Supply.

MR. R. W. CRAWFORD

said that, connected as he had been with the establishment of railways in India, and presiding as he now did over the East India Railway Company, he could not allow the present opportunity to pass without saying a few words in reply to the statements of the hon. Member for Great Yarmouth, (Mr. Watkin). He thought that the attack which had been made upon the railway companies for the failure of their efforts to complete their works within a reasonable time was very unfair, and he should submit some facts to the House which would show that the hon. Gentleman had taken very little trouble to inform himself of the real circumstances. The East India Railway Company was established for the purpose of constructing a line of about 1,100 miles in length. In 1849 it entered into a contract for that object with the East India Company; in 1851 it was put into possession of the land, and in 1855 it opened 123 miles of railway—a rate of progress which might bear a favourable comparison with the best examples of railway enterprise in England. Nor was that all. So far from its being true, as the hon. Member for Great Yarmouth had stated, that no progress had been made beyond the 123 miles already opened, the company had at the present moment in active construction no fewer than 900 miles of railway, and during the course of last year the large sum of £1,700,000 was expended on the line, of which £523,000 was laid out upon the permanent way and bridges. In addition to that, the company had spent nearly a quarter of a million in sending out rails and other heavy materials. He did not think that the East India Company was in the slightest degree amenable to the charges which had been preferred against it by the hon. Member for Yarmouth; on the contrary, he believed that the success of the railway companies was owing in a great degree to the able and conciliatory manner in which Sir James Melvill had exercised the supervision with which he had been intrusted by the East India Company. At the same time, he admitted that the conduct of the local authorities in India was often not of the most judicious kind. Their interference was often of a petty and almost ridiculous character; and it certainly might be said that great circumlocution did prevail in India; for instance, the Madras Company was called upon to despatch an express train, but it could not be done without the sanction of the superintending engineer. To obtain that sanction occupied two days, so that the order to despatch the express train came two days after it was required. He was quite alive to the appeal which had been made for going into Committee, and therefore, upon that and other topics connected with Indian railways, he would reserve the observations which he wished to address to the House until the President of the Board of Control brought forward his annual budget.

MR. C. GILPIN

said, that the speech of the hon. Member for Yarmouth (Mr. Watkin) had accomplished, at least, one good object—it had elicited from the President of the Board of Control a statement which could not fail to be satisfactory to every Member of the House. The right hon. Gentleman had declared himself willing to give a full and fair course to private enterprise, and if that were done there was every reason to expect that the railways of India would be pushed forward with as much vigour as those of other countries. In 1853 a Bill passed the Canadian Legislature for the construction of the Grand Trunk Railway in Canada, and in 1856 no less than 853 miles of railway were opened. From a Report of the railway with which the hon. Member for London, (Mr. R. W. Crawford) was connected, it appeared that 88 miles were opened. [Mr. CRAWFORD.—One hundred and twenty three.]—Well, possibly now it may be 123 miles. At the same time he would observe, that when the hon. Gentleman (Mr. Crawford) said that the hon. Member for Yarmouth had taken up this question lightly, he was never more mistaken in his life. No man had taken greater pains with railway matters than his hon. Friend (Mr. Watkin). No man's opinion deserved to be held in higher estimation upon such questions. And it was, first of all, his knowledge of railway matters, and secondly, his sincere and warm interest in all that concerned India that induced him to bring forward the present Motion. He hoped, however, that his hon. Friend would be satisfied with the explanations which had been given, and would not press the Question to a division. For himself, he readily owned that he had seconded the Motion, not with any special reference to the military occupation of India, but from a strong desire to see commercial enterprise progressing there, and from a conviction that such progress was intimately and closely connected with the welfare of our Indian empire, and its restoration to peace and prosperity. Before resuming his seat he would say just one word as to the comparison which had been entered into between the first beginnings of railways in England and India. It had been argued that if a comparison were instituted between the development of railways in the two cases, it would be found that the progress of railways in India had not been so much delayed. Now, that was not a fair comparison, for when railways were first set on foot in England, everything was new to the engineer; whereas in India, these gentlemen were able to commence their work with the experience of the whole world to guide them; therefore, that which might have been fair progress in England twenty years ago, was very slow and dilatory in these days.

COLONEL SYKES

said he would content himself with expressing a hope, that in a few days such facts and figures would be laid before the House as would save it from the repetition of the present most discursive discussion.

MR. AYRTON

said, he could not but consider the hon. Gentleman (Mr. Watkin) to be entirely out of place in his present complaint. Whatever had been the past conduct of the Indian Government, he felt bound to admit that in recent times its efforts to promote railway enterprise had been greatly extended; for although up to the present moment there had been only constructed a very small extent of railways, still there was a very large extent in the course of construction. He should be sorry if the statement of the hon. Member for Yarmouth (Mr. Watkin) was to go forth without correction, namely—that the 280 miles actually constructed represented the whole of the railway enterprise in India. On the contrary, he (Mr. Ayrton) found that in addition to the 1000 miles under construction in Bengal, there were under construction in Bombay, leading into the interior, no less than 224 miles of railway, from Madras no less than 300 miles, and from Surat about 100 miles; while beyond that some 2,000 miles additional had been surveyed, with the intention of completing different sections as arrangements were completed. It was, therefore, wrong to say that the Government of India had been remiss in its duty; on the contrary, he was sorry to say that the administration of India, being of the weakest and most vacillating character, it was being driven too much in an opposite direction, and by the force of public opinion they were being driven to construct railways with too much rapidity; for if railways were pressed with an over-rapidity, the expense of their construction would be greatly enhanced, and they would run the danger of disorganising the labouring population of the country, by creating and congregating in a few spots a class of labourers at high wages, who, when the demand for their labour had ceased, would be placed in circumstances of great distress. Upon the whole, he thought it would be much better to investigate the administration of the Indian Government when the question was brought generally under review by the President of the Board of Control. As for the deficiency of railway communication having influenced recent events in India, he would only say, that he thought the cause of the unhappy results which had been witnessed must be sought in a totally different direction.

MR. PLATT

said, that having received frequent communications from the borough which he had the honour to represent on the subject of the production of cotton in India, with which the development of railway communication in that country was so intimately connected, he might be suffered to offer a few observations to the House on the present occasion. The hon. Member below him (Mr. Ayrton) seemed to complain that the work of railway construction had gone on too rapidly in India. Now, in order to disabuse the hon. Gentleman's mind of such an impression he would supply him with some stastictics connected with the Great India Peninsular line. He believed that that line was first brought under the notice of the Board of Control in 1844. However, the Bill was not introduced into the House of Commons until 1845, when it fell to the ground because of the opposition of the East India Company. Well, the scheme remained in abeyance until 1848. When the Bill was permitted to pass, what was the result? Why, the contracts were made in 1849, and now in 1857 just eighty-eight miles of railway were opened. Now, he would ask the House whether that bore any comparison with the progress of railway enterprise in either England or America? It was proved before the Select Committee which had been appointed to consider the growth of cotton in India, that the cotton had to be brought down from the plantations, a distance of 400 miles, on the backs of bullocks to the sea coast, and that the cost of that carriage actually doubled the price of the cotton, while if good roads were made, we should receive cotton at a cheaper rate, and in return find a market for our manufactured goods. The value of our cotton exportation he found stated at between £36,000,000 and £38,000,000 a year; but it would be well if the House understood that at that moment they were paying £10,000,000 more than they ought for cotton. Now, that made the value of our exports appear very much more than it really was, or at all events, it did not follow that the profits to this country with an increased export were greater than before. He believed, on the contrary, the position of the manufacturing interest in Lancashire at the present moment to be very unsatisfactory, and that the difference between the price of the cotton and the profit of the manufacturer was less than at any previous period. The consumption of cotton in this country was increasing year by year, while the supply did not proceed in an equal ratio. In other lands the supply did not equal the demand. The United States of America supplied seven-eighths of the cotton consumed by England, while the increase of slave labour there was but very gradual, and even that increase must sooner or later come to a stand-still. If that were so, it behoved them to look to other countries for a supply of cotton, and to India they ought to turn their eyes in the first instance; but there the difficulty was how to bring the cotton down to the sea-coast. At the same time the production of cotton in India was accompanied with difficulties unknown to America; in India the climate greatly interfered with the work, and in consequence it became necessary that certain works of irrigation should be undertaken by the Government. In conclusion, he begged to assure the House that the greatest anxiety, he might almost say alarm, existed in the manufacturing districts with respect to the future supply of cotton. He believed that that anxiety was well founded, and that the only way of escaping from the difficulty was by connecting the cotton districts in India with the coast by means of railways, and by proceeding with works of irrigation, which, as the East India Company was the landlord of that country, it ought to undertake.

MR. WILLOUGHBY

said, he hoped he could show that the East India Company had not been wanting in its efforts to promote the construction of railways in India. He had been connected with the first railway ever constructed in India, and therefore he thought he might be justified in calling in question some of the statements of the hon. Member for Yarmouth, (Mr. Watkin). In the first place let him observe that it was not until the 31st of October, 1850, that an attempt had been made to introduce railways into India, and that therefore the period during which the work of railway construction had been going on in India was only six and a half years instead of fourteen years. In fact the honour had devolved on him of turning the first sod of the first railway commenced in India on the date above mentioned. Well, what next? The East India Company have already sanctioned trunk lines of railway extending in the aggregate to 3,695 miles, of which upwards of 300 miles have been opened. The estimated outlay already sanctioned is £28,231,000, of which £14,196,287 has been paid into the Company's treasury. It is a fallacy to estimate the future progress of railways by what has been effected during the last six years, for he would beg the House to bear in mind how much greater the results of the next six years would be than those of the preceding term. He believed that the system on which the Indian railways were being constructed was much more perfect than any other, because it combined the energies of the private capitalist with the control and authority of a disinterested Power—but he ought not to say a disinterested Power, because the East India Company were interested in the speedy construction of railways in India. Happy would it have been for England if the same controlling influence had been brought to bear upon the organization of her railway system, for then, indeed, shareholders would not have had to lament the fact that the average interest received on railway stock in this country was only £3 12s. 4d., or under 3¾ per cent. We hope to do better than this in India.

MR. WATKIN

announced his intention to withdraw the Motion.

Question, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Question," put, and agreed to.

Main Question put, and agreed to.