PRICE AND VALUE OF LORD PALMERSTON'S "EXTENDED COMMERCE."
Jr is not to China or to Afghanistan that we must look for the effects of the Eastern policy of the late Ministry, but to our own dominions in India. It is not the news of battles lost or won that can enable us to judge whether that policy was wise in its first conception, or whether it is successfully acted upon : the pros- perous or embarrassed condition of our Indian Government is the true test of the AUCKLAND-PALMERSTON policy.
It is difficult to obtain information to enable us to apply this test. At all times there is an apathy in this country both in and out of Parliament regarding the affairs of India : Sir ROBERT PEEL'S Government, like every other, is inclined to reveal just as much concerning them as the importunity of Opposition prevents being kept secret, and no more ; and the leaders of the present Opposi- tion have good reason not to insist too urgently upon light being thrown on the state of matters in Hindostan.
It is impossible, however, for any Minister to ask for money with- out making something like a statement of what is to be done with it ; and thus, information which nobody seems to care for, and which so many have an interest to conceal, oozes out. On Mon- day evening, Sir ROBERT PEEL gave the House of Commons to understand that the treasury of the Indian Government is reduced to a very low ebb, and that in a great measure by the operation of the wars in China and against the Afghans. In consequence of the expense of these two wars, the Indian Government is incapa- ble of fulfilling its agreement with the Home Government to ad- vance, even as as a temporary loan, the money for the Chinese ex- pedition. So suspicious are the Indian capitalists of the condition of their public revenue, or so depressed is the money-market, that a loan opened for the purpose of raising funds to meet the Chinese expenditure has proved unproductive. The Local Go- vernment in India has advised the Directors that it has been under the necessity of suspending till September the advances it had been making to merchants upon hypothecated goods. The Directors have been obliged to abstain from drawing on the Treasury of India for six months; and Ministers have found it ne- cessary to take upon themselves the immediate payment of 800,000. incurred by the Indian Government in fitting out the expedition to China. The credit of the Indian Government has received a shock ; and somewhat more than 800,000/. "towards the expenses of the ex- pedition to China" was voted in the House of Commons on Monday evening,—no trifling item in the permanent deficiency which is Sir ROBERT PEEL'S apology for imposing his vexatious Property-tax. This is the price we are paying for "the wide field for Briti h commerce," which Lord PALMERSTON tells us has been opened through "the great measure taken by the late Government in Af- ghanistan." Admitting that "the great measure" has opened to us the commerce of Central Asia, (which under existing circum- stances is extremely problematical,) what is the value of that com- merce? To the North of India is the high table-land of Thibet-
plain, no part of which is within the Tropics, the average eleva- tion of which above the level of the sea is not much short of the altitude of Mont Blanc, and which is everywhere intersected 17 mountain-ranges rivalling in height the colossal Himalaya.
country so situated is almost as unfavourable to vegetation as the Arctic regions, and its productions are barely sufficient to support a thin and straggling population : the few objects of desire it offers to more fortunate nations (its scanty supply of gold, and its shawl-wool) never could form the staple of a great commerce, even did the barely pervious mountain-defiles through which it must be carried on admit of its extension. Between this country and the frontiers of Russia lies a region most part of which is a sandy de- sert, in which an enormous valley alone supplies a route from China to the countries round the Caspian, across a desert studded at in- tervals with towns which have sprung up in the oases thinly sprinkled along its line. The narrow slip of comparatively fertile country which connects Herat with Western Persia is hemmed in by the salt desert of Iran on the West and the sandy desert of Oxiania on the East ; and its wretched inhabitants exposed to the incessant forays of the Turkomans, live in walled villages and castles, (like the Scotch borderers of the old time,) and have no heart for settled industry or commercial enterprise. Central Asia, if it were opened, is a wide enough field, no man can deny ; but something more than mere width is required to render a country a profitable field for commerce. The inhabitants of those extensive regions, even though they were inclined to trade with our mer- chants. have scarcely any thing to offer them, of native growth, which cannot be had both cheaper and better in more accessible countries; and the commodities which they obtain from China, Russia, and Persia, can all be procured by ourselves by means of a direct and easy intercourse. The scheme of opening up a new and extensive field for British commerce in the direction of the Indus, was a piece of mystifica- tion from the first. It was thrown as a "tub to the whale" by the India Directors, when the public first began to cry out for having the China trade thrown open. It was barefaced enough to tell merchants, if you give over asking for leave to trade with fertile China, you may pour your goods into the deserts of Central Asia ; but for men who, like our Whig Ex-Ministers, so long professed pacific nonintervention policy, to claim credit for endeavouring to conquer by armies the commerce of these sand-wastes, is the very sublime of impudence.
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