FINANCIAL REDEMPTION OF BRITISH INDIA.
Berrrsn India is insolvent; her Government is plunging her deeper into bankruptcy : she can be made solvent, if her Govern- ment will be taught by facts. We will show how. A writer in the Daily News, whom we recognize as a man tried in active service, practically and thoroughly acquainted with India, affirms with much logical force, that England must accept the obliga- tions of British India. We enjoyed power and revenue while India was prosperous, he says, and we must now take the other part of ownership, and sustain her liabilities now that she is impoverished. He remarks and with truth, that the military mutiny in India was far less formidable than the monetary mu- tiny of India—an outbreak which the English public as yet searcely appreciates. Heretofore the position of India in a finan- cial sense has been very peculiar. To put it in its simplest as- pect, England has been to India somewhat like the landlord of an Irish estate, drawing all the produce and a large re- venue of virtual taxation, all under the consolidated form of rent. In the meanwhile, in the towns under barbarous Govern- ments, and still more advantageously under a more- civilized Go- vernment, have grown up classes of traders, depending of course upon the profits of exchange, but in many respects differing from the traders of this country. To impose special taxation upon them would be to disperse the tribe, and to stamp out anything like a rising commerce in India. Heretofore, they have been very useful to Government, in their faithful contribution towards the standing open loans. A stroke of policy in the Indian Go- vernment reducing the interest upon one stock, where it was imagined that the promise of interest was immutable, shook the _faith of this moneyed class ; and the conduct of Lord Canning's Government has made the class still less capable of investing with confidence in the durability or steady-going of the British Government. But Lord Cunning's avowedly most formidable difficulty lay in the refusal of the moneyed class to persevere with its contribution to the open loans. This is not stated simply as a fact, though even as such it is very impor- tant, but still more as a type of the altered relation between the moneyed class and the British Government With a mar- vellous burlesque upon " energy," Lord Canning has dashed out a new tariff; imposing taxes upon various bodies and interests ; he was obliged to retract some of those imposts before they were actually decreed, and was forced to confess that after all the whole impolitic inroad upon the Indian system will produce less than a million even on the face of the estimate. We find, there- fore, that the Indian Government is short of cash, is deprived of its usual resources, and is madly rushing at resources by methods that tend further to cripple its means.
We have already said that the true course of any great finan- _osier in India would be, to borrow the resources of England for the
purpose of tiding over the financial and oomnierciol difficulty, in the meanwhile using every eftbrt of mind andbody te, develope the
natural resources of theeountry. We believe that su ch a develop- ment can be effected from the seenewhence C. D. L. writes, North- Western India, down 'beyond BombaY to Cape C omorin, and back by Madras, beyond Calcutta to that region i n the North East, whose capacities are described with so much knowledge and force, by another writer, in the Universal Review; a man who is evidently master of the whole question of Indian commerce and finance, and handles this subject with an intimate command of information possessed by very few. i Let us take up his special branch of the subject ; for it is of paramount importance, though it by no means exhausts the field of Indian capacities. We have heard of tea growing. in India, we have some recollection of attempts made by the East India Company to introduce the tea plant in the Himalayas, and we have also heard of some imports of tea into this country from Assam : but of the vast capabilities of India for the production of tea, of the great profit attending its cultivation, and of the mag- nitude and importance of the results that may follow, we had no conception until we perused the article in the Review. The writer proves to us that the tea-growing districts of India are a
mere extension of those of China—that the soils are nearly the same, and that they lie under the same degrees of latitude. The tea plant, he informs us, flourishes from the confines of Affghan- istan to the borders of Aumah, and wherever it has been culti- vated it has invariably proved profitable to the planter. He asserts that tea can be grown in sufficient quantity to supply the wants of the world, and this assertion he supports by the authority of local officials and scientific travellers who have recently written reports on the tea districts or given their evidence be- fore the Committee for Colonization and Settlement in India. It has been supposed that the tea grows only on the slopes of hills at certain elevations ; but the writer has seen it growing on the Himalayas at an elevation of 7000 feet above the level of the sea, in the valley of the Dhoon at an elevation of 2000 feet, on the banks of the Burhampooter in Assam, and the Soorma in Sylhet, just above the level of the sea. In Assam and Caches, where the plant is indigenous, it is known to produce excellent leaves to the age of sixty or seventy years. Doctor Jameson, the Superintendent of the Botanical Gardens at Agra in reporting on the Government Tea Gardens,—which the reader is not to confound with our sub- urban tea gardens,--calculates that in the Kangra valley alone tea can be produced to the extent of 88,500,000 pounds, exclu- sively of neighbouring districts, which would bring the estimate up to a 100,000,000 pounds in that quarter alone—equal to the whole export of China. The Government gives free grants of land, subject to a very moderate rent on three quarters of the tract granted, with lenient considerations as to the payment. There is one difficulty in the cultivation of the tea plant—for the first two or three years it yields no revenue ; but the amount of capital needed is small, very small in proportion to the ultimate return ; so that companies formed by men with small incomes find their land a really valuable property at the end of three years, such companies becoming a kind of savings bank of an exceedingly reproductive kind. Here is a field for produc- tion, here is a field for future taxation on a moderate scale ; in short here is a field for enlarging the genuine British property in India, which may hereafter be expected to pay its royalty or per centage to the State which develops and protects it. It is a de- velopment which not only settles the question of Indian finance., but settles also the question of China (which may hereafter di- minish its consumption of Indian opium, and may be disposed to furnish us less tea) while it affords a certain field for the employ- ment of British shipping. In connection with this culture properly stands the question of colonization. One of the best methods—the most natural, just, and appropriate, for strengthening our hold upon British India, is to increase the proportion of the British race. The influence of that race will extend in a ratio far beyond the direct increase of -nuinbers, because it must become to a great extent the employing race, • and will also be identified with instruction in commerce, with promises of profit, for the native races. A great British community could, by degrees, but with rapidity, be settled in the hill tracts. Most men who are acquainted with the subject dO not recommend the migration of British labourers; they look to a class of British yeomanry, who have intelligence but small means; who will be content to work, and glad to make their fortunes. Roads are rapidly extending in the tea districts ; and the climate, unlike the larger portion of India, is exceedingly suitable to the British temperament. The writer in the Universal Review has seen " the boys at the schools of Muasooree and Nynee Tal as full of colour and health and buoyant spirits as the boys in England ; and grown people assuredly enjoy as robust health as they do at home. Tea, we have said, is not the only produce ; there are also hemp, flax, timber, and resinous woods, which European capital could develope to an important extent. In short, there is land, climate, and opportunity, where the British race could take the lead in making India—so rich in natural qualities, so beggarly in produce—become a mine of wealth for its British colonists thenceforward, and recognized as the practical guides and bene- factors of the Hindoo. It takes about three years to create a tea plantation : allow double that time, and how much ground may be covered ! In the meanwhile, with how mach just hope would British capital seek to invest itself in that splendid opportunity
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