Current:

Leader (1850-1860), 1st January 1859, Edition 2 of 2, Page 21, INDIA AND INDIAN PROGRESS.

Page 21
Page 21
21 of 32

On this page

  • Text (4)
  • Transcript

    • Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.

      Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.

      No. 458, Januaky 1, 1859.] T H G_J^ E Aj...

      No . 458 , Januaky 1 , 1859 . ] T H g _ J ^ E AjDJEJR ^ [___ 21

      India And Indian Progress.

      INDIA AND INDIAN PROGRESS .

      Madras Irrigation. Fully Aware As We Are...

      MADRAS IRRIGATION . Fully aware as we are of the value of a " material guarantee" for the peace and quietness of subject races and individuals , we are not without hopes that such important schemes as that promoted by the Madras irrigation Company may find favour in the eyes of thelndian native capitalists , of whom there are many who might lend them considerable pecuniary support . They have already evinced some disposition towards associations . Understanding the direct application of money , they have not been prevented from joining in banking companies by jealousy of directors and managers ; and being in some cases themselves bankers , they have even taken seats at boards of direction . But it should now be an ' object with our Indian department still further to school the natives in cnv terprise , even though well meaning persons here still amuse themselves by repeating , ad nauseam , the old cuckoo cries against companies , speculations , and all investments , in fact , save those of their own peculiar predilection . It is to be hoped " that the ¦ scheme under consideration will at least get a stage beyond such retrogressive and unpatriotic twaddle , and be tried , as it sooner or later must be , oil its merits . No country , we take it , can be truly prosperous which is totally wholly dependent for progress upon foreign capital . It may add to . it ' s . wealth from such a source , but it must also have sunk capital of its own . There is none so poor but it has resources available for its own public ' works '; and India has at this moment enough and to spare , not alone for all the works in progress , but for all that are reauircd . But the knowledge , how . properly to direct icse funds is wanting ; and that knowledge must , in tlie first instance , come from without . A few years ago Ireland seemed destitute and dependent for her public works upon State advances and British capitalists ; yet her people were buying consols and hoarding bullion . She now finds large sums for investment in all kinds of national securities ; she invests in her own soil ; her own railway stocks are fast passing into native hands ; their management to native directorates . By'the aid of English capital au . ( i English directors the French railways were laid , but now France can supply not mcrely ' her own demands , but in part those of" Austria , Russia , Spain , and Italy . British India is to be put through a similar course of tuition , and our Government should surely be supported in giving guarantees likely to induce English capitalists to enlist primarily in such distant enterprises , in fact , "to set the stone rolling , " and to become the foster-fathers of nativo industrial energy . The money dealers may at firsli profess to care little for undertakings yielding but 5 or G per cent , per annum , but there is in India a large class of mcomed persons who , ignorant of trade , and without faith in their countrymen engaged in it , simply hoard up their capital . A safe investment under Government guarantee , with trustworthy management , will be as fascinating to them as to the parallel class in Europe . yVe may thus , in time , expect the Indian public to bo tutored ; and works of irrigation will form a valuable initiatory lesson , for they are already well aware that water is of the first neoesaity to the land , that it is sold at high rates , and that it brings large returns . Although we regard these railway and irrigation associations as engines of certain political value to the country , as well as of possible profit , to shareholders , wo must not shut our eyes to the fuot that great doubts have been expressed as to the policy of guarantees . It has been urged by somo—and plausibl y—that all necessary public works should bo exocuted by the State , that so the accruing profits might go in diminution of public burdens . But though Government oan raise money easily , Mia disburse it , perhaps , ohoaply by Us staff organisation , it may bo gravoly questioned whether any advantages thus arising oould comparo with those hkol y to result from stimulated enterprise . Onoo WiiBod and wisely wioldod , the spring of individual acquisitiveness will bo found more potent than all the purer dispositions of ministers of finance or public j * jWJw . No such minister qvor advanced his country U * Q ft Robert Stophonson , because , noble and efllqiont

      as may be the love of approbation and the sense of duty , these may be yet made to give out more power by the incentive of pecuniary profit . Our private engineers will find practicable and profitable works in every corner of India if capital only be forthcoming to repay them for the search ; and if the people of India are acted upon as above suggested , we believe that energy will be created whe . none now exists , capital will be coaxed from its lurking-places , and a move be made towards obtaining a material guarantee for the good order of the great colony , which direct connexion of Government with public works would not secure . Nowhere more than in India is some salutary influence required to awaken enterprise .. The experience and glories of the past appeal in vain to the native . No zemindar restores a . tank or a bund , though he knows the land now desert was once'fertilised by mighty works whose ruins lay around him . The presence and continual agitation of a few vigorous enterprising men , well supported b y ^ capital , will do more towards changing unchangeable India than all your ' Orders in Council and Acts of Parliament . They will operate by the force of example ; by showing that there is something contemptible as ¦ well as prudent in the eternal " tomorrow ; " ami tha t '" good intentions" may sometimes arrive at realisation . Let us hope that men of such calibre arc connected with the undertaking ' 'how ' so fairly started , and that their progress in the desirable road may be so sound and speedy ' as to ¦ warrant the Indian Administration ill a more extended application of the guarantee system .

      India Ix 1s5s And India In T 1859. The R...

      INDIA IX 1 S 5 S AND INDIA IN 1859 . The revolt in India is a fact that every one can understand ; it . was a strong and striking event readily to be seized by the popular mind , and this has made the India of 1 S 57 and 1 S 5 S memorable ; but the influence of peaceful events , although more permanent , is not always so readily acknowledged , for there is a pomp , a bustle , a horror in war which raises stronger emotions , and few therefore are to be found who have observed that real revolution in India which has followed the revolt and has marked 1858 as an historical epoch . So a comet which has approached nearer the earth and has no more physical importance and significance than the other two more dimly visible which accompanied it ^ marks the year to many as the comet year , and it is not till years have passed away and the comet year is found not to be fraught with cometary influence , that its phenomenal dignity is felt to be naught . The revolt will give pictures for years to come to the art-painter and the painter with the pen , but changes more miraculous , though less picturesque , will , year after year , be developed . At present the keenest of us sec but little of it ; wo can sec but the signs and tokens of what is coming on , rather than recognise the beginning of that great march of events which announce the adoption of India as a member of the- civilised world . Slowly did the new America rise above the wilderness of the savage—so slowly that the advent of the United States in the last century as ono of the league of nations was beyond the belief of the many ; but yet in that country the domain of civilisation was extended to a now world . In this century its oxtension by the adoption of India is a fact more remarkable as yet than the throwing open of China and Japan to external influeneo , because these remain in their integral , self-adopted organisation , but India is directly leavened by the Anglo-Saxon spirit . The change of government at prcsont is ono of name—Queen Viotoria for that of Honourable Company—but it is ono of fact , for it oonfirms the progress of principles adoptod in tho last yoars of the Company , ana which have now received full sanction ana free cotirso . Tho old Government relied on the development of civilisation in India from \ vithin , a kind of Paraguayan self-growth which was to achieve tho virtues of civilisation without the ovils of oontaot with its professorswithout tho recaption of their vices , without , tho annoyanco of their superiority , without tho blighting effects whioh are brought b y tho highor racos on those of wcakor mould . The experiment iu

      India has been brought to a violent close , as was that in Paraguay / as has been the fate of that longlived experiment at isolation in Japan ; but" it could not have continued , and assuredly it could not have succeeded , for paternal government cannot be perpetual , as the law of nature makes men of the children of to-day , and fathers of those who once obeyed as sons , and the paternal Government which has taught its children to think has taught them the limits of its own mission . ; . ¦ The present Government of India seeks for the free development of civilisation by . the free contact of English mind , and thus it has a more powerful machinery ' progress than could be compassed by " the old select but restricted system which has now fallen , shaken to its base , in a year which has been strangely fatal to the mandarin or bureaucratic system . In India , it has lost supremacy ; in Russfa it is threatened bv the creation , ot a , people and a middle class , and the freer action of provincial aristocracies ; in Prussia its sanctity is more endangered by the Regency of 1858 than by the revolution of ISIS ; and in France there is a tendency to limit centralisation by the encouragement of separate action in the provinces . India had reached seemingly a high point of centralisation in the hands of the one Governor-General and Legls-! lativc Council of India , but in reality the turning point has been reached . The presidencies and subpresideucies have , in fact , acquired a freer action , and the government of the Punjab is the type which is conquering and subjecting the governmental types of the other presidencies . In the hands of Lawrence , the Punjab might be called a prsetorship , but he has made it a proconsulate , and " India is now about to undergo a system of division which will rapidly efface the sacred presidential bounds . The reconstttution of the governments ot . the Punjab and the North-Western Provinces is attended with a real change of administration , and the system of commissionerships , which has spread over the presidency of Bengal , is preparing the way for a further division of the local governments . , -r , ¦ i- i ¦ The reconstruction of the police under English officers is going on over India , and the judicial and magisterial system is likewise under change . The late Government reached the height of its aspirat ions in a Black Act , or scheme for what Samuel Johnson called levelling downwards , but instead of the domination of English citizens by their native subjects , and the occupation of the bench by native magistrates , the reform js directed to an augmentation of English magistrates . In some of the nonreguTation and outlying districts , laws more in conformity to English law have been introduced , and English records substituted for the chicanery of native craft . These are experiments which , by their success , will strengthen the authorities in the elder governments . The adoption of the European typo and scrip for native purposes has this year received a further recognition , and we can scarcely doubt their general reception at an early period . While the local governments and authorities aro acquiring freer action , the system of municipalities , which was of an experimental character , has nowreceived a further application , and many of the largo oities . of India hayo now municipal commissions and road boards , with the power to carry put local improvements . This is another stop , which cannot bo taken backward , and which bears rioh promise of benefit to India . Experiments may bo tried by the old administrators with tho nat ' ivo army , and convenient jobs may bo favoured , but the time has passod for us to bo ' burdoned with a nativo army , and India , as an integral part of the empire , iriust bo plaood on tho same military footing as tho rest . Thero must bo ono main army , and thoro may bo local oorps , but with tho opening of tho hill regions of healthy clhnato , thoro must bo tho stations and arsonals of tho English rogimonts , baoked by tho militia and military rosouroes of tho English settlors and the hill tribes . Thoso hill-stations and sanitaria have taken a rooognised plaoo in military administration , and each year , as railway communication spreads , will thoy beoomo moro important , whatever offorts may bo made to establish a native nrmy . Already Bombay is hold by the garrisons iu tho uplands ,

  • Citation
    • Leader (1850-1860), Jan. 1, 1859, page 21, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_01011859/page/21/