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    INDIA AND INDIAN PROGRESS

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    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 , on 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 ';' . . India ' has ¦ at this moment enough and to spare , not alone for all the works in progress , but for all that are required . But the knowledge how ; properly to direct these funds is wanting ; and that knowledge must , in the first instance , come from without . A few years ago Ireland seemed destitute and dependent for her

    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 by capital , will do more towards changing unchangeable India than all your Orders in Council , arid 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 ; " and that ' ¦ " good intentions " may sometimes arrive at realisation . Let us hope that men of such calibre arc connected with the undertaking now so fairly started , and that their progress in the desirable road may be so sound and speedy as to warrant the Indian Administration iii-a more extended application of the guarantee system .

    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 aud English directors the French railways were laid , but now France can supply not merely her own demands , but in . part those of" Austria , Russia , Spain , and Italy .

    British India is to be put through n . 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 first , profess to care little for undertakings yielding but 5 or G per cent , per annum , but there is in India a large class of wcomed persons who , ignorant of trade , aud

    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 t he 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 neoessity to the land , thai it is sold at high rates , nnd that it brings large returns . Although wo regard these railway and irrigation associations as engines of certain political vnluo to

    the country , as well as of possible profit , to sharoholders , wo must not shut our eves to the foot that gteftt doubts have been expressed as to the policy of guarantees . It has boon urged by somo—and plausibly—that all necessary public works should do exoouted by the State , that so the accruing profits might go in diminution of public burdens . But thoucli Government nan ruisn nionov casilv .

    Mid disburse it , perhaps , ohonply by its staff organisation , it may bo Rravoly questioned whether any advantages thus Arising oould comparo with those Mkoly to result from stimulated enterprise . Onoo WU 8 o 4 and wisely wioldod , the spring of individual acquisitiveness will bo fount ! more potent than all the furor dispositions of ministers of finance or public ul ? t » ^ ° suou minister ever advanced his country U * Q ft Robert Stophonson , because , noble and qfllqiout

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    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 , althoug h' 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

    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 of 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 by the creation of a people and ; i 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 Legist

    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 of 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 , 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 aspirations 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 nonregulation 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 ihe 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 now received a further application , and many of the largo oities . of India hayo now municipal commissions nnd rood boards , with the power to carry out local improvements . This is another stop , which cannot bo taken bnckwnrd , and which bears rioh promise of benefit to India .

    Experiments may bo tried by the old administrators with tho nnt ' ivo army , nnd convenient jobs may bo favoured , but the time has passod for us to bo burdoncd with a nntivo army , and India , as an integral part of tho empire , must bo placod on the snmo military footing as tho rest . Thero must be ono main army , and thoro may bo local oorps , but with tho opening of the hill regions of healthy clunnto , thoro must bo tho stations and arsenals of tho English regiments , baoked by tho militia and military resource's of tho English settlors and the hill tribes . Those hill-stations and sanitaria have

    taken a rooognised place in military administration , and each year , as railway communication sproads , will thoy beoomo moro important , whatever ouorts may bo made to establish a native army . Already Bombay is hold by the garrisons iu tUo uplands ,

    185 S 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 eometary 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 vear , 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 tho beginning of that great inarch of events which announce tho adoption of India as a member of tho civilised world . Slowly did tho 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 tho league of nations was beyond tho belief of the many ; but yet in that country tho domain of civilisation was extended to a now world . In

    this century its oxtensiou by the adoption of India is a fact more remarkable as yet than tho throwing open of China and Japan to external influeneo , be * cause those remain in their integral , self-adopted organisation , but India is directly leavened by tho Anglo-Saxon spirit . The change of government at prcsont is ono of name—Queen Victoria for that of Honourable Compauy—but . it is ono of fact , for it confirms the progress of principles adoptod in tho last yonrs of tho Company , and which have now roooivod full sanction ana free course The old Government relied on the development of civilisation iu India from \ vithin , a kind of Paraguayan solf-arowth which was to achiovo tho virtues of civilisation

    without tho ovils of ooutaot with its processorswithout tho reception of thoir y ioos , without tho nnnoyanco of thoir superiority , without tho blighting effects whioh arc brought b y tho highor raoos on those of wenkor mould . The cxporimont in

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    No . 458 , January 1 , lggg-j T H E __ jj EA _ P _ E B . _ __ 21

    India And Indian Progress

    INDIA AND INDIAN PROGRESS

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Jan. 1, 1859, page 21, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2275/page/21/