Rhymes for Youthful Historians on the History of England, brought down to the Reign of Queen Victoria; together with a Brief Poetical Chronology of Ancient and Modern History. With Thirty-seven Portraits of Sovereigns. Journal of a Tour in Ceylon and India, undertaken at the request of the Baptist Missionary Society, in company with the Rev. J. Leechman, M.A. With Observations and Remarks by Joshua Russell.

The British Controversialist. January-June, 1852. Half-yearly volume. A Ride through the Nubian Desert. By Capt. W. Peel, R.Ñ.

Remarks on Certain Statements by Alexander Haldane, Esq., in his Memoirs of Robert Haldane, of Anthrey, and his brother James A. Haldane. By John Brown, D.D.

Practical Suggestions for Reforming the Educational Institutions of Scotland. By Rev. R. J. Bryce, LL.D.

Transubstantiation for the Million; a Popular Exposition of the Popish Doctrine of Transubstantiation. By an Old Cantab.

Notes and Narratives of a Six Years' Mission, principally among the Dens of London. By R. W. Vanderkiste, late London City Missionary.

Daily Bible Illustrations; being Original Readings for a Year, on Subjects from Sacred History, Biography, Geography, Antiquities, and Theology. By John Kitto, D.D. Evening Series, Isaiah and the Prophets. April-June. Scripture Teacher's Assistant; with Explanations and Lessons, designed for Sunday Schools and Families. By Henry Althans.

The Celt, the Roman, and the Saxon; a History of the Early Inhabitants of Britain, down to the Conversion of the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity. By Thomas Wright, Esq.

The Contest with Rome; a Charge to the Clergy of the Archdeaconry of Lewes, delivered at the ordinary visitation in 1851. With Notes, especially in answer to Dr. Newman's recent Lectures. By Julius Charles Hare, M.D.

Extracts from the Reports of Her Majesty's Inspectors of Schools, intended chiefly for the use of the Managers and Teachers of such Elementary Schools as are not receiving Government Aid.

The Pope's Supremacy a thing of Priestcraft, alike unwarranted by Holy Scripture or Tradition. Being a compendious Refutation of the Arguments by which modern Romanists attempt to support Papal Usurpation. By Charles Hastings Collette.

Lectures. By Samuel Martin, of Westminster Chapel, WestminsterNo. I. True Christianity-Pure Socialism.

No. II. The Straits of Pure Socialism.

No. III. The Anti-Socialist Warned of God.

Sabbath lessons for a Year. No. XI. By Samuel Martin.

A Latin Grammar. Containing-Part I. The Eton Grammar revised and corrected; Part II. A Second or Larger Grammar, in English, for the higher classes of Schools, &c. By Rev. J. T. White, A.M.

Popular Scripture Zoology. Containing a Familiar History of the Animals mentioned in the Bible. By Maria E. Catlow.

Voices from the Dead: a Sermon occasioned by the death of the Rev. Wm. Rooker (late of Tavistock). Preached at Norley Chapel, Plymouth, on Sunday Morning, April 18, 1852. By Eliezer Jones. To which is appended a Sketch of Mr. Rooker's Life and Dying Experience.

The Bookselling System. Letter to the Right Hon. Lord Campbell, respecting the late Inquiry into the Regulations of the Booksellers' Association, more particularly in reference to the Causes which led to its Dissolution, &c. By a Retail Bookseller.

A Discourse Delivered at the Funeral of Professor Moses Stuart. By Edwards A. Park, Andover, Massachusetts.

THE

Eclectic Review.

AUGUST, 1852.

ART. I.-6. A Letter on the Cultivation of Cotton, the Extension of internal Communication and other Matters connected with India, addressed to Sir Harry Verney, M.P. By Edward Money, of the 25th Regiment of Bengal Native Infantry. London: James Ridgway.

7. Parliamentary Paper, 622. Aug. 1, 1851. East India Public Works, India.

Ir was not considered necessary in our former notice of this important subject to give any elaborate proof of the deficiency of roads in India, and the miserable character of such as there are. The testimony of Mr. Money (art. 6, above) is, however, so pertinent and decisive, that it would be a grave omission not to quote it, premising, that whilst he admits the deplorable want of roads in India, he is an eulogist of the Indian Government, and evinces some portion of that esprit du corps, which attaches to the members of all corporate or administrative bodies. Mr. Money's competency as a witness rests on the fact that he 'resided in India for a number of years, and was employed on the public works, both military and civil; during a part of which time he was located in one of the great cotton districts, and on one of the great cotton thoroughfares, of which he was in charge.' The following is his testimony:That India is destitute of roads, no one who has studied the maps, with the power of testing their accuracy, and knows what interminable difficulties present themselves in the way of wheel carriages, or who has seen the manner in which the merchan

dize or produce of one district is, perforce, transported to another, or who has seen grain at a famine price in one spot and in abundance at another a hundred miles distant, CAN DOUBT for ONE MINUTE; or that the want of good roads is the great evil of our Indian administration, and is that for which the East India Company will have most difficulty to find an excuse when the renewal of the Charter comes under discussion.'-pp. 31, 32.

Mr. Money states further, (p. 34,) that until roads are constructed in India, all improvements, whether it be in the cotton or other cultivation, or in the education and civilization of the natives, must be retarded.' It will scarcely be believed, that in the Bengal presidency, comprising 360,000 square miles, nearly five times the area of Great Britain, the length of roads (not exceeding in any case forty feet wide) on which a four-in-hand could be driven fifty miles on end without let or hindrance,' is not 1500 miles; whilst in England and Wales only, in 1829, there were turnpike roads to the extent of 20,875, to say nothing of 80,000 miles of bye-roads, all passable for carriages.

Turning to other testimony (art. 6, above), and confining quotation to the expenditure on public works in the Bombay presidency, that being the one from which an augmented supply of cotton must principally, if at all, be obtained, the following is a condensed abstract of the 'EXPENDITURE on the construction and repair of PUBLIC WORKS, in the ROAD and TANK DEPARTMENT, from the 1st of May, 1836, to the 30th of April, 1847:

The area of the presidency being 65,000 square miles, and its revenue about £2,500,000 per annum, it follows that the expenditure on all these objects has been at the rate of 12s. 3d. per square mile annually, and has constituted a charge of 3d. in the pound on the annual revenue. Miserable as is this result, it is not the worst to be deduced from the significant figures quoted. The whole expenditure in the ten years on

new roads, at £800 per mile, would give 130 miles, including bridges, or thirteen miles per annum: whilst in England and Wales, in the eleven years from 1818 to 1829, 1000 miles of turnpike road were constructed at a cost incomparably greater than £800 per mile! Extending the comparison from the Bombay presidency to the whole of British India, it appears that in the fourteen years, from 1834 to 1848, the whole expenditure of the Indian government on roads, bridges, and tanks, was £1,434,000, less by £140,000 than the expenditure for the single year 1841, on the repairs only of the 20,000 miles of turnpike roads in England and Wales, which was £1,574,000. It would be an almost sinful waste of words to adduce another proof, that AS A SYSTEM, ROADS HAVE NO EXISTENCE IN INDIA !'

Sir James Hogg may, however, be commended to Mr. Money's pamphlet, and the Parliamentary Return which shows the construction of thirteen miles of new roads annually over a surface of 65,000 square miles, to correct that poetic tendency which was so wonderfully displayed in his speech of June 18, 1850, on Mr. Bright's motion; and more especially in his quotation of Mr. Bell's evidence, relative to Candeish, that the intersection, of the roads is the first thing which strikes a stranger!' Sir James Hogg, and his compeers in the East India Directory, may rest assured, that neither alleged facts, argument, nor oratory, will remove, in one iota, the belief, amongst all who understand the matter, that roads are vitally essential to the prosperity of India, and that some body or bodies shall be made responsible for their construction.

The question of immediate and indispensable urgency to answer is, then, simply this-Who, in India, is responsible to make the roads? Clearly, we think, the Hon. Company itself. THE COMPANY IS PROPRIETOR OF THE SOIL. All its acts proceed on this assumption. In virtue of proprietorship, rents are fixed, annually, or otherwise, by the Company. Rent or landtax is the principal source of revenue. The government either takes as rent all that the cultivator or Zemindar can afford to pay after providing for roads, or it does not. If the former is

the rule, clear and distinct regulations should be in existence for the construction and maintenance of roads on some municipal or district system. If the latter be the rule, then the government alone is responsible, and must be judged by its deeds. There is little, if any dispute, that the actual system belongs to the second category; and it follows that, waiving all censure on account of past omissions, a present and most onerous obli-, gation rests upon the government of India. The capability ot that vast country to produce a large supply of cotton, is no

doubted by any competent judge; but difficulties in the way of transit render unavailable that capability, not simply as they enhance the price and deteriorate the quality of the cotton produced; but as they offer almost insuperable obstacles in the way of direct European agency and capital, directed to the staple, the better picking, sorting, and packing of the cotton, and the emancipation of the cultivator from his present situation of serfdom to the village banker and other classes of middlemen, who, together with the government, leave him little else than labour-wages for all his toil.

. But it is objected that the government of India is in debt, and that on the average of the last four or five years the expenditure has exceeded the income; and so a government is neither to see to it that municipal provision is made for the construction of roads, nor to do the work itself, because its income is not sufficient. No such defence can for a moment be tolerated. It supposes that a government can dispense with the performance of some of its first duties, involving the essential conditions of national well-being, on the score of poverty; just as a man may dispense with superfluities and luxuries in the hour of reverse and loss. There are certain things a government must do, or forfeit its right to govern; and in the present condition of India as to roads, the competency of any government for the onerous rule over that vast territory must be tested amongst other things, by what it does to facilitate exchange and production. It is sheer sophistry to urge that what is asked is in violation of the principle of free trade. All that is asked of the government is, that it shall provide all those social and material conditions which lie directly in its province-not that it shall provide and apply capital or labour directly in production. A government must do one of two things, as to roads either provide them out of the general revenue, or make provision obligatory on municipalities or district to do so. At the low cost at which roads may be constructed in India, according to some authorities, £800 per mile, but according to Mr. Money, £450, there is no excuse for their absence. As an investment they would pay; for it is well known that, wherever they have been found, the increased interchange has augmented the customs' duties in a more than proportionate degree, quite apart from the tolls collected.

What has been done in the neighbouring island of Ceylon under the enlightened administration of Sir Emerson Tennent, amply illustrates this view of the matter. In this island, with a revenue not one-fifth of that of Bombay, 1247 miles of road were rendered serviceable in four and a half years; and the follow