is torn by internal dissentions. England watches 

 the sea-board. No one can foresee into what com- 

 plications, the situation, may at any moment hurry 

 us, but any one can foretell that they, most 

 inevitably, must eventuate in a crisis, that will 

 shake the Celestial Empire to its foundations, and 

 possibly devastate every acre of those vast tea lands 

 in which England is so deeply interested. Even 

 now, if I am correctly informed, the civil war that 

 has been raging for the last five years, has shrunk 

 up thousands of acres of fine tea crops, or so 

 seriously damaged the trees as to leave them 

 capable of producing none but very inferior tea. 

 What has occurred with cotton, may occur with 

 tea ; and in such circumstances, it certainly must 

 be very gratifying to Her Majesty's Ministers to 

 know, that while India is secure and well governed, 

 England's demand for tea, be it ever so great, can 

 be readily supplied. 



But if viewed from an external point, the present 

 condition and future prospects of tea cultivation in 

 India, are promising ; how much more so are they 

 in their bearing on the internal prosperity and 

 material progress of the country itself. I accept 

 it as a sound maxim, that no country can be 

 colonized by the people of another country, in 

 which that people cannot till the soil Now the 

 European cannot labour in the plains of India, and 

 therefore I look on the idea of colonization, gene- 



