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system rather than confess that they had made a mistake, which men are in danger of doing when they are committed to one particular line.
Third. That we have abundant proof now before us, in spite of the clumsy way in which these matters have hitherto been conducted, that India offers an unbounded field for the capital, energy, and philanthropy of England in the way of material improvement. Taking only Mr. Thornton’s figures, and I am sure that they err on the side of under-estimating, we are receiving direct into the Treasury about double the present interest of money for what has been done while serving our apprenticeship, and now we shall start with the advantages of the experience of all our mistakes and discoveries, and a most complete knowledge of the Country, the People, &c. John Bunyan says most wisely, Captain Experience was a man very successful in his undertakings. There can be no comparison between the probable results of Works now undertaken with this immense advantage and those carried on without it. There is not the slightest necessity for our investing our capital on American or Spanish or Turkish Works of War or Peace; there is the safest possible field for Investment in our own Empire, not to speak of the absolute necessity for it, if it were only to preserve the lives of our People. Think for instance of a single line of communication of 130 miles, on the carriage on which there is, at this present moment, an expenditure of at least a Million and a quarter per annum, of which upwards of a Million could be saved by an effective work of transit. Perhaps hardly anything could give a more striking proof of the unaccountable mismanagement of these things in times past than that this loss of a Million sterling a year should have been going on under the very eyes of the Viceroy, the Governor of Bengal, and the whole Commercial Community of Calcutta, while the Government were spending £6,000 a mile upon Railways in Nagpore, on which the traffic is so insignificant that they are shut up a great part of the year because there is literally nothing to
