TABLE II.

Abstract of the Replies of the Bengal Revenue Officers to the six Questions circulated in 1848.

TABLE I.

The annual average of the price of Cotton, as given in this table, for the Bengal bazars, has been calculated from the monthly price current lists, which, until 1859, used to be forwarded to the Revenue Board by the different Collectors. I have been told that they are no longer called for, in consequence of their supposed inaccuracy: it was found that the subordinate officers of the department, who used to report the prices for the different district markets, either through carelessness, or fraud, introduced errors, which of course vitiated the statements compiled in the Collector's office.

If, however, it is remembered, that each entry in this table is calculated for a district, including often several markets, from each of which a monthly return was made by different persons, and that twelve such returns are included in every average, and represented in each such entry, it is not, I think, rash to assume that inaccuracies, whether accidental or intentional, will have counterbalanced each other, and that the figures may thus be considered as tolerably close approximations to the truth. Such, at least, are their claims to confidence.

It is unfortunate that the earliest information to which I have had access was for the year 1838, which was an exceptional one: the price of Cotton in Bengal having been that year certainly greatly affected by the bad seasons of 1837 throughout the North-West Provinces. It is equally unfortunate that there were not data for carrying on the table to the present date, for unquestionably the prices of Cotton in Bengal were greatly enchanced in 1858-59 by the mutiny year of 1857.

Notwithstanding those disadvantages the figures are given: I believe it will be found that the small and gradual advance between 1848 and 1857 inclusive, from 340d. to 3.67d. per lb., furnishes a true index to the state of the case.

No figures that I have had access to, tend to confirm the assertion so often made, that there has been a falling off in the price of

Cotton.* It is true that we are told the Dacca spinners could, in 1790, afford to give 3d. per lb. for a Cotton carefully grown, to meet a special and limited demand, at a time when they could buy the Surat Cotton for 23d. per lb., and that of Northern and Western India for 2d.: but the market rate of the general crop of the district was at that time under 14d. per lb.

I had prepared a column of figures for this table, to represent the average price of a food staple during the same period: taking rice for Bengal: but I have had reason to think that the result I arrived at was vitiated through want, on my part, of the special knowledge required for a really just appreciation of the fluctuations of price in such a case : and I preferred, as already stated, to assume, in general terms, as true, the assertion so often made on good authority, and so generally accepted, that the general value of agricultural produce has rapidly advanced, while the price of Cotton has done so but very slowly, a state of things which is of course practically equivalent to a retrogression on the part of the latter.

The line of figures representing the average of the provincial market rates will show that they are, as a rule, a little above those of the Calcutta bazar; with regard to the line showing the price of Cotton in Liverpool, it should be remembered that the figures represent the price of Surat Cotton and are, consequently, higher than the Cotton represented by all the other figures would have fetched: if bearing this in mind, we add something (say d. per lb.) to the Calcutta bazar rates for packing, commission, and freight, it will be seen how seldom it would have been profitable to export Bengal Cotton to the English market during the last few years.

TABLE II.

This table is a reproduction of the information contained in the replies to the six questions so often already referred to.

This statement is made with the full consciousness of the fact that more extended and searching analysis might have led to a different result. This book was, it should be remembered, compiled between the 1st November and the 5th December.

The first column indicates a price at which Cotton could not be profitably grown in Bengal: it is that of the imported Cotton: the local crop could almost every where command a slightly higher price but has never been stimulated into competition by the advantage: beyond this fact the figures convey little information.

The second column shows how low the cost of transport is for the greater part of the province : Hazarebaugh, Bankoora, Cuttack, and parts of Shahabad send their Cotton on carts, and of course at a greater cost than any of the districts which have the advantage of water-carriage.

The figures representing the area actually under the Cotton crop, and that to which it might be extended, are inserted whenever they were given with apparent exactness by the officers reporting: many of them, however, did not give figures, but only stated in general terms that about so many bigas, or doons, or koolbas were, or might be, cultivated: often not explaining the equivalents of the local terms employed.