Mu. Holt S. Hallett is unwearied in his advocacy of his Burma-China railway schemes. He has persuaded himself that by the early construction of a line along the route from Maulmain our trade with the Shan States and Western China would be enormously developed. By starting from Maulmain, he says in an address which he lately delivered before the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce, we should escape the maze of hills lying between the Salween and the Irrawaddy, and tap the Shan States as well asthe Weston provinces of China. He mentions the engineering advantages which this route possesses over any other that has been suggested or ap feasible, and concludes that there is now no longer any doubt whatever that Yunnan Fu can be reached from the seaport of Maulmain by a railway that can be constructed at a reasonable cost:—From Yunnan Fu the railway would follow the crest of the plateau as far as the head waters of the Yung-ning-ho, and descend by one of its western branches to the Yangtze River, thus missing the deep valleys of the upper waters of the Canton, Wuchiang, and Chih-shui-ho crossed by Mr. Hosie on his journey. All of these streams, as is evidenced by the levels that have been taken by Mr. Hosie and Mr. Baber, have their sources in the northeastern continuation of the plateau of Yunnan, and could thus be escaped by the railway. From the point where it touched the Yangtze a series of railways could be made permeating the rich and heavily populated plains of Szechuan in every direction." Having thus arranged his railway on paper Mr. Holt Hallett proceeds to show the utter folly of supposing that steamers can run on the Tipper Yangtze. He relies ona report by Commander Stokes wh 5 accompanied the Blakiston expedition, who seems to admit that a steamer might make way against the stream but scarcely thinks it possible that one could come down safely with the our rent. On the faith of this and_some extracts from the reports of Mr. Hosie, taken without their context, he is somewhat astonished that "our consuls in their zeal for increasing our trade turning desires into hopes whatever that may mean—" and hopes into beliefs that steamers will yet surmount these rapids." All this part. of the address will not lead those who are better acquainted with the subject than Mr. Hallett to take an indulgent, perhaps not even a fair view of his industry and those parts of his paper which are really of value. There can be no doubt that steamboat communication with Chungking, and railways, whether from the eastern provinces of middle China into Szechuen and Yunnan, or from Burma, would greatly increase our trade with those parts of the world. So would a line from Burma increase English trade. The Birmingham audience was no doubt ready to admit these anticipations, however hazy may have been its geoxraphical notions. But what would expecially fix its attention would be the differences in prices of articles in Burma and the undevel laud countries. The mouths of the Birmingham men must have watered when they heard that raw cotton which sells at Ichang at £44 10s. a ton sells in the capital of Szechuen at £88 18s. 10d.; that coals double their price when carried five miles from the mines; that cotton bought in Zimmé for £33 12s. a ton sells at three times that price in Yunnan. The innnense variety of the articles of which this trade is composed, as given by Mr. Hallett, must have further whetted the Birmingham appetite, and no doubt many a man who pears knew little or nothing about geography cheered Mr. Hallett's attack on a dilatory Indian Government that had not made a railway from Maulmain into this land of high prices for imported goods. Mr. Hallett's contrast of his own Tine with the Yangtze route Maulmain in an air line is 1,075 miles from Chungking. Adding one-third for the development of the railway, the length would be 1,433 miles; the cost for railway carriage of grain, salt and minerals, £1 13s. 5d. a-ton. From the Ichang Consular Report for 1884 it appears that the cost for conveyance of piece-goods up the Yangtee-Kiany River from Ichang to Chungking is £7 11s. 1d. a-ton, "payable in advance, and not to be refunded if boat and cargo should be lost in the rapids." If we add on £2 Ss. 11d. for the carriage from Shanghai to Ichang, the exact cust of which I do not know, we have a gross cost of £10 for the carriage of a ton of piece-zeeds by river from Shanghai to Chungking, or six times the cost that would be charged for grain and minerals by railway from Maul-main; and it ast be remembered that Maulmain is between 2,000 and 3,000 miles nearer England than Shanghai is. Every step nearer Mauhuain and away from Chungking must be more expensive from Shanghai and less expensive from Maulmain. The carriage down stream from Chungking to Ichang, according to the Consular Report for 1880, averages £6 10s. 5d. a-ton, Bee sides the through trafic that would: be carried by the railway, the local trafic would naturally be very great, as I have shown that the railway would convey heavy produce such as grain, salt anit minerals forty-three times cheaper than they are now conveyed by caravans." The Indian Government has fought shy of Mr. Hallett's scheme, mainly for something like the same political reasons, which have led the Spectator, in the article we reproduced on Thursday, to Sir Richard Temple's greater shelved. France is supposed to sinister eyes on Siam, and the Siamese Government would like to have the support of England and were therefore ready to construct a cons necting railway. Our Indian Office did not meet the advances made by Siam, a few years ago. Since then we have had. the conquest of Burma on our hands while France has been occupied in For fairs have not at public attention. That they may be of paramount importance to ws before many years are over is probable enough, and We may hope that England. will take care that the independence and Fights of her ally are safe-guarded. The article from the Spectator deserves attention. It no doubt gives a faithful account of Sir Richard Temple's proposals and as faithfully represents that small school of politicians who are grievously troubled about the obligations of England and to whom Mr. Arnold's phrase a" Wearied Titan" is as wisdom. Itwas not by counting the cost beforehand in this fashion that India was won, and when there is. strong reason for action, though it involves annexation, these feeblenesses are forgotten,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.