to such
falsehoods. Not yet fifty years have we held this island; not yet thirty
have we had the _entire_ possession of the island; and (what is more
important to a point of this nature) not yet thirty have we had that
secure possession which results from the consciousness that our government
is not meditating to resign it. Previously to Waterloo, our tenure of
Ceylon was a provisional tenure. With the era of our Kandyan conquest
coincides the era of our absolute appropriation, signed and countersigned
for ever. The arrangements, of that day at Paris, and by a few subsequent
Congresses of revision, are like the arrangements of Westphalia in
1648--valid until Christendom shall be again convulsed to her foundations.
From that date is, therefore, justly to be inaugurated our English career
of improvement. Of the roads laid open through the island, we have spoken.
The attempts at improvement of the agriculture and horticulture furnish
matter already for a romance, if told of any other than this wonderful
labyrinth of climates. The openings for commercial improvement are not
less splendid. It is a fact infamous to the Ceylonese, that an island,
which might easily support twenty millions of people, has been liable to
famine, not unfrequently, with a population of fifteen hundred thousand.
This has already ceased to be a possibility: is _that_ a blessing of
British rule? Not only many new varieties of rice have been introduced,
and are now being introduced, adapted to opposite extremes of weather: and
soil--some to the low grounds warm and abundantly irrigated, some to the
dry grounds demanding far less of moisture--but also other and various
substitutes have been presented to Ceylon. Manioc, maize, the potato, the
turnip, have all been cultivated. Mr Bennett himself would, in ancient
Greece, have had many statues raised to his honour for his exemplary
bounties of innovation. The food of the people is now secure. And, as
regard their clothing or their exports, there is absolutely no end to the
new prospects opened before them by the English. Is _cotton_ a British
gift? Is sugar? Is coffee? We are not the men lazily and avariciously to
anchor our hopes on a pearl fishery; we rouse the natives to cultivate
their salt fish and shark fisheries. Tea will soon be cultivated more
hopefully than in Assam. Sugar, coffee, cinnamon, pepper, are all
cultivated already. Silk worms and mulberry-trees were tried with success,
and opium with _v