Many years ago I heard the late Mr. Hugh Mason (formerly President of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce) speak at a meeting of the Society of Arts on the manufacturing prospects of India, and, after reviewing the general situation, he said that it is difficult to see what other advantages India could require in order to raise itself into the position of a great manufacturing country.  It is true, he said, that the operative there cannot do as much as the operative hero, but, he continued, I can remember the time when the operative here could not do nearly as much as he can do now, and there is no reason to doubt but that a similar improvement would take place in the case of the Indian operative.  And when this improvement takes place, and India becomes more known and developed, her great manufacturing capabilities will become fully apparent.  India has two very great advantages.  She has an abundant, docile, and orderly population, and she obtains from the sun an ample supply of that heat which has to be paid largely for here.  When, then, the Indian operative attains to an advanced degree of proficiency—­and to this he undoubtedly will attain—­the greatest labour competition that the world has ever seen will begin—­a competition between the white labourer who requires to be expensively fed, warmly clothed, and well shod, and housed, and the black or brown skinned man who can live cheaply, and work naked, and who is as physically comfortable in a mere shelter as his rival is in a well built dwelling.  The Indian peasant already, in the case of wheat, undersells the English farmer, and it seems merely a question of time as to when the Indian operative will undersell his Lancashire rival, and when perhaps calico will come to England, as it once did, from Calicut.  And no doubt, some such thoughts were passing through Cobden’s mind when he once said, “What ugly ruins our mills will make.”  We are, however, a considerable way from such remains as the reader will see if he consults the interesting paper on “The Manufactures of India,” read by Sir Juland Danvers at a meeting of the Society of Arts on the 24th of April last, and by this it appears that the imports of cloths of English manufacture have increased in recent years.  Still India is progressing, and there are now a total of 126 cotton mills in all India.  Of these one is in Bangalore, and was opened in 1885.  The Mysore Government took 250 shares in it, and to enable the Company to extend the buildings, subsequently lent it on easy terms two lakhs of rupees.  There is also another company at work in Bangalore which started as a woollen factory, but which has now set up machines for spinning cotton.  The efforts made to push forward industries of all kinds in Mysore are highly creditable to the administration, and I find numerous references in the annual addresses made by the Dewan at the meeting of the Representative Assembly to the desire of the Government to foster any kind of industry that is likely to afford increased