not present, and Sir Edward Ryan took the chair. Resolutions were passed and a memorial to Government was determined upon; but it was not thought prudent then to open subscriptions in consequence of the failure of several agency-houses and the ruin it had caused to many. The next morning the Bishop, in his walk, was regretting this circumstance, when Lord William Bentinck met him. Sir Charles (then Mr.) Trevelyan, who was riding by the Bishop, said "I wish, my Lord, I cannot say how earnestly, that you would come forward and do something to direct the stream into the right channel again." This met with the silent approval of the Governor General. The Bishop wrote a letter to the Chief Magistrate in which he treated the question so conclusively that "in one week thirty-three thousand rupees were subscribed by one hundred and seventy European and Native gentry." A public meeting was held in the town hall, and in a short time the subscribers numbered two thousand, five hundred and forty, and the subscription amounted to one hundred and seventy-six thousand rupees. We believe that at this meeting the Bishop said in his speech that "the extension of steam navigation to India would be opening the floodgates of measureless blessings to mankind."

On the 3rd June 1834, Charles Grant, the President of the Board of Control, introduced the question of steam communication into the House of Commons; and the Committee appointed to consider the subject, passed a series of resolutions for carrying out the object.

Mr. C. B. Greenlaw, whose bust is to be seen in the town hall, was the Secretary to the New Bengal Steam Fund. For many years he worked incessantly and zealously, but quietly, to promote steam communication with England. It had been resolved that the Steamer Forbes should be employed for three voyages between Calcutta and Suez; but the first voyage was unsuccessful, and the idea was consequently abandoned. The subscribers to the Bengal Steam Fund met at the town hall, on the 16th February 1836, when it was resolved to send memorials to the Home authorities. The original idea of steam communication was by the Cape. On the 5th March 1836 a public meeting was held in the town hall to consider the question of steam communication with England by way of the Red Sea. Sir Edward Ryan was in the chair, and Sir John Grant read the resolutions submitted by the Select Committee to the House of Commons. The purport of these was, that regular steam communication should be established from Bombay or Calcutta by the Red Sea; and the meeting adopted a petition to the Home authorities for the establishment of steam communication between Indian Ports and Great Britain.

Lord William Bentinck's sentiments were well known. He said :—“I have been a zealous supporter of the cause of steam communication with England from the strongest conviction, confirmed by every day's further reflection, of its vast importance to innumerable interests both national and commercial."

Opinion on the subject of steam communication with England was divided here. The new Bengal Steam Committee were for the "Comprehensive line," while Sir Thomas Turton, W. P. Grant, and others were for the " precursor line," or for the line between Calcutta and Suez, on the ground that the French and English vessels in the Mediterranean afforded considerable facilities on the European side of the Isthmus. Both parties kept up the agitation until 1845, when the importance of the comprehensive scheme was acknowledged and accepted. It was considered best that steam communication should not be confined to Bombay or Calcutta only, but that it should embrace all the Presidencies.

Sir John Hobhouse said that, "it was calculated to benefit India to an extent beyond the power of the most ardent imagination to conceive." With the view of carrying out the comprehensive scheme, the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company was formed. The Hindostan was the first steamer despatched to Calcutta, on the 24th September 1842, to open the comprehensive line by plying between Calcutta, Madras, Ceylon and Suez.

The Directors of the East India Company entered into postal arrangements with the Peninsular and Oriental Company. There were thus two mails, viz., one conveyed by the East India Company between Bombay and Suez, and one by the Peninsular and Oriental Company between Calcutta and Suez, vid Madras and Ceylon. The East India Company had at last to give the Bombay Branch of the Indian mail to the Peninsular and Oriental Company.

The outbreak of the mutiny in India necessitated the estab lishment of weekly communication. In November 1857, "the line between Bombay and Aden was extended to Suez, and in conjunction with it, a fortnightly line was opened between Marseilles and Alexandria, and the arrivals and departures of the Bombay mail being made to alternate with those of the Calcutta here instead of being coincident with them as was previously the case, a weekly communication with India was established."

The establishment and the extension of steam communication in Calcutta gave rise to enquiry for coal; and the Government of Bengal, anticipating the increasing consumption of the article, appointed a Committee on the 28th December 1836, for the purpose of enquiring into the localities of coals, whether found alone or mixed with other useful minerals, and reporting by what

routes and at what expense coal could be brought to the banks of the navigable rivers. The Committee sat for several years; and the publication of their Reports has led to the discovery of a number of mines in different parts of the country and their working by private individuals and companies.

In 1804 coal had been observed by Mr. J. Delmain and brought to notice by Mr. W. Jones. The mines owned by the Bengal Coal Company, which belonged at one time to a private individual, were sold by auction and bought by DwarkaÑath Tagore, who formed the Bengal Coal Company.

The Bengal Chamber of Commerce was established in 1834 for the protection of commercial interests, and its history will show that it has rendered valuable services to the country.

PEARY CHAND MITTRA,

ART. VII.-PRELATES ON EVOLUTION.

(Independent Section.)

I.—On the Relation between Science and Religion through the Principles of Unity, Order, and Causation. Read before the Victoria Institute, by the Rt. Rev. BISHOP COTTERILL, D.D., etc. II. Charge to the Clergy and Laity, etc., by the ARCHBISHOP of CANTERBURY.

THE

HESE two addresses mark a step in the history of modern science. As has been often observed, the attitude of orthodoxy towards new discoveries goes through three stages : firstly, we are told, that they are false and damnable; next, that they are deserving of cautious examination; lastly, that they are, and always have been, matters of general notoriety, and are without any bearing whatever on religion or morality. Dr. Tait has reached the second stage in regard to the Evolutional Philosophy, while Dr. Cotterill is already approaching, if he is not landed in, the third.

The readers of the Review may be willing to join in a brief examination of these remarkable documents, especially of the latter, which is really a complete acceptance on the part of a most able and learned Prelate of the latest teachings of Modern Physical Science. Here are the Bishop's own words :

"The truth of the Law of Evolution may be tested almost without limit; and it holds, in the organic world, nearly the same position as the law of gravitation holds in the inorganic. And this law is so entirely in accordance with the principles of the contemporaneous order observed in Nature that

it commends itself with almost irresistible force to the scientific mind as a general expression of the order of Nature."

So far, barring awkwardness of style, there is no doubt, or reserve. Yet, as a champion of orthodoxy, the Bishop has another word to say :

"This, however, by no means lands us in agnosticism. Science has been found continuously in the direction of One infinite and Almighty Intelligence as the only explanation of the principles it requires. 'God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him.'"

*

Here is a camp of the Philistines, separated from us by a chasm which the Bishop has to fill or bridge. The position of the Evolutionists, which Dr. Cotterill recognizes as the true position of physical science, is that matter has developed into heterogeneous organisation from the humblest and most chaotic

beginnings; which development has produced man in all the various stages up to the highest that he has yet reached. And that this development is the result of an innate property in matter and not of creative exertions on the part of an anthropomorphic Deity external thereto. The orthodox position, on the other hand, is that an all-wise and all-good Dispenser has made man, such as he now is, cast in His own likeness, and inspired by Him, in a special manner, with "the breath of life." While admitting the first, the Bishop undertakes to support the second; and there is a heading called "special," in which it is stated that the publications of the Society from which the address emanates are called for by the dangerous tendency of such writings as those of Herbert Spencer. It is plain, then, that the undertaking of the author of the address is to reconcile the notion of an external Artificer with that of an internal law.

In order to carry out this design, Dr. Cotterill very ingeniously adopts the fundamental principle of Spencer and his school, viz., that the physical evolution of the phenomenal universe implies a corresponding metaphysical basis. But, inasmuch as this implication, has not led the evolutionists to the belief in an anthropoid Deity,-but quite the reverse-the task is by no means accomplished when this point has been attained; only the rest of the work has to be performed with very untrustworthy materials.

The first of the Bishop's arguments is a type of all the rest; being a combination of two devices. In one respect he begs the question; in another he imputes to the system he is opposing a doctrine which it does not teach. Quoting, with approval, the words of a Mr. Balfour, he points to the evil done by holding that religion receives or requires the support of science. Then he proceeds to declare that it is necessary to prove that there is no conflict between them; "but, for the same reason that assures us that true Science and true Religion cannot be at variance, it also follows that they must have some correlation." Now, on this it seems proper to remark, that whoever desires that religion should be supported by Science, such is not the desire of the evolutionists; while no correlation between the two is admitted by them. By Science they understand the classification of the verifiable facts presented to the senses; by Religion they understand the feeling of the unverifiable absolute, which may minister to the emotions. When we follow the Bishop a little further, we get a clearer view of the vast différence here involved. For, in the next section, he tells us what he means by religion; namely,