“The establishment of steam communication by the Messageries Maritimes on the route of the Red Sea to Calcutta and other Eastern ports, shows the importance attached by the French to the extension of their commercial relations with the East. A Russian line of steamers, also, has lately been established, to run between Odessa and Bombay by the Suez Canal route. Even those who see no danger in the policy of annexation pursued by Russia, will admit that the Russian roads and railways now being pushed towards Persia and Afghanistan, if designed with pacific intentions, prove, at all events, the anxiety of the Russian Government to compete with us for the trade of Central Asia, the Punjaub, and Northern India. “The substitution of Kurrachee for Bombay as the European port of India would, even by the Red Sea route, give us an advantage of some five hundred miles; but if the Euphrates route were once established, the adoption of Kurrachee as the European port of India would necessarily follow, and India would thus be brought upwards of a thousand miles nearer to us than at present; while during the monsoon months, the gain would be still greater, as the route between the Persian Gulf and Kurrachee is not exposed to the severity of the monsoon, which, it is well known, renders a divergence of some five hundred miles necessary during a portion of the year on the voyage from Bombay to Aden. “When the railway system of the Indus is completed, Kurrachee will be in continuous railway communication with Calcutta and with the gates of Central Asia at the Kyber and Bolan Passes, and it will thus become the natural basis of operations in the event either of any internal commotion in India, or of aggression on our north-western frontier. “The grand object desired, is to connect England with the north-west frontier of India by steam transit through the Euphrates and Indus valleys. The latter will render movable to either the Kyber or the Bolan—the two gates of India—the flower of the British army cantoned in the Punjaub; and the Euphrates and Indus lines being connected by means of steamers, we should be enabled to threaten the flank and rear of any force advancing through Persia towards India. So that, by this great scheme, the invasion of India would be placed beyond even speculation, and it is evident that the great army of India of three hundred thousand men being thus united to the army of England, the mutual support they would render each other, would quadruple the power and ascendancy of this country, and promote powerfully the progress, the freedom, and the peace of the world. “The Euphrates and Indus lines together would, moreover, secure for us almost a monopoly of the trade with Central Asia, enabling us to meet Russia, our great competitor in these distant fields of commercial enterprise, on more than equal terms.