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at the date when the last extract was written (1837), they were in a very much worse state than now. In 1838, a material change was made in the distribution of engineer officers; one so material, in fact, as to form an era in the history of the public works. The nature of this will be best explained by an account of its operation on the one district which, among those recently reported on, we have remarked as having its works declared to be generally in good repair by the engineer in charge of them. This is the district of Tinnevelly, which up to 1834 was, with four other districts, the whole comprising an area of 38,460 square miles altogether one-fifth larger than Ireland - the charge of a single engineer officer. From 1834 to 1838, this vast charge was slightly reduced to 32,880 square miles. But in 1838, the Tinnevelly and Madura districts, forming an area of 16,400 square miles, were allotted as the charge of one officer; -an area greatly too extensive, -a charge infinitely too burdensome, but which still, as compared with what had previously existed, admitted of some control, and enabled the engineer to aim at a general supervision, which before was altogether hopeless. Bearing the data of these changes in mind, we find, in the following extract from the Report, that such improved superintendence, and the additional outlay which it renders possible, are not thrown away, even if considered merely as a commercial speculation:

The aggregate income of the first nine years (1822-31), was 94.55.647 rupees, or 10.50.633 rupees annually; and the aggregate expenditure on repairs of the first ten years (1823-32) was 3.22.938 rupees, or 32.293 rupees annually. In the last fifteen years (1837-51) the aggregate income was 1.77.33.875, or 11.82.258 rupees annually; and the outlay on repairs was 807.826, or 53.855 rupees annually. The total excess of the expenditure in these fifteen years over what it would have been on the average of the first ten years, was 3.23.419 rupees; but the aggregate excess of revenue from irrigated land during the last fifteen years, over what it would have been at the average of the first nine, is 19.74.830 rupees.'

The greater part of the above outlay has been in repairs of old works, (not in the formation of new,) or in improvements extending irrigation to land which the imperfection of the old works did not permit to be irrigated, and in rendering tolerably certain the supply of water which before was fluctuating, and the very uncertainty of which was a cause of loss both to the cultivator and to the public revenue. The Tinnevelly district is an instance of improvement by increased attention to many works scattered over the face of the country. As one

showing the contrast between neglect and attention in a narrower space, we may instance the northern portion of the delta of the Cauvery river, called the Talooks of Manargoody and Chillumbrum. Their irrigation had been much neglected, and the channels allowed to fill up, during the earlier years of our possession; but between 1834 and 1839 various repairs and improvements were executed. A dam was thrown across the river, the old channels cleared out, and new ones excavated, and the entire expense of these operations amounted to 35,900. To the public revenue the result has been, that, comparing the average receipts of the eleven years preceding 1834, when the works were begun, with those of the fourteen years succeeding the construction of the dam in 1836, there is an annual gain of 11,500l., or an aggregate in the fourteen years of 161,1134.

These are instances of improvement on a large scale; but, while dwelling on these and on others which we have yet to mention, it is well to bear in mind that something more is involved in them than the interests of a government, the profitable investment of capital, or the triumphs of engineering skill. For this end we extract a passage from the Report, which is instructive as showing both the dependence of the prosperity of the people on the maintenance of these works, and the manner in which an imperfect system and an insufficient establishment may combine to prevent their restoration when in want of repair :

In connexion with the subject of loss of revenue from neglect to repair works of irrigation, it must never be forgotten that for every hundred rupees of revenue so sacrificed, a further loss of fully one hundred and fifty is entailed on the ryot. Indeed, the loss to him is often total ruin, in cases which the Government only regard as a decline of revenue to the amount of a few hundred or a few thousand rupees out of their hundreds of lacs. For if the tank or channel on which the value of his land depends, is permitted to fall into decay, he has no resource; he cannot even, under the existing revenue arrangement, cultivate it with dry crops, for if he did so, he would have to pay the full rent for irrigated land; and the ground is therefore untilled. The following is an instance of this, and not a very rare one. The tank of the small village of Poottiavauripilly in North Arcot, was breached in 1847 so as to be incapable of holding water. It was not repaired till 1851, the delay being chiefly in consequence of the civil engineer department having had no time to visit it, as the Board of Revenue would not sanction a talook estimate sent up. The ryots, who are poor hardworking people, deeply felt the loss of their tank, and did their best to get water from wells to cultivate a little of the land. The land thus cultivated has yielded 67 rupees a year, while the average collections prior to the breaching of the tank were 426 rupees.

The

estimate for the repair of the tank was only 750 rupees. Thus, in this petty case, the Government sustained a positive loss of above 1400 rupees in four years for want of a proper person to estimate for this trifling and simple work. But the loss to the ryots has been much more heavy; they have been reduced to much actual distress.' (Report, par. 277.)

The Commissioners proceed to observe, and we fully concur in the opinion, that when a cultivator has invested his capital and labour in land under a tank or channel, and has for a series of years depended upon it for subsistence, and paid the due revenue to Government, the repair of any injury which may happen to the work on which his maintenance is dependent, should not, unless in some extreme cases, be a new question of whether it will be a profitable investment of capital, but that he should be considered entitled, as by an implied contract, to have the necessary repairs executed.

The most striking effects of the extension of irrigation and of the application of engineering skill are undoubtedly to be found in the delta of the Godavery. In 1844 the revenue of that district was just what it had been forty years before, while in Tanjore, a district with no greater capabilities for irrigation, but with the benefit of the peculiar attention paid to it, and of an average yearly expenditure of about 80007. (of which one half was for necessary repairs only, and not for improvements), the revenue rose in the same period by regular gradations from 310,000l. to 400,000l. In 1844 the revenue from the delta of the Godavery was declining, the people were impoverished and dispirited, when Colonel A. T. Cotton, who has illustrated his name by the great works he has since carried out, proposed a plan for throwing a dam across the river Godavery, and for distributing the water so accumulated by a network of channels over an area of 3000 square miles. At the place where the embankment was to be constructed, the river was two miles wide; it was divided by islands into four channels, and the bed was of sand of unknown depth. The works have since been carried on, as is usually the case, with insufficient means, and not much more than half of the calculated expenditure had taken place up to the end of the official year 1850-1, till which time the results are shown in a statement appended to the Report. These results are some of the most remarkable on record. About 130,000l. had been expended, and 110,000l. more was expected to complete the work. But, in fact, no real outlay had been made by the Government; for such had been the effect of the employment of capital and labour, and the stimulus given to an impoverished district, that, each year as the works went on,

even in the very first, the revenue rose, and was greater, after deducting the sum expended, than the average of the preceding eleven years. So that the total increase was more than 195,000l.; which, after deducting the outlay, left a clear profit of upwards of 65,000l.

These are magnificent results; and not many opportunities may be found for projects on so grand a scale, conferring such singular benefits in return for the application of capital. Yet, that it may not be supposed that this is a solitary instance, or that there do not yet exist, scattered through the plains of Southern India, localities which will yield to engineering skill rewards to encourage the most desponding, and satisfy the most greedy, it may be well to refer to a list of all the original works, so far as they could be ascertained, which have been at different times executed in the Madras Presidency from 1836 to 1849, and which is to be found in the Appendix to the Report. Thirty-nine works are enumerated in this catalogue, three of which have, from various circumstances, not been remunerative; the remaining thirty-six have afforded a profit on the money spent upon them, and this to such an extent that, taking the loss with the profit on the whole thirty-nine, not less than 69 per cent. on the cost is repaid yearly. Thirteen of the thirtysix yield a profit of 134 per cent. on the outlay, and the remainder from 3 to 47 per cent. The entire sum laid out on these original works, has been only 54,100l., the profit on which has been 37,670l. a year.

Enough has been said to show that the works of irrigation in the Madras Presidency are of the highest value; that they have not hitherto been kept in really efficient repair; that, if made fully efficient, they would justify the saying, that what is worth. doing at all, is worth doing well; that both repairs and original works, if well selected,-in other words, if sufficient engineering skill is available, are capable of producing results in return for the outlay of capital, such as are not dreamt of in more fully cultivated countries; and that the amount which has as yet been laid out, in original works especially, is paltry when compared with the extent of the Madras territories, 138,000 square miles. These advantages are altogether irrespective of the increased and less fluctuating supply of food, of employment for capital and labour, of the stimulus given to the exertions of the population, of the moral effects of plenty in facilitating their improvement.

Closely connected with the subject of works of irrigation, is that of internal communication. It is needless at this day to insist on the importance of roads, or to contrast the situation of

a country pierced with canals or railroads with that of one which has not even common metalled roads. But one point is worth observing, that in an inland country without roads, and where a heavy assessment is fixed on the land, it is possible that the construction of a great work of irrigation may be highly beneficial to the persons immediately affected by it, and may add greatly to their means of employing capital, while the great increase of food thus produced may, by there being no means of export, have even a deteriorating effect on the situation of some neighbours, whose fixed money assessment will, from the fall in the price of grain, bear a still greater proportion to the value of the gross produce of their land than it did before the work was constructed. Hence there may arise a necessity for reconsidering the Government assessment, and this, being a great deviation from official routine, may create, and we believe has created in some quarters, a strong feeling against all increase of works of irrigation, instead of producing, as might naturally be expected, a strong desire to apply the proper remedy of improved communications. It may be added that where there are no means of reaching the sea, and thus entering into the great market of the world, whatever is produced must be chiefly for local consumption, and from this cause the great staples, whether produced on irrigated land or not, of sugar, cotton, indigo, are altogether neglected for the production of food alone. The remedy for this, the obvious remedy, is a road, by means of which the grain may be exported; and a still more valuable advantage, by means of which the people may find it profitable, not exclusively to attend to the production of food, but to grow the far more costly products we have mentioned.

It is difficult to convey a correct idea of the state of the roads in the Madras country. They may be arranged in three classes, -those to which nothing whatever has been done, those to which something has been done, and those which are called trunk roads, and which are supposed to be on the footing of our turnpike roads. The first class forms the vastly greater portion of the whole. Any one who has seen a track across a common in Scotland, along which cattle are customarily driven, can conceive what these roads are. If the country is rough and stony, nothing but men and animals can pass along them; if smooth and even, carts are in use, unless hedges have been allowed to grow up so close on either hand as to prevent the passage of any thing wider than a loaded bullock. In either case, nature, and the traffic along the road, have made it what it is. The third class, the trunk roads, so far as they really exist, consist of a road from Madras due westward to the opposite sea coast; a