Indian Problem Solved (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1874 Excerpt: ...is; but I should hope oven that that work would hereafter be so improved that it would pay. I think that there is one element in the question, which apparently you have not taken into consideration, and that is the great saving of revenue which has been effected by the existence of the Ganges Canal. I would say in a broad and general way, that the money which you saved in the year 1861-62 in the shape of land revenue, and in the shape of saving the property of the people, was fur more, on the most moderate calculation, than all the accumulated interest which we lost until the canal paid say 5 per cent, on its actual outlay. The actual authority which I queted as to the saving of land revenue, and the saving of property in the drought of 1861, was Colonel liuird Smith, an engineer officer of great ability and reputation, who is now dead, who was sent up by Lord Canning immediately after the famine, when the effects of the famine could be seen, and he got together all the data of the famines which had occurred in previous years; and I have been present in India, living in some of the districts where the famine in 1838 and the famine iu 1834 occurred, and I have no doubt myself tliat the estimates made by Colonel Baiid Smith were very likely correct, or at any rate were very near the truth. But taking his data, and assuming that one-fourth of it, or one-sixth of it, or one-eiphth of it was a real saving, instead of what he put down, I would say that that value was more than equal to all the loss of interest during the time that the Gauges Canal was under construction. There is no doubt that on some of these lands some cultivation would have gone on under wells; but that is very scanty compared with what you get from canals; and where the land is distant from t...