The total outlay on the construction of these lines is shown in the following tables which have been compiled from decennial Reports on the Moral and Material Progress and Condition of India.

The total capital outlay down to the end of the year 1901 is given as 340,159,800 tens of rupees, equivalent to £226,773,200 sterling.1

It only remains to add that the Government reserved the right to purchase lines from guaranteed companies, and this right has been freely, and we think rightly, exercised within the last twenty years. The East India Railway was acquired in 1880, the Eastern Bengal Railway in 1884, the Sindh, Punjab, and Delhi Company's lines in 1885-86, the Oudh and Rohilkhand Railway in 1888, the South Indian Railway in 1890, and the Great Indian Peninsular Railway in 1900. But while the old guaranteed lines were thus purchased by the

1 Statistical Abstract relating to British India, 1891-92 to 1900-01.

Government, other guarantees have again been given in recent years for new lines. The Assam Bengal Railway, formed in 1892, obtained a guarantee of 3 per cent. to connect Assam with the port of Chittagong, obviously in the interests of the Assam tea gardens. The Burma Railways Company, formed in 1897, obtained a guarantee of 2 per cent. to take over the State-railway system in Burma, and to extend the line from Mandalay towards China. The line has been carried as far as Lathio, and has brought no traffic; and the Indian money has been wasted on a scheme from which Indian tax-payers have nothing to gain.

When we turn from railways to the subject of irrigation works we turn from unwise extravagance to equally unwise niggardliness. The great schemes suggested by Sir Arthur Cotton were never seriously considered. And the total outlay on irrigation works in India, down to March 1902, scarcely amounted to 24 millions sterling against 226 millions sterling spent on railways,

The area of land irrigated from Government canals in the different provinces of India in the year 19011902, excluding the Sindh canals, is shown in the table on the next page.

It has been stated before that the water rate has been consolidated with the land rate in Madras, and cultivators in the Ryotwari tracts are required to pay a fixed consolidated tax year after year.

In some provinces a year of heavy rainfall means a larger distribution of canal water, while in Sindh a good rainfall means a fall in the irrigated area, because the people are not in want of irrigation water. In Orissa, where there is generally a good rainfall, the cultivators refrained, to a large extent, from using the canal water, until the drought of 1896. Then there was a rush of applications, and agriculturists entered into agreements to use and pay for the canal water for years to come.

For all these reasons, the area irrigated in India varies

from year to year.

But there are large tracts of country where no canals or other irrigation works have yet been constructed; and the famines of 1897 and 1900 once more directed the attention of the Government to a duty yet unfulfilled. At last, in 1901, measures were adopted which should have been taken twenty years before; and a Commission was appointed to inquire into the extent to which irrigation works could be extended in India. Sir Colin ScottMoncrieff, who had served in the irrigation department in India, and had distinguished himself by his great and successful irrigation works in Egypt, was elected the head of the Commission,; and the result of his labours has recently appeared in four Blue Books of very respectable size.

The second volume contains a summary of the irrigation works done in India, and the suggestions of the

Commission for future works. In the Punjab, the Commission recommend the postponement of the Lower Bari-Doab scheme, and suggest the bolder scheme of a canal from the Chinab to be carried across the valley of the Ravi.

In Sindh, the further development of the existing inundation canals is proposed. In Gujrat, the Commission make a valuable proposal to find suitable sites for storage works on the Sabarmati, Mahi, and Narbada rivers, and for the construction of canals from these reservoirs for the irrigation of Ahmadabad and Kaira. And for the Deccan they make a similar but bolder proposal that the catchment areas of all the rivers which derive their supplies from the unfailing rainfall of the Western Ghats should be examined with a view to the construction of storage works, and to the excavation of canals from these works to parts of the country urgently in need of protection.

In Madras, the extension of the Kurnool-Cuddapa canal and a complete investigation of the Tumbhadra project are recommended; and large storage works for the Kaveri and the Krishna are also proposed.

In Bengal, storage works and canals for the irrigation of Shahabad and Muzaffarpur Districts are proposed. And in Agra and Oudh, the Commission strongly recommend the construction of the Ken canal for the protection of Banda and Bandelkhand, and also a diversion of the Sarda water into the Ganges, utilising a portion of it for the irrigation of Bijnor and Budaon.

Besides these and other large works, there is a wide field for the construction of works of a humbler class, . the majority of which will not cost more than £60,000, while some may cost even less than £6000. "There is a great deal to be said in favour of such works. They afford protection to many tracts which cannot be brought within the scope of larger and more ambitious schemes; they involve much less financial risk; and on most of

them work can be started for the purpose of employing relief labour with some assurance that the works are likely to be completed."

in the rice

Both in regard to the smaller works and the major works, the Commission strongly recommend their construction for the protection of agriculture even when they are not likely to be directly remunerative. "There are other small works which are never likely to be directly remunerative, but which we have no hesitation in recommending, as we have recommended many major works, on the ground that they afford the only means of providing protection against drought to tracts that are greatly in want of it. Foremost among these we would place the works which we have proposed growing districts of the Central Provinces. that many works of the same kind may be possible in other tracts such as are to be found in Gujrat, Berar, Chota Nagpur, and Bandelkhand." The Government of India and the Provincial Governments, which have so often been compelled to remit portions of the Land Revenue after the devastations caused by recent famines, will no doubt feel that, even from a purely financial point of view, it is a sound and wise policy to undertake these large and small irrigation works, even when they are not likely to be "directly remunerative."

But we
But we hope

A wise suggestion is made by the Commission for the appointment of a Central Board invested with the responsibility of regularly watching and reporting progress in irrigation works in the future. The recommendation might be somewhat widened; a Central Board for all public works, including railways, might be formed; and some Indian Members, qualified by their administrative experience and their knowledge of the needs of their countrymen, should be appointed to the Board. The Public Works of India are represented by one member of the Viceroy's Council, generally an engineer. He looks at questions from an engineer's point of view, and