besides the straw and navigation (on the Ganges Canal).
And the area of irrigation is still extending. About 7 per cent. net of this now comes into the treasury. In the Jumna Canals, in the same part of the country, the returns into the treasury are 25 per cent., and in all the Madras districts double and treble that. The question of returns to Government,[1] though a point of importance, is of much smaller consequence than that of total benefits to the community. Besides its being a question of life or death, of health or disease, of civilisation, comfort, and cleanliness, or dirt and barbarism and misery, the average total benefits are at least 100 per cent. The Godavery district used to export £60,000 a year; it now exports, by sea only, £800,000 or £900,000 a year, besides the whole population being well fed and well clothed and housed; so that their home consumption is probably doubled. The 560,000 acres irrigated, then, now yield about £1,100,000 a year more in grain, besides straw and navigation, by an expenditure of about £600,000.
The results of the irrigation and navigation works in the Godavery Delta have been so conspicuous that I cannot but give the following short account: In 1843, when the first sketch of them was made by Sir Arthur Cotton, he and Lady Cotton took up their abode in tents and rough sheds on the bank of the
- ↑ Official papers are written as though the Government were simply a trading Company to whom the sole question was: What direct profit can be obtained?
