refused this year, a considerable extent has been irrigated surreptitiously; and when one of the engineers was reporting about it, a Native Revenue official told him he had had his predecessor turned out, and he would have him turned out too if he reported it. Such is the confusion in these districts. Such the relation between the State and the 'creatures of its own creation,' the Zemindars. Such the difference between the Ryotwari and Zemindari tenures.
8. It is here, however, that the Government hesitate, or rather that they have drawn back.
Lord Mayo's Government was in favour of a compulsory rate in all irrigated districts.
Lord Northbrook and Sir G. Campbell are against it.
But, without it, it is said that irrigation and drainage (if the works are to be constructed by Government) can never be carried out on a scale commensurate with the wants of the country.
Is there much diversity of opinion, however, where the water is actually given? But then no compulsion is needed. Are not the people only too glad to get and pay for the water, as fast as they can prepare their fields and get manure? But are we not always in a hurry? and, after shutting our eyes for years to the truth as to the value of irrigation, always trying to force the poor cultivators to take the water the very instant we ourselves are converted to a sense of its value, and charging them for all the blunders we have made in supplying it?
Nay: do we not even go further and make laws
