experience of irrigation in Bengal—chiefly the unwillingness of the people to take our canal water, except when driven to it by the failure of the rains—to cause the Government to pause before beginning new schemes, without some such guarantee for the repayment of the interest on the outlay as a compulsory rate would afford. The works are all carried out with loan funds, and the interest must be met from some source. But, as above said, our expenditure has been, and continues to be, £500,000 per annum.
As far as has been seen in India, however, 'the unwillingness of the people to take canal water' really means 'our own bad management' in some way or another.
One can hardly conceive now but that, even had famine been averted, the great drought would not have given a vigorous impulse to this most important class of land improvements.
But famine has come.
In Lower Bengal the field for drainage is boundless.
There, however, the one question which stops theWho is to pay? way is whether Government will make the Zemindars, who are the possessors of the soil, pay for the works or not. Here there is great hesitation. Are the Zemindars so selfish and worthless a class as to exercise their considerable influence over the Government in this way? And would they resist, as is said, with all their might?
The drainage, however, of about eighty square milesDrainage experiment on the Hooghly. of swamps on the banks of the Hooghly is now
