Page:A General Biography of Bengal Celebrities Vol 1.djvu/18

 HIS POLITICAL CAREER AND DEATH. 9

maintained at the expense of the State which has once for all settled the difficulty. Kaja Degumher also fought hard against Sir William Grey's Irrigation and Drainage Bill. In order to root out the epidemic fever, some officials conceived the scheme of combining agricultural improvement with sanitation by irrigation. Raja Degumher, in a thoroughly practical speech, pointed out that what might contribute to agricultural improvement would not necessarily contribute to sanitary improvement. Agricultural improvement would require the supply of water, but sanitary improvement would require the draining out of the water. Sir William was convinced of his logic, and abandoned the general scheme, and substituted in lieu of it a project of agricultural improvement by the reclamation of the Dancooni heel in the District of Hooghly. By his determined opposition to the original scheme, he saved considerable public money and much private suffering. In the renewal of the thirty years' settlement of Orissa after the famine of 1866, he took an active part. The Government was not quite disposed to continue the settlement without an increase of the assessment, hut he showed by irrefragable facts and logic, that if any measure could resuscitate the miserable people of Orissa, it was the continuance of the settlement on the original basis, and the Government accepted his recommendation. Experience has shewn that the measure has proved a boon to Orissa. He was a most intelligent advocate of the Permanent Settlement. His speeches at the anti road-cess meeting to petition Parliament was one of the ablest vindications of the advantages of the Permanent Settlement. He showed that the loss to the State by the fixation of the revenue in perpetuity was much less compared with the gain to the community at large.

Raja Degumher was neither a ready nor an eloquent speaker, but he was always compact, sensible, and practical." 2