Page:Arthur Cotton - The Madras Famine - 1898.djvu/12

 Millions sterling, this in the very district in which there was a terrible Famine 40 years ago, and which was in such a terrible state some years afterwards, that a special Commissioner had to be sent to investigate the case. These are some of the facts that would come before a special Commission on the Famine, but not a word of which will come before the public, if the matter is left to the India Office. Are these things not sufficient to show that the case is one most urgently demanding special treatment and real investigation? Though I am in a minority in this matter, the following extracts will show that I no longer stand quite alone. In the India Office itself, where it is, that the word Water is a proscribed word, I find three persons who dare openly to support this side of the question. Gen. Strachey, one of the first men in the Engineer department, who has been many years employed in connection with Public Works and now a Member of the India Council, said at the Royal Institution, on the 18th of May, “We must be content to pass through a condition of periodical suffering of an acute kind, during which ways of escape from these evils will be gradually perfected. These ways are indeed already sufficiently evident, and so far as they have been applied, have been found to be thoroughly efficacious. They are the provision of artificial Irrigation and improved transport.” And he “has passed a considerable portion of his life in seeking for the means of extending those essential material allies in the battle of Indian life.” My next India Office witness is the present head of the Irrigation Department, Mr. Thornton, who lately read a Paper at the Society of Arts, in which he gives in figures from the Official Records, the Returns from all the new Government Works of Irrigation, the lowest being five per cent. and the highest forty. He states that this result was arrived at with the assistance of the Head of the Railway Department, Mr. Danvers, the man whose bias, if he had any, would necessarily be against the Navigation Works. He adds; “Even to myself these are unexpected favourable results, and they will probably take