Page:Arthur Cotton - The Madras Famine - 1898.djvu/15

 quotes from the reports on the works and adds, “in these remarks he is speaking of the results of an Irrigation of about 90,000 Acres, whereas the Canal is capable of Irrigating more than four times as much. Here there are works capable of feeding 4,000,000, of people for two months or nearly 700,000 for a year, and of saving the Government an outlay of £2,000,000. The calamity now desolating the Madras Presidency will not be without its lesson if it only impresses upon our rulers the true value of these works, and that the prime want of India is Irrigation and cheap transit.”

With respect to the latter point, viz. cheap transit, I may state that so impressed was Lord Mayo with the necessity of this, that he had actually begun a Canal by the side of the Railway from Calcutta to the Coal fields, and that in stopping it he said in a letter to the Government of Bengal; “should the discovery of coal at Midnapoor result in a coal field equal to Raneegunge, one of the principal objects in the formation of the Damooda Canal would no longer exist, because the coal would be carried by the Midnapoor canal to Calcutta.” What could be a more complete acknowledgment of the truth of these views than this. If after spending £25,000 a mile upon a double Railway, a Canal was absolutely necessary by its side to carry coal, (and by consequence almost all other goods, for they stand upon the same ground precisely,) it is proved that the Railways have failed to give cheap transit to the country. Further this is what a Railway Engineer says on this subject; Mr. Leslie, who constructed the extension of the Eastern Bengal Railway, as soon as he had finished it, wrote a letter to the Calcutta merchants on the construction of a Canal by the side of it, in which he says, “with respect to revenue, when a Canal of sufficient capacity is once available, there can be no doubt that it would command the entire goods traffic provided the tolls are not too high. The present Eastern traffic is 1,900,000 Tons per annum, and it is rapidly increasing; a toll of 1¼-ru. a ton on this traffic alone would yield a return of £237,000, sufficient