Page:Life or Death in India.djvu/51

 Or we should pass a law calling on all proprietors to improve the drainage, irrigation, and roads over their property, on pain of being taxed for the support of their people every time that famine comes—something as we did in Ireland, where we charged for famine and where the landlords had to pay over and above what other landlords had to pay, because the people were dying. Should not the fixed land-tax rest only on the basis that the people can live and not die?

This was, in fact, Lord Cornwallis' principle. People blame his 'Permanent Settlement,' but they forget that the best half of his plan was never carried out by his successors. He clearly intended to make the Zemindars maintain a police, make roads, and do all other things that a landowner should do. But when he died his successors went to sleep.

4. Drainage and irrigation will improve the stamina of the entire working population; but of this improvement the Zemindar, if untaxed for the work, will reap the whole profit.

In Godavery there is no comparison between present condition of the people and that before the works. But the extraordinary effect these works have had in the improvement of the people's bodily strength and spirit is one that is not generally observed. In Godavery the difference between a people under-fed and working utterly without hope, and the same people as they now are, is most striking. There is, perhaps, nearly three times the amount of work done by the same population, now that they are well