Indian public works and cognate Indian topics
/ /(\ / /..,.; X../...J ^ -^J. A //A^ ../.^.^>y.. fW ^-z^ <r I .^^^^/^ INDIAN. PUBLIC .WORKS AND COGNATE INDIAN TOPICS y BY WILLIAM THOMAS THORNTON, C.B. SECRETARY FOR PUBLIC WORKS IN THK INDIA OFFICE AUTHOR OF A TREATISE 'ON LABOUR' ETC. In privy corner private merit lurks But public worth breaks forth in public works' Creech, Crashaw, or another Itonbon MACMILLAN AND 1875 CO. All rights reserved LONDON : PRINTED BY SfOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE AND PARLIAMENT STREET 4^93 T33i TO GEORGE DOUGLAS DUKE OF ARGYLL, K.T. FOR FIVE YEARS HER majesty's PRINCIPAL SECRETARY OF STATE FOR INDIA THESE PAGES TREATING FOR THE MOST PART OF SUBJECTS WHICH THE AUTHOR HAS BEEN PRIVILEGED TO DISCUSS WITH HIS GRACE ARE INSCRIBED WITH FEELINGS OF PERSONAL ATTACHMENT NOT ALWAYS DEVELOPED OUT OF OFFICIAL SUBORDINATION CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY. 1 Governmental Shortcomings of the Past — The Shortcomings rather Absolute than Relative — Magnitude of the Obliga- tions in regard to Public Works that devolved on the Anglo-Indian Government — Advantages and Disadvan- tages of Governmental Agency as compared with Private Enterprise — Some general Principles .... CHAPTER H. COMMUNICATIONS. Roads — Their Paramount Importance — Progress made by the Central Government in providing them — Arrangements for Enlisting Municipal Aid in the Operation — Railways — Lord Dalhousie's Railway Programme — Its two. grand Defects — Guarantee System — Its inherent Vices and un- satisfactory Results — The Gauge Controversy in relation to India — Selection of a 52 ft. Gauge for Guaranteed Lines — Its needless Width and Costliness — Adoption of the Metre Gauge for State Lines — Indian Railways Present and Pro- CONTENTS. PAGE spective — Proposed Lines from Car\var to Hooblee and from Nagpore to Chutteesgurh — Railway from Rangoon to Prome — Forest Reserves and Plantations for the Supply of Wood Fuel— Indian Coal-fields— Mr. F. Danvers' Pro- cess for utilising Refuse Coal— Condensed Peat — Govern- ment's Right of Compulsory Purchase of Guaranteed Rail- ways— Arguments for and against Exercising the Right — in the Case of the East Indian Railway— of the Eastern Bengal — of the Sind, Punjab and Delhi — the South In- dian—the Oude and Rohilcund — the Great Indian Pe- ninsula—the Bombay and Baroda — and the Madras Rail- way— Comparison between Management of Railways by the Government and by the Guaranteed Companies — Ap- plicability to Railway Management of the Principle of Industrial Co-operation — Desirability of an uniform Metre (iauge throughout India — Special suitableness of that Gauge for the Punjab and for Sind . . . -23 CHAPTER III. IRRIGATION. Dr. Brandis' Division of India into seven Hygrometric Regions — Inadequacy of Rainfall in five of these— Antiquity of Irrigation in the Punjab — Inundation Canals — Its equal Antiquity in South Eastern India — Tanks — Canalisation of the Cauvery Valley by the Rajah Veranum — Improve- ments effected by Sir Arthur Cotton — Achievements of the same Officer in the Deltas of the Godavery and Kistnah — Operations of Bengal Engineers in the North — Western Juiuna Canal — Ganges Canal — BareeDoab Canal — Colonel Fife's Proposals for Improvement of Irrigation in Sind — Recognition by Government of its Obligation to extend Irrigation — Financial Dangers involved in the Obligation — Proposal to make land capable of being irrigated from CONTENTS. PAGE any particular work, whether actually irrigated or not, pe- cuniarily responsible for the cost of the work — Arguments of Sir John Strachey in support of this expedient — Objec- tions to it — Desirableness of moderation of pace in future Irrigational Extensions — Evils incidental to Irrigation — Danger of its aggravating instead of obviating the Effects of Drought — Malaria — Reh — Colonel Corbett's Anti-irri- gational Theory — Its exaggerations — Objections to com- mittal of large Irrigational Undertakings to Private En- terprise ......... 96 CHAPTER IV. MISCELLANEOUS WORKS. Harbours — Calcutta — Mutlah — Bombay — Kurrachee — Havens in the Gulf of Cutch — Carwar — Cochin — Coringa and Cocanada — Natural Harbour in course of Formation at False Point — Project of Mr. Parkes for a close Harbour at Madras — Proposed Ship Canal between Ceylon and the Mainland — East and West Coast Canals — Fluvial Im- provements—  — Engineering Establishment — Its compo- sition at first purely Military — Introduction of the Civil Element — Successive Expedients for the Purpose — Institu- tion of Engineering College at Coopers' Hill — Unwieldi- ness of Actual Establishment — Suggestions for its better Distribution — Complicated Arrangements for controlling its C>perations — Accounts' Branch of the Public Works a CONTENTS. PAGE Department — Recent Appointment of Public Works Mem- ber to the Vice-regal Council — Upper and Lower Subor- dinate Establishments . . • . . . .156 CHAPTER VI. LAND TENURE. Interception by Zemindars of Benefits accruing from Public Works — Evidence of Lieutenant Colonel Haig on the Point — Primeval Agrarian Arrangements — Village Com- munities— Investigations of Sir Henry Maine and others — Indian Land Tenure at the Commencement of British Rule — Changes since Introduced — Permanent Settlement of Bengal — Ryotwar Settlements of the Madras — and of the Bombay Presidency — Settlement of the North-west Provinces — Principles of Settlement acted upon by Lord Laurence in the Punjab — Effects of Lord Laurence's Policy — Settlement of Oude — Two main Principles recommended for Observance in future Settlements — Retention intact of the Rights of the State — Protection of the Rights of the Peasantry — Illustrations of the evil working of Perpetual Settlement in Bengal Proper — Corresponding Illustrations with respect to Orissa — Defects of the Oude, North-western and Madras modes of Settlement — Improvements prac- ticable in these several Modes — Claims of the Punjabee System to be taken as a Model — Means of rehabilitating and strengthening Village Communities — Character of the future Land Tenure which the proposals of the Text have in View — Tendency to Over-population in some parts of India — Probable Influence of the suggested Land Tenure in counteracting that Tendency — Education an indispen- sable auxiliary counteragent CONTENTS. CHAPTER VII. NATIONAL EDUCATION. PAGE Governmental Aid — Its Misapplication — Supersession of Native Languages by Latin, in the Barbaric Provinces of the Roman Empire — Causes of this Linguistic Revolution — Linguistic Measures of the Anglo-Indian Government, the reverse of those of the Roman — Discouragement by the former of English Teaching and English Colonisation — Eagerness of the Natives of India to learn English — Feasi- bility of making Acquaintance with English general throughout the Land — Industrial, Intellectual, Moral and Religious Improvements to be expected from such Natu- ralisation of English — Its possible Tendency to produce Political Disaffection — Means of counteracting such Ten- dency— Britain's Mission in India .... 249 Map of the Indian Railways, Existing and Prospective Frontispiece INDIAN PUBLIC WORKS. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY. Public Works have always formed rather a weak side of Anglo-Indian administration, and nothing can be farther from the design of this volume than to eulogize either the East India Company's management of them, or that of the Viceroyalty, by which the Company's domination has been superseded. It is, however, rather absolutely than relatively that the management of either has been at fault. Since the fall of the Roman Empire, there has never been a Government whose strong side has been Public Works ; and among existing Governments, there certainly is not one which, from the height of these latter, would be warranted in casting disdainful glances on the Anglo-Indian. In those countries which are at present best provided with Public Works the provision has been made mainly by private enterprise, with little aid from the State, while in none of those countries in which the State has done most in this direction has it done nearly as much within an equal period as the British rulers of (,1/ B INDIAN FUBIIC WORKS. India have done within the last twenty years. Since the Indian Pubhc Works Department was constituted in 1855, its own proper expenditure, irrespectively of an about equal amount absorbed by guaranteed railways, has been more than ninety millions sterling, a very liberal tithe of the entire revenues of the State during the period, nor need the results of this enormous outlay shrink from comparison as to quality any more than as to quantity with those of corresponding governmental expenditure nearer home. Not to speak of the extension to Pesha- war of the Indian Via Appia, the Grand Trunk Road already running for twelve hundred miles from Calcutta to Lahore, the Simla, Nynee Tahl, Raneekhet and Darjeeling Roads, scaling as they do the steeps and overhanging the abysses of the Lower Himalayas, would, each of them, be no mean match for the most remarkable of the Highland tracks commemorated in the immortal distich If you'd seen these roads before they were made, You'd have held up your hands, and blessed General Wade. Nor would the glories of the Ganges, or Baree Doab, or Godavery, or Kistnah Canals pale beside those of the Caledonian. If, despite the long list of constructional successes of which these are samples, public works are still conspicuous in India far more by their absence than their presence, the reason is not so much that the Anglo- Indian Government has done little towards establishing them, as that preceding Governments, by doing next to nothing, left such an immensity for it to do. In justification of this remark it may be proper here INTRODUCTORY. to interpose a definition. By Public Works are, through- out the following pages, to be understood all such and only such fabrics or excavations as are designed rather for public than for private accommodation, for the use, that is, not of particular individuals but of any of the whole mass of individuals composing the nation who may be in a position to take advantage of them. Monuments of personal ostentation or magnificence, however grand in scale or artistic in design and execution, are excluded from the category. Imperial or Ro}'al palaces or mausolea stand outside the line that marks as a class apart roads, railways, bridges, canals of irrigation or navigation, embankments, harbours, docks, lighthouses, law courts, barracks, and a variety of other edifices subservient to purposes of general administration, civil or military. Now although, according to Mountstuart Elphinstone, 'from the earliest Hindoo times to the decline of the Mogul Empire, the great roads were objects of much attention to the Government,' and although, according to the same historian, Ibn Batuta, travelling in the fourteenth century along the coast of Malabar, found the highways shaded by trees, with resting-houses and wells at regular inter- vals, it is not to be supposed that any of these high- ways were paved, while it is needless to insist on the instability of all unpaved roads of a pre-macadamite age. Although, too, in a list of works attributed to the Mogul Sovereign, Firooz Toghluk, one hundred and fifty bridges are included, it is not the less certain that, long after the latest Mogul dynasty had ceased to be more than the shadow of a great name, all the larger Indian rivers were S 2 INDIAN PUBLIC WORKS. still iinbridged, that, until the present century was far advanced, none but a first-rate swimmer could cross the Jumna or Soane or Godavery or Kistnah, except by fording or ferrying, or can even now traverse the main stream of the Indus or Brahmaputra, or more than three or four of their affluents or branches, by any other means. ^ Although, again, irrigation received a good deal of attention long before aids to transport and locomotion began to be much thought of, that attention was be- stowed rather by individual or associated landholders than by the State. Firooz Toghluk, over and above his one hundred and fifty bridges, is recorded to have constructed, for irrigational purposes, fifty dams across rivers, and thirty reservoirs, but the very number of these shows that they must have been in general of moderate size ; while, with regard to the one irrigational canal with which the same monarch is credited, and which was designed to convey the waters of the Chetang to his hunting seat at Hissar, we are distinctly informed that, sixty years after his death, it had ceased to perfonn its office, a great part of its bed having become so filled up as to be scarcely discernible. Among other canals of some little antiquity, those of most historic celebrity are the two east and west of the Jumna, excavated at Shahjehan's behest by Ali- murdan Khan, and of these the first became practically extinct about the middle of the eighteenth century, and the second seems to have been supplied with water for only one single season, if indeed for so long : when first sub- ' Over the Ganges there is now one solitary bridge, that of the Oude and Rohilcuud Railway, at Rajghat, finished about a twelve- month ago. INTRODUCTORY. 5 jectecl to the critical scrutiny of British engineers, neither the one nor the other had revolved any but sandy waves within the memory of the oldest inhabitant of the neighbourhood. It need scarcely be said that for navi- gation, whether internal or maritime, absolutely nothing was done by any Hindoo or IMahometan dynasty ; that, under the sway of each, rivers and tides were left at their own caprice alternately to scoop out harbours and to silt them up ; that not a lighthouse, still less a dock or breakwater, scarcely even a wharf or jetty, was to be seen along the whole Indian coast line. Of miscellaneous public edifices, colleges, hospitals, hill-forts, mosques, pagodas, there was no doubt comparative abundance, but few if any of these were at once suitable and available for the purposes of administration according to European notions. Briefly, then, the programme of constructional operations which the English in India found awaiting them as soon as they had time to look around them after be- coming masters there, was of unprecedented length, so that, within the period that has since elapsed, the utmost energy on their part must have failed to discharge all its obliga- tions. At least as much of praise is due for what they have done towards clearing off the score as of blame for what they have omitted, and if in the course of this volume more stress is nevertheless laid on their short- comings than on their performances, the reason simply is that the most trustworthy guidance for the future is that which may be derived from the errors of the past. According to Adam Smith, the moral obligations of a Government to its subjects are three in number : — Defence INDIAN PUBLIC WORKS. against foreign aggression and intestine commotion ; protection from domestic injustice ; erection and main- tenance of public works and institutions, and the enume- ration does not seem to be open to any serious exception. Still, however plainly incumbent it may be on a Govern- ment to see that all necessary public works are provided, much doubt may reasonably be entertained whether their actual provision is a function which any Government can be specially qualified to discharge. Smith, during his two years' residence in France as tutor to the young Duke ot Buccleuch, had noticed more than one ' magnificent high- road made through a desert country where there was little or no commerce, merely because it happened to lead to the country villa of the intendant of the province or to that of some great lord to whom the intendant found it convenient to pay his court.' He had seen 'great bridges thrown over rivers at places where nobody passed, or merely to embellish the view from a neighbouring palace.' He had noticed too that although ' the great post roads — the roads which made the communication between the principal towns of the kingdom — were in general kept in good order, and in some provinces were even superior to the greater part of the turnpike roads in England ; what we call the cross roads, that is, the far greater part of the roads of the country, were entirely neglected, and in many places absolutely impassable for any heavy carriage ; ' nay that ' in some places it was even dangerous to travel on horseback, and mules were the only conveyance which could safely be trusted.' ' The proud minister of an ostentatious ccurt may,' he says, INTRODUCTORY. * frequently take pleasure in executing a work of splendour and magnificence such as a great highway which is fre- quently seen by the principal nobility whose applauses not only flatter his vanity, but even contribute to support his interest at court. But to execute a great number of little works, in which nothing that can be done can make any great appearance or excite the smallest degree of admira- tion in any traveller, and which, in short, have nothing to recommend them except their extreme utility, is a business which appears in every respect too mean and paltry to merit the attention of so great a magistrate.' ^ Nor is it only when personal motives interpose that the central authority or its representatives are likely to acquit them- selves but indifferently in the capacity of constructors. Even when desirous of supplying what is requisite, they often, instead of consulting the party chiefly concerned, prefer to trust to their own skill in divination, and not unfrequently make in consequence somewhat erroneous guesses. For the expenses, too, of their constructional ope- rations they can draw upon coffers which are replenished at expense of the sweat of other brows than theirs, and they are consequently relieved from one of the most cogent motives for avoiding waste. With respect to public works, the public may be presumed to know best both what the public wants and also how much the public can afford to pay in order to get its wants supplied ; and the next best judges on these points would seem to be those private individuals who are ready to undertake the works as commercial speculations, and who, in order to make their ' 'Wealth of Nations,' Book v. ch. i. part iii. INDIAN PUBLIC WORKS. venture a secure one, will do their best to avoid all works but those for the use of which the public may be ex- pected to be willing to pay freely, doing their best also to make the money they lay out go as far as possible. For this reason there has always been a strong feeling in this country in favour of leaving public works to private enter- prise, which moreover, may really deserve to be preferred wherever or as long as the only choice lies between it and the agency of an irresponsible Government. But in these days most civilized Governments are constantly becoming more and more responsible to public opinion, whose keen and even captious vigilance, when exerted through the medium of popular assemblies and an un- fettered press, operates almost as effectually as feelings of self-interest could do to keep in check official vagaries, to restrain official extravagance, and to convert official apathy into activity. Witness on this head the exemplary efficiency of the British Post Office under the manage- ment, first of Sir Rowland Hill, and subsequently of those on whom Sir Rowland's mantle has fallen. Testifying, on the other hand, to the proneness of private enterprise, when once it has acquired the monopoly of any industrial field, to assume, together with the powers, all the airs of despotism, are certain appeals of our own to King Log for deliverance from King Stork, petitions to Parliament for purchase of railways by the State, vociferous denunciations at vestry meetings of the iniquities of gas and water com- panies. Perhaps it may here be suggested that what is thus sought is merely the lesser of two great evils, and we may be reminded of one stock objection to govern- INTRODUCTOR Y. mental interposition wherever it can be dispensed with. That the State should do nothing for the public which the public can do equally well for itself has almost passed into a proverb, the soundness of which I am myself so far from disputing that I should rather be disposed to carry the maxim to an extreme. To me the fostering of habits of self-help and self-dependence appears so impor- tant an element in national education that, within certain, and those pretty wide limits, I would say, Better for the public to do things badly for itself than to have them well done by private individuals. Evidently, however, what is done for the public by individuals the public does not do for itself, nor is there any way by which a public can exercise any executive functions except by delegating their execution to some presiding authority. Now publics are of various degi'ees and magnitudes — parochial, urban, metropolitan, provincial, national ; but that must be a very small public indeed the members of which are not much too numerous to be capable of com- bining for constructional operations. Directly to par- ticipate in these, a parish must needs accept the agency of its vestry, a town of its municipality, a nation of its central government. Where, then, works of national dimensions are concerned, to say that the State should leave the public to construct them is a contradiction in terms, for in no other mode can the public undertake the constmction than by entrusting it to the State. Besides, it is plainly desirable, not simply that public works should be as suitable as possible for their special purposes, but also that the public should have the use of lO INDIAN PUBLIC WORKS. them on the lowest possible terms, which it obviously cannot have if private speculators are permitted to make a profit from them, while without the prospect of profit private speculators will not undertake them. That surely cannot be the best arrangement for the public under which public needs become the subject of private gain — under which particular persons profit at the expense of the generality. Evidently it were better either that the charges for use of public works should be so low as barely to cover expenses without yielding any surplus, or that, if any profits are made at the public expense, they should return into the public treasury. What private management of public works may become, at its worst, we may judge from what we are suffering from railway arrogance and recklessness ; but we may also perceive that at its best it must necessarily be far more costly than State management, properly controlled by public opinion, would be permitted to become. There is, too, a palpable fallacy at the bottom of the popular prepossession in favour of leaving public works to private enterprise. Private speculators, in spite of the warnings of self-interest, are liable to occasional miscalculation. They sometimes over-estimate public needs, or under-estimate the cost of providing for them, and so engage in undertakings for the use of which, when completed, the public cannot be in- duced to pay sufficiently to compensate the undertakers for their outlay. But any loss sustained by the under- takers, in consequence, is commonly regarded as ex- clusively theirs, and as being moreover partially counter- balanced by gain accruing to the public. A railway may INTR OD UC TOR Y. 1 1 be made through a district, the traffic of which is not sufficient to render the railway remunerative, but although in that case to have constructed the line at the public expense might at first sight seem necessarily a bad in- vestment of public money, still to have the convenience of the railway is undoubtedly an advantage to the public, and it is not usually perceived to be any drawback from this advantage that to provide the convenience has cost certain private individuals more than it is worth, for no part of the cost is supposed to devolve on the public except what the public voluntarily pays in the form of rates and fares. With the private wealth sunk in the undertaking, the public is assumed to have no concern. It is curiously overlooked that the total of public wealth is but the sum of the portions of wealth possessed by the several private individuals composing the public, and that consequently no individual can misapply his own substance without simultaneously misapplying a portion of the national substance. Yet the loss resulting to the nation at large from such misapplication is manifestly as great as that which is sustained by the immediate owners of the misapplied wealth ; nay, on examination it will be found to be even greater. If, for instance, in a country in which the current rate of profit is lo per cent, per annum, a railway or other public work constructed by private enterprise, at the cost of a million sterling, and constructed, let us for convenience sake suppose, in the course of a single twelvemonth, cannot by the most skilful management be made to yield a net annual return of more than 3,000/., or 3 per cent, on its cost, the share- 1 2 INDIAN PUB lie WORKS. holders obviously obtain 7,000/. a year less than they might have done by a different investment of their money. But it is not they alone who thus sufter. For, to say that the same milHon sterling, if employed in agricultural or manufacturing industry, might have yielded 10 instead of 3 per cent, is equivalent to saying that 100,000/. worth of goods might in that case have been added to the quantity sent to market, and thereby rendered available for distribution amongst, and con- sumption by, the entire community, which therefore has virtually sacrificed 100,000/ for the sake of convenience worth only 30,000/. 1 hus, equally with the shareholders, the entire community has lost 70,000/, the effects of the loss making themselves felt nationally in the form of higher general prices. But this is not all. The million sterling which has been irrecoverably sunk in the supposed public work would, if invested as productively as it might have been, while bringing into existence 100,000/ of profit, have likewise reproduced itself The necessaries of life, raw materials, &c., represented by the million sterling, would, after having been consumed or worked up, have been replaced by products capable of being exchanged for another million's worth of necessaries and materials, which in their turn might be consumed and worked up, similarly reproducing their own equivalent with 10 per cent, profit in addition, and the same process might be any number of times repeated. The million in question may be likened to the cruse of oil that failed not, and to the barrel of meal that wasted not, wherewith the widow of Sarepta went on making cakes without end. The INTR OD UC TOR Y. 1 3 nation, similarly, after eating its cake, might still have its cake, and by judicious perseverance in cake-making might go on for ever eating and still having. It is not indeed impossible for a country to be too rich to be affected in this manner. From our own country, literally overflowing as it is with wealth, with wealth increasing annually so fast that the whole annual increment cannot be employed at home at a rate sufficient to satisfy its owners, capital is habitually sent abroad for investment, the British public as a whole deriving subse- quently little or no benefit from the portion so sent. For 14 INDIAN PUBLIC WORKS. the British pubHc, therefore, it may be better that its superabundant capital should be employed in any domestic undertaking whatever, not absolutely useless, than that it should be virtually lost to the nation by being invested, however profitably, in foreign countries ; better certainly that it should be applied to the construction of London, Chatham, and Dover Railways, or of Southampton Docks, than be invested abroad even in the mines of St. John del Rey. But it is only in respect to an exceedingly wealthy country that the doctrine of the intimate connexion between personal and natural wealth requires to be thus qualified. In a country as poor as India, whose aggre- gate wealth is much below the amount that might forth- with find profitable occupation at home, it cannot but be nationally inexpedient that any public works should be constructed by private enterprise which it would not have been worth the public's while to constmct at the public expense. Out of these considerations arises another, more practically important, of a converse character. Public works, in which private enterprise could not engage with- out loss, may sometimes nevertheless be advisably under- taken at the public expense. A public work cannot adequately remunerate private undertakers unless the payments made by its immediate customers for its use are such as to yield adequate profit on its cost, but the same work may quite possibly be indirectly productive of compensating public advantages for which its immediate customers will not consent to pay. How this can be may not be readily apparent to us, seeing as we do that INTRODUCTOR V. 1 5 whatever be the benefits derivable from a public work, the first recipients of those benefits can be no other than those who make use of the public work, and that through their medium alone the benefits can be communicated to the general public. The truth of the statement may, however, be shown by examples, and by reference more especially to bridges, roads, railways, canals, and other aids to locomotion and transport. One chief use of these consists in diminishing the expense of access to old markets, and in rendering new markets accessible, thereby temporarily enabling producers to obtain aug- mented profits on their sales, and permanently encouraging them to extend production. It is the second of these operations which chiefly demands attention here. If by means of a bridge thrown over a deep or rapid stream, goods can be carried to market more expeditiously or conveniently than was possible when boats or lighters were indispensable for the purpose, and if for the use of the bridge the very highest tolls be charged, that will not render that mode of conveyance more expensive than the previous one, and, nevertheless, the net revenue resulting be not sufficient to give the bridge-owners the average rate of profit on their outlay, the benefits afforded by the bridge will plainly have been produced at a cost exceeding their value ; but, if so, not only must the construction of the bridge have been a bad investment on the part of its constmctors, it would equally have been a bad investment if con- structed at the public expense. Such highest tolls, how- ever, are never really leviable. Ordinary people greatly 1 6 INDIAN PUBLIC WORKS. dislike laying aside old habits, and require to be rather heavily bribed in order to be induced to adopt novel practices. A new bridge may offer a much quicker and easier means of getting themselves and their merchandise across a river, but if, for the time and trouble thereby saveable, they are to be charged as much or nearly as much as the saving is worth, they will see that they would gain little or nothing by changing, and will prefer adhering to the old familiar ways. In order, therefore, to get the bridge frequented, its owners have no alterna- tive but to charge for its use considerably less than its use is worth, and the consequence is that the producers who avail themselves of it, and who, though by its aid conveying their goods to market somewhat more cheaply than before, are yet for awhile able to sell them as dearly as before, reap an extra profit which stimulates them to extend production. Farmers thereupon take fresh land into cultivation, or apply improved modes of culture to old land ; manufacturers manufacture more largely, and an increased quantity of goods of all sorts is in conse- quence sent to market, and by lowering prices brings down profits eventually to the previous level. The traffic over the bridge, meanwhile, of course increases propor- tionably, but if nevertheless still insufficient to compen- sate the shareholders, it is not in the power of the latter to increase their revenue by levying enhanced rates. For with the rates as they actually are, producers are receiving only the old rate of profit, rather than sub- mit to a reduction of which they would withdraw part of their capital from their business, thereby diminishing INTRODUCTORY. 1 7 the traffic over the bridge. Yet though in this case the bridge would still be comparatively unprofitable, though it would remain an undertaking on which it was unwise for private enterprise to have engaged, it might now have become one on which public money might have been very profitably invested. for a while, will be forthwith applied to production, and it is to be particularly noted that the increase of national wealth thereupon consequent will not be limited to the additional profits made by the local producers ; will not consist of merely the lo per cent, or other percentage gained by them on their increased investments ; in other words, will not be simply the difference between cost of production and the market value of the goods produced, but will be more nearly the whole of that market value. Suppose that a farmer, who, while his market was com- paratively limited, had, by expending the equivalent of ICO quarters of wheat in wages, seed, manure, &c. been accustomed to raise an average crop of 150 quarters, should, now that his market is enlarged, employ 200 quarters in producing 300 quarters, the addition made to the national wealth will not be 50 quarters merely, but 150 quarters. For the supplementary investment of 100 quarters, if not so employed, might have been left in the stacks for a year or more, being during the interval of no more use to the consuming public than if it had not ex- isted, whereas, in the circumstances supposed, the 100 quarters have been consumed during the year, and yet at the end of it the public are in possession of 150 quarters in their place. The same thing, only in a less degree, would take place in regard to manufactures. So much of any additional investment in these as consisted of wages to operatives would have to be added to the manu- facturer's net profit in order to show to what extent that investment had augmented national wealth. It is thus clear that a bridge built at the public expense INTRODUCTORY. 1 9 may, by promoting the earlier utilisation of capital, easily occasion an addition to national wealth, amply sufficient to compensate for deficiencies in the net revenue resulting from tolls. And a similar inference might even more obviously be drawn if a railway instead of a bridge were selected by way of illustration. Since George Stephenson, in 1826, cut the first sod for the Manchester and Liverpool line, the expenditure on railwa} s in the United Kingdom has altogether been upwards of 590 millions, or on an average more than twelve millions annually; but although the average rate of profit m this country on capital invested in productive industry would probably be gre'atly understated at 10 per cent., the net profits of British railway shareholders have not averaged more than 3-I per cent., so that their total net receipts in 48 years may be roughly reckoned at 494 millions. It may be true that the aforesaid 590 millions could not have found emijloyment at home at the current rate of profit, but they could undoubtedly have earned at least that rate if judiciously invested abroad, in that case producing a net revenue of nearly 1,412 millions altogether, so that by preferring to spend it on railways at home the share- holders have incurred a loss of 918 millions. But, on the other hand, the exports from and the imports into the United Kingdom, which in 1826 were 56,000,000/. and 44,000,000/., were in 1873, 3 11,000,000/ and 3 7 1,000,000/ respectively— having increased during the interval at an average rate of about 5 and 7 millions annually. The increase of exports and imports is of course a very im- perfect measure of the contemporaneous increase of 02 20 INDIAN PUBLIC WORKS. nationa wealth, but, even as thus imperfectly indicated, the addition made since 1826 cannot be less than 8,000 millions ; and although free trade and a variety of other causes have no doubt contributed immensely to this re- sultj still the portion of it remaining due to railways is, as indubitably, also immense — quite immense enough, if dis- tributed rateably amongst railway shareholders, to bring up their average dividends from 3^ to 10 per cent. But, if so, it follows that the same enormous network of railways which to private enterprise has proved a losing concern, wQuld, if constructed at the public expense, have turned out to be a very lucrative investment of public money. Wherefore, if private enterprise had not interposed, it would have been highly expedient for the public to con- struct all the railways at its own cost. True, overflowing as thq United Kingdom does with capital which cannot find adequately remunerative occupation at home, it is still better for the nation as a whole that some of its individual members have relieved it from the necessity of making railways at the public cost, by making them with money vv^hich would otherwise have been lost to the nation as a whole by being sent abroad \ but it is only when a country is literally overflowing with wealth that this can be the case. In a country whose entire capital is ordinarily retained at home for immediate or early employment in productive industry, it is quite possible for public works, constructed at the public expense with money raised by general taxation, to be unremunerative directly, and yet indirectly to repay the public well, although, if the same works had been constructed by INTROD UCTOR Y. 2 1 private speculators, there might be nothing, unless perhaps the sense of having made private sacrifice for the public good, to compensate the individual speculators for the losses sustained by them. The comparison thus attempted between the advan- tages and disadvantages of governmental agency and of private enterprise, abstractedly considered, will not, it is hoped, be deemed misplaced, notwithstanding that the question, in its abstract form, may probably never have presented itself to the Anglo-Indian Government, which has never really been allowed a choice between the rival agencies. In India, not only has private enterprise, properly so-called, been hitherto content to hold the noiseless tenor of its way along a cool and sequestered vale, without venturing either to scale even the unam- bitious heights of banking or tea cultivation, or to descend to the depth of riverine steam navigation until after Government had given a lead in those directions, but that municipal assistance, on which the central Government may almost everywhere else more or less rely, has also been altogether wanting. Village com- munities, indeed, had existed immemorially, but cen- turies of alternating tyranny and anarchy had pretty nearly extinguished whatever public spirit may once have animated them. Here and there a local community might combine to prevent an ancestral tank or embank- ment from falling into utter ruin, but that was about the boldest stretch of their associative capacity. If left to themselves, the country people would have continued to jolt along, like their forefathers, on wheels axle-deep in INDIAN PUBLIC WORK'S. sand or mud, according to the season ; to see their crops burnt up to nothing when the rains failed, or swept away by torrents when the rivers were in flood ; perishing them- selves periodically by thousands and hundreds of thou- sands— in this district from starvation consequent on drought, in that from pestilence exhaled by waterlogged swamps. Clear it was on the inauguration of British rule in India that, if public works were to be, the creative fiat must proceed from the rulers. Now in India, as elsewhere, public works may, irre- spectively of other modes of classification, be arranged under two general heads : of those required exclusively or principally for governmental purposes ; and of those which, however serviceable governmentally, subserve in still larger measure the convenience and interests of the people. Those belonging to the first division will here be passed over lightly, for there is seldom much danger of their being grossly neglected, and, as a matter of fact, the Anglo-Indian Government has not been particularly remiss in providing palatial residences for its presidents, or stately offices for the transaction of its civil business, or commodious barracks and sanataria for its troops. Our attention may be more profitably bestowed on works of popular utility, and among these are two subdivisions, those of Communications and Irrigation Works, each of which well merits a chapter to itself COMMUNICA TIONS. 2 3 CHAPTER II. COMMUNICATIONS. Under this term, in the language of the Indian PubHc Works Department, are grouped roads, navigable canals or rivers, bridges, railways, and whatever other appliances of a permanent character have been supplied by nature or created or improved by art as aids to the locomotion and transport of passengers and goods. Among objects of governmental solicitude, there would seem to be none entitled to take precedence of these, since where these are altogether wanting it is impossible for a Government satisfactorily to discharge any of its duties, not even the primary one of protecting life and property. They are the constituents of an arterial system, without which administrative energy cannot be properly directed or dis- tributed, and the absence of which therefore almost necessarily implies a state of things more or less ap- proaching to anarchy. It is not, however, so much from this point of view as from that of their popular utility, that they will now be regarded. What especially renders human beings interdependent, and constrains them to gather together into communities, is division of labour, or separation of 24 INDIAN PUBLIC WORKS. employments. A family that does not produce for itself all the necessaries of life cannot subsist without ex- changes, but for exchange there must be carriage, and for carriage some sort of landways or waterways. Of these fortunately no country is ever left absolutely destitute by nature, but it is only in proportion as they are multiplied or improved by art, that civilisation, in its earlier stages, can make very sensible progress. To the civilised rulers, then, of a backward territory, a grand opportunity is Open ; an opportunity of which the old Romans were always prompt to avail themselves. Of those sagacious pioneers of material progress the tirst care after entering Spain, Gaul, Germany, or Britain, was to cast over the land a network of roads, devised primarily for the passage of their legions, but along which the arts of peace promptly followed in the track of war, raising the social condition of the aborigines nearer and nearer to the Roman level. Neither are the English in India justly chargeable with remissness in this particular. They, too, have shown themselves, in person or by proxy, ' labouring pioneers ' of the type described in ' Paradise Regained:' A multitude with spades and axes armed To lay hills plain, fell woods, or valleys fill : Or where plain was raise hill, or overlay With bridges rivers proud, as with a yoke. They found India, a century ago, as trackless as Britain was before the Roman invasion ; they have now rendered it in most directions as permeable as England was in the early part of the Georgian era, when as yet only one stage coach a month oscillated between COMMUNICA TIONS. 2 5 London and Edinburgh, and that one was usually a fortnight on the way, and while it was only ' God willing ' that a coach-proprietor would promise to convey passengers from London to Exeter or Notting- ham in so few as four days and four nights. In Lidia, however, as elsewhere, the national appetite for loco- motive appliances has grown with what it has fed on : increase of supply has begotten increase of demand. Every newly-opened route has become parent of a traffic requiring subsidiary routes for its accommodation : inso- much that the Government, aghast at such ever-multi- plying claims on its resources, is anxiously casting about for auxiliaries to whom to delegate part of the obligation of meeting the requisitions. This it may do without any dereliction of duty or departure from the salutary prin- ciples insisted on in our first chapter, for, as has been said, every large community is an aggregate of smaller ones ; there are everj^vhere publics within publics — communal and urban clustering into cantonal, cantonal into provincial, provincial into national — and it is gene- rally the reverse of desirable that the central authority should continue to do aught which the local authorities can contrive to do at all passably. So of late years, some of the wisest of Anglo-Lidian statesmen have been endeavouring to establish or to resuscitate institutions more or less analogous to the parish vestries, civic corporations, and county sessions of their native land. 