42 GRANT OP LOANS AND ADVANCES TO AGRICULTURISTS. 



He need not now enter into the details of the measure he proposed 

 to introduce. A more fitting opportunity for doing so would be found 

 on the introduction of the Bill, if the Council would give him leave to 

 proceed with the measure. Provisions would of course be required in 

 detail, to regulate the purposes for which these advances of money 

 might to made, and for defining the conditions under which advances 

 should be given, and under which they would be repayable, and, in 

 cases of failure in re-payment, for defining the manner in which the 

 money should be recovered. The Local Governments were all con- 

 sulted regarding this measure in a letter which was published in the 

 Gazette of India some six months ago. Answers had been received 

 from all the Local Governments in the north of India ; and although 

 many suggestions had been made, many of which were very valuable 

 and would require careful consideration in detail, he might say 

 generally that the proposed measure had been generally approved by 

 all the authorities consulted. 



This system, which had long been in force in India, though in a 

 very undeveloped form, was identical in principle with that which had 

 been carried out on a large scale in many parts of the United 

 Kingdom under the Land Improvement Acts, with results which 

 were most encouraging, and the nature of which was well-known 

 to His EXCELLENCY THE PRESIDENT, and to which he need not refer 

 more particularly. He thought it might be safely said that there was 

 perhaps no country in the world to which a system of this kind was 

 more properly applicable than India; for in India at the present 

 time there was one great industry, and one only the agricultural 

 industry. The one great source of wealth in India was the land. 

 It might be safely said that the whole present and future prosperity of 

 this country, and he might add the future financial position of our 

 Empire in India, depended on the development of the vast and 

 practically unlimited, though too often neglected, agricultural 

 resources of the country. If advantage were taken of the means 

 which science and wealth had placed at our disposal for the improve- 

 ment of the land, and, he might add, if we abstained from putting 

 into operation theories which ignored the only really great and 

 progressive source of wealth which India possessed, it might be 

 safely predicted that the increase of agricultural prosperity in India 

 would be rapid and immense; and he believed that at no distant 

 period the twenty millions of annual income which the land now 



