[Extracts from t/te Proceedings of the Governor General's Council, 

 dated the 28tk September, 1871.] 



LAND IMPROVEMENT LOANS BILL. 



THE HON'BLE MR. (afterwards SIR JOHN) STRACHEY said that he 

 need not say much about the objects of the Bill, because they had been 

 fully stated on former occasions. In regard to the main principles 

 of this measure, there was no novelty in it. It was a consolida- 

 tion of the old taJcavi laws, with some important amendments. 

 It ought, he thought, to be remembered to the credit of the British 

 Government of the last century in India, that it recognized 

 by law the principle now acted upon with so much advantage at 

 home, under the Land Improvement Acts, that it was the duty 

 of the State to make use of its resources in encouraging and 

 developing agricultural improvement. The old Regulations for 

 which it was proposed to substitute the present Bill, had not, 

 he believed, in any Province, been applied on any defined and 

 organized system. Their application had mainly depended on the 

 opinions or zeal of individual officers of the Government. Nor 

 would it have been easy to introduce such a system, for the pro- 

 visions of the existing law were, to some extent, unsuitable and 

 obsolete. For instance, if the law were strictly acted upon, 

 which he believed it never was, they would have to charge twelve 

 per cent, interest on all advances. What they required was a 

 well organized system under which the Government should encourage, 

 by loans granted on the security on the land to be improved, the 

 construction of simple works of agricultural improvement, such 

 as, wells, tanks, minor water-courses, and so forth. The Govern- 

 ment was now gradually covering India with great works of irri- 

 gation on a scale unknown in any other part of the world, but no 

 proper provision had hitherto been made for the encouragement of 

 the humbler but hardly less valuable class of works to which this 

 Bill referred works which would be constructed by the landed 

 proprietors and occupiers themselves. 



The present measure brought with it no financial risk, and 

 imposed no charges whatever on the revenues of the State. Govern- 

 ment would make advances at a somewhat increased rate of interest 



