378 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTEAL INDIA. 



profits yielded to agriculture. This process is now going on, 

 but it requires all the existing profit to enable it to do so ; 

 and as to increase the Government rent very greatly would 

 be to diminish this profit, it proves to be impossible to do so 

 at present. Further, the scarcity has affected all incomes 

 from other sources than land, and thus all other branches of 

 taxation are also unproductive. The profits of commerce, 

 which mainly deals with the produce of the land, are also at 

 present low, and taxation of them is very difficult to effect. 

 But all this must pass away before long. The extension of 

 tillage having taken place, the people will soon have sufficient 

 food again ; prices will steady themselves at a somewhat 

 lower though still remunerative point ; and the Govern- 

 ment, if gifted with sufficient foresight, will be able to adjust 

 its income to the altered circumstances of the country. It 

 may then be expected that such enterprises as the opening 

 up of such extensive waste regions as the MandM district 

 will receive a share of the public attention. Another danger 

 to such enterprises is, however, looming in the distance. 

 Interprovincial jealousy bids fair to form a serious obstacle 

 to the proper development of the great public property vested 

 in the soil of India. It is scarcely credible that a clamorous 

 school of Indian public writers exists, whose continual cry 

 is levelled at the policy of expending any portion of the 

 revenues raised in one province of the empire on the deve- 

 lopment of another ; who would have wealthy thriving 

 Bombay or Madras allowed to expend the whole of its 

 revenues within itself, and such poor half-reclaimed regions 

 as the Central Provinces allowed nothing for their improve- 

 ment but what they can raise themselves. The policy aimed 

 at would be identical, it seems to me, with that of a gardener 

 who should refuse to expend anything in the cultivation of 



