536 EEPOET— 1891. 



speech I not long ago heard made by Mr. H. J. S. Cotton, one of the Secre- 

 taries to the Bengal Government, at a meeting of the East India Associa- 

 tion. It is obvious that the mere extension of the cultivated area is not 

 necessarily a good thing in itself. If poorer soils, with a precarious rain- 

 fall and no other means of irrigation, are broken up and barely supply the 

 "wants of an increasing population, this merely means a spread of the 

 insecure area already liable to famine. Now in the case of the Punjab 

 canals, which I mentioned just now, water is being brought to virgin 

 soils ; and we hope that, as far as possible, the land allotments will be 

 taken up by incoming settlers from congested districts. All this is, I 

 think, unmixed gain. 



The other remark is that the changes which have taken place in Indian 

 trade must necessarily produce corresponding changes in Indian agricul- 

 ture. The historic exports of India, such as spices, silk, lac, and dye stuffs,, 

 now take a secondary place; opium and indigo still hold their ground, but 

 the rapid advance in the export trade is of recent origin and is based upon 

 the European demand for Indian raw products. The great export of 

 cotton followed the American War of Secession (1861-5). The export 

 of jute practically began after the Crimean War. ' The seed trade,' Mr. 

 O'Conor says, ' and the trade in wheat and rice took their present large 

 proportions only after the opening of the Suez Canal. The great tea 

 trade and the trade in coffee are the creations of the last quarter of a 

 century. So with the exports of hides and skins, wool and timber.' It 

 is a question for experts whether, in taking raw products and returning 

 cotton piece goods of English manufacture, we do not slowly add to the- 

 impoverishment of the soil. The remedy for the evil, if evil there be, is 

 doubtless to be found in greater diversity of occupations. Thei'e is a 

 beginning in this ; of the 114 cotton mills and 26 jute and hemp mills 

 now at work in India not one existed in 1848 and nearly all have been 

 started within the last twenty years. 



Some of the most valuable recommendations of the Famine Com- 

 mission had reference to the relations of proprietors and tenants. The 

 Commission urged that, where this was not already suflBciently provided by 

 law, guarantees should be accorded to the landed classes that they shoul'd 

 without hindrance enjoy the fruits of improvements made at their own 

 expense. In the case of those persons who pay the land revenue direct 

 to Government, all of them, though called by different names and holding 

 tenures of different kinds in different parts of the country, have always- 

 under British rule, at least during the present century, had the benefit of 

 security of tenure. In many parts of the country, particularly in portions 

 of Northern and Western India, where the old Hindu institutions success- 

 fully reasserted themselves against Muhammadan supremacy, or where 

 that supremacy was never effectual, or where wise ^luhammadan em- 

 perors or governors laid down fairly lasting lines of revenue administra- 

 tion conceived in the Hindu spirit, the revenue- payers are very commonly, 

 though by no means invariably, themselves the actual cultivators, and a 

 class of tenants interposed between them and the soil, though it occurs, 

 IS not general. Even in these provinces there is a tenant question ; the 

 stratification of Indian society, indeed, bears witness almost everywhere 

 to the superposition of race upon race, or tribe upon tribe, due doubtless 

 to untold ages of internal warfare and successive invasions of new 

 tribes or races from without. In other parts of the country we foun-d 

 the old state of things terribly confused and almost entirely obliterated 



