April i, 1891.] 
THE TROPICAL AOmCOLTURISt, 
?it 
“ CEYLON AND lERIGATlON.” 
is the heading of a further letter hy Mr. 
Alfred Deakin (the probable future Premier 
of Victoria) in] the Melbourne A(je received by 
today’s mail. This contribution is so full of 
local colouring and interest that we reproduce 
it in full. Mr. Deakin, it must he confessed, 
writes with more accuracy and insight than 
we could have expected from his short visit 
to the island. Of course, there are some slips 
in his letter, but none very glaring, unless 
it be the statement that the import duty on 
rice does not affect the scale of wages paid 
by the planters. That dear or taxed food 
has a corresponding effect on wages is ac- 
knowledged all the world over, nor is Ceylon 
an exception ; for certainly the abolition of 
our Customs letry would lessen the cost of 
Indian rice to coolies and planters, and either 
the former would have to take less wages 
per day, or the latter would pocket the 
difference in the cheaper rice which they pur- 
chased and supplied to their coolies. Then 
again, Mr. Deakin heard nothing in Ceylon ap- 
parently of the grant-in-aid system through 
which the Ceylon planters pay in direct contribu- 
tion half the cost of their district roads. Still 
more our Australian critic ignores the point of our 
general revenue being largely benefited through 
railway profits, these therefore constituting 
undoubtedly an indirect medium of taxation. 
Of course, the tea, coffee, cinchona and cacao 
plantations contribute the vast bulk of rail- 
way receipts through rice, machinery, manure 
and general goods carried up and produce down. 
If there were a general “ land tax,” which Mr. 
Deakin, like everybody else, would consider 
the proper and scientific mode of raising the 
larger proportion of the general revenue in 
Ceylon, undoubtedly railway rates would 
have to be adapted until no more than 
working expenses and interest with sinking 
fund contribution for debt, were provided. But 
as we personally pointed out to Mr. Deakin, 
could there be a better or fairer way of 
dealing with plantations than by a tax 
which is strictly proportioned to the 
quantity of crop gathered and despatched, 
the requirements in rice, &c. being nearly 
always in proportion to the outturn of pro- 
duco. Considering the time of Mr. Deakin’s 
visit, it is not unnatural that he should come to 
the conclusion that “ Irrigation ” was the one 
great subject of political and administrative dis- 
cussion before the Government and public of 
Ceylon ; but had he remained a little time longer, 
ho would have seen how mistaken was this view, 
seeing that no reference whatever was made to 
it in tlie annual Reports of either the Planters’ 
Association or Chamber of Commerce of the 
Colony. Mr. Deakin as a democratic, practical 
politician, is keen enough to see the futility 
of discussing such a one-sided unjustifiable pro- 
posal as the abolition of one rice -tax without 
the other, and he ai)pears to favour a scheme 
which has for its basis the recommendations 
of the recent Select-Committee on the .subject. 
To this wo take no objection — indeed it is 
the policy we have all along urged as the 
best adapted to the case of Ceylon at pro- 
seut and i'vr twenty years to come. Certainly, 
it is the arrangement which is best calculated 
to save the native agricultural classes in 
the island from a change which they would 
have reason to regret far more than their 
experience of the present system of taxation 
so far as it affects them. 
CEYLON AND IRRIGATION. 
BY ALFRED DEAKIN. 
Those by whom Ceylon has been considered a Crown 
colony of Oriental stagnation, where a despotic but 
indifferent Governor presides on the one hand over a 
handful of effete Europeans enervated by the climate, 
and upon the other hand over a great body of natives 
hostile to every form of change, both classes being 
entirely excluded from participation in the Government 
of the country in which they live, are cherishing an 
unpardonable delusion. The natives, it is true, have 
multiplied rather than advanced, the planters have 
had a keen eye to their own interest rather than to 
tliat of the colored races, and one or two of the Go- 
vernors have spent their terms of office in mere routine; 
nevertheless, these have not been the most prominent 
circumstances in its recent history. The represen- 
tatives of the Queen have for the most part striven 
hard to do their duty, and as a rule they have been 
supported by their white and appreciated by their 
brown subjects. The industrial vicissitudes which have 
here succeeded each other with rapidity have only 
developed among the planters a courage and an 
energy which reflect honor upon them. Through 
times of prosperity and times of depression the 
Government has pursued its way, and undauntedly 
coped with each crisis as it has occurred. From one 
motive or another the leading natives have joined to 
some extent in the forward movement, from which 
they have incidentally benefited. In spite, therefore, 
of a few palpable blunders and some intervals of 
paralysis, the island has been steadily progressive and 
has evolved by degree a progressive policy worthy of 
the examination of self-governing colonies. 
The population of Ceylon has more than trebled 
nder British rule, and its production has several times 
trebled. Its revenue from all sources, including rail- 
ways and water supply, amounts to £1,-!,00,000, two- 
thirds of which is received for services rendered, and 
only one-third of which is raised by taxation. Opti- 
mists claim that neither race of the inhabitants have 
Buffered from this burden, and that if the Secretary of 
State for the Oolouies assents to a proposal now 
before him for a further reduction of the grain excise 
neither race will know that it is taxed at all. There 
appears to be some ground for this contention. Cer- 
tainly the indebtedness of the colony is insignificant, 
since it. requires to pay interest upon only £2,300,000, 
while its railways, upon which £4,600,000 has been 
spent, pay interest, have repaid a considerable portion 
of their original cost, and would cow sell for much more 
than the total of the colony’s obligations. Financially, 
therefore, the position of Ceylon is strong and its future 
hopeful. As a rule its soils are less rich than those cul- 
tivated for the same products in India, but constant 
moisture and constant heat give its climate the effect 
of a forcing house and render production equable as 
well as large. The cost of irrigation and the rent of 
land to the Government are less than the average in 
the peninsula. In brief, while every prospect pleases 
as much as in the days of Bishop Heber the more 
humane conclusion has been arrived at that man is not 
viler here than elsewhere, and this baa been coupled 
with the further conviction that his labor can be made 
very profitable to himself and to the empire. 
At first sight it may appear remarkable that Ceylon 
should have required an irrigation policy at all, and 
still more that it should have come to occupy the most 
prominent place in its politics, llie st.aple products 
such as those from the coconut, which with tea, coffee, 
cocoa and spices furnish the wealth and e.xport of 
Ceylon, are none of them irrigated, and most of tbem 
are grown in regions which enjoy an ample rainfall^ 
