If

ever he has to enter into any written transaction. driven by temporary stress of circumstances to betake himself to some other occupation for a while, it is always with the intention of returning to till a plot of land in his own village. The obligations of caste prevent all but the lowest from engaging in the larger manual industries of India, and for the same reason foreign travel is closed to him. The emigrants from India to the plantations of the West Indies and Mauritius are a mere handful each year, in spite of the profit reaped by the few who make the venture. Even if the mineral resources of India were to be developed more than at present, caste would be found a great obstacle to the factory system which would have to be extended, as the different strata of society would not, except under dire distress, be induced to work together. On the other hand, the caste system is not without its advantages, and no one who looks to the general welfare of the community would think of encouraging the dissolution of its restrictions so long as nothing has been implanted below it to take its place. It upholds the conventional standard of morals, and is inexorable in its exaction of obedience. It has its obligations to the individual, though it does not recognise his right to independent action. Thus the care taken by each caste of its indigent or distressed members renders it possible to do without a Poor Law, and the aid of the State is invoked only in cases of widespread calamity, such as after a flood or fire, or when the drought has amounted to an entire failure of crops over a large area. Whether caste will ultimately move with the times is a question which is beyond our ken at present, and we can only recognise that it combines with the material conditions of India in preventing any general upheaval of industrial and social circumstances such as that which characterised the economical development of our own country on the

In the meantime, it

close of the Napoleonic wars. brings prominently before us a problem to the solution of which the British Government of the Dependency has for some years been devoting its most serious attention, not without substantial success, though much remains which can only be effected by the co-operation of the people themselves. This problem is no other than the old one propounded by the King of Brobdingnag, of how to make two blades of corn grow where one grew before. A long period of peace and protection has stimulated an expansion of the population, the burden of which must inevitably fall almost entirely upon the land, in default of the extension of other means of livelihood. It is true that the growth of the Indian population is relatively not so fast as that of Germany, or even of our own country, but the food supply must be obtained entirely from an area which cannot be indefinitely expanded, and the produce of which cannot be exchanged for that of other countries through exports of manufactured goods, as in the West. I have used the term relatively in regard to this increase in the population in order to avoid giving an exaggerated notion of the movement; but lest the enormous mass of the existing population should be ignored, I must remind my readers that even at the above-mentioned moderate rate of growth a population equal to that of the whole of England or of Italy is being added every ten years to that of India. This is a solid fact which may appropriately bring this paper to a close, as it will afford ample food for reflection to those among my readers who may regard it as an indication alike of the magnitude of the task we have taken upon ourselves in our great Dependency, and of one, and not the least striking, of the results of our endeavours to fulfil it.

MADRAS

BY THE RIGHT HON. LORD WENLOCK, G.C.S.I., G.C.I.E.

(Governor of Madras, 1891-1896)

MADRAS occupies, roughly speaking, the whole of the apex of the triangle which represents on the map the country of Hindustan. It was in Madras that British energy and enterprise first established a footing in India. In 1639 a grant of land was given to an individual named Day for the purpose of erecting and carrying on the business of what was then known as a factory, on the identical spot occupied by the present city of Madras.

The Presidency has some 1500 miles of seaboard; but from Bombay, running along the whole southern coast of India to Cape Comorin, and from there northwards to Calcutta, there is not a single natural harbour which can admit vessels at all times of the year to work their cargoes in actual safety. The Government of India has, it is true, spared neither money nor trouble in trying to make a good harbour at Madras, and at the present moment the work is actually completed. The two arins, both about 3900 feet in length, were finished in 1895, leaving an entrance of 515 feet; but so far the harbour has not been called upon to bear the fury of the cyclones which are liable to burst upon it at any moment. It must not be forgotten that the original harbour was completely wrecked by a cyclone in 1881. But the present one has been constructed specially to resist these convulsions of nature; the

engineers having learnt from experience what errors they should avoid, they are now fully prepared to guarantee the present structure against the most furious onslaught of the elements. But even now, whenever the readings of the barometer become threatening, warning is given to any vessels that may be lying in the harbour, and they have to go outside and fight it out with nature in the open sea. So far 127 lakhs have been spent on the two harbours-the cost of the first, 65 lakhs, having been written off, while the principal and interest on the second is being paid off every year out of the harbour dues. When this is done, and, as I sincerely hope, when docks shall have been constructed within the present harbour, Madras will be a cheap and a perfectly safe port.

Many other ports are dotted along the coast; but the same disadvantage is attached to them all. Vessels have to lie outside in open roadsteads, and frequently during the prevalence of the two monsoons, the southwest and the north-east, they have to suspend all operations. The harbour at Vizagapatam is, however, one which, by a large outlay of money, could be made into a first-class harbour, as the means exist there for constructing wharves and docks inland. If this port should at any time be connected by railway with the Central Provinces, and the whole trade of the new East Coast Railway concentrated there, such an undertaking might prove remunerative; while a very valuable dockyard for the Indian navy might be established there in the very centre of the Bay of Bengal, immediately opposite to Burma, and within striking distance of the mouths of the Hooghly, which, as the reader will be aware, constitute the sea approach to Calcutta, the capital city of the Indian Empire.

It would be tedious to survey in detail all the capabilities and positions of the various ports along the coast. They all serve more or less effectually

Done 1702

the requirements of the country in their immediate vicinity, and together do a very large amount of business. I cannot say that their lighting arrangeinents are as yet as perfect as they might be; but this subject has been carefully inquired into by a competent officer, and his report was being considered by Government when I came away.

I will now ask the reader to leave the sea and take to the land, and trace the main lines of railways with their branches-the arteries and veins along which the life-blood of the trade and commerce of the country flows. The Madras Railway converges at Madras, the upper section coming from the direction of Bombay and the north-west, and the lower from Calicut, on the opposite Malabar coast and the south-west. Due south from Madras runs the South Indian over 1000 miles of line, touching at all the ports dotted along the Bay of Bengal till it reaches Tuticorin, from which port the traffic to and from Ceylon is conducted. The ships calling here have to lie off from five to six miles. (I might here mention that at Masulipatam they have to lie off as far as seven miles.) Due north from Madras the new portion of the E.C. Railway is now being constructed to connect at Bezvada, on the Kistna River, with the existing portion of the railway-500 miles in length up to Cuttack. This line was laid for the special purpose of bringing grain to the ceded districts from the great alluvial deltas of the Godaveri and the Kistna-that is, from districts where the harvests never fail, to districts where the rainfall is very precarious.

A glance at the map will show this length of railway bridging over almost exactly half the space between Calcutta and Madras, leaving some 250 miles at each end. It has now been decided to finish off these ends, and I hope it will not be long before these two great centres are connected together by railway. The reader may, perhaps, have wondered why there should be so