Sir James Stephen writes a long and singularly forcible letter
to the Times against Mr. Bright's argument for the commence of vast irrigation works in India. He says that English capital is not forthcoming for Indian irrigation, because English capitalists know that irrigation does not pay. The Madras Irri- gation Company has spent £1,600,000, and the expenditure "is an utter failure from a financial point of view ;" and the same may be said of £1,250,000 spent on the Orissa Canal. The natives, in fact, will not buy the water, and to make them buy it would be a very serious addition to our unpopularity. Even in England we do not yet make fire insurance compulsory. Sir -James Stephen further shows that the Government oven in 1871 had sanctioned irrigation works to the amount of £20,000,000, and ilea spent upon them £8,500,000, and is going on spending, as for instance, £1,800,000 in 1877-78. And he finally shows that the assertion that £100,000,000 have been squandered upon rail- ways is unfounded, the railway profits all over India exceeding the guaranteed interest by £1,817,260, a sum, we may add, which is a trifle compared with the ultimate profit to be expected. Sir James Stephen, therefore, contends that the Government has done the work it is accused of not doing, and that Mr. Bright has not carefully studied the facts.
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