§ It is next suggested to us that we should embark on a large irrigation policy, and I received a large number of requests from Members of Parliament to at once sanction the outlay. Twenty years ago a Committee of this House, of which I was chairman, made a most exhaustive inquiry as to how far irrigation works of great magnitude could usefully be extended in India. Upon that Committee were Mr. Fawcett, Mr. Arthur Balfour, Mr. Childers, Sir George Campbell, Mr. John Cross, Mr. Grant Duff, Mr. Mulholland, and Mr. Edward Stanhope, and we were unanimous in the conclusions at which we arrived. Agriculture in certain parts of India is impossible without irrigation. In all such districts irrigation, if it be associated with a constant supply of water, is an enormous benefit, and this is shown by the very large returns which canals in the Punjab and Sind give on their original outlay. There are other districts, such as the North-West Provinces, in which may be found large tracts which can be very beneficially irrigated; but no irrigation has paid its expenses in Lower Bengal or Orissa, and in the greater part of Bombay and Bengal the lack of rain and the physical configuration of the country have prevented irrigation works of great magnitude. The Indian Government are now spending annually Rx.750,000 upon great irrigation works, and the local Governments have an absolutely free hand, so far as their revenues are concerned, in promoting small works of irrigation; and every engineer who has had great practical experience of irrigation confirms the view, taken by this Committee some 20 years ago, that the localities or area in which great new irrigation works can be undertaken with advantage is becoming exhausted, and it will be a waste of ways and means to embark in 435 anything like the wholesale expenditure which after every famine we find pressed upon us.