acquainted with either England or India, who
does not know that England would a thousand times sooner resume
population, fertility, and what ought to be the ultimate secretion from
both,--revenue,--than such a country as the Carnatic.

The Carnatic is not by the bounty of nature a fertile soil. The general
size of its cattle is proof enough that it is much otherwise. It is some
days since I moved that a curious and interesting map kept in the India
House should be laid before you. The India House is not yet in readiness
to send it; I have therefore brought down my own copy, and there it lies
for the use of any gentleman who may think such a matter worthy of his
attention. It is indeed a noble map, and of noble things; but it is
decisive against the golden dreams and sanguine speculations of avarice
run mad. In addition to what you know must be the case in every part of
the world (the necessity of a previous provision, seed, stock, capital)
that map will show you that the uses of the influences of heaven itself
are in that country a work of art. The Carnatic is refreshed by few or
no living brooks or running streams, and it has rain only at a season;
but its product of rice exacts the use of water subject to perpetual
command. This is the national bank of the Carnatic, on which it must
have a perpetual credit or it perishes irretrievably. For that reason,
in the happier times of India, a number, almost incredible, of
reservoirs have been made in chosen places throughout the whole country;
they are formed for the greater part of mounds of earth and stones, with
sluices of solid masonry; the whole constructed with admirable skill and
labor, and maintained at a mighty charge. In the territory contained in
that map alone, I have been at the trouble of reckoning the reservoirs,
and they amount to upwards of eleven hundred, from the extent of two or
three acres to five miles in circuit. From these reservoirs currents are
occasionally drawn over the fields, and these water-courses again call
for a considerable expense to keep them properly scoured and duly
leveled. Taking the district in that map as a measure, there cannot be
in the Carnatic and Tanjore fewer than ten thousand of these reservoirs
of the larger and middling dimensions, to say nothing of those for
domestic services and the uses of religious purification. These are not
the enterprises of your power, nor in a style of magnificence suited to
the taste of your minist