264

INDIA

is most likely to fail ; the position being that when the rainfall
 is favourable the cultivator does not need and will
not take canal water, and when the rainfall is deficient he
cannot get it. Thus storage works have rarely, if ever,
stood the test of sound financial conditions. Within the
last ten years the revenues derived from irrigation in
[ndia have increased from a million and a half to three
millions sterling.
A few statistics are necessary to illustrate the economic
development of India during the last half century; but
as this is a geographical treatise, and not a statistical compendium,
 they shall be made as general as possible.
In the year 1840 the gross revenues of India
amounted to twenty-one million sterling, in 1886 they
were seventy-seven million, in 1896 they reached ninetyfour
 million. Out of this ninety-four millions only
twenty-nine millions are: derived from taxation. Thus
taxation does not supply one-third of the total revenues at
the present time, although that source of income has
somewhat increased in proportion to the gross revenues
since the year 1886. In England taxation supplies fivesixths
 of the revenue. India is probably the most lightly
taxed country in the world ; the average tax per head of
the population amounting to something less than one
rupee (1s. 4d.) per annum, and this is chiefly derived
from the taxpayer as a salt consumer. Were the rent
included for the land he occupies (which is of course
inadmissible as an item of taxation) it might perhaps be
doubled.
The extraordinary increase in gross revenue which is
shown in certain decades of our Indian history is usually
due to the increase of land revenue as we gradually
acquired fresh territory and extended British dominion.
Within the last ten years very little of the increase represented
 by the difference between seventy-seven and ninetyfour
 millions is due to this cause. Six million of it is due
to the increase in railway receipts, a million and a half
to irrigation, and more than seven millions to increased
taxation. Receipts under the head of “opium?” alone