other cases, the occurrence of Fever has warned us to look to our drainages.
Irrigation to be combined with drainage.4. No one, now-a-days, would think of proposing irrigation without drainage.
There is no danger in the one provided the other goes with it.
The engineer's problem is to apportion the one to the other, so as to increase production without injuring health.
Degeneration due to malaria and rack-renting.5. Whether the physical degeneration of the people in and over Bengal is due solely or chiefly to malaria, or to malaria and rack-renting combined, is just the point which a commission might be appointed to investigate. But the drainage and irrigation works should be executed first. About these there is no doubt. This is as well known as St. Paul's. And the investigation may be carried on afterwards.
Under the permanent settlement the share of the produce of the soil left to the cultivator is often too little for health. A process of slow starvation may thus go on, which so enfeebles the great mass of the people, that when any epidemic sets in they are swept off wholesale. Land is let and sublet to a degree unknown anywhere else. The Zemindar will let his land to a Patnidar, the Patnidar to a Durpatnidar, the Durpatnidar again to a Seypatnidar, and he again may farm it out to an Izaridar.
Under such a system what portion of the produce do we suppose falls to the share of the ryot who tills the soil?
