road from Madras to Trichinopoly; and one or two other roads, such as one from Coimbatore to the western coast. On the first, that from Madras to Bangalore, transit carriages, travelling six miles an hour, convey private travellers; although this is the most considerable line of passage for English travellers. Much even of it is unbridged. Of all these roads, however, there is not a mile, outside of the British stations, which is equal to a common turnpike road. As for the so-called northern trunk road, it has no real existence; 5,6007. have been spent on it in four years; pieces have been made here and there, but in a line seven hundred miles long, they are but few and far between. We described the second class of roads as those to which something has been done; but what has been done to them it is difficult to describe, from the variety in the nature of the roads, and the means applicable to improving them. Some lines on a good soil were impassable for want of bridges; others were throughout on a bad soil; others had difficult passes through chains of hills. A bridge or two in the first, and a well-traced line opened in the last, might make them greatly superior to what they were in their original state, and render them capable of permitting traffic to pass along them without difficulty; while nothing but a considerable outlay would form a passable road out of one labouring under the disadvantages of a bad soil throughout.

The district of Tanjore has been fortunate in roads as well as in works of irrigation. During the last twenty years about 8007. a year has been spent on the roads by the Government, and about 1,500l. a year has been assigned to that purpose from the surplus of the pagoda funds which were managed by the Government. These sums have been laid out chiefly in building bridges, which, in a delta intersected by canals, are an absolute necessity. The connecting roads have been generally formed at the expense of the landholders, by heaping up earth two or three feet high so as to form a level causeway, and covering it with a layer of sand from the nearest canal. Of such roads there are 534 miles in an area of 4000 square miles, and, however rude and incapable of bearing a heavy traffic, they are of the highest value to the population.

The district of Salem has long been regarded as preeminent for the excellence of its roads. This originated about 1836, when an active collector, Mr. Orr, expended about 4000l. in putting the roads in repair; he further introduced a toll on carts, and, by means of the proceeds, and by the contribution of Government, the whole amounting to less than 1000l. a year, provided for the roads being kept up within his circle. In this case, the unpaid labour of the landholders was also largely made use

of; and the result at the present day is, that on the best soil for roads in Southern India, there are, in an area of 8000 square miles 400 miles of road, greatly superior to those which have had no care bestowed on them, and suitable to the generally light traffic which passes over them. It should also be added that no attempt has been made to connect this completely inland district with the sea, and to give its small system of roads an outlet to the nearest port. The effort in fact has been an isolated one, and has not formed any part of a system, notwithstanding that it long ago attracted attention, and that really to utilise its results, an outlet to the sea was essential.

The two districts we have mentioned are the most favourable instances to be found in the Madras territories; they are the best provided with roads; and the assessment on the land is comparatively light. It will not be uninstructive to consider the situation of two others which are not so advantageously circumstanced. We will take the two districts of Cuddapah and Bellary, both altogether inland, both with a rich soil, but labouring under a heavy assessment; both, however, having what may be considered an additional claim to some attention to their roads, in the circumstance that the high road from Madras to Bombay runs through them. In 1847 the collector of Cuddapah reported to Government that with the exception of a small 'portion of the road leading to Cumbum, the formation of 'which has lately been undertaken on an estimate of 1867. 14s., 1867 rupees, there is not a made road of any description throughout the whole length and breadth of this extensive province, in which so much trade and commerce are carried on, 'particularly in cotton, sugar, and indigo.' In 1851, however, there are more signs of animation. The Goolcherroo Ghaut, a difficult pass, has been completed, and nothing can possibly be better than the work; but until it can be approached on either side with somewhat less difficulty than at present, its value to the merchants must of necessity be comparatively 'small.' No doubt: and its value on the whole must be somewhat impaired by what we learn further, that, with that exception, nothing has been done to improve the communications in the past year;' and also, that roads, properly so called, can hardly be said to exist."

The Cuddapah district, it should be observed, has an area of 12,970 square miles, and a population of 1,450,000 souls; and contains 34 miles of made road. The neighbouring district of Bellary has been more fortunate. It contains upwards of 13,000 square miles, and up to 1847, had had an average expenditure of 1587. a year on its roads during the preceding

twenty years. It stands on the list as having nine miles of

made road.

In 1850 the collector says in his annual report:

"I have nothing further to add to my report dated the 22d "October 1849, the orders of Government on which I am still ex"pecting." He refers to some repairs on a small part of the Bellary and Dharwar road, on an estimate to the amount of rupees 6.177 13, as on the point of completion; and notices for the further estimate (for rupees 25.200) had not yet received the sanction of Government. He closes his short and hopeless report with a repetition of his request that some plan for making roads through Bellary may be authorised and commenced upon.' (Report, par. 346.)

The four districts we have noticed, show a marked difference in the treatment they have received at the hands of the British Government. In the first two, some attention has been directed towards creating a system of passable cross roads, though, in the main lines which are in India called trunk roads, they are nearly wholly deficient. In the last two, on the contrary, so little has been done, that it may fairly be said that no attention whatever has been given to the improvement of the roads. So striking a difference would lead to the belief that there has never been any systematic endeavour to improve the roads of the country, and that this great engine for the advancement of commerce has been altogether neglected. The conclusion, however, would not be substantially right, inasmuch as it would not do justice to the good intentions which caused the establishment of a superintendent of roads, and placed all the chief communications of the country under his care, with a fixed yearly fund at his disposal.

A slight sketch of the subject will show that the complete apathy with which the improvement of the roads was originally regarded has gradually changed for a generally earnest desire on the part of the Government to effect that object while the extracts from official documents which have already been given, show that the same wish pervades the great body of the local officers. The difficulties in the way of progressive improvement have been those which arise not only from disinclination, but from the want of money, of proper establishments, and of that wide and systematic view of the whole subject, which could alone clear away such obstacles, but which no one has ever had time to take, and which is now, for the first time, partially supplied by the present Report.

In 1817, the Court of Directors ordered that the ferry funds, a small branch of revenue arising from the leasing out of ferries, and not amounting to more than 3500l. a year,

should be assigned to the improvement of the roads. Subsequently but many years ago, this was done in the north of India, where a local committee in each district manages the revenue from ferries. But the Government of Madras of that day did not even take the trouble to carry out this order, and it has never been acted on. From 1817 to 1835, the chief improvement made in the roads was by means of the military corps of Pioneers; and this, though but a small body of men, did much good service, more especially in opening passes through the chains of mountains by which the Peninsula is intersected. These passes were, it is true, often too steep for wheels, or nearly so; but, such as they were, they were infinitely superior to the old tracks, and were fit for the passage of loaded pack bullocks, which before had either to be lightly loaded, or to have their burdens carried on men's heads through the pass. In one instance, a large sum was spent on a road made by the combined labour of the pioneers and common workmen, so large, and with such unsatisfactory results, that the Government resolved in 1831 to make no more lines of road. From 1836 to 1842, Lord Elphinstone was Governor of Madras; and, among several beneficial measures to which his attention to this branch of his Government led, one may be cited which has become of permanent advantage to the country. This was the formation of the Western Trunk Road, leading from Madras towards Bangalore, on which a great traffic is now carried on, the heaviest, probably, on any road in India. Lord Tweeddale succeeded as Governor in 1842, and the result of the attention which he pad to the subject was the appointment of an engineer officer as superintendent of the department of roads, and the assignment by the Court of Directors of a fund of 40,000l. a year to be expended by it. The Court directed that the outlay on trunk roads should not exceed that sum, but observed that the fund was applicable only to trunk roads, and that other roads must be separately provided for. For this purpose, it was ordered that each collector and civil engineer should report every year on the state of the cross roads of his district, and the collectors were authorised to lay out on them fifty rupees a mile, in cases where the civil engineer concurred as to the propriety of the outlay. The latter clause was never acted on. No such authority was given to the collectors, and though their reports have been yearly made, and it has become known through them that there are great inland districts whose crying want is the improvement of their roads, that want has been wholly neglected. The inconvenience of a frequent change of governors is most clearly exhibited, when, as in the

present instance, the favourite plan of one person has to be carried out by his successor. This remark especially applies to what ultimately befell the department of roads. The superintendent, an able and energetic officer, submitted to the Government a statement of the establishment necessary for carrying out the purposes for which his office had been created. The establishment which he proposed was refused, and the new office rendered of no avail: so that after it had existed six years, of the 240,000l. which had been assigned to it in that period, only 130,000l. had been expended.

Like its predecessor of 1817, the Madras Government of 1842 did not carry out the orders of the Home Government, which assigned a certain fund for the improvement of the roads. Whether from not valuing the object, or from a desire to gain credit for economy, or merely from being too feeble to be capable of breathing energy into so great a work, the fact is certain, that nearly half of the road fund remained unspent, and that the road department was kept in so inefficient a state that one-third of that expenditure nominally made on the roads under its charge, was really laid out on works executed not under its superintendence, but under that of the ordinary district officers.

The disinclination to expend money on roads, thus strongly manifested in not even permitting the expenditure of the amount ordered by higher authority to be laid out upon them, was assuredly not caused by the want of success which had attended the one road already completed, or by the results of a comparison of the money laid out on it, and of the benefits that outlay has produced. The road we allude to is the Western road to Madras. In 1851 it had been, if not completed, at least opened, so as to be fit for traffic, though not bridged throughout, as far as the limits of Mysore, where it joined a road constructed by the Government of that country, and leading to Bangalore. The benefits which have been conferred on commerce by the construction of this road may be inferred from a statement furnished to the Commissioners by a merchant resident at Madras, and extracted from his correspondence with his constituent at Wallajahnuggur, a commercial town inland. Two of the items given will be sufficient for our purpose. In 1837, before the road was commenced, the hire of a cart carrying 900 lbs. between the two places was 10s. (5 rupees). In 1851, the improvement of the road enabled the same cart to carry 1600lbs., and its hire was 7s. 3d. (3 rupees 10 annas). The cost of the carriage of goods was therefore reduced in 1851 to considerably less than half what it was in 1835; an advantage which, no doubt, was chiefly felt by the

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