Every day you are fatigued and disgusted with this cant, “The Carnatic is a country that will soon recover, and become instantly as prosperous as ever.”  They think they are talking to innocents, who will believe, that, by sowing of dragons’ teeth, men may come up ready grown and ready armed.  They who will give themselves the trouble of considering (for it requires no great reach of thought, no very profound knowledge) the manner in which mankind are increased, and countries cultivated, will regard all this raving as it ought to be regarded.  In order that the people, after a long period of vexation and plunder, may be in a condition to maintain government, government must begin by maintaining them.  Here the road to economy lies not through receipt, but through expense; and in that country Nature has given no short cut to your object.  Men must propagate, like other animals, by the mouth.  Never did oppression light the nuptial torch; never did extortion and usury spread out the genial bed.  Does any of you think that England, so wasted, would, under such a nursing attendance, so rapidly and cheaply recover?  But he is meanly 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.[38] 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 of habitation, 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