The Life of Florence Nightingale Volume II Part 19

But we have arrived at a most remarkable crisis now, first in the occurrence of this most terrible famine, and, second, in the revolution in the India Office. Lord Salisbury will think for himself in spite of an Indian Council composed--with only the exception of Sir B. Frere--of men of incurable old Indian bias." Sir Arthur Cotton's inventive genius has left a permanent impress upon India; but he was now _en disponibilite_, and he was one of those enthusiasts who, when out of office and unable to carry on their plans, conceive the world to be in wilful conspiracy against them. Moreover, in urging the case for ca.n.a.ls, he overstated it by too uncompromising a criticism of railways. During ensuing years Sir Arthur Cotton was one of the most voluminous of Miss Nightingale's correspondents. She was fully alive to the faults of manner which hindered the acceptance of his ideas, and from time to time she pleaded with him for more moderation and less asperity. She herself was sometimes blamed, by Mr. Jowett and others, for over-emphasis. She would laughingly wonder in reply what they thought of Sir Arthur Cotton who gave the public "strong alcohol," in comparison with which anything of hers was but "watered milk." She had not far pursued her researches into the Irrigation question before she perceived that it was intimately bound up with the Land question. Who was to pay for irrigation? Were the ryots willing to pay a water-rate? Could they pay it? Were not the Zemindars rapacious? Was not the cultivator at the mercy of the usurers?

Sir George Campbell was full of such subjects, and Miss Nightingale proceeded, with his a.s.sistance, to master the intricacies of Land tenure in various parts of India, and especially of the "Permanent Settlement"

in Bengal. One subject led her on to another, and she became deeply interested in the questions of representation, land, education, usury.

She became, in short, an Indian Reformer, or an Indian Agitator, at large.

V

Her immediate effort, however, was thrown into the advocacy of Irrigation. In view alike of the poverty of India, and of the ever present danger of famine, she held that it was the duty of the Government to promote Irrigation in every way--by great works as well as small, by wells and tanks as much as by great and small ca.n.a.ls--by encouraging private capital as well as by making great national grants and loans. The Indian tax-payer was poor, it was said to her; the way to make him less poor, she replied, was to irrigate his land.

Miss Nightingale began her Irrigation campaign with an appeal to Lord Salisbury, and she approached him on a point which she thought would be common ground. She knew that he was of a scientific turn of mind, and hoped he would agree with her that the first thing needful was to obtain complete and trustworthy statistics. She sent him some tentative figures as to the cost of irrigation works already carried out, and the financial results accruing therefrom, confessing, however, that she had experienced great difficulty in obtaining the figures. "I have been too long on the search for such returns myself," he replied (May 10, 1875), "not to sympathise with your distress." He proceeded at some length to enumerate "the difficulties in the way of a really rigorous exhibit," and to state the questions which seemed to him still unsolved with regard to irrigation in general; for instance, "Is irrigation," he asked, "the creation or merely the antic.i.p.ation of fertility? Does it make vegetable wealth, which but for it would never have existed, or does it crowd into a few years the enjoyment of the whole productive power of the soil?" Meanwhile he had her figures submitted to critical annotation at the India Office, directed various Papers to be sent to her, and promised to see whether fuller returns could be obtained. As nothing definite resulted, Miss Nightingale suggested the appointment of a Committee or Commission to investigate and report. The suggestion elicited a characteristic reply from Lord Salisbury. "As for a Commission," he wrote (Nov. 1, 1875), "I doubt its efficiency.

Commissions are very valuable to collect and summarize opinion, and they are often able to decide one or two distinct issues of fact. But they are too unwieldy for the collection and digestion of a great variety of facts and figures. With the best intentions, their work is slow and _routinier_, and in their report they gloss over the weak places with generalities.... As a rule, administrative force is in the inverse proportion of the number of men who exercise it. One man is twice as strong as two; two men are twice as strong as four. Boards and Commissions are only contrivances for making strong men weak."

From time to time she jogged Lord Salisbury's elbow, asking whether he had yet been able to obtain trustworthy figures, and beseeching him to initiate a great irrigation policy. "Do not for a moment imagine," he wrote (Feb. 27, 1876), "that I have forgotten the question. The more I go into it, the deeper the mystery appears. Every one who has a right to entertain an opinion on it vindicates that right by entertaining a different one from his neighbour. General Strachey and Sir Barrow Ellis have been engaged upon the matter for years. Both of these a.s.sert with confidence that one set of statements is true, while the Government of India, backed by Mr. Thornton, our excellent Public Works Secretary, a.s.sert it with no less confidence to be false.... When I am able to get a little light I will let you know; but as long as my oracles flatly contradict each other, I am not likely to get nearer certainty than I am now." As Lord Salisbury was disinclined to a Committee of experts, she begged him to procure returns from India, and she drew up a model form of inquiry, on which particulars might be asked of the extent of cultivated land in each district, the amount of land under irrigation, the cost of annual repairs, and so forth, and so forth. Lord Salisbury took the suggestion into consideration, and some returns were called for, but nothing came of it for the time. Miss Nightingale then tried to obtain information in another way. There were, she was told, ma.s.ses of data in the India Office itself, which only needed a.n.a.lysis and tabulation to yield valuable results. Lord Lawrence had introduced to her Mr. Edward Prinsep (late Settlement Commissioner, Punjab) as a man likely to be helpful in such work. She made friends with him; Sir Louis Mallet gave facilities, and Mr. Prinsep began making researches on Miss Nightingale's behalf. Unfortunately for her success, she had the correct.i.tude to ask Lord Salisbury's permission. Lord Salisbury referred her request to the Revenue Department, who in a solemn minute represented the serious precedent that would be set by allowing an outsider to delve in official archives, and Mr. Prinsep had to discontinue his researches. "You are doubtless aware," Sir Louis Mallet told her dryly, "that in the India Office opinions diametrically opposed are usually entertained on every subject which is discussed." There was only one certainty, he added, that any decision taken at one time would be reversed at another. Ultimately a good deal of information was collected by a Select Committee of the House of Commons on Public Works in India (1878) and by Famine Commissions. Returns, such as Miss Nightingale asked for, are now regularly made.

Some irrigation works were carried out during these years,[170] but no great forward policy in that direction was inst.i.tuted. The "forward policy" presently adopted was of a very different sort. The thoughts of the politicians were absorbed in other things; the opinions of the bureaucrats were divided, and there was stringency in Indian finance. If the experts could not agree on the proper basis of estimating the results of irrigation, still less were they at one on the kind of irrigation work that was desirable. Every one was agreed in favour of irrigation "in principle"; but as soon as it became a question of detail, whether in finance or in engineering, there were as many opinions as there were experts. One school said, "Borrow the money and the land will be so enriched that the ryot will be able to pay increased taxation." Another school retorted, "But he will be squeezed out of existence first; therefore, retrench all round, and wait for better times." Or, if the financial difficulty were overcome, engineering difficulties were raised. One school said, "Make navigable ca.n.a.ls," but that meant fulness of water in them. Another said, "Make ca.n.a.ls primarily for irrigation," but that meant depletion. And so the controversy continued, with no decided impulse from the men in office.

Famines came and went; some works were carried out as a form of "relief"; no great preventive policy was established.

[170] _E.g._ the "Buckingham Ca.n.a.l," connecting the ca.n.a.ls N. and S. of Madras (made as a Famine Relief work, after being "under consideration" for a quarter of a century). Miss Nightingale celebrated this tardy achievement in an article in the press: see Bibliography A, No. 99.

Miss Nightingale was much disheartened, but she persevered. She corresponded with everybody of importance whom she could hope to influence. With Lord Lytton, who had succeeded Lord Northbrook as Viceroy in 1876, she was not acquainted; and Lord Beaconsfield she never approached, except on another matter, and then without any encouragement on his part.[171] In April 1878 Lord Salisbury became Foreign Secretary, and was succeeded at the India Office by Mr. Gathorne-Hardy (Lord Cranbrook), Mr. Edward Stanhope becoming Under-Secretary. Mr. Stanhope came to see her (June 1878); and in the following year she sent him the figures of mortality in the last Indian famine, which she had compiled with great labour from various sources of information, and correspondence ensued. She saw and corresponded largely with Sir James Caird, the English representative on the Famine Commission. She tried to incense Lord Houghton on the subject of Indian grievances. She saw and corresponded with Mr. Fawcett. She saw Mr. Bright. She kept up a large and regular correspondence with officials in India. She supplied materials for lectures in England; and, with skilled a.s.sistance, she had some maps drawn and engraved, to show the princ.i.p.al works which might be constructed. These maps did service at lectures; and Miss Nightingale also wrote repeatedly in newspapers and magazines--heralding "water-arrivals,"[172] pointing out districts which famine had not visited owing to previous irrigation, and others where similar works might be expected to prevent famine in future; comparing the cost of relief and prevention; urging the importance of extending education; calling attention to oppression in forms of land-tenure and by money-lenders; and generally seeking to arouse public interest at home in the life and sufferings of the voiceless millions in India.

[171] In 1879 the Registrar-General retired, and Miss Nightingale wrote to Lord Beaconsfield urging the claims of Dr. Farr to the post. As the greatest of English statisticians, and as the senior in the Registrar-General's office, he would have been the right man, but Lord Beaconsfield gave the appointment to Sir Brydges Henniker.

Dr. Farr thereupon retired from the Public Service. In the following year he was made C.B. (at Miss Nightingale's instance, through Sir Stafford Northcote).

[172] The t.i.tle of an article by Miss Nightingale in _Good Words_. For it, and other Indian writings, see Bibliography A., Nos. 82, 84, 90, 92, 97-100.

The piece by Miss Nightingale which attracted most attention was an article on "The People of India" in the _Nineteenth Century_ for October 1878. Sir James Knowles's magazine was then in the early days of its influence, and he gave the first place to this article, in which Miss Nightingale administered a wholesome shock to British complacency. "We do not care for the people of India," she exclaimed. "The saddest sight in the world" was to be seen in the British Empire; it was the condition of the Indian peasant. She gave pitiable facts and figures of Indian famines, and pa.s.sed on to describe in more detail the evils of usury in the Bombay Deccan. "I cannot tell you," she wrote to a correspondent in the following year,[173] "the intense interest that I take in the subject: how to raise the indebted poor cultivators of India out of their wretched bondage of poverty, whether by _monts de piete_, by some National Bank, such as you propose, by some co-operative system, or by all or any of such means." Miss Nightingale's article was received as a kind of manifes...o...b.. those who sympathized with her point of view, and the publication brought a large accession to her Indian correspondence.

In official circles it caused some flutter. "I have read your article,"

wrote a friend in the India Office (Aug. 8), "with the greatest interest and admiration. The official mind is much disturbed. I overheard a conversation between two magnates (not in the present Government) in which the article was described as a shriek, and the question was whether something could not be done to counteract the impression." Lord Northbrook, after reading the article, sent to Miss Nightingale an elaborate criticism, not traversing her case in all points, but pleading that she had exaggerated the shadows. With Lord Salisbury's successor at the India Office there was the following correspondence:

(_Miss Nightingale to Lord Cranbrook._) _August_ 10 [1878].

DEAR LORD CRANBROOK--Very meekly I venture to send you a poor little article of mine on the People of India in the _Nineteenth Century_. I hope if you read it you will not call it a shriek (I am astonished at my own moderation). I am not so troublesome as to expect that you can find time to read it, but the India Office has untold treasures (which it does not know itself) in Reports on these subjects which will engage your busy time; and especially the Deccan Riots Commission Report, on the relation of the ryots and the extortionate money-lenders in the Bombay Deccan, will, I am sure, call for your attention. Can there be any private enterprise in trade or commerce, in manufacture, or in new interests, when to money-lenders are guaranteed by our own Courts the profits, the enormous and easy profits, which no enterprise of the kind that India most wants can rival? What are the practical remedies for extortionate usury in India, and princ.i.p.ally in the Bombay Deccan?

The Bill now before the Legislature at Simla does not seem to promise much. Does it? The whole subject is, I know, before you.

Pray believe me (with some wonder at my own audacity), ever your faithful and grateful servant, FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE.

(_Lord Cranbrook to Miss Nightingale._) INDIA OFFICE, _August_ 13 [1878]. DEAR MISS NIGHTINGALE--Having been out of town for two days your note only reached me this morning. I read your article last week with much interest; but, without underrating the griefs of India, I think you generalise too much from one locality.

Nevertheless there is enough to stir the heart and mind in search of remedies for admitted evils.--Yours very sincerely, CRANBROOK.

[173] Mr. Francis William Fox; he had sent to her his pamphlet on _Reform in the Administration of India_, suggesting _inter alia_ a National Agricultural Bank. Miss Nightingale's letter of three sheets (June 18, 1879) is eloquent both of her profound knowledge of Indian conditions and of her enthusiastic interest in Indian problems.

The Secretary of State wrote to the Viceroy, Lord Lytton, in much the same sense; calling his attention to Miss Nightingale's article, saying that she had generalized too much, but adding, "I shall be truly glad if your legislation can afford a remedy."[174] The Viceroyalty of Lord Lytton was more famous, however, for the forward policy in Afghanistan than for internal reforms. Miss Nightingale, as a disciple of Lord Lawrence, was wholly opposed to an aggressive policy which, moreover, had the effect of causing retrenchment in all departments except the military.

[174] The letter to Lord Lytton is printed in vol. ii. p. 80 of Mr. A. E. Gathorne-Hardy's _Memoir of Lord Cranbrook_ (1910).

VI

Miss Nightingale in her propagandist zeal now turned to Mr. Gladstone.

She made an article of his, called "Friends and Foes of Russia," which appeared in the _Nineteenth Century_ (January 1879), the occasion of a letter to him. In this article he had incidentally referred to the loss of "1,400,000 lives" in the last Indian famine. She pointed out to him that his estimate was far below the truth, and she sought to enlist him in a crusade for the Indian causes dear to her heart:--

(_Mr. Gladstone to Miss Nightingale._) HAWARDEN, _Jan._ 26 [1879].

How many years have elapsed since your name used to sound daily in my ears, and how many sad events, events of varied sadness, have happened in the very place where I used to hear it! All through this Eastern controversy, the most painful of my life, it has been a consolation to know that I was in sympathy with you--especially I remember your most striking declaration about the war against Turkey. I am glad that you approve of my article on the Friends and Foes of Russia, glad that the error you notice is one of under-statement. I had not the means of complete reference when I sent off the sheets, and 1,400,000 seemed to me so awful that I trembled lest I should be over-stating. The first correction I received put four millions--and now you raise it higher still.[175]

The Indian question under most vicious handling is growing gigantic and most perilous. Depend on it I will do what I can in it: but I fear this must be little. I fear that--apart from other reasons weighty enough--my taking a leading part in it would at once poison its atmosphere, now that it has come to be a main ground of the controversy between Government and Opposition. When I dealt with the Vernacular Press Act last year, there was no Indian controversy, and I took all the care in my power not to treat it as a contentious question. All this is now changed: and whatever I recommend about India the Tories will oppose. You can hardly be aware of the extraordinary degree in which prejudice and pa.s.sion have gathered round my very name (as well, I am bound to say, as favour and affection) since the Eastern Question came up. Whether by my fault or not, I can hardly say: but such is the fact. In the line I have followed I must steadily persist to the end of the conflict; but I have all along foreseen the likelihood that it would probably disable me, even if age and other circ.u.mstances did not, for rendering any other _serious_ public service in the way of acting, which, it must always be remembered, is so different from that of objecting and censuring.... The whole Indian question will, however, force itself forward, and there will be plenty of hands to deal with it. Mr. Bright is coming here in two days, and I hope to have full conversation with him about it. Believe me, with warm regard and respect, sincerely yours, W. E. GLADSTONE.

[175] The India Office gave 1,250,000 as the total of deaths in the Famine. Mr. Caird, after investigating the question in India, gave 4,050,000 as his estimate. Miss Nightingale's was 5 to 6 millions.

"I begin to think now," wrote Sir Louis Mallet (March 10, 1879) when Mr. Caird's estimate was made, "that your 'Shriek' was a better expression of the truth than any other utterance."

Miss Nightingale continued the correspondence, and presently Mr. Gladstone called upon her to talk over Indian affairs, which were now beginning to a.s.sume some importance in his general campaign against the policy of Lord Beaconsfield. Mr. Gladstone's visit was in May. On June 26 Lord Lawrence died, and Miss Nightingale was deeply moved:--

(_Miss Nightingale to Mr. Gladstone._) _July_ 6 [1879]. I see you were at Lord Lawrence's funeral yesterday, and you may care to hear the story of his last days from one who has been privileged to know and serve with two such men as Sidney Herbert and John Lawrence--very different, but alike in the "one thing needful"--the serving with all their souls and minds and without a thought of self their high ideal of right. Lord Lawrence's last years were spent in work: he did not read, he studied; though almost blind, he waded with the help of a Private Secretary (who was a lady[176]) thro' piles of blue books--chiefly, but not wholly Indian--bringing the weight of his unrivalled experience to bear upon them. Up to Tuesday night, tho' very ill (he died on Friday), he worked. On the Thursday before, he had spoken in the House of Lords on the Indian Finance question. The disease, tedious and trying, of which he died, was brought on by the London School Board work. He used to come home quite exhausted, saying that he could have done the thing himself in half-an-hour; yet having entered, with a patience very foreign, to his nature, into all the niggling crotchets of everybody on the Board. He gave the impression, I believe, of sternness in public, but the tenderness and the playfulness of his intercourse in private were beyond a woman's tenderness. He was a man of iron; he had gone thro' 40 years of Indian life, in times of danger, toil, and crisis; had been brought seven times to the brink of the grave; and had weathered it all--to die of a School Board at last! He had the blue eye, and the expression in it (before his operation), of a girl of 16, and the ma.s.sive brow and head of a General of Nations rather than of Armies.... I received a letter from him the day _after_ his death--dictated, but signed by himself, sending me some recent Indian Reports--private papers--which he had read and wished me to read--all marked and the page turned down where he had left off. This was his legacy. O that I could do something for India for which he lived and died! The simplicity of the man could not be surpa.s.sed--the unselfishness, the firmness. It was always, "Is it right?" If it was, it was done.

It was the same thing: its being right and its being done.... A photograph was taken a few hours after death. If it had been a sketch by Carracci, or Leonardo, or Michael Angelo, we should have said, How far Art transcends Nature. In the holiest pictures of the Old Masters, I have never seen anything so beautiful or so holy.

The lips are slightly parted (like those of a child in a rapture of joy on first awakening), with a child-like joy at entering into the presence of the Heavenly Father whom he had served so n.o.bly and so humbly. The poor eyes are looking down, but as if they were looking inward into the soul to realize the rapture--like Milton's "And joy shall overtake him like a flood." The face is worn. I think sometimes the youth, the physical beauty in the old Italian pictures of Christ do not give the full meaning of "it behoved Him to have _suffered_ these things that He might enter into His glory"; or else, like t.i.tian's "Moneta," it is the _mere_ ascetic.

But here it was the joy arising out of the long trial, the Cross out of which came the Crown. The expression was that of the winged soul, the child-soul as in the Egyptian tomb-paintings, rising somehow without motion (spiritually) out of the worn-out body. (He said on the Sunday, "I can't tell you how I feel: I feel worn out.") All India will feel his loss. No one now living knows what he did there--in private, I mean, as well as in public--the raising of the people by individuals as well as by Inst.i.tutions--the letters and messages from Sikhs to him, the Indian gentlemen who used to come to see him here and treated him as their father. The little curs here have barked and bit round the heels of the old lion. He heard them but he heeded not. And now he is gone to undertake yet greater labours, to bless more worlds in the service of G.o.d. Lady Lawrence wished to give every one something which had belonged to his personal use. But it was found he had nothing.

There were some old clothes, and a great many boots, patched; but nothing else, not even a pin, except his watch, 20 years old, and his walking-stick, which she kept. The lady who served as his secretary after his blindness had his old shoe-horn, and told me this story with an infinite relish of its beauty. It was so characteristic of him. Pardon me if I have taken up your time with my thoughts of John Lawrence. I felt as if I were paying him a last tribute in commending his memory to you.

[176] Miss Gaster.

VII

"O that I could do something for India!" She had done much, and was yet to do more; but it was a constant regret of her later years that she had failed to carry through one piece of work which she had planned. This was a book on the allied questions of Indian Irrigation and Indian Land Tenure, to which, in her first draft, she had given the fanciful t.i.tle _The Zemindar, the Sun and the Watering Pot as Affecting Life or Death in India_. Miss Nightingale had first written the book in 1874, and she had several copies privately printed. The earliest copies are prefaced by the following notes on "Dramatis Personae." They introduce, besides the Minister on whom at this time she pinned her hopes, her princ.i.p.al informants, and they show the spirit of the book:--

THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY: A real workman and born ruler of men.

Secretary of State for India by the grace of G.o.d.

SIR GEORGE CAMPBELL: Ex-Lieutenant Governor of Bengal. Gulliver among the Lilliputians.

SIR ARTHUR COTTON, R.E.: The most perfect master of the water question living.

COLONEL RUNDALL, R.E.: Head of Water Department of Bengal, then of all India; now at home.

COLONEL HAIG, R.E.: Head of Water Department of Bengal; now at home ill.

THE ZEMINDAR: Created Landlord out of Tax-Gatherer. Growing rich.

THE RYOT: Created Slave out of Landowner or Privileged Cultivator.

Starving. For while "wealth acc.u.mulates, men decay."

Mr. Jowett revised the book many times, and among the first things which he cut out was the characteristic "Dramatis Personae." His unfavourable opinion of the book as a literary work prevented the publication of it in 1874. "The style," he wrote (Aug. 11, 1874), "is too jerky and impulsive, though I think it is logical and effective. You must avoid faults of taste and exaggeration. The more moderate a statement is the stronger it is. But strength lies in paragraphs, in pages, in the whole; not in single sentences. The form should appear to flow irresistibly from the facts and reasonings. 'What does the man mean by talking to me about style when I am thinking only of the sufferings and oppression of 100,000,000 of Ryots?' Yes, but if you want to make the English people think about the Ryots you must be careful of the least indiscretion or exaggeration. You must make style a duty, and then your book will last." And again, "I find myself amid striking expressions, but I do not know where I am." He told her that she must rewrite the whole thing before publishing it. He offered to help her, and drew out a more methodical scheme; but she was impatient of his "pa.s.sion for making heads"; besides, his heads "do not cover the ground that I must cover, and do cover ground that I don't want to cover." She was disheartened, and laid the book aside for a while; but at various times during the following years she resumed work upon it. The book was in two Parts, the first dealing with the Land Question, and being a plea for a reform of the Permanent Settlement, with an appendix (largely contributed by M. Mohl) "On Prussian, Austrian, and Russian Reforms in Abolition of Servitude." The second Part dealt with Irrigation as affecting Life or Death in India, with an appendix of statistical data.

For the first Part she had prepared a series of ill.u.s.trations of Indian agricultural life and customs. Many of the woodcuts were from sketches by the son of her old friend, Sir Ra.n.a.ld Martin. For the second Part she had prepared the Irrigation maps already mentioned. Meanwhile, the tables of statistics which she had compiled had, owing to the delay, become out of date. Some of her friends--Sir Bartle Frere and Sir George Campbell and Sir Arthur Cotton--urged her to revise the book and publish it; and there are in existence a series of proofs, in various stages, and belonging to various years, corrected by the three friends just mentioned and by many others. Lord Lawrence too had read the book carefully, and one of his last letters to Miss Nightingale contained a full discussion of many of the points involved in it. Clearly the book first written in 1874 required in 1879 large revision, and she could not bring herself to do it. In later years she used some of the material in other ways; it served, indeed, as a quarry for many articles, papers, and private letters; but she never ceased to regret that she had not been able to leave in permanent literary form her views on the questions discussed in the book. In her Will, made in 1896, she left special provision for the publication of "such part, if any," as her executors might think fit, of the "books, papers (whether ma.n.u.script or printed), and letters relating to my Indian work (together with two stones for Irrigation maps of India, and also with the woodcut blocks for ill.u.s.tration of those works)." By "those works" I take it that she meant princ.i.p.ally the book written in 1874. I do not know whether her suggestion will be carried out. If it were, much revision and editing would be necessary. Indian reform moves, it is true, at a rate which "savours much of the periods of Indian cosmogony"; but yet it moves.

There is a good deal in Miss Nightingale's published and unpublished writings about India which might be collected and still serve as Tracts for the Times; but there is at least as much which is now happily out of date. Of the reform of the Bengal Land System, projected by Lord Ripon, and carried into effect by Lord Dufferin, we shall hear something in a later chapter (VI.). Some of the princ.i.p.al Irrigation works which Miss Nightingale advocated were presently carried out with success, and to the great benefit of the country, notably the Swat river ca.n.a.l (1885), the Chenab ca.n.a.l (1887), and the Jhelum ca.n.a.l (1902). Her Irrigation map, "brought up to date by statistics at the India Office," was published in 1900;[177] and maps brought up to a later date are accessible.[178] Twenty years after the date of Miss Nightingale's paper on "The People of India," the area irrigated by "productive"

ca.n.a.ls had increased from 5 million acres to 9-1/2 million, and since 1901 a consistent policy of "preventive" irrigation has been adopted.[179]

The policy of introducing some element of representation and of admitting the natives of India more largely to administrative and judicial posts has slowly but steadily progressed since the years when Miss Nightingale turned her attention to such questions.

[177] In _General Sir Arthur Cotton: His Life and Work_, by his daughter, Lady Hope.

[178] See _The Irrigation Works of India_, by Robert Burton Buckley, C.S.I., Chief Engineer, Indian Public Works Department (retired), second edition, 1905. This is an exhaustive work on the subject, with maps, woodcuts, and statistics (such as Miss Nightingale had asked Lord Salisbury to obtain). An account of some later irrigation works may be found in the Engineering Supplement of the _Times_, May 21, 1913.

[179] Foreshadowed in Lord Curzon's "Statement on Famine" in the Legislative Council, Simla, October 19, 1900: see _Speeches of Lord Curzon_ (Calcutta, 1900), vol. ii. pp. 25-27.