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 of eleven hundred, from the extent of two or three
acres to five miles in circuit. From these reservoirs currents are
occasionally drawn over the fields, and these watercourses again call