114 tea gardens were at work on the 1st January 1872;

1 tea garden closed work during the year;

3 new gardens were opened and worked during the year; 117 tea gardens were at work on the 31st December 1872.

The principal figures in the labour statistics of the year 1872 were as follows:

Mean number of contract labourers at work during the year

of adult
of children over seven years

19,875
18,405

1,470

of infants under seven years and not reckoned as labourers 2,268 Percentage of mortality among adult labourers

child

infant non-labourers

Number of deserters during the year who were not apprehended
of labourers who completed their contract during the year

imported during the year..
engaged in the district during the year

2.8

1.9

7.31

667

12,553

3,698

11,340

It is highly satisfactory that so large a proportion, nearly three-quarters, of the labourers engaged during the year were coolies who had become acclimatized to Cachar, and who made their own terms on the spot with their employers. The inspection reports and the special reports of the medical officer repeat what has often been said before, namely, that the greatest mortality always takes place among newly-arrived coolies.

In only a very few gardens was the mortality in any way excessive. On the whole the inspection reports bear out the view which the Lieutenant-Governor expressed in 1871, that the coolies on Cachar tea gardens are in the main contented, healthy, and well cared for.

There is some doubt thrown on all the percentages by the fact that some gardens do not make returns for time-expired and local coolies. The census of January 1872 showed that 40,000 people were resident on the Cachar tea gardens, though the labour returns for the same month showed only 20,622 labourers and infants. The coolies remaining at Cachar at the end of the year 1872, as stated to have belonged to the several emigrant tracts, number as follow:

Probably, however, most of the people classed as Bengalis are not real Bengalis, as the term is used generically in the tea districts, and most of these people are, it is believed, of aboriginal tribes-Dhangurs, &c., recruited on the western borders of Bengal.

Steps are being taken to prevent the multiplication of liquor-shops near the coolie lines, as complaints have been made of the spread of drunkenness among the labourers.

Sylhet.

From Sylhet the reports are very satisfactory. Including branch gardens there are five gardens in the district, giving an average of 505 coolies for the year under notice. They speak well for the management of the gardens and the health of the coolies. There were no complaints about wages or work.

The figures as contrasted with previous years are as follows:

Amendment of Act II (B.C.) of 1870.

During the year the amendment of the Act (II B.C. of 1870) regulating the transport of labourers to Assam, Cachar, and Sylhet, has closely engaged the attention of the Lieutenant-Governor and the Bengal Legislative Council. The amending Bill (Labour Districts Emigration Act) effects a change as to which all parties are quite agreed, and which is of very great importance, inasmuch as it will remove wholly from the operations of the Bill at least two-thirds of the persons now subject to it, viz. the time-expired labourers. These people, who are now in a state of quasi-bondage (inasmuch as every new contract of whatever duration and of whatever character, verbal and written, without registry or other precaution, restores them to all the rigors of the Act), will become free men and free women. There were several other amendments of the Act which a thoroughly practical experience in its actual working had shown to be required. It was originally the desire of this Government to make these amendments only. The Special Member of Council in charge of the business found, however, that the Act might be greatly systematized and improved by redrafting, and he accordingly redrafted the previous Act as well as amended it. Unfortunately, however, he carried his enthusiasm for improvements in language so far that the old Act was very much disguised by making verbal changes, which were probably not indispensable. Great attention has been since given to the Bill by a highly competent committee with the Advocate-General at its head. The substantial improvements and more systematic arrangement have been retained, while unncessary changes in the previous wording have been avoided. The Lieutenant-Governor thinks there cannot be a doubt that the Bill as it now stands is a great improvement on the previous Act, and that the improvements effected with so much care and labour should not be lost.

One very important question which has arisen in connection with the Bill is whether free recruiting Free recruiting for Cachar and Sylhet. shall be permitted to certain of the

tea districts. The Lieutenant-Governor found that one of the best gardens in Cachar, where the coolies are perfectly happy and content, was to a large extent worked by labourers who had been in fact illegally recruited, that is to say, they had been induced to go there by sirdars without being taken before a Magistrate or registered under the Act. The matter came before him in the shape of a proposal to punish criminally a sirdar who had so recruited. It appeared to His Honor that if coolies could be procured for tea gardens in this way, and were well treated and happy there, there was no reason why a penal law

should be put in force. If these coolies had not the protection of the Act, neither were they bound by its provisions as to contract.

In Cachar and Sylhet the system of free recruiting would, the Lieutenant-Governor is inclined to think, work unobjectionably, and opinions have been sought for as to whether it is better that the districts in question should be removed from the operation of the Bill altogether and left untrammelled and unfettered, like any other district of these provinces, or whether they should be retained in the Bill.

All parties must see that a one-sided settlement, i.e. one freeing planters from all restrictions in recruiting, and at the same time subjecting the cooly to special penal laws to enforce the contracts into which they may enter without any special precautions, is quite out of the question. Planters must choose whether they will have freedom of contract for themselves with the protection of the ordinary law of the country only, or the present system of examination, registration, and special precautions in regard to contracts, followed by a special penal law to make the cooly work out his contract, as provided by

the Bill. In the for-
mer case, ie. if they
come under the ordinary
law, planters may en-
force their contracts-
(1) by an ordinary suit,
and (2) by the penal
provision of Section 492
of the India Penal Code
(Act No. XLV of
1860), quoted
on the
margin.

Another question on which the Lieutenant-Governor has asked for

Free emigration alongside present system in Assam.

opinions is to an amendment which would allow a system of free emigration to go on side by side with the system prescribed by the Bill. The penalty on recruiting otherwise than under the Bill would be altogether removed, but it would be provided that no contract to labour in the labour districts otherwise than under the Act should be binding on an emigrant; but if he goes without any binding contract, when he reaches the labour district he may then enter into any contract he chooses, like any other local labourer, under the ordinary law of contract. The question then is whether in those districts which remain under the Bill it is desirable to allow this free system or any other free system side by side with the system under the Act.

Another amendment Proposal as to runaway coolies.

proposes to repeal the present power of planters themselves to seize runaway coolies. Without prejudging this ques

tion, His Honor has said that he would like much to learn what officers, planters, and the coolies themselves, say about it. The effect

of the amendment would be, that instead of seizing his cooly the master must prosecute him for desertion in the criminal court. The question is whether the time has come when so great an interference with the liberty of the subject as this power of the master to seize can be dispensed with. His Honor is inquiring, both from the planter's and from the cooly's point of view, whether the power is liable to abuse; and whether, if not unduly used to restrain a fair freedom of action, the object would not be sufficiently gained by making it the duty of the Magistrate to seize and punish any deserter who may be pointed out to him.

The above are the more important matters under discussion in connection with the Bill, and the Lieutenant-Governor hopes that they may be settled and the Bill passed before Assam is separated from Bengal.

The question of establishing a system of emigration to British Burmah is under the consideration of Emigration to British Burmah. the Imperial legislature, and it will probably be found that the discussion upon that Bill and upon the Bill above described will together tend to place the whole subject of labour transport on a satisfactory footing.

CHAPTER XXV.

SANITATION.

General remarks.

THE Government of Bengal has never been able to effect much in the way of sanitation in the interior of these populous provinces. We are still much hampered by our ignorance of the statistics of mortality and of the conditions of health and disease in this country, although, as is shown in this report, we have done something towards improvement in this respect. We have no machinery wherewith to improve the sanitary state of the country. A supply of good water everywhere is no doubt more than anything the Need of good water. one thing needful, and this we are at present powerless to furnish except in a few municipalities, the landholders being unwilling to aid, and communal machinery being wanting. All the hospital, jail, and other statistics, show that in Bengal generally the most fatal form of disease is not fever, but dysentery, diarrhoea, and other bowel diseases, which may well be connected with the water-supply. The Government has devoted considerable attention to the condition and deplorable mortality of the fever-stricken districts in the Burdwan division. The want of pure water is there most especially felt. Still, as yet, in the reeking swamps of lower Hooghly and part of Midnapore there has been much less fever than in the higher parts of Burdwan and Hooghly, where there is a sensible natural drainage. Colonel Haig, in his note on the Burdwan fever, gives a striking and almost horrible description of this lowlying tract, where there is no healthy flow of water whatever, and no escape,-where the water stagnates and a mass of decaying vegetation stagnates in it; and yet not only is the fever less in these swamps, but the human race has multiplied therein to a greater extent than anywhere in India-perhaps in the world. It seems as if it may almost be said that we cannot have too much water in Bengal, and that in such conditions in this climate, all sanitary science notwithstanding, the human race will multiply till it is wasted by great calamities. During the year a complete survey has been made by the officers of Colonel Haig's Irrigation Department of the most water-logged and unhealthy tracts of the Hooghly district in order to put us in possession of the physical facts, and furnish some guide towards great plans of drainage, reclamation, and sanitation.