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scale will involve no doubt a proportionate expenditure. We may hope indeed that Government, Native States and private landowners will generously assist us to overcome these difficulties by grants of land, and advances of money and other concessions. Still we must anticipate that a considerable portion of the financial burden and responsibility in commencing such an enterprise must of necessity fall upon us.
The Over-Sea Colony may for the present be postponed^ and hence we> have not now to consider what would be the probable expenses. But omitting this, and having regard only to the City and Country Colonies, I believe that to> make a commencement on a fairly extensive scale we shall require a sum of one lakh of rupees. We do not pretend that with this sum at our command we can do more than make a beginning. It would be idle to suppose that the miseries, of twenty-five millions of people could be annihilated at a stroke for such a sum.
We do believe however that by sinking such a suia we should be able to manufacture a road over which a continuous and increasing mass of the Submerged would bet able to, liberate themselves from their present miserable surroundings and rise to. a position of comparative comfort.
We are confident moreover that the profits, or shall we call them the tolls paid by those who passed over this highway, would enable us speedily to construct a second, which would be broader and better than the first. The first two would multiply themselves, to four, the four to eight, the eight to sixteen, till the number and breadth of these social highways would be such as to place deliverance within easy reach of all who desired it.
The sum we ask for is less than a tithe of what has been so speedily raised in England for the rescue of a far