The
Chinese have, after their own fashion, devoted themselves to this kind
of improvement for centuries; so have the enlightened Dutch, the most
recent example of which is that noble engineering achievement, the
draining of the lake of Haarlem; and although the sale of the drained
land did not recoup the Government for the outlay, yet they felt the
work was a great national benefit, inasmuch as it added forty-three
thousand acres to the arable soil of Holland. So pleased indeed are they
with the result, that they have at present under consideration another
undertaking of the same kind, and of far greater extent, namely, the
draining of the Zuider Zee.
It would seem, then, to be a question well worthy the consideration of
statesmen, whether or not, in the reclamation of wastes, it would be the
true and enlightened policy to act upon the commercial idea alone.
Mr. Fagan, a commercial man of sound practical ability, who sat in the
House of Commons for the County Wexford, put forward, in the famine
period, a scheme for the reclamation of the waste lands.[254] It was
mainly based upon the principle, that the men whose labour reclaimed
those lands should have a beneficial interest in them.
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