NEWS OF THE WEEK.
AGENUINE " famine " in Russia, a famine of the Chinese kind, in which the difficulty is not want of money, but want of anything eatable by man, would be the most awful calamity recorded in the modern history of Europe. The people are still thinly scattered, they are easily discouraged, they suc- cumb readily to disease, owing to their low diet, and in a time of extreme dearth they would die like flies. It was recently reported that such a famine was impending, but the Govern- ment denied it, and the rumours speedily died away. The Times' correspondent in St. Petersburg, however, reports on July 8th that the evidence in support of the pessimist view is becoming irresistible. There are provinces with an average harvest, but there are others, and those some of the most fertile, where "the new harvest will not suffice even for seed." The Minister of Finance has reduced the tariff for grain to be forwarded from the ports to the interior, and the Minister of Domains has ordered that the pea- sants shall have free pasture on the Crown lands, and shall eat there all the mushrooms and wild fruits that they can find. The local representative body of Nijni Novogorod has voted five millions of roubles for the purchase of seed, and applications from the provinces for State grants and remis- sions of taxation are constantly coming in. The almost total failure of the rye crop will greatly aggravate the distress, as the poorest classes live on rye, and the villagers of the grain dis- tricts have no cattle that they can afford to kill. Emigration from such districts offers little hope, as it is emigration from fat land to lean land; and now that the dearth has come, the distances are too vast. The Government will, of course, do what it can, but Russia in such emergencies is burdened by her own vastness and the corruption of her officials.
