Much news has arrived about the Indian famine, most of
it confirmatory of the account we gave last week. Pro- fessor Monier Williams, who writes from Madura, gives a painful account of the starving crowds in Madras (city), where thousands of famine-stricken creatures crowd round the rice- bags on the wharf, and not daring to steal, dig up the sand, to find the few grains which escape from holes in the bags. He justifies our fear as to the cattle, saying that he found them too emaciated to work, an account repeated by the agents of a large planter in Coorg, named Marsden, and by a statement from the Bombay Presidency that in the dis- tressed districts the people are selling their cattle for 28. each. We may imagine the condition of affairs, when Hindoos leave cows to die of hunger. The Government of India has, as we mentioned, estimated the cost of the famine at six and a half millions, has insisted on the labour-test, has forbidden State pur- chases of grain, and has declared that relief on the Behar scale will "inevitably lead to national bankruptcy." We do not blame them, but we do not like the signs abroad,—the early emaciation of the people, the outbreak of cholera, and the grave risk that the cattle over so vast a territory may all die. There is too perfect a silence, too, in the Nizam's dominions.
