The reports of the Bengal Famine are still bad. By
the latest telegram in the Times children are dying in Saran, and Sir R. Temple declares that he is marching from black to blacker confines. Tirhoot alone will want half the rice purchased by the Government, for " without it half the population would die." That estimate exceeds the " wildest" calculation we have yet put forward, namely, two-tenths, in opposition to Lord Northbrook's one-tenth ; yet it is telegraphed home by Mr. Archibald Forbes, the Daily News' Commissioner, who is apparently in Sir R. Temple's camp, and certainly reporting his opinions. The popu- lation of Nepaul is moving southwards, famine-driven, and it is said that there is apprehension in Madras, and something more in Travancore. The report as to that little State is probably true, as rice is always dear there, from the demand for Ceylon, and from the excessively abject condition of the Pariah caste,
which, up to 1854, was enslaved by owners who always kicked out the aged and the feeble to die of hunger by the tank-side, the fact which, we believe, induced the Government at home to insist peremptorily on a decree of enfranchisement.
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