[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR.") SIR,-A very large number
of persons will agree with the opinion which the Bishop of Manchester has so ably and courageously expressed, and will withhold their subscriptions from the Bengal Famine Fund,—(1), because the relief thus afforded would be at .best but a miserable driblet, compared with the magnitude of the calamity ; and (2), because any quantity of money is at the disposal of the Indian Government,—the difficulty unhappily being, not money, but means of distribution, which no amount of subscription from this side would relieve.
But Englishmen cannot it still and read the harrowing accounts which are only beginning to reach us, without stirring themselves to deal personally with some phase, at any rate, of this vast misery. The famine will bring pestilence, orphanage, and long destitution in its train. Might not a noble fund at once be raised by all our congregations and by local committees, not to meet the famine— the Government is now intensely in earnest, and all_ that can be done will be done—but to meet the contingent and consequent distress,—a Distress Fund, in short, to deal with miseries which official hands cannot reach, but which the English people, through the voluntary agency of their missionaries and of English residents
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