NEWS OF THE WEEK.
TrIE intelligence from Bengal this week is not very reassur- ing. The Zemindars' Association, a society of powerful land- owners, represent (November 24) that they expect only three- eighths of a crop among sixty millions of people,—that is, over the whole of Bengal, excluding Orissa—and pray for a law pro- Iibiting the export of • rice, a law it is simply impossible to grant. In the first place, we have no right whatever to stop the export from the French settlements, and as they are -in India, vessels would simply load for them, obtain French pipers on payment of a fee, and sail away wherever they 'Eked. In the second place, Ceylon must be excepted, as 'her labourers, though not her people, depend on Indian rice, and once loaded for Colombo, a ship could go anywhere ; and in the third place, notice must be given to the Mauritins, which is populated, so to speak, by natives of India, or there will be a famine there. In the fourth place, Bengal cannot afford to lose the trade the sudden stoppage might imperil; and in the fifth ',place, price is already reducing the danger, by making it incon • wenient-foi outsiders to buy. , Nobody will buy rice to hold over att its present price, and the Government will soon be the only possible purchaser, though at immense figures.
