The recent accounts from India as to the state of
the crops excite very little interest, but they are by no means pleasant reading. The Madras correspondent of the Times, writing on March 2, says there are still 280,000 people supported by Govern- ment relief, the harvest has been very bad, and there are still 4,000 tons of grain a week imported from Bengal and Burwah. The price of food-stuffs throughout India remains upon the in- crease. In the North-West, Oude, and the Punjab, the official quotations for wheat, barley, and millet range from twice to thrice the quotations of last year, and in Rohilcund there is something like an actual famine. In Agra and in Undo the number of the starving is very great, officers reporting in the latter country that they find the watercourses " strewed with dead bodies." This writer complains that the famine allow- ances have lowered the normal rate of wages, and estimates the total number of deaths from famine in Madras and Mysore—the deaths, that is, in excess of the normal rates—at two millions. We trust he is unconsciously exaggerating, but it is true that India seems to have entered on a cycle of scarcity, and that pauperism will for a time be a very serious evil. At the same time, two facts must be remembered. The great bulk of the people, being peasants, benefit by the high prices of grain, and the relief measures of Government make distress, which always exists, very manifest. The paupers flock to centres, and are counted.
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