Piecing all the information carefully together, we should say that
Government was fairly aroused, and willing to fight the famine as it would an invader, but that it was three months too late ; that transport, in spite of Sir R. Temple's device for feeding bullocks with cotton-seed, which is as good as oil-cake, but re- quires carriage as much as grain, could not be adequately supplied, except by human labour ; that the labour-test had rendered the death by disease of about half the 300,000 on the works a certainty; that the proportion of paupers had been under-calculated by one- half, and that there would be one horrible gap, probably July, between hunger and relief. It is the possibility of that gap which should now be examined as strictly as a problem in mathematics, and if at last discovered, met by emptying Cali- fornia into Calcutta. The loss cannot be excessive, for wheat keeps, and the objection to cooked food does not extend to flour.
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