The Famine news is, on the whole, disastrous, the correspondent
of the Daily News announcing that hundreds of deaths have occurred in Sarun, and that high-caste women are working on the roads ; according to the Times' correspondent, Dinage- pore has been heavily struck, and in North Moorshedabad the labourers are reduced to one meal a day, while in Goruckpore starving children are received in the Mission Orphanage ; and rice is 2d. a pound, far above famine-level. His telegram of the 12th inst., however, conveys some gleam of comfort. Sir R. Temple has given up the labour-test, in Tirhoot, at all events ; has established 25 Relief Centres, not Relief Works ; has drawn out carriage by large offers of pay, and has in some way reached the villages in Chumparun. If that is the case he has anticipated Mr. Disraeli, whose speech, however, printed in Calcutta on the 11th inst., would be a great support to him ; has reversed the policy we have condemned, and is trying to distribute to the people, instead of drawing the people away from home. The statement that "South Behar is saved" is, however, unintelligible. How can a great province declared only a day or two since to be in the extremity of danger be saved in twenty-four hours? We shall know, however, soon whether the only possible mode of saving the people—a mode treated, when . we first suggested it, with contumely—has really been adopted in time. If it had been adopted two months ago there would have been six hundred relief centres by this time, and quick daily supply from them to the villages throughout the "famine district," with its 38,000,000.
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