THE FAMINE IN BENGAL.
Tstatements and the facts received within the last two weeks from India are very bad indeed. We greatly fear that the Indian 'Government is face to face with one of those
calamities which no'effort can seriously relieve, which break men's hearts, and make some of them like Goethe, doubt if Providence is benevolent. Setting aside Reuter as mere cor- roborative evidence, the correspondent of the Times, whose signature is on the telegrams, is the last man in the world to send sensational messages, is completely trusted by the autho- rities, and has every possible reason for toning down enormous calamities. Yet if his account is correct, all Bengal Proper, except its furthest Eastern districts, and all Behar, are about to be visited, not with scarcity of food, but with real want, want such as existed in 1770—the year from which natives colloquially date everything—the awful famine under which ten millions of people perished, and if tradition lies not, a few great civilians made giant fortunes by regrating. Macaulay believes that Verelst, the worst Governor ever known in Bengal, was one of them. The Times' correspondent gives his facts without exaggeration ; alleges that rice has as yet reached only 7s.—equivalent to wheat at 120s. in Mark Lane (or did he write 7 rupees, equivalent to 240s. for wheat ?)- notices that there is less, but still dangerous distress in Oade and " Guzerat"—a mistake, perhaps, of the telegraph for Goojerat, in the `Punjab—and records the sudden spring of Lord Northbrook' from Simla to Calcutta, a month earlier than he intended to come. Sir George Campbell, the Lieutenant- Governor of Bengal, is a very able though eccentric man, but Lord Northbrook evidently sees that the crisis demands the Viceroy, perhaps the use of those powers delegated to him by the last regulating Act, which make him stronger, by law, than any Autocrat in the world. He has if possible, to save a popula-
tion, ranging from thirty to thirty-five millions, dwelling, for the most part, in a boundless jungle, depending entirely on water for the safety of their crop, accustomed to no other food, and accustomed also to sell themselves bare of grain to the
'native regraters, who either export or store till the hard time comes, when they make fortunes in a minute, or, in districts like the Sonthal Pergunnahs, are killed en masse by the starving
cultivators. No cultivator, as a rule, stores grain. He has no buildings for such a purpose, no labourers to help him, no
means without touching his family hoard—which he will not do till death is in his face—of repaying his advances. He sells at once to the muhajun, whom we do not wish to traduce, as he is of the last utility, but who certainly, if he saw his way to money, would let his district or neighbourhood die without a pang. At a later stage in the distress even he gets exhausted, for he dare not wait too long, lest popular fury break all bounds; and then ensues a scene that this writer, thank God, has never seen, though he has seen photographs of its victims, such as breaks the hearts even of the officials. The grain disappears, the fruit disappears, half the Bengal forest being eatable, the cattle are slain—not to eat, unless the district is Mussulman but to sell the hides and stop the cattle's consumption of food—the seed-grain is eaten up, the pigeons—the only edible bird—dis- appear, and the very water as it gets lower in the wells and streams becomes undrinkable, till the calm native, who, Hindoo or Mussulman alike, scorns death with a scorn Calvinist or Catholic cannot rival, sits quietly down to die. Whole villages perish in a week, whole districts in a month ; the jungle retakes possession of the arable land with a speed in which, if we were to describe it, none but Dr. Brandis, or perhaps Sir W. Hooker, would believe, and a third of the country may be reduced to a state of nature. It is of no use to remit taxation, or send money, or make promises,—the people are past all that. To the last they have usually some silver, but money has lost its power, they are quite unable to fly, usn'ally putting off that effort till it is too late, and no short flight will help them to more food. Then, as the season gets better and hope arises, comes the in- variable successor of famine,—the terrible Indian typhoid, or malaria fever, or whatever it is which mows them down, till there is no longer an attempt to burn the dead.
The Government rout help—that is, must bring food to these myriads of villages in the jungle—and how is it to do it ? The Viceroy can buy, or if necessary, sequestrate at a price, all the surplus grain in the eastern counties, in Assam, in Arracan, in Madras ; but still he has to get it up to Calcutta, and from Calcutta to the threatened territories, often from four to &re hundred miles off. There are two railways, but the stations may be hundreds of miles from the threatened points, and when thirty millions of people are to be fed, what can two railways do ? The rivers, which run, with- out rhetoric, everywhere, can do more ; but they are low from the drought, and are, except the great arteries, im- passable to steamers, while to pole huge loads of grain in native boats up stream is a work requiring months, and attended with endless loss and worry. The only course will be to bring grain, if procurable, downwards, as well as upwards, to a few fixed centres, and near them open great public works, as the Madras Government does in Bellary. Of course, very little work will be done, but the men can be lodged in camps, buy- ing with their wages the necessary food in the Government bazaar, so that no question of caste need arise, and will in some way feed, or possibly bring their wives and child- ren. How on earth the work is to be done over so vast a region we can hardly imagine, but an able Chief, Colonel Meade, has already been told off for the duty ; engineers, road overseers, and the police are ubiquitous, and know the country, and we believe—though on Madras, not Bengal authority— that in presence of this one calamity, native officials will work like- Europeans, or harder. Unless rain falls, however, excessive speed will have to be enforced in the collection of grain, and in getting it through the country, and excessive speed means excessive expenditure. It will not do to empty the muhajuns' stores by decree without ample compensa- tion, for they would cease to hoard, and we doubt, if the calamity is to be great, whether we shall not lose five millions of people, and double that sum in grants and remissions of revenue. Most fortunately, the "balances," which Colonel Nassau Lees derides as needless taxation, are pretty full, but it will be well if we get out of the matter without a loan. Saving Orissa is child's-play to saving Bengal, even if we have not Oude, part of the North-West, and the Punjab on our hands. Sbme of our readers must remember how the Irish famine went on, even when the Treasury opened its bottomless purse to relieve it, and here we have six Irelands, full of men who will eat only two kinds of food,—rice, and bread made and cooked either by Brahmins or men of their own caste.
There are very few men knowing the task who would under- take it for the Viceroyalty of India, and it forces on us the doubt whether, after all, we are so much wiser than the Pharaohs. The moment the calamity is over, a rush will be made on the India House for more irrigation works—which, except once a century, will be as useful as sea-water in. Holland—that is, for more guarantees, more jobbing in London, and more waste of resources and ability in India. Fortu- nately the India Office has had a severe lesson or two on that subject, and will, perhaps, even fight Parliament ; but we are not so sure that it will consider Joseph's alternative, and store grain in every district. The granaries need be filled but once for three years, and then sold down one-third every year to re-
ceive the fresh supply, to make famine very nearly impossible; while the expense would be limited to the original outlay, which would be recouped by the price taken in bad years. Both grain• and rice keep well for that time, there would be a minimum of interference with the muhajans, while prices would be kept
below a famine level. The Government of India used to do this with salt, and stands ready to do it still, if any over- powerful Ring—as happened twice under our eyes—got hold of the whole of that necessary of life. Notice was quietly given that if the rise in price went on, every Government post office would be a salt shop, and the combination was broken, after two days of the greatest danger Calcutta had ever encountered. The policy we recommend is merely a slight extension of that which was successful then, and will, at all events, enable the India Office to abstain from wasting fifty millions in the effort to spread malaria through the beat- watered province in the world.
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