The news of the Famine in Bengal is still most
disheartening. The 'Viceroy sends little information whatever, but it appears from his telegram and other sources that exportation has stopped, and that little grain reaches Calcutta ; that Sir R. Temple has demanded 180,000 tons 'for North Behar alone, that prices are steadily rising everywhere, and that two hundred thousand per- sons are already upon the relief works. It is believed that a loan must be raised, as the famine must cost five millions, and the
public, works five millions more, Sir &Temple, for-example, having ordered eighty miles of tramway in Tirhoot, merely-to. facilitate transport. Sir W. Muir also, the calm and successful Lieutenant-Governor of the• North-West, anticipates suffering in Benares, Goruckpore, Ghazeepore, and Bustee, and has ordered relief in those cities. The meaning of all this is that the area of famine now includes the southern counties of Hindostan Proper;. that the surplus of rice obtainable in the non-stricken districts is exhausted, and the price there has risen 'to a figure at which ex- portation does not pay ; and that the Government will shortly be dependent on wheat . alone, which already chokes the railways. Boats, we notice in the weekly statement of the Bengal Govern- ment, are pronounced too slow for the • necessity. Lord North- brook is already giving way as to the labour-test. -
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