A famine in Bengal, where the soil yields two crops
a year, and it is said that the return of a rice crop is often equal to seventeen times the cost of cultivation, seems almost impossible, but there is one. The drought has destroyed the harvest, and in November the peasantry in Moughyr were eating leaves, and in Bhaugulpore crying for a prohibition on the export of rice, while near Calcutta the people buy the bad rice used for distillation. It is quite pos- sible that many thousands of lives will be lost, for though food can scarcely be unattainable in any part of the Delta it may pos- sibly reach a price which the lowest class of all, the agriculturists who have no land, cannot pay. Fortunately, though there is no poor law or substitute for a poor law in any part of Bengal, the people think it a religious duty to maintain their relatives, and the Government in times of distress always recognizes the droit de travail, and puts the population to make roads.
