SOME DOCUMENTS ON THE FAMINE.
AVE d o n
attacks, ot often c and due fwe nhde nourselves th ose who against attack kexternal eharcharge least of a us with ultra-care for humanity, or as Mr. Auckland Colvin put it more pungently, with " true philanthropic rage." But we cannot always resist the pleasure of showing our adver- saries that they are talking nonsense, that the gravest and most moderate official statements are absolutely identical with those which, in a form no doubt more or less intended to awaken the attention of uninterested men, we have persistently put forward, and that the controversy between us and our opponents is absolutely reduced to an easily settled question of literary form. The statements about the Famine to which ex- ception has been taken, were made in nearly all the London journals, and are reducible mainly to these, four :—That time was wasted at the beginning in collecting transport, the one point upon which it was almost certain the Administration would break down, and was wasted mainly by the Viceroy, who rejected the demand of the Bengal Government for £500,000 to organise arrangements early. This mistake has been admitted by the Viceroy himself, and the admission quoted by Lord Salisbury in Parliament, and all discussion therefore upon that subject may end, more especially as Lord Northbrook, whether on Sir R. Temple's advice or not makes no difference, perceived his error, and by working as if he were War Secretary, and spending as if he were in a campaign, actually caught up the lost time, and at a price which we reckon roughly at a million of money, dropped like guano into the threatened
districts, secured the safety of the Famine territory. Secondly, we averred that the official calculation of the proportion of the people who would be thrown on Lord Northbrook's hands was obviously wrong, that his one-tenth was calculated from records made before we knew the numbers of Bengal, that two-tenths would prove much nearer the mark, and that the proportion of helpless pauperism 'right even come up to three-tenths. It has exactly realised our figures, as the official statement quoted below will show, and had Lord Northbrook's calculation of the Famine area given in his deepatch of Decem- ber 20, and from that time relied upon by ourselves, to the ex- clusion of every other calculation, proved accurate, the number dependent upon Government for their lives would have ex- ceeded ten millions, and the "gap " which may still occur, though we believe it will be prevented by the astonishing wheat crop of the Punjab, and the price at which it has been selling, would have occurred before now. And finally, we have protested against the absurdity of telegraphing home a list of Famine deaths, which was simply impossible, if a famine had occurred at all ; and to-day we publish a letter, which we at least believe implicitly, stating those deaths, up to May 27, at two thousand. Ten thousand deaths would, amid such vast numbers, have meant success, and the attempt to efface them altogether has had no result, except to induce the cynical, the slanderous, and the ignorant to believe that officials who are almost dying of exertion and responsibility have manu- factured a famine to secure promotion. For the last state- ment we have only the authority of our own Correspondent, a man who is in the best position to secure information, and who has from the first been strongly on the official side ; but for the remainder, we have this letter from Mr. Charles Bernard, one of the most quietly considerate of Civilians, and Secretary to the Government of Bengal. It was read to the Famine Relief Committee at the Mansion House on Tuesday by Lord Lawrence, whose nephew the writer is. The date is "22nd May, Monghyr." We have made no alteration in the letter, except to translate some Indian numbers and weights and measures, and italicise some statements of importance :—
" The general result of the last month—namely, from the 15th of April to the 20th of May—has been that in all Behar south of the Ganges the distress has been, and bids fair to remain, very much less than we had feared ; so much so that during the last few weeks we have been able to reduce the allotments of Government grain to Gya, Shahabad, and Monghyr, and even to transfer to Tirhoot some of the grain stored to meet possible distress in Patna. The Sonthal Pergunnahs toe, where deep distress was predicted, are holding out very well, and very few people there have come upon charitable relief. Sir George Campbell, however, had all along held that the Sonthal Pergunnahs would manage for themselves pretty well. In the Rajehaye division, too, the distress has hitherto, except, perhaps, in Rungpore, been less than we expected; but then in Dinagepore, the worst and poorest district, over a hundred thousand of people have for two or three months past been kept in good case by our relief works. I am afraid that ends the cata- logue of good districts. Tirhoot is, on the whole, in a worse condition than we expected. I do not mean that people are dying, because they are not, but the proportion of people who are on the hands of Govern- ment, and who would certainly be dead or dying by now if Government had not stepped in, is very much larger than most people expected, and is up to the figure estimated by Sir Richard Temple. In two sub- divisions 850,000 people, or more than half the population, are living on Government wages or Government rice ; and what is more, really general distress has appeared in the head-quarters subdivision of Tir- hoot, where we did not expect it. In Chumparun, or, at any rate, in North Chnmparun, matters are as bad as in Tirhoot, and the famine is only just stayed by all the exertions and expenditure a very strong staff of officers manage. Then during the last month matters have turned out to be very bad in 3Iaunbhoom, a district of Chota Nagpere, which suffered considerably in 1866. Happily, the afflicted tracts of Maunbhoom are close to the railway, and have been sufficiently suc- coured, but we have had just at the end of the season, to send a good deal of grain there, and cholera has broken out badly among the cart- men. Our immunity from cholera on the works and on the grain routes in North Behar and in Dinagepore has been most providential. During the last few days prices have gone up to six pounds per shilling, distress has broken out, and there have been disturbances and grain riots in Jalpigoree, an out-of-the-way district which we thought was wholly and entirely safe. It had enjoyed a ten-anna rice crop—ten- sixteenths of a full crop—and had been exporting largely to other dis- tricts. We have ordered up 50,000 =sands of grain from the stores in the district next door, and the grain has already started. Some more will be sent up the Teesta during the rains. Among the poorer classes of the Bnrdwan division, especially in- the fever-stricken tracts, there is a good deal of distress, and shout 60,000 people are being fed or relieved there. Altogether the result now, in the middle of May, is that the famine is not so general over the whole of Behar as we feared it might be. For this escape we have to thank Providence, for sending us a good summer harvest, and we are also indebted to the East Indian Railway for bringing down such an immense quantity of grain from the North-West and Punjab to the Behar grain-dealers. In North Behar matters are worse than we ex- pected, partly because there was little or no summer harvest, except in Saran, and partly because private trade has done little or nothing there. Tho Rajshayo division has kept up somewhat better than we expected, because the stocks were larger and the people richer than we had estimated. In Burdw an, Chota Nagporo, and Julpigoree distress has appeared of a graver and more general type than we expected. The position now is that we have about 1,400,000 people on Government relief works, 250,000 on charitable relief, and 850,000 living on Government grain, which is either advanced to them as a loan, or sold to them at 12 to 14 pounds per chilling,—making 2,500,000 people in all. This number is probably below the truth at the time I am writing, and it does not incluIe the people who are on relief works executed by Zemindars with Government loans, or people who are living on grain bought with Government loans. The people employed in transporting our grain are, with their families, living on Government pay. Some time back the number of carts in Government employ, besides pack- bullocks, was 10,250. The number of people directly on the hands of Government will not increase, for most of the relief labourers will, I hope, go off to work in the fields; but the sales and advances of Government grain will largely increase. We expect to expend one way or another at least 35,000 tons of Government grain this month (May). Rain has fallen in fair quantity in the Rajshayo Division, but as yet we have had very little rain in Behar. The natives about hero are anxiously watching for rain, and if we get a good down-pour in the first fortnight of June prices will go down 10 or 15 per cent., or perhaps more, at once."
This, be it remembered, is the official view. Our own Corre- spondent, who is on the spot, is slightly more gloomy ; and a letter of May 27, evidently addressed by Sir R. Temple him- self or Mr. Charles Bernard to the Correspondent of the Daily News, is less sanguine as to the future :—
" The out-look for the future stands thus :—The full number of people for whom Sir R. Temple provided have not yet come on the hands of Government. He estimated for a possible maximum of 34 millions; as yet only
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millions have come, but the worst month is still before us. The Government grain having been husbanded during April, the stores now in the famine districts are sufficient to support 34 millions down to the middle or end of October. If the September crop is moderately good, the distress ought to ease off from the beginning of October. 29,000 villages have been visited by relief officers, and relief is being given in one form or another to all who require it ; the needy are searched out and relieved, and are not left to die in their homes. If the next crop should unhappily fail, the prospect of the season will be known by the 15th or 30th July. Reserves of steamers and boats have been told off to the several river systems, by which grain can be carried during the rainy season into the most afflicted districts. During the last two days, however (the 25th and 26th May), there has been a most opportune fall of rain; 3 inches in Rungpore, inch in Chumparun, 1 inch in Mudhobunee, more than an inch in South Behar. This rain will very materially alter the prospects of the ryots, and will raise their drooping spirits. There is now left about a month or six weeks of uncertainty. If timely rain fall during the second half of June [as has happened since], the Government arrangements will suffice, and will carry the people on to the next harvest. If there should be another drought during June or July, or if, unhappily, the September rain should again fail [the final danger to which we have often pointed], then the campaign against famine will have again to be resumed. Regarding Northern Bengal and its fate during the coming season, people generally have little apprehension; but for Northern Tirhoot, with its depleted granaries and its enormous population, there must be recurring anxiety until great irrigation works and improved means of communication insure the country against famine."
Every word in all these documents is official, is intended to be most moderate, and is as regards deaths decidedly beneath the truth. The question comes therefore to this. Was it our duty, who foresaw this state of affairs, and believed that it would be worse, believed, that is, that the area struck would be as large as Lord Northbrook thought, and believed also that the Government would shrink from catching up the transport muddle by the only possible means—lavish or even reckless expenditure—to remain silent, or by a reiterated, and if you like, rhetorical statement of those views, to rouse the country to an imperative demand, that these three millions of lives should be saved from death by direct starvation ? Nothing short of that appeal would have sufficed, and but for the accident that the Times had a correspondent in Calcutta, who had lived through the Orissa famine, and caught the profound, or even excessive horror, which comes to men who know what famine inflicts even upon the patient natives of India, that appeal might have failed. Thanks to the Times' telegrams, to the entire London Press, to the Duke of Argyle, whose peremptory action stands revealed in the Blue-book of telegrams, and to Lord Salisbury, rain in ' September, though it will not prevent two months of over-work and danger, will prevent, if it comes, a massacre like that of Orissa,—a massacre which, had it occurred, would have been remembered throughout Bengal, like the massacre of 1770, for a century, and have been attributed by natives, as that was attributed, to a vast regrating of corn to fill the pockets of British invaders.
We have but one document more to quote, and it is not official, but, nevertheless, it is signed. Like the Bishop of Manchester, we from the first resisted the notion of an English subscription, as a mere aid to the Indian Treasury, sure to be insufficient, and yielded only to the representation that it was needful to content the native mind. On Tuesday the Lord Mayor expressed a bare hope that the subscription might reach £200,000, and on Wednesday Mr. Forbes, the corre- spondent of the Daily News, published the following definite statement, for the accuracy of which we of course assume no responsibility :—
" Until now I have sedulously refrained from any reference to the topic of the voluntary subscription which England has been making on behalf of the sufferers in this time of distress. The responsibility was too great to warrant any conscientious man in writing on it from imma- ture impressions, and there was at least the certainty that the subscrip- tion could do no harm. My belief is, that in this somewhat negative expression there is stated the amount of its usefulness. It was early clear that there could be no separate administration of a Charitable Relief Fund outside and apart from the Government machinery. And with its, the only possible, machinery, the Government has done and is doing all that the circumstances appear to admit of. What could be more in the way of Charitable Relief work than tho making of advances to respectable but impoverished ryots, that they need not sell thoir cattle, and need not come upon the relief works? But this work has been wisely undertaken by Government, and would have been under- taken if not a single sixpence had been subscribed. The fact that the funds received by the Central Committee, of which Mr. &hatch is the chairman, are paid into the Indian Treasury, is the most conclusive acknowledgment that the only purpose voluntary subscriptions subsorve is to lessen to some little extent the burden of the famine expenditure on the taxpayers of India. No doubt, when the famine has ceased and when Government withdraws from the field of relief, there will be some scope for the judicious expenditure of charitable funds among the sorely-reduced victims. But I have been assured that the quick elasticity with which the natives of India recover from the effects of calamity of this kind is most wonderful and sur- prising; and then, again, the danger of imposition must be obvious to every one who has any familiarity with the native character. As an expression of sympathy, our home subscription was grateful and well- timed ; and every pound subscribed means a pound the less required to be raised in taxation from the population of British India ; and when this has been said, I venture to think that all that can be said has been said as to its beneficial character."
We do not care a straw for the imputation of heartlessness in opposing subscriptions of twopence-halfpenny, when we were urging the expenditure of millions ; but the Bishop of Man- chester perhaps does, and in justice to him, the Lord Mayor ought either to confirm or explain the definite statement of Mr. Forbes.
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