TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE INDIAN FAMINE itCALAMITY has fallen upon our Indian possessions which seems in its awful depth and magnitude to frighten English philanthropy out of its accustomed energy. The intelligence received by the last mail leaves no doubt that throughout the greater part of Hindostan Proper—that is, over a region inhabited by twenty-five millions of human beings—food for man has failed. The long drought, which commencing in October' 1859, has lasted, almost unbroken, for seventeen months, has rendered tillage impossible or unavailing. The slight rains reported by the last mail have not sufficed to moisten the earth, and from March to mid-June continuous rain is not to be expected. For five months there can be no serious relief from within the provinces themselves, and the misery which will be accumu- lated within that period is something human hearts shrink from believing. Already the lowest class are without food, literally deprived of the ordinary means of sustaining life, hunting the jungles for berries or subsisting upon the fish drawn from the drying creeks of the great rivers. And this lowest class of all exceeds the entire people of Ireland in numbers, as it surpasses the poorest Irish cottiers in the depth of its poverty and helplessness. Suicide, always pre- valent in particular districts, is becoming the most habitual of crimes. Children are left to perish, or sold for a few pence to the nobles, brothel-keepers, and wandering tribes, who alone in Upper India purchase slaves. One European has seventy of these foundlings under his charge. The mission- aries exert themselves to save all children finally deserted, but they are scattered and overtasked. Even the pride of the zenana, the last feeling which abandons a Hindoo, has given way, and women never seen except on some great festival are begging along the roads. The remnant of food stored up from the poor harvest of 1858, though not yet consumed, has passed beyond the reach of any but the wealthy, and in another month the famine must reach the class above the lowest, and the number exposed to its ravages rise at once to nearly fifteen millions. It is not, be it observed, a scarcity with which the wretched people have to contend, or even a dearth which can be met by importation. The food is gone, and with it the possibility of importing more. There is no money left. For forty years the Government of the North-West has slowly pulverized the great properties it found. The Euro- pean settlers north of the Kuramnassa may be counted by tens, for it is only amidst the boundless fertility of Bengal that the European can stand up against the laws and the system by which he is " encouraged. ' Over whole districts there is nothing left but the officials and the peasantry, both powerless in the face of a calamity so vast. The middle class, limited in number and confined to the cities, supports its own relatives, and will do no more. It is greatly to be feared that the peasantry will use up their last resource, and that the terrible thinning of the trees noticed for the last twenty years will be carried to actual denudation, thus ensuring the recurrence of drought in ever diminishing cycles. There is as little hope that India itself can meet or even greatly alleviate the evil. The Europeans are straining every nerve, and Calcutta and Bombay have already sent 16,000/. to the afflicted territory, but they are few, and though charitable to lavishness' cannot maintain a nation. The natives who could do it will contribute simply nothing. A few great men will subscribe, as they would subscribe to anything if asked by an official, but the proprietors of Ben- gal, as rich as the country gentlemen of England, will not collect a hundred pounds. They never do. There is not an hospital in Bengal which is not supported by Europeans ex- clusively, or by the half-dozen natives so highly placed as to attract the personal attention of the officials. They support their own relatives, but whether from too great a reliance on Government, or, as we believe, from the contempt for human Buffering ingrained into the Elindoo character, they will see the North-West depopulated with their coffers closed. Go- vernment, usually so powerful, is in this instance apparently baffled. It has not, so far as we can perceive, spared money, but if it gave millions, it would still be partially powerless. It has not the agency to distribute the millions. The few Euro- peans are overtasked by the multitudes immediately around them, and to trust official natives would be simply to throw the money into a sea of peculation. The only real palliative is to circulate such money as is possible by public works— and this is done—and compensate the grain dealers for sales at rates the people can for the hour afford—and this is omitted.
It is, we imagine, this consideration of the hopelessness of effort which has deadened the sympathy of English charity. In any other view, the first refusal to support the Lord Mayor's effort to raise a subscription, `perfunctory as it certainly appears to have been, would be most discreditable to the metropolis. The notion of animosity to the Hindoos is un- worthy refutation. The race which has ground for animosity —the English in India, who for three long years were ex- posed to incessant murder, and taunted by England for the vigour of their self-defence—is subscribing to the limit of its means. The men who are raising funds, distributing food, protecting deserted children, and calling upon England for aid, are, without exception, men who survived the mutinies, in spite of those whom they now feed. There is no such feeling at home, and the partial reluctance to aid springs, we believe, only from the pained resignation produced by evils beyond the range of human exertion. That feeling, how- ever, is unsound. It is true that we cannot preserve the population of the North-West from awful misery, but we can preserve hundreds of thousands from dying of starvation —all the people of the cities, all the people round the mis- sionary stations, all the people who now throng to the calum- niated European settler as their only hope. A quarter of a million sterling, sent out in a continuous stream of remit- tances, beginning instantly, would keep at least that number of persons from the most horrible of deaths. Let the orga- nization of the Relief Fund, which, in distributing half a million was never accused of a mistake, be at once revived. The men who then relieved Europeans will relieve natives as effectually, and the people, if they perish, will at least feel that they perish from no neglect of man. The Indian Go- vernment doubles all subscriptions from private individuals. If the Secretary of State for India would grant the same concession, the sum raised would afford appreciable relief, and the expense would be even then but half the treasure flung away in alms to the wealthy descendants of the hostile tyrant of Mysore.
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