THE FAMINE.
IT has come at last, the terrible calamity of which the Press has for four months steadily warned the India House— we do not mean the Secretary of State, but the self- opinionated section of the Council which so often misguides him—and it has found us unprepared. The famine is acknowledged by the Queen, who has, with unfortunate generosity, sent a thousand pounds—a sum which, there- fore, no native millionaire will dare to exceed lest he should insult his Sovereign—by the Viceroy, by the Lieu- tenant-Governor, Sir G. Campbell, and by his adlatus, Sir Richard Temple, and all, consciously or unconsciously, use terms which, to all Anglo-Indians save the two or three in the India House, who must next March save themselves from the wrath of Parliament, will prove absolutely that the Press has exaggerated nothing, has made nothing sensational, but has against its own interest—for the famine interests no one, as witness the elections—done its plain duty, and in doing it has utterly failed. On Wednesday night, while Mr. Fawcett, the solitary candidate of importance who has alluded to the topic, was saying his few words, a meeting was held in Calcutta, at which the Viceroy and the Lieutenant-Governor were both present and both spoke. We need not tell anyone who knows India that the presence of the Viceroy at any great meeting of this kind is the rarest of events—one which at once dis- tinguishes it from any local or provincial effort to form opinion. The Viceroy spoke briefly apparently, but acknow- ledged that a population exceeding that of Great Britain was affected, and that one larger than that of Ireland "must suffer severe and protracted distress," words which, in his mouth, mean that thirty millions of people are in deep distress, and that six millions of people are thrown upon our hands to save or let perish, for that is what severe and protracted distress for food means in Bengal. Sir George Campbell followed with details, unfortunately lost, for even our richest papers cannot afford to publish columns of matter at os. a word, but he read a telegram, received only on Tuesday, from Sir Richard Temple, the Lieutenant-Governor on the spot in Behar. This telegram is given in the Daily _Yews only, a journal hitherto inclined to suspect exaggeration in the entire matter, and is intended to convey either a condensed version or the ipsissima verba of Sir Richard's statement, which again, we need scarcely say, is the most cautious he could frame. We give the telegram as it should have been printed, altering no word :— " Sir George Campbell, the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, in an able speech, explained in detail the gravity of the pre- sent and the future. He read an important telegram of the 3rd inst. from Sir Richard Temple :— " In Tirhoot alone the officials expect to have nearly a million persons on their hands for several months. Of four millions of the population there, ono-third have lost their harvest almost entirely ; another third have lost half. Altogether in the Patna division about a million and a hold° will be on their hands. There aro no markets, and distress prevails everywhere. Hundreds of the non-labouring classes are crowding to the relief works. Certainly without Government help great mortality north of the Ganges would occur, and many tracts on the northern border of Patna will be almost depopulated. Already numbers of the people are limiting themselves to one daily meal. They are anxious, but wonder- fully patient. The worst tracts of country are the least accessible to carriage.
"This telegram created a profound sensation. An influen- tial committee, composed of Europeans and natives, was appointed, and subscriptions announced amounting to £11,000 by native notabilities."
No wonder that the sensation is profound, for Calcutta understands what the short sentences mean—that without State aid, Tirhoot, the richest county in Bengal, the only one in which European gentlemen are as thick as in Hamp- shire, the only one in which manufactures are almost as im- portant as agriculture, would perish utterly ; that if it goes, all Behar, nineteen millions, is certain to go with it; that "a million and a half" of people on the officials' hands in one division alone means, as the Viceroy, we imagine, fully admitted, an Ireland of utter paupers to feed ; that actual "depopula- tion," as the Times' telegram affirms, has already begun ; and that the official effort has already failed to provide aught except food. Carriage has already broken down, as Lord Northbrook in one of his telegrams hinted months ago. As Sir R. Temple —who, remember, is reporting for the moment only from the Division in which he is—says, "the worst tracts," i.e., the most stricken tracts, "are the least accessible to carriage," and that "hundreds of the non-labouring classes "—the gentle, soft people, as incapable of labour as English countesses- " are crowding to the relief works." We leave an entirely in- dependent witness in the Times, a Madras man evidently of great experience, to relate what the meaning of that last remark is, —what he saw with his own eyes :—" But a fate worse than that of the dead was often the portion of the living ; for an order had gone forth to relieve none at the public expense who could be put to the coarse and humiliating labour of
tank-digging. It was a heart-breaking sight to see the tenderly-nurtured daughters of respectable castes and descent subjected to the authority of gross native overseers, against whom they could have but scanty protection or redress."
Throughout the whole of this discussion, in common with the entire Press of London—for the Standard, though it publishes some silly letters denying the famine, has not been led away by them in its leaders—we have struggled, and struggled in vain, to force on the dense optimism and self-sufficiency of the Indian Council three points,—that food should be secured in adequate quantities, regardless of expense ; that there must be no labour- test if the women and children were to be saved ; and that any mode of distribution except by the ancient method—the carriage of the grain in "ghurras " (large jars) on men's heads, or in boxes slung on men's shoulders—was physically impossible. The first of these points may have been secured—for although Lord Northbrook's calculation of one-tenth is obviously wrong, or the non-labouring classes would not be on the works already, and is, indeed, admitted by himself to be wrong, or he would not compare a Great Britain of distress to an Ireland of severe and protracted hunger ; and although our own calcula- tion of two-tenths was, we fear, far within the mark, for we only doubled the proportion of labourers under the new Census, and never dreamt of the non-labouring, soft-handed classes needing relief—still if the people will eat wheat, we can sweep North India for their relief, and up to a certain extent have done so. The trains and the river can scarcely bring down wheat fast enough, and this supply is not, as the Times seems to believe, exported, but is, we do not doubt, in Lord Northbrook's hands. On every other point there has, even with a united Press, in the absence of Parliament, been failure. The Duke of Argyll had not the means of knowing the horrors which a labour test would in- volve, but his advisers had, and it is on their shoulders that the guilt of th4 useless and tyrannical expedient must ulti- mately rest. Who it is who has ordered that women and children in Bengal shall not be fed unless they march hundreds of miles to perform tasks as utterly revolting to them as the carting of manure would be to English ladies, must be the first subject of the Indian Commission of Inquiry into the Famine which we trust will be nominated on the day Parlia- ment meets, with Lord Shaftesbury, or failing him, some strong philanthropist, at its head. Meanwhile, the first duty of the Duke of Argyll is to act on his own judgment, and telegraph peremptory orders prohibiting the test for women and children, and ordering its application to men of the labouring class as carriers instead of diggers. Let them carry food, instead of spooning earth. If the expense is ten millions, be it ten millions, but it will not be the half of what we shall lose in five years if we lose the Patna Division alone ; and we shall lose it, if this cruel and foolish policy is persisted in two months longer. The labour-test would be unreasonable even in the Highlands, where women can work ; but in Bengal, amidst a distress already reaching the non-labouring classes, it is murder. Parliament will never bear talk about money in such a matter, when the Office has just sanctioned all that will be saved by the extinction of India Bonds in expenditure on a fleet, and will, once the death-lists pour in, propose some mad expedient such as an English loan, which will end economy in India once and for ever. What is the use of economising if, with a revenue of fifty millions, a crisis is to be met out of the bottomless British Treasury ? The _labour test must be abandoned, and the food transported to the villages on men's shoulders, or Parliament will have to -meet under a cloud such as it has scarcely known,—the slow perishing of one of the finest races under its dominion. We dread to state, or even to think of, our own opinion as to the numbers which within the next three months may disappear from the ranks of Her Majesty's subjects, if the Duke of Argyll does not break free from the men around him, and insist abso- lutely on these two points,--that the labour test shall cease for women and children ; that food shall reach the villages, to be -distributed under the superintendence of the Punchayut, even if there is waste in trusting that ancient jury. He will be told that the Punchayut is dead in Bengal, and that there is no official organisation with access to the villages, and he will be told rubbish. The Punchayut, where it is dead, which is not in Behar, can be revived by a mere order ; and as to the rest, we do actually communicate with every village. Has the Post Office become extinct, or are the village police all dead, or is the armed police useless to get bearers for peace, when it gets them so readily for war, or is the time of famine just the time when money will not multiply all those organi- sations tenfold ? The thing can be done ; and if it is not done, the first duty of Parliament will be once more to inquire -whether Lord Palmerston was not right, and the Indian Coun- cil here a mere screen to hide the bad counsel given to the -responsible Minister.
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