INDIA.

Globe, Volume III, Issue 247, 25 March 1875, Page 4

INDIA.

{From the Pioneer, January 1.) The famine will take so large a place :in all future histories of the year 1874, that any retrospect of the past twelve months should, of course, be directed chiefly to the strange series of events which the failure of the previous autumn rains in Berar, and the intoxication of public feeling at home on the subject, conspired to bring about. Occurrences, however, may be too vast in their proportions for complete delineation on a small canvas. The beiginning of a new year tempts one to look back over the recollections connected with our now useless almanacks of the concluded year, but time must take us a little further down its stream ' before we can hope to grasp the famine of 1874 and its relief measures in their ' true political proportions. The great engineer of the famine, Sir Eichard Temple, has not yet published his own account of the mighty work he directed; and at present there swims before the imagination a mere inchoate vision of enormous energy, of money flowing over' a precipice in an irresistible volume like the Falls of Niagara, of great officers flashing about the country on the back of a whirlwind, of all other business connected with Government being at a standstill, and of the Bengal Civil Service generally dancing a beneficent tarantula, ■ with unknown terrors menacing them in the background, if they paused for an instant to take breath. Gorged with accumulated cash balances, the famine relief system, a philanthropic monster, informe, inqens, cut lumen ademptum, went roaring about the • land during the spring and summer seeking whom it could overwhelm with i its' favors. But to collect the figures of the famine, to say that at such and such a date there were so many laborers on the relief works, and that the consumption of grain was so much 1 ii day, that the expenditure will amount - to so'many millions sterling—though this may perhaps be possible eventually, it is certainly not so yet. One thing, indeed, we know now .„ with as much unquestioned assurance as we know that the last year's har- ' vest was short —namely, that the measures undertaken to mitigate the misfortune proved to be enormously out of proportion to the magnitude of the evil. The famine collapsed many months sooner than the Bengal Government expected • vast stores of rice were left upon their hands, although it was commonly supposed that the exertions of the whole relief staff were turned towards their dissipation during the latter months of the dearth. We also know that a large number of observers contended from the very beginning that no evidence of probable Buffering had ever been brought forward which justified measures of preparation on the scale on which they were undertaken. Of course, however, it would be unreasonable to condemn the policy of the Government of India too unreservedly on this account. The moderate view of the famine was certainly a conjecture formed by old residents of India on considerable experience; but the policy of the Government of India is supposed to have been a line of action undertaken on statistical and other reports relating to the actual state of facts. How far these were simply wrong, in which ease local officers were to blame, or how far the Government of India, in obedience to the impulse received from Home, rushed forward in advance of all genuine estimates, when taking its measures of precaution, it is difficult as yet to say. Gradually, at any rate, the whole administration is recovering from the singular excitement of the time, and many indications show that the spasmodic efforts of the past year will not be accepted as precedents for the treatment of famine another time. But the bad effect of much that was done will long be felt. Private traders, for inntance,haveserious grounds of complaint ngainst the Government. It was declared at first that the Government would only sell grain at a certain rate —only when its price fell to ten seers the rupee. Latterly, however, when the absurd superabundance of the Government stores became manifest, the rice was sold off at a far lower rate, thus upsetting the calculations] of private traders, and no doubt involving them in seriou3 loss. In this way, while Government might, by judicious management, have taught private trade to do the greater part of famine relief work in emergencies, it has in reality paralysed its action for the \ future by betraying its interests. To criticise the famine, however, would be a task as foreign to our present purpose as to record it in detail. For the present; no comprehensive review of the , past twelve months can do more than bow to the famine as one of the most sistounding phenomena, taken altogether, of modern times, and pass by on the other side. Nowhere but in Bengal did the famine relief mania obtain dangerous proportions. Sir William Muir, in

the north-west, had indeed a slight attack of the complaint, which his brother-lieutenants in Bengal suffered from so seriously. He held a Famine Belief meeting at Allahabad, at which he reproved the wickedness of people who did not believe in the reputed intensity of the famine with much paternal severity. He sent down a Special Commission to examine that part of his dominion adjacent to the famine districts of Bengal and suffering from the same failure of crops. He carried out a number of relief measures recommended by the Commission ; and, perhaps, the north-west famine might have attained serious proportions if it had been nursed. But Sir John Strachey taking over the Government of the north-west in April, went almost immediately to examine the so-called famine districts for himself, found that the whole theory of famine, as far as they were concerned, was a delusion, and put a stop to all exceptional measures of relief. In Oude, a quiet little provincial famine was, meanwhile, successfully administered by the local government. Its exact magnitude and intensity are of course subjects of discussion to this day ; but, at all events, all bad consequences were averted at a comparatively trifling cost, and certainly the Oude Grovernment, even if it may be open to criticisms of detail, has no reason to look back with dissatisfaction on the history of the year so far as its own share in the principal event of the time is concerned. The decision of the Viceroy not to sanction the usual migration to Simla in 1874 was decided in Council on the 15th January, and in accordance with that resolution his Excellency haß passed the greater part of the year at Calcutta. No doubt the abandonment of the usual trip, though, as a practical measure, it may have proved less valuable than for its dekne he waste effect, has had a good influence in showing the most intelligent of the native classes that the Government is less selfish than an Oriental imagination would naturally paint it. The figures of the current budget were announced at the latter end of April, when the public was officially assured that there would be no extra taxation required to meet the expenditure of the famine. The explanation of the mystery was given in two words—cash balances. The previous policy of maintaining these at an extravagantly high level, against which many arguments have been advanced in these columns, does not seem to us to have been justified by the fact that swollen hoards enabled the Government to perform an act of unparalled extravagance in expenditure, without calling on the people to bear any immediate burden in finding the funds to meet it.