THE INDIAN FAMINE.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XII, Issue 209, 4 September 1877, Page 4

THE INDIAN FAMINE.

There is no change for the better in India. The famine has not abated, and affairs everywhere are becoming critical. The price of grain is advancing, most of the Burmese rice crop hae beea secured for English consumption, aud there is no raiu. The condition of the people on tbe relief works is gradually deteriorating. In eight diatricts where the annual death rate of the winter season is usually not more than 20 per 1000, it rauged from 37.3 to 148 3 in December, and from 62.6 to 118.7 in January. Many of the deaths are due to starvation, or disease engendered by starvation, but theae are debited to "cholera." The best authorities estimate- the total loss of life that will follow from famine at a million, and think that the Madras census of 1881, with its thirty million souls, will show, if uot a retrograde, a stationary population. A fact is cited by the London Times' correspondent which upsets the assertion that periodical famines ani pestilences are necessary to keep down the redundant population of Hindoatan. The remarks on this head, the correspondent holds, would be pertinent to the subject if the , famine had displayed itself in the moat thickly populated districts of the country, but aa a matter of fact, the most thickly populated districts have been able not only to grow food enough for their own necessities, but to export to places where there was a scarcity. Tanjore, for instaoce, with its 540 inhaoitauts to a square mile, has known no tamiue nor distress beyond that incidental to the raining of prices of food from 100 to 200 per cent above the ordinary rates; while Kurnool, Cuddapah, and Bellary, with only 130, 160, and 1.50 inhabitants to a square mile, havo lelt the pressure moat severely. There is no evidence of any value to show that the population in India ia beyond the capacity of the land to support. Every pound of grain consumed in tbe famine tract of the south duriug the present scarcity haa been supplied by India itself; and while an enormous local failure of crops over an area inhabited by 20,000,000 of people has prevailed, she has still beeu able to add largely to her exporis of wheat to Europe. There is nothing iv tha con dition of the famine-stricken district to point to over-populatioD, and when the lamino is over it may be found that the districts are suffering from waut of people to till the soil. — English paper.