Lord Salisbury on Thursday, in moving the second reading of
the India Loan Bill, took occasion to give his opinion on the Madras famine. It was a very gloomy one, though he gave the figures without including the Native States, part of which, we maintain, ought to be included, as starving persons will flow out from thence. He stated, however, that 2,300,000 persons were already under relief, the majority being collected on relief works and in relief camps, where small-pox, if it broke out, would have them at its mercy. He believed that the state- ment telegraphed to London that half a million of people had already died included the extra deaths from cholera, but admitted that the drought rendered the water in the wells more impure than usual—a new and quite incurable evil—and said that it had been found necessary to give twice as much gratuitous relief without labour—as in Bengal. The reason, he thought, was the inactivity of the people, but it may also be their low condition. He denied altogether that the British Govern- ment had changed its policy as to rescuing the people from famine, and stated that the Madras Government had raised its rate of relief, which had been considered on medical authority too low. That is all satisfactory, but Lord Salisbury should ask what the drink- ing-water arrangements are in the relief camps. He does not want an outburst of a new and more malignant type of cholera, which is quite possible.
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