The Russian famine is assuming vast proportions. A trustworthy gentleman,
residing in Samara, declares in the Nineteenth Century that half the population of that province, 1,250,000 persons, are literally starving to death ; and. M. Levasseur, the eminent French statist, calculates that to
supply the. deficiency in. thirteen provineea,.6,500 ships must be emplOyed, carrying 128,000,000 hectolitres of grain, which will cost £60,000,000. The State has not the money to spend, and if it bad, could not convey the grain over a surface of 1,000,000 square kilometres, and to the 5,400,000 houses in want of food. Moreover, the assertion, at first disbelieved, that official corruption would not be checked even by the horrors of the famine, has been proved to be true. The whole subscrip- tion of St. Petersburg for the benefit of its own poor and those of its environs has been stolen, the 15,000,000 lb: of rye-flour purchased being found to be uneatable, and even in parts poisonous. There is something which might make a Czar despair in such an incident occurring under such, circum- stances. He can only work with the tools he has,—and if they are rotten P Publicity would probably be a cure, but publicity implies popular control.
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