The accounts from India are most unfavourable. The crops of
last year in the North were insufficient for want of rain, and this year there is danger of actual famine. The price of grain in the Punjab has risen from an average of 32 lb. for the rupee to 20 lb. for the same price, which is- equivalent to a rise in the English loaf from 6d. to 10d., and if, as is expected, the drought continues, the rise will be much greater. Bread riots are already frequent, and the Govern- ment is anxiously preparing against a demand for relief works. to keep the poorest class alive. It must be remembered that in every division of India, while the great body of the respectable peasantry can face one year of agricultural failure, there is an immense residuum below them who live from hand to mouth, and in a year of doubled prices cannot obtain sufficient food. Happily the railways now enable Govern- ment to bring up grain from the southern provinces, and famine rarely spreads over the whole continent, but the loss of revenue will be very great, and the suffering of an, estimable class extreme. The weight of a scarcity in India does not fall on paupers, but on those who are struggling, and who feel as much horror of relief works, with their un- avoidable incidents of crowding and exposure, as our own artisans do of life in the workhouses. Fortunately natives- of India do not attribute famine either to the State or the rich, but to the will of Providence, which, again, they think has the right to punish.
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