by excessive tariffs. Our colonics should be shown that when they thus: compel the ships which fetch their products to return empty they simply burden the producers with double freight, which comes out of their profits; and that trade follows where nations exchange goods, and dimi-nishes where one party requires payment in gold, involving a heavy loss: in exchange: If Canada could be persuaded so to modify her tariffs as to encourage the import of those goods with which we can best supply her, she might almost monopolize the English grain trade, receiving in return not only cheap manufactures and implements of agriculture, but a splendid revenue which she now sacrifices for the sake of protecting a few manufacturing interests, and of enabling scheming tradesmen to wax rich at the expense of the whole community. If, however, she persists in her present policy, other corn-growing countries will doubtless undersell her.

The vast fertile country handed over by the Hudson's Bay Company may secure to Canada a magnificent future; and instead of being, as at present, comparatively poor and sparsely populated, she may become one of the wealthiest and happiest countries on the face of the earth. In addition to her timber and fisheries, she now possesses a fertile belt, probably unequalled for wheat-growing in any part of the world, her only partner being the Hudson's Bay Company, who by the terms of transfer retain one-twentieth part of the land.

It

Even in this partnership she is fortunate, since the influence of a Company deeply interested in the success of the land may be used to promote immigration in many ways not open to the Government. is a Company with a noble history, having ruled for more than two centuries a country very nearly equal in extent to the whole of Europe, without having had in its service a single soldier, or having engaged in a single Indian war. Though the Europeans in its employ at no time exceeded a few hundreds in number, yet by its just dealing the wild Indians were made its friends, and the English name is now everywhere respected and beloved. It will be well, both for the material prosperity of the Dominion and for the honour of its name, if, acting with the same good faith, it maintains this happy state of things. Meantime, it is fortunate in its connection with a Company which has such credit with the Indians, and now forms an invaluable link of communication. This Company may, perhaps, in the future, render no less service as an intermedium between emigrants, now so often deceived by American agents, and the fertile land which is waiting to give our struggling surplus population a home of plenty.

FRANCIS PEEK,

THE TRUTH ABOUT THE INDIAN FAMINE

OF 1877-78.

N the CONTEMPORARY REVIEW for December, 1879, I published a brief survey of Lord Lytton's Indian Administration, under the title of "India under Lord Lytton." Amongst other matters, I gave a brief account of the terrible famine which fell upon the North-West Provinces during the cold weather months of 1877-78. The appalling mortality which marked this famine I attributed to two causes. Firstly, the rapacity of the Indian Government in insisting upon an immediate collection of the Land Revenue during a season of unparalleled distress and destitution; and, secondly, its inhuman niggardliness in providing labour and food for a starving populace. Both charges, it appeared to me, were amply substantiated by the official testimony which I quoted in their support. Their truth has, however, been denied by Mr. C. A. Elliott in a letter which appeared in The Times on the 25th December. Mr. Elliott has every right to speak with authority on the subject. He is an Indian civilian of great ability; he was, for many years, Secretary to the Government of the North-West Provinces; and it is not improbable that when Sir George Couper vacates his present post, Mr. Elliott will succeed him as Lieutenant-Governor of the North-West Provinces. A weight, therefore, attaches to whatever he says on this subject, to which words of mine can assert no pretension, and in his letter he claims to "have disproved every charge brought by Colonel Osborn against the Government of India in respect of the drought of 1877 in the North-West Provinces." I wish, in all sincerity, that he had. There is no satisfaction to be ob tained from the belief that a million of Her Majesty's subjects perished of hunger, owing to the heedless cruelty and neglect of Lord Lytton, Sir John Strachey, and Sir George Couper. But, on the other hand, if they were thus done to death, it is imperative that the facts should be made known to the nation; and I am bound to say that, having read

Mr. Elliott's letter with the attention due to the ability and special knowledge of the author, it seems to me to leave all my statements virtually untouched. My former account of the famine was necessarily brief and compendious, because I had, in a small compass, so much else on which, also, I desired to comment. I propose, at present, to tell the story of the famine at length, with larger extracts from official documents than I could employ in my former paper. And here let me state plainly the object I have in writing. My firm conviction is that the government of India under Lord Lytton has been so bad, that it has brought the Empire to the brink of a catastrophe-so close, indeed, that I doubt if a complete and immediate reversal of policy would now suffice to avert it. Believing this to be so, I hold it to be my simple duty to enlighten the nation, so far as I can, regarding the impending peril. But I have no satisfaction in believing that the danger exists. I shall rejoice as heartily as any one else if Mr. Elliott or any other champion of officialism will demonstrate that my fears are baseless, and that what I conceive to be facts are merely fictions. It is especially necessary

that I should say this in regard to this North-West Famine. I, as the assailant of the Administration, write from the outside; Mr. Elliott, as its champion and defender, writes from within. He has access to documents and reports of all kinds which are as sealed books to me; and he may, in consequence, convict me, here and there, of errors of statement arising from the imperfection of my knowledge. But my desire is, not to establish my own accuracy at every point, but so to arouse public attention that the famine may be made a matter of Parliamentary inquiry with a view to eliciting the entire truth.

First, then, let me state in a precise form what is the point at issue between me and the Government of India, as represented by its advocate, Mr. Elliott. I am, luckily, able to state this issue in a manner to which Mr. Elliott can take no exception. His letter to The Times was immediately followed by one from Mr. Caird, a distinguished member of the Commission appointed by the Indian Government to inquire into the nature and causes of Indian famines. The famine in the North-West Provinces would, of course, be included in this inquiry; and he summarises the intensity of that famine in the following terms:

"It has been estimated, on authority which Mr. Elliott will not question, that 3,420,000 tons of food grain had been lost to the Provinces by the drought. This is equivalent to the food of 21 millions of the population. If all the money expended by the Government in relief had been laid out in the purchase of food, it would not have kept alive more than one in each 150 of that vast multitude; 1,250,000 died of famine."

Now, my contention is that this appalling mortality is very largely due to the heedless cruelty and niggardliness which marked the action of the Indian authorities in dealing with this Famine. Mr. Elliott denies this in toto. He declares that in nothing has Lord Lytton been so conspicuously successful as "in his treatment of the difficult problems

connected with the management and relief of famine "-this famine among others, we must suppose from the gist of his letter, which, he says, has disproved every statement made by me on the subject. It is impossible not to see that Mr. Elliott's assertions suggest a very serious apprehension. We cannot always provide India with Governors-General eminently successful in handling the difficult problems connected with the management of famines. If an adept in the art of this management allows a million and a quarter of human beings to perish from want of food, it is appalling to imagine what the mortality would be under the guidance of a bungler. Luckily, there is no just cause for this apprehension. These people perished because the Government of India decreed that they should die. The Government was weary of spending its revenues on the profitless task of keeping its own subjects alive. There was nothing spirited or dazzling in a tame proceeding of that kind. It burned to witch the world with deeds of noble statesmanship in Afghanistan. It had already been pestered with a Madras famine, and a famine in Bombay, and a third famine was a thing beyond all official endurance, either at Simla or elsewhere. So Sir George

Couper was made to understand that there was to be no famine in the North-West Provinces, at least in official records intended for the public eye, whatever there might be in reality. There are under British rule two Indias existing side by side, which bear but the faintest resemblance to each other. There is India as it is, filled with poverty and misery, mined with disaffection, and which may, at any moment, explode beneath our feet as it did in 1857; and there is an India as it exists in official documents, in the speeches of Secretaries of State, and in the letters of The Times Calcutta Correspondent. This India is, indeed, a delightful place, full of sweetness and light, and of loyal emotions for the Empress and Lord Lytton. India as it is often proves unmanageable, but in the "official" India, the Government finds no difficulty in abolishing famine when it is inconvenient that famine should exist. The "official India" and the "real India" tend continually to become increasingly dissimilar; for it is the invariable characteristic of a Bureaucracy, that the more grievously it fails in the actual conduct of administration, the more rose-coloured become its reports of the situation. As no Administration, since that of Lord Auckland, has failed so hopelessly, so completely, and with such unbroken uniformity as the Administration of Lord Lytton, so, also, there has been none in which the "official India" has been so entirely a figment of imagination. Lord Lytton's eminent success in the management of famines has been precisely on a par with his eminent success in the management of Afghanistan.

The charges which I bring against the Government of India and Sir George Couper conjointly, are briefly these: Firstly, that during a season of almost unparalleled distress, they aggravated the misery and mortality of the people by the exaction of the Land Revenue. Secondly, that,

knowing the frightful lack of food which prevailed in parts of the NorthWest Provinces, they failed to make adequate provision for the hungry and the needy. Thirdly, that even on such scanty relief works as were opened, the wage was fixed so low that the people either abandoned them in despair, and returned to their villages to die, or if they remained, were starved to death only a little less rapidly. In attempting to substantiate these charges I shall also have occasion to pass in review Mr. Elliott's statements, and shall point out what appears to me to be inaccurate in them. My narrative will, as far as possible, be taken direct from official documents.

On the 4th of October, 1877, the Government of the North-West Provinces and Oudh reported as follows to the Government of India" on the condition and agricultural prospects" of the Provinces under its administration :

"Since the latter date (11th September) there has been no rain anywhere, and the whole of the Provinces have been devastated by a hot dry wind. . . . . The consequences of this disastrous failure of the usual rains are most deplorable for man and beast. The full effect cannot yet be determined, but it is now certain that in the Meerut, Agra, Rohilkhand, Sitapur, and Lucknow Divisions, and in parts of the Allahabad, Jhansi, Rae Bareli, and Fyzabad Divisions, the unirrigated crops are entirely destroyed. In Benares, and greater part of Allahabad and Fyzabad, it was hoped, after the rain of the 10th and 11th, that from five to eight annas (ie., a third to a half) would be saved; but these hopes it is now known cannot be realised. The hot wind that has raged since the 11th has irretrievably damaged much that survived, and threatens to destroy all. A speedy fall of rain would yet save some; and in part of the Jhansi Division there is also a little which is not yet utterly ruined. . . . . The general result is, as stated above, that, except in parts of Benares, Fyzabad, and Allahabad, the out-turn of the unirrigated kharif (i.e. cold-weather crops) will be nil. Unfortunately, the area of irrigated kharif is very small. . . . . Food grains and fodder are generally grown on lands that depend on the periodical rainfall, and, at the sowing season, the cultivators could not foresee the terrible drought that was to prevail, and did not avail themselves of canal-water for this class of crop. . . . . One of the most deplorable consequences of the failure of the kharif is the inevitable great mortality among cattle for want of fodder, and that, too, at a time when the need for well irrigation is most pressing. . . . . Loss of cattle from starvation has been reported, and there is no means of providing sustenance for them. . . . . It has been, with some certainty, ascertained that what grain there is in the Provinces is chiefly in the hands of dealers, and that the stocks held by cultivators and others are low. . . . Prices are now in the worst places more than double what they were three months ago. . . They verge on famine rates."

The foregoing extracts show, beyond the reach of question, that Sir George foresaw clearly the terrible calamity that had fallen upon the Provinces under his administration. "The whole of the Provinces had been devastated by a hot dry wind." "The unirrigated crops had been entirely destroyed." The irrigated land did not produce, except in insignificant quantities, either food for man or fodder for cattle. The cattle were already reported as dying of hunger, and it was impossible to devise means for keeping them alive. The reserves of food in the possession of the cultivators were low; and any demands, therefore,