only enough rice in the province to feed the troops and the prisoners in the gaols for a very short time. Then the Government woke up; and its relief operations were conducted with a prodigal expense, which might in great measure have been saved had the true state of things been recognised earlier. A million maunds* of rice were imported with the greatest difficulty and expense owing to the isolated position of the province. Orissa is cut off by hilly country on the west, and was at that time very poorly connected with Bengal by roads. Its harbours, being mere open roadsteads, were almost useless as soon as the south-west monsoon began to blow. The rice imported was used for relief purposes and for sale at cheap prices; but only about a third was required, and the remainder had to be sold at a nominal rate. The cost of the relief was one crore † and forty-five lacs of rupees, and the loss of life one million, or one third of the population of the province. The Orissa irrigation works owed their commencement to this famine. They have not proved a success financially, but have provided Orissa with a cheap insurance against scarcity, whether caused by too much or too little water. The Orissa famine was the first to be enquired into by a Famine Commission, which sat under the presidency of Sir George Campbell.

The famine of 1868-69 in Rajputana, in the North-West Provinces and the Panjab, was caused by the premature stoppage of the rains in August and September 1868. On this occasion the Government for the first time declared that life must be saved at any cost, and that every district officer would be held personally responsible for any death occurring from starvation which could have been avoided by any exertion either on his part or on that of his subordinates. The relief-works were carried out by contract. This system was the cause of great distress, as only ablebodied labourers were employed; and those most in need of relief were either refused admission or were unable to earn subsistence at the rates paid, though the contractors received an allowance intended to compensate them for

* A'maund' = 822 lb. English. A million maunds = about 36,735 tons. † A crore 100 lacs 10,000,000 rupees. 'For many years a crore of rupees was almost the exact equivalent of a million sterling. It had once been a good deal more, and has now been for some years a good deal less' (Hobson-Jobson, 1886),

employing inefficient labourers. The total mortality of this famine was 1,200,000, and its cost to the Government forty-five lacs of rupees (450,0007.).

The famine of 1873-74 occurred in Behar, a province not usually liable to famine, except on its northern frontier. Some of its districts, however, have a very dense population; and therefore, when dearth does occur, it is a more serious calamity than elsewhere. Rain did not fall till late in July 1873, and then only scantily; and it ceased prematurely in September. The autumn crop was ruined, and the ground was too hard to admit of sowing the spring crop. Sir George Campbell, then Lieutenant-Governor, wished to stop the exportation of rice from Bengal, but he was overruled by Lord Northbrook, the Viceroy. Calcutta consequently presented the curious spectacle of a port having a large export and import trade in rice going on at the same time.

There were then no facilities for railway transport into Behar north of the Ganges. Government therefore determined not to trust to private trade, but to import 450,000 tons of rice by its own agency. The transport of this grain into the distressed districts had to be provided for; and contracts were made at lavish rates for its carriage by bullock-cart. During the Behar famine, relief was for the first time fully organised, and the whole country was mapped out into circles of from fifty to a hundred villages, and into smaller charges. All this machinery had to be improvised, as Bengal, being a 'permanently settled' country, did not possess the subordinate revenue establishment, which is generally put in charge of relief operations in other provinces. Full wages (the money value of 1 lb. of grain) were given to all able-bodied labourers on reliefworks under professional engineers, but only subsistence rates to those employed on the smaller or village works. It was computed that 750,000 labourers were employed on relief-works for nine months, and that 450,000 persons received gratuitous relief daily for six months. Of the 450,000 tons imported, 100,000 tons of rice had eventually to be sold at a loss. The Behar famine cost the Indian Government six and a half millions sterling. This enormous expenditure had at least this result, that the famine was the first of which it could be said that there was no loss of life by starvation,

The famine of 1876-77 in Southern India was most severely felt in the Bombay and Madras Deccan districts, and Mysore. At the commencement of the famine there was considerable friction between the Bombay and Madras Governments and the Government of India. The provincial governments wished to open 'public' works of permanent utility, but the supreme Government preferred scattered village-works (which mostly took the form of tanks), because they would entail less expenditure, if the famine should turn out to be slight. There was also some misunderstanding about the regulations for relief; and the famine was, on the whole, mismanaged.

The Bombay famine was caused by the scantiness, irregularity and premature cessation of the monsoon of 1876. The autumn crop failed; and the soil, unmoistened by rain, was so hard that the spring crop could not be sown. During the famine 320,000 or 3 per cent. of the population of the most distressed tracts, were employed on relief-works for thirteen months, while 33,000 received gratuitous relief daily for the same period, at a total cost of one crore and fourteen lacs of rupees.*

The Madras famine was caused by the deficient rains of 1875, the failure of both the south-west and north-east monsoons in 1876, and of the south-west monsoon in 1877. The rainfall was not so much deficient as unevenly distributed; eleven districts had a rainfall equal to or even greater than the average, but twenty-one inches of it fell between the 18th and the 21st of May. The Southern India famine happened at a time of reaction against the somewhat profuse expenditure of the Behar famine; and economy was the order of the day. Sir Richard Temple's instructions as famine delegate ran as follows: "The Government would spare no pains to save the population of the distressed districts from starvation, or from an extremity of suffering dangerous to life, but they would not attempt the task of preventing all suffering, and of giving general relief to the poorer classes of the community.' They believed that 'from the history of past famines rules of action might be learnt which would enable them in the future to provide efficient assistance for the suffering people without incurring disastrous expenditure.'

* Equal, in 1877, to 1,046,0007.

The Secretary of State for India agreed that,

' in the interests of the distressed population itself, as well as of the taxpayers generally, the Government of India was bound to adopt precautions similar, as far as the circumstances of India will permit, to those with which in this country it has always been found necessary to protect the administration of public relief.'*

The natural outcome of all this cry for economy was seen in the Temple ration.' The wages on the relief works under civil agency, both in Madras and Bombay, were, on Sir Richard Temple's arrival, fixed at two annas a day, on the supposition that this amount would buy one and a half pounds of grain per diem, and leave a balance of a pice for fuel and condiments. This quantity was considered the minimum sufficient for a labouring man; but Sir Richard Temple proposed in the following terms to reduce it still further:

'There might, indeed, be a question whether life cannot be sustained with one pound of grain per diem, and whether the Government is bound to do more than preserve life. This is a matter of opinion; and I myself think that one pound per diem might be sufficient to sustain life, and that the experiment ought to be tried.'

The experiment was abandoned after three months, and the amount of the grain-ration was materially increased. In justice it should be observed that the ration of one pound of grain and half an anna in cash was intended to apply only to labourers who could not do more than from 50 to 75 per cent. of a full task, and that they received an extra allowance of three pice each for their children. All labourers who could do 75 per cent. of a full task received one pound of grain and one anna in cash, and were employed on works under the supervision of professional engineers. Mr Dutt, in his book on Indian Famines, ignores such points as these, which place Sir Richard Temple's action in a more favourable light.

The Viceroy, Lord Lytton, visited Madras in August 1877, and found 1,131,000 persons in receipt of gratuitous relief. This number was enormously in excess of the

* Secretary of State's despatch, July 10th, 1878, approving the Government of India's action in appointing the Famine Commission.

usual proportion to the number of persons employed on relief works. Gratuitous relief was afterwards placed under more careful supervision; and the control of the famine operations was concentrated in the hands of the Governor, the Duke of Buckingham, with General Sir Michael Kennedy as adviser. Pursuing a similar policy, the Viceroy assumed supreme control of the battle against famine, with Sir Alexander Arbuthnot as his chief of the staff. From Madras Lord Lytton went on to Mysore, where famine operations were in the hands of Mr Sanders as Chief Commissioner, and Colonel Sankey as head of the local public works. Things were not going well; but attention had been diverted from the serious shortcomings by Sir Richard Temple's praise of the economical management of the famine in Mysore. The famine relief-works were managed by professional engineers and employed only able-bodied labourers, whilst numbers of the needy poor, who might advantageously have been employed on relief-works, were receiving casual and unsystematic relief from food-kitchens at a vast expense.

This state of things was altered by the transfer of Colonel Sankey, the appointment of Mr Elliot as Famine Commissioner, and the commencement of the Mysore Railway as a famine relief-work; but the loss of a million lives was the penalty of mismanagement. In the Madras famine it was estimated that 750,000 people, or 5 per cent. of the population of the distressed tracts, were employed on relief-works for twenty-two months; and that the cost amounted to 5,775,000l. sterling. The total mortality of the Southern Indian famine was estimated at 5,250,000 deaths above the average, while the births were 2,000,000 below the usual birth-rate. Its total cost amounted to 8,000,000l. sterling.

The famine of 1896-97 differed from that of 1877 by being felt, more or less, all over India; but it was much less destructive than its predecessor. It extended over an area of 125,000 square miles, and affected 34,000,000 persons. Some 2,220,000 persons were relieved daily for one year at a cost of Rs 32.7 per head.* The direct cost of relief was 727 lacs of rupees (4,846,6667.). The cause of the famine was the abrupt termination of the south-west

The rupee was worth, in 1897, about 1s, 4d,