The Unseen World and Other Essays IX. The Famine of 1770 in Bengal
by John Fiske
[30]
[30] The Annals of Rural Bengal. By W. W. Hunter. Vol. I. The
Ethnical Frontier of Lower Bengal, with the Ancient
Principalities of Beerbhoom and Bishenpore. Second Edition. New
York: Leypoldt and Holt. 1868. 8vo., pp. xvi., 475.
No intelligent reader can advance fifty pages in this volume
without becoming aware that he has got hold of a very remarkable
book. Mr. Hunter's style, to begin with, is such as is written
only by men of large calibre and high culture. No words are
wasted. The narrative flows calmly and powerfully along, like a
geometrical demonstration, omitting nothing which is significant,
admitting nothing which is irrelevant, glowing with all the
warmth of rich imagination and sympathetic genius, yet never
allowing any overt manifestation of feeling, ever concealing the
author's personality beneath the unswerving exposition of the
subject-matter. That highest art, which conceals art, Mr. Hunter
appears to have learned well. With him, the curtain is the
picture.
Such a style as this would suffice to make any book interesting,
in spite of the remoteness of the subject. But the "Annals of
Rural Bengal" do not concern us so remotely as one might at first
imagine. The phenomena of the moral and industrial growth or
stagnation of a highly-endowed people must ever possess the
interest of fascination for those who take heed of the maxim that
"history is philosophy teaching by example." National prosperity
depends upon circumstances sufficiently general to make the
experience of one country of great value to another, though
ignorant Bourbon dynasties and Rump Congresses refuse to learn
the lesson. It is of the intimate every-day life of rural Bengal
that Mr. Hunter treats. He does not, like old historians, try our
patience with a bead-roll of names that have earned no just title
to remembrance, or dazzle us with a bountiful display of
"barbaric pearls and gold," or lead us in the gondolas of
Buddhist kings down sacred rivers, amid "a summer fanned with
spice"; but he describes the labours and the sufferings, the
mishaps and the good fortune, of thirty millions of people, who,
however dusky may be their hue, tanned by the tropical suns of
fifty centuries, are nevertheless members of the imperial Aryan
race, descended from the cool highlands eastward of the Caspian,
where, long before the beginning of recorded history, their
ancestors and those of the Anglo-American were indistinguishably
united in the same primitive community.
The narrative portion of the present volume is concerned mainly
with the social and economical disorganization wrought by the
great famine of 1770, and with the attempts of the English
government to remedy the same. The remainder of the book is
occupied with inquiries into the ethnic character of the
population of Bengal, and particularly with an exposition of the
peculiarities of the language, religion, customs, and
institutions of the Santals, or hill-tribes of Beerbhoom. A few
remarks on the first of these topics may not be uninteresting.
Throughout the entire course of recorded European history, from
the remote times of which the Homeric poems preserve the dim
tradition down to the present moment, there has occurred no
calamity at once so sudden and of such appalling magnitude as the
famine which in the spring and summer of 1770 nearly exterminated
the ancient civilization of Bengal. It presents that aspect of
preternatural vastness which characterizes the continent of Asia
and all that concerns it. The Black Death of the fourteenth
century was, perhaps, the most fearful visitation which has ever
afflicted the Western world. But in the concentrated misery which
it occasioned the Bengal famine surpassed it, even as the
Himalayas dwarf by comparison the highest peaks of Switzerland.
It is, moreover, the key to the history of Bengal during the next
forty years; and as such, merits, from an economical point of
view, closer attention than it has hitherto received.
Lower Bengal gathers in three harvests each year; in the spring,
in the early autumn, and in December, the last being the great
rice-crop, the harvest on which the sustenance of the people
depends. Through the year 1769 there was great scarcity, owing to
the partial failure of the crops of 1768, but the spring rains
appeared to promise relief, and in spite of the warning appeals
of provincial officers, the government was slow to take alarm,
and continued rigorously to enforce the land-tax. But in
September the rains suddenly ceased. Throughout the autumn there
ruled a parching drought; and the rice-fields, according to the
description of a native superintendent of Bishenpore, "became
like fields of dried straw." Nevertheless, the government at
Calcutta made--with one lamentable exception, hereafter to be
noticed--no legislative attempt to meet the consequences of this
dangerous condition of things. The administration of local
affairs was still, at that date, intrusted to native officials.
The whole internal regulation was in the hands of the famous
Muhamad Reza Ehan. Hindu or Mussulman assessors pried into every
barn and shrewdly estimated the probable dimensions of the crops
on every field; and the courts, as well as the police, were still
in native hands. "These men," says our author, "knew the country,
its capabilities, its average yield, and its average
requirements, with an accuracy that the most painstaking English
official can seldom hope to attain to. They had a strong interest
in representing things to be worse than they were; for the more
intense the scarcity, the greater the merit in collecting the
land-tax. Every consultation is filled with their apprehensions
and highly-coloured accounts of the public distress; but it does
not appear that the conviction entered the minds of the Council
during the previous winter months, that the question was not so
much one of revenue as of depopulation." In fact, the local
officers had cried "Wolf!" too often. Government was slow to
believe them, and announced that nothing better could be expected
than the adoption of a generous policy toward those landholders
whom the loss of harvest had rendered unable to pay their
land-tax. But very few indulgences were granted, and the tax was
not diminished, but on the contrary was, in the month of April,
1770, increased by ten per cent for the following year. The
character of the Bengali people must also be taken into the
account in explaining this strange action on the part of the
government.
"From the first appearance of Lower Bengal in history, its
inhabitants have been reticent, self-contained, distrustful of
foreign observation, in a degree without parallel among other
equally civilized nations. The cause of this taciturnity will
afterwards be clearly explained; but no one who is acquainted
either with the past experiences or the present condition of the
people can be ignorant of its results. Local officials may write
alarming reports, but their apprehensions seem to be contradicted
by the apparent quiet that prevails. Outward, palpable proofs of
suffering are often wholly wanting; and even when, as in 1770,
such proofs abound, there is generally no lack of evidence on the
other side. The Bengali bears existence with a composure that
neither accident nor chance can ruffle. He becomes silently rich
or uncomplainingly poor. The emotional part of his nature is in
strict subjection, his resentment enduring but unspoken, his
gratitude of the sort that silently descends from generation to
generation. The. passion for privacy reaches its climax in the
domestic relations. An outer apartment, in even the humblest
households, is set apart for strangers and the transaction of
business, but everything behind it is a mystery. The most
intimate friend does not venture to make those commonplace kindly
inquiries about a neighbour's wife or daughter which European
courtesy demands from mere acquaintances. This family privacy is
maintained at any price. During the famine of 1866 it was found
impossible to render public charity available to the female
members of the respectable classes, and many a rural household
starved slowly to death without uttering a complaint or making a
sign.
"All through the stifling summer of 1770 the people went on
dying. The husbandmen sold their cattle; they sold their
implements of agriculture; they devoured their seed-grain; they
sold their sons and daughters, till at length no buyer of
children could be found; they ate the leaves of trees and the
grass of the field; and in June, 1770, the Resident at the Durbar
affirmed that the living were feeding on the dead. Day and night
a torrent of famished and disease-stricken wretches poured into
the great cities. At an early period of the year pestilence had
broken out. In March we find small-pox at Moorshedabad, where it
glided through the vice-regal mutes, and cut off the Prince Syfut
in his palace. The streets were blocked up with promiscuous heaps
of the dying and dead. Interment could not do its work quick
enough; even the dogs and jackals, the public scavengers of the
East, became unable to accomplish their revolting work, and the
multitude of mangled and festering corpses at length threatened
the existence of the citizens..... In 1770, the rainy season
brought relief, and before the end of September the province
reaped an abundant harvest. But the relief came too late to avert
depopulation. Starving and shelterless crowds crawled
despairingly from one deserted village to another in a vain
search for food, or a resting-place in which to hide themselves
from the rain. The epidemics incident to the season were thus
spread over the whole country; and, until the close of the year,
disease continued so prevalent as to form a subject of
communication from the government in Bengal to the Court of
Directors. Millions of famished wretches died in the struggle to
live through the few intervening weeks that separated them from
the harvest, their last gaze being probably fixed on the
densely-covered fields that would ripen only a little too late
for them..... Three months later, another bountiful harvest, the
great rice-crop of the year, was gathered in. Abundance returned
to Bengal as suddenly as famine had swooped down upon it, and in
reading some of the manuscript records of December it is
difficult to realize that the scenes of the preceding ten months
have not been hideous phantasmagoria or a long, troubled dream.
On Christmas eve, the Council in Calcutta wrote home to the Court
of Directors that the scarcity had entirely ceased, and,
incredible as it may seem, that unusual plenty had returned.....
So generous had been the harvest that the government proposed at
once to lay in its military stores for the ensuing year, and
expected to obtain them at a very cheap rate."
Such sudden transitions from the depths of misery to the most
exuberant plenty are by no means rare in the history of Asia,
where the various centres of civilization are, in an economical
sense, so isolated from each other that the welfare of the
population is nearly always absolutely dependent on the
irregular: and apparently capricious bounty of nature. For the
three years following the dreadful misery above described,
harvests of unprecedented abundance were gathered in. Yet how
inadequate they were to repair the fearful damage wrought by six
months of starvation, the history of the next quarter of a
century too plainly reveals. "Plenty had indeed returned," says
our annalist, "but it had returned to a silent and deserted
province." The extent of the depopulation is to our Western
imaginations almost incredible. During those six months of
horror, more than TEN MILLIONS of people had perished! It was as
if the entire population of our three or four largest
States--man, woman, and child--were to be utterly swept away
between now and next August, leaving the region between the
Hudson and Lake Michigan as quiet and deathlike as the buried
streets of Pompeii. Yet the estimate is based upon most accurate
and trustworthy official returns; and Mr. Hunter may well say
that "it represents an aggregate of individual suffering which no
European nation has been called upon to contemplate within
historic times."
This unparalleled calamity struck down impartially the rich and
the poor. The old, aristocratic families of Lower Bengal were
irretrievably ruined. The Rajah of Burdwan, whose possessions
were so vast that, travel as far as he would, he always slept
under a roof of his own and within his own jurisdiction, died in
such indigence that his son had to melt down the family plate and
beg a loan from the government in order to discharge his father's
funeral expenses. And our author gives other similar instances.
The wealthy natives who were appointed to assess and collect the
internal revenue, being unable to raise the sums required by the
government, were in many cases imprisoned, or their estates were
confiscated and re-let in order to discharge the debt.
For fifteen years the depopulation went on increasing. The
children in a community, requiring most nourishment to sustain
their activity, are those who soonest succumb to famine. "Until
1785," says our author, "the old died off without there being any
rising generation to step into their places." From lack of
cultivators, one third of the surface of Bengal fell out of
tillage and became waste land. The landed proprietors began each
"to entice away the tenants of his neighbour, by offering
protection against judicial proceedings, and farms at very low
rents." The disputes and deadly feuds which arose from this
practice were, perhaps, the least fatal of the evil results which
flowed from it. For the competition went on until, the tenants
obtaining their holdings at half-rates, the resident
cultivators--who had once been the wealthiest farmers in the
country--were no longer able to complete on such terms. They
began to sell, lease, or desert their property, migrating to less
afflicted regions, or flying to the hills on the frontier to
adopt a savage life. But, in a climate like that of Northeastern
India, it takes but little time to transform a tract of untilled
land into formidable wilderness. When the functions of society
are impeded, nature is swift to assert its claims. And
accordingly, in 1789, "Lord Cornwallis after three years'
vigilant inquiry, pronounced one third of the company's
territories in Bengal to be a jungle, inhabited only by wild
beasts."
On the Western frontier of Beerbhoom the state of affairs was,
perhaps, most calamitous. In 1776, four acres out of every seven
remained untilled. Though in earlier times this district had been
a favourite highway for armies, by the year 1780 it had become an
almost impassable jungle. A small company of Sepoys, which in
that year by heroic exertions forced its way through, was obliged
to traverse 120 miles of trackless forest, swarming with tigers
and black shaggy bears. In 1789 this jungle "continued so dense
as to shut off all communication between the two most important
towns, and to cause the mails to be carried by a circuit of fifty
miles through another district."
Such a state of things it is difficult for us to realize; but the
monotonous tale of disaster and suffering is not yet complete.
Beerbhoom was, to all intents and purposes, given over to tigers.
"A belt of jungle, filled with wild beasts, formed round each
village." At nightfall the hungry animals made their dreaded
incursions carrying away cattle, and even women and children, and
devouring them. "The official records frequently speak of the
mail-bag being carried off by wild beasts." So great was the
damage done by these depredations, that "the company offered a
reward for each tiger's head, sufficient to maintain a peasant's
family in comfort for three months; an item of expenditure it
deemed so necessary, that, when under extraordinary pressure it
had to suspend all payments, the tiger-money and diet allowance
for prisoners were the sole exceptions to the rule." Still more
formidable foes were found in the herds of wild elephants, which
came trooping along in the rear of the devastation caused by the
famine. In the course of a few years fifty-six villages were
reported as destroyed by elephants, and as having lapsed into
jungle in consequence; "and an official return states that forty
market-towns throughout the district had been deserted from the
same cause. In many parts of the country the peasantry did not
dare to sleep in their houses, lest they should be buried beneath
them during the night." These terrible beasts continued to infest
the province as late as 1810.
But society during these dark days had even worse enemies than
tigers and elephants. The barbarous highlanders, of a lower type
of mankind, nourishing for forty centuries a hatred of their
Hindu supplanters, like that which the Apache bears against the
white frontiersman, seized the occasion to renew their inroads
upon the lowland country. Year by year they descended from their
mountain fastnesses, plundering and burning. Many noble Hindu
families, ousted by the tax-collectors from their estates, began
to seek subsistence from robbery. Others, consulting their
selfish interests amid the general distress, "found it more
profitable to shelter banditti on their estates, levying
blackmail from the surrounding villages as the price of immunity
from depredation, and sharing in the plunder of such as would not
come to terms. Their country houses were robber strongholds, and
the early English administrators of Bengal have left it on record
that a gang-robbery never occurred without a landed proprietor
being at the bottom of it." The peasants were not slow to follow
suit, and those who were robbed of their winter's store had no
alternative left but to become robbers themselves. The thieveries
of the Fakeers, or religious mendicants, and the bold, though
stealthy attacks of Thugs and Dacoits--members of Masonic
brotherhoods, which at all times have lived by robbery and
assassination--added to the general turmoil. In the cold weather
of 1772 the province was ravaged far and wide by bands of armed
freebooters, fifty thousand strong; and to such a pass did things
arrive that the regular forces sent by Warren Hastings to
preserve order were twice disastrously routed; while, in Mr.
Hunter's graphic language, "villages high up the Ganges lived by
housebreaking in Calcutta." In English mansions "it was the
invariable practice for the porter to shut the outer door at the
commencement of each meal, and not to open it till the butler
brought him word that the plate was safely locked up." And for a
long time nearly all traffic ceased upon the imperial roads.
This state of things, which amounted to chronic civil war,
induced Lord Cornwallis in 1788 to place the province under the
direct military control of an English officer. The administration
of Mr. Keating--the first hardy gentleman to whom this arduous
office was assigned--is minutely described by our author. For our
present purpose it is enough to note that two years of severe
campaigning, attended and followed by relentless punishment of
all transgressors, was required to put an end to the disorders.
Such was the appalling misery, throughout a community of thirty
million persons, occasioned by the failure of the winter
rice-crop in 1769. In abridging Mr. Hunter's account we have
adhered as closely to our original as possible, but he who would
obtain adequate knowledge of this tale of woe must seek it in the
ever memorable description of the historian himself. The first
question which naturally occurs to the reader--though, as Mr.
Hunter observes, it would have been one of the last to occur to
the Oriental mind--is, Who was to blame? To what culpable
negligence was it due that such a dire calamity was not foreseen,
and at least partially warded off? We shall find reason to
believe that it could not have been adequately foreseen, and that
no legislative measures could in that state of society have
entirely prevented it. Yet it will appear that the government,
with the best of intentions, did all in its power to make matters
worse; and that to its blundering ignorance the distress which
followed is largely due.
The first duty incumbent upon the government in a case like that
of the failure of the winter rice-crop of 1769, was to do away
with all hindrance to the importation of food into the province.
One chief cause of the far-reaching distress wrought by great
Asiatic famines has been the almost complete commercial isolation
of Asiatic communities. In the Middle Ages the European
communities were also, though to a far less extent, isolated from
each other, and in those days periods of famine were
comparatively frequent and severe. And one of the chief causes
which now render the occurrence of a famine on a great scale
almost impossible in any part of the civilized world is the
increased commercial solidarity of civilized nations. Increased
facility of distribution has operated no less effectively than
improved methods of production.
Now, in 1770 the province of Lower Bengal was in a state of
almost complete commercial isolation from other communities.
Importation of food on an adequate scale was hardly possible. "A
single fact speaks volumes as to the isolation of each district.
An abundant harvest, we are repeatedly told, was as disastrous to
the revenues as a bad one; for, when a large quantity of grain
had to be carried to market, the cost of carriage swallowed up
the price obtained. Indeed, even if the means of
intercommunication and transport had rendered importation
practicable, the province had at that time no money to give in
exchange for food. Not only had its various divisions a separate
currency which would pass nowhere else except at a ruinous
exchange, but in that unfortunate year Bengal seems to have been
utterly drained of its specie..... The absence of the means of
importation was the more to be deplored, as the neighbouring
districts could easily have supplied grain. In the southeast a
fair harvest had been reaped, except, in circumscribed spots; and
we are assured that, during the famine, this part of Bengal was
enabled to export without having to complain of any deficiency in
consequence..... INDEED, NO MATTER HOW LOCAL A FAMINE MIGHT BE IN
THE LAST CENTURY, THE EFFECTS WERE EQUALLY DISASTROUS. Sylhet, a
district in the northeast of Bengal, had reaped unusually
plentiful harvests in 1780 and 1781, but the next crop was
destroyed by a local inundation, and, notwithstanding the
facilities for importation afforded by water-carriage, one third
of the people died."
Here we have a vivid representation of the economic condition of
a society which, however highly civilized in many important
respects, still retained, at the epoch treated of, its aboriginal
type of organization. Here we see each community brought face to
face with the impossible task of supplying, unaided, the
deficiencies of nature. We see one petty district a prey to the
most frightful destitution, even while profuse plenty reigns in
the districts round about it. We find an almost complete absence
of the commercial machinery which, by enabling the starving
region to be fed out of the surplus of more favoured localities,
has in the most advanced countries rendered a great famine
practically impossible.
Now this state of things the government of 1770 was indeed
powerless to remedy. Legislative power and wisdom could not
anticipate the invention of railroads; nor could it introduce
throughout the length and breadth of Bengal a system of coaches,
canals, and caravans; nor could it all at once do away with the
time-honoured brigandage, which increased the cost of transport
by decreasing the security of it; nor could it in a trice remove
the curse of a heterogeneous coinage. None, save those
uninstructed agitators who believe that governments can make
water run up-hill, would be disposed to find fault with the
authorities in Bengal for failing to cope with these
difficulties. But what we are to blame them for--though it was an
error of the judgment and not of the intentions--is their
mischievous interference with the natural course of trade, by
which, instead of helping matters, they but added another to the
many powerful causes which were conspiring to bring about the
economic ruin of Bengal. We refer to the act which in 1770
prohibited under penalties all speculation in rice.
This disastrous piece of legislation was due to the universal
prevalence of a prejudice from which so-called enlightened
communities are not yet wholly free. It is even now customary to
heap abuse upon those persons who in a season of scarcity, when
prices are rapidly rising, buy up the "necessaries of life,"
thereby still increasing for a time the cost of living. Such
persons are commonly assailed with specious generalities to the
effect that they are enemies of society. People whose only ideas
are "moral ideas" regard them as heartless sharpers who fatten
upon the misery of their fellow-creatures. And it is sometimes
hinted that such "practices" ought to be stopped by legislation.
Now, so far is this prejudice, which is a very old one, from
being justified by facts, that, instead of being an evil,
speculation in breadstuffs and other necessaries is one of the
chief agencies by which in modern times and civilized countries a
real famine is rendered almost impossible. This natural monopoly
operates in two ways. In the first place, by raising prices, it
checks consumption, putting every one on shorter allowance until
the season of scarcity is over, and thus prevents the scarcity
from growing into famine. In the second place, by raising prices,
it stimulates importation from those localities where abundance
reigns and prices are low. It thus in the long run does much to
equalize the pressure of a time of dearth and diminish those
extreme oscillations of prices which interfere with the even,
healthy course of trade. A government which, in a season of high
prices, does anything to check such speculation, acts about as
sagely as the skipper of a wrecked vessel who should refuse to
put his crew upon half rations.
The turning-point of the great Dutch Revolution, so far as it
concerned the provinces which now constitute Belgium, was the
famous siege and capture of Antwerp by Alexander Farnese, Duke of
Parma. The siege was a long one, and the resistance obstinate,
and the city would probably not have been captured if famine had
not come to the assistance of the besiegers. It is interesting,
therefore, to inquire what steps the civic authorities had taken
to prevent such a calamity. They knew that the struggle before
them was likely to be the life-and-death struggle of the Southern
Netherlands; they knew that there was risk of their being
surrounded so that relief from without would be impossible; they
knew that their assailant was one of the most astute and
unconquerable of men, by far the greatest general of the
sixteenth century. Therefore they proceeded to do just what our
Republican Congress, under such circumstances, would probably
have done, and just what the New York Tribune, if it had existed
in those days, would have advised them to do. Finding that sundry
speculators were accumulating and hoarding up provisions in
anticipation of a season of high prices, they hastily decided,
first of all to put a stop to such "selfish iniquity." In their
eyes the great thing to be done was to make things cheap. They
therefore affixed a very low maximum price to everything which
could be eaten, and prescribed severe penalties for all who
should attempt to take more than the sum by law decreed. If a
baker refused to sell his bread for a price which would have been
adequate only in a time of great plenty, his shop was to be
broken open, and his loaves distributed among the populace. The
consequences of this idiotic policy were twofold.
In the first place, the enforced lowness of prices prevented any
breadstuffs or other provisions from being brought into the city.
It was a long time before Farnese succeeded in so blockading the
Scheldt as to prevent ships laden with eatables from coming in
below. Corn and preserved meats might have been hurried by
thousands of tons into the beleaguered city. Friendly Dutch
vessels, freighted with abundance, were waiting at the mouth of
the river. But all to no purpose. No merchant would expose his
valuable ship, with its cargo, to the risk of being sunk by
Farnese's batteries, merely for the sake of finding a market no
better than a hundred others which could be entered without
incurring danger. No doubt if the merchants of Holland had
followed out the maxim Vivre pour autrui, they would have braved
ruin and destruction rather than behold their neighbours of
Antwerp enslaved. No doubt if they could have risen to a broad
philosophic view of the future interests of the Netherlands, they
would have seen that Antwerp must be saved, no matter if some of
them were to lose money by it. But men do not yet sacrifice
themselves for their fellows, nor do they as a rule look far
beyond the present moment and its emergencies. And the business
of government is to legislate for men as they are, not as it is
supposed they ought to be. If provisions had brought a high price
in Antwerp, they would have been carried thither. As it was, the
city, by its own stupidity, blockaded itself far more effectually
than Farnese could have done it.
In the second place, the enforced lowness of prices prevented any
general retrenchment on the part of the citizens. Nobody felt it
necessary to economize. Every one bought as much bread, and ate
it as freely, as if the government by insuring its cheapness had
insured its abundance. So the city lived in high spirits and in
gleeful defiance of its besiegers, until all at once provisions
gave out, and the government had to step in again to palliate the
distress which it had wrought. It constituted itself
quartermaster-general to the community, and doled out stinted
rations alike to rich and poor, with that stern democratic
impartiality peculiar to times of mortal peril. But this served
only, like most artificial palliatives, to lengthen out the
misery. At the time of the surrender, not a loaf of bread could
be obtained for love or money.
In this way a bungling act of legislation helped to decide for
the worse a campaign which involved the territorial integrity and
future welfare of what might have become a great nation
performing a valuable function in the system of European
communities.
The striking character of this instructive example must be our
excuse for presenting it at such length. At the beginning of the
famine in Bengal the authorities legislated in very much the same
spirit as the burghers who had to defend Antwerp against Parma.
"By interdicting what it was pleased to term the monopoly of
grain, it prevented prices from rising at once to their natural
rates. The Province had a certain amount of food in it, and this
food had to last about nine months. Private enterprise if left to
itself would have stored up the general supply at the harvest,
with a view to realizing a larger profit at a later period in the
scarcity. Prices would in consequence have immediately risen,
compelling the population to reduce their consumption from the
very beginning of the dearth. The general stock would thus have
been husbanded, and the pressure equally spread over the whole
nine months, instead of being concentrated upon the last six. The
price of grain, in place of promptly rising to three half-pence a
pound as in 1865-66, continued at three farthings during the
earlier months of the famine. During the latter ones it advanced
to twopence, and in certain localities reached fourpence."
The course taken by the great famine of 1866 well illustrates the
above views. This famine, also, was caused by the total failure
of the December rice-crop, and it was brought to a close by an
abundant harvest in the succeeding year.
"Even as regards the maximum price reached, the analogy holds
good, in each case rice having risen in general to nearly
twopence, and in particular places to fourpence, a pound; and in
each the quoted rates being for a brief period in several
isolated localities merely nominal, no food existing in the
market, and money altogether losing its interchangeable value. In
both the people endured silently to the end, with a fortitude
that casual observers of a different temperament and widely
dissimilar race may easily mistake for apathy, but which those
who lived among the sufferers are unable to distinguish from
qualities that generally pass under a more honourable name.
During 1866, when the famine was severest, I superintended public
instruction throughout the southwestern division of Lower Bengal,
including Orissa. The subordinate native officers, about eight
hundred in number, behaved with a steadiness, and when called
upon, with a self-abnegation, beyond praise. Many of them ruined
their health. The touching scenes of self-sacrifice and humble
heroism which I witnessed among the poor villagers on my tours of
inspection will remain in my memory till my latest day."
But to meet the famine of 1866 Bengal was equipped with railroads
and canals, and better than all, with an intelligent government.
Far from trying to check speculation, as in 1770, the government
did all in its power to stimulate it. In the earlier famine one
could hardly engage in the grain trade without becoming amenable
to the law. "In 1866 respectable men in vast numbers went into
the trade; for government, by publishing weekly returns of the
rates in every district, rendered the traffic both easy and safe.
Every one knew where to buy grain cheapest, and where to sell it
dearest, and food was accordingly brought from the districts that
could best spare it, and carried to those which most urgently
needed it. Not only were prices equalized so far as possible
throughout the stricken parts, but the publicity given to the
high rates in Lower Bengal induced large shipments from the upper
provinces, and the chief seat of the trade became unable to
afford accommodation for landing the vast stores of grain brought
down the river. Rice poured into the affected districts from all
parts,--railways, canals, and roads vigorously doing their duty."
The result of this wise policy was that scarcity was heightened
into famine only in one remote corner of Bengal. Orissa was
commercially isolated in 1866, as the whole country had been in
1770. "As far back as the records extend, Orissa has produced
more grain than it can use. It is an exporting, not an importing
province, sending away its surplus grain by sea, and neither
requiring nor seeking any communication with Lower Bengal by
land." Long after the rest of the province had begun to prepare
for a year of famine, Orissa kept on exporting. In March, when
the alarm was first raised, the southwest monsoon had set in,
rendering the harbours inaccessible. Thus the district was
isolated. It was no longer possible to apply the wholesome policy
which was operating throughout the rest of the country. The
doomed population of Orissa, like passengers in a ship without
provisions, were called upon to suffer the extremities of famine;
and in the course of the spring and summer of 1866, some seven
hundred thousand people perished.