The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1833-12-20 00:00:00

ARTIFICIAL FAMINE IN INDIA

Accounts from Vellore represent that place, as well as the
countries adjacent, to be in a very distressing state. An under-
standing evidently exists among the dealers in rice to raise the
price of this commodity to such an extent as would favour the
supposition that all India was suffering under the severest fa-
mine. Grain of every description is sold so excessively hi $h
that the poorer classes of the people are almost deprived of Me
means of subsistence.; and this, coupled with the failure which
the cultivators in various districts have recently sustained, leads
to the most fearful apprehensions.
Every man, it is contended, has a right to do what he pleases
with his own, so long as he does not thereby injure auother.—
To force a merchant to sell his goods against his will would be
to deprive him of the liberty of disposing of his property to his
greatest advAntage. But in extreme cases, few will deny, that
some interference on the part of government would be pro-
ductive of general good. He who invests his capital iu
the par-
chase of any commodity has an undoubted title to a fair com-
pensation • but when it is evident that a systematic monopolY
exists to the prejudice of the public, the emergency imperatively
demands the notice of authority.
It is nut to be believed that the granaries of India are abso-
lutely empty =that there is really not sufficient lice in the coun-
try for the support of its inhabitants; on the contrary, it is ge-
nerally, and we are inclined to think truly asserted, that there
is au abundance of this article in the stores of merchants who
deal exclusively in it; and shall they be allowed to demand any
price they may think proper when the people are perishing in
the streets from actual want? Shall it be in their power to
starve the inhabitants if they are unable to pay the exorbitant .
price demanded as the value of this article of food ? Shall ere-
vernment look on with criminal indifference while their subject.'
are driven to desperation by the exercise of the monopoly to
which they allude ?
It is almost impossible to conceive the distress -which our cor-
respondent mentions as being prevalent at Velure. Mee is
there sold at four and half measures the rupee; grain at eight,.
• and inferior grain is dear in proportion. The poor are actually
starving; and will it be believed when we state, on the most
undoubted authority, that at Vellore, on the 4th instant, hun-
dreds witnessed the horrible and disgusting sight of a dead in-
fant partly devoured by its own mother! This unhappy woman
had been several days without any sustenance whatever, and
when death relieved her babe from misery, satisfied the cravings
of hunger by preying upon her lifeless child !
The shipwrecked have been known to murder one another
to shed the blood of a fellow-sufferer—and to subsist on the
flesh of a butchered comrade ;—but men in populous cities,
in wealthy towns, with food before their eyes, will suffer the sor-
did miser to hoard his riches, by extorting from them their last
fraction, will submit to all the miseries of want, and will prefer
the agonies of starvation, to boldly demanding their just rights!
We.would not, of course, say that poverty alone is any excuse
for the perpetration of an unlawful act; but if government
will-not interfere, if authoritywillibe indifferent to.the wrongs
of the subject, if individuals in power will be both blind to the
sufferings and deaf to the complaints of the inhabitants, how
long will the people bear what they do now--how long can this
state of things coutinue—how long can they be patient under .
their accumulated ills? Already do they show what they are
driven toalready it is evident that they must and will resort
to crime to satisfy, their wants, and that they will compel the
wretch to resign what his detestable avarice induced him to re-
fuse to part with upon reasonable terms. Highway robbery,
we understand, is almost daily committed in the interior; and
one, in particular, was perpetrated on the road from Trinchino
poly to Vellore, which, as it was attended with considerable lose`
of life, we shall relate, in the hope that it will have the salutary
effect of leading government to perceive the absolute necessity
of adopting measures, not only for the security of the public
peace, but also for the protection of the public safety.—About
fifty natives, who were travelling in company to Vellore, were
attacked near Tinnamalay, on the Trichinopoly road, by a baud
of about a hundred desperate men, who, meeting with resist-
ance, fired upon the travellers, killing as many as nineteen eft
twenty, and wounding several others. After the sanguinary
contest they were robbed of every article they possessed, and
left to prosecute their journey throdgh an aimost desolate
country, dependent for subsistence on precarious charity.