Semi-weekly standard. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1853-18??, 1855-11-03

aExcept in some chief cities, many provinces IN
India are thnly inhabited; vast tracts OF country
lie uncutivated and desoate fertile regions where
two or three crops might be reaped annually, arr
pcopled only by struggling villages, and the popula
ton is something less than o1e-elghth OF Wnat is
contained within the square mile in Britain. Iher
habations are more wretched than can be concelV,
ed by Englishmen, that have often passed
through Agricultural villages and found the people
preferring the roadside as their place OF inidhSnt
rest their food is of the coarsest fare and lnsu
cent to sustain animal strength while even OF Inns
their supply is far less than appetite requires Inc
state of their rural mendicant poor beggars descrR
ton: whenever one of them becomes SICK ne mas
no resting place, but is exposed to deserton TO De
an outcast hurried from village to village lest MS
death should entail burden on his poor neghDors
The clothing of the laborins poor is not so much as
will be veil to cover the shame OF nakedness:
rag not worth three pence is often the only garment
for tender and feminine delicacy, for the aged pa
rent and the man of gray hairs. Few, II any, OF
this class in districts ever know what 1t is to
enjoy the warmth and shelter of midnight cover
ing in seasons when the blanket would be vaiued
and its protection be blessing. Native laborers
work for native masters sometimes torso low wages
as penny or two pence per day; and they are
deemed well paid if they receive as servants TO Eu-
ropeans four pence daily.
1t is, however, in the oft-recurrng scenes OF fam
ine dry and partial crops, that the phys
ical wretchedness of Hindoos is fully Developed
None but those who have been eye-wtnesses OF the
horrors then realized imagine how PROSTATE
and ruined is their condition under such vista
ton. "
al have stood among them when the dead
lying at my feet and when the dying fell by my
sde when the eprous, MANNED in hands and feet,
exhibited their loathsome eXtremties; when old age
and childhood were covered by the ulcers and pus-
tules of the smallpox; when haggard famine sat
upon the and Sunken cheek, and the hollow
eye of thousands; when it was necessary to mete
out the charity of a generous foreign community
under the protection of armed police poems; and
when the wailngs and feeble cry of the hungry and
exhausted pierced and agonized the heart The
spectacle not likely to fade from the MEM
Dry, or the causes to escape enquiry. To prevent
the tens of thousands perishng in one country from
passing into neighborng districts, it was deemed OK
pedient to erect barriers, and place armed force
lest they should paralyZe the local bencvolence
which struggling to mitigate the suifcrings OF
the surrounding poor. | have the miserable
and cmacated victims of famine searching among
the ercrements of cameis, elephants, and cattle for
particles of grain which had passed undigested.-
Such scenes, if they occurred only in the his
tory of nation, were enough to excite the COM
miscration of mankind, and bring suspicion upon
the wisdom of the men by whom the people were
governed. Unhappily, however, they have been
OF frequent in British India periodical
ly have they been experienced, three times with
in fifteen years. Private letters, official accounts,
and other of information, unite with my
idence in representing that people subject to such
alarming and consuming restitution, furnishing my
riads depending on the scanty supplies of charity,
hundreds and thousands pershing from want and
attendant diseases, villages and rural districts de-
populated by migration or death, the streams and
rivers choked poisoned by the putrd carcasses of
people dying in too great numbers to be buried
by surviving reatives-death not only arrayed in
its most CHASTITY forms, but also serving to generate
diseases at which trembling mortality shudders, and
which human courage and science can exercise
control. ----
Cholera with all its terrors, has been rendered
desirable, compared withtilc more fearful and
resistess ravages of hydrophobia. Gaunt and squal
id wretchedncss, emaciated and skeleton forms,
dued with vigor which despair and rabd disease
impart have pcopled The streets and lowered round
tke dwellings of European residents to indicate the
misery and suffering which Hindoo subjects of the
British Crown endure.
In 1888 famine prevailed in the Bombay and Ma
dras presdencies, during which the destruction
awful. More than $50 900 miserable creatures fled
from their country to seek in the ncighborhood Of
the capitals the means of sustaining life. Myrads
persisted at home and on the roads; and the rem
nants who did not abandon the country parts, and
yet continued to sustain life reduced to state
of emacation which defes description. Their per-
sonal appearance was scarcely human their anato-
my nearly as much developed that of actual
skeetons the articulation of each joint but for the
skin, might have been traced their bellies were I'M
naturally swollen, and their color of the deepest
jet. These British subjects, who had been Ia
ken under control and made tributaries to the sup
port OF government; whose land was taxed so high
ly that more thon seven -siXteenthS of the pro-
duce went to the husbandmen; and whose fruits Of
industry could he sold to other merchant than
tHcIF governments Wnlle they nau Dccn
able to purchase goods in market but what their.
rulers furnished. 1t is country where the tax and
land collectors, where the judges and arbcrs in all
contests or disputes are the armed conquerors and
rulers of the region"
1.-THE scenes too, of misery and desoation which
accompanied European conquests, which attended
the contests for ascendency between the English
and French, and which were occasioncd by the N.Y.
sore, the Pndarre, the Mahratta, and Burmese wars
recorded in military campaigns and the civil his
tories of British India us how extensive must
have been the suffering and how disastrous the con-
dition of the wretched peasantry. Conflagration
rapine, carnage, aud sanguinary battles, military
ecutions and proracted and wasting sieges, served
to desoate the country, to destroy the commerce.
interrupt manufactures, to prevent agriculture, to
exhaust the resources and consume the people of
India. How large the price which has been paid
for British conquest and Indian sGbjugation; how
numerous the human sacrifices how fearful the |
crminality and cruelty it would not be easy to i'm.
agine or describe But it has been affirmed that all
India yet groans, while her teemng population is
rapidly consuming in the midst of famine and pow
erty The British power has been stretched over |
llindostan by the employment of native armies one
nation has been marched against another and one |
class has helped to subdue the other While
the British conquerors have never employed a |
larger force than thirty-seven thousand of Euro
pean troops, the native Hindoo ranks have some
times numbered more than 26O, 900 fighting soldiers
ACQUIRED and upheld by British pay. 1t may there
fore, be supposed, the case that the policy
of the has been to elevate he few and