§ I now turn to the three great calamities which have visited India during the last 12 months—earthquake, plague, and famine. The effects of the earthquake were entirely confined to the provinces of Bengal and Assam. It is now clear that the loss of life was much exaggerated, and that it should be numbered by hundreds rather than by the thousands whom it was originally stated had perished in this catastrophe. ["Hear, hear!"] The loss of property, however, is great in many parts of the country. All masonry buildings have been destroyed, and bridges, 427 railways, and roads have been greatly damaged; but the loss has mainly fallen on the well-to-do. It is the planters and manufacturers and the employers of labour who have lost heavily. The mat huts of the natives can be easily restored, and the demand for labour is great, and wages are high; so much is this the case that the Commissioner of Assam informed the Viceroy that there was no need of a relief fund for the benefit of this province. Still, I fear that this disaster will have a pernicious and deterrent effect upon the subsequent investment of capital in this part of India, and a considerable check will be given to the development of this rich but sparsely inhabited province. The outbreak of plague in Western India in one sense caused even greater apprehension to the authorities than the knowledge that scarcity and famine would attack a large area of territory. It is true that scarcity and famine might and did afflict a very much larger proportion of the population, and caused much more suffering and distress; but the methods by which it could be met were known and were appreciated, and the Government could rely upon hearty co-operation from every section of the community in their endeavours to mitigate the evil. But these conditions were all reversed when it became necessary to deal with plague. The only methods by which its growth could be arrested were repugnant to the instincts, customs, and usages of the great mass of the native population, and they interfered with the privacy of their home life. At the outset of plague, Government had to consider the only two alternative courses which were open to them. They might have allowed the plague to run its course, and thus avoided all the unpopularity and disturbance which might be provoked by any attempt to stamp it out. But if they had adopted this course, not only would it have been a cowardly derogation of duty, but it might and probably would have involved the industrial and economic ruin of India. It is impossible to exaggerate the intensity of the alarm caused everywhere by a knowledge of the outbreak of this disease. If plague had once been allowed to fasten upon India, looking at the area of its territory and the vastness of its population, it would 428 have been many years before this pestilence could have been extirpated. During the whole of that period India would have been boycotted by the world. The danger ahead in India in my judgment is not insufficiency of food, but insufficiency of employment for her rapidly-increasing millions. Industries are gradually springing up, and an exporting trade is slowly developing of inestimable benefit in giving employment of a varied character. The establishment of plague in India would have not only caused terrible mortality and great distress in the districts which it visited, but it would have deprived many millions of persons outside those districts of the employment which they now obtain. The Government, therefore, had no choice but to do their best to stamp out the plague—[cheers]—and the only method by which plague can be so eradicated, is by the segregation of the sick and house-to-house visitation. Both these principles came into contact with the hereditary customs and traditions of Oriental life. The people were at first alarmed, but the patience and kindness shown by the officers in charge of these operations soon reassured them—["hear, hear!"]—and no serious difficulty occurred anywhere in the West of India except at Poona. In Poona, unfortunately, there is a clique of some of the descendants of those who, at the commencement of this century, controlled a considerable portion of India. They have ever been hostile to British rule, and they have never lost any opportunity of stirring up discontent and disaffection against the authorities. They promptly availed themselves of this occasion, and, by gross and wilful distortion of the acts of the officers of the search party employed at Poona, they contrived to produce the feeling which resulted in the murder of Mr. Rand and Lieutenant Ayerst. Both these officers were done to death by the spread of wilful and malicious falsehoods. I trust that there will be no recrudescence of this pestilence in the ensuing autumn. The Government will show every respect for the feelings, the traditions, and even the prejudices of the native community in any further action they may take for the suppression of plague. Any improper acts of those under its authority will be promptly punished; but if, on behalf of the Indian Government, I enter into 429 this undertaking, I think I have a right to ask for some reciprocity. ["Hear, hear!"] India is the land of exaggeration, of romance, and of imagination. Ordinary prosaic acts are there expanded by high-flown exaggerated language to proportions which, to our commonplace minds, seem almost incredible. I am sure I am not asking too much of those who take an interest in the proceedings of the Government of India to be most careful before they give currency to statements reflecting upon the action of the officers associated with the discharge of plague duties, to investigate the sources of their information, and to believe no statements made to them until they are satisfied that they rest on indisputable authority. ["Hear, hear!"] The dimensions of the late famine and scarcity were considerably greater than that which occurred 20 years ago in 1877–78, and a comparison between the two may be interesting. The area of square miles affected by famine in 1877 was 257,000; in 1897, 322,000. The population of the famine area in the first period was 58,000,000; the population this year 68,000,000; and the highest number receiving relief at one time in 1877 was 3,178,000; in 1897, 4,224,000. There is a marked difference in the characteristics of the two famines. In 1877 there were two separate and distinct famine districts, one in Northern India and one in Southern India. The distress extended over a period of 18 months, but the culmination of distress in Southern India was many months in advance of the period at which distress attained its height in Northern India. There was an intense pressure from an absence of foot in both districts, caused by an almost complete failure of the crops, but in districts outside the crops were good, and surpluses of food for the distressed districts were, to a large extent, available. The peculiarity of the famine of last year was an almost universal shortness of rain. Crops in only a few districts—Bundelound and the Central Provinces—were a complete failure, but almost everywhere they were a partial failure.