workshop devoid of any modern appliances or apparatus. By the time they are placed on the table of the English household they are distributed by the English importer in bottles with elegant designs, one of which I picked up last Easter in an ordinary grocery store in Ramsgate. For evident reasons I omit the name and the address of the company selling it, but that is not necessary to the elucidation of the fact, that whereas an article of exclusive Indian make yielded to the native manufacturer a bare profit over the cost price, to the more enterprising and skilled English victualler, who from his training is able to detect in it an attractive article of popular consumption if properly prepared for the shop window, it has become a source of great wealth. I could multiply such instances without limit to prove that the want of technical instruction is at the root, not only of the loss of most of India's industries, but of much of that poverty and helplessness under which she labours.

There is in the country the raw produce, and also the labour, necessary for industrial pursuits. The excellent catalogue of the economic products of the Bombay Presidency, published by that great friend and well-wisher of India, Sir George Birdwood, proved as far back as thirty-five years ago, of that part of India, what is true of many other parts, that her raw material wealth is practically unbounded in quantity and rich in variety. Other larger works in the same direction, published at later dates, have brought within the reach of students of Indian economic products the widest and fullest knowledge. The artistic and scientific faculties, too, of the native of India are of a high order, which have evoked the praise of many competent judges and observers. They have always excelled not only in hereditary and indigenous arts, but whenever they have turned their attention to it they have in many cases shown superiority of skill in arts imported from the

West, and an aptitude for converting them into profitable industries. To give just one case I would mention the great photographic business reared up in India by the Raja Deen Dayal. This gentleman's diligent and trained pursuit of photography had been for years known in several parts of India, but I was not prepared to find that great perfection of the art which he had attained until I saw last January samples of his work in his newly opened depot in Bombay. His portraits and pictures, in style and finish, and in other artistic merits, are equal to the best that one could find in any European photographic establishment. But what struck me even more than this artistic excellence of his work was the elegantly comfortable, yet business-like, surroundings of his studio, and his own modest and intellectual conversation on many economic and industrial topics, all tending to show how an educated native of India, if brought under the influence of technical instruction, is thoroughly capable of developing any art or scientific calling into a profitable and pleasurable industry for himself and his countrymen.

Now this paper has lengthened out considerably beyond what I intended when I first undertook to write it, and still it has but touched the fringe of the important subject it deals with. My treatment of it has been hurried and crude, but still I have, I hope, been able to show you, by a few figures, arguments, and illustrations, that, on the one hand, there is scarcely any technical instruction imparted in India, and that, on the other, that it is India's greatest need from more points of view than the economic. All-important as this point is, I submit that if, as I firmly believe, a system of technical instruction widely diffused throughout the country were to lead to a higher appreciation of Britain's domination over India than is at present to be found, that of itself ought to prove not the least of those impulses under which her administrators are bound,

without further delay, to do all that they can to furnish her with the means of developing the vast natural resources of the country and the industrial and artistic faculties of her literally teeming millions, than whom no more industrious, patient, provident, tractable, and loyal people anywhere exist within the wide range of the British Empire.

FAMINES IN INDIA

BY J. A. BAINES, C.S.I.

(Late Census Commissioner for India)

To treat of a subject of so very special a character in a series of papers purporting to refer to the general features of the British Empire appears altogether inconsistent. We must take into consideration, however, the fact that India ought not to be regarded as a single country, except in reference to the one universal feature of British rule. In all other respects, whether on geographical, ethnical, or other grounds, it must be taken to be a mere collection of heterogeneous elements, kept in position by outside influences, not by mutual attraction, and lacking, accordingly, all the factors which go to form what we know in the present day as nationality.

The British Government is responsible for the repression of the manifestation of the racial, religious, and other animosities which in bygone days kept the different communities apart, and prevented the growth of any general bond throughout the country. It is this responsibility which amply justifies the use of the title Imperial in relation to our rule over India; and the action taken by the Government on the one hand, and by the people of this country on the other, in the face of a calamity so intense and widespread as the famine which in 1897 afflicted our great Dependency, proves that we are fully sensible of that responsibility and have no intention of evading it. In former days a famine, apart from the actual misery to the masses,

meant the relaxation of bonds of social order. Villages were pillaged for food, and under the shadow of this pretext, bands of professional robbers pursued their trade undisturbed owing to the general paralysis of the authority of the ruling powers. Often, again, a State weakened by famine fell a prey to a stronger and less afflicted neighbour; whilst, owing to the want of communications, even had the will to aid been present among the numerous petty States into which India was then divided, the power to throw supplies into the reach of a suffering population was absent.

The consolidation of the country which we know as India, a term so wide in scope that it remains far beyond the comprehension of the average inhabitant of the country even at this day, has converted a local calamity, like the famine, into a matter of Imperial concern, and no part of our Eastern possessions is entirely exempt from the obligation of assisting in the alleviation of the distress of another. This fact, together with the interest which the famine has excited in England, justifies, perhaps, the inclusion of my subject among those which have been already dealt with by myself and others in the present series of papers.

The first points we have to consider, then, are the cause and nature of a famine. The main object of the cultivator in India is different from that of his

English compeer. Here, owing to our climate, the farmer has to do what he can to get the moisture in the soil down to a reasonable limit, and the rainfall with which he has to contend is spread over the greater part of the year. At least, it is at no time safe for us to lend away our unbrella for more than a few days at a time. Now, in India the chief want is water in the soil, so that the crops which have to struggle against the burning heat may be refreshed from below, or they come up stunted and soon wither