“If there is one thing,” writes Mr. Anderson, “I am certain of it is this, that although some people think that natives have no gratitude, there has never been anything concerning which the natives have been so loud in their praise as the unbounded generosity of the London public, who in time of fearful distress came forward with money to feed and clothe hundreds and thousands of starving poor.  Many a poor woman and man have asked me to express blessings to ‘the people of my village’ who rescued them in their dire distress.  Perhaps you can give this message, which, as an outsider, I have never had an opportunity of doing.”  I only wish I could add that the gratitude of the Government was equal to that of the natives.  Yes, Mr. Graham Anderson was an outsider, and the Government (Mysore was under British rule at the time) was evidently determined that he should remain so in the fullest sense of the word, for he never even received a letter of thanks for his valuable and gratuitous services, or the smallest notice of any kind.  I have no hesitation in praising most highly the action of the planters, because, though one of them, I was not in India at the time, and, though my estate manager took an early and active part in relief operations, I had nothing personally to do with the famine relief work.

The subject of famines is of such vast importance to the people, the Government, and all who have any stake in India, that I think it well to offer here some remarks on them, and also suggest some measures for their prevention, or perhaps I should rather say for their mitigation.

The causes that would lead to an increase of famines in India were fully pointed out by me in 1871 in the “Experiences of a Planter,” in letters to the “Times,” and in the evidence I gave when examined by the India Finance Committee of the House of Commons in 1872.  There were two principal causes—­the spread of the use of money instead of grain as a medium of exchange, and such a restricted development of communications that, while these were sufficient to drain the countries in the interior of their grain, they were not sufficiently developed to enable the grain to be brought back again in sufficient quantities when it was necessary to do so in times of famine.  Till, then, communications were developed to an adequate extent, it was quite clear that India would be much more exposed to risk from famines than she was in the days when grain was largely used as a medium of exchange, and when, besides, grain, from the want of communication, was largely kept in the country.  The people, in short, in the olden days, and even for some time after I landed in India, hoarded grain, and in times of scarcity they encroached upon their supplies of buried grain, whereas now they hoard money, which in time of famine can go but a very short way in buying grain.  The statement that an increase of famines would be sure to ensue from the causes above indicated is amply