INDIAN FAMINES - Institute for Social and Economic Change

126 A FEW GENERAL CRITICISMS.
at the disposal of England as compared with
India. All the other difficulties which have
been enumerated elsewhere have to be added;
but their value cannot be reduced to such hardand-fast
terms as the foregoing estimate affords.
It is useless to fix arbitrarily their importance,
by saying that it would amount to double, or
ten times, or a hundredfold, of the foregoing.
All I ask is, that the facts of the numerous
other difficulties be not lost sight of in this
calculation.
'Ve have now worked round to a new phase
of famine aspects in attempting to compare
the effects of dearth in England with those of
dearth in India. England is already dependent
on foreign countries to a very great extent
for her food-supplies; that is, there is an insufficiency
of grain in the country for the support
of her population-in short, there is a famine
yearly in Britain j and instead of its being
the normal state of affairs that India should
at times be subject to famine and that England
should be exempt, we find that England is
always in a chronic state of famine, and that
famine is the ~eption in India. What, then, is