INDIAN FAMINES - Institute for Social and Economic Change

164 ADMINISTRATIVE MANAGEMENT
tion, opinions on such subjects as the saving
of life from distress, from disease, from famine,
from railway accidentB, &c., should vary as they
do. It may be that it is a particular and necessary
phase of advancing civilisation, as, no
doubt, most people will at once reply; it may
be so-I do not argue the point, I merely state
a fact. In the case of famines, public opinion
has developed itself in geometrical progression,
-i.e" always making due allowance for the first
term being nil; for during th~ famine of 1770
ten million people died; and not only did this
startling mortality prove insufficient to excite
attention, but the fact that the number bore the
unparalleled proportion of one - third of the
entire population, did not evince a word oj
public opinion or of censure. True, there arE
many influences at work at the present day that
did not exist then; the means of obtaining anc
circulating rapidly information were not the SaInt
formerly as at present. But we must sUppOSt
that human nature was much the same then w
it is in our own day-the same blood whicl
runs in our veins was circulating in those of OUl
ancestors. Yet compare the fact of 10,000,OO(