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