Is not this passing strange? Sir George knows that these people are in a state of the direst distress; their cattle dying by hundreds, themselves penniless and foodless; if this demand is made upon them, he has reported that they will "simply be ruined;" but at the exhortations of Lord Lytton he sets to work cheerfully. Neither inclination nor effort shall be wanting in him to make the people experience to the full the agony and the bitterness of famine. Thus it is that a prayerful Viceroy, with the "valued assistance" of his colleagues, provides for the "well-being of the millions committed to his fostering care." "I have tried," writes one despairing district officer, "to stave off collecting, but have received peremptory orders to begin. This will be the last straw on the back of the unfortunate zemindars.... A more suicidal policy I cannot conceive. I have done what I could to open the eyes of the Commissioners and the Lieutenant-Governor as to the state of the place, but without avail. I have nothing to do but to carry out the orders of Government, which means simply ruin." "The exaction of the land revenue in Budaon," writes another, "and, I believe, in other districts as well, involved a direct breach of faith with the zemindars, which has had the very worst effect on the minds of the native community.... The people are loud in their complaints of the faithlessness of Government, and, to my mind, with ample reason." But the Government of India having decreed the collection of the land revenue, were now compelled to justify their rapacity, by pretending that there was no famine calling for a remission. The dearth and the frightful mortality throughout the North-West Provinces were to be preserved as a State secret like the negotiations with Shere Ali. By this means it was hoped that the famine would work itself out, the dead be decently interred out of human sight, and Lord Lytton obtain the funds for his hunting expedition without an unpatriotic opposition becoming cognizant of the facts either in India or in England. It is a striking illustration of the enormous space which divides us from the people of India, that such a scheme should have been thought practicable, but stranger still--it was very near to success. An accident may be said to have defeated it. During all that dreary winter famine was busy devouring its victims by thousands. At the lowest computation more than a quarter of a million perished of actual starvation. The number would have to be doubled if it included all those who perished of disease, the consequence of insufficient food and exposure to cold; for, in the desperate endeavour to keep their cattle alive, the wretched peasantry fed them on the straw which thatched their huts, and which provided them with bedding. The winter was abnormally severe, and without a roof above them or bedding beneath them, scantily clad and poorly fed, multitudes perished of cold.