Almost the only nation that has suffered from the worst kind of bread famine of late years, has been one altogether outside the pale of civilization. At the period referred to, the telegraph was only seen in Persia, because it was necessary to use the territory for putting up telegraph-poles to carry a through wire to India. As we write, there is not a steam-whistle to be heard in that country, which is somewhat astonishing, considering that it is so near to us and that it is twice as big as France; although it must be said, in justice to His Majesty the Shah, that he has already seen the benefits to be derived from coming out of his dominions himself, and by letting civilizers in, with _carte blanche_ powers, to transform his dominions from a condition, as regards production, which may well shame the representative of an ancient line of kings. With the exception of countries situated as Persia is, with reference to obtaining supplies from other nations, no considerable centre of population need suffer from bread famine in our time, unless under circumstances which no human foresight can prevent. This very important fact was recognized when the first great foreign railway loans were offered for subscription in England. It was seen that by enabling Russia to make railways from the great corn-growing districts of her Baltic provinces to ports to which vessels could gain access during the winter, we should, in case of need, be able to supply ourselves from this source. We have not yet had special occasion to prove the inestimable value of those lines of railway, but one thing is quite certain that, whatever some authorities may say as to the impolicy of lending largely to foreign powers to assist them in constructing strategic railways, for reasons beyond the one given, England never made a better business than by lending Russia some of her surplus capital. Whether or not we have now lent sufficient is another matter. A hunger crisis arises from a scarcity of bread, and a monetary crisis from a scarcity of money, or what represents it perhaps too largely at some centres, credit. There are stores of corn kept in larger or smaller quantities by all civilized nations, and famines have arisen in former times, not only from the absence of sufficiently rapid communication making the surplus supply of one centre available for the deficiency of another, but from the failure of production. It is tolerably certain, however, that at all times while human beings have existed there has always been enough food grown for every living creature, if it could have been distributed according to the varying wants of different populations. Now that this can be effectually done, famines are unknown except in lands whose people are such lie-a-bed tories that they prefer to sit in the sackcloth and ashes of barbarism and want, to humanising the body and soul by the regenerating influence of modern civilization.