THE FAMINE IN PERSIA.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 52, 20 January 1872, Page 2

THE FAMINE IN PERSIA.

[Prom the Spectator, October 28th.]

We greatly doubt whether the people of this country, even those who have noticed the statements upon the subject, have any idea of the present state of affairs in Persia. Sir Henry Rawlinson lias told them something, but he was obviously afraid of overcharging his picture, and alienating sympathy by apparent exaggeration. Knowing Persia, too, he was, we imagine from bis speech at the Mansion honse, entirely unaware of a curious difficulty in his way, an intellectual severance between his knowledge and that of his audience. He thinks of Persia as an immense country of mountain, and desert, and prairie, unirrigated by man, and insufficiently watered by nature; with comparatively few trees and no deltas defended from drought as it were by Heaven, full of vast arid plains which with water would yield like Lincolnshire, but without it are about as culturable as the Place de la Concorde; the whole occupied by about two millions of a brave and intellectual, but idle and vicious, race of artisans and cultivators, far below the Neapolitans, whom of all Europeans they most resemble, —Mohommedans penetrated at once with fatalism and with that dreadful Sufee infedelity, the infedelity which, recognising alike God and good, holds that neither has any moral obligation; and with about 2,000,000 of pastoral nomads, socially on a level with the Bedouins, morally, we believe, below them. To most of Sir Henry’s audience at the Mansion house, on the contrary, the word “ Persia” calls up the idea of a grand Oriental empire, full of semi-civilised people and of wealth, with a Government despotic and oppressive perhaps, but energetic, efficient, and full of resources, a Government in all but probity not unlike that of India. In reality, the feeble, scattered, and decaying population of weary voluptuaries, cowed peasants, and savage herdsmen, is ruled by perhaps the worst Government, the one most inefficient for good, which ever afflicted mankind—by a clan of despotic satraps, who, because they are kinsmen of the Royal House, are exempt even from the ordinary Asiatic check on mifs-government —assassination by an. indignaut monarch or an outraged mob. There will come no help from them, even if they could give any ; and. if Persia has really been struck, as now.'thetas certain, by that most horrible of: scßtlfgesV a culminating famine, a fa cbliffi increasing

through throe successive years—a famine like that of Orissa, or of Rajpootana, or the great famine of North India, a famine of forage as well as cereals, words will not suffice to describe the extent of a calamity which, if it lasts another year—and the time has passed for rain —may almost blot Persia out of the nations, finally paralyse her for resistance to the power always closing round her throat. Sir Henry Rawlinson states only what be knows, but what he states with reserve when carefully read indicates a calamity worse than that which crushed Orissa. The Eelyat or Bedouin tribes who make up so large a portion of the population of Persia, a population smaller than that of Belgium, and more scattered and isolated in many districts than that of Norihern Sweden, have been fighting for three years against continuous drought, until at last forage is unprocurable, and their stock has perished. It is difficult to imagine under such circumstances how they could be saved, even if the Persian Government were as strong as that of India. The clans cannot help each other, for all are stricken alike. They cannot march to more fertile pastures, for the drought has desolated the whole pastoral country, and if they wander beyond it they will be treated as enemies, even if there exist means to feed them beyond the frontier. Besides, their means of locomotion —that is, of travelling hundreds of miles through dried-up plains —must have failed them, and the only course visible to themselves will be to practice the resignation which in extreme moments never fails a Mohammedan, to live on less than will keep them alive, and await calmly either relief or death. They are doing this in known places, and what their fate must be in the encampments whence news never reaches Europe or even India, in the more arid plains and the dry valleys in the bills, it is ghastly even to conjecture. Help, if it comes at all, must come from without, and as Sir Henry Rawlinson hinted, that help is, humanly speaking, nearly impossible. The Indian Government, with its wealth and organisation, if stirred to a desperate effort, an effort like that required for the invasion of 1856-57, might save the tribes near the coast, but the Indian Government is not responsible for Persia, is overburdened, and would be utterly distrusted by the statesmen of Teheran. These statesmen can do almost nothing. Money is worthless even if they had it, and they haveno supplies to send. They have no granaries stored for years such as the Indian princes used to keep before communication improved, no means of transport such as nature and the British conquerors have provided for India. They have no storehouse like Bengal, where the only danger is flood, where, when the rest of the continent is frying for want of water, the rice accumulates till the granaries hurst. The conveyance of forage to the dying Bedouins is simply impossible, for the pack animals marching through blighted provinces would eat more than they could carry, and except beasts of burden there are no means of conveyance. There are no roads, no rivers, no railways, no canals, no means of transporting caravans of food. An Eelyat encampment with its horses dead must be like an encampment in a ruined planet, isolated from the help of all sentient beings. The cities” might ray out supplies to certain limited distances ; but with one exception, a city in Persia is a collection of houses tenanted by people with less power to help than one of our large northern villages would in extremity exhibit, with one year’s store of grain at most, and no accumulated wealth whatever. Besides, the famine must have extended to the cities. The inhabitants of the plains within any possible marching distance will of course have poured into them, and the worst stories of suffering come from them, from Teheran, and Tabreez, and Bushire, the last, the richest, and most accessible place in Persia. If the people in Bushire are dying daily; if in Ishpahan, under the shadow of the Court, 12,000 are known to have perished ; if in Kazeroon out of 10,000 people only 2000 remain—and all these statements can be surpassed from the official records of Orissa—there is visibly no help to be hoped for from Persia itself. The Persian

Minister, as in duty bound, says the Shah gives all he can ; but though, we dare say, he orders food and is plundered to pay for it, sympathy is an undeveloped virtue in the East, and the officials will accept the famine as they would a flood, and think they have done much when they have remitted the State taxes. The famine, however, is not at an end. Not a hint is given in any of the speeches of AYednesday, not even in the optimist one uttered by the Minister, of any proximate diminution of distress, nor do we perceive any immediate or indeed approaching reason for hope. The forage may revive next year, but it will be three before the flocks and herds can be renewed, and one before much grain can be ready for consumption. For months everything must be imported, as there is nothing to export in return, no hoarded wealth and no means of transport on any adequate scale, the future looks black indeed. Whether Sir Henry Rawlinson used the phrase “ a doomed country advisedly we do not know, but that phrase conveys exactly the apprehension which the recent history of Persia and the suggestions as to this famine leave upon our minds. A Government bad and effete, but too strong to be shaken off, cities ruined by tyranny and taxation, a people declining in number, and a soil devastated by droughts, Persia seems to us to be a great and tempting prey to any power with the inclination to terminate her independence.