occurrence of so great a calamity. The rains had failed; the water in the tanks had dried up; the rice-fields had become parched and dry. There were but few stores handy to enable the foreigner to disburse the necessary grain. It was the first famine-experience of the English, and they too had made no provision for it. The misery was terrible. The large centres of industry, the only places where there was a chance of obtaining food, became thronged with the dying and the dead. The rivers floating corpses to the sea became so tainted that the very fish ceased to be wholesome food. In summing up, two years later, the effects of the famine on the population, the Governor-General in Council declared that in some places one-half, and, on the whole, one-third of the inhabitants had been destroyed. It need scarcely be added that this terrible calamity affected the Proprietors of East India Stock in a manner, to them the most vital: — it destroyed their prospects of large dividends.
To remedy this evil the brains of the Court of Directors could devise no other scheme than that which the foundering of the Aurora had previously baffled: they would send out other Supervisors. But Lord North had taken the matter in hand. He brought in a bill providing for the constitution in Calcutta of a Supreme Court, to consist of a Chief Justice and three Puisné judges, appointed by the Crown; giving to the Governor of Bengal authority over the two other Presidencies, with the title of
