Potitist. By far the most important incident in Chinese domestic affairs has been the famine which, continually spreading in extent and severity, threatens to partially depopalate large areas in the Northern provinces. Shantung, which suffered so terribly last winter, appears to be at present in better circumstances; but Shansi is suffering more severely than did, last year, its sister province; and the drought which deprived its population of the means of subsistence has prevailed also over the greater portions of Shensi, Ghibli and Honan. "The Goverament has been roused to unwonted exertion by the magnitude of the calamity decree after decree has appeared in the Peking Gazette, appointing special commissioners and urging the local officials of the distressed provinces to take measures for the relief of the sufferers.
Large quantities of grain and sums of money considerable for so poor a Government, have been appropriated. But the organisation of the Chinese Government is utterly inadequate to cope with a disaster of such magnitude, and the want of roads opposes most serious difficulties to the transmission of such relief even as it is able to afford. The sums officially allotted scarcely equal the total even of those subscribed by private charity in England for the relief of the famine in India; and it is beyond hope that the private subscriptions, which here also are not wanting, can have reached a tithe of the amount which the. Government of India has expended in grappling with a visitation less wide in its range than that under which China is now suffering. It is to be feared that terrible loss of life will have to be recorded before the advent of summer can cause the earth to yield its accustomed crops; and the sufferings of the people in the meantime must be sadly aggravated by the rigour of a winter more severe than we have experienced since the season of 1861-2. With all this distress, however, we hear of no political distarhance, and of very little brigandage. Probably, indeed, the distress is so great, the country so atterly bare of food, that the people could not congregate and more about in bodies even if they were so inclined.
Amid all this distress, however, the Government has'found means to carry on the war in the North-West, and its generals have lately achieved some Signal successes. The capture of Manas in the late satan of '76—news of which bad not yet reached us when writing our Retrospect of that year—was followed by: a temporary lull. Daring the past sammer active' opera tions were resumed; and after one severe defeat at Harashar, which the Mahomedans were apparently not a position to follow up, the Lmperiulists seem to have recovered themselves and made a dashing advance into Kashgavia, as far as the cities of Aksu and Ushi, some 700 miles beyond their base of operations at Torfun. It is said that the treachery of Hakim Beg,—whom rumour accuses of having poisoned the late Ameer, Yakoob, with a view to usurp the reins of Government—has greatly facilitated this advance; that, finding himself unable to make head against the son of his late Raler, this
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.