Dunne the past few weeks the prise of rice has gone up in Shang-ai from about $4.80 per picul to $7.20 per picul, nnd there has been corresponding rise in the price of the staple food of the people throughout the Yungize Valley. The immediate cause adduced 18) the flooding of extensive arcus in Hunan through phenomenal rains, and the consequent ruination of! many crops and the urgent demand for fod, The immediate result has been the series of fond riots, some serious, others milder "explosions of public feeling, and wil of them expressions in the first instance of the earliest cravings of human nature, the demand for fuad, The situation is one w sich arises periodic cally in China, and indeed in every thickly-populated country, and the officials are tuking the usual steps to suppress the trouble in the full knowledge that as time goes on the same conditions will arise again and they will be called upon to exert themselves to similar measures.
Never a your passes in China without its flood in some pur or another, and although that of the Sing Valley is unusually extensive, and the suffer-rs there deserve ull and more the sympathy which has been extended to them, the aster would not in itself] G2, cause a famine in the proper sense of the word, There is plenty of rice available to supply wil the people with fod. The present distress is the result therefore of other circumstances and chiefly of the ill-judged attempted regulations of the food supply by the officials themselves, who have now to endeavour, ty fresh restrictions, to relieve the situation which has beset brought about by their into: tereu Human nature being what it there will always be commercial vampires willing to pile up riches ab the expense of the very lives of the people. The "corner era frequently overreach themselves in the long run, but the money prizes are vast and the temptation is not easily resisted. In China the method is to accumulate the grain in centres, petition for and obtain the right of export, and then use the threat of creating a famine as a f forcing up prices, When has become too acute the officials step in again with a fresh prohibition ofthe export. It is the situation caused by the English Corn Laws over again, and the obvious remedy is absolute free trade in the food of the people for China as well as for Great Britain. With improved and cheapened means of transport and the removal of all barriers in the way of the working of the 1:15 ofj The Wee. Herald and S.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.