Despite the appalling example of the great Irish famine, Smithian imperatives continued to inform policies in India during the famines of the 1860s and 1870s. Baird Smith, reporting on the famine of 1860-1, applauded the non-interventionist principles of The Wealth of Nations and advised that the remedy for dearth be left to "the order of nature [which] if it occasionally produces dire sufferings, does also provide generally the most effective means for their mitigation". (In Orissa alone, in 1860, famine deaths were estimated at 1,364,529.) It has been suggested that some administrators were fortified in policies of non-interference by literal-minded assent to Malthusian doctrines. The magistrate at Patna was advised by the Governor-General that, while it was "beyond the power... of the public authorities to remedy the unfortunate dearth of grain", yet the magistrates may "effect much to soften the distress and calm the irritation of the people": By manifesting a sympathy in their sufferings, by a humane, patient and indulgent hearing of their complaints, by encouraging them to look forward to the approaching harvest... they may be persuaded to bear with resignation the inevitable calamities under which they labour. This throws one back, not only to Smith and to Malthus, but also to Edmund Burke's Thoughts on Scarcity.
E.P. Thompson, Customs in Common
