Princes of Orissa pose for a photograph in 1870, four years after a famine in the region killed one million people.

In his book Economic History of Orissa, JK Samal writes:

Sir Cecil Beadon, the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, visited Orissa with his Public Works Secretary, Colonel Nicolls, and GF Cockburn, Member of the Board of Revenue, in the middle of February 1866. On 17 February, he held at Cuttack a Darbar which was attended by twenty Rajas of Mahals, eighty Zamindars, and the covenanted and uncovenanted officers of the districts. In his darbar speech, he explained that Government could never interfere with prices. “If I were to attempt to do this, I would consider myself no better than dacoit of thief.” On this statement, the Hindu Patriot of 5 March remarked: “No sane or righteous man would wish him to be either, but have not the people of Orissa a right to ask him to act as a man and a brother?”