were explained and codified by Jimutavahana and Raghunandan. The five centuries of Musalman rule in Bengal, in spite of all that has been said against it, promoted agriculture, manufacture, and the national industries of Bengal; secured perfect autonomy and self-government under zemindars and village elders; and witnessed literary, religious, and social results, evidencing a healthy progress and culture of the national mind.

RISE OF BRITISH POWER-CLIVE

The story of the rise of British power in Bengal is well known, and need not be told again in these pages. The capture of Calcutta by Suraj-ud-dowla and the tragedy of the "Black Hole"; the doings of Clive and the battle of Plassy; the election of the effete Mir Jafar at Nawab; the election of Mir Kasim and his war with the British; the re-election of Mir Jafar and subsequent events-all these are well known to English readers. At last, in 1765, Lord Clive came out again as Governor of Bengal, and the East India Company was formally made the Diwan or revenue administrator of Bengal, Behar, and Orissa.

EARLY MISTAKES OF BRITISH ADMINISTRATION

The administrative scheme adopted by Lord Clive failed. Under his system the administration of law and justice, as well as the collection of revenue, was left in the hands of the Nawab of Bengal and the two Deputy Nawabs of Murshidabad and Patna; and the revenue when collected was made over to the Company. In the meantime the Company's servants were busy with the Company's trade and with making colossal fortunes by private trade, wrongfully ousting native traders from their markets. This dual system of rule could not succeed, and did not succeed. The Nawab

and the Deputy Nawabs felt that they were collecting revenues for the Company, and were unconscious of the responsibilities of real rulers; while the Company's servants felt that the Nawab was responsible for the administration, and they had nothing to do but to look after their trade. The responsibility which is felt by a ruling power for the good of the people was felt by neither party, and the people of Bengal were more grievously oppressed in the first years of the British rule than they had ever been under the Mohamedan rule. A terrible famine, such as India had perhaps never witnessed before, occurred in 1770-71; one-third of the population of Bengal was swept away, and the sites of many villages relapsed into jungle.

WARREN HASTINGS

In 1772 Warren Hastings was appointed Governor of Bengal, and two years after he was made GovernorGeneral under the new India Act, called the Regulating Act. It is needless for us in these pages to narrate the story of his rule in India, which is so well known to English readers, or even to refer to those wellknown acts which formed subjects of the historical impeachment against him on his return to England. It would be more profitable for our purposes to review his administrative work in Bengal. He totally upset the system of Lord Clive, and went to the opposite extreme. He arrested the Deputy Nawabs, made a judicial inquiry into their conduct, and abolished their authority for ever. He removed the central revenue offices to Calcutta, and placed them under English officials under the name of Board of Revenue. He abolished the judicial powers of local zemindars, and appointed an English officer in each district to discharge the functions of Civil Judge, of Collector of Revenues, and of Criminal Court. He drew up regu

lations for their guidance, and established two Sadr Courts of Appeal in Calcutta. These measures indicate the energy and vigour of Warren Hastings, but they also evidence that contempt for native co-operation which has always been the most serious blemish in British rule in India. When the zemindars were deprived of all power and responsibility for keeping the peace, the unaided English district officer, with his unscrupulous police and his corrupt subordinates, failed to perform that work. Crime multiplied all over the country, and organised robbery increased to an alarming extent. The ruin of the hereditary landlords brought about the sale of the defaulters' estates, and the oppressiveness of money-lenders and speculators, who became auction-purchasers and set up as landlords, added to the misfortunes of the people.

LORD CORNWALLIS

On the 13th August 1784, Pitt's Bill for the Better Government of India was passed. Warren Hastings left India in 1785, and was succeeded by Lord Cornwallis. The name of Cornwallis is associated with the first successful endeavours to reform British rule in India. He forced the Court of Directors to grant adequate pay to district officers, and he abolished the various additional and irregular incomes which those officers used to make in various ways. He limited the powers of the district officers to revenue work only, and appointed magistrates and judges for the performance of judicial work. And he raised the position and secured the permanent well-being of the landed and agricultural classes of Bengal by permanently settling the land revenues of that province. The assessment was extremely heavy, being £2,680,000, nearly double of Murshid Kuli Khan's assessment made only seventy years before; but this revenue was fixed for ever.

Those who judge the policy of Indian rulers merely by the amount of revenue which it brings to the Government have condemned this permanent settlement of land revenues made by Cornwallis. Those who judge it by the happiness which it secures to the people have held that no single measure of the British Government has been so beneficial to the people, and has so effectually secured their prosperity and wellbeing, as this settlement. As the Government asks for no increase of revenues from the landlords of Bengal, they have by three subsequent Acts stopped the landlords from obtaining enhancement of rents from cultivators, except on the most reasonable grounds. And the Bengal cultivators to-day are more prosperous and self-relying, more free from the grasp of the moneylender, and better able to protect themselves against the first onset of famines, than cultivators elsewhere in India. It is necessary to add that Bengal proper, which suffered from the worst famine in the last century, has known no real famine since the permanent settlement. And even in the congested districts of Behar the famines which appeared in 1874 and in 1897 were milder and less destructive than famines in Madras and Bombay, in the North-West and Central Provinces of India.

The close of the eighteenth century was clouded by wars in Europe and in India-in Europe from 1793 to 1815, in India from 1798 to 1818. The wars of the Marquis of Wellesley and the Marquis of Hastings against the Mahrattas and other powers have been frequently told in works on Indian history. Bengal remained in peace during these troublous times; but it was a long time before the administratiou of the country became thoroughly efficient. Robbery was still rife all over Bengal in the early years of the present century, and the Governor-General, writing in 1810, recorded: "The people were perishing almost

in our sight; every week's delay was a doom of slaughter and torture against the defenceless inhabitants of many populous countries." It was then that the wisest servants of the Company perceived how hopeless it was to successfully administer a civilised country without the co-operation of the people themselves. Sir Henry Strachey, Judge of the District of Calcutta, declared: "In a civilised, populous country like India, justice can be well dispensed only through the natives themselves." And Colonel Monro, of Madras, declared: "If we pay the same price for integrity, we shall find it as readily amongst natives as Europeans."

LORD WILLIAM BENTINCK

These liberal ideas gradually took shape in Bengal, specially under the administration of Lord William Bentinck, who was Governor-General of India from 1828 to 1835. Appointments in the subordinate judicial and executive services were thrown open to the natives of Bengal, and their pay and prospects were improved so as to secure the services of an upright and deserving class of public servants. The result was not only a great improvement in the administration of the country, but also a reduction in the expenditure; and Lord William Bentinck changed the deficit of a million into a surplus of two millions before he left India. Lord William Bentinck also abolished the inhuman practice of the self-inimolation of widows, known as sati; he suppressed the perfidious system of murder known as thagi; and he declared the English language to be the official language of India. dawn of a liberal and an enlightened administration in Bengal stimulated intellectual progress; the Hindu College founded in Calcutta in 1817 sent out its annual harvest of young men trained in Western

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