EX LIBRIS 
 
 THOMAS WILLIAM PRICE 
 
DUKE 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2018 with funding from 
 Duke University Libraries 
 
 https://archive.org/details/marquesscornwall01seto_0 
 
flukrs of Jhttiia 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 SIR WILLIAM WILSON HUNTER, K.C.S.I., C.l E. 
 
 M.A. (Oxford) : LL.D. (Cambridge) 
 
 LORD CORNWALLIS 
 
/ 
 
 Xonton 
 
 HENRY FROWDE 
 
 Oxford University Press Warehouse 
 Amen Corner, E.C. 
 
 [All rights reserved ] 
 

 TIE 1HBIAN EMPIRE 
 
 Prepared for Sir William Wilson Hunter* 
 
 IMPERIAL GAZETTEER OF INDIA 
 
RULERS OF INDIA 
 
 Ube ilftarquess CotnwalUs 
 
 By W. S. SETON-KARR, Esq. 
 
 FORMERLY A PUISNE JUDGE OF THE HIGH COURT OF CALCUTTA 
 AND SOMETIME SECRETARY TO THE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA 
 IN THE FOREIGN DEPARTMENT 
 
 
 Oxford 
 
 AT THE CLARENDON PRESS: 1890 
 
©jfora 
 
 PRINTED AT THE CLARENDON 
 
 PRESS 
 
 BY HORACE HART, PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY 
 

 Q I ^ 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 
 PAGES 
 
 I. 
 
 Early Life and American Campaign 
 
 7-18 
 
 II. 
 
 Political Condition of India. The Revenue 
 
 
 
 Settlement . 
 
 19-59 
 
 III. 
 
 Principles and Results. 
 
 60-73 
 
 IV. 
 
 Reform of the Civil Service .... 
 
 74-100 
 
 V. 
 
 Private Life. Social Life in India 
 
 101-118 
 
 VI. 
 
 Perpetual Settlement of Benares . 
 
 119-137 
 
 VII. 
 
 Madras. Bengal : Sale Laws and Resump- 
 
 
 
 TIONS. 
 
 138-136 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Mission to the Continent. Indian Corre- 
 
 
 
 SPONDENCE. 
 
 I57- i6 9 
 
 IX. 
 
 The Peace of Amiens. 
 
 1 70-177 
 
 X. 
 
 Return to India. Policy. Death . 
 
 178-197 
 
 
 Appendix. 
 
 O 
 
 O 
 
 1 
 
 ON 
 
 ON 
 
 
 Index . 
 
 201-203 
 
 
 NOTE 
 
 
 The orthography of proper names follows the system adopted by the 
 I ndian Government for the Imperial Gazetteer of India. That system, 
 while adhering to the popular spelling of very well-known places, such 
 as Punjab, Lucknow, etc., employs in all other cases the vowels with 
 the following uniform sounds:— 
 
 a, as in woman: d, as in fathers : i, as in police : », as in intrigue : 
 o, as in cold : u, as in ball : -A, as in sare : e, as in grey. 
 
LORD CORNWALLIS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 Early Life and American Campaign 
 
 The family of Cornwallis, Mr. Ross says with 
 truth, was of some importance in Ireland, as is shown 
 by the family papers. The first of whom we hear 
 anything positive in England was Thomas Corn¬ 
 wallis, who became Sheriff of London in 1378. He 
 acquired property in Suffolk, and his son and grand¬ 
 son represented that county in Parliament. One of 
 his successors helped to suppress the insurrection of 
 Wyatt, and was rewarded by the office of Treasurer 
 of the Household. The grandson of the Treasurer 
 was created a baronet by Charles I, supported the 
 Royal cause, and followed Charles II to the Continent. 
 After the Restoration, Sir Frederick became Baron 
 Cornwallis in 1661. The third holder of this title is 
 known as having married Anne Scott, widow of 
 Monmouth and Duchess of Buccleugh. The fifth 
 baron, who was Chief Justice of Eyre south of Trent, 
 
8 
 
 LORD CORNWALLIS 
 
 and Constable of the Tower, was created Earl Corn¬ 
 wallis and Viscount Brome in June, 1753. His son. 
 born December 31, 1738, is the subject of the present 
 memoir. 
 
 Charles, second Earl and first Marquess Cornwallis, 
 was educated at Eton; and, according to the custom 
 of the time, entered the army at the age of eighteen. 
 He was sent abroad in 1757 to acquire some techni¬ 
 cal knowledge, and joined the Military Academy at 
 Turin. Several amusing anecdotes of his life there are 
 given in letters from a Prussian officer, Captain De 
 Roguin, who appears to have accompanied the young 
 Englishman as a sort of travelling companion and 
 tutor. The discipline of the Academy seems to have 
 been fairly strict, and Lord Brome spent his time in 
 learning to dance and fence, studying the German 
 language, and taking lessons in the riding school. 
 After leaving Turin he visited some of the German 
 courts, served on the staff of Lord Granby, and was 
 present at several actions on the Continent, including 
 the battle of Minden. In 1760 he entered Parliament 
 as member for Eye, but in less than two years he 
 succeeded to the earldom, on the death of his father in 
 June, 1762. 
 
 Hitherto there had been nothing extraordinary in 
 the career of Earl Cornwallis. He had benefitted by 
 a public school education. His mind had been opened 
 and his taste improved by foreign travel, and he had 
 seen some hard service at Minden, Labinau, and other 
 
EARLY LIFE 
 
 9 
 
 minor actions against the French. On his return 
 home he continued to pay attention to his military 
 duties and was stationed with his regiment at Dublin, 
 Derby, Gloucester, and Gibraltar. In July, 1768, he 
 married Jemima, daughter of Colonel Jones of the 
 third regiment of Foot Guards. He seems to have 
 been constantly in his place in the House of Peers, 
 and to have voted usually with Lord Shelburne, who 
 eventually became the first Lord Lansdowne, and 
 with Earl Temple. It is significant that notwith¬ 
 standing the political opinions of his predecessors he 
 was steadily opposed to the scheme for taxing the 
 American colonists, and though he held divers Minis¬ 
 terial appointments he voted against the Ministry of 
 the day on more than one occasion. In 1770 he was 
 violently denounced by Junius, and by that venomous 
 writer was credited with the intention of ‘ retiring 
 into voluntary banishment in the hope of recovering 
 some of his reputation.’ 
 
 This attack rests on no more basis of truth than 
 many of the accusations of Junius. But so far from 
 retiring from public life into social exile, it was the 
 fate of Cornwallis from this date to take a decided 
 and prominent part in most important events in 
 America, in India, in Ireland, and on the Continent. 
 Practically, his public career may be divided into 
 four portions. He commanded a division of Koyal 
 troops and saw much service in the American War 
 of Independence. He was Governor-General and 
 
io 
 
 LORD CORNWALLIS 
 
 Commander-in-Ckief in India—first from September, 
 i 786, to October, 1793, and again from July to October, 
 1805. He was Lord-Lieutenant and Commander-in- 
 Cbief in Ireland for neai-ly three years—between June, 
 1798 and May, 1801. He negotiated tbe Peace of 
 Amiens. 
 
 It will be tbe object of tbis memoir to describe the 
 aims, motives, and character of Lord Cornwallis as an 
 Indian Ruler, and to notice tbe historical events with 
 which he was connected only so far as may be neces¬ 
 sary for the comprehension of his character. Average 
 English readers must be credited with a fair know¬ 
 ledge of the struggle which led to the loss of our 
 American colonies, with the condition of Ireland at 
 the beginning of the present century, and with the 
 French war terminated by the short Peace of Amiens. 
 Similarly, in treating of the Indian administration 
 there will be no detailed account of the two successive 
 campaigns waged against Tipu Sultan. But to the 
 important measures of reform in India introduced by 
 Lord Cornwallis a considerable space will be accorded. 
 And, generally speaking, no facts or anecdotes will be 
 omitted which tend to assign to this statesman his 
 due place in history, whether as a soldier or a civil 
 administrator. 
 
 Cornwallis, who by this time had attained the rank 
 of Lieutenant-General, was directed to take command 
 of a division of the English army in America at the 
 beginning of 1776. He had opposed the Ministry 
 
AMERICAN CAMPAIGN IT 
 
 and regretted the contest, but under a sense of military 
 duty he accepted the post. Two years afterwards we 
 find him in England. He returned to America in 
 April, 1778, but again came home and threw up his 
 command; not from any conviction of the injustice of 
 the -war, but owing to the illness of Lady Cornwallis, 
 who pined in the absence of her husband and died at 
 Culford, the family place, on February 14, 1779. 
 
 This sad event decided him to return to active 
 service, and he was again employed in America till 
 his surrender at York Town. The late Sir John 
 Kaye holds the opinion that our success in America 
 had become hopeless even before the first arrival of 
 Cornwallis. And the prospect became still darker 
 when the chief command was entrusted to Sir Henry 
 Clinton in succession to Sir William Howe. According 
 to the late Lord Stanhope, we should not have laid 
 the foundations of our Empire in Bengal but for 
 Clive, and the historian adds that had Clive lived 
 we might not have lost our American colonies ; or at 
 least their independence would have been attained in 
 some other way. While it is almost needless to state 
 that in America we had no heaven-born general on 
 our side, it is fair to add that Cornwallis met and 
 fairly defeated the colonists on at least three occasions. 
 
 When the English forces had evacuated Phila¬ 
 delphia with some loss of stores and more loss of 
 honour, Cornwallis, in his first campaign, repulsed the 
 Americans who were closing round his rear with no 
 
12 
 
 LORD CORNWALLIS 
 
 inconsiderable loss. At the siege of Charleston he 
 actually as a volunteer formed one of the storming 
 party, and if it be objected that a general officer had 
 no business to place himself in such a position, his 
 example was followed by Sir James Outram in the 
 Indian Mutiny, who charged with the Volunteer 
 Cavalry at the relief of Lucknow and actually resigned 
 the command to General Havelock. On August 18, 
 1780, by a rapid march from Charleston to Camden 
 and Rugeley Mills, he totally defeated the army of 
 General Gates. In a letter to an officer he says: 
 ‘Above 1000 were killed and wounded and about 
 800 taken prisoners. We are in possession of eight 
 pieces of brass cannon, all they had in the field, all 
 their ammunition-waggons, a great number of arms, 
 and 130 baggage-waggons: in short, there never was 
 a more complete victory.’ Unfortunately, as has been 
 remarked by more than one writer, these temporary 
 successes were never properly followed up. Our 
 movements were hindered by want of transport and 
 by a defective commissariat; and the British army, 
 though numerically superior to its adversaries, was 
 never strong in discipline or morale. Moreover, while 
 Cornwallis was successful, detachments under other 
 officers were defeated by the colonists. The Royalists 
 and their levies of militia became dispirited and dis¬ 
 heartened by a series of small failures, and although 
 the campaign of 1780 was on the whole favourable to 
 the Royal cause, Colonel Tarleton suffered a defeat at 
 
AMERICAN CAMPAIGN 
 
 T 3 
 
 Cowpens, which has been described as the most serious 
 calamity after the surrender of Saratoga. What could 
 be done to repair this defeat was done by Cornwallis. 
 
 At Guildford he attacked General Greene, who com¬ 
 manded a force of nearly 6000 men, and on March 15, 
 1781, he routed this officer and captured his cannon. 
 But here again want of supplies, the general dis¬ 
 affection of the country, and the failure of energy on 
 the part of the Loyalists, crippled operations; and 
 although this action is admitted by the American 
 writers to have been a ‘ signal instance of the steadi¬ 
 ness of British troops when well commanded,’ and 
 though one English annalist compares it to Cressy, 
 Poitiers, and Agincourt, it was only an apparent 
 triumph; and indeed it may be said to have indicted 
 more damage on the English than on the Americans. 
 
 Cornwallis, who had been wounded in the battle of 
 Guildford, next marched through North Carolina into 
 Virginia, and took up his position at York and 
 Gloucester, on the York River. It is not easy to 
 apportion the blame for the surrender of York Town. 
 The Commander-in-Chief subsequently endeavoured 
 to show that he had not thought favourably of Corn¬ 
 wallis’s march into the Virginian provinces. But it 
 is quite clear that he ordered Cornwallis to act on 
 the defensive and to fortify himself in some suitable 
 position. Cornwallis had also some hope of relief or 
 assistance from the British deet. But nothing was 
 done with vigour and effect. And when the American 
 
14 
 
 LORD CORNWALLIS 
 
 and French armies, strong in men and material, 
 artillery and engineers, closed round the English 
 forces, nothing was left for the Commander but to 
 surrender his post or to try and cut his way out 
 through the enemy. When the latter alternative 
 had been tried in vain, the surrender of an ex¬ 
 hausted garrison and crumbling works naturally 
 followed. 
 
 This event practically put an end to the contest. 
 Cornwallis remained a prisoner of war for about 
 three months and was allowed to leave on parole for 
 England. It is pleasant to note that in his letters he 
 mentions with gratitude and good-feeling the delicacy 
 and courtesy shown to him and others by the French 
 officers. Eventually, after a long and troublesome 
 correspondence about his exchange with Colonel 
 Laurens, an American prisoner of high rank, he was 
 released from his parole at the beginning of 1783. 
 
 Without analysing the numerous pamphlets and 
 letters in which the responsibility for our failure was 
 long and acrimoniously discussed, it is quite possible 
 to form an estimate of the merits of Cornwallis as a 
 military man and a strategist. That he did not 
 possess the quick perception and the rapid glances 
 which distinguish great captains in the field, may be 
 readily admitted. But there is every reason to think 
 that under a first-rate commander, Cornwallis at the 
 head of a division, or despatched to cany out some 
 distinct combination, or to operate in a particular 
 
AMERICAN CAMPAIGN 
 
 15 
 
 quarter with adequate support, might have won no 
 inconsiderable military distinction. 
 
 He had been well trained ; he was a good discipli¬ 
 narian ; he knew when and how to be severe, and he 
 had formed some distinct idea of carrying on a cam¬ 
 paign. Sir H. Clinton showed his incapacity by 
 recommending desultory measures as a means of 
 reducing the enemy. Cornwallis tells us that he was 
 quite tired of ‘ marching about the country in quest 
 of adventures.’ He informs his Commander-in-Chief 
 that the right maxim for the safe and honourable 
 conduct of the war was ‘ to have as few posts as 
 possible, and that wherever the King’s troops are, they 
 should be in respectable force.’ He was in favour of 
 offensive operations in Virginia only. He did not 
 foresee the least advantage from destroying goods and 
 property at Philadelphia. He thought it absurd to 
 attempt to turn an unhealthy swamp into a defensive 
 post, which could at once be taken by an enemy with 
 a temporary superiority at sea. In fact, ho was for 
 concentrating his efforts on operations in a province 
 where a decisive victory would mean the defeat of his 
 opponents; and at one time before the surrender of 
 York Town we had firm possession of four important 
 provinces, while another state, Vermont, had shown a 
 desire for union with Canada. Our Loyalists had not 
 then lost all heart, and the ‘ Americans were reduced 
 to great straits for both money and supplies.’ 
 
 In a very few years, however, the talents and 
 
i6 
 
 LORD CORNWALLIS 
 
 experience of Cornwallis were to find scope for their 
 action in a very different sphere, where he would not 
 be hampered by the incapacity of a superior, and 
 where what Gibbon terms the seals and the standard, 
 or the civil and military power, would be vested in the 
 same person. We have it on his own authority that 
 Lord Shelburne in May, 1782, proposed to him ‘ to go 
 to India as Governor-General and Commander-in- 
 Chief.’ It is clear from this, that notwithstanding the 
 disaster of York Town, Cornwallis still possessed 
 the confidence of statesmen high in office, and was 
 thought fitted for important trusts. Yet about the 
 same time we find him complaining that he had been 
 treated very unfairly by the King and Mr. Pitt, and 
 that these two great personages had agreed to expose 
 him to the world ‘ as an object of contempt and 
 ridicule.’ 
 
 It seems from the correspondence that negotiations 
 with a view to engage Cornwallis in the Admini¬ 
 stration were not very delicately and judiciously 
 managed. It is curious too that Cornwallis, when 
 turning over the suggestion of India in his mind, 
 should have come to the conclusion that it offered 
 no field for military reputation. Possibly the re¬ 
 collection of failures in America may have warped 
 his judgment, and the recent defeat and capture of our 
 officers by Haidar Ali may have obliterated the 
 memories of Plassey and Baxar. 
 
 Cornwallis writes thus to Colonel Ross in anticipa- 
 
THE GOVERNOR-GENERALSHIP 
 
 17 
 
 tions which happily were not fulfilled. He does not 
 feel inclined 1 to abandon my children and every 
 comfort on this side the grave, to quarrel with the 
 Supreme Government in India, whatever it may be : 
 to find that I have neither power to model the army 
 nor to correct abuses; and finally, to run the risk of 
 being beaten by some Nabob and disgraced to all 
 eternity.’ Cornwallis may have been thinking of the 
 wearisome disputes between Hastings and Francis, 
 and the support withheld by other members of the 
 Council from the Governor-General. 
 
 In June, 1784, there came a distinct intimation that 
 the Ministers intended to offer him the two posts of 
 Governor-General and Commander-in-Chief, and in 
 February, 1785, he was ‘attacked,’ as he phrases it, to 
 take the Governor-Generalship. To this proposal, 
 after a consideration of twenty-four hours, he gave a 
 ‘ civil negative.’ This it might be thought would 
 have precluded any renewal of similar negotiations, 
 and during the next year Cornwallis was much taken 
 up with the claims to compensation preferred by the 
 American loyalists, and by the proceedings of a Board 
 or Special Commission for the fortification of our sea¬ 
 ports, of which, with other distinguished naval and 
 military officers, he was made a member. In the 
 same year he was deputed to Berlin to attend a 
 review of the Prussian army, and was received there 
 with some civility by Frederic the Great, though it is 
 expressly mentioned in a letter to Colonel Ross that 
 
 B 
 
1 8 
 
 LORD CORNWALLIS 
 
 the king showed a marked preference for La Fayette- 
 A conversation between the king and the English 
 General, recorded in the Cornwallis Correspondence, 
 is very curious as showing Frederic’s view of the 
 political relations of continental states with each 
 other and with England. 
 
 In the beginning of 1786, from some cause not 
 clearly explained in Cornwallis’s Life and Letters, the 
 offer of India was again made, and with grief of 
 heart, as he puts it, Cornwallis accepted the appoint¬ 
 ment, sailed in May, and landed in Calcutta in 
 September of the same year. A Bill, on lines which 
 he had himself approved or suggested, enlarging the 
 powers of the Governor-General under the India Bill 
 of 1783, and very properly giving him authority to 
 act on emergencies without the concurrence of his 
 Council, and even in opposition to that body, received 
 the Royal assent after his departure for the East. 
 
CHAPTER 11 
 
 Political Condition op India. The Revenue 
 Settlement 
 
 A short summary of the condition of British India 
 at that time ma} r not be deemed superfluous for the 
 complete understanding of the powers, responsibilities, 
 and policy of the new Governor-General. 
 
 We had acquired and had begun in a fashion to 
 administer the fine provinces of Bengal and Behar 
 with a portion of Orissa. The six great Maratha 
 houses with large territories and disciplined forces 
 were still independent. Muhammadan Viceroys ruled 
 over vast tracts of country at Lucknow and at 
 Haidarabad. There were other lesser Nawabs of the 
 Karnatic and of Farukhabad, and Rajas at Travan- 
 core and Tanjore, who at any moment might require 
 support and countenance as allies,—if they did not 
 become troublesome as enemies. The Presidency of 
 Bombay was comprised within two islands, and some 
 not very important districts on the mainland. Madras 
 was more extensive; but over the greater portion of 
 India, dynasties, old and young, and potentates of 
 every degree of merit, demerit, and obscurity, still 
 held sway, and their representatives were ever ready 
 
20 
 
 LORD CORNWALLIS 
 
 to appropriate to themselves some share in a Mughal 
 empire which when at its highest had lasted only 
 a century and a half, and was now crumbling to 
 pieces. 
 
 Before dealing with any of the reforms in civil 
 administration carried out by Cornwallis, it is as well 
 to state briefly the result of two campaigns waged 
 against our bitterest and most formidable opponent, 
 Tipu Sultan, the son of Haidar All who had sup¬ 
 planted the old Hindu Rfijas of Mysore and ruled at 
 Seringapatam. The war began under the auspices of 
 General Medows as Commander-in-Chief at Madras. 
 Tipii had made an unprovoked attack on our ally 
 the Raja of Travancore, and it was the object of the 
 General, in alliance with the Nizam and the Peshwa, 
 to bring the Sultan to account. But it soon appeared 
 that Medows, though a brave, experienced, and chival¬ 
 rous officer, had not the strategic qualities which, in 
 a difficult country and against a watchful and wary 
 enemy, were sufficient to ensure success. To add to 
 this, our army was badly equipped and provisioned. 
 The Treasury was empty. The civil government of 
 Madras was incapable. At the close of the year T790, 
 Cornwallis, the Governor-General, made use of his 
 provisional powers and practically assumed command 
 of the army in the field. 
 
 It is creditable to Medows that he displayed no 
 resentment at his supersession, and that he con¬ 
 tinued to carry out the orders of Cornwallis with 
 
THE MYSORE CAMPAIGN 
 
 1\ 
 
 perfect cordiality and fidelity. In March, 1791, 
 Bangalore was stormed, and Tipu fell back on 
 Seringapatam. Cornwallis followed. But when within 
 ten miles of that city, although he had met and dis¬ 
 persed the enemy in the field, he found himself unable 
 to follow up his advantage from want of guns and 
 material, and was compelled to return to Bangalore. 
 
 The disastrous events of this retreat are well known 
 and have been described by historians. Tipu managed 
 to obtain swift intelligence of all our proceedings, 
 while our knowledge of his movements was almost a 
 blank. Our battery train had to be buried. The heavy 
 baggage was abandoned, and the sick and wounded 
 had to be transported on horses borrowed from the 
 native cavalry. Little or nothing was effected in the 
 course of the same year, and Cornwallis wrote to his 
 son, Lord Brome, that he was growing old and rheu¬ 
 matic and had lost all spirit. He had hopes how¬ 
 ever of bringing Tipu to terms either by negotiation 
 or by an attack on his capital, and he did not think 
 of leaving India before January, 1793. At the same 
 time the Governor-General expressed his amazement, 
 in a letter to his brother the Bishop of Lichfield, that 
 any man of common sense could have ever imagined 
 that the war could be avoided. It was indeed, to use 
 his expression to Henry Dundas, ‘ an absolute and 
 cruel necessity.’ And it is not surprising to read that 
 the attack made by the Opposition in both Houses, on 
 the Mysore War, was not only a complete failure, but 
 
22 
 
 LORD CORNWALLIS 
 
 that it was really converted into a vote of approba¬ 
 tion. 
 
 Towards the close of 1791 warlike operations were 
 resumed with some vigour. The fortress of Seven- 
 droog or Savandrug, described by Colonel Yule as 
 ‘ a remarkable double-hill fort in Mysore, standing on 
 a two-topped, bare, rock of granite,’ and long thought 
 impregnable either by battery or escalade, was taken 
 in the end of September. The capture of three other 
 forts followed. The British Army had been reinforced. 
 The native merchants collected ample stores of grain, 
 and with the aid of a considerable army under the 
 son of the Nizam and a small contingent of Ma- 
 rathas, Cornwallis carried the fortified camp of the 
 enemy in a night attack in which he himself was 
 wounded, forced Tipd to evacuate all his posts to 
 the north of the river Cauvery, and was at last in a 
 position to lay siege to the town. The final over¬ 
 throw of the Muhammadan usurper was reserved 
 for a statesman who, gifted with remarkable energy 
 and foresight, found India in a better state of prepara¬ 
 tion, and was aided by officers and diplomatists of the 
 very first rank. But the termination of the two 
 campaigns of Cornwallis is entitled to be termed a 
 real success. 
 
 The native allies who., it was afterwards ascer¬ 
 tained, had been in secret communication with Tiptr, 
 were content to leave protracted negotiations for 
 peace in the hands of the English soldier and states- 
 
THE MYSORE CAMPAIGN 
 
 2.3 
 
 man. Some territory was ceded to us. A consider¬ 
 able sum was exacted as a fine, and the two eldest 
 sons of Tipu. were brought to the tent of the 
 Governor-General and delivered over to him as 
 hostages for the future. A well-known old print of 
 this imposing ceremony is still to be found in country 
 houses in England. 
 
 A link with the past history of Mysore was long 
 furnished by the third son of Tipu, Prince Ghulam 
 Muhammad, who, younger than his brothers the 
 hostages, survived down to our own times,—a loyal, 
 hospitable, and peaceful subject, residing in the neigh¬ 
 bourhood of Alipur, who on two separate occasions 
 paid a visit to England. Many Englishmen have a 
 pleasant recollection of the old Prince’s hospitality ; 
 his entertainment of Viceroys at his residence; and 
 his black horse with a long tail that swept the ground, 
 as he took his leisurely morning canter round the 
 race-course of Calcutta. 
 
 Some other incidents in the foreign policy of 
 Cornwallis’s administration may be briefly noticed. 
 Sindhia was informed, through the Resident, Major 
 Palmer, that the Governor-General would be ready to 
 interpose with his good offices and advice, and to 
 adjust differences between Gwalior and the Vizir of 
 Oudh. But the Maratha ruler was warned at the 
 same time that any insult offered or injury done to 
 the Vizir or his subjects would be looked on as 
 offered to the subjects of the Company. Though the 
 
24 
 
 LORD CORNWALLIS 
 
 time bad not perhaps arrived for the open assertion 
 of our position as the Paramount Power in India, the 
 above language was suited to the occasion, and would 
 not have been unworthy of Wellesley himself. 
 
 The succession to the Raj of Tanjore occupied a good 
 deal of attention. The Government at first supported 
 the claims of Amir Singh who was in possession. On 
 further consideration however, and especially on a letter 
 from the celebrated missionary Schwartz, this decision 
 was altered. Sarfiji, the adopted son of the deceased 
 Raja, was placed on the throne. Steps were taken to 
 induce the Nawab of the Karnatic to liquidate his debts 
 and observe the stipulations of treaties ; but they had 
 not much effect, and the solution of this difficulty was 
 also reserved for Wellesley. Captain Kirkpatrick, a 
 very distinguished political officer, was dispatched on 
 a mission to Nepal, where he was kindly received 
 by the Regent, uncle of the Raja, in spite of the strong 
 opposition of a party of nobles who looked with sus¬ 
 picion on commercial treaties and European inter¬ 
 course. Indeed, owing to the extensive jealousy of 
 the king and the ministers of Nepal in each succes¬ 
 sive generation, we have scarcely made any real 
 progress in what is termed the opening up of that 
 kingdom to British commercial enterprise since the 
 mission sent by Cornwallis. 
 
 With the exception of the campaigns against Tipu, 
 the government of Cornwallis may be said to have 
 been one of peace. The reduction of Pondicherry was 
 
THE REVENUE SETTLEMENT 
 
 25 
 
 one of his last acts, accomplished by a combined naval 
 and military force. After a few discharges from our 
 batteries the town capitulated. And this was of 
 course followed by the temporary cession of all the 
 other French settlements and factories in India. 
 
 It is now a pleasing task, after this brief recapitula¬ 
 tion of the political and military events which Corn¬ 
 wallis directed, or in which he took a prominent part, 
 to turn to the measures of internal reform which 
 entitle him to rank as one of those English states¬ 
 men who have based our supremacy in India on a 
 solid foundation, and have civilised, disciplined, and 
 improved vast provinces acquired either by conquest 
 or by cession. In reviewing these subjects the first place 
 will be given to the Settlement of the Land Revenue. 
 Under every respectable government, Hindu, Mu¬ 
 hammadan, or foreign, the adjustment of the Land 
 Tax has always been one of the primary objects to be 
 attained. The due exaction of the revenue or ffi e 
 Lan d Tax has been considered the right of every de 
 
 fa cto governmen t from time immemorial, whether this 
 
 power were exercised by a mighty monarch like 
 Asoka or Akbar over splend id pro vinces, or by s ome 
 petty Raja with a hill fort and a few square miles of 
 jungle streaked with cultivati on. With the more 
 enlightened rulers, such as Akbar or Slier Shah, the 
 due assessment of the revenue and the equitable 
 division of the produce between the cultivator or the 
 village community and the superior landlord, has 
 
2 6 
 
 LORD CORNWALLIS 
 
 always been a paramount duty. When we acquired the 
 Diwani of Bengal in 17 65, o ur first object was to realise 
 the revenue by annual or quinquennial assessments. 
 
 Later acquisitions have impressed on our ad¬ 
 ministrators the necessity of fixing the Government 
 share of the produce on more definite principles, of 
 collecting it by easy processes, of ascertaining the 
 rights and interests of all classes from the superior 
 landlord or tenant-proprietor down to the tenant-at- 
 will, and of stereotyping these rights by a permanent 
 and trustworthy record. It has been justly remarked 
 that until the Land Rev enue has bee n fix ed and the 
 Settlement concluded no other improvement should be 
 attempted, or, if attempted, would be likely to succeed. 
 It is vain to look for contentment and acquiescence 
 whether in a foreign or an indigenous rule, or to set 
 about any of those moral and material works which 
 denote progress and civilisation, until the mass of the 
 agriculturists know for certain in what proportions, 
 at what periods of the year, at what places, and under 
 what conditions or guarantees, they are to contribute 
 to the Exchequer that portion of the harvest which 
 they admit to be its due. No one in India, except 
 under a special grant of exemption from the ruling 
 power, has ever imagined that he could hold his Taluk 
 or his allotment without paying something for it. 
 
 All these considerations were not so fully appre¬ 
 ciated by the servants of the East India Company 
 under Warren Hastings and Cornwallis as they 
 
THE REVENUE SETTLEMENT 
 
 27 
 
 have been since. But even then the collection of 
 the revenue had been for twenty years the first and 
 chief care of the merchants and writers who found 
 themselves called from the desk and the counting-house 
 to preside at the local treasury and to replenish it 
 with contributions from a huge district. After the 
 second administration of Lord Clive we, of course, 
 began regularlyto" collect the share of the Govern¬ 
 ment, and in some sense to govern the country. At 
 first Englishmen were employed, and they soon felt 
 the need of native collectors and subordinates. Then 
 supervisors were appointed over the collectors. Next 
 came local Councils at Patna, Dacca, and Murshidabad; 
 and at last there was formed a Board of Revenue of 
 which the President of the Council, and ultimately Lord 
 Cornwallis as Governor-General, became a member. 
 
 The assessments were made for five years at one 
 period, and for one year at another. The Collectors 
 were paid by salaries and by commission, the former 
 moderate and the latter very large. Abuses pre¬ 
 vailed as much in the collection of the revenue due 
 to the Government as in the realisation of the rents 
 due to Zamindars. It was th e objec t of Cornwallis 
 almost from the moment of his arrival, to enquire into 
 these abuses, to redress gri evances, and t o provide for 
 the contentment of the cultivating community, the 
 security of the Zamindars, and the interests of the 
 East India Company, by one eqnitable~and consistent 
 code and system. With this object the Governor- 
 
28 
 
 LORD CORNWALLIS 
 
 General judiciously sought assistance from the men 
 best able to supply it. It would have been unreason¬ 
 able for Cornwallis or for the historian of that period 
 to expect in Collectors suddenly placed over large 
 districts in Bengal, a minute, accurate, and diversified 
 acquaintance with tenures, village customs, rights, re¬ 
 sponsibilities, qualities of soils, and value of produce. 
 
 Still, it is not to be imagined that some of the 
 older Company’s servants were destitute of all agri¬ 
 cultural and revenue knowledge. In Mr. Law and in 
 Mr. Brooke, the father of Raja Brooke of Borneo, the 
 Governor-General found two highly qualified and 
 experienced officers. The celebrated Analysis of the 
 Finances of Bengal, by Mr. James Grant, contains an 
 enormous mass of information, though the conclusions 
 are often unsound and the deductions untrustworthy. 
 But in Mr. Shore, afterwards Lord Teignmouth, the 
 Governor-General found a subordinate and a colleague 
 whose understanding of the revenue and rent 
 system of Bengal and Behar was accurate, extensive, 
 and profound. Shore’s Minutes are copious, and one, 
 of June 1789, extends to 562 paragraphs, and covers 
 nearly ninety pages of close print. No one could 
 have written it who had not completely mastered the 
 past history and present condition of the Province. 
 
 Many of Shore’s observations, deductions, and rea¬ 
 sons are as just and unimpeachable at this hour as 
 they were when written just a century ago. His 
 remarks on native character and proclivities are 
 
THE REVENUE SETTLEMENT 
 
 29 
 
 pertinent at this very day. No one can pretend to 
 understand the origin of the Bengal Zamindari system 
 who has not carefully studied this text-book on the 
 subject. The diction is clear and perspicuous, in spite 
 of the inevitable introduction of local phrases and 
 terms; and in handsome language the Governor- 
 General more than once acknowledged his obligations 
 to the writer of these treatises, as they may fairly be 
 termed, though he differed from Shore on more than 
 one important point. 
 
 There has been, at various times, a good deal of 
 discussion amongst able Anglo-Indian experts as to 
 the precise position and rights of those whom in the 
 Lower Provinces we have termed Zamindars. It is the 
 opinion of some very competent authorities that these 
 Zamindars were originally of various kinds. Some¬ 
 times they were mere agents nominated for short 
 periods who had bid for the privilege of collecting 
 and paying the Government dues. A very notable 
 example of this class may be found in the Lives of the 
 Lindsays. The Hon. Robert Lindsay, a servant of 
 the East India Company, finding that one Ganga 
 Govind, a native collector, was unequal to the collec¬ 
 tion of the revenue of the district of Sylhet, himself 
 came forward and tendered for the right to collect, 
 though he was opposed by the Council of Dacca. His 
 offer was accepted by Warren Hastings, and in this 
 way, aided by the monopoly of catching elephants and 
 supplying the bazars of Calcutta with oranges and 
 
LORD CORNWALLIS 
 
 3 ° 
 
 lime, he legitimately acquired a large fortune. In 
 those days such a proceeding was perfectly honour¬ 
 able and fail - . 
 
 In other instances the native tax-collector, em¬ 
 ployed at first by the Muhammadan Nawab of Dacca 
 and Murshidabad, was enabled to hand over the same 
 privilege to his son or successor, and as the office thus 
 had a tendency to become hereditary, it was in theory 
 associated with vested rights. But it was often found 
 to be sound policy to entrust the collection of the 
 revenue to the representatives of the old landed aris¬ 
 tocracy of Bengal, and Shore particularly mentions 
 that at the time of the acquisition of the Provinces 
 of Bengal and Behar, one million of revenue was 
 contributed by the Zamindaris of the Rajas of 
 Bardwan, Rajshahi, Dinapur, Nadiya, Birbhum, Bish- 
 nupur, and Jessor. To this day some of their re¬ 
 presentatives are in the enjoyment of fine estates. 
 Bardwan is the largest and most flourishing, but 
 Nadiya or Nuddea and Jessor are in the hands of 
 the descendants of Shore’s Rdjas. By Rajshahi is 
 meant Nattor, an estate now very much reduced in size 
 and wealth. The Zamindars of Birbhum and Bishnu- 
 pur are sunk almost to destitution, owing to mis¬ 
 management, the dishonesty of servants, litigation, and 
 general incapacity. In 1789 it was assumed that we 
 were to make the Settlement with the Zamindars, who 
 by descent, prescription, or privilege and use, had been 
 in the habit of collecting rents from hundreds and 
 
THE REVENUE SETTLEMENT 31 
 
 thousands of cultivators, and accounting to Govern¬ 
 ment for its propel 1 share or revenue. 
 
 It has been asserted at several epochs that as Corn¬ 
 wallis declared the Zamindars, with whom his Settle¬ 
 ment was made, to be the ‘ proprietors of the soil,’ and 
 assured to them in his own language ‘ the possession 
 of their lands,’ and the profits arising from the im¬ 
 provement thereof, he intended to vest, and did vest 
 them, with an absolute and exclusive right of owner¬ 
 ship as we understand that term in England. But 
 this is by no means the case. It is quite clear from 
 the language of his Minutes and Letters, as well as 
 from his legislation, that he only recognised in them a 
 limited and not an absolute proprietorship ; that he 
 clearly perceived and was prepared to protect the rights 
 and interests of other parties in the soil; and that the 
 terms in which he speaks of Zamindars as proprietors 
 must be taken in the Oriental and not in the English 
 sense. 
 
 He could not practically override what for cen¬ 
 turies had been the common law of the country. 
 Sir George Campbell, who has the advantage of 
 familiarity with land tenures in the Punjab, in the 
 Upper Provinces, in Oudh, and in Bengal, pointed out 
 some years ago that land in India was a possession 
 in which two and more parties had very distinct, 
 separate, and permanent interests ; and that much of 
 the confused and erroneous language applied to the 
 subject had arisen from overlooking and disregarding 
 
32 
 
 LORD CORNWALLIS 
 
 this elementary fact. Those public servants who 
 either took part in the remediary legislation of 1859 
 or who, previous to that date, in administering the 
 revenue and the land laws of the Lower Provinces, 
 endeavoured to see that the Ryot had fair play, and 
 who insisted on the limited rights of the Zamindar, 
 may be certain that this latter view found favour with 
 John Herbert Harington, author of the well-known 
 Analysis. His work, published between 1815 and 
 1821, has long been out of print, and of course many 
 of the Statutes, analysed and explained with wonder¬ 
 ful clearness and precision, have been supplanted by 
 later and better laws. But if any student of past 
 times, or civil servant now employed in the Lower 
 Provinces, wishes to understand thoroughly the gra¬ 
 dual introduction of our administrative system, the 
 terrible legacies of Muhammadan Viceroys, the diffi¬ 
 culties encountered in the collection of the revenue 
 and the establishment of law and order, he will study 
 Harington’s Analysis. 
 
 That work is for Indian legislation what Coke on 
 Littleton is for English law. Part of Vol. III. which 
 treats of the Land Revenue is enlivened by a contro¬ 
 versy with Colonel Wilks who, while writing his 
 Historical Sketches of the South of India, a book of 
 much value, seemed to have completely misunderstood 
 the Zamindari tenures of Bengal. What appeared 
 to Colonel Wilks ‘ an inextricable puzzle,’ is simplified 
 and made clear by Harington. He began by quoting 
 
THE REVENUE SETTLEMENT 
 
 33 
 
 Shore to the effect ‘ that the most cursory observation 
 shows the situation of things in this country to be 
 singularly confused. The relation of a Zamindar to Go¬ 
 vernment, and of a Ryot to a Zamindar, is neither that 
 of a proprietor nor a vassal, but a compound of both. 
 The former performs acts of authority unconnected 
 with proprietary right: the latter has rights without 
 real property. And the property of the one and the 
 rights of the other are in a great measure held at dis¬ 
 cretion. Such was the system which we found, and 
 which we have been under the necessity of adopting. 
 Much time, I fear, will elapse before we can establish a 
 system perfectly consistent in all its parts, and before 
 we can reduce the compound relation of a Zamindar 
 to Government, and of a Ryot to a Zamindar, to the 
 simple principles of landlord and tenant/ Then Haring- 
 ton himself goes on to say that this was the principal 
 source of all the confusion which had been introduced 
 into the discussions about Indian landed tenures. ‘ It 
 is by attempting to assimilate the complicated system 
 which we found in this country, with the simple princi¬ 
 ples of landlord and tenant in our own, and especially 
 in applying to the Indian system terms of appropriate 
 and familiar signification which do not without con¬ 
 siderable limitation properly belong to it, that much, 
 if not all, of the perplexity ascribed to the subject has 
 arisen/ He follows this up by a definition of the 
 Zamindar as we found him, which for well-balanced 
 antithesis, recognition of rights followed by language 
 
 c 
 
34 
 
 LORD CORNWALLIS 
 
 of positive limitation, and fair solution of perplexing 
 contradictions, has probably not been surpassed in 
 any Minute, State Paper, or Proclamation on the 
 subject. 
 
 ‘ The Zaminddr appears to be a Landholder of a peculiar 
 description, not definable by any single term in our language. 
 A receiver of the territorial Revenue of the State from the 
 Ryots and other under-tenants of the land: allowed to 
 succeed to his Zamind&ri by inheritance, yet in general re¬ 
 quired to take out a renewal of his title from the Sovereign, 
 or his representative, on payment of a jjeshkash or fine of 
 investiture to the Emperor, and a nazardnd or present to 
 his provincial delegate the Nazim : permitted to transfer 
 his Zamind&ri by sale or gift, yet commonly expected to 
 obtain previous special permission: privileged to be generally 
 the annual contractor for the public revenue receivable from 
 his Zamindiiri, yet set aside with a limited provision in land 
 or money, whenever it was the pleasure of the Government 
 to collect the rents by separate agency or to assign them 
 temporarily or permanently by the grant of a Jaghir or 
 Altamghd; authorized in Bengal since the early part of the 
 present century to apportion to the Pargan&s, villages, and 
 lesser divisions of land within his ZammdUn, the abwdbs or 
 cesses imposed by the Subalidar, usually in some proportion 
 to the Standard Assessment of the Zamindari established by 
 Todar Mall, and others; yet subject to the discretionary 
 interference of public authority, to equalize the amount 
 assessed on particular divisions or to abolish what appeared 
 oppressive to the Ryot: entitled to any contingent emolu¬ 
 ments proceeding from his contract during the period of his 
 agreement, yet bound by the laws of his tenure to deliver in 
 a faithful account of his receipts: responsible by the same 
 
J. //. HA RING TON'S VIEWS 
 
 35 
 
 terms for keeping the peace within his jurisdiction, hut 
 apparently allowed to apprehend only and deliver over to 
 a Musalm&n magistrate for trial and punishment—this is, 
 in abstract, my present idea of a Zamindar under the Mughal 
 constitution and practice.’ 
 
 This was the opinion of the young revenue officer, 
 who had been brought up in the school of HastingS 5 
 and twenty-eight years afterwards, with his ripe ex¬ 
 perience, he saw no reason to alter his language. 
 But he then explains the changes in the Zamindar’s 
 situation and privileges which the Permanent Settle¬ 
 ment had introduced. Glancing at the reservation to 
 Government of the power to legislate for the protec¬ 
 tion of dependent Talukdars, Ryots, and other culti¬ 
 vators, he remarks that the Zamindar was now at 
 liberty to appropriate to his own use the difference 
 between the portion of the produce which was the 
 right of Government, and his own private rent. This 
 share was already estimated to be treble what it had 
 been before 1793, and looking to this increment and 
 advantage, Harington was prepared to recognise the 
 Zamindars, Talukdars, and all landholders, of what¬ 
 ever denomination, as ‘ proprietors in a general sense.’ 
 
 In other not unimportant particulars their position 
 was secured and improved. Heirs and successors 
 were no longer called on to take out a sanad, or 
 deed of investiture, in ratification of their succession. 
 They were not expected to pay the former Peshkash 
 or the Nazarand. No permission was needed for the 
 
36 LORD CORNWALLIS 
 
 sale or transfer of an estate. As long as the revenue 
 was fully and punctually paid, the Zamindar was no 
 longer subject to temporary or permanent removal 
 from the management of the Zamindari. As he had 
 been relieved from the imposition of new or extra 
 cesses, he was bound to abstain from imposing similar 
 taxes on his Ryots. But he was no longer liable to 
 furnish any accounts of receipts and disbursements, 
 except when such accounts were essential to the ap¬ 
 portionment of the Public Revenue on the division of 
 an estate between joint-shareholders. Finally, he had 
 been relieved of the charge of the police, and was only 
 expected to aid the regular officials of the Government 
 by preserving the peace and giving information of 
 crimes and heinous offences. And as Harington had 
 previously defined the status of a Zamindar under the 
 Mughal Government and during the administrations 
 of Clive, Yerelst, Cartier, and Hastings, he wound up 
 by a definition applicable to his new position under 
 the Cornwallis Code. He had become ‘ a landholder, 
 possessing a Zamindari estate which is hereditable and 
 transferable by sale, gift, or bequest: subject under 
 all circumstances to the public assessment fixed upon 
 it: entitled, after payment of such assessment, to ap¬ 
 propriate any surplus rents or profits which may law¬ 
 fully be receivable by him from the under-tenants of 
 land in his Zamindari or from the improvement and 
 cultivation of untenanted lands ; but subject never¬ 
 theless to such rules and restrictions as are already 
 
SHORE’S VIEWS 
 
 37 
 
 established or may be hereafter enacted by the British 
 Government, for securing the rights and privileges of 
 Ryots and other under-tenants of whatever denomina¬ 
 tion, in their respective tenures ; and for protecting 
 them against undue exaction or oppression.’ 
 
 Cornwallis had two very distinct objects in view. 
 He wished to recognise the Zamindars as landed 
 proprietors with the prospect of an increased rental 
 from the cultivation of the land, and he desired that 
 the Settlement made with them for ten years should 
 be declared permanent and fixed for ever. Here was 
 one of the points in which he differed from Shore, 
 and a large part of the Minutes and State Papers of the 
 day is taken up with long discussions on this head. 
 
 Briefly stated, Shore held that the capacities of 
 the land had not been properly ascertained: that 
 we had no staff of men possessed of sufficient know¬ 
 ledge of the vast and intricate subjects of rents, 
 tenures, and agricultural interests; that great abuses 
 prevailed in the levy by Zamindars of extra cesses 
 from the Ryots ; that it was desirable to diminish 
 the size of vast Zamindaris and to increase the 
 number of small proprietors: that these ends could 
 not be attained without time and trouble; and, in 
 short, that before committing ourselves to an irre¬ 
 vocable Settlement in Perpetuity it would be prudent 
 and politic to wait. Lord Cornwallis replied that we 
 had not then, and should not have at the end of ten 
 years, any staff of officials capable of entering into 
 
38 
 
 LORD CORNWALLIS 
 
 such minute and complicated details ; that a very 
 large portion of the Province was waste and jungle, 
 and that a Permanent Settlement would give con- 
 fidence to the Zamindars, increase to agriculture, and 
 stability to Government. It is well here to dwell 
 on a fact which of late years has been conveniently or 
 negligently overlooked; and this is that the share of 
 the Zamindar was in those days reckoned at only 
 one-tenth of his whole receipts. The remaining 
 nine-tenths were to go to the Government. If a 
 Zamindar declined after a trial to engage for the 
 collection of the revenue in any district, and another 
 man became the collecting agent, an allowance, of ten 
 per cent, only, was set aside for the excluded Za¬ 
 mindar, and the same rule was followed in the case of 
 minors and females. Shore anticipated that on the 
 confirmation of the proposed assessment, the profits 
 of the Zamindar might reach to nearly fifteen per 
 cent. It is not superfluous to state that while we 
 have no absolute certainty as to the net profits of 
 Zamindars at the present day, we may safely conclude 
 that in very many cases they far exceed Shore’s 
 moderate estimate. 
 
 In another important point Shore and Cornwallis 
 were at issue. There were certain internal duties 
 which the Zamindars had been in the habit of levy¬ 
 ing. They were known as sdyer and rdhddri or transit 
 dues, and as taxes on goods exposed for sale in the 
 wholesale and retail markets of the country. It is 
 
TRANSIT DUTIES 
 
 39 
 
 not necessary now to go into these differences at great 
 length, though a knowledge of them may be deemed 
 indispensable to the young civilian of the present day. 
 The result can be shortly put. The sdyer duties were 
 local and arbitrary charges levied by Zamindars on 
 goods passing through their estates by land and 
 water. The rdhddri were similar in kind. This word 
 properly means a permission or permit for goods to 
 pass: a kind of black mail. Both kinds were for¬ 
 mally abolished by the Laws of 1790 and 1793. 
 
 Since that date, though such dues have been occa¬ 
 sionally levied throughout Bengal by oppressive and 
 high-handed Zamindars, within the memory and cog¬ 
 nizance of men still living, the theory has been that 
 Zamindars are confined in the collection of their dues 
 to rents of cultivated lands, to fisheries, to pasture, and 
 to the natural yield of the jungle and forest. A 
 little further explanation may be expedient in regard 
 to duties levied by Zamindars, not on goods passing 
 through their estates and in transit from one Zamin- 
 dari or Pargana to another, but on goods brought 
 and exposed to sale at certain distinct places. These 
 are designated by Shore in language applicable to this 
 very hour, as the Ganj, the Bazar, and the Hat. 
 The Ganj is a wholesale market, though articles 
 may also be retailed at such places by the smaller 
 traders. Familiar examples of such Ganjs, which 
 are centres of enormous traffic, are Sirajganj in 
 Pabna, Nalchiti in Bakarganj, and Narainganj in 
 
40 
 
 LORD CORNWALLIS 
 
 Dacca. A Bazar is simply an assemblage of ten, 
 twenty, or fifty and more houses and shops for the 
 retail of all articles of subsistence. By a Hdt is 
 meant a place where vegetables, fruits, and the 
 necessaries of life are exposed for sale, generally on 
 two special days in the week. Sometimes each per¬ 
 manent bazar has its bi-weekly market or Hdt. 
 
 But quite as often a Hdt is held in an open space 
 where there is not a single permanent structure of 
 any kind. On Hdt days such places are resonant 
 with the hum of two thousand voices of buyers and 
 sellers. On other days the Hdt is a lifeless, un¬ 
 tenanted, vacant space. It is very significant when we 
 consider the point of absolute ownership claimed for 
 Zamindars, that there was a considerable amount of 
 discussion on paper whether these Ganjs, Bazars, 
 and Hats should not be taken entirely away from 
 the Zamindars, and separated from their estates. The 
 opinion actually prevailed in some quarters that the 
 rights and privileges of the Zamindars were to be con¬ 
 fined to arable and pasture, to fisheries and forests alone. 
 
 In some parts of the Province, the Zamindars did 
 not even claim the Ganj at all. Shore mentions 
 the cases of men who had become proprietors of 
 Ganj and Bazars without any Zamindari rights. 
 In the end, all three descriptions of markets were 
 handed over to the Zamindars within whose estates 
 they were found ; and amongst their rights and privi¬ 
 leges none, to this day, is more valued or often more 
 
MINOR INTERESTS. THE TALUKDARS 41 
 
 productive, than the privilege of setting up a new 
 Hdt or Bazar. Indeed, down to recent times Bazars 
 were set up by powerful proprietors with the express 
 object of ruining a rival and attracting his buyers 
 and sellers ; and many outrages, fights, and affrays 
 and much litigation used to ensue from such proceed¬ 
 ings some thirty and forty years ago. 
 
 It is no disparagement to the discernment of Corn¬ 
 wallis that he had not such a vivid notion of the 
 interior of a district in Bengal and Behar as was 
 present to the mind of Shore. But it is also clear 
 that Cornwallis had managed to grasp successfully 
 some of the main points in the agricultural and 
 revenue system of the Province and that, as before 
 stated, he did not by any means intend to hand over 
 the whole agricultural and village community to the 
 superior landlords to be dealt with by them on the 
 terms of contract and under the economic laws of 
 demand and supply. To prove this we have only to 
 read carefully his Minutes and Regulations. He was 
 in favour of multiplying smaller proprietors, as he 
 was of opinion that their management was better. 
 He conceded to some smaller Tdlukddrs the privilege 
 of payment of revenue direct to the Government 
 Treasury instead of through the superior Zamindar. 
 Such estates in revenue phraseology were called 
 Huzuri in contradistinction to Shikmi Taluks. 
 
 He laid down the principle that a Zamindar could 
 only receive the customary or established rent, and 
 
42 
 
 LORD CORNWALLIS 
 
 that he had no right to dispossess any one cultivator 
 for the sole purpose of giving his land to another. 
 He insisted that Zamindars should grant pattds or 
 documents specifying the amount which the Ryots 
 were to pay ‘ by whatever rule or custom it may be 
 demanded.’ Every cess or ‘benevolence’ known as 
 abwdb, imposed by the Zamindar, was declared by 
 Cornwallis to be a breach of his agreement and a 
 direct violation of the established laws of the country. 
 
 He expressly reserved to Government the right to 
 enquire into and to resume alienations of land granted 
 for religious and secular purposes to favourites, 
 Brahmans, astrologers, priests, and other classes: and 
 one of the sections of the Regulation or Law in which 
 he embodied these views contains, as has been shown, 
 an intimation that as it was the duty of the ruling 
 power to protect the helpless classes, the Governor- 
 General in Council, whenever he might deem it 
 proper, would enact such Regulations as he might 
 think necessary for the safety and welfare of the 
 dependent Talukdars, Ryots, and other cultivators of 
 the soil. In many other ways was a limit imposed 
 on the power of the Zamindar. Though permitted 
 to sell and mortgage his estates, he was not by any 
 such transaction to endanger the realisation of the 
 Government revenue. 
 
 Although private sales of estates were not numerous 
 the shares of joint-proprietors had to be separated. 
 And the separation, which at first only meant that 
 
THE ZAM/NDAR 
 
 43 
 
 each shareholder collected his rents by a separate 
 agent, in the end resulted in a division of the terri¬ 
 torial estate. It then became the duty of the Collector 
 to see that each separate portion or cluster of villages 
 was assessed with its proper amount of revenue. 
 And in any private transfer or any official division of 
 the land, the interest of Government was effectively 
 protected by the action of the Collector. Unless this 
 person had given his sanction to the transaction, the 
 
 whole original estate was held liable for the dues of 
 © 
 
 Government. 
 
 For some time subsequent to the Code of 1 793 
 Zamindars were prevented by law from granting 
 leases beyond a certain term of years and creating 
 perpetual sub-infeudations. The Zamindar, it has 
 been shown, was to take the bad years with the good, 
 and as he was liable to no enhancement, he was to 
 expect no remission in drought or scarcity. When an 
 estate was put up to public auction, the incoming 
 purchaser acquired his new possession free from any 
 fresh encumbrances created by his predecessor. And 
 at some periods of our rule many ingenious frauds 
 were attempted. Zamindars, who had received a 
 bonus for the creation of an encumbrance or sub¬ 
 infeudation, purposely allowed their estates to be put 
 up to auction for arrears, then purchased them in the 
 name of a dependent or third person, and tried to 
 annul the subordinate titles which they had them¬ 
 selves created. This sort of proceeding had, however, 
 
44 
 
 LORD CORNWALLIS 
 
 very little effect on the actual tenant-proprietor or 
 cultivator. And his position was to some extent safe¬ 
 guarded l)}’ a rule that the Zamindar was not at 
 liberty to enhance the ordinary rent without resorting 
 to a regular civil suit. Actions to fix the rent of a 
 Ryot or to bring it up to the standard of the Par- 
 gana or the neighbourhood became common. The 
 judicial rent now familiar to English readers from its 
 recent introduction into Ireland, was the law of the 
 land in India a century ago. It has never been 
 shown how this necessity of a resort to a judicial 
 tribunal could be compatible with any theory of 
 absolute and unlimited ownership. 
 
 Still, the position of the Raja, Zamindar, or Chau- 
 dari during and after the administration of Cornwallis 
 was in many respects one of power, privilege, and 
 profit. And something must now be added in regard 
 to what was either conferred on him by law or 
 recognised by judicial decisions. An estate, which is 
 often used as the English equivalent for the term 
 Zamindar! or Taluk, in Bengal merely denotes a 
 certain tract of land, with boundaries loosely given 
 or not defined at all, which is burdened with a certain 
 specific amount of revenue. It may mean a single 
 village, a cluster of villages, portions of several 
 villages, or a principality as big as an English county. 
 Each estate bears a separate number on the roll of 
 the Collectorate and is usually described as situated 
 in such or such a Pargana or Chakla. In revenue 
 
THE Z A MIND AR 
 
 45 
 
 phraseology the villages contained in the estate are 
 termed Mauzds : a word which would not be 
 employed by an ordinary speaker talking of the 
 village in which he resided or to which he was 
 bound. But whether the estate were large or small, 
 the Zamindar was entitled to demand his rent from 
 every tenant: and he alone could induct new tenants 
 into their holdings. All waste and untenanted lands 
 were his. He might cultivate them by hired labour, 
 which he rarely or never did, or he might induce new 
 Ryots to settle there under his protection, build 
 houses for themselves, clear the jungle, and break up 
 the soil. In such instances the rent demanded was 
 at first very small. On lands that had been long 
 under cultivation the rent varied with the nature of 
 the crop. There was a moderate rate for rice crops 
 grown on the higher ground, and a heavier rate on 
 rice in the deep land. The better kinds of produce 
 were more heavily taxed than either of the above, 
 such as sugar-cane, tobacco, and pdn: and gardens and 
 homesteads usually paid the highest of all. All plots 
 vacated by famine, desertion, or death, ipso facto 
 reverted to the Zamindar. He was allowed to 
 challenge the titles of all who claimed to hold small 
 plots as Lakhiraj or rent-free, and the onus of 
 proving a valid grant from some former authority, 
 empowered to make such a title, was by the judicial 
 courts always thrown on the Lakhiraj dar. It was 
 held in the case of squatters or Ryots who had never 
 
46 
 
 LORD CORNWALLIS 
 
 asked for or received any pattds or titles to their 
 holding, that no period of time could bar the Zamin- 
 dar’s claim to rent. As he was bound to pay the 
 revenue, a demand for rent to pay it constituted a 
 cause of action, and no amount of time in which pay¬ 
 ment had not been demanded, or had been withheld, 
 could create a title to sit rent-free. In theory it was 
 asserted that most Ryots could not sell or transfer their 
 holdings without the consent of the superior landlord. 
 
 But in treating of the Ryot’s position it will be 
 shown that in this respect practice was at variance with 
 theory. Over jungle, waste, scrub and swamp, the 
 Zamindar had equally clear rights. They were termed 
 Bctnkar, or forest produce: Jcdkar, fishery: Phulkctr, 
 honey and fruits : and Thalkar, what dropped on the 
 ground. When the Zamindar was minded to expend 
 money on his Zamindari, his expenditure generally 
 took the following shape. He might drain a huge 
 swamp by cutting a channel for the overflow of its 
 water into the nearest river. He excavated by paid 
 labour an enormous reservoir which secured a supply 
 of pure water for half-a-dozen villages. He con¬ 
 structed glidts or landing-places of stone or brick 
 on the banks of rivers or tanks. He dedicated 
 temples and built school-houses. But he never con¬ 
 trolled the agricultural operations of his tenants, or 
 thought himself bound to provide them with houses 
 or to fence their land. 
 
 It is clear that Cornwallis did not fully compre- 
 
THE ZAMINDAR 
 
 47 
 
 hend the custom of the country in regard to the 
 spread of cultivation. In the first and most important 
 of his Regulations he expresses a hope that the Zamin- 
 dars would exert themselves to cultivate their lands, 
 and would improve their respective estates, and he 
 assures them that they would enjoy exclusively the 
 fruits of their own industry without any fear that 
 the demands of Government would be augmented in 
 consequence of any such increase of cultivation and 
 enhanced value of landed property. From the use of 
 the above phrases we can only conceive the ideal or 
 typical Zamindar whom Cornwallis had in his mind, 
 to be identical with what in England we should call 
 an improving landlord: one who expends capital in 
 planting trees where corn will not grow with profit, 
 in making hedges, clearing out ditches, draining wet 
 lands, and erecting model cottages of the most 
 approved type. Now it has been already shown that 
 the Zamindar in almost every district did spend con¬ 
 siderable sums in digging tanks, building temples and 
 ghdts, and cutting canals. But he never spent a 
 farthing on drains, cottages, breaking up jungle and 
 waste land, or in introducing the higher and more 
 lucrative kinds of cultivation on any holding within his 
 estate. The whole of this burden fell on the Ryot. 
 
 It is true that a Zamindar gave to the Ryot 
 whom he inducted into a plot of ground, the counte¬ 
 nance which was at all times indispensable in such 
 a country as India. He was occasionally, to such 
 
4 8 
 
 LORD CORNWALLIS 
 
 tenants, a refuge from the tyranny and encroachment 
 of a rival landholder. But it was the mattock and 
 axe of the Ryot and the exercise of the Ryot’s thews 
 and sinews that cut down the jungle and cleared the 
 waste. He worked, as it were, for himself under the 
 Zamindar’s shadow. The new ground which he 
 broke up without the slightest help from the superior 
 landlord and his agents, was frequently assessed for 
 some years at a very low rate. It might be a half or 
 a quarter of the usual rental, or a mere nominal rate 
 for the first twelvemonth. Sometimes, from the 
 negligence or the indifference of the local manager, 
 a holding might escape taxation for several seasons, or 
 the Ryot might take in additional land beyond the 
 amount specified in his deed of induction. But what¬ 
 ever might be the fate of the Ryot, and whether his 
 Zamindar was careless or precise in the assessment 
 and exaction of rent, it is indisputable that all over 
 Bengal the Zamindar looked on placidly while the 
 tenant-proprietor and the Ryot burnt the jungle 
 grass, broke up the clay soil, sowed the rice, and 
 introduced gradually the more valuable products. 
 
 It is not necessary in accepting these facts, to cen¬ 
 sure the Zamindars as a class for not at once filling 
 the exact position of improving landlords which 
 Cornwallis had anticipated. The custom of the 
 country from the earliest times was for the Ryot 
 to toil under the Zamindar’s protection. But the 
 Zamindar had often private lands or lands in his 
 
THE ZAM/jVDAK 
 
 49 
 
 own occupation, termed in the phraseology of the day 
 Nij-jot and Kh&s Khdmdr ; and he was not in the 
 habit, in respect of such plots, of showing the tenantry 
 how the yield of the land could be increased by 
 manure, or how on the various levels the cereals, the 
 date-tree, the jute, the tobacco-plant or the sugar¬ 
 cane, could be sown and grown with profit. Practi¬ 
 cally in these cases his own servants or hired 
 labourers cultivated the Khas lands and produced 
 very indifferent results. The main object of the 
 Zannndars, for years after 1793, was t° induct Ryots 
 into waste and culturable lands, as population in¬ 
 creased and as more space and new villages were 
 required to meet the wants of a growing community. 
 
 It was one of the cardinal points of the new Settle¬ 
 ment that Government on the one hand would not 
 impose any additional taxation on any lands within 
 the supposed area of any estate which had been 
 cleared and cultivated, or on account of any luxuriant 
 harvest in any one year. On the other hand, the 
 Zamindar was not to expect remissions or sus¬ 
 pensions of the revenue when his lands suffered 
 from drought, inundation, or other calamity of the 
 season. He was bound to take the lean and the fat 
 years together and to make the best of both. If he 
 failed in the punctual discharge of his obligations to 
 the State, no excuse could be accepted. His estate, 
 or a portion sufficient to make good the arrears due, 
 would be put up to auction peremptorily and sold to 
 
 D 
 
5 ° 
 
 LORD CORNWALLIS 
 
 the highest bidder. He was not allowed to plead the 
 default or incapacity of a shareholder, though he 
 could always protect his own interests by paying up 
 the defaulter’s portion, and recovering his payments 
 by means of a civil action. The provisions of the 
 Sale Law were stringent, but they were an improve¬ 
 ment on the ancient mode of compelling payment by 
 the confinement of the defaulter or by his corporal 
 punishment. And a sure and certain spread of culti¬ 
 vation was the natural consequence of the cessation 
 of Muhammadan oppression and Maratha raids. The 
 operations of nature in that region were always 
 effected on a gigantic scale. If the drought was of 
 long continuance or the inundations widespreading 
 and calamitous, as was often the case in Central and 
 Eastern Bengal, the silt deposited by the overflowing 
 waters elevated and fertilised the soil. The reed and 
 the bulrush made way for the rice crop. The jungle 
 retreated before the axe and the plough. The 
 swamp became firm land. And around new villages 
 and hamlets there sprang up fruit trees, bamboos, and 
 a rich and artificial vegetation almost as dense as the 
 primeval forest which it had displaced. In all this 
 there was an increase to the profits of the Zamindar. 
 
 The documents which he was expected to give to 
 Ryots, new or old, were known as pattds, and the 
 Ryot was bound to hand in exchange for the same 
 what was termed a kabuliyat or acceptance. These 
 two terms have very often, in judicial decisions, formal 
 
THE ZAMIndAR 
 
 5 1 
 
 reports, and other documents, been loosely denominated 
 as leases and their counterparts. In truth the pattd 
 of an ordinary Ryot has no resemblance to an English 
 lease. No term of years is specified. There are stipu¬ 
 lations to the effect that the Ryot is not to withhold 
 his rent or fail in payment on the plea of drought or 
 inundation, death or desertion of joint-shareholders, 
 or tenants-at-will without occupancy rights. 
 
 Timber and fruit trees were not to be cut down. 
 Not that they had been planted by the hand of 
 the Zamindar, but because by their destruction the 
 value of the holding was lessened. Similarly, if a 
 substantial tenant wished to excavate a tank, the 
 Zamindar might, if he chose, put in an objection on 
 the ground that any diminution of the culturable or 
 cultivated area diminished the security for rent. As 
 a matter of fact, however, such objections were com¬ 
 paratively rare. Many of the Bengal villages suffer 
 from a redundancy of reservoirs not sufficiently deep 
 and not always kept in proper repair. These rights 
 and privileges were coupled with certain liabilities 
 and duties. The Zamindar was bound to provide 
 means to carry the post on what we should call cross¬ 
 country roads. This postal service rarely went be¬ 
 yond the transmission of heavy police reports. Besides 
 his obligation to assist the police, the Zamindar was 
 bound to prevent the illicit manufacture of salt and 
 the unauthorised cultivation of the poppy, inasmuch 
 as Government retained the monopoly of opium and 
 
 D 2 
 
52 
 
 LORD CORNWALLIS 
 
 salt. The Zamindar was also credited with the main¬ 
 tenance and pay of the village watchmen. But for 
 many years the postal service between police stations 
 and the magistrate’s court, as well as the Chaukidari 
 or village watch system, was on a most unsatis¬ 
 factory footing. 
 
 If some of the above responsibilities were occa¬ 
 sionally inconvenient and irksome, they could also 
 be turned into instruments of power and oppression 
 in the hands of energetic landlords who could afford 
 to have good legal advice and who were well served 
 by active agents and retainers. While inexperienced 
 and indifferent Zamindars were cheated by their ser¬ 
 vants, baffled by combinations of Ryots, and driven 
 to the expedient of creating sub-infeudations which 
 left them rent-chargers on their own estates ; others, 
 with energy and intelligence and without scruples, 
 managed to avail themselves of every clause and 
 section of the law, and to convert statutory liabilities 
 into sources of profit. They sent their agents to 
 measure holding after holding, and levied rents on 
 all lands in excess of the pattd, as they had a perfect 
 right to do. They sued substantial Ryots for enhanced 
 rents, in order to exact the rates leviable by common 
 custom on the better products. In spite of repeated 
 prohibitions, legal and executive, they demanded and 
 received extra cesses known as abwdbs at every remark¬ 
 able incident in their lives : the birth of a son, the 
 marriage of a daughter, the dedication of a temple, 
 
THE RYOT 
 
 53 
 
 the erection of a school, the building of a ghat, the 
 march of a high official through the district, the 
 receipt of a title or a dress of honour from the 
 Government, the termination of a great lawsuit, or 
 any other propitious or unpropitious event: and it 
 may certainly be conceded that, if not in the exact 
 position of an English landlord, the Zamindar was by 
 Lord Cornwallis raised from an uncertain to a well- 
 defined place, and to one of emolument, privilege, and 
 power. It could no longer be altered at the caprice 
 of some wayward autocrat ruling at Dacca or Mur- 
 shidabad. It was stamped with the seal of a foreign 
 power whose representatives were known to be men 
 of their word. It could only be forfeited by inca¬ 
 pacity or wilful default. And finally the Zamindar 
 might raise money on his estate, mortgage and sell it, 
 and transmit it to his heirs and successors, increased in 
 value, unimpeachable in title, and unaffected by any 
 rise in price or any further claims of the State. 
 
 In treating of the rights, interests, and position of 
 the Ryot, it would be impossible, in the limits of this 
 memoir, to describe the various Ryotty tenures to be 
 found in the Provinces to which the Perpetual Settle¬ 
 ment was applied. Many which bear different titles 
 in different districts of the Lower Provinces, are in 
 substance and reality almost identical. In some cases 
 the distinctions are more apparent than solid ; and 
 certainly at various epochs, when the position and 
 claims of the Ryots have been investigated, it has 
 
54 
 
 LORD CORNWALLIS 
 
 generally been found possible to class them under 
 three great divisions. Important but comparatively 
 few in number, as has been often pointed out, are 
 the tenants who hold land at rates positively fixed 
 before the Perpetual Settlement, or at rates never 
 enhanced or varied since that date. These valuable 
 tenures are commonly denominated istimrdri, or 
 mulcarraH, and to these titles there is often appended 
 the word maurdsi, or hereditary. No claim for 
 enhancement can affect a valid title of this kind. 
 
 Next in the scale are resident Ryots, who, though 
 not holding nor claiming to hold at unchangeable 
 rates, have been considered to have a right to 
 retain their tenures as long as they pay their rents, 
 and against whom claims for enhancement must 
 be urged and proved by the formal process of a 
 regular civil suit. These have a sort of proprietary 
 right: they form a very considerable and important 
 class ; and much discussion and litigation have ensued 
 in regard to individual cases as well as to the claims 
 of the whole body. The third and last class is that of 
 cultivators without any rights of occupancy. These 
 latter are very often the sub-tenants of tenant-pro¬ 
 prietors, and as such are variously known as shiJcmi, 
 hurfa, or Jcoljdna Ryots. These terms are almost 
 identical and are perfectly well understood. Of course 
 this class is to be found on large and small estates 
 holding directly under the Zamindar or Talukdhr. 
 
 For all practical purposes it would not be diffi- 
 
THE RYOT 
 
 55 
 
 cult to assign to tenants in any part of the Lower 
 Provinces a place in one or other of the above cate¬ 
 gories. They hold either from 1793 or possibly before 
 it, at an unchanged and unchangeable rate. Or they 
 have a right of occupancy and cannot legally be 
 evicted, though by a civil action their rates may be 
 brought up to the scale prevalent in the Pargana in 
 which they reside, or in the neighbouring villages. 
 Or they are sub-tenants or tenants without rights of 
 occupancy, and it may be conceded that in recent 
 times their rents have been the subject of contract. 
 Practically in the first half of this century their rates 
 were settled by custom and mutual understanding. 
 
 It is essential to lay stress on the occupancy right 
 because doubts have been thrown on its existence, 
 and attempts have been made in the interest of the 
 Zamindars to prove that if ever in existence, it had 
 perished or was so faint as not to merit legal recog¬ 
 nition. But it is far more correct to say that if the 
 right was not recognised by statute till long after the 
 time of Cornwallis, it was an article of firm belief 
 held by a large proportion of the peasantry. Pay¬ 
 ment of rent is almost everywhere in India regarded 
 as an obligation from which no cultivator can escape. 
 A regular discharge of this obligation is often put for¬ 
 ward as a mark of respectability. Failure or refusal 
 to pay would stamp the recusant as a badmdish or bad 
 character. But then this admitted obligation was 
 balanced, in the mind of a large number of cultivators, 
 
56 
 
 LORD CORNWALLIS 
 
 by the comforting reflection that there could be no 
 capricious eviction of those who paid. 
 
 In many districts of Bengal the occupancy Ryot 
 has always played an important part in the spread of 
 cultivation and the improvement of agriculture. He 
 may be known by various denominations. He is 
 the jotddr or the Gdnthiddr or the Khud-Kdsht Ryot. 
 This last term signifies a tenant whose homestead 
 and holding are in one and the same village. In 
 many instances his family has lived in the same place 
 for generations. He has erected two, three, and four 
 houses, neatly built of bamboos and wattles, well 
 thatched, with a verandah on more than one side, 
 and the whole raised on a firm foundation of 
 well-beaten clay. The space between the houses 
 ensures privacy. The courtyard and the dwellings 
 are scrupulously clean. They are shaded by fine 
 trees, and the garden adjoining the house is dense 
 with foliage and heavy with fruit. Many of this 
 class, if not rich, are independent and comfortable, 
 and in spite of the antagonism between Zamindar 
 and Ryot, which has been the normal state of parts 
 of the country for some two or three generations, 
 many more of this useful class have maintained 
 their position than is often supposed. It is the result 
 of a community of interest on the part of the cultivat¬ 
 ing castes, of a passionate attachment to the native 
 village and the ancestral homestead, and of the popu¬ 
 lar and well-founded belief that the Zamindar had at 
 
THE RYOT 
 
 57 
 
 no period the power, and not often the will, to resort 
 to evictions. And instances of abuse of power and of a 
 disregard and defiance of law, police, and magistrates, 
 for particular objects, are no proof of any deliberate 
 intention to override what may be termed the common 
 law of the country. 
 
 Left to himself in many matters, the Ryot was his 
 own master in all the processes of agriculture and 
 cropping. No Zamindar ever dreamt of insisting on 
 rotation of crops, consumption of straw on the spot, 
 or any of those familiar conditions which tenants in 
 other countries holding under contracts are compelled 
 to accept. The tenant-proprietor and even the non¬ 
 occupancy Ryot, erects his own dwelling-house, finds 
 his own materials, puts up his slender fences, cuts the 
 channel to conduct superfluous water from his own 
 plot to his neighbour's, maintains the small embank¬ 
 ments of earth that serve for communication over the 
 plain as well as for boundaries of holdings, expends 
 time and money on the higher and more remunerative 
 species of produce, and in short makes the most of his 
 land without advice, direction, or hindrance from the 
 superior landlord. These are distinct and irrefragable 
 proofs of a permanent interest in the land, and yet 
 they are perfectly compatible with the existence of 
 rights and privileges of others. It has been said in a 
 previous part of the memoir that the Ryot was ex¬ 
 pected to notify to his superior any sale or transfer of 
 his own interest. But that duty, though admitted in 
 
LORD CORNWALLIS 
 
 5S 
 
 theory, was frequently disregarded in practice. It is 
 absolutely certain that the jot or jamma of a Ryot 
 had a market value of its own. It was often put up 
 to public auction in satisfaction of a decree of court, 
 and was bid for and bought by purchasers without 
 the least reference to the Zamindar. And almost as 
 often, holdings changed hands by private agreement. 
 
 Sometimes a Ryot parted with his holding and was 
 reinstated as a mere cultivator. Sometimes he con¬ 
 veyed it to his own Zamindar, and sometimes again 
 the Zamindar was in the habit of buying hold¬ 
 ings situated within the estate of a neighbour and a 
 rival, for purposes of intimidation, annoyance, and 
 revenge. In other cases the Ryot’s holdings have 
 been purchased openly and fairly, and with a per¬ 
 fectly lawful object, by the Zamindar himself. If the 
 Zamindar had no spare land of a requisite class, and 
 wished for a small plot on which to lay out a garden, 
 build a temple, or excavate a tank, he was forced to bar¬ 
 gain with his own Ryot to cede land for the purpose. 
 
 He would not be supported by law, custom, or 
 public opinion in forcibly demanding a cession of the 
 Ryot’s land without compensation or equivalent. In 
 England any such requirement of the superior land¬ 
 lord would easily be met, at the end of an annual or 
 periodical lease, by the retention of a farm or any 
 portion of a farm in the hands of the owner. But 
 Cornwallis did not find, and he did not introduce, any 
 system of periodical leases or of rents based on contract. 
 
THE RYOT 
 
 59 
 
 Some of the Ryot’s rights and customs may at first 
 sight appear conflicting and irreconcilable. But they 
 are in reality quite capable of distinct identification 
 and of severance. 
 
 Zamindars, on the one hand, usually know per¬ 
 fectly well how far they can assert their privileges, 
 and when they will be resisted or upheld by the law ; 
 and Ryots, on the other, though pressed for rents, 
 harshly treated by agents, and compelled to supply 
 additional funds for the necessities and the caprices of 
 the landlord, have often successfully met violence by 
 artifice, learnt hi their turn the power of combination 
 for safety, and held their ground till their position 
 was defined, stereotyped by statute, and eventually 
 upheld in the courts of law. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 Principles and Results. 
 
 Some additional remarks on the apparent conflict 
 of landlords’ and tenants’ rights and duties will be 
 found in the chapter giving a summary of the 
 legislation rendered necessary as a corollary to the 
 Perpetual Settlement. But a few more words may 
 now be said as to the other effects of that measure 
 on the condition of the country, and as to its fulfil¬ 
 ment or non-fulfilment of the expectations of its 
 author. The opinions of the press on the policy of 
 the measure are not without their value. The editor 
 of the Calcutta Gazette on the 31st of May, 1789, 
 expressed his satisfaction at the announcement that, 
 in September of that year, the revenue of the Behar 
 province would be fixed in perpetuity. ‘ We venture 
 to observe,’ he said, ‘ that the main principles admit a 
 positive right of property in the landholders in op¬ 
 position to a system which has been maintained by 
 some, that the Zamindars and Talukdars are public 
 officers only, and that the Sovereign is the real pro¬ 
 prietor of the lands, which he leases out as landlord 
 instead of levying a tax on them as ruler. The most 
 
THE PERPETUAL SETTLEMENT 
 
 61 
 
 important benefits may be expected from this decision. 
 The proprietor, stimulated by self-interest, will improve 
 his estate to the utmost of his ability, without appre¬ 
 hension of losing the fruits of his improvements from 
 an increase in his payments to Government; and 
 without fear of dispossession from the management of 
 another being more likely to augment the produce of 
 his lands to the State.’ About the same time the 
 editor observed that a Settlement of the revenues of 
 this country for a long term of years would produce 
 greater advantages than those which had been in¬ 
 ferred. ‘ By allowing a certain return to industry, 
 free from any deduction for the public tax, it is prob¬ 
 able that extensive plans of improvement would be 
 undertaken, agriculture increase, and commerce 
 flourish. The landlord, secure in the enjoyment of his 
 profits, would be averse to rack-rent his under¬ 
 tenants, and these in a country where cultivators, not 
 employers, are sought for, would be interested in 
 encouraging the peasantry. In short, a permanent 
 system promises ease to the lower order of subjects, 
 opulence to the middle and higher ranks, and a 
 punctual realisation of the tax of Government.’ 
 
 The editor also stated that the Governor-General 
 had come to the important resolution of taking 
 into the immediate charge of Government the 
 collection of the Ganj, Bazar, Hat, and other duties 
 generally denominated Sayer, both in the estates 
 paying revenue and in the Altamgha, Aima, Jagirs, 
 
62 
 
 LORD CORNWALLIS 
 
 and other Lakhiraj or rent-free tenures. It has been 
 already shown that though the above project was 
 discussed and considered, the Ganjes, Bazars, and 
 Hats were left as appendages to the Zamindaris. 
 The Sayer or transit dues were, however, abolished. 
 
 The editorial written after the Proclamation of the 
 Perpetual Settlement for the three Provinces is, in its 
 way, so remarkable that it has been thought proper 
 to reproduce it in its entirety. It will be recollected 
 that the Indian press was then in its infancy, and 
 that newspapers were not free to discuss every 
 political event. The remarks on a novel and im¬ 
 portant measure, as it appeared to a writer who, 
 though he cannot be pronounced altogether indepen¬ 
 dent, had yet undertaken to acquaint the community 
 with the views and intentions of Government, will 
 not be without their interest. They are somewhat 
 analogous to the first criticisms on the appearance of 
 a great historical work or a poem destined to become 
 famous. The editorial of the 9th of May, 1793, is as 
 follows:— 
 
 ‘ We have great pleasure in announcing to the public an 
 event which immediately concerns the native landholders, 
 and is certainly an object of the greatest political importance 
 to the welfare of these provinces. The circumstance we 
 mention is a proclamation issued by the Governor-General in 
 Council, declaring that the Jamma which has been assessed 
 on the lands of the different description of proprietors in 
 Bengal, Behar and Orissa, under the Regulations for the 
 
THE PERPETUAL SETTLEMENT 63 
 
 Decennial Settlement of the public revenue, is from henceforth 
 fixed for ever. 
 
 ‘To enter into a detail of the advantages that will, in all 
 probability, be derived from the various articles of this 
 proclamation, by confirming the claims of all ranks of pro¬ 
 prietors, and .abolishing many inferior duties, would lead 
 into a very wide field, which we could but imperfectly 
 explore; but the great purpose of it, the permanent settle¬ 
 ment of the land-tax, we consider as involving so much 
 political truth with practical benefit, that we cannot pass it 
 over without endeavouring to illustrate what it is impossible 
 not to admire. 
 
 ‘It has frequently been a subject of controversy among 
 philosophers and financiers, whether the taxation of land 
 should be fixed according to a certain valuation, not after¬ 
 wards to be altered, or formed on a scale which varies with 
 each variation of the real rent of the land, and rises or falls 
 with the improvement or declension of its cultivation. 
 Government has, on the present occasion, adopted the 
 former system; and we think, however specious the latter may 
 appear, it is founded on a mistaken principle, as it in argu¬ 
 ment supposes that considerable improvements will arise, 
 while in fact it at the same moment throws the strongest 
 check upon every species of improvement and industry; 
 namely, that the Government, which bears no part in the 
 expense, shall bear away a share of the profits of improve¬ 
 ment. 
 
 ‘Under the former system of land-tax, the revenue is 
 rendered certain to the Government as well as to the 
 Individual, and notliing is left to the arbitrary disposal of 
 the one, or the evasion and dishonesty of the other; at the 
 same time the strongest inducement is held out to the pro¬ 
 prietor to improve the value of his estate, for as that is 
 
64 
 
 LORD CORNWALLIS 
 
 improved, not only his general comfort and wealth ai'e 
 increasing, hut the very tax itself is rendered more light 
 by hearing a smaller proportion to the increased value and 
 produce. Nor is Government excluded from sharing in these 
 advantages, though in a less immediate way, for the im¬ 
 mediate consequence of an increase of produce is an increase 
 of the population of the country, whose industry returns 
 again to the fields, or overflows into the manufactories 
 which work upon their productions. 
 
 1 Such are the effects which must result from the humane 
 and wise principles announced by this proclamation, which 
 opens a new era in the history of our Government in the 
 East, and must he considered by the natives as the greatest 
 blessing conferred on them for many ages. 
 
 ‘ During the period of the Muhammadan Government, the 
 assessment on land was subject to numerous and arbitrary 
 impositions; that assessment, since the English have been in 
 possession of these Provinces, has been variously levied 
 and frequently augmented; the evil effects of this desultory 
 system were severely felt; they will now have been com¬ 
 pletely remedied ; the Decennial Settlement placed the 
 revenue on the equitable footing of a fixed unalterable 
 assessment provisionally, until the Court of Directors should 
 give their approbation to it. That Settlement is now confirmed 
 for ever. 
 
 4 With regard to the amount of the jamma, its moderation 
 is sufficiently proved by the complete payment of the revenue 
 last year to Government, except in two Zammd&rfs, not only 
 without a balance, but with the additional collection of 
 former suspensions. 
 
 4 By these measures a permanent revenue is secured to 
 Government, property to individuals, and a prospect of 
 wealth and happiness is opened to the natives co-extensive 
 
PRINCIPLES AND RESULTS 65 
 
 with the industry and capital they shall think fit to employ 
 in the cultivation and improvement of their lands.’ 
 
 It will be seen from the above that the editor 
 shared in the delusion that the proprietors would 
 themselves expend capital in improving their estates. 
 His anticipations of industrial enterprise and manu¬ 
 factories were certainly a little premature. But 
 no exception can be taken to the remark that the 
 Proclamation was the commencement of a new era, 
 and that it was in striking contrast to the system 
 adopted by Muhammadan Viceroys, and to a certain 
 extent by the Anglo-Indian Government for more 
 than twenty years. As Cornwallis had anticipated, an 
 immediate impulse was given to cultivation. Invasions 
 of Maghs from Arakan, common in the sixteenth 
 century, and the Maratha raids of the earlier part of 
 the eighteenth century, had come to an end. 
 
 The agriculturists of Bengal had thus been secured 
 against robbery from without before the time of 
 Cornwallis. They were now in a position to increase 
 and multiply, to found villages in spots tenanted 
 only by the wild boar, the deer, and the tiger, and 
 they had only to contend with the exaction and 
 rapacity of their own countrymen. There was also 
 the semblance and outward show of executive au¬ 
 thority, and the people began dimly to discern that 
 their lives and properties were no longer held under 
 the good-will and caprice of irresponsible despots. 
 
 E 
 
66 
 
 LORD CORNWALLIS 
 
 At a,ny rate it is quite certain that, aided by natural 
 agencies, the agriculturists soon began to lessen the 
 area of uncultivated and forest land and to make 
 inroads on the swamps. The copious rainfall, and the 
 overflow of many of the network of rivers which 
 find their way into the Bay of Bengal, have had the 
 effect of gradually raising the level of the soil, silting 
 up the marsh, and replacing the fish-weir and the net 
 of the fowler by the plough. The author of this 
 memoir himself had the advantage of hearing from 
 the mouth of a civil servant 1 who began his career 
 in 1793 and ended it in 1845, after more than fifty 
 years of continuous service on the Bengal establish¬ 
 ment, the opinion which was held by some very 
 competent judges of the paramount necessity of a 
 permanent assessment at the time of the famous 
 Proclamation. It was, he said, such as to leave the 
 Governor-General hardly any option at all. There was 
 difficulty in some districts in getting well-qualified 
 persons to engage for the realisation of the public 
 revenue. 
 
 There was even greater difficulty in keeping them 
 to their engagements. Whole districts, easily reclaim- 
 able, were covered with grass jungle and reeds. In 
 others, the primeval forest of Sal and other timber 
 trees had scarcely been touched by the axe. On 
 many of the public roads, or rather on the wretched 
 
 1 The late Mr. James Pattle, senior member of the Board of Revenue 
 for many years, to his death in September, 1845. 
 
PRINCIPLES AND RESULTS 
 
 67 
 
 tracks of communication impassable for wheeled 
 carriages for at least five months in the year, the 
 runners who conveyed the post were constantly 
 carried off by tigers. There was plausibility in 
 the argument that without a guarantee against any 
 increase to the land-tax, the Zamindari system, if 
 not doomed to failure, would never be a success. 
 But it is admitted that the judgment of posterity has 
 endorsed the wiser opinion of Shore. Many of the 
 advantages of a Perpetual Settlement might have 
 been equally attainable by a Settlement for a long 
 term of years. It is only fair, in judging Cornwallis, 
 to take into consideration the stubborn difficulties 
 which he had to face. 
 
 Many of the subsidiary measures, executive and 
 legislative, necessary for the complete success of the 
 measure, were not immediately carried out. Some 
 indeed were unaccountably and unwarrantably de¬ 
 layed. A summary of them will be given in the 
 chapter descriptive of subsequent legislation. They 
 included the resumption of invalid rent-free tenures: 
 the creation of facilities for the recovery of rent by sum¬ 
 mary process; and the protection of the rights of tenant- 
 proprietors and others, in 1859 and again in 1884. 
 
 But in one aspect, the Settlement has not received 
 its full meed of praise. Here, for the first time in 
 Oriental history, was seen the spectacle of a foreign 
 ruler binding himself and his successors to abstain 
 from periodical revisions of the land-tax ; almost 
 
68 
 
 LORD CORNIVALLTS 
 
 creating a new race of landlords; giving to property 
 another title than the sword of its owner or the favour 
 of a Viceroy ; and content to leave to the Zamindars 
 the whole profit resulting from increased population 
 and undisturbed peace. At this distance of time it is 
 not very easy to estimate the exact effect of such 
 abnegation on the minds of the great Zamindars of 
 Bengal and Behar as well as on the Chiefs and Princes 
 of neighbouring States. It is sometimes said that a 
 policy of this kind is ascribed by natives to weakness 
 and fear. Whatever may be the case in other instances, 
 and however necessary it may be to rule Orientals by 
 firmness and strict justice quite as much as by con¬ 
 ciliation, it can hardly be said that the moderation of 
 Cornwallis was considered as a sign of impotence. It 
 must have been felt all over the Province as a relief, 
 if not a blessing. And though several of the solid 
 fruits of the Settlement in perpetuity might have been 
 equally attained by a Settlement for a long period, it 
 may be argued that periodical assessments might in 
 Bengal have been productive of other evils. Bengal 
 is, more than any other Province in India, the scene 
 of that evasion and subterfuge which are the prover¬ 
 bial resources of the weak. In other Provinces, as the 
 period for revision draws nigh, a certain amount of 
 distrust and disquietude arises in the minds of the 
 population. Wealth is concealed ; lands are purposely 
 thrown out of cultivation ; and many unfair means 
 are resorted to in order to avoid an increase of rental. 
 
GOOD RESULTS IN THE MUTINY 69 
 
 There can be no doubt that all these disturbing 
 agencies would have been set actively at work in 
 Bengal. It is not, moreover, easy to over-estimate the 
 advantage of a wealthy and privileged class, who have 
 everything to lose and nothing to gain by revolution. 
 
 This was clearly seen and acknowledged at the time 
 of the Sepoy Mutiny. There were few large military 
 cantonments in the Lower Provinces in that eventful 
 year. The elements of a great Sepoy revolt, with its 
 inevitable accompaniments of arson, plunder, and an¬ 
 archy, were not abundant as they were in the Upper 
 Provinces. Even when isolated detachments of Sepoys 
 mutinied as they did at Dacca, Chittagong, and in 
 Birbhum, they met with no countenance from the Za- 
 mindars. The Sepoys were disciplined and trained to 
 fight. They had arms of precision in the midst of an 
 unwarlike population, the bravest of whom could do 
 little more than use a matchlock to kill a wild beast, 
 and a spear to transfix an adversary in a village fight. 
 But after the first outbreak at the Station, where they 
 were resolutely met by a mere handful of Englishmen, 
 the Sepoys took to the villages and the jungles, and 
 then they literally melted away before the impassive 
 demeanour, the want of sympathy, and the silent 
 loyalty of the Zamindars. In other Provinces the 
 system of village communities afforded no bulwark 
 against the tide of anarchy. That system was in many 
 respects admirable and suited to the community. 
 
 It had been justly renowned as a field for the 
 
7o 
 
 LORD CORNWALLIS 
 
 exhibition of the highest kind of administrative talent. 
 Men of large experience, broad views, and active sympa¬ 
 thies, had fashioned or had rescued from slow decay, 
 that most wonderful and diversified piece of mosaic 
 known as the pattiddri tenure. They had almost 
 defied the teachings of political economy and had well- 
 nigh arrested the play of social forces by rooting old 
 and hereditary cultivators to the soil. Yet with the 
 outbreak of the Sepoys and the temporary eclipse of 
 British authority, these fabrics, the result of so much 
 experience and philanthropy, collapsed of themselves 
 or were broken up. In Bengal public tranquillity was 
 hardly ruffled. The rebellion of Koer Sing in Behar 
 was a solitary exception. 
 
 In times of famine and scarcity the co-operation of 
 wealthy Zamindars has been invoked by the Govern¬ 
 ment, and in many instances ungrudgingly afforded. 
 Here and there, no doubt, there were cases where 
 Zamindars were niggardly and selfish. But several 
 experts hold still to the opinion that scarcity is met, 
 relief works are set on foot, and supplies are trans¬ 
 ported with greater facility, where there are large 
 Zamindaris, than in Provinces where the Settlement 
 has been made with the heads of village communities, 
 or with each Ryot direct as in Madras. The Tirhut 
 famine of 1873-4 is certainly an instance in point. 
 And in a country where social distinctions and in¬ 
 equalities still retain their attractions for the masses, 
 the maintenance of some large Zamindaris is quite 
 
SHORE'S VIEWS 
 
 71 
 
 in accordance with native feeling, and it has political 
 advantages which compensate or at any rate balance 
 its defects. 
 
 But, to sum up, it can hardly now be an open 
 question whether Shore’s plea for delay would have 
 involved any sacrifice. The Zamindars, with security 
 of tenure and with privileges converted into rights, 
 would have been willing to accept a Settlement for a 
 long term of years. The changes in the constitution, 
 duties, and remuneration of the Civil Service, about to 
 be described, would have enabled the Indian Govern¬ 
 ment to train up a race of officials who had a deeper 
 knowledge of agricultural customs and a more com¬ 
 plete mastery of administrative principles and details. 
 At any and every periodical revision of the Zamin- 
 dari system, abuses must have been tested by in¬ 
 creased official knowledge, and remedies would have 
 been applied at an earlier date. This revision would 
 have probably outweighed any disadvantage arising 
 out of the excitement inseparable from a break in 
 the revenue system. As it has turned out, action for 
 the benefit of tenants and under-tenants has been 
 forced on the Government by the periodical represen¬ 
 tations of district officers, by the recurrence of formid¬ 
 able combinations on the part of the agriculturists, and 
 by outrages for which magistrates and judges who sat 
 in j udgment on their perpetrators were often compelled 
 to remark that there were divers excuses to be made. 
 
 Yet it must be remembered that the Settlement 
 
72 
 
 LORD CORNWALLIS 
 
 of the Lower Provinces a century ago was not due 
 to the cries of a down-trodden community and to 
 a long discussion by well-informed writers in a free 
 and independent press. It was what seemed to some 
 men at the time the only way out of a series of 
 difficulties. Taken in its purely commercial and 
 financial aspect, it resulted in a considerable aban¬ 
 donment of future revenue. As an administrative 
 measure, it obviously required much more of statutory 
 declaration and vigorous executive management to 
 render it complete. But looking at it solely from the 
 political point of view, it was the means of allaying 
 apprehensions and removing doubts, while it proved 
 a strong incentive to good behaviour, and to something 
 beyond passive loyalty in seditious and troublous 
 times. 
 
 Some of the fundamental principles of the system 
 were practical and sound. The change from the 
 mere collecting native agent, with his status that 
 might or might not become hereditary; the recogni¬ 
 tion, as a matter of right, of Rajas, chieftains, and 
 other superior landlords ; the grave and measured 
 language of a Proclamation putting an end to brief 
 and temporary contrivances for the realisation of the 
 dues of the State ; the incentives to prudent manage¬ 
 ment afforded by the prospect of additional rental; 
 and the sense of security, the limited ownership, and 
 power of transmission and disposal, were, in theory, 
 excellent. 
 
z am/nd Jr, ryot, and government 73 
 
 Lord Cornwallis bad only the experience and the 
 legacies of failure to guide him. Pressed for ways 
 and means, and anxious for reform in more de¬ 
 partments than one, he committed himself to a policy 
 which, in regard to the three interested parties—the 
 Zamindar, the Ryot, and the Ruling Power—assured 
 the welfare of the first, somewhat postponed the 
 claims of the second, and sacrificed the increment 
 of the third. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 Reform of the Civil Service 
 
 It is almost impossible, in this attempt to describe 
 Cornwallis as an Indian ruler, to do more than give 
 occasional extracts from his voluminous correspon¬ 
 dence and to state a summary of his political views. 
 But now and then a private and confidential letter 
 throws such a light on the perplexities which tried 
 his constancy and statesmanship, and illustrates pro¬ 
 blems only solved after painful experience, that it 
 is expedient to quote from it at length. Of this kind 
 is a private and confidential letter to Dundas, dated 
 April 4th, 1790. That minister had sent him a list 
 of questions relating to the East India Company as a 
 commercial and a political institution; to the right 
 of patronage to civil appointments in India; to the 
 export trade of the Dependency; to the relation 
 which English forces should bear to the Sepoys; and to 
 other matters. Changes in administration have left 
 to some of the views of the Governor-General only 
 their historical interest. On other points, his opinions 
 might have weight with administrators of our own 
 time ; and his reply to Dundas is a fitting prelude to 
 
LETTER TO DUNDAS 
 
 75 
 
 a summary of those internal and executive reforms 
 which were to occupy so much of his time and atten¬ 
 tion, and to leave behind them such good and lasting 
 effects. 
 
 ‘I must acknowledge that I am happy to hear that 
 the principles of that plan were still under delibera¬ 
 tion, and that it was only upon the supposition that 
 the commercial branch might be left to the Company, 
 and the other departments taken into the hands of 
 Government, that you had stated these queries. Many 
 weighty objections occur to the separation that you pro¬ 
 pose, for it is almost beyond a doubt with me that no 
 solid advantages would be derived from placing the civil 
 and revenue departments under the immediate direc¬ 
 tion of the King’s Government; and I am perfectly 
 convinced that if the fostering aid and protection and, 
 what is full as important, the check and control of the 
 governments abroad, are withdrawn from the com¬ 
 mercial departments, the Company would not long 
 enjoy their new charter, but must very soon be re¬ 
 duced to a state of actual bankruptcy. 
 
 ‘ I am not surprised that, after the increased and 
 vexatious contradictions which you have experienced 
 from the Court of Directors, you should be desirous of 
 taking as much of the business as possible entirely 
 out of their hands ; but I know that great changes 
 are hazardous in all popular governments, and as the 
 paltry patronage of sending out a few writers is of 
 no value to such an administration as Mr. Pitt’s, I 
 
7 6 
 
 LORD CORNWALLIS 
 
 should recommend it to your serious consideration 
 whether it would not he wiser, when you shall no 
 longer have to contend with chartered rights, to tie 
 their hands from doing material mischief, with¬ 
 out meddling with their Imperial dignity or their 
 power of naming writers, and not to encounter the 
 furious clamour that will be raised against annex¬ 
 ing the patronage of India to the influence of the 
 Crown, except in cases of the most absolute neces¬ 
 sity. 
 
 ‘ That a Court of Directors formed of such materials 
 as the present can never, when left to themselves, 
 conduct any branch of the business of this country 
 properly, I will readily admit; hut under certain re¬ 
 strictions and when better constituted, it might prove 
 an useful check on the ambitious or corrupt designs 
 of some future minister. In order, however, to enable 
 such Directors to do this negative good, or to prevent 
 them doing much positive evil, they should have a 
 circumscribed management of the whole, and not a 
 permission to ruin uncontrolled the commercial ad¬ 
 vantages which Britain should derive from her 
 Asiatic territories. 
 
 ‘ It will, of course, have been represented to you 
 that the India Company formerly was supported by 
 its commerce alone, and that it was then richer than 
 it is at present, and that when their Directors have no 
 longer any business with governing empires, they 
 may again become as thrifty merchants as heretofore. 
 
LETTER TO DUNDAS 
 
 77 
 
 I am persuaded, however, that experience would 
 give a contradiction to that theory, for if they should 
 not have lost their commercial talents by having 
 been Emperors, this country is totally changed by 
 being under their dominion. There are now so many 
 Europeans residing in India, and there is such a com¬ 
 petition at every wharf of any consequence, that in 
 my opinion even an upright Board of Trade sitting at 
 Calcutta could not make advantageous contracts or 
 prevent the manufactures from being debased; and 
 therefore, that unless the Company have able and 
 active Residents at the different factories, and unless 
 those Residents are prevented by the power of Govern¬ 
 ment from cheating them as they formerly did, London 
 would no longer be the principal mart for the choicest 
 commodities of India. 
 
 ‘ If the proposed separation was to take place, not a 
 man of credit or character would stay in the Com¬ 
 pany’s service, if ho could avoid it; and those who 
 did remain, or others who might be hereafter ap¬ 
 pointed, would be soon looked upon as an inferior 
 class of people to the servants acting under appoint¬ 
 ments from His Majesty. The contempt with which 
 they would be treated would not pass unobserved by 
 the natives, and would preclude the possibility of 
 their being of essential use, even if they were not de¬ 
 ficient in character or commercial abilities, and upon 
 the supposition that the Company could afford to pay 
 them liberally for their services. When you add to 
 
7 
 
 LORD CORNWALLIS 
 
 the evils which I have described, and which no man 
 acquainted with this country will think fictitious, the 
 jobbing that must prevail at the India House in a 
 department which is in a manner given up to 
 plunder, you will not, I am sure, think that I have 
 gone too far in prophesying the bankruptcy of the 
 Company. 
 
 ‘ In answer to this statement of the impossibility of 
 the Company’s carrying on the trade when all the 
 other parts of the administration of the country are 
 taken into the hands of Government, it may be said 
 by people who have reflected but little on the subject, 
 “ If the Company cannot carry on the trade, throw it 
 open to all adventurers.” To that mode I should 
 have still greater objection, as it would be very diffi¬ 
 cult for Government to prevent this unfortunate 
 country from being overrun by desperate specu¬ 
 lators from all parts of the British dominions. The 
 manufacturers would soon go to ruin, and the exports 
 —which would annually diminish in value—would 
 be sent indiscriminately to the different countries of 
 Europe. 
 
 ‘ As the new system will only take place when the 
 rights of the present Company cease, you cannot be 
 charged with a violation of charters, and the attacks 
 of the Opposition in Parliament will therefore be 
 confined to an examination of its expediency and 
 efficacy. I fancy I need hardly repeat to you that 
 they would above all things avail themselves of any 
 
LETTER TO DUNDAS 
 
 79 
 
 apparent attempts on your part to give an increase of 
 patronage to the Crown, which could not be justified 
 on the soundest constitutional principles, or on the 
 ground of evident necessity; and could make use of 
 it to misrepresent your intentions and principles, and 
 to endeavour to influence the minds of the natives 
 against you. 
 
 ‘ An addition of patronage to the Crown, to a cer¬ 
 tain degree, will, however, in my opinion, be not only 
 a justifiable measure, but absolutely necessary for the 
 future good government of this country. 
 
 ‘ But, according to my judgment, a renewal of the 
 Company’s Charter for the management of the terri¬ 
 torial revenues and the commerce of India for a 
 limited time (for instance, ten or fifteen years), and 
 under such stipulations as it may be thought proper 
 to annex as conditions, would be the wisest founda¬ 
 tion for your plan, both for your own sakes as 
 Ministers, and as being best calculated for securing 
 the greatest possible advantages to Britain from her 
 Indian possessions, and least likely to injure the 
 essential principles of our own Constitution. 
 
 ‘ The present Court of Directors is so numerous, and 
 the responsibility for public conduct which falls to 
 the share of each individual is so small, that it can 
 have no great weight with any of them; and the par¬ 
 ticipation in a profitable contract, or the means of 
 serving friends or providing for relations, must always 
 more than compensate to them for the loss that they 
 
8o 
 
 LORD CORNWALLIS 
 
 may sustain by any fluctuation that may happen in 
 the market price of the stock which constitutes their 
 qualifications. I should therefore think that it would 
 be very useful to the public to reduce the number of 
 directors to twelve or to nine; and if handsome 
 salaries could be annexed to those situations, I should 
 be clear for adopting means for their being prohibited 
 from having an interest directly or indirectly in con¬ 
 tracts, or in any commercial transactions whatever, 
 in which the Company may have the smallest con¬ 
 cern. 
 
 ‘ At the same time, however, if one or both of these 
 points should be carried, I would not by any means 
 recommend that they should retain the power of ap¬ 
 pointing Governors, Commanders-in-Chief, or Mem¬ 
 bers of Council at any of the Presidencies ; the honour 
 and interest of the nation, the fate of our fleets and 
 armies, being too deeply staked on the conduct of 
 the persons holding the above-mentioned offices, to 
 render it safe to trust their nominations in any other 
 hands but those of the Executive Government of 
 Britain. But as this measure, though not in fact 
 deviating very widely from the existing arrangement 
 by which the King has the power of recalling those 
 officers, would at first appear a strong one, and would 
 be vehemently opposed, I would give it every quali¬ 
 fication that the welfare and security of the country 
 would admit of. I would establish it by law, that 
 the choice of the civil Members of Council should be 
 
LETTER TO DUNDAS 
 
 limited to Company’s servants of a certain standing 
 (at least twelve years), which would in the mind of 
 every candid person leave very little room in respect 
 to them for ministerial patronage, and it should 
 be left to the Court of Directors to frame such 
 general Regulations for the appointment to offices in 
 India as should be consistent with the selection of 
 capable men, and to establish the strictest system that 
 they can devise of check and control upon every 
 article of expenditure at the different Presidencies. 
 
 ‘I would likewise recommend that it should be 
 clearly understood and declared that the Court of 
 Directors should have a right to expect that His 
 Majesty’s Ministers should pay the greatest attention 
 to all their representations respecting the conduct of 
 the Governors, Commander-in-Chief, and Councillors ; 
 and that in case satisfactory redress should not be given 
 to any of their complaints of that nature, that they 
 should have a right to insist upon the recall of any 
 Governor, Commander-in-Chief, or Councillors, whom 
 they should name, and that the utmost facility should 
 be given to them to institute prosecutions against 
 such Governors, &c., whose conduct may appear to 
 them to have been culpable, before the Court of 
 Judicature which has been established by Act of 
 Parliament for the trial of Indian delinquents. 
 
 ‘ In regard to the military arrangements, I am 
 clearly of opinion that the European troops should 
 all belong to the King, for experience has shown that 
 
 F 
 
82 
 
 LORD CORNWALLIS 
 
 the Company cannot keep up an efficient European 
 force in India; this is a fact so notorious that no 
 military man who has been in this country will 
 venture to deny it, and I do not care how strong-ly 
 I am quoted as authority for it. 
 
 ‘ The circumstances, however, of the native troops 
 are very different. It is highly expedient and indeed 
 absolutely necessary for the public good, that the 
 officers who are destined to serve in these corps 
 should come out at an early period of life and devote 
 themselves entirely to the Indian service; a perfect 
 knowledge of the language, and a minute attention to 
 the customs and religious prejudices of the Sepoys, 
 being qualifications for that line which cannot be 
 dispensed with. Were these officers to make a part 
 of the King’s army, it would soon become a practice 
 to exchange their commissions with ruined officers 
 from England, who would be held in contempt by 
 their inferior officers and in abhorrence by their 
 soldiers, and you need not be told how dangerous 
 a disaffection in our native troops would be to our 
 existence in this country. I think, therefore, that as 
 you cannot make laws to bind the King’s prerogative 
 in the exchange or promotions of his army, it would 
 be much the safest determination to continue the 
 native troops in the Company’s service, and by doing 
 so you would still leave to the Court of Directors the 
 patronage of cadets, and of course give some popu¬ 
 larity to the measure. 
 
LETTER TO DUNDAS 83 
 
 ‘ The alternate line to be drawn would give to the 
 Court of Directors the appointment of writers to the 
 civil branches of the service and of cadets for the 
 native troops, and the power of presmbing certain 
 general rules under the description I have mentioned 
 for the disposal of offices by the Government in India, 
 and of calling the Governors, &c., to an immediate 
 account for every deviation from these rules; but 
 they ought to be strictly prohibited from appointing 
 or recommending any of their servants to succeed to 
 offices in this country, as such appointments or re¬ 
 commendations are more frequently granted to intrigue 
 and solicitation, than to a due regard to real merit or 
 good pretensions, and such interference at home must 
 always tend in some degree to weaken the authority 
 of the Government in India. 
 
 ‘ Upon the supposition of the Charters being re¬ 
 newed, it appears to me highly requisite for the 
 public good that the right of inspection and control 
 in the King’s Ministers should be extended to every 
 branch of the Company’s affairs, without any excep¬ 
 tion as to their commerce : and as altercations between 
 the controlling power and the Board of Directors must 
 always be detrimental to the public interest, whether 
 occasioned by improper encroachments on one side 
 or an obstinate or capricious resistance on the other, 
 it seems particularly desirable that not only the 
 extent, but also the manner in which the Ministers 
 are to exercise the right of inspection and control 
 
s 4 
 
 LORD CORNWALLIS 
 
 should be prescribed so clearly as to prevent, if pos¬ 
 sible, all grounds for misapprehension or dispute.’ 
 
 The establishment of a revenue system, which if 
 not entirely new, presented one or more novel features 
 of paramount importance, was not calculated to ensure 
 either the prosperity of the country or the content¬ 
 ment of the people, unless measures were taken to 
 reform the Civil Service and to appoint as Collectors 
 of districts men who could be relied on as proof 
 against corruption. When Cornwallis landed in India, 
 the whole service was more or less in a transition 
 state. It was still occupied with commercial enter¬ 
 prise, and yet its members were called on to discharge 
 administrative* functions and to fill executive posts. 
 They were often remunerated by gratuities and com¬ 
 mission, and the acceptance by them of large gratui¬ 
 ties and of perquisites was common. It was the sur¬ 
 vival of an even worse state of things when men in the 
 high position of Members of Council had not scrupled to 
 accept lacks of rupees for giving a preference to one 
 Nawab or pretender over another. There had been 
 flagrant instances of corruption at Lucknow, Benares, 
 and Madras, and it must be admitted that the Court 
 of Directors had seen and almost approved a system 
 under which their servants, placed in positions of 
 high trust and of manifold temptations, drew small 
 salaries and were allowed to make up for this de¬ 
 ficiency by large extra lump sums. Even when the 
 Governor-General represented in strong language the 
 
THE COLLECTOR OF REVENUE 
 
 85 
 
 necessity for some reform, the Directors were still of 
 opinion that Collectors should be paid partly by com¬ 
 mission and partly by fixed salaries, but that the larger 
 part of their remuneration should be the commission. 
 
 The Resident at Benares, who really wielded almost 
 absolute power in that Province without check or 
 control, drew only 1000 rupees a month, but from 
 monopolies in commercial and other ventures, re¬ 
 ceived besides four lacks every year. In other places, 
 Collectors engaged in commercial speculation under 
 cover of the name of some relative or friend, and it 
 may be said roundly, that while no Collector drew 
 above 1200 rupees a month, his irregular and additional 
 gains amounted to far more. Cornwallis saw almost 
 at once that the only mode of preventing abuses, 
 maintaining discipline, and creating a sense of honour 
 and responsibility, was to give liberal salaries and to 
 confine the recipients to their proper work. Trading 
 was henceforth forbidden; and if commission was 
 still allowed, it was calculated at so much per cent, 
 on the net collections. Even this regulated mode of 
 payment, though perfectly fair and equitable at the 
 time of its introduction, was eventually abolished. 
 
 There were other anomalies in the constitution and 
 character of the service which could not escape 
 notice. The criminal administration had been left 
 in the hands of the Nawab Nazim and his native 
 subordinates, as will be explained in dealing with the 
 new arrangements for civil and criminal justice. The 
 
86 
 
 LORD CORNWALLIS 
 
 Collectors from the time of Warren Hastings, besides 
 being responsible for the revenue, were vested with 
 certain judicial powers in civil cases. Cornwalbs 
 goes so far as to state that the Civil Courts of justice 
 throughout the whole of the Company’s Provinces 
 had been for many years in the hands of the Com¬ 
 pany’s servants. The Collector, in addition to his 
 revenue duties, held in this capacity what was termed 
 a Mai Adalat, or court in which he decided all cases 
 regarding the rights of the landholders and culti¬ 
 vators, and all claims arising between them and their 
 servants. It was resolved to abolish these Mai 
 Adalats, in which the civil servant was Judge as 
 well as Collector, and to transfer all judicial powers 
 and the decision of all rights and all civil suits to 
 regular judicial tribunals. It may here be mentioned 
 by anticipation that six years after the departure of 
 Cornwallis, Collectors were again vested with power 
 to settle, in a summary enquiry, all claims for the rent 
 of the current year due from ryots to Zamindars. 
 
 But with this exception the Collector, after 1793, 
 was confined to his proper functions, which were quite 
 sufficient to occupy his attention and to increase his 
 store of official knowledge. The districts over which 
 such Collectors presided were enormous in extent. 
 The district of Jessor touched the Twenty-four Par- 
 ganas on one side and the Rajshahi District across 
 the Ganges on the other; and it was not for thirty 
 or forty years afterwards that the size of these and 
 
THE COLLECTOR 
 
 87 
 
 other zillahs were curtailed by the formation of 
 smaller independent districts, such as Barasat, Bogra, 
 Pabna, and others. 
 
 The Collector, to sum up, was placed by Cornwallis 
 in a definite, important, well-salaried post. He 
 was responsible for the land revenue of a vast tract, 
 which in amount varied from ten to twenty lacks of 
 rupees. He looked after the estates of minors, and of 
 landowners incapacitated by lunacy or other causes. 
 He was the Superintendent of all estates held khds, 
 as it is termed, on those in which the Government had 
 acquired the Zamindari or landholder’s, as well as the 
 sovereign right. He was paymaster of pensioners 
 and allowances for compensation. He was the re¬ 
 cognised authority for the division of estates between 
 irreconcilable shareholders. He alone could appor¬ 
 tion the liability for revenue of each share. He col¬ 
 lected the tax on spirituous liquors. He was to put up 
 the estates of defaulting proprietors to public sale. 
 He was formally placed under the Board of Revenue, 
 with which he was regularly to correspond. 
 
 The popular idea of a Collector in England is or 
 was an individual with a note-book and certain forms 
 and schedules and demands, calling at inconvenient 
 times for the Queen’s taxes or the palish rates, and 
 viewed with aversion and dislike by householders. 
 From the time of Cornwallis the Anglo-Indian col¬ 
 lector became a Court of Wards, as well as a Court of 
 Exchequer, and on his moderation, good faith, skill, 
 
88 
 
 LORD CORNWALLIS 
 
 and management, there depended the welfare of in¬ 
 habitants who even in those epochs of forest waste 
 and jungle, not seldom amounted to a half or one 
 million of souls in a single district: together with the 
 realisation of the State dues 
 
 The Perpetual Settlement and the relegation of the 
 Collectors to their proper and essential duties was now 
 accomplished. But a great deal remained to be done 
 before the Civil Service could be said to have entered 
 on the entire executive and judicial administration of 
 Bengal and Behar. The machinery for the detection 
 and punishment of crime had been left, as already 
 remarked, in the hands of the Nawab Nazim, who 
 might be termed the titular sovereign of the country. 
 The consequences were ruinous to property and life. 
 The Faujdar of Hugli, a metropolitan district, re¬ 
 ceived ten thousand pounds or a lack of rupees a year, 
 and ddk&iti, or gang robbery with violence, was rife 
 in the very neighbourhood of Calcutta, on the confines 
 of the Maratha Ditch, and indeed all over the Lower 
 Provinces. 
 
 Criminal trials were conducted by native Judges. 
 It is true that there was already a Court of Appeal 
 known as the Sadr Diwani and Nizfimat Adalat, 
 and that the English Collector of revenue was sup¬ 
 posed to overlook the proceedings of the native 
 magistrates in the districts; to see that witnesses 
 were duly examined; and that the proceedings were 
 conducted with some fairness and impartiality. But 
 
THE CIVIL AND CRIMINAL COURTS 89 
 
 the preamble to several of the Regulations or Laws 
 of 1793, shows that there must have been much confu¬ 
 sion, diversity of practice, and uncertainty of jurisdic¬ 
 tion in the civil and criminal courts. Indeed, the 
 language of the preamble of one of these laws is so 
 significant and illustrative of the incompetence of 
 the native officers, and of the inability of the English 
 Collector to interfere to any good purpose, that it must 
 be here quoted in extenso. In Reg. IX of 1793 the 
 Governor-General sums up the case for a complete 
 change in the following terms :— 
 
 ‘ I. Pursuant to the Regulations passed by the President 
 and Council on 21st August, 1772, Criminal Courts, denomi¬ 
 nated FaujdAri AdAlats, were established in the interior 
 parts of the Provinces for the trial of persons charged with 
 crimes or misdemeanors : and the Collectors of the revenue, 
 who were covenanted servants of the Company, were directed 
 to superintend the proceedings of the officers of those Courts, 
 and on trials to see that the necessary witnesses were sum¬ 
 moned and examined, that due weight was allowed to their 
 testimony, and that the decisions passed were fair and im¬ 
 partial. By the same Regulations, a separate and superior 
 Criminal Court was established at MurshidabAd, under the 
 denomination of the NizAmat Adalat, for revising the 
 proceedings of the Provincial Criminal Courts in capital 
 cases, and the Committee of Revenue at MurshidAbAd was 
 vested with a control over this court, similar to that which 
 the Collectors of the revenue were empowered to exercise 
 over the Provincial Courts. Upon the abolition of the 
 Committee of Revenue at MurshidAbAd, the NizAmat Adalat 
 was removed to Calcutta, and placed under the charge 
 
9 o 
 
 LORD CORNWALLIS 
 
 of a Darogha or superintendent, subject to the control of 
 the President of the Council, who revised the sentences of 
 the Criminal Courts in capital cases. The above arrange¬ 
 ments continued in force, without any considerable alteration, 
 until 18th October, 1775, when the entire control over the 
 department of criminal justice was committed to the N&ib 
 Nazim. The Nizamat Adalat was in consequence re-estah- 
 lished at Murshkhlbad, and the Naib Nazim appointed 
 native officers, denominated Faujdars, assisted by persons 
 versed in the Muhammadan law, to superintend the Criminal 
 Courts in the several districts, and to apprehend and bring 
 to trial offenders against the public peace. This system was 
 adhered to, without any material variation, until 6th April, 
 1781, when the institution of Faujdars not having answered 
 the intended purposes, the general establishment both of 
 Faujdars, and the Th&n&d&rs or police officers acting under 
 them, were abolished. Faujdari Courts, however, were 
 continued in the several divisions, subject as before to the 
 control of the Naib Nazim or superintendent of the Nizdmat 
 Adalat, and the English judges of the Courts of Diwdni 
 Adilat were appointed magistrates, with a power to appre¬ 
 hend daktiitis and persons charged with crimes or misde¬ 
 meanors within their respective jurisdictions and commit 
 them to the nearest Faujdari Court for trial. With a view 
 to enable Government to superintend, in some degree, the 
 administration of justice in criminal cases, a separate depart¬ 
 ment was at the same time established at the Presidency, 
 under the control of the Governor-General, to receive monthly 
 returns of the sentences passed in the Faujdari Courts: and for 
 the assistance of the Governor-General in this duty, a Cove¬ 
 nanted Civil servant of the Company was appointed with the 
 official appellation of Remembrancer to the Criminal Courts. 
 
 ‘ From the inefficiency, however, of the authority of the 
 
THE CIVIL AND CRIMINAL COURTS 91 
 
 English magistrates over the Znmmdars and other land¬ 
 holders, the administration of justice in criminal cases was 
 much impeded, whilst the Regulation which vested the 
 magistrates with the power of apprehending offenders, but 
 without permitting them to interfere in any respect in the 
 trials, gave rise to a new evil. The magistrates being 
 obliged to deliver over to the Daroghas, or superintendents 
 of the Faujd&rf Courts, all persons charged with a breach 
 of the peace, however trivial, and a considerable time often 
 elapsing before they were brought to trial, many of the lowest 
 and most indigent classes of the people were frequently 
 detained for a long period in prison, where their sufferings 
 often exceeded the degree of their criminality. The 
 magistrates therefore on 27th June, 1787, were vested 
 with authority to hear and decide on complaints of petty 
 affrays, abusive names, and other slight offences, and under 
 certain restrictions to inflict corporal punishment and impose 
 fines on the offenders. 
 
 ‘ But the numerous robberies, murders, and other enormities, 
 which continued to be daily committed throughout the country, 
 evincing that the administration of criminal justice was still 
 in a very defective state ; and as these evils appeared to result 
 principally from the great delay which occurred in bringing 
 offenders to punishment, and to the law not being duly 
 enforced, as well as to other material defects in the Con¬ 
 stitution of the Criminal Courts; and as it was essential for 
 the prevention of crimes not only that offenders should be 
 deprived of the means of eluding the pursuit of the officers 
 of justice, but that they should be speedily and impartially 
 tried when apprehended; the Governor-General in Council 
 passed certain Regulations on 3rd December, 1790, estab¬ 
 lishing Courts of Circuit under the superintendence of 
 English Judges assisted by natives versed in the Muhammadan 
 
9 
 
 LORD CORNWALLIS 
 
 law, for trying in the first instance persons charged with 
 crimes or misdemeanors, and enabling the Governor-General 
 and the members of the Supreme Council to sit in the 
 Xizamat Adalat (which were for that purpose again re¬ 
 moved to Calcutta) and superintend the administration of 
 criminal justice throughout the provinces. These Regula¬ 
 tions, with the subsequent amendments, are now re-enacted 
 with further alterations and modifications V 
 
 The above quotation from the new Code of this 
 time, with other like deliverances, is illustrative of 
 the extreme caution with which the Government 
 proceeded to assume its responsibilities and to carry 
 out reforms. These changes to readers and adminis¬ 
 trators of the present generation seem easy and 
 natural. Collectors who could only advise native 
 Judges—English magistrates who might apprehend 
 and yet not try criminals—a Government which 
 
 1 The author of this memoir in his early years of service discovered 
 some of the old records of those very Criminal Courts, presided over by 
 these Faujddrs, still in existence, and on inspecting them he found what 
 is known as the "Rubakari, or finding and sentence of the Court. It was 
 very brief and concise, and ended with the direction that the prisoner 
 kaid bashad: in other words, that he was to be sent to prison. No term 
 whatever was specified, and there was a tradition amongst the older 
 native employes of the magistrates’ office as late as the year 1845, 
 of an individual who, having been sentenced to indefinite imprison¬ 
 ment for stealing some of a neighbour’s rice crop, remained in durance 
 for many years. It must be added that the rules of prison discipline 
 were neither then, nor for many years afterwards, of a strict nature. 
 Prisoners were locked up at night, but during the day they had 
 a good deal of liberty, walked about the bdzdrs, did or pretended to 
 do a little work in repairing the roads and clearing out the ditches 
 of this Station, saw their friends, and often obtained tobacco, sweet¬ 
 meats, and other indulgences. 
 
THE CIVIL AND CRIMINAL COURTS 93 
 
 acted as a sort of referee, which might prevent unjust 
 sentences in capital cases, but could not interfere to 
 any valid purpose in the earlier stages of an assize, 
 were evidently not the agencies fitted to deal with 
 a population which, however unwarlike and generally 
 tractable, contained in towns and villages many of 
 the elements of crime and disorder. Cornwallis, after 
 some tentative measures, proceeded to map out the 
 whole of the country into districts presided over by 
 English Judges and Magistrates. In some twenty-five 
 of these districts or zillahs he appointed a Civil and 
 Sessions Judge. In four of the principal cities—that 
 is, in Calcutta, Patna, Dacca, and Murshidabad—he 
 established Provincial Courts of Appeal, or courts in¬ 
 termediate between the Court of the Zillah and the 
 Sadr Court, or highest and ultimate tribunal. An¬ 
 other law extended and defined the jurisdiction of the 
 last-mentioned court. Distinct and, in some instances, 
 minute rules of procedure were incorporated in these 
 laws. 
 
 Magistrates with judicial powers of reasonable 
 extent were appointed to each district, and Darogahs 
 or heads of police were placed under them for the 
 prevention and detection of crime. In civil suits the 
 English Judge was empowered to hear and decide all 
 suits regarding real and personal property, land rents, 
 debts, accounts, partnerships, marriage, caste, inheri¬ 
 tance, damages, and, in short, all cases of a civil na¬ 
 ture. In criminal trials the Code to be followed was 
 
94 
 
 LORD CORNWALLIS 
 
 the Muhammadan Code; but means were at once taken 
 to mitigate its harshness and to correct its absurdities. 
 Barbarous punishments, such as mutilation, were not 
 allowed. The rules of Muhammadan evidence were 
 modified and brought into harmony with those of 
 English courts. In civil cases between Hindus the 
 Judge was assisted by a native Pandit, who advised 
 on matters of inheritance, marriage, caste, and the 
 like. The Muhammadan law similarly was applied 
 in cases where both parties were Musalmans. When 
 the litigants were of different creeds, the English Judge 
 was to follow the dictates of equity and good con¬ 
 science. Of his native coadjutors, the Pandit was 
 the first to be abolished, though he lasted till 1821. 
 But the office of Kazi or Maulavi remained in some 
 districts down to the introduction of the Penal Code 
 and the Code of Criminal Procedure in i860. 
 
 While attempts had been made by Warren Hastings 
 and by Cornwallis himself to improve the civil and 
 criminal administration of the province, and though 
 a few changes and improvements had been intro¬ 
 duced all tending to vest authority more and more 
 in the hands of Englishmen, the system in its fulness 
 dates from 1793, the l as t y ear of the Cornwallis 
 administration. Every civil servant from the begin¬ 
 ning of this century has looked on this date as the 
 commencement of a new era. He may have heard 
 of other ‘ General Kegulations,’ but they were never 
 printed or circulated for his use and guidance. 
 
THE CORNWALLIS CODE 
 
 95 
 
 The Cornwallis Code, whether for revenue, police, 
 criminal and civil justice, or other functions, de¬ 
 fined and set bounds to authority, created procedure, 
 by a regular system of appeal guarded against the 
 miscarriage of justice, and founded the Civil Service 
 of India as it exists to this day. This Code has been 
 the basis of every attempt to introduce law and order 
 into each successive acquisition of districts and king¬ 
 doms. Very possibly its provisions were in some 
 instances cumbrous and minute, and not suited to 
 races more manly and warlike and less prone to 
 litigation and chicanery than the population of Cen¬ 
 tral and Lower Bengal. Some of its sections and 
 clauses were ruthlessly put aside when new, simple, 
 and equitable Codes had to be suited to purely savage 
 or warlike tribes. It may be also said that criminals 
 were allowed a fatal facility of appeal, which in the 
 working proved disadvantageous to the general wel¬ 
 fare of the community. But the Cornwallis Code was 
 dictated by an anxious desire to conciliate Hindus 
 and Muhammadans, to soothe their feelings, to avoid 
 offence to religious and social prejudices, and at the 
 same time to substitute order, method, and system 
 for anarchy, chaos, and the irregular and uncontrolled 
 exercise of judicial power. Objections have occa¬ 
 sionally been made to the phraseology of these Regu¬ 
 lations, and doubtless they suffer by comparison with 
 the precise, correct, and luminous language of the 
 later Acts dating from 1833, when the legislation of 
 
9 6 
 
 LORD CORNWALLIS 
 
 the Indian Government was framed by such high 
 authorities as Macaulay and Cameron, or Maine and 
 Stephen in our own days. But we should remember 
 that the Indian Government a century ago had to deal 
 with a community ruled by despots and unacquainted 
 with any fixed or settled Code of administration. The 
 training of the officials who were to administer the 
 new laws was imperfect. Many of the Collectors and 
 Magistrates began to learn their business when they 
 began to work, and had to arrive at system and 
 method through the detection of errors and mistakes. 
 
 The Regulations in consequence were not merely 
 the expression of what in future was to be the revenue 
 or the criminal law of the land. The preambles, and 
 occasionally some of the sections, contained reasons 
 and explanations for the new procedure. Some are 
 more in the nature of a manifesto from the Ruling 
 Power than a law. The Governor-General reviewed 
 the past, pointed out the errors discovered in practice 
 and arising out of imperfect knowledge of the wants of 
 the people, and then proceeded to apply a legislative 
 remedy. 
 
 The Perpetual Settlement itself took the form of 
 a Proclamation which became Regulation I in the 
 Code. The Hindus, ‘ who form the body of the 
 people,’ are expressly informed that while agriculture 
 then as now is the principal element in the wealth of 
 the country, it is the object of the British Government 
 to extend commerce, to improve judicial procedure, 
 
THE COLLECTOR 97 
 
 and to provide against the recurrence of inundation 
 and drought. 
 
 In addition to his revenue and judicial Code, Lord 
 Cornwallis laid it down as a rule that the official 
 acts of the Collectors might be challenged in the 
 Civil Courts of the country; that Government might 
 be sued, like any private individual, for exactions or 
 infringements of the rights of landholders; and that 
 such suits could only be cognizable by Judges who 
 had no direct or personal interest in enforcing the 
 financial claims of Government. Practically the 
 Governor-General did away with any idea that a 
 Collector was a sort of pro-consul whose irregularities 
 were exempt from the jurisdiction of the ordinary tri¬ 
 bunals, and who was accountable only to the Executive 
 which he served. Many important subjects, political 
 and military, were of course exempted from the cog¬ 
 nizance of the law courts. But from 1793, i n that 
 related to landed and personal property, the Govern¬ 
 ment, in the language of one of the Regulations, 
 ‘ divested itself of the power of infringing in its 
 executive capacity on the rights and privileges ’ 
 which, in its legislative capacity, it had conferred on 
 the landholders. 
 
 Divers other important questions continued to occupy 
 the attention of Cornwallis. There was considerable 
 jealousy between the English officers of the King’s 
 troops or Royals, as they were termed, and the officers 
 of native infantry. The sovereign of England was 
 
 G 
 
9 8 
 
 LORD CORNWALLIS 
 
 not likely ever to give up the notion that officers 
 bearing his commission were entitled to a pre-emin¬ 
 ence over those who held their appointments from a 
 commercial body of his own subjects. It was calcu¬ 
 lated that at that epoch the whole European and 
 native forces of Bengal and Madras did not exceed 
 70,000 men. Of these, 5000 only were King’s troops ; 
 the Company’s ‘ Europeans,’ or Englishmen recruited 
 by the Company in England, were about the same in 
 number. 
 
 These latter were ‘ a set of wretched objects ; ’ and 
 Cornwallis saw at once that in order to raise them 
 to the standard, the discipline, and the efficiency 
 to which they subsequently attained, the Directors 
 should be allowed to recruit openly, and the recruits 
 should be subjected to martial law, and be placed 
 under the command of their own officers until the date 
 of their embarkation for the East. Dundas looked 
 far ahead, and actually prepared a memorandum for 
 the amalgamation of the Royal and the Company’s 
 troops into one army. Cornwallis admitted that if 
 the Company’s troops consisted only of Englishmen 
 the amalgamation would be a very easy matter. But 
 he saw a great difficulty in dealing with nearly four 
 hundred officers serving in native regiments, who 
 were, as a rule, the best men in the army, and who 
 were well acquainted with the languages, manners, 
 and religious customs of the Sepoys. So the amal¬ 
 gamation was deferred for three quarters of a century, 
 
THE KING'S TROOPS 
 
 99 
 
 but a scheme originating with Cornwallis was eventu¬ 
 ally carried out, by which the Company’s officers 
 were allowed to take rank equally with those of the 
 Royal regiments, according to the dates of their re¬ 
 spective commissions, while serving in India. Jealousy 
 between the two sets of officers—though always kept 
 within bounds in action and in a campaign, owing to 
 a sense of military subordination—occasionally came 
 to the surface in peaceful times ; but it would not 
 be easy to find any instances in which military 
 operations were impeded or marred by any such 
 social antipathy. Some of the most signal victories 
 in India have been gained by Company’s officers 
 commanding a combined force of the soldiers of the 
 Sovereign and the Sepoys of the Company. With all 
 his philanthropy and considerate regard for the feel¬ 
 ings of the natives, Cornwallis was quite alive to one 
 danger to which India has never at any time been 
 unexposed. 
 
 ‘ It must be universally admitted,’ he tells the 
 Court of Directors, ‘ that without a large and well- 
 regulated body of Europeans, our hold of these valu¬ 
 able dominions must be very insecure. It cannot be 
 expected that even the best of treatment would con¬ 
 stantly conciliate the willing obedience of so vast a 
 body of people, differing from ourselves in almost 
 every circumstance of laws, religion, and customs ; 
 and oppression of individuals, errors of government, 
 and several other unforeseen causes, will no doubt 
 
 G 2 
 
1 oo 
 
 LORD CORNWALLIS 
 
 arouse an inclination to revolt. On such occasions it 
 would not be wise to place great dependence upon 
 their countrymen who compose the native regiments 
 to secure their subjection.’ It was not the Governor- 
 General’s last utterance, but it might be said, 
 ‘ Ilia tanquam cycnea fuit . . . hominis vox et 
 oratio.’ 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 Private Life and Social Customs 
 
 While Cornwallis’s relations with Henry Dundas 
 were, even when they differed, of the most amicable 
 nature, and while their correspondence is replete 
 with instructive and statesmanlike views on most of 
 the vital portions of Indian administration, it is clear 
 that his endeavours to promote the efficiency of the 
 Civil Service were sorely hampered by requests from 
 sundry high personages in England to promote their 
 relatives and friends. The Civil Service was not 
 then regularly fenced in by exclusive rules and rigid 
 restrictions, and there were divers occasions on which 
 the Head of the Government might exercise his dis¬ 
 cretion in giving appointments to candidates who 
 had not been sent out by the Court, or who had gone 
 out on their own account, as the saying was. In the 
 hands of a strong and just man it was not likely 
 that the privilege of selection outside the ranks of 
 the service would be abused. But peers and other ac¬ 
 quaintances had not the slightest hesitation in writing 
 out to Cornwallis to provide for Mr. Such-a-one in 
 some lucrative and easy post. To one peer he had 
 to reply that he had never heard of a certain clerical 
 
102 
 
 LORD CORNWALL/S 
 
 friend, but unless be bad been sent out by the Court 
 of Directors it was not in his power to promote him. 
 
 In the same letter he says he should be glad to 
 appoint a Mr. Beachcroft to a Commercial Residency 
 if he were likely to succeed in it: 1 But here, my loi’d, 
 we are in the habit of looking for the man for the 
 place, and not for the place for the man.’ Another 
 peer recommends a young gentleman named Ramus, 
 a late page of honour to the King. He went out as a 
 free merchant. The name of Ramus occurs about 
 this time in the list of Company’s servants. But the 
 most flagrant attempt in this direction was made by 
 the Prince of Wales. He had a protege named Treves, 
 whose ambition it was to be appointed to the Ada- 
 lat, or Civil Court of Benares. The post at that time 
 was filled by ‘ a black named Ali Cann.’ This gentle¬ 
 man’s right name was Ali Ibrahim Khfin, a man of 
 real talent and universally respected. Cornwallis 
 answers His Royal Highness to the effect that though 
 he was anxious to put the Company’s servants at 
 the head of both the Civil and Criminal Courts, it 
 would be a difficult and unpopular measure to remove 
 the incumbent, and that if Ali Khan were to die to¬ 
 morrow, it would be impossible to give this appoint¬ 
 ment to Mr. Treves, looking to his standing in the 
 service, as well as the impropriety of appointing so 
 young a man to a situation of so much gravity and 
 importance. 
 
 Again, a year afterwards, the Prince of Wales 
 
PATRONAGE 
 
 io 3 
 
 recommends a young Mr. Watts, who wanted to get 
 a rank in the ‘ regulars ’ equal to what he had in the 
 Company's army. But he was told civilly that this 
 could not be done, and Mr. Watts afterwards ob¬ 
 tained a commission in a West India regiment. These 
 recommendations, in a letter to his brother the 
 Bishop of Lichfield, are treated by the Governor- 
 General as ‘infamous and unjustifiable jobs.’ 
 
 Other difficulties had to be met and overcome. 
 On one occasion the Prince recommends a young 
 man going out as a cadet, but in a harmless way and 
 for such social notice as the Governor-General may 
 think fit. On another point the Court of Directors 
 very properly came to his aid. The Court had strong 
 objections to recognise as agents persons accredited 
 in England by such potentates as the Nawab of 
 Bengal and the Baja of Tanjore. The Directors held 
 that all communications from Princes or Chiefs deem¬ 
 ing themselves aggrieved, should be preferred only 
 through the regular channel of the Iudian Govern¬ 
 ment. And this sound precedent has rarely been set 
 aside, and never without risk and prejudice to good 
 administration. Acting in the same spirit, Corn¬ 
 wallis absolutely refused to forward a complimentary 
 letter from the Nawab Vizier of Oudh, accompanied 
 by 25,000 rupees, for Dr. Willis, the King’s physician. 
 
 A nctzr of 101 gold mohurs, as a congratulatory 
 offering from an inferior to a superior, with a sum of 
 7000 rupees for Dr. Willis, and an additional 7000 
 
104 
 
 ’ LORD CORNWALLIS 
 
 rupees for the poor in the neighbourhood of the 
 King’s palace, transmitted by the Naw;ib of Bengal, 
 were all courteously but firmly refused. The Governor- 
 General contented himself with sending the letters 
 which accompanied these presents, to His Majesty 
 the King of England. 
 
 Cornwallis’s annoyance at the importunities of 
 friends on behalf of candidates for office, breaks out 
 amusingly in the letter to Lord Sydney already 
 quoted: ‘ I think I told you how much Lord Ailes- 
 bury had distressed me by sending out Mr. Ritso. 
 He is now writing in the secretary’s office for 200 
 or 250 rupees per month, and I do not see the proba¬ 
 bility of my being able to give him anything better, 
 without deserving to be impeached. I am still per¬ 
 secuted every day by people coming out with letters 
 to me, who either get into jail or starve in the foreign 
 Settlements. Eor God’s sake do all in your power to 
 stop this madness.’ The Mr. Ritso alluded to was 
 evidently employed in the secretariat as a copyist, or 
 what used to be denominated a section-writer. Men 
 of this class in later days were generally Eurasians, 
 and they were remunerated by payment for so many 
 words. Originally the rate was 75o words the rupee, 
 but secretaries of an economical turn raised the rate 
 of work to 1400 words. 
 
 It is pleasant after this denunciation of jobbery 
 to turn to letters from Warren Hastings to the 
 Governor-General. There are several allusions, in 
 
WARREN HASTINGS 
 
 105 
 
 the Ross edition of the Correspondence, to the im¬ 
 peachment of the ex-Governor-General ; and the 
 editor expressly states that Cornwallis entertained a 
 very high opinion of his eminent and ill-treated 
 predecessor. The public journals of the time show 
 that the enlightened opinion of the Settlement, as it 
 was termed, was entirely on the side of Hastings; 
 and at the news of his acquittal, the city of Calcutta 
 was illuminated, and messages of congratulation were 
 forwarded by a large number of inhabitants convened 
 at a public meeting by the sheriff. Macaulay was 
 well informed when he wrote that every ship that 
 sailed from Calcutta brought home a ‘ cuddy-full ’ of 
 friends and admirers of Hastings. But Cornwallis 
 would take no active part in getting up testimonials 
 to character, and the letter referring to this determina¬ 
 tion is so honourable to both Statesmen, that it is worth 
 quoting. On the 22nd of April, 1790, Hastings writes:— 
 ‘ Of thanks I have a large debt due from me to 
 your Lordship for many and substantial favours : for 
 your great goodness to my old domesticks ; for your 
 distinguished notice of my friends ; and for the liberal 
 manner in which you were pleased to proclaim your 
 allowance of the testimonials which were subscribed 
 in my favour, and to authenticate them by the trans¬ 
 mission of them to the Court of Directors. ... You 
 might, my Lord, have done more to indicate your 
 countenance of those subscriptions, had I been en¬ 
 titled to such a proof of your personal good-will; 
 
io 6 LORD CORNWALLIS 
 
 but though I should have felt as I ought for the 
 motive, I should have regretted that you had yielded 
 to it. Such a proceeding would have been construed 
 into a transgression of the line of public duty, and have 
 defeated its own purpose, by inducing a suspicion that 
 the testimonials were extorted by the influence of 
 authority. Considering the subject in its relation to 
 your Lordship, I applaud the nice discretion with 
 which you tempered a conduct impelled by a desire to 
 promote the redress of an injured character. Regard¬ 
 ing it merely as it affected myself, I am thankful 
 for what you did, and for stopping precisely where 
 you did stop.’ 
 
 In January of the same year (1788) Cornwallis had 
 written to Lord Sydney : ‘ Without entering into the 
 merits of the case, I am very sorry that things have 
 gone so much against poor Hastings, for he certainly 
 has many amiable qualities;’ and the writer follows 
 this up by some uncomplimentary remarks about 
 Impey. This may be a surprise to readers drawing 
 their notions of Hastings from Macaulay, who thought 
 ‘ his heart was somewhat hard.’ The real truth is 
 that Hastings, confronted with some spiteful adver¬ 
 saries, was a man of strong affections, and had a circle 
 of many devoted and high-minded friends. His cha¬ 
 racter and conduct have been recently placed in a 
 very different light by Sir Fitzjames Stephen and Sir 
 Alfred Lyall, and the time is possibly coming when 
 men of the present generation may regret to think 
 
PRIVATE LIFE 107 
 
 that their forefathers were his mistaken and relent¬ 
 less foes. 
 
 The private life of Cornwallis in his high office was 
 pure and consistent, and marked by a wish to avoid 
 display whenever this could be done without a disregard 
 of the hospitality and ceremony looked for at Govern¬ 
 ment House. The editor of the Correspondence notes 
 that Cornwallis rose early, as some officials still do in 
 India, all the year round; mounted a hard-trotting 
 horse; and took a long ride attended by his military 
 secretary and a groom. At table he was abstemious 
 and even sparing in his diet. The soundest medical 
 authorities hold that health in India is best preserved 
 by a generous diet not carried to excess. It has been 
 said by Sir John Ivaye that there is scarcely room 
 for personal luxury in India. What, indeed, are 
 superfluities in temperate climates are the absolute 
 necessaries for Indian existence and comfort. The 
 youngest civilian or subaltern writes, eats, and usually 
 sleeps under a punkah for more than half the year, 
 and changes his linen twice in the day, equally with 
 the Viceroy and the Commander-in-Chicf. Routine 
 and regularity are, in fact, prescribed by the inexor¬ 
 able laws of nature for the greater part of the year. 
 
 As a general rule it may be laid down, that most 
 men in India go to bed about 10.30 or 11 and rise 
 earlier than they do in England; and that very 
 much of the best work in India, in the shape of 
 Minutes, judgments, reports, correspondence with 
 
LORD CORNWALLIS 
 
 108 
 
 superiors and subordinates, and visits to jails and 
 police-stations, is accomplished before breakfast. 
 
 Cornwallis writes to his son, Lord Brome, an 
 Etonian, that life at Calcutta was perfect ‘ clockwork.’ 
 
 ‘ I get on horseback just as the dawn of day begins to 
 appear, ride on the same road and the same distance, 
 pass the whole forenoon after my return from riding 
 in doing business, and almost exactly the same por¬ 
 tion of time every day at table, drive out in a phaeton 
 a little before sunset, then write or read over letters 
 or papers on business for two hours ; sit down at 
 nine with two or three officers of my family to some 
 fruit and a biscuit, and go to bed soon after the clock 
 strikes ten. I don’t think the greatest sap at Eton 
 can lead a duller life than this.’ In explanation of 
 the above it should be remembered that the usual 
 dinner-hour at Calcutta in those days was 4 p.m., and 
 the evening meal alluded to in the above letter was a 
 kind of light supper. Hours have long altered much 
 for the better, and nearly everybody in India dines 
 at 8 p.m., or at 7.30 at earliest, after the evening ride 
 or drive. 
 
 By many persons the early morning ride has now 
 been given up, at least during the hot weather and 
 rains. In the glorious cold season, the race-course 
 and the cantonment, the Mall and the parade, are 
 full of life and animation. In those times no hill- 
 stations had been acquired or discovered. There were 
 no steamers to convey invalids or hard-worked officials 
 
PRIVATE LIFE 
 
 109 
 
 to Madras, Rangoon, Singapur, or Galle, for a week 
 or fortnight’s sea air. The splendid Government 
 House which overlooks the Esplanade of Calcutta, 
 was a later creation of Lord Wellesley, and there 
 was no suburban retreat, like the country house at 
 Barrackpur, to which the Viceroy could retire after 
 the weekly council on Friday to the following Mon¬ 
 day or Tuesday. Cornwallis, however, made the best 
 of his dull life, as Warren Hastings had done before 
 him, and many Judges, Councillors, secretaries and 
 staff-officers have done since. Sir William Jones, the 
 great Orientalist and Judge, who was consulted by 
 the Governor-General on proposed changes in the 
 criminal law, lived at Garden Reach, three or four 
 miles out of Calcutta, and he also had his country 
 house at Krishnagar, the head Station of the district 
 Nadiya, sixty miles off, easily reached by boat or 
 palanquin. The ruins of this house were plainly 
 visible forty years ago in the grounds now occupied 
 by the Krishnagar College. Cornwallis, though he 
 did not anticipate the ceremonial and show of Lord 
 Wellesley who attended public worship on Sunday in 
 his robes of state, and who issued an order prohibiting 
 all servants of Government from horse-racing on 
 Sunday, set an excellent example of public morality. 
 
 Nor was he niggardly in public entertainments. 
 He writes, in 1792, to his brother the Bishop, that 
 he had been considerably out of pocket by the war 
 with Tipu. ‘I spent ^27,360, reckoning the current 
 
1 IO 
 
 LORD CORNWALLIS 
 
 rupee at two shillings, between the ist of December, 
 1790, and the 31st of July, 1792, besides the wine 
 from England, and two Arabian horses for which I 
 am to give English hunters.’ The general simplicity 
 of Cornwallis’s habits was a well-remembered tradi¬ 
 tion in Calcutta society, and is happily hit off in 
 some excellent stanzas by the late H. M. Parker, 
 Bengal C. S. 1 , in his Elegy on Mr. Simms, an imagi- 
 nary Tim Linkinwater, clerk in one of the great mer¬ 
 cantile houses, as follows :— 
 
 ‘ And he was full of anecdote, and spiced his prime 
 pale ale 
 
 With many a curious hit of talk and many a curious 
 tale:— 
 
 How Dexter 2 ate his buttons off; and in a one-horse- 
 cliay 
 
 My Lord Cornwallis drove about; Alack and well-a-day.’ 
 
 This tradition obviously alludes to the unosten¬ 
 tatious habits of the man. As the head of society he 
 gave sumptuous entertainments on public festivals 
 and holidays, as the subjoined extracts from the 
 newspapers of the day attest 3 :— 
 
 ‘ A very large and respectable company, in conse¬ 
 quence of the invitation given by the Right Honour¬ 
 able the Governor-General, assembled on New Year’s 
 Day at the old Court House Street, where an elegant 
 
 1 Bole Pongis, 2 vols. By Henry Meredith Parker. Elegy on Mr. 
 Simms. 
 
 2 Dexter was a livery-stable keeper at the end of the last century. 
 
 3 Selections from Calcutta Gazette. By the Author. 
 
PRIVATE LIFE 
 
 III 
 
 dinner was prepared. The toasts were, as usual, 
 echoed from the cannon’s mouth, and merited this 
 distinction from their loyalty and patriotism. In 
 the evening the ball exhibited a circle less extensive, 
 but equally brilliant and beautiful, with that which 
 graced the entertainment in honour of the King’s 
 birthday. Lady Chambers and Col. Pearse danced 
 the first minuet, and the succeeding ones continued 
 till about half after eleven o'clock, when the supper 
 tables presented every requisite to gratify the most 
 refined epicurean.’ 
 
 The King’s birthday was the 4th of June, but was 
 kept in Calcutta in the cold season. Colonel Pearse 
 was a distinguished officer of artillery, and Lady 
 Chambers was the wife of Sir Kobert Chambers, one 
 of the Puisne Judges of the Supreme Court. 
 
 Cornwallis does not appear to have found the time 
 or to have acknowledged the necessity for many 
 visits to the interior. Lord Wellesley spent months 
 in a tedious journey to the North-West Provinces, by 
 boat, stopping at all the principal stations on the 
 Ganges. But Cornwallis for two seasons was much 
 occupied in the Madras Presidency with the campaign 
 against Tipvx. And during the earlier years of his 
 administration, the work that he had to do was 
 precisely of that kind which could best be accom¬ 
 plished by conference with his colleagues, and by 
 an exchange of notes and Minutes. Until he had 
 reformed and re-constituted the Civil Service, and 
 
1 X 2 
 
 LORD CORNWALLIS 
 
 liad laid down the pi'inciples which wei’e to guide the 
 Government in assessing and collecting the revenue, 
 there was really no department to overhaul or inspect. 
 Personal inspection of the records at Murshidabad, 
 Patna, and Dacca, would have given him nothing that 
 he could not equally well obtain at the Presidency; 
 and except once, there was no necessity for those visits 
 to the frontier and to large centres of civilisation, which 
 have become a part of the regular duty of Viceroys 
 and Governors, and by which the whole machinery 
 of administration is examined, tested, and improved. 
 
 It has been shown that the Governor-General, 
 besides being President of the Board of Revenue, 
 was also ex ojjficio a member of the Sadr Court, 
 or Highest Civil and Criminal Court of Appeal. 
 In one of the old reports of the decisions of that 
 tribunal, it is expressly mentioned that the Governor- 
 General was present as a member of the Court. But 
 in all probability he took no active part in any dis¬ 
 cussion or argument, and merely went on a solitary 
 occasion as a matter of form. More remai’kable is it 
 that in his letters there is no mention of the practice 
 of duelling, which from contemporary records and 
 newspapers was then very prevalent in India. Per¬ 
 haps to a military officer such events appeared matters 
 of course, required by the prevailing code of honour. 
 But he thought much of the condition and treatment 
 of the natives, and when the officers of a court-martial 
 acquitted one of their comrades charged with the 
 
PRIVATE LIFE 
 
 Jl 3 
 
 brutal treatment of a poor native, in the teeth of the 
 clearest evidence, the Governor-General rebuked the 
 offenders in a scathing Minute which might have 
 come from the pen of Dalhousie or Canning. 
 
 Allusions to sport occur occasionally. The par¬ 
 tridge shooting at Culford was good, especially in 
 November and December. And as the practice of 
 driving birds was then unknown, it may be presumed 
 that there was more cover in the fields than we see 
 anywhere at present. But we do not find any men¬ 
 tion of a tiger, a deer, or a buffalo hunt in any of the 
 most familiar correspondence, though districts now 
 entirely cleared of tree and grass jungle, numbering 
 countless villages and containing a population of 500 
 souls to the square mile, were then the haunts of deer, 
 wild boars, leopards, and tigers. 
 
 Some further details of the social condition of Cal¬ 
 cutta are subjoined. They illustrate the habits and 
 fashions of our grandfathers in India, and shed a 
 pleasant light on the character and position of the 
 Governor-General. 
 
 Cornwallis was not so taken up with big questions 
 that he could find no time for measures affecting the 
 health and comfort of the residents of Calcutta. 
 Within a year of his arrival he, as Governor of Fort 
 William—an office held with but independent of that 
 of the Governor-Generalship—forbade inmates of the 
 Fort to use flaring links and torches, but allowed the 
 use of lanterns with candles along the ramparts and 
 
 H 
 
H4 
 
 LORD CORNWALLIS 
 
 in the streets. He tells gangs of Coffres, Manilla 
 men and Mahiys, that as they had been guilty of 
 great irregularities, and had committed outrages in 
 Calcutta and its environs, they should ship themselves 
 off, before a certain date, lest a worse thing befall 
 them. 
 
 He finds time to witness the artillery practice 
 with mortars and shells at bum Dum, under the 
 direction of Colonel Pearse. He attends the consecra¬ 
 tion of the new church, which is now known as the 
 old Cathedral to distinguish it from the edifice built in 
 the episcopate of Bishop Wilson. In the year 1787 
 he visited Benares, going up the Ganges in the State 
 barge, and it was justly considered a marvellous rate 
 of progress when an editor could record that including 
 stoppages at divers stations on the river, Ivrishnagar, 
 Bhagalpur, Patna, and others, he arrived at Benares 
 in a month. One result of this visit was that he pro¬ 
 hibited not only Europeans generally, but persons in 
 the civil and military services, from proceeding beyond 
 Baksar without an official pass. The tour also brought 
 to his notice the melancholy fact that many of the 
 subalterns in the army had got deeply into debt, 
 owing to dissipation and extravagance. This state of 
 things had been made the subject of complaint by a 
 respectable English merchant stationed at Cawnpur, 
 who had lent divers sums to officers and had no means 
 of recovering his debts except by a tedious journey to 
 Calcutta and an action in the Supreme Court. 
 
PRIVATE LIFE 
 
 It was not indeed till the time of Lord Auckland 
 that all Englishmen in the interior were made amen¬ 
 able to the ordinary Civil Courts of the country. What 
 Cornwallis could then do was to warn the indebted 
 officers that he might take steps to bring them within 
 or near the jurisdiction of the only Court that could 
 take cognizance of such claims. At the same time 
 officers of the army in general were further warned 
 against opposing sheriffs’ officers in the execution of 
 their duty ‘ at any of the Stations, but even in the 
 most remote districts of the Province.’ It may, how¬ 
 ever, be doubted whether such functionaries were 
 likely to be found serving processes and executing 
 warrants in Upper India or anywhere except in 
 the immediate neighbourhood of Calcutta. Then 
 we have notices of more dinners, balls, suppers, and 
 entertainments, and an instructive commentary on 
 the inefficiency of the police while in native hands, in 
 the occurrence of a dakditi in the very heart of Cal¬ 
 cutta, when the robbers carried off some 4000 rupees. 
 
 A Proclamation against slavery by the Governor- 
 General in Council shows that the practice of kid¬ 
 napping children and sending them into the interior, 
 or carrying them off to foreign parts, must have been 
 not uncommon. Another order prohibited the sale 
 and transport of guns, cannon, and warlike stores to 
 any part of India without a pass. A third establishes 
 a Government Stud in the district of Tirhut, and in¬ 
 vites owners of mares to send their animals to the 
 
 H 2 
 
LORD CORNWALLIS 
 
 11 6 
 
 superintendent. This establishment existed down to 
 very recent times. The financial difficulties under 
 which Cornwallis and his successors laboured are 
 illustrated by notifications that promissory notes issued 
 for three or four months bore interest at twelve per 
 cent.; and in no case does it seem that Government 
 could raise money at a less interest than six per cent. 
 Eight and ten per cent, were not uncommon. At one 
 period during the campaign of 1791 against Tipu, 
 the Court of Directors thought it necessary to send 
 out specie to Madras to the amount of half a million. 
 
 It is somewhat remarkable that there is no record 
 of any public demonstration at the time when Corn¬ 
 wallis gave up his high office. On August 75, 1793, 
 he left Government House, spent the day with his 
 successor, Sir John Shore, at Garden Reach, and 
 embarked on a Pilot schooner, which was to take him 
 to his ship lying off’ Kedgeree. But the campaign 
 ending with Seringapatam and his return from Madras 
 had previously been the occasion of great festivities. 
 Englishmen and natives presented him with loyal 
 addresses. Odes were published in the newspapers. 
 The officers stationed at Fort William invited him to 
 a splendid ball and supper at the theatre, which was 
 appropriately decorated, so says the chronicler of this 
 event, with busts of Augustus and Trajan, together 
 with the restoration of the Roman eagle and standards 
 to the former, and the submission of the Dacian chiefs 
 to the latter Emperor. A year after Cornwallis’s retire- 
 
RETURN HOME 11 7 
 
 ment his health was still drunk at the annual dinner 
 given on St. Andrew’s day, with all the warmth usually 
 displayed by Scotchmen on such festive occasions. 
 
 There can be no doubt that in an administration 
 of six years Cornwallis had never forfeited the 
 regard and esteem of the English community, while 
 he had secured a place in the memory of the natives 
 by devoting a large portion of his time to their best 
 interests. His position as Chief of the army as well 
 as Governor-General at the head of the Civil Service, 
 and the novitas regni, offered him advantages which in 
 the case of a modern Viceroy it would be vain to expect. 
 This portion of the memoir may fittingly be concluded 
 with his reply to an address from the British inhabi¬ 
 tants of Calcutta, forwarded to him through the Court 
 of Directors, a year and a half after be had left India. 
 
 Writing on the 16th of April, 1795, to the chairman 
 of the Calcutta meeting, he says:— 
 
 ‘ I beg leave to trouble you to inform the gentlemen 
 who signed the address that I feel myself no less 
 flattered and honoured by the favourable opinion 
 which so respectable a body of people have been 
 pleased to deduce of my public and private conduct 
 in the government of Bengal, than by the kind and cor¬ 
 dial terms in which that opinion has been expressed. 
 
 ‘ I likewise request that you and all the other 
 subscribers will believe that I shall ever remember 
 through life how much I was indebted to the zeal and 
 abilities of many of the gentlemen who signed the 
 
ii8 
 
 LORD CORNWALLIS 
 
 address, for the success of several of the most im¬ 
 portant and useful measures of my Government, and 
 that I shall consider myself fortunate if it should at 
 any time be in my power to mark my personal regard 
 for those individuals who have a particular claim to 
 my esteem and gratitude, or to continue in any degree 
 to promote the general prosperity of the British in¬ 
 habitants of Calcutta.’ 
 
 Shortly after this reply reached Bengal, the inhabi¬ 
 tants of Calcutta were forwarding a congratulatory 
 address to Warren Hastings on his final acquittal 
 from the impeachment of Burke. Almost the last 
 despatch of Cornwallis to the Court of Directors is 
 dated from Madras in September, 1793. He tells 
 them that on the Declaration of War against Eng¬ 
 land and Holland by the French, he had taken 
 immediate steps for the reduction of Pondicherry and 
 the other French settlements, which had been crowned 
 with success; and in all the bustle of departure, he 
 finds time to address a letter of thanks to Sir John 
 Shore, who had been his right hand and chief adviser. 
 Cornwallis left Madras on the 10th of October, 1793, 
 and he came to an anchor in the Sivallorv packet, in 
 Torbay, on the 3rd of February, 1794. He had ac¬ 
 complished a great work in settling the land revenue 
 system of Bengal on an intelligible basis. He had 
 entirely changed the character of the Civil Service. 
 He longed for a little peace and quiet; but there 
 was still much work before him. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 The Perpetual Settlement of Benares 
 
 One of the immediate consequences of the introduc¬ 
 tion of the Perpetual Settlement into the Lower 
 Provinces was its extension to the Province of Be¬ 
 nares. This was accomplished by Sir John Shore, 
 Cornwallis’s successor. But the opinion formed by 
 Cornwallis himself as to the state of the Province is 
 so significant that it ought to be quoted. Writing in 
 1787, on two separate occasions, he delivers himself 
 as follows: — 
 
 ‘ Benares on its present system must be a scene of 
 the grossest corruption and mismanagement. There 
 could be no reason for not placing it under the Board 
 of Revenue like other Zamindaris, except the con¬ 
 sideration of the Governor-General losing so much 
 patronage. It would be better for the Zamlndar, the 
 inhabitants, and the country, and will probably soon 
 take place. I am not enough versed in all the secrets 
 of Benares to enter into a minute detail of them at 
 present. I propose, if no untoward circumstances 
 happen to prevent it, to visit the upper Stations this 
 
120 
 
 LORD CORNWALLIS 
 
 year, and to set out at the end of July for that 
 purpose. It will be material that I should get all 
 possible information the first year.’ 
 
 Again he writes :— 
 
 ‘Ill as I thought of the late system of Benares, I 
 found it on enquiry much worse than I could have 
 conceived. The Resident, although not regularly in¬ 
 vested with any power, enjoyed the almost absolute 
 government of the country without control. His 
 emoluments, besides the thousand rupees per month 
 allowed him by the Company, certainly amounted to 
 little less than four lacks a year, exclusive of the 
 complete monopoly of the whole commerce of the 
 country, with the power of granting parwdnas, &c. 
 It has been generally supposed that in return for all 
 these good things, the Residents at Benares have not 
 been ungrateful to the friends of the Governor- 
 
 General. I have no reason to suppose that Mr.-- 
 
 took more than his predecessors—God knows what he 
 gave ; but as he was on bad terms with the Raja and 
 his servants, and as new measures are more likely to 
 succeed with new men, I thought it better to remove 
 him. Although many persons were desirous, nay 
 even importunate, to show their zeal for the Com¬ 
 pany’s service by undertaking this office, it was not 
 very easy for me to find a successor to my mind. For 
 I could not venture to lower the authority of the Resi¬ 
 dent too abruptly, from apprehension of losing our 
 revenue; and as the Raja is a fool, his servants 
 
SETTLEMENT OF BENARES 
 
 I2L 
 
 rogues, every native of Hindustan (I really believe) 
 corrupt, and Benares 600 miles from Calcutta, there 
 was a danger, unless it was put into good hands, 
 of the old system being in some degree continued. 
 
 ‘As I had the prosperity of Benares most exceedingly 
 at heart, and as I felt that nothing could tend so much 
 as a good management of that Brovince to raise our 
 character and reputation in the remotest parts of 
 Hindustan, I determined on this occasion to make a 
 very great sacrifice, and, much against his own will, 
 appointed Mr. Jonathan Duncan, the Secretary of 
 the Bublic and Revenue departments, to that office. 
 Perhaps you are not acquainted with Mr. Duncan’s 
 character: he is held in the highest estimation by 
 every man, both European and native, in Bengal, and, 
 next to Mr. Shore, was more capable of assisting me, 
 particularly in revenue matters, than any man in this 
 country. I am sorry to say that I have every reason 
 to believe that at present almost all the Collectors are, 
 under the name of some relation or friend, deeply 
 engaged in commerce, and, by their influence as Col¬ 
 lectors and Judges of Adalat, they become the most 
 dangerous enemies to the Company’s interest and the 
 greatest oppressors of the manufactures. I hope you 
 will approve of the additional allowances and the 
 commission we have given to the Collectors, for with¬ 
 out them it was absolutely impossible that an honest 
 man could acquire the most moderate competency. 
 After this liberality, I make no scruple in issuing the 
 
122 
 
 LORD CORNWALLIS 
 
 Revenue Regulations and orders against engaging in 
 trade, which you will read, and I promise you that I 
 will make an example of the first offender that I can 
 catch.’ 
 
 The development of the measure for the Permanent 
 Settlement of Benares Province received the assent 
 of Sir John Shore in March, 1795. From the laws 
 and Regulations of 1795 there is good ground to 
 infer that the measure had been adequately dis¬ 
 cussed and considered, and that the same prosperous 
 results were looked for in the contentment of the 
 landholders, the spread of agriculture, and the 
 stability of the Government. Indeed, the Regula¬ 
 tions of that time applicable to Benares, reveal a 
 somewhat different state of things from what existed 
 certainly in Lower Bengal, and to some extent in 
 Behar ; and they bristle with terms, titles, and phrases 
 of a new kind, and provide for rights, interests, and 
 customs of a cognate character to those of the Doab 
 of Hindustan. It seems that although a high official 
 styled the Resident had been stationed at Benares 
 before the year 1781, he had not been allowed to 
 interfere in any way with the Settlement and collec¬ 
 tion of the revenue till the year 1787. The Raja 
 Mahip Narayan, a nephew of the celebrated Chait 
 Singh, administered the Province, with the aid of Naibs 
 or deputies. In the last-mentioned year this duty 
 was made over to the Resident, and he collected the 
 dues of Government through functionaries styled 
 
SETTLEMENT OF BENARES I23 
 
 Aumils, whose position was analogous to those 
 farmers in the Lower Provinces who were not Rajas 
 or hereditary Zamindars. Settlements for one year 
 and for five years were made through these function¬ 
 aries. 
 
 Rules were laid down for the valuation of crops 
 where the revenue was usually paid in kind by 
 a division of the produce; for the consolidation of 
 all extra cesses into one payment with the original 
 rent; for the differences between the old and the new 
 form of the measuring rod and the old and new 
 bighas, or portions of an acre ; and for divers other 
 matters calculated to remedy abuses, to prevent 
 oppression, and to promote prosperity and peace. At 
 the same time, it was provided that the Amils or 
 farmers of the revenue were to look to the Zamin¬ 
 dars or hereditary landholders for the realisation of 
 the revenue ; and here, for the first time in our revenue 
 phraseology, we must interpret this familiar term to 
 mean something very different from the high per¬ 
 sonages, whose estates might range from fifty villages 
 to an extent of land of the size of an English county. 
 
 The local Zamindar of Benares and the North-West 
 Provinces signifies a sharer in an estate or village in 
 which the whole land is held and managed in common. 
 The rents, with all other profits from the estate, are 
 thrown into a common stock, and after a deduction 
 for all necessary expenses, the balance is divided 
 among the proprietors according to their ancestral 
 
124 
 
 LORD CORNWALLIS 
 
 shares. The Zamindar of Bengal and Behar, in fact, 
 may somewhat loosely be described as a big, and the 
 Zamindar of the Upper Provinces as comparatively a 
 small personage; and it would be also correct to say 
 that the powerful Zamindar in Bengal is analogous to 
 the Talukdar in Oudh. 
 
 It is quite clear that this distinction, though not fully 
 expressed, was clearly understood and recognised by 
 the administrators who framed the Perpetual Code for 
 Benares on the model of that of 1793, and with just the 
 necessary amplifications of the same, fitted to the 
 special demands of the new Province. It seems also 
 tolerably certain that the Permanent Settlement of 
 Benares Avas preceded by enquiries of a more detailed 
 and formal character than had been thought possible 
 in Bengal Proper. Particulars of the assessment on the 
 Talukdars and village Zamindars had been obtained; 
 registers of lands exempted from payment of revenue, of 
 pensions, and of charitable allowances, were drawn up. 
 Recourse was had to local officers known as Kanungos, 
 and new forms of the documents known as Pattds and 
 Kabuliyats , which are loosely termed leases and their 
 counterparts, had been framed and issued under the 
 authority of the Government. In order to facilitate 
 the transition from a Settlement for five years to a 
 Settlement in perpetuity, the English Resident and 
 his Assistants made a regular tour throughout the 
 Province in the cold season. They investigated the 
 capabilities of the villages and of their divisions 
 
SETTLEMENT OF BENARES 
 
 125 
 
 and subdivisions ; provided for a restoration of their 
 rights to some village Zamindars, as well as for the 
 permanent exclusion of certain others who had been 
 out of possession since July, 1775, the date of our 
 acquisition of the Province ; revised the assessments; 
 arranged for a moderate and progressive increaso of 
 revenue from portions of lands found to be waste but 
 culturable; took steps to prevent the levy of transit 
 duties which had been abolished, and against the 
 creation of new rent-free tenures: enforced the neces¬ 
 sary stipulations for the maintenance of peace, the 
 detection and communication of crime, and the re¬ 
 storation of stolen property. On the whole they pro¬ 
 ceeded with cautious local enquiries, which were a 
 decided improvement on the summary proceedings of 
 the Cornwallis administration on the one hand, but 
 were yet much below the standard of the regular village 
 Settlement, with its detailed record of rights, liabili¬ 
 ties, and privileges, which on the other hand has been 
 the glory of successive generations of officials of the 
 school of Thomason in Upper India, and of Munro in 
 Madras. Of course this was not accomplished with¬ 
 out obstruction and the expenditure of trouble and 
 time. It was discovered that the Amils, or farmers, 
 had often availed themselves of their position 
 and knowledge to 1 procure deeds of conveyance J , 
 in their own names or those of their relations, for 
 
 1 This objectionable practice is known as ism-farz't in the Upper and 
 as benami in the Lower Provinces. 
 
12 6 
 
 LORD CORNWALLIS 
 
 lands the property of persons in arrears, whose 
 balances had been wholly or partially liquidated.’ 
 
 Local enquiries revealed the existence of serious 
 disputes between patUddrs, or sharers in the same 
 village, as to their respective portions and between 
 different families claiming; the same villages. As a 
 rule the village Zamindars, either in actual occupancy 
 or known to have been in possession at any time 
 since the acquisition of the Province in 1775, were 
 readmitted to Settlement; and while the Resident and 
 his Assistants had power to fix the revenue payable, 
 this ruling was to be no bar to the prosecution of any 
 claim to a recovery of the proprietary right in the 
 Civil Courts of the Province. In other words, the 
 English revenue officer fixed the amount of revenue 
 for each estate or village, and took an engagement 
 from one out of two or more contending claimants 
 before him. The amount of revenue could only be 
 varied on appeal by the Resident or the Revenue 
 Board. 
 
 A dissatisfied claimant for the Settlement was 
 left to his new remedy before the civil tribunal; 
 and if successful there, would succeed to his estate 
 or village, burdened with the payment of the re¬ 
 venue already fixed. This amount the Civil Court 
 had no power to vai'y. Divers other provisions 
 with regard to certain Parganas or hundreds were 
 included in the Regulation which is the land charter 
 of the Province. They have reference to the services, 
 
SETTLEMENT OF SENATES 
 
 127 
 
 claims, and treatment of certain Rajas ; to the rights 
 of their tenant-proprietors; to certain villages held 
 at quit-rents ; and to other points which it is unneces¬ 
 sary here to specify in detail. It was roundly stated 
 at the time that of the whole Province eight-twelfths 
 were settled with the Zamindars ; three-twelfths were 
 still left in the hands of the Amils; and the re¬ 
 maining twelfth was, in the revenue phraseology, 
 Amani 1 ; that is to say, the revenue was neither 
 farmed nor settled, but was collected by an official 
 yearly, from each contributor direct; and it is indis¬ 
 putable from the language and style of the Regulations 
 of this year that the administrators of the day had 
 begun to recognise the existence of new and different 
 tenures. The pattiddr, or principal shareholder in 
 a village, was admitted to engage in his own name 
 for the payment of revenue, while those shareholders 
 who were then styled inferior pattiddrs, were ‘ an¬ 
 nexed to or blended in common with the principal 
 of the family,’ or the head man of the cultivating 
 brotherhood. But it was left optional with the infe¬ 
 rior pattiddrs to bring suits in the Civil Court for 
 a separation of their family shares, and for the entry 
 of their name in a distinct and separate engagement. 
 
 Village communities, if they ever existed in Bengal 
 Proper, had disappeared when our rule began. 
 
 1 Am.Ini is elsewhere known as Khain or Khus-tahsll. It may be 
 terminated at the close of a year by the Collector and a Settlement 
 made with some responsible person. 
 
128 
 
 LORD CORNWALLIS 
 
 Certain villages and certain tracts of country were 
 however found to be in the possession of particular 
 castes. In one place the inhabitants were exclusively 
 Muhammadan. Other villages and distinct Mahallas, 
 or parts of villages, were tenanted wholly by fisher¬ 
 men, by weavers, or by the purely agricultural castes 
 of Hindus—the Pod, the Kaibart, the Kopali, and the 
 Teor. But anything like an obligation to collect rents 
 in common, apportion liabilities, and divide the surplus, 
 it would not have been easy to find in Lower Bengal. 
 There were numerous instances in which Bengali 
 Ryots combined to resist extortion, or to prevent a 
 purchaser at auction or by private sale, or a lessor, 
 from enforcing his legal rights. There were also the 
 usual village functionaries and artisans necessary for 
 agricultural occupations, e.g. the watchman, the car¬ 
 penter, and the blacksmith. But of the co-parcenary 
 tenure and the Bhayachara village occupied by the 
 proprietary brotherhood, in which the revenue was 
 assessed by a bach or rate, there was no trace at the 
 acquisition of the Diwani in 1765, in Bengal Proper. 
 
 In several other matters, in spite of these variations 
 in the landed tenures, the precedents of 1793 were 
 closely followed. The exaction of tolls and taxes and 
 duties was forbidden. Inland customs were to be 
 levied at four towns only—Benares, Ghazipur, Juan- 
 pur, and Mirzapur. The duties of the English Col¬ 
 lector were specifically defined. He was to collect 
 the revenue, whether due from Talukclars, Zamindars, 
 
SETTLEMENT OF BENARES 
 
 129 
 
 and Pattidars; or from estates farmed to Amils, or 
 from estates in amdni, for which no Settlement had 
 been concluded. He was to endeavour to make a 
 regular Settlement of estates of this latter class. His 
 other functions, just as in Bengal Proper, were the 
 payment of pensions, the management of estates under 
 the Court of Wards, the due apportionment of revenue 
 on estates that might be split in two or more parts, the 
 collection of the excise, and the resumption of invalid 
 rent-free tenures. Under the Collector were placed 
 native Tahsildars, and minute rules were laid down 
 for the issue by them of processes in case of defaulters, 
 and for the eventual confinement of such persons. 
 
 Provisions were also made for the levy of fines, and 
 in extreme cases for the forfeiture of the proprietary 
 right. It is noteworthy that liberty to appeal against 
 the proceedings of the revenue Collector to the Civil 
 Court of the district, to the Provincial Court of Appeal, 
 and to the Sadr, or highest Court, was expressly re¬ 
 served to defaulting Talukdars and Zamindars. As in 
 Bengal, so in Benai’es, the Governor-General in Council 
 always contemplated the protection of all subordinate 
 rights and interests in the land, and it is certain that 
 this intention was carried out at an earlier period than 
 was unfortunately the case in the Lower Provinces. 
 
 These rights were guarded in Benares by a dis¬ 
 tinct and separate law \ and an equitable and com¬ 
 prehensive Regulation, known as VII of 1821, of which 
 1 Reg. XXVII of 1795. 
 
 I 
 
i 3 o 
 
 LORD CORNWALLIS 
 
 some notice may be taken hereafter, was passed for 
 the enquiry into and Settlement of the rights and 
 interests of all classes concerned with the land ; and 
 under this law adequate protection was afforded to 
 Zamindars, Pattidars, and others. Possibly, too, the 
 sturdier character of the inhabitants of the Benares 
 Province may have facilitated the task of Collectors 
 and Settlement officers in this respect. The culti¬ 
 vators were more independent, and more ready to 
 combine together for legitimate purposes of defence. 
 
 From whatever cause, it is certain that disturbances 
 in regard to rents, exactions, and encroachments were 
 less frequent, and the cause of less anxiety to our 
 administrators in Benares, after it was thus per¬ 
 manently settled in 1795. The subsequent Settlement 
 of the rights of tenant-proprietors, and Ryots generally, 
 was the work of Collectors such as James Thomason 
 in Azamgarh, and of others elsewhere under the admir¬ 
 able system devised by Robert Bird. It was accom¬ 
 plished gradually between 1832 and 1840, as far as the 
 Province of Benares was concerned. To describe the 
 regular Settlement of the Doab of Hindustan and other 
 districts in the North-West Provinces, by which the 
 two names just mentioned have become household 
 words to some twenty-five millions of Asiatics, forms 
 no part of this mem oil - . 
 
 While the law for the punctual payment of revenue 
 by the Zamindars of Bengal and Behar was enforced 
 with stringency, and while defaulters were exposed 
 
RECOVERY OF RENTS 
 
 I 3 1 
 
 to processes, confinement, and the eventual forfeiture 
 of their rights, sufficient provision had not been made 
 for the realisation of the Zamindars’ rents, which are 
 the basis of all land revenue. In 1793 a ^ aw had 
 been enacted defining the extent of the legal coercion 
 which landholders might exercise over under-farmers, 
 dependent Talukdars, and Ryots, but it was soon 
 found to be insufficient for this purpose; and in 1799 
 a further Regulation, No. VII, was enacted, which re¬ 
 mained for more than half a century the principal 
 statute relative to the recovery of arrears. By this 
 law any tenant was considered a defaulter who with¬ 
 held his rent beyond the day specified in his written 
 engagement or, in default of specification, beyond the 
 date sanctioned by local usage. The landholder was 
 empowered to distrain crops and products of the 
 earth, as well as cattle and other personal property. 
 Ploughs and other implements of husbandry, cattle 
 actually trained to the plough, and grain for seed, 
 were exempted from attachment and sale, and the same 
 protection was extended to lands, houses, and other 
 immovable property. A notice of fifteen days was 
 necessary before the attached property could be sold. 
 
 Further power was given to landholders to procure 
 the arrest of dependent Talukdars, leaseholders, Ryots, 
 or their sureties ; and they were also authorised to 
 summon, and if necessary to compel the attendance of 
 their Ryots at their private Kacheri or local office, with 
 the object of adjusting their balances, and of giving 
 
1 3 2 
 
 LORD CORNWALLIS 
 
 explanations in regard to delay in payment, or any 
 other similar matter. This provision was very often 
 grossly abused, and it was eventually abolished, to 
 the dissatisfaction of the landholders, but to the effec¬ 
 tive relief of the Ryots, by a comprehensive statute in 
 1859. The decisions of these suits instituted for the 
 recovery of rents were called summary suits. 
 
 The procedure was intended to be simple and 
 expeditious. No arrear of more than one twelve- 
 month could be adjudged. And the power to hear 
 such cases has, at various times, been shifted from the 
 Civil Courts to the Collectors and back, so as to cause 
 much perplexity and confusion. Rents that were due 
 beyond the year could only be exacted by a regular 
 civil suit. It is evident from the language of the 
 whole law of 1799, which was intended to be very 
 full and comprehensive, that many abuses had been 
 already brought to light in the management of estates. 
 
 But it is by no means to be understood that Zamin- 
 dars and their agents were always harsh and unscru¬ 
 pulous, or that the Ryot was invariably a down-trodden 
 and innocent being. Instances could be quoted by 
 scores in which both parties were in fault. If a Zamin- 
 dar was weak and inattentive to business and his agents 
 careless, the Ryots could easily set him at defiance. 
 When a new landlord came in by private purchase or 
 public sale, it might take him six months or a year 
 before he could realise any rent at all. The bound¬ 
 aries of his acquisition were ill-defined. Its area was 
 
RENTS 
 
 133 
 
 uncertain. There were no maps, and the rent-roll, 
 with the names of the tenants and their holdings, 
 might not be available, or if found was often wanting 
 in many important particulars. Frequently in sheer 
 despair or from inability to manage a large estate, a 
 Zamindar would create a sub-infeudation on a part of it, 
 or would grant a lease of the whole or half of his Zamin- 
 dari to some determined and energetic Englishman. 
 
 In some cases the new owner or lessee found it 
 necessary to bring a series of summary suits against 
 defaulters, to measure lands under the protection of 
 the police, and to institute a regular civil action to fix 
 the rent according to the custom of the Pargana, on 
 the different kinds of crops and lands, selecting for 
 typical cases three or four of the most obstructive 
 and substantial Ryots. In the end, a persevering 
 landlord or lessee generally had his own way. 
 Decrees were obtained, and after delays and appeals, 
 were enforced against a head-man or permanent tenant- 
 proprietor. The less determined villagers gave in, 
 attended at the local office, and effected a private 
 settlement; then, in all probability, the Zamindar 
 made up for lost time and money. He got what in 
 Anglo-Indian phrase was termed the dakhal : that is 
 to say, he obtained a firm footing in the village owing 
 to command of means, knowledge of revenue practice, 
 dexterity in management, and determination in carry¬ 
 ing out his decrees. Rents were then punctually 
 exacted. Ryots were compelled by force to attend 
 
134 LORD CORNWALLIS 
 
 at the KacherL Lands were measured and re¬ 
 measured. Summary suits for the realisation of rents 
 due in the year were followed by formidable regular 
 suits brought to raise the old rent to the standard of 
 the neighbourhood. In fact, by the machinery of the 
 Courts and by pressure out of doors, a general all¬ 
 round rise in rents was effected. In one district in 
 Eastern Bengal the tenants were so distrustful of re¬ 
 ceipts and quittances given by agents, that they almost 
 made it a rule to wait for the institution of a summary 
 suit, when they at once paid the money into Court. 
 
 At other times it was not very easy to apportion 
 the blame between a high-handed landlord and a 
 defiant or obstructive Ryot. All that can be affirmed 
 with absolute certainty is that no Ryots theoretically 1 
 ever objected to pay rent: that they combined equally 
 for legitimate as for unlawful purposes: and that in 
 the end it became the duty of the Government to 
 interfere for their protection. And this eventually 
 resulted in the well-known Act X of 1859. In the 
 interim, the statutory provisions regarding the speedy 
 realisation of rents were amended. The Preamble to 
 Reg. Y of 1812, passed in the administration of Lord 
 Minto, is somewhat in the nature of an indictment 
 against the Zamindars. There were grounds, it was 
 deliberately said, for believing that this class had 
 
 1 One exception may be made in the case of the Fardizl sect of Mus- 
 alnidns in Eastern Bengal, who have at times propounded a theory that 
 Hindus or infidels were not entitled to rent at all. 
 
RENTS 
 
 *35 
 
 abused their powers and had been guilty of acts of 
 oppression in connection with the distraint and sale 
 of the property of their tenants. It was advisable to 
 amend the law of distraint and to revise the rules for 
 granting pattds, as well as those under which auction 
 purchasers might collect their rents ; and also to 
 relieve defaulting Zamlndars and farmers from a 
 heavy penalty of twelve per cent, interest. It was 
 therefore enacted that Zamindars were bound to serve 
 their tenants with a written demand specifying the 
 precise amount of their arrears. The notice was to 
 be served personally on the tenant or affixed at his 
 usual place of residence ; and by way of relief or 
 compensation the tenant, if he disputed the justice of 
 the demand, was enabled to get the attachment taken 
 off by making a certain application within five days 
 and binding himself to institute a civil suit to contest 
 the distraint and attachment within other fifteen 
 days. But this provision was somewhat clogged with 
 formalities, and in practice it was inopei’ative. The 
 defaulting tenant had to execute a bond with a surety 
 before either a Commissioner, a Judge, a Collector, or 
 the Kazi of the Pargana—a nondescript kind of func¬ 
 tionary—that he would speedily institute his suit; 
 and a civil suit in those days involved much trouble, 
 a good deal of time, and no inconsiderable outlay. 
 
 If the suit was not instituted within the pre¬ 
 scribed time, the attachment revived against the 
 person and the property of the defaulter who had 
 
i 3 6 
 
 LORD CORNWALLIS 
 
 given sureties for his action, and the property of the 
 unfortunate surety became liable for the arrears of 
 rent, if no suit were brought. It is remarkable that 
 in this law there is raised for the first time a doubt as 
 to the existence of any regular standard known as 
 the Pargana Rates. Failing such rates, rents were 
 to be assessed and collections made according to the 
 rates payable for lands of a similar description in the 
 neighbourhood. There was another not unimportant 
 section by which an enhanced rate of rent could not be 
 levied or awarded judicially unless the tenant had 
 been served with a formal notice of enhancement 
 during the month of Jeth or Jyeshtha. This date cor¬ 
 responds with the latter half of May and the beginning 
 of June, and is always regarded as the link between 
 one agricultural year and another. Agricultural 
 operations, which are either suspended or languidly 
 pursued in May, recommence after the beginning of 
 the periodical rains ; and this event occurs about the 
 second week of June in Bengal, and towards the end 
 of that month or at the beginning of July in Behar. 
 
 Of the excellent intentions of the framers of this Jaw 
 there can be no doubt. Remedies were always pro¬ 
 vided in every Regulation dealing with landlord and 
 tenant, for redress against the injustice of summary 
 decisions by referring discontented parties to the Civil 
 Court. But, as has been already said, procedure in 
 those Courts was then cumbrous and slow. Resort 
 was had to them more by the landlord than by the 
 
RENTS 
 
 137 
 
 tenant, and though Ryots were brought to understand 
 the simple procedure of a summary suit before either 
 the Collector or the Civil Judge, and were not back¬ 
 ward in applying to the magistrate for advice and 
 protection, it may be fairly questioned whether a real 
 redress for his grievances was provided till nearly 
 sixty years after the administration of Cornwallis. 
 
 In 1859, the Legislative Council, constituted by 
 Lord Dalkousie in 1854, passed an Act which has 
 been termed the Magna Charta of the Ryots. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 Madras. Sale Laws. Resumptions 
 
 The introduction of the Permanent Settlement into 
 the Province of Benares seems, from the legislative and 
 official correspondence of the time, to have followed 
 rather as a matter of course. But the Court of Direc¬ 
 tors inclined to the opinion that the same measure 
 might be introduced into the Madras Presidency, as 
 they were sensible ‘ of the propriety and expediency 
 of the late revenue and judicial regulations esta¬ 
 blished in Bengal.’ A vast amount of correspondence 
 ensued. Both the Madras and the Bombay Govern¬ 
 ments had been furnished by Cornwallis with all the 
 papers regarding the Bengal Settlement and the 
 establishment of the new Courts of justice. The Re¬ 
 venue Board at Madras directed an elaborate enquiry 
 into the resources of certain tracts which at that time, 
 or about 1798-9, comprised Baramahal and Din- 
 digal, Coimbatore and Kanara, a district subsequently 
 transferred to Bombay. Much caution had been en¬ 
 joined and information had been procured of the 
 various Collectors about the rights of the under- 
 
MADRAS 
 
 J 39 
 
 tenants and other proprietors. A comprehensive report 
 was eventually sent home, and about the year 1802 a 
 Special Commission was appointed to settle permanently 
 the land revenue of those parts of the Madras Presidency 
 for which sufficient materials had been collected. 
 
 Within two years the Permanent Settlement was 
 introduced into the Northern Circars, and by 1806-7 
 the following districts were settled on the same 
 plan. A Jaghir obtained from the Nawab of Arcot 
 in 1750 and 1763, which surrounds the Presidency 
 town, and is now Chengalpat; later acquisitions, 
 including the districts of Salem ; several tracts 
 termed Pollams held by powerful turbulent chiefs, 
 known as Polygars ; Ramnad, Krishnagiri, and some 
 others of less importance, were all included in the 
 same category. But at this very time other views 
 began to prevail. In some places the fixed revenues 
 had been collected with greater facility. But in the 
 Jaghir, which had been converted into a Collectorate, 
 the revenue had not been paid with punctuality. 
 Certain estates had been sold for default, and some 
 others had been thrown back on the hands of Govern¬ 
 ment. Part of the failure was due to a calamitous 
 season, but serious mistakes had been made in esti¬ 
 mating the rents of the tenants, or in fixing the 
 assessment of the Zamindars, and a formidable rival 
 to the supporters of a Permanent Settlement appeared 
 in the person of Thomas Munro. He showed con¬ 
 clusively that a Settlement made with individual 
 
140 
 
 LORD CORNWALLIS 
 
 proprietors, though apparently intricate and laborious, 
 had been familiar to native Governments; that in¬ 
 dividuals called Patels, or head-men, were per¬ 
 fectly capable of aiding in the Settlement of their 
 respective villages; that a complete establishment of 
 hereditary revenue servants was already in existence; 
 that Ryots were in the habit of meeting and holding 
 discussions about agricultural stock, cultivation, and 
 payment of rent; and that an active Collector making 
 the circuit of his district, and beginning when the 
 early crop was reaped and the late crop sown, was 
 quite capable of conducting these multifarious opera¬ 
 tions to an issue financially profitable to Government, 
 and socially advantageous to the Ryot. There was 
 more correspondence of the usual kind; statistics, 
 reports, Minutes, and Resolutions. In the end, the 
 Permanent Assessment was staid. In only a single 
 portion of the Madras Territory had the Bengal sys¬ 
 tem been introduced. Malabar, Kanara, Coimbatore, 
 the Ceded Districts, Nellore and Arcot, and those 
 magnificent tracts of country comprised in Tanjore, 
 Trichinopoli, and Tinnevelli had nearly all escaped. 
 
 This is not the place to discuss minutely the merits 
 and demerits of the various revenue systems pre¬ 
 vailing in different provinces of India. Variety in 
 the mode of collecting the dues of the State, and in 
 the persons or communities responsible for the reve¬ 
 nue, is an essential part of our administration, and 
 contributes to the accumulation of a large stock of 
 
MADRAS 
 
 141 
 
 experience. The error in Bengal was that, from a 
 variety of causes, the corollary to a new and com¬ 
 prehensive measure which had established a solid 
 landed aristocracy, was not carried out for more than 
 half a century. In the greater part of Madras the 
 settlement is Ryotwari, and though in cases where 
 Zamindars have thrown up their estates, and Govern¬ 
 ment has stepped in, the Ryotwari system has been 
 introduced, the converse operation has never taken 
 place. No district and no part of a district put under 
 the Ryotwari system, has ever again reverted to the 
 Zamindars. 
 
 The multifarious and important sub-infeudations 
 which have arisen out of Cornwallis’s Zamlndari sys¬ 
 tem may claim a little attention. Although reliable 
 statistics in regard to trade, commerce, agriculture, 
 and population have only been collected of very late 
 years, there are the broad facts in regard to the Lower 
 Provinces in general, and to Eastern and Central 
 Bengal in particular, which have been so prominent 
 as to admit of no dispute. The alluvial soil was 
 extremely fertile and the revenue assessment was 
 light. For some years, as has been shown, the Zamin¬ 
 dars were restricted from giving perpetual leases of 
 villages or portions of their estates. But it soon 
 became clear that whatever laws Government might 
 enact for the benefit of the cultivators and for the 
 security of its own exchequer, the Zamindar could 
 not be prevented from assigning to other persons 
 
142 LORD CORNWALLIS 
 
 those distinct rights which had been vested in him as 
 superior landlord. He very soon turned this unde¬ 
 niable privilege into a source of profit. Sometimes 
 the Zamindari was unwieldy and large. Ryots were 
 obstinate and difficult to manage. Servants were 
 corrupt and untrustworthy. The Zamindar had be¬ 
 come involved in expensive litigation, or he wanted 
 funds to dedicate a temple, to marry a son or 
 daughter, to entertain a host of Brahmans at a 
 Sraddha or sacrificial supper, to build a new resi¬ 
 dence, to satisfy the caprice of the moment, the duty 
 of charity, and the obligations of religion. 
 
 The Maharaja of Bardwan, whose descendants 
 are still amongst the most opulent of the Bengal 
 landholders, had been in the habit of creating 
 sub-tenures known as Patni. In its etymological 
 meaning this word signified a Settlement or colony. 
 In revenue phraseology it came to designate a Taluk 
 created by the Zamindar on the whole or a part of his 
 estate, ‘ to be held at a rent fixed in perpetuity by the 
 lessee and his heirs for ever 1 .’ The Patanidar prac¬ 
 tically stepped into the place of the Zamindar who, 
 though in theory still held bound by the Government 
 to discharge his obligations, to aid the police, and to 
 report crimes, became practically a rent-charger on 
 this portion of his estate. The Patanidar having 
 paid a considerable sum as bonus for the creation of 
 his own title, acquired a permanent estate with the 
 1 Regulation VIII of 1819. 
 
SUB-TENURES 
 
 1 43 
 
 right of sale and transfer, and all the other privi¬ 
 leges of his lessor. By the law of 1H19 arrears of 
 Patni rent could be exacted by the Zamindar, not 
 merely by the ordinary process of a suit, but by the 
 summary process of sale by the Collector after due 
 notice, and the execution of certain formalities. The 
 Zamindar's estate, when in default, was liable to be 
 put up to public auction at four stated periods of the 
 year. That of the Patanidar could be sold only at 
 two periods—in the month of May and in October. 
 
 Rules were passed in the same law cancelling all 
 subordinate creations in the event of such public 
 auction, and yet allowing the holders of the incum¬ 
 brances to save their properties by depositing the 
 amount of arrears claimed by the superior landlord. 
 Generally speaking, the new law gave validity to a 
 series of transactions which, originating in Bardwan, 
 had been followed by the landholders of other districts 
 and had by degrees spread over the whole country. 
 
 So far, in all probability, the creation of Pat- 
 nis, or rather the sub-division of large estates into 
 what is really a separate estate more compact and 
 manageable, might have worked well. The public 
 revenue was safeguarded. The condition of the tenant 
 proprietor would not have been impaired. But, un¬ 
 fortunately, the practice commenced by the Zamindar 
 was improved and extended by his creation, the Pata¬ 
 nidar. He, in his turn, harassed by contests with his 
 Ryots, or requiring a round sum to be paid down for his 
 
144 
 
 LORD CORNWALLIS 
 
 own convenience, parted with his rights and privileges 
 as a Patanidar of the second degree, and the latter to 
 another of the third degree. These latter creations 
 were termed Dar-Patanidars and Seh-Patanidars. 
 
 It is useless now, after the lapse of sixty years, 
 to discuss the policy of giving statutory effect to 
 these repeated devolutions of duties and rights, or 
 to enquire whether it would not have been both fair 
 and equitable to have recognised the creation of the 
 first incumbrance and nothing beyond. But what is 
 undeniable is, that as each Patanidar of the first, 
 second, and third degree, looked for some profit over 
 and above the ordinary rental of the village, the 
 burden of creating and supplying such excess fell on 
 the actual cultivators. It was not likely that a 
 Patanidar of any class would assume the position 
 of a mere rent-collector satisfied with a small commis¬ 
 sion as his only reward. The law already quoted 
 vested the Patanidar with the right of sub-letting 
 the Taluks ‘ in the manner they might deem most 
 conducive to their own interest,’ and the legislators 
 of that day directed their attention rather to the 
 security of the public revenue and to the privileges 
 of the Zamindar than to the protection of the Ryot. 
 
 Patnis were for a long time the only under-tenures 
 on behalf of which fresh legislation was particularly 
 demanded. But many varieties of similar tenures, 
 known by different names and held under varying 
 conditions, were created all over the province. In 
 
SUB-TENURES 
 
 M 5 
 
 the district of Bakarganj there were found four and 
 five of such sub-infeudations interposed between the 
 landholder and the cultivating tenant. They were 
 repeatedly the subject of judicial investigation and 
 had the sanction of decrees of Court. They were 
 alluded to, if not definitely protected, in the various 
 laws passed to regulate sales of land for arrears of 
 revenue, and facilities were given to the holders of 
 such under-tenures to register their holdings specially, 
 so as to protect them from cancelment in the event of 
 the sale of the superior right. That there has been 
 found for nearly a century a margin of pi’ofit for 
 tenures intervening three and four deep between the 
 Zamindar and the Ryot; that the jungle has dimi¬ 
 nished ; that agriculture has spread; that a magni¬ 
 ficent internal trade has sprung up; that fleets of 
 country boats, lines of bullock-carts, and thousands 
 of miles of railway, have been required for the trans¬ 
 port of produce of every description to centres of 
 internal commerce as well as to the port of Calcutta; is 
 due in part to natural causes operating on a soil of 
 unrivalled fertility, renewed in many places by the 
 silt deposits of a thousand streams, but also to the 
 patient industry and steady cultivation of the Ryot, 
 who knows how to make the most of the capacity of his 
 holding, and with primitive instruments as ancient as 
 the days of Asoka or Manu has produced astonishing, 
 if ‘ unscientific,’ results. 
 
 It has not always been easy to define the limits of 
 K 
 
146 
 
 LORD CORNWALLIS 
 
 an under-tenure by any precise form of words, or to 
 say when a tenant-proprietor of the substantial class 
 who has cultivating tenants under him, ought to be 
 reckoned as the holder of a sub-tenure. Recently an 
 attempt has been made to separate the two classes 
 and give them a distinct statutory recognition. Prac¬ 
 tically, a district officer who knows his business would 
 have little difficulty in coming to a decision as to the 
 status of any one individual case. 
 
 The Sale Laws of Bengal affixing the penalty of 
 loss and cancelment of an estate to a failure to pay 
 the revenue at the specified times, have often been 
 treated as if they were inexorable and harsh. They 
 have not seldom been modified between 1793 and 
 1859. But their effect has been to secure punctuality 
 of payment—which could not have been secured by 
 any other means—and to protect the claims of Govern¬ 
 ment, without, of recent years, inflicting any real in¬ 
 jury on the Zamindars as a class. Doubtless at the 
 commencement of this century, when estates were 
 put up to sale at Calcutta only and not in the several 
 districts where they were situated, without sufficient 
 notice, and much oftener than once a quarter, many 
 estates were sold in haste and purchased by specu¬ 
 lators or persons interested in concealing facts from 
 the owners. But for the last fifty years provisions 
 have been introduced which have simplified and 
 mitigated the law. Persons having a lien on the 
 estate are allowed to pay up the sum necessary to 
 
SALE LAWS 147 
 
 preserve it from sale. A sharer is protected against 
 the wilful or careless default of a co-sharer. 
 
 Sales are conducted with due formalities, of which 
 all intex-ested parties have notice ; and though a sale 
 is in theory held to annul all incumbrances, to vest 
 the purchaser with what is analogous to a Parlia- 
 mentary title, and to allow him to enter on a clear 
 property not clogged or fettei’ed by the acts or im¬ 
 prudence of his predecessor, it has been thought ex¬ 
 pedient to pi'eserve from cancelment not only certain 
 old under-tenures and Ryots with rights of occupation, 
 but other interests which have gi’own up in the general 
 development and progress of the Province. Lands 
 held at bona-fide leases at fair rents, or let in farms 
 for periods not exceeding twenty years, were ex¬ 
 empted. And in the former class were included 
 mines, gardens, manufactures, tanks, canals, places of 
 worship, and bui’ying-grounds. It may be safely said 
 that during the last half-century and more no valu¬ 
 able estates have come to the hammer by the mere 
 operation of the law of arreai’s and sale. Many 
 miserable properties have been bought for Govern¬ 
 ment at a small or a nominal sum, in default of any 
 private bidders, and the management of these proper¬ 
 ties, termed 1 Khas Mahals,’ or ! pi’ivate estates,’ 
 forms a distinct and special branch of the duties of 
 every Collector. The Government, in such cases, has 
 acquired the Zamindari as well as the Sovereign 
 right. 
 
 K 2 
 
148 
 
 LORD CORNWALLIS 
 
 These State-purchases are generally farmed out to 
 some enterprising individual, who is often an English¬ 
 man, and it has lately been calculated that the whole 
 yearly revenue derivable from this source in the 
 Lower Provinces does not amount to much more 
 than .^220,000 a year—a sum insignificant in com¬ 
 parison with the rent-roll of other landed gentry all 
 over the Province. On this part of the subject it may 
 be safely asserted that the economic result of the 
 land laws for Bengal; of the tendency of the j oint 
 Hindu family system to sub-divide and separate 
 estates; of the inevitable increase of population, 
 wealth, and capital, derived from commerce, banking, 
 and enterprise; of the desire of new men to possess 
 old acres ; and of the general sense of security created 
 by nearly a century of peace ; is one which Cornwallis 
 in a certain measure anticipated, and which he would 
 have rejoiced to see. 
 
 On another division of this subject, the action taken 
 by Government was not satisfactory. At all times 
 and in all provinces of India, its rulers have been in 
 the habit of making grants of land, to be held free 
 from the payment of revenue, to Brahmans and 
 priests, for the endowment of places of worship; to 
 men who had done good service, in civil and military 
 capacities ; and to favourites of every conceivable 
 degree of merit or demerit—ministers, fiddlers, dancing- 
 girls, concubines, buffoons, soothsayers, and cooks. 
 Warren Hastings was fully aware of the existence of 
 
RENT-FREE TENURES 
 
 149 
 
 these grants; and Cornwallis had, as has been seen, 
 contemplated an early enquiry into the validity of 
 the titles by which they were held. Unfortunately, 
 each Governor-General from Cornwallis to Bentinck 
 was also Governor of Bengal, and had his hands fully 
 occupied with wars and conquests, the cession and 
 pacification of new territories, and the enactment 
 of legislative measures of pai’amount necessity or 
 undisputed advantage. Thus, although divers dis¬ 
 cussions took place, and though a special law for the 
 resumption of illegal and invalid tenures was passed 
 during the administration of the Marquess of Hastings, 
 in 1819, nothing was done till ten further years had 
 elapsed. 
 
 It was, beyond any doubt, a fundamental principle of 
 the Settlement of Bengal, and indeed of that of every 
 province in India, that the Ruling Bower was entitled 
 to some portion of the produce of every acre of land, 
 unless that same power had waived or alienated its 
 rights for a time or in perpetuity, and by the grant of 
 title-deeds or documents which the British Govern¬ 
 ment would be bound to respect. So in 1828 a class 
 of officers, termed Special Commissioners, was called 
 into existence to enquire into these alienations, and 
 subsequently there were placed under them others, 
 designated Special Deputy Collectors, each of whom 
 had charge of this department of enquiry in three or 
 four districts, and whose duties were kept distinct 
 from those of the ordinary Collectors. The alienations 
 
150 LORD CORNWALLIS 
 
 were at first divided into two broad classes. Those 
 which had been granted by the Sovereign or Em¬ 
 peror, which were known as Badshahi or Royal 
 grants, and those which had been conferred by rulers 
 of provinces, Viceroys, Zamindars or Amils, and 
 other high functionaries. These latter were known 
 as Hu km i grants. The highest form of these aliena¬ 
 tions was that of Altumgha, or the great seal. An¬ 
 other description was known as Madad-i-maish, or 
 ‘ in aid of subsistence.’ The villages said to have 
 been assigned by the Persian monarch to Themis- 
 tocles must have been of this sort. Then there were 
 various other descriptions : Devattar, grants for 
 temples ; Brahmattar to Brahmans ; Mahattran to the 
 Sudra caste; Aima, lands given in charity and held 
 at a quit-rent; Piran and Fakiran, lands given to 
 Muhammadan saints or their shrines, and to Fakirs; 
 and several others. In order to avoid minute and 
 harassing enquiries, it was ruled that all grants less 
 than one hundred bighds in extent were to be exempt 
 from investigation, and this exemption was subse¬ 
 quently extended to parcels of land of less than fifty 
 bighds each, though one or more such parcels might 
 be covered by one Farman or Sannad, and might in the 
 aggregate amount to more than one hundred bighds. 
 
 But the excitement which the Resumption Laws 
 caused in the native community was excessive and 
 was not soon forgotten. In the course of half a cen¬ 
 tury, many of the original title-deeds had disappeared: 
 
RESUMPTIONS 
 
 15 * 
 
 ruined by damp, eaten by insects, destroyed in the 
 fires which break out in the dry season in every 
 bazar, and reduce the whole place to ashes in a 
 couple of hours. The temptation to replace the 
 missing deeds by forging new ones was irresistible. 
 
 Again, many of the lands originally granted for 
 support of religious foundations and to pious and 
 learned persons, had been sold or diverted to secular 
 purposes. Many, like the kingdoms which had ‘ over¬ 
 set and passed from hand to hand,’ had also changed 
 hands. The native community had been lulled into 
 a false security while Government was sleeping over 
 its own rights. For months and years a violent con¬ 
 troversy raged in the press, in which the partisans of 
 the Government and the advocates of the Lakhiraj- 
 dar displayed remarkable ability and ingenuity. 
 
 In the progress of the enquiry, various concessions 
 were made by the Government to remove some of the 
 discontent. Resumption was not insisted on, if the 
 purposes for which the grant had been made origin¬ 
 ally were still carried out; if there were strong pre¬ 
 sumption that they were of a date anterior to j 765, 
 or the Diwani ; and if there were proof of continuous 
 and uninterrupted possession subsequent to that date. 
 The effect of these investigations was in Bengal to in¬ 
 crease the Government revenue by about thirty-eight 
 lacks a year, the whole operations having cost one 
 hundred and twenty lacks. But a vast number of 
 small portions of land, which had been expressly 
 
153 
 
 LORD CORNWALLIS 
 
 excluded from the claims of the Government, were still 
 left exposed to the assessment of the Zamindars. 
 
 As the onus for proving his Lakhiraj, or rent-free 
 title, was properly placed on the Ryot claiming it, 
 many of these titles were challenged in the Courts of 
 law, and, when found to be defective, were declared 
 liable to assessment of rent. All over Bengal, how¬ 
 ever, there are still to be found examples of Devattar 
 and Brahmattar, and other descriptions of land which 
 have escaped the ordeal; and there is a sort of under¬ 
 standing amongst the community that Ryots who cul¬ 
 tivate such lands for their fortunate possessors are 
 entitled to sit at lower rents than the tenants of an 
 ordinary Taluk or Jot. Warned by the excitement 
 moved by such resumptions, the Indian Government, 
 in all its later acquisitions of conquest or cession, has 
 been more expeditious in the assertion of its rights. 
 The enquiry has been made as soon as circumstances 
 permitted, on well-considered principles, and with a 
 leaning towards the intentions of the grantors. In 
 some instances the grant has been prolonged for two 
 and three generations, and then has been assessed at 
 half-rates. There can be no doubt that in every pro¬ 
 vince such grants, made by one dynasty, ruler, or 
 Viceroy, were understood to be subject to the good¬ 
 will and pleasure of the successor. The just and 
 equitable policy is for the revenue department to 
 overhaul all these alienations at the time when the 
 regular settlement—whether Talukdari, village com- 
 
QUINQUENNIAL REGISTERS 
 
 t 53 
 
 munity, or Ryotwari—is carried out. To separate the 
 two operations, and to postpone the Lakhiraj enquiry, 
 was an error in the eyes of natives, almost equivalent 
 to resumption by the strong hand of a despot. 
 
 In carrying out other administrative measures, 
 which followed on the Cornwallis Code, something 
 of the same laxity was apparent. The quinquennial 
 registers contemplated by the laws of 1793 and 1800, 
 and intended to show the changes in estates and in 
 their owners, were never properly kept up. New 
 shareholders and purchasers were allowed to register 
 their names on the Collector’s rent-roll, or not—just 
 as they chose. The local officials, known as Kanun- 
 goes and Patwaris, the latter being village account¬ 
 ants who in other parts of India keep up the 
 statistics of the villages, gradually disappeared. In 
 another d rection something was at last done. A 
 field survey of the Province was thought impolitic, 
 owing to its enormous expanse. But a survey of 
 the Mahals, or estates, was begun by the revenue 
 officers some forty years ago ; and this rough survey, 
 as it was termed, was tested and verified by another 
 set of officers, chiefly of the staff corps, who used 
 a more accurate set of instruments and had more 
 technical skill. Much information was collected in 
 this way. Accurate lists of villages were made; 
 maps were drawn of estates in blocks, and where—as 
 was often the case—one single village was parcelled out 
 amongst different estates, crossing and re-crossing each 
 
i54 
 
 LORD CORNWALLIS 
 
 other in detached portions, the maps were proportion¬ 
 ately minute, accurate, and detailed. All natural and 
 all remarkable artificial objects were entered on the 
 maps; tanks and rivers, depressions and 'nullahs, 
 mosques and temples, residences of stone and brick. 
 
 A considerable amount of agricultural and com¬ 
 mercial statistics was collected. Thus the geogra¬ 
 phical features, the character of the rivers, the staple 
 crops and other products of the land, the flora and 
 fauna, the trades and castes, the existing facilities 
 for communication by land and water, the principal 
 wholesale marts, and divers other local characteristics, 
 were duly investigated, reported on, and published. 
 
 These enquiries were for the most part instituted 
 without offending prejudice or creating or exciting 
 groundless fear about enhancement of taxation. It 
 has been said that if it were worth while to incur 
 expense and depute two different sets of officials to 
 survey the land—first with the prismatic compass, 
 and then with the theodolite, it would have been 
 politic, advantageous, and easy to extend the char¬ 
 acter and broaden the aims of the enquiry. With a 
 little more expense, the survey might have included 
 the complete demarcation of mouzahs or villages, in 
 the revenue sense of the term, and even of fields and 
 plots. 
 
 But in Lower Bengal, more perhaps than in any 
 other Province of India, the most unexpected changes 
 are wrought by the tremendous force of its streams, 
 
GENERAL RESULTS 
 
 155 
 
 bringing down a yellow flood in the rainy season. A 
 vast body of water cuts through natural obstacles ; 
 sweeps away whole villages; corrodes and absorbs half 
 or the whole of an estate ; inundates large tracts, and 
 disappears in the month of October, to leave behind 
 it a fresh alluvial soil, from which every familiar 
 landmark has disappeared, while bewildered owners 
 make vague guesses at the outline of their former 
 possessions, and the most experienced boatman an¬ 
 chors his craft at an unfamiliar landing-place and 
 launches it on a new stream. Nor is it superfluous 
 to remark that the whole community of Bengal 
 Proper has for nearly a century been accustomed to be 
 governed by the action of the judicial Courts. Settle¬ 
 ment officers, native Tahsildars, and all the admirable 
 machinery so familiar in other Provinces, have there 
 never sprung into life ; and if Courts of first instance 
 have of late years been multiplied, if new districts 
 have been created, and facilities for the disposal of 
 revenue and criminal cases been multiplied by the 
 formation of sub-divisions, it may be asked whether 
 some of the objects of the Cornwallis Settlement have 
 not at last been fully attained. 
 
 That the Perpetual Settlement should have been 
 put forward to support groundless claims and justify 
 unfair exemptions which no ruler could grant, was to 
 be expected. It has been invoked as a guarantee 
 against the imposition of new forms of taxation, im¬ 
 perial and local. It was humorously said by a very 
 
156 
 
 LORD CORNWALLIS 
 
 able Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, that at one time 
 jealousy of any enquiry prevailed to such an extent 
 that to ask any Ryot his name, except in a Court of 
 justice, was tantamount to a violation of the rights 
 of landlords. And the liability of the Zamindars to 
 contribute to the calls of the State by taxation other 
 than an increase of their land assessment, was 
 thoroughly discussed and decided by the Secretary 1 
 of State for the time, some twenty years ago. The 
 guarantee of 1793, it was clearly reasoned, only 
 affected the land revenue. Zamindars could not be 
 exempted from the other calls to which every subject 
 is liable, without unduly increasing the burdens of 
 less favoured classes in Bengal and in other Pro¬ 
 vinces. But the Perpetual Settlement of the land 
 cannot be altered or impaired. It is still remembered 
 with the gratitude due to its author. It has com¬ 
 mitted the British nation to pledges from which no 
 Viceroy can think of drawing back. 
 
 1 The Duke of Argyll. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 Mission to the Continent. Indian Corre¬ 
 spondence 
 
 Cornwallis was not long permitted to enjoy the 
 rest to which in India he had often looked forward 
 and which he had fairly earned. Kaye writes very 
 happily that the Ministry of the day regarded the 
 ex-Governor-General not as one who had been em¬ 
 ployed for the good of his country in the East, but as 
 one who was still to be employed for his country’s 
 good in the West. An English army had been sent to 
 Flanders to co-operate with the Austrians, Prussians, 
 and Dutch in the defence of that country. The Duke 
 of York, who commanded the English army, had de¬ 
 feated Pichegru. The Austrians, under Generals Cler- 
 fait and Kaunitz, had experienced a severe check. 
 
 The Austrian and Prussian generals held very 
 different views about the employment of the Allied 
 Army, and in order to mediate between them and to 
 obviate jealousy and discontent, Cornwallis, within 
 four months of his return from India, was sent on 
 a mission to Flanders to explain matters to the Em¬ 
 peror of Austria. He was not given a very definite 
 
158 
 
 LORD CORNWALLIS 
 
 position or command, but it was soon obvious that his 
 deputation meant, practically, the supersession of the 
 Duke of York, and eventually Cornwallis felt himself 
 compelled to address a letter to his Royal Highness 
 explanatory of the motives which had led him to 
 accept the mission. It is creditable to the Duke that 
 he took in good part the manly and straightforward 
 explanation which was entirely in accordance with 
 the character and motives of Cornwallis, at every 
 critical conjuncture. Pitt and Dundas, it is tolerably 
 clear, would have favoured a plan for giving Corn¬ 
 wallis the rank of Field Marshal, and virtually placing 
 him in command of the entire allied force. But there 
 were insurmountable difficulties in the way. The 
 Austrians did not want the Prussians to act on the 
 Meuse, but required them in West Flanders, and they 
 depi'ecated the exposure of the Rhine boundary to the 
 attacks of the French. Mallendorf, the Prussian 
 general, on the other hand, refused to respond to a 
 request for any such employment of his troops in 
 Flanders, and after divers conferences and much cor¬ 
 respondence, the plan of putting Cornwallis at the head 
 of the combined forces was abandoned, and he returned 
 to England sometime in the middle of 1794. 
 
 He was, however, still consulted by the Ministry 
 about the conduct of operations on the Continent. 
 Cornwallis recognised the necessity for acting on the 
 offensive, for the employment of a considerable Eng¬ 
 lish force, and for a Commander-in-Chief of capacity 
 
MISSION TO THE CONTINENT 
 
 159 
 
 and resolution. Engaged as he was in matters of 
 paramount importance to the influence of England at 
 Continental Courts, he had still time to devote to 
 news from India, and we get occasional glimpses of 
 his private life. He took a house in Lower Grosvenor 
 Street from Lord Hertford, completely furnished, for 
 which he paid 600 guineas a year. He purchased 
 a manor and estate adjoining the park of Lord Bristol 
 for £ 12,000, and he was only prevented from giving 
 evidence on the impeachment of Warren Hastings, at 
 the solicitation of the accused, by an attack of illness. 
 Afterwards, however, his evidence was taken by the 
 managers. 
 
 Early in 1795 Cornwallis was made Master of the 
 Ordnance, a post which he would gladly have ex¬ 
 changed for the Tower, and this was soon afterwards 
 followed by the command of the troops in Essex and 
 Hertfordshire, with head-quarters at Warley. Owing 
 to the disturbed state of the Continent, his command 
 was one of responsibility and importance, for he had 
 under him no fewer than two lieutenant-generals and 
 five major-generals. But Indian affairs were perpetually 
 engaging his attention. Shore writes to him about the 
 death of Sindia, and the Royal and Company’s troops. 
 General Abercromby tells him that at Shore’s bidding 
 he had to put down a rising of the rebellion promoted 
 by Ghulam Muhammad, a young son of the deceased 
 Nawab of Rampur. Cornwallis found time to answer 
 Shore, and to give to another correspondent a memoran- 
 
i6o 
 
 LORD CORNWALLIS 
 
 dum in which the jurisdiction of the Supreme Courts 
 of the Presidencies over any natives is very strongly 
 deprecated. Attempts made at various periods of 
 Indian history to extend the authority of the old 
 Supreme Court to natives not residing within the 
 limits of the Presidency towns, have been frustrated. 
 
 But Cornwallis seems to have gone further, and to 
 have recommended that litigation in the Presidency 
 Courts should be confined to cases in which both the 
 litigants were Englishmen, or at any rate were not 
 natives. He was of opinion that natives, under proper 
 safeguards, might be summoned before such Courts as 
 witnesses only. But what he dreaded was the expen¬ 
 sive character of such litigation and the subjection 
 of Asiatics to the jurisdiction of tribunals that 
 administered strange laws in a language which, at 
 that time, few natives could understand. 
 
 Controversies on this and similar points, and as to 
 whether Englishmen in their turn should or should 
 not be subjected to the local tribunals in civil 
 and criminal cases, have at various times convulsed 
 Anglo-Indian society. Such agitation was not set 
 at rest till the amalgamation of the Supreme and 
 Sadr Courts of the Presidency into one tribunal, 
 styled the High Court, in 1862. The fusion was due 
 to the able and constructive statesmanship of the late 
 Lord Halifax. But it is interesting to observe how 
 Cornwallis had anticipated that this question of juris¬ 
 diction, whether of English Courts over natives, or of 
 
DISCONTENT OF INDIAN OFFICERS 161 
 
 local tribunals over Englishmen engaged in mercantile 
 pursuits in the interior of the country, was sure to 
 provoke a vehement discussion. 
 
 India was, however, at the end of the last century 
 destined to be the scene of an agitation far more 
 dangerous to our supremacy and one which threatened 
 the very foundation of our power. Cornwallis had 
 circulated some queries about the Royal and the Com¬ 
 pany’s troops to thirteen distinguished officers, most of 
 whom were in the Company’s service. This enquiry 
 got wind, and it was taken up, on imperfect know¬ 
 ledge and in an adverse sense, by Englishmen serving 
 in the native regiments. Officers met, appointed dele¬ 
 gates, swore each other to secrecy, and formulated 
 proposals subversive of all discipline, and to speak 
 plainly, characterised by amazing effrontery. The dele¬ 
 gates insisted that the Royal troops should never ex¬ 
 ceed a small fixed number; that generals in the King’s 
 army should be ineligible for staff appointments ; that 
 all promotions should go by seniority ; and that no 
 genei-al officer should ever be selected for a command. 
 
 There were other demands equally offensive and 
 incompatible with discipline. Sir John Shore at 
 Calcutta was so perturbed at the spectacle of this 
 insubordination that he wanted troops to be sent 
 from the Cape of Good Hope and Madras to awe the 
 officers into submission, and he warned Lord Keith 
 that the naval force under his command might be 
 called up to Calcutta. The Ministry at home were 
 
 L 
 
162 
 
 LORD CORNWALLIS 
 
 evidently perplexed, and Dundas in a letter of en¬ 
 treaty begged Cornwallis to bring himself to forego 
 the comforts of home for one year, and to proceed to 
 India to settle the claims of the officers. Dundas 
 held rightly that the very British Empire might be 
 at stake, and he was even prepared, had Cornwallis 
 refused the appointment, to proceed to India himself. 
 
 But Dundas had a firm belief that all difficulties 
 would vanish on the mere mention of the name of 
 Cornwallis. Cornwallis actually consented to go, and 
 in one of his many confidential letters to General 
 Ross he briefly says, ‘ The die is cast, and I am to go 
 out to India: how sorry I feel that your domestic 
 circumstances put it out of my power to ask you 
 to accompany me.’ Events, however, then took an¬ 
 other turn. Some of the loyal Bengal officers repu¬ 
 diated the pretensions of the delegates. Concessions 
 were made by the Board of Control and by the Court 
 of Directors which did not at all commend themselves 
 to Cornwallis. Indeed he calls one of his proposed 
 instructions ‘ a milk-and-water order.’ A mutiny 
 broke out at Portsmouth, and Cornwallis gave up his 
 appointment to India in August, 1797. 
 
 His services were next required much nearer home, 
 in a position which has tried and been fatal to the 
 reputation of many men whose claims to statesman¬ 
 ship are recognised, and which from the violence of 
 parties, the clash of interests, the exposure to relent¬ 
 less and searching criticism that follows immediately 
 
IRELAND 
 
 163 
 
 on action, was at that special period calculated to test 
 all the qualities of firmness, decision, tact, and con¬ 
 structive statesmanship. It was as trying as a cam¬ 
 paign against an Oriental usurper, as the purification 
 of the Indian service, or as the establishment of a 
 land tax on a new basis. Lord Camden was about to 
 relinquish his post as Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, and 
 the Ministry determined to replace him by Lord Corn¬ 
 wallis as Viceroy and Commander-in-Chief. It does 
 not come within the scope of this memoir to give 
 even a summary of the administration which pre¬ 
 ceded the Union. Cornwallis assumed his onerous 
 and responsible office in June, 1798, and was suc¬ 
 ceeded by Lord Hardwicke in May, 1801. In these 
 three years the Union was carried out. 
 
 Amidst all the anxieties, disappointments, crosses 
 and vexations by which Cornwallis was tried during 
 his Irish administration, it is pleasant to turn to his 
 Indian correspondence. The Viceroy of Ireland had 
 never forgotten the Governor-General of India. He 
 had naturally been much interested and alarmed 
 by the insubordination of the officers of the Bengal 
 army; and just after hearing of the suppression of 
 the delegates and the triumph of the loyal and faith¬ 
 ful officers, he had been asked or had volunteered to 
 give to an officer proceeding to India a letter of in¬ 
 troduction to Sir John Shore, his successor in the 
 Governor-Generalship. It is brief, and must be 
 reproduced with only a word of explanation. 
 
164 
 
 LORD CORNWALLIS 
 
 ‘Whitehall, June xoth, 1796. 
 ‘To Sm John Shore. 
 
 ‘ Dear Sir, 
 
 ‘ I beg leave to introduce to you Colonel 
 Wesley (sic), who is Lieutenant-colonel of my regi¬ 
 ment. He is a sensible man and a good officer, and 
 will, I have no doubt, conduct himself in a manner to 
 merit your approbation.’ 
 
 The bearer of the letter was Arthur Wellesley, after¬ 
 wards Duke of Wellington. 
 
 To the claims of another officer whose name is not 
 given, Cornwallis turns a deaf ear. Dundas was 
 pressed to nominate to the Madras Council a civil 
 servant of whom Cornwallis knew a little too much. 
 It was not prudent, he says, to charge him with cor¬ 
 ruption which could not be proved, though it was 
 strongly suspected; but in a letter to Dundas it is 
 shown that the appointment of a suspected intriguer 
 would be highly inexpedient. The whole adminis¬ 
 tration of Madras at that period required a more 
 thorough reform than Bengal. Another letter about 
 a young man, a member of Parliament who was pro¬ 
 ceeding to India, not in any official situation, might 
 have been written with effect at the present day. 
 
 ‘ As Mr.- is a member of Parliament, he may 
 
 be looked up to by the young men of the Settlement, 
 who have chiefly gone abroad at a very early period 
 of life, and are consequently very ill-informed in regard 
 
INDIAN AFFAIRS 
 
 165 
 
 to European politics. Nothing could be so prejudicial 
 to themselves as well as to the general good order of 
 the Settlement as to instil into their minds a spirit of 
 party and of opposition to all government. Liberty 
 and equality is a most pernicious and dangerous doc¬ 
 trine in all parts of the world ; but it is particularly 
 ill-suited to the Company’s servants in India, who are 
 to thrive by minding their own business and paying 
 a due regard to the commands of their superiors in 
 the service.’ 
 
 In April, 1799, when the resistance to the Union 
 of Ireland was most felt, Cornwallis sincerely repents 
 that he did not return to Bengal. In July he gets 
 a letter from the Marquess of Wellesley, then Lord 
 Mornington, who had succeeded Sir John Shore, giving 
 an account of the assassination of Mr. Cherry at 
 Benares in an dmeute got up by the partisans of Vizir 
 All. This news filled him with sorrow, but a few 
 months afterwards a mail from India caused him 
 much gratification. After the final storming of Serin- 
 gapatam, in May 1799, the army voted an address to 
 the late Commander-in-Chief, who had carried on two 
 campaigns against Tipu. The officers presented him 
 with the turban of the deceased ruler and the sword 
 of a Maratha chief. It was brought to England by 
 General Harris, great-grandfather of the present 
 Governor of Bombay (1890). 
 
 It is amusing to find Cornwallis’s old-standing and 
 strong dislike to Madras re-appearing in his disap- 
 
166 
 
 LORD CORNWALLIS 
 
 proval of the plan of annexing Malabar to the Pre¬ 
 sidency. He would not, however, stir in the matter. 
 Dundas at the India Board was jealous of any inter¬ 
 ference with his own department, and there was quite 
 enough of controversial matters in Ireland without 
 any addition from Indian disputes and claims. It 
 may be mentioned while keeping clear of the Irish 
 controversy, that just as Cornwallis was about to 
 leave, the Ministry had received information from 
 another quarter about a supposed conspiracy and an 
 intended massacre. It is characterised by Cornwallis 
 as a great exaggeration, and the Duke of Portland is 
 recommended to accept with a degree of qualification 
 stories circulated in England regarding the state of 
 Ireland. The following extracts show the exact state 
 of his feelings on retirement from office 1 :— 
 
 ‘ The joy that I should feel at being released from 
 a situation which, with regard to every idea of 
 enjoyment of life, has been most irksome to me, will 
 be greatly alloyed by my apprehension that I am 
 leaving a people who love me, and whose happiness 
 I had so nearly secured in a state of progressive 
 misery.’ 
 
 Three days afterwards he writes to another friend : 
 —‘You know me too well to doubt my being happy 
 at the thoughts of retirement, and you will likewise 
 believe that the ungracious circumstances that attend 
 it do not give me much concern, but the reflection of 
 
 1 Major-General Ross. May 12th, 1801. 
 
IRISH ADMINISTRATION 
 
 167 
 
 the misery to which a people are doomed who have 
 shown me every mark of gratitude and affection, and 
 the ultimate danger to which the convulsions in Ire¬ 
 land will expose the British Empire, are a severe alloy 
 to my prospects of future enjoyment/ 
 
 On the 25th of May Lord Hardwicke had arrived 
 at Dublin and succeeded Cornwallis. On the 28th 
 Cornwallis was at Holyhead. On the 30th he writes 
 from Shrewsbury that the roads and the weather were 
 so had that he cannot think of attempting to perform 
 the journey between that town and London in two 
 days. His Irish administration had been to him a 
 sore trial. His return to England was a release and 
 not a triumph. He had expressed a wish to retire 
 from his situation, and the Ministry had taken him at 
 his word. Still followed by correspondents in Ire¬ 
 land who claimed the fulfilment of alleged promises 
 and worried for recommendations to Lord Hardwicke, 
 Cornwallis was glad to get to Culford and to enjoy 
 the society of his son, his daughter-in-law, and their 
 two children. Here his time was taken up with letters 
 about Indian taxation, which he says was loosely 
 mentioned in Minutes and papers written at the time 
 of the Permanent Settlement. ‘ It (the imposition of 
 other taxes) must be exercised with great prudence 
 and discretion, and must not be left to the capricious 
 will of the Governor. It has the disadvantage of 
 novelty, which is a very serious one in a country so 
 bigoted to old habits.’ His repose was soou dis- 
 
168 
 
 LORD CORNWALLIS 
 
 turbed by the offer of the command of the Eastern 
 district. 
 
 Cornwallis would have preferred an order to go to 
 Egypt, but always responding to the call of duty, he 
 took up his post at Colchester ! without horses, house, 
 or aide-de-camp.’ The forces at his disposal were 
 not more than eight weak regiments of militia, 
 ‘making about 2800 firelocks,’ and two regiments of 
 dragoons. His very natural fears for the safety of 
 the country were somewhat allayed by the sight of 
 two line-of-battle ships and a 74 razee (cut down) 
 stationed near Clackton Beach and Walton Tower. 
 ‘ In our wooden walls alone must we place our trust. 
 We should make a sad business of it on shore; ’ and 
 then he indulges in a hit at some evidently incom¬ 
 petent military officer. ‘ If it is really intended that 
 
 - should defend Kent and Sussex, it is of very 
 
 little consequence what army you place under his 
 command.’ In the month of August the public fear 
 of invasion began to subside. In the month of Sep¬ 
 tember, however, Cornwallis was still full of anxiety. 
 He saw no prospect of peace, and thought that a good 
 many men would be killed in Egypt. To Major- 
 General Boss he writes in the same letter:—‘ We 
 shall prepare for the land defence of England by 
 much wild and capricious expenditure of money, 
 and if the enemy should ever elude the vigilance 
 of our wooden walls, we shall, after all, make a bad 
 figure.’ 
 
MISSION TO FRANCE 169 
 
 A few days subsequently he was called on to pro¬ 
 ceed to France, in order to negotiate the Peace of 
 Amiens ; and with a hope that he might still give 
 an old friend ‘ as good partridge shooting as Suffolk 
 can afford ’ at no distant date, he set out on his 
 diplomatic mission. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 The Peace of Amiens 
 
 The principal points in the negotiations which 
 ended in the Peace of Amiens are matters of history. 
 Rut a short account of them may he given in this 
 chapter, inasmuch as Indian affairs were the subject 
 of a brief discussion by Bonaparte and as they illus¬ 
 trate the capacity of the ex-Governor-General for 
 dealing with politicians who were as disingenuous and 
 subtle as any Indian prince could be. Great Britain 
 wanted to recover some of her colonial possessions. 
 The English negotiators at the Preliminary Treaty 
 had been anxious that the French should evacuate 
 Egypt. There were other serious matters for discus¬ 
 sion regarding the Neapolitan and Roman States and 
 the restoration of Malta to the Knights of St. John. 
 And there was also the question of the release of 
 prisoners in both countries and the expenses of their 
 maintenance during captivity. Bonaparte wished for 
 peace in order to make a better preparation for war : 
 purposely delayed proceedings and threw the blame 
 of the delay on England; used a haughty and dicta- 
 
PARIS 
 
 171 
 
 torial tone in his correspondence about the form and 
 manner of the negotiations ; and throughout showed 
 his usual duplicity. As the final results are known 
 and are available to all readers, a few incidents of the 
 negotiations may be mentioned here, as they illus¬ 
 trate Cornwallis’s tact in negotiation. 
 
 Cornwallis left Dover early on the morning of 
 November 3rd, 1801, and reached Calais at ten 
 o’clock at night, after a stormy passage of fifteen 
 hours. He was received with all due respect and 
 honour, and pushed on almost at once to Paris. On 
 November the 8th he had an interview with Talley¬ 
 rand, whom he distrusted as unscrupulous. According 
 to this Prince, Bonaparte was very anxious (empress^) 
 to see the English plenipotentiary. The interview 
 took place on the 10th of the month, Talleyrand being 
 present, and we have this description of the meeting 
 in a letter to Lord Hawkesbury. 
 
 ‘ Bonaparte was gracious to the highest degree. 
 He enquired particularly after His Majesty and the 
 state of his health, and spoke of the British nation in 
 terms of great respect, intimating that as long as we 
 remained friends, there would be no interruption of 
 the peace of Europe. I told him that the horrors 
 which succeeded the Revolution had created a general 
 alarm ; that all the neighbouring nations dreaded the 
 contagion; that when, for the happiness of mankind, 
 and of France in particular, he was called to fill his 
 present situation, we knew him only as a hero and 
 
172 
 
 LORD CORNWALLIS 
 
 a conqueror: but the good order and tranquillity 
 which the country now enjoyed made us respect him 
 as a statesman and a legislator, and had removed 
 our apprehensions of having connection and intercourse 
 with France.’ There were fireworks and illumina¬ 
 tions in the evening. The crowd of spectators was 
 orderly. Nothing but expressions of civility were 
 heard as Cornwallis drove through the streets, and 
 when he went to the opera a few nights afterwards 
 he was ‘ greeted with loud and general acclama¬ 
 tions.’ 
 
 Lord Cornwallis, from his early travels on the 
 Continent, must have acquired a very fair command 
 of the French language, and at one time he evidently 
 expected to have several additional interviews with 
 the First Consul. But for some reason this plan was 
 not fully carried out, and the English Plenipotentiary 
 was referred for the whole discussion to Joseph Bona¬ 
 parte, who had the character of a ‘ well-meaning 
 although not a very able man.’ The two diplomatists 
 began their conference at Paris but soon shifted their 
 ground to Amiens. Before leaving the French capital 
 Cornwallis had one more conference with Bonaparte 
 without the presence of a third person. It lasted 
 half-an-hour. Bonaparte’s views and wishes are given 
 by Cornwallis in another letter to Lord Hawkesbury 
 as follows:— 
 
 ! He began the conversation by assurances of his 
 earnest desire for peace, and avowed that it was much 
 
BONAPARTE 
 
 173 
 
 wanted for his country, which had entirely lost its 
 commerce, and in a great degree exhausted its 
 pecuniary resources, adding, “You see that I conceal 
 nothing, et que je parle franchement ”: he desired 
 only to adhere, in the arrangement of the Definitive 
 Treaty, to the full intent and meaning of the pre¬ 
 liminary articles, and as I should find M. Joseph 
 Bonaparte a just and fair man, he made no doubt 
 that everything would be speedily adjusted.’ 
 
 The remainder of this memorable interview was 
 occupied with the principal matters in dispute: the 
 departure of the French fleet for St. Domingo, and the 
 chagrin of the First Consul at our remonstrances on 
 this expedition : the indemnity to the Stadtholder and 
 the House of Orange: a suggested provision for the 
 King of Sardinia : the strange proposal to admit a 
 Russian garrison into Malta, which Bonaparte justly 
 characterised as equally mischievous and detrimental 
 to England and France : the cession of the island of 
 Tobago : the charge for the maintenance of prisoners : 
 and the desire of the First Consul to negotiate with a 
 Nawab for the cession of a ‘few leagues of territory 
 round Pondicherry.’ To this latter proposal Corn¬ 
 wallis at once replied by stating that there was no 
 Nawab with whom the French could treat, and that 
 any such addition of territory would only tend to 
 embroil the two nations. Vous etes bien dur, was 
 Bonaparte’s reply. He added that if there could be 
 a mutual agreement for the removal of disaffected or 
 
174 
 
 LORD CORNWALLIS 
 
 dangerous persons from either country, he would be 
 quite willing to send United Irishmen away. 
 
 So ended this conference. The discussion was re¬ 
 newed at Amiens by Joseph Bonaparte and Cornwallis. 
 It continued all through December, 1801, and January 
 and February, 1802. The serious part of the corre¬ 
 spondence is here relieved by a lively letter from Lord 
 Brome to his father’s friend, General Hope. He, Lord 
 Brome, had been occupied with Barisian sights in the 
 morning and with dinners of forty and fifty people 
 in the evening, who had c the dress of mountebanks 
 and the manners of assassins.’ He had seen an odd 
 mixture of ladies, amongst whom was Talleyrand’s 
 mistress, whom he calls Mme. Grand, and who was, of 
 course, the divorced wife of M. Le Grand, who figured 
 in a celebrated case in the Supreme Court of Calcutta 
 in connection with Philip Francis. Every Anglo- 
 Indian knows the exclamation of a Puisne Judge of 
 that tribunal to his colleague, Sir Elijah Impey, C.J., 
 when the latter cast Francis in damages to the extent 
 of 50,000 rupees : ‘ Siccas, brother Impey ! siccas!’ 
 
 The sessions of the Corps L^gislatif did not fill 
 Lord Brome with reverence :—‘ No puppet-show 
 could be more ridiculous.’ ‘ There came in a man 
 dressed in a sort of mountebank dress, who, it was 
 natural to imagine, was going to exhibit on the tight 
 rope, but who turned out to be Citizen Chaptal, Minis¬ 
 ter of the Interior.’ This man, the son of a small 
 apothecary, became distinguished as a chemist, and 
 
JOSEPH BONAPARTE 
 
 *75 
 
 was amongst the first persons who set up large factories 
 for the manufacture of sugar from beet-root. And 
 then the negotiations went slowly on. Joseph Bona¬ 
 parte, in the opinion of Cornwallis, improved into a 
 ‘ very sensible, modest, gentlemanlike man, totally free 
 from diplomatic chicanery, and fair and open in all 
 his dealings.’ To a request from Lady Spencer that 
 certain articles of glass might pass free of duty, Corn¬ 
 wallis found time to answer that though averse to all 
 contraband traffic, he would take care that her glass 
 should be brought over with his own baggage, on his 
 return. Of the society at Amiens an amusing picture 
 is given in a letter from Colonel Nightingale, who 
 was one of the suite of the British Plenipotentiary, to 
 Ross. The majority of the male sex at Amiens might, 
 without deviating from truth, be called rogues, and 
 many of the females, with equal propriety, something- 
 worse. 
 
 Joseph Bonaparte was the best among them, al¬ 
 though he had not the manners of a gentleman. His 
 wife was a vulgar little woman, without anything to 
 say for herself. She had been Mdlle. Clary, and lived 
 down to 1845. To the Prefect was applied the epithet 
 given by one of the friends of Charles Surface to the 
 picture of Sir Oliver. This man had been a member 
 of the National Convention and had voted for the 
 death of the king. Cornwallis, as might be ex¬ 
 pected, was very civil to all these local notabilities: 
 gave large dinners twice a week, as he had done at 
 

 LORD CORNWALLIS 
 
 ('alcutta; and rode out every day when not prevented 
 by the weather or by swellings in the legs, of which 
 there had already been an ominous mention in some 
 of the letters from Dublin. 
 
 Throughout January, February, and the greater 
 part of March, 1802, the terms of the proposed Treaty 
 were sifted, analysed, and pulled to pieces till the 
 patience of Cornwallis was nearly exhausted. ‘ What 
 can be expected,’ he writes, ‘ from a nation naturally 
 overbearing and insolent, when all the powers of 
 Europe are prostrating themselves at its feet and 
 supplicating for forgiveness and future favour, except 
 one little island, which by land at least is reduced to 
 a strict, and at best, a very inconvenient defensive ? ’ 
 More than once he was in dread of the renewal of a 
 bloody war or the alternative of the dishonour and 
 degradation of his country. He wished ‘ himself 
 again in the backwoods of America, at two hundred 
 miles distance from his supplies, or on the banks of 
 the Cauvery without the means of either using or with¬ 
 drawing his heavy artillery.’ At length, however, 
 every difficulty was surmounted in one way or other : 
 the stipulations in favour of the Prince of Orange, the 
 articles relating to the Porte, the arrangement about 
 Malta and Portugal, with some compromises and con¬ 
 cessions, were all definitely settled. The Peace was 
 concluded and the Declaration signed on March 25th, 
 1802. The signatures were affixed to the Treaty a 
 few days afterwards. Almost anticipating an expres- 
 
PEACE OF AMIENS 
 
 177 
 
 sion employed by another British statesman more 
 than seventy years afterwards, Cornwallis had hoped 
 for a ‘ peace that will not dishonour the country,’ and 
 one ‘ that would afford as reasonable a prospect of 
 a future safety as the present very extraordinary 
 circumstances of Europe would admit.’ 
 
 The table on which this Treaty was signed is, writes 
 the editor of the Cornwallis Correspondence , still pre¬ 
 served in the Hotel de Ville at Amiens. At one end 
 of the apartment there is a full-length picture of the 
 Plenipotentiaries and their suites. The portrait of 
 Cornwallis is not unlike but the painting is in¬ 
 different. ‘ In the background an English officer is 
 cordially embracing one of the French suite.’ 
 
 M 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 Retukn to India. Policy. Death 
 
 On his return from Amiens Cornwallis found some¬ 
 thing to interest him in the elections and his letters 
 are amusingly illustrati ve of the way in which such 
 political events were managed in those times. There 
 was an election for the county of Suffolk, in which 
 there ‘ was reason to expect the most perfect una¬ 
 nimity.’ This election had to give way to the claims 
 of the races at Newmarket, and was postponed for 
 three days in consequence. But there was rather 
 more excitement about the return of two members 
 for the borough of Eye. Cornwallis is careful to state 
 that his party neither bribed nor treated in what was 
 practically a pocket borough, and that a majority had 
 been secured of four to one incontestable voters, after 
 deducting paupers and those who had purchased meal 
 at a reduced price during the scarcity. The elections 
 ended satisfactorily by the return of two members of 
 the Cornwallis family who each polled 114 votes, their 
 opponents obtaining fifteen apiece. 
 
 In November, 1802, Cornwallis writes: ‘I am still 
 
CULFORD 
 
 179 
 
 equal to a pretty good day’s fag in shooting, but I 
 think that I rather train off as a marksman; this sport, 
 however, amuses me, and is an inducement to take 
 exercise, which I am persuaded is right.’ The affairs 
 of India again occupied his attention. He was con¬ 
 sulted about a suggestion for giving Jonathan Duncan, 
 who had been a successful administrator of the Pro¬ 
 vince of Benares, and who was then Governor of 
 Bombay, a seat in Council in Bengal, and placing him 
 at the head of the whole Revenue department. At the 
 same time, too, he seems to have been asked privately 
 whether he would care again to go to Ireland as 
 Commander-in-Chief. Nothing came of this, nor is 
 there any trace of the offer in the State Papers. 
 
 He sat to Hoppner the well-known portrait painter, 
 and in this fashion some months passed away. But 
 he was quite ready to do the State further service, and 
 even Culford, with its rural pleasures and occupations, 
 began to pall. ‘ To sit down quietly by myself, without 
 occupation or object, to contemplate the dangers of my 
 country, with the prospect of being a mere cypher, 
 without arms in my hands,’ was not pleasing to a 
 man whose previous life had been usefully and 
 actively spent. In a letter written in September, 
 1803, he notes that it was not his fault that he did 
 not again go to Ireland. He would not have meddled 
 with politics, and would have been entirely under the 
 Lord-Lieutenant. As it was he considered himself to 
 bo ‘laid quietly on the shelf.’ As Constable of the 
 
 M 2 
 
i8o 
 
 LORD CORNWALLIS 
 
 Tower he was plagued with applications some of 
 which must have been rather absurd, and the King 
 himself was anxious for his return to Ireland. 
 
 About the end of 1804, Cornwallis expressed some 
 anxiety as to the success of Lord Wellesley’s policy in 
 India, an anxiety which was not justified by the result. 
 And probably owing to these views and to wishes 
 expressed either by the Ministry or the Court of 
 Directors, or both, he began seriously to consider 
 about his return to that country. The Court of 
 Directors for some time past had been alarmed at 
 Lord Wellesley’s vigorous foreign policy. Castlereagh 
 at the Board of Control had taken fright, and even 
 Pitt was carried away and committed himself to a 
 hasty opinion that the Governor-General had acted 
 imprudently and illegally. So, after a little more 
 consideration, Cornwallis decided again to accept the 
 offer of the Governor-Generalship. He was to discuss 
 Indian politics with the President of the Board of 
 Control in the winter, and to arrange for a landing 
 in Bengal by the latter end of the south-west 
 Monsoon. 
 
 He was then entering on his sixty-seventh year. 
 To men of the present generation, accustomed to weigh 
 all the chances of health and efficiency in an Indian 
 climate with regard to their individual constitutions, it 
 seems extraordinary that no medical opinion should 
 have been taken. Swellings in the feet and increasing 
 weakness of body had been apparent for some little 
 
INDIA 
 
 181 
 
 time. He himself spoke of the adventure ‘ as a 
 desperate act.’ No English statesman has ever taken 
 office in India at so advanced an age. Lord Hardinge 
 went out as Governor-General when he was fifty-nine. 
 Lord Lawrence, after a long previous service as a 
 Bengal Civilian, had had six years’ comparative rest 
 in England, and became Viceroy at fifty-four. Other 
 statesmen, such as Wellesley and Dalhousie, were in 
 their thirty-fifth or thirty-sixth year. But duty was 
 paramount with Cornwallis. He had not sought the 
 high office, but he would not refuse to accede to the 
 combined request of a political associate and his old 
 masters the Court of Directors. 
 
 Dr. Dick, his medical attendant in India on the pre¬ 
 vious occasion, offered his services in the same capacity. 
 But Cornwallis thought the embarkation of ‘ himself 
 on the Medusa Frigate, attended by his physician,’ 
 would sound ridiculous. In the present day every 
 Viceroy has long had a physician as an officer of his 
 suite, just as he has a Private Secretary, a Military 
 Secretary, and four or more Aides-de-Camp. Directly 
 his intended departure became known he was over¬ 
 whelmed with ‘ absurd and ridiculous applications.’ 
 If the Company ‘ was to hire forty large vessels ’ they 
 could not carry one half the persons who had asked 
 for situations in which they might eat a piece of bread. 
 Cornwallis left England in the spring of 1805, and 
 after touching at Madras, landed in Calcutta on the 
 29th of July of that year. 
 
LORD CORNWALLIS 
 
 183 
 
 Events had succeeded each other with startling 
 rapidity since he left the country in the autumn of 
 1793. That the mild and pacific policy of his imme¬ 
 diate successor, carried on with the avowed object of 
 maintaining peace by the mere balance of power 
 between the various native states, had failed in its 
 aims and was unsuited to the age and country, is 
 now almost universally admitted. With the arrival 
 of the Wellesleys the whole scene was transformed. 
 In six years’ time the British armies, directed by one 
 brother in the Council and commanded by another in 
 the field, were everywhere triumphant. The capital 
 of Tipu Sultan was stormed. The French battalions 
 at Haidarabad were disbanded, and the Nizam, from 
 an envious rival or a halting friend, became an 
 obedient ally. The Maratha powers that had risen 
 on the ruins of the crumbling Mughal Empire, were 
 shattered. The Madras Presidency had swelled to its 
 present dimensions. We had acquired what are now 
 known as the North-Western Provinces of India. We 
 had the Peshwa for our vassal. Monson’s disastrous 
 retreat before Holkar, and Lake’s failure to take 
 Bhartpur, for years afterwards the never-failing sub¬ 
 jects of jeers and gibes in the bazars of India and 
 amongst the disaffected classes, had been the only 
 undertakings not crowned with a splendid success. It 
 was not likely that masterly combinations could be 
 carried out without straining the financial and mili¬ 
 tary resources of British India. And when Sindhia, 
 
INDIA 
 
 l8 3 
 
 in spite of his overthrow, was anxious to renew war¬ 
 like operations, and Holkar had never been subdued, 
 Cornwallis appeared on the scene with orders from 
 home to substitute negotiations and diplomacy for 
 war, and almost to abandon the proud position of the 
 Paramount Power which, foreshadowed by Hastings 
 for the Company, in spite of doubts and hesitations, 
 had been attained by Wellesley. 
 
 The first act of Cornwallis on his arrival was to 
 make preparations for a visit to the Upper Provinces. 
 He wrote to Lord Lake to warn him against engaging 
 in any acts of aggression and renewal of military opera¬ 
 tions. He informed the Secret Committee that he 
 trusted, on arriving in Upper India, to terminate by 
 negotiations and without any sacrifice of honour, a 
 contest in which the most brilliant successes could 
 afford no solid benefit, and which threatened the 
 gravest financial complications. To the Court of 
 Directors he explained that he should be compelled to 
 detain the ships carrying treasure to China, and to 
 apply to Madras for five lacks of rupees to carry on 
 his government. He had fully made up his mind 
 that subsidiary treaties were a mistake, and that they 
 burdened the Indian Government with useless native 
 dependants and allies. He expected no advantage 
 from a contest with Holkar and Sindhia, as they had 
 no territory to lose. And as a proof of his strong 
 feeling on this point, he was anxious to give up the 
 alliances with the Jat chief of Bhartpur, the Raja 
 
184 
 
 LORD CORNWALLIS 
 
 of Macheri, and the Rana of Gohad. There was con¬ 
 siderable correspondence in regard to the last-men¬ 
 tioned State, and it is only fair to the memory and 
 character of Cornwallis to state here in his own words 
 the exact policy which he intended to pursue and 
 which has been more or less condemned by Anglo- 
 Indian historians. In a letter to Lord Lake, written 
 about a fortnight before his own death, he fully 
 explains his meaning and intentions. 
 
 ‘ 1. To make over to Sindhia the possessions of 
 Gwalior and Gohad. 
 
 ‘ 2. To transfer to him, according to the provisions 
 of the treaty of peace, the districts of Dholpur, 
 Bari, and Rajkerrie, and to account to Sindhia 
 for the collections from these districts since the 
 peace. 
 
 ‘ I am aware that this is not to be considered in the 
 light of a concession, but I am willing to relinquish 
 that stipulation of the treaty which prohibits Sindhia 
 from stationing a force in these districts, an object 
 which I should suppose to be highly desirable to that 
 chieftain. 
 
 ‘ 3. The eventual restoration of the Jainagar tribute, 
 amounting, as I understand, to the annual sum 
 of 3 lacks of rupees. 
 
 ‘4. To require from Sindhia his consent to the abro¬ 
 gation of the pensions, and to the resumption 
 of the Jaghirs in the Doab, established by the 
 treaty of peace. 
 
GWALIOR AND GO HAD 185 
 
 ‘ 5. To require from Sindhia the relinquishment of 
 his claim to the arrears of his pension. 
 
 ‘ 6. To demand a compensation for the public and 
 private losses sustained by the plunder of the 
 Residency. 
 
 ‘7. To require Sindhia to make a provision for the 
 Rana of Gohad to the extent of 2 \ or 3 lacks 
 of rupees, which I should conceive should be 
 amply sufficient.’ 
 
 He goes on to say that he proposes to cede nothing 
 to Sindhia which it is any object to retain: that 
 Sindhia must understand that the British Government 
 does not admit his right to either Gohad or Gwalior, 
 and that the transfer of these places is an entirely 
 gratuitous one on our part; and that he was disposed 
 to act in concert with Sindhia, as an ally against 
 Holkar. And he was also prepared to restore to 
 Holkar territory conquered by the British forces. 
 
 He declared that his object was to restore to the 
 Native States that confidence in the justice and 
 moderation of the British Government which past 
 events had considerably impaired, and which appeared 
 essential to the security and tranquillity of the British 
 dominions. And then follow about three pages regard¬ 
 ing the claims of the Rana of Gohad. The position of 
 this chieftain was peculiar, and from a most trust¬ 
 worthy source it may be stated as follows. 
 
 The Governor of Gohad, named Ambaji Inglia, had, 
 in 1803, thrown off his allegiance to Sindhia, and 
 
186 
 
 LORD CORNWALLIS 
 
 joined the British forces on the understanding that 
 he was to surrender to them the fort of Gwalior, and 
 certain districts which the Government intended to 
 confer on the Buna. Thirty years before this time 
 Warren Hastings had made a treaty with the Rana, 
 and the joint forces of the Rana and the English then 
 retook Gwalior, which Sindhia had previously seized. 
 The Rana subsequently was thmown over, on the 
 ground that he had been guilty of treachery, and then 
 Sindhia retook Gwalior and Gohad. This latter 
 place is some twenty-eight miles from Gwalior, now 
 Sindhians capital, and the Jat chiefs had established 
 themselves there in the beginning of the eighteenth 
 century, like so many others in troublous times. 
 
 At the close of the successful campaign of 1803 the 
 position of Sindhia and Gohad was this. Sindhia, by 
 the Treaty of Surjee Angengam, had agreed to re¬ 
 nounce all claim on his feudatories with whom the 
 British Government had made treaties. The Rana of 
 Gohad was clearly one of those feudatories, but 
 taking advantage of the wording of the treaty and of 
 the Rana’s recent conduct, Sindhia contended that the 
 treaties alluded to which he was bound to respect, 
 could not include the Rana, inasmuch as bis pre¬ 
 tensions had been extinguished and his territories had 
 been in Sindhia’s possession for thirty years. The 
 obvious reply to this claim was, that recent conquest 
 and separate treaties with the Rana concluded in 1803 
 and 1804, by Lord Wellesley, had reversed their posi- 
 
DHOLPUR 
 
 187 
 
 tions, and had restored the Rana’s old rights and 
 claims to our protection 1 . But Cornwallis was so 
 deeply impressed with the necessity for concluding a 
 general pacification of the country, so convinced of 
 the inability of the Rana to manage his possessions, 
 collect the revenues, and preserve tranquillity, and so 
 apprehensive of the dangers and vexations of a direct 
 British Administration forced on us by failure of the 
 native rule, that he was quite ready to annul or dis¬ 
 regard the stipulation in the treaty, and to restore 
 Gohad and Gwalior to Sindhia. It is true that he 
 intended to compensate the Rana for this loss, and 
 within a few months after the death of Cornwallis, 
 his temporary successor, Sir George Barlow, granted 
 to the Rana the sovereignty over the districts of 
 Dholpur, Bari, and Rajkerrie. The Chambal river 
 became the boundary between Dholpur and Sindhia. 
 Raja Kirat Sing, of Dholpur, took rank as one of the 
 Rajput Princes, lived to a great age, died in 1836, 
 and was succeeded by a chief who protected British 
 fugitives and behaved loyally in the mutiny of 
 
 i857* 
 
 For this one special provision and for the retransfer 
 of Gwalior to the Marathas, there is really a good 
 deal, but for the general and prompt reversal of 
 Wellesley’s policy there is very little, to be said. 
 The Rana had no claim as the representative of an 
 ancient family. From a mere landholder he had 
 
 1 Sir C. Aitchison’s Treaties, vol. iv. 
 
188 
 
 LORD CORNWALLIS 
 
 become a chieftain, and the loss of Gohad was made 
 up to him by the gain of Dholpur. The cession to 
 Gwalior was followed by the discontinuance of the 
 pensions paid by Government to Sindhia’s officers, 
 amounting to fifteen lacks of rupees, but was coupled 
 with other stipulations very advantageous to the 
 Marathas. They will be clearly seen by the sub¬ 
 joined excellent summary taken from the Treaties and 
 Engagements of Sir C. Aitchison :— 
 
 ‘ A Treaty was concluded on 23rd of November, 
 1805, which confirmed the Treaty of Sarge Angen- 
 gaum, except what might be altered by this Treaty, 
 ceded Gwalior and Gohad to Sindhia, abolished the 
 pensions of fifteen lacks a year paid by Govern¬ 
 ment to Sindhia’s officers, constituted the Chambal 
 the northern boundary of Sindhia’s territory, de¬ 
 prived Sindhia of all claim to tribute from Bundi 
 or any State north of the Chambal and east of 
 Kotah, bound the British not to make treaties with 
 Udaipur, Jodhpur, Kotah, or other chiefs tributary 
 to Sindhia in Malwa or Mewar, or to interfere with 
 the arrangements which Sindhia might make in regard 
 to them; and granted a pension of four lacks a year 
 to Sindhia, and Jaghirs of two lacks to his wife 
 Baiza Bai, and one lack to his daughter, Chamna 
 Bai V 
 
 Whatever admiration may be entertained for Corn¬ 
 wallis, his character, motives, and internal reforms, it 
 
 1 Yol. v. p. 200. 
 
NATIVE STATES 
 
 189 
 
 is impossible not to condemn the foreign policy which 
 he sketched and which his successor completed. 
 Sindhia had no special claim on our forbearance and 
 gratitude. He had invited defeat by our forces, and 
 had intrigued with our secret and open foes. The 
 abandonment of the high-spirited Rajput Princes to 
 Maratha rapacity was denounced by Lord Lake, and 
 was not creditable to the British name. Concessions 
 to Holkar who had deserved nothing at our hands, 
 only served to whet his appetite for plunder and to 
 stimulate his insolent and revengeful spirit. The 
 policy of 1805 had the effect of ‘allowing the whole 
 of Hindustan, beyond its own boundaries, to become a 
 scene of fearful strife, lawless plunder, and frightful 
 desolation for many succeeding years, until the same 
 horrors invaded its own sacred precincts, and involved 
 it in expensive and perilous warfare, the result of 
 which was its being obliged to assume what it had so 
 long mischievously declined, the avowed supremacy 
 over all the States and Princes of Hindustan.’ 
 
 This policy has been condemned by historians and 
 commentators, as well as by statesmen, soldiers, and 
 diplomatists; by Mill and his editor, H. H. Wilson, and 
 by Thornton; by Lord Lake and Sir John Malcolm. 
 The mischief was done and the loss of influence was 
 not regained for a decade. It was not till the con¬ 
 clusion of an expensive and protracted campaign, that 
 the Indian Government was replaced in the position 
 where it had been left by Wellesley. The blame of 
 
190 
 
 LORD CORNWALLIS 
 
 this weak and unfortunate policy must be divided 
 between Cornwallis and Barlow, between the Court 
 of Directors and the Board of Control. 
 
 The end was now nigh. The Governor-General 
 had assumed his office on July 30th. The Marquess 
 of Wellesley did not leave India till the 29th of 
 August, so that there must have been some time for 
 the two statesmen to interchange views and to discuss 
 all present and future policy. On the 8th of August 
 Cornwallis was at Barrackpur, and for nearly two 
 months his state barge was being towed slowly 
 against the current of the Ganges, swollen by the 
 rains, in his progress to the Upper Provinces. During 
 this time he was constantly writing or dictating State 
 Papers, and whatever condemnation may be passed 
 on their substance, it is not possible to discern in the 
 style any traces of a failing intellect. Read from his 
 point of view the diction and reasoning are still clear 
 and precise. It was hoped that the air of the river, 
 which has occasionally saved the lives of Indian 
 officers struck down by fever or dysentery, would have 
 restored him to something like health and activity. 
 But it was too late. His last public letter is dated 
 Sept. 23rd. After that we are dependent on the 
 letters of secretaries and friends. There was a slight 
 rally on the 25th. On the 5th of October he expired 
 at Ghazipur. He had been removed on the 29th of 
 September from his boat to a house at that station. 
 
 The inhabitants of Calcutta and other residents in 
 
ILLNESS AND DEATH 
 
 191 
 
 different parts of India were profoundly moved. At 
 a meeting convened by the sheriff of Calcutta, held on 
 October 29th, it was resolved that in order to express 
 the public sense of his virtues, a memorial should be 
 erected in his honour. The native inhabitants sent a 
 letter to the Chairman of the same meeting signifying 
 their grateful sense of his just and honourable ad¬ 
 ministration, and intimating that they regarded him 
 as their guardian and benefactor. Copies of the reso¬ 
 lutions passed at this meeting were sent to Madras 
 and Bombay, to Ceylon, Penang, and Fort Marl¬ 
 borough. Subscriptions were invited and a com¬ 
 mittee was formed. A funeral sermon was preached 
 at Madras by the order of the Governor, Lord William 
 Bentinck, on the 9th of November. The text was 
 taken from the 24th verse of the 35th chapter 
 of the Second Book of Chronicles, ‘And all Judah 
 and Jerusalem mourned for Josiah.’ A correspondent 
 of the Calcutta Gazette prefaced some verses to his 
 memory by the well-known and well-timed quotation 
 from the Agricola of Tacitus, ‘ Finis vitae ejus nobis 
 luctuosus, amicis tristis, extraneis etiam ignotisque 
 non sine cura fuit.’ On the 17th of November, what 
 was termed 1 an eloquent and appropriate sermon ’ 
 was preached by the Rev. N. Wade, at Bombay, pre¬ 
 ceded by a choral service which ‘for taste, judgment, 
 and execution, far exceeded anything of the kind in 
 India.’ The text chosen, not perhaps very happily, 
 was from the 21st verse of the 9th chapter of 
 
LORD CORNWALLIS 
 
 19a 
 
 the First Book of the Maccabees, ‘ How is the 
 valiant man fallen, that delivered Israel.’ 
 
 Cornwallis lies at Ghazipur, in a monument de¬ 
 scribed as a domed quasi-Grecian building, with a 
 marble statue by FlaxmanL There is another statue 
 in the Town Hall of Calcutta, and an excellent full- 
 length portrait hangs on the walls of the Council 
 Chamber at Government House in the same city. He 
 is painted in uniform, and has for his companions Clive; 
 Warren Hastings, in knee-breeches and velvet coat; 
 Lord Wellesley; Lord Minto, with a scroll in his 
 hand ; and, last of all, Mr. Adam, who, in the interval 
 between the departure of the Marquess of Hastings 
 and the arrival of Lord Amherst, caused J. S. Buck¬ 
 ingham to be deported for an offence against the 
 censorship of the press. The statue of Cornwallis in 
 the Town Hall is by Bacon, junior. It is not one of 
 the sculptor’s happiest efforts ; and the garb of an 
 ancient Roman, though in the taste of the day, does 
 not set off the Governor-General to advantage. The 
 two female figures at the base of the statue, with a 
 mirror and a serpent, signifying justice and truth, 
 belong to no particular age or country. From a 
 cornucopia are poured out all sorts of Indian vegetables 
 and fruits—the pine-apple and the custard-apple, 
 mangoes and UcMs, Indian corn and rice-stalks; 
 and we discern a lion’s skin, a club, and a bundle of 
 arrows. The work is inferior to the bronze statue of 
 1 Imperial Gazetteer of India , vol. v. p. 70. 
 
CHARACTER 
 
 193 
 
 Lord William Bentinck, in the open air in front of the 
 same Town Hall, and far below Foley’s splendid 
 equestrian statue of Lord Hardinge. 
 
 The character of Cornwallis has been drawn by 
 more than one historian, and not always with fair¬ 
 ness. In Thornton’s History of British India, his 
 mental constitution is described as the highest order 
 of commonplace. He is said to have been entirely 
 destitute of originality, and to have represented the 
 spirit, the opinions, and the prejudices of his own 
 age. This historian adds that, although he enjoyed 
 an extraordinary degree of reputation during his life¬ 
 time, its artificial brilliancy soon passed away. 
 
 Mill, while admitting the generous policy of the 
 Permanent Settlement, declares that it was dictated 
 in some measure by prejudice, and attributes to Corn¬ 
 wallis, himself an aristocrat, the intention of estab¬ 
 lishing an aristocracy on the European model. No 
 one who has carefully studied the public and private 
 lives of the eminent men who have been selected from 
 the two great political parties of Eugland and have 
 ruled India at eventful times, would place Cornwallis 
 on the same platform as Wellesley and Dalliousie, or 
 would compare him for ability, vigour, and energy to 
 that servant of the East India Company who, from a 
 writer, became Governor-General, and was not re¬ 
 warded by a diadem. But there was nothing com¬ 
 monplace about Cornwallis ; and if in some points he 
 reflected and acted on the opinions of his time, in 
 
 N 
 
194 
 
 LORD CORNWALLIS 
 
 others he was far ahead of it. In his contempt for 
 jobbery; his determination to place the Company’s 
 servants, whom he transformed from merchants to 
 administrators, above the reach of temptation ; in his 
 anxiety to protect native rights and interests ; in 
 constructive ability and in tenacity of purpose, he 
 may challenge a comparison with some of the most 
 eminent men who have ruled India. 
 
 His aristocratical prejudices—if they be so con¬ 
 sidered—were really just what suited his position and 
 aims. It may he truly said that they cannot be cast 
 aside by any statesman who thoroughly comprehends 
 the peoples whom he has to govern, and the problems 
 which he ought to solve. There is nothing demo¬ 
 cratic in the various strata of Indian society. From 
 its earliest traditions to its recent history it has been 
 the sanctuary of privilege. Its tribes worship pomp 
 and pageantry, and are reconciled to an apparent in¬ 
 equality, over which every man of talent and capacity 
 hopes to triumph. It may be taken as an axiom that 
 the general sense of the natives is in favour of marked 
 gradations of rank, and of exemption from restraints 
 and restrictions, while at the same time a value is 
 set on impartial justice, inviolate good faith, and incor¬ 
 ruptible integrity. Guilds and fraternities, associations 
 of traders, community of interests between co-parce¬ 
 nary communities, are not democratic, but if anything 
 oligarchical; and caste, in all its endless ramifications, 
 is a symbol of honour and not a badge of disgrace. 
 
CHARACTER 
 
 195 
 
 Cornwallis may perhaps be best described as a 
 statesman on whom the Ministry of the day could 
 always rely. His patriotism, his regard for disci¬ 
 pline, his sense of duty to the State, were the qualities 
 which attained their fullest development in Welling¬ 
 ton. A statesman who purified and reconstituted the 
 civil administration of a great Empire ; who promul¬ 
 gated a code of law on lines which were followed 
 by more experienced legislators; who carried out the 
 Union of Ireland in despite of avowed enemies and 
 of injudicious friends ; who induced a military despot 
 to agree to a treaty, in which every step might 
 have led to a snare or a pitfall ; possessed qualities 
 which ought to mitigate censure, and did much that 
 in balancing accounts should be placed to his credit. 
 
 Cornwallis overflows in Minutes and State Papers, as 
 well as in private correspondence. His writings are 
 not, like those of Wellesley and Dalhousie, close in 
 reasoning, splendid from their sustained eloquence, 
 and broad and far-reaching in aim ; but they are 
 replete with sound sense and right feeling, and his 
 deliverances on thorny and intricate questions prove 
 that he had the faculty of apprehending the salient 
 points of new subjects, for which he could not have 
 been prepared by his previous learning in Parliament 
 or in camp. Moreover, his life was one of almost unin¬ 
 terrupted devotion to duty and work. Other statesmen, 
 who before and after him fdled a similar office in India, 
 have returned home, and have taken comparatively 
 
196 
 
 LORD CORNWALLIS 
 
 but a slight share in politics. Some succumbed to the 
 rapid death which carried off Achilles, or were victims 
 to the slow decay which undermined the strength and 
 vigour of Tithonus. But Cornwallis had little or no 
 rest. From America to the Continent; from England 
 to India; from India to Ireland and back to India to 
 die, his whole career was one of duty and self-sacrifice. 
 It may be added that his private life was estimable 
 and pure. His letters to relations and friends breathe 
 a spirit of the truest friendship and regard, and it is 
 a trite quotation, ‘ Bonum virum facile crederes: 
 magnum libenter.’ 
 
 The family of Cornwallis is extinct in the male 
 line. The son of the Governor-General—the Viscount 
 Brome, mentioned in the correspondence—succeeded 
 his father, as second Marquess, and died leaving no 
 male issue, in 1823. His sister, the Lady Mary 
 Cornwallis, married, in 1815, Mark Singleton, then 
 an ensign in the guards. At the death of the second 
 Marquess, the earldom passed to the Bishop of Lichfield, 
 and then to his son James. At his death, in 1852, the 
 title became extinct. But the descendants of Corn¬ 
 wallis are still to be found in the following families. 
 The eldest daughter of the second Marquess married 
 the third Lord Braybrooke. Two of the sons of this 
 marriage fell in the Crimea—one at Balaclava, and 
 the other at Inkerman. The present peer, the fifth 
 Lord Braybrooke, is great-grandson to the Governor- 
 General. Another descendant, Charles Cornwallis 
 
HIS DESCENDANTS 
 
 197 
 
 Ross, who also died in the Crimea, was the grandson 
 of the second Marquess, by Lady Mary Ross. Lady 
 Jemima, another daughter of the same peer, married 
 the third Earl of St. Germans. One son of this 
 marriage, Captain Eliot, was killed at Inkerman. 
 The present Earl St. Germans and the Hon. Charles 
 Eliot, issue of the same marriage, are still alive. 
 Those who have not yet ceased to believe in the 
 hereditary character of worth, may be glad to know 
 that the line of the Founder of all sound Indian 
 Administration has not quite passed away. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Act X of 1859, 134. 
 
 Aitcheson, Sir Charle-,K. C. S.T., 
 Treaties, 188. 
 
 America, operations in, 12-16. 
 
 Arcot, Nawib of, 139. 
 
 Army, condition of, 82. 
 
 Bardwan, Mahdrdjd of, 142. 
 
 Barlow, Sir George, 187. 
 
 Bazars, 39, 40. 
 
 Benares, Settlement of, 120- 
 13 °. 
 
 Bengal, Aspect and Commerce 
 
 of, I 45 - J 54 - 
 
 Bonaparte, Joseph, 174-177. 
 
 Bonaparte, Napoleon, 171-173. 
 
 Bkome, Lord, 21, 108, 174. 
 
 Calcutta, social customs, 108- 
 
 m. 
 
 Canning, Earl of, 137. 
 
 Chambers, Lady, 111. 
 
 Cherry, assassination of, 165. 
 
 Clerfait, General, 137. 
 
 Collector, powers of, 86-88. 
 
 Cornwallis Code, 95. 
 
 Cornwallis, Marquess: family, 
 7, 8 : education and marriage, 
 9: campaign in America, 
 
 11-15: offer of Governor- 
 Generalship refused, 17 : 
 renewed offer and accept¬ 
 
 ance, 18 : campaigns against 
 Tipu, 22, 23: Settlement of 
 Land Revenue, 25 : discussion 
 with Shore, 37-41 : view of 
 the interests of Zamindar and 
 Ryot, 31-37, 46, 47 : sacrifice 
 of future revenue, 73 ; corre¬ 
 spondence with Dundas; Com¬ 
 pany’s Charter, appointment 
 by Court of Directors, patron- 
 age, 75-84 : Executive and 
 Judicial reforms, 88-97 : 
 opinion of English and Na¬ 
 tive troops, 97-99 : forecast 
 of the Mutiny, 99 : his patron¬ 
 age and hatred of jobbery, 
 101-105 : private life and 
 hospitality, 107-111 : visit to 
 Benares, 114: departure from 
 India, 116: arrival in Eng¬ 
 land, 118 : views on Benares 
 Settlement, 120: deputation 
 to Flanders, 157, 158: pur¬ 
 chase of house and land in 
 England, 159 : mutiny of 
 officers in Bengal; intended 
 return to India, 162 : goes 
 to Ireland as Viceroy and 
 Commander-in-Chief, 163: 
 address from officers after 
 Seringapatam, 165 : view 
 of Native Taxation, 167 : 
 
INDEX 199 
 
 command of Eastern district, 
 168: mission to Bonaparte; 
 interview with, 171-173: ne¬ 
 gotiates Peace of Amiens, 176 ; 
 views on English elections, 
 178: returns to India, 187: 
 reversal of Wellesley’s policy, 
 184-187 : sickness and death 
 at Ghazipur, 190 : sermon on 
 his death, 191,192 : character, 
 i 93~ i 96: Cornwallis’s family, 
 origin of, 7, 8 : extinction of, 
 195 - 197 - 
 
 Corn wallis, Statue of, 192. 
 
 Courts of Justice, 89-94. 
 
 Culford, 113, 179. 
 
 Dholpur, R£jd, of, 187. 
 
 Directors, Court of, Patron¬ 
 age, Trade, 76-81. 
 
 Duncan, Jonathan, 121, 179. 
 
 Dundas, Henry, 75, 162 : 98- 
 101. 
 
 Ganj, Wholesale Market, 39, 
 40. 
 
 Ghazipur, Mausoleum of Corn¬ 
 wallis, 192. 
 
 Gohad, 184-186. 
 
 Gwalior, 183-187. 
 
 Hardwicke, Earl of, 167. 
 
 Harington, John Herbert, on 
 rights and position of Zamfn- 
 dars, 32-35- 
 
 Hat, Bi-weekly Markets, 39- 
 40. 
 
 Indian Army, discontent of, 
 161. 
 
 Ireland, 163-167. 
 
 Jones, Sir William, 109. 
 
 Kaunitz, General, 157. 
 
 Kazi, Muhammadan officer, 94. 
 
 Lake, Lord, 183, 184. 
 
 Macaulay on Hastings, 105, 
 106. 
 
 Madras, Settlement of, 139- 
 141. 
 
 Maulavi, Muhammadan officer, 
 190, 194. 
 
 Mill, James, opinion of Corn¬ 
 wallis, 193. 
 
 Pandit, Law Officer, 94. 
 
 Patni Tilluks, 142-145. 
 
 Pearce, Colonel, in, 114. 
 
 Quinquennial Register, 153. 
 
 Regulations, IX of 1793 : 
 XXYII of 1795 : YII of 
 1799: V of 1812, 131, 134. 
 
 Regulations of Benares, 122, 
 129. i3L 137- 
 
 Resumption of rent-free Tenures, 
 i4 8 -!53- 
 
 Ryot, 53-58 : 131-137. 
 
 Sale Laws in Bengal, 146-148. 
 
 Shore, Sir John. Settlement 
 for term of years, 28, 30, 37, 
 38, 116. 
 
 Ihpey, Sir Elijah, 106. 
 
200 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Survey (Revenue), 153—155. 
 
 Thornton, History of British 
 India, 193. 
 
 Tipu Sultdn, 20-23. 
 
 Warren Hastings, correspond¬ 
 ence with, 105,106, 118. 
 Wellington, Duke of, 164. 
 
 Willis, Dr., 103. 
 
 York, Duke of, 158. 
 
 Zami'ndar of Benares, 123, 124. 
 ZamIndar of Bengal, rights, 
 duties, position, 3-36, 38-40, 
 43 - 48 , 5 1 — 53 - 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 [Note on the object oj this memoir and the authorities referred to 
 by the Author .] 
 
 The Irish administration of Cornwallis has been de¬ 
 signedly excluded from this memoir, the object being to 
 show what Cornwallis effected as a Ruler of India. And 
 in this view chapters have been added descriptive of the 
 extension of the Perpetual Settlement to other Provinces 
 besides Bengal and Behar, and of the supplementary legis¬ 
 lation whicli was found indispensable to the completion of 
 the same Settlement in the Lower Provinces. The sources of 
 information to which the Author has had recourse are the 
 following:— 
 
 The Cornwallis Correspondence. Edited, with accurate 
 and copious notes, by Charles Ross, Esq., 3 vols., 1858. 
 
 The celebrated Fifth Report of the House of Commons 
 on the Affairs of India, 1812. 
 
 The Regulations and Acts of the Government of India 
 from 1793 to 1859 inclusive. 
 
 The Judicial Decisions of the Sadr Diwdni Addlat 
 from 1793 to 1862 and the subsequent Decisions of the High 
 Court of Calcutta. 
 
 3 vols. of manuscript notes taken between 1857 and 
 i860 inclusive, by the Author of this memoir, during a 
 systematic and unofficial enquiry into the rents, rights, and 
 privileges of the Tenant-proprietors of Bengal and into 
 village and agricultural customs. 
 
202 
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 Calcutta Review, 1857 to 1859; articles by the Author 
 on Life in the Rice Fields, Bengal Village Biogragihies, and 
 the Owner of the Soil. 
 
 Report of the Indigo Commission, i860. 
 
 Life of Sir John Shore, First Lord Teignmoutli, by his 
 Son, 2 vols. 1843. 
 
 Lives of Indian Officers, by the late Sir John Kaye, 
 K.C.S.I. 
 
 Lives of Eminent British Commanders, in Yol. II of 
 Dr. Lardner’s Cabinet Cyclopaedia. 
 
 Selections from Calcutta Gazettes, by the Author, 
 3 vols. 
 
 Revenue Handbook, by the late Janies H. Young, 
 Bengal C. S. 
 
 The Imperial Gazetteer, by Sir William W. Hunter, 
 K.C.S.I., C.I.E. 
 
 The A.- W. Provinces Gazetteer. 
 
 Regions of the Officers of the Survey in Bengal and 
 Behar ; especially those of Capt. W. Sherwill. 
 
 Report of the Government of Bengal on the Proposed 
 Amendment of the Law of Landlord and Tenant, 1883. 
 
 Two volumes (anonymous) 011 the Zammddri Settlement, 
 1879. 
 
 Divers other Blue Books and Reports. 
 
 THE END. 
 
RULERS OF INDIA 
 
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OPINIONS OF THE PRESS ON ‘ DALHOUSIE ’ ( continued ). 
 
 own method, and shaping a huge agglomeration of facts into a lucid and 
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 of Dalhousie. . . . The knowledge displayed by the writer of the motives 
 of Lord Dalhousie’s action, of the inner working of his mind, is so com¬ 
 plete, that Lord Dalhousie himself, were he living, could not state them 
 more clearly. In the next place the argument throughout the book is so 
 lucid, based so entirely upon facts, resting upon official documents and 
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 enlightened and humane administration.’— Literary World. 
 
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 which the readers of Colonel Malleson’s other works are accustomed.’— 
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 contact with India seems to have generated in so many European minds, 
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 if suffered to have full play, might have ended in giving the whole of 
 Southern India to France. Even as it was, Colonel Malleson shows 
 hnw narrowly the prize slipped from French grasp. In 1783 the 
 Treaty of Versailles arrived just in time to save the British power from 
 extinction.’— Times. 
 
 ‘ Colonel Malleson’s Life of Dupleix, which has been just published, 
 though his estimate of his hero differs in some respects from Lord 
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 fairly faithful portraiture of the prophetic genius to whom the possibility 
 of a great Indo-European Empire first revealed itself. Had the French 
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 Hunter (Oxford, at the Clarendon Press), is accordingly neither inop¬ 
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 says a brief preface, “endeavours to exhibit for the first time the actual 
 work of that great Governor-General, as reviewed from the firm stand¬ 
 point of the original records now made available to the students of 
 Indian history.” Captain Trotter is well known as a competent and 
 attractive writer on Indian history, and this is not the first time that 
 Warren Hastings has supplied him with a theme.’— The Times. 
 
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 memoir is more valuable [than Sir A. Lyall’s] from a strictly historical 
 point of view. It contains more of the history of the period, and it 
 embraces the very latest information that casts light on Hastings’ re¬ 
 markable career. . . His work too is of distinct literary merit, and is 
 worthy of a theme than which British history presents none nobler. It 
 is a distinct gain to the British race to be enabled, as it now may, to 
 count the great Governor-General among those heroes for whom it need 
 not blush.’— Scotsman. 
 
 ‘ Captain Trotter has done his work well, and his volume deserves to 
 stand with that on Dalhousie by Sir William Hunter. Higher praise 
 it would be hard to give it.’— New York Herald. 
 
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 Leeds Mercury. 
 
 ‘ Captain Trotter has done full justice to the fascinating story of the 
 splendid achievements of a great Englishman.’— Manchester Guardian. 
 
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 the first Governor-General of India. The author has been fortunate in 
 having had access to State Papers which cover the period of the entire 
 rule of Warren Hastings.’— The Newcastle Chronicle. 
 
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 and other State Papers preserved in the Foreign Department of the 
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 ministration of Warren Hastings. The present volume, therefore, may 
 truly claim that it “ exhibits for the first time the actual work of the 
 great Governor-General, as reviewed from the firm stand-point of 
 original records.” It is a book which all must peruse who desire to be 
 “ up to date ” on the subject.’— The Glohe.