Page:A General Biography of Bengal Celebrities Vol 1.djvu/98

 HIS CHARACTER. 59 Bengal, its millions of cultivators and land-holders! waged a regular crusade against the White Planters, it was this poor Brahmin clerk who made sacrifice of his time and money for the good of his mother coun- try. For full eight years he conducted the Hindoo Patriot at a cost ruinous to himself without reward or recompense from those whom he served so nobly. Calculating the average cost of printing and publish- ing this hebdomadal of small circulation at Rs. ioo per mensem at the lowest, it would not be too much to say that Hurish Chunder spent more than Rupees 10,000 for this purpose alone within the short space of 8 years of his editorial life. Every farthing of this money was saved with the ut- most economy from his small earnings as a clerk, and spent for conducting the journal for public good. Then again during the Indigo crisis, he not only helped the poor ryots, as he deposed before the Indigo Com- mission, by drafting petitions and memorials for them, but fed them, protected them, and befriended them in every possible way. His housd at Bhowanipur be- came an asylum for them, and they sung the rural ballad in great glee all over the wide fields of Bengal that "One Hurish saved us" while another Hurish (a servant of an Indigo factory) killed." Over . and above these, consider, gentle reader! what tremendous sacrifice he made for these poor ryots at the close of his career. In i860, some twelve months before his final departure from this world of sorrows, the Indi- go Planters instituted criminal and civil suits against * him for what he had written on behalf of the poor ryots against the oppressions perpetrated upon them. He knew perfectly well that neither his country- men nor the ryots would help him in the hour of trial. One word of apology from him would have satisfied the enraged planters of Bengal. Yet he manfully stood to his gun and refused to recant his words. The con- sequence was that the Planters got a decree against 12