Page:History of Bengali Literature in the Nineteenth Century.djvu/34

 10 BENGALI LITERATURE the time of Clive’s second mission, no doubt, a schism arose in the Court of Directors which heralded a fundamental change in the character of the Company. One party was for trade alone, the other supported Clive in his proposal to aceept the Dewani and thus incur the responsibility of government. In 1761, the Court wrote to its agents in India, declaring that trade was to be combined with “ warfare, fortification, military prudence, and political government.”’! But this military precaution was urged chiefly for the protection of trade and, although the break-up of the Mohammedan rule was beginning to offer vast opportunities to the trader to become a soldier anda politician, the Court always insisted upon an attitude of non-intervention and peremptorily disapproved, on more than one occasion, the intention of its agents for territorial acquisition when such a step did not also extend their sales and profits. ? It was by slow degrees, therefore, that the company of calculating shop-keepers turned into earnest empire-builders. Gradually they began to acquire Slow and gradual Zemindary rights, monopolise revenue, ০৮522 assume civil control, and step by step exclude the Mohammedan Government by destroying its financial and military supremacy. ‘his long process of gradually exhausting and appropriating the funetions of the existing govern- ment, which, however, meant, as it did, half a century of misery to the people, first began with the grant of the districts of Burdwan, Midnapur, and Chittagong in 1760. The necessities of revenue administration compelled the Company to build up a system of internal government 1 Quoted in F, P. Robinson, The Trade of the Bast India Company, p. 67. 2 Esp. Letter to Bengal, March 16, 1768, quoted in Auber, Rise and Progress etc. vol. ii, p. 185.