Page:History of Bengali Literature in the Nineteenth Century.djvu/37

 INTRODUCTORY RETROSPECT 13 a system of monopoly and coercion, deprived the country of those sources of wealth, of ‘those rights of free produe- tion and free barter which they had enjoyed under good and bad government alike.”’! The consequences were too evidently exemplified in the ruin of the entire inland trade and» manufacture, in the decline of agriculture under oppressive systems of land-settlements, in the diminution of the specie, and in the general distress of the poor. The reputation of the English was so bad in Bengal that no sooner did a European come into one of the villages “ than all the shops were immediately locked up and all the people 599 “The sources of tyranny and oppression ”’ said Clive in his memorable letter to the Directors, ‘ which have been opened by the European agents acting under the authority of the Com- pany’s servants and the numberless black agents and sub-agents, acting also under them, will, I fear, be a lasting reproach to the English name in this country.”® for their own safety ran away. In 1772, the Select Committee express themselves bound “to lay open to the view of the Directors a series of transactions too notoriously known to be suppressed, and too affecting to their interest, to the character and to the existence of the Company in Bengal, to escape unuoticed and uncensured; transactions which seem to demonstrate that every spring of their government was smeared with corruption: that principles of rapacity and oppression universally prevailed, and that every spark of sentiment and publie spirit was lost and extinguished in the unbounded lust of unmerited wealth.”* Even 'R. C. Dutt, Economic History, p. 27 and pp. 30-31. 2 Memoirs of a Gentleman who resided for several years in the East Indies, quoted in Robinson, op. cit., p 70, > Clive’s Letter to the Directors, dated Sep. 30th, 1765 (Third Report, App. p. 391 et. seq.) ‘ Third Report, 1772, App. No. 86.