Page:History of Bengali Literature in the Nineteenth Century.djvu/39

 INTRODUCTORY RETROSPECT 15 masquerades: but “Sunday afternoons” we are told “as well as the early morning before the sun was too high in the heavens, were frequently taken advantage of to get rid of the accumulated evil passions roused between gentlemen, who might be seen, commonly enough, furnished with swords and pistols, wending their way in palanquins towards Tolly’s Nullah, as it enters the Hooghly, to settle their little differences after the manner of Hastings and Francis ; and they not unfrequently returned with a pistol-bullet or a sword-thrust as a memento of their outing and a remembrance of the region of Kidderpore.’’! It cannot be denied, however, that the Company’s Directors were trying their best to The administrative put down this state of things and policy of the Com- ; E i pany’s government. were consistently condemning in un- equivocal terms the conduct and character of their servants ; yet the policy of the Company’s government itself was a faithful reflection of its narrow commercial views. In order to enhance the value of his services, Clive had propagated the pernicious belief that India overflowed with riches, and the servants of the Company kept up this tradition by furnishing perpetually Hattering accounts of their affairs in India.* Notwith- standing a knowledge of the pecuniary embarrassments of the Company, the inadequacy of the revenues, and the exhaustion of the treasury, the Directors were compelled, by the glorious promises so confidently made of unbounded by a “writer in the Hon’ble Company’s Service ” with a view to ascertain its origin and effect on society. (Seton-Karr, Selection from Calcutta Gazette ii, 564). See also Good .Old Days of Hon'ble John Company, ch. xxiii and xxx. On the profanation of Sunday, see the Letter of the Directors (1798) and the proclamation of the G.-G. Novy. 9, 1798, quoted op. cit. ii, p. 36-37. > Mill, op. cit, iii. 432. Mill records that “the inflated conceptions of the nation at large multiplied the purchasers of India stock: and it rose as high as 263 per cent.”
 * In 1793, was published a book entitled “Thoughts on Duelling”