Page:History of Bengali Literature in the Nineteenth Century.djvu/41

 INTRODUCTORY RETROSPECT 17 want of system in the government at Fort William: and the case of Hastings versvs Francis, revealed by the state- papers, is a memorable testimony to the weakness of the central government, so strongly denounced by the author of the Seir Mutagherin.! The beginning of the nineteenth century saw a disappearance of some of these evils, no doubt, yet in other respects, it witnessed no material improvement. The inevitable conviction, referred to by Francis as a state of “delirium”, which took hold of almost every English official in those days was that the Dewani lands were an inexhaustible estate for the profits of the Company: and that every conceivable method should be brought to bear upon the object of making India pay; this was declared in the official language as “keeping up the revenue”. Effi- ciency of government was judged by the standard of net gain, “by the coarse and ready method of calculating, in pies and gundas, the increase and decrease of the revenue.” ? If we study the schemes of reform, formu- lated from time to time, we find that they were framed not so much in the interest of the people as in the interest of the commercial rulers of Bengal, to which everything else was sacrificed. Indeed the Hon’ble Company, at home and in India, had reached that depth of opposition 22০87 to to light and freedom which justifies even Burke’s extremest passages. Ignorance was the talisman on which their power over the people and the safety of their possessions in India were supposed to depend; and to dispel this popular ignorance by diffusing knowledge and _ education, by introducing missionaries and schoolmasters, by permitting freedom of. public criticism was fantastically considered 1 SeirtMutaqherin, vol. iii, p. 185 et seq. 2 Firminger, op. cst. p, ccxy.