Page:History of Bengali Literature in the Nineteenth Century.djvu/47

 INTRODUCTORY RETROSPECT 23 Dewani, without the government deeming itself competent "1 The reports of the supravisors to remedy the defects. themselves, consisting mostly of antiquarian or statistical essays, represent the government as having attained the last stage of oppressiveness and barbarism. It is needless to comment on the condition of the ryot and the cultivator under this system. ছি ety In a country subject to disorder and revolution, infinite varieties prevailed, as Hunter points out, in the administration of the separate districts. Some districts were under the immediate jurisdic- tion of the subahdar ; while in others the hereditary zemindar preserved the appearance of power, although the jealousy of the subahdar and an increased taxation left to him little more than a nominal authority. The country laboured under the disorders of unbounded despotism. To add to this, a great national disaster occurred in the terrible famine of 1769-70 which cut off ten to twelve millions of human beings. Even. before 1769, high prices had given indication of an approaching famiuve but the tax was collected as rigorously as ever.? রত Famine of The suffering of the people was heightened so much by the acts of the Company’s agents and sub-agents that the Court of Directors indignantly condemned their method of “ profitting by universal distress.”’* Hastings, writing 1 Fifth Report. p. 4. et seq. Also see Siath Report of 1782, App. i; Colebrooke’s Supplement to the Digest of Bengal Regulations, pp. 174-190. 2 Hunter, Annals of Rural Bengal, p. 20-21; also pp. 399-404. August, 28, 1771, qnoted in Auber, op. cit. pp. 354-5, It is difficult to say how far the famine was due to an intentional ‘‘cornering” of the grain or similar unscrupulous commercial transactions ; but this was the widely prevalent complaint, and Stavorinus (vol I, p. 853) ascribes the famine partly to the of the rice.” ae monopoly which the English had made
 * Firminger, op. cit. p. cxcix: See also Letter to Bengal dated