Page:History of Bengali Literature in the Nineteenth Century.djvu/48

 24. BENGALI LITERATURE in 1772, sets down the loss of population “at least of one-third of the inhabitants of the province” ; and even twenty years later, Cornwallis officially described one-third of Bengal left as a jungle, inbabited only by wild beasts. The English knew very little about the country at that time and did less for its inhabitants. Even state-charity was grudged and land-tax was as rigorous as_ ever. Hastings points out in 1772 that ‘ notwithstanding the loss of at least one-third of the inhabitants of the pro- vince, and the consequent decrease of the cultivation, the vett collections of the year 1771 exceeded even those of 1768.” In 1771, one-third of the culturable land was returned in the public accounts as Its effects on the land- « deserted’: in 1776, the entries in lord and the tenant. this column exceeded to one-half of the whole district, four acres lying waste to every seven. But the Company increased its demands from less than £100,000 sterling in 1772 to close on £112,000 in 1776." One-third of the generation of peasants had been swept away anda whole generation of once rich families had been reduced to indigence. The revenue-farmers who had been unable to realise the tax were stripped of their office, shorn of their lands, and thrown ultimately into prison. The zemindars who had hitherto lived like semi-independent chiefs, fared worse 2: and Sir William Hunter rightly remarks that “from the year 1770, the ruin of the two-thirds of the old aristocracy of Lower Bengal dates.” The great Famine also deeply affected the relation of the tenant to the landlord and of the landlords to one another. Nearly one-third of Bengal fell out of tillage: 1 unter, op, cit. p. 63-64. 2 Hunter (op. cit. p. 56 ff.) cites the well-known cases of the Maharaja of Burdwan, the Raja of Nadia, and Rani Banwari of Rajshahi.