Page:History of Bengali Literature in the Nineteenth Century.djvu/72

 48 BENGALI LITERATURE The revenue system began to be placed on a secure footing. There was greater peace and order throughout the country, and the civil, criminal, and police functions of the government were beginning to be organised. The rural administration was taken in hand and Calcutta was forming itself into a Calcutta settling i down into a 755 metropolis. In 177 i we find pore Caleutta a straggling village of mud- houses, the whole of the ground south of Chandpal Ghat thickly covered with jungle and forest-trees. From 1780 onwards, we read in the Caleutta papers of frequent complaints about the indescribably filthy condition of the streets and roads which is fully confirmed by the account of Grandpré in 1790, who tells us of the canals and cess- pools reeking with putrefying animal matter—the awful stench comirg out of them—the myriads of flies and flocks of animals and birds acting as scavenger.! In the times of Hastings and Francis and for a long time after that, dacoity and highway robbery within a mile of the seat of government and of the Supreme Court were, we have seen, crimes exceedingly prevalent. But when Hastings’ government abolished the provincial Revenue Councils and transferred from Murshidabad to Caleutta the seat of the Supreme Courts of Justice as well as the head-seat of revenue administration and the Khalsa, Caleutta was being deliberately designed to become ulti- mately the political capital of Bengal.? By 1800, a busy 1 This state of things continued for a long time and we here of cons- tant complaints of this not only in the English papers and also in the Samachar-darpan as late 1818. See the Samachar-darpan, Nov. 14, 1818 ; May 27, 1820 etc. (the quotations, will be found given in my article on the above-mentioned paper in Sahitya Parigat Patrika vol. 24, no. 8, p. 163.) 2 Gleig, Memoirs of Warren Hastings, vol. i. p. 268.