Page:History of India Vol 8.djvu/327

Rh Hastings had been constantly interrupted by quarrels at home and wars abroad.

Henceforward internal organization goes on continuously; laws are passed, abuses are firmly repressed, and the settlement of the land revenue of Bengal is the administrative achievement by which the name of Lord Cornwallis is now chiefly remembered in India. In fixing for ever the land-tax of the districts then included within the regular jurisdiction of the Presidency, he followed the natural bent of a statesman familiar only with the property tenures of England, where a Parliament of landlords was just about to make their own land-tax a perpetual charge at a fixed rate of valuation. And although the measure has cut off the Indian treasury from all share in the increase of rents and the immense spread of cultivation, although it has prevented the equitable raising of the land revenue in proportion with the fall in value of the currency in which it is paid, yet it has undoubtedly maintained Bengal as the wealthiest province of the empire.

Prom this time forward, also, political insecurity within British territory gradually gives way to a sense of stable and enduring dominion, and to that feeling of confidence in a government which is the mainspring of industry. While the people begin to adjust themselves at home to these novel conditions of Western sovereignty, abroad the British frontier is rarely threatened and hardly ever crossed by a serious enemy. The British government has now taken undisguised rank among the first-class powers of India. There is as yet,