Page:Ramtanu Lahiri, Brahman and Reformer - A History of the Renaissance in Bengal.djvu/120

 conduct in connection with the great famine that devastated the whole province of Bengal in 1770-1771 may be cited as an illustration. One-third of the inhabitants were carried off, yet the collection of the revenue was made unremittingly, and even with greater rigour than before. To convince the reader of this, let us draw his attention to a portion of Warren Hastings’ letter to his masters in England, in regard to this famine:

“It was naturally to be expected that the diminution of the revenue should have kept pace with the other consequences of so great a calamity. That it did not was owing to its being violently kept up to its former standard. To ascertain all the means by which this was effected is not easy. One tax, however, we will endeavour to describe, as it may serve to account for the equality which has been preserved in the past collections, and to which it has principally contributed. It is called Najay, and it is an assessment upon the actual inhabitants of every inferior description of land to make up for the loss sustained in the rents of their neighbours, who are either dead or have fled the country.”

The following statement showing the collections made during the year of the famine and the years immediately preceding and following it may interest the reader:—

We can, from the passage just quoted from Hastings’ letter, see that diminution in the revenue on account of the death of so many as one-third of the population of Bengal was made up by enormously increased demands upon the remaining two-thirds. Hastings, in justification of this,