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 BENGAL.

279

Shore (Lord Teignmouth) 1798, Sir Alured Clarke {pro tem.) 1798, Marquis Wellesley; 1805, Marquis Cornwallis; 1806, Earl of Minto 1813, Marquis of Hastings; 1823, John Adam {pro te?n.) 1823, Earl Amherst; 1828, Lord William Cavendish Eentinck 1835, Sir Charles Metcalf; 1836, Earl Auckland 1842, Earl of Ellenborough 1848, Marquis of Dalhousie. 1844, Viscount Hardinge













Sixth Period. BENGAL UNDER LIEUTENANT-GOVERNORS, 1854-1883. Sir Frederick Halliday, 1854 ; Sir John Peter Grant, 1859 Sir Cecil Beadon, 1862 Sir William Grey, 1867 ; Sir George Campbell, 1871 ; Sir Richard Temple, 1874; The Honourable Sir Ashley Eden, 1877; Mr. Rivers Thompson, 1882.



English Comiection with Bengal

.

its earliest

—The East India Company formed

settlements in Bengal in the

first

half of the 17th century.

These settlements were of a purely commercial character. In 1620, one of the Company’s factors dates a letter from Patna; in 1624-36, the Company established itself, by the favour of the Emperor, on the ruins of the ancient Portuguese settlement of Pipplt, in the north of

Orissa; in 1640-42, the patriotism of an English surgeon, Mr. Gabriel

Boughton, obtained for us establishments

at

Balasor

(also in Orissa),

and at Hugli, 25 miles above Calcutta. The vexations and extortions to which the Company’s early agents were subjected nearly induced them more than once to abandon the trade, and in 1677-78 they threatened

to

In

withdraw from Bengal altogether.

1686,

their

by the oppression of the Mughal governors, fled from Hugh down the Ganges to the three villages which have grown up into Calcutta, the metropolis of India. During the next fifty years, the English had a long and hazardous struggle, alike with the Mughal governors of the Province, and with the Marathd armies which invaded it. In 1756, this struggle culminated in the great outrage known as the Black Hole of Calcutta, followed by the re-capture of Calcutta and Clive’s battle of Plassey, which avenged it. That battle, and the subsequent years of confused fighting, established our military supremacy in Bengal, and procured the treaties of 1765, by which the Provinces of Bengal, Behar, and Orissa passed under our administration. To Varren Hastings (1772-85) belongs the Bengal

factors, driven to extremity

glory of consolidating our power, and converting a military occupation into a stable civil government.

To

another

member

of the civil service,

due the formaActing under Lord Cornwallis, the Governor-General, he ascertained and defined the rights of the landholders in the soil. These landholders under the native system had, for the most part, started as collectors of the revenue, and gradually acquired certain prescriptive rights as quasi-

John Shore (1786-98), afterwards Lord Teignmouth, tion

of a regular system of Anglo-Indian legislation.

is