Page:The Marquess Cornwallis and the Consolidation of British Rule.djvu/115

Rh to Madras, Rangoon, Singapur, or Galle, for a week or fortnight's sea air. The splendid Government House which overlooks the Esplanade of Calcutta, was a later creation of Lord Wellesley, and there was no suburban retreat, like the country house at Barrackpur, to which the Viceroy could retire after the weekly council on Friday to the following Monday or Tuesday. Cornwallis, however, made the best of his dull life, as Warren Hastings had done before him, and many Judges, Councillors, secretaries and staff-officers have done since. Sir William Jones, the great Orientalist and Judge, who was consulted by the Governor-General on proposed changes in the criminal law, lived at Garden Reach, three or four miles out of Calcutta, and he also had his country house at Krishnagar, the head Station of the district Nadiyá, sixty miles off, easily reached by boat or palanquin. The ruins of this house were plainly visible forty years ago in the grounds now occupied by the Krishnagar College. Cornwallis, though he did not anticipate the ceremonial and show of Lord Wellesley who attended public worship on Sunday in his robes of state, and who issued an order prohibiting all servants of Government from horse-racing on Sunday, set an excellent example of public morality.

Nor was he niggardly in public entertainments. He writes, in 1792, to his brother the Bishop, that he had been considerably out of pocket by the war with Tipú. 'I spent £27,360, reckoning the current