Page:The Marquess Cornwallis and the Consolidation of British Rule.djvu/71

Rh with the industry and capital they shall think fit to employ in the cultivation and improvement of their lands.'

It will be seen from the above that the editor shared in the delusion that the proprietors would themselves expend capital in improving their estates. His anticipations of industrial enterprise and manufactories were certainly a little premature. But no exception can be taken to the remark that the Proclamation was the commencement of a new era, and that it was in striking contrast to the system adopted by Muhammadan Viceroys, and to a certain extent by the Anglo-Indian Government for more than twenty years. As Cornwallis had anticipated, an immediate impulse was given to cultivation. Invasions of Maghs from Arakan, common in the sixteenth century, and the Maráthá raids of the earlier part of the eighteenth century, had come to an end.

The agriculturists of Bengal had thus been secured against robbery from without before the time of Cornwallis. They were now in a position to increase and multiply, to found villages in spots tenanted only by the wild boar, the deer, and the tiger, and they had only to contend with the exaction and rapacity of their own countrymen. There was also the semblance and outward show of executive authority, and the people began dimly to discern that their lives and properties were no longer held under the good-will and caprice of irresponsible despots.