Page:The Marquess Cornwallis and the Consolidation of British Rule.djvu/72

66 At any rate it is quite certain that, aided by natural agencies, the agriculturists soon began to lessen the area of uncultivated and forest land and to make inroads on the swamps. The copious rainfall, and the overflow of many of the network of rivers which find their way into the Bay of Bengal, have had the effect of gradually raising the level of the soil, silting up the marsh, and replacing the fish-weir and the net of the fowler by the plough. The author of this memoir himself had the advantage of hearing from the mouth of a civil servant who began his career in 1793 and ended it in 1845, after more than fifty years of continuous service on the Bengal establishment, the opinion which was held by some very competent judges of the paramount necessity of a permanent assessment at the time of the famous Proclamation. It was, he said, such as to leave the Governor-General hardly any option at all. There was difficulty in some districts in getting well- qualified persons to engage for the realisation of the public revenue.

There was even greater difficulty in keeping them to their engagements. Whole districts, easily reclaimable, were covered with grass jungle and reeds. In others, the primeval forest of Sal and other timber trees had scarcely been touched by the axe. On many of the public roads, or rather on the wretched