Page:The Marquess Cornwallis and the Consolidation of British Rule.djvu/75

Rh There can be no doubt that all these disturbing agencies would have been set actively at work in Bengal. It is not, moreover, easy to over-estimate the advantage of a wealthy and privileged class, who have everything to lose and nothing to gain by revolution.

This was clearly seen and acknowledged at the time of the Sepoy Mutiny. There were few large military cantonments in the Lower Provinces in that eventful year. The elements of a great Sepoy revolt, with its inevitable accompaniments of arson, plunder, and anarchy, were not abundant as they were in the Upper Provinces. Even when isolated detachments of Sepoys mutinied as they did at Dacca, Chittagong, and in Bírbhúm, they met with no countenance from the Zamíndárs. The Sepoys were disciplined and trained to fight. They had arms of precision in the midst of an unwarlike population, the bravest of whom could do little more than use a matchlock to kill a wild beast, and a spear to transfix an adversary in a village fight. But after the first outbreak at the Station, where they were resolutely met by a mere handful of Englishmen, the Sepoys took to the villages and the jungles, and then they literally melted away before the impassive demeanour, the want of sympathy, and the silent loyalty of the Zamíndárs. In other Provinces the system of village communities afforded no bulwark against the tide of anarchy. That system was in many respects admirable and suited to the community.

It had been justly renowned as a field for the