Page:The Marquess Cornwallis and the Consolidation of British Rule.djvu/76

70 exhibition of the highest kind of administrative talent. Men of large experience, broad views, and active sympathies, had fashioned or had rescued from slow decay, that most wonderful and diversified piece of mosaic known as the pattidárí tenure. They had almost defied the teachings of political economy and had well-nigh arrested the play of social forces by rooting old and hereditary cultivators to the soil. Yet with the outbreak of the Sepoys and the temporary eclipse of British authority, these fabrics, the result of so much experience and philanthropy, collapsed of themselves or were broken up. In Bengal public tranquillity was hardly ruffled. The rebellion of Koer Sing in Behar was a solitary exception.

In times of famine and scarcity the co-operation of wealthy Zamíndárs has been invoked by the Government, and in many instances ungrudgingly afforded. Here and there, no doubt, there were cases where Zamíndárs were niggardly and selfish. But several experts hold still to the opinion that scarcity is met, relief works are set on foot, and supplies are transported with greater facility, where there are large Zamíndárís, than in Provinces where the Settlement has been made with the heads of village communities, or with each Ryot direct as in Madras. The Tirhút famine of 1873-4 is certainly an instance in point. And in a country where social distinctions and inequalities still retain their attractions for the masses, the maintenance of some large Zamíndárís is quite