Page:Warren Hastings (Trotter).djvu/35

Rh pany's dastak in his hand regards himself as not less than the Company .' Loud and bitter also were the murmurs of Mír Kásim's officers against those overbearing Sáhibs whose agents forced the people to buy and sell at the Sáhibs'  own price, under pain of a flogging, and sat in judgment on their own causes without any regard for the decrees of the regular courts.

On his way up to Patná in April, 1762, Hastings reported to the Governor what his own eyes had seen. To his surprise every boat he met on the river bore the Company's flag, which was flying also from many places along the bank. At almost every village he found the shops closed and the people fled, for fear of fresh exactions at the hands of English merchants and their followers. What he saw then and afterwards convinced him that the lawless doings of his countrymen could 'bode no good to the Nawáb's revenues, the quiet of the country, or the honour of our nation .' It was the old tale of masterful adventurers working their mad will on neighbours too weak, timid, or indolent to withstand them. On the one side towered 'the strength of civilisation without its mercy;' on the other crouched a multitude of feeble folk, debased by centuries of foreign tyranny, caste oppression, and all the lowering influences of a tropical climate. The people of Bengal in fact were as sheep waiting to be shorn by men who would certainly shear them to the skin.