INDIAN FAMINES - Institute for Social and Economic Change

10f
FINANOIAL AND OTHER RESULTS
In comparing the final with the initial results,
as shown in the table, I think we may
consider that this branch of our administration
has progressed favourably. It may be of interest
to trace some of the general causes of
this, and to discover to what we may attribute
these satisfactory results. Experience, as I will
hereafter show at some length, is not to be
credited with the whole results.
For one of the causes, we must go back to
the date of our assuming the administration of
affairs in Bengal in 1765.
We succeeded a
government, or rather a misgovernment, which
subjected its people to all the evils of a despotic
power, without giving any of the ameliorating
influences which render despotism in other
countries not altogether an unmixed evil The
government was tyrannical; in Bengal it was
vicarious, with the many evila attached thereto;
-it might even be questioned if there was any
established government at all. Might was
right, and want and war were no unfamiliar
visitors. Famine was an acknowledged curse
of the land, against which it was useless to
struggle. Not only did we succeed to this state