THE HARMONY OF VIRTUE

84 The Harmony of Virtueas a champion and a deliverer. At Khulna this mild, thoughtfulBengali wears the strange appearance of a Hercules weeding outmonsters, clearing augean stables, putting a term to pests. Histranquil energy quite broke the back of the Indigo tyrants. Theirmaster-criminals and chief indigocrats fled to Anam and Brindaban,but they were overtaken by Bankim's warrant and persuadedto come back. Fine and imprisonment meted out with a healthyseverity shattered their prestige and oppressed their brutal spirits.Khulna then saw the last of government by organised ruffiandom.No less terse and incisive were Bankim's dealings withthe water-thieves who lurking in creek and brushwood dominatedto the perpetual alarm and molestation of travellers the hundredwaters of the Sunderban. The outlaws were hunted downand imprisoned and their principal spirits relegated where therewas less room for their genius to find self-expression. The hydraof the waters had been crushed as effectually as the indigopest; and since the era of Bankim's magistracy one may travelthe length and breadth of Khulna without peril except from malariaand ague. By a little quiet decisiveness he had broken theback of two formidable tyrannies and given an object lesson inwhat a Government can do when it heartily intends the good ofthe people.Baruipur, a place consecrated in the calendar of literature,was next put into his hands. The event of his residence herewas his appointment vice Mr. Justice Princep to the chair of anOfficial Emoluments Commission, then sitting. The Governmentintended this to look like an extraordinary distinction, and hadnot the genius of the man raised him immeasurably above anyEnglishman in the country, we might have regarded it as such.Berhampur was the next step in his journey, and after BerhampurMaldeh, and after Maldeh the important Suburban districtof Hugly. He was now nearing his high-water mark and his officialexistence, which had been till then more than ordinarily smooth,began to be ploughed up by unaccustomed storms. The Governmentwanted to give some inadequate expression to its senseof his extraordinary merits and could think of nothing better thana place in the Secretariat. It was here that he came into collisionwith the spirit of bureaucracy. His superior was a certain