The Private Journal of the Marquess of Hastings

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: and the tide so weak, that we could not reach Diamond harbour, where the William Pitt svas lying. We anchored not far below Fultah. January 17th.?I had now to bid adieu to all most dear to me, as there are ceremonies at Calcutta tomorrow (on account of the Queen's birthday) from which. I cannot decently be...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: and the tide so weak, that we could not reach Diamond harbour, where the William Pitt svas lying. We anchored not far below Fultah. January 17th.?I had now to bid adieu to all most dear to me, as there are ceremonies at Calcutta tomorrow (on account of the Queen's birthday) from which. I cannot decently be absent. Prepared, as I was, I have been quite stupified at this fulfilment of our own determination, and I only feel the confused soreness of a blow the real mischief of which I have not recollection to appreciate. I am only conscious of its having been the resignation of every comfort How little an exercise of thought shows one the possibility, and thence enforces the certainty, that all apparently rigid destinations of the Almighty are kindness. February 13th.?Our ordinances in this country have been generally instigated by some casual occurrence. In other countries, laws are only recognitions and enforcements of settled opinions of the community, and as these opinions are the resultof long observation and practical experience, there is little danger that an edict founded on them should be inconvenient to society. From the want of a comprehensive view in our system, many of our regulations, while they correct one evil, institute many sources of oppression. When we invested the zemindars with the proprietary right in the lands of which they were before the superintendents, it became necessary to secure to Government the regular payment of the rent reserved for the State; and for this purpose the law was established that, in the event of arrears to Government, the whole estate should be put up for sale, the residue of its produce (after Government should have paid itself) being restored to the zemindar. This was evidently framed upon a contemplation of the confined zemi...