Page:The Marquess Cornwallis and the Consolidation of British Rule.djvu/122

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
116
LORD CORNWALLIS

superintendent. This establishment existed down to very recent times. The financial difficulties under which Cornwallis and his successors laboured are illustrated by notifications that promissory notes issued for three or four months bore interest at twelve per cent.; and in no case does it seem that Government could raise money at a less interest than six per cent. Eight and ten per cent, were not uncommon. At one period during the campaign of 1791 against Tipú, the Court of Directors thought it necessary to send out specie to Madras to the amount of half a million.

It is somewhat remarkable that there is no record of any public demonstration at the time when Cornwallis gave up his high office. On August 15, 1793, he left Government House, spent the day with his successor. Sir John Shore, at Garden Reach, and embarked on a Pilot schooner, which was to take him to his ship lying off Kedgeree. But the campaign ending with Seringapatam and his return from Madras had previously been the occasion of great festivities. Englishmen and natives presented him with loyal addresses. Odes were published in the newspapers. The officers stationed at Fort William invited him to a splendid ball and supper at the theatre, which was appropriately decorated, so says the chronicler of this event, with busts of Augustus and Trajan, together with the restoration of the Roman eagle and standards to the former, and the submission of the Dacian chiefs to the latter Emperor. A year after Cornwallis's retire-