Page:History of Bengali Literature in the Nineteenth Century.djvu/71

INTRODUCTORY RETROSPECT 47 fact. The Company in the meantime had been extending its territories beyond the limits of Bengal. Hastings had boldly thrown aside the mask of dual government which Clive had thought so expedient to wear, But even Hastings, boldly ambitious of founding an Empire in India, could not carry out what he devised. The records of the period give us some glimpses of good intentions but there was little of actual performance. From Corn- wallis’s time however, we enter upon a brighter period. Cornwallis had greater freedom from interference or control, and his noble rank enabled him to demand _ his own terms from the wise-heads at Leadenhall Street. In spite of Thornton’s strictures, it cannot be denied that Cornwallis realised for the first time that the governed as well as the governors ought to be considered in all system of good government. It was he who gave a better moral tone to the civil service. It is not necessary here to trace step by step this gradual process of political recons- truction from Cornwallis’s time onward or enter into the details of every scheme of reform or every administrative measure. The general effect of these changes was that the Company was gradually being transformed from a trading corporation into a sovereign power. The idea that Bengal was an estate which yielded a large rental but involved none of the responsibilities of government had not, it is true, totally disappeared ; but none of the administrators since this time can be regarded as mere land-stewards of a private property. Narrow views still prevailed but we find a liberal-minded Governor-General like Wellesley laying stress upon the fact that the Factory had grown into an Empire and that the civil servants should not consider themselves as mere agents of a commercial concern but as responsible officers and adminis- _trators whose duty it was to understand the people.