of God, was desolated and
destroyed by this man.

Having now done with the province of Oude, we will proceed to the
province of Bengal, and consider what was the kind of government which
he exercised there, and in what manner it affected the people that were
subjected to it.

* * * * *

Bengal, like every part of India subject to the British empire, contains
(as I have already had occasion to mention) three distinct classes of
people, forming three distinct social systems. The first is the
Mahometans, which, about seven hundred years ago, obtained a footing in
that country, and ever since has in a great degree retained its
authority there. For the Mahometans had settled there long before the
foundation of the Bengal empire, which was overturned by Tamerlane: so
that this people, who are represented sometimes loosely as strangers,
are people of ancient and considerable settlement in that country; and
though, like Mahometan settlers in many other countries, they have
fallen into decay, yet, being continually recruited from various parts
of Tartary under the Mogul empire, and from various parts of Persia,
they continue to be the leading and most powerful people throughout the
peninsula; and so we found them there. These people, for the most part,
follow no trades or occupation, their religion and laws forbidding them
in the strictest manner to take usury or profit arising from money that
is in any way lent; they have, therefore, no other means for their
support but what arises from their adherence to and connection with the
Mogul government and its viceroys. They enjoy under them various
offices, civil and military,--various employments in the courts of law,
and stations in the army. Accordingly a prodigious number of people,
almost all of them persons of the most ancient and respectable families
in the country, are dependent upon and cling to the subahdars or
viceroys of the several provinces. They, therefore, who oppress,
plunder, and destroy the subahdars, oppress, rob, and destroy an immense
mass of people. It is true that a supervening government, established
upon another, always reduces a certain portion of the dependants upon
the latter to want. You must distress, by the very nature of the
circumstances of the case, a great number of people; but then it is your
business, when, by the superiority which you have acquired, however you
may have acquired it, (for I am not now considering