This is in effect a tax upon the industry of the inhabitants:
since there is scarce a field of grain in the province, _I might say not
one_, which has not been preserved by the incessant labor of the
cultivator, by digging wells for their supply, or watering them from the
wells of masonry with which their country abounds, or from the
neighboring tanks, rivers, and nullahs. The people who imposed on
themselves this voluntary and extraordinary labor, and not unattended
with expense, did it on the expectation of reaping the profits of it;
and it is certain they would not have done it, if they had known that
their rulers, _from whom they were entitled to an indemnification_,
would take from them what they had so hardly earned. If the same
administration continues, and the country shall again labor under a want
of rain, _every field will be abandoned, the revenue fail, and thousands
perish through want of subsistence_: for who will labor for the _sole_
benefit of others, and to make himself the subject of exaction? These
practices are to be imputed to the Naib himself" (the administrator
forced by the said Warren Hastings on the present Rajah of Benares).
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