200 



Government would simply establish an immigration 

 agency, and afford reasonable protection to their 

 interests. 



The results of this inaction on the part of the 

 Government of Bengal, were very lamentable. 

 Situated in a country in which it is notorious that 

 no important operation, if new, can be undertaken 

 with the remotest chance of success, without Go- 

 vernment supervision and support, the planters, thus 

 abandoned, were driven back on their own resources ; 

 and, reduced to the utmost straits to save their 

 property from ruin, they adopted such means of 

 aiding' themselves, as were within their reach. Plan- 

 tations were rapidly progressing. The labour of 

 the province was wholly inadequate to the increased 

 demand. Powerful companies, and those planters 

 who had capital sufficient, endeavoured to establish 

 independent agencies for immigration. But the 

 rules rendering all grants liable to confiscation by 

 the Government for thirty years, prohibited the 

 possibility of obtaining any advance of money on 

 the security of the cultivation, and the bulk of the 

 planters being men of small means and unequal to 

 operations on a large scale, they were compelled to 

 witness the plants, in which they had invested their 

 little all, choked with rank jungle, or their precious 

 leaves harden and spoil on the bushes before their 

 eyes. The cultivation, thus, was seriously checked ; 

 and a struggle arose for the labour that was avail- 

 able, The course pointed out by the Lieutenant- 



