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of the fact that plantations in Assam were snperin- 

 tented and carried on, not by statesmen or rich mer- 

 chants princes well acquainted with the true prin- 

 ciples of commercial policy, and of great local 

 experience, but, for the most part, by young men 

 with very limited means, and employes often raw 

 and wholly new to the country, refused to take 

 any action whatever except on the suggestion o f 

 the planters which was nothing short of abandon- 

 ing the prerogatives of a Government, and shifting 

 its highest duties and responsibilities from their 

 ligitimate and proper resting place, to the shoulders 

 of a few tea planters. 



"It is manifest " wrote Sir John Peter Grant 

 late Lieutenant. Governor of Bengal on the 20th 

 January 1860 "that the great want is a suffi- 

 ciency of labor for the proper cultivation of land 

 already obtained for, and in part planted with Tea, 

 and for the proper gathering and manufacture 

 of the leaves. This is work in which the men, 

 women and grown, children of a whole family can 

 be employed; and it is therefore most favorable 

 for the importation of labor at a moderate charge, 

 and the fixing of a new laboring population in the 

 neigbourhood of the Tea plantations. It is also 

 found that the profit of Tea cultivation is such as 

 richly to repay an adequate expenditure in increa- 

 sing it. This state of things indicates the pro- 

 priety of high wages ; and the generally scanty 



