1842.] Mineral Resources of India. 823 



the lending of money on such accounts, was intended as an intimation 

 of their opinion to the service. Mr. Heatly was now appointed to the 

 chiefship of Tirhoot and Purnea, which precluded all personal superin- 

 tendence on his part. I can trace nothing more at present of his sub- 

 sequent connexion with the mines. As the iron mines continued to be 

 worked long after, he may have let the coal mines to Mr. Farquhar. If 

 not, the well known economical disposition of the latter makes it 

 exceedingly probable, that he availed himself of the " singular advantage 

 of contiguity" to carry them on for his own benefit, without hindrance 

 on the part of the proprietor. 



Independent of the want of a regular market, another powerful cause 

 came into operation a little after, to repress the energies of private 

 speculators. 



I have said that Lord Cornwallis brought out a disposition system- 

 atically opposed to anything like colonial independence. Smarting un- 

 der the humiliation inflicted on him by the Americans, he undeviatingly 

 discouraged colonization. No plan which tended to make India a self- 

 dependent state met his approbation, and at no period of the empire 

 here do the records exhibit such a bareness of projects for developing 

 the resources of the country. Under such auspices, it was not to be 

 hoped that either the original proprietor or other individuals would at- 

 tempt the resuscitation of the mining project, and accordingly in a 

 short time the " young forgot it, and the old had died." Round its 

 history grew 



A daily darkening pall : it sank subdued, 

 In cold and unrepining quietude. 



A brilliant career was opened to Mr. Heatly whose social qualities, 

 and American-royalist connexions, had made him a personal favorite 

 with Cornwallis, and his time was fully engrossed by it. 



It has been said before, that Mr. Heatly was appointed Collector of 

 Ramgur and Palamow in 1775, a situation he held till December 1776. 

 During this period, he was employed in examining the resources of the 

 country with a view to its settlement. Warm with the affairs of his 

 Bheerbhoom coal mines at the very time, I think it is hardly possible 

 that he could have overlooked the mines of coal in Ramgur and 

 Palamow, although the troubles which demanded his vigorous efforts for 

 their settlement may have prevented him from devoting much atten- 



