ABSTRACT
On September 12, 1786, Lord Cornwallis had arrived in India with definite instructions to conclude a permanent settlement of Bengal and Behar. As a politician in England, Cornwallis had never risen to a position of eminence, and his reputation rested almost entirely on the political and military capacity shown by him in the American wars. A man of the highest integrity and loyalty, but possessed of no conspicuous originality, he had doubtless been selected for the post of Governor-General under the conviction that the orders, which he carried with him, would be executed punctiliously and successfully, and without criticism; but he accepted the post ‘much against his will and with grief of heart’. Shore, who was appointed a member of the Supreme Council on January 21, 1787, and remained as Cornwallis’s chief adviser until the end of December, 1789, had been a member of the Bengal administration since the year 1769. In Murshīdabād and Rājshāhi he acquired experience of district administration, and in 1775, at the early age of twenty-four, he was appointed a member of the Revenue Council at Calcutta, and soon afterwards became President of the Committee of Revenue. A calm and clear-headed administrator, he had gained experience of all the phases of administration since 1769; a man of great honesty and integrity, he had remained poor while his brethren in office had amassed wealth. Cornwallis differed from Shore on one important point only, the question of permanence, and, as will be seen, it was nothing but Cornwallis’s sense of discipline and his determination to, carry out the orders entrusted to him that induced him to override the experience of Shore.
