printed and sent to the Bengal office. I may here state what I have always avowed to personal friends, that I set no value whatever on the Nil Durpan, except as an ebullition of popular feeling on a subject which had for some time agitated the Native and English Public. I well knew that the Hindoos from time immemorial were in the habit of adopting the drama as an exponent of their feelings; but I never for one instant contemplated the application of the matters therein represented to any two particular planters, or to any persons as representatives of the whole class. The names of men and of places were not traceable to any one district; they were entirely fictitious; and the whole thing in my eyes, was a popular drama—and no more. Neither did I for a moment intend to express or to imply that the view of the indigo system taken by the Native author was a correct view of the general system as carried on by Englishmen in any part of Bengal. It seemed to me, as it has done to others who have read the work, that it contained exaggerated statements of the conduct not only of two fictitious individuals (Rose and Wood) but of their servants, of the class of mookhtiars or attornies who practise in our Courts, and of the English Magistrates who administer justice.
The strictures on the imaginary members of my own service were certainly, in some respects, as sharp as any directed against any other class of men. Consequently, remembering how little is known to the authorities and to Europeans generally of the under-currents of Nalive society; how constantly men of the greatest Indian experience, the widest benevolence, and the largest sympathies, had lamented their utter inability to penetrate the recesses of Native thought and feeling; how repeatedly Government itself had been blamed during and before the mutiny, for paying no heed to cheap publication from the Native press and indicative of popular feeling; I thought the work was one to which attention ought to be called, and to this opinion I must still adhere, however erroneous the mode of calling attention to the drama may have been. It was not that the Native auther uttered opinion which I accepted, or depicted scenes which I wished to be understood as of common occurrence; or that his view of Indigo planting was my view; but it was that he had his own thoughts and opinions on the system of Indigo planting, and that he had the boldness to avow these in
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