IS APPOINTED TO CHANDRANAGAR. 69 proceeded to make against that decision. At the end c **| ? - of nearly four years, the result he had striven for s ^ occurred. The sentence of suspension was removed 1726. (September 30, 1730), and, as a compensation for the injustice he had suffered, he was appointed very soon after Intendant or Director of Chandranagar, a junior officer previously appointed by Lenoir being removed to make way for him. From the period of its first occupation in 1676, to the time when Dupleix assumed the Intendantship, Chan- dranagar had been regarded as a settlement of very minor importance. Starved by the parent Company in Paris, it had been unable, partly from want of means, and partly also from the want of enterprise on the part of the settlers, to carry on any large commercial opera- tions. The town, as we have seen,* had been fortified in 1688. Lodges, or commercial posts, dependent upon Chandranagar, had also been established at Kasim- bazar, Jugdia, Dhaka, Baleswar, and Patna. But their operations were of small extent. The long stint of money on the part of the Company of the Indies had had, besides, a most pernicious effect upon the several intendants and their subordinates. The stagnation at- tendant upon poverty had lasted so long that it had demoralised the community. The members of it had even come to regard stagnation as the natural order of things. It had thus deprived them of energy, of enter- prise, of all care for the future. The utmost extent of their efforts was limited to an endeavour to surmount a pressing emergency. That once accomplished, they relapsed into the far niente mode of life that had become habitual to them. The place itself bore evidence to the same effect. It had a ruined and forlorn appear- ance ; its silent walls were overgrown with jungle ; and whilst the swift stream of the Hugli carried past it
- Chapter I.
