Page:John Russell Colvin.djvu/46

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JOHN RUSSELL COLVIN

with the Committee, and condemned the Múnshi to dismissal. The Resident was transferred to an equivalent post elsewhere; his judgment merely, not his integrity, being in question. The officers whom he had so summarily dismissed from their employment were re-instated. Then, for reasons unconnected with the inquiry, the little group at Haidarábád was scattered. For the corpuscles which form the lifeblood of British society in India are always in a state of circulation. Were it otherwise, the vitality of the whole body would perish. They are continually being pumped from the centre to the extremities, from the extremities finding their way back to the centre. While Mr. Martin went north to Delhi, Mr. Colvin returned to Calcutta: Mr. Ravenshaw travelled westward to Nágpur.

Lord William Bentinck had succeeded Lord Amherst as Governor-General. The Nizám, under whom the Northern Provinces of Haidarábád had been made over to British administration, was dead. The accession of a new Nizám gave to the successor of Lord Amherst an occasion of abandoning a system towards which neither he nor his masters were favourably disposed. The post held by Mr. Colvin was abolished; and in July, 1830, he retraced his steps by Masulipatam to the capital, where he was to pass the next seven years of his life.

He was appointed an Assistant in the Revenue and Judicial Department first for a few months under Holt Mackenzie, praeclarum nomen in Indian Land