Revenue annals, and then under his former friend of the Sadr Court, Mr. William Macnaghten. 'I owe my appointment to Macnaghten,' he wrote to his friend Ravenshaw. 'I have succeeded in my main object of securing, if fate enables me to retain it, a useful interval of leisure before being lost in the labour and detail of an executive appointment.' During 1831 Mr. Colvin remained an Assistant in the Judicial and Revenue Departments, of which the Deputy Secretary, his immediate superior, was Mr. James Thomason. Him Mr. Colvin was to see more of when in the Upper Provinces in 1838 and 1839, and eventually to succeed as Lieutenant-Governor.
In November, 1831, he found himself nominated for the second time to conduct an inquiry. This time it was not a Múnshi who was the culprit, but a body of Bengal peasantry. The story illustrates the many-sided life of India. It would be well if it illustrated no more. Unhappily it also exposes the carelessness of British officials; the venal character of the native police; the despair of the villager, in vain trying to obtain a hearing; his recklessness when he can get no redress; finally his violence, ending in his ruin. The episode has an interest of its own, because it is a plant of a growth which eventually overshadowed many a Mahommedan homestead in the adjoining province of Behar. Though this rod was rooted out, seeds of the same planting were carried to the mountains on our distant North-Western frontier, where they were to become a vigorous forest. Thence thirty-
