General judiciously sought assistance from the men best able to supply it. It would have been unreasonable for Cornwallis or for the historian of that period to expect in Collectors suddenly placed over large districts in Bengal, a minute, accurate, and diversified acquaintance with tenures, village customs, rights, responsibilities, qualities of soils, and value of produce.
Still, it is not to be imagined that some of the older Company's servants were destitute of all agricultural and revenue knowledge. In Mr. Law and in Mr. Brooke, the father of Rájá Brooke of Borneo, the Governor-General found two highly qualified and experienced officers. The celebrated Analysis of the Finances of Bengal, by Mr. James Grant, contains an enormous mass of information, though the conclusions are often unsound and the deductions untrustworthy. But in Mr. Shore, afterwards Lord Teignmouth, the Governor- General found a subordinate and a colleague whose understanding of the revenue and rent system of Bengal and Behar was accurate, extensive, and profound. Shore's Minutes are copious, and one, of June 1789, extends to 562 paragraphs, and covers nearly ninety pages of close print. No one could have written it who had not completely mastered the past history and present condition of the Province.
Many of Shore's observations, deductions, and reasons are as just and unimpeachable at this hour as they were when written just a century ago. His remarks on native character and proclivities are
