That about the year 1770 the provinces of Bengal and Bahar were visited with a dreadful famine and mortality, by which at least one third of the inhabitants perished.  That Warren Hastings, Esquire, has declared, “that he had always heard the loss of inhabitants reckoned at a third, and in many places near one half of the whole, and that he knew not by what means such a loss could be recruited in four or five years, and believed it impossible.”  That, nevertheless, the revenue was violently kept up to its former standard,—­that is, in the two years immediately preceding the appointment of the said Warren Hastings to the government of Fort William,—­in consequence of which the remaining two thirds of the inhabitants were obliged to pay for the lands now left without cultivation; and that from the year 1770 to the year 1775 the country had languished, and the evil continued enhancing every day.  That the said Warren Hastings, in a letter to the Secret Committee of the Court of Directors, dated 1st September, 1772, declared, “that the lands had suffered unheard-of depopulation by the famine and mortality of 1769; that the collections, violently kept up to their former standard, had added to the distress of the country, and threatened a general decay of the revenue, unless immediate remedies were applied to prevent it.”  That the said Warren Hastings has declared, “that, by intrusting the collections to the hereditary zemindars, the people would be treated with more tenderness, the rents more improved, and cultivation more likely to be encouraged; that they have a perpetual interest in the country; that their inheritance cannot be removed; that they are the proprietors; that the lands are their estates, and their inheritance; that, from a long continuance of the lands in their families, it is to be concluded they have riveted an authority in the district, acquired an ascendency over the minds of the ryots, and ingratiated their affections; that, from continuing the lands under the management of those who have a natural and perpetual interest in their prosperity, solid advantages might be expected to accrue; that the zemindar would be less liable to failure or deficiencies than the farmer, from the perpetual interest which the former hath in the country, and because his inheritance cannot be removed, and it would be improbable that he should risk the loss of it by eloping from his district, which is too frequently practised by a farmer when he is hard-pressed for the payment of his balances, and as frequently predetermined when he receives his farm.”  That, notwithstanding all the preceding declarations made by the said Warren Hastings of the loss of one third of the inhabitants and general decline of the country, he did, immediately after his appointment to the government, in the year 1772, make an arbitrary settlement of the revenues for five years at a higher rate than had ever been received before, and with a progressive and accumulating increase on each of the four last years of the said settlement.