‘The creatures of our government enrich themselves at the people’s expense, nay even their ruin.’20 As a result of such heartless methods of revenue collection, the famine initially made no impression on Company ledgers, as tax collections were, in the words of Warren Hastings, ‘violently kept up to their former standards’.21 In February 1771, the Council was able to tell the directors in London that ‘notwithstanding the great severity of the late famine, and the great reduction of people thereby, some increase [in revenue] has been made’.22
