This proclamation he showed to Major Gregory, assuring him that no degree of distress or clamour among the people of the city or the cantonments should ever make him violate the pledge therein given to the corn-dealers; and that he was prepared to risk his situation and reputation as a public officer upon the result.  After issuing this proclamation about noon, he had his police establishments augmented, and so placed and employed as to give to the people entire confidence in the assurances conveyed in it.  The grain-dealers, no longer apprehensive of danger, opened their pits of grain, and sent off all their available means to bring in more.  In the morning the bazaars were all supplied, and every man who had money could buy as much as he pleased.  The troops got as much as they required from the city.  Major Gregory was astonished and delighted.  The colonel, a fine old soldier from the banks of the Indus, who had commanded a corps of horse under the former government, came to the magistrate in amazement; every shop had become full of grain as if by supernatural agency.

’Kale admi ki akl kahan talak chalegi?’ said he.  ’How little could a black man’s wisdom serve him in such an emergency?’

There was little wisdom in all this; but there was a firm reliance upon the truth of the general principle which should guide all public officers on such occasions.  The magistrate judged that there were a great many pits of grain in the town known only to their own proprietors, who were afraid to open them, or get more grain, while there was a chance of the civil authorities yielding to the clamours of the people and the anxiety of the officers commanding the troops; and that he had only to remove these fears, by offering a solemn pledge, and manifesting the means and the will to abide by it, in order to induce the proprietors, not only to sell what they had, but to apply all their means to the collecting of more.  But it is a singular fact that almost all the officers of the cantonments thought the conduct of the magistrate in refusing to have the grain pits opened under such pressing circumstances extremely reprehensible.

Had he done so, he might have given the people of the city and the cantonments the supply at hand; but the injury done to the corn-dealers by so very unwise a measure would have recoiled upon the public, since every one would have been discouraged from exerting himself to renew the supply, and from laying up stores to meet similar necessities in future.  By acting as he did, he not only secured for the public the best exertions of all the existing corn-dealers of the place, but actually converted for the time a great many to that trade from other employments, or from idleness.  A great many families, who had never traded before, employed their means in bringing a supply of grain, and converted their dwellings into corn shops, induced by the high profits and assurance of protection.  During the time when he was most