भारतीय उद्योग धन्धों का सर्वनाश १ सिराजुद्दौला के समय में जङ्गलबाही के इलाके के पास पास से कपड़ा बुनने वालों के सात सौ से उपर कुटुम्बों ने इस तरह के अत्याचारों के कारण अपना पेशा और अपना देश दोनों को एक साथ छोड़ दिया x x x बंगाल में लॉर्ड क्लाइव के पिछले शासन में इस जोश में कि कम्पनी की कच्ची रेशम की आमदनी को बढ़ाया जाय, रेशम के लपेटने वालों को सताने में मानव समाज के पवित्रतम नियमों का घोर उल्लङ्घन किया गया । x x x" • “ To effect this, Int oncervable oppressions and hardahips have been practised towards the poor manufacturers and workmen of the country, who are, in fact, monopolised by the Company as so many slaves Various and innumerable are the methods of oppressing the poor weavers, which are daily practised by the Company's agents and gomashtas in the country , such as by tines, imprisonments, loggings, forcing bonds from them, etc, by which the number of weavers in the country has been greatly decreased The weaver, therefore, desirous of obtaining the just price of his labour frequently attempts to sell his cloth privately to others, This occasions the English Company's gomashta to set his peons over the weaver to watch him, and not intrequently to cut the piece out of the loom when nearly finished therefore every kind of oppression to manufacturers of all denominations throughout the whole country has daily increased, in so mucli that weavers, for daring to sell their goods, and dallals and pykars for having contributed to aud connived at such sales, have, by the Com- pany's agents, been frequently seized and imprisoned, confined in Irons, fined considerable suns of money, logged and deprived, in the most ignominious manner, of what they esteem most valuable, their castes It was not till the time of Serajuddowla that oppressions of the nature now described, from the employing of gomashtas, commenced with the increasing power of the English Company in Serajuddowla's time above seven hundred families of weavers, in the districts round Jungalbarry, at once abandoning their country and their professions on account of oppre- ssions of this nature, winders of raw silk were pursued with such rngour during Lord Clive's late Government in Bengal, from a real for increasing the Company's Investment of raw silk, that the most sacred laws
