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.
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