The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 08 (of 12)
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Title: The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 08 (of 12)
Author: Edmund Burke
Release date: April 13, 2006 [eBook #18161]
Language: English
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THE WORKS
OF
THE RIGHT HONOURABLE
EDMUND BURKE
IN TWELVE VOLUMES
VOLUME THE EIGHTH
[Illustration: Burke Coat of Arms.]
LONDON
JOHN C. NIMMO
14, KING WILLIAM STREET, STRAND, W.C.
MDCCCLXXXVII
CONTENTS OF VOL. VIII.
NINTH REPORT OF THE SELECT COMMITTEE OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS ON
THE AFFAIRS OF INDIA. JUNE 25, 1783.
OBSERVATIONS ON THE STATE OF THE COMPANY'S AFFAIRS IN INDIA 3
CONNECTION OF GREAT BRITAIN WITH INDIA 41
EFFECT OF THE REVENUE INVESTMENT ON THE COMPANY 56
INTERNAL TRADE OF BENGAL 75
SILK 83
RAW SILK 88
CLOTHS, OR PIECE-GOODS 99
OPIUM 116
SALT 142
SALTPETRE 170
BRITISH GOVERNMENT IN INDIA 173
ELEVENTH REPORT OF THE SELECT COMMITTEE OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS ON
THE AFFAIRS OF INDIA. WITH EXTRACTS FROM THE APPENDIX.
NOVEMBER 18, 1783 217
ARTICLES OF CHARGE OF HIGH CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS AGAINST WARREN
HASTINGS, ESQUIRE, LATE GOVERNOR-GENERAL OF BENGAL: PRESENTED TO
THE HOUSE OF COMMONS IN APRIL AND MAY, 1786.--ARTICLES I.-VI.
I. ROHILLA WAR 307
II. SHAH ALLUM 319
III. BENARES
PART I. RIGHTS AND TITLES OF THE RAJAH OF BENARES 327
PART II. DESIGNS OF MR. HASTINGS TO RUIN THE RAJAH OF
BENARES 339
PART III. EXPULSION OF THE RAJAH OF BENARES 354
PART IV. SECOND REVOLUTION IN BENARES 380
PART V. THIRD REVOLUTION IN BENARES 386
IV. PRINCESSES OF OUDE 397
V. REVOLUTIONS IN FURRUCKABAD 467
VI. DESTRUCTION OF THE RAJAH OF SAHLONE 484
NINTH REPORT
OF THE
SELECT COMMITTEE OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS
ON
THE AFFAIRS OF INDIA.
June 25, 1783.
NINTH REPORT
From the SELECT COMMITTEE [of the House of Commons] appointed
to take into consideration the state of the administration of
justice in the provinces of Bengal, Bahar, and Orissa, and to
report the same, as it shall appear to them, to the House,
with their observations thereupon; and who were instructed to
consider how the British possessions in the East Indies may
be held and governed with the greatest security and advantage
to this country, and by what means the happiness of the
native inhabitants may be best promoted.
I.--OBSERVATIONS ON THE STATE OF THE COMPANY'S AFFAIRS IN INDIA.
In order to enable the House to adopt the most proper means for
regulating the British government in India, and for promoting the
happiness of the natives who live under its authority or influence, your
Committee hold it expedient to collect into distinct points of view the
circumstances by which that government appears to them to be most
essentially disordered, and to explain fully the principles of policy
and the course of conduct by which the natives of all ranks and orders
have been reduced to their present state of depression and misery.
Your Committee have endeavored to perform this task in plain and popular
language, knowing that nothing has alienated the House from inquiries
absolutely necessary for the performance of one of the most essential
of all its duties so much as the technical language of the Company's
records, as the Indian names of persons, of offices, of the tenure and
qualities of estates, and of all the varied branches of their intricate
revenue. This language is, indeed, of necessary use in the executive
departments of the Company's affairs; but it is not necessary to
Parliament. A language so foreign from all the ideas and habits of the
far greater part of the members of this House has a tendency to disgust
them with all sorts of inquiry concerning this subject. They are
fatigued into such a despair of ever obtaining a competent knowledge of
the transactions in India, that they are easily persuaded to remand them
back to that obscurity, mystery, and intrigue out of which they have
been forced upon public notice by the calamities arising from their
extreme mismanagement. This mismanagement has itself, as your Committee
conceive, in a great measure arisen from dark cabals, and secret
suggestions to persons in power, without a regular public inquiry into
the good or evil tendency of any measure, or into the merit or demerit
of any person intrusted with the Company's concerns.
[Sidenote: Present laws relating to the East India Company, and internal
and external policy.]
The plan adopted by your Committee is, first, to consider the law
regulating the East India Company, as it now stands,--and, secondly, to
inquire into the circumstances of the two great links of connection by
which the territorial possessions in India are united to this kingdom,
namely, the Company's commerce, and the government exercised under the
charter and under acts of Parliament. The last [first] of these objects,
the commerce, is taken in two points of view: the _external_, or the
direct trade between India and Europe, and the _internal_, that is to
say, the trade of Bengal, in all the articles of produce and manufacture
which furnish the Company's investment.
The government is considered by your Committee under the like
descriptions of internal and external. The internal regards the
communication between the Court of Directors and their servants in
India, the management of the revenue, the expenditure of public money,
the civil administration, the administration of justice, and the state
of the army. The external regards, first, the conduct and maxims of the
Company's government with respect to the native princes and people
dependent on the British authority,--and, next, the proceedings with
regard to those native powers which are wholly independent of the
Company. But your Committee's observations on the last division extend
to those matters only which are not comprehended in the Report of the
Committee of Secrecy. Under these heads, your Committee refer to the
most leading particulars of abuse which prevail in the administration of
India,--deviating only from this order where the abuses are of a
complicated nature, and where one cannot be well considered
independently of several others.
[Sidenote: Second attempt made by Parliament for a reformation.]
Your Committee observe, that this is the second attempt made by
Parliament for the reformation of abuses in the Company's government. It
appears, therefore, to them a necessary preliminary to this second
undertaking, _to consider the causes which, in their opinion_, have
produced the failure of the first,--that the defects of the original
plan may be supplied, its errors corrected, and such useful regulations
as were then adopted may be further explained, enlarged, and enforced.
[Sidenote: Proceedings of session 1773.]
The first design of this kind was formed in the session of the year
1773. In that year, Parliament, taking up the consideration of the
affairs of India, through two of its committees collected a very great
body of details concerning the interior economy of the Company's
possessions, and concerning many particulars of abuse which prevailed at
the time when those committees made their ample and instructive reports.
But it does not appear that the body of regulations enacted in that
year, that is, in the East India Act of the thirteenth of his Majesty's
reign, were altogether grounded on that information, but were adopted
rather on probable speculations and general ideas of good policy and
good government. New establishments, civil and judicial, were therefore
formed at a very great expense, and with much complexity of
constitution. Checks and counter-checks of all kinds were contrived in
the execution, as well as in the formation of this system, in which all
the existing authorities of this kingdom had a share: for Parliament
appointed the members of the presiding part of the new establishment,
the Crown appointed the judicial, and the Company preserved the
nomination of the other officers. So that, if the act has not fully
answered its purposes, the failure cannot be attributed to any want of
officers of every description, or to the deficiency of any mode of
patronage in their appointment. The cause must be sought elsewhere.
[Sidenote: Powers and objects of act of 1773, and the effects thereof.]
The act had in its view (independently of several detached regulations)
five fundamental objects.
1st. The reformation of the Court of Proprietors of the East India
Company.
2ndly. A new model of the Court of Directors, and an enforcement of
their authority over the servants abroad.
3rdly. The establishment of a court of justice capable of protecting the
natives from the oppressions of British subjects.
4thly. The establishment of a general council, to be seated in Bengal,
whose authority should, in many particulars, extend over all the British
settlements in India.
5thly. To furnish the ministers of the crown with constant information
concerning the whole of the Company's correspondence with India, in
order that they might be enabled to inspect the conduct of the Directors
and servants, and to watch over the execution of all parts of the act;
that they might be furnished with matter to lay before Parliament from
time to time, according as the state of things should render regulation
or animadversion necessary.
[Sidenote: Court of Proprietors.]
[Sidenote: New qualification.]
The first object of the policy of this act was to improve the
constitution of the Court of Proprietors. In this case, as in almost all
the rest, the remedy was not applied directly to the disease. The
complaint was, that factions in the Court of Proprietors had shown, in
several instances, a disposition to support the servants of the Company
against the just coercion and legal prosecution of the Directors.
Instead of applying a corrective to the distemper, a change was proposed
in the constitution. By this reform, it was presumed that an interest
would arise in the General Court more independent in itself, and more
connected with the commercial prosperity of the Company. Under the new
constitution, no proprietor, not possessed of a thousand pounds capital
stock, was permitted to vote in the General Court: before the act, five
hundred pounds was a sufficient qualification for one vote; and no value
gave more. But as the lower classes were disabled, the power was
increased in the higher: proprietors of three thousand pounds were
allowed two votes; those of six thousand were entitled to three; ten
thousand pounds was made the qualification for four. The votes were thus
regulated in the scale and gradation of property. On this scale, and on
some provisions to prevent occasional qualifications and splitting of
votes, the whole reformation rested.
[Sidenote: The ballot.]
[Sidenote: Indian interest.]
Several essential points, however, seem to have been omitted or
misunderstood. No regulation was made to abolish the pernicious custom
of voting by _ballot_, by means of which acts of the highest concern to
the Company and to the state might be done by individuals with perfect
impunity; and even the body itself might be subjected to a forfeiture of
all its privileges for defaults of persons who, so far from being under
control, could not be so much as known in any mode of legal cognizance.
Nothing was done or attempted to prevent the operation of the interest
of delinquent servants of the Company in the General Court, by which
they might even come to be their own judges, and, in effect, under
another description, to become the masters in that body which ought to
govern them. Nor was anything provided to secure the independency of the
proprietary body from the various exterior interests by which it might
be disturbed, and diverted from the conservation of that pecuniary
concern which the act laid down as the sole security for preventing a
collusion between the General Court and the powerful delinquent servants
in India. The whole of the regulations concerning the Court of
Proprietors relied upon two principles, which have often proved
fallacious: namely, that small numbers were a security against faction
and disorder; and that integrity of conduct would follow the greater
property. In no case could these principles be less depended upon than
in the affairs of the East India Company. However, by wholly cutting off
the lower, and adding to the power of the higher classes, it was
supposed that the higher would keep their money in that fund to make
profit,--that the vote would be a secondary consideration, and no more
than a guard to the property,--and that therefore any abuse which tended
to depreciate the value of their stock would be warmly resented by such
proprietors.
If the ill effects of every misdemeanor in the Company's servants were
to be _immediate_, and had a tendency to lower the value of the stock,
something might justly be expected from the pecuniary security taken by
the act. But from the then state of things, it was more than probable
that proceedings ruinous to the permanent interest of the Company might
commence in great lucrative advantages. Against this evil large
pecuniary interests were rather the reverse of a remedy. Accordingly,
the Company's servants have ever since covered over the worst
oppressions of the people under their government, and the most cruel and
wanton ravages of all the neighboring countries, by holding out, and for
a time actually realizing, additions of revenue to the territorial funds
of the Company, and great quantities of valuable goods to their
investment.
[Sidenote: Proprietors.]
But this consideration of mere income, whatever weight it might have,
could not be the first object of a proprietor, in a body so
circumstanced. The East India Company is not, like the Bank of England,
a mere moneyed society for the sole purpose of the preservation or
improvement of their capital; and therefore every attempt to regulate it
upon the same principles must inevitably fail. When it is considered
that a certain share in the stock gives a share in the government of so
vast an empire, with such a boundless patronage, civil, military,
marine, commercial, and financial, in every department of which such
fortunes have been made as could be made nowhere else, it is impossible
not to perceive that capitals far superior to any qualifications
appointed to proprietors, or even to Directors, would readily be laid
out for a participation in that power. The India proprietor, therefore,
will always be, in the first instance, a politician; and the bolder his
enterprise, and the more corrupt his views, the less will be his
consideration of the price to be paid for compassing them. The new
regulations did not reduce the number so low as not to leave the
assembly still liable to all the disorder which might be supposed to
arise from multitude. But if the principle had been well established and
well executed, a much greater inconveniency grew out of the reform than
that which had attended the old abuse: for if tumult and disorder be
lessened by reducing the number of proprietors, private cabal and
intrigue are facilitated at least in an equal degree; and it is cabal
and corruption, rather than disorder and confusion, that was most to be
dreaded in transacting the affairs of India. Whilst the votes of the
smaller proprietors continued, a door was left open for the public sense
to enter into that society: since that door has been closed, the
proprietary has become, even more than formerly, an aggregate of private
interests, which subsist at the expense of the collective body. At the
moment of this revolution in the proprietary, as it might naturally be
expected, those who had either no very particular interest in their vote
or but a petty object to pursue immediately disqualified; but those who
were deeply interested in the Company's patronage, those who were
concerned in the supply of ships and of the other innumerable objects
required for their immense establishments, those who were engaged in
contracts with the Treasury, Admiralty, and Ordnance, together with the
clerks in public offices, found means of securing qualifications at the
enlarged standard. All these composed a much greater proportion than
formerly they had done of the proprietary body.
Against the great, predominant, radical corruption of the Court of
Proprietors the raising the qualification proved no sort of remedy. The
return of the Company's servants into Europe poured in a constant supply
of proprietors, whose ability to purchase the highest qualifications for
themselves, their agents, and dependants could not be dubious. And this
latter description form a very considerable, and by far the most active
and efficient part of that body. To add to the votes, which is adding to
the power in proportion to the wealth, of men whose very offences were
supposed to consist in acts which lead to the acquisition of enormous
riches, appears by no means a well-considered method of checking
rapacity and oppression. In proportion as these interests prevailed, the
means of cabal, of concealment, and of corrupt confederacy became far
more easy than before. Accordingly, there was no fault with respect to
the Company's government over its servants, charged or chargeable on the
General Court as it originally stood, of which since the reform it has
not been notoriously guilty. It was not, therefore, a matter of surprise
to your Committee, that the General Court, so composed, has at length
grown to such a degree of contempt both of its duty and of the permanent
interest of the whole corporation as to put itself into open defiance of
the salutary admonitions of this House, given for the purpose of
asserting and enforcing the legal authority of their own body over their
own servants.
The failure in this part of the reform of 1773 is not stated by your
Committee as recommending a return to the ancient constitution of the
Company, which was nearly as far as the new from containing any
principle tending to the prevention or remedy of abuses,--but to point
out the probable failure of any future regulations which do not apply
directly to the grievance, but which may be taken up as experiments to
ascertain theories of the operation of councils formed of greater or
lesser numbers, or such as shall be composed of men of more or less
opulence, or of interests of newer or longer standing, or concerning the
distribution of power to various descriptions or professions of men, or
of the election to office by one authority rather than another.
[Sidenote: Court of Directors.]
The second object of the act was the Court of Directors. Under the
arrangement of the year 1773 that court appeared to have its authority
much strengthened. It was made less dependent than formerly upon its
constituents, the proprietary. The duration of the Directors in office
was rendered more permanent, and the tenure itself diversified by a
varied and intricate rotation. At the same time their authority was held
high over their servants of all descriptions; and the only rule
prescribed to the Council-General of Bengal, in the exercise of the
large and ill-defined powers given to them, was that they were to yield
obedience to the orders of the Court of Directors. As to the Court of
Directors itself, it was left with very little regulation. The custom of
ballot, infinitely the most mischievous in a body possessed of all the
ordinary executive powers, was still left; and your Committee have found
the ill effects of this practice in the course of their inquiries.
Nothing was done to oblige the Directors to attend to the promotion of
their servants according to their rank and merits. In judging of those
merits nothing was done to bind them to any observation of what appeared
on their records. Nothing was done to compel them to prosecution or
complaint where delinquency became visible. The act, indeed, prescribed
that no servant of the Company abroad should be eligible into the
direction until two years after his return to England. But as this
regulation rather presumes than provides for an inquiry into their
conduct, a very ordinary neglect in the Court of Directors might easily
defeat it, and a short remission might in this particular operate as a
total indemnity. In fact, however, the servants have of late seldom
attempted a seat in the direction,--an attempt which might possibly
rouse a dormant spirit of inquiry; but, satisfied with an interest in
the proprietary, they have, through that name, brought the direction
very much under their own control.
As to the general authority of the Court of Directors, there is reason
to apprehend that on the whole it was somewhat degraded by the act whose
professed purpose was to exalt it, and that the only effect of the
Parliamentary sanction to their orders has been, that along with those
orders the law of the land has been despised and trampled under foot.
The Directors were not suffered either to nominate or to remove those
whom they were empowered to instruct; from masters they were reduced to
the situation of complainants,--a situation the imbecility of which no
laws or regulations could wholly alter; and when the Directors were
afterwards restored in some degree to their ancient power, on the
expiration of the lease given to their principal servants, it became
impossible for them to recover any degree of their ancient respect, even
if they had not in the mean time been so modelled as to be entirely free
from all ambition of that sort.
From that period the orders of the Court of Directors became to be so
habitually despised by their servants abroad, and at length to be so
little regarded even by themselves, that this contempt of orders forms
almost the whole subject-matter of the voluminous reports of two of your
committees. If any doubt, however, remains concerning the cause of this
fatal decline of the authority of the Court of Directors, no doubt
whatsoever can remain of the fact itself, nor of the total failure of
one of the great leading regulations of the act of 1773.
[Sidenote: Supreme Court of Judicature.]
The third object was a new judicial arrangement, the chief purpose of
which was to form a strong and solid security for the natives against
the wrongs and oppressions of British subjects resident in Bengal. An
operose and expensive establishment of a Supreme Court was made, and
charged upon the revenues of the country. The charter of justice was by
the act left to the crown, as well as the appointment of the
magistrates. The defect in the institution seemed to be this,--that no
rule was laid down, either in the act or the charter, by which the court
was to judge. No descriptions of offenders or species of delinquency
were properly ascertained, according to the nature of the place, or to
the prevalent mode of abuse. Provision was made for the administration
of justice in the remotest part of Hindostan as if it were a province in
Great Britain. Your Committee have long had the constitution and conduct
of this court before them, and they have not yet been able to discover
very few instances (not one that appears to them of leading importance)
of relief given to the natives against the corruptions or oppressions of
British subjects in power,--though they do find one very strong and
marked instance of the judges having employed an unwarrantable extension
or application of the municipal law of England, to destroy a person of
the highest rank among those natives whom they were sent to protect. One
circumstance rendered the proceeding in this case fatal to all the good
purposes for which the court had been established. The sufferer (the
Rajah Nundcomar) appears, at the very time of this extraordinary
prosecution, a discoverer of some particulars of illicit gain then
charged upon Mr. Hastings, the Governor-General. Although in ordinary
cases, and in some lesser instances of grievance, it is very probable
that this court has done its duty, and has been, as every court must be,
of some service, yet one example of this kind must do more towards
deterring the natives from complaint, and consequently from the means
of redress, than many decisions favorable to them, in the ordinary
course of proceeding, can do for their encouragement and relief. So far
as your Committee has been able to discover, the court has been
generally terrible to the natives, and has distracted the government of
the Company without substantially reforming any one of its abuses.
This court, which in its constitution seems not to have had sufficiently
in view the necessities of the people for whose relief it was intended,
and was, or thought itself, bound in some instances to too strict an
adherence to the forms and rules of English practice, in others was
framed upon principles perhaps too remote from the constitution of
English tribunals. By the usual course of English practice, the far
greater part of the redress to be obtained against oppressions of power
is by process in the nature of civil actions. In these a trial by jury
is a necessary part, with regard to the finding the offence and to the
assessment of the damages. Both these were in the charter of justice
left entirely to the judges. It was presumed, and not wholly without
reason, that the British subjects were liable to fall into factions and
combinations, in order to support themselves in the abuses of an
authority of which every man might in his turn become a sharer. And with
regard to the natives, it was presumed (perhaps a little too hastily)
that they were not capable of sharing in the functions of jurors. But it
was not foreseen that the judges were also liable to be engaged in the
factions of the settlement,--and if they should ever happen to be so
engaged, that the native people were then without that remedy which
obviously lay in the chance that the court and jury, though both liable
to bias, might not easily unite in the same identical act of injustice.
Your Committee, on full inquiry, are of opinion _that the use of juries
is neither impracticable nor dangerous in Bengal_.
Your Committee refer to their report made in the year 1781, for the
manner in which this court, attempting to extend its jurisdiction, and
falling with extreme severity on the native magistrates, a violent
contest arose between the English judges and the English civil
authority. This authority, calling in the military arm, (by a most
dangerous example,) overpowered, and for a while suspended, the
functions of the court; but at length those functions, which were
suspended by the quarrel of the parties, were destroyed by their
reconciliation, and by the arrangements made in consequence of it. By
these the court was virtually annihilated; or if substantially it
exists, it is to be apprehended it exists only for purposes very
different from those of its institution.
The fourth object of the act of 1773 was the Council-General. This
institution was intended to produce uniformity, consistency, and the
effective coöperation of all the settlements in their common defence. By
the ancient constitution of the Company's foreign settlements, they were
each of them under the orders of a President or Chief, and a Council,
more or fewer, according to the discretion of the Company. Among those,
Parliament (probably on account of the largeness of the territorial
acquisitions, rather than the conveniency of the situation) chose Bengal
for the residence of the controlling power, and, dissolving the
Presidency, appointed a new establishment, upon a plan somewhat similar
to that which had prevailed before; but the number was smaller. This
establishment was composed of a Governor-General and four Counsellors,
all named in the act of Parliament. They were to hold their offices for
five years, after which term the patronage was to revert to the Court of
Directors. In the mean time such vacancies as should happen were to be
filled by that court, with the concurrence of the crown. The first
Governor-General and one of the Counsellors had been old servants of the
Company; the others were new men.
On this new arrangement the Courts of Proprietors and Directors
considered the details of commerce as not perfectly consistent with the
enlarged sphere of duty and the reduced number of the Council.
Therefore, to relieve them from this burden, they instituted a new
office, called the Board of Trade, for the subordinate management of
their commercial concerns, and appointed eleven of the senior servants
to fill the commission.
[Sidenote: Object of powers to Governor-General and Council.]
The powers given by the act to the new Governor-General and Council had
for their direct object the kingdom of Bengal and its dependencies.
Within that sphere (and it is not a small one) their authority extended
over all the Company's concerns of whatever description. In matters of
peace and war it seems to have been meant that the other Presidencies
should be subordinate to their board. But the law is loose and
defective, where it professes to restrain the subordinate Presidencies
from making war without the consent and approbation of the Supreme
Council. They are left free to act without it _in cases of imminent
necessity_, or _where they shall have received special orders from the
Company_. The first exception leaves it open to the subordinate to judge
of the necessity of measures which, when taken, bind or involve the
superior: the second refers a question of peace or war to two
jurisdictions, which may give different judgments. In both instances
cases in point have occurred.[1] With regard to their local
administration, their powers were exceedingly and dangerously loose and
undetermined. Their powers were not given directly, but in words of
reference, in which neither the objects related to nor the mode of the
relation were sufficiently expressed. Their legislative and executive
capacities were not so accurately drawn, and marked by such strong and
penal lines of distinction, as to keep these capacities separate. Where
legislative and merely executive powers were lodged in the same hands,
the legislative, which is the larger and the more ready for all
occasions, was constantly resorted to. The Governor-General and Council,
therefore, immediately gave constructions to their ill-defined authority
which rendered it perfectly despotic,--constructions which if they were
allowed, no action of theirs ought to be regarded as criminal.
Armed as they were with an authority in itself so ample, and by abuse so
capable of an unlimited extent, very few, and these very insufficient
correctives, were administered. Ample salaries were provided for them,
which indeed removed the necessity, but by no means the inducements to
corruption and oppression. Nor was any barrier whatsoever opposed on the
part of the natives against their injustice, except the Supreme Court
of Judicature, which never could be capable of controlling a government
with such powers, without becoming such a government itself.
There was, indeed, a prohibition against all concerns in trade to the
whole Council, and against all taking of presents by any in authority. A
right of prosecution in the King's Bench was also established; but it
was a right the exercise of which is difficult, and in many, and those
the most weighty cases, impracticable. No considerable facilities were
given to prosecution in Parliament; nothing was done to prevent
complaint from being far more dangerous to the sufferer than injustice
to the oppressor. No overt acts were fixed, upon which corruption should
be presumed in transactions of which secrecy and collusion formed the
very basis; no rules of evidence nor authentic mode of transmission were
settled in conformity to the unalterable circumstances of the country
and the people.
[Sidenote: Removal of servants.]
One provision, indeed, was made for restraining the servants, in itself
very wise and substantial: a delinquent once dismissed, could not be
restored, but by the votes of three fourths of the Directors and three
fourths of the proprietors: this was well aimed. But no method was
settled for bringing delinquents to the question of removal: and if they
should be brought to it, a door lay wide open for evasion of the law,
and for a return into the service, in defiance of its plain
intention,--that is, by resigning to avoid removal; by which measure
this provision of the act has proved as unoperative as all the rest. By
this management a mere majority may bring in the greater delinquent,
whilst the person removed for offences comparatively trivial may remain
excluded forever.
[Sidenote: Council-General]
The new Council nominated in the act was composed of two totally
discordant elements, which soon distinguished themselves into permanent
parties. One of the principal instructions which the three members of
the Council sent immediately from England, namely, General Clavering,
Colonel Monson, and Mr. Francis, carried out with them was, to "_cause
the strictest inquiry to be made into all oppressions and abuses_,"
among which _the practice of receiving presents from the natives_, at
that time generally charged upon men in power, was principally aimed at.
Presents to any considerable value were justly reputed by the
legislature, not as marks of attention and respect, but as bribes or
extortions, for which either the beneficial and gratuitous duties of
government were sold, or they were the price paid for acts of
partiality, or, finally, they were sums of money extorted from the
givers by the terrors of power. Against the system of presents,
therefore, the new commission was in general opinion particularly
pointed. In the commencement of reformation, at a period when a
rapacious conquest had overpowered and succeeded to a corrupt
government, an act of indemnity might have been thought advisable;
perhaps a new account ought to have been opened; all retrospect ought to
have been forbidden, at least to certain periods. If this had not been
thought advisable, none in the higher departments of a suspected and
decried government ought to have been kept in their posts, until an
examination had rendered their proceedings clear, or until length of
time had obliterated, by an even course of irreproachable conduct, the
errors which so naturally grow out of a new power. But the policy
adopted was different: it was to begin with _examples_. The cry against
the abuses was strong and vehement throughout the whole nation, and the
practice of presents was represented to be as general as it was
mischievous. In such a case, indeed in any case, it seemed not to be a
measure the most provident, without a great deal of previous inquiry, to
place two persons, who from their situation must be the most exposed to
such imputations, in the commission which was to inquire into their own
conduct,--much less to place one of them at the head of that commission,
and with a casting vote in case of an equality. The persons who could
not be liable to that charge were, indeed, three to two; but any
accidental difference of opinion, the death of any one of them or his
occasional absence or sickness, threw the whole power into the hands of
the other two, who were Mr. Hastings and Mr. Barwell, one the President,
and the other high in the Council of that establishment on which the
reform was to operate. Thus those who were liable to process as
delinquents were in effect set over the reformers; and that did actually
happen which might be expected to happen from so preposterous an
arrangement: a stop was soon put to all inquiries into the capital
abuses.
Nor was the great political end proposed in the formation of a
superintending Council over all the Presidencies better answered than
that of an inquiry into corruptions and abuses. The several Presidencies
have acted in a great degree upon their own separate authority; and as
little of unity, concert, or regular system has appeared in their
conduct as was ever known before this institution. India is, indeed, so
vast a country, and the settlements are so divided, that their
intercourse with each other is liable to as many delays and difficulties
as the intercourse between distant and separate states. But one evil may
possibly have arisen from an attempt to produce an union, which, though
undoubtedly to be aimed at, is opposed in some degree by the unalterable
nature of their situation,--that it has taught the servants rather to
look to a superior among themselves than to their common superiors. This
evil, growing out of the abuse of the principle of subordination, can
only be corrected by a very strict enforcement of authority over that
part of the chain of dependence which is next to the original power.
[Sidenote: Powers given to the ministers of the crown.]
That which your Committee considers as the fifth and last of the capital
objects of the act, and as the binding regulation of the whole, is the
introduction (then for the first time) of the ministers of the crown
into the affairs of the Company. The state claiming a concern and share
of property in the Company's profits, the servants of the crown were
presumed the more likely to preserve with a scrupulous attention the
sources of the great revenues which they were to administer, and for the
rise and fall of which they were to render an account.
The interference of government was introduced by this act in two ways:
one by a control, in effect by a share, in the appointment to vacancies
in the Supreme Council. The act provided that his Majesty's approbation
should be had to the persons named to that duty. Partaking thus in the
patronage of the Company, administration was bound to an attention to
the characters and capacities of the persons employed in that high
trust. The other part of their interference was by way of inspection. By
this right of inspection, everything in the Company's correspondence
from India, which related to the civil or military affairs and
government of the Company, was directed by the act to be within fourteen
days after the receipt laid before the Secretary of State, and
everything that related to the management of the revenues was to be laid
before the Commissioners of the Treasury. In fact, both description of
these papers have been generally communicated to that board.
[Sidenote: Defects in the plan.]
It appears to your Committee that there were great and material defects
in both parts of the plan. With regard to the approbation of persons
nominated to the Supreme Council by the Court of Directors, no
sufficient means were provided for carrying to his Majesty, along with
the nomination, the particulars in the conduct of those who had been in
the service before, which might render them proper objects of
approbation or rejection. The India House possesses an office of record
capable of furnishing, in almost all cases, materials for judging on the
behavior of the servants in their progress from the lowest to the
highest stations; and the whole discipline of the service, civil and
military, must depend upon an examination of these records inseparably
attending every application for an appointment to the highest stations.
But in the present state of the nomination the ministers of the crown
are not furnished with the proper means of exercising the power of
control intended by the law, even if they were scrupulously attentive to
the use of it. There are modes of proceeding favorable to neglect.
Others excite inquiry and stimulate to vigilance.
[Sidenote: Proposition to remedy them.]
Your Committee, therefore, are of opinion, that for the future
prevention of cabal, and of private and partial representation, whether
above or below, that, whenever any person who has been in the service
shall be recommended to the King's ministers to fill a vacancy in the
Council-General, the Secretary of the Court of Directors shall be
ordered to make a strict search into the records of the Company, and
shall annex to the recommendation the reasons of the Court of Directors
for their choice, together with a faithful copy of whatever shall be
found (if anything can be found) relative to his character and
conduct,--as also an account of his standing in the Company's service,
the time of his abode in India, the reasons for his return, and the
stations, whether civil or military, in which he has been successively
placed.
With this account ought to be transmitted the names of those who were
proposed as candidates for the same office, with the correspondent
particulars relative to their conduct and situation: for not only the
separate, but the comparative merit, probably would, and certainly
ought, to have great influence in the approbation or rejection of the
party presented to the ministers of the crown. These papers should be
laid before the Commissioners of the Treasury and one of the Secretaries
of State, and entered in books to be kept in the Treasury and the
Secretary's office.
[Sidenote: Appointment of Counsellors, &c.]
[Sidenote: Macpherson's appointment.]
[Sidenote: Stables's.]
These precautions, in case of the nomination of any who have served the
Company, appear to be necessary from the improper nomination and
approbation of Mr. John Macpherson, notwithstanding the objections
which stood against him on the Company's records. The choice of Mr. John
Stables, from an inferior military to the highest civil capacity, was by
no means proper, nor an encouraging example to either service. His
conduct, indeed, in the subaltern military situation, had received, and
seems to have deserved, commendation; but no sufficient ground was
furnished for confounding the lines and gradations of service. This
measure was, however, far less exceptionable than the former; because an
irregular choice of a less competent person, and the preference given to
proved delinquency in prejudice to uncensured service, are very
different things. But even this latter appointment would in all
likelihood have been avoided, if rules of promotion had been
established. If such rules were settled, candidates qualified from
ability, knowledge, and service would not be discouraged by finding that
everything was open to every man, and that favor alone stood in the
place of civil or military experience. The elevation from the lowest
stations unfaithfully and negligently filled to the highest trusts, the
total inattention to rank and seniority, and, much more, the combination
of this neglect of rank with a confusion (unaccompanied with strong and
evident reasons) of the lines of service, cannot operate as useful
examples on those who serve the public in India. These servants,
beholding men who have been condemned for improper behavior to the
Company in inferior civil stations elevated above them, or (what is less
blamable, but still mischievous) persons without any distinguished civil
talents taken from the subordinate situations of another line to their
prejudice, will despair by any good behavior of ascending to the
dignities of their own: they will be led to improve, to the utmost
advantage of their fortune, the lower stages of power, and will endeavor
to make up in lucre what they can never hope to acquire in station.
The temporary appointment by Parliament of the Supreme Council of India
arose from an opinion that the Company, at that time at least, was not
in a condition or not disposed to a proper exercise of the privileges
which they held under their charter. It therefore behoved the Directors
to be particularly attentive to their choice of Counsellors, on the
expiration of the period during which their patronage had been
suspended. The duties of the Supreme Council had been reputed of so
arduous a nature as to require even a legislative interposition. They
were called upon, by all possible care and impartiality, to justify
Parliament at least as fully in the restoration of their privileges as
the circumstances of the time had done in their suspension.
But interests have lately prevailed in the Court of Directors, which, by
the violation of every rule, seemed to be resolved on the destruction of
those privileges of which they were the natural guardians. Every new
power given has been made the source of a new abuse; and the acts of
Parliament themselves, which provide but imperfectly for the prevention
of the mischief, have, it is to be feared, made provisions (contrary,
without doubt, to the intention of the legislature) which operate
against the possibility of any cure in the ordinary course.
In the original institution of the Supreme Council, reasons may have
existed against rendering the tenure of the Counsellors in their office
precarious. A plan of reform might have required the permanence of the
persons who were just appointed by Parliament to execute it. But the act
of 1780 gave a duration coexistent with the statute itself to a Council
not appointed by act of Parliament, nor chosen for any temporary or
special purpose; by which means the servants in the highest situation,
let their conduct be never so grossly criminal, cannot be removed,
unless the Court of Directors and ministers of the crown can be found to
concur in the same opinion of it. The prevalence of the Indian factions
in the Court of Directors and Court of Proprietors, and sometimes in the
state itself, renders this agreement extremely difficult: if the
principal members of the Direction should be in a conspiracy with any
principal servant under censure, it will be impracticable; because the
first act must originate there. The reduced state of the authority of
this kingdom in Bengal may be traced in a great measure to that very
natural source of independence. In many cases the instant removal of an
offender from his power of doing mischief is the only mode of preventing
the utter and perhaps irretrievable ruin of public affairs. In such a
case the process ought to be simple, and the power absolute in one or in
either hand separately. By contriving the balance of interests formed in
the act, notorious offence, gross error, or palpable insufficiency have
many chances of retaining and abusing authority, whilst the variety of
representations, hearings, and conferences, and possibly the mere
jealousy and competition between rival powers, may prevent any decision,
and at length give time and means for settlements and compromises among
parties, made at the expense of justice and true policy. But this act of
1780, not properly distinguishing judicial process from executive
arrangements, requires in effect nearly the same degree of solemnity,
delay, and detail for removing a political inconvenience which attends a
criminal proceeding for the punishment of offences. It goes further, and
gives the same tenure to all who shall succeed to vacancies which was
given to those whom the act found in office.
[Sidenote: Provisional appointment for vacancies.]
Another regulation was made in the act, which has a tendency to render
the control of delinquency or the removal of incapacity in the
Council-General extremely difficult, as well as to introduce many other
abuses into the original appointment of Counsellors. The inconveniences
of a vacancy in that important office, at a great distance from the
authority that is to fill it, were visible; but your Committee have
doubts whether they balance the mischief which may arise from the power
given in this act, of a provisional appointment to vacancies, not on the
event, but on foresight. This mode of providing for the succession has a
tendency to promote cabal, and to prevent inquiry into the
qualifications of the persons to be appointed. An attempt has been
actually made, in consequence of this power, in a very marked manner, to
confound the whole order and discipline of the Company's service. Means
are furnished thereby for perpetuating the powers of some given Court of
Directors. They may forestall the patronage of their successors, on whom
they entail a line of Supreme Counsellors and Governors-General. And if
the exercise of this power should happen in its outset to fall into bad
hands, the ordinary chances for mending an ill choice upon death or
resignation are cut off.
In these provisional arrangements it is to be considered that the
appointment is not in consequence of any marked event which calls
strongly on the attention of the public, but is made at the discretion
of those who lead in the Court of Directors, and may therefore be
brought forward at times the most favorable to the views of partiality
and corruption. Candidates have not, therefore, the notice that may be
necessary for their claims; and as the possession of the office to which
the survivors are to succeed seems remote, all inquiry into the
qualifications and character of those who are to fill it will naturally
be dull and languid.
Your Committee are not also without a grounded apprehension of the ill
effect on any existing Council-General of all strong marks of influence
and favor which appear in the subordinates of Bengal. This previous
designation to a great and arduous trust, (the greatest that can be
reposed in subjects,) when made out of any regular course of succession,
marks that degree of countenance and support at home which may
overshadow the existing government. That government may thereby be
disturbed by factions, and led to corrupt and dangerous compliances. At
best, when these Counsellors elect are engaged in no fixed employment,
and have no lawful intermediate emolument, the natural impatience for
their situations may bring on a traffic for resignations between them
and the persons in possession, very unfavorable to the interests of the
public and to the duty of their situations.
Since the act two persons have been nominated to the ministers of the
crown by the Court of Directors for this succession. Neither has yet
been approved. But by the description of the persons a judgment may be
formed of the principles on which this power is likely to be exercised.
[Sidenote: Stuart and Sulivan's appointment to succeed to vacancies.]
Your Committee find, that, in consequence of the above-mentioned act,
the Honorable Charles Stuart and Mr. Sulivan were appointed to succeed
to the first vacancies in the Supreme Council. Mr. Stuart's first
appointment in the Company's service was in the year 1761. He returned
to England in 1775, and was permitted to go back to India in 1780. In
August, 1781, he was nominated by the Court of Directors (Mr. Sulivan
and Sir William James were Chairman and Deputy-Chairman) to succeed to
the first vacancy in the Supreme Council, and on the 19th of September
following his Majesty's approval of such nomination was requested.
[Sidenote: Mr. Stuart's situation at the time of his appointment.]
In the nomination of Mr. Stuart, the consideration of rank in the
service was not neglected; but if the Court of Directors had thought fit
to examine their records, they would have found matter at least strongly
urging them to a suspension of this appointment, until the charges
against Mr. Stuart should be fully cleared up. That matter remained (as
it still remains) unexplained from the month of May, 1775, where, on the
Bengal Revenue Consultations of the 12th of that month, peculations to a
large amount are charged upon oath against Mr. Stuart under the
following title: "_The Particulars of the Money unjustly taken by Mr.
Stuart, during the Time he was at Burdwan._" The sum charged against him
in this account is 2,17,684 Sicca rupees (that is, 25,253_l._ sterling);
besides which there is another account with the following title: "_The
Particulars of the Money unjustly taken by Callypersaud Bose, Banian to
the Honorable Charles Stuart, Esquire, at Burdwan, and amounting to
Sicca Rupees 1,01,675_" (that is, 11,785_l._),--a large sum to be
received by a person in that subordinate situation.
The minuteness with which these accounts appear to have been kept, and
the precision with which the date of each particular, sometimes of very
small sums, is stated, give them the appearance of authenticity, as far
as it can be conveyed on the face or in the construction of such
accounts, and, if they were forgeries, laid them open to an easy
detection. But no detection is easy, when no inquiry is made. It appears
an offence of the highest order in the Directors concerned in this
business, when, not satisfied with leaving such charges so long
unexamined, they should venture to present to the king's servants the
object of them for the highest trust which they have to bestow. If Mr.
Stuart was really guilty, the possession of this post must furnish him
not only with the means of renewing the former evil practices charged
upon him, and of executing them upon a still larger scale, but of
oppressing those unhappy persons who, under the supposed protection of
the faith of the Company, had appeared to give evidence concerning his
former misdemeanors.
This attempt in the Directors was the more surprising, when it is
considered that two committees of this House were at that very time
sitting upon an inquiry that related directly to their conduct, and that
of their servants in India.
[Sidenote: Mr. Sulivan's situation at the time of his appointment.]
It was in the same spirit of defiance of Parliament, that at the same
time they nominated Mr. Sulivan, son to the then Chairman of the Court
of Directors, to the succession to the same high trust in India. On
these appointments, your Committee thought it proper to make those
inquiries which the Court of Directors thought proper to omit. They
first conceived it fitting to inquire what rank Mr. Sulivan bore in the
service; and they thought it not unnecessary here to state the
gradations in the service, according to the established usage of the
Company.
The Company's civil servants generally go to India as _writers_, in
which capacity they serve the Company _five years_. The next step, in
point of rank, is to be a _factor_, and next to that a _junior
merchant_; in each of which capacities they serve the Company _three
years_. They then rise to the rank of _senior merchant_, in which
situation they remain till called by rotation to the _Board of Trade_.
Until the passing of the Regulation Act, in 1773, seniority entitled
them to succeed to the _Council_, and finally gave them pretensions to
the _government of the Presidency_.
The above gradation of the service, your Committee conceive, ought never
to be superseded by the Court of Directors, without evident reason, in
persons or circumstances, to justify the breach of an ancient order. The
names, whether taken from civil or commercial gradation, are of no
moment. The order itself is wisely established, and tends to provide a
natural guard against partiality, precipitancy, and corruption in
patronage. It affords means and opportunities for an examination into
character; and among the servants it secures a strong motive to preserve
a fair reputation. Your Committee find that no respect whatsoever was
paid to this gradation in the instance of Mr. Sulivan, nor is there any
reason assigned for departing from it. They do not find that Mr. Sulivan
had ever served the Company in any one of the above capacities, but was,
in the year 1777, abruptly brought into the service, and sent to Madras
to succeed as Persian Translator and Secretary to the Council.
Your Committee have found a letter from Mr. Sulivan to George Wombwell
and William Devaynes, Esquires, Chairman and Deputy-Chairman of the
Court of Directors, stating that he trusted _his applications_ would
have a place in their deliberations when Madras affairs were taken up.
Of what nature those applications were your Committee cannot discover,
as no traces of them appear on the Company's records,--nor whether any
proofs of his ability, even as Persian Translator, which might entitle
him to a preference to the many servants in India whose study and
opportunities afforded them the means of becoming perfect masters of
that language.
On the above letter your Committee find that the Committee of
Correspondence proceeded; and on their recommendation the Court of
Directors unanimously approved of Mr. Sulivan to be appointed to succeed
to the posts of Secretary and Persian Translator.
[Sidenote: Mr. Sulivan's succession of offices.]
Conformably to the orders of the court, Mr. Sulivan succeeded to those
posts; and the President and Council acquainted the Court of Directors
that they had been obeyed. About five months after, it appears that Mr.
Sulivan thought fit to resign the office of Persian Translator, to which
he had been appointed by the Directors. In April, 1780, Mr. Sulivan is
commended for his _great diligence as Secretary_; in August following
he obtains leave to accompany Mrs. Sulivan to Bengal, whence she is to
proceed to Europe on account of her health; and he is charged with a
commission from the President and Council of Fort St. George to obtain
for that settlement supplies of grain, troops, and money, from the
Governor-General and Council of Bengal. In October the Governor-General
requests permission of the Council there to employ Mr. Sulivan as his
_Assistant_, for that he had experienced (between his arrival in Bengal
and that time) the abilities of Mr. Sulivan, and made choice of him as
_completely qualified for that trust_; also requests the board to
appoint him Judge-Advocate-General, and likewise to apply to the
Presidency of Madras for him to remain in Bengal without prejudice to
his rank on their establishment: which several requests the board at
Madras readily complied with, notwithstanding their natural sensibility
to the loss of a Secretary of such ability and diligence as they had
described Mr. Sulivan to be.
On the 5th of December following, the President and Council received a
letter from Bengal, requesting that Mr. Sulivan might be allowed to keep
his rank. This request brought on some discussion. A Mr. Freeman, it
seems, who had acted under Mr. Sulivan as Sub-Secretary whilst his
principal obtained so much praise for his diligence, addressed the board
on the same day, and observed, "that, since Mr. Sulivan's arrival, _he_
[Mr. Freeman] had, _without intermission_, done almost the _whole_ of
the duty allotted to the post of Secretary, _which it was notorious Mr.
Sulivan had paid but little attention to_; and neither his inclination
or duty led him to act any longer as Mr. Sulivan's deputy."
Here your Committee cannot avoid remarking the direct contradiction
which this address of Mr. Freeman's gives to the letter from the
President and Council to the Court of Directors in April, 1780, wherein
Mr. Sulivan is praised for his "diligence and attention in his office of
Secretary."
The President and Council do not show any displeasure at Mr. Freeman's
representation, (so contrary to their own,) the truth of which they thus
tacitly admit, but agree to write to the Governor-General and Council,
"that it could not be supposed that they could carry on the public
business for any length of time without _the services of a Secretary_
and Clerk of Appeals, two offices that required personal attendance, and
which would be a general injury to the servants on their establishment,
and in particular to the person who acted in those capacities, as they
learnt that Mr. Sulivan had been appointed Judge-Advocate-General in
Bengal,--and to request the Governor-General and Council to inform Mr.
Sulivan of their sentiments, and to desire him to inform them whether he
meant to return to his station or to remain in Bengal."
On the 5th December, as a mark of their approbation of Mr. Freeman, who
had so plainly contradicted their opinion of Mr. Sulivan, the President
and Council agree to appoint him to act as Secretary and Clerk of
Appeals, till Mr. Sulivan's answer should arrive, with the emoluments,
and to confirm him therein, if Mr. Sulivan should remain in Bengal.
On the 14th February, 1781, the President and Council received a letter
from Bengal in reply, and stating their request that Mr. Sulivan might
reserve the right of returning to his original situation on the Madras
establishment, if the Court of Directors should disapprove of his being
transferred to Bengal. To this request the board at Madras declare they
have no objection: and here the matter rests; the Court of Directors not
having given any tokens of approbation or disapprobation of the
transaction.
Such is the history of Mr. Sulivan's service from the time of his
appointment; such were the qualifications, and such the proofs of
assiduity and diligence given by him in holding so many incompatible
offices, (as well as being engaged in other dealings, which will appear
in their place,) when, after three years' desultory residence in India,
he was thought worthy to be nominated to the succession to the Supreme
Council. No proof whatsoever of distinguished capacity in any line
preceded his original appointment to the service: so that the whole of
his fitness for the Supreme Council rested upon his conduct and
character since his appointment as Persian Translator.
Your Committee find that his Majesty has not yet given his approbation
to the nomination, made by the Court of Directors on the 30th of August,
1781, of Messrs. Stuart and Sulivan to succeed to the Supreme Council on
the first vacancies, though the Court applied for the royal approbation
so long ago as the 19th of September, 1781; and in these instances the
king's ministers performed their duty, in withholding their countenance
from a proceeding so exceptionable and of so dangerous an example.
Your Committee, from a full view of the situation and duties of the
Court of Directors, are of opinion that effectual means ought to be
taken for regulating that court in such a manner as to prevent either
rivalship with or subserviency to their servants. It might, therefore,
be proper for the House to consider whether it is fit that those who
are, or have been within some given time, Directors of the Company,
should be capable of an appointment to any offices in India. Directors
can never properly govern those for whose employments they are or may be
themselves candidates; they can neither protect nor coerce them with due
impartiality or due authority.
If such rules as are stated by your Committee under this head were
observed in the regular service at home and abroad, the necessity of
superseding the regular service by strangers would be more rare; and
whenever the servants were so superseded, those who put forward other
candidates would be obliged to produce a strong plea of merit and
ability, which, in the judgment of mankind, ought to overpower
pretensions so authentically established, and so rigorously guarded from
abuse.
[Sidenote: Deficiency of powers to ministers of government.]
The second object, in this part of the plan, of the act of 1773, namely,
that of inspection by the ministers of the crown, appears not to have
been provided for, so as to draw the timely and productive attention of
the state on the grievances of the people of India, and on the abuses of
its government. By the Regulating Act, the ministers were enabled to
inspect one part of the correspondence, that which was received in
England, but not that which went outward. They might know something, but
that very imperfectly and unsystematically, of the state of affairs; but
they were neither authorized to advance nor to retard any measure taken
by the Directors in consequence of that state: they were not provided
even with sufficient means of knowing what any of these measures were.
And this imperfect information, together with the want of a direct call
to any specific duty, might have, in some degree, occasioned that
remissness which rendered even the imperfect powers originally given by
the act of 1773 the less efficient. This defect was in a great measure
remedied by a subsequent act; but that act was not passed until the year
1780.
[Sidenote: Disorders increased since 1773.]
Your Committee find that during the whole period which elapsed from 1773
to the commencement of 1782 disorders and abuses of every kind
multiplied. Wars contrary to policy and contrary to public faith were
carrying on in various parts of India. The allies, dependants, and
subjects of the Company were everywhere oppressed;[2] dissensions in the
Supreme Council prevailed, and continued for the greater part of that
time; the contests between the civil and judicial powers threatened that
issue to which they came at last, an armed resistance to the authority
of the king's court of justice; the orders which by an act of Parliament
the servants were bound to obey were avowedly and on principle
contemned; until at length the fatal effects of accumulated misdemeanors
abroad and neglects at home broke out in the alarming manner which your
Committee have so fully reported to this House.[3]
[Sidenote: Proceedings in India not known to Parliament.]
In all this time the true state of the several Presidencies, and the
real conduct of the British government towards the natives, was not at
all known to Parliament: it seems to have been very imperfectly known
even to ministers. Indeed, it required an unbroken attention, and much
comparison of facts and reasonings, to form a true judgment on that
difficult and complicated system of politics, revenue, and commerce,
whilst affairs were only in their progress to that state which produced
the present inquiries. Therefore, whilst the causes of their ruin were
in the height of their operation, both the Company and the natives were
understood by the public as in circumstances the most assured and most
flourishing; insomuch that, whenever the affairs of India were brought
before Parliament, as they were two or three times during that period,
the only subject-matter of discussion anywise important was concerning
the sums which might be taken out of the Company's surplus profits for
the advantage of the state. Little was thought of but the disengagement
of the Company from their debts in _England_, and to prevent the
servants abroad from drawing upon them, so as that body might be
enabled, without exciting clamors here, to afford the contribution that
was demanded. All descriptions of persons, either here or in India,
looking solely to appearances at home, the reputation of the Directors
depended on the keeping the Company's sales in a situation to support
the dividend, that of the ministers depended on the most lucrative
bargains for the Exchequer, and that of the servants abroad on the
largest investments; until at length there is great reason to apprehend,
that, unless some very substantial reform takes place in the management
of the Company's affairs, nothing will be left for investment, for
dividend, or for bargain, and India, instead of a resource to the
public, may itself come, in no great length of time, to be reckoned
amongst the public burdens.
[Sidenote: Inspection of ministers has failed in effect.]
In this manner the inspection of the ministers of the crown, the great
cementing regulation of the whole act of 1773, has, along with all the
others, entirely failed in its effect.
[Sidenote: Failure in the act.]
Your Committee, in observing on the failure of this act, do not consider
the intrinsic defects or mistakes in the law itself as the sole cause of
its miscarriage. The general policy of the nation with regard to this
object has been, they conceive, erroneous; and no remedy by laws, under
the prevalence of that policy, can be effectual. Before any remedial law
can have its just operation, the affairs of India must be restored to
their natural order. The prosperity of the natives must be previously
secured, before any profit from them whatsoever is attempted. For as
long as a system prevails which regards the transmission of great wealth
to this country, either for the Company or the state, as its principal
end, so long will it be impossible that those who are the instruments of
that scheme should not be actuated by the same spirit for their own
private purposes. It will be worse: they will support the injuries done
to the natives for their selfish ends by new injuries done in favor of
those before whom they are to account. It is not reasonably to be
expected that a public rapacious and improvident should be served by any
of its subordinates with disinterestedness or foresight.
II.--CONNECTION OF GREAT BRITAIN WITH INDIA.
In order to open more fully the tendency of the policy which has
hitherto prevailed, and that the House may be enabled, in any
regulations which may be made, to follow the tracks of the abuse, and
to apply an appropriated remedy to a particular distemper, your
Committee think it expedient to consider in some detail the manner in
which India is connected with this kingdom,--which is the second head of
their plan.
The two great links by which this connection is maintained are, first,
the East India Company's commerce, and, next, the government set over
the natives by that company and by the crown. The first of these
principles of connection, namely, the East India Company's trade, is to
be first considered, not only as it operates by itself, but as having a
powerful influence over the general policy and the particular measures
of the Company's government. Your Committee apprehend that the present
state, nature, and tendency of this trade are not generally understood.
[Sidenote: Trade to India formerly carried on chiefly in silver.]
Until the acquisition of great territorial revenues by the East India
Company, the trade with India was carried on upon the common principles
of commerce,--namely, by sending out such commodities as found a demand
in the India market, and, where that demand was not adequate to the
reciprocal call of the European market for Indian goods, by a large
annual exportation of treasure, chiefly in silver. In some years that
export has been as high as six hundred and eighty thousand pounds
sterling. The other European companies trading to India traded thither
on the same footing. Their export of bullion was probably larger in
proportion to the total of their commerce, as their commerce itself bore
a much larger proportion to the British than it does at this time or has
done for many years past. But stating it to be equal to the British,
the whole of the silver sent annually from Europe into Hindostan could
not fall very short of twelve or thirteen hundred thousand pounds a
year. This influx of money, poured into India by an emulation of all the
commercial nations of Europe, encouraged industry and promoted
cultivation in a high degree, notwithstanding the frequent wars with
which that country was harassed, and the vices which existed in its
internal government. On the other hand, the export of so much silver was
sometimes a subject of grudging and uneasiness in Europe, and a commerce
carried on through such a medium to many appeared in speculation of
doubtful advantage. But the practical demands of commerce bore down
those speculative objections. The East India commodities were so
essential for animating all other branches of trade, and for completing
the commercial circle, that all nations contended for it with the
greatest avidity. The English company flourished under this exportation
for a very long series of years. The nation was considerably benefited
both in trade and in revenue; and the dividends of the proprietors were
often high, and always sufficient to keep up the credit of the Company's
stock in heart and vigor.
[Sidenote: How trade carried on since.]
But at or very soon after the acquisition of the territorial revenues to
the English company, the period of which may be reckoned as completed
about the year 1765, a very great revolution took place in commerce as
well as in dominion; and it was a revolution which affected the trade of
Hindostan with all other European nations, as well as with that in whose
favor and by whose power it was accomplished. From that time bullion was
no longer regularly exported by the English East India Company to
Bengal, or any part of Hindostan; and it was soon exported in much
smaller quantities by any other nation. A new way of supplying the
market of Europe, by means of the British power and influence, was
invented: a species of trade (if such it may be called) by which it is
absolutely impossible that India should not be radically and
irretrievably ruined, although our possessions there were to be ordered
and governed upon principles diametrically opposite to those which now
prevail in the system and practice of the British company's
administration.
[Sidenote: Investments.]
A certain portion of the revenues of Bengal has been for many years set
apart to be employed in the purchase of goods for exportation to
England, and this is called the _Investment_. The greatness of this
investment has been the standard by which the merit of the Company's
principal servants has been too generally estimated; and this main cause
of the impoverishment of India has been generally taken as a measure of
its wealth and prosperity. Numerous fleets of large ships, loaded with
the most valuable commodities of the East, annually arriving in England,
in a constant and increasing succession, imposed upon the public eye,
and naturally gave rise to an opinion of the happy condition and growing
opulence of a country whose surplus productions occupied so vast a space
in the commercial world. This export from India seemed to imply also a
reciprocal supply, by which the trading capital employed in those
productions was continually strengthened and enlarged. But the payment
of a tribute, and not a beneficial commerce to that country, wore this
specious and delusive appearance.
[Sidenote: Increase of expenses.]
The fame of a great territorial revenue, exaggerated, as is usual in
such cases, beyond even its value, and the abundant fortunes of the
Company's officers, military and civil, which flowed into Europe with a
full tide, raised in the proprietors of East India stock a premature
desire of partaking with their servants in the fruits of that splendid
adventure. Government also thought they could not be too early in their
claims for a share of what they considered themselves as entitled to in
every foreign acquisition made by the power of this kingdom, through
whatever hands or by whatever means it was made. These two parties,
after some struggle, came to an agreement to divide between them the
profits which their speculation proposed to realize in England from the
territorial revenue in Bengal. About two hundred thousand pounds was
added to the annual dividends of the proprietors. Four hundred thousand
was given to the state, which, added to the old dividend, brought a
constant charge upon the mixed interest of Indian trade and revenue of
eight hundred thousand pounds a year. This was to be provided for at all
events.
By that vast demand on the territorial fund, the correctives and
qualifications which might have been gradually applied to the abuses in
Indian commerce and government were rendered extremely difficult.
[Sidenote: Progress of investments.]
The practice of an investment from the revenue began in the year 1766,
before arrangements were made for securing and appropriating an assured
fund for that purpose in the treasury, and for diffusing it from thence
upon the manufactures of the country in a just proportion and in the
proper season. There was, indeed, for a short time, a surplus of cash in
the treasury. It was in some shape to be sent home to its owners. To
send it out in silver was subject to two manifest inconveniences. First,
the country would be exhausted of its circulating medium. A scarcity of
coin was already felt in Bengal. Cossim Ali Khân, (the Nabob whom the
Company's servants had lately set up, and newly expelled,) during the
short period of his power, had exhausted the country by every mode of
extortion; in his flight he carried off an immense treasure, which has
been variously computed, but by none at less than three millions
sterling. A country so exhausted of its coin, and harassed by three
revolutions rapidly succeeding each other, was rather an object that
stood in need of every kind of refreshment and recruit than one which
could subsist under new evacuations. The next, and equally obvious
inconvenience, was to the Company itself. To send silver into Europe
would be to send it from the best to the worst market. When arrived, the
most profitable use which could be made of it would be to send it back
to Bengal for the purchase of Indian merchandise. It was necessary,
therefore, to turn the Company's revenue into its commerce. The first
investment was about five hundred thousand pounds, and care was taken
afterwards to enlarge it. In the years 1767 and 1768 it arose to seven
hundred thousand.
[Sidenote: Consequences of them.]
This new system of trade, carried on through the medium of power and
public revenue, very soon produced its natural effects. The loudest
complaints arose among the natives, and among all the foreigners who
traded to Bengal. It must unquestionably have thrown the whole
mercantile system of the country into the greatest confusion. With
regard to the natives, no expedient was proposed for their relief. The
case was serious with respect to European powers. The Presidency plainly
represented to the Directors, that some agreement should be made with
foreign nations for providing their investment to a certain amount, or
that the deficiencies then subsisting must terminate in an open rupture
with France. The Directors, pressed by the large payments in England,
were not free to abandon their system; and all possible means of
diverting the manufactures into the Company's investment were still
anxiously sought and pursued, until the difficulties of the foreign
companies were at length removed by the natural flow of the fortunes of
the Company's servants into Europe, in the manner which will be stated
hereafter.
But, with all these endeavors of the Presidency, the investment sunk in
1769, and they were even obliged to pay for a part of the goods to
private merchants in the Company's bonds, bearing interest. It was plain
that this course of business could not hold. The manufacturers of
Bengal, far from being generally in a condition to give credit, have
always required advances to be made to them; so have the merchants very
generally,--at least, since the prevalence of the English power in
India. It was necessary, therefore, and so the Presidency of Calcutta
represented the matter, to provide beforehand a year's advance. This
required great efforts; and they were made. Notwithstanding the famine
in 1770, which wasted Bengal in a manner dreadful beyond all example,
the investment, by a variety of successive expedients, many of them of
the most dangerous nature and tendency, was forcibly kept up; and even
in that forced and unnatural state it gathered strength almost every
year. The debts contracted in the infancy of the system were gradually
reduced, and the advances to contractors and manufacturers were
regularly made; so that the goods from Bengal, purchased from the
territorial revenues, from the sale of European goods, and from the
produce of the monopolies, for the four years which ended with 1780,
when the investment from the surplus revenues finally closed, were never
less than a million sterling, and commonly nearer twelve hundred
thousand pounds. This million is the lowest value of the goods sent to
Europe for which no satisfaction is made.[4]
[Sidenote: Remittances from Bengal to China and the Presidencies.]
About an hundred thousand pounds a year is also remitted from Bengal, on
the Company's account, to China; and the whole of the product of that
money flows into the direct trade from China to Europe. Besides this,
Bengal sends a regular supply in time of peace to those Presidencies
which are unequal to their own establishment. To Bombay the remittance
in money, bills, or goods, for none of which there is a return, amounts
to one hundred and sixty thousand pounds a year at a medium.
[Sidenote: Exports from England to India.]
The goods which are exported from Europe to India consist chiefly of
military and naval stores, of clothing for troops, and of other objects
for the consumption of the Europeans residing there; and, excepting some
lead, copper utensils and sheet copper, woollen cloth, and other
commodities of little comparative value, no sort of merchandise is sent
from England that is in demand for the wants or desires of the native
inhabitants.
[Sidenote: Bad effects of investment.]
When an account is taken of the intercourse (for it is not commerce)
which is carried on between Bengal and England, the pernicious effects
of the system of investment from revenue will appear in the strongest
point of view. In that view, the whole exported produce of the country,
so far as the Company is concerned, is not exchanged in the course of
barter, but is taken away without any return or payment whatsoever. In a
commercial light, therefore, England becomes annually bankrupt to Bengal
to the amount nearly of its whole dealing; or rather, the country has
suffered what is tantamount to an annual plunder of its manufactures and
its produce to the value of twelve hundred thousand pounds.
[Sidenote: Foreign companies.]
[Sidenote: Consequences of their trade.]
In time of peace, three foreign companies appear at first sight to bring
their contribution of trade to the supply of this continual drain. These
are the companies of France, Holland, and Denmark. But when the object
is considered more nearly, instead of relief, these companies, who from
their want of authority in the country might seem to trade upon a
principle merely commercial, will be found to add their full proportion
to the calamity brought upon Bengal by the destructive system of the
ruling power; because the greater part of the capital of all these
companies, and perhaps the whole capital of some of them, is furnished
exactly as the British is, out of the revenues of the country. The civil
and military servants of the English East India Company being
restricted in drawing bills upon Europe, and none of them ever making or
proposing an establishment in India, a very great part of their
fortunes, well or ill gotten, is in all probability thrown, as fast as
required, into the cash of these companies.
In all other countries, the revenue, following the natural course and
order of things, arises out of their commerce. Here, by a mischievous
inversion of that order, the whole foreign maritime trade, whether
English, French, Dutch, or Danish, arises from the revenues; and these
are carried out of the country without producing anything to compensate
so heavy a loss.
[Sidenote: Foreign companies' investments.]
Your Committee have not been able to discover the entire value of the
investment made by foreign companies. But, as the investment which the
English East India Company derived from its revenues, and even from its
public credit, is for the year 1783 to be wholly stopped, it has been
proposed to private persons to make a subscription for an investment on
their own account. This investment is to be equal to the sum of
800,000_l._ Another loan has been also made for an investment on the
Company's account to China of 200,000_l._ This makes a million; and
there is no question that much more could be readily had for bills upon
Europe. Now, as there is no doubt that the whole of the money remitted
is the property of British subjects, (none else having any interest in
remitting to Europe,) it is not unfair to suppose that a very great
part, if not the whole, of what may find its way into this new channel
is not newly created, but only diverted from those channels in which it
formerly ran, that is, the cash of the foreign trading companies.
[Sidenote: Of the silver sent to China.]
Besides the investment made in goods by foreign companies from the funds
of British subjects, these subjects have been for some time in the
practice of sending very great sums in gold and silver directly to China
on their own account. In a memorial presented to the Governor-General
and Council, in March, 1782, it appears that the principal money lent by
British subjects to one company of merchants in China then amounted to
seven millions of dollars, about one million seven hundred thousand
pounds sterling; and not the smallest particle of silver sent to China
ever returns to India. It is not easy to determine in what proportions
this enormous sum of money has been sent from Madras or from Bengal; but
it equally exhausts a country belonging to this kingdom, whether it
comes from the one or from the other.
[Sidenote: Revenue above the investment, how applied.]
[Sidenote: Allowance to Nabob of Bengal.]
[Sidenote: How reduced.]
But that the greatness of all these drains, and their effects, may be
rendered more visible, your Committee have turned their consideration to
the employment of those parts of the Bengal revenue which are not
employed in the Company's own investments for China and for Europe. What
is taken over and above the investment (when any investment can be made)
from the gross revenue, either for the charge of collection or for civil
and military establishments, is in time of peace two millions at the
least. From the portion of that sum which goes to the support of civil
government the natives are almost wholly excluded, as they are from the
principal collections of revenue. With very few exceptions, they are
only employed as servants and agents to Europeans, or in the inferior
departments of collection, when it is absolutely impossible to proceed
a step without their assistance. For some time after the acquisition of
the territorial revenue, the sum of 420,000_l._ a year was paid,
according to the stipulation of a treaty, to the Nabob of Bengal, for
the support of his government. This sum, however inconsiderable,
compared to the revenues of the province, yet, distributed through the
various departments of civil administration, served in some degree to
preserve the natives of the better sort, particularly those of the
Mahomedan profession, from being utterly ruined. The people of that
persuasion, not being so generally engaged in trade, and not having on
their conquest of Bengal divested the ancient Gentoo proprietors of
their lands of inheritance, had for their chief, if not their sole
support, the share of a moderate conqueror in all offices, civil and
military. But your Committee find that this arrangement was of a short
duration. Without the least regard to the subsistence of this innocent
people, or to the faith of the agreement on which they were brought
under the British government, this sum was reduced by a new treaty to
320,000_l._, and soon after, (upon a pretence of the present Nabob's
minority, and a temporary sequestration for the discharge of his debts,)
to 160,000_l._: but when he arrived at his majority, and when the debts
were paid, (if ever they were paid,) the sequestration still continued;
and so far as the late advices may be understood, the allowance to the
Nabob appears still to stand at the reduced sum of 160,000_l._
[Sidenote: Native officers.]
The other resource of the Mahomedans, and of the Gentoos of certain of
the higher castes, was the army. In this army, nine tenths of which
consists of natives, no native, of whatever description, holds any rank
higher than that of a _Subahdar Commandant_, that is, of an officer
below the rank of an English subaltern, who is appointed to each company
of the native soldiery.
[Sidenote: All lucrative employments in the hands of the English.]
Your Committee here would be understood to state the ordinary
establishment: for the war may have made some alteration. All the
honorable, all the lucrative situations of the army, all the supplies
and contracts of whatever species that belong to it, are solely in the
hands of the English; so that whatever is beyond the mere subsistence of
a common soldier and some officers of a lower rank, together with the
immediate expenses of the English officers at their table, is sooner or
later, in one shape or another, sent out of the country.
Such was the state of Bengal even in time of profound peace, and before
the whole weight of the public charge fell upon that unhappy country for
the support of other parts of India, which have been desolated in such a
manner as to contribute little or nothing to their own protection.
[Sidenote: Former state of trade.]
Your Committee have given this short comparative account of the effects
of the maritime traffic of Bengal, when in its natural state, and as it
has stood since the prevalence of the system of an investment from the
revenues. But before the formation of that system Bengal did by no means
depend for its resources on its maritime commerce. The inland trade,
from whence it derived a very great supply of silver and gold and many
kinds of merchantable goods, was very considerable. The higher provinces
of the Mogul Empire were then populous and opulent, and intercourse to
an immense amount was carried on between them and Bengal. A great trade
also passed through these provinces from all the countries on the
frontier of Persia, and the frontier provinces of Tartary, as well as
from Surat and Baroach on the western side of India. These parts opened
to Bengal a communication with the Persian Gulf and with the Red Sea,
and through them with the whole Turkish and the maritime parts of the
Persian Empire, besides the commercial intercourse which it maintained
with those and many other countries through its own seaports.
[Sidenote: And the trade to Turkey.]
During that period the remittances to the Mogul's treasury from Bengal
were never very large, at least for any considerable time, nor very
regularly sent; and the impositions of the state were soon repaid with
interest through the medium of a lucrative commerce. But the disorders
of Persia, since the death of Kouli Khân, have wholly destroyed the
trade of that country; and the trade to Turkey, by Jidda and Bussorah,
which was the greatest and perhaps best branch of the Indian trade, is
very much diminished. The fall of the throne of the Mogul emperors has
drawn with it that of the great marts of Agra and Delhi. The utmost
confusion of the northwestern provinces followed this revolution, which
was not absolutely complete until it received the last hand from Great
Britain. Still greater calamities have fallen upon the fine provinces of
Rohilcund and Oude, and on the countries of Corah and Allahabad. By the
operations of the British arms and influence, they are in many places
turned to mere deserts, or so reduced and decayed as to afford very few
materials or means of commerce.
[Sidenote: State of trade in the Carnatic.]
Such is the actual condition of the trade of Bengal since the
establishment of the British power there. The commerce of the Carnatic,
as far as the inquiries of your Committee have extended, did not appear
with a better aspect, even before the invasion of Hyder Ali Khân, and
the consequent desolation, which for many years to come must exclude it
from any considerable part of the trading system.
It appears, on the examination of an intelligent person concerned in
trade, and who resided at Madras for several years, that on his arrival
there, which was in the year 1767, that city was in a flourishing
condition, and one of the first marts in India; but when he left it, in
1779, there was little or no trade remaining, and but one ship belonging
to the whole place. The evidence of this gentleman purports, that at his
first acquaintance with the Carnatic it was a well-cultivated and
populous country, and as such consumed many articles of merchandise;
that at his departure he left it much circumscribed in trade, greatly in
the decline as to population and culture, and with a correspondent decay
of the territorial revenue.
Your Committee find that there has also been from Madras an investment
on the Company's account, taking one year with another, very nearly on
the same principles and with the same effects as that from Bengal; and
they think it is highly probable, that, besides the large sums remitted
directly from Madras to China, there has likewise been a great deal on a
private account, for that and other countries, invested in the cash of
foreign European powers trading on the coast of Coromandel. But your
Committee have not extended their inquiries relative to the commerce of
the countries dependent on Madras so far as they have done with regard
to Bengal. They have reason to apprehend that the condition is rather
worse; but if the House requires a more minute examination of this
important subject, your Committee is willing to enter into it without
delay.
III.--EFFECT OF THE REVENUE INVESTMENT ON THE COMPANY.
Hitherto your Committee has considered this system of revenue
investment, substituted in the place of a commercial link between India
and Europe, so far as it affects India only: they are now to consider it
as it affects the Company. So long as that corporation continued to
receive a vast quantity of merchantable goods without any disbursement
for the purchase, so long it possessed wherewithal to continue a
dividend to pay debts, and to contribute to the state. But it must have
been always evident to considerate persons, that this vast extraction of
wealth from a country lessening in its resources in proportion to the
increase of its burdens was not calculated for a very long duration. For
a while the Company's servants kept up this investment, not by improving
commerce, manufacture, or agriculture, but by forcibly raising the
land-rents, on the principles and in the manner hereafter to be
described. When these extortions disappointed or threatened to
disappoint expectation, in order to purvey for the avarice which raged
in England, they sought for expedients in breaches of all the agreements
by which they were bound by any payment to the country powers, and in
exciting disturbances among all the neighboring princes. Stimulating
their ambition, and fomenting their mutual animosities, they sold to
them reciprocally their common servitude and ruin.
The Governor-General, Mr. Hastings, and the Council, tell the Directors,
"that the supply for the investment has arisen from _casual_ and
_extraordinary_ resources, which they could not expect _always_ to
command." In an earlier minute he expresses himself still more
distinctly: he says, "If the internal resources of a state fail it, or
are not equal to its _occasional_ wants, whence can it obtain immediate
relief but from _external_ means?" Indeed, the investment has not been
for any long time the natural product of the revenue of Bengal. When, by
the vast charge and by the ill return of an evil political and military
traffic, and by a prodigal increase of establishments, and a profuse
conduct in distributing agencies and contracts, they found themselves
under difficulties, instead of being cured of their immoral and
impolitic delusion, they plunged deeper into it, and were drawn from
expedient to expedient for the supply of the investment into that
endless chain of wars which this House by its resolutions has so justly
condemned. At home these measures were sometimes countenanced, sometimes
winked at, sometimes censured, but always with an acceptance of whatever
profit they afforded.
At length, the funds for the investment and for these wars together
could no longer be supplied. In the year 1778 the provision for the
investment from the revenues and from the monopolies stood very high. It
was estimated at a million four hundred thousand pounds; and of this it
appears that a great deal was realized. But this was the high flood-tide
of the investment; for in that year they announce its probable decline,
and that such extensive supplies could not be continued. The advances to
the Board of Trade became less punctual, and many disputes arose about
the time of making them. However, knowing that all their credit at home
depended on the investment, or upon an opinion of its magnitude, whilst
they repeat their warning of a probable deficiency, and that their
"finances bore an unfavorable aspect," in the year 1779 they rate their
investment still higher. But their payments becoming less and less
regular, and the war carrying away all the supplies, at length Mr.
Hastings, in December, 1780, denounced sentence of approaching
dissolution to this system, and tells the Directors that "he bore too
high a respect for their characters to treat them with the management of
a preparatory and gradual introduction to an unpleasing report: that it
is the _only substantial_ information he shall have to convey in that
letter." In confidence, therefore, of their fortitude, he tells them
without ceremony, "that there will be a necessity of making a large
reduction, or possibly a _total suspension_, of their investment;--that
they had already been reduced to borrow near 700,000_l._ This resource,"
says he, "cannot last; it must cease at a certain period, and that
perhaps not far _distant_."
He was not mistaken in his prognostic. Loans now becoming the regular
resource for retrieving the investment, whose ruin was inevitable, the
Council enable the Board of Trade, in April, 1781, to grant certificates
for government bonds at eight per cent interest for about 650,000_l._
The investment was fixed at 900,000_l._
But now another alarming system appeared. These new bonds overloaded
the market. Those which had been formerly issued were at a discount; the
Board of Trade was obliged to advance, therefore, a fourth more than
usual to the contractors. This seemed to satisfy that description of
dealers. But as those who bought on agency were limited to no terms of
mutual advantage, and the bonds on the new issue falling from three to
eight, nine, and ten per cent discount, the agents were unable to
furnish at the usual prices. Accordingly a discount was settled on such
terms as could be made: the lowest discount, and that at two places
only, was at four per cent; which, with the interest on the bonds, made
(besides the earlier advance) at the least twelve per cent additional
charge upon all goods. It was evident, that, as the investment, instead
of being supported by the revenues, was sunk by the fall of their
credit, so the net revenues were diminished by the daily accumulation of
an interest accruing on account of the investment. What was done to
alleviate one complaint thus aggravating the other, and at length
proving pernicious to both, this trade on bonds likewise came to its
period.
Your Committee has reason to think that the bonds have since that time
sunk to a discount much greater even than what is now stated. The Board
of Trade justly denominates their resource for that year "the sinking
credit of a paper currency, laboring, from the uncommon scarcity of
specie, under disadvantages scarcely surmountable." From this they value
themselves "on having effected an _ostensible_ provision, at least for
that investment." For 1783 nothing appears even ostensible.
By this failure a total revolution ensued, of the most extraordinary
nature, and to which your Committee wish to call the particular
attention of the House. For the Council-General, in their letter of the
8th of April, 1782, after stating that they were disappointed in their
expectations, (how grounded it does not appear,) "thought that they
should be able to spare a sum to the Board of Trade,"--tell the Court of
Directors, "that they had adopted a _new_ method of keeping up the
investment, by private subscribers for eighty lacs of rupees, which will
find _cargoes for their ships_ on the usual terms of privilege, _at the
risk of the individuals_, and is to be repaid to them _according to the
produce of the sales in England_,"--and they tell the Directors, that "a
copy of the plan makes a number in their separate dispatches over land."
It is impossible, in reporting this revolution to the House, to avoid
remarking with what fidelity Mr. Hastings and his Council have adhered
to the mode of transmitting their accounts which your Committee found it
necessary to mark and censure in their First Report. Its pernicious
tendency is there fully set forth. They were peculiarly called on for a
most accurate state of their affairs, in order to explain the necessity
of having recourse to such a scheme, as well as for a full and correct
account of the scheme itself. But they send only the above short minute
by one dispatch over land, whilst the copy of the plan itself, on which
the Directors must form their judgment, is sent separately in another
dispatch over land, which has never arrived. A third dispatch, which
also contained the plan, was sent by a sea conveyance, and arrived late.
The Directors have, for very obvious reasons, ordered, by a strict
injunction, that they should send _duplicates of all_ their dispatches
by _every ship_. The spirit of this rule, perhaps, ought to extend to
every mode of conveyance. In this case, so far from sending a duplicate,
they do not send even one perfect account. They announce a plan by one
conveyance, and they send it by another conveyance, with other delays
and other risks.
At length, at nearly four months' distance, the plan has been received,
and appears to be substantially that which had been announced, but
developing in the particulars many new circumstances of the greatest
importance. By this plan it appears that the subscription, even in idea
or pretence, is not for the use of the Company, but that the subscribers
are united into a sort of society for the remitting their _private
fortunes_: the goods, indeed, are said to be _shipped on the Company's
account_, and they are directed to be sold on the same account, and at
the usual periods of sales; but, after the payment of duties, and such
other allowances as they choose to make, in the eleventh article they
provide "that _the remainder of the sales shall revert to the
subscribers_, and be declared to be _their property_, and divided in
proportion to _their_ respective shares." The compensation which they
allow in this plan to their masters for their brokerage is, that, if,
after deducting all the charges which they impose, "the amount of the
sales _should be found_ to exceed two shillings and twopence for the
current rupee of the invoice account, it shall be taken by the Company."
For the management of this concern in Bengal they choose commissioners
by their own authority. By the same authority they form them into a
body, they put them under rules and regulations, and they empower them
also to make regulations of their own. They remit, by the like
authority, the duties to which all private trade is subject; and they
charge the whole concern with seven per cent, to be paid from the net
produce of the sales in England, as a recompense to the commissioners:
for this the commissioners contract to bear all the charges on the goods
to the time of shipping.
The servants having formed this plan of trade, and a new commission for
the conduct of it, on their private account, it is a matter of
consideration to know who the commissioners are. They turn out to be the
three senior servants of the Company's Board of Trade, who choose to
take upon them to be the factors of others for large emoluments, whilst
they receive salaries of two thousand pounds and fifteen hundred pounds
a year from the Company. As the Company have no other fund than the new
investment from whence they are to be paid for the care of their
servants' property, this commission and those salaries being to take
place of their brokerage, they in effect render it very difficult, if
not impossible, for them to derive advantage from their new occupation.
As to the benefit of this _plan_: besides preventing the loss which must
happen from the Company's ships returning empty to Europe, and the
stopping of all trade between India and England, the authors of it
state, that it will "_open a new channel_ of remittance, and abolish the
practice, by precluding the necessity, of remitting _private fortunes_
by _foreign bottoms_, and that it may lead to some _permanent mode_ for
remittance of private fortunes, and of combining it with the regular
provision of the Company's investment,--that it will yield _some_ profit
to the Company without risk, and the national gain will be the same as
upon the regular trade."
As to the combination of this mode of remittance with the Company's
investment, nothing can be affirmed concerning it until some
satisfactory assurance can be held out that such an investment can ever
be realized. Mr. Hastings and the gentlemen of the Council have not
afforded any ground for such an expectation. That the Indian trade may
become a permanent vehicle of the private fortunes of the Company's
servants is very probable,--that is, as permanent as the means of
acquiring fortunes in India; but that _some profit_ will accrue to the
Company is absolutely impossible. The Company are to bear all the charge
outwards, and a very great part of that homewards; and their only
compensation is the surplus commission on the sale of other people's
goods. The nation will undoubtedly avoid great loss and detriment, which
would be the inevitable consequence of the total cessation of the trade
with Bengal and the ships returning without cargoes. But if this
temporary expedient should be improved into a system, no occasional
advantages to be derived from it would be sufficient to balance the
mischiefs of finding a great Parliamentary corporation turned into a
vehicle for remitting to England the private fortunes of those for whose
benefit the territorial possessions in India are in effect and substance
under this project to be _solely_ held.
By this extraordinary scheme the Company is totally overturned, and all
its relations inverted. From being a body concerned in trade on their
own account, and employing their servants as factors, the servants have
at one stroke taken the whole trade into their own hands, on their own
capital of 800,000_l._, at their own risk, and the Company are become
agents and factors to them, to sell by commission _their_ goods for
_their_ profit.
To enable your Committee to form some judgment upon the profit which may
accrue to the Company from its new relation and employment, they
directed that an estimate should be made of the probable proceeds of an
investment conducted on the principles of that intended to be realized
for 1783. By this estimate, which is subjoined,[5] it appears to your
Committee, that, so far from any surplus profit from this transaction,
the Bengal adventurers themselves, instead of realizing 2_s._ 2_d._ the
rupee, (the standard they fix for their payment,) will not receive the
1_s._ 9_d._ which is its utmost value in silver at the Mint, nor
probably above 1_s._ 5_d._ With this certain loss before their eyes, it
is impossible that they can ever complete their subscription, unless, by
management among themselves, they should be able to procure the goods
for their own account upon other terms than those on which they
purchased them for their masters, or unless they have for the supply of
the Company on their hands a quantity of goods which they cannot
otherwise dispose of. This latter case is not very improbable, from
their proposing to send ten sixteenths of the whole investment in
silk,--which, as will be seen hereafter, the Company has prohibited to
be sent on their account, as a disadvantageous article. Nothing but the
servants being overloaded can rationally account for their choice of so
great a proportion of so dubious a commodity.
On the state made by two reports of a committee of the General Court in
1782, their affairs were even then reduced to a low ebb. But under the
arrangement announced by Mr. Hastings and his colleagues, it does not
appear, after this period of the servants' investment, from what fund
the proprietors are to make any dividend at all. The objects of the sale
from whence the dividend is to arise are not _their_ goods: they stand
accountable to others for the whole probable produce. The state of the
Company's commerce will therefore become an object of serious
consideration: an affair, as your Committee apprehends, of as much
difficulty as ever tried the faculties of this House. For, on the one
hand, it is plain that the system of providing the Company's import into
Europe, resting almost wholly by an investment from its territorial
revenues, has failed: during its continuance it was supported on
principles fatal to the prosperity of that country. On the other hand,
if the nominal commerce of the Company is suffered to be carried on for
the account of the servants abroad, by investing the emoluments made in
their stations, these emoluments are therefore inclusively authorized,
and with them the practices from which they accrue. All Parliamentary
attempts to reform this system will be contradictory to its institution.
If, for instance, five hundred thousand pounds sterling annually be
necessary for this kind of investment, any regulation which may prevent
the acquisition of that sum operates against the investment which is the
end proposed by the plan.
On this new scheme, (which is neither calculated for a future security
nor for a present relief to the Company,) it is not visible in what
manner the settlements in India can be at all upheld. The gentlemen in
employments abroad call for the whole produce of the year's investment
from Bengal; but for the payment of the counter-investment from Europe,
which is for the far greater part sent out for the support of their
power, no provision at all is made: they have not, it seems, agreed that
it should be charged to their account, or that any deduction should be
made for it from the produce of their sales in Leadenhall Street. How
far such a scheme is preferable to the total suspension of trade your
Committee cannot positively determine. In all likelihood, extraordinary
expedients were necessary; but the causes which induced this necessity
ought to be more fully inquired into; for the last step in a series of
conduct may be justifiable upon principles that suppose great blame in
those which preceded it.
After your Committee had made the foregoing observations upon the plan
of Mr. Hastings and his colleagues, transmitted to the Court of
Directors, an extract of the Madras Consultations was a few days ago
laid before us. This extract contains a letter from the Governor-General
and Council of Bengal to the Presidency of Fort St. George, which
affords a very striking, though to your Committee by no means an
unexpected, picture of the instability of their opinions and conduct. On
the 8th of April the servants had regularly formed and digested the
above-mentioned plan, which was to form the basis for the investment of
their own fortunes, and to furnish the sole means of the commercial
existence of their masters. Before the 10th of the following May, which
is the date of their letter to Madras, they inform Lord Macartney that
they had fundamentally altered the whole scheme. "Instead," say they,
"of allowing the subscribers to retain an interest in the goods, they
are to be provided entirely on account of the Company, and transported
_at their risk_; and the subscribers, instead of receiving certificates
payable out of the produce of the sales in Europe, are to be granted
receipts, on the payment of their advances, bearing an interest of eight
per cent per annum, until exchanged for drafts on the Court of
Directors, payable 365 days after sight, at the rate of two shillings
per current rupee,--which drafts shall be granted in the proper time, of
three eighths of the amount subscribed, on the 31st of December next,
and the remaining five eighths on the 31st of December, 1783."
The plan of April divests the Company of all property in Bengal goods
transported to Europe: but in recompense they are freed from all the
risk and expense, they are not loaded with interest, and they are not
embarrassed with bills. The plan of May reinstates them in their old
relation: but in return, their revenues in Bengal are charged with an
interest of eight per cent on the sum subscribed, until bills shall be
drawn; they are made proprietors of cargoes purchased, under the
disadvantage of that interest, at their own hazard; they are subjected
to all losses; and they are involved in Europe for payments of bills to
the amount of eighty lacs of rupees, at two shillings the rupee,--that
is, in bills for eight hundred thousand pounds sterling. It is probably
on account of the previous interest of eight per cent that the value of
the rupee on this scheme is reduced. Mr. Hastings and his colleagues
announce to Lord Macartney no other than the foregoing alteration in
their plan.
It is discouraging to attempt any sort of observation on plans thus
shifting their principle whilst their merits are under examination. The
judgment formed on the scheme of April has nothing to do with the
project of May. Your Committee has not suppressed any part of the
reflections which occurred to them on the former of these plans: first,
because the Company knows of no other by any regular transmissions;
secondly, because it is by no means certain that before the expiration
of June the Governor-General and Council may not revert to the plan of
April. They speak of that plan as likely to be, or make a part of one
that shall be, _permanent_. Many reasons are alleged by its authors in
its favor, grounded on the state of their affairs; none whatever are
assigned for the alteration. It is, indeed, morally certain that
persons who had money to remit must have made the same calculation which
has been made by the directions of your Committee, and the result must
have been equally clear to them,--which is, that, instead of realizing
two shillings and twopence the rupee on their subscription, as they
proposed, they could never hope to see more than one shilling and
ninepence. This calculation probably shook the main pillar of the
project of April. But, on the other hand, as the subscribers to the
second scheme can have no certain assurance that the Company will accept
bills so far exceeding their allowance in this particular, the necessity
of remitting their fortunes may beat them back to their old ground. The
Danish Company was the only means of remitting which remained. Attempts
have been made with success to revive a Portuguese trade for that
purpose. It is by no means clear whether Mr. Hastings and his colleagues
will adhere to either of the foregoing plans, or, indeed, whether any
investment at all to that amount can be realized; because nothing but
the convenience of remitting the gains of British subjects to London can
support any of these projects.
The situation of the Company, under this perpetual variation in the
system of their investment, is truly perplexing. The manner in which
they arrive at any knowledge of it is no less so. The letter to Lord
Macartney, by which the variation is discovered, was not intended for
transmission to the Directors. It was merely for the information of
those who were admitted to a share of the subscription at Madras. When
Mr. Hastings sent this information to those subscribers, he might well
enough have presumed an event to happen which did happen,--that is,
that a vessel might be dispatched from Madras to Europe: and indeed, by
that, and by every devisable means, he ought not only to have apprised
the Directors of this most material change in the plan of the
investment, but to have entered fully into the grounds and reasons of
his making it.
It appears to your Committee that the ships which brought to England the
plan of the 8th of April did not sail from Bengal until the 1st of May.
If the change had been in contemplation for any time before the 30th of
April, two days would have sufficed to send an account of it, and it
might have arrived along with the plan which it affected. If, therefore,
such a change was in agitation before the sailing of the ships, and yet
was concealed when it might have been communicated, the concealment is
censurable. It is not improbable that some change of the kind was made
or meditated before the sailing of the ships for Europe: for it is
hardly to be imagined that reasons wholly unlooked-for should appear for
setting aside a plan concerning the success of which the Council-General
seemed so very confident, that a new one should be proposed, that its
merits should be discussed among the moneyed men, that it should be
adopted in Council, and officially ready for transmission to Madras, in
twelve or thirteen days. In this perplexity of plan and of transmission,
the Court of Directors may have made an arrangement of their affairs on
the groundwork of the first scheme, which was officially and
authentically conveyed to them. The fundamental alteration of that plan
in India might require another of a very different kind in England,
which the arrangements taken in consequence of the first might make it
difficult, if not impossible, to execute. What must add to the confusion
is, that the alteration has not the regular and official authority of
the original plan, and may be presumed to indicate with certainty
nothing more than that the business is _again_ afloat, and that no
scheme is finally determined on. Thus the Company is left without any
fixed data upon which they can make a rational disposition of their
affairs.
The fact is, that the principles and economy of the Company's trade have
been so completely corrupted by turning it into a vehicle for tribute,
that, whenever circumstances require it to be replaced again upon a
bottom truly commercial, hardly anything but confusion and disasters can
be expected as the first results. Even before the acquisition of the
territorial revenues, the system of the Company's commerce was not
formed upon principles the most favorable to its prosperity; for,
whilst, on the one hand, that body received encouragement by royal and
Parliamentary charters, was invested with several ample privileges, and
even with a delegation of the most essential prerogatives of the
crown,--on the other, its commerce was watched with an insidious
jealousy, as a species of dealing dangerous to the national interests.
In that light, with regard to the Company's imports, there was a total
prohibition from domestic use of the most considerable articles of their
trade,--that is, of all silk stuffs, and stained and painted cottons.
The British market was in a great measure interdicted to the British
trader. Whatever advantages might arise to the general trading interests
of the kingdom by this restraint, its East India interest was
undoubtedly injured by it. The Company is also, and has been from a
very early period, obliged to furnish the Ordnance with a quantity of
saltpetre at a certain price, without any reference to the standard of
the markets either of purchase or of sale. With regard to their export,
they were put also under difficulties upon very mistaken notions; for
they were obliged to export annually a certain proportion of British
manufactures, even though they should find for them in India none or but
an unprofitable want. This compulsory export might operate, and in some
instances has operated, in a manner more grievous than a tax to the
amount of the loss in trade: for the payment of a tax is in general
divided in unequal portions between the vender and consumer, the largest
part falling upon the latter; in the case before us the tax may be as a
dead charge on the trading capital of the Company.
The spirit of all these regulations naturally tended to weaken, in the
very original constitution of the Company, the main-spring of the
commercial machine, _the principles of profit and loss_. And the
mischief arising from an inattention to those principles has constantly
increased with the increase of its power. For when the Company had
acquired the rights of sovereignty in India, it was not to be expected
that the attention to profit and loss would have increased. The idea of
remitting tribute in goods naturally produced an indifference to their
price and quality,--the goods themselves appearing little else than a
sort of package to the tribute. Merchandise taken as tribute, or bought
in lieu of it, can never long be of a kind or of a price fitted to a
market which stands solely on its commercial reputation. The
indifference of the mercantile sovereign to his trading advantages
naturally relaxed the diligence of his subordinate factor-magistrates
through all their gradations and in all their functions; it gave rise,
at least so far as the principal was concerned, to much neglect of price
and of goodness in their purchases. If ever they showed any
extraordinary degrees of accuracy and selection, it would naturally be
in favor of that interest to which they could not be indifferent. The
Company might suffer above, the natives might suffer below; the
intermediate party must profit to the prejudice of both.
Your Committee are of opinion that the Company is now arrived at that
point, when, the investment from surplus revenue or from the spoil of
war ceasing, it is become much more necessary to fix its commerce upon a
commercial basis. And this opinion led your Committee to a detailed
review of all the articles of the Indian traffic upon which the profit
and loss was steady; and we have chosen a period of four years, during
the continuance of the revenue investment, and prior to any borrowing or
any extraordinary drawing of bills, in order to find out how far the
trade, under circumstances when it will be necessary to carry it on by
borrowing, or by bills, or by exportation of bullion, can be sustained
in the former course, so as to secure the capital and to afford a
reasonable dividend. And your Committee find that in the first four
years the investment from Bengal amounted to 4,176,525_l._; upon
2,260,277_l._ there was a gain of 186,337_l._, and upon 1,916,248_l._ a
loss of 705,566_l._: so that the excess of loss above gain, upon the
whole of the foregoing capital, was in the four years no less than
519,229_l._
If the trade were confined to Bengal, and the Company were to trade on
those terms upon a capital borrowed at eight per cent Indian interest,
their revenues in that province would be soon so overpowered with debt,
that those revenues, instead of supporting the trade, would be totally
destroyed by it. If, on the other hand, the Company traded upon bills
with every advantage, far from being in a condition to divide the
smallest percentage, their bankruptcy here would be inevitable.
Your Committee then turned to the trade of the other factories and
Presidencies, and they constantly found, that, as the power and dominion
of the Company was less, their profit on the goods was greater. The
investments of Madras, Bombay, and Bencoolen have, in the foregoing four
years, upon a capital of 1,151,176_l._, had a gain upon the whole of
329,622_l._ The greatest of all is that of Bencoolen, which, on a
capital of 76,571_l._, produced a profit of 107,760_l._ This, however,
is but a small branch of the Company's trade. The trade to China, on a
capital of 1,717,463_l._, produced an excess of gain amounting to
874,096_l._, which is about fifty per cent. But such was the evil
influence of the Bengal investment, that not only the profits of the
Chinese trade, but of all the lucrative branches taken together, were so
sunk and ingulfed in it, that the whole profit on a capital of
7,045,164_l._ reached to no more than 684,489_l._, that is, to
189,607_l._ less than the profit on the Chinese trade alone,--less than
the total profits on the gainful trades taken together, 520,727_l._
It is very remarkable, that in the year 1778, when the Bengal investment
stood at the highest, that is, so high as 1,223,316_l._, though the
Chinese trade produced an excess of gain in that year of 209,243_l._,
and that no loss of moment could be added to that of Bengal, (except
about 45,000_l._ on the Bombay trade,) the whole profit of a capital of
2,040,787_l._ amounted only to the sum of 9,480_l._
The detail of the articles in which loss was incurred or gain made will
be found in the Appendix, No. 24. The circumstances of the time have
rendered it necessary to call up a vigorous attention to this state of
the trade of the Company between Europe and India.
INTERNAL TRADE OF BENGAL.
The internal trade of Bengal has next attracted the inquiries of your
Committee.
The great and valuable articles of the Company's investment, drawn from
the articles of internal trade, are raw silk, and various descriptions
of piece-goods made of silk and cotton. These articles are not under any
formal monopoly; nor does the Company at present exercise a _declared_
right of preëmption with regard to them. But it does not appear that the
trade in these particulars is or can be perfectly free,--not so much on
account of any direct measures taken to prevent it as from the
circumstances of the country, and the manner of carrying on business
there: for the present trade, even in these articles, is built from the
ruins of old monopolies and preëmptions, and necessarily partakes of the
nature of its materials.
In order to show in what manner manufactures and trade so constituted
contribute to the prosperity of the natives, your Committee conceives it
proper to take, in this place, a short general view of the progress of
the English policy with relation to the commerce of Bengal, and the
several stages and gradations by which it has been brought into its
actual state. The modes of abuse, and the means by which commerce has
suffered, will be considered in greater detail under the distinct heads
of those objects which have chiefly suffered by them.
During the time of the Mogul government, the princes of that race, who
omitted nothing for the encouragement of commerce in their dominions,
bestowed very large privileges and immunities on the English East India
Company, exempting them from several duties to which their natural-born
subjects were liable. The Company's _dustuck_, or passport, secured to
them this exemption at all the custom-houses and toll-bars of the
country. The Company, not being able or not choosing to make use of
their privilege to the full extent to which it might be carried,
indulged their servants with a qualified use of their passport, under
which, and in the name of the Company, they carried on a private trade,
either by themselves or in society with natives, and thus found a
compensation for the scanty allowances made to them by their masters in
England. As the country government was at that time in the fulness of
its strength, and that this immunity existed by a double connivance, it
was naturally kept within tolerable limits.
But by the revolution in 1757 the Company's servants obtained a mighty
ascendant over the native princes of Bengal, who owed their elevation to
the British arms. The Company, which was new to that kind of power, and
not yet thoroughly apprised of its real character and situation,
considered itself still as a trader in the territories of a foreign
potentate, in the prosperity of whose country it had neither interest
nor duty. The servants, with the same ideas, followed their fortune in
the channels in which it had hitherto ran, only enlarging them with the
enlargement of their power. For their first ideas of profit were not
official; nor were their oppressions those of ordinary despotism. The
first instruments of their power were formed out of evasions of their
ancient subjection. The passport of the Company in the hands of its
servants was no longer under any restraint; and in a very short time
their immunity began to cover all the merchandise of the country. Cossim
Ali Khân, the second of the Nabobs whom they had set up, was but ill
disposed to the instruments of his greatness. He bore the yoke of this
imperious commerce with the utmost impatience: he saw his subjects
excluded as aliens from their own trade, and the revenues of the prince
overwhelmed in the ruin of the commerce of his dominions. Finding his
reiterated remonstrances on the extent and abuse of the passport
ineffectual, he had recourse to an unexpected expedient, which was, to
declare his resolution at once to annul all the duties on trade, setting
it equally free to subjects and to foreigners.
Never was a method of defeating the oppressions of monopoly more
forcible, more simple, or more equitable: no sort of plausible objection
could be made; and it was in vain to think of evading it. It was
therefore met with the confidence of avowed and determined injustice.
The Presidency of Calcutta openly denied to the prince the power of
protecting the trade of his subjects by the remission of his own duties.
It was evident that his authority drew to its period: many reasons and
motives concurred, and his fall was hastened by the odium of the
oppressions which he exercised voluntarily, as well as of those to which
he was obliged to submit.
When this example was made, Jaffier Ali Khân, who had been deposed to
make room for the last actor, was brought from penury and exile to a
station the terms of which he could not misunderstand. During his life,
and in the time of his children who succeeded to him, parts of the
territorial revenue were assigned to the Company; and the whole, under
the name of residency at the Nabob's court, was brought, directly or
indirectly, under the control of British subjects. The Company's
servants, armed with authorities delegated from the nominal government,
or attended with what was a stronger guard, the fame of their own power,
appeared as magistrates in the markets in which they dealt as traders.
It was impossible for the natives in general to distinguish, in the
proceedings of the same persons, what was transacted on the Company's
account from what was done on their own; and it will ever be so
difficult to draw this line of distinction, that as long as the Company
does, directly or indirectly, aim at any advantage to itself in the
purchase of any commodity whatever, so long will it be impracticable to
prevent the servants availing themselves of the same privilege.
The servants, therefore, for themselves or for their employers,
monopolized every article of trade, foreign and domestic: not only the
raw merchantable commodities, but the manufactures; and not only these,
but the necessaries of life, or what in these countries habit has
confounded with them,--not only silk, cotton, piece-goods, opium,
saltpetre, but not unfrequently salt, tobacco, betel-nut, and the grain
of most ordinary consumption. In the name of the country government
they laid on or took off, and at their pleasure heightened or lowered,
all duties upon goods: the whole trade of the country was either
destroyed or in shackles. The acquisition of the Duanné, in 1765,
bringing the English into the immediate government of the country in its
most essential branches, extended and confirmed all the former means of
monopoly.
In the progress of these ruinous measures through all their details,
innumerable grievances were suffered by the native inhabitants, which
were represented in the strongest, that is, their true colors, in
England. Whilst the far greater part of the British in India were in
eager pursuit of the forced and exorbitant gains of a trade carried on
by power, contests naturally arose among the competitors: those who were
overpowered by their rivals became loud in their complaints to the Court
of Directors, and were very capable, from experience, of pointing out
every mode of abuse.
The Court of Directors, on their part, began, though very slowly, to
perceive that the country which was ravaged by this sort of commerce was
their own. These complaints obliged the Directors to a strict
examination into the real sources of the mismanagement of their concerns
in India, and to lay the foundations of a system of restraint on the
exorbitancies of their servants. Accordingly, so early as the year 1765,
they confine them to a trade only in articles of export and import, and
strictly prohibit them from all dealing in objects of internal
consumption. About the same time the Presidency of Calcutta found it
necessary to put a restraint upon themselves, or at least to make show
of a disposition (with which the Directors appear much satisfied) to
keep their own enormous power within bounds.
But whatever might have been the intentions either of the Directors or
the Presidency, both found themselves unequal to the execution of a plan
which went to defeat the projects of almost all the English in
India,--possibly comprehending some who were makers of the regulations.
For, as the complaint of the country or as their own interest
predominated with the Presidency, they were always shifting from one
course to the other; so that it became as impossible for the natives to
know upon what principle to ground any commercial speculation, from the
uncertainty of the law under which they acted, as it was when they were
oppressed by power without any color of law at all: for the Directors,
in a few months after they had given these tokens of approbation to the
above regulations in favor of the country trade, tell the Presidency,
"It is with concern we see in _every page_ of your Consultations
_restrictions, limitations, prohibitions, affecting various articles of
trade_." On their side, the Presidency freely confess that these
monopolies of inland trade "were the foundation of all the bloodsheds,
massacres, and confusions which have happened of late in Bengal."
Pressed in this urgent manner, the Directors came more specifically to
the grievance, and at once annul all the passports with which their
servants traded without duties, holding out means of compensation, of
which it does not appear that any advantage was taken. In order that the
duties which existed should no longer continue to burden the trade
either of the servants or natives, they ordered that a number of
oppressive toll-bars should be taken away, and the whole number reduced
to nine of the most considerable.
When Lord Clive was sent to Bengal to effect a reformation of the many
abuses which prevailed there, he considered monopoly to be so inveterate
and deeply rooted, and the just rewards of the Company's servants to be
so complicated with that injustice to the country, that the latter could
not easily be removed without taking away the former. He adopted,
therefore, a plan for dealing in certain articles, which, as he
conceived, rather ought to be called "a regulated and restricted trade"
than a formal monopoly. By this plan he intended that the profits should
be distributed in an orderly and proportioned manner for the reward of
services, and not seized by each individual according to the measure of
his boldness, dexterity, or influence.
But this scheme of monopoly did not subsist long, at least in that mode
and for those purposes. Three of the grand monopolies, those of opium,
salt, and saltpetre, were successively by the Company taken into their
own hands. The produce of the sale of the two former articles was
applied to the purchase of goods for their investment; the latter was
exported in kind for their sales in Europe. The senior servants had a
certain share of emolument allotted to them from a commission on the
revenues. The junior servants were rigorously confined to salaries, on
which they were unable to subsist according to their rank. They were
strictly ordered to abstain from all dealing in objects of internal
commerce. Those of export and import were left open to young men without
mercantile experience, and wholly unprovided with mercantile capitals,
but abundantly furnished with large trusts of the public money, and with
all the powers of an absolute government. In this situation, a religious
abstinence from all illicit game was prescribed to men at nine thousand
miles' distance from the seat of the supreme authority.
Your Committee is far from meaning to justify, or even to excuse, the
oppressions and cruelties used by many in supplying the deficiencies of
their regular allowances by all manner of extortion; but many smaller
irregularities may admit some alleviation from thence. Nor does your
Committee mean to express any desire of reverting to the mode (contrived
in India, but condemned by the Directors) of rewarding the servants of
an higher class by a regulated monopoly. Their object is to point out
the deficiencies in the system, by which restrictions were laid that
could have little or no effect whilst want and power were suffered to be
united.
But the proceedings of the Directors at that time, though not altogether
judicious, were in many respects honorable to them, and favorable, in
the intention at least, to the country they governed. For, finding their
trading capital employed against themselves and against the natives, and
struggling in vain against abuses which were inseparably connected with
the system of their own preference in trade, in the year 1773 they came
to the manly resolution of setting an example to their servants, and
gave up all use of power and influence in the two grand articles of
their investment, silk and piece-goods. They directed that the articles
should be bought at an equal and public market from the native
merchants; and this order they directed to be published in all the
principal marts of Bengal.
Your Committee are clearly of opinion that no better method of purchase
could be adopted. But it soon appeared that in deep-rooted and
inveterate abuses the wisest principles of reform may be made to operate
so destructively as wholly to discredit the design, and to dishearten
all persons from the prosecution of it. The Presidency, who seemed to
yield with the utmost reluctance to the execution of these orders, soon
made the Directors feel their evil influence upon their own investment;
for they found the silk and cotton cloths rose twenty-five per cent
above their former price, and a further rise of forty per cent was
announced to them.
SILK.
What happened with regard to raw silk is still more remarkable, and
tends still more clearly to illustrate the effects of commercial
servitude during its unchecked existence, and the consequences which may
be made to arise from its sudden reformation. On laying open the trade,
the article of raw silk was instantly enhanced to the Company full
eighty per cent. The contract made for that commodity, wound off in the
Bengal method, which used to sell for less than six rupees, or thirteen
shillings, for two pounds' weight, arose to nine rupees, or near twenty
shillings, and the filature silk was very soon after contracted for at
fourteen.
The Presidency accounted for this rise by observing that the price had
before been _arbitrary_, and that the persons who purveyed for the
Company paid no more than "what was _judged_ sufficient for the
maintenance of the first providers." This fact explains more fully than
the most labored description can do the dreadful effects of the monopoly
on the cultivators. They had the _sufficiency_ of their maintenance
measured out by the judgment of those who were to profit by their labor;
and this measure was not a great deal more, by their own account, than
about two thirds of the value of that labor. In all probability it was
much less, as these dealings rarely passed through intermediate hands
without leaving a considerable profit. These oppressions, it will be
observed, were not confined to the Company's share, which, however,
covered a great part of the trade; but as this was an article permitted
to the servants, the same power of arbitrary valuation must have been
extended over the whole, as the market must be equalized, if any
authority at all is extended over it by those who have an interest in
the restraint. The price was not only raised, but in the manufactures
the quality was debased nearly in an equal proportion. The Directors
conceived, with great reason, that this rise of price and debasement of
quality arose, not from the effect of a free market, but from the
servants having taken that opportunity of throwing upon the market of
their masters the refuse goods of their own private trade at such
exorbitant prices as by mutual connivance they were pleased to settle.
The mischief was greatly aggravated by its happening at a time when the
Company were obliged to pay for their goods with bonds bearing an high
interest.
The perplexed system of the Company's concerns, composed of so many
opposite movements and contradictory principles, appears nowhere in a
more clear light. If trade continued under restraint, their territorial
revenues must suffer by checking the general prosperity of the country:
if they set it free, means were taken to raise the price and debase the
quality of the goods; and this again fell upon the revenues, out of
which the payment for the goods was to arise. The observations of the
Company on that occasion are just and sagacious; and they will not
permit the least doubt concerning the policy of these unnatural trades.
"The amount of our Bengal cargoes, from 1769 to 1773, is 2,901,194_l._
sterling; and if the average increase of price be estimated at
twenty-five per cent only, the amount of such increase is 725,298_l._
sterling. The above circumstances are exceedingly alarming to us; but
what must be our concern, to find by the advices of our President and
Council of 1773, that a further advance of forty per cent on Bengal
goods was expected, and allowed to be the consequence of advertisements
then published, authorizing a free trade in the service? We find the
Duanné revenues are in general farmed for five years, and the aggregate
increase estimated at only 183,170_l._ sterling (on a supposition that
such increase will be realized); yet if the annual investment be sixty
lacs, and the advance of price thirty per cent only, such advance will
_exceed the increase of the revenue by no less than 829,330l.
sterling_."
The indignation which the Directors felt at being reduced to this
distressing situation was expressed to their servants in very strong
terms. They attributed the whole to their practices, and say, "We are
far from being convinced that the competition which tends to raise the
price of goods in Bengal is wholly between public European companies, or
between merchants in general who export to foreign markets: we are
rather of opinion that the sources of this grand evil have been the
extraordinary privileges granted to individuals in our service or under
our license to trade without restriction throughout the provinces of
Bengal, and the encouragement they have had to extend their trade to the
uttermost, even in such goods as were proper for our investment, by
observing the success of those persons who have from time to time _found
means to dispose of their merchandise to our Governor and Council_,
though of so bad a quality as to be sold here with great difficulty,
after having been frequently refused, and put up at the next sale
without price, to the very great discredit and disadvantage of the
Company." In all probability the Directors were not mistaken; for, upon
an inquiry instituted soon after, it was found that Cantû Babû, the
banian or native steward and manager to Mr. Hastings, (late President,)
held two of these contracts in his own name and that of his son for
considerably more than 150,000_l._ This discovery brought on a
prohibition from the Court of Directors of that suspicious and dangerous
dealing in the stewards of persons in high office. The same man held
likewise farms to the amount of 140,000_l._ a year of the landed
revenue, with the same suspicious appearance, contrary to the
regulations made under Mr. Hastings's own administration.
In the mortifying dilemma to which the Directors found themselves
reduced, whereby the ruin of the revenues either by the freedom or the
restraint of trade was evident, they considered the first as most rapid
and urgent, and therefore once more revert to the system of their
ancient preëmption, and destroy that freedom which they had so lately
and with so much solemnity proclaimed, and that before it could be
abused or even enjoyed. They declare, that, "unwilling as we are to
return to _the former coercive system_ of providing an investment, or to
abridge that freedom of commerce which has been so lately established in
Bengal, yet at the same time finding it our indispensable duty to strike
at the _root_ of an evil which has been so severely felt by the Company,
and which can no longer be supported, we hereby direct that all persons
whatever in the Company's service, _or under our protection_, be
absolutely prohibited, by public advertisement, from trading in any of
those articles which compose our investment, directly or indirectly,
except on account of and for the East India Company, until their
investment is completed."
As soon as this order was received in Bengal, it was construed, as
indeed the words seemed directly to warrant, to exclude all natives as
well as servants from the trade, until the Company was supplied. The
Company's preëmption was now authoritatively reëstablished, and some
feeble and ostensible regulations were made to relieve the weavers who
might suffer by it. The Directors imagined that the reëstablishment of
their coercive system would remove the evil which fraud and artifice had
grafted upon one more rational and liberal. But they were mistaken; for
it only varied, if it did so much as vary, the abuse. The servants might
as essentially injure their interest by a direct exercise of their power
as by pretexts drawn from the freedom of the natives,--but with this
fatal difference, that the frauds upon the Company must be of shorter
duration under a scheme of freedom. That state admitted, and indeed led
to, means of discovery and correction; whereas the system of coercion
was likely to be permanent. It carried force further than served the
purposes of those who authorized it: it tended to cover all frauds with
obscurity, and to bury all complaint in despair. The next year,
therefore, that is, in the year 1776, the Company, who complained that
their orders had been extended beyond their intentions, made a third
revolution in the trade of Bengal. It was set free again,--so far, at
least, as regarded the native merchants,--but in so imperfect a manner
as evidently to leave the roots of old abuses in the ground. The Supreme
Court of Judicature about this time (1776) also fulminated a charge
against monopolies, without any exception of those authorized by the
Company: but it does not appear that anything very material was done in
consequence of it.
The trade became nominally free; but the course of business established
in consequence of coercive monopoly was not easily altered. In order to
render more distinct the principles which led to the establishment of a
course and habit of business so very difficult to change as long as
those principles exist, your Committee think it will not be useless here
to enter into the history of the regulations made in the first and
favorite matter of the Company's investment, the trade in _raw silk_,
from the commencement of these regulations to the Company's perhaps
finally abandoning all share in the trade which was their object.
RAW SILK
The trade in _raw silk_ was at all times more popular in England than
really advantageous to the Company. In addition to the old jealousy
which prevailed between the Company and the manufactory interest of
England, they came to labor under no small odium on account of the
distresses of India. The public in England perceived, and felt with a
proper sympathy, the sufferings of the Eastern provinces in all cases in
which they might be attributed to the abuses of power exercised under
the Company's authority. But they were not equally sensible to the evils
which arose from a system of sacrificing the being of that country to
the advantage of this. They entered very readily into the former, but
with regard to the latter were slow and incredulous. It is not,
therefore, extraordinary that the Company should endeavor to ingratiate
themselves with the public by falling in with its prejudices. Thus they
were led to increase the grievance in order to allay the clamor. They
continued still, upon a larger scale, and still more systematically,
that plan of conduct which was the principal, though not the most
blamed, cause of the decay and depopulation of the country committed to
their care.
With that view, and to furnish a cheap supply of materials to the
manufactures of England, they formed a scheme which tended to destroy,
or at least essentially to impair, the whole manufacturing interest of
Bengal. A policy of that sort could not fail of being highly popular,
when the Company submitted itself as an instrument for the improvement
of British manufactures, instead of being their most dangerous rival, as
heretofore they had been always represented.
They accordingly notified to their Presidency in Bengal, in their letter
of the 17th of March, 1769, that "there was no branch of their trade
they more ardently wish to extend than that of raw silk." They
disclaim, however, all desire of employing compulsory measures for that
purpose, but recommended every mode of encouragement, and particularly
by augmented wages, "_in order to induce manufacturers of wrought silk
to quit that branch and take to the winding of raw silk_."
Having thus found means to draw hands from the manufacture, and
confiding in the strength of a capital drawn from the public revenues,
they pursue their ideas from the purchase of their manufacture to the
purchase of the material in its crudest state. "We recommend you to give
an _increased price_, if necessary, _so as to take that trade out of the
hands of other merchants and rival nations_." A double bounty was thus
given against the manufactures, both in the labor and in the materials.
It is very remarkable in what manner their vehement pursuit of this
object led the Directors to a speedy oblivion of those equitable
correctives before interposed by them, in order to prevent the mischiefs
which were apparent in the scheme, if left to itself. They could venture
so little to trust to the bounties given from the revenues a trade which
had a tendency to dry up their source, that, by the time they had
proceeded to the thirty-third paragraph of their letter, they revert to
those very compulsory means which they had disclaimed but three
paragraphs before. To prevent silk-winders from working in their private
houses, where they might work for private traders, and to confine them
to the Company's factories, where they could only be employed for the
Company's benefit, they desire that the newly acquired power of
government should be effectually employed. "Should," say they, "this
practice, through _inattention_, have been suffered to take place again,
it will be proper to put a stop to it, which may _now be more
effectually done by an absolute prohibition, under severe penalties, by
the authority of government_."
This letter contains a perfect plan of policy, both of compulsion and
encouragement, which must in a very considerable degree operate
destructively to the manufactures of Bengal. Its effect must be (so far
as it could operate without being eluded) to change the whole face of
that industrious country, in order to render it a field for the produce
of crude materials subservient to the manufactures of Great Britain. The
manufacturing hands were to be seduced from their looms by high wages,
in order to prepare a raw produce for our market; they were to be locked
up in the factories; and the commodity acquired by these operations was,
in this immature state, carried out of the country, whilst its looms
would be left without any material but the debased refuse of a market
enhanced in its price and scanted in its supply. By the increase of the
price of this and other materials, manufactures formerly the most
flourishing gradually disappeared under the protection of Great Britain,
and were seen to rise again and flourish on the opposite coast of India,
under the dominion of the Mahrattas.
These restraints and encouragements seem to have had the desired effect
in Bengal with regard to the diversion of labor from manufacture to
materials. The trade of raw silk increased rapidly. But the Company very
soon felt, in the increase of price and debasement of quality of the
wrought goods, a loss to themselves which fully counterbalanced all the
advantages to be derived to the nation from the increase of the raw
commodity. The necessary effect on the revenue was also foretold very
early: for their servants in the principal silk-factories declared that
the obstruction to the private trade in silk must in the end prove
detrimental to the revenues, and that the investment clashes with the
collection of these revenues. Whatsoever by bounties or immunities is
encouraged out of a landed revenue has certainly some tendency to lessen
the net amount of that revenue, and to forward a produce which does not
yield to the gross collection, rather than one that does.
The Directors declare themselves unable to understand how this could be.
Perhaps it was not so difficult. But, pressed as they were by the
greatness of the payments which they were compelled to make to
government in England, the cries of Bengal could not be heard among the
contending claims of the General Court, of the Treasury, and of
Spitalfields. The speculation of the Directors was originally fair and
plausible,--so far as the mere encouragement of the commodity extended.
Situated as they were, it was hardly in their power to stop themselves
in the course they had begun. They were obliged to continue their
resolution, at any hazard, increasing the investment. "The state of our
affairs," say they, "requires the utmost extension of your investments.
You are not to forbear sending even those sorts _which are attended with
loss_, in case such should be necessary to supply an investment to as
great an amount as _you can provide from your own resources_; and we
have not the least doubt of your being thereby enabled to increase your
consignments of this valuable branch of national commerce, even to the
utmost of your wishes. But it is our positive order that no part of
such investment be provided with borrowed money which is to be repaid by
_drafts upon our treasury in London_; since the license which has
already been taken in this respect has involved us in difficulties which
we yet know not how we shall surmount."
This very instructive paragraph lays open the true origin of the
internal decay of Bengal. The trade and revenues of that country were
(as the then system must necessarily have been) of secondary
consideration at best. Present supplies were to be obtained, and present
demands in England were to be avoided, at every expense to Bengal.
The spirit of increasing the investment from revenue at any rate, and
the resolution of driving all competitors, Europeans or natives, out of
the market, prevailed at a period still more early, and prevailed not
only in Bengal, but seems, more or less, to have diffused itself through
the whole sphere of the Company's influence. In 1768 they gave to the
Presidency of Madras the following memorable instruction, strongly
declaratory of their general system of policy.
"We shall depend upon your prudence," say they, "to discourage
foreigners; and being intent, as you have been repeatedly acquainted, on
bringing home as great a part of the revenues as possible in your
manufactures, the outbidding them in those parts where they interfere
with you would certainly prove an effectual step for answering that end.
We therefore recommend it to you to offer such increase of price as you
shall deem may be consistently given,--that, by beating them out of the
market, the quantities by you to be provided may be proportionally
enlarged; and if you take this method, it is to be so cautiously
practised as not to enhance the prices in the places immediately under
your control. On this subject we must not omit the approval of your
prohibiting the weavers of Cuddalore from making up any cloth of the
same sortments that are provided for us; and if such prohibition is not
now, it should by all means be in future, _made general, and strictly
maintained_."
This system must have an immediate tendency towards disordering the
trade of India, and must finally end in great detriment to the Company
itself. The effect of the restrictive system on the weaver is evident.
The authority given to the servants to buy at an advanced price did of
necessity furnish means and excuses for every sort of fraud in their
purchases. The instant the servant of a merchant is admitted on his own
judgment to overbid the market, or to send goods to his master which
shall sell at loss, there is no longer any standard upon which his
unfair practices can be estimated, or any effectual means by which they
can be restrained. The hope entertained by the Directors, of confining
this destructive practice of giving an enhanced price to a particular
spot, must ever be found totally delusive. Speculations will be affected
by this artificial price in every quarter in which markets can have the
least communication with each other.
In a very few years the Court of Directors began to feel, even in
Leadenhall Street, _the effects of trading to loss_ upon the revenues,
especially on those of Bengal. In the letter of February, 1774, they
observe, that, "looking back to their accounts for the four preceding
years, on several of the descriptions of silk there has been an
_increasing loss_, instead of any alteration for the better in the last
year's productions. This," they say, "threatens the destruction of that
valuable branch of national commerce." And then they recommend _such
regulations_ (as if regulations in that state of things could be of any
service) as may obtain "a profit in future, instead of so considerable a
loss, which _we can no longer sustain_."
Your Committee thought it necessary to inquire into the losses which had
actually been suffered by this unnatural forced trade, and find the loss
so early as the season of 1776 to be 77,650_l._, that in the year 1777
it arose to 168,205_l._ This was so great that worse could hardly be
apprehended: however, in the season of 1778 it amounted to 255,070_l._
In 1779 it was not so ruinously great, because the whole import was not
so considerable; but it still stood enormously high,--so high as
141,800_l._ In the whole four years it came to 642,725_l._ The
observations of the Directors were found to be fully verified. It is
remarkable that the same article in the China trade produced a
considerable and uniform profit. On this circumstance little observation
is necessary.
During the time of their struggles for enlarging this losing trade,
which they considered as a national object,--what in one point of view
it was, and, if it had not been grossly mismanaged, might have been in
more than one,--in this part it is impossible to refuse to the Directors
a very great share of merit. No degree of thought, of trouble, or of
reasonable expense was spared by them for the improvement of the
commodity. They framed with diligence, and apparently on very good
information, a code of manufacturing regulations for that purpose; and
several persons were sent out, conversant in the Italian method of
preparing and winding silk, aided by proper machines for facilitating
and perfecting the work. This, under proper care, and in course of time,
might have produced a real improvement to Bengal; but in the first
instance it naturally drew the business from native management, and it
caused a revulsion from the trade and manufactures of India which led as
naturally and inevitably to an European monopoly, in some hands or
other, as any of the modes of coercion which were or could be employed.
The evil was present and inherent in the act. The means of letting the
natives into the benefit of the improved system of produce was likely to
be counteracted by the general ill conduct of the Company's concerns
abroad. For a while, at least, it had an effect still worse: for the
Company purchasing the raw cocoon or silk-pod at a fixed rate, the first
producer, who, whilst he could wind at his own house, employed his
family in this labor, and could procure a reasonable livelihood by
buying up the cocoons for the Italian filature, now incurred the
enormous and ruinous loss of fifty per cent. This appears in a letter to
the Presidency, written by Mr. Boughton Rouse, now a member of your
Committee. But for a long time a considerable quantity of that in the
old Bengal mode of winding was bought for the Company from contractors,
and it continues to be so bought to the present time: but the Directors
complain, in their letter of the 12th of May, 1780, that both species,
and particularly the latter, had risen so extravagantly that it was
become more than forty per cent dearer than it had been fifteen years
ago. In that state of price, they condemn their servants, very justly,
for entering into contracts for three years,--and that for several
kinds of silk, of very different goodness, upon averages unfairly
formed, where the commodities averaged at an equal price differed from
twenty to thirty per cent on the sale. Soon after, they formed a regular
scale of fixed prices, above which they found they could not trade
without loss.
Whilst they were continuing these methods to secure themselves against
future losses, the Bengal ships which arrived in that year announced
nothing but their continuance. Some articles by the high price, and
others from their ill quality, were such "as never could answer to be
sent to Europe at any price." The Directors renew their prohibition of
making fresh contracts, the present being generally to expire in the
year 1781. But this trade, whose fundamental policy might have admitted
of a doubt, as applied to Bengal, (whatever it might have been with
regard to England,) was now itself expiring in the hands of the Company,
so that they were obliged to apply to government for power to enlarge
their capacity of receiving bills upon Europe. The purchase by these
bills they entirely divert from raw silk, and order to be laid out
wholly in piece-goods.
Thus, having found by experience that this trade, whilst carried on upon
the old principles, of whatever advantage it might have been to the
British manufacturers, or to the individuals who were concerned in it in
Bengal, had proved highly detrimental to the Company, the Directors
resolved to expunge the raw silk from their investment. They gave up the
whole to private traders, on condition of paying the freight, charges,
and duties,--permitting them to send it to Europe in the Company's ships
upon their own account.
The whole of this history will serve to demonstrate that all attempts,
which in their original system or in their necessary consequences tend
to the distress of India, must, and in a very short time will, make
themselves felt even by those in whose favor such attempts have been
made. India may possibly in some future time bear and support itself
under an extraction of measure [treasure?] or of goods; but much care
ought to be taken that the influx of wealth shall be greater in quantity
and prior in time to the waste.
On abandoning the trade in silk to private hands, the Directors issued
some prohibitions to prevent monopoly, and they gave some directions
about the improvement of the trade. The prohibitions were proper, and
the directions prudent; but it is much to be feared, that, whilst all
the means, instruments, and powers remain, by which monopolies were
made, and through which abuses formerly prevailed, all verbal orders
will be fruitless.
This branch of trade, being so long principally managed by the Company's
servants for the Company and under its authority, cannot be easily taken
out of their hands and pass to the natives, especially when it is to be
carried on without the control naturally inherent in all participation.
It is not difficult to conceive how this forced preference of traffic in
a raw commodity must have injured the manufactures, while it was the
policy of the Company to continue the trade on their own account. The
servants, so far from deviating from their course, since they have taken
the trade into their own management, have gone much further into it. The
proportion of raw silk in the investment is to be augmented. The
proportion of the whole cargoes for the year 1783, divided into sixteen
parts, is ten of raw silk, and six only of manufactured goods. Such is
the proportion of this losing article in the scheme for the investment
of private fortunes.
In the reformed scheme of sending the investment on account of the
Company, to be paid in bills upon Europe, no mention is made of any
change of these proportions. Indeed, some limits are attempted on the
article of silk, with regard to its price; and it is not improbable that
the price to the master and the servant will be very different: but they
cannot make profitable purchases of this article without strongly
condemning all the former purchases of the Board of Trade.
CLOTHS, OR PIECE-GOODS.
The general system above stated, relative to the silk trade, must
materially have affected the manufactures of Bengal, merely as it was a
system of preference. It does by no means satisfactorily appear to your
Committee that the freedom held out by the Company's various orders has
been ever fully enjoyed, or that the grievances of the native merchants
and manufacturers have been redressed; for we find, on good authority,
that, at that very period at which it might be supposed that these
orders had their operation, the oppressions were in full vigor. They
appear to have fallen heaviest on the city of Dacca, formerly the great
staple for the finest goods in India,--a place once full of opulent
merchants and dealers of all descriptions.
The city and district of Dacca, before the prevalence of the East India
Company's influence and authority, manufactured annually to about three
hundred thousand pounds' value in cloths. In the year 1776 it had
fallen to about two hundred thousand, or two thirds of its former
produce. Of this the Company's demand amounted only to a fourth part,
that is, about fifty thousand pounds yearly. This was at that time
provided by agents for the Company, under the inspection of their
commercial servants. On pretence of securing an advantage for this
fourth part for their masters, they exerted a most violent and arbitrary
power over the whole. It was asserted, that they fixed the Company's
mark to such goods as they thought fit, (to all goods, as stated in one
complaint,) and disposed of them as they thought proper, excluding not
only all the native dealers, but the Dutch Company, and private English
merchants,--that they made advances to the weavers often beyond their
known ability to repay in goods within the year, and by this means,
having got them in debt, held them in perpetual servitude. Their
inability to keep accounts left them at the discretion of the agents of
the supreme power to make their balances what they pleased, and they
recovered them, not by legal process, but by seizure of their goods and
arbitrary imprisonment of their persons. One and the same dealer made
the advance, valued the return, stated the account, passed the judgment,
and executed the process.
Mr. Rouse, Chief of the Dacca Province, who struggled against those
evils, says, that in the year 1773 there were no balances due, as the
trade was then carried on by the native brokers. In less than three
years these balances amounted to an immense sum,--a sum lost to the
Company, but existing in full force for every purpose of oppression. In
the amount of these balances almost every weaver in the country bore a
part, and consequently they were almost all caught in this snare. "They
are in general," says Mr. Rouse, in a letter to General Clavering,
delivered to your Committee, "a timid, helpless people; many of them
poor to the utmost degree of wretchedness; incapable of keeping
accounts; industrious as it were by instinct; unable to defend
themselves, if oppressed; and satisfied, if with continual labor they
derive from the fair dealing and humanity of their employer a moderate
subsistence for their families."
Such were the people who stood accused by the Company's agents as
_pretending_ grievances, in order to be excused the payment of their
balances. As to the commercial state of the province in general, Mr.
Rouse represents it "to be for those two years a perpetual scene of
complaint and disputation;--the Company's agents professing to pay
higher rates to weavers, whilst the Leadenhall sales showed an heavy
loss to the Company; the weavers have even travelled in multitudes to
prefer their complaints at the Presidency; the amount of the investment
comparatively small, with balances comparatively large, and, as I
understand, generally contested by the weavers; the native merchants,
called _delâls_, removed from their influence, as prejudicial to the
Company's concerns; and European merchants complaining against undue
influence of the Company's commercial agents, in preventing the free
purchase even of those goods which the Company never takes."
The spirit of those agents will be fully comprehended from a state of
the proceedings before Mr. Rouse and Council, on the complaint of a Mr.
Cree, an English free merchant at Dacca, who had been twice treated in
the same injurious manner by the agents of Mr. Hurst, the Commercial
Chief at that place. On his complaint to the board of the seizure of the
goods, and imprisonment of his agents, Mr. Hurst was called upon for an
explanation. In return he informed them that he had sent to one of the
villages to inquire concerning the matter of fact alleged. The impartial
person sent to make this inquiry was the very man accused of the
oppressions into which he was sent to examine. The answer of Mr. Hurst
is in an high and determined tone. He does not deny that there are some
instances of abuse of power. "But I ask," says he, "what _authority_ can
guard against the conduct of individuals? but that a _single_ instance
cannot be brought of a general depravity." Your Committee have reason to
believe these coercive measures to have been very general, though
employed according to the degree of resistance opposed to the monopoly;
for we find at one time the whole trade of the Dutch involved in the
general servitude. But it appears very extraordinary that nothing but
the actual proof of a _general_ abuse could affect a practice the very
principle of which tends to make the coercion as general as the trade.
Mr. Hurst's reflection concerning the abuse of _authority_ is just, but
in this case it is altogether inapplicable; because the complaint was
not of the abuse, but of the use of authority in matters of trade, which
ought to have been free. He throws out a variety of invidious
reflections against the Council, as if they wanted zeal for the
Company's service; his justification of his practices, and his
declaration of his resolution to persevere in them, are firm and
determined,--asserting the right and policy of such restraints, and
laying down a rule for his conduct at the factory, which, he says, will
give no cause of just complaint to private traders. He adds, "I have no
doubt but that they have hitherto provided investments, and it cannot
turn to my interest to preclude them _now_, though I must ever think it
my duty to combat the private views of individuals who _set themselves
up as competitors_ under that very body under whose license and
indulgence only they can derive their privilege of trade: all I contend
for is the _same influence_ my employers have ever had." He ends by
declining any reply to any of their future references of this nature.
The whole of this extraordinary letter is inserted in the Appendix, No.
51,--and Mr. Rouse's minute of observations upon it in Appendix, No. 52,
fully refuting the few pretexts alleged in that extraordinary
performance in support of the trade by influence and authority. Mr.
Hollond, one of the Council, joined Mr. Rouse in opinion that a letter
to the purport of that minute should be written; but they were overruled
by Messrs. Purling, Hogarth, and Shakespeare, who passed a resolution to
defer sending any reply to Mr. Hurst: and none was ever sent. Thus they
gave countenance to the doctrine contained in that letter, as well as to
the mischievous practices which must inevitably arise from the exercise
of such power. Some temporary and partial relief was given by the
vigorous exertions of Mr. Rouse; but he shortly after removing from that
government, all complaints were dropped.
It is remarkable, that, during the long and warm contest between the
Company's agents and the dealers of Dacca, the Board of Trade seem to
have taken a decided part against the latter. They allow some sort of
justice in the complaints of the manufacturers with regard to low
valuation, and other particulars; but they say, that, "although" (during
the time of preëmption) "it appears that the weavers _were not allowed
the same liberty of selling to individuals they before enjoyed_, our
opinion on the whole is, that these complaints have originated upon the
premeditated designs of the delâls [factors or brokers] _to thwart the
new mode_ of carrying on the Company's business, _and to render
themselves necessary_." They say, in another place, that there is no
ground for the dissatisfactions and difficulties of the weavers: "that
they are owing to the delâls, _whose aim it is to be employed_."
This desire of being employed, and of rendering themselves necessary, in
men whose only business it is to be employed in trade, is considered by
the gentlemen of the board as no trivial offence; and accordingly they
declare, "they have established it as _an invariable rule_, that,
_whatever deficiency_ there might be in the Dacca investment, no
purchase of the manufactures of _that quarter_ shall be made for account
of the Company from private merchants. We have passed this resolution,
which we deem of importance, from a persuasion that private merchants
are often _induced_ to make advances for Dacca goods, not by the
ordinary chance of sale, but merely from an expectation of disposing of
them at an enhanced price to the Company, against _whom a rivalship_ is
by this manner encouraged"; and they say, "that they intend to observe
the _same_ rule with respect to the investment of other of the factories
from whence similar complaints may come."
This positive rule is opposed to the positive directions of the Company
to employ those obnoxious persons by preference. How far this violent
use of authority for the purpose of destroying rivalship has succeeded
in reducing the price of goods to the Company has been made manifest by
the facts before stated in their place.
The recriminatory charges of the Company's agents on the native
merchants have made very little impression on your Committee. We have
nothing in favor of them, but the assertion of a party powerful and
interested. In such cases of mutual assertion and denial, your Committee
are led irresistibly to attach abuse to power, and to presume that
suffering and hardship are more likely to attend on weakness than that
any combination of unprotected individuals is of force to prevail over
influence, power, wealth, and authority. The complaints of the native
merchants ought not to have been treated in any of those modes in which
they were then treated. And when men are in the situation of
complainants against unbounded power, their abandoning their suit is far
from a full and clear proof of their complaints being groundless. It is
not because redress has been rendered impracticable that oppression does
not exist; nor is the despair of sufferers any alleviation of their
afflictions. A review of some of the most remarkable of the complaints
made by the native merchants in that province is so essential for laying
open the true spirit of the commercial administration, and the real
condition of those concerned in trade there, that your Committee
observing the records on this subject and at this period full of them,
they could not think themselves justifiable in not stating them to the
House.
Your Committee have found many heavy charges of oppression against Mr.
Barwell, whilst Factory Chief at Dacca; which oppressions are stated to
have continued, and even to have been aggravated, on complaint at
Calcutta. These complaints appear in several memorials presented to the
Supreme Council of Calcutta, of which Mr. Barwell was a member. They
appeared yet more fully and more strongly in a bill in Chancery filed in
the Supreme Court, which was afterwards recorded before the
Governor-General and Council, and transmitted to the Court of Directors.
Your Committee, struck with the magnitude and importance of these
charges, and finding that with regard to those before the Council no
regular investigation has ever taken place, and finding also that Mr.
Barwell had asserted in a Minute of Council that he had given a full
answer to the allegations in that bill, ordered a copy of the answer to
be laid before your Committee, that they might be enabled to state to
the House how far it appeared to them to be full, how far the charges
were denied as to the fact, or, where the facts might be admitted, what
justification was set up. It appeared necessary, in order to determine
on the true situation of the trade and the merchants of that great city
and district.
The Secretary to the Court of Directors has informed your Committee that
no copy of the answer is to be found in the India House; nor has your
Committee been able to discover that any has been transmitted. On this
failure, your Committee ordered an application to be made to Mr. Barwell
for a copy of his answer to the bill, and any other information with
which he might be furnished with regard to that subject.
Mr. Barwell, after reciting the above letter, returned in answer what
follows.
"Whether the records of the Supreme Court of Judicature are lodged at
the India House I am ignorant, but on those records my answer is
certainly to be found. At this distance of time I am sorry I cannot from
memory recover the circumstances of this affair; but this I know, that
the bill did receive a complete answer, and the people the fullest
satisfaction: nor is it necessary for me to remark, that [in?] the state
of parties at that time in Bengal, could party have brought forward any
particle of that bill supported by any verified fact, the principle that
introduced it in the proceedings of the Governor-General and Council
would likewise have given the verification of that one circumstance,
whatever that might have been. As I generally attend in my place in the
House, I shall with pleasure answer any invitation of the gentlemen of
the Committee to attend their investigations up stairs with every
information and light in my power to give them.
"St. James's Square, 15th April, 1783."
Your Committee considered, that, with regard to the matter charged in
the several petitions to the board, no sort of specific answer had been
given at the time and place where they were made, and when and where the
parties might be examined and confronted. It was considered also, that
the bill had been transmitted, with other papers relating to the same
matter, to the Court of Directors, with the knowledge and consent of Mr.
Barwell,--and that he states that his answer had been filed, and no
proceedings had upon it for eighteen months. In that situation it was
thought something extraordinary that no care was taken by him to
transmit so essential a paper as his answer, and that he had no copy of
it in his hands.
Your Committee, in this difficulty, thought themselves obliged to
decline any verbal explanation from the person who is defendant in the
suit, relative to matters which on the part of the complainant appear
upon record, and to leave the whole matter, as it is charged, to the
judgment of the House to determine how far it may be worthy of a further
inquiry, or how far they may admit such allegations as your Committee
could not think themselves justified in receiving. To this effect your
Committee ordered a letter to be written Mr. Barwell; from whom they
received the following answer.
"Sir,--In consequence of your letter of the 17th, I must request the
favor of you to inform the Select Committee that I expect from their
justice, on any matter of public record in which I am personally to be
brought forward to the notice of the House, that they will at the same
time point out to the House what part of such matter has been verified,
and what parts have not nor ever were attempted to be verified, though
introduced in debate and entered on the records of the Governor-General
and Council of Bengal. I am anxious the information should be complete,
or the House will not be competent to judge; and if it is complete, it
will preclude all explanation as unnecessary.
"I am, Sir,
"Your most obedient humble servant,
"RICHARD BARWELL.
"St. James's Square, 22nd April, 1783.
"P.S. As I am this moment returned from the country, I had it not in my
power to be earlier in acknowledging your letter of the 17th."
Your Committee applied to Mr. Barwell to communicate any papers which
might tend to the elucidation of matters before them in which he was
concerned. This he has declined to do. Your Committee conceive that
under the orders of the House they are by no means obliged to make a
complete state of all the evidence which may tend to criminate or
exculpate every person whose transactions they may find it expedient to
report: this, if not specially ordered, has not hitherto been, as they
apprehend, the usage of any committee of this House. It is not for your
Committee, but for the discretion of the party, to call for, and for the
wisdom of the House to institute, such proceedings as may tend finally
to condemn or acquit. The Reports of your Committee are no charges,
though they may possibly furnish _matter_ for charge; and no
representations or observations of theirs can either clear or convict on
any proceeding which may hereafter be grounded on the facts which they
produce to the House. Their opinions are not of a judicial nature. Your
Committee has taken abundant care that every important fact in their
Report should be attended with the authority for it, either in the
course of their reflections or in the Appendix: to report everything
upon every subject before them which is to be found on the records of
the Company would be to transcribe, and in the event to print, almost
the whole of those voluminous papers. The matter which appears before
them is in a summary manner this.
The Dacca merchants begin by complaining that in November, 1773, Mr.
Richard Barwell, then Chief of Dacca, had deprived them of their
employment and means of subsistence; that he had extorted from them
44,224 Arcot rupees (4,731_l._) by the terror of his threats, by long
imprisonment, and cruel confinement in the stocks; that afterwards they
were confined in a small room near the factory-gate, under a guard of
sepoys; that their food was stopped, and they remained starving a whole
day; that they were not permitted to take their food till next day at
noon, and were again brought back to the same confinement, in which they
were continued for six days, and were not set at liberty until they had
given Mr. Barwell's banian a certificate for forty thousand rupees; that
in July, 1774, when Mr. Barwell had left Dacca, they went to Calcutta to
seek justice; that Mr. Barwell confined them in his house at Calcutta,
and sent them back under a guard of peons to Dacca; that in December,
1774, on the arrival of the gentlemen from Europe, they returned to
Calcutta, and preferred their complaint to the Supreme Court of
Judicature.
The bill in Chancery filed against Richard Barwell, John Shakespeare,
and others, contains a minute specification of the various acts of
personal cruelty said to be practised by Mr. Barwell's orders, to extort
money from these people. Among other acts of a similar nature he is
charged with having ordered the appraiser of the Company's cloths, who
was an old man, and who asserts that he had faithfully served the
Company above sixteen years without the least censure on his conduct, to
be severely flogged without reason.
In the _manner_ of confining the delâls, with ten of their servants, it
is charged on him, that, "when he first ordered them to be put into the
stocks, it was at a time when the weather was exceedingly bad and the
rain very heavy, without allowing them the least covering for their
heads or any part of their body, or anything to raise them from the wet
ground; in which condition they were continued for many hours, until the
said Richard Barwell thought proper to remove them into a far worse
state, if possible, as if studying to exercise the most cruel acts of
barbarity on them, &c.; and that during their imprisonment they were
frequently carried to and tortured in the stocks in the middle of the
day, when the scorching heat of the sun was insupportable,
notwithstanding which they were denied the least covering." These men
assert that they had served the Company without blame for thirty
years,--a period commencing long before the power of the Company in
India.
It was no slight aggravation of this severity, that the objects were not
young, nor of the lowest of the people, who might, by the vigor of their
constitutions, or by the habits of hardship, be enabled to bear up
against treatment so full of rigor. They were aged persons; they were
men of a reputable profession.
The account given by these merchants of their first journey to Calcutta,
in July, 1774, is circumstantial and remarkable. They say, "that, on
their arrival, _to their astonishment, they soon learned that the
Governor, who had formerly been violently enraged against the said
Richard Barwell for different improprieties in his conduct, was now
reconciled to him; and that ever since there was a certainty of his
Majesty's appointments taking place in India, from being the most
inveterate enemies they were now become the most intimate friends; and
that this account soon taught them to believe they were not any nearer
justice from their journey to Calcutta than they had been before at
Dacca_."
When this bill of complaint was, in 1776, laid before the Council, to be
transmitted to the Court of Directors, Mr. Barwell complained of the
introduction of such a paper, and asserted, _that he had answered to
every particular of it on oath about eighteen months, and that during
this long period no attempt had been made to controvert, refute, or even
to reply to it_.
He did not, however, think it proper to enter his answer on the records
along with the bill of whose introduction he complained.
On the declarations made by Mr. Barwell in his minute (September, 1776)
your Committee observe, that, considering him only as an individual
under prosecution in a court of justice, it might be sufficient for him
to exhibit his defence in the court where he was accused; but that, as a
member of government, specifically charged before that very government
with abusing the powers of his office in a very extraordinary manner,
and for purposes (as they allege) highly corrupt and criminal, it
appears to your Committee hardly sufficient to say that he had answered
elsewhere. The matter was to go before the Court of Directors, to whom
the question of his conduct in that situation, a situation of the
highest power and trust, was as much at least a question of state as a
matter of redress to be solely left to the discretion, capacity, or
perseverance of individuals. Mr. Barwell might possibly be generous
enough to take no advantage of his eminent situation; but these
unfortunate people would rather look to his power than his disposition.
In general, a man so circumstanced and so charged (though we do not know
this to be the case with Mr. Barwell) might easily contrive by legal
advantages to escape. The plaintiffs being at a great distance from the
seat of government, and possibly affected by fear or fatigue, or seeing
the impossibility of sustaining with the ruins of fortunes never perhaps
very opulent a suit against wealth, power, and influence, a compromise
might even take place, in which circumstances might make the
complainants gladly acquiesce. But the public injury is not in the least
repaired by the acquiescence of individuals, as it touched the honor of
the very highest parts of government. In the opinion of your Committee
some means ought to have been taken to bring the bill to a discussion on
the merits; or supposing that such decree could not be obtained by
reason of any failure of proceeding on the part of the plaintiffs, that
some process official or juridical ought to have been instituted against
them which might prove them guilty of slander and defamation in as
authentic a manner as they had made their charge, before the Council as
well as the Court.
By the determination of Mr. Hurst, and the resolutions of the Board of
Trade, it is much to be apprehended that the native mercantile interest
must be exceedingly reduced. The above-mentioned resolutions of the
Board of Trade, if executed in their rigor, must almost inevitably
accomplish its ruin. The subsequent transactions are covered with an
obscurity which your Committee have not been able to dispel. All which
they can collect, but that by no means distinctly, is, that, as those
who trade for the Company in the articles of investment may also trade
for themselves in the same articles, the old opportunities of
confounding the capacities must remain, and all the oppressions by which
this confusion has been attended. The Company's investments, as the
General Letter from Bengal of the 20th of November, 1775, par. 28,
states the matter, "are never at a stand; advances are made and goods
are received all the year round." Balances, the grand instrument of
oppression, naturally accumulate on poor manufacturers who are intrusted
with money. Where there is not a vigorous rivalship, not only tolerated,
but encouraged, it is impossible ever to redeem the manufacturers from
the servitude induced by those unpaid balances.
No such rivalship does exist: the policy practised and avowed is
directly against it. The reason assigned in the Board of Trade's letter
of the 28th of November, 1778, for its making their advances early in
the season is, to prevent the foreign merchants and private traders
_interfering_ with the purchase of their (the Company's) assortments.
"They also refer to the means taken to prevent this interference in
their letter of 26th January, 1779." It is impossible that the small
part of the trade should not fall into the hands of those who, with the
name and authority of the governing persons, have such extensive
contracts in their hands. It appears in evidence that natives can hardly
trade to the best advantage, (your Committee doubt whether they can
trade to any advantage at all,) if not joined with or countenanced by
British subjects. The Directors were in 1775 so strongly impressed with
this notion, and conceived the native merchants to have been even then
reduced to so low a state, that, notwithstanding the Company's earnest
desire of giving them a preference, they "doubt whether there are at
this time in Bengal native merchants possessed of property adequate to
such undertaking, or of credit and responsibility sufficient to make it
safe and prudent to trust them with such sums as might be necessary to
enable them to fulfil their engagements with the Company."
The effect which so long continued a monopoly, followed by a preëmption,
and then by partial preferences supported by power, must necessarily
have in weakening the mercantile capital, and disabling the merchants
from all undertakings of magnitude, is but too visible. However, a
witness of understanding and credit does not believe the capitals of the
natives to be yet so reduced as to disable them from partaking in the
trade, if they were otherwise able to put themselves on an equal footing
with Europeans.
The difficulties at the outset will, however, be considerable. For the
long continuance of abuse has in some measure conformed the whole trade
of the country to its false principle. To make a sudden change,
therefore, might destroy the few advantages which attend any trade,
without securing those which must flow from one established upon sound
mercantile principles, whenever such a trade can be established. The
fact is, that the forcible direction which the trade of India has had
towards Europe, to the neglect, or rather to the total abandoning, of
the Asiatic, has of itself tended to carry even the internal business
from the native merchant. The revival of trade in the native hands is of
absolute necessity; but your Committee is of opinion that it will
rather be the effect of a regular progressive course of endeavors for
that purpose than of any one regulation, however wisely conceived.
After this examination into the condition of the trade and traders in
the principal articles provided for the investment to Europe, your
Committee proceeded to take into consideration those articles the
produce of which, after sale in Bengal, is to form a part of the fund
for the purchase of other articles of investment, or to make a part of
it in kind. These are, 1st, Opium,--2ndly, Saltpetre,--and, 3rdly, Salt.
These are all monopolized.
OPIUM.
The first of the internal authorized monopolies is that of opium. This
drug, extracted from a species of the poppy, is of extensive consumption
in most of the Eastern markets. The best is produced in the province of
Bahar: in Bengal it is of an inferior sort, though of late it has been
improved. This monopoly is to be traced to the very origin of our
influence in Bengal. It is stated to have begun at Patna so early as the
year 1761, but it received no considerable degree of strength or
consistence until the year 1765, when the acquisition of the Duanné
opened a wide field for all projects of this nature. It was then adopted
and owned as a resource for persons in office,--was managed chiefly by
the civil servants of the Patna factory, and for their own benefit. The
policy was justified on the usual principles on which monopolies are
supported, and on some peculiar to the commodity, to the nature of the
trade, and to the state of the country: the security against
adulteration; the prevention of the excessive home consumption of a
pernicious drug; the stopping an excessive competition, which by an
over-proportioned supply would at length destroy the market abroad; the
inability of the cultivator to proceed in an expensive and precarious
culture without a large advance of capital; and, lastly, the incapacity
of private merchants to supply that capital on the feeble security of
wretched farmers.
These were the principal topics on which the monopoly was supported. The
last topic leads to a serious consideration on the state of the country;
for, in pushing it, the gentlemen argued, that, in case such private
merchants should advance the necessary capital, the lower cultivators
"_would get money in abundance_." Admitting this fact, it seems to be a
part of the policy of this monopoly to prevent the cultivator from
obtaining the natural fruits of his labor. Dealing with a private
merchant, he could not get _money in abundance_, unless his commodity
could produce an _abundant_ profit. Further reasons, relative to the
peace and good order of the province, were assigned for thus preventing
the course of trade from the equitable distribution of the advantages of
the produce, in which the first, the poorest, and the most laborious
producer ought to have his first share. The cultivators, they add, would
squander part of the money, and not be able to complete their
engagements to the full; lawsuits, and even battles, would ensue between
the factors, contending for a deficient produce; and the farmers would
discourage the culture of an object which brought so much disturbance
into their districts. This competition, the operation of which they
endeavor to prevent, is the natural corrective of the abuse, and the
best remedy which could be applied to the disorder, even supposing its
probable existence.
Upon whatever reasons or pretences the monopoly of opium was supported,
the real motive appears to be the profit of those who were in hopes to
be concerned in it. As these profits promised to be very considerable,
at length it engaged the attention of the Company; and after many
discussions, and various plans of application, it was at length taken
for their benefit, and the produce of the sale ordered to be employed in
the purchase of goods for their investment.
In the year 1773 it had been taken out of the hands of the Council of
Patna, and leased to two of the natives,--but for a year only. The
contractors were to supply a certain quantity of opium at a given price.
Half the value was to be paid to those contractors in advance, and the
other half on the delivery.
The proceedings on this contract demonstrated the futility of all the
prin
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