 
WITH FOUR PLATES
CASSELL AND COMPANY, LTD |
| CHAPTER | PAGE | |
| 1. | Introductory Reflections | 1 |
| 2. | Konopischt | 34 |
| 3. | William II | 52 |
| 4. | Roumania | 77 |
| 5. | The U-boat Warfare | 114 |
| 6. | Attempts at Peace | 134 |
| 7. | Wilson | 188 |
| 8. | Impressions and Reflections | 195 |
| 9. | Poland | 200 |
| 10. | Brest-Litovsk | 211 |
| 11. | The Peace of Bucharest | 258 |
| 12. | Final Reflections | 271 |
| Appendix | 275 |
LIST OF PLATES
| Count Czernin | Frontispiece |
| FACING PAGE | |
| The Archduke Franz Ferdinand | 48 |
| Count Tisza | 128 |
| General Hoffmann | 240 |
Proprietors.But this consideration of mere income, whatever weight it might have, could not
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. Ac
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.
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
As to the general authority of the Court of Direc
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.
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
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
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,
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.
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 with
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, ex
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.
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 re
Council-GeneralThe 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
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
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
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.
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.
Appointment of Counsellors, &c.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's appointment.Macpherson, notwithstanding the ob
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
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. Provisional appointment for vacancies.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.
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.
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, 25,253l. sterling); besides which there is another account with the fol
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.
It was in the same spirit of defiance of Parliament, that at the same time they nominated Mr. Sulivan,
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
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.
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
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
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
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.
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
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;
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
Inspection of ministers has failed in effect.In this manner the inspection of the ministers of
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.
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
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.
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
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
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
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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 uten
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.
Foreign companies.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. Consequences of their trade.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
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.
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 800,000l. Another loan has been also made for an investment on the Company's account to China of 200,000l. 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.
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.
Revenue above the investment, how applied.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 im
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 de
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.
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. Former state of trade.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.
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. 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.
State of trade in the Carnatic.Such is the actual condition of the trade of Bengal since the establishment of the
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 ap
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
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
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 650,000l. The investment was fixed at 900,000l.
But now another alarming system appeared. These
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
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
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
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 800,000l., at their own risk, and the Company are
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,
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 fac
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
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 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
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 conse
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
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.
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 4,176,525l.; upon 2,260,277l. there was a gain of 186,337l., and upon 1,916,248l. a loss of 705,566l.: so that the excess of loss above gain, upon the whole of the foregoing capital, was in the four years no less than 519,229l.
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 1,151,176l., had a gain upon the whole of 329,622l. The greatest of all is that of Bencoolen, which, on a capital of 76,571l., produced a profit of 107,760l. This, however, is but a small branch of the Company's trade. The trade to China, on a capital of 1,717,463l., produced an excess of gain amounting to 874,096l., 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 7,045,164l. reached to no more than 684,489l., that is, to 189,607l. less than the profit on the Chinese trade alone,—less than the total profits on the gainful trades taken together, 520,727l.
It is very remarkable, that in the year 1778, when the Bengal investment stood at the highest, that is, so high as 1,223,316l., though the Chinese trade pro
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.
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
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
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
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
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,
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
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
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.
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
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,
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:
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
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;
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.
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 pre
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
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.
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 advan
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
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
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
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 77,650l., that in the year 1777 it arose to 168,205l. This was so great that worse could hardly be apprehended: however, in the season of 1778 it amounted to 255,070l. 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 141,800l. In the whole four years it came to 642,725l. 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 per
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
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.
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
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
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
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 de
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 direc
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
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 (4,731l.) 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
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 indi
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
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
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 Com
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.
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
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
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 principles on which the monopoly was founded. The Council, as a part of their plan, were obliged, by heavy duties, and by a limitation of the right of emption of foreign opium to the contractors for the home produce, to check the influx of that commodity from the territories of the Nabob of Oude and the Rajah of Benares. In these countries no monopoly existed; and yet there the commodity was of such a quality and so abundant as to bear the duty, and even with the duty in some degree to rival the monopolist even in his own market. There was no complaint in those countries of
On the other hand, several of the precautions inserted in this contract, and repeated in all the subsequent, strongly indicated the evils against which it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to guard a monopoly of this nature and in that country. For in the first contract entered into with the two natives it was strictly forbidden to compel the tenants to the cultivation of this drug. Indeed, very shocking rumors had gone abroad, and they were aggravated by an opinion universally prevalent, that, even in the season immediately following that dreadful famine which swept off one third of the inhabitants of Bengal, several of the poorer farmers were compelled to plough up the fields they had sown with grain in order to plant them with poppies for the benefit of the engrossers of opium. This opinion grew into a strong presumption, when it was seen that in the next year the produce of opium (contrary to what might be naturally expected in a year following such a dearth) was nearly doubled. It is true, that, when the quantity of land necessary for the production of the largest quantity of opium is considered, it is not just to attribute that famine to these practices, nor to any that were or could be used; yet, where such practices did prevail, they must have been very oppressive to individuals, extremely insulting to the feelings of the people, and must tend to bring great and deserved discredit on the British government. The English are a people
Things continued in this train, until the great revolution in the Company's government was wrought by the Regulating Act of the thirteenth of the king. In 1775 the new Council-General appointed by the act took this troublesome business again into consideration. General Clavering, Colonel Monson, and Mr. Francis expressed such strong doubts of the propriety of this and of all other monopolies, that the Directors, in their letter of the year following, left the Council at liberty to throw the trade open, under a duty, if they should find it practicable. But General Clavering, who most severely censured monopoly in general, thought that this monopoly ought to be retained,—but for a reason which shows his opinion of the wretched state of the country: for he supposed it impossible, with the power and influence which must attend British subjects in all their transactions, that monopoly could be avoided; and he preferred an avowed monopoly, which brought benefit to government, to a virtual engrossing, attended with profit only to individuals. But in this opinion he did not seem to be joined by Mr. Francis, who thought the suppression of this and of all monopolies to be practicable, and strongly recommended
The Council, however, submitting to the opinion of this necessity, endeavored to render that dubious engagement as beneficial as possible to the Company. They began by putting up the contract to the highest bidder. The proposals were to be sealed. When the seals came to be opened, a very extraordinary scene appeared. Every step in this business develops more and more the effect of this junction of public monopoly and private influence. Four English and eight natives were candidates for the contract; three of the English far overbid the eight natives. They who consider that the natives, from their superior dexterity, from their knowledge of the country and of business, and from their extreme industry, vigilance, and parsimony, are generally an over-match for Europeans, and indeed are, and must ultimately be, employed by them in all transactions whatsoever, will find it very extraordinary that they did not by the best offers secure this dealing to themselves. It can be attributed to this cause, and this only,—that they were conscious, that, without power and influence to subdue the cultivators of the land to their own purposes, they never could afford to engage on the lowest possible terms. Those whose power entered into the calculation of their profits could offer, as they did offer, terms without comparison better; and therefore one of the English bidders, without partiality, secured the preference.
The contract to this first bidder, Mr. Griffiths, was prolonged from year to year; and as during that
Whilst these things were going on, the evils which this monopoly was in show and pretence formed to prevent still existed, and those which were naturally to be expected from a monopoly existed too. Complaints were made of the bad quality of the opium; trials were made, and on those trials the opium was found faulty. An office of inspection at Calcutta, to ascertain its goodness, was established, and directions given to the Provincial Councils at the places of growth to certify the quantity and quality of the commodity transmitted to the Presidency.
In 1776, notwithstanding an engagement in the contract strictly prohibiting all compulsory culture of the poppy, information was given to a member of the Council-General, that fields green with rice had been forcibly ploughed up to make way for that plant,—and that this was done in the presence of several English gentlemen, who beheld the spectacle with a just
This monopoly continuing and gathering strength through a succession of contractors, and being probably a most lucrative dealing, it grew to be every day a greater object of competition. The Council of Patna endeavored to recover the contract, or at least the agency, by the most inviting terms; and in this
To form a clear judgment on the decisive step taken at this period, it is proper to keep in view the opinion of the Court of Directors concerning monopolies, against which they had uniformly declared in the most precise terms. They never submitted to them, but as to a present necessity; it was therefore not necessary for them to express any particular approbation of a clause in Mr. Mackenzie's contract which was made in favor of their own liberty. Every motive led them to preserve it. On the security of that clause they could alone have suffered to pass over in silence (for they never approved) the grant of the contract which contained it for three years. It must also be remembered that they had from the beginning positively directed that the contract should be put up to public auction; and this not having been done in Mr. Mackenzie's case, they severely reprimanded the Governor-General and Council in their letter of the 23rd December, 1778.
The Court of Directors were perfectly right in showing themselves tenacious of this regulation,—not so much to secure the best practicable revenue from their monopoly whilst it existed, but for a much more essential reason, that is, from the corrective which this method administered to that monopoly itself: it prevented the British contractor from becoming doubly terrible to the natives, when they
On the expiration of Mr. Mackenzie's term, and but a few months after Mr. Sulivan's arrival, the Governor-General, as if the contract was a matter of patronage, and not of dealing, pitched upon Mr. Sulivan as the most proper person for the management of this critical concern. Mr. Sulivan, though a perfect stranger to Bengal, and to that sort and to all sorts of local commerce, made no difficulty of accepting it. The Governor-General was so fearful that his true motives in this business should be mistaken, or that the smallest suspicion should arise of his attending to the Company's orders, that, far from putting up the contract (which, on account of its known profits, had become the object of such pursuit) to public auction, he did not wait for receiving so much as a private proposal from Mr. Sulivan. The Secretary perceived that in the rough draught of the contract the old recital of a proposal to the board was inserted as a matter of course, but was contrary to the fact; he therefore remarked it to Mr. Hastings. Mr. Hastings, with great indifference, ordered that recital to be omitted; and the omission, with the remark that led to it, has, with the same easy indifference, been sent over to his masters.
The Governor-General and Council declare themselves apprehensive that Mr. Sulivan might be a loser by his bargain, upon account of troubles which they supposed existing in the country which was the object of it. This was the more indulgent, because the contractor was tolerably secured against all losses. He
Nothing appears to have been considered but the benefit of the contractor, and for this purpose the solicitude shown in all the provisions could not be exceeded. One of the first things that struck Mr. Hastings as a blemish on his gift was the largeness of the penalty which he had on former occasions settled as the sanction of the contract: this he now discovered to be so great as to be likely to frustrate its end by the impossibility of recovering so large a sum. How a large penalty can prevent the recovery of any, even the smallest part of it, is not quite apparent. In so vast a concern as that of opium, a fraud which at first view may not appear of much importance, and which may be very difficult in the discovery,
Monopolies were (as the House has observed) only tolerated evils, and at best upon trial; a clause, therefore, was inserted in the contracts to Mackenzie, annulling the obligation, if the Court of Directors should resolve to abolish the monopoly; but at the request of Mr. Sulivan the contract was without difficulty purged of this obnoxious clause. The term was made absolute, the monopoly rendered irrevocable, and the discretion of the Directors wholly excluded. Mr. Hastings declared the reserved condition to be no longer necessary, "because the Directors had approved the monopoly."
The Chiefs and Councils at the principal factories had been obliged to certify the quantity and quality of the opium before its transport to Calcutta; and their control over the contractor had been assigned as the reason for not leaving to those factories the management of this monopoly. Now things were changed. Orders were sent to discontinue this measure of invidious precaution, and the opium was sent to Calcutta without anything done to ascertain its quality or even its quantity.
An office of inspection had been also appointed to examine the quality of the opium on its delivery at the capital settlement. In order to ease Mr. Sulivan from this troublesome formality, Mr. Hastings abolished the office; so that Mr. Sulivan was then totally freed from all examination, or control whatsoever, either first or last.
These extraordinary changes in favor of Mr. Sulivan were attended with losses to others, and seem to
Some benefits, which had been given to former contractors at the discretion of the board, were no longer held under that loose indulgence, but were secured to Mr. Sulivan by his contract. Other indulgences, of a lesser nature, and to which no considerable objection could be made, were on the application of a Mr. Benn, calling himself his attorney, granted.
Your Committee, examining Mr. Higginson, late a member of the Board of Trade, on that subject, were informed, that this contract, very soon after the making, was generally understood at Calcutta to have been sold to this Mr. Benn, but he could not particularize the sum for which it had been assigned,—and that Mr. Benn had afterwards sold it to a Mr. Young. By this transaction it appears clearly that the contract was given to Mr. Sulivan for no other purpose than
The monopoly given for these purposes thus permanently secured, all power of reformation cut off, and almost every precaution against fraud and oppression removed, the Supreme Council found, or pretended to find, that the commodity for which they had just made such a contract was not a salable article,—and in consequence of this opinion, or pretence, entered upon a daring speculation hitherto unthought of, that of sending the commodity on the Company's account to the market of Canton. The Council alleged, that, the Dutch being driven from Bengal, and the seas being infested with privateers, this commodity had none, or a very dull and depreciated demand.
Had this been true, Mr. Hastings's conduct could admit of no excuse. He ought not to burden a falling market by long and heavy engagements. He ought studiously to have kept in his power the means of proportioning the supply to the demand. But his arguments, and those of the Council on that occasion, do not deserve the smallest attention. Facts, to which there is no testimony but the assertion of those who produce them in apology for the ill consequences of their own irregular actions, cannot be admitted. Mr. Hastings and the Council had nothing at all to do with that business: the Court of Directors had wholly taken the management of opium out of his
The Board of Trade appear, indeed, to merit reprehension for disposing of the opium by private contract, as by that means the unerring standard of the public market cannot be applied to it. But they justified themselves by their success; and one of their members informed your Committee that their last sale had been a good one: and though he apprehended a fall in the next, it was not such as in the opinion of your Committee could justify the Council-General in having recourse to untried and hazardous speculations of commerce. It appears that there must have been a market, and one sufficiently lively. They assign as a reason of this assigned [alleged?] dulness of demand, that the Dutch had been expelled from Bengal, and could not carry the usual quantity to Batavia. But the Danes were not expelled from Bengal, and Portuguese ships traded there: neither of them were interdicted at Batavia, and the trade to the eastern ports was free to them. The Danes actually applied for and obtained an increase of the quantity to which their purchases had been limited; and as they asked, so they received this indulgence as a great favor. It does not appear that they were not very ready to supply the place of the Dutch. On the other hand, there is no doubt that the Dutch would most gladly receive an article, convenient, if not necessary, to the circulation of their commerce, from the Danes, or under any
The supply of the Canton treasury with funds for the provision of the next year's China investment was the ground of this plan. But the Council-General appear still to have the particular advantage of Mr. Sulivan in view,—and, not satisfied with breaking so many of the Company's orders for that purpose, to make the contract an object salable to the greatest advantage, were obliged to transfer their personal partiality from Mr. Sulivan to the contract itself, and to hand it over to the assignees through all their successions. When the opium was delivered, the duties and emoluments of the contractor ended; but (it appears from Mr. Williamson's letter, 18th October, 1781, and it is not denied by the Council-General) this new scheme furnished them with a pretext of making him broker for the China investment, with the profit of a new commission,—to what amount does not appear. But here their constant and vigilant observer, the vendue-master, met them again:—they seemed to live in no small terror of this gentleman. To satisfy him for the loss of his fee to which he was entitled upon the public sale, they gave him also a commission of one per cent on the investment. Thus was this object loaded with a double commission; and every act of partiality to one person produced a chargeable compensation to some other for the injustice that such partiality produced. Nor was this the whole. The discontent and envy excited by this act went infinitely further than to those immediately affected, and something
As soon as it was discovered that the Council entertained a design of opening a trade on those principles, it immediately engaged the attention of such as had an interest in speculations of freight.
A memorial seems to have been drawn early, as it is dated on the 29th of March, though it was not the first publicly presented to the board. This memorial was presented on the 17th of September, 1781, by Mr. Wheler, conformably (as he says) to the desire of the Governor-General; and it contained a long and elaborate dissertation on the trade to China, tending to prove the advantage of extending the sale of English manufactures and other goods to the North of that country, beyond the usual emporium of European nations. This ample and not ill-reasoned theoretical performance (though not altogether new either in speculation or attempt) ended by a practical proposition, very short, indeed, of the ideas opened in the preliminary discourse, but better adapted to the immediate effect. It was, that the Company should undertake the sale of its own opium in China, and commit the management of the business to the memorialist, who offered to furnish them with a strong armed ship for that purpose. The offer was accepted, and the agreement made with him for the transport of two thousand chests.
A proposal by another person was made the July following the date of this project: it appears to have been early in the formal delivery at the board: this was for the export of one thousand four hundred and eighty chests. This, too, was accepted, but with new conditions and restrictions: for in so vast and so new
The dealing at this time seemed closed; but the gentlemen who chartered the ships, always recollecting something, applied anew to the board to be fur
Whilst these dispositions were making, the first proposer, perceiving advantages from the circuitous voyage of the second which had escaped his observation, to make amends for his first omission, improved both on his own proposal and on that of the person who had improved on him. He therefore applied for leave to take two hundred and fifty chests on his own account, which he said could "be readily disposed of at the several places where it was necessary for the ship to touch for wood and water, or intelligence, during her intended voyage through the Eastern Islands." As a corrective to this extraordinary request, he assured the board, that, if he should meet with any unexpected delay at these markets, he would send their cargo to its destination, having secured a swift-sailing sloop for the protection of his ship; and this sloop he proposed, in such a case, to leave behind. Such an extraordinary eagerness to deal in opium lets in another view of the merits of the alleged dulness of the market, on which this trade was undertaken for the Company's account.
The Council, who had with great condescension
The difficulty of disposing of the opium according to this project being thus got over, a material preliminary difficulty still stood in the way of the whole scheme. The contractor, or his assignees, were to be paid. The Company's treasure was wholly exhausted, and even its credit was exceedingly strained. The latter, however, was the better resource, and to this they resolved to apply. They therefore, at different times, opened two loans of one hundred thousand pounds each. The first was reserved for the Company's servants, civil and military, to be distributed in shares according to their rank; the other was more general. The terms of both loans were, that the risk of the voyage was to be on account of the Company. The payment was to be in bills (at a rate of exchange settled from the supercargoes at Canton) upon the
Bills upon Europe without interest are always preferred to the Company's bonds, even at the high interest allowed in India. They are, indeed, so greedily sought there, and (because they tend to bring an immediate and visible distress in Leadenhall Street) so much dreaded here, that by an act of Parliament the Company's servants are restricted from drawing bills beyond a certain amount upon the Company in England. In Bengal they have been restrained to about one hundred and eighty thousand pounds annually. The legislature, influenced more strongly with the same apprehensions, has restrained the Directors, as the Directors have restrained their servants, and have gone so far as to call in the power of the Lords of the Treasury to authorize the acceptance of any bills beyond an amount prescribed in the act.
The false principles of this unmercantile transaction (to speak of it in the mildest terms) were too gross not to be visible to those who contrived it.
It is stated, indeed, that a monopolizing company in Canton, called the Cohong, had reduced commerce there to a deplorable state, and had rendered the
There are two further circumstances in this transaction which strongly mark its character. The first is, that this adventure to China was not recommended to them by the factory of Canton; it was dangerous to attempt it without their previous advice, and an assurance, grounded on the state of the market and the dispositions of the government, that the measure, in a commercial light, would be profitable, or at least safe. Neither was that factory applied to on the state of the bills which, upon their own account, they might be obliged to draw upon Europe, at a time when the Council of Bengal direct them to draw bills to so enormous an amount.
The second remarkable circumstance is, that the Board of Trade in Calcutta (the proper administrator of all that relates to the Company's investment) does not seem to have given its approbation to the project, or to have been at all consulted upon it. The sale of opium had been adjudged to the
If Mr. Hastings, on the expiration of Mr. Mackenzie's contract, the advantages of which to the Company had been long doubtful, had put himself in a situation to do his duty, some immediate loss to the revenue would have been the worst consequence of the alleged depreciation; probably it would not have been considerable. Mr. Mackenzie's contract, which at first was for three years, had been only renewed for a year. Had the same course been pursued with Mr. Sulivan, they would have had it in their power to adopt some plan which might have secured them from any loss at all. But they pursued another plan: they carefully put all remedy still longer out of their reach by giving their contract for four years. To cover all these irregularities, they interest the settlement in their favor by holding out to them the most tempting of all baits in a chance of bills upon Europe.
In this manner the servants abroad have conducted themselves with regard to Mr. Sulivan's
The sentiments of the Directors are proper, and worthy of persons in public trust. Their surprise, indeed, at the disobedience to their orders is not perfectly natural in those who for many years have scarcely been obeyed in a single instance. They probably asserted their authority at this time with as much vigor as their condition admitted.
They proceed: "We do not mean," say they, "to convey any censure on Mr. Sulivan respecting the transaction; but we cannot withhold our displeasure from the Governor-General and Council at such an instance of contempt of our authority." They then proceed justly to censure the removal of the inspection, and some other particulars of this gross proceeding. As to the criminality of the parties, it is undoubtedly true that a breach of duty in servants is highly aggravated by the rank, station, and trust of the offending party; but no party, in such conspiracy to break orders, appear to us wholly free from fault.
The Directors did their duty in reprobating this contract; but it is the opinion of your Committee that further steps ought to be taken to inquire into the legal validity of a transaction which manifestly attempts to prevent the Court of Directors from ap
Both Mr. Sulivan and Mr. Hastings are the Company's servants, bound by their covenants and their oaths to promote the interest of their masters, and both equally bound to be obedient to their orders. If the Governor-General had contracted with a stranger, not apprised of the Company's orders, and not bound by any previous engagement, the contract might have been good; but whether a contract made between two servants, contrary to the orders of their common master, and to the prejudice of his known interest, be a breach of trust on both sides, and whether the contract can in equity have force to bind the Company, whenever they shall be inclined to free themselves and the country they govern from this mischievous monopoly, your Committee think a subject worthy of further inquiry.
With regard to the disposal of the opium, the Directors very properly condemn the direct contraband, but they approve the trading voyage. The Directors have observed nothing concerning the loans: they probably reserved that matter for future consideration.
In no affair has the connection between servants abroad and persons in power among the proprietors of the India Company been more discernible than in this. But if such confederacies, cemented by such means, are suffered to pass without due animadversion, the authority of Parliament must become as inefficacious as all other authorities have proved to restrain the growth of disorders either in India or in Europe.
The reports made by the two committees of the House which sat in the years 1772 and 1773 of the state and conduct of the inland trade of Bengal up to that period have assisted the inquiries of your Committee with respect to the third and last article of monopoly, viz., that of salt, and made it unnecessary for them to enter into so minute a detail on that subject as they have done on some others.
Your Committee find that the late Lord Clive constantly asserted that the salt trade in Bengal had been a monopoly time immemorial,—that it ever was and ever must be a monopoly,—and that Coja Wazid, and other merchants long before him, had given to the Nabob and his ministers two hundred thousand pounds per annum for the exclusive privilege. The Directors, in their letter of the 24th December, 1776, paragraph 76, say, "that it has ever been in a great measure an exclusive trade."
The Secret Committee report,
On these last orders Lord Clive's plan was formed, in 1765, for engrossing the sole purchase of salt, and dividing the profits among the Company's senior servants. The Directors, who had hitherto reluctantly given way to a monopoly under any ideas or for any purposes, disapproved of this plan, and on the 17th May, 1766, ordered it to be abolished; but they substituted no other in its room.
Under the positive orders of the Company, the salt trade appears to have continued open from 1768 to 1772. The act, indeed, contained an exception in favor of the Company, and left them a liberty of dealing in salt upon their own account. But still this policy remained unchanged, and their orders unrevoked. But in the year 1772, without any instruction from the Court of Directors indicating a change of opinion or system, the whole produce was again monopolized, professedly for the use of the Company, by Mr. Hastings. Speaking of this plan, he says (letter to the Directors, 22d February, 1775): "No new hardship has been imposed upon the salt manufacturers by taking the management of that article into the hands of government; the only difference is, that the profit which was before reaped by English gentlemen and by banians is now acquired by the Company." In May, 1766, the Directors had condemned the monopoly on any conditions whatsoever. "At that time they thought it neither consistent with their honor nor their dignity to promote such an exclusive trade."
Notwithstanding this solemn declaration, in their letter of 24th December, 1776, they approve the plan of Mr. Hastings, and say, "that the monopoly, on its present footing, can be no considerable grievance to the country," &c.
This, however, was a rigorous monopoly. The account given of it by General Clavering, Colonel Monson, and Mr. Francis, in their minute of 11th January, 1775, in which the situation of the molungees, or persons employed in the salt manufacture, is particularly described, is stated at length in the Appendix. Mr. Hastings himself says, "The power of obliging molungees to work has been customary from time immemorial."
Nothing but great and clear advantage to government could account for, and nothing at all perhaps could justify, the revival of a monopoly thus circumstanced. The advantage proposed by its revival was the transferring the profit, which was before reaped by English gentlemen and banians, to the Company. The profits of the former were not problematical. It was to be seen what the effect would be of a scheme to transfer them to the latter, even under the management of the projector himself. In the Revenue Consultations of September, 1776, Mr. Hastings said, "Many causes have since combined to reduce this article of revenue almost to nothing. The plan which I am now inclined to recommend for the future
It appears that the ill success of his former scheme did not deter him from recommending another. Accordingly, in July, 1777, Mr. Hastings proposed, and it was resolved, that the salt mahls should be let, with the lands, to the farmers and zemindars for a ready-money rent, including duties,—the salt to be left to their disposal. After some trial of this method, Mr. Hastings thought fit to abandon it. In September, 1780, he changed his plan a third time, and proposed the institution of a salt office; the salt was to be again engrossed for the benefit of the Company, and the management conducted by a number of salt agents.
From the preceding facts it appears that in this branch of the Company's government little regard has been paid to the ease and welfare of the natives, and that the Directors have nowhere shown greater inconsistency than in their orders on this subject. Yet salt, considering it as a necessary of life, was by no means a safe and proper subject for so many experiments and innovations. For ten years together the Directors reprobated the idea of suffering this necessary of life to be engrossed on any condition whatsoever, and strictly prohibited all Europeans from trading in it. Yet, as soon as they were made to expect from Mr. Hastings that the profits of the monopoly should be converted to their own use, they immediately declared that it "could be no considerable grievance to the country," and authorized its continuance, until he himself, finding it produced little or nothing, renounced it of his own accord. Your Committee are apprehensive that this will at all
Your Committee think it hardly necessary to observe, that the many changes of plan which have taken place in the management of the salt trade are far from honorable to the Company's government,—and that, even if the monopoly of this article were a profitable concern, it should not be permitted. Exclusive of the general effect of this and of all monopolies, the oppressions which the manufacturers of salt, called molungees, still suffer under it, though perhaps alleviated in some particulars, deserve particular attention. There is evidence enough on the Company's records to satisfy your Committee that these people have been treated with great rigor, and not only defrauded of the due payment of their labor, but deliv
After the result of their examination into the general nature and effect of this monopoly, it remains only for your Committee to inquire whether there was any valid foundation for that declaration of Mr. Hastings which we conclude must have principally recommended the monopoly of salt to the favor of the Court of Directors, viz., "that the profit, which was before reaped by English gentlemen, and by banians, was now acquired by the Company." On the contrary, it was proved and acknowledged before the Governor-General and Council, when they inquired into
In pursuing their inquiries, your Committee have endeavored chiefly to keep in view the conduct of persons in the highest station, particularly of those in whom the legislature, as well as the Company, have placed a special confidence,—judging that the conduct of such persons is not only most important in itself, but most likely to influence the subordinate ranks of the service. Your Committee have also examined the proceedings of the Court of Directors on all those instances of the behavior of their servants that seemed to deserve, and did sometimes attract, their immediate attention. They constantly find that the negligence of the Court of Directors has kept pace with, and must naturally have quickened, the growth of the practices which they have condemned. Breach of duty abroad will always go hand in hand with neglect of it at home. In general, the Court of Directors, though sufficiently severe in censuring offences, and sometimes in punishing those whom they have regarded as offenders of a lower rank, appear to have suffered the most conspicuous and therefore the most dangerous examples of disobedience and misconduct in the first department of their service to pass with a
On the same principle on which your Committee have generally limited their researches to the persons placed by Parliament or raised or put in nomination by the Court of Directors to the highest station in Bengal, it was also their original wish to limit those inquiries to the period at which Parliament interposed its authority between the Company and their servants, and gave a new constitution to the Presidency of Fort William. If the Company's servants had taken a new date from that period, and if from thenceforward their conduct had corresponded with the views of the legislature, it is probable that a review of the transactions of remoter periods would not have been deemed necessary, and that the remembrance of them
Your Committee find that in March, 1775, a petition was presented to the Governor-General and Council by a person called Coja Kaworke, an Armenian merchant, resident at Dacca, (of which division Mr. Richard Barwell had lately been Chief,) setting forth in substance, that in November, 1772, the petitioner had farmed a certain salt district, called Savagepoor, and had entered into a contract with the Committee of Circuit for providing and delivering to the India Company the salt produced in that district; that in 1773 he farmed another, called Selimabad, on similar conditions. He alleges, that in February, 1774, when Mr. Barwell arrived at Dacca, he charged the petitioner with 1,25,500 rupees, (equal to 13,000l.,) as a contribution, and, in order to levy it, did the same year deduct 20,799 rupees from the amount of the advance money which was ordered to be paid to the petitioner, on account of the India Company, for the provision of salt in the two farms, and, after doing so, compelled the petitioner to execute and
Such were the allegations of the petition relative to the unjust exaction. The harsh means of compelling the payment make another and very material part; for the petitioner asserts, that, in order to recover the amount of these bonds, guards were placed over him, and that Mr. Barwell by ill usage and oppressions recovered from him at different times 48,656 Arcot rupees, besides 283 rupees extorted by the guard,—that, after this payment, two of the bonds, containing 36,313 rupees, were restored to him, and he was again committed to the charge of four peons, or guards, to pay the amount of the remaining two bonds. The petition further charges, that the said gentleman and his people had also extorted from the petitioner other sums of money, which, taken together, amounted to 25,000 rupees.
But the heaviest grievance alleged by him is, that, after the sums of money had been extorted on account of the farms, the faith usual in such transactions is allowed not to have been kept; but, after the petitioner had been obliged to buy or compound for the farms, that they were taken from him,—"that the said Richard Barwell, Esquire, about his departure from Dacca, in October, 1774, for self-interest wrested from the petitioner the aforesaid two mahls, (or districts,) and farmed them to another person, notwithstanding he had extorted from the petitioner a considerable sum of money on account of those purgunnahs."
To this petition your Committee find two accounts annexed, in which the sums said to be paid to or
Mr. Barwell's immediate answer to the preceding charge is contained in two letters to the board, dated 23rd and 24th of March, 1775. The answer is remarkable. He asserts, that "the whole of Kaworke's relation is a gross misrepresentation of facts;—that the simple fact was, that in January, 1774, the salt mahls of Savagepoor and Selimabad became his, and were re-let by him to this man, in the names of Bussunt Roy and Kissen Deb, on condition that he should account with him [Mr. Barwell] for profits to a certain sum, and that he [Mr. Barwell] engaged for Savagepoor in the persuasion of its being a very profitable farm"; and he concludes with saying, "If I am mistaken in my reasoning, and the wish to add to my fortune has warped my judgment, in a transaction that may appear to the board in a light different to what I view it in, it is past,—I cannot recall it,—and I rather choose to admit an error than deny a fact." In his second letter he says, "To the Honorable Court of Directors I will submit all my rights in the salt contracts I engaged in; and if in their opinion those rights vest in the Company, I will account to them for the last shilling I have received from such contracts, my intentions being upright; and as I never did wish to profit myself to the prejudice of my employers, by their judgment I will be implicitly directed."
The majority of the board desired that Kaworke's petition should be transmitted to England by the ship then under dispatch; and it was accordingly sent
The committee opened their proceedings with reading a second petition from Kaworke, containing corrected accounts of cash said to be forcibly taken, and of the extraordinary and unwarrantable profits taken or received from him by Richard Barwell, Esquire; all which are inserted at large in the Appendix. By these accounts Mr. Barwell is charged with a balance or debt of 22,421 rupees to Kaworke. The principal difference between him and Mr. Barwell arises from a different mode of stating the accounts acknowledged to exist between them. In the account current signed by Mr. Barwell, he gives Kaworke credit for the receipt of 98,426 rupees, and charges him with a balance of 27,073 rupees.
The facts stated or admitted by Mr. Barwell are as follow: that the salt farms of Selimabad and Savagepoor were his, and re-let by him to the two Armenian merchants, Michael and Kaworke, on condition of their paying him 1,25,000 rupees, exclusive of their engagements to the Company; that the engagement was written in the name of Bussunt Roy and Kissen Deb Sing; and Mr. Barwell says, that the reason of its being "in these people's names was because it was not thought consistent with the public regulations that the names of any Europeans should appear."
It is remarkable that this policy was carried to still greater length. Means were used to remove such
Mr. Barwell, in his justification, proceeds to affirm, that Coja Kaworke never had the management of the salt mahls, "but on condition of accounting to the former Chief, and to Mr. Barwell, for a specified advantage arising from them,—that Mr. Barwell determined, without he could reconcile the interests of the public with his own private emoluments, that he would not engage in this concern,—and that, when he took an interest in it, it was for specified benefit in money, and every condition in the public engagement to be answered."
Your Committee have stated the preceding facts in the same terms in which they are stated by Mr. Barwell. The House is to judge how far they amount to a defence against the charges contained in Kaworke's petition, or to an admission of the truth of the principal part of it. Mr. Barwell does not allow that compulsion was used to extort the money which he received from the petitioner, or that the latter was dispossessed of the farms in consequence of an offer made to Mr. Barwell by another person (Ramsunder Paulet) to pay him a lac of ru
The transaction itself, as it stands, is clearly collusive; the form in which it is conducted is clandestine and mysterious in an extraordinary degree; and the acknowledged object of it a great illicit profit, to be gained by an agent and trustee of the Company at the expense of his employers, and of which he confesses he has received a considerable part.
The committee of the Governor-General and Council appear to have closed their proceedings with several resolutions, which, with the answers given by Mr. Barwell as a defence, are inserted in the Appendix. The whole are referred thither together, on account of the ample extent of the answer. These papers will be found to throw considerable light not only on the points in question, but on the general administration of the Company's revenues in Bengal. On some passages in Mr. Barwell's defence, or account of his conduct, your Committee offer the following remarks to the judgment of the House.
In his letter of the 23rd March, 1775, he says, that he engaged for Savagepoor in the persuasion of its being a very profitable farm. In this place your Committee think it proper to state the 17th article of the regulations of the Committee of Circuit, formed in
17th. "That no peshcar, banian, or other servant, of whatever denomination, of the collector, or relation or dependant of any such servant, be allowed to farm lands, nor directly or indirectly to hold a concern in any farm, nor to be security for any farmer; that the collector be strictly enjoined to prevent such practices; and that, if it shall be discovered that any one, under a false name, or any kind of collusion, hath found means to evade this order, he shall be subject to an heavy fine, proportionate to the amount of the farm, and the farm shall be re-let, or made khas: and if it shall appear that the collector shall have countenanced, approved, or connived at a breach of this regulation, he shall stand ipso facto dismissed from his collectorship. Neither shall any European, directly or indirectly, be permitted to rent lands in any part of the country."
Remark by the Board.
17th. "If the collector, or any persons who partake of his authority, are permitted to be the farmers of the country, no other persons will dare to be their competitors: of course they will obtain the farms on their own terms. It is not fit that the servants of the Company should be dealers with their masters. The collectors are checks on the farmers. If they themselves turn farmers, what checks can be found for them? What security will the Company have for their property, or where are the ryots to look for relief against oppressions?"
The reasons assigned for the preceding regulation seem to your Committee to be perfectly just; but they can by no means be reconciled to those which induced Mr. Barwell to engage in the salt farms of Selimabad and Savagepoor. In the first place, his doing so is at length a direct and avowed, though at first a covert, violation of the public regulation, to which he was himself a party as a member of the government, as well as an act of disobedience to the Company's positive orders on this subject. In their General Letter of the 17th May, 1766, the Court of Directors say, "We positively order, that no covenanted servant, or Englishman residing under our protection, shall be suffered to hold any land for his own account, directly or indirectly, in his own name or that of others, or to be concerned in any farms or revenues whatsoever."
Secondly, if, instead of letting the Company's lands or farms to indifferent persons, their agent or trustee be at liberty to hold them himself, he will always (on principles stated and adhered to in the defence) have a sufficient reason for farming them on his own account, since he can at all times make them as profitable as he pleases; or if he leases them to a third person, yet reserves an intermediate profit for himself, that profit may be as great as he thinks fit, and must be necessarily made at the Company's expense. If at the same time he be collector of the revenues, it will be his interest to recommend remissions in favor of the nominal farmer, and he will have it in his power to sink the amount of his collections.
These principles, and the correspondent practices, leave the India Company without any security that all the leases of the lands of Bengal may not have
To enable the House to judge how far this apprehension may be founded, it will be proper to state, that Mr. Nicholas Grueber, who preceded Mr. Barwell in the Chiefship of Dacca, in a letter dated 29th of April, 1775, declares that he paid to the Committee of Circuit twelve thousand rupees as their profit on a single salt farm,—which sum, he says, "I paid the Committee at their request, before their departure from Dacca, and reimbursed myself out of the advances directed to be issued for the provision of the salt." Thus one illicit and mischievous transaction always leads to another; and the irregular farming of revenue brings on the misapplication of the commercial advances.
Mr. Barwell professes himself to be sensible "that a wish to add to his fortune may possibly have warped his judgment, and that he rather chooses to admit an error than deny a fact." But your Committee are of opinion that the extraordinary caution and the intricate contrivances with which his share in this transaction is wrapped up form a sufficient proof that he was not altogether misled in his judgment; and though there might be some merit in acknowledging an error before it was discovered, there could be very little in a confession produced by previous detection.
The reasons assigned by Mr. Barwell, in defence of the clandestine part of this transaction, seem to your Committee to be insufficient in themselves, and not very fit to be urged by a man in his station. In one place he says, that "it was not thought consistent with the public regulations that the names of any Europeans
Your Committee have opposed this construction of Mr. Barwell's to the positive order which the conduct it is meant to color has violated. "Europeans of credit and responsibility," that is, Europeans armed with wealth and power, and exercising offices of authority and trust, instead of being excepted from the spirit of the restriction, must be supposed the persons who are chiefly meant to be comprehended in it; for abstract the idea of an European from the ideas of power and influence, and the restriction is no longer rational.
Your Committee are therefore of opinion that the nature of the evil which was meant to be prevented by the above orders and regulations was not altered,
The earliest instructions that appear to have been given by the Court of Directors in consequence of these transactions in Bengal are dated the 5th of February, 1777. In their letter of that date they applaud the proceedings of the board, meaning the majority,
On the 4th of March, 1778, the Directors appear to have resumed the subject. In their letter of that date they instructed the Governor and Council forthwith to commence a prosecution in the Supreme Court of Judicature against the persons who composed the Committee of Circuit, or their representatives, and also against Mr. Barwell, in order to recover, for the use of the Company, the amount of all advantages acquired by them from their several engagements in salt contracts and farms. Adverting, however, to the declaration made by Mr. Barwell, that he would account to the Court of Directors for the last shilling he had received and abide implicity by their judgment, they thought it probable, that, on being acquainted with their peremptory orders for commencing a prosecution, he might be desirous of paying his share of profits into the Company's treasury; and they pointed out a precaution to be used in accepting such a tender on his part.
On this part of the transaction your Committee observe, that the Court of Directors appear blamable in having delayed till February, 1777, to take any measure in consequence of advices so interesting and important, and on a matter concerning which they had made so strong a declaration,—considering that
In consequence of these delays, even their first orders did not arrive in Bengal until some time after the death of Colonel Monson, when the whole power of the board had devolved to Mr. Hastings and Mr. Barwell. When they sent what they call their positive orders, in March, 1778, they had long been apprised of the death of Colonel Monson, and must have been perfectly certain of the effect which that event would have on the subsequent measures and proceedings of the Governor-General and Council. Their opinion of the principles of those gentlemen appears in their letter of the 28th of November, 1777, wherein they say "they cannot but express their concern that the power of granting away their property in perpetuity should have devolved upon such persons."
But the conduct of the Court of Directors appears to be open to objections of a nature still more serious and important. A recovery of the amount of Mr. Barwell's profits seems to be the only purpose which they even professed to have in view. But your Committee are of opinion that to preserve the reputation and dignity of the government of Bengal was a much more important object, and ought to have been their first consideration. The prosecution was not the pursuit of mean and subordinate persons, who might with safety to the public interest remain in their seats during such an inquiry into their conduct. It appears very doubtful, whether, if there were grounds for such a prosecution, a proceeding in Great Britain were not more politic than one in Bengal. Such a prosecution ought not to have been ordered by the Directors, but upon grounds that would have fully authorized the recall of the gentleman in question. This prosecution, supposing it to have been seriously undertaken, and to have succeeded, must have tended to weaken the government, and to degrade it in the eyes of all India. On the other hand, to intrust a man, armed as he was with all the powers of his station, and indeed of the government, with the conduct of a prosecution against himself, was altogether inconsistent and absurd. The same letter in which they give these orders exhibits an example which sets the inconsistency of their conduct in a stronger light, because the case is somewhat of a similar nature, but infinitely less pressing in its circumstances. Observing that the Board of Trade had commenced a prosecution against Mr. William Barton, a member of that board, for various acts of peculation committed by him, they say, "We must be of opinion, that,
In the present state of power and patronage in India, and during the relations which are permitted to subsist between the judges, the prosecuting officers, and the Council-General, your Committee is very doubtful whether the mode of prosecuting the highest members in the Bengal government, before a court at Calcutta, could have been almost in any case advisable.
It is possible that particular persons, in high judicial and political situations, may, by force of an unusual strain of virtue, be placed far above the influence of those circumstances which in ordinary cases are known to make an impression on the human mind. But your Committee, sensible that laws and public proceedings ought to be made for general situations, and not for personal dispositions, are not inclined to have any confidence in the effect of criminal proceedings, where no means are provided
Your Committee, in a former Report, have stated the consequences which they apprehended from the dependency of the judges on the Governor-General and Council of Bengal; and the House has entered into their ideas upon this subject. Since that time it appears that Sir Elijah Impey has accepted of the guardianship of Mr. Barwell's children, and was the trustee for his affairs. There is no law to prevent this sort of connection, and it is possible that it might not at all affect the mind of that judge, or (upon his account) indirectly influence the conduct of his brethren; but it must forcibly affect the minds of those who have matter of complaint against government, and whose cause the Court of Directors appear to espouse, in a country where the authority of the Court of Directors has seldom been exerted but to be despised, where the operation of laws is but very imperfectly understood, but where men are acute, sagacious, and even suspicious of the effect of all personal connections. Their suspicions, though perhaps not rightly applied to every individual, will induce them to take indications from the situations and connections of the prosecuting parties, as well as of the judges. It cannot fail to be observed, that Mr. Naylor, the Company's attorney, lived in Mr. Barwell's house; the late Mr. Bogle, the Company's commissioner of lawsuits, owed his place to the patronage of Mr. Hastings and Mr. Barwell, by whom the office was created for him; and Sir John Day, the Company's advocate, who arrived in
If the Directors are known to devolve the whole cognizance of the offences charged on their servants so highly situated upon the Supreme Court, an excuse will be furnished, if already it has not been furnished, to the Directors for declining the use of their own proper political power and authority in examining into and animadverting on the conduct of their servants. Their true character, as strict masters and vigilant governors, will merge in that of prosecutors. Their force and energy will evaporate in tedious and intricate processes,—in lawsuits which can never end, and which are to be carried on by the very dependants of those who are under prosecution. On their part, these servants will decline giving satisfaction to their masters, because they are already before another tribunal; and thus, by shifting responsibility from hand to hand, a confederacy to defeat the whole spirit of the law, and to remove all real restraints on their actions, may be in time formed between the servants, Directors, prosecutors, and court. Of this great danger your Committee will take farther notice in another place.
No notice whatever appears to have been taken of the Company's orders in Bengal till the 11th of January, 1779, when Mr. Barwell moved, that the claim made upon him by the Court of Directors should be submitted to the Company's lawyers, and that they should be perfectly instructed to prosecute upon it. In his minute of that date he says, "that the state of his health had long since rendered it necessary for him to return to Europe."
Your Committee observe that he continued in Bengal another year. He says, "that he had hitherto waited for the arrival of Sir John Day, the Company's advocate; but as the season was now far advanced, he wished to bring the trial speedily to issue."
In this minute he retracts his original engagement to submit himself to the judgment of the Court of Directors, "and to account to them for the last shilling he had received": he says, "that no merit had been given him for the offer; that a most unjustifiable advantage had been attempted to be made of it, by first declining it and descending to abuse, and then giving orders upon it as if it had been rejected, when called upon by him in the person of his agent to bring home the charge of delinquency."
Mr. Barwell's reflections on the proceedings of the Court of Directors are not altogether clearly expressed; nor does it appear distinctly to what facts he alludes. He asserts that a most unjustifiable advantage had been attempted to be made of his offer. The fact is, the Court of Directors have nowhere declined accepting it; on the contrary, they caution the Governor-General and Council about the manner of receiving the tender of the money which they expect him to make. They say nothing of any call made on them by Mr. Barwell's agent in England; nor does it appear to your Committee that they "have descended to abuse." They have a right, and it is their duty, to express, in distinct and appropriated terms, their sense of all blamable conduct in their servants.
So far as may be collected from the evidence of the Company's records, Mr. Barwell's assertions do
If he had stood a trial, when he first acknowledged the facts, and submitted himself to the judgment of the Court of Directors, the suit would have been carried on under the direction of General Clavering, Colonel Monson, and Mr. Francis; whereas in the year 1779 his influence at the board gave him the conduct of it himself. In an interval of four years it may be presumed that great alterations might have happened in the state of the evidence against him.
In the subsequent proceedings of the Governor-General and Council the House will find that Mr. Barwell complained that his instances for carrying on the prosecution were ineffectual, owing to the legal difficulties and delays urged by the Company's law officers, which your Committee do not find have
The next article of direct monopoly subservient to the Company's export is saltpetre. This, as well as opium, is far the greater part the produce of the province of Bahar. The difference between the management and destination of the two articles has been this. Until the year 1782, the opium has been sold in the country, and the produce of the sale laid out in country merchandise for the Company's export. A great part of the saltpetre is sent out in kind, and never has contributed to the interior circulation and commerce of Bengal. It is managed by agency on the Company's account. The price paid to the manufacturer is invariable. Some of the larger undertakers receive advances to enable them to prosecute their work; but as they are not always equally careful or fortunate, it happens that large balances accumulate against them. Orders have been sent from Calcutta from time to time to recover their balances, with little or no success, but with great vexation to all concerned in the manufacture. Sometimes they have imprisoned the failing contractors in their own houses,—a severity which answers no useful purpose. Such persons are so many hands detached from the im
The supply for the Company's demand in England has rarely fallen short of two thousand tons, nor much exceeded two thousand five hundred. A discretionary allowance of this commodity has been made to the French, Dutch, and Danes, who purchase their allotted shares at some small advance on the Company's price. The supply destined for the London market is proportioned to the spare tonnage; and to accommodate that tonnage, the saltpetre is sometimes sent to Madras and sometimes even to Bombay, and that
Mr. Law, Chief of Patna, being examined on the effect of that monopoly, delivered his opinion, that with regard to the Company's trade the monopoly was advantageous, but as sovereigns of the country they must be losers by it. These two capacities in the Company are found in perpetual contradiction. But much doubt may arise whether this monopoly will be found advantageous to the Company either in the one capacity or the other. The gross commodity monopolized for sale in London is procured from the revenues in Bengal; the certain is given for the hazardous. The loss of interest on the advances, sometimes the loss of the principal,—the expense of carriage from Patna to Calcutta,—the various loadings and unloadings, and insurance (which, though borne by the Company, is still insurance),—the engagement for the Ordnance, limited in price, and irregular in payment,—the charge of agency and management, through all its gradations and successions,—when all these are taken into consideration, it may be found that the gain of the Company as traders will be far from compensating their loss as sovereigns. A body like the East India Company can scarcely, in any circumstance, hope to carry on the details of such a business, from its commencement to its conclusion, with any degree of success. In the subjoined estimate of profit and loss, the value of the commodity is stated at its invoice price at Calcutta. But this affords no just estimate of the whole effect of a dealing, where the Company's charge commences in the first rudiments of the manufacture, and not at the purchase at the place of sale and valuation: for they [there?]
The other link by which India is bound to Great Britain is the government established there originally by the authority of the East India Company, and afterwards modified by Parliament by the acts of 1773 and 1780. This system of government appears to your Committee to be at least as much disordered, and as much perverted from every good purpose for which lawful rule is established, as the trading system has been from every just principle of commerce. Your Committee, in tracing the causes of this disorder through its effects, have first considered the government as it is constituted and managed within itself, beginning with its most essential and fundamental part, the order and discipline by which the supreme authority of this kingdom is maintained.
The British government in India being a subordinate and delegated power, it ought to be considered as a fundamental principle in such a system, that it is to be preserved in the strictest obedience to the government at home. Administration in India, at an immense distance from the seat of the supreme authority,—intrusted with the most extensive powers,—liable to the greatest temptations,—possessing the amplest means of abuse,—ruling over a people guarded by no distinct or well-ascertained
But your Committee find that this principle has been for some years very little attended to. Before the passing the act of 1773, the professed purpose of which was to secure a better subordination in the Company's servants, such was the firmness with which the Court of Directors maintained their authority, that they displaced Governor Cartier, confessedly a meritorious servant, for disobedience of orders, although his case was not a great deal more than a question by whom the orders were to be obeyed.
Before your Committee proceed to offer to the House their remarks on the most distinguished of these instances, the particulars of which they have already reported, they deem it necessary to enter into some detail of a transaction equally extraordinary and important, though not yet brought into the view of Parliament, which appears to have laid the foundation of the principal abuses that ensued, as well as to have given strength and encouragement to those that existed. To this transaction, and to the conclusions naturally deducible from it, your Committee attribute that general spirit of disobedience and independence which has since prevailed in the government of Bengal.
Your Committee find that in the year 1775 Mr. Lauchlan Macleane was sent into England as agent to the Nabob of Arcot and to Mr. Hastings. The conduct of Mr. Hastings, in assisting to extirpate, for a sum of money to be paid to the Company, the innocent nation of the Rohillas, had drawn upon him the censure of the Court of Directors, and the unanimous censure of the Court of Proprietors. The former had even resolved to prepare an application to his Majesty for Mr. Hastings's dismission.
Another General Court was called on this proceeding. Mr. Hastings was then openly supported by a majority of the Court of Proprietors, who professed to entertain a good opinion of his general ability and rectitude of intention, notwithstanding the unanimous censure passed upon him. In that censure
On this occasion the Directors showed themselves extremely punctilious with regard to Mr. Macleane's powers. They probably dreaded the charge of becoming accomplices to an evasion of the act by which Mr. Hastings, resigning the service, would escape the consequences attached by law to a dismission; they therefore demanded Mr. Macleane's written authority. This he declared he could not give into their hands, as the letter contained other matters, of a nature extremely confidential, but that,
Nothing being now wanting to the satisfaction of the Directors, the resignation was formally accepted. Mr. Wheler was named to fill the vacancy, and presented for his Majesty's approbation, which was received. The act was complete, and the office that Mr. Hastings had resigned was legally filled. This proceeding was officially notified in Bengal, and General Clavering, as senior in Council, was in course to succeed to the office of Governor-General.
Mr. Hastings, to extricate himself from the difficulties into which this resignation had brought him, had recourse to one of those unlooked-for and hardy measures which characterize the whole of his administration. He came to a resolution of disowning his agent, denying his letter, and disavowing his friends. He insisted on continuing in the execution of his office, and supported himself by such reasons as could be furnished in such a cause. An open
On this determination, such as it was, the division in the meeting, but not in the minds of the Council, ceased. General Clavering uniformly opposed the conduct of Mr. Hastings to the end of his life. But Mr. Hastings showed more temper under much greater provocations. In disclaiming his agent, and in effect accusing him of an imposture the most deeply injurious to his character and fortune, and of the grossest forgery to support it, he was so very mild and indulgent as not to show any active resentment against his unfaithful agent, nor to complain to the Court of Directors. It was expected in Bengal that
A sanction was hereby given to all future defiance of every authority in this kingdom. Several other matters of complaint against Mr. Hastings, particularly the charge of peculation, fell to the ground at the same time. Opinions of counsel had been taken relative to a prosecution at law upon this charge, from the then Attorney and the then Solicitor-General and Mr. Dunning, (now the Lords Thurlow, Loughborough, and Ashburton,) together with Mr. Adair (now Recorder of London). None of them gave a positive opinion against the grounds of the prosecution. The Attorney-General doubted on the prudence of the proceedings, and censured (as it well deserved) the ill statement of the case. Three of them, Mr. Wedderburn, Mr. Dunning, and Mr. Adair, were clear in favor of the prosecution. No prosecution, however, was
With regard to the Supreme Council, the members who chose (for it was choice only) to attend to the orders which were issued from the languishing authority of the Directors continued to receive unprofitable applauses and no support. Their correspondence was always filled with complaints, the justice of which was always admitted by the Court of Directors; but this admission of the existence of the evil showed only the impotence of those who were to administer the remedy. The authority of the Court of Directors, resisted with success in so capital an instance as that of the resignation, was not likely to be respected in any other. What influence it really had on the conduct of the Company's servants may be collected from the facts that followed it.
The disobedience of Mr. Hastings has of late not only become uniform and systematical in practice, but has been in principle, also, supported by him, and by Mr. Barwell, late a member of the Supreme Council in Bengal, and now a member of this House.
In the Consultation of the 20th of July, 1778, Mr. Barwell gives it as his solemn and deliberate opinion, that, "while Mr. Hastings is in the government, the respect and dignity of his station should be supported. In these sentiments, I must decline an acquiescence in any order which has a tendency to bring the government into disrepute. As the Company have the means and power of forming their own administration in India, they may at pleasure place whom they please at the head; but in my opinion they are not authorized to treat a person in that post with indignity."
By treating them with indignity (in the particular
But in thus throwing off the authority of the Court of Directors, Mr. Hastings and Mr. Barwell have thrown off the authority of the whole legislative power of Great Britain; for, by the Regulating Act of the
These are the cases of Mr. Fowke, Mr. Bristow, and Mahomed Reza KhÂn. In a few weeks after the death of Colonel Monson, Mr. Hastings having obtained a majority in Council by his casting vote, Mr. Fowke and Mr. Bristow were called from their respective offices of Residents at Benares and Oude, places which have become the scenes of other extraordinary operations under the conduct of Mr. Hastings in person. For the recall of Mr. Bristow no reason was assigned. The reason assigned for the proceeding with regard to Mr. Fowke was, that "the purposes for which he was appointed were then fully accomplished."
An account of the removal of Mr. Fowke was communicated to the Court of Directors in a letter of the
So early as the 6th of the following January the appointment of these gentlemen was communicated in a letter to the Court of Directors, without any sort of color, apology, or explanation. That court found a servant removed from his station without complaint, contrary to the tenor of one of their standing injunctions. They allow, however, and with reason, that, "if it were possible to suppose that a saving, &c., had been his motive, they would have approved his proceeding. But that when immediately afterwards two persons, with two salaries, had been appointed to execute the office which had been filled with reputation by Mr. Fowke alone, and that Mr. Graham enjoys all the emoluments annexed to the office of Mr. Fowke,"—they properly conclude that Mr. Fowke was removed without just cause, to make way for Mr. Graham, and strictly enjoin that the former be reinstated in his office of Resident as Post-
It was now to be seen which of the parties was to give way. The orders were clear and precise, and enforced by a strong declaration of the resolution of the Court to make itself obeyed. Mr. Hastings fairly joined issue upon this point with his masters, and, having disobeyed the general instructions of the Company, determined to pay no obedience to their special order.
On the 21st July, 1778, he moved, and succeeded in his proposition, that the execution of these orders should be suspended. The reason he assigned for this suspension lets in great light upon the true character of all these proceedings: "That his consent to the recall of Mr. Graham would be adequate to his own resignation of the service, as it would inflict such a wound on his authority and influence that he could not maintain it."
If that had been his opinion, he ought to have resigned, and not disobeyed: because it was not necessary that he should hold his office; but it was necessary, that, whilst he hold it, he should obey his superiors, and submit to the law. Much more truly was his conduct a virtual resignation of his lawful office, and at the same time an usurpation of a situation which did not belong to him, to hold a subordinate office, and to refuse to act according to its duties. Had his authority been self-originated, it would have been wounded by his submission; but in this case the true nature of his authority was affirmed, not injured, by his obedience, because it was a power
In this determined disobedience he was supported by Mr. Barwell, who on that occasion delivered the dangerous doctrine to which your Committee have lately adverted. Mr. Fowke, who had a most material interest in this determination, applied by letter to be informed concerning it. An answer was sent, acquainting him coldly, and without any reason assigned, of what had been resolved relative to his office. This communication was soon followed by another letter from Mr. Fowke, with great submission and remarkable decency asserting his right to his office under the authority of the Court of Directors, and for solid reasons, grounded on the Company's express orders, praying to be informed of the charge against him. This letter appears to have been received by Mr. Hastings and Mr. Barwell very loftily. Mr. Hastings said, "that such applications were irregular; that they are not accountable to Mr. Fowke for their resolution respecting him. The reasons for suspending the execution of the orders of the Court of Directors contain no charge, nor the slightest imputation of a charge, against Mr. Fowke; but I see no reason why the board should condescend to tell him so." Accordingly, the proposition of Mr. Francis and Mr. Wheler, to inform Mr. Fowke "that they had no reason to be dissatisfied with his conduct," on the previous question was rejected.
By this resolution Mr. Hastings and Mr. Barwell discovered another principle, and no less dangerous than the first: namely, that persons deriving a valuable interest under the Company's orders, so far from being heard in favor of their right, are not so
The arrival soon after of Sir Eyre Coote giving another opportunity of trial, the question for obedience to the Company's orders was again
The resolution in Bengal being thus decisively taken, it came to the turn of the Court of Directors to act their part. They did act their part exactly in their old manner: they had recourse to their old remedy of repeating orders which had been disobeyed. The Directors declare to Mr. Hastings and Mr. Barwell, though without any apparent reason, that "they have read with astonishment their formal resolution to suspend the execution of their orders; that they shall take such measures as appear necessary for preserving the authority of the Court of Directors, and for preventing such instances of direct and wilful disobedience in their servants in time to come." They then renew their directions concerning Mr. Fowke. The event of this sole measure taken to preserve their authority, and to prevent instances of direct and wilful disobedience, your Committee will state in its proper place,—taking into consideration, for the present, the proceedings relative to Mr. Bristow, and to Mahomed Reza KhÂn, which were
The province of Oude, enlarged by the accession of several extensive and once flourishing territories, that is, by the country of the Rohillas, the district of Corah and Allahabad, and other provinces betwixt the Ganges and Jumna, is under the nominal dominion of one of the princes of the country, called Asoph ul Dowlah. But a body of English troops is kept up in his country; and the greatest part of his revenues are, by one description or another, substantially under the administration of English subjects. He is to all purposes a dependent prince. The person to be employed in his dominions to act for the Committee [Company?] was therefore of little consequence in his capacity of negotiator; but he was vested with a trust, great and critical, in all pecuniary affairs. These provinces of dependence lie out of the system of the Company's ordinary administration, and transactions there cannot be so readily brought under the cognizance of the Court of Directors. This renders it the more necessary that the Residents in such places should be persons not disapproved of by the Court of Directors. They are to manage a permanent interest, which is not, like a matter of political negotiation, variable, and which, from circumstances, might possibly excuse some degree of discretionary latitude in construing their orders. During the life
Mr. Bristow, however, was recalled by Mr. Hastings and Mr. Barwell, who had then acquired the majority, without any complaint having been assigned as the cause of his removal, and Mr. Middleton was sent in his stead to reside at the capital of Oude. The Court of Directors, as soon as they could be apprised of this extraordinary step, in their letter of the 4th of July, 1777, express their strongest disapprobation of it: they order Mr. Middleton to be recalled, and Mr. Bristow to be reinstated in his office. In December, 1778, they repeat their order. Of these repeated orders no notice was taken. Mr. Bristow, fatigued with unsuccessful private applications, which met with a constant refusal, did at length, on the 1st of May, 1780, address a letter to the board, making his claim of right, entitling himself to his offices [office?] under the authority of the Court of Directors, and complaining of the hardships which he suffered by the delay in admitting him to the exercise of it. This letter your Committee have inserted at large in the Fifth Report, having found nothing whatsoever exceptionable in it, although it seems to have excited the warmest resentment in Mr. Hastings.
This claim of the party gave no new force to the order of the Directors, which remained without any attention from the board from Mr. Bristow's arrival until the 1st of May, and with as little from the 1st of May to the 2nd of October following. On that day, Mr. Francis, after having caused the repeated orders of the Court of Directors to be first read, moved that Mr. Bristow should be reinstated in his office. This motion, in itself just and proper in the highest degree, and in which no fault could be found, but that it was not made more early, was received by Mr. Hastings with the greatest marks of resentment and indignation. He declares in his minute, that, "were the most determined adversary of the British nation to possess, by whatever means, a share in the administration, he could not devise a measure in itself so pernicious, or time it so effectually for the ruin of the British interests in India." Then turning to the object of the motion, he says, "I will ask, Who is Mr. Bristow, that a member of the administration should, at such a time, hold him forth, as an instrument for the degradation of the first executive member of this government? What are the professed objects of his appointment? What are the merits and services, or what the qualifications, which entitle him to such uncommon distinction? Is it for his superior integrity, or from his eminent abilities, that he is to be dignified at such hazard of every consideration that ought to influence the members of this administration? Of the former (his integrity) I know no proofs; I am sure it is not an evidence of it, that he has been enabled to make himself the principal in such a competition: and for the test of his abilities I appeal to the letter which he has dared to write to
Had the language and opinions which prevail throughout this part of the minute, as well as in all the others to which your Committee refer, been
Mr. Hastings, by his confidence in the support derived from this source, or from the habits of independent power, is carried to such a length as to consider a motion to obey the Court of Directors as a degradation of the executive government in his person. He looks upon a claim under that authority, and a complaint that it has produced no effect, as a piece of daring insolence which he is ashamed that the board has suffered. The behavior which your Committee consider as so intemperate and despotic he regards as a culpable degree of patience and forbearance. Major Scott, his agent, enters so much into the principles of Mr. Hastings's conduct as to tell your Committee that in his opinion Lord Clive would have sent home Mr. Bristow a prisoner upon such an occasion. It is worthy of remark, that, in the very same breath that Mr. Hastings so heavily condemns a junior officer in the Company's service (not a servant of the Council, as he hazards
If anything could add to the disagreeable situation of those who are submitted to an authority conducted on such principles, it is this: The Company has ordered that no complaint shall be made in Europe against any of the Council without being previously communicated to them: a regulation formed upon grave reasons; and it was certainly made in favor of that board. But if a person, having ground of complaint against the Council, by making use of the mode prescribed in favor of that very Council, and by complaining to themselves, commits an offence for
During the whole day of that deliberation things wore a decided face. Mr. Hastings stood to his principles in their full extent, and seemed resolved upon unqualified disobedience. But as the debate was adjourned to the day following, time was given for expedients; and such an expedient was hit upon by Mr. Hastings as will, no doubt, be unexpected by the House; but it serves to throw new lights upon the motives of all his struggles with the authority of the legislature.
The next day the Council met upon the adjournment. Then Mr. Hastings proposed, as a compromise, a division of the object in question. One half was to be surrendered to the authority of the Court of Directors, the other was reserved for his dignity. But the choice he made of his own share in this partition is very worthy of notice. He had taken his sole ground of objection against Mr. Bristow on the supposed ill effect that such an appointment would have on the minds of the Indian powers. He said, "that these powers could have no dependence on his fulfilling his engagements, or maintaining the faith of treaties which he might offer for their acceptance, if they saw him treated with such contempt." Mr. Bristow's appearing in a political character was the whole of his complaint; yet, when he comes to a voluntary distribution of the duties of the office, he gives Mr. Bristow those very political negotiations of which but the
The conduct of Mr. Hastings in the affair of Mahomed Reza KhÂn was an act of disobedience of the same character, but wrought by other instruments. When the DuannÉ (or universal perception, and management of the revenues) of Bengal was acquired to the Company, together with the command of the army, the Nabob, or governor, naturally fell into the rank rather of a subject than that even of a dependent prince. Yet the preservation of such a power in such a degree of subordination, with the criminal jurisdiction, and the care of the public order annexed to it, was a wise and laudable policy. It preserved a portion of the government in the hands of the natives; it kept them in respect; it rendered them quiet on the change; and it prevented that vast kingdom from wearing the dangerous appearance, and still more from sinking into the terrible state, of a country of conquest. Your Committee has already reported the manner in which the Company (it must be allowed, upon pretences that will not bear the slightest examination) diverted from its purposes a great part of the revenues appropriated
However, lest any one should so far mistrust their understanding as to conceive them the dupes of this pretext, they who had disobeyed the Company's orders under color that no deputy was necessary immediately appoint another deputy. This independent prince, who, as Mr. Hastings said, "had an incon
The Company's orders, censuring this transaction in the strongest terms, and ordering Mahomed Reza KhÂn to be immediately restored to the office of Naib Subahdar, were received in Calcutta in November, 1779. Mr. Hastings acted on this with the firmness which he had shown on other occasions; but in his principles he went further. Thinking himself assured of some extraordinary support, suitable to the open and determined defiance with which he was resolved to oppose the lawful authority of his superiors, and to exercise a despotic power, he no longer adhered to Mr. Barwell's distinction of the orders which had a tendency to bring his government into disrepute. This distinction afforded sufficient latitude to disobedience; but here he disdained all sorts of colors and distinctions. He directly set up an independent right to administer the government according to his pleasure; and he went so far as to bottom his claim to act independently of the Court of Directors on the very statute which commanded his obedience to them.
He declared roundly, "that he should not yield to the authority of the Court of Directors in any instance in which it should require his concession of the rights which he held under an act of Parliament." It is too clear to stand in need of proof, that he neither did or could hold any authority that was not subject, in every particle of it, and in every instance in which it could be exercised, to the orders of the Court of Directors.
He therefore refused to back the Company's orders with any requisition from himself to the Nabob, but merely suffered them to be transmitted to him, leaving it to him to do just as he thought proper. The Nabob, who called Mr. Hastings "his patron, and declared he would never do anything without his consent and approbation," perfectly understood this kind of signification. For the second time the Nabob recovered from his trance of pageantry and insignificance, and collected courage enough to write to the Council in these terms: "I administer the affairs of the Nizamut, (the government,) which are the affairs of my own family, by my own authority, and shall do so; and I never can on any account agree to the appointment of the Nabob Mahomed Reza KhÂn to the Naib Subahship." Here was a second independent power in Bengal. This answer from that power proved as satisfactory as it was resolute. No further notice was taken of the orders of the Court of Directors, and Mahomed Reza KhÂn found their protection much more of a shadow than the pageant of power of which he aspired to be the representative.
This act of disobedience differs from the others in one particular which, in the opinion of your Committee, rather aggravates than extenuates the offence. In the others, Messrs. Hastings and Barwell took the responsibility on themselves; here they held up the pretext of the country government. However, they obtained thereby one of the objects which they appear to have systematically pursued. As they had in the other instances shown to the British servants of the Company that the Directors were not able to protect them, here the same lesson was taught to the natives. Whilst the matter lay between the native power and
In this manner the authority of the British legislature was at that time treated with every mark of reprobation and contempt. But soon after a most unexpected change took place, by which the persons in whose favor the Court of Directors had in vain interposed obtained specific objects which had been refused to them; things were, however, so well contrived, that legal authority was nearly as much affronted by the apparent compliance with their orders as by the real resistance they had before met with. After long and violent controversies, an agreement took place between Mr. Hastings and Mr. Francis. It appears that Mr. Hastings, embarrassed with the complicated wars and ruinous expenses into which his measures had brought him, began to think of procuring peace at home. The agreement originated in a conversation held on Christmas-Day, 1779, between Major Scott, then aide-de-camp, and now agent, to Mr. Hastings, and Mr. Ducarrel, a gentleman high in the Company's service at Calcutta. Mr. Scott, in consequence of this conversation, was authorized to make overtures to Mr. Francis through Mr. Ducarrel: to declare Mr. Hastings tired of controversy; expressing his wish to have the Mahratta war entirely left to him; that there were certain points he could not give up; that he could not (for reasons he then assigned) submit to the restoration of Mr. Fowke, Mahomed Reza KhÂn, and Mr. Bristow; that he had not the
Your Committee observe on this part of the transaction of Mr. Hastings, that as long as the question stood upon his obedience to his lawful superiors, so long he considered the restoration of these persons as a gross indignity, the submitting to which would destroy all his credit and influence in the country; but when it was to accommodate his own occasions in a treaty with a fellow-servant, all these difficulties instantly vanish, and he finds it perfectly consistent with his dignity, credit, and influence, to do for Mr. Francis what he had refused to the strict and reiterated injunctions of the Court of Directors. Tranquillity was, however, for a time restored by this measure, though it did not continue long. In about three months an occasion occurred in which Mr. Francis gave some opposition to a measure proposed by Mr. Hastings, which brought on a duel, upon the mischievous effects of which your Committee have already made their observations.
The departure of Mr. Francis soon after for Europe opened a new scene, and gave rise to a third revolution. Lest the arrangement with the servants of the Company should have the least appearance of being mistaken for obedience to their superiors, Mr.
As usual, the Court of Directors appear in their proper order in the procession. After this third act
The extraordinary operations of Mr. Hastings, that soon after followed in every department which was the subject of all these acts of disobedience, have made them appear in a light peculiarly unpropitious to his cause. It is but too probable, from his own accounts, that he meditated some strong measure, both at Benares and at Oude, at the very time of the removal of those officers. He declares he knew that his conduct in those places was such as to lie very open to malicious representations; he must have been sensible that he was open to such representations from the beginning; he was therefore impelled by every motive which ought to influence a man of sense by no means to disturb the order which he had last established.
Of this, however, he took no care; but he was not so inattentive to the satisfaction of the sufferers, either in point of honor or of interest. This was most strongly marked in the case of Mr. Fowke. His reparation to that gentleman, in point of honor, is as full as possible. Mr. Hastings "declared, that he approved his character and his conduct in office, and believed that he might depend upon his exact and literal obedience and fidelity in the execution of the functions annexed to it." Such is the character of the man whom Mr. Hastings a second time removed from
So far the reparation, in point of honor, to Mr. Fowke was complete. The reparation in point of interest your Committee do not find to have been equally satisfactory; but they do find it to be of the most extraordinary nature, and of the most mischievous example. Mr. Fowke had been deprived of a place of rank and honor,—the place of a public Vackeel, or representative. The recompense provided for him is a succession to a contract. Mr. Hastings moved, that, on the expiration of Colonel Morgan's contract, he should be appointed agent to all the boats employed for the military service of that establishment, with a commission of fifteen per cent on all disbursements in that office,—permitting Mr. Fowke, at the same time, to draw his allowance of an hundred pounds a month, as Resident, until the expiration of the contract, and for three months after.
Mr. Hastings is himself struck, as every one must be, with so extraordinary a proceeding, the principle of which, he observes, "is liable to one material objection." That one is material indeed; for, no limit being laid down for the expense in which the percentage is to arise, it is the direct interest of the person employed to make his department as expensive as possible. To this Mr. Hastings answers, that "he is convinced by experience it will be better performed"; and yet he immediately after subjoins, "This defect can only be corrected by the probity of the person intrusted with so important a charge; and I am willing to have it understood, as a proof of the confidence I repose in Mr. Fowke, that I have proposed his appointment, in opposition to a general principle, to a trust so constituted."
In the beginning of this very Minute of Consulta
It is not foreign to the object of your Committee, in this part of their observations, which relates to the obedience to orders, to remark upon the manner in which the orders of the Court of Directors with regard to this kind of dealing in contracts are observed. These orders relate to contracts; and they contain two standing regulations.
1st, That all contracts shall be publicly advertised, and that the most reasonable proposals shall be accepted.
2ndly, That two contracts, those of provisions and for carriage bullocks, shall be only annual.
These orders are undoubtedly some correctives to the abuses which may arise in this very critical article of public dealing. But the House will remark, that, if the business usually carried on by contracts can be converted at pleasure into agencies, like that of Mr. Fowke, all these regulations perish of course, and there is no direction whatsoever for restraining the most prodigal and corrupt bargains for the public.
Your Committee have inquired into the observance of these necessary regulations, and they find that they have, like the rest, been entirely contemned, and contemned with entire impunity. After the period of Colonel Monson's death, and Mr. Hastings and Mr. Barwell obtaining the lead in the Council, the contracts were disposed of without at all advertising for proposals. Those in 1777 were given for three years; and the gentlemen in question growing by habit and encouragement into more boldness, in 1779 the contracts were disposed of for five years: and this they did at the eve of the expiration of their own appointment to the government. This increase in the length of the contracts, though contrary to orders, might have admitted some excuse, if it had been made, even in appearance, the means of lessening the expense. But the advantages allowed to the contractors, instead of being diminished, were enlarged, and in a manner far beyond the proportion of the enlargement of terms. Of this abuse and contempt of orders a judgment may be formed by the single contract for supplying the army with draught and carriage bullocks. As it stood at the expiration of the contract in 1779, the expense of that service was about one thousand three hundred pounds a
The case of Mr. Belli's contract for supplying provisions to the Fort is of the same description; and what exceedingly increases the suspicion against this profusion, in contracts made in direct violation of orders, is, that they are always found to be given in favor of persons closely connected with Mr. Hastings in his family, or even in his actual service.
The principles upon which Mr. Hastings and Mr. Barwell justify this disobedience, if admitted, reduce the Company's government, so far as it regards the Supreme Council, to a mere patronage,—to a mere power of nominating persons to or removing them from an authority which, is not only despotic with regard to those who are subordinate to it, but in all its acts entirely independent of the legal power which is nominally superior. These are principles directly leading to the destruction of the Company's government. A correspondent practice being established, (as in this case of contracts, as well as others, it has been,) the means are furnished of effectuating this purpose: for the common superior, the Company,
Your Committee being led to attend to the abuse of contracts, which are given upon principles fatal to the subordination of the service, and in defiance of orders, revert to the disobedience of orders in the case of Mahomed Reza KhÂn.
This transaction is of a piece with those that preceded it. On the 6th of July, 1781, Mr. Hastings announced to the board the arrival of a messenger and introduced a requisition from the young Nabob Mobarek ul Dowlah, "that he might be permitted to dispose of his own stipend, without being made to depend on the will of another." In favor of this requisition Mr. Hastings urged various arguments:—that the Nabob could no longer be deemed a minor;—that he was twenty-six years of age, and father of many children;—that his understanding was much improved of late by an attention to his education;—that these circumstances gave him a claim to the uncontrolled exercise of domestic authority; and it might reasonably be supposed that he would pay a greater regard to a just economy in his own family than had been observed by those who were aliens to it. For these reasons Mr. Hastings recommended to the board that Mahomed Reza KhÂn should be im
The House will naturally expect to find that the
The drift of these contradictions is sufficiently apparent. Mahomed Reza KhÂn was to be divested of his office at all events, and the management of the Nabob's stipend committed to other hands. To accomplish the first, the Nabob is said to be "now arrived at that time of life when a man may be supposed capable, if ever, of managing his own concerns." When this principle has answered the momentary purpose for which it was produced, we find it immediately discarded, and an opposite resolution formed on an opposite principle, viz., that he shall not have the management of his own concerns, in consideration of his want of experience.
Mr. Hastings, on his arrival at Moorshedabad, gives Mr. Wheler an account of his interview with the Nabob, and of the Nabob's implicit submission to his advice. The principal, if not the sole, object of the whole operation appears from the result of it. Sir John D'Oyly, a gentleman in whom Mr. Hastings places particular confidence, succeeds to the office of Mahomed Reza KhÂn, and to the same control over the Nabob's expenses. Into the hands of this gentleman the Nabob's stipend was to be immediately paid, as every intermediate channel would be an unavoidable cause of delay; and to his advice the Nabob was required to give the same attention as if it were given by Mr. Hastings himself. One of the conditions prescribed to the Nabob was, that he should admit no Englishman to his presence without previously consulting Sir John D'Oyly; and he must forbid any person of that nation to be intruded without his introduction. On these arrangements it need only be observed, that a measure which sets out with professing to relieve the Nabob from a state of perpetual pupilage concludes with delivering not only his fortune, but his person, to the custody of a particular friend of Mr. Hastings.
The instructions given to the Nabob contain other passages that merit attention. In one place Mr. Hastings tells him, "You have offered to give up the sum of four lacs of rupees to be allowed the free use of the remainder; but this we have refused." In another he says, that, "as many matters will occur which cannot be so easily explained by letter as by conversation, I desire that you will on such occasions give your orders to Sir John D'Oyly respecting such points as you may desire to have imparted to me." The
As soon as the Nabob's requisition was communicated to the board, it was moved and resolved that Mahomed Reza KhÂn should be divested of his office; and the House have seen in what manner it was disposed of. The Nabob had stated various complaints against him:—that he had dismissed the old established servants of the Nizamut, and filled their places with his own dependants;—that he had regularly received the stipend of the Nizamut from the Company, yet had kept the Nabob involved in debt and distress, and exposed to the clamors of his creditors, and sometimes even in want of a dinner. All these complaints were recorded at large in the proceedings of the Council; but it does not appear that they were ever communicated to Mahomed Reza KhÂn, or that he was ever called upon, in any shape, to answer them. This circumstance inclines your Committee to believe that all of these charges were groundless,—especially as it appears on the face of the proceedings, that the chief of them were not well founded. Mr. Hastings, in his letter to Mr. Wheler, urges the
The transaction, on the whole, speaks very sufficiently for itself. It is a gross instance of repeated disobedience to repeated orders; and it is rendered particularly offensive to the authority of the Court of Directors by the frivolous and contradictory reasons assigned for it. But whether the Nabob's requisition was reasonable or not, the Governor-General and Council were precluded by a special instruction from complying with it. The Directors, in their letter of the 14th of February, 1779, declare, that a resolution of Council, (taken by Mr. Francis and Mr. Wheler, in the absence of Mr. Barwell,) viz., "that the Nabob's letter should be referred to them for their decision, and that no resolution should be taken in Bengal on his requisitions without their special orders and instructions," was very proper. They prudently reserved to themselves the right of
Since the closing of the above Report, many material papers have arrived from India, and have been laid before your Committee. That which they think it most immediately necessary to annex to the Appendix to this Report is the resolution of the Council-General to allow to the members of the Board of Trade resident in Calcutta a charge of five per cent on the sale in England of the investment formed upon their second plan, namely, that plan which had been communicated to Lord Macartney. The investment on this plan is stated to be raised from 800,000l. to 1,000,000l. sterling.
It is on all accounts a very memorable transaction, and tends to bring on a heavy burden, operating in the nature of a tax laid by their own authority on the goods of their masters in England. If such a compensation to the Board of Trade was necessary on account of their engagement to take no further (that is to say, no unlawful) emolument, it implies that the practice of making such unlawful emolument had formerly existed; and your Committee think it very extraordinary that the first notice the Company had received of such a practice should be in taxing them for a compensation for a partial abolition of it, secured on the parole of honor of those very persons who are supposed to have been guilty of this unjustifiable conduct. Your Committee consider this
FOOTNOTES:
This calculation supposes the eighty lac investments will be equal to the tonnage of five ships.
| To custom | £320,000 | By sale amount of piece-goods and raw silk | £1,300,000 | ||
| " freight | 200,000 | ||||
| " 5 per cent duty on £1,300,000 | 65,000 | Discount 6½ per cent allowed the buyers | 84,500 | ||
| " 2 do. warehouse room do. | 26,000 | ||||
| 7 do. commission on £604,500 | 42,315 | ||||
| £653,315 | |||||
| " Balance | 562,185 | ||||
| £1,215,500 | £1,215,500 |
