Volume VIII Part 7 (1/2)
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 applying any remedy to a grievance which has been for years the constant subject of complaints.
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 pa.s.s 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.
SALT.
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 a.s.sisted 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 a.s.serted 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,[8] that under the government of the Nabobs the duty on salt made in Bengal was two and an half per cent paid by Mussulmen, and five per cent paid by Gentoos. On the accession of Mir Ca.s.sim, in 1760, the claim of the Company's servants to trade in salt duty-free was first avowed. Mr. Vansittart made an agreement with him by which the duties should be fixed at nine per cent. The Council annulled the agreement, and reduced the duty to two and an half per cent. On this Mir Ca.s.sim ordered that no customs or duties whatsoever should be collected for the future. But a majority of the Council (22nd March, 1763) resolved, that the making the exemption general was a breach of the Company's privileges, and that the Nabob should be positively required to recall it, and collect duties as before from the country merchants, and all other persons who had not the protection of the Company's _dustuck_. The Directors, as the evident reason of the thing and as their duty required, disapproved highly of these transactions, and ordered (8th February, 1764) _a final and effectual stop to be put to the inland trade in salt_, and several other articles of commerce.
But other politics and other interests prevailed, so that in the May following a General Court resolved, that it should be recommended to the Court of Directors to reconsider the preceding orders; in consequence of which the Directors ordered the Governor and Council to form a plan, in concert with the Nabob, for regulating the inland trade.
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 subst.i.tuted no other in its room.[9] In this manner things continued until November, 1767, when the Directors repeated their orders for excluding all persons whatever, excepting the natives only, from being concerned in the inland trade in salt; and they declared that (vide par. 90) ”_such trade is hereby abolished and put a final end to_.” In the same letter (par. 92) they ordered that the salt trade should be laid open to the natives in general, subject to such a duty as might produce one hundred and twenty thousand pounds a year. This policy was adopted by the legislature. In the act of 1773 it was expressly provided, that it should not be lawful for any of his Majesty's subjects to engage, intermeddle, or be any way concerned, directly or indirectly, in the inland trade in salt, except on the India Company's account.
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 hards.h.i.+p 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.”[10] ”They considered it, too, as disgraceful, _and below the dignity of their present situation_, to allow of such a monopoly, and that, were they to allow it under any restrictions, they should consider themselves as a.s.senting and subscribing to all the mischiefs which Bengal had presented to them for four years past.”[11]
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 circ.u.mstanced. 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 management of the salt revenue differs widely from that which I adopted under different circ.u.mstances.”
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 inst.i.tution 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 times, whatever flattering appearance it may wear for a time, be the fate of any attempt to monopolize the salt for the profit of government. In the first instance it will raise the price on the consumer beyond its just level; but that evil will soon be corrected by means ruinous to the Company as monopolists, viz., by the embezzlement of their own salt, and by the importation of foreign salt, neither of which the government of Bengal may have power for any long time to prevent. In the end government will probably be undersold and beaten down to a losing price.
Or, if they should attempt to force all the advantages from this article of which by every exertion it may be made capable, it may distress some other part of their possessions in India, and destroy, or at least impair, the natural intercourse between them. Ultimately it may hurt Bengal itself, and the produce of its landed revenue, by destroying the vent of that grain which it would otherwise barter for salt.
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 delivered over, like cattle, in succession, to different masters, who, under pretence of buying up the balances due to their preceding employers, find means of keeping them in perpetual slavery. For evils of this nature there can be no perfect remedy as long as the monopoly continues. They are in the nature of the thing, and cannot be cured, or effectually counteracted, even by a just and vigilant administration on the spot. Many objections occur to the farming of any branch of the public revenue in Bengal, particularly against farming the salt lands. But the dilemma to which government by this system is constantly reduced, of authorizing great injustice or suffering great loss, is alone sufficient to condemn it. Either government is expected to support the farmer or contractor in all his pretensions by an exertion of power, which tends of necessity to the ruin of the parties subjected to the farmer's contract, and to the suppression of free trade,--or, if such a.s.sistance be refused him, he complains that he is not supported, that private persons interfere with his contract, that the manufacturers desert their labor, and that proportionate deductions must be allowed him.
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 princ.i.p.ally 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 this matter, in March, 1775, that the Chiefs and Councils of those districts in which there were salt mahls reserved particular salt farms for their _own_ use, and divided the profits, in certain stated proportions, among themselves and their a.s.sistants. But, unless a detail of these transactions, and of the persons concerned in them, should be called for by the House, it is our wish to avoid entering into it. On one example only your Committee think it just and proper to insist, stating first to the House on what principles they have made this selection.
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 punis.h.i.+ng 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 pa.s.s with a feeble and ineffectual condemnation. In those cases which they have deemed too apparent and too strong to be disregarded even with safety to themselves, and against which their heaviest displeasure has been declared, it appears to your Committee that their interference, such as it was, had a mischievous rather than a useful tendency. A total neglect of duty in this respect, however culpable, is not to be compared, either in its nature or in its consequences, with the destructive principles on which they have acted.
It has been their practice, if not system, to inquire, to censure, and not to punish. As long as the misconduct of persons in power in Bengal was encouraged by nothing but the hopes of concealment, it may be presumed that they felt some restraint upon their actions, and that they stood in some awe of the power placed over them; whereas it is to be apprehended that the late conduct of the Court of Directors tells them, in effect, that they have nothing to fear from the certainty of a discovery.
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 const.i.tution 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 would have been gradually effaced and finally buried in oblivion. But the reports which your Committee have already made have shown the House that from the year 1772, when those proceedings commenced in Parliament on which the act of the following year was founded, abuses of every kind have prevailed and multiplied in Bengal to a degree unknown in former times, and are perfectly sufficient to account for the present distress of the Company's affairs both at home and abroad. The affair which your Committee now lays before the House occupies too large a s.p.a.ce in the Company's records, and is of too much importance in every point of view, to be pa.s.sed over.
Your Committee find that in March, 1775, a pet.i.tion 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 pet.i.tioner 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 pet.i.tioner with 1,25,500 rupees, (equal to 13,000_l._,) 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 pet.i.tioner, on account of the India Company, for the provision of salt in the two farms, and, after doing so, compelled the pet.i.tioner to execute and give him four different bonds for 77,627 rupees, in the name of one Porran Paul, for the remainder of such contribution, or unjust profit.
Such were the allegations of the pet.i.tion relative to the unjust exaction. The harsh means of compelling the payment make another and very material part; for the pet.i.tioner a.s.serts, 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 pet.i.tion further charges, that the said gentleman and his people had also extorted from the pet.i.tioner 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 pet.i.tioner 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 pet.i.tioner the aforesaid two mahls, (or districts,) and farmed them to another person, notwithstanding he had extorted from the pet.i.tioner a considerable sum of money on account of those purgunnahs.”