Part 63 (1/2)
To give India the advantage of free inst.i.tutions, or all the blessings of which she is capable under an enlightened paternal government, nothing is more essential than the supersession of this feudal aristocracy by one founded upon other bases, and, above all, upon that of the concentration of capital in commerce and manufactures. Nothing tends so much to prevent the acc.u.mulation and concentration of capital over India as this feudal aristocracy which tends everywhere to destroy that feeling of security without which men will nowhere acc.u.mulate and concentrate it. They do so, not only by the intrigues and combinations against the paramount power, which keep alive the dread of internal wars and foreign invasion, but by those gangs of robbers and murderers which they foster and locate upon their estates to prey upon the more favoured or better governed territories around them. From those gangs of freebooters who are to be found upon the estate of almost every native chief, no acc.u.mulation of movable property of any value is ever for a moment considered safe, and those who happen to have any such are always in dread of losing, not only their property, but their lives along with it, for these gangs, secure in the protection of such chief, are reckless in their attack, and kill all who happen to come in their way.[14]
Notes:
1. This phrase is meant to include America.
2. Money-lenders naturally have flourished daring the long period of internal peace since the Mutiny. They vary in wealth and position from the humblest 'gombeen man' to the millionaire banker. Many of these money-lenders are now among the largest owners of land in the country. Under native rule interests in land were generally too precarious to be saleable. The author did not foresee that the growth of private property in land would carry with it the right and desire of one party to sell and of another to buy, and would thus favour the growth of large estates, and, to a considerable extent, counteract the evils of subdivision. Of course, like everything else, the large estates have their evils too. Much nonsense is written about sales of land in India, as well as in Ireland. The two countries have more than the initial letter in common.
3. Theorists declare that it is right that the tax-payers should know what is taken from them, and that, therefore, direct taxes are best; but practical men who have to govern ignorant and suspicious races, resentful of direct taxation, know that indirect taxation is, for such people, the best.
4. This ill.u.s.tration would give a very false idea of modern Indian finance.
5. They have no duty to perform as creditors; but as citizens of an enlightened nation they no doubt perform many of them, very important ones. [W. H. S.] The author's whimsical comparison between stockholders and Adam and Eve, and his notion that the creditors of the nation may be regarded as officials without duties, only obscure a simple matter. The emigration of owners of Consols never a.s.sumed very alarming dimensions.
6. The Corn Laws were repealed in 1846, and the s.h.i.+lling duty which was then left was abolished in 1869. Considering that the author belonged to a land-owning family, his clear perception of the evils caused by the Corn Laws is remarkable.
7. By the 'Western Provinces' the author means the region called later the North-Western Provinces, and now known as the Agra Province in the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh, with the Delhi Territories, which latter are now partly under the Government of the Panjab, and partly in the new small Province, or Chief Commissioners.h.i.+p of Delhi.
8. At the time referred to, the provincial Government had not been const.i.tuted.
9. Fifty per cent. may be considered as the average rate left to the lessees or proprietors of estates under this new settlement; and, if they take on an average one-third of the gross produce, Government takes two-ninths. But we may rate the Government share of the produce actually taken at one-fifth as the maximum, and one-tenth as the minimum. [W. H. S.]
It is unfortunately true that in the short-term settlements made previous to 1833 many abuses of the kinds referred to in the text occurred. The traditions of the people and the old records attest numerous instances. The first serious attempt to reform the system of revenue settlements was made by Regulation VII of 1822, but, owing to an excessive elaboration of procedure, the attempt produced no appreciable results. Regulation IX of 1833 established a workable system, and provided for the appointment of Indian Deputy Collectors with adequate powers. The settlements of the North-Western Provinces made under this Regulation were, for the most part, reasonably fair, and were generally confirmed for a period of thirty years. Mr. Robert Mertins Bird, who entered the service in 1805, and died in 1853, took a leading part in this great reform. When the next settlements were made, between 1860 and 1880, the share of the profit rental claimed by the State was reduced from two-thirds to one-half. Full details will be found in the editor's _Settlement Officer's Manual for the N.
W. P._ (Allahabad, 1882), or in Baden Powell's big book, _Land Systems of British India_ (Clarendon Press, 1892).
10. Since 1833 the people whom the author calls 'farmers' have gradually become fall proprietors, subject to the Government lien on the land and its produce for the land revenue. For many years past the ancient custom of joint owners.h.i.+p and collective responsibility has been losing ground. Part.i.tions are now continually demanded, and every year collective responsibility is becoming more unpopular and more difficult to enforce.
11. This judgement, I need hardly say, would not be accepted in Madras or Bombay. The issue raised is too large for discussion in footnotes.
12. The advantages of very long terms of settlements are obvious; the disadvantages, though equally real, are less obvious. Fluctuations in prices, and above all, in the price of silver, are among the many conditions which complicate the question. Except the Bengal landowners, most people now admit that the Permanent Settlement of Bengal in 1793 was a grievous mistake. It is also admitted that the mistake is irrevocable.
13. These two suggestions of the author that the law of primogeniture should be established to regulate the succession to ordinary estates, and that it should be abolished in the case of chieftains.h.i.+ps, where it already prevails, are obviously open to criticism. It seems sufficient to say that both recommendations are, for many reasons, altogether impracticable. In pa.s.sing, I may note that the term 'feudal' does not express with any approach to correctness the relation of the Native States to the Government of India.
14. The evils described in this paragraph, though diminished, have not disappeared. Nevertheless, no one would now seriously propose the deliberate supersession of the existing aristocracy by rich merchants and manufacturers. The proposal is too fanciful for discussion.
During the long period of peace merchants and manufacturers have naturally risen to a position much more prominent than they occupied in the author's time.
CHAPTER 73
Meerut--Anglo-Indian Society.
Meerut is a large station for military and civil establishments; it is the residence of a civil commissioner, a judge, a magistrate, a collector of land revenue, and all their a.s.sistants and establishments. There are the Major-General commanding the division; the Brigadier commanding the station; four troops of horse and a company of foot artillery; one regiment of European cavalry, one of European infantry, one of native cavalry, and three of native infantry.[1] It is justly considered the healthiest station in India, for both Europeans and natives,[2] and I visited it in the latter end of the cold, which is the healthiest, season of the year; yet the European ladies were looking as if they had all come out of their graves, and talking of the necessity of going off to the mountains to renovate, as soon as the hot weather should set in. They had literally been f.a.gging themselves to death with gaiety, at this the gayest and most delightful of all Indian stations, during the cold months when they ought to have been laying in a store of strength to carry them through the trying seasons of the hot winds and rains. Up every night and all night at b.a.l.l.s and suppers, they could never go out to breathe the fresh air of the morning; and were looking wretchedly ill, while the European soldiers from the barracks seemed as fresh as if they had never left their native land. There is no doubt that sitting up late at night is extremely prejudicial to the health of Europeans in India.[3] I have never seen the European, male or female, that could stand it long, however temperate in habits; and an old friend of mine once told me that if he went to bed a little exhilarated every night at ten o'clock, and took his ride in the morning, he found himself much better than if he sat up till twelve or one o'clock without drinking, and lay abed in the mornings. Almost all the gay pleasures of India are enjoyed at night, and as ladies here, as everywhere else in Christian societies, are the life and soul of all good parties, as of all good novels, they often to oblige others sit up late, much against their own inclinations, and even their judgements, aware as they are that they are gradually sinking under the undue exertions.
When I first came to India there were a few ladies of the old school still much looked up to in Calcutta, and among the rest the grandmother of the Earl of Liverpool, the old Begam Johnstone, then between seventy and eighty years of age.[4] All these old ladies prided themselves upon keeping up old usages. They use to dine in the afternoon at four or five o'clock--take their airing after dinner in their carriages; and from the time they returned till ten at night their houses were lit up in their best style and thrown open for the reception of visitors. All who were on visiting terms came at this time, with any strangers whom they wished to introduce, and enjoyed each other's society; there were music and dancing for the young, and cards for the old, when the party a.s.sembled happened to be large enough; and a few who had been previously invited stayed supper. I often visited the old Begam Johnstone at this hour, and met at her house the first people in the country, for all people, including the Governor-General himself, delighted to honour this old lady, the widow of a Governor-General of India, and the mother-in-law of a Prime Minister of England.[5] She was at Murs.h.i.+dabad when Siraj-ud- daula marched from that place at the head of the army that took and plundered Calcutta, and caused so many Europeans to perish in the Black Hole; and she was herself saved from becoming a member of his seraglio, or peris.h.i.+ng with the lest, by the circ.u.mstance of her being far gone in her pregnancy, which caused her to be made over to a Dutch factory.[6]
She had been a very beautiful woman, and had been several times married; the pictures of all her husbands being hung round her n.o.ble drawing-room in Calcutta, covered during the day with crimson cloth to save them from the dust, and uncovered at night only on particular occasions. One evening Mrs. Crommelin, a friend of mine, pointing to one of them, asked the old lady his name. 'Really, I cannot at this moment tell you, my dear; my memory is very bad,' (striking her forehead with her right hand, as she leaned with her left arm in Mrs.
Crommelin's,) 'but I shall recollect in a few minutes.' The old lady's last husband was a clergyman, Mr. Johnstone, whom she found too gay, and persuaded to go home upon an annuity of eight hundred a year, which she settled upon him for life. The bulk of her fortune went to Lord Liverpool; the rest to her grandchildren, the Ricketts, Watts, and others.
Since those days the modes of intercourse in India have much altered.