CHAPTER V.

ON THE COLONIZATION OF INDIA.

"Instat enim et urget, et quo te cunque verteris, persequitur."

THAT the people of India are, generally speaking, immersed in almost hopeless poverty; that they have in fact nothing to lose, and every thing to gain by a change of masters; and that they must in consequence be quite indifferent to our weal or woe, in the event of danger threatening our dominion, must be quite evident to all who have attentively considered the three great features of our Indian revenue system: the effects which followed, and those which still continue to follow, upon the permanent settlement; the acknowledged aim and end of the Munro system, which is to tax industry and improvement, and to enable Government to drain all the surplus earnings of the cultivators, as the zemindars are allowed to do in Bengal; and lastly, the refusal on the part of the Court of Directors to grant any settlement to the ceded and conquered pro

vinces, by which a limit may be affixed to the demands of the state upon the produce of the soil. In 1786, Mr. T. Grant thus describes the condition of the Hindoo peasantry : "A seer of rice with a little seasoning, a rag, a hut, or the canopy of heaven, (the whole brought within the daily expenditure of an anna, or twopence for each individual,) satisfy all the natural wants of an Hindostanny husbandman or manufacturer; and if he can save at the end of the year a couple of rupees from the produce of his industry, rated at one hundred in the market, he is infinitely richer, more contented, and easy in his circumstances, than the individual following either of these trades in England, who, after incurring a personal expense of two shillings a day, should be able to lay by an annual profit of two guineas from his whole estimated work of one hundred." Twenty-seven years afterwards, Warren Hastings, in his reply to a question put to him by Parliament, says: "The poor of India, who are the people, have no*

* One might imagine that with these gentlemen, to want nothing, and to want every thing, were synonymous expressions. Much general misapprehension prevails in England respecting the actual wants of the people of India: when we read of the rag which covers the lower classes, and the fine cloth in which the wealthy are wrapped, we think only of the blessing of living in so genial a clime, forgetting

wants; unless the scanty rags which they wear, their huts, and simple food may be considered as such, and these they have upon the ground which they tread upon." And in Mr. Tucker's late work on the Finances of the Company, the following is the description given: "The habits of the great body of the people are simple and uniform; their diet is spare, and confined generally to a few articles of the first necessity-rice, vegetables, fish, and the smaller grains; their clothing is scanty and mean; their habitations poor and unfurnished; what we term luxuries, are confined to the opulent few. Capital is thinly distributed over the surface; and even the advantages of a genial climate, a prolific soil, and of manufacturing skill, were not found sufficient to swell the stream of commerce. In all this the keen eye of the financier could see nothing to touch; the objects were too minute and worthless,* &c." Thus

that the temperature varies from forty to fifty degrees of Farenheit's thermometer during the year, and, not unfrequently, fifteen or twenty degrees during twenty-four hours. So far, indeed, from clothing being unnecessary, there are perhaps few countries in which the poor suffer more from the want of it; even in the hot weather, the same poverty which puts clothing out of their reach, deprives them of oil, without which their sufferings from a scorching sun are excessive.

* "Review of Financial State," &c. p. 49. It is worthy of

we see, that, at this moment, the account of the poverty of the inhabitants, given, too, by men who

remark, that, notwithstanding the worthless and minute nature of the objects of taxation here apparently assigned as a reason for the immense land-tax of India, other taxes formed, at the period of Mr. Tucker's writing, more than a moiety of the whole revenue of the Bengal Presidency. The salt monopoly, in particular, yields two-thirds as much as the land-revenue of the lower provinces; approaching, as Mr. Tucker himself expresses it, to a poll-tax of no trifling amount. The price of salt Mr. T. states to be about 12 pence per annum to the consumers, for six seers, (which, however, is but a small average allowance ;) but as he inadvertently grounds his estimate upon the wholesale price obtained by Government, it is obviously too low. And, in point of fact, the retail price is always as high as two annas per seer, which will raise the expenditure of each individual to eighteen pence, instead of twelve pence half-penny, or about 50 per cent. upon the wholesale price: which, assuming Mr. T.'s estimate of natural price to be correct, (about one-third the gross sale price,) will make the amount of tax to Government, on account of salt, about one shilling, instead of eight pence halfpenny a head per annum, as he has stated it. This computation agrees, also, with the amount of gross sales and charges given in Mr. Prinsep's financial result of Lord Hastings' administration. The charge of 55,53,176 rupees being deducted from 2,04,75,412 rupees, and the remainder divided by thirty millions, the supposed amount of population, gives 11.925 pence, or very nearly one shilling; which, being taken as the amount of poll-tax received by Government, and 50 per cent, added for the advance of retail price, gives about eighteen pence a head, as before. Independent of this tax, the customs,

ranked amongst the firmest advocates of the Company, applies with as much force as it did nearly half a century ago, notwithstanding the boasted good effects of our rule. Yet more than thirtyfive years have now elapsed since the commencement of the discussion respecting the introduction of a more equitable relation between landlord and tenant, upon the model of European tenures, and the subject is still apparently as far as ever from being set at rest. Whole volumes have been written upon the condition of our Eastern possessions, but nothing whatever has been done towards the removal of those causes which weigh down the spirit, and paralyze the exertions, of the great mass of their population. In the interminable controversy, one party accuses the other of exclusively employing the reasoning dictated by European prepossessions, whilst the other retorts the reproach of Orientalism upon all those who would stamps, and excise, bear with considerable weight upon the people of India: though their consumption of taxable objects may be small, the general rise of prices, occasioned by high taxation, reaches all classes; for the imposition of a tax is like the casting of a stone into the water-the greatest agitation occurs in the first instance at the spot where it falls, but the movement thus occasioned soon subsides, and is carried in circling eddies to the very margin of the pool, leaving its surface smooth and undisturbed, but raised in its level exactly in proportion to the size of the body thrown into it.