The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke Volume VIII Part 5

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 s.h.i.+ps 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 quant.i.ty 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 princ.i.p.ally managed by the Company's servants for the Company and under its authority, cannot be easily taken out of their hands and pa.s.s to the natives, especially when it is to be carried on without the control naturally inherent in all partic.i.p.ation.

It is not difficult to conceive how this forced preference of traffic in a raw commodity must have injured the manufactures, while it was the policy of the Company to continue the trade on their own account. The servants, so far from deviating from their course, since they have taken the trade into their own management, have gone much further into it. The proportion of raw silk in the investment is to be augmented. The proportion of the whole cargoes for the year 1783, divided into sixteen parts, is ten of raw silk, and six only of manufactured goods. Such is the proportion of this losing article in the scheme for the investment of private fortunes.

In the reformed scheme of sending the investment on account of the Company, to be paid in bills upon Europe, no mention is made of any change of these proportions. Indeed, some limits are attempted on the article of silk, with regard to its price; and it is not improbable that the price to the master and the servant will be very different: but they cannot make profitable purchases of this article without strongly condemning all the former purchases of the Board of Trade.

CLOTHS, OR PIECE-GOODS.

The general system above stated, relative to the silk trade, must materially have affected the manufactures of Bengal, merely as it was a system of preference. It does by no means satisfactorily appear to your Committee that the freedom held out by the Company's various orders has been ever fully enjoyed, or that the grievances of the native merchants and manufacturers have been redressed; for we find, on good authority, that, at that very period at which it might be supposed that these orders had their operation, the oppressions were in full vigor. They appear to have fallen heaviest on the city of Dacca, formerly the great staple for the finest goods in India,--a place once full of opulent merchants and dealers of all descriptions.

The city and district of Dacca, before the prevalence of the East India Company's influence and authority, manufactured annually to about three hundred thousand pounds' value in cloths. In the year 1776 it had fallen to about two hundred thousand, or two thirds of its former produce. Of this the Company's demand amounted only to a fourth part, that is, about fifty thousand pounds yearly. This was at that time provided by agents for the Company, under the inspection of their commercial servants. On pretence of securing an advantage for this fourth part for their masters, they exerted a most violent and arbitrary power over the whole. It was a.s.serted, that they fixed the Company's mark to such goods as they thought fit, (to all goods, as stated in one complaint,) and disposed of them as they thought proper, excluding not only all the native dealers, but the Dutch Company, and private English merchants,--that they made advances to the weavers often beyond their known ability to repay in goods within the year, and by this means, having got them in debt, held them in perpetual servitude. Their inability to keep accounts left them at the discretion of the agents of the supreme power to make their balances what they pleased, and they recovered them, not by legal process, but by seizure of their goods and arbitrary imprisonment of their persons. One and the same dealer made the advance, valued the return, stated the account, pa.s.sed the judgment, and executed the process.

Mr. Rouse, Chief of the Dacca Province, who struggled against those evils, says, that in the year 1773 there were no balances due, as the trade was then carried on by the native brokers. In less than three years these balances amounted to an immense sum,--a sum lost to the Company, but existing in full force for every purpose of oppression. In the amount of these balances almost every weaver in the country bore a part, and consequently they were almost all caught in this snare. "They are in general," says Mr. Rouse, in a letter to General Clavering, delivered to your Committee, "a timid, helpless people; many of them poor to the utmost degree of wretchedness; incapable of keeping accounts; industrious as it were by instinct; unable to defend themselves, if oppressed; and satisfied, if with continual labor they derive from the fair dealing and humanity of their employer a moderate subsistence for their families."

Such were the people who stood accused by the Company's agents as _pretending_ grievances, in order to be excused the payment of their balances. As to the commercial state of the province in general, Mr.

Rouse represents it "to be for those two years a perpetual scene of complaint and disputation;--the Company's agents professing to pay higher rates to weavers, whilst the Leadenhall sales showed an heavy loss to the Company; the weavers have even travelled in mult.i.tudes 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 _delals_, removed from their influence, as prejudicial to the Company's concerns; and European merchants complaining against undue influence of the Company's commercial agents, in preventing the free purchase even of those goods which the Company never takes."

The spirit of those agents will be fully comprehended from a state of the proceedings before Mr. Rouse and Council, on the complaint of a Mr.

Cree, an English free merchant at Dacca, who had been twice treated in the same injurious manner by the agents of Mr. Hurst, the Commercial Chief at that place. On his complaint to the board of the seizure of the goods, and imprisonment of his agents, Mr. Hurst was called upon for an explanation. In return he informed them that he had sent to one of the villages to inquire concerning the matter of fact alleged. The impartial person sent to make this inquiry was the very man accused of the oppressions into which he was sent to examine. The answer of Mr. Hurst is in an high and determined tone. He does not deny that there are some instances of abuse of power. "But I ask," says he, "what _authority_ can guard against the conduct of individuals? but that a _single_ instance cannot be brought of a general depravity." Your Committee have reason to believe these coercive measures to have been very general, though employed according to the degree of resistance opposed to the monopoly; for we find at one time the whole trade of the Dutch involved in the general servitude. But it appears very extraordinary that nothing but the actual proof of a _general_ abuse could affect a practice the very principle of which tends to make the coercion as general as the trade.

Mr. Hurst's reflection concerning the abuse of _authority_ is just, but in this case it is altogether inapplicable; because the complaint was not of the abuse, but of the use of authority in matters of trade, which ought to have been free. He throws out a variety of invidious reflections against the Council, as if they wanted zeal for the Company's service; his justification of his practices, and his declaration of his resolution to persevere in them, are firm and determined,--a.s.serting the right and policy of such restraints, and laying down a rule for his conduct at the factory, which, he says, will give no cause of just complaint to private traders. He adds, "I have no doubt but that they have hitherto provided investments, and it cannot turn to my interest to preclude them _now_, though I must ever think it my duty to combat the private views of individuals who _set themselves up as compet.i.tors_ under that very body under whose license and indulgence only they can derive their privilege of trade: all I contend for is the _same influence_ my employers have ever had." He ends by declining any reply to any of their future references of this nature.

The whole of this extraordinary letter is inserted in the Appendix, No.

51,--and Mr. Rouse's minute of observations upon it in Appendix, No. 52, fully refuting the few pretexts alleged in that extraordinary performance in support of the trade by influence and authority. Mr.

Hollond, one of the Council, joined Mr. Rouse in opinion that a letter to the purport of that minute should be written; but they were overruled by Messrs. Purling, Hogarth, and Shakespeare, who pa.s.sed a resolution to defer sending any reply to Mr. Hurst: and none was ever sent. Thus they gave countenance to the doctrine contained in that letter, as well as to the mischievous practices which must inevitably arise from the exercise of such power. Some temporary and partial relief was given by the vigorous exertions of Mr. Rouse; but he shortly after removing from that government, all complaints were dropped.

It is remarkable, that, during the long and warm contest between the Company's agents and the dealers of Dacca, the Board of Trade seem to have taken a decided part against the latter. They allow some sort of justice in the complaints of the manufacturers with regard to low valuation, and other particulars; but they say, that, "although" (during the time of preemption) "it appears that the weavers _were not allowed the same liberty of selling to individuals they before enjoyed_, our opinion on the whole is, that these complaints have originated upon the premeditated designs of the delals [factors or brokers] _to thwart the new mode_ of carrying on the Company's business, _and to render themselves necessary_." They say, in another place, that there is no ground for the dissatisfactions and difficulties of the weavers: "that they are owing to the delals, _whose aim it is to be employed_."

This desire of being employed, and of rendering themselves necessary, in men whose only business it is to be employed in trade, is considered by the gentlemen of the board as no trivial offence; and accordingly they declare, "they have established it as _an invariable rule_, that, _whatever deficiency_ there might be in the Dacca investment, no purchase of the manufactures of _that quarter_ shall be made for account of the Company from private merchants. We have pa.s.sed 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 rivals.h.i.+p_ is by this manner encouraged"; and they say, "that they intend to observe the _same_ rule with respect to the investment of other of the factories from whence similar complaints may come."

This positive rule is opposed to the positive directions of the Company to employ those obnoxious persons by preference. How far this violent use of authority for the purpose of destroying rivals.h.i.+p has succeeded in reducing the price of goods to the Company has been made manifest by the facts before stated in their place.

The recriminatory charges of the Company's agents on the native merchants have made very little impression on your Committee. We have nothing in favor of them, but the a.s.sertion of a party powerful and interested. In such cases of mutual a.s.sertion and denial, your Committee are led irresistibly to attach abuse to power, and to presume that suffering and hards.h.i.+p 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 a.s.serted 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 circ.u.mstances 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 circ.u.mstance, 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 pet.i.tions to the board, no sort of specific answer had been given at the time and place where they were made, and when and where the parties might be examined and confronted. It was considered also, that the bill had been transmitted, with other papers relating to the same matter, to the Court of Directors, with the knowledge and consent of Mr.

Barwell,--and that he states that his answer had been filed, and no proceedings had upon it for eighteen months. In that situation it was thought something extraordinary that no care was taken by him to transmit so essential a paper as his answer, and that he had no copy of it in his hands.

Your Committee, in this difficulty, thought themselves obliged to decline any verbal explanation from the person who is defendant in the suit, relative to matters which on the part of the complainant appear upon record, and to leave the whole matter, as it is charged, to the judgment of the House to determine how far it may be worthy of a further inquiry, or how far they may admit such allegations as your Committee could not think themselves justified in receiving. To this effect your Committee ordered a letter to be written Mr. Barwell; from whom they received the following answer.

"Sir,--In consequence of your letter of the 17th, I must request the favor of you to inform the Select Committee that I expect from their justice, on any matter of public record in which I am personally to be brought forward to the notice of the House, that they will at the same time point out to the House what part of such matter has been verified, and what parts have not nor ever were attempted to be verified, though introduced in debate and entered on the records of the Governor-General and Council of Bengal. I am anxious the information should be complete, or the House will not be competent to judge; and if it is complete, it will preclude all explanation as unnecessary.

"I am, Sir, "Your most obedient humble servant, "RICHARD BARWELL.

"St. James's Square, 22nd April, 1783.

"P.S. As I am this moment returned from the country, I had it not in my power to be earlier in acknowledging your letter of the 17th."

Your Committee applied to Mr. Barwell to communicate any papers which might tend to the elucidation of matters before them in which he was concerned. This he has declined to do. Your Committee conceive that under the orders of the House they are by no means obliged to make a complete state of all the evidence which may tend to criminate or exculpate every person whose transactions they may find it expedient to report: this, if not specially ordered, has not hitherto been, as they apprehend, the usage of any committee of this House. It is not for your Committee, but for the discretion of the party, to call for, and for the wisdom of the House to inst.i.tute, such proceedings as may tend finally to condemn or acquit. The Reports of your Committee are no charges, though they may possibly furnish _matter_ for charge; and no representations or observations of theirs can either clear or convict on any proceeding which may hereafter be grounded on the facts which they produce to the House. Their opinions are not of a judicial nature. Your Committee has taken abundant care that every important fact in their Report should be attended with the authority for it, either in the course of their reflections or in the Appendix: to report everything upon every subject before them which is to be found on the records of the Company would be to transcribe, and in the event to print, almost the whole of those voluminous papers. The matter which appears before them is in a summary manner this.

The Dacca merchants begin by complaining that in November, 1773, Mr.

Richard Barwell, then Chief of Dacca, had deprived them of their employment and means of subsistence; that he had extorted from them 44,224 Arcot rupees (4,731_l._) by the terror of his threats, by long imprisonment, and cruel confinement in the stocks; that afterwards they were confined in a small room near the factory-gate, under a guard of sepoys; that their food was stopped, and they remained starving a whole day; that they were not permitted to take their food till next day at noon, and were again brought back to the same confinement, in which they were continued for six days, and were not set at liberty until they had given Mr. Barwell's banian a certificate for forty thousand rupees; that in July, 1774, when Mr. Barwell had left Dacca, they went to Calcutta to seek justice; that Mr. Barwell confined them in his house at Calcutta, and sent them back under a guard of peons to Dacca; that in December, 1774, on the arrival of the gentlemen from Europe, they returned to Calcutta, and preferred their complaint to the Supreme Court of Judicature.

The bill in Chancery filed against Richard Barwell, John Shakespeare, and others, contains a minute specification of the various acts of personal cruelty said to be practised by Mr. Barwell's orders, to extort money from these people. Among other acts of a similar nature he is charged with having ordered the appraiser of the Company's cloths, who was an old man, and who a.s.serts 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 delals, 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 a.s.sert 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 const.i.tutions, or by the habits of hards.h.i.+p, 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 circ.u.mstantial and remarkable. They say, "that, on their arrival, _to their astonishment, they soon learned that the Governor, who had formerly been violently enraged against the said Richard Barwell for different improprieties in his conduct, was now reconciled to him; and that ever since there was a certainty of his Majesty's appointments taking place in India, from being the most inveterate enemies they were now become the most intimate friends; and that this account soon taught them to believe they were not any nearer justice from their journey to Calcutta than they had been before at Dacca_."

When this bill of complaint was, in 1776, laid before the Council, to be transmitted to the Court of Directors, Mr. Barwell complained of the introduction of such a paper, and a.s.serted, _that he had answered to every particular of it on oath about eighteen months, and that during this long period no attempt had been made to controvert, refute, or even to reply to it_.

He did not, however, think it proper to enter his answer on the records along with the bill of whose introduction he complained.

On the declarations made by Mr. Barwell in his minute (September, 1776) your Committee observe, that, considering him only as an individual under prosecution in a court of justice, it might be sufficient for him to exhibit his defence in the court where he was accused; but that, as a member of government, specifically charged before that very government with abusing the powers of his office in a very extraordinary manner, and for purposes (as they allege) highly corrupt and criminal, it appears to your Committee hardly sufficient to say that he had answered elsewhere. The matter was to go before the Court of Directors, to whom the question of his conduct in that situation, a situation of the highest power and trust, was as much at least a question of state as a matter of redress to be solely left to the discretion, capacity, or perseverance of individuals. Mr. Barwell might possibly be generous enough to take no advantage of his eminent situation; but these unfortunate people would rather look to his power than his disposition.

In general, a man so circ.u.mstanced and so charged (though we do not know this to be the case with Mr. Barwell) might easily contrive by legal advantages to escape. The plaintiffs being at a great distance from the seat of government, and possibly affected by fear or fatigue, or seeing the impossibility of sustaining with the ruins of fortunes never perhaps very opulent a suit against wealth, power, and influence, a compromise might even take place, in which circ.u.mstances might make the complainants gladly acquiesce. But the public injury is not in the least repaired by the acquiescence of individuals, as it touched the honor of the very highest parts of government. In the opinion of your Committee some means ought to have been taken to bring the bill to a discussion on the merits; or supposing that such decree could not be obtained by reason of any failure of proceeding on the part of the plaintiffs, that some process official or juridical ought to have been inst.i.tuted against them which might prove them guilty of slander and defamation in as authentic a manner as they had made their charge, before the Council as well as the Court.

By the determination of Mr. Hurst, and the resolutions of the Board of Trade, it is much to be apprehended that the native mercantile interest must be exceedingly reduced. The above-mentioned resolutions of the Board of Trade, if executed in their rigor, must almost inevitably accomplish its ruin. The subsequent transactions are covered with an obscurity which your Committee have not been able to dispel. All which they can collect, but that by no means distinctly, is, that, as those who trade for the Company in the articles of investment may also trade for themselves in the same articles, the old opportunities of confounding the capacities must remain, and all the oppressions by which this confusion has been attended. The Company's investments, as the General Letter from Bengal of the 20th of November, 1775, par. 28, states the matter, "are never at a stand; advances are made and goods are received all the year round." Balances, the grand instrument of oppression, naturally acc.u.mulate on poor manufacturers who are intrusted with money. Where there is not a vigorous rivals.h.i.+p, not only tolerated, but encouraged, it is impossible ever to redeem the manufacturers from the servitude induced by those unpaid balances.

No such rivals.h.i.+p does exist: the policy practised and avowed is directly against it. The reason a.s.signed 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) a.s.sortments.

"They also refer to the means taken to prevent this interference in their letter of 26th January, 1779." It is impossible that the small part of the trade should not fall into the hands of those who, with the name and authority of the governing persons, have such extensive contracts in their hands. It appears in evidence that natives can hardly trade to the best advantage, (your Committee doubt whether they can trade to any advantage at all,) if not joined with or countenanced by British subjects. The Directors were in 1775 so strongly impressed with this notion, and conceived the native merchants to have been even then reduced to so low a state, that, notwithstanding the Company's earnest desire of giving them a preference, they "doubt whether there are at this time in Bengal native merchants possessed of property adequate to such undertaking, or of credit and responsibility sufficient to make it safe and prudent to trust them with such sums as might be necessary to enable them to fulfil their engagements with the Company."

The effect which so long continued a monopoly, followed by a preemption, and then by partial preferences supported by power, must necessarily have in weakening the mercantile capital, and disabling the merchants from all undertakings of magnitude, is but too visible. However, a witness of understanding and credit does not believe the capitals of the natives to be yet so reduced as to disable them from partaking in the trade, if they were otherwise able to put themselves on an equal footing with Europeans.

The difficulties at the outset will, however, be considerable. For the long continuance of abuse has in some measure conformed the whole trade of the country to its false principle. To make a sudden change, therefore, might destroy the few advantages which attend any trade, without securing those which must flow from one established upon sound mercantile principles, whenever such a trade can be established. The fact is, that the forcible direction which the trade of India has had towards Europe, to the neglect, or rather to the total abandoning, of the Asiatic, has of itself tended to carry even the internal business from the native merchant. The revival of trade in the native hands is of absolute necessity; but your Committee is of opinion that it will rather be the effect of a regular progressive course of endeavors for that purpose than of any one regulation, however wisely conceived.

After this examination into the condition of the trade and traders in the princ.i.p.al articles provided for the investment to Europe, your Committee proceeded to take into consideration those articles the produce of which, after sale in Bengal, is to form a part of the fund for the purchase of other articles of investment, or to make a part of it in kind. These are, 1st, Opium,--2ndly, Saltpetre,--and, 3rdly, Salt.

These are all monopolized.

OPIUM.