"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 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 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 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 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 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 circumstanced 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 circumstances 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 instituted 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 accumulate on poor manufacturers who are intrusted with money. Where there is not a vigorous rivalship, not only tolerated, but encouraged, it is impossible ever to redeem the manufacturers from the servitude induced by those unpaid balances.

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 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 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 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 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.

OPIUM

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 state of the country: the security against adulteration; the prevention of the excessive home consumption of a pernicious drug; the stopping an excessive competition, which by an over-proportioned supply would at length destroy the market abroad; the inability of the cultivator to proceed in an expensive and precarious culture without a large advance of capital; and, lastly, the incapacity of private merchants to supply that capital on the feeble security of wretched farmers.

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See the Secret Committee's Reports on the Mahratta War.

Vide Secret Committee Reports.

Vide Select Committee Reports, 1781

The sale, to the amount of about one hundred thousand pounds annually, of the export from Great Britain ought to be deducted from this million.

Estimate of the Sale Amount and Net Proceeds in England of the Cargoes to be sent from Bengal, agreeable to the Plan received by Letter dated the 8th April, 1782.

This calculation supposes the eighty lac investments will be equal to the tonnage of five ships.

[A] 1. The sale amount is computed on an average of the sales of the two last years' imports.

[B] 2. The custom is computed on an average of what was paid on piece-goods and raw silk of said imports, adding additional imposts.

[C] 3. The ships going out of this season, (1782,) by which the above investment is expected to be sent home, are taken up at 47l. 5s. per ton, for the homeward cargo; this charge amounts to 35,815l. each ship; the additional wages to the men, which the Company pay, and a very small charge for demurrage, will increase the freight, &c., to 40,000l. per ship, agreeable to above estimate.

[D] 4. The duty of five per cent is charged by the Company on the gross sale amount of all private trade licensed to be brought from India: the amount of this duty is the only benefit the Company are likely to receive from the subscription investment.

[E] 5. This charge is likewise made on private trade goods, and is little, if anything, more than the real expense the Company are at on account of the same; therefore no benefit will probably arise to the Company from it on the sale of the said investment.

[F] 6. This is the sum which will probably be realized in England, and is only equal to 1s. 6d. per rupee, on the eighty lacs subscribed.

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