The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 02 (of 12)

This is a true and unexaggerated picture, not only of Furruckabad, but of at least three fourths of the country which we possess, or rather lay waste, in India. Now, Sir, the House will be desirous to know for what purpose this picture was drawn. It was for a purpose, I will not say laudable, but necessary: that of taking the unfortunate prince and his country out of the hands of a sequestrator sent thither by the Nabob of Oude, the mortal enemy of the prince thus ruined, and to protect him by means of a British resident, who might carry his complaints to the superior resident at Oude, or transmit them to Calcutta. But mark how the reformer persisted in his reformation. The effect of the measure was better than was probably expected. The prince began to be at ease; the country began to recover; and the revenue began to be collected. These were alarming circumstances. Mr. Hastings not only recalled the resident, but he entered into a formal stipulation with the Nabob of Oude never to send an English subject again to Furruckabad; and thus the country, described as you have heard by Mr. Hastings, is given up forever to the very persons to whom he had attributed its ruin,—that is, to the sezawals or sequestrators of the Nabob of Oude.

Such was the issue of the first attempt to relieve the distresses of the dependent provinces. I shall close what I have to say on the condition of the northern dependencies with the effect of the last of these attempts. You will recollect, Sir, the account I have not long ago stated to you, as given by Mr. Hastings, of the ruined condition of the destroyer of others, the Nabob of Oude, and of the recall, in consequence, of Hannay, Middleton, and Johnson. When the first little sudden gust of passion against these gentlemen was spent, the sentiments of old friendship began to revive. Some healing conferences were held between them and the superior government. Mr. Hannay was permitted to return to Oude; but death prevented the further advantages intended for him, and the future benefits proposed for the country by the provident cars of the Council-General.

One of these gentlemen was accused of the grossest peculations; two of them by Mr. Hastings himself, of what he considered as very gross offences. The Court of Directors were informed, by the Governor-General and Council, that a severe inquiry would be instituted against the two survivors; and they requested that court to suspend its judgment, and to wait the event of their proceedings. A mock inquiry has been instituted, by which the parties could not be said to be either acquitted or condemned. By means of the bland and conciliatory dispositions of the charter-governors, and proper private explanations, the public inquiry has in effect died away; the supposed peculators and destroyers of Oude repose in all security in the bosoms of their accusers; whilst others succeed to them to be instructed by their example.

It is only to complete the view I proposed of the conduct of the Company with regard to the dependent provinces, that I shall say any thing at all of the Carnatic, which is the scene, if possible, of greater disorder than the northern provinces. Perhaps it were better to say of this centre and metropolis of abuse, whence all the rest in India and in England diverge, from whence they are fed and methodized, what was said of Carthage,—"De Carthagine satius est silere quam parum dicere." This country, in all its denominations, is about 46,000 square miles. It may be affirmed universally, that not one person of substance or property, landed, commercial, or moneyed, excepting two or three bankers, who are necessary deposits and distributors of the general spoil, is left in all that region. In that country, the moisture, the bounty of Heaven, is given but at a certain season. Before the era of our influence, the industry of man carefully husbanded that gift of God. The Gentoos preserved, with a provident and religious care, the precious deposit of the periodical rain in reservoirs, many of them works of royal grandeur; and from these, as occasion demanded, they fructified the whole country. To maintain these reservoirs, and to keep up an annual advance to the cultivators for seed and cattle, formed a principal object of the piety and policy of the priests and rulers of the Gentoo religion.

This object required a command of money; and there was no pollam, or castle, which in the happy days of the Carnatic was without some hoard of treasure, by which the governors were enabled to combat with the irregularity of the seasons, and to resist or to buy off the invasion of an enemy. In all the cities were multitudes of merchants and bankers, for all occasions of moneyed assistance; and on the other hand, the native princes were in condition to obtain credit from them. The manufacturer was paid by the return of commodities, or by imported money, and not, as at present, in the taxes that had been originally exacted from his industry. In aid of casual distress, the country was full of choultries, which were inns and hospitals, where the traveller and the poor were relieved. All ranks of people had their place in the public concern, and their share in the common stock and common prosperity. But the chartered rights of men, and the right which it was thought proper to set up in the Nabob of Arcot, introduced a new system. It was their policy to consider hoards of money as crimes,—to regard moderate rents as frauds on the sovereign,—and to view, in the lesser princes, any claim of exemption from more than settled tribute as an act of rebellion. Accordingly, all the castles were, one after the other, plundered and destroyed; the native princes were expelled; the hospitals fell to ruin; the reservoirs of water went to decay; the merchants, bankers, and manufacturers disappeared; and sterility, indigence, and depopulation overspread the face of these once flourishing provinces.

The Company was very early sensible of these mischiefs, and of their true cause. They gave precise orders, "that the native princes, called polygars, should not be extirpated." "The rebellion" (so they choose to call it) "of the polygars may, they fear, with, too much justice, be attributed to the maladministration of the Nabob's collectors." "They observe with concern, that their troops have been put to disagreeable services." They might have used a stronger expression without impropriety. But they make amends in another place. Speaking of the polygars, the Directors say that "it was repugnant to humanity to force them to such dreadful extremities as they underwent"; that some examples of severity might be necessary, "when they fell into the Nabob's hands," and not by the destruction of the country; "that they fear his government is none of the mildest, and that there is great oppression in collecting his revenues." They state, that the wars in which he has involved the Carnatic had been a cause of its distresses; "that those distresses have been certainly great, but those by the Nabob's oppressions they believe to be greater than all." Pray, Sir, attend to the reason for their opinion that the government of this their instrument is more calamitous to the country than the ravages of war:—Because, say they, his oppressions are "without intermission; the others are temporary;—by all which oppressions we believe the Nabob has great wealth in store." From this store neither he nor they could derive any advantage whatsoever, upon the invasion of Hyder Ali, in the hour of their greatest calamity and dismay.

It is now proper to compare these declarations with the Company's conduct. The principal reason which they assigned against the extirpation of the polygars was, that the weavers were protected in their fortresses. They might have added, that the Company itself, which stung them to death, had been warmed in the bosom of these unfortunate princes: for, on the taking of Madras by the French, it was in their hospitable pollams that most of the inhabitants found refuge and protection. But notwithstanding all these orders, reasons, and declarations, they at length gave an indirect sanction, and permitted the use of a very direct and irresistible force, to measures which they had over and over again declared to be false policy, cruel, inhuman, and oppressive. Having, however, forgot all attention to the princes and the people, they remembered that they had some sort of interest in the trade of the country; and it is matter of curiosity to observe the protection which they afforded to this their natural object.

Full of anxious cares on this head, they direct, "that, in reducing the polygars, they [their servants] were to be cautious not to deprive the weavers and manufacturers of the protection they often met with in the strongholds of the polygar countries"; and they write to their instrument, the Nabob of Arcot, concerning these poor people in a most pathetic strain. "We entreat your Excellency," (say they,) "in particular, to make the manufacturers the object of your tenderest care; particularly when you root out the polygars, you do not deprive the weavers of the protection they enjoyed under them." When they root out the protectors in favor of the oppressor, they show themselves religiously cautious of the rights of the protected. When they extirpate the shepherd and the shepherd's dog, they piously recommend the helpless flock to the mercy, and even to the tenderest care, of the wolf. This is the uniform strain of their policy,—strictly forbidding, and at the same time strenuously encouraging and enforcing, every measure that can ruin and desolate the country committed to their charge. After giving the Company's idea of the government of this their instrument, it may appear singular, but it is perfectly consistent with their system, that, besides wasting for him, at two different times, the most exquisite spot upon the earth, Tanjore, and all the adjacent countries, they have even voluntarily put their own territory, that is, a large and fine country adjacent to Madras, called their jaghire, wholly out of their protection,—and have continued to farm their subjects, and their duties towards these subjects, to that very Nabob whom they themselves constantly represent as an habitual oppressor and a relentless tyrant. This they have done without any pretence of ignorance of the objects of oppression for which this prince has thought fit to become their renter; for he has again and again told them that it is for the sole purpose of exercising authority he holds the jaghire lands; and he affirms (and I believe with truth) that he pays more for that territory than the revenues yield. This deficiency he must make up from his other territories; and thus, in order to furnish the means of oppressing one part of the Carnatic, he is led to oppress all the rest.

The House perceives that the livery of the Company's government is uniform. I have described the condition of the countries indirectly, but most substantially, under the Company's authority. And now I ask, whether, with this map of misgovernment before me, I can suppose myself bound by my vote to continue, upon any principles of pretended public faith, the management of these countries in those hands. If I kept such a faith (which in reality is no better than a fides latronum) with what is called the Company, I must break the faith, the covenant, the solemn, original, indispensable oath, in which I am bound, by the eternal frame and constitution of things, to the whole human race.

As I have dwelt so long on these who are indirectly under the Company's administration, I will endeavor to be a little shorter upon the countries immediately under this charter-government. These are the Bengal provinces. The condition of these provinces is pretty fully detailed in the Sixth and Ninth Reports, and in their Appendixes. I will select only such principles and instances as are broad and general. To your own thoughts I shall leave it to furnish the detail of oppressions involved in them. I shall state to you, as shortly as I am able, the conduct of the Company:—1st, towards the landed interests;—next, the commercial interests;—3rdly, the native government;—and lastly, to their own government.

Bengal, and the provinces that are united to it, are larger than the kingdom of France, and once contained, as France does contain, a great and independent landed interest, composed of princes, of great lords, of a numerous nobility and gentry, of freeholders, of lower tenants, of religious communities, and public foundations. So early as 1769, the Company's servants perceived the decay into which these provinces had fallen under English administration, and they made a strong representation upon this decay, and what they apprehended to be the causes of it. Soon after this representation, Mr. Hastings became President of Bengal. Instead of administering a remedy to this melancholy disorder, upon the heels of a dreadful famine, in the year 1772, the succor which the new President and the Council lent to this afflicted nation was—shall I be believed in relating it?—the landed interest of a whole kingdom, of a kingdom to be compared to France, was set up to public auction! They set up (Mr. Hastings set up) the whole nobility, gentry, and freeholders to the highest bidder. No preference was given to the ancient proprietors. They must bid against every usurer, every temporary adventurer, every jobber and schemer, every servant of every European,—or they were obliged to content themselves, in lieu of their extensive domains, with their house, and such a pension as the state auctioneers thought fit to assign. In this general calamity, several of the first nobility thought (and in all appearance justly) that they had better submit to the necessity of this pension, than continue, under the name of zemindars, the objects and instruments of a system by which they ruined their tenants and were ruined themselves. Another reform has since come upon the back of the first; and a pension having been assigned to these unhappy persons, in lieu of their hereditary lands, a new scheme of economy has taken place, and deprived them of that pension.

The menial servants of Englishmen, persons (to use the emphatical phrase of a ruined and patient Eastern chief) "whose fathers they would not have set with the dogs of their flock" entered into their patrimonial lands. Mr. Hastings's banian was, after this auction, found possessed of territories yielding a rent of one hundred and forty thousand pounds a year.

Such an universal proscription, upon any pretence, has few examples. Such a proscription, without even a pretence of delinquency, has none. It stands by itself. It stands as a monument to astonish the imagination, to confound the reason of mankind. I confess to you, when I first came to know this business in its true nature and extent, my surprise did a little suspend my indignation. I was in a manner stupefied by the desperate boldness of a few obscure young men, who, having obtained, by ways which they could not comprehend, a power of which they saw neither the purposes nor the limits, tossed about, subverted, and tore to pieces, as if it were in the gambols of a boyish unluckiness and malice, the most established rights, and the most ancient and most revered institutions, of ages and nations. Sir, I will not now trouble you with any detail with regard to what they have since done with these same lands and landholders, only to inform you that nothing has been suffered to settle for two seasons together upon any basis, and that the levity and inconstancy of these mock legislators were not the least afflicting parts of the oppressions suffered under their usurpation; nor will anything give stability to the property of the natives, but an administration in England at once protecting and stable. The country sustains, almost every year, the miseries of a revolution. At present, all is uncertainty, misery, and confusion. There is to be found through these vast regions no longer one landed man who is a resource for voluntary aid or an object for particular rapine. Some of them were not long since great princes; they possessed treasures, they levied armies. There was a zemindar in Bengal, (I forget his name,) that, on the threat of an invasion, supplied the subah of these provinces with the loan of a million sterling. The family at this day wants credit for a breakfast at the bazaar.

I shall now say a word or two on the Company's care of the commercial interest of those kingdoms. As it appears in the Reports that persons in the highest stations in Bengal have adopted, as a fixed plan of policy, the destruction of all intermediate dealers between the Company and the manufacturer, native merchants have disappeared of course. The spoil of the revenues is the sole capital which purchases the produce and manufactures, and through three or four foreign companies transmits the official gains of individuals to Europe. No other commerce has an existence in Bengal. The transport of its plunder is the only traffic of the country. I wish to refer you to the Appendix to the Ninth Report for a full account of the manner in which the Company have protected the commercial interests of their dominions in the East.

As to the native government and the administration of justice, it subsisted in a poor, tottering manner for some years. In the year 1781 a total revolution took place in that establishment. In one of the usual freaks of legislation of the Council of Bengal, the whole criminal jurisdiction of these courts, called the Phoujdary Judicature, exercised till then by the principal Mussulmen, was in one day, without notice, without consultation with the magistrates or the people there, and without communication with the Directors or Ministers here, totally subverted. A new institution took place, by which this jurisdiction was divided between certain English servants of the Company and the Gentoo zemindars of the country, the latter of whom never petitioned for it, nor, for aught that appears, ever desired this boon. But its natural use was made of it: it was made a pretence for new extortions of money.

The natives had, however, one consolation in the ruin of their judicature: they soon saw that it fared no better with the English government itself. That, too, after destroying every other, came to its period. This revolution may well be rated for a most daring act, even among the extraordinary things that have been doing in Bengal since our unhappy acquisition of the means of so much mischief.

An establishment of English government for civil justice, and for the collection of revenue, was planned and executed by the President and Council of Bengal, subject to the pleasure of the Directors, in the year 1772. According to this plan, the country was divided into six districts, or provinces. In each of these was established a provincial council, which administered the revenue; and of that council, one member, by monthly rotation, presided in the courts of civil resort, with an appeal to the council of the province, and thence to Calcutta. In this system (whether in other respects good or evil) there were some capital advantages. There was, in the very number of persons in each provincial council, authority, communication, mutual check, and control. They were obliged, on their minutes of consultation, to enter their reasons and dissents; so that a man of diligence, of research, and tolerable sagacity, sitting in London, might, from these materials, be enabled to form some judgment of the spirit of what was going on on the furthest banks of the Ganges and Burrampooter.

The Court of Directors so far ratified this establishment, (which was consonant enough to their general plan of government,) that they gave precise orders that no alteration should be made in it without their consent. So far from being apprised of any design against this constitution, they had reason to conceive that on trial it had been more and more approved by their Council-General, at least by the Governor-General, who had planned it. At the time of the revolution, the Council-General was nominally in two persons, virtually in one. At that time measures of an arduous and critical nature ought to have been forborne, even if, to the fullest council, this specific measure had not been prohibited by the superior authority. It was in this very situation that one man had the hardiness to conceive and the temerity to execute a total revolution in the form and the persons composing the government of a great kingdom. Without any previous step, at one stroke, the whole constitution, of Bengal, civil and criminal, was swept away. The counsellors were recalled from their provinces; upwards of fifty of the principal officers of government were turned out of employ, and rendered dependent on Mr. Hastings for their immediate subsistence, and for all hope of future provision. The chief of each council, and one European collector of revenue, was left in each province.

But here, Sir, you may imagine a new government, of some permanent description, was established in the place of that which had been thus suddenly overturned. No such thing. Lest these chiefs, without councils, should be conceived to form the ground-plan of some future government, it was publicly declared that their continuance was only temporary and permissive. The whole subordinate British administration of revenue was then vested in a committee in Calcutta, all creatures of the Governor-General; and the provincial management, under the permissive chief, was delivered over to native officers.

But that the revolution and the purposes of the revolution might be complete, to this committee were delegated, not only the functions of all the inferior, but, what will surprise the House, those of the supreme administration of revenue also. Hitherto the Governor-General and Council had, in their revenue department, administered the finances of those kingdoms. By the new scheme they are delegated to this committee, who are only to report their proceedings for approbation.

The key to the whole transaction is given in one of the instructions to the committee,—"that it is not necessary that they should enter dissents." By this means the ancient plan of the Company's administration was destroyed; but the plan of concealment was perfected. To that moment the accounts of the revenues were tolerably clear,—or at least means were furnished for inquiries, by which they might be rendered satisfactory. In the obscure and silent gulf of this committee everything is now buried. The thickest shades of night surround all their transactions. No effectual means of detecting fraud, mismanagement, or misrepresentation exist. The Directors, who have dared to talk with such confidence on their revenues, know nothing about them. What used to fill volumes is now comprised under a few dry heads on a sheet of paper. The natives, a people habitually made to concealment, are the chief managers of the revenue throughout the provinces. I mean by natives such wretches as your rulers select out of them as most fitted for their purposes. As a proper keystone to bind the arch, a native, one Gunga Govind Sing, a man turned out of his employment by Sir John Clavering for malversation in office, is made the corresponding secretary, and, indeed, the great moving principle of their new board.

As the whole revenue and civil administration was thus subverted, and a clandestine government substituted in the place of it, the judicial institution underwent a like revolution. In 1772 there had been six courts, formed out of the six provincial councils. Eighteen new ones are appointed in their place, with each a judge, taken from the junior servants of the Company. To maintain these eighteen courts, a tax is levied on the sums in litigation, of two and one half per cent on the great, and of five per cent on the less. This money is all drawn from the provinces to Calcutta. The chief justice (the same who stays in defiance of a vote of this House, and of his Majesty's recall) is appointed at once the treasurer and disposer of these taxes, levied without any sort of authority from the Company, from the Crown, or from Parliament.

In effect, Sir, every legal, regular authority, in matters of revenue, of political administration, of criminal law, of civil law, in many of the most essential parts of military discipline, is laid level with the ground; and an oppressive, irregular, capricious, unsteady, rapacious, and peculating despotism, with a direct disavowal of obedience to any authority at home, and without any fixed maxim, principle, or rule of proceeding to guide them in India, is at present the state of your charter-government over great kingdoms.