Page images
PDF
EPUB

they who they may, will deem it their duty to support. But this is the unfortunate position in which all petitioners for redress of wrongs are placed. If their complaints against the evil-doers are placed in the hands of Opposition, they may be heard, but will never be attended to by those in power. If they are sent direct to those in authority, they are either not brought forward at all, or so coldly as to ensure their subsequent neglect. Unless the whole question of the East India Company's Monopoly can be brought into discussion,and this can only be done through the mercantile and manufacturing interests of England, no question for reform of Indian abuses will be listened to with patience in either House of Parliament; though we rejoice at every circumstance, bearing upon this Monopoly, that may arise for public discussion, because it serves to keep the public mind alive on this subject, and increases the store of facts and arguments to be brought up in judgment against it when the day of reckoning, now fast approaching, shall arrive.

The people of England, generally, think of India only as a vast and rich country, from the interior of which they are now shut out by the odious monopoly of the East India Company; and their chief hope and desire is, to see that country and China thrown open, as South America, New Holland, and other distant parts of the world now are, to increase the number of markets for consuming their productions. That desire was considered to be in some degree gratified by the partial opening of the East India trade, which took place at the last renewal of the charter, by which ships were allowed to visit the three principal ports of Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay, though they could not touch at intermediate ones, nor send agents or supercargoes to sell their goods in the interior, where the great consumption must always be. But, if the claim now set up by the East India Company, of a right to levy what taxes they please, without license or limitation, on every British subject visiting India for the purpose of residence or trade, be admitted, they will have it in their power to retain their commercial monopoly in spite of all that Parliament has done, or can do, towards its amelioration for being themselves exempt from any tax, as they are the tax-imposers as well as tax-collectors, they have only to tax all their trading rivals up to the proper limit, and they can at once destroy all competition, and drive every other trader, but themselves, from the

market.

Any notion of a free trade under such a power as this, is perfect mockery; it is worse than even the arbitary exactions of a Turkish Pasha, or a Bedouin robber; because these are but occasional, and for a season at least may be escaped: whereas the unlimited taxation of the East India Company being managed upon the most approved models of more enlightened fiscal regulations, reach every individual, and no man can hope to elude its rapacious grasp.

If any thing could rouse the people of India to resistance, it ought to be this; and as we lost America by the same line of conduct,

attempting to tax the people without giving them a voice in the matter, and singularly enough too, beginning then, as now, with one of the most offensive of all imposts, a Stamp Tax, we are not without a hope of seeing similar good effects proceeding from similarly sufficient causes. If any thing could rouse the people of England also, to any interest whatever about India, it ought to be this monstrous claim of the India Company: first, because if persisted in, it may lead to the entire loss of that country, which it is the fashion to call the brightest jewel in the British Crown;' and next, because if not so lost, it must render it useless as a mart of trade since any government, itself composed of traders, who have the power to tax all other traders visiting their markets to any extent they please, will effectually keep all rivals out, and enjoy the trade entirely to themselves, as much as if their exclusive monopoly was confirmed to them by fifty Acts of Parliament.

Let us hope, therefore, that both in India and in England, the resistance to this impudent usurpation of the India Company will be strong and general; and that sooner or later it will end in wresting the whole country from their iniquitous and degrading dominion. To assist in this, we shall give, in this place, a summary history of the attempt in question, which we transcribe from a communication simultaneously sent to different publications, though appearing but in few, and which we therefore deem it our duty to place on record in the pages of this Work; in preceding Numbers of which will be found almost every thing that has yet appeared in India or in England on this topic, in addition to such illustrations as we have from time to time offered from our own pen.

The Company's exchequer was drained by the Burmese war, which is said to have entailed on the nation-for, speaking rationally, this is the real state of the case- a debt of 13,000,000l. sterling. To meet the enormous disbursements of the Burmese war, the Indian Government, as early as 1824, made an attempt to impose general stamp duties on their Indian subjects, and promulgated a law to this effect. The Indians resisted the edict, by perversely refusing to purchase stamps, and the law became a dead. letter, the local Government not daring to enforce it for fear of exciting insurrection, of which, on similar grounds, they had the experience of more than one example. On this, it occurred to them, that taxing their rivals, the British merchants of Calcutta, from whom no insurrection was to be apprehended, and on whose passive obedience they fully reckoned, would be a wholesome example of submission to the wayward provinces. This could not, as the law stood, be done without the consent of the authorities in England that is, as they imagined, of the Directors and India Board. A regulation was therefore secretly proposed, secretly sent home, secretly and readily approved of, secretly sent back to India, and then so suddenly promulgated, that the inhabitants of Calcutta had not the slightest notion of the vexatious and oppressive attack

meditated against their privileges and properties until the law made its appearance in the Gazette of Government. The inhabitants lost no time in addressing a respectful petition to the local Government, in which they insisted upon the obvious impolicy of stamp duties in such a state of society as prevailed throughout India;— stated, that no measure of Government had ever excited such general alarm,-dwelt upon the embarrassment which it would cause in all commercial dealings, and prayed that the operation of the law might be suspended. The Government replied, that it wanted money, and must have it; that the legislature had conferred upon the Company and its servants the power of taxing Englishmen in any way, and to any extent they thought proper, just as they taxed the Hindoos; and, above all, it insisted that the stamp duties were among the least objectionable taxes that could be imposed upon a people;" for that they fell upon the rich, and not upon the needy! Seduced by this last piece of nonsensical extravagance, it went even the length of taking credit to itself for not sparing the rich, as it had already not spared the poor. Further, the inhabitants of Calcutta, who had before imagined that they paid more than enough, and that they had done a vast deal to support an unpopular Government that did nothing to support them, were told, in plain terms, that they contributed nothing, or next to nothing, in support of the East India Company; and that, in future, they must contribute as directed, in order, as the servants of the Company expressed it, that there might henceforth be no "inequitable exemption."

66

'There was no reasoning with an authority that could banish a man for a difference of opinion, or arrest his person and ruin his prospects for advancing a solid argument, or stating an incontrovertible matter of fact. If this line of proceeding had been safe, the people of Calcutta could easily have shown, that through direct or indirect contributions, in the shape of taxes on rents, spirits, drugs, in customs, in monopolies, they in reality contributed ten times more than the poor and incapable provincials, alleged by the heedless Government to sustain the whole burden of the administration. Such a course being utterly unsafe, they contented themselves with a respectful intimation to the Council, that it was their intention to apply to Parliament for an explanation of those clauses of the statute on which the Company pretended to found its right to tax them,-clauses which, it was plain to common sense, were meant only to legalize duties of customs, and which, whatever their original intent, had (except in relation to such duties) lain dormant and inoperative for thirteen years. The omnipotent Council modesty replied, that it saw no objection to the inhabitants of Calcutta petitioning "the Parliament of England." This was the exact expression it made use of. It had objections, nevertheless; for, when the inhabitants had obtained leave of the Sheriff to meet for the purpose of considering the propriety of petitioning Parliament, it sent a severe reprimand to that officer, who happened to be a ser

vant of their own, and commanded him to disallow the meeting; an order which of course he complied with. The pretext for this violation of constitutional rights was, an edict in the shape of a letter, twenty years old, from the sovereigns of Leadenhall-street, forbidding all public meetings, the object of which might not be agreeable to the local Government. The penalty, "our high displeasure," as the above puissant lords expressed themselves, would only have been laughable, if unhappily the legislature had not been committed into arming them with powers which made it dangerous and pernicious.

The inhabitants, debarred from meeting in their corporate capacity, resolved to meet as an assembly of individuals; and that there might appear nothing clandestine in their proceedings, gave a public intimation of their intention. The Government, which had "no objection" to the inhabitants petitioning the Parliament of England, saw great objection to affording them the means of drawing up a petition, and highly offended that they did not evince themselves passively obedient to "the Parliament of Calcutta," sent, in utter ignorance of the law of the land, an order to their stipendiary magistrates to disperse the meeting, and, if necessary, to call in a military force for this purpose. The magistrates having more sense and discretion than their masters, consulted a lawyer on the legality of the act; and finding that each and every one of them would be liable to an action of trespass for disturbing a lawful meeting, they refused to obey the order. The meeting, which was composed of all the wealth, talent, and respectability of Calcutta, European and Native, accordingly took place, and was conducted with the utmost temper, order, and regularity.

A petition to both Houses of Parliament, which is distinguished, in our opinion, by good sense, temperance, and just constitutional sentiments, was unanimously voted, and was shortly after numerously signed by every man in Calcutta, of whatever party, eminent for wealth or station, out of the service of the Company, but by not one man connected with it. Such is the despotic character of a Government which, in such times as these, has the folly openly to boast that it always has been, and ought always to continue to be arbitrary.

'Its being arbitrary, however, did not make it infallible,-another attribute of which it would be glad to be thought possessed. The Stamp Regulation was to have been, according to proclamation, in operation from the 1st of May; but no one bought stamps, and it was in vain that the Government organized a cordon of stampofficers, erected stamp-offices, built a fleet to distribute its gifts in the provinces, placarded, offered discounts, &c.: still no one would buy.

The public, although the vanity of the Government seduced it to think otherwise, had got it into their heads that the regulation was not law without being approved by the King's Supreme Court, -a form required by statute wherever a King's Court has special jurisdiction. This was, in fact, the case; and, after ap interval of

condition which would necessarily be fatal to it, since any taxation other than by Parliament, grounded upon the fact of our being represented in that assembly, is allowed, on all hands, to be unconstitutional and illegal. Thirdly, the declaration in paragraph 7 of the Bengal Government's letter, that because stamp duties on deeds, &c., had long been levied in the interior of the country, it was equitable to levy them on Calcutta also, as in the eyes of the Legislature of England the inhabitants of the interior had equal claims to consideration with those of Calcutta, is either incorrect in fact,-upon the supposition of the management of the interior having been entirely given up to the Company, or incorrect in principle, since it justifies the wrong inflicted upon the interior, by asserting that the same wrong may be in the same manner inflicted upon Calcutta, for a wrong it must be in either case to impose a tax without a representation in Parliament, when it is asserted that in the eyes of the Legislature of England the inhabitants of the interior and of Calcutta have equal claims to consideration,—unless, indeed, by equal claims is meant no claim at all. That such a mockery, however, was ever intended by the Legislature, can hardly be imagined: and we have the testimony of Sir Edward East, in his letter to Lord Liverpool,* upon the judicial system of British India, for assuming that all the Native as well as the European inhabitants of the Company's territories are British subjects, and that this, which could never have been seriously questioned after the supremacy of the King of Delhi became purely nominal,' is now put beyond all doubt by the formal declaration of the Legislature, in the Act of the 53d Geo. III. c. 155, which asserts the undoubted sovereignty of the Crown over the Indian territories.'

In a legal point of view, therefore, the case, it seems, stands thus : All the inhabitants of the Company's territories are British subjects; but, owing to the peculiar constitution of the Supreme Court, the protection of the King's laws is, in respect of the Natives, available only to those who inhabit Calcutta. On the other hand, however, the Company's Governments are, in the opinion of legal men, restricted in their right to raise revenue to the means which were in existence when the management of the country was given up to them by the Crown; and this principle is adopted in its fullest extent by Mr. Prinsep, a confidential functionary of Government, writing under the auspices of a late Governal-General, Lord Hastings, and having had, it is understood, the assistance of high official authority in completing his account of that nobleman's administration, with the addition of a new and fuller summary of the political and financial result of those operations,' as noticed in the preface to

See this Letter, published in the November Number of The Oriental Herald,' vol. xv., p. 223. It is there considered to have been addressed to Lord Eldon; but subsequent discussions on the subject, contained in the Calcutta Papers, give reason to believe that it was addressed to Lord Liverpool, then Prime Minister of England,

« PreviousContinue »