on the subject of the embankment of the Kistna. Now, the embankment of
the Kistna has been recommended as far back as the year 1792, and from
that time has been repeatedly brought forward. The whole estimate for it
is but 155,000_l_., and it was not until September, 1852, that the
preliminary operations were commenced. I find this officer stating with
respect to the district of Rajamundry, that if a particular improvement
that had been recommended above twenty years ago had been carried out,
it would have saved the lives of upwards of 100,000 persons who perished
in the famine of 1837. I say that such facts as these are a
justification of stronger language than any in which I have indulged in
reference to the neglect of the Indian Government whether in this House
or out of it. The right hon. gentleman candidly informs us that this
very embankment has been recently stopped by order of the Madras
Government, because the money was wanted for other purposes--the Burmese
war, no doubt. In the year 1849 it was reported that Colonel Cotton
wrote a despatch to the Madras Government, in which, after mentioning
facts connected with the famines, he insisted, in strong and indignant
language, that the improvements should go on. I believe that there was
an allusion in the letter to the awkward look these things would have,
pending the discussions on the Government of India, and I understand
that it was agreed that the original letter, which countermanded the
improvements, should be withdrawn, and that then the remonstrance from
Colonel Cotton should also be withdrawn. A gentleman who has been in the
Company's service, and who has for some time been engaged in
improvements, chiefly in irrigation, writes in a private letter as
follows:--
'From my late investigations on this subject, I feel convinced
that the state of our communications is the most important
subject which calls for consideration. I reckon that India now
pays, for want of cheap transit, a sum equal to the whole of the
taxes; so that by reducing its cost to a tenth, which might
easily be done, we should as good as abolish all taxes. I trust
the Committees in England are going on well, in spite of the
unbecoming efforts which have been made to circumscribe and quash
their proceedings. Woe be to India, indeed, if this opportunity
is lost! Much will depend upon you--
(the letter was not addressed to myself)--
and others now in England, who know India, and have a single eye
to its welfare. It behoves you to do your utmost to improve this
most critical time, and may God in his mercy overrule all the
efforts of man for its good! What abominations, villanies, and
idiotcies there still are in our system! Is there no hope, no
possibility, of infusing a little fresh blood from some purer
source into these bodies?
(the ruling authorities).
It is quite clear that no radical improvement can take place till
some influences can be applied to stimulate our rulers to more
healthy, wholesome action; health can never be looked for in a
body constituted as the Court of Directors now is; nothing but
torpid disease can be expected as matters now stand.
With respect to the administration of justice, I shall not go at any
length into that subject, because I hope it will be taken up by some
other Gentleman much more competent than myself, and I trust that a
sufficient answer will be given to what has been stated by the right
hon. Gentleman. However, as far as I am able to understand, there
appears to be throughout the whole of India, on the part of the European
population, an absolute terror of coming under the Company's Courts for
any object whatever. Within the last fortnight I have had a conversation
with a gentleman who has seen a long period of service in India, and he
declared it was hopeless to expect that Englishmen would ever invest
their property in India under any circumstances which placed their
interests at the disposal of those courts of justice. That is one reason
why there appears no increase in the number of Europeans or Englishmen
who settle in the interior of India for the purpose of investing their
capital there. The right hon. Gentleman endeavoured to make an excuse on
the ground that the Law Commission had done nothing. I was not in the
House when the right hon. Member for Edinburgh (Mr. Macaulay) brought
forward the Bill of 1833, but I understand it was stated that the Law
Commission was to do wonders; yet now we have the evidence of the right
hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Control, that the Report of
the Law Commission has ever since been going backwards and forwards,
like an unsettled spirit, between this country and India. Mr. Cameron,
in his evidence, said (I suppose it is slumbering somewhere on the
shelves in the East India House) that the Court of Directors actually
sneered at the propositions of their officers for enactments of any
kind, and that it was evidently their object to gradually extinguish the
Commission altogether. Yet the evidence of Mr. Cameron went to show the
extraordinary complication and confusion of the law and law
administration over all the British dominions in India. The right hon.
Gentleman the President of the Board of Control also referred to the
statistics laid before the public; but I want to know why Colonel Sykes'
statistical tables are not before the House. They are at the India
House; but a journey to Leadenhall-street seems to be as long as one to
India, and one can as soon get a communication by the overland mail as
any information from the India House. What did Colonel Sykes say, with
respect to a subject referred to by the right hon. Gentleman, who had
given the House to suppose that a great deal had been done in respect to
improvements in India? Colonel Sykes stated that in fifteen years, from
1838 to 1852, the average expenditure throughout the whole of India on
public works, including roads, bridges, tanks, and canals, was
299,732_l_. The north-west appeared to be the pet district; and in
1851 the total expenditure was 334,000_l_., of which the north-west
district had 240,000_l_. In 1852 the estimate was 693,000_l_.,
of which the north-west district was to have 492,000_l_., leaving
only 94,000_l_. in 1851, and 201,000_l_. in 1852, for public
works of all kinds in the three Presidencies of Bengal, Madras, and
Bombay, with a population of 70,000,000 souls. The right hon. Gentleman
then referred to the exports from this country, and the increase of
trade with India; and a kindred subject to that was the mode in which
Englishmen settle in India. What I want to show is, that the reason why
so little is done with India by Englishmen is, that there does not exist
in that country the same security for their investments as in almost
every other country in the world. I recollect receiving from Mr. Mackay,
who was sent out by the Manchester Chamber of Commerce, a letter
expressing his amazement on finding that in the interior of India an
Englishman was hardly known, unless he now and then made his appearance
as a tax collector. The following Return shows in what small numbers
Europeans resort to India:--
'British-born subjects in India not in the service of the Queen
or the Company:--
Bengal 6,749
Madras 1,661
Bombay 1,596
------
10,006
'In the interior of the country, engaged in agriculture or
manufactures--
Bengal 273
Madras 37
Bombay 7
------
317'
I cannot believe, if the United States had been the possessors of India,
but that where there are tens of Europeans now in that country there
would have been, not hundreds, but thousands of the people of America.
The right hon. Gentleman spoke of the exports to India, and wanted to
show how large they were. Certainly they have increased very much,
because they started from nothing at all. Before the opening of the
trade, the Court of Proprietors, by resolution, declared that it was
quite a delusion to suppose it possible to increase the trade with
India. In 1850 the total exports to India from Great Britain and Ireland
were 8,024,000_l_., of which cotton goods alone amounted to
5,220,000_l_., leaving 2,804,000_l_. for the total exports
from Great Britain and Ireland upon all other branches of industry other
than cotton. Now, let the House make a comparison with another country,
one with which a moderately fair comparison might be made. Brazil has a
population of 7,500,000 souls, half of whom are reckoned to be slaves,
yet the consumption of British goods is greater in Brazil, in proportion
to the population, than in India--the former country, with a population
of 7,500,000, taking British goods to the amount of 2,500,000_l_.
If India took but half the quantity of our exports that Brazil did in
proportion to her population, she would take more than five times what
she now takes. Yet Brazil is a country upon which we have imposed the
payment of exorbitant duties, which we have almost debarred from trading
with us by an absurd monopoly in sugar, while India is a country
entirely under our own government, and which, we are told, is enjoying
the greatest possible blessings under the present administration,
compared with what it enjoyed under its former rulers. Our exports to
India in 1814 were 826,000_l_.; in 1832 they were
3,600,000_l_.; in 1843 they were 6,500,000_l_.; and in 1850
they were 8,000,000_l_. India consumes our exports at the rate of
1_s_. 3 _d_. per head; whilst in South America, including the
whole of the slave population, the consumption per head is 8 _s_.
8_d_. These are facts which the right hon. Baronet is bound to pay
serious attention to. For myself, representing, as I do, one of our
great seats of manufacturing industry, I feel myself doubly called upon
to lose no opportunity of bringing such facts before the House,
satisfied as I am that there is no Member of this House so obtuse as not
to comprehend how materially the great manufacturing interests of this
country are concerned in the question--what shall be the future
Government of India?
Another subject requiring close attention on the part of Parliament is
the employment of the natives of India in the service of the Government.
The right hon. Member for Edinburgh (Mr. Macaulay), in proposing the
Indian Bill of 1833, had dwelt on one of its clauses, which provided
that neither colour, nor caste, nor religion, nor place of birth, should
be a bar to the employment of persons by the Government; whereas, as
matter of fact, from that time to this, no person in India has been so
employed, who might not have been equally employed before that clause
was enacted; and, from the statement of the right hon. Gentleman the
President of the Board of Control, that it is proposed to keep up the
covenanted service system, it is clear that this most objectionable and
most offensive state of things is to continue. Mr. Cameron, a gentleman
thoroughly versed in the subject, as fourth member of Council in India,
President of the Indian Law Commission, and of the Council of Education
for Bengal--what does he say on this point? He says--
'The statute of 1833 made the natives of India eligible to all
offices under the Company. But during the twenty years that have
since elapsed, not one of the natives has been appointed to any
office except such as they were eligible to before the statute.
It is not, however, of this omission that I should feel justified
in complaining, if the Company had shown any disposition to make
the natives fit, by the highest European education, for admission
to their covenanted service. Their disposition, as far as it can
be devised, is of the opposite kind.
'When four students (added Mr. Cameron) were sent to London from
the Medical College of Calcutta, under the sanction of Lord
Hardinge, in Council, to complete their professional education,
the Court of Directors expressed their dissatisfaction; and when
a plan for establishing a University at Calcutta, which had been
prepared by the Council of Education, was recommended to their
adoption by Lord Hardinge, in Council, they answered that the
project was premature. As to the Law Commission, I am afraid that
the Court of Directors have been accustomed to think of it only
with the intention of procuring its abolition.'
Under the Act of 1833 the natives of India were declared to be eligible
to any office under the Company. No native has, in the twenty years
which have since elapsed, been appointed to any office in pursuance of
that clause which he might not have held before the Bill passed, or had
it never passed at all. There might not, perhaps, have been so much
reason to complain of this circumstance, had the Government of India
meanwhile shown a disposition to qualify the natives for the covenanted
service; but the fact is that the Government has, on the contrary,
manifested a disposition of a totally opposite character. The House must
be very cautious not to adopt the glossed and burnished statement of the
right hon. Gentleman as exhibiting the real state of things in India;
for it is essential, in the highest degree, that in the present critical
juncture of things the whole truth should be known. The right hon.
Baronet, towards the close of his speech, has gone into the subject of
education, and not so much into that of ecclesiastical establishments in
India, but somewhat into that of religion. Now, with reference to
education, so far as can be gathered from the Returns before the House--
I have sought to obtain Returns of a more specific character, but to no
purpose, having received the usual answer in these matters, that there
was no time for preparing them--but from the Returns we have before us I
find that while the Government has overthrown almost entirely that
native education which had subsisted throughout the country so
universally that a schoolmaster was as regular a feature in every
village as the 'potail' or head man, it has done next to nothing to
supply the deficiency which has been created, or to substitute a better
system. Out of a population of 100,000,000 natives we instruct but
25,000 children; out of a gross revenue of 29,000,000_l_. sterling,
extracted from that population, we spend but 66,000_l_. in their
education. In India, let it be borne in mind, the people are not in the
position with regard to providing for their own education which the
people of this country enjoy, and the education which they have provided
themselves with, the Government has taken from them, supplying no
adequate system in its place. The people of India are in a state of
poverty, and of decay, unexampled in the annals of the country under
their native rulers. From their poverty the Government wrings a gross
revenue of more than 29,000,000_l_. sterling, and out of that
29,000,000_l_., return to them 66,000_l_. per annum for the
purposes of education!
What is our ecclesiastical establishment in India? Three bishops and a
proportionate number of clergy, costing no less than 101,000_l_. a-
year for the sole use of between 50,000 and 60,000 Europeans, nearly
one-half of whom, moreover--taking the army--are Roman Catholics. I
might add, that in India, the Government showed the same discrimination
of which the noble Member for the City of London (Lord J. Russell)
seemed to approve so much the other night, for, although they give to
one Protestant bishop 4,000_l_. a-year, with 1,2OO_l_. a-year
more for expenses and a ship at his disposal, and to two other
Protestant bishops between 2,000_l_. and 3,000_l_. a-year,
they give to the Roman Catholic bishop a paltry sum of about
250_l_. a-year. The East India Company are not, perhaps, herein so
much to blame, seeing that they do but follow the example of what is
going on in this country.
There is another question--perhaps the most important of all--the
question of Indian finance, which, somehow or other, the right hon.
Baronet has got over in so very lame a manner, in so particularly
confused a style, that had I not known something of the matter
previously, I should have learnt very little from the right hon.
Baronet's statement. A former Director of the East India Company has, on
this subject, issued a book--of course, in defence of the Company. Here
are two or three facts extracted from this book:--From 1835 to 1851--
sixteen years--the entire net taxation of India has produced
340,756,000_l_.; the expenditure on the Government in the same
period having been 341,676,000_l_.--an amount somewhat in excess of
the revenue. During these sixteen years there has been also expended on
public works of all kinds 5,000,000_l_., and there has been paid,
in dividends, to the proprietors of East India stock,
10,080,000_l_.; making a total expenditure of 356,756,000_l_.
In the same period the Company has contracted loans to the extent of
16,000,000_l_.; every farthing of which has gone to improvements,
the stated extent of which I believe to have been greatly magnified, and
to pay the amiable ladies and gentlemen whose votes return to
Leadenhall-street those immaculate Directors whom the Government seems
so desirous of cherishing. All expenditure for improvements of every
kind, and all dividends to stockholders, have been paid from loans
contracted during the last sixteen years; so that the whole revenue has
been expended, leaving nothing for improvements and nothing for the
Company's dividends. This seems to me a formidable, an alarming state of
things.
The right hon. Gentleman spoke of the Indian debt coming upon the people
of this country, expressing the opinion that if the Government of India
were transferred to the Crown--which assuredly it ought to be--the debt
ought so to be transferred. The debt is not in the present Budget,
indeed, but it will certainly come before the House. I have already
referred to a memorable speech of the late Sir Robert Peel on this
subject, in 1842, just after he had come into office, and when, finding
the country left by the Whigs with an Exchequer peculiarly discouraging
to a Chancellor of the Exchequer, he was about to propose that temporary
income-tax which has since become permanent. He said, after referring to
the affairs of Canada and China--
'For the purpose of bringing before the House a full and complete
view of our financial position, as I promised to do, I feel it to
be my duty to refer to a subject which has of late occupied
little attention in the House, but which I think might, with
advantage to the public, have attracted more of their regard--I
refer to the state of Indian finance, a subject which formerly
used to be thought not unworthy of the consideration of this
House. I am quite aware that there may appear to be no direct and
immediate connexion between the finances of India and those of
this country; but that would be a superficial view of our
relations with India which should omit the consideration of this
subject. Depend upon it, if the credit of India should become
disordered, if some great exertion should become necessary, then
the credit of England must be brought forward to its support, and
the collateral and indirect effect of disorders in Indian
finances would be felt extensively in this country. Sir, I am
sorry to say that Indian finance offers no consolation for the
state of finance in this country. I hold in my hand an account of
the finances of India, which I have every reason to believe is a
correct one. It is made up one month later than our own accounts--
to the 5th of May. It states the gross revenue of India, with the
charges on it; the interest of the debt; the surplus revenue, and
the charges paid on it in England; and there are two columns
which contain the net surplus and the net deficit. In the year
ending May, 1836, there was a surplus of 1,520,000_l_. from
the Indian revenue. In the year ending the 5th of May, 1837,
there was a surplus of 1,100,000_l_., which was reduced
rapidly in the year ending May, 1838, to one of 620,000_l_.
In the year ending the 5th of May, 1839, the surplus fell to
29,000_l_.; in the year ending the 5th of May, 1840, the
balance of the account changed, and so far from there being any
surplus, the deficit on the Indian revenue was 2,414,000_l_.
I am afraid I cannot calculate the deficit for the year ending
May, 1841, though it depends at present partly on estimate, at
much less than 2,334,000_l_. The House, then, will bear in
mind, that in fulfilment of the duty I have undertaken, I present
to them the deficit in this country for the current year to the
amount of 2,350,000_l_., with a certain prospect of a
deficit for the next year to the amount of at least
2,470,000_l_., independently of the increase to be expected
on account of China and Affghanistan, and that in India, that
great portion of our Empire, I show a deficit on the two last
years which will probably not be less than 4,700,000_l_.'--
[3 _Hansard_, lxi. 428-9.]
Now, this deficit has in the period since 1842 been growing every year,
with the exception of two years, when, from accidental and precarious
circumstances, a surplus of between 300,000_l_. and
400,000_l_. was made out. The course of deficit has now, however,
been resumed, and there is probably no one in this House or in the
country but the right hon. President of the Board of Control, who does
not perceive that the Burmese war will materially aggravate the amount
of that deficit. Where is this to end? When the Board of Control was
first established, the debt was 8,000,000_l_.; in 1825 it was
25,000,000_l_.; in 1829 it was 34,000,000_l_.; in 1836,
37,000,000_l_.; in 1843, 36,000,000_l_.; in 1849,
44,000,000_l_.; in 1853, 47,000,000_l_.; and now, including
the bond debt at home and the debt in India, it is about
51,000,000_l_. The military expenditure of India has increased
since the last Charter Act from 8,000,000_l_. a-year to more than
12,000,000_l_. a-year, and now forms no less than 56 per cent. of
the whole expenditure. I believe that if the Indian Government would
endeavour to improve the condition of the people by attending to
economic principles, by establishing better means of communication, by
promoting irrigation, and by affording facilities for education, the
Indian population would at once be convinced that there was a feeling of
sympathy entertained towards them on the part of their rulers and
conquerors, and the idea--which I believe prevails very extensively--
that we held India more with the object of extorting taxation than of
benefiting the people, would speedily be removed.
When I come to consider the amount of the revenue, and its pressure upon
the population, I think I can show a state of things existing in India
which cannot be paralleled in any other country in the world. The
evidence of Mr. Davies and Mr. Stewart, collectors in Guzerat, shows
that in that district the actual taxation varies from 60 to 90 per cent.
upon the gross produce of the soil. Mr. Campbell calculates the gross
revenue of India at about 27,000,000_l_.; and Mr. Kaye, a recent
authority, who, I presume, wrote his book at the India House, states
that the gross revenue was 29,000,000_l_. The land revenue is
12,000,000_l_. or 13,000,000_l_.; and although the Government
took, or intended to take, all the rent, it is not half enough for them,
and they are obliged to take as much more from other sources in order to
enable them to maintain their establishments. I mention this fact to
show the enormous expense of the Indian Government, and the
impossibility of avoiding a great and dangerous financial crisis unless
some alteration is made in the present system. Mr. Campbell, speaking of
the Indian revenues under the Mogul Princes, says--
'The value of food, labour, &c., seems to have been much the same
as now--that is, infinitely cheaper than in Europe; and,
certainly, in comparison to the price of labour and all articles
of consumption, the revenue of the Moguls must have been more
effective than that of any modern State--I mean that it enabled
them to command more men and luxuries, and to have a greater
surplus.'
I would ask the House to imagine that all steam engines, and all
applications of mechanical power, were banished from this country; that
we were utterly dependent upon mere manual labour. What would you think
if the Chancellor of the Exchequer, under such circumstances,
endeavoured to levy the same taxation which is now borne by the country?
From one end of India to the other, with very trifling exceptions, there
is no such thing as a steam engine; but this poor population, without a
steam engine, without anything like first-rate tools, are called upon to
bear, I will venture to say, the very heaviest taxation under which any
people ever suffered with the same means of paying it. Yet the whole of
this money, raised from so poor a population, which would in India buy
four times as much labour, and four times as much of the productions of
the country, as it would obtain in England, is not enough to keep up the
establishments of the Government; for during the last sixteen years the
Indian Government has borrowed 16,000,000_l_. to pay the dividends
to the proprietors in England.