THE ENGLISH IN INDIA, CONTINUED.—TREATMENT OF THE NATIVES, CONTINUED.
“If,” says the same historian, in whose language we concluded the last
chapter, “to this picture of public oppressions we were to add that of
private extortions, we should find the agents of the Company almost
everywhere exacting their tribute with extreme rigour, and raising
contributions with the utmost cruelty. We should see them carrying
a kind of inquisition into every family, and sitting in judgment on
every fortune; robbing indiscriminately the artizan and the labourer;
imputing it often to a man, as a crime, that he is not sufficiently
rich, and punishing him accordingly. We should view them selling their
favour and their credit, as well to oppress the innocent as to oppress
the guilty. We should find, in consequence of these irregularities,
despair seizing every heart, and an universal dejection getting the
better of every mind, and uniting to put a stop to the progress and
activity of commerce, agriculture, and population.” This, which is the
language of a foreigner, was also the language of the Directors at
the same period, addressed to their servants in India. They complained
that their “orders had been disregarded; that oppression pervaded the
whole country; that youths had been suffered with impunity to exercise
sovereign jurisdiction over the natives, and to acquire rapid fortunes
by monopolizing commerce.” They ask “whether there be a thing which
had not been made a monopoly of? whether the natives are not more
than ever oppressed and wretched?” They were just then appointing
Mr. Hastings their first Governor-general, and expressed a hope that
he would “set an example of temperance, economy, and application.”
Unfortunately Mr. Hastings set an example of a very different kind. It
was almost immediately after his appointment to his high station that
he entered into that infamous bargain with the Nabob of Oude for the
extermination of the Rohillas; and during his government scarcely a
year passed without the most serious charges being preferred against
him to the supreme council, of which he himself was the head, of his
reception of presents and annuities contrary to the express injunctions
of the Company, and for the purpose of corrupt appointments. In 1775
he was charged with the receipt of 15,000 rupees, as a bribe for the
appointment of the Duan of Burdwan, or manager of the revenues; in
1776, of receiving an annual salary from the Phousdar of Hoogly of
36,000 rupees for a similar cause. About the same time it came out
too, that in 1772, that is, immediately on entering the governorship,
he received from the Munny Begum a present of one lac and a half of
rupees, for appointing her the guardian and superintendent of the
affairs of the Nabob of Bengal, a minor; and the same sum had been
received by Mr. Middleton, his agent. The council felt itself bound to
receive evidence on these charges. The Maha Rajah Nundcomar, who had
been appointed to various important offices by Mr. Hastings himself,
came forward and accused the governor of acquitting Mahmud Reza Khan,
the Naib Duan of Bengal, and Rajah Shitabroy the Naib Duan of Bahar,
of vast embezzlements in their accounts, and also offered proof of the
bribe of upwards of three and a half lacs from Munny Begum and Rajah
Gourdass. What answer did he make to these charges? He refused to enter
into them; but immediately commenced a prosecution of Nundcomar, on
a charge of conspiracy; which failing, he had him tried on a charge
of forgery, said to be committed five years before. On this he was
convicted by a jury of Englishmen, and hanged, though the crime was
not capital by the laws of his country. This was a circumstance that
cast the foulest suspicions upon him. It was said that a man standing
in the position and peculiar circumstances of the governor, accused of
the high crimes of bribery and corruption, would, had he been innocent,
have used every exertion to have saved the life of an accuser, had he
been prosecuted by others, instead of himself hastening him out of
the way; which must leave the irresistible conviction in the public
mind, of his own guilt. But on the celebrated trial of Mr. Hastings,
this was exactly the mode in which every accusation was met. When the
most celebrated men of the time had united to reiterate these and
other charges; when he stood before the House of Peers, impeached by
the Commons, instead of standing forward as a man conscious of his
innocence, and glad of the opportunity to clear his name from such foul
taint, every technical obstruction which the ingenuity of his council
could devise was thrown in the way of evidence. When the evidence of
this Rajah Nundcomar, as taken by the supreme council of Calcutta,
was tended, it was rejected because it was not given in the council
upon oath; though Mr. Hastings well knew that the Hindoos never gave
evidence upon oath, being contrary to their religion; that it was never
required,—that this very evidence had been received by the council
as legal; and that he himself had always contended during his own
government, that such evidence was legal. When a letter of Munny Begum
was presented, proving the reception of her bribe by Mr. Hastings,
that letter was not admitted because it was merely a copy, though an
attested one; the original letter itself was however produced, and
persons high in office in India at the time of the transaction, came
forward to swear to the hand and seal as those of the Begum. And what
then? the original letter itself was rejected because it made part of
the evidence before the council, which had been rejected before on
other grounds!
Such was the manner in which these and the other great charges against
this celebrated governor, which we have noticed in a former chapter,
were met. Every piece of decisive evidence against him was resisted by
every possible means: so that had he been the most innocent man alive,
the only conviction that could remain on the mind of the public must
have been that of his guilt. He had neither acted like an innocent,
high-minded man, to whom the imputation of guilt is intolerable,
himself in India, nor had his advocates in England been instructed
to do so. Evidence on every charge, of the most conclusive nature,
was offered, and resolutely rejected; and spite of all the endeavours
to clear the memory of Warren Hastings of cruelty and corruption, the
very conduct of himself and his counsel on the trial, must stamp the
accusing verdict indelibly on his name.
But his individual conduct is here of no further concern than to
shew what must have been the contagion of his example, and what the
license given by the House of Peers, by the rejection of evidence
in such a case, to all future adventurers in India. Well might
Burke exclaim, “That it held out to all future governors of Bengal
the most certain and unbounded impunity. Peculation in India would
be no longer practised, as it used to be, with caution and with
secresy. It would in future stalk abroad at noon-day, and act without
disguise; because, after such a decision as had just been made by
their lordships, there was no possibility of bringing into a court
the proofs of peculation.” And indeed every misery which the combined
evils of war, official plunder, and remorseless exaction could heap
upon the unhappy natives, seems to have reigned triumphant through
the British provinces and dependencies of India at this period. The
destructive contests with Hyder Ali, the ravages of the English and
their ally, the Nabob of Arcot, in Tanjore and the Marawars, were
necessarily productive of extreme ruin and misery. During Mr. Hastings’
government the duannee, or management of the revenues was assumed in
Bengal by the English. Reforms both in the mode of collecting the
taxes and in the administration of justice were attempted. The lands
were offered on leases of five years, and those leases put up to
auction to the best bidders. The British Parliament in 1773 appointed
a Supreme Court of Judicature, in which English judges administered
English law. But as the great end aimed at was not the relief of the
people, but the increase of the amount of taxation, these changes were
only disastrous to the natives. Native officers were in many cases
removed, and the native ryots only the more oppressed. Every change,
in fact, seemed to be tried except the simple and satisfactory one of
reducing the exactions and cultivating the blessings of peace. Ten
years after these changes had been introduced, and had been all this
time inflicting unspeakable calamities on the people, Mr. Dundas moved
inquiry into Indian affairs, and pronounced the most severe censures
on both the Indian Presidencies and the Court of Directors. He accused
the Presidencies, and that most justly, of plunging the nation into
wars for the sake of conquest, of contemning and violating treaties,
and plundering and oppressing the people of India. The Directors he
charged with blaming the misconduct of their servants only when it was
unattended with profit, and exercising a very constant forbearance as
often as it was productive of gain or territory.
Of the effects of his own military and financial changes Mr. Hastings
had a good specimen in his journey through the province of Benares
in 1784. This was only three years after he had committed the
atrocities in this province, related in a former chapter, and driven
the Rajah from his throne; and these are his own words, in a letter
to the Council, dated Lucknow, April, 1784:—“From the confines of
Buxar to Benares, I was followed and fatigued by the clamours of the
discontented inhabitants. The distresses which were produced by the
long-continued drought unavoidably tended to heighten the general
discontent: yet I have reason to fear that the cause principally
existed in a defective, if not a corrupt and oppressive administration.
From Buxar to the opposite boundary I have seen nothing but traces of
complete devastation in every village.” And what had occasioned those
devastations? The wars and the determined resolve introduced by Mr.
Hastings himself, to have the very uttermost amount that could be wrung
from the people.
For the sort of persons to whom Mr. Hastings was in the habit of
farming out the revenues of the provinces, and the motives for which
they were appointed, we must refer to particulars which came out on
his trial respecting such men as Kelleram, Govind Sing, and Deby Sing;
but nothing can give a more lively idea of the horrid treatment which
awaited the poor natives under such monsters as these collectors, than
the statements then made of the practices of the last mentioned person,
Deby or Devi Sing. This man was declared to have been placed on his
post for corrupt ends. He was a man of the most infamous character; yet
that did not prevent Mr. Hastings placing him in such a responsible
office, though he himself declared on the trial that he “so well knew
the character and abilities of Rajah Deby Sing that he could easily
conceive it was in his power both to commit great enormities and to
conceal the real grounds of them from the British collectors in the
district.”— Well, notwithstanding this opinion, the Rajah offered
a very convenient sum of money, four lacs of rupees—upwards of
40,000_l._—and he was appointed renter of the district of Dinagepore.
Complaints of his cruelties were not long in arriving at Calcutta.
Mr. Patterson, a gentleman in the Company’s service, was sent as a
commissioner to inquire into the charges against him; and the account
of them, as given by Mr. Patterson, is thus quoted by Mills, from “The
History of the Trial of Warren Hastings, Esq.”
“The poor ryots, or husbandmen, were treated in a manner that would
never gain belief if it was not attested by the records of the Company:
and Mr. Burke thought it necessary to apologize to their lordships for
the horrid relation with which he would be obliged to harrow their
feelings. The worthy Commissioner Patterson, who had authenticated
the particulars of this relation, had wished, that for the credit of
human nature, he might have drawn a veil over them; but as he had been
sent to inquire into them, he must, in the discharge of his duty state
those particulars, however shocking they were to his feelings. The
cattle and corn of the husbandmen were sold for a third of their value,
and their huts reduced to ashes! The unfortunate owners were obliged
to borrow from usurers, that they might discharge their bonds, which
had unjustly and illegally been extorted from them while they were in
confinement; and such was the determination of the infernal fiend, Devi
Sing, to have these bonds discharged, that the wretched husbandmen
were obliged to borrow money, not at twenty, or thirty, or forty, or
fifty, but at SIX HUNDRED per cent. to satisfy him! Those who could
not raise the money were most cruelly tortured. _Cords were drawn
tight round their fingers, till the flesh of the four on each hand was
actually incorporated, and became one solid mass. The fingers were then
separated again by wedges of iron and wood driven in between them!_
Others were tied, two and two, by the feet, and thrown across a wooden
bar, upon which they hung with their feet uppermost. They were then
beat on the soles of the feet till the toe-nails dropped off! They were
afterwards beat about the head till the blood gushed out at the mouth,
nose, and ears. They were also flogged upon the naked body with bamboo
canes, and prickly bushes, and above all, with some poisonous weeds,
which were of a caustic nature, and burnt at every touch. The cruelty
of the monster who had ordered all this, had contrived how to tear the
mind as well as the body. He frequently had a father and son tied naked
to one another by the feet and arms, and then flogged till the skin
was torn from the flesh; and he had the devilish satisfaction to know,
that every blow must hurt; for if one escaped the son, his sensibility
was wounded by the knowledge he had, that the blow had fallen upon his
father. The same torture was felt by the father, when he knew that
every blow that missed him had fallen upon his son.
“The treatment of the females could not be described. Dragged from the
inmost recesses of their houses, which the religion of the country
had made so many sanctuaries, they were exposed naked to public view.
The Virgins were carried to the Court of Justice, where they might
naturally have looked for protection, but they now looked for it in
vain; for in the face of the ministers of justice, in the face of the
spectators, in the face of the sun, those tender and modest virgins
were brutally violated. The only difference between their treatment
and that of their mothers was, that the former were dishonoured in the
face of day, the latter in the gloomy recesses of their dungeon. Other
females had the nipples of their breasts put in a cleft bamboo, and
torn off.” What follows is too shocking and indecent to transcribe!
It is almost impossible, in reading of these frightful and savage
enormities, to believe that we are reading of a country under the
British government, and that these unmanly deeds were perpetrated by
British agents, and for the purpose of extorting the British revenue.
Thus were these innocent and unhappy people treated, because Warren
Hastings wanted money, and sold them to a wretch whom he knew to be a
wretch, for a bribe; thus were they treated, because Devi Sing had paid
his four lacs of rupees, and must wring them again out of the miserable
ryots, though it were with their very life’s blood, and with fire and
torture before unheard of even in the long and black catalogue of
human crimes. And it should never be forgotten, that though Mr. Burke
pledged himself, if permitted, under the most awful imprecations, to
prove every word of this barbarous recital, such permission was stoutly
refused; and that, moreover, the evidence of the Commissioner Patterson
stands in the Company’s own records.
But it was not merely the commission of these outrages which the poor
inhabitants had to endure. The English courts of justice, which should
have protected them, became an additional means of torture and ruin.
The writs of the supreme court were issued at the suit of individuals
against the zemindars of the country in ordinary actions of debt.
They were dragged from their families and affairs, with the frequent
certainty of leaving them to disorder and ruin, any distance, even
as great as 500 miles, to give bail at Calcutta; a thing, which, if
they were strangers, and the sum more than trifling, it was next to
impossible they should have in their power. In default of this, they
were consigned to prison for all the many months which the delays
of English judicature might interpose between this calamitous stage
and the termination of the suit. Upon the affidavit, into the truth
of which no inquiry was made, upon the unquestioned affidavit of any
person whatsoever—a person of credibility, or directly the reverse, no
difference—the natives were seized, carried to Calcutta, and consigned
to prison, where, even when it was afterwards determined that they were
not within the jurisdiction of the court, and, of course, that they had
been unjustly persecuted, they were liable to lie for several months,
and whence they were dismissed totally without compensation. Instances
occurred, in which defendants were brought from a distance to the
Presidency, and when they declared their intention of pleading, that
is, objecting to the jurisdiction of the court, the prosecution was
dropped; but was again renewed; the defendant brought down to Calcutta,
and again upon his offering to plead, the prosecution was dropped. The
very act of being seized, was in India, the deepest disgrace, and so
degraded a man of any rank that, under the Mahomedan government, it
never was attempted but in cases of the utmost delinquency.[22]
In merely reading these cases of
The proud man’s contumely, the oppressor’s wrong,
it is difficult to repress the burning indignation of one’s spirit.
What shame, what disgrace, that under the laws of England, and in a
country to which we owe so much wealth and power, such a system of
reckless and desperate injustice should for a long series of years
have been practising! But if it be difficult to read of it without
curses and imprecations, what must it have been to bear? How must
the wretched, hopeless, harassed, persecuted, and outraged people
have called on Brahma for that tenth Avatar which should sweep their
invincible, their iron-handed and iron-hearted oppressors, as a swarm
of locusts from their fair land! Let any one imagine what must be the
state of confusion when the zemindars, or higher collectors of the
revenues were thus plagued in the sphere of their arduous duties, and
called out of it, to the distant capital. When they were degraded in
the eyes, and removed from the presence of the ryots, what must have
been the natural consequence, but neglect and license on the part
of the ryot, only too happy to obtain a little temporary ease? But
the ryots themselves did not escape, as we have already seen. Such,
however, continued this dismal state of things to the very end of the
century. Lord Cornwallis complained in 1790, “that excepting the class
of shroffs and banyans, who reside almost entirely in great towns, the
inhabitants of these provinces were hastily advancing to a general
state of poverty and wretchedness.” Lord Cornwallis projected _his_
plans, and in 1802, Sir Henry Strachey, in answer to interrogatories
sent to the Indian judges, drew a gloomy picture of the result of
all the schemes of finance and judicature that had been adopted. He
represented that the zemindars, by the sale of their lands, in default
of the payment of their stipulated revenue, were almost universally
destroyed, or were reduced to the condition of the lowest ryots. That,
in one year (1796) nearly one tenth of all the lands in Bengal, Bahar,
and Orissa, had been advertised for sale. That in two years alone, of
the trial of the English courts, the accumulated causes threatened to
arrest the course of justice: in one single district of Burdwan more
than thirty thousand suits were before the judge; and that no candidate
for justice could expect it in the course of an ordinary life. “The
great men, formerly,” said Sir Henry, “were the Mussulman rulers, whose
places we have taken, and the Hindoo zemindars. These two classes are
now ruined and destroyed.” He adds, “exaction of revenue is now, I
presume, and, perhaps, always was, the most prevailing crime throughout
the country; and I know not how it is that extortioners appear to us
in any other light than that of the worst and most pernicious species
of robbers.” He tells us that the lands of the Mahrattas in the
neighbourhood of his district, Midnapore, were more prosperous than
ours, though they were without regular courts of justice, or police.
“Where,” says he, “no battles are fought, the ryots remain unmolested
by military exactions, and the zemindars are seldom changed, the
country was in high cultivation, and the population frequently superior
to our own.”
Such was the condition and treatment of the natives of Indostan, at the
commencement of the present century. In another chapter, on our policy
and conduct in this vast and important region—it remains only to
take a rapid glance at the effect of these two centuries of despotism
upon these subjected millions, and to inquire what we have since been
doing towards a better state of things,—more auspicious to them, and
honourable to ourselves.