THE ENGLISH IN INDIA,—CONCLUDED.
The preceding chapter is an awful subject of contemplation for a
Christian nation. An empire over one hundred millions acquired by
force, and held by force for the appropriation of their revenues!
Even this dominion of force is a fragile tenure. We even now watch
the approaches of the gigantic power of Russia towards these regions
with jealousy and alarm; and it is evident that at once security to
ourselves, and atonement to the natives, are only to be found in the
amelioration of their condition: in educating and Christianizing
them, and in amalgamising them with British interests and British
blood as much as possible. The throwing open of these vast regions,
by the abolition of the Company’s charter of trade, to the enterprise
and residence of our countrymen, now offers us ample means of moral
retribution; and it is with peculiar interest that we now turn to every
symptom of a better state of things.
A new impulse is given to both commerce and agriculture. The march of
improvement in the cultivation and manufacture of various productions
is begun. The growth of wheat is encouraged, and even large quantities
of fine flour imported thence into England. The indigo trade has become
amazing by the improvement in the manipulation of that article. Sugar,
coffee, opium, cotton, spices, rice, every product of this rich and
varied region, will all find a greater demand, and consequently a
greater perfection from culture, under these circumstances. There is,
in fact, no species of vegetable production which, in this glorious
country, offering in one part or another the temperature of every
known climate, may not be introduced. Such is the fertility of the
land under good management, that the natives often now make 26_l._ per
acre of their produce. The potato is becoming as much esteemed there
as it has long been in Europe and America. Tea is likely to become one
of its most important articles of native growth. Our missionaries of
various denominations—episcopalians, catholics, baptists, methodists,
moravians, etc., are zealously labouring to spread knowledge and
Christianity; and there is nothing, according to the Christian brahmin,
Rammohun Roy, which the Indian people so much desire as an English
education. Let that be given, and the fetters of caste must be broken
at once. The press, since the great struggle in which Mr. Buckingham
was driven from India for attempting its freedom, has acquired a great
degree of freedom. The natives are admitted to sit on petty juries;
slavery is abolished; and last, and best, education is now extensively
and zealously promoted. The Company was bound by the terms of its
charter in 1813 to devote 10,000_l._ annually to educating natives
in the English language and English knowledge, which, though but
a trifling sum compared with the vast population, aided by various
private schools, must have produced very beneficial effects. Bishop
Heber states that on his arrival in Bengal he found that there
were fifty thousand scholars, chiefly under the care of Protestant
missionaries. These are the means which must eventually make British
rule that blessing which it ought to have been long ago. These are the
means by which we may atone, and more than atone, for all our crimes
and our selfishness in India. But let us remember that we are—after
the despotism of two centuries, after oceans of blood shed by us, and
oceans of wealth drained by us from India, and after that blind and
callous system of exaction and European exclusion which has perpetuated
all the ignorance and all the atrocities of Hindu superstition, and
laid the burthen of them on our own shoulders—but at this moment on
the mere threshold of this better career. Let us remember that still,
at this hour, Indostan is, in fact, the IRELAND OF THE EAST! It is
a country pouring out wealth upon us, while it is swarming with a
population of one hundred millions in the lowest state of poverty and
wretchedness. It swarms with robbers and assassins of the most dreadful
description: and it is impossible that it should be otherwise. It is
said to be happy and contented under our rule; but such a happiness
as its boldest advocates occasionally give us a glimpse of, may God
soon remove from that oppressed country. Indeed, such are the features
of it, even as drawn by its eulogists, as make us wonder that such
wretchedness should exist under English sway. Our travellers describe
the mass of the labouring people as stunted in stature, especially
the women; as half famished, and with hardly a rag to their backs.
Mr. Tucker, himself a Director, and Deputy-Chairman of the Court of
Directors, asks, “Whether it be possible for them to believe that
a government, which seems disposed to appropriate a vast territory
as _universal landlord_, and to collect, not _revenue_, but _rent_,
can have any other view than to extract from the people the utmost
portion which they can pay?” and adds, that “if the deadly hand of the
tax-gatherer perpetually hover over the land, and threaten to grasp
that which is not yet called into existence, its benumbing influence
must be fatal, and the fruits of the earth will be stifled in the very
germ.”
Yet this is the constant system; and the poor ryots who cultivate
farms of from six to twenty-four acres, but generally of the smaller
kind, requiring only one plough, which, with other implements and a
team of oxen, costs about 6_l._, are compelled to farm not such as
they chose, but such as are allotted to them; to pay from one-half to
two-thirds of their gross produce. If they attempt to run away from
it, they are brought back and flogged, and forced to work. If after
all, they cannot pay their quota, Sir Thomas Munro tells you, “_it must
be assessed upon the rest_.” That where a crop _even is less than the
seed_, the peasantry _should always be made to pay the full_ rent where
they can. And that all complaints on the part of the ryot, “should be
listened to with very great caution.” Is it any wonder that Indostan
is, and always has been full of robbers? Is this system not enough to
make men run off, and do anything but work thus without hope? But it
is not merely the work: look at the task-masters set over them. “A
very large proportion of the talliars,” says Sir Thomas Munro, “are
themselves thieves; all the kawilgars are themselves robbers exempting
them; and though they are now afraid to act openly, there is no doubt
that many of them still secretly follow their former practices. Many
potails and curnums also harbour thieves; so that no traveller can
pass through the ceded districts without being robbed, who does not
employ his own servants or those of the village to watch at night; and
even this precaution is often ineffectual. Many offenders are taken,
but great numbers also escape, for connivance must also be expected
among the kawilgars and the talliars, who are themselves thieves; and
the inhabitants are often backward in giving information from the
fear of _assassination_.” Colonel Stewart in 1825, asserted in his
“Considerations on the Policy of the Government of India,” that “if
we look for absolute and bodily injury produced by our misgovernment,
he did not believe that all the cruelties practised _in the lifetime_
of the worst tyrant that ever sat upon a throne, even amounted to the
quantity of human suffering inflicted by the Decoits _in one year_ in
Bengal.” The prevalence of Thugs and Phasingars does not augur much
improvement in this respect yet; nor do recent travellers induce us to
believe that the picture of popular misery given us about half a dozen
years ago by the author of “Reflections on the Present state of British
India,” is yet become untrue.
“Hitherto the poverty of the cultivating classes, men who have both
property and employment, has been alone considered; but the extreme
misery to which the immense mass of the unemployed population are
reduced, would defy the most able pen adequately to describe, or the
most fertile imagination to conceive.... On many occasions of ceremony
in families of wealthy individuals, it is customary to distribute alms
to the poor; sometimes four annas, about three-pence, and rarely more
than eight annas each. When such an occurrence is made known, the poor
assemble in astonishing numbers, and the roads are covered with them
from twenty to fifty miles in every direction. On their approaching
the place of gift, no notice is taken of them, though half famished,
and almost unable to stand, till towards the evening, when they are
called into an inclosed space, and huddled together for the night, in
such crowds, that notwithstanding their being in the open air, it is
surprising how they escape suffocation. When the individual who makes
the donation perceives that all the applicants are in the inclosure,
(by which process he guards against the possibility of any poor wretch
receiving his bounty twice), he begins to dispense his alms, either in
the night, or on the following morning, by taking the poor people, one
by one, from the place of their confinement, and driving them off as
soon as they have received their pittance. The number of people thus
accumulated, generally amounts to from twenty to fifty thousand; and
from the distance they travel, and the hardships they endure for so
inconsiderable a bounty, some idea may be formed of their destitute
condition.
“In the interior of Bengal there is a class of inhabitants who live by
catching fish in the ditches and rivulets; the men employing themselves
during the whole day, and the women travelling to the nearest city,
often a distance of fifteen miles, to sell the produce. The rate at
which these poor creatures perform their daily journey is almost
incredible, and the sum realized is so small as scarcely to afford
them the necessaries of life. In short, throughout the whole of the
provinces the crowds of poor wretches who are destitute of the means of
subsistence are beyond belief. On passing through the country, they are
seen to pick the undigested grains of food from the dung of elephants,
horses, and camels; and if they can procure a little salt, large
parties of them sally into the fields at night, and devour the green
blades of corn or rice the instant they are seen to shoot above the
surface. Such, indeed, is their wretchedness that they envy the lot of
the convicts working in chains upon the roads, and have been known to
incur the danger of criminal prosecution, in order to secure themselves
from starving by the allowance made to those who are condemned to hard
labour.”
Such is the condition of these native millions, from whose country our
countrymen, flocking over there, according to the celebrated simile
of Burke, “like birds of prey and of passage, to collect wealth, have
returned with most splendid fortunes to England.” What is the avowed
slavery of some half million of negroes in the West Indies, who have
excited so much interest amongst us, to the virtual slavery of these
_hundred millions_ of Hindus in their own land? It is declared that
these poor creatures are happy under our government,—but it should be
recollected that so it has been, and is, said of the negroes; and it
should be also recollected what Sir John Malcolm said, in 1824, in a
debate at the India-house—himself a governor and a laudator of our
system, that “even the instructed classes of natives have a hostile
feeling towards us, which was not likely to decrease from the necessity
they were under of concealing it. My attention,” he said, “has been
during the last five-and-twenty years particularly directed to this
dangerous species of secret war carried on against our authority,
which is _always carried on_ by numerous though unseen hands. The
spirit is kept up by letters, by exaggerated reports, and by pretended
prophecies. When the time appears favourable from the occurrence of
misfortune to our arms, from rebellion in our provinces, or from mutiny
in our troops, circular letters and proclamations are dispersed over
the country with a celerity that is incredible. _Such documents are
read with avidity._ Their contents are in most cases the same. The
English are depicted as _usurpers_ of low caste, and as tyrants, who
have sought India only to degrade them, to rob them of their wealth,
and subvert their usages and religion. The native soldiers are always
appealed to, and the advice to them is in all instances I have met
with, the same,—‘your European tyrants are few in number—_murder
them_!’”
How far are these evils diminished since the last great political
change in India—since the abolition of the Company’s charter, and
they became, not the commercial monopolists, but the governors of
India? Dr. Spry, of the Bengal Medical Staff, can answer that in
his “Modern India,” published in 1837. The worthy doctor describes
himself as a short time ago (1833) being on an expedition to reduce
some insurrectionary Coles in the provinces of Benares and Dinapore.
“Next morning,” he says, “Feb. 9th, we went out in three parties to
burn and destroy villages! Good fun, burning villages!” The mode of
expression would lead one to suppose that the doctor extremely enjoyed
“the good fun of burning villages;” but the general spirit of his work
being sensible and humane, we are bound to suppose that his expressions
and his notes of admiration are ironical, and meant to indicate the
abhorrence such acts deserves; for he immediately tells us that these
Coles seemed very inoffensive sort of people, and laid down their arms
in large numbers the moment they were invited to do so.
Dr. Spry tells us that the Anglo-Indian government, in 1836, had come
to the admirable resolution to make the English language the vernacular
tongue throughout Indostan. That would be, in effect, to make it
entirely an English land—to leaven it rapidly, and for ever, with the
spirit, the laws, the literature, and the religion of England. It is
impossible to make the English language the vernacular tongue, without
at the same time producing the most astonishing moral revolution which
ever yet was witnessed on the earth. English ideas, English tastes,
English literature and religion, must follow as a matter of course.
It is curious, indeed, already to hear of the instructed natives of
Indostan holding literary and philosophical meetings in English forms,
debating questions of morals and polite letters, and adducing the
opinions of Milton, Shakspeare, Newton, Locke, etc. Dr. Spry states
that the Committee of Public Instruction are about to establish schools
for educating the natives in English, at Patnah, Dacca, Hazeeribagh,
Gohawati, and other places; and that the native princes in Nepaul,
Manipúr, Rajpootanah, the Punjaub, etc. were receiving instruction in
English, and desirous to promote it in their territories. This is most
encouraging; but Dr. Spry gives us other facts of a less agreeable
nature. From these we learn that the ancient canker of India, excessive
and unremitting exaction, is at this moment eating into the very
vitals of the country as actively as ever. He says that “it is in the
territories of the independent native chiefs and princes that great and
useful works are found, and maintained. In our territories, the canals,
bridges, reservoirs, wells, groves, temples, and caravansaries, the
works of our predecessors, from revenues expressly appropriated to such
undertakings, are going fast to decay, together with the feelings which
originated them; and unless a new and more enlightened policy shall be
followed, of which the dawn may, perhaps, be distinguished, will soon
leave not a trace behind. A persistence for a short time longer in our
selfish administration will level the face of the country, as it has
levelled the ranks of society, and leave a plain surface for wiser
statesmen to act on.
“At present, the aspect of society presents no middle class, and the
aspect of the country is losing all those great works of ornament and
utility with which we found it adorned. Great families are levelled,
and lost in the crowd; and great cities have dwindled into farm
villages. The work of destruction is still going on; and unless we
act on new principles will proceed with desolating rapidity. How
many thousand links by which the affections of the people are united
to the soil, and to their government, are every year broken and
destroyed by our selfishness and ignorance; and yet, if our views in
the country extended beyond the returns of a single harvest, beyond
the march of a single detachment, or the journey of a single day, we
could not be so blind to their utility and advantage.” He adds: “By
our revenue management we have shaken the entire confidence of the
rural population, who now no longer lay out their little capital in
village improvement, lest our revenue officers, at the expiration of
their leases, should take advantage of their labours, and impose an
additional rent.... With regard to Hindustan, those natives who are
unfriendly to us _might with justice declare our conduct to be more
allied to Vandalism than to civilization_.... Burke’s severe rebuke
still holds good,—that if the English were driven from India, they
would leave behind them no memorial worthy of a great and enlightened
nation; no monument of art, science, or beneficence; no vestige of
their having occupied and ruled over the country, except such traces
as the vulture and the tiger leave behind them.”—pp. 10-18. He tells
us that a municipal tax was imposed under pretence of improving and
beautifying the towns, but that the improvements very soon stopped,
while the tax is still industriously collected. In the appendix to his
first volume, we find detailed all the miseries of the ryots as we have
just reviewed them; and he tells us that of this outraged class are
_eleven-twelfths of the population_! and quotes the following sentence
from “The Friend of India.” “A proposal was some time since made, or
rather a wish expressed, to domesticate the art of caricaturing in
India. Here is a fine subject. The artist should first draw the lean
and emaciated ryot, scratching the earth at the tail of a plough drawn
by two half-starved, bare-ribbed bullocks. Upon his back he would place
the more robust Seeputneedar, and upon his shoulders the Durputneedar;
he, again, should sustain the well-fed Putneedar; and, seated upon his
shoulders should be represented, to crown the scene, the big zemindar,
that compound of milk, sugar, and clarified butter.... The poor ryot
pays for all! He is drained by these middle-men; he is cheated by his
banker out of twenty-four per cent. at least; and his condition is
beyond description or imagination.”
Dr. Spry attests the present continuance of those scenes of destitution
and abject wretchedness which I have but a few pages back alluded to.
He has seen the miserable creatures picking up the grains of corn from
the soil of the roads. “I have seen,” says he, “hundreds of famishing
poor, traversing the jungles of Bundlecund, searching for wild berries
to satisfy the cravings of hunger. Many, worn down by exhaustion
or disease, die by the road-side, while mothers, to preserve their
offspring from starvation, sell or give them to any rich man they can
meet!” He himself, in 1834, was offered by such a mother her daughter
of six years old for fourteen shillings!—vol. i. 297.
These are the scenes and transactions in our great Indian empire—that
splendid empire which has poured out such floods of wealth into this
country; in which such princely presents of diamonds and gold have been
heaped on our adventurers; from the gleanings of which so many happy
families in England[25] “live at home at ease,” and in the enjoyment
of every earthly luxury and refinement. For every palace built by
returned Indian nabobs in England; for every investment by fortunate
adventurers in India stock; for every cup of wine and delicious viand
tasted by the families of Indian growth amongst us, how many of these
Indians themselves are now picking berries in the wild jungles,
sweltering at the thankless plough only to suffer fresh extortions, or
snatching with the bony fingers of famine, the bloated grains from the
manure of the high-ways of their native country!
I wonder whether the happy and fortunate—made happy and fortunate by
the wealth of India, ever think of these things?—whether the idea
ever comes across them in the luxurious carriage, or at the table
crowded with the luxuries of all climates?—whether they glance in
a sudden imagination from the silken splendour of their own abodes,
to the hot highways and the pestilential jungles of India, and see
those naked, squalid, famishing, and neglected creatures, thronging
from vast distances to the rich man’s dole, or feeding on the more
loathsome dole of the roads? It is impossible that a more strange
antithesis can be pointed out in human affairs. We turn from it with
even a convulsive joy, to grasp at the prospects of education in that
singular country. Let the people be educated, and they will soon cease
to permit oppression. Let the English engage themselves in educating
them, and they will soon feel all the sympathies of nature awaken in
their hearts towards these unhappy natives. In the meantime these are
all the features of a country suffering under the evils of a long and
grievous thraldom. They are the growth of ages, and are not to be
removed but by a zealous and unwearying course of atoning justice.
Spite of all flattering representations to the contrary, the British
public should keep its eye fixed steadily on India, assuring itself
that a debt of vast retribution is their due from us; and that we have
only to meet the desire now anxiously manifested by the natives for
education, to enable us to expiate towards the children all the wrongs
and degradations heaped for centuries on the fathers; and to fix our
name, our laws, our language and religion, as widely and beneficently
there as in the New World!