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SPEECH
ON
INDIAN AFFAIRS,
DELIVERED BEFORE THE
MANCHESTER CHAMBER OF COMMERCE,
ON THE
24TH JANUARY, 1866.
BY
ROBERT KNIGHT.
("TIMES OF INDIA.")

LONDON:
WILLIAM JOHN JOHNSON, 121, FLEET STREET,
MDCCCLXV
DOCOLAY!
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435
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LONDON: W. J. JOHNSON, PRINTER, 121, FLEET STREET.
3.
45 713029
PREFACE.
SIR CHARLES TREVELYAN's device of Export Duties, to meet the
deficit which the Budget Estimates professed to show in the
Indian balance-sheet for 1865-6, drew forth from the press of
this country a series of comments upon our finances, marked
by so painful an absence of exact, or comprehensive, acquaint-
ance with our condition, that I looked round me to see to whom
I might address myself with a reasonable hope of secur-
ing a hearing upon the question. The Times had refused to
publish a letter which I had sent to it upon the subject
—a letter which I venture to think it ought to have
welcomed to its columns, as the contribution of a writer
who had very closely studied Indian finance upon the
spot. In despair of awakening public attention in this
way to considerations which are completely overlooked
in this country, I determined to address myself to "the
Manchester Party," in the hope that it might be induced
to look carefully and comprehensively into our finances. I
addressed myself to them, because, after all, they seem to be
the only body of men in England who are willing to make
any effort to grasp the facts of bur eondition. We have
B 2
iv
PREFACE.
no right, I submit, to inspect too narrowly the motives.
of Manchester in this matter; and it is hardly decent on the
part of gentlemen who refuse to take any interest in Indian
affairs themselves, to carp or sneer at those who do.
In pursuance of this resolution, I sought and obtained in
June last an interview, in London, with Mr. Bazley, and
other members of the House, in the presence of Mr. Henry
Ashworth, the respected leader of the Manchester Chamber
of Commerce; and I think I may venture to say that at the
close of a long conversation with these gentlemen, I left
them impressed with the necessity of bringing the whole sub-
ject of Indian finance under exact parliamentary inquiry.
The session was then too far advanced to admit of any-
thing being done before the dissolution of the House, but
Mr. Ashworth did not forget the pledge he gave me, that
Manchester should take up the subject. Accordingly, a few
weeks ago, I was invited to attend a conference of its
Chamber to discuss the following subjects:-
1. The impolicy of levying Duties on Cotton Goods and Yarns
imported into India.
2. The impolicy of Export Duties, as shown in the case of
Saltpetre.
3. The advantages likely to attend the Sale of Waste Lands of
India in fee-simple.
4. The Perpetual Settlement of the Land-tax.
5. The enactment of a Law providing for the registration and
enforcement of Contracts, and the establishment of Small
Cause Courts, at convenient distances throughout the
country, invested with Summary Jurisdiction.
PREFACE.
V
6. The more active prosecution of Public Works, especially as
regards Roads and Irrigation.
The Conference took place on the 24th ultimo, when the
Chamber was addressed by Mr. Dickenson (of the Indian
Reform Society), Mr. Walter Cassels (late of the Bombay
Legislative Council), Mr. Danby Seymour, Lord William
Hay, Sir Arthur Cotton, and myself.
and myself. As I followed
these gentlemen, at the close of a long sitting, and spoke at
considerable length, the reporters abandoned the attempt
to do more than note what seemed to them to be the main
propositions of my address. It has been represented to
me, however, that it is of some importance that what I said
on the occasion should be more widely known; and in repro-
ducing from my notes the considerations I laid before the
Conference, I have endeavoured to state exactly what I
wished to have said upon each subject, rather than what
I may have said.
I have also increased the speech by
embodying in it the substance of certain remarks which I
made in conversation subsequently with some of the leading
members of the Chamber, as I am anxious that the subjects
dealt with may be fully understood.
We are carrying through in India at this moment a fiscal
revolution of fatal import to the country, upon the strength
of a vague general impression that we are doing a wise thing;
an impression so erroneous that the least exact inquiry
is sufficient to dissipate it. A Permanent Settlement of
the Land Revenue throughout the whole of the North West
vi
PREFACE.
Provinces of India, has been proclaimed within the last
eighteen months, while the Government of the country does
not possess as much exact information, as to the pressure
of the impost upon those provinces, as would justify it in
settling the bazaar duties of a village.
So little appreciation is there, moreover, of what that
change means, that Sir Charles Wood told me, in the course of
a conversation I had with him, upon my arrival from India
in 1864, that no change would be made in the Land Set-
tlement of the country. Within three months of that
assurance, a Permanent Settlement of the Land Revenue
was proclaimed throughout the whole of the provinces I
have named! The news of this revolution has been received
almost without comment in this country. I do not hesitate
to say, that peaceful rule of India in the future will be
impossible, if Parliament do not lay its arrest upon the
monstrous folly of which that settlement is the expression.
There has been no Select Committee of Inquiry into Indian
affairs since 1858-9, and if ever such a Committee were
needed it is certainly at this crisis, when the whole fiscal
system of India is to be recast, apparently,pon the model of
this country, while everything in the circumstances of that
Empire, speaks trumpet-tongued to us of the danger of such a
course.
It is a curious fact that this great revolution is being car-
ried through, in the teeth of an almost unanimous expres-
an almorgans
sion of opinion against it, in the leading organs of this country
:
PREFACE.
vii
2
no later than 1862, when it was presented in the far less fatal
shape of Lord Canning's famous Land Resolution. On that
occasion, the Times, better informed than it is now, assured
us that the scheme was nothing less than "a total subver-
"sion of the fundamental principles of Indian Government
thoroughly understood and deliberately adopted by the
"great statesmen who ruled India under the Company. It
“is the surrender of a radical principle of our Indian policy.
"It is the sacrifice of the one single opportunity left in the
"world of carrying out in practice the essential principle of
political economy in the maintenance of a community with
"entire justice and without waste. From the first hour when
"the philosophy of administration has been understood, it has
"been admitted that the true source of State revenue is the
land, and the only sound policy is to preserve the land as
"the property of the State. The land is the one species
"of property which necessarily and perdurably increases in
"value by the mere growth of society, and which can
"therefore be charged with the support of the State,
precluding all burdens upon individuals, and precisely
adapting itself to the demands upon it. The misfortune
((
of all the Western kingdoms of the world has been, that
"this discovery was not clearly made till the practical appli-
"cation of it had become impossible, through the appropria-
"tion of the soil as private property; and when India
"came into the hands of our fathers, they found them-
"selves in possession of the one opportunity left in• the
viii
PREFACE.
"world for carrying on government without taxation, and
"without the necessity for ever instituting taxes."
The Daily News warned us with equal vigour against
the minor change that was then contemplated; while now
that a revolution of ten times its gravity is advancing
with giant footsteps towards completion, almost no voice
is raised in its arrest. One of the great objects of my
address to the Chamber was to awaken attention to this
subject, while there is yet time for inquiry; the others
I had in view, will speak for themselves. And I venture
earnestly to beg, in the interests of our great Indian Empire,
a patient hearing of considerations novel to the English
mind, but vital to the welfare of India.
LONDON, February, 1866.
SPEECH.
SIR,—I have listened with great attention to the speeches
which have been delivered here this morning, and before
entering upon any consideration of the special propositions
on which you invite discussion, I must be allowed to make
some remarks upon what has fallen from the gentlemen who
have preceded me. You opened the meeting, Sir, yourself,
by quoting with great approval from an Indian journal
the statement that India had allowed the fairest opportunity
a nation ever possessed "of establishing, once and for ever,
a lasting and lucrative trade in cotton" to slip by her without
improvement. The exact quotation was as follows: "It is
obvious that the prosperity of a country would be better
promoted by a ready alacrity in seizing the great opportuni-
ties of improvement which the fluctuation of events is now
and again placing within our reach. Never had a nation a
fairer opportunity of establishing, once and for ever, a lasting
and lucrative trade in cotton than that which the American
war offered, and never has a nation more grievously neglected
it. . . . It was known that our staple was bad, and in normal
states of the market could not hold its ground against that of
America; and, instead of any vigorous and enlightened efforts
being made to improve it, or to compel improvement, which
would have been the exercise merely of a humane despotism,
we have a Cotton Frauds Act as the summum bonum of legis-
lative wisdom, and a Cotton Commissioner experimenting,
and still experimenting and distributing a few pounds of New
Orleans seed annually in Mofussil"
10
Now, Sir, the journal you have quoted represents
largely the non-official mind of India, and I must state,
at the outset of my speech, my deep regret that this
Chamber so constantly reflects the uninformed opinions of
this class. It is one of our misfortunes, Sir-and one that
admits of no remedy-that you will never get, and never can
expect to get, an enlightened and well-informed judgment
upon the affairs of India from the non-official body in that
country.
The Bombay Chamber of Commerce at this moment con-
sists of a body of young men, than whom no better judges
of piece goods and cotton, I dare say, could be found in
the world, but who are void of much practical wisdom
on political subjects, and who have necessarily little acquaint-
ance with Indian affairs. You send out these young men at
• twenty or twenty-two years of age, to sell piece goods for you,
and to buy cotton; and they commonly retire from the country
within eight or ten years. The consequence is that the
only deliberative non-official body we have, the Chamber-
whose opinions you are constantly reflecting here—is of an
average age of twenty-seven or twenty-eight years. Well,
do you think you are likely, Sir, to get much matured wisdom.
from such a body, or much safe guidance upon the troubled
sea of Indian affairs?
From curiosity, I tried out for myself the other day the
average age of some twenty members of your House of
Commons, taken at random, and of the Peers; and I found
the average age of the Lower House to be fifty-four years,
of the Lords, fifty-seven. And can any on doubt that it
is because of this preponderance of age in your national
councils, that so much practical wisdom guides them, and that
so seldom is any step taken, in either House, which comes
afterwards to be regretted? But what would be the effect,
Sir, of getting together a Parliament of the average
age of twenty-eight years? I would beg the Chamber to
weigh this consideration well. You never, Sir, can get from
the non-official body of India, an opinion upon public affairs
11
that you may safely trust; and so long as this Chamber
continues to reflect that opinion so largely as it does,
its influence upon the conduct of our affairs cannot be
otherwise than perilous. Go back now to the quotation
you read, and allow me to cast a little light upon it.
You will remember that the Cotton Frauds Act emanated
from this Chamber. You expressed a strong opinion as to the
necessity of such an Act: and in furtherance of your wishes.
the Government of Bombay appointed a Committee to draft
an enactment upon the subject. Two or three of the most
prominent merchants of Bombay (the Hon. Mr. Scott amongst
them) sat upon that Committee, and both official and non-
official members worked loyally at its construction. The Bill
was at last published. It was not a perfect Bill; but it was
the best Bill the Committee could draft; and how was it
received? Why that very journal you have quoted with so
much approval, did its utmost to prevent the Bill becoming
law! The Government had inadvertently omitted to consult
the Chamber collectively, in the preparation of the measure;
and that wise body of very young men almost insolently told
the Government that it need look for no help from them to
carry the measure into effect.. The dignity of these young
gentlemen was offended. They had been insulted, and what
they could do they did, to thwart the measure.
Now it is desirable, perhaps, gentlemen, that I should,
as bearing on my practical knowledge of these questions,
say, that I am proprietor of the
am proprietor of the Times of India,
and edited that journal myself from 1857 to 1864.
But it happen that I am more. I am a non-official
of the non-officials, for I am one of those very coffee-
planters of the Neilgherry Hills, upon whose woes Mr.
Danby Seymour has been touching this morning. I pos-
sess one of the largest estates upon those hills, and have,
at this moment, nearly 300 men at work upon it. I
have no connexion with Government, direct or remote. I
have no expectations from it whatever; but I have had the
advantage of watching its couse very closely for many
12
years past, as a political writer. Well, gentlemen, I
tell you that it is a libel upon the Government of
India to say-as has been said here this morning-
that it is disaffected to European enterprise in India. I
affirm, from a long course of observation upon the spot, and
after full opportunity of forming an unbiassed judgment,
that, upon the whole, the Government of India is as wish-
ful to promote European enterprise in India, and push
forward the affairs of that country, as this Chamber. You
have had a long impeachment, gentlemen, this morning,
of the Indian Government from Mr. Dickenson. Now I
have the warmest regard for Mr. Dickenson, as a sincere
friend of India. I know him to be such, but I know him also
to be wrong in this matter. Some years ago, we pulled very
much together, when urgent reforms were required; but Mr.
Dickenson has been ill-informed on Indian subjects of late
years. He has done what you have done, reflected too faith-
fully the uninformed non-official opinion of India; and he
has, therefore, gone wrong. I will give you an instance of
it. It is not yet four years since Mr. Dickenson brought out
a pamphlet by a Mr. Brown, of Tellicherry, upon Indian
affairs. So important did Mr. Dickenson deem it to be, that
he himself wrote a preface to it, and launched it from
the gates of the Reform Society at the Indian Govern-
ment. And what was Mr. Brown's complaint?
A pas-
sionate protest against our injustice to the people of India,
in allowing Cotton and Seeds to escape the export duty
we levied upon the coarse grains grown in the country!
Neither Mr. Dickenson nor Mr. Brown could see, that we
did so in the ryot's own interest, that he might compete
on the best possible terms with other producers of cotton
and seeds. Now, gentlemen, suppose for one moment that
the Indian Government had listened to Mr. Dickenson's
representations, and put an export duty on cotton, I ask you
what would have been the judgment of this Chamber upon
the matter? And it is Mr. Dickenson who so vehemently
denounces this morning the misgovernment of India, as the
cause of your getting no more cotton therefrom.
13
But again, you heard the same gentleman complain
that the coffee-planters of India were left without ads to
their estates, and Mr. Danby Seymour seemed to be at one
with him. Now I beg the Chamber to observe how readily it
may be misled upon such subjects. I am, as I have told you,
one of these very Neilgherry coffee-planters, but I have never
dreamed of reproaching Government that it had made no
road to my estate. These coffee lands lie in inaccessible, out-
of-the-way localities, where no roads exist, but simply moun-
tain paths. The coffee-planter selects land in these districts,
with the full knowledge that he will find great difficulty in get-
ting his crops to the seaside. Were the lands more accessible
did good roads exist to them, he would have to pay a very
high price for them, where he now obtains them for an almost
nominal cost. But he has no sooner opened his estate, and
brought it into bearing, than he begins to cry out against the
Government, because of the difficulty of getting his produce
down to the plains. But is the Government to blame for
that? Is the Government—all the energies and resources of
which are unequal to construct roads, even in the plains-to
go up into the hills, and make them for the planter? Let
him do, Sir, as I have done, make them for himself. It
was only yesterday that I accepted a bill for £500, drawn
by my partner, at Coonoor, for making roads to our estate;
and I repudiate Mr. Danby Seymour's sympathy, and Mr.
Dickenson's remonstrances, on our behalf. This incessant
calling upon Government to help us is most unhealthy, and,
allow me to add, most un-English. You must not take up
such outcries, gentlemen, in this Chamber, if your influence
is to be a right one, but must regard with more suspicion
than you are accustomed to show, the representations of the
non-official class in India.
I am truly sorry, gentlemen, to have had to complain.
of the tenor of Mr. Dickenson's address, for I have a sincere
admiration for his disinterested and laborious efforts on
behalf of India. I only wish they had been of late years
more wisely directed.
+
14
I will now proceed, Sir, to take up, in regular order, the
propositions for discussing which we are invited here to-day.
The first of them is this:-
The impolicy of levying duties on Cotton goods and Yarns im-
ported into India.
in
Gentlemen, you want in this Chamber greater breadth
your treatment of Indian affairs. I agree with you
that it is bad policy to levy duties on yarn and piece
goods imported into India, but not on the ground on
which you come to that conclusion. I tell you that it
is bad policy to levy Customs duties at all in India,
because you never can get a revenue from such duties. A
tax never draws well, till it reaches the masses. Now it so
happens, that the only articles of general consumption that
pass through the Indian Custom-house, or are ever likely
to pass through it, are the products of your mills and
looms. The total gross revenue we are deriving at this
moment from the vast network of Customs machinery
which stretches along our coast of 3,500 miles, is less
than £2,200,000! And, gentlemen, you will never get much
more. The existence of Custom-houses in India is but a
wretched imitation of the fiscal system which has grown up
in Europe, under a condition of things totally different from
what prevails in India, or ever can prevail there. You
find no difficulty in this country in raising a vast revenue
with great ease through your Custom-houses.
But why?
Because through your Custom-houses dies the highway of
half-a-dozen products of the world's industry, that are con-
sumed by every man, woman, and child in the country. Thus
you get a very large revenue from a small duty upon tea,
because every one drinks tea; from coffee, because every one
drinks coffee; from sugar, because every one uses sugar; and
so on. A tax never draws well, till it reaches the masses. And
so, the only important source of revenue in our Customs list
in India, is just those very manufactures which you want to
see imported free. I, also, should like to see them imported
15
free; but as they yield us half our revenue from Customs,
if you admit them free, you must admit everything else
free. And that, I believe, is our right policy in India:
free ports everywhere; because under no conceivable con-
dition of things, can we ever hope to get a revenue of
any moment from Customs. It is because of this, that I
hold so strongly the impolicy and danger of tampering with
the one great and inexhaustible source of revenue in India-
the land! The advocates of a change tell you that if you will
permanently settle the land-tax, the people will soon show
a power of consuming dutiable articles that will make you
independent of the land-tax. But what dutiable articles?
Is it to be tea, the people are going to consume; or
sugar; or coffee? Why, they are all grown at their
doors. Is it to be spirits? The 40,000,000 of Mussulmans
cannot, and the masses of the Hindoo people will not, touch
them; and I hope never will.
My quarrel, Sir, with the men who are tampering with
our land revenue is this, that while they cannot point out an
article or product of any kind, from which there is even a
remote prospect of our ever getting revenue in India through
the Custom-house, they would have us be content with general
assurances that we need have no fear upon the subject. To
show, Sir, how inelastic our Customs are, allow me to point
out that we are getting very little more to-day from this
source, than we were forty to fifty years ago:
CUSTOMS REVENUE-INDIA.
1817-18 to 1821-22
1827-28 to 1831-32
1865-6°
£1,667,000
1,747,000
2,191,180
These figures represent the average annual revenue from
Customs forty years ago, and the total estimated revenue
of the present year. You sent us the late Mr. Wilson
to set our finances right, and I would speak with every
respect for the memory of that distinguished man; but so
16
little insight had Mr. Wilson into our real condition,
that even he dreamed of a large revenue from Custom-
houses. But did he find any new dutiable articles that he
might tax? No; nor will such ever be found in the list of
our imports, unless you make up your minds to tax
bullion, and metals, and machinery. All that Mr. Wilson
could do was to raise the rates to 20 per cent. By this
⚫ spasm he screwed the revenue temporarily up to £4,000,000,
to sink back within two or three years to its old level of
£2,000,000, when his highly prohibitive tariff was abandoned.
You may lay it down, gentlemen, as an axiom of Indian
finance, that you will never realise a revenue through your
Customs establishments. Take the duty off piece goods and
yarns, and we have £1,000,000 of gross revenue left ;* from
which all the charges of collection over 3,500 miles of sea-
board have to be deducted. Everything in our circum-
stances points to the propriety of our declaring free-trade
with the world—not comparative free-trade, as you have it
here, but absolute; that we open our ports to the ships
of all nations, and taking upon ourselves the trifling
charges of harbour dues, light dues, and pilot dues, bid
all the ships that traverse the ocean come and wel-
come" to India, without imposts of any kind. It is
impossible to say what the seaborne commerce of India
might not become under wise government; but, gentlemen,
while declaring her ports free, we must hold fast by her
land-tax, for it is the one certain source, and the only certain
source, of her revenue.
Let me sum up.
If we are to have Custom-ho uses in
India at all, then must we pronounce against your first pro-
position, which declares the impolicy of our levying duty upon
piece goods and yarn; for to retain our Custom-houses,
and abolish our chief source of revenue therefrom, is plainly
absurd. Rather than see such deference shown to the in-
terests of this Chamber, I would consent to an excise
* Raised from nearly 1,000 articles of import and export!
17
upon the produce of the Bombay mills. For let it be
well understood, that the duties we are levying upon your
manufactures, are in no sense whatever protective. They are
imposed simply for purposes of revenue; and if we are to
retain import duties at all, then must these be retained. I
am not even prepared to say that they ought not to be in-
creased, in such event; but I have told you freely my
conviction that the imposition of such duties, at all, in India
is an error in our fiscal system, arising from a mischievous
caricature of the highly artificial system of taxation that
prevails in this country.
I need say very little, Sir, upon the second subject on
your paper:
"The impolicy of Export Duties, as shown in the case of
Saltpetre."
What I have said on the subject of import duties, applies
with still greater force to export duties, in a country like
India. An export duty, I suppose, is never defensible,
except in those rare cases where a country possesses the
monopoly of some production. An export duty was laid.
upon Indian saltpetre, by the late Mr. Wilson, under the
impression that Bengal possessed a virtual monopoly of the
supply. I shared the belief with that gentleman, but
I understand that it is now, found that the cheaper salts
produced in America, and in France, are competing suc-
cessfully with the saltpetre of Bengal. Well, if that be
so, the export duty levied in the Indian ports should, of
course, be remitted at once.
But here, again, Sir, let us get upon a broader plat-
form. Export duties in India are a mistake altogether,
and should be wholly given up. We are compelled, by
the competition which the ryot has to encounter from the
producers of other lands, to allow Cotton, Seeds, and others
of our great exports, an exemption from export duties;
and the result is, that our vast export, trade is burdened
with all the forms of a cumbrous Customs' procedure, for
C
18
the sake of a revenue little better than nominal. I have
not the statistics of the last two or three years with me,
but in 1862 I directed the attention of the Bombay Chamber
to this subject, in the Times of India, as follows:-
"The total value of our exports during the last year, was
upwards of £21,000,000. Will it be credited, then, that the
gross amount of export duty, realised by the cumbrous and
vexatious machinery appointed to collect it, was just £54,416
sterling! The truth is, that in so far as our export trade is
concerned, we are compelled to allow it to be free of all but
nominal imposts, while we yet mischievously incumber it
with an irritating and expensive Customs procedure, that
could not be more elaborate, though we were deriving millions
from its existence. Let the Chamber of Commerce weigh
the fact, that our export trade of twenty-one millions sterling
is burdened with all the forms of an elaborate Customs Act
for the sake of £54,000 a-year-a sum probably not amount-
ing to what our merchants have to pay in the shape of
salaries for clearing clerks, and hardly more than equiva-
lent to the pay of the establishment required to make the levy.
On our import trade of £22,000,000 we realised during the
year the gross sum of £774,861, against which have to be set
about £50,000 for drawback, and all the expenses of the
collection. Of this sum, moreover, the duty on yarn and
piece goods alone amounted to £360,000, or nearly one-half of
the gross collections of the port. As the Chamber knows
very well, it will not be long before this amount will have to
be sacrificed to Manchester demands, when the fact stands
revealed that for the sake of a gross collection of £353,000,
or thereabouts, we are wise enough to, burden a trade of
£42,000,000 sterling, with all the hindrances a Custom-house
offers to its growth. To increase the pressure of either the
import or export duties would be next to impossible, and how
wild is the idea of our ever depending thereon in India, for
the national expenditure, is clear."
The belief that I would urge upon this Chamber, Sir,
is this, that the Custom-house is an institution unsuited
1
19
to our circumstances in India altogether. It costs us
far more in the way of hindrance to our trade, than we
derive from it, or ever can derive from it. The belief that we
shall ever be able to depend upon indirect taxation for the
national income will shipwreck us, if we are unwise enough
to trust to it; whereas, by opening all the ports of India to
an unfettered commerce, we should see a development of its
trade that would strike the world with wonder. To illustrate
the greater folly by the less, can there be a more pitiful exhi-
bition of the "traditional wisdom" which is forced upon us, than
the levy of light dues and harbour dues in our ports? You have
not found out yet, even in this country, Sir, all the secrets of
successful intercourse with the world. In private life, who that
wishes to see his friends, would direct the keeper of his lodge
to demand a toll of every visitor to keep the carriage-drive in
order, and to pay the cost of lighting it? Not one whit more
reasonable are the light dues and harbour dues you have
learned from your fathers to levy upon the shipping that
comes to your ports, and which you make us also levy in
India. Allow us to publish to the shipping of the world that
so desirous are we of their coming to our ports, that they
shall be free to come and go unchallenged; that we will levy
no due of any kind upon ship or cargo, but will regard all the
favour of the visit as conferred upon ourselves; that we will
lighten the approaches, and mark the dangers, and point out
the anchorages of our harbours at our own expense, and that
all we ask of them is TO COME! The result of such a course
would be that, within 20 years, India would lead the commerce
of the world, and you would find all other nations pressing in
our wake, imitating, as far as was possible to them, our
example, and wondering at our fortunes and our future.
And now, Sir, about waste lands. We are asked to express
our opinion upon
The advantages likely to attend the sale of Waste Lands in
India in Fee Simple.
That it is desirable to get the waste lands of India culti-
vated, there can be no doubt; but you must remember,
20
•
gentlemen, that it is not waste lands for the growth of cotton,
or any other staple of the plains, that all the agitation in
India has been about; but waste lands for the growth
of tea and coffee. Now, I am a coffee-planter myself; but
I have learned, from my vocation as editor, I suppose,
to take a broader interest in India than planters usually do,
and I cannot conceal from myself that the advantages which
are expected to flow from the planting of tea and coffee on
the mountain slopes of India, are greatly over-estimated.
It is from no love of paradox, nor from any wish to
depreciate the planter, that I affirm that the advantages
. derived by the people of India from the presence of the
planter, are far from being as important as he supposes.
So settled is the belief that we are to derive immense ad-
vantages from the enterprise of English planters, that
it is almost dangerous to venture upon an investiga-
tion of its grounds. And yet nothing can be more super-
ficial, than popular impressions upon the point. If you
inquire at all closely into the subject, it will appear that
all the direct advantages of the enterprise, are enjoyed by
the planter himself; and that the indirect ones the country
may hope to reap therefrom, are by no means of the magni-
tude popularly assigned them. It is overlooked, I think, that
there is a wide difference between the successful cultiva-
tion of a new article of export upon the waste hills of a
country, and the successful cultivation of the same article
upon the lands already under cultivation. Tea and coffee
planting by Europeans upon the was mountain slopes of
India, will have an altogether different effect upon the
country, from the successful cultivation of the same pro-
ducts in the plains. For the successful growth of a new export
in the cultivated lands of a country, enhances the value of its
whole area; not so the growth of a new export upon its
wastes. In the former case, the export displaces less valuable
crops; and, contracting the acreage under such crops, will
raise the value of all descriptions of produce together, to the
indefinite advantage of the agriculturist. In the case of hill
21
:
wastes, however, brought under cultivation with products that
cannot be grown in the plains, it seems to me that the agricul-
turist must lose much of what the labouring class gains
In other words, the demand for labour upon the hill planta-
tions, makes labour dearer in the plains. The mere labourer
will gain by this, of course; but it will be at the expense of
the producer, who will find the cost of cultivation proportion-
ately enhanced of every staple in which he has to compete
with other lands. Thus the advantages the tea and coffee
planter's presence brings with it, are largely counter-
balanced by the injury it inflicts on the plains. The culti-
vation of tea and coffee in the hills makes the cost of pro.
ducing cotton and linseed in the plains greater than before;
and, by so much, places the producer at a disadvantage in
competing with the agriculture of other lands. For it
must be remembered that this is not the case of a land suffer-
ing under a surplusage of labour, but of a land in which the
dearth of labour is already severely felt. I trust that no
one will suppose that I repine at the labourer's good fortune.
I am simply pointing out considerations in connexion with
European planting, that have been, I think, overlooked.
In the next place, the planter in nineteen cases out of
twenty will be an "absentee landlord," drawing a large
revenue, as time wears on, from India, and spending it in
England. This, of itself, is a very important drawback, in
no way counterbalanced by the fact, that the plantations may
pass eventually by purchase into native hands; since the
purchase-money of these estates, their capitalised value, will
find its way sooner or later to Europe. The money paid by
the planter for the fee-simple of the land, is too trifling in
amount, to be worth estimating in this inquiry. What,
then, are the advantages which India is to derive from a
cultivation, the profits of which go to enrich not her own
children, but ourselves? No doubt it will be replied, that
the mere presence of a body of Europeans in the country
engaged in such pursuits, will exercise a beneficial in-
fluence upon the character, and the future, of the people. I
22
am disposed to allow full weight to this consideration; but
am afraid that the history of colonisation in all parts of the
world, is far from encouraging the anticipations formed on
this head. To come nearer home, what have the indigo
planters done for Bengal, during the half-century of their
fortune-making therein? What could be more demoralising
to both races, than the nature of the relations subsisting
between them, at its close? And as to securing good govern-
ment for the people, the Bengal planters were willing enough,
it is to be feared, to have allowed the old state of matters to
have remained until doomsday, so long as their own powers
remained intact.
But let us suppose, that the advantages which are to flow
from planting enterprise in India, are to be all that is pre-
dicted of it, what grievance is there in the Government
putting those tea and coffee lands up to auction, that it
may obtain the best possible price for them? So restricted
are they in extent-at the Neilgherries, for instance—that it
is difficult, if not impossible, any longer to obtain land there
at all. I myself was one of those aggrieved gentlemen who
applied for land under Lord Canning's rules, and had to submit
to take it under Sir Charles Wood's. I certainly had hoped
that I should get it at the upset price of Rs.5 an acre. But
those "rascally" natives, who knew the value of the land as
well as my partner, ran us up to Rs.18 the acre, for a large
part of it. But I made no grievance of the thing; I was but
The newspapers,
too glad to get the land even at that rate.
however, who never knew that I was the purchaser, took
the cudgels up for me, to my great amusement, and abused
the Government roundly for the exaction. As a matter of
fact, Sir, there never was of late years, any unreasonable diffi-
culty in getting waste lands in India. In proof of this, I point
you to the fact that the Wynaad, and the Neilgherries on our
side of India, were filled with coffee plantations; and on the
Bengal side, in Assam, Cachar, and Darjeeling, its great tea
districts, no fewer than 196 estates were under cultivation in
1861, before Lord Canning's Resolutions were even heard of!
23
?
The tea plant was first discovered growing wild in Cachar,
in the year 1855, and the total area under lease in Bengal for
cultivation, at the close of April, 1861-that is, within six
years-is supposed to have been not less than 200,000 acres.
Could any more conclusive proof be given of the sort
of agitation, in deference to which the land resolution
of Lord Canning was passed? The truth is, that the crime
of the State was, that it attempted in any way to
keep a reserved rent for the Commonwealth, in the
limited districts of the country, which were found suited to
tea and coffee cultivation. Sick with anxiety to get the
land into their possession, the needy adventurers of Calcutta.
screamed with rage at every intimation on the part of Go-
vernment, that the land should only be sold at its fair value,
until they frightened the timid counsellors around Lord
Canning into the unconditional promise of selling it to the
first comer at Rs.5 per acre. That no unreasonable obstacle
ever existed to the obtaining of land in these districts,
I have shown; while the sort of applications that were
made for land received a fair illustration in the case
of Messrs. Barry and Hernott, who obtained-and of Sir J. P.
Grant, be it remembered, too-nearly twenty thousand acres
of tea land in Cachar, and had opened just fifty acres at the
close of the year 1860-61, at which date they were employing
twenty-two coolies in developing the resources of the country!
Is it not lamentable, gentlemen, that you should be misled
by the representations of such men?
You have had, this morning, from the lips of Mr. Danby
Seymour, a very fair illustration of the sort of demand I
am exposing. You remember, Sir, that he called your atten-
tion to the fact that Mr. Temple, Commissioner of Nagpore,
had been rebuked by the Government of Calcutta for wishing
to sell 16,000 acres of land, to some one who had applied
for it. And you remember the price that was to be paid for
it-sixpence per acre. That is to say, the Government of
India did very wrong to refuse to alienate in perpetuity
about thirty square miles of territory, when the magnificent
24
sum of £400 was offered for the purchase. Why at that
moment, Sir, we were sending a railway into the heart of
Nagpore, at the cost of £20,000 a-mile! My humble
judgment is, that the Government of India-and by that I
mean the Commonwealth of India-is better off to-day with
those thirty square miles of land in its possession, than it would
have been with the £400 offered in exchange for them.
Gentlemen, you must remember that the Government of
India dare not lose sight of the fact, that its one source of
revenue is the land, now and for all time, so far as we can see.
And this leads me, Sir, to remark further, that what the
.planter really demands in India, is a good deal more than what
you call fee-simple. For there is nothing inconsistent with
a fee-simple title, in the levying a tax upon the land. Now
the grievance of the planting body is, that the title does
not carry with it exemption from the land-tax. Of
course it would very materially enhance the value of my
estate, if no land-tax were to be levied upon it now or for
ever. But I know that the Government must have a
revenue; and I see clearly that a land-tax is the wisest
of all taxes in India, and I will not be a party to any
selfish agitation for a concession, that the Government
of India ought not to make. My title is perfect, though
I do pay a land-tax of Rs.2 an acre, and shall probably
by-and-bye have to pay more. The Commonwealth has
a right to tax my land, if that is the wisest and most
equitable way of raising the revenue; and I believe it
is. What the planters of India required was far more, I
say, than a fee-simple right in their lands. They demanded
not only absolute ownership of the land, but a pledge that
we would never lay a tax thereon; an exemption which fee-
simple title in this country so little conveys, that one of the
first economists of the age asserts his opinion, that the State
has a clear and equitable right even here to the whole
"future increment of rent that may arise from causes
independent of the landlord's exertions, if it choose to
assert it. Mr. Danby Seymour must pardon my telling
""
25
him that fee-simple titles exist throughout India, although
we do raise a revenue from the land.
The terms "lease" and "rent" when applied to India,
are very misleading to English ears. You have heard this
morning Mr. Cassels' lucid description of the thirty years'
leases of the Bombay Presidency; and I endorse heartily all
that gentleman's statements upon the subject. The holders
of these leases have as indefeasible a title to their lands, as
any fee-simple in existence.
No power on earth can disturb
their possession of them. Their title is absolute. They
hold for ever; subject only to a trifling impost upon their
estates, liable to enhancement, and quite possibly to reduc-
tion, once in a generation of years.
And here, Sir, let me beg your careful attention to a fact I
am anxious to fasten in the memory of this Chamber. You
have heard it asserted this morning by Mr. Seymour, upon
high official authority, that the land revenue of India is
a rack-rent of one-half, and even two-thirds, the produce
of the ryots' fields. Sir, it is not very creditable to the
Government of India, that it was left to a journalist
there to explode this absurdity. It is only within the
last three or four years, that I have succeeded, I think, in
India, in dissipating this mischievous delusion. It lingers, no
doubt, still here and there in some muddled official brains,
and forms too convenient a cry for selfish agitators to be com-
pletely silenced as yet. But if Mr. Danby Seymour will
take out his pencil, and note down a few figures that I will
give him, I think can convince him that he is in error.
Let us suppose, then, for a moment that he is right
in his belief, that the assessment we are levying absorbs
one-half of the gross produce of the land. It will, then,
follow-since the gross land revenue of our territories
amounts to no more than £20,000,000 sterling-that the
total value of the produce is just twice that sum, or
£40,000,000 sterling annually. There is no escape from this
conclusion in any direction. If the assessment really amount
to one-half of the produce, then must the. whole value of
26
that produce be just twice the amount of that assessment.
But we know the amount of the assessment to a fraction ;
and in round figures it is £20,000,000. Plainly, then, if Mr.
Seymour's statement be correct, the total value of the pro-
duce of the land is about £40,000,000 sterling annually!
But will any one who reflects at all, endorse so absurd a
statement, or avow the belief that it is correct? In the
first place, the whole cost of feeding 130,000,000 of people
must stand represented in that sum; for that is the popula-
tion of the British territories, exclusive of the Native States.
In the second place, there must be represented therein
the whole value of the forage and grain crops of the
country for cattle, the whole value of the crops of cotton,
oil seeds, spices, &c., grown for home consumption; the value
also of the immense exports that we contrive to make; and,
lastly, the annual accumulations of the zemindars and ryots.
I am persuaded, Sir, that the annual value of the crops.
of India cannot be less than three to four hundred millions
sterling, and that the average pressure of our land revenue
thereon, does not exceed one-fifteenth of the produce. Now,
bear in mind that this is all the State levies upon the land.
Call it rent, or call it tax, or whatever you please, this
is its pressure; while it is in deference to ignorant
clamour about the great pressure of this tax, that the fatal
step is now being taken in India of permanently settling it at
its present amount. I cannot find words, Sir, to express
my sense of the error that Sir Charles Wood has been
induced to sanction. It is my profound conviction that we
have seen an end of all peaceful rule in India, if Parliament
continue idle spectators of this movement. The vital question
of our times in India is
THE PERPETUAL SETTLEMENT OF THE LAND TAX.
revenue.
It means, Sir, the perpetual settlement of our whole
It means that with a rapidly increasing expen-
diture, we are to divest ourselves of the only revenue we have
that can reasonably be relied upon to expand. Sir Charles
Wood and his Council are endorsing the popular impression
A
27
that the thirty years' leases of Bombay and the North West
Provinces-although all improvements under them, made by
the cultivator, are secured to him-are not a sufficiently liberal
tenure to induce him to sink capital in his fields; and that,
upon the whole, the land-tax of India is an impolitic tax, and
presses heavily upon the industry of the country. That there
is not a particle of foundation for these impressions, but that
under these leases, as Mr. Cassels has shown you, the ryot is
everywhere rapidly accumulating wealth; that capital is being
as largely sunk in the soil, as the hoarding traditions of the
country yet render possible; that the impost is a tax upon no
man's produce, and upon no man's labour; that to settle it.
permanently will produce no real advantages, but will plunge
us into certain embarrassments, and be a fraud on the whole
urban population of the country; that the pressure of the
impost, instead of being what it is popularly supposed to be,
is so light that it is doubtful if it absorb even one-twentieth
of the produce; that vast centres of wealth are growing
up under the thirty years system, as Bombay with its mills,
and factories, and million of people; Ahmedabad, Broach,
and Dharwar, with their wealthy populations; and Kurrachee,
with its giant trade; that the objection against the thirty
years' leases-viz., that in their last years the tenant would.
fear to improve his holding-is an objection held to be of no
weight in any other part of the world, and might, moreover,
be entirely obviated by renewing them three, four, or five
years before they fell in; and, lastly, that under the heavy
and continuous ri in prices that is taking place, we ought at
once to double the pay of the establishments of the country,
if we would not see them demoralised,* and have no possible
There is no measure, perhaps, more urgently called for at this
moment in India, than a statesmanlike and comprehensive revision of
the pay of the Establishments. Instead of patching up salaries
with irregular allowances of batta and house-rent, and I know not
what else, the fact should be looked full in the face, that the pay of
the establishments has become altogether inadequate to maintain their
efficiency. It is a fact that, during the last summer, officers of our army
28
!
means of doing so, but from the land-all these considera-
tions are given to the winds.
It is with regret and indignation that I have seen the Home
Government dragged at the heels of this folly. The Council,
which should have stood between the selfish agitators in
India, whose clamour initiated the movement, and the
Government, have lent themselves to it; and they who, like
Sir John Lawrence, have approved this change, have done so
to a man upon merely general impressions, as their pub-
lished minutes upon the subject show. A Permanent
Settlement of the Land Revenue of the whole of the North
West Provinces has just been declared, without the Govern-
ment possessing as much exact information upon the pres-
sure of the tax, as would have justified it in determin-
ing the bazaar duties of a village. That Mr. Laing and
Lord Canning should have been carried away by the
outcry, was deplorable enough; but that a majority of
Sir Charles Wood's Council should have possessed so
little insight into the conditions of Indian finance, as
to sanction this fatal resolution, is amazing. Sir, that
Settlement of the North West Provinces should be in-
stantly subverted at any cost, and the course upon which
the Government has entered arrested by Parliament.
For
in Poonah were obliged to restrict their wives and children to the use of
fresh meat twice a-week, owing to the enormous rise in the prices of all
the necessaries of life. The fact is surely disgraceful to our adminis-
tration. The ryots of the presidency, meanwhile, are revelling in
prosperity, and it is in these circumstances that were told we must
fix the land-tax in perpetuity, lest we should depress their enterprise !
Mr. Justice Couch, of the High Court of Bombay, himself told me,
about two years ago, that had he known the frightful cost of living in
Bombay, he would not have accepted the judgeship offered to him.
He had consulted Sir Erskine Perry upon the subject, and that gentle-
man, ignorant of the revolution that had occurred in our circum-
stances, had completely misled him. It is not in the Bombay Presi-
dency only, that this change has taken place. It has taken place
everywhere. The agricultural classes are amassing wealth, while men
on fixed incomes are starving.-R. K.
1
29
let this movement progress, and within twenty years you will
see the Empire torn to pieces, in the effort to resume in the
way of direct taxes, what is now being cast to the winds in
the mere passion for change.*
The short history of this deplorable movement, Sir, is this:
The famine in the North West Provinces occurred just at the
time when the great outcry about waste lands was agitating
Calcutta. The late Colonel Baird Smith was deputed by
Lord Canning to report upon that calamity; and Colonel
Baird Smith, unfortunately for the country, had been a great
apologist, as it subsequently turned out, of the Permanent.
Settlement in Bengal. Indeed, he had been a writer in.
*
It cannot be too often repeated that we have but one source of
revenue in India, upon the expansion of which we may reckon with
confidence. We derive our present income from land, opium, salt,
customs, stamps, and abkaree (spirits). I would not exaggerate the
precariousness of the revenue we get from opium; but that India for
all time to come, may count upon an OPIUM revenue of £7,000,000
a-year will be maintained by few persons. The SALT TAX I believe
upon the whole to be a wise tax, but we have screwed it a little too
high, as is clear from the smuggling that goes on in the north-
west; and it would be well, perhaps, to lower it R.1 a maund.
At all events no further expansion is possible. That we shall
ever get a large revenue from CUSTOMS is a day-dream, as I have
shown. The revenue from STAMPS will no doubt expand with our
commerce, but it can never occupy more than a subordinate place in
our estimates; and I have already pointed out that the habits of the
people are opposed to our ever getting a large revenue from Abkaree.
In these circumstances we are shut up to the land revenue, or a giant
income-tax in its roo. Superficial statesmen and self-seeking agita-
tors have between them brought the future finances of the country
into circumstances of the deepest peril, and the necessity of parliamen-
tary interference, is paramount. The growing necessities of the Govern-
ment will have to be provided for, and the land revenue being fixed in
perpetuity, they must be provided for by taxes on realised capital and
income. In attempting to make good the loss in this way, the Empire
will be torn to pieces by excitement, industry will be paralyzed,
and capital driven to happier shores. It is almost incredible,
but true, that the people of India are profoundly indifferent to
this Permanent Settlement gift. We owe it entirely to the doctrinaire
counsels of men without insight into our real condition.-R. K.
30
the newspapers, I believe, in its defence. Full of belief
therein, he went upon his mission of inquiry; and, as
might have been expected, recommended at its close a
Permanent Settlement of the Land Revenue, as the best device
he could hit upon for mitigating famines in the future. The
error which Colonel Smith made was plain. Under their
thirty years' leases, he said, the people had grown so
wealthy that they stood up well under the famine: only make
their settlement perpetual, and they will encounter future
famines without fear. It is amazing that so palpable a non
sequitur should have affected Lord Canning's Council as it did.
. That it is not the permanency of the settlement, but its pres-
sure, that must determine the status of the cultivator, is
as clear as the noonday sun, if men look at the subject
without spectacles. A permanent rack-rent will impoverish
a people (just as Bengal is now impoverished*) more surely
*
No single consideration, perhaps, has had so much weight in this
disastrous change, as the general belief that Bengal has grown wealthy
under its Permanent Settlement. That belief, so sedulously fostered
by Bengal civilians and Bengal newspapers, and so long accepted
as true, has now, I believe, been exploded everywhere, except in
the columns devoted by the Times to the letters of its Calcutta
correspondent. Instead of being enriched by its settlement,
the province has been absolutely beggared under it. There is
not a district in India at this moment, in which the masses of the
people are not well-to-do, when their condition is compared with the
hopeless, abject poverty of the masses in Bengal. I must refer the
reader who would like to satisfy himself upon this point to "The Indian
Land Question: a Timely Warning" (Smith, Elder, and Co., 1865).
In India itself there is no longer any doubt upon the subject. The
only province of the country, really rack-rented, is Bengal, under the
frightful system of sub-letting to which the Permanent Settlement has
given birth there. It is impossible to use language too strong to
describe the hopeless condition of that province. We have beggared
the ryot, that we might raise up a race of dissipated, selfish, rack-
renting landlords upon the soil. Mr. Marshman, the former editor of
the Friend of India, tells us that "the condition of the Bengal peasant
“is almost as wretched and degraded as it is possible to conceive; living
"in the most miserable hovel, scarcely fit for a dog-kennel, covered with
"tattered rags, and unable, in too many instances, to procure more than
i
31
than a thirty years' one.
The fact was that the assessment
was not only very light in the North West Provinces-as
it now is everywhere-but that the great rise in prices of late
years had reduced it to almost a nominal impost. That it was
not necessary to give the North West Provinces a per-
manent settlement, Colonel Smith told us himself in that
report, when he said that the average selling price of the
cultivators' holdings throughout the province was 22 years
purchase of the assessment! And they would have been much
more to-day. In the Bombay Presidency these leases com-
mand almost fabulous premiums. But Colonel Smith's recom-
mendation unhappily fell in with the temper of the times. .
Calcutta was in a ferment about the land. A very weak
man-I don't mean Mr. Laing-was at the Viceroy's elbow,
and, as I have already said, the determination was come to
to settle the land revenue in perpetuity throughout those
provinces, while the Government had not sufficient informa-
tion in its hands to settle, as I have already said, even the
bazaar duties of a village. I mean, Sir, exact information.
For we have no statistics whatever in. India; and it was
not until after this frightful error had been resolved upon,
that men began to become aware of what the real pressure
of the land revenue was.
Great stress, Sir, was unhappily laid upon the opinion
of Sir John Lawrence. Well, Sir John Lawrence told us
that we had better settle the land revenue in perpe-
tuity, because the teaching of his long experience had been
that the Government was never able to increase the assess-
ments, let them be revised as often as they might. The
simple answer to this was, that Sir John Lawrence's experience
was that of a past generation. During the first fifty years of
((
(
a single meal a-day for himself and family. The Bengal ryot knows
nothing of the most ordinary comforts of life. We speak without
exaggeration when we affirm that, if the real condition of those who
"raise the harvest, which yields between three and four millions a-year,
was fully known, it would make the ears of every one who heard
thereof to tingle.”—R. K.
66
32
}
the century, the agriculture of India was very much depressed,
owing more to the change of administrative system we had
everywhere introduced than to any other cause.
With prices
constantly falling, it was not very wonderful, I think, that
Sir John Lawrence's experience was what it was.
But
what of a period of such giant enhancement as has set in
upon us, within the last few years? Why the saleable value
of the land of India within the last ten years has been
quadrupled; and in utter oversight of this revolution, Sir John
Lawrence bids us be guided by his experience as a revenue
officer, acquired under a totally different condition of things,
. twenty-five or thirty years before.
Let me point out to the Chamber how vital a bearing
the Permanent Settlement has upon the great question
of public works in India. You must remember that we
are taking from the land the merest fraction of its true
rent. We take no more than we absolutely require for
the administration of the laws, and the maintenance of
Government. The popular idea in this country-and it is
shared, I regret to see, by the Times-is, that we are acting as
landlords towards the agricultural classes, and have, there-
fore, all the duties of landlords devolving upon us.
But we
se doing nothing of the kind. We have not a tenant, as
a rule, who is not occupying at a quit-rent. We take no
more from the land than is absolutely required to defray the
expenses of the State. What the true rent of India amounts
to it is impossible to say, but it cannot fall far short of
£80,000,000 to £100,000,000 sterling year. Now the
Permanent Settlement abandons in perpetuity to the culti-
vator, what every Government of India before our own, has
held in trust for the general Commonwealth-viz., the whole
margin that lies between our assessment of £20,000,000 and
this vast sum of £80,000,000. Well, if we are to do this,
if we are to abandon absolutely, instead of merely holding
in abeyance, our rights as landlord, we must, of course,
For
instantly cease all expenditure for improving the land.
where is the money to come from? Having already con-
j
33
ferred upon the cultivator an enormous proprietary right in
the soil, which neither he nor his fathers knew, are we next
to tax the urban classes of the country to give him roads, and
railroads, and irrigation works, and canals?
Every shilling that has been expended by the State on
works of improvement in Bengal since 1792, has been a plain
fraud upon the rest of India, because we abandoned in that
province, in that year, all right to share in the improved
value of its soil. Are not these considerations plain even
to a child, when fairly placed before it ? And yet within the
last eighteen months, the same folly has been perpetrated
in the North West Provinces, while the Government still.
professes to dream of a great expenditure upon public works
therein. Does not such folly justify the alarm I express?
Tell me, Sir, who should make the great public improve-
ments required at this moment in Bengal-the State, or the
zemindars, to whom the State has abandoned nearly the
whole rent of the province ? All that we take therefrom
is between three and four millions a-year, while the true rent
does not, I am persuaded, fall short of £12,000,000 to
£20,000,000 a-year! The total stoppage, then, of all public
works in the country, is the necessary sequence of this Perma-
nent Settlement folly; a result which its supporters, from
Sir John Lawrence downwards, have completely overlooked.
The height of their statesmanship is an income-tax upon
the cities, to construct public works for the zemindars !
As to waste lands for the growth of cotton, the question is
really more one of labour than of land. Mr. Cassels has told
you this morning, and told you truly, that every acre of cotton
ground in the Bombay Presidency is already under cultiva-
tion. We have no cultivable waste lands in our presidency
except in Khandeish; and the cultivation of Khandeish is
a question of labour, not of land. The soil of the province is
well adapted for the growth of cotton, and Khandeish was
formerly one of the most fertile districts of Western India.
The province was devastated, however, by Holkar in 1802,
and has since become a jungle so deadly, that it is impos-
D
•
34
.
sible at certain seasons of the year to pass through it. Well,
Sir, how are you going to cultivate Khandeish? I am
certain that if you Manchester gentlemen will form a Com-
pany to lease half the province, the Government will give
you almost any terms, short of total alienation, you may ask
for. But I should myself be very sorry to take shares in
your company.
I will tell you what would be the result of the enter-
prise. With great difficulty you would get together a
body of cultivators perhaps 500 strong; you would cut dowr-
the jungle; break up the land; build your coolie lines; put
.in your cotton seed-and what then? The sickly season
comes round, cholera breaks out in your lines, and within forty-
eight hours, there would not be a coolie within fifty miles of you.
This is no fancy picture, gentlemen, to scare enterprise away
from us.
It is the constant, everyday experience of planting
in India, except in some highly-favoured districts; and
do you think a Breach of Contracts Bill would keep your
coolies on the estate, in such circumstances? I confess, for
myself, that I despair of seeing the waste lands in the plains of
India cultivated, except in the way in which they have
ever been encroached upon. Under peaceful government,
and with a steady and remunerative demand for their pro-
duce, the villages in the neighbourhood of these wastes, will
steadily, but, in the nature of things, slowly, grow upon
them, and bring them under cultivation. I have no
faith in costly, spasmodic efforts to reclaim them.
As
a rule, labour already is so scarce in India that the pro-
curing it is the chief difficulty of the tea and coffee planter;
the popular belief in this country that India is a land bur-
dened with a surplus population being untrue.
There are
districts of the country densely populated, no doubt, but any
one who has once tried the experiment of inducing an Indian
community to migrate from one district to another, will think
twice before entering upon such an experiment a second
time.
I do not think I need spend much time, Sir, over the
35
next subject on your list, as the Indian Government has, to a
large extent, anticipated your wishes thereon :-
The Enactment of a Law providing for the Registration and
Enforcement of Contracts, and the Establishment of Small
Cause Courts, at convenient distances throughout the country,
invested with Summary Jurisdiction.
Mr. Cassels has already told you that an Act for the •
Registration of Contracts was passed in India nearly eighteen
months ago, and that the experiment of Small Cause
Courts is now being tried on a somewhat extensive scale in
the interior. I think it right to say on this subject, that*
while I strongly opposed the Breach of Contracts Bill
which this Chamber was so anxious to see adopted -I was the
only journalist in India, I think, who attempted to give shape
to its wish for a Registration Act. Such an Act has now
been passed, and I need, therefore, say no more about it. It
is necessary for me, however, to point out to this Chamber
certain considerations affecting the Small Cause "Courts expe-
riment, which I feel satisfied have escaped your notice. You
must not forget, gentlemen, that the system of protracted
litigation, and of "appeals" in India, arises out of the
untrustworthiness and incompetency of the subordinate courts.-
The right of appeal is simply an admission that we know
the inferior courts to be incompetent. Well, the mate-
rial we have to work with is still the same. You cannot
improvise judges, as you may police constables, and there
is great danger, in the establishment of these Small Cause
Courts, of our handing whole districts over not only to
summary, but to thoroughly corrupt, administration. A
Small Cause Court without appeal, may work exceed-
ingly well in the presidency towns, where its every judg-
ment is liable to sharp comment in the next morning's papers,
and where everything is done in the light of day. But
what of the interior, where we are now establishing them,
where no sunlight reaches, and where neither press nor
public exists? You make too little allowance, Sir, in this
D 2
36
country, for the difficulties under which the law is ad-
ministered in India. A few months ago an article
appeared in the North British Review upon "The Adminis-
tration of Justice in India," from the pen of Mr. Justice
Campbell, of the High Court of Calcutta, one of the barrister-
civilian judges of India; and, with your permission, I will
point out, in this gentleman's, words, the dangers which
• beset the experiment upon which we have entered at your
wish:
• (6
"The evils of protracted litigation, and appeal on appeal,-
"have long been acknowledged. To cure this was devised the
system of Small Cause Courts without appeal. Now in
"many respects such a system has great advantages, but it is
"tried under most difficult circumstances. And two things
seem essential to the exercise of unchecked power—first, men
"fitted to fill the post of judges, and, second, the control of
public opinion and the publicity of the press. It is
"under those conditions that Small Cause judges work
"in England. It is otherwise in India. Government having
"determined to try the Small Cause system in Bengal,
"at once appointed a number of Small Cause judges and
posted them alike in town and in rural districts. These
"courts have very great powers; in proportion, far beyond
"those of English Small Cause judges. They try absolutely,
"and without appeal or supervision of any kind, all personal
"actions of every description up to Rs.500, which is quite
"equal in proportion to value of money to, say, £300 in
(
England. Two or three good judges, placed in large towns
"under the public view, have, we believe, done much good.
"But, for the rest? They are, for the most part, the old
"judges of the old courts transformed under a new name,
“with a sprinkling of Europeans taken from the lower walks
"of the law, but with very little knowledge of the country.
"The great difference, then, as compared to the old system,
"consists in the absence of appeal.
"Is it to be hoped and expected, that the same judges,
"whose proceedings were superficial and indifferent when
1
37
CC
'they knew that they were subject to the supervision and
"criticism of the appellate courts, will be more careful,
"searching, and thorough, when they are relieved from all
"control, and set down in rural districts, where public opinion
can scarcely touch them? We much doubt it. More than
(<
(6
this, there is some political risk to be considered. These
In a
summary courts are essentially plaintiffs' courts.
country, and under a system, in which evidence is no-
toriously untrustworthy, and documents are supposed to be
"generally forged, this condition obtains. The plaintiff
"chooses his time for the action, not the defendant; he has
“abundant leisure to prepare his documents, cook his evi-.
"dence, and get ready his case. Suddenly he comes down
"in a summary court on an unprepared defendant: the
'primâ facie evidence is all on his side, and if the judge be
disposed to get through his business in a rapid way, a heavy
"decree is passed, the execution of which will sweep away
"many precious rights (perhaps preserved through a lifetime
"of litigation) before the defendant has breathing-time.
(C
"It has always been popularly said among the natives, that
"ours is the Government of the shopkeeper and the money-
"lender. We hear that there are signs that this feeling is
"much increased by the action of some of the Small Cause
"Courts. We remember the cause of the Sonthal rebellion.
"May not similar causes lead to dangerous results else-
"where?"
I need add nothing to this statement, Sir. I have read it
simply to show the Chamber that the reforms which it solicits,
even where practicable, are beset with dangers which it very
rarely, if at all, discerns.
I come now to the Breach of Contracts Bill, about which
so much has been said and written. Well, what is its
history? Mr. Laing told you it was a bill brought into
Council in the interests of the cotton-grower; but Mr.
Laing's memory was at fault. I have here with me the
history of this measure, from a period long before Mr. Laings
arrival amongst us. The Times of India gave the bill the
·
38
most strenuous opposition throughout, and I rejoiced to see it
finally shelved. Remember, gentlemen, it is no Government
official who is speaking now, but one of those very men in
whose interests it was to be enacted. I say, Sir, that the
bill, from first to last, was purely an indigo planters'
bill. You will remember, no doubt, the Honourable Mr.
Eden's proclamation, which led all the ryots of Nuddea
and Jessore to rise up as one man, and repudiate the
contracts they were under to grow indigo. Now, you
have a very scandalous story in this city, as to the
true occasion of that proclamation. I know not whether
.that story is true or false; and it matters little which
it is; for, under any circumstances, the quarrel between
Mr. Eden and the planters was a most fortunate accident.
For nothing is more certain than that the very name
of the indigo plant has stunk in the nostrils of the people
of Bengal for the last fifty years; and no wonder, for the
whole system of indigo planting, as it is improperly called,
was a scandal to the English name. Several of the Cal-
cutta newspapers,I am sorry to say, have tried to whitewash
the system, and I must, therefore, go at some length into it.
Now look, first, at the conditions under which the indigo
_planter sets to work. The first thing is to find a tract of land
suited for the plant, and to discover the owner of it. The
land is found, and the planter is told that the zemindar, in
whose name it is held from the Government, is Gunesh
Moraba; but Gunesh has sub-let it to A, and A has sub-let
it to B, and B to C, and that the present holder of the lease
is D. In other words, the land is already rack-rented to the
last farthing. That such, Sir, is the present condition of
Bengal under its vaunted Permanent Settlement, we have the
testimony of the Friend of India; a journal that has done its
best, remember, to sustain the cause of the indigo planter.
Here is that journal's description of a Bengal county:
"Between the zemindar and the actual cultivator there are
four middlemen, as a rule, each of whom has his profit; and
"worse than these four, while he is their necessary result, is
39
(C
"the money-lender. We have seen that the average rental
paid by the landlord to the State is 6-9 annas per acre.
“As the actual cultivator pays an average in kind to rent-free
"landlords of Rs.4-8 per acre, the difference between that and
"6-9 annas represents the profits spread over four middle-
men and the landlord. To be able to pay that rent, the
peasant borrows seed from the money-lender at from 24
"to 50 and 100 per cent., according to the security."
Now, Sir, it is upon this condition of things that indigo
planting in Bengal, supervenes. Having ascertained who holds
the lease of the land upon which the planter has cast his eye,
he applies to him to know upon what terms he will trans-
fer it. The man, who is already screwing all he can out of the
wretched tenantry, knows perfectly well what the land is
wanted for, and makes his bargain accordingly. "I am get-
ting," he will say, "Rs. 1,000 a-year from the land; if you
will farm it for Rs. 13,00 it is yours." The bargain is struck,
and now the indigo planter has become the landlord. Can
you conceive any position more unhappy than that of the
ryot?
Having obtained the lease, the indigo planter is quite con-
tent to allow the ryots to occupy at their old rental; only they
must purchase that privilege by growing indigo upon such
lands as the planter points out; and FOR NOTHING! For that
is what the thing comes to, as was shown by the report of
the Indigo Commission. And I mean by that, Mr. Fergusson's
report; and Mr. Fergusson, you know, was the planters'
representative on that Commission. Can you wonder, gentle-
men, that a system such as this did not work well; that
the ryot groaned under it, and was beggared by it? Look
at the fearful powers possessed by the planter as land-
lord. If the ryot, although already rack-rented, refused
to grow indigo, he was liable to be driven from what had
been his father's home for a hundred generations, by a notice
of enhancement of rent which he could not possibly pay.
And this is the true history of the Bengal Rent
difficulty, of which you have heard so much.. Armed with
40
\
powers which Lord Cornwallis never dreamed he was giving
to the zemindar, the planters, within the last five years, have
served notices of exorbitant enhancements of rent by hun-
dreds of thousands upon their tenants, and when the Law
Courts broke down under the pressure, these gentlemen
complained of their inefficiency. Lord Cornwallis so little
foresaw to what his Settlement would lead, that in his
Minute of Feb. 3, 1790, he treats Mr. Shore's supposition that
such enhancements would ever be attempted, as preposterous.
But we have seen them not only attempted in our day,◄
but positively upheld by no less an authority than Sir Barnes
Peacock, who unhappily seems to have got tinged with this
indigo quarrel. When Sir Barnes Peacock's judgment ap-
peared I did not hesitate to declare it to be an outrage upon
the ancient law and custom of India; and I have had the
satisfaction, within the last six months, of seeing that judg-
ment reversed by the unanimous verdict of the whole thirteen
judges of the High Court of Calcutta.*
66
* The right of the cultivator in Bengal was possession of his field, at
the rate per beegah at which it was assessed at the Permanent Settle-
ment. Nothing is more certain, than that Lord Cornwallis intended
the Settlement to be as permanent between the zemindar and ryot, as
Between the State and the zemindar. "Whoever cultivates the land
[Minute, February 3, 1790] the zemindar can receive no more than the
"established rent. To permit him to dispossess one cultivator, for the
"sole purpose of giving the land to another, would be vesting him with
a power to commit a wanton act of oppression. . . . The rents of an
"estate can only be raised by inducing the rypts to cultivate the more
"valuable articles of produce, and to clear the extensive tracts of waste
"land which are to be found in almost every zumeendary in Bengal.'
What can be clearer than these statements? Lord Cornwallis supposed
that he had effectually secured the ryot from enhancement of rent,
except in cases where a more valuable article of produce than rice, or
grain, came to be grown in his fields, when the zemindar would be
entitled to receive one-third, or whatever was the established rate,
The
of the new and more valuable produce instead of the old.
Friend of India, with curious inconsistency, but with truth, de-
clared the judgment of Sir Barnes Peacock likely to create “an
agrafian rising," and to. make the Englishman as hated in Bengal as
41
But an enhancement of rent, gentlemen, was not the
object of the planters. Indigo was what they wanted,
and, therefore, power to compel their ryots to grow it;
and it was out of this want that the Breach of Con-
tracts Bill came. For that bill merely made perpetual
Act XI. of 1860, a summary Act passed for the enforce-
ment of indigo contracts for six months only, pending
the inquiries of the Indigo Commission. The Commis-
sion brought its labours to a close with an emphatic con-
demnation of the whole system, and Act XI. expired by
effluxion of time. The ryots to a man refused to have
anything more to do with indigo; when the planters served
them, as I have said, with hundreds of thousands of notices
raising their rents tenfold, while they simultaneously be-
he was in Tipperary. And yet the decision simply confirmed to
the planter, the very rights which the Friend of India had been
demanding in his behalf for many months before. It now found
out that so contrary was the decision of the High Court to the
people's sense of justice, that the attempt to enforce it would end in
making the Englishman "as hated in Bengal as he is in Tipperary."
But the indigo planter was a wiser man than the Friend of India sup-
posed him to be. All he wanted was power to compel the ryot to grow
indigo upon the old terms, which would pay him better than any rent
it was possible for him to exact from his tenantry. And so this
mischievous decision of Sir Barnes Peacock was used merely to
force the ryots back into the slavery, from which we hoped they
had been emancipated. After the judgment, we were told that
the ryots were now "willingly" entering into contracts to sow indigo,
on condition that their rents were not raised more than four annas
a beegah. The willingness must have been very cheerful, no doubt,
when the alternative was an enhancement of rent from five annas
to five rupees a beegah. The new contracts, as I learned privately
from Calcutta, were being made for ten years at the old rate of
six bundles for the rupee. The ryots were to cultivate at this rate,
and pay more rent besides; and a penal Contract Law was much
wanted to enforce these "willingly" signed agreements, although Mr.
Fergusson, as the representative of the planters, had reported that
"large concessions must be made at once.” The planters pretended
all through the dispute that the rent struggle had nothing to do with
indigo it was simply a new phase of the old quarrel-R. K.
42
-
sieged the Government to make Act XI. perpetual. They
knew very well the screw they could put upon the ryot to
force him into contract with them for the hated neel,
and all they required was a summary penal Act to enforce
the contracts so compulsorily made. Now that is a plain,
unvarnished account of the origin of the Contracts Bill.
Reluctant to see the indigo culture of Bengal destroyed, and yet
Conscious that a penal bill merely to enforce indigo contracts,
would be little short of an indecency, the Government of
Calcutta kindly assured the world that cotton-growing, and
sugar-refining, and coffee-planting, and all other European
enterprise in the country, wanted the protection of such a
bill. Sir, it was an unworthy pretence on the part of that
Government. I, as a coffee-planter, and the employer
of 500 natives of India, utterly repudiate the want
of such a measure.
But the mention of cotton-growing
struck a chord that vibrated, unfortunately, in Bombay, and
so the agitation spread to our side of India, and then Man-
chester took fire. Now, Sir, the short and easy proof that
the bill was an indigo bill, and nothing but an indigo bill,
is this: that it contemplated, almost exclusively, a description
of contracts unknown for years in the cotton-growing dis-
tricts of Bombay. Great stress has been laid, Sir, upon the
Honourable Mr. Scott's statement of the difficulties which his
firm (Messrs. Ritchie, Stuart, and Co.) had found in the cotton.
districts, for want of a summary Contract Law. I have the
greatest respect for Mr. Scott, but it so happened that Messrs.
Ritchie, Stuart, and Co.'s experience was then ten years.
old, and that the whole procedure of the vil law had been
changed in 1859, and had been made as summary as Mr.
Scott, I think, could have wished. Did I not fear trespassing
too far upon your patience, I would read to this meeting what
remedies the Civil Code of 1859 already provides upon the
subject; and it is a suggestive fact, that throughout the
debates in Calcutta upon the bill, there was not the slightest
attempt to show that the very summary procedures of that
Code had been tried and failed. Again, Sir, we had but just
1
43
2
codified, after thirty years' deliberation, our whole Criminal
Law ("Macaulay's Code," as it is called). Now this very ques-
tion of indigo contracts had come up before the Commission
that framed that Code, and after full deliberation they had
pronounced against the making the breach of those contracts
penal. And are you prepared to tell us, that to support
such a system as I have described, we are to crowd our
statute-book with new penal laws, lest we should dis-
courage European enterprise? How is it, Sir, that I, a planter,
want no penal Contract Law, and have never wanted one,
while the tea planters of Assam and Cachar have constantly
been calling upon Government to help them against their
coolies ? The labour contract difficulty is of the same
order as the indigo difficulty: it arises from the fact that
the planter does not make it worth the coolie's while to
stay on his estate. If you go down into the rice plains of
Bengal, and tempt coolies with six months' advance of pay to
follow you up into the hills, where they will want better
housing, better food, and better clothing than below, and
expect them to stay there, while you pay them no more
than they obtain in the plains, you are rightly punished
when they escape from your estate, and defraud you of
your advances. Sir, the Government cannot healthfully in-
terfere in such quarrels. Let the planter make it worth the
coolie's while to stay upon his estate, and treat him con-
siderately, and he will stay. Human nature is pretty much the
same, all the world over, according to my experience; amen-
able to the same treatment, and influenced by the same
motives. Unfortunately, the planters of India hitherto have
in general been needy men. It has been a struggle with
them to get their estates opened at all; and while you may
legitimately sympathize with their difficulties, you cannot
legislate exceptionally in their behalf. I am heartily glad
that we are to have no penal Contracts Bill in India,
either for indigo, cotton, tea, coffee, or anything else; and I
am sure that in agitating for such a measure you are not well
advised. Allow me to remind you once more that I have at
44
•
this moment nearly 300 people at work on the Neilgherries,
and I suppose between 200 and 300 in the Times of India
office at Bombay, without the least necessity for such a law.
You will get troublesome labourers, sometimes, in India, as
everywhere else, but I have an old-fashioned belief, that
upon the whole you will find good masters the slowest to
make complaints about bad workmen.
The last subject on which you invite this meeting to
express an opinion is—
"The more active prosecution of Public Works in India,
especially as regards Roads and Irrigation.”
Now, I agree cordially with every word that has
fallen from previous speakers as to the importance of the
more active prosecution of public works in India. But
half the mistakes made in this country with respect to
India arise from the difficulty of grasping adequately the
magnitude of the country; and so it comes to pass that the
handful of Englishmen who form the Government of India
are perpetually "talked at" upon this subject of public
works, as though it were possible to take that great
empire up, and manipulate it as you would the county
of Lancashire. India, Sir, is a great continent; a con-
tinent of many nations, and of vast extent; and it is
almost impossible for any mind, however familiar with the
country, to understand aright how vast an undertaking is the
simultaneous prosecution of public works throughout the
country. The task of the Indian Government is like that
which would lie before the Government of this country,
were the public works of all Europe suddenly cast upon its
responsibility. What the full import of this last proposition
of yours is, would then, perhaps, be discerned.
Were the
English Government, I say, charged with the respon-
sibility of perfecting not only the vast railway system of
Europe, but the construction and repair of all the roads and
canals, and civil and military buildings of two-thirds of the
continent, you would then understand better what our re-
45
sponsibility in India involves, and how absurdly incommen-
surate therewith have all our efforts hitherto been. •
And here, gentlemen, once more, I am obliged to state my
conviction that it is not the Government of India so much
as this Chamber that is to be blamed for the little
that has hitherto been done. For I am entitled, I think, to
regard the late Mr. Wilson as the representative of this
Chamber; and it was Mr. Wilson, who, amongst other
errors into which he fell, first laid down the doctrine
that India alone, of all the nations of the earth, must
not borrow. The rule that India shall provide whatever
public works she stands in need of, out of her current revenues
-her driblets of savings from income-lays, of itself, an
effectual prohibition upon the prosecution of public works.
in the country on any adequate scale.
It matters not that India is one of the poorest countries
in the world, nor that you, the richest of them all, are con-
structing your very fortifications out of borrowed money-
India must not borrow. If she wants roads or tanks, or
tramways, or canals, she must either go without them, or con-
trive to build them out of import duties, or perhaps an
income-tax-falling with confiscatory violence upon 300,000
people for the benefit of 180,000,000—or out of export duties
upon the produce of her plantations. At all events, she
is not to be allowed to borrow money for the purpose, how-
ever willing foreign capitalists may be to lend it. While all
other countries may borrow of you as freely as they please,
the Indian Administration may not do so. There is not a
Government in existence that may not borrow money on your
Stock Exchange, even for purposes of war; while the
Government of India is not allowed to borrow a sixpence,
even for the construction of roads, or irrigational works.
The special leave of Parliament has to be obtained for the pur-
pose, although the same Parliament repudiates all liability for
the Indian debt. We are not merely refused the Imperial
guarantee the withholding of which our credit might
perhaps survive-but we are forbidden.to borrow even apon
the credit of our own revenues.
46
Does it require an elaborate argument to prove that it is
false economy in any country where money is worth in trade
20 per cent. per annum, to levy taxes therein for works
of public improvement, when the Government may import
capital for the purpose as freely as it pleases at 4 per cent.?
India is your possession, and you cannot do better than invest
your overflowing capital in the property. Her safety and
wellbeing and your own, equally point to this conclusion;
while, as the case now stands, every country in the world
may come to you for assistance except India. Not one
shilling are we allowed to borrow, but under special Act of
- Parliament, to be obtained only at the cost of a party
demonstration in the House. The result is, that India may
starve before English Ministers will help her. She is thus
forced to construct her public works out of revenue, and
there is a constant recurrence of a seeming, though not real,
deficit in her accounts.
Now, Sir, this is not the result of misgovernment in
India, but of your mischievous interference with our affairs.
We do not ask you to be answerable for our debt-which,
by-the-bye, I will show presently to be your debt, and not
ours-but we do ask you to cease this unheard-of inter-
ference with our national credit. There is not an empire,
or republic on the face of the earth that may not borrow
as freely as it pleases in your money market, upon whatever
credit it possesses; while India alone, of all nations and of all
your colonies and dependencies, is shut out therefrom by your
legislative wisdom. Do you think that the capitalist is not
well able to see for himself whether the credit we offer him is
sufficient? As if for the very purpose, moreover, of destroying
our credit, you insist year after year upon our accounts being
presented to the world in a shape utterly misleading, and
most damaging to us. The English press is never tired of
affirming that the Indian balance-sheet shows a chronic
state of deficit, while there is not a balance-sheet in the
world that will compare in respectability with our own, if
you will but make it. out as you take care to make out your
47
own balance-sheet. The fact is simply this, that our yearly
accounts are made out upon a principle that renders it matter
of mere caprice whether our deficit is one million or twenty
millions. The ordinary revenues of the year are charged with
an indefinite expenditure upon public works, the outlay upon
which would be met in any other country by loans. It de-
pends, therefore, upon the mere caprice of the man who
happens to be the Finance Minister you have sent-in others
words, upon his estimate of the public works expenditure of
the year-whether there shall be a deficit in the accounts of
one million or ten. Is it not a grievous wrong that our
accounts should be annually presented to the world, in a shape •
to convey the impression that it is with difficulty we meet our
current expenditure, when the fact is, that we have an im-
mense surplus available year by year for investment in repro-
ductive works?
For many years past, we have been contriving, not
only to pay our way, but to spend from £6,000,000 to
£8,000,000 sterling a-year upon public works in the
country. This has been all done out of taxes, be it remem-
bered. A vast proportion, about two-thirds of this outlay,
has been on reproductive works, while it is all treated in the
accounts as though it had been cast into the Dead Sea of
current expenditure. I have been insisting upon this fact
for years, and Mr. Laing recognised its truth when he
told you in his pamphlet that "our large expenditure in
public works is really a sinking fund admirably invested."
Well, whose fault is it that we have been able to spend no
more? Is it our fault, or yours? Shut up to the narrow
resources of our current income to meet the urgent wants
of a vast empire, we have done our best to overtake them,
while you have done nothing but taunt us that we have not
done more. Do you think it was a wise thing, after all, for
Mr. Wilson to lay 20 per cent. import duties upon us, and an
income-tax, that the proceeds might be spent upon railways,
* I must not be misunderstood about this income-tax. I have not
the slightest objection in principle to n income-tax in India, if only
48
and canals, and roads, when we could have borrowed as much
money as we required, had we been allowed to do so, at 4 or
5 per cent. for the purpose. The great want of India is
imported capital to quicken the languishing springs of her
industry, while in your philanthropy and wisdom you dam
up the stream of wealth that fertilises all lands but India,
and which would flow to India also, if you would allow it.
• But I have not yet done, gentlemen. If ever a Govern-
ment was required to make bricks without straw, it is this
unhappy Indian Government of ours. You insist upon our
constructing what public works we require out of taxes;
you refuse us all assistance in the shape of loans; you
taunt us with the meanness of expenditure; and, last of all,
abuse us for levying taxes at all in the country—for it really
comes to that.
For against which of the Indian taxes have you not, at
one time or another, raised a clamour? To-day Mr. Danby
Seymour is here denouncing the land-tax, as an impost that
crushes all enterprise out of the country. Mr. Dickenson
has had his fling at our "abominable stamp-tax;" as for
Customs duties, you "cannot away with them," while our
opium and abkarree revenues are denounced by all the philan-
thropists of the land. What, in the name of common sense,
then, is the Government to do? Was there ever perversity
so deep in dealings with affairs so momentous? You carp
at everything; you suggest nothing; you button up your
pockets, and give us incessant abuse.
Against each of our resources, I say, in turn has all the
it be imposed for legitimate purposes. Mr. Wilson's income-tax was
levied to meet a giant Public Works expenditure, and was, therefore, a
plain act of confiscation. But I am not at all prepared to contend
that it might not be wise and just to lower the salt-tax one rupee
per maund, and to make up the deficiency by an income-tax.
An income-tax for the current expenses of the State is just enough;
for Public Works to improve the land, when the public have no
longer any interest in that land, it is monstrous. The policy, or im-
policy, of such a tax in India at all, is another question.-R, K.
49
force of uninformed clamour been brought to bear in this
country. Twelve or fourteen years ago, a great outtry was
got up against the salt-tax, which was denounced in every
note of the gamut, from the shrill treble of "small economists,"
dogmatizing upon a state of matters of which they were
ignorant, to the deep bass growling of the leading English
journals. Many of you gentlemen must remember the torrent
of abuse John Company had to endure from the lungs of
honest John Bull, who had taken it into his head, at the
uggestion of the Cheshire salt manufacturers, with Mr. D.
C. Aylwin at their head, that the salt-tax was all that the
land-tax is now represented by Mr. Danby Seymour to be. -
For half-a-century had the impression been cherished, that
the salt-tax was "a great iniquity." The manufacture of the
salt was "a monopoly," and a monopoly is a very odious
thing. The tax was declared to be a species of poll-tax, and
a poll-tax is a very odious thing. The effect of the tax was to
deprive the poor man of the amount of salt absolutely necessary
to keep his body from being shrivelled and dwarfed into the
size of a monkey. And then those "wretched Molungees,"
whom the Moloch of a Government forced to manufacture
the salt in the Soonderbuns-how much doleful lamentation
was uttered by indignant philanthropists on behalf of the
"miserable Molungees." Your very penny-a-liners almost
became familiar with the name and woes of the class. Upon
the whole, it required a good deal of courage to say a word.
in defence of the salt-tax, in the presence of non-official
Englishmen, only twelve or fourteen years ago. It was at
last found out that the tax was not so bad a tax after all,
being about the only tax that reached the masses, while of
the smallest possible amount to those whose means are in
proportion small. It is a tax paid, moreover, in a manner
that is, at least in appearance, voluntary, and levied in a
way that is free from inquisition, and collected with less
expense and greater certainty than perhaps any other could
be. And so public opinion, better informed than it was,
became so reconciled to the tax that its pressure has been
E
50
gradually increased with general approval, until the revenue
we derive therefrom has reached the immense sum of
£6,000,000. And is there nothing in all this suggestive of
a doubt, that the present outcry against the Indian land-tax
may be of no better order ?
I care not whom it offends when I say that the agita-
tion against the land-tax of India is begotten of selfish-
ness and ignorance; an
an ignorance so disgraceful to the
official men who share it, that its exhibition deserves the
severest handling it may get. Had we not a right to ex
pect that the very first step of the opponents of the tax would
be a painstaking and exact inquiry into the pressure of the
tax, upon the classes who are declared to be crushed
by it? And yet there has not been a writer against the
tax down to Mr. Danby Seymour and Mr. Dickenson to-day,
that has not assumed that it is "6 a rack-rent of half the
produce of the ryot's fields." Many of them have explicitly
affirmed the statement, and it has been repeated from mouth
to mouth, till it is now as generally believed as was the
salt-tax ten years ago believed to be "a giant iniquity."
Gentlemen, I do rejoice to be brought face to face this day
with this folly, and however unpalatable these statements
may be, I do trust that India may derive some benefit from
them in the future.
The reforms that are required in the matter of our
Public Works expenditure are plain. You must abandon
the position that India shall not borrow, and in place of it
encourage its Government to come freely to your capitalists
for all the wants of that great empire. Its prosperity is
your prosperity: and a wise and unselfish administration of
its affairs will react upon the wealth of this nation in a way
little hoped for now. Then there should be an immediate
separation of the Public Works expenditure of the country,
from the Budget Estimates of the year. Instead of jum-
.bling up together our, outlay upon railways and canals,
with the cost of administering the laws of the country,
the accounts should be separated at once and for ever.
7
51
Let our balance-sheet show every year what our real
surplus is, and let an exact account be registered of
every item of expenditure upon public works of a repro-
ductive nature. The Indian Finance Minister of the day
need have nothing to do, necessarily, with any outlay upon
public works, except such as is legitimately chargeable to
the current revenues of the year. This expenditure of itself
is very heavy, comprising the cost of all repairs of existing
works, civil and military buildings, &c. For the rest, we
ought probably to organize a great Public Works De-
partment in the country. And let us take care that it is not
too centralised. The cavalier manner in which urgent appli-
cations from the Bombay and Madras Governors for money
for the most necessary public works, have been treated
must end. Calcutta must not be allowed to dogmatise
upon what Bombay, or Madras, or the Punjab, shall do or
shall not do. It has enough work before it in Bengal; let it
stick to it. That some such changes as I have here hinted
at must be inaugurated before public works in India will be
prosecuted upon the right scale, and in the right way, I
think there can be no doubt.
I have detained you too long already, gentlemen, but I
must be allowed to take a hurried glance at our Railway
expenditure in India, before I close. The total amount, then,
expended upon our railway system, as far as it has gone,
up to the close of 1865, is about £75,000,000, of which sum
about £60,000,000 was contributed under the guarantee,
and the remaining £15,000,000 advanced out of Indian
taxes, in payment of the interest guaranteed to the share-
holders and in railway exchanges. The total outlay, I say,
upon the Indian railway system from its commencement
down to this day, a period of seventeen years, is about
£75,000,000 sterling, and towards this sum the capitalists of
this country have contributed the greater part of the
£60,000,000 raised under the guarantee. The nett amount
of capital India has received, however, has been no more
than £45,000,000, since £15,000,000 of interest and ex-
.000.000
E 2
52
change have been returned to this country, out of taxes, in
the payment of guaranteed interest and exchange. We have
thus paid back to England £15,000,000, while we still owe
her an undiminished debt of £60,000,000. All the risks
of the enterprise are our own, and the investment, in so
far as England is concerned, must be held to be a highly
advantageous one. For a very large amount of this capital has
been spent upon English industry. Of the £60,000,000 we
owe, no less a sum than £22,000,000 was paid to English ma-
chinists, ironmasters, engineers, and shipowners, for permanent
way, freight, rolling stock, &c., establishments, and how
advantageous this arrangement has been to the country
you, of course, are well aware. Your expenditure upon
railway enterprise in India resolves itself, then, into this:
that for the last seventeen years you have allowed the Indian
Government to borrow, upon an average, £3,600,000 a-year,
of which sum £1,400,000 a-year has been laid out on
English goods, ships, &c.; nearly £1,000,000 a-year has been
returned in the shape of interest, and exchange, because the
system does not yet pay; and the nett balance, or a total
sum of £23,000,000, has been actually expended in India
itself. That is to say, the help which this great country,
whose surplus accumulations of capital year by year are
variously estimated at from £90,000,000 to £140,000,000
sterling, the help, I say, which it has rendered to India,
amounts to the sum of 1 to 2 per cent. of the wealth you
hardly know what to do with! For this advance you have the
most ample security, and a dividend of per cent.
And the Government of this wealthy nation declares,
in its wisdom, that the system of guaranteed loan has gone
far enough, and must now be terminated. Well,
Well, with
this expenditure of £75,000,000 out of capital and taxes,
we have contrived in seventeen years to open about 3,300
miles of railway. I will now tell you what English gold
did for the United States of America, in ten years only,
from 1851 to 1861. Without a guarantee of any kind
from its Government, then, you so freely offered your gold to
-
53
America, that they contrived to open with your help upwards
of 19,000 miles of railways in the States in those ten years,
or nearly 2,000 miles a-year; and you think you have done
great things for us, in aiding us to construct about two hundred.
Sir, we must invest capital in India on a very different scale
from this, if we would reap the harvest of wealth that lies
ready to our hand in that great country. Deal with India
in the open-handed manner in which you deal with other
lands, and you will reap a return therefrom such as you have
now little conception of.
Well, you have now seen the total actual expenditure
of English capital on railway enterprise in India. Allow
me, in conclusion, to draw your attention to the abstrac-
tion you make of capital therefrom annually. At this
moment, then, what are called the Home charges of the
Indian Government do not fall short of six millions a-year.
Now, I speak the language of sober earnestness when I say
that there is hardly an item in those charges, that does not
admit of question as to its justice, either in principle or in
degree. I must not weary you, however; and I shall refer
but to two or three particulars therein. I remark then, first,
that in those charges there is a demand annually made
for the sum of £3,000,000, in payment of interest on the
debts incurred in the prosecution of the Affghan War, and in
the suppression of the Indian Mutiny. Now I speak within
the hearing of men who are quite able to verify what I say,
when I affirm that the large sum of money thus claimed is taken
from India every year, by no law but that of might. Will it
be contended seriously that the Affghan War was entered
upon in the interests of India, or that India had any voice
whatever, either in its prosecution or its close? It was a
purely English war, undertaken by English statesmen in the
teeth of the rulers of India, and in purely English interests;
and so mistaken and so guilty was that war, that it has come
to be called proverbially" the iniquitous Affghan War."
And yet, though India had nothing whatever to do either
with its inception, its responsibility, or its prosecution; and
54
though the East India Company protested earnestly against
the whole affair; you have fastened the whole cost of it,
namely, £1,000,000 a-year in perpetuity, upon the people
of that country. Do you think that the terrible sufferings
of 1857 cast no light upon this transaction? Already the sum
abstracted from the people of India on account of that war, does
not fall short of the whole amount of your boasted expendi-
ture upon Indian railways. You are at the present moment
taking £1,000,000 sterling a-year from India for the cost
of that iniquitous war; and you mean to take it still. Do
you think the lapse of twenty years takes off the disgrace
of the proceeding? I do not stay to notice the miserable
pretences upon which the interests of India were sought
to be linked with that war. Suffice it to say that it
cost, directly or indirectly, £20,000,000 to £30,000,000 be-
fore its last traces disappeared from the Indian balance-sheet,
and that you have unjustly fastened a perpetual demand of
£1,000,000 a-year upon the people of India for its conduct-
and you take care that they pay it.
Once more, under this head (and I remark parenthetically
that it would be easy to show that the whole Indian debt is
really an English liability, and not Indian) I point your
attention to the fact, that you are exacting £2,000,000 more
every year from India, and mean to exact it in perpetuity,
it seems, for the suppression of the Indian Mutiny. And yet,
what fact in equity can be more certain, than that the cost of
suppressing that outbreak, should be borne by those by whose
misrule it was occcasioned? Let it be well understood that
there is no longer any controversy as to its causes.
The English Government of the day was committed to
course of spoliation of high and low. On one pretext
or another, our treaties with the native princes of the
country were violated, that we might seize their possessions,
while Enam commissioners were sweeping as with a besom all
the private freeholds of the country into the Government
treasuries. It was impossible all this while, remember, to
secure a hearing for any remonstrance that came from India.
55
Every petition presented to either Lords or Commons was
treated as so much waste paper; and when at last a
rebellion occurred, you bound the whole cost of its suppres-
sion, to the last farthing, upon the shoulders of the people.
But you reversed your policy, and signed judgment against
yourselves for the debt in doing so.
Is it thus that this
vast dependency whose
While you have been
What, I ask, had the loyal millions of Bombay, Madras,
the Punjab, Sind, Nagpoor, to do with that rebellion,
that they are now to pay its cost; while you, by whose
misrule alone it was brought about, refuse to touch the
burden with one of your fingers?
Christian people should govern the
finances are in its hands, as a trust?
making your guaranteed outlay upon Indian railways of three
millions a-year, Sir Charles Wood has been drawing three
millions a-year to pay the interest upon debts, unjustly
incurred in our name, because we are in your power.
Do you think, if India was rightly represented in the
British Parliament, this state of things would be allowed.
to last ?
Before I dismiss this subject, let me ask your attention
to a fact concerning the Mutiny debt, which is truly so dis-
graceful as to be all but incredible. It happened that a large
part of this so-called debt of £40,000,000 was incurred just
at the time when you were under the panic of a French in-
vasion. There were no fewer than 100,000 troops in India at
the period, the depôts of which, amounting to 22,000 men,
were in this country. Well, all through that panic those depôts.
formed a most important part of your national defences, and
your statesmen, and newspapers, comforted themselves with
their presence here. Can you believe it possible, then, that
the whole cost of their maintenance was thrown-as the cost
of these depôts ever was thrown-upon the Indian Treasury,
upon the pretext that the regiments to which they belonged
were serving in India? Comment
Comment upon such a fact is super-
fluous. The cost of your defence was thrown upon the Indian
ryot, and he is paying it to this day. And yet you are easy
56
under the impression that your rule of India is upright and
commendable, and exactly what it ought to be.
*
I do not carry the subject further, or it would be easy for
me to show that these so-called Home charges, which have
amounted in round figures to £150,000,000, since the com-
mencement of the century, have been one of the chief
causes that have retarded the progress of that country.
India pays a heavy penalty, gentlemen, for the benefits of
English rule. What the total capital annually abstracted
from her under our giant system of absenteeism amounts to
it is difficult to say; but it is heavy in the extreme, and
tends terribly to her impoverishment. I need not tell you
how different is the effect of taxes spent within the country
in which they are raised, and taxes spent without it. It is
the unavoidable misfortune of India that many millions
a-year of her taxes, are sent therefrom to be expended in this
country; and I cannot forbear the statement of my convic-
tion that our national relations with that great empire are
far from resting upon an equitable basis. The principle
upon which all our financial relations with India have
hitherto been conducted, is the assumption that England never
had any interest in the acquisition of its rule, and has none what-
ever in its maintenance. I need not tell you how false that
assumption is. A De Tocqueville, amongst foreigners, is lost
in admiration of the fortune we possess in our great depen-
dency, while the vulgar leaders of your press indecently
threaten to “cut the Indian Empire adrift" rather than let
her cost you one shilling. Do you not think, gentlemen, strong
primâ facie evidence exists against the equity of your rule, in
the fact that you may search the records of your Exchequer
through, and fail to find there a trace even of the ex-
* India owes much to Mr. Laing, as the first English statesman
who has had the courage to animadvert boldly upon the character of
our financial relations therewith; and I regret deeply that I am
obliged to differ from him on any question. It was Mr. Laing's attitude
towards the Home charges, I believe, that was the real, though not
ostensible, origin of the quarrel that drove him from office.—R. K.
3
4
57
istence of your Indian Empire. You have unlimited
control of our finances. There is no man to rise up in
Parliament, and question the equity or the justice of the vast
abstractions you are making, year by year, from the treasury
of India, without check or hindrance of any kind. You do
as you please with that treasury. You ever have done so.
Every charge that you could connect, however remotely, with
the name of India, you have cast upon her. Instead of a
scrupulous regard to what equity and good faith suggested,
and a careful attempt to apportion the cost of maintaining
the connexion of the two countries between them, upon the
principle that each should pay according to the benefits it
derives therefrom, you have made India pay the whole;
you are still making it do so; and you mean still to make
it do so.
The time is coming, gentlemen, when interpellations
upon this subject will reach you from the native mind of
India itself. It is not for nothing that the young men of
India are pressing through the Universities you have esta-
blished in its chief cities. Their voices are mute now, for
they know not political warfare; but the time is coming
when you will have to give an account to the sons of India,
of the trust so long confided to your hands, and, as I in my
conscience believe, so inequitably used. Remember, if your
treatment of your other dependencies is right, then is your
treatment of India shamelessly wrong; and I would, from
the bottom of my heart, that you awoke to this fact of
yourselves. It is enough for me, that I have made a
deliverance of my own conscience upon this subject.
When I regard attentively the intense selfishness of
our rule in India; our deliberate refusal to pay one
shilling for the important benefits we derive from that
rule; and remember that India is one of the poorest
countries on the earth, whilst we are estimated to be the
wealthiest, I cannot but have misgivings as to our future.
I cannot but fear that what we are wrongfully withdrawing
from that country, will be exacted of us, to the last far-
58
thing, in national rebuke, humiliation, and suffering. I speak
the more unreservedly upon this subject, because I know
how extensively deep religious feeling pervades the north of
England, and because, we are told by high authority, that it
is from Manchester that the great political impulses of the
day are flowing.
I would suggest that Manchester should petition for a
Select Committee of the House, to report upon the following
questions:-
1. The propriety of declaring every Port in India a Free
Port?
2. The propriety of extending the Permanent Settlement
throughout India, as sanctioned by Sir Charles
Wood's Dispatch of 1864?
3. The propriety of that Settlement in the North West
Provinces ?
4. The propriety of mixing up the vast Public Works
Expenditure of India with its current Revenue
accounts, and of compelling its Government to construct
Public Works of a reproductive character, out of
Taxes, instead of allowing it to borrow money for the
purpose, as all other Governments do ?
5. The character of our financial relations with India,
and the principles on which they are based?
NOTE.
Shortly after the Conference, a letter commenting thereon appeared
in the Times, signed "A Colonist," illustrating very perfectly the want
of exact acquaintance with our affairs, which I allege against the
colonist party generally. The writer remarks :—
The Government of India, while boasting that it possesses a source of revenue
which other Governments have foolishly alienated, has never understood that the
privilege of collecting the rent of the land entails upon it the obligation of fulfil-
ling those duties of a landlord which elsewhere are performed by private individuals.
While maintaining the theory that the land revenue is only the rent, it has never
scrupled to use that revenue as a tax to defray the expenses of foreign wars, or to
relieve the wealthy commercial inhabitants of great cities from the burden of pay-
ing their fair share of the general taxation of the country. As a general rule, none
of the money taken from the land was, till lately, spent on the land, and conse-
quently, the backward condition of Indian agriculture presented a close parallel to
that of Irish agriculture in those good old days in which absentee landlords
squandered in foreign countries the rents they received from their properties in
Ireland. Even still it is considered a work of grace, and not of obligation, for the
Indian Government to spend money on public improvements, such as roads and
works of irrigation; and so little did Sir C. Trevelyan last year recognise what the
Government owes to the land, that he actually abolished the income tax-the only
direct impost to which the commercial millionaires of India, the men who benefit
most largely by our rule, contributed-because he could use the land revenue to
supply the gap thus created, instead of applying it to its legitimate purposes.
A day or two after this letter appeared, the Bolton Chronicle
echoed the substance of its complaint as follows
If we want more cotton, and better cotton, and cheaper cotton, from India, we
must have more roads, more navigable canals, and greater improvements to the
navigation of existing rivers between the cotton districts and the coast. And here
it is that the Government of India has signally failed in its duty. It is true we are
told that during the last six years the grants for public works, chiefly roads, have
been £30,000,000. It seems a great sum. But look to the different position in
which the Government of India stands to the landowners and occupiers, to that
which it holds in reference to the same classes in our own country. In England,
if a new road has to be made, the owners and occupiers of land must subscribe for
the improvement. But in India the Government may be called fairly the land-
owner; it levies a land-tax which during the last six years has amounted to
60
£120,000,000. And we say it is bound in all honesty to expend that tax in the
improvement of the land upon which it is levied. Let the cotton manufacturer
stick to this one point-" You, the Government of India, receive £20,000,000
a-year of rent from the land; that is a sum you have no right to dispose of for the
enefit of merchants, and for the improvement of towns, but which you should
devote to the benefit of those who pay it.
Lastly, a greater than either the "Colonist " or the Chronicle-the
Times-was insisting upon the same thing, a few months ago, in the
following terms :—
It is true that a large sum of £5,890,000 is to be spent in the ensuing year on
public works, but nearly as much, or £5,686,000, was spent in the past twelve
months. A Government like that of India, which, taking into account the opium
-monopoly, derives more than half its income in its character of landowner, must
every year be prepared to lay out considerable sums in public works. This has
been done for many years past, and the revenue is now reaping the benefit of the
expenditure. The present generation must do for its successors what its prede-
cessors have done for it.
In substance, all these gentlemen agree that as the Government of
India is the landlord of the country, and enjoys the rights of land-
lord, so must it be held answerable for the discharge of the landlord's
duties in other words, it is its duty to construct what works are
necessary for the improvement of the land, out of the income which it
derives therefrom. The extracts are replete with misstatements of
fact on minor matters, to which I need not reply: but admitting for a
moment that the Government of India does stand towards the soil in the
relation which these gentlemen, erroneously, suppose when or where in
the world, I ask, was it ever yet held that a landlord ought not to be
allowed to borrow money for the improvement of his estate, but should
be compelled to devote thereto, the income he derives therefrom! The
question raised by these gentlemen, and thus superficially treated, is
vital to the wellbeing of India; and if the erroneous impressions con-
veyed by such writings are to govern our conduct in the matter of
public works in India, the future of that great country will be inde-
finitely compromised.
The terms lease, rent, landlord, and tenant, as applied to the relations
existing between the State and the land in India, are suggestive of so
much error, that their use is greatly to be deprecated. A lease in
India is not a lease, in the English meaning of the term; nor is the
Government a landlord, nor the ryot a tenant, nor the land revenue
Governm
61
a rent; and the assumption that the words so translated have the
full meaning of their English renderings, is the parent of half the
errors made in this country upon the subject of Indian finances.
In no part of India, does the Government stand towards the soil in
the relation of landlord. Its rights as landlord (if it ever possessed
them) were long since waived in favour of the cultivator. As a matter
of fact, the Government of India never was the landlord; it was simply
entitled by immemorial usage to what was known as the khirauj→●
an impost that might, or might not, represent the true rent of the soil
This impost might legally extend to one-half the produce, but could
not exceed that proportion; while in practice only a third or a fourth
was taken. In other words, the Commonwealth had a prescriptive
right to share in the produce of the soil; a share that might reach to
one-half, but in practice seldom exceeded one-third.
Now, let it be well understood that this was the condition of things
we found in India. We found that the Commonwealth had reserved
a right from time immemorial to a certain proportion of the produce
of the land. But the State had no right to the soil: it could not
dispossess one tenant to put another in at a higher rental; for the
soil belonged to the occupier, who could do with it what he liked,
so long as he paid the State share of the produce. When a man
sold his land in those days, he sold it subject to the State claim
upon it; in other words, he sold a right to occupy and enjoy for eɣer
two-thirds of its produce. The remaining third was not his to sell,
and never was his, nor his fathers'. Whether the State share repre-
sented the true rent of the soil or not, would of course be an accident:
I am inclined to believe it fell a good deal short of that rent as a
rule. Well, this was the condition of things we found everywhere;
while at this moment we have everywhere lowered that khirauj almost
to the point of abandonment. The land has risen so enormously in
value within the last twenty years-mainly from the successful growth
of new and valuable articles of export-that, instead of one-third, it
is doubtful if we are taking one-twentieth of the produce as the
State share. In other words, whatever our predecessors may have
been, we have long since abandoned all claim to anything but a quit-
rent of the soil.
Wisely or unwisely, we have abandoned, I say, to the cultivator that
share in the produce which before we came, the Commonwealth
62
a
reserved for defraying the expenses of the Government. In so doing,
we have of course conferred an enormously valuable property upon
une cultivator, which neither he nor his fathers knew, and to which
neither he nor they had the remotest title, or right. If, therefore,
it ever was the landlord, the Government has long ceased to be so,
having abandoned to the cultivator the whole margin of profit which
lies between our light assessment and the true rental of the fields.
• Now, these are facts of which "A Colonist" is plainly ignorant.
The belief still lingers everywhere, that the land revenue of India is "
rack-rent of half the produce." The truth is, a revolution has taken
place in that country within the last twenty years, so vast that the
experience and the writings of men who may have been "authorities "
in 1845 are now simply misleading and dangerous. It is because of this
that the proposal to settle the land-tax in perpetuity at its present
amount, is so monstrous a folly. Just at the period when the land is
doubling in value every five years, we are bidden to settle the land-
tax in perpetuity. Take the case of a ryot holding a thirty
years' lease, in the Bombay Presidency. The man has what is
called a right of occupancy; and the "lease" is simply an as-
surance that the Government assessment shall not be raised for a
generation of years. He can do what he likes with his land, for his
right to occupy is heritable, and transferable, and perpetual. The
State cannot oust him; all improvements upon the land are his for
He is simply liable at the end of thirty years to find the quit-
rent he is paying somewhat increased, from a general edict falling upon
the whole talooka; an edict ever preceded by careful inquiry. Where
he is now paying a quit-rent of Rs.2 an acre, he may perhaps have to
pay by-and-bye Rs.3. Who is the real landlord in these circum-
stances? The so-called tenant, who is allowed from generation to
generation to enjoy the rent, or the so-called landlord, who does not
enjoy it? So valuable a property are these leases, that they command
the most fabulous premiums. Land is not to be bought in Western
India at all. If we could get at the hoards of these men for the
purpose of making the roads, and tanks, and canals, which they have
too little enterprise to make for themselves, it might be good policy
to tax them for the purpose; but to tax the urban classes for such
work while they are to have no interest in the profits arising from the
outay, is plainly monstrous. On this ground, have I ever condemned
ever.
!
63
..
the income-tax in India; because it was levied to sustain a great
public works expenditure, and not to defray the current expenses of
the State. If we settle the land-tax in perpetuity at its present amour
then is it certain that the Commonwealth should cease all expenditure
upon public works for improving that land. All that the State is now
taking from the land of India is a quit-rent, the whole proceeds of
which go to defray the expense of administering the laws, and main-
taining the military establishments. To undertake public works for
improving the land, out of that quit-rent, or out of an income-tax
upon the cities, is plainly preposterous. The State has already con-
ferred upon the occupiers of land an enormously valuable property,
which belonged of right to all classes in common. And we are now to
add to the value of that property, it seems, by an indefinite outlay
upon public works made out of taxes upon the non-agricultural
classes.
LONDON: W. J. JOHNSON PRINTER, 121, FLEET STREET.
•
SIR GEORGE COUPER
AND THE
1
FAMINE IN THE NORTH-WEST PROVINCES
[Being a revised reprint of certain Letters and Articles on the
Subject in the STATESMAN AND FRIEND OF INDIA.]
Calcutta:
"STATESMAN" OFFICE: 3, CHOWRINGHEE.
1878.
•
CALCUTTA :
CALCUTTA CENTRAL PRESS COMPANY, LIMITED,
5, COUNCIL HOUSE STREET.
PREFACE:
THE appalling mortality attending the recent famine
in the North-West Provinces has beer shown beyond
cavil by the Statesman to be directly attributable to the
blindness and apathy of Sir George Couper's govern-
ment, and to the total want of discretion with which he
carried out, regardless of consequences, the policy which
he believed would commend itself to the approval
of the Government of India. Lord Lytton has shown.
more respect for public opinion than most of his pre-
decessors, but it is too weak in India to compel the
bureaucracy under which we live to acknowledge the falli-
bility of high officials, or the failure of measures which
it has itself adopted or approved. To effect this, we must
appeal to the public opinion of England. So vital are
the issues raised in the following controversy, so necessary.
is it that the late scandal in the North-West should be
exposed and condemned, and that at, the same time, the
essential, though unintentional, cruelty of the famine policy
imposed by the agency of Sir Richard Temple on Madras,
and which under Sir George Couper has permitted half
a million of people to die of hunger, should be clearly
demonstrated-that we deem it our duty to ask the verdict
of the Home public upon the matter.
!
Early in February last, when the Indian public, and even
the local Government, were yet in ignorance of the
terrible mortality from famine that was raging in the North-
West Provinces, Mr. Knight had occasion to go to Agra.
Dr. Cornish, the Sanitary Commissioner of Madras, had
6
•(ii)
į
just preceded him, and when Mr. Knight arrived he received
a letter from Dr. Cornish, pointing out to him the unmis-
takable symptoms of famine among the people. What he
saw with his own eyes and heard from all quarters, official
and unofficial, more than confirmed Dr. Cornish's state-
ments. Mr. Knight thereupon wrote to the Statesman his
first letter on the subject, and thus, in the middle of
February, the public was for the first time made aware that
a severe famine had been raging, almost without remark, in
the North-West since November. Attempts were made
through certain newspapers and by the publication of
official documents to cast discredit on his statements.
This; and the pitiable condition of the people, led him
to write two other letters to the Statesman, the contents.
of which were so damaging to the government of Sir
George Couper, that the latter felt it incumbent on
him to address a defence of his policy to the Govern-
ment of India. The Government of India rashly accept-
ed the defence, and approved Sir George Couper's course;
and to pacify public opinion published the official cor-
respondence. By this time Mr. Knight was back in
Calcutta, and was thus able to deal exhaustively with the
questions in dispute, in the editorial columns of the
Statesman. By means of the mortuary returns, published
by the Government, and other official papers to which he
had access, he was able, by official evidence, to prove his
charges and to expose the flimsiness of Sir George Cou-
per's defence. At the same time corroborative testimony
streamed daily into the office of the Statesman from a
host of correspondents in the North-West, including not
only, missionaries and other non-official gentlemen of
position, but also many, officials in Government service.
The following pages contain Mr. Knight's letters, and the
official papers in defence of the Government, with the
(iii)*
Statesman's editorials and important extracts from the corre-
spondence referred to. As much as possible has been done
by compression and re-arrangement to present the contro-
versy to the public in a convenient form. To attain due
method and brevity, it would have been necessary to
write an original pamphlet; but the importance of the
subject is such that it is hoped that defects of style and
method, inseparable from a reprint of this kind, will not
be allowed to weigh with the critic against facts of so
lamentable an order as are here disclosed.
We lay the appeal before the Home public, because
the horrible scandal which it discloses is simply the cul-
mination of the reactionary policy towards these calamities
that has been begotten of Sir Richard Temple's guilty
extravagancies in 1874. Down to the Orissa famine,
it was the accepted belief of the Government that
Our one danger in these calamities was the 'doing
too much' for the people. As there are no poor laws
in India, and no provision of any kind for the des- ·
titute, every famine encountered under our rule had
been attended by an appalling mortality. The dreadful
sufferings of the people in Orissa (1866-67) reached the
ears of the English public, and the Commission that was
appointed to enquire into that calamity produced a
report that it was supposed and believed would change the
entire attitude of the Government towards these calamities
in the future. But two short years afterwards, the Raj-
pootana famine occurred, and a million and a half of people
were again consigned to death, by ignoring the Orissa
Commission as if it had never existed. The district
officers were again warned to be sure 'they did not do
too much,' and it ended, as usual, in doing nothing. Sir
John Strachey was Lieutenant-Governor of the North
8
00
(iv)
West at the time, and it was he, undoubtedly, who struck
the key-note of our course in this new calamity.
Strange to tell, this dreadful famine in Rajpootana excit-
ed no remark in England at all, but the Anglo-Indian press
did its duty. The Friend of India on the one side of India,
and the Times of India, followed by the Indian Economist,
on the other. spoke out in terms of indignant passion
upon the subject, and a great change came over men's
mind in India, as to the spirit in which these calamities
needed to be met. It will be the lasting praise of Earl
Northbrook-an otherwise feeble ruler-that the duty of the~
Government towards the people in time of famine, had
taken absolute possession of his mind. Had he but
been wise enough to have put the power of the Supreme
Government behind Sir George Campbell, when the Behar
famine confronted us in 1873-74, Sir George would have
stereotyped as a guide for all time, the course to be
pursued. But Lord Northbrook was jealous of his great
Lieutenant, and insisted upon his retiring in the midst of
the famine, that he might put Sir Richard Temple in his
place. To this unhappy mistake, we owe everything that
has followed. Without a conviction upon any subject and
equally ready to make a famine where there is none, or to
shut his eyes to the calamity when raging around him, Sir
Richard Temple's wild extravagance of expenditure be-
came a scoff and by-word in the country. He spent six
or seven millions sterling, when two would have been more
than ample, and made a famine everywhere to sustain the
wild estimates he had himself forced upon the district
officers, against their remonstrances.
A reaction. of course was inevitable, and when famine
again loomed upon us in Bombay and Madras, in 1876-77,
い
​V )
Sir John Strachey, who had become Finance Minister,
rehabilitated the old policy once more, with Sir Richard
Temple as the instrument to give effect to it. The old
delusion was on its feet stronger than ever-that our
danger lies in doing too much,' while the Behar famine,
in which not a life was lost, was never named but to be
scoffed at, because of Sir Richard Temple's guilty folly
in connection with it.
Every one knows how total has been the failure of the
Strachey-Temple policy imposed in the last eighteen
months upon Madras, while the facts disclosed in the fol-
lowing pages as to the famine in the North-West show the
culmination of this reaction, in Sir George Couper's inhuman
course. We have tried to be as brief as we could, where a
volume would be necessary to explain the exact position to
the English mind. We send forth the pamphlet with deep
reluctance, and only because we feel it to be our duty to
do so.

CALCUTTA, June 1878.

FAMINE IN THE NORTH-WEST.
MR. KNIGHT'S LETTERS TO THE "STATESMAN."
I.
AGRA, February 15th, 1878.
SIR, It is with real distress that I attempt to awaken
the Imperial Government to the fact that we are at
this moment in the midst of actual famine in the
North-West Provinces, and that the fatal propensity of
our officials to conceal from themselves and from the
Government the extent of the distress, and the real suffer-
ings of the people, will result-indeed, is already result-
ing-in a terrible mortality from starvation. That there
may be no mistake as to my meaning, I affirm plainty
that masses of the labouring poor are being slowly starved
to death in these provinces, and I fear the statement is as
true concerning Oudh and Rohilkund as of the districts.
of which Agra is the centre. No one will suspect me, I
hope, of pretending to be more humane, or more clear-
sighted, than the great body of honorable and able men
who constitute the Civilian executive of these provinces.
No one in India has a higher appreciation than I have
of the claims of the Service to which they belong upon
the admiration and the confidence of their countrymen ;
but there is unhappily a fatal Service tradition amongst
them upon this subject of famine. A few years ago, the
tradition was everywhere accepted that it was idle to
suppose that the Government could charge itself with
the responsibility of saving the people alive in time of
famine. The Government could perhaps do something to
mitigate the sufferings of the people, but not much. It
might, in extremity, suspend the collection of the land
• ( 2 )
revenue, or at the last moment open relief works, and
finally give some assistance to private movements for
doling out a daily ration to the infirm, the aged, and
the very young, just sufficient to sustain, life. And
that was all. To hope to do more than this, was
deemed visionary and quixotic, nay, contrary to the
'laws of political economy. That famine is one of those
calamities that fall under the same category as war,
and that the responsibilities of the Government in en-
countering it are to be measured only by its powers,
is now an established conviction; but it has been contested
at every step of its progress, by this 'tradition' of the Ser-
vice. Not a Government resolution, nor circular order on the
subject, was ever issued down to 1869, that was not couched
in a tone of warning to the district officer to be sure that
he did not do too much. The great thing to aim at was
not the mitigation of the peoples' sufferings, but as small
a drain as possible upon the exchequer; the first care
consequently in famine was care for the treasury. The
people of course must suffer-suffer terribly. The great
thing was to see that the treasury did not suffer, or suffered
as little as possible. That famine must be encountered in
the spirit in which a nation enters upon the calamity of
war, and that the Government stands or falls by the
success or failure of its operations, is a conviction to
which we do lip-service readily enough, but which has
never yet dethroned the official tradition.
The Government wishes to believe that the people can
pull through without assistance, and that their sufferings,
if not imaginary, are at all events exaggerated by the
zeal of officers who are wanting in judgment, and whose
extravagance in representing matters to their superiors, or
indiscretion in "writing to the papers," should be repressed
as only mischievous and embarrassing. So well understood
is it that the Government does not look with favour upon
anything like strong representations of the peoples' suffer-
ings, that probably no officer ever sits down to call atten-
tion to them, without a distinct effort to bring his style
down to the official level that is recognized as the
right standard. What the Government wishes to believe
is of course well known to the entire district executive,
and the art of minimizing the sufferings of the people is
practised, I believe unconsciously, by nineteen officials out
of every twenty who are moving in their very midst.
•
( 3 )•
Į
•
I now
warn the Government that this fatal art is
being practised to a dangerous extent at this moment în
these provinces. It is not want of humanity, but the delu-
sion that, with wheat at II seers the rupee, we must expect
the very poor to die-it is this that produces the apathy
with which the widespread starvation of the people is
being watched by the executive. Three-fourths of the
people, even on our so-called relief-works, are slowly but
surely starving to death Wheat, jowaree, and dhall at
10 to II seers the rupee, and a daily wage of 9 pie for
women and I anna for men coolies! It is simply death by
slow torture, and calls for any indignation you may express
upon it. And now observe the results of this so-called
relief, communicated in a private letter to myself by a
very high medical authority who passed through Agra a
week ago.
AGRA, Sunday, 10th February.
"I did not expect to meet with any evidence of famine
in this part of India, but on my way to the Taj yesterday,
I stopped and inspected a number of the working gangs
on the famine relief-works, and this morning I have been
into the poor-house where the worst cases are brought in.†
In regard to the people on relief-works, they are generally
in a worse condition than our working gangs in the South
were at this time last year. Their appearance betrays a love
course of under-feeding. The dirty, hard, dry skins and
blue gums indicate a deteriorated state of health that is
certain to end in high mortality. At the poor-house during
the few minutes I remained, four miserable creatures were
brought in on doolies, and the condition of the inmates is
generally very bad. I understood the man in charge to
say that 87 persons had died there in Fanuary, the average
daily strength being from 200 to 300. I have seen none of
the local magnates, nor do I know what views are enter-
tained in regard to the extent of the distress. All that
I can
say is, that the misery from chronic starvation
amongst the people on the relief-works and in the poor-
house, and wandering about the town, is very real; and that
the present prospects of .famine are very much what they
•
* Dr. Cornish, Sanitary Commissioner of Madras.
+ It has been stated since that this was really a hospital, but as Dr.
Cornish calls it a place "where the worst cases were brought in," the hame
makes little difference.
•( 4 )
were in Madras a year ago. Only in this particular is the
N.-W. better off, that you have promising crops of wheat,
barley, and dhall, which will come into market in two
months, whereas in our case last February, we had no
prospect of harvest under six or seven months. The dis-
trict jail I was unable to see, but Dr. Tyler informs me
that his numbers are double the average, and this of course
indicates distress in the district.
"I have no doubt that Agra receives the waifs of Jey-
pore and surrounding districts, and that there is a concen-
tration of misery about here, just as occurred in all our
large towns in Madras; but from the very little that has
been said in regard to the distress here, I should be inclin-
ed to think that there was an unwillingness to admit the
existence of actual famine, and that it may burst rather un-
pleasantly on the authorities if the growing crops should
turn out unfavourably. The early symptoms of famine
are quite unmistakable to those accustomed to witness
them, and I have no hesitation in saying that they exist
in the relief-workers near Agra.”
The italics in this letter are mine, and I earnestly beg
the attention of the Government to the facts remarked by
the writer. The people are being slowly starved by us,
while we nurse the belief that we are protecting them
from this last extremity of suffering. Let the reader re-
flect for a moment upon 87 deaths in one month, in a
single poor-house, with an average of 200 to 300 inmates.
I implore the attention of the Government to these dis-
closures. What is wanted in our district officers is not
humanity, not pity for such sufferings-but their deliver-
ance once for all from the miserable delusion that it is the
public will, or the wish of the Government, that our relief
measures should simply mean a horrible process of pro-
longing a man's death over six weeks of starvation on a
Temple ration, instead of cutting his misery short by
keeping him without food for six days. It is not in the
Agra districts alone, that this terrible state of things
exists, and exists apparently without the knowledge of the
Government at all. I am urged by post this morning to
go to Bareilly, to Budaon, to Shahjehanpore, to see the
real state of matters, as the "officials are doing what they
can to conceal the gravity of the state of affairs" from
the Government.
R. KNIGHT.
( 5 ) •
This letter called forth a reply from Dr. Hilson, Civil
Surgeon of Agra, in the form of a letter to the Collector,
in which he argued that Dr. Cornish had not had time to
ascertain the facts accurately, and that his account of
the distress was very much exaggerated. It was pro-
bably in consequence of the same letter that the Secretary
to Sir. George Couper's government addressed a com-
munication to the Government of India on the 28th of Feb-
ruary, in which the existence of severe distress was admit-
ted, but an attempt was made to show that the Govern-
ment of the North-West had made adequate arrangements
to meet it in every district, with the exception of Rai
Bareli. The following paragraph, while describing the
sufferings of the people, reveals, in the lines italicised,
complete ignorance, even at that time, of the great mor-
tality among the people :-
The
6. It was intimated at the time that, though the rainfall of October had
for the time saved these Provinces from distress amounting to famine, a con-
siderable part of the population would inevitably be reduced to sore straits
in the interval between the sowing and the ripening of the crops, and this
prediction has been only too fully verified. The copious rainfall in December
and January was not an unmixed blessing, for it deprived the labouring
classes of the work they would otherwise have obtained in irrigating the
crops; and the general failure of the khurreef grains, on which they ordinarily
subsist, and which have been less abundant in the markets than wheat or
barley, and quite as dear, deprived them as well of their usual food.
result has been that, unable to obtain their usual work, and with the grains
on which they ordinarily depend for food selling at famine rates, the large
class of day-laborers have been in a great measure compelled to eke out
their subsistence by eating the green leaves of sarson, gram, and other plants.
These remarks apply chiefly to the Agra and Rohilkhund Divisions, the
greater part of Oudh, and parts of the Benares Division. The distress was
much aggravated by the quite abnormal cold which came upon us so very
suddenly and unexpectedly after the rain which fell in the first part of
January. In ordinary years the poorest classes have abundance of straw for
their bedding, and are thus kept warm at night when the cold is most severe;
but this year, when in some places even the thatch has been pulled off the
houses to feed the cattle, they were unable to get this auxiliary to their
scanty clothing, and the cold acting on frames already enfeebled by insuffi-
cient nourishment has undoubtedly produced a mortality considerably in
excess of the usual rate at the present season of the year, although it may be
questioned whether it will not be found hereafter that the comparative immunity
from cholera and fever which, owing apparently to the drought, the Provinces
have enjoyed during the past year, will not compensate for the losses caused
by insufficient food and clothing, and make the mortality generally little if
at all, higher than in an ordinary year. The deaths have been most nu-
merous amongst the class of wandering and professional beggars:
We quote also the following passages, because they
embody the main excuse that has been put forward by the
• ( 6 )
:
j
North-West Government, for the dreadful mortality in
these districts :-
IO. In the Rohilkhund Division generally the laborers who are in distress-
ed circumstances are represented to have shown great reluctance to come to
the relief-works, preferring to sit idly at their homes when they found they
were required to do a fixed task. This apathy has undoubtedly tended to
increase the numbers in the poor-houses, as admission could not be refused
when they had become too feeble to work, and must have starved if they
were not admitted. It was stated also that not a few who, on being dis-
charged from the poor-house, were sent to a relief work ran away. *
II. As it appeared that one of the objections made to laboring on a relief-
work was that the task exacted was somewhat beyond the powers of some of
the people by reason of their already enfeebled state, it was at once reduced
to an amount which such people could be fairly expected to perform. But the
chief difficulty which the local authorities have had to contend against is the
reluctance of the people to give any equivalent at all for their food in the
shape of work. They say the "Sirkar fed us for nothing in 1868," and they
cannot understand why they should not be similarly favored now.
As soon
as they, found that work was expected from them, they hied to their homes.
This impression and its consequences are, of course, much to be deprecated;
but the local officers were instructed to use all the influence at their command
to bring the people to a sense of what was due from them to Government, as
well as what was due from Government to them.
The concluding paragraph contained the following sen-
tence:" It is unquestionable that there has been, and
still is, very severe distress; but everywhere the arrange-
ments appear to be such, that His Honor believes no man
need die of starvation. How greatly His Honor was
deluded, will be seen when we come to deal with the mor-
tuåry returns.
""
The Government of India, in replying to this communi-
cation, declared itself satisfied that Sir G. Couper's
arrangements had, "on the whole," been "timely and
sufficient," but called for a report on the rate of wages
given on relief-works,—a point to which Sir G. Couper's
Secretary had made no allusion. A report was according-
ly furnished, which, however, it is unnecessary to produce.
here, as the nominal wage system will be found set forth
in Sir G. Couper's defence. The rate actually paid on
several of the works was, as will be seen, very far below
the nominal rate.
After waiting to see all that could be said in reply to
his first letter, Mr. Knight again addressed the Editor of
the Statesman, exposing in stronger terms than before the
mismanagement of the famine.
( 7 ) •
II.
AGRA, 29th March 1878.
SIR,-I have purposely delayed noticing the strictures
that have been made upon my letter, published in your
columns of the 19th ultimo, concerning the mortality from
starvation in these provinces during the last few months,
that I might see all that had to be said against it. My
letter I presume it was that gave rise to the correspondence.
on the subject between the local Government of these pro
vinces and the Government of India, that was made public
your columns a few weeks ago; while it has been
honored, I find, by a leading article in the Englishman of
the 12th instant, and by a letter from the Civil Surgeon of
Agra to the Collector of the district, that found its way
into the Pioneer about a fortnight ago.
* *
*
*
*
*
Your contemporaries cannot but know the fact that
there has been an appalling mortality in these provinces
since November last, nor can they be ignorant, I think,
that it is neither old age, nor disease, nor epidemic of any
kind, that has caused this ghastly death-roll; but-starva-
tion. The people have died of hunger by tens of thousands
in these provinces since November last. They were so dying
all through December, January, and February without a
relief-work open anywhere; and when public attention is
called to the horrible fact, instead of joining me in the
demand for enquiry as to how this mortality could have
occurred, in presence of a District Executive supposed
to be charged with its prevention, your contemporary
(the Englishman) opens his editorial columns to a most
untruthful official apology which pooh-poohs the whole
subject, and which is allowed to assume the form of an
independent editorial assurance that Mr. Knight had made
most erroneous statements on the subject. According to
your contemporary, some trifling distress had been expe-
rienced, but it was in no way attributable to Executive
incapacity or want of foresight. The wording of my letter
ought, I think, to have shown everyone how desirous I
was to attribute as little blame as possible to the Exe-
cutive, while stating firmly that there was actual famine in
the provinces, and that a systematic effort was being made
by our district officers to conceal its existence from the
• ( 8 )
Government, and even from themselves. Both the local
journals, Pioneer and Delhi Gazette, were silent upon the
subject, or were Government apologists according to their
wont; while the Englishman publishes as an independent
editorial an official apology, the authorship of which is very
well known, contributed from Agra. Whatever may be
thought of such journalism by others, it is a long way re-
moved from my own conception of the true functions of the
Indian Press. Had your contemporary made any enquiry
into the facts, he would have known how necessary it was
to receive with caution every official assurance
subject.
on the
Dr. Hilson's letter hardly calls for notice from myself,
as it is in the main a simple expression of his professional
opinion that the physical condition of the labourers on the
relief-works in Agra itself, in the early part of February,
was far from being indicative of such lamentable under-
feeding, as Dr. Cornish declared it to be. The impression
which Dr. Hilson's letter is likely to convey seems
to me an unfortunate one in the interests of improved ad-
ministration; as it is impossible that Dr. Hilson should
not know that there has been a very appalling mortality
in these provinces in the last three months, or that he
should be ignorant of its real cause. The tilt against Dr.
Cornish as to the physical condition of the relief labour-
ers in Agra serves only to divert attention from the terri-
ble fact in which we are so much interested, namely, the
starvation of the people. The past cold season has been
a particularly healthy one. There has been neither fever,
nor cholera, nor epidemic of any kind to carry off the
people; and yet the mortality has been appalling. The
people have perished by tens of thousands of starva-
tion; that, and nothing else. I do not feel called upon to
decide whether Dr. Hilson or Dr. Cornish has given the
truer professional diagnosis of the condition of the people
on the relief-works at last opened in this city. It is
enough for me to have seen with my own eyes, the truly
horrible condition of crowds of people, past work alto-
gether; and to see that the official Gazette discloses a
death-rate throughout the provinces in December and
January last, of more than double the normal ratio.
Nothing is farther from my intention or wish than the
fastering of a reproach upon our district officers. What I
am anxious to do, is to show that we have not yet learned
(9)
that we must encounter famine in a different spirit alto-
gether from that which still traditionally prevails in the
Civil Service, if we are to encounter it successfully. I
will recur to the subject with your permission in a second
letter; and I leave it to the public to say whether such
"opposition" to the Government, as this letter expresses,
is desirable and necessary or not.
R. KNIGHT.
III.
March
AGRA, 30th March 1878.
SIR,-In my letter of yesterday I endeavoured to
dispose of all that is personal in the discussion which my
letter of the 19th.ultimo has provoked in the columns of
the Englishman and the Pioneer. I pointed out that the
reply to my letter in the former journal was simply an
official apology sent from this station as a contribution to
its columns, and was in no sense an independent editorial
judgment upon the matter, although it was made to
assume that form in your contemporary's columns. Had
the Englishman made any attempt to ascertain for itself
what the condition of the people really was, and what the
attitude of our district officers had been in presence of their
distress, it would have known how misleading was the apo-
logy, and how absolutely true was my complaint that the
Government views with displeasure all attempts of its
district executive to depict the sufferings of the people in
their true magnitude and intensity. I purposely preferred
the charge against the Government in general terms only,
but insisted on the fact that our district officials are too
apt to minimise the sufferings of the people. The result
in the present case has been an appalling mortality from star-
vation. The local officials were slow to open their eyes
to the real extent of the people's sufferings, the local Govern-
ment loving to have it so; and the result has been the
death of tens of thousands of the poor from sheer star-
vation. Had there been any true insight into the condi-
tion of the people, or any just reflection upon their
circumstances, the administration of these Provinces would
have been carried on from October last with the utmost
watchfulness, guided by a reasonable forecast of their
B
( 10 )
sufferings, and accompanied by the adoption of relief
measures, to the absence of which the dreadful mortality of
December, January, and February is directly attributable.
Every one knew that the khurreef harvest had failed abso-
lutely, and that these Provinces, at the end of September,
resembled nothing but a vast desért. Not a drop of rain had
fallen for months; not a blade of grass was to be seen any-
where; and the people were looking death in the face,
both for themselves and their cattle. At this terrible junc-
ture, and when all hope had forsaken them, the clouds
suddenly gathered blackness, and a heavy and continuous
downpour of rain occurred in the first week of October:
but for this Providential and abnormal rainfall, it is hard
to see how either man or beast could have been saved alive.
Not only had the great khurreef harvest of grain and forage
perished, but all hope of the rubbee crop, now happily
being reaped, was also gone. The parched condition of
the soil had made the rubbee sowings impossible. The
floods of rain that drowned the parched fields in October
were a veritable reprieve from death for the people and
their cattle; but the Government made the fatal mistake
of supposing that this unusual rain had redeemed the
Provinces from all danger. It had done nothing of the
kind, as a very little reflection should have shown every one.
The khurreef and grass and forage of the year were lost
beyond redemption, and all that these most timely rains
did for the people was to renew in them the hope of a
spring harvest, and give immediate employment in the
fields to the mass of agricultural labourers who had been
without work for many months, at a period when food was
at famine rates. The rainfall emptied the relief-works
at once. Within a few days they were all deserted, the
people hurrying to their homes and villages to prepare and
sow their lands for the rubbee. Now it ought to have been
distinctly foreseen by the Government that when these
sowings were completed, and the usual lull came in the
demand for field labour, it would be necessary to re-open
This
the relief-works to save the day-labourer alive.
forecast seems to have been absolutely wanting, and the
delusion was everywhere nursed that all need of Govern-
mental assistance was at an end. The impoverishment of
the people through the total loss of their grain-crops, and
the famine prices of grain, had made the condition of the
day-labourer so critical, that it was necessary to watch
( II ).
it with the utmost care. All thought of any such need seems
to have been banished. Every relief-work in the Provinces
was closed at the very moment when, as events have
clearly shown, it was necessary to open them every-
where, if the people were not to perish. The winter rains
that fell so seasonably in December and January, and
upon which the Government congratulated itself so much,
aggravated the danger of the labourer by superseding
all necessity of irrigating the fields. Is it not amazing
that even so simple a reflection as this seems not to have
presented itself to the official mind? The more favourable.
the season showed itself for the actual proprietor of the
fields, the more heavily did the scarcity press upon the
day-labourer, who was reduced to half-work, when food
was at famine rates. No Government can be carried on
by steam; while a Government with such masses of the
poor dependent upon it as our own, can hope to be ad-
ministered successfully, only by constant reflection and
the most watchful care. And the charge against Sir
George Couper's administration is, that it showed no pre-
vision and made no forecast of danger, in circumstances
that urgently demanded both. The policy resorted to
was to drive away the people who remained upon the
relief-works, by successively lowering the rate of wage,
until the Temple 'ration' was thrown into the shade alto-
gether by the adoption, in these districts, of a scale of 6
chittacks of flour and one of dhall per day.*
Is it any
wonder that the people dreaded to resort to the works,
as Sir George Couper says they did, when resort to them
meant slow starvation? I believe I am stating the fact
when I say that the people were driven from the relief-
works, by the inhumanity which was simply starving them
thereon. In Agra itself, the wages were 6 chittacks of
flour and one of dhall per day, down to the last week in
January. From alarm at the terrible mortality reported
from all quarters, the rate has since been raised to 10 chit-
tacks of flour and 2 of dhall. Is not the alternative
clear-that we are either grossly extravagant now, or were
starving the people before? If you can see any escape
from this alternative, give Sir George Couper the. benefit
of it: I see none. The notion that seems to have been
acted upon was, that the keeping of relief-works open

* I Chittack=2 ounces.
(12)
at all after the October rains fell, was a benevolent folly ;
and so the people were to be starved off them. With
what success this policy was attended, the frightful death-
rate of the Provinces during December, January, and
February has shown but too clearly. It is on these
grounds that I declare our policy in dealing with these
calamities to be a distinct failure. The dread of doing too
much still haunts the official mind in all departments,
and until this evil tradition has been got rid of, we
shall never see famine encountered in the right spirit.
But Sir George Couper has reviewed his own ad-
ministration in the letter to the Government of India
of the 16th February, lately published in your columns;
and instead of an admission of the incapacity that has
resulted in so frightful a mortality as the Gazette discloses,
he gets credit for the "vigor and foresight" which have
marked his operations. I venture to say, that nine-tenths
of the officers who have been concerned in this matter
during the last few months, will agree with me that Sir
George Couper's action was everywhere "too late." There
is ample official evidence of the fact, but it has been
suppressed. It is not primarily a question between the
public and the Government, as the Pioneer would make
out, but one between Sir George Couper and his own
officers. A small number of men in the N.W. P. hold
no doubt the traditional Civilian view, that everything
has been done in the wisest and best way possible; but
there is a large majority of men of ability and insight, to
whom the events of the last two months have been a real
awakening to the fact that our administration has been a
ghastly failure. There has been a real awakening, I say,
among the officers of this Government. The chords of
their humanity have been keenly touched. Surrounded
by the dying and the dead, they have sent in appeal after
appeal to their superiors in every possible tone-angry,
piteous, sarcastic, economical, and sanitary. When, as
sometimes has happened, they were answered with cold
denial and disbelief, sometimes with censure and punish-
ment, they have learned a lesson which only a great
calamity could teach, and, in common with Israel of old,
have at last seen that their gods are of stone, that they
see not, neither do they hear. I am not about to criticise
in any detail the defence which the local Government has
put forward, as I do not wish to "set a-going," to use its
j

( 13 ).
own classic language, a prolonged controversy on the sub-
ject, for none is needed. There is no dispute about the facts.
Every one capable of reflecting at all must haye known
well that, after the failure of the khurreef, there would be a
famine in these Provinces from December to March, and
that there was imminent danger of it lasting from Septem-
ber 1877 to September 1878.
Providence mercifully fuled that the lesser calamity only
should fall upon us, but so little prevision of it was there,
that the Government closed generally what relief-works
were in hand, just when there was most need for them,
and when the mortality was beginning to be very heavy.
Some officers resisted, I believe, the pressure that was put
on them, and poor-houses for those totally unable to work
<were kept open, I believe in Rohilkhund, i.e., one divi-
sion out of ten; but relief-works were closed even in name
everywhere!
In point of fact there never were any relief-works worthy
of the name, till about the 20th January, and no works suffi-
cient for the people's need till the middle of February.
Overwhelming proofs can be produced of the fact, not only
for the Rai Bareli district, where failure is admitted, but
also in districts in which success is supposed to have
attended the "vigor and foresight" so idly claimed for the
local Government. Practically, there were no measures
taken to meet the sufferings of the people, on an adequate
scale. As a fact, they were preposterously inadequate ; and
the result is that the mortality of the Provinces has been
double and treble that of ordinary seasons. Hunger
alone has killed twice as many people for months together,
as old age, fever, cholera, natural causes, and decay
combined; and if this shows vigour and foresight in the
administration, I should like to know what apathy and
blindness mean. The defence put forward by the Govern-
ment of Sir George Couper, is only a series of mis-state-
ments. I pass over some of the fatuous absurdities with
which it abounds, as that "early grain was coming into the
market" in the week ending 16th February; that the
mortality would "be little if at all higher than in ordinary”
years; that the "large class of day-labourers had eked out
their subsistence by eating green leaves," &c., to come to
the main defence, which is that the people would not come
to the relief-works. "The chief difficulty is the reluc-
·
•(14)
(C
"tance of the people to give any equivalent at all for
"their food, in the shape of work." They say, 'the
"Sircar fed us for nothing in 1868,' and as soon
«<
as
they found that work was expected from them, they
"hied to their homes." I do not believe that any officer
whatever, who had practical experience of these relief-
works, would confirm this statement in its entirety.
In the Agra Municipality alone, there were 23,000 on
the works in February, in spite of a very low scale of
pay and continuous labor, Sundays and holidays, from 8
A.M. to 4 P.M. The poor creatures were often not paid and
dismissed till near 6 P.M. That of the tens of thousands
on the works, a proportion were idle is no doubt true;
but is it any wonder that many forsook these works
and returned to their huts to die amongst their children,
when neither blankets, nor shelter, nor sufficient food
were obtainable in the cruel and bitter "abnormal cold" of
the season? I affirm positively that the vast majority of
these poor creatures, in spite of the repellent character of
the works and of their associations, were, if not eager, still
quite willing to use the strength left them, in performing
the task exacted of them, where they were sheltered and
fed. When, therefore, Sir George Couper apologises for the
failure of his administration, by the broad, unqualified
statement that the people were unwilling to work, I say
that nine-tenths of his own officers would declare the
statement untrue. Thousands of the children have been
sold by the people in their extremity for a little food, or
given away by their starving parents, and their homes
made desolate, while the prisons have been crowded with.
poor creatures who have sinned only in their sore need.
What are we to say of the gaunt despairing mother who,
babe in arm, leaped into the well, and whose life, but not
the babe's, was saved, and whose plea when tried for
murder was, "I was dying of hunger, and could not leave
my child"? What of the husbands who flung their girl-
wives into ponds, that they might not see them die?
Depend upon it, we have a lesson to learn from this famine,
and it is one that we have not yet learned--to meet these
calamities in the right spirit. They will never be surmount-
ed, until we meet them with the promptness and resolution
with which we brace ourselves up for the calamity of war.
We failed in Madras lamentably; we have now failed here,
with far less excuse, and to acquit Sir George Couper's
( 15 ).
i
administration of the blame is impossible to those who
know the facts.
R. KNIGHT.
P.S.-Let your readers bear in mind the fact that what little has leaked
out in the press touching this famine, has appeared in the columns of the
Calcutta Statesman. The daily papers in Agra and Allahabad have main-
tained a servile silence on the subject, knowing it to be unwelcome to our
rulers.
R. K.

•
•( 16 )
THE MORTUARY RETURNS.
THE reference in the foregoing letter to the "frightful
mortality during December, January, and February,
was followed by an examination of the official mortuary
returns, in the editorial columns of the Statesman. In
introducing a few quotations on this subject, a word of
explanation is necessary. The official papers speak of
the mortality in the provinces under Sir George Couper's
government, as 'double or treble' the ordinary rate of the
season. Bad as this would be, it gives no just idea of the
facts. The deaths were six to eight and even ten times
as numerous as in ordinary years. The mistake arises
from extending the averages to the entire province. We
must look into the returns from the famine tracts only,
to understand what the sufferings of the people really
were. It is the returns from the Rohilkhund Division, from
the Oonao Division, from the Agra Division-that we
are concerned with. In Rohilkhund, the mortality was
from six to eight times the ordinary rates. We have
also to remember that registration in India is so imperfect
that the actual mortality was, in all human likelihood, far
in excess of the rates shown by the returns, terrible as
they are.
We shall now quote from the Statesman of the 22nd of
April:-
The official mortality returns disclose the appalling fact
that 138,758 deaths occurred in the North-West Provinces
in February last, against but 43,999 in the same month
of the preceding year. We wish to blame no one for
this dreadful state of matters, but we insist upon the
necessity of its being distinctly known, that men may
ponder what it means. For three successive months-De-
cember, January, and February-the death-rate in these
unfortunate provinces was as follows:-
December 1877
January 1878
February 1878
...
2'77 per 1,000
3.27 ""
3'30
Now the average or normal death-rate of the provinces
during the same three months, is about 1.30; at all events
it was so in 1876-77. If the returns are defective, as they

( 17 )
probably are, there is still no reason to suppose that the
registration was more accurate this year than it was last
year or the year before. The chances presumably are,
that if the registration was very defective in 1876 and
1877, when the mortality was comparatively low, it has
been yet more imperfect in 1878, with a far larger number
of casualties to enumerate. The Government of the North-
West Provinces stands face to face, therefore, with its own
truly dreadful record that 250,000 persons were mown
down by death therein during the three months of the
cold weather, all of whom presumably ought to-day to
have been alive. It requires the exercise of a powerful
imagination, to realise for a moment the sufferings which
the people must have gone through, for so horrible a
mortality to have occurred. Let it be remembered that
these casualties represent, after all, but the cases in which
the sufferings of the people reached the last extremity
of death. By no effort of the imagination can we picture
to ourselves the cruel hunger endured by masses of the
labouring poor, with their women and little ones, before
this death-roll was possible. Those of our readers whose
life in India has been spent in the Lower Provinces, or in the
neighbourhood of the sea, have no conception of what
the cold season of the North-West means. From the
miserable manner in which the people are clothed and
housed, their sufferings from the cold can hardly be less.
than those of our own poor at home; and an imagi-
nation however active, and sympathy however quick, fail
to realize what millions of the poor must have gone
through, in the districts north-west of Benares, all through
the winter months. The day labourers were plainly
dying in crowds, from cold and hunger, in tens of thou-
sands of villages throughout the North-West. The
mortality returns simply give an imperfect record of the
cases in which the flickering life at last went out of the
skeleton socket, that could maintain it no longer. If we
say that for every actual death that occurred, ten, twenty,
or thirty men, women, and children trod the same path of
awful suffering down to the very brink of death, we shall
certainly not exaggerate the fact. And the existence of
this dreadful state of matters was quite unknown, we are
told, to the local Government. Plainly it is in a dilemma.
If it is really true that this dreadful state of things could
exist for months together, without the Government being
C
( 18 )
even aware of it, the gulf that yawns between our admi-
nistration and the people, can end only in a cataclysm that
will sweep it and us away together.
It is necessary that the Indian public should take clear
hold of the fact, that we owe our present knowledge of the
state of the North-West Provinces in the last cold weather,
to the accident that we have been publishing for some
years, official mortuary returns therein. But for these
returns, Mr. Knight's statements upon the subject would
have been dismissed as a mischievously exaggerated des-
cription of sufferings that were inevitable, and that Sir
George Couper's government had done all in its power
to avert or mitigate. So far from doing anything for the
people, his "vigour and foresight" were directed to ex-
acting the land revenue from them, when they had no
means of paying it. The relief-works were closed at the
very time when the need of them was more pressing than
ever, the people being forced from them by slow starva-
tion in a bitterly cold season, with neither blankets to
cover their bodies, nor shelter for their heads. This is
the administration we have really had, and that was
officially declared to have been marked with success, until
this dreadful death-roll showed us the true state of
matters.
We ask the Government of India to look at the follow-
ing returns for the month of February from the Rohilkhund
Division, and to compare them with the returns of the
same month last year, as a proof of the "vigor and fore-
sight" with which the local Government dealt with the
famine, in that part of its territorial charge :—
Bijnour
Moradabad
Bareilly
Shajehanpore
Budaon
Feby. 1878.
Feby. 1877.
+
5,425
5,812
844
1,230
...
9,665
- 1,190
10,208
971
8,900
1,190
TOTAL
...
40,000
5,425
Now this terrible mortality arose from starvation. The
season, we are assured, was by no means an unhealthy
one. On the contrary, it was a healthy season; and
here is a death-rate nearly eight times in excess of the
( 19 )•
rate last year. Again, take the figures of the Agra Divi-
sion in the same month:-
Etah.
Muttra
...
Furruckabad
Mainpuri...
Agra
Etawah
TOTAL
Feby. 1878.
Feby 1877.
3,856 deaths.
713 deaths.
1,725
3,606
>>
867
1,131
...
2,443
838
4,736
1,382
1,911
857
18,277 deaths.
5,768 deaths.
Again, take the Lucknow Division:-
Lucknow...
Bara Bunke
Unao
TOTAL
6,296 deaths.
...
5,575
4,323
979 deaths.
1,203
953 "
16,194 deaths.
3,135 deaths.
This terrible mortality was not confined to the month
of February, be it remembered, but had been going on.
from November. Not to weary our readers, we give the
returns of the Rohilkhund Division only:
November 1877
December
January 1878
February
18,233 deaths) Against a pre-
30,840
vious rate of
38,522
5,000 to 8,000
40,000 "9
per month.
This is comment enough, we think, upon the "vigour
and foresight" with which the local Government provided
for the safety of the people, after the loss of their khur-
reef harvest. Practically, nothing was done for them; while
the land revenue was exacted just as if no calamity what-
ever had befallen them. And here is the result. When
Mr. Knight wrote from Agra in the middle of February
that there was "actual famine" in the provinces, he
ought to have said "actual famine had been raging from
November," while the Government had not lifted a finger
to save the people.
*
When these returns are looked into carefully, the facts
they disclose are most distressing. Thus, the Pioneer
notices that the deaths from suicide were twice as numerous
in the month of February last, as in February 1877. Had
-
1
:
•( 20 )
the writer looked more carefully into the figures, he would
have seen that the misery of the people was leading them
to wholesale self-destruction. The mortality from suicide
is recorded under the general head of Injuries, the
deaths from which are classified under the four heads of
suicide, wounds, snake-bite and wild-beasts, and accidents,
Now the mortality under these four heads in February.
contrasts with that of the same month in 1877 as follows:
Feb. 1878
1877
""
Suicide. Wounds. Snake-bite, &c. Accidents.
83
159 145
69
64
67
895
563
Thus, with the single exception of death from snake-
bite or from wild-beasts, the increased mortality is frightful.
We may fairly assume that nearly all the casualties under
the head of Accidents are deaths from drowning; and that
unless where positive proof was forthcoming that the
deceased person had wilfully drowned himself, the death
would be recorded as an "accident." So with the returns
under the head of Wounds, the figures indicate clearly
enough, that the people have been destroying themselves
in this way also. The great majority of the deaths from
drowning are probably suicides in all years; but let that be
as it may, the mortality returns of the last few months
show with painful distinctness what the sufferings of the
people have really been :-
December,
January, February,
1876 1877 1877 1878 1877 1878
Suicides
Wounds
...
Snake-bite, &c.
Accidents
85 126
III 146
83
159
89 156
78. 149
69
148
...
...
79
568 919
86
77 71
67
64
542 1,040
563
895
821 1,287
808 1,406
782 1,266
There is unhappily no room for mistaking what these
figures mean. The deaths from snake-bite and from wild
animals are normal, and these only. The others show but
too plainly that between 3,000 and 4,000 people sought
an escape from a lingering death by starvation, during
these three months of the cold weather, by throwing
themselves into the nearest pond or well.
Their privations began during the autumn months,
and produced heavy mortality as soon as the cold weather

(21)
approached. Thus 83,656 deaths occurred in November,
and then-
December
January
February
...
Aggregate
1876-77
1877-78
66,675
116,330 deaths.
50,427
137,161 ""
43,999
138,758
་་་
161, 101
392,249 deaths.
The Sanitary Commissioner of the North-West himself
volunteers the statement that the excessive mortality in
the Provinces during December and January, was probably
due to the extreme distress of the poor <<
during this
season of high prices." This is but a euphemistic avoidance
of a plain statement of the fact, that hunger alone was
killing nearly three times as many people in the Provinces,
as all other causes combined. Upon the whole, we doubt
if we shall come through this calamity without a net record
of 300,000 to 400,000 deaths from starvation.
These are only the most essential portions of a series
of editorials, published about the same time in the
Statesman. These and Mr. Knight's letters contained.
charges against Sir George Couper's government which
could not be ignored, and the Lieutenant-Governor therefore
recorded a minute in his own defence. The minute and
the reply of the Government of India were published
in the Gazette of, India, evidently in the hope that they
would abolish Mr. Knight and close the discussion.
Under Lord Lytton's predecessors, an attempt would have
been made to ignore such newspaper criticism, and it is
greatly to the credit of the present Viceroy that on this,
as on every other occasion, he has been ready to recog-
nise and respond to the fair criticism of an independent
Press. The publication of this correspondence enabled
the Statesman to show how hollow and inaccurate
Sir George Couper's defence was, and in so doing
to expose more crushingly-and this time by official
evidence, which has convinced even opposing critics-the
real character of the so-called relief operations in the
North-West.
•
:
i
SIR GEORGE COUPER'S DEFENCE.
No. 1007A.
From-C. ROBERTSON, Esq., Secretary to Government,
N.-W. Provinces and Oudh,
To-The Secretary to the Government of India, Public
Works Department.
NAINI TAL, 23rd April 1878.
A letter appeared in the Calcutta Statesman of the 30th
ultimo, signed "R. Knight," which contained grave
charges of maladministration of the distress which now
prevails in these provinces, on the part of the Lieutenants
Governor; and as Sir George Couper believes Mr. Knight
was formerly in Government employ, and is a person of
some consideration, he thinks it incumbent on him not to
leave these charges unnoticed and unanswered.
I am,
therefore, desired to submit herewith a Minute which His
Honor has recorded on the subject.
Minute by His Honor the Lieutenant-Governor of the North-
Western Provinces and Chief Commissioner for Oudh,-
dated Nairi Tal, the 23rd April 1878.
"The charges brought against me by Mr. Knight would
seem to resolve themselves into three. There are other
points of detail, but I do not think it necessary to take up
my own time and that of His Excellency, the Viceroy in
Council in discussing these. These charges are-
I. That I showed no prevision and made no forecast
of danger in circumstances that urgently demanded both;
and the measures subsequently undertaken were ludi-
crously inadequate; that in point of fact, there never
were any relief-works worthy of the name until 20th
January.
II. That a large majority of my officers have sent in
appeal after appeal in every possible tone-"angry, piteous
sarcastic, economical, sanitary"-which have been met
with cold denial and disbelief, and sometimes with cen-
sure and punishment.
..
-
( 23 )
III.—That my statement that the people were unwilling
to work is untrue. They would have been ready enough
to work, but that a daily wage of six chittacks of flour
and one of dhall was not enough for their support, and
therefore they would not come to the relief-works where
this dole was given.
"The reports already submitted to the Government of
India are, I think, amply sufficient to acquit me of the
first charge. It will be enough here to say that, in
September last, when it was feared that rain would not fall
in time to save the spring sowings, the Chief Engineer of
the North-Western Provinces visited the head-quarters of
each division to concert with the Commissioners and the
district officers, who were summoned to meet him, the
measures of relief which should be undertaken in the event
of our being visited with this dire calamity. Subsequently
rain fell, and all immediate necessity for action passed
away in consequence. But it was known that the autumn
crops had been a complete failure, and consequently that
during the period between the spring sowings and the
harvesting operations, there would be great distress among
the people who depend upon the produce of the autumn
crop for their support. So, in October, Colonel Fraser
was again deputed to visit the head-quarters of each divi-
sion, and in consultation with the district officers, settle
what works should be undertaken to give employment to
the poor when the inevitable pressure began. The neces-
sary arrangements were accordingly made and sanctioned
throughout the provinces, and, where it was needful, money
was at once allotted for carrying out the preliminary sur-
veys. At the same time, the standard rules for the estab-
lishment of poor-houses, for the relief of those too feeble
to work, were circulated for the information of district
officers, with an intimation that they were at once to act
upon them, should necessity arise. I submit that it was
not in the power of the local Government to take further
precautions than these in anticipation of the coming dis-
tress.
"With regard to the special charge, that the relief mea-
sures were ludicrously inadequate, and that none worthy
of the name were undertaken until 20th January, I have
only to say that the accompanying return (A) shows.that
some thousands were employed daily throughout the
months of September, October, November, and December
:
...
•
( 24 )
:
in the Agra District, to which it is evident Mr. Knight
specially refers. That more were not employed is due to
the circumstance that more people did not come; that
there was work enough for them is proved by the fact that
the river embankment was started on 28th September, and
afforded employment to tens of thousands in February and
March, who would have been employed similarly earlier
had they only chosen to come.
*
*
*
"With regard to the second charge I have to say that
in January last Mr. McMinn
wrote me three or four letters, which have been to some
extent reproduced in that of Mr. Knight: there was the
same story of the gaunt mother throwing her child into a
well, and of the husbands flinging their girl-wives into
ponds * * * * *** I sent his letters to the
Commissioner of his division, with an intimation that the
statements which they contain could not be passed over,
and that the Magistrate should at once visit the spot in-
dicated by Mr. McMinn and report the result.
(C
'The Magistrate reported that there was no doubt great
distress, although Mr. McMinn's descriptions were great
exaggerations, and added that it might at once have been
alleviated, had Mr. McMinn chosen to follow the instruc-
tions laid down for his guidance, instead of acting on a
hobby of his own. He wound up by saying that he had
taken the necessary measures to put matters right.
•
Perhaps I ought to have censured Mr. McMinn for
having ignored his immediate superiors, and sent me
direct letters which contained great exaggerations; but,
as a matter of fact, I did not do so, much less
did I punish him; and yet this is really the sole
foundation which Mr. Knight has for the statement which
he made, doubtless with the best of motives, but which
nevertheless I am inclined to think somewhat sweeping
in its nature, that a large majority of my officers have
sent in appeal after appeal in every possible tone-angry,
piteous, sarcastic, economical, sanitary-which have been
met with cold denial and disbelief, and sometimes with
censure and punishment.
(C
Mr. Knight's third charge is that my statement, that
the people would not come to the relief-works, is substan-
tially false, that is to say, they would have been ready
enough to come had the supply of food been sufficient.
"Mr. Knight says, in support of this charge, that in Agra

( 25 )
itself the wages were six chittacks of flour and one of
dhall per day, down to the last week in January, when it
was raised through fright to ten chittacks of flour and
two of dhall. And he gives me the alternative of either
being grossly extravagant now, or having starved the
people before. From what source Mr. Knight derived
his statement I know not, but the following figures will
show that he has fallen into some strange error.
The
quantity of food considered necessary for the support of
an ordinary man on the relief-works was fixed, in con-
formity with former precedent, at ten chittacks of wheat, two
chittacks of dhall, chittack of salt, I seers of fire-wood;
and one anna six pie was the money rate fixed to be paid
to each man for the purchase of the above amount of food.
And the Magistrate of Agra certifies that this sum has been
received daily ever since the commencement of the relief
operations. The following table shows the price-current
of the dietary above referred to in the Agra District :-
Return showing price-current of food grain, Agra District.
Rates per rupee.
Month.
Fortnight
ending
Wheat.
Dhall.
Remarks

Fire-
wood.
1877.
S. C. S. C. Mds. S.
September
Ditto
15th
II 142/
II O
30th ΙΟ 7½
9 6
October
15th
II
10 O
Ditto
November
Ditto
December
Ditto
31st
15th
12
...
30th I2
15th 12
...
31st
12
~~~~~
O
II о 3
12 о
II
8
II
40
13
O
12 8
O o O ∞
о
о
444N MN 2
O
O
о
2
20
3
O
2
ww
30
30
1878.
January
Ditto
15th II о
31st II O
12
0∞
2
20
II 8 2 20
Assumed
at
February
Ditto
15th ΙΟ
28th
March
Io chittacks wheat, cost in pies
15th
8
II 8
8
II 8
8
12
O
A.
B.
11.5
II 4
2
Ditto Dhall,
Ditto Salt,
Iseers Firewood,
2.6
2'I
0'3
0'3.
1.8
2'9
Total cost in pies
16.2
16.7
Allowed by Government
18.0
18.0
Government scale in excess of absolute cost of
food
1.8
1.3
pies.
D
I I
∞ ∞ ∞
12
1 2
Со со о
2 2 2
20
B.
ΙΟ
2 20
( 26 )
ㅎ
​"Those periods during which prices ranged highest are
marked A and B, and yet it will be seen that, even during
those periods, the sum allowed, viz., one anna six pie,
was sufficient for the purchase of the requisite amount of
food, and gave a margin besides. It may be that these
figures do place me on one of the horns of the dilemma
stated by Mr. Knight. For it would seem that, on the whole,
the prescribed allowance of one anna and six pie was
more than sufficient to purchase the necessary quantity of
food. But it is very difficult, in dealing with large bodies
of people, to do more than lay down general rules; and I
hope, having regard to the peculiar difficulties of the case, that
if I have erred on the side of liberality, I shall not want
the forgiveness of His Excellency the Viceroy in Council.
But be the Viceroy's decision on this point what it may, I.
think I have demonstrated that, whatever the causes which
deterred the people from coming to the works may have
been, insufficiency of food was not one of them.
"Mr. Knight refers to the appalling mortality which, as
he truly says, was double and treble that recorded during
the same months of the previous year; and I can fully
sympathize with his indignation at the thought of so
much suffering, which, in his opinion, might have been
averted. But it is to be borne in mind that in the previous
year the autumn crop, which yields the food on which the
people who swell the mortuary returns have to depend,
was plentiful; whereas it is not too much to say, indeed
Mr. Knight himself declares, that the khurreef of the pre-
sent year was a total failure. Now it must be remembered
what that means. It does not mean the curtailment of
å few luxuries, or even of a few necessaries. It means
that the people were absolutely without one of the cardi-
nal conditions of life, viz., food, and in a great measure
without another cardinal condition of existence, viz.,
shelter. For the loss of the crop not only deprived them
of their ordinary food, but also of the shelter which they
obtain in normal years from the straw yielded by the
autumn crop when garnered. In many places, too, the
people had stripped the thatch from their dwellings to
feed their cattle. Seeing then that the present season
was abnormally cold, I do not think it wonderful, although
it is doubtless a fact greatly to be deplored, that double
and treble the number of the aged, of the weakly, and
of the young, should have succumbed for want of the

!
( 27 )
shelter and food which they had in plenty during the
previous year, specially as owing to the drought there was
comparatively but little fever during the autumn months,
and the hundreds who would in ordinary years have suc-
cumbed to that disease, were spared to fall victims to
privation and cold a few months later.
"But whether this point be conceded or not, I can only
say, in the words of the Commissioner of Rohilkhund,
in whose division the distress pressed most sorely, that,
speaking broadly, no person need have died who was will-
ing to give an equivalent for his food in the shape of
work. Mr. Edwards writes:-"Every effort is being made
to alleviate suffering and save life. The people themselves
are the chief difficulty. They stick in their villages, and
refuse aid if any return in the way of work is demanded.”
And Mr. Duthoit, the Collector of Shahjehanpore, which
was perhaps the most stricken district of this stricken
division, and whose humanity is well-known, in a letter
describing the efforts he was making to induce the people
to have resort to the works, writes: "The people who starve
are those who wont go to relief-works or relief camps,-
will not leave their villages in fact." And the same state
of affairs has been reported from several other districts.
The returns show that this reluctance is being overcome
by degrees; but I do not know what more could have
been done, in the first instance, than to have everything
in readiness to receive the people if they chose to come.
The village Chowkidars visit the head-quarters Police
stations at regular intervals, and the people must have
known through their instrumentality that relief was avail-
able. But they would not avail themselves of it, nor did
they wander about the country, in their numbers, in search
of food. If they had, they could have been drafted on to
the works. There is nothing more remarkable in the
present distress than the absence of large bodies of people
invading the sudder stations and other place of European
resort, clamouring for aid. In 1837, the people beset
the houses of the European residents in thousands, beg-
ging for the food which they had not to give, and, for the
want of which, the poor sufferers lay down in their num-
bers and died in the compounds. Nothing of the sort has
been seen this year, and I submit that this fact goes a
long way towards corroborating the statement that the
people preferred to stay at their homes. The only way
in which this could have been prevented, would have been
་
(• 28 )
to visit every village, and every house in each village, and
urge, and if need were, compel, every person who seemed
unable to support himself, to have resort to the relief-work
or poor-houses. I will confess that I was unprepared for
the sad apathy with regard to their fate evinced by the
people, and, therefore, that this alternative did not occur
to me. For all former experience in these provinces has
shown that the people are willing. enough to come for-
ward themselves when really in want. And even if it had,
ous European agency was altogether inadequate for such an
undertaking, while to have entrusted it to Native agency
might, and almost certainly would, have involved
amount of interference and oppression hardly less disas-
trous in its effect, although in a different way, than the
calamity which we sought to alleviate.
an
"In conclusion, I have to say that I have had to contend
with a very heavy visitation. I have had the guidance
and advice of Colonel Fraser, my Chief Engineer, whose
public worth and experience in these matters is as well
known to the Government of India, as are his humanity
and kindness of heart to a wide circle of private friends.
I have also had the co-operation and counsel of the Com-
missioners of divisions and District Officers, for whose un-
wearying and disinterested support I can never be suffici-
ently grateful. But notwithstanding all this help, what
the care and trouble and anxiety have been, can only be
appreciated by the few who have been similarly situated.
"I am far from wishing it to be supposed that my
management of this famine has been immaculate. On the
contrary, I have myself pointed out short-comings and
mistakes which have occurred. But I can conscientiously
say that I have done my best, and, whatever my failures
may have been, I trust the Government of India will at
least acquit me of having been " apathetically blind" in
that I made no forecast of, and took no measures to meet,
the present calamity; of having bullied the officers to
whose services I am so much indebted, because their
warnings were unpalatable: and of having lied when I
represented that the chief difficulty with which we all have
had to contend, has been the reluctance of the people
themselves to have resort to the works which had been
organised for their support."
GEORGE COUPER,
Lieut-Govr., N. W. P., and
Chief Commr. for Oudh
•
:
( 29 )
APPENDIX A.
Number of labourers employed in Agra District.

Month.
Week.
Total for the
week.
Daily
Average.
Daily average
from poor.
house return.
Total daily
average.
September.. III.
15,741
2,248 5/7
2,248 5/7
IV.
24,393
2,7103
325
3,035 1/8
October
I.
39,459
5,637
285a
5,922
II.
37,027
5,289 4/7
285a
5,574 4/7
III.
40,009
5,715 4/7
285a
6,000 4/7
IV.
60,906
6,090 3 5
285a
6,375 3/5
November..
I.
43,956
6,279 3/7
285a
6,564 3/7
II.
23,997
3,428 1/7
285a
3,713 1/7
III.
24,852
3,550 2/7
285a
3,835°2/7
IV.
• 37,946
4,216 29
285a
4,501 2,9
December..
I.
28,130
4,018 4/7
217
4,235 4/7
II.
23,753
3,393 2/4
190
3,583 2,7
III.
42,357
6,051
191
6,242
IV.
43,887
4,388 7/10
199
4,587 7/10
January
I.
17,528
2,504
323
2,827
II.
18,660
2,665 /7
473
3,138 5/7
III.
22,924
3,274 6/7
522
3,796 6.7
IV.
81,459
8,145 9/10
567
8,712 9/10
February
•
I.
98,000
14,000
• 654
14,614
II.
138,500
19,785 57
825
20,610 5'7
III.
163,632
23,376
904
24,280
IV.
223,078
31,868 2/7
988
32,856 2
March
I.
208,801
29,828 5/7
I,446
31,274 5
II.
170,286
24,326 4/7
1,509
25,835 4/7
III.
II5,475
16,496 3 7
I, 100
17,596 3 7
IV.
101,378
10,137 8/10
959
11,196 8/10
• No. 1256.
From-C. BERNARD, Esq., C.S.I., Addl. Secretary to the
Government of India,
To-The Secretary to Government, N. W. Provinces and
PUBLIC WORKS DEPARTMENT.
Oudh.
Famine.
SIMLA, the 2nd May 1878.*
SIR,—I am directed to acknowledge the receipt of your
letter No. 1007 A, dated 23rd April, forwarding a Minute
:
•
•( 30 )
by the Hon'ble the Lieutenant-Governor upon certain
statements made in the Calcutta Statesman newspaper
concerning the measures taken for the relief of distress
in the North-Western Provinces during the present season.
2. In reply, I am to say that His Excellency the
Viceroy in Council has read with much interest the con-
vincing statement of facts set forth in Sir George Couper's
Minute. No such statement, indeed, was needed to con-
vince the Government of India' that the Lieutenant-Gover-
nor had exercised forethought in his arrangements, and
has shown humanity in his orders, throughout the recent
crisis; but the Viceroy in Council is glad to have this
opportunity of expressing his sympathy with the cares
and anxieties by which the Lieutenant-Governor was
surrounded, and his appreciation of, and humane consi-
deration for, the people, with which these troubles had
been encountered.
3. The Viceroy in Council cannot fail to share with
Sir George Couper the deep and painful regret expressed
by him at the lamentable mortality which in the early
months of the year visited the distressed districts. This
mortality was due in part to the unusual cold of the
season, superimposed upon the privation caused by the total
failure of the previous khurreef crop; but the mortality,
so far as it was directly the result of famine, was caused
rather by the unwillingness of the people to leave their
homes, than by any want of forethought on the part of
the local Government in providing works where they
might be relieved. The Viceroy in Council unhesitatingly
accepts the statement of the local Government that no
one who was willing to go to a relief-work need have died
of famine, and it is satisfactorily Shown in His Honor's
Minute that the relief wage was ample.
4. This same phenomenon, however, of the unwilling-
ness of famine-stricken people to leave their villages in
order to betake themselves to relief-works, has been forced
on the attention of Government in other provinces also.
It is a problem very difficult to deal with, and it indicates
the apparent necessity of providing, simultaneously with
relief-works, a numerous, and it is to be feared an expen-
sive, organisation of village inspectors. Unless by these
means, or some other remedy, the difficulty can be met,
it must always, where the system of relief is based on the
( 31 )*
sound principle of work tests, go far in the early stages of
a famine to render nugatory the humane desire of Govern-
ment to save life. The special attention of the Famine
Commission will be directed to this point.
I have the honor to be,
SIR,
Your most obedient Servant,
C. BERNARD,
Addl. Secretary to the Govt. of India™

THE "STATESMAN'S" REPLY.*
FOR the first time within our knowledge, the Government
has wisely condescended to recognise that place in the
constitution of the country, which it has itself assigned
to the Public Press by conferring upon it the right of
complete freedom of speech. There is no Parliament in
India in which the representatives of the people may chal-
lenge the conduct of the Executive Government, and in
which the Government may reply to the satisfaction of
the country. By wisely condescending, however, to answer
through the Press itself, open and specific charges brought
against it therein, the Government may plainly secure to
the country some of the most important advantages that
representative assemblies confer upon other lands. We
thank His Excellency the Viceroy, therefore, warmly for
publishing the defence of Sir George Couper to the grave
charges made against his administration of the N.-W.
Provinces in these columns by Mr Knight. It is the very
wisest thing the Government could do, and is the most
important step towards administrative reform that has
been taken for many years. The publication of Sir George
Couper's defence is accompanied, however, by one false
step. It was most unwise for the Government of India to
identify itself so completely with Sir George Couper's re-
putation. We shall be able to show conclusively, and in
a way that admits of no reply, that our charges against
Sir George Couper are true. Now, the Government of
India unwisely writes:-
'His Excellency the Viceroy in Council has read with much interest the
convincing statement of facts set forth in Sir George Couper's minute. No
such statement, indeed, was needed to convince the Government of India
that the Lieutenant-Governor had exercised forethought in his arrangements
and has shown humanity in his orders, throughout the recent crisis; but the
Viceroy in Council is glad to have this opportunity of expressing his sympathy
with the cares and anxieties by which the Lieutenant-Governor was surround-
ed, and his appreciation of, and humane consideration for, the people, with
which these troubles had been encountered."
The reader will be good enough to note carefully the
words we have italicized in this extract, and to bear them
in mind as we proceed to show the total want of foresight
shown by Sir George Couper throughout this calamity, and
Extracted from the editorial columns of the Statesman of 9th May et postea.

:
(339
the inhumanity of his orders. Why was the Government
of India in such unwise haste to anticipate the results
of this enquiry, and to pronounce this unjustified verdict
of acquittal? We can understand and respect the gener-
ous feeling which prompted the acquittal, but its publica-
tion only makes it the more incumbent upon us to press
home the charges we have made against Sir George, and
to leave neither him northe Government of India a loop-
hole of escape. It is our duty, now more than ever, to
declare without reservation, that more than 300,000 people
have been consigned to death under the Government of Sir
George Couper, by a want of foresight equalled only by. -
its want of humanity. How could Mr. Secretary Bernard
be so unwise as to permit His Excellency in Council to
give the following assurance to the world :-
:
"This lamentable mortality was due in part to the unusual cold of the
season, superimposed upon the privation caused by the total failure of the
previous kurreef crop but the mortality, so far as it was directly the result
of famine, was caused rather by the unwillingness of the people to leave their
homes, than by any want of forethought on the part of the local Government
in providing works where they might be relieved. The Viceroy in Council
unhesitatingly accepts the statement of the local Government that no one
who was willing to go to a relief-work need have died of famine, and it is
satisfactorily shown in his Honor's minute that the relief wage was ample.
We ask the reader once more to bear these assurances
in mind. Mr. Bernard is incapable of writing or saying
what he does not believe to be true, and there is plainly a
very disagreeable surprise awaiting both himself and his
Excellency the Viceroy, whom he has betrayed into these
assurances. This is still one passage in Mr. Bernard's
letter that must be noticed before we proceed to the
examination of Sir George Couper's own statements.
It is this:-
"This same phenomenon of the unwillingness of famine-stricken people.
to leave their villages in order to betake themselves to relief-works, has been
forced on the attention of Government in other provinces also. It is a pro-
blem very difficult to deal with, and it indicates the apparent necessity of
providing, simultaneously with relief-works, a numerous, and it is to be
feared an expensive, organisation of village inspectors. Unless by these
means, or some other remedy, the difficulty can be met, it must always,
where the system of relief is based on the sound principle of work tests,
go far in the early stages of a famine to render nugatory the humane desire
of Government to save life. The special attention of the Famine Commis-
sion will be directed to this point."
We shall show presently that if the people en masse
preferred death to Sir George Couper's relief-works, it was
the cruel, the inhuman, character of those works, and not
any aversion to labour, that made them do so. It is a

E
( 34 )
calumny upon these miserable poor, to suggest that they
wanted the State to feed them without giving work in
return for it, and we believe we shall be able to make this so
clear, that even Mr. Bernard himself will be convinced, and
that the Famine Commission may be spared this hollow
and idle reference to its members. If we have charged
Sir George Couper falsely, let the world treat us as slan-
derers. On the other hand, if we show that we have
charged him truthfully, let him be made to retire from a
position that he has so deplorably abused. We now come
to his defence. He says:-
"The charges brought against me by Mr. Knight would seem to resolve
themselves into three. There are other points of detail, but I do not think
it necessary to take up my own time, and that of His Excellency the Viceroy
in Council, in discussing these. These charges are :--
I. That I showed no prevision and made no forecast of danger in circum-
stances that urgently demanded both; and the measures subsequently under-
taken were ludicrously inadequate; that in point of fact there never were
any relief works worthy of the name until 20th January.
II. That a large majority of my officers have sent in appeal after appeal
in every possible tone-" angry, piteous, sarcastic, economical, sanitary".
which have been met with cold denial and disbelief, and sometimes with
censure and punishment.
III. That my statement that the people were unwilling to work, is un-
true. They would have been ready enough to work, but that a daily wage
of 6 chittacks of four and one of dhall was not enough for their support,
and therefore they would not come to the relief works where this dole was
given.
Sir George proceeds to say that "the reports submitted
by him to the Government of India are amply sufficient
to acquit him of the first charge, namely, want of prevision
or foresight of what was coming. In further proof of
his foresight' of the calamity, and that it was not con-
fined to writing mere 'reports to the Supreme Govern-
ment, he tells us that he deputed Colquel Fraser in Sep-
tember, to visit the head-quarters of each division, to con-
cert with the local executive the measures that should be
undertaken "in the event of our being visited with this
dire calamity." Not content with that deputation, he
sent Colonel Fraser a second time, on a similar tour in
October, after the providential and unexpected rainfall
at the commencement of that month.
As almost every-
thing turns upon this second tour of Colonel Fraser, it is im-
portant that Sir George Couper's own account of it should
be quoted verbatim:-
"It was known that the autumn crops had been a complete failure, and
consequently, that during the period between the spring sowings and the
harvesting operations, there would be great distress among the people, who

1
( 35 )
(35
depend upon the produce of the autumn crop for their support.. So in
October, Colonel Fraser was again deputed to visit the head-quarters of each
division, and, in consultation with the District Officers, settle what works
should be undertaken to give employment to the poor when the inevitable
pressure began. The necessary arrangements were accordingly made and
sanctioned throughout the provinces, and where it was needful, money was
at once allotted for carrying out the preliminary surveys. At the same time
the standard rules for the establishment of poor-houses for the relief of
those too feeble to work, were circulated for the information of District Officers,
with an intimation that they were at once to act upon them should necessity
arise. I submit that it was not in the power of the local Government to
take further precautions than these in anticipation of the coming distress
Observe that our charge is not that Sir George Couper
did not anticipate and foresee a certain amount of distress
during the cold weather. He would have been more in-
capable still, than even we suppose him to be, had he doubt-
ed that. Our charge is that he did not 'foresee' or make
any provision whatever for the dreadful calamity that hung
over the provinces like a black cloud: that he did not
discern the famine even when it was raging around him,
as the mortality returns show that it was, throughout
November. Colonel Fraser's deputation tour, on which we
shall have much to say, came to a close on the 12th Novem-
ber at Kulpi; and so far was Sir George Couper from 'fore-
seeing' anything, we have proof positive that so late as
the 23rd November-at a time when the people were al-
ready dying by tens of thousands-he was in a fool's para-
dise on the subject. We are under the heavy disadvantage
of not possessing Sir George Couper's reports to the
Government of India; but one of his reports is in our hands
his report to the Government on the 23rd November last.
Now, in that report we find him assuring the Government
that all "danger of widespread famine had happily passed
away," and also openly admitting that "if relief works on a
large scale had been necessary," his Government would have
been "in a most serious difficulty, from the absence of any
well-considered projects for large public works on which to
employ the people." Widespread famine, as we now know,
was at that very moment disclosing itself. He was on the
very verge of the calamity, when he assured the Government
that all "danger had passed away" and happily so, because,
if it had occurred, he was totally unprepared to meet it.
In the same letter, he told the Government that everything
depended on the Christmas rains, If these fell seasonably,
everything would be well, and he would be able to meet
any distress arising from the failure of the previous khurreef
out of local resources, without troubling the Government.
•
6 36 36
)
of India. That Sir George Couper believed all this, no offe
will doubt, but how can we, and how dare the Government,
compliment him on the 'foresight' which he showed? The
Christmas rains did fall seasonably, as every one knows,
-fell in abundance, while an awful famine accompanied them,
without his recognising it even then, when it was there.
And yet the Government of India can tell the public that
he showed great "foresight and vigour. Comment upon
such facts would be simply idle: Wherein was the 'fore-
sight' shown? Was it shown in assuring the Government
that all danger had happily passed away, and that if the
Christmas rains did not fail them, he could manage any dis-
Tress that might exist, without troubling the Government
of India? If the Christmas rains but fell seasonably, all
anxiety even would be at an end; yet when the rains did
fall, and a widespread famine unexpectedly disclosed itself,
his Government was not only unprepared to meet it, but did
not even know that it had come upon the people.
If Sir George Couper on the 23rd November had told
the Government that the danger unhappily had not passed
away, but was imminent; and that it was very doubtful
whether the Christmas rains would at all dissipate the
gloom that was settling down over the provinces; that
the mortality returns were already appalling; and that,
unhappily, he had no matured projects of relief-works
on which to set the people,—that would have been ‘fore-
sight.' So blind was he, that he even went on collecting
the land revenue up to the middle of January last; and we
suppose Mr. Bernard will tell us that this also was fore-
sight; vigour it was undoubtedly, or more properly rigour
of the most lamentable order. Who was answerable for
the total unpreparedness of Sir George Couper's govern-
ment to meet the calamity of famine, by a well-ordered
scheme of public works, we cannot possibly ascertain.
Presumably it was he himself, for we have the confes-
sion under his own hand that he was thus unprepared so
late as the 23rd November, months after the total failure.
of the rains and the khurreef. He openly confesses and
deplores his unpreparedness, but says, "happily it is of no
consequence since the October rainfall. Let the Christ-
mas rains but come, and our unpreparedness will be of no
consequence to any one." And Mr. Bernard dares describe
all this to the world as distinguished 'foresight and vigour !'
Let the public judge between us and the Government.

<<
( 37 )
But we have charged Sir George Couper's government
with having deliberately starved the people off the reliéf-
works, by a rate of wages insufficient to keep soul and body
together, and by leaving them exposed without shelter or
a common cooly-blankes to protect them from the bitter cold
of a North-West winter, with the thermometer at freezing
point. Now this vindication of Sir George Couper is
silent, we notice, as to the question of shelter and clothing.
As to the rate of wages; we abide by our statement that
the wages on these works—we do not know on how many
of them was but 12 ounces of flour and 2 of dhall up to
the end of January, when the allowance was raised to 20
ounces. It is impossible that we should be mistaken, for
we inquired minutely whether it was true, and were told
to publish it boldly, as it was perfectly true.
We are
under this disadvantage, that we are called upon to prove
the statements of witnesses whom we cannot put into the
witness-box. Our readers will observe that Mr. McMinn
is charged by Sir George Couper, with having been our
sole informant in this matter. Mr. McMinn, we believe,
has acknowledged that he did supply us with certain of
the facts stated by us in these columns. And with what
result to himself? Five or six men are at once promoted
over his head, and he is ordered to proceed to Basti, the
penal settlement of the North-West. And having dared
to do this openly, to stop the mouths of the witnesses who
would otherwise appear against him, Sir George Couper
comes before the public challenging us to produce proof
of the statements we have made. Well, we are going to
produce other witnesses than Mr. McMinn, but let any
Magistrate in the North-West openly come forward in his
own name, and declare the sense he entertains of the con-
duct of Sir George Couper's administration throughout this
calamity and it will ruin him! Within the last week,
we have had repeated assurances from other officers in the
North-West, that our charges against Sir George Couper
are true to the letter; but they have begged us not to hint
even generally how we got our information. Is not such
Government an infamy in our circumstances? We are
challenged to produce our witnesses, when even to name
them, would be to ruin them. Heavy as is our disadvan-
tage, we can however do enough to convince the public
that we have not misrepresented matters, and that Sir George
Couper's administration deserves all we have said about it..

•
of

( 38 )
The Government of India is compromised to some extent
in Sir George Couper's action. So far back as the 29th August
last, a communication was addressed by the Government
of India to the Government of the North-West, in which
His Excellency the Viceroy showed very clearly his dislike
of certain proposals that had been made by the local
Government to open relief-works in the provinces. "His
Excellency advises," ran the despatch," that the relief-
wage on such works be fixed at the lowest subsistence rate."
Let the reader note carefully the words we have italicised.
We are most reluctant to say so for we have a strong
regard and esteem for him-but the truth is, Sir John
Strachey belongs to the old school that does not believe

JC.
th
the new famine-relief policy. Sir John has never cor-
My accepted that policy, and it is he, we fear, who struck
knote of the Imperial policy, both in Madras and
i in the North-West, that has ended so deplorably in
He belongs, quite honestly we are sure, to the old
scibol of thought upon the subject. He regards it as
Utopian and Quixotic to suppose that the Government
should charge itself with the responsibility of keeping the
people alive in famine. Stated nakedly and in the form
in which the Pioneer has many times put it-it is a Quixo-
tic interference with Nature, to attempt to thwart her
efforts to dispose of the surplus population of the land.
Nature which sends the storm-wave of the hurricane over
the land, to engulf a quarter of a million of the population
who are only starving thereon, would effect the same
beneficent end in the North-West by now and again re-
fusing the rainfall of the year; and instead of recognising
the ultimate beneficence of her intentions, we stupidly step
in with our relief-works and new famine policy, to preserve
the people alive, whom Nature was kindly minded to be
rid of. We are most distressed to find this note once
more dominating the action of the Supreme Government.
Not a line has ever emanated from the old school of Civi-
lians on this terrible subject, that did not contain, in
some shape or other, the caution: "Not to do too
much for the people." This spirit unhappily breathes
in every line written by this school, to this hour; and
until this evil spirit is exorcised and cast out of the Govern-
"His Ex-
ment, these dreadful scandals will never end.

(C
cellency advises that if relief-works are opened, the wages
be fixed at the lowest subsistence rates." And now, mark
(39)
:
what followed. In the middle of October last, Colonel
Fraser, the Secretary to the Government of the North-
West in the Public Works Department, made the second
tour that Sir George Couper speaks of, to all the Commis-
sionerships in the provinces. He opened his visitation
at Bareilly on the 19th October, having summoned the
Commissioner, the Collector, and the Executive Engineers
of the division to meet him there, and began the pro-
ceedings, by reading the following extract from a letter
addressed to himself by Sir George Couper :-
"Please discourage relief-works in every possible way. It
may be, however, that when agricultural operations
over, some of the people may want work. This, however,
except on works for which there is budget provision, should
only be given if the Collector is satisfied that without it i
people would actually starve. Mere distress is not a sufficien
reason for opening a relief-work. And if a relief-work t
started, task work should be rigorously exacted, and
people put on the barest subsistence wage; so that we m2)
"be satisfied that if any other kind of work were procurabie
elsewhere, they would resort to it."
We pause: we beg the reader to pause, and to re-read
these instructions, and remember that Sir George Couper
is resenting Mr. Knight's charges against him, little
supposing that these directions to Colonel Fraser would be
in our hands. Colonel Fraser went from Rohilkhund to the
Meerut division, thence to the Agra division, thence to
Lucknow, thence to Benares, thence to Allahabad, and
finally to Jhansi. He assembled the Commissioners and
District Officers, at the head-quarters of each to meet him;
and opened the proceedings at all alike, by reading this
same extract from Sir George Couper's instructions to him.
He was ordered, he told them, to "discourage relief-works
in every possible way." The italics are ours. Now these
meetings, be it remembered, were being held up to the 12th
November, on which date the last of them took place at
Jhansi. Mere distress,' he told them in Sir George
Couper's words, was not to be considered "a sufficient rea-
son for opening a relief-work." Mere distress, even when
the people were without work, was not to be a sufficient
reason. The District Officers were to shut their ears to
'mere distress,' and their eyes even to the fact that the
people were without work.' They were to open works
:
(40)
only when they had "satisfied" themselves-mark the
expression satisfied that the people would actually die, if
they did not open them. And when they did open the
works, task work was to be "rigorously exacted" in return
for “bare subsistence." And to-day, when we are standing
face to face with the horrible mortality which these instruc-
tions have produced, Mr. Knight is scandalously to blame
for charging Sir George Couper with the guilt of it,-Sir
George Couper who did all that he could do to save the
people alive!

Sir
George Couper would have the world believe that
he sent Colonel Fraser on his second deputation, to make
provision for the calamity which he foresaw was coming.
No more untruthful suggestion could possibly have been
made Colonel Fraser was sent on this tour, to shut up
e relief-works that were then in existence, and to prohibit
eir being re-opened. Little did Sir George Couper
nagine, when writing this defence, that he would be
Confronted with his own instructions to Colonel Fraser.
Those instructions were perfectly consistent with Sir George
Couper's view of the position. He believed danger to be
over, throughthe early October rainfall; and Colonel Fraser
was sent on this tour, to compel the local executive every-
where to close the relief-works that had been opened in
September. Anything more absolutely untrue than the
statement, or suggestion, that he sent Colonel Fraser on
this mission, because he foresaw that 'widespread famine'
was coming upon the people, and that he was anxious to
make definite preparations to meet it, we say advisedly
was never before put upon an official record.
Sir George
Couper has concealed from the public what the real object
of Colonel Fraser's mission was, and made it appear to
be one precisely opposite. We appeal to the entire body
of executive officers in the North-West, that what we
affirm is true, and that what Sir George Couper says is not

SO.
We ask these gentlemen pointedly-Did Colonel Fraser
approach you on this tour, to warn you that the Lieutenant-
Governor foresaw that 'widespread famine' was coming
upon the provinces, and to settle with you beforehand
how you were to meet it? Or did he come to you, with
assurances that all fear of calamity was over, and to urge
you to close your relief-works, and to show great caution
in again, opening them, should any lingering distress show
:
(41
itself after the rubbee sowings were over? When penning
his untruthful defence, Sir George Couper did not know
that his private instructions to Colonel Fraser would appear
in our columns.
Colonel Fraser opened his deputation tour at Bareilly
on the 19th October, a fortnight after the great rainfall, and
he visited in turn Meerut, Agra, Lucknow, Benares, Allaha-
bad, and Jhansi, assembling the local executive officers
to meet him at each place. He held the same language
at all, opening the proceedings in every case by reading
out to the meeting the private instructions, printed in
italics.* Now that these happy rains had fallen, he was
ordered, he told them, to "discourage relief-works in every
posstufe way.
way." The last of these meetings was at Jhansi,
r2th November. Mere distress,' he told the officers, there
was, not to be considered" a sufficient reason for opening
a relief-work." Mere distress, even when the people were
without work, was not to be a sufficient reason. They
were to shut their ears to tales of mere distress, and their
eyes to the fact that the people were 'without work.' They
were to re-open the works only when they had "satisfied"
themselves-again mark the expression satisfied themselves
-that the people would actually die if they did not open
them. And when they did open the works, the wages
were to be fixed "at the lowest subsistence rate;" and final-
ly, after all this, and with "a lowest subsistence rate of
wages," "task-work was to be rigorously exacted."
And to-day, when we are standing face to face with the
horrible mortality which these instructions have produced,
Mr. Knight is scandalously to blame for charging Sir Geoge
Couper with the guilt of it,-Sir George Couper who did
all that he could do to save the people alive!
But the reader will naturally wish to know whether
Colonel Fraser's instructions met with no remonstrances.
He must remember that the evidence as to that is not in
our hands, but in Sir George Couper's. We are assured
that strong remonstrances were addressed to him on the
subject, and we are fortunately able to say positively that
some remonstrances were certainly made. The immediate
procedure at Bareilly-one of the chief centres of, the

* Page 39.
:
امين
( 42 )
dreadful mortality that followed-was the adoption of the
following resolution in Colonel Fraser's presence :—--
"The opinion of the meeting is, that until the real position of the people
be clearly known-which it cannot be for another month or six weeks-it
will be best to close the works now in hand, reserving, however, the projects
enumerated in the appendix, to meet immediate needs.'
At the same meeting, Colonel Fraser directed that "all
rates on existing works should be immediately reduced
**** so as to give bare subsistence." Now we make an
appeal in our turn, to the Collector of Bareilly to tell us
what the results of this meeting and these instructions
were. We care nothing about Mr. Knight's reputation in
the matter. If the Government of India would really deal
honestly with the public, let the Collector of Bareilly be
invited to tell us what ensued. We say that the people of
Bareilly were dying of hunger at this very time, or imme-
diately after, and with theses before us, and these
dreadful mortality returns ir our hands, it is to insult public
intelligence to acquit Sir George Couper and condemn
Mr. Knight. Passing to Budaon, we say that the Collec-
tor of Budaon (Mr. Sandys) strongly urged the Commis-
sioner not to close the works. The Collector of Bijnour
(Mr. Colvin) pointed out that "the pressure would proba-
bly continue until the middle of April." He showed that
crowds of the people were still on the works, and added:-
"There is nothing here to attract labour. It is a bare subsistence wage,
and that people will come and work for it, shows that the continuance of the
works is necessary. Wages-I anna per man, 3 pice per woman, I pice
per child."
Let the reader remember these rates--one anna per man.
Sir George says they were one-and-a-half. And with
these facts on his own records, Sir George Couper dares
tell the world that Mr. Knight has misrepresented matters.
The Collector of Shahjehanpore (Mr. Duthoit) remonstrated
to the same effect, and wrote:-
"There is, I am afraid, no room for hope that relief-works will cease to
be necessary in this district. On the contrary, I look for a large increase in
the numbers upon them by the end of another three weeks.
The Collector of Moradabad wrote to the same purpose,
so that all five Collectors in the Rohilkhund division dis-
tinctly, warned Sir George Couper in October, that to close
the works would be to deliver the people over to death.
The pretence that the people would not come to the works,
if true at all, was true only after they had been driven
therefrom by 'rigorous task-work on starvation wages, 'the

( 43 )
}
lowest subsistence wage'; and Colonel Fraser undertook
this tour for the very purpose of driving the people from
the works. Thus we find him at Meerut, minuting con-
cerning Alghur :—
"The Collector asks for much morer elief-work than the Commissioner
deems necessary.
The Executive Engineer will proceed at once to that dis-
trict, and see that the rates are reduced to the bare sustenance wages.”
In consequence of this visitation tour, we find the Com-
missioner at Meerut ruling that relief-works on which ordi-
nary rates of wages are paid, are to be stopped, and that the
people are not to be taken on the works, except at wages
'far below the ordinary rates." And yet it is a slander to
say that the people were deliberately forced off the works!
At Agra (25th October) it was resolved, Colonel Fraser
being present, "to stop all works now in hand, but to re-
sume a certain number of them on sustenance wages and
task-work, if distress came." We repeat that this susten-
ance wage at Agra in January, was 12 ounces of flour
and 2 ounces of dhall per day, and as this is one of the
facts which Mr. McMinn most properly communicated to
us, we appeal to him to corroborate it. At Lucknow, we
find Colonel Fraser again urging upon the assembled
officers, that mere distress was not to be considered a
reason for opening relief-works," and that His Honor had
directed that "no relief-works should be started unless
absolutely necessary to prevent starvation." At Fyzabad,
on the 1st of November, we find him urging in the same
way upon the assembled officers, that "the Lieutenant-
Governor had decided that where works are commenced,
they must be carried out on a system of sustenance
wages, calculated on certain tasks, which must be rigorously.
exacted" At Benares, on the 3rd November, we find him
holding very peculiar language on the subject. Let the
reader note it carefully :—
"With the view of saving the Government excess expenditure hereafter,
all works in the budget, except those of a very emergent character, should be
postponed until late in the season, when it could be better determined
whether to take them up as relief-works, or not, i.e., by paying the labourers
only sustenance wages and by rigorously exacting task-work."
In other words, although the works were sanctioned and
provided for in the regular budget of the year, at ordinary
wages rates, advantage was to be taken of the extremity of
the poor to defer the execution, until they could forte the
people to execute them on starvation allowances, under a
rigorous exaction of task-work. And yet the people were

• 44)
(•
not starved off the works! Nothing was to be done; and
even the sanctioned public works of the Budget were to be
postponed to make quite sure that we did not do too much.
The passage that follows is too striking to be omitted:-
"When the necessity for departing from the above rule of postponing
the works should arise, it should be the duty of the Collector first to satisfy
His Honor the Lieutenant-Governor, through the Commissioner of Division,
in the General Department, that the people in the neighbourhood of the work
were in such a state of distress and starvation, as to render the undertaking
of such work absolutely necessary. When Government is satisfied on this
point, the Public Works Department to be informed, and the work to be carried
out under such instructions as the head of that department shall issue. Two
objects will be attained by these proposals: First, Government money will not
be expended at a time when its expenditure is not absolutely necessary for the
lf of the people. Secondly, the works, if undertaken, will be carried out
under such rigorous supervision as to exact a full tale of work for the money
expended."
Let the public read this passage once more.
When the
Collector has satisfied himself that the people around him are
in such a state of distress and starvation as to be dying, he
may then apply to the Commissioner, who will then apply
to the Lieutenant-Governor, who will then apply to the
Public Works Department, which will then instruct its
subordinates to begin the works! And all this time the
people are dying. While the application, which is to satisfy
everybody, is slowly grinding its way through the official
mill, the people solve the difficulty by perversely dying,
or throwing themselves into the nearest pond or well.
And what a grievous wrong we have done Sir George
Couper, by blaming him for their perversity! In their per-
versity they would not work, and in their perversity they
would die, and how could Sir George Couper help it?
At Allahabad, on the 6th November, the Bareilly
minutes were adopted bodily, and Colonel Fraser records
that “any works carried out there, will be so on susten-
ance wages, if at all." And finally at Kalpi, on the 12th
•November, we read:-
"On the construction of the Saugor road, the average rate of wage up
to 31st October had proved to be about one anna one pie per head. Major
Thompson having said that he thought it would be in accordance with the
wishes of Government that this work should at present be treated entirely
as a relief-work, the usual orders about sustenance wages will at once issue,
and the work will most probably stop."
Was conduct so dastardly, so cruel, ever shown by a
civilised Government before? An ordinary public work,
budgetted for and sanctioned, and being executed at the
low rate of wage of anna I pie per day, is taken out of

( 45 )
|
the category of such works and called a relief-work, that
the poor miserable men labouring thereon may have their
wages reduced to bare subsistence rates, for the very pur-
pose of driving them away from it.. In other words, the
extremity of the class without work, was made a pretext
for reducing the wages of the whole unfortunate labouring
class to bare sustenance rates under rigorous task-work.
And we have calumniated and slandered the Government
that has acted thus!
Sir George Couper tells us, that his rate of wage on relief-
works was the ample rate of one and a half anna. How
then is it on official record by Mr. Colvin at Bijnour, that
his rates were—
I anna per man.
3 pice per woman.
I pice per child.
How is it that it is on official record, that Major -
Thompson's rates on the Saugor road were I anna I pie per
day, and that this rate was reduced after Colonel Fraser's
visit to Kalpi? How is it that the rates at Agra were the
infamous rates we are assured they were? Can a woman
really live upon 3 pice per day! Can a man on bare sub-
sistence wage, and under rigorous task-work' feed the child
that cannot work, and yet is dependent upon him? Were
the veil really lifted upon the sufferings that millions of
the poor went through during December, January and
February, in the North-West Provinces, under these orders,
it would strike us all dumb with grief. Of what use is it,
to point out that a fraction of the starving people did hold
on to the so-called relief-works on bare subsistence rates
under rigorous task work? The many felt it less hard to
die with their wives and children around them in their
villages, than that the poor bread-winner should leave the
hut for a distant relief-work, where amidst crowds as
wretched as himself, huddled together without shelter in
the bitter nights of the winter, and without even a blanket
to cover them, he could get bare subsistence for himself.
Had Sir George Couper's arrangements been marked by
any real humanity, had relief-works on the proper scale
been opened, and had the people been properly fed thereon
instead of being starved, they would have flocked. grate-
fully to the works in this famine, as they have done in
every preceding one. Does it realty need Mr. Bernard's.
:
46
46 )
theory of an unaccountable phenomenon' to explain
why the people would not go to the works? They would
not go, because it was blank misery and despair to go, and
so they stayed away. and died. When Mr. Knight arrived
at Agra (11th February) the condition of the people was
simply frightful. Dr. Cornish's letter on the subject reach-
ed him that very day, and will be fresh in the reader's
mind. At that time the talk of the station was that Mr.
McMinn was in disgrace, for having opened a small relief-
work at Ferozabad, on his own responsibility, and at his
own cost, when on arriving at the village, he found dead
bodies lying in the street, and the people starving.
A week later Mr. Knight himself saw on the Futtehpore-
Sikri road, and again, on the Dholepore road, the most
dreadful spectacles of poor famine-stricken creatures re-
auced to skeletons, sitting apathetically by the road-side,
or lying down to die. The moment that proper relief-
works and poor-houses were opened, the people crowded
into Agra in thousands. The 'unaccountable phenomenon'
of the people refusing to work was, to our own knowledge,
not present at Agra, and would have been seen nowhere but
for the inhumanity of the system that had been followed
under Sir George Couper's orders. So shocked and dis
tressed was Mr. McMinn by what he saw, when he went
out into the district to take his usual turn of work
there, that he committed the unheard-of irregularity of
writing direct to Sir George Couper, describing to
him the dreadful state of the people, in terms that
were most unpleasant. He wrote at the same time
to his Collector and to the Commissioner. This was
&bout the 8th of January, if we remember.rightly. He at
the same time did what every humane man would have
done-opened a relief-work at his own cost, leaving the
Government to adopt it or not, as it pleased. The answer
he received was a heavy censure for having dared to
address his Honor at all, strong reflections upon the ex-
aggerated tone of his statements, and an order to close his
relief-work instantly, and to come into Agra forthwith, as
not fit to be in the district at all. The fact simply was
that, as a humane and impulsive man, he was horrified at
what he saw, and stepping out of the grooves of official
routing to try to save the people, he was told that it was
far better they should die, than that administrative rules
And so his
should be broken in this unheard-of way.
:
(47
relief-work was shut up, and he came back into Agra in
disgrace, for having tried to awaken Sir George Couper
to the true state of matters. He was ight to the letter.
The people were dying in cowds. When Mr. Knight
arrived in Agra, the subject was the talk of the whole
station; indeed nothing else was talked about; and we
say firmly that there was but one opinion that Mr.
McMinn was substantially right, and that the way in
which the authorities were shutting their eyes to the con-
dition of the people was an infamy. Mr. McMinn did
not seek us out. A stranger to the district, Dr. Cornish,
thoroughly familiar with famine symptoms, had seen at a
glance the condition of the people, though he was only
24 hours in Agra, and had left his now famous letter at
the station, for Mr. Knight's arrival. They had arranged
to meet there, but Mr. Knight's arrival was delayed.. This
was a full month, be it remembered, after Mr. McMinn's
irregular and scandalous proceeding in opening a relief-
work at his own expense, and trying to awaken Sir
George Couper to the real condition of things. On the
15th of February, Mr. Knight wrote his first letter to this
journal. He tried hard to write without emotion, but
with enough point to rouse the attention of the Govern-
ment. The letter appeared in the Statesman on 19th
February; and Sir George Couper now, at last, and after
four months of cruel inaction, or the more cruel action
we have described, addressed a letter (Lucknow, 26th
February) to the Government of India, plainly intended
to be a reply to Mr. Knight's statements. It was now
discovered, for the first time, that those Christmas rains
that were to do away with all anxiety whatever, were not
an unmixed blessing, as "they deprived the labouring
"classes of the work they would otherwise have obtained
"in irrigating the crops." Now this really means that the
Christmas rains, instead of relieving the distressed classes,
only aggravated their misery, but it was Mr. McMinn, if
we are not very much mistaken, from whom the Govern-
ment learned this simple fact. But we quote this letter
of 26th February, for another purpose altogether. From
the 23rd of November to the 26th February are.three full
months, and it was during these three months that this
truly horrible mortality occurred. Is it not almost incon-
ceivable then, that in this letter of 26th February Sir
George Couper, in replying to Mr. Knight's statement that...
:
48
the people were perishing of starvation, could write as
follows:-
"The cold acting on frames already enfeebled by insufficient nourishment
has undoubtedly produced a mortality considerably in excess of the usual
rate at the present season of the year, although it may be questioned whether
it will not be found hereafter that the comparative immunity from cholera
and fever which, owing apparently to the drought, the provinces have enjoyed
during the past year, will not compensate for the losses caused by insufficient
food and clothing, and make the mortality generally little, if at all, higher
than in an ordinary year.
The ruler who could pen such a paragraph as this, after
witnessing the terrible mortality that had marked the
preceding four months of November, December, January,
and February, is really 'unspeakable.' Sir George Couper
can never have looked at the figures, or if he looked at
them, cannot possibly have understood them. He inci-
dentally corroborates our statement that the season was
a healthy season, and yet the horrible mortality in Rohil-
khund, Agra, Oudh, and elsewhere, did not alarm him.
in the very least. He does not even see what the figures
mean. He foresaw no danger in November, when the
people were already dying in crowds; he could see no
famine in January, when the dead bodies of the people
were lying in the public roads with no one to bury
them; and at the end of February, when the famine
is finishing its work, he is in total unconsciousness that
it has been there, and has swept hundreds of thousands
of the unhappy people away.
Sir George Couper says, "I have had to contend with a
very heavy visitation, but I have had the guidance and
advice of Colonel Fraser, my Chief Engineer, whose
public work and experience in these matters is as well
known to the Government of India, as are his humanity
and kindness of heart to a wide circle of private friends."
If it is the fact that Sir George Couper acted throughout
under the guidance and advice of Colonel Fraser, we
must then, in so far as the inadequacy of the relief-wage
is concerned, blame Colonel Fraser heavily in common
with himself. It is of course impossible for us to say to
whom Sir George Couper trusted for advice and guidance,
but it is easy we think to discern the fatal error which
the advice embodied. The error is so obvious and so vital
that if ever made again, the man who shall make it will
deserve to be hanged.
If when the Government opens a relief-work, it fixes
49)
I
the wage at the lowest subsistence rate, any attempt
to exact task-work in return, must plainly end in reducing
the wage below subsistence rates. Obvious as this is when
once clearly stated, we suspect that, it was entirely lost
sight of, in these disastrous proceedings. If we begin by
fixing the daily pay at the bare subsistence of 1½ anna,
or any other amount, it is obvious that to exact task-work
in return, means that only such labourers as have executed
the task will get paid the full rate, while that rate is "the
lowest subsistence rate!" We begin by laying down that a
man cannot be maintained in ordinary strength, upon a
lower wage than 1½ anna per day; and then, by a system
of task-work, make it problematic how much he will be
able to earn of that rate. If he fulfils the complete task
allotted to him, he will get the lowest rations on which a
labouring man can be kept in ordinary health. If he falls
short of the task, he at once starves under a system like
this. Obvious as this reflection is, it does not seem to
have occurred either to Sir George Couper or his advisers.
Now we suspect shrewdly that the discrepancies between
our statements as to the rate of wages and Sir George
Couper's arise in this very way. His are the hypothetical
wages; ours the real ones. Crowds of the men and
women who came to the relief-works were too enfeebled
to fulfil the task exacted for the full rate of daily wage;
and as that rate is 'the lowest subsistence rate,' they slowly
starved the whole time they worked, through earning less
than the subsistence rate. Is it not most discouraging-is
it not incredible-that after all our experience of famine,
we, as mere newspaper writers, should have to point out
these obvious facts? If you are going to exact a full day's.
work for a full day's wage, you must plainly make that
wage something above the lowest subsistence rate.
only reasonable and sound course to follow, is to pay for
a full day's wage just the same on the relief-work as on
any ordinary public work whatever. The labourer will then
work with all his heart and soul, and feel no degradation.
in his work. He is earning his bread with the sweat of
his brow, the only difference being that he is working for
the State instead of for a private employer. The rate
should never perhaps be below 2 annas per day; the actual
pay never less than the lowest subsistence rate of 1 anna.
The people are naturally so hard-working and industrious
that if they fall short of the full tale of work, you may.

G:
The

:

:
( 50 )
be almost certain that physical incapacity is the cause of
their failure. You may easily demoralize the labourer,
however, by the work you set him upon. He sees
well enough, whether he is doing real work of value, or
only sham work, to make a show of earning his living. And
it is the great reproach against Sir George Couper's adminis-
tration that, when this calamity came, the district officers
were at their wits' end how to employ the people. Mr.
Knight himself saw them at Agra apathetically shovelling
the earth backwards and forwards, without the slightest
interest in what they were doing, because they saw that it
was only sham work they were employed upon. There
is a great deal of human nature, strange to say, about the
poor Indian cooly, though we hardly think it. He is sus-
ceptible of self-respect, and of the glow of honest labour,
as other men; and if you set him to dig a hole and then fil
it up, as a mere pretence for giving him a meal of food, he
knows what we are doing, just as well as we do ourselves.
•

The policy we should adopt, we submit, is as clear as
the noon-day. There is not a Famine tract in the country
in which great works of public improvement are not
urgently required; and matured plans for commencing
such schemes at once on emergency, ought to be in every
one's hand. When distress comes, these works should be
undertaken at once without hesitation, and the labourers
paid the full ordinary wage-rate of the district, to secure
marly, honest, self-respecting labour from the people. Fix
the task as high as you please, but let it be a reason-
able day's work for a fair ordinary day's pay: the lowest
pay must be the limit that will keep the labourer in ordi-
nary health and strength, while the patient industry of the
people is guarantee enough that the labourer will earn
that wage, if his strength enables him to do so. Why
should we attempt to construct necessary public works at
the cost of the poor? What we have been really doing
under Sir George Couper's system, is to exact rigorously
a hard day's work-not for a fair day's wage, but for an
unfair and oppressive one; and to such lengths have we
carried the dishonorable and hateful system, that the poor
have lain down in their huts, and died in despair at our
inhumanity. Instead of punishing Mr. McMinn for his revolt
at such a system, or branding Mr. Knight as a calumniator,
we owe them both earnest thanks for what they have done,
and we appeal to the public to confirm our judgment.

EXACTION OF THE LAND REVENUE.
*
We beg our readers, we beg the Famine Commission,
we beg the Government of India, and all our contempo-
raries to read the letter in our correspondence columns
from the Rev. Mr. Scott, missionary at Bareilly, and to
note-without emotion if they can-his story of this terri-
ble calamity. The constraint which he has put upon him-
seif is manifest in every line of it, and yet how terrible
it is. Travelling in February, "I saw," he says, “ men
lying dead by the wayside; others abandoned to perish;
stores were tumbled into old wells, the deaths being too
numerous for the miserable relatives to perform the usual
funeral rites. Scores of children were emaciated to the
last degree. Here was a family of little children, both
parents dead: there a widow with three small children.
More than one hundred had perished already in this not
large village. I applied to the Magistrate * * and the
prompt reply was that there could be no departure from
the established mode of relief." Mr. Scott's story is the
more pathetic from the evident desire of the writer to
blame the Executive as little as he can.
We have more
than once pointed out that we shall never know what the
real mortality has been. The official returns give no
adequate idea of what the death-rate really was; and
while some are blaming us for laying this melancholy story
bare, others vehemently complain that we are allowing an
undue tenderness for the Viceroy and Sir John Strachey,
to tone down what we ought to say of the policy that has-
really been pursued. One correction we feel we ought to
make. Sir George Couper has referred to Colonel Fraser's
"well-known humanity" as a guarantee that all was done
that could be done and we were disposed to give promi-
nence to the plea. Within the last few days, however, we
have had the most terrible impeachment of this officer's
conduct, sent in to us from districts widely remote from each
other. We are assured that we have been imposed upon,
and that Colonel Fraser was absolutely fierce in the, ex-


* See page 70.
:
6 52 )
652)
3
>>
pression of his determination, that "there should be no
famine under his administration, and that any Collector
who attempted to get one up should
We shall not
pollute our columns with the language attributed to him;
but if the accounts of this officer's conduct, which have
been sent in to us are true-and they come in every case
from gentlemen in positions of responsibility-no terms are
too strong to characterize his course. If we did not
silence our indignation, by the charitable assumption that
he did not himself believe in the famine, we should speak
of Colonel Fraser in terms that he would never perhaps
forget. Both he and the Lieutenant-Governor were abso-
lutely blind to what was around them. Colonel Fræser
was "put in sole professional charge of the famine opera-
tions on the 3rd October, and he undoubtedly is largely
answerable for what followed.
>>
*
But we call attention to Mr. Scott's letter, for another
purpose. The warnings sent in to Sir George Couper by
the District Executive, from about the middle of August,
ought all to be laid before the world to enable it to discern the
real fatuity of his course in exacting the land kist in Novem-
ber. We have dilettante readers who wish we would let the
subject alone, but it is not to them we feel answerable for
our course. A complete change of attitude must be made
towards these calamities, and the way to ensure it is to
carry the conviction of its necessity to all minds. If there
was one lesson concerning famine that we supposed had
been thoroughy iearned, it was the fact that the suspension
of the land revenue collections is the one measure of all
others that gives most effectual relief to the people. Why,
then, were the collections not suspended in the present
case? "I may mention," says Mr. Scott, "without enlarging
apon it, my firm conviction that the exacting of the usual
kist greatly enhanced the distress." We have not the small-
est doubt that it did so. Now, in spite of the warnings.
that had been sent in to him for two months previously,
as to the critical condition of the people-by Mr. Webster,
Mr. Edwards, and others-Sir George Couper addressed
his own
Board of Revenue on the 10th October, as
follows;-
"Notwithstanding the great deficiency of assets in the present year, His
Honar considers that with reference to the character of the settlement, and
the urgency of the demands on Government, remission of revenue ought not
to be sanctioned, except in very special cases."

:
(53)
On the next day, he wrote to the Government of India
as follows:---
"If the village communities who form the great mass of our revennes
payers be pressed now, they wili simply be ruined.”
Again on the 26th November, he wrote:
"The Government of India fail to realise the extent of the damage caused
by the unparalleled failure of the rains that has marked als year. **The
rain did not come until 6th October, by which time the gater part of the
crops was irretrievably ruined.'>
56
If the State demand on the zemindars is not suspended, the Collectors
can neither claim nor expect any relaxation of the demand for rent if pres-
sure is put on the former to pay they in turn must and will put the screw
on their tenants. All through the dark months of August and September,
the zemindars were urged by district officers to deal leniently with their
tenants, and aid them by all the means in their power. Many nobly respond-
ed to the call, and it would be rather inconsistent to subject them now to a
pressure, which may compel them to deal harhly with their tenants.
di
• It is clear from these representations, that pressure had
been placed upon Sir George Couper by the Government
of India, to prevent any suspension of the regular collec-
tions. The Government of India was under great finan-
cial pressure at the time, as the
at the time, as the reader will remember wh
recals the fact that it was at this very time, that the
Finance Department negotiated those strange 6 or 7 per
cent. loans in the native bazaars, that wee so much talkeů
about at the time. But Sir George Couper was the res-
ponsible ruler of the North , and what are we to say
of a Governor who after making the above remonstrances,
could write as follows:---
"His Honor trusts that the realisations will equal the expectations of the
Government of India; but if they are disappointed, His Excellency in
Council may rest assured that it will not be for want of effort or inclination
to put the necessary pressure on those who are liable for the demand."

ti
It would be ungenerous to lay stress on the unhappy
words we have italicized in this extract, but Sr. George
Couper's best friends must wish they had never been used.
As a fact, the collections were going on this very time
(26th Nov.) and were continued v
Gramy UP
middle of January. In spite of the warnings added
to him by his own district officers; in spite of his own
knowledge that the zemindars had behaved so well to-
wards their tenants, that it would be most improper to
put any State pressure upon them; in spite the fact
that he knew that the failure of the harvest had been un-
paralleled; and in spite of his own conviction, that "the
great mass of our revenue-payers would be simply ruined,"

(.54
54)
if pressure was made, he nevertheless applied that pres-
sure steadily, up to the very middle of January, and suc-
cceded, we believe, in getting in the bulk of the State
demand. But the people died. We could and would
make excuses, both for Sir George Couper and the Govern-
ment of India, but that our earnest purpose is to point the
lesson-that the land revenue cannot be exacted at such
periods without imminent danger to the people. Long
before Mr. Scott sent us this letter, we had learned that
the exaction of the November kist with the arrears of the
June kist, had greatly aggravated the distress of the
people. Mr. Scott says, "it greatly enhanced the distress."
It was sure to do so. Sir George Couper knew that it
would do so, and yet did it! And in May, we are holding
an inquest on the dead!


"



:
THE ACTUAL EXPENDITURE.
As the controversy progressed, we became very desirous
to find out the extent of Sir George Couner's expenditure
upon the famine, during the terrible nonths from Nov-
ember to March last, for a very obvious reason. Every-
thing we were assured had been done by him, that could
be done. He was alive to the danger we were told, foresaw
it all, and made all the provision he possibly coula' k
to meet it. Well, a very palpable and obvious test of
his exertions, plainly would be his expenditure upon the
relief of the people. We did not like to write to the
Secretariat at Allahabad for an account of it, for although
such information ought of course to be communicated to
the public freely, it jarred upon us, to ask Sir George's
own Secretariat, for information to be used against his
administration. And so while very desirous to know
what it was, we refrained om the attempt to ascertain it.
The Pioneer-a journal pubhed at Allahabad and very
unfavorably known througut the country, for the way
in which it systematically excuses administrative errors,
made an effort to weaken our charges against Sir George
Couper; but inadvertently, and by inadvertence only, com-
pleted the case against him, by disclosing what his expen-
diture really was. The disclosure it made gave the final coup
de grace to his administration. It turns out then, that the
total expenditure of this humane and vigorous adminis
tration upon the relief of the people, during the six months
that this famine was desolating the provinces, was just
lakhs or about £57,000. The journal thus supplied, the one
fact we had been waiting for, to complete the case.
The writer adduced it as a proof that adequate action was
taken, that "6 lakhs of rupees had been laid out upon
relief-work, up to the end of March." The case was now
complete.


•
a
With millions of the poor, starving in bitter
North-West winter, and with 42 millions of people all
more or less in distress, and without a poor law of any
kind to meet their misery, the full amount of the provision
made for their relief, was some £50,000 to £60,000: The

(• 56⋅ )
derstd
haps,
bin_arately sm
re
disclosure would have stricken us dumb, but that it was
necessary to impresss the fact upon the public mind.
We knew well that the expenditure had been very small,
nd that our statement that Sir George Couper had done
othing for the people, was true but we were not pre-
paited for a disclosure of this order. It was idle after
this to speak of 'relief' at all. The simple fact
is-there was one. How are we to make the reader.
he figures mean? It may help him
him that in England, with its
population of 20 millions, the rates
poor have never fallen short during
years of five, six, or seven millions sterling a
c last year for which we have any information
was 1869, when the State expenditure, upon direct relief
of the poor, was £7,700,000. This vast expenditure is
The provision made in the parishes of the kingdom, that
o poor person, actually starves. The workhouses are
poon to the aged and infirm and the very young, and a
veckly allowance of bread and money made to the desti-
poor, all the year roun If a death from actual
starvation is ever reported in England, we know with
hat horror and indignation is commented upon. No
excuse is admittel, hit the me of it is searched to the
bottom. And with the people found dead in the streets
by the cart-load, night after night as at Lucknow, and
being tumbled by scores into old wells as at Bareilly, Sir
ge Coper at the end of it all, and when half a
illion of people had actually died of starvation, pointed
to his expenditure of £60,000, as a proof of the humane
vigour with which he attempted to relieve their sufferings !
There are no poor laws in india, for providing for the sick
an aged poor, and for men out of employ. The people.
take the care of the poor entirely upon themselves, and
fook to Government for assistance, only when the extrem-
ity of famine comes upon them. This honourable
readiness of the people themselves to sustain their poor in
ordinary seasons, gives them a peculiar claim upon the
assistance of the Government, when a failure of harvests
makes it no longer possible for them to do without it.
And now look for a moment, at what our course has
really, been. The Government is the great landlord of the
North-West, taking about 65 per cent. of the gross rental,
as its share of the produce of the people's industry.


•

( 57 )
What the gross annual value of the harvests in the North
West really is, has been much disputed. We had an int
esting controversy some years ago with Mr. C. A. F
then secretary to the North-West Government,
point, and that gentleman estimated the value
member rightly, at £24,000,000 sterling
own estimate was a very much higher
assume the money value of the ha ouths m
year to be £24,000,000 to £30,000,00
good deal below the amount.
No
faire,
round figures, £6,000,000. In other
share of the gross produce is about end
consist of the khurreef or rain harvest, a
rubbee harvest. What their respective value
tell, but it is to the khurreef harvest in Noven
State looks mainly, we believe, for the paym
revenus. The rubbee kists are collected in Ma
and those for the khurreef in November and Dec
Now there was no khureef this last year, the rains ha
totally failed. The people had lost their harvest altogethe
while there was the Government demand for its share
hanging over them for, we suppose, £3,000,000 sterling,
to be paid by them anyhow, they could. And instead of
remitting the demand, because the people had no harvest
from which to pay it, or at all events suspending
the collection of it, the inexorable claim was made,
and the State share of £3,000,000 wrung from the people
in their misery! Regardless of the known distress, regard-
less of the fact that a mass of the population would have
to depend upon charity for their maintenance, and that
in Sir George Couper's own words we should "ruin the
mass of the revenue payers" by exacting our share from
them when there was no harvest to share-the cast iron
machinery of the State went right on and over the people,.
crushing the £3,000,000 out of them, and refusing to
give them the slightest assistance to keep their poor alive.
We took our £3,000,000 share without remorse, and then
left the people to deal with the millions of the destitute poor,
as they could. Now that we know what Sir George Cou-
per's so-called "relief was-namely £60,000 in six
months- we know all. We want no further revelation.
More horrible cruelty was never shown under civilized
rule. There were no poor-houses, no poor rates, no fund
whatever to save the people. Sir George was determined.
.H
D
>

( 58 )
there should be no famine; and so after instructing every
district officer to shut his ears and closè his eyes to the cries
people left to perish-he went to Allahabad, and
here with the utmost composure, while the people
death by hundreds of thousands. He never woke
Mr. Knight's letter of 15th February in the
him out of his guilty course. He then
anwhat for the first time, to see what was going
time and the end of March, screwed
per
COR
for feclief.
the fast
uli of the £60,000 of his total
rom these provinces as the State share
since the terrible famine of 1837, not
$,000,000 to £200,000,000 sterling, and when
rs who have produced it all, can produce no
gh the unkindly Earth refusing it to their
blood-we could positively spare but £60,000
the last £3,000,000 we wrung from them, to save
from the cruel death of hunger. The taking these
st £3,000,000 was the crime of multitudinous murder-
and the blood of these poor creatures shall not remain in
our skirts, at all events. The one fact we were waiting for
was furnished; and the case stands forth in an awful com-
pleteness of outline, that we never even ourselves supposed
it could attain.
Sir George Couper's minute was a tissue of untruths, such
never before drawn up, we think, by a man in respon-
osition. He began by declaring that he sent Colonel
er in October last, to warn the District Executive of
t was coming, and to make every preparation for it.
was really sent, as we have shown from his own
structions, to tell them that there was no longer any
nger of famine; to compel them to close the existing
Hcf works instantly; and to make them understand
early that any attempt to 'get up' a famine, would be
dealt with in a way they would not forget.• The district
officers were positively threatened by Colonel Fraser, in
language that we cannot quote in these pages. And
Sir George Couper then dared to represent to the Supreme
Government, that Colonel Fraser's mission was the result
of his foresight, and of a humane resolve to save the
people alive? He went on to declare that, in spite of an
ample relief-wage, the people would not come to the works;
and told the Government that it was most 'unaccount-
( 59 )
"
able;' the fact being that there were no relief-works at all
in most places, and that where there were any, the people
were deliberately driven from them, by rates that were an
infamy, that were but half or two thirds the rates he
said they were, and were being acted upon at the
very time he was writing his defence. He took no notice
of the charge, that where such works were
opened, the
people were exposed in the cold and bitter nights of the
North-West winter, without shelter of any kind over them,
or even cooly blankets to wrap them in.~ He, said
nothing about his exaction of the land kist. We
have shown that he himself warned the Government of
India, that to exact it, would "simply ruin the mass of the
revenue-payers," and that the zemindars had shown a noble
example to the State of forbearance with their rent
claims. And yet he proceeded straightway to exact the
kist, and went on doing
up to the middle of
January. He succeeded, we believe, in wringing the
bulk of the revenue from the people, though he knew
he was "simply ruining" them; and has so thrown masses
of them into the hands of the money-lender from whom
they will now never escape.
OUR advices from the North-West were telling us at this very time-May-
that the wages on the Lucknow relief-works were then :-




Bildars
Common laborers
Children
{
..
...
1½ anna
I
These wages are one anna lower all round than the rates when foo.A
ordinary prices. At Sitapur the rates were a little higher
Bildars
Common laborers
Women
Children
...
...
...
...
1½ anna.
14
""
I
3/4
The rates were being changed, at the time our correspondent wrote, y
making payment partly in grain, with a view to make the remuneration a
little higher. But the above were the rates at which the people were being
paid, both at Lucknow and Sitapur in February on to May, with wheat at 10
seers the rupee at the former place, and 94 seers at the latter, the people
never getting full measure from the dealers even at these rates. Sir George
Couper had told the Government of India that he had taken great care to
fix the wage at a rate that would give the people sufficient though 'bare'
subsistence; and that as the current prices of wheat and dhall had been II,
12, and even 13 seers per rupee throughout, he had made the wage anna
per day: and he added-
"I hope hat if I have erred on the side of liberality, I shall not want


(° 6060 °
)
he forgiveness of H. E. the Viceroy in Council; but be H. E.'s decision
what it may, I think I have demonstrated that whatever the causes which
deterred the people from coming to the works may have been, insufficiency of
food was not one of them.”
He said nothing about "rigorous task work being exacted in return for
is 1½ anna rate; but at the very time he was thus writing, and up till even
May, the rates were but one-half or two-thirds of the 12 wage, with food in-
definitely dearer than he told the Government it was. He says:-"I decided
at the outset that the labourer could not live on less than 1%½ anna per day,
because the rupee would purchase but II to 13 seers of food-gain." His actual
rate had been but one-half to two-thirds of what he saidat was, while the
runee has purchased no more than 9 to 10 seers of short measure.
With food at 9 seers the rupee, and the relief wage of the masses (the
cooly) at 1 anna per day under "rigorous task work,
rigorous task work," it is clear that the
people have Been deliberately starved off the works, wherever they have
really left them. But they did not leave them, even at these rates. When
the works were opened at Muttra so late as May, the people poured in, in
such crowds, upon the engineers, that they had to fly, the starving multitude
being desperate. Wherever the rate was even I anna, the people stayed by
the works though slowly starving when it went down to 34 anna, they went
back in despair to their huts to die. But there were no relief-works at all, at
numberless places. At Luckiow, the were none till the middle of February,
after four months toore suffering, and after nine dead bodies a night had
been picked up in the
ets every m ring for a whole month. The 34
anna rate, with food at, seers the rupe, was absolute starvation. There are
64 pice in the ruj ee, and 9 seers are equal to 144 chittacks. Then-


Pice.
64
.
Chittacks.
144
Pice.
3
Chittacks:*
63/3
This if every pie of the actual subsistence rate of 34 annas were spent upon
grain, it would cur no more for the miserable creatures than 62/3 chittacks
of foad, while bir George Couper assured the Government that he had
carefully frame his rate so as to enable the laborer to obtain double that quan-
tity of twelve chîttacks of grain, beside salt and firewood.
attempt was made (Pioneer) to show that to have provided blankets for
people would have cost Rs. 10,000,000. It is a proportion only of the
e who have not bundles of rags to wrap themselves in, while £100,000
aly would have given every poor creature what was wanted. At Agra this
provision was made in February at trifling cost, and the attempt to show that
our demands upor. the State were extravagant, are thoroughly dishonest. The
sum we have named (£100,000) would more than have met the wants of the
poor miserable creatures, who it is admitted (Pioneer) had in some cases no
shelter whatever, Let the English reader imagine what it means.
No shelter
over head, with the thermometer at 32° freezing point, and without even a
Rs. 2 cooly blanket to cover them. England must call the Indian Govern-
ment strongly to account for its reactionary attitude on this subject, from the
extravagant and unprincipled conduct of Sir Richard Temple, who made
our expenditure a by-word in 1874.
The condition to which the miserable people of the Agra, Rohilkund, and
Lucknow divisions have been reduced, by the starvation process to which
they have been subjected, seems to be perfectly frightful. The people con-

*. A chuttack is 2 ounces: an anna is 1d.


( $61 •},
tinue to die like otter sheep. The teturns for March and April are af
follow :-
Rokilkund\...
Agra
Lucknow
Roy Bareilly
March
April
1978.
37,884
1877.
39.233 9,076
March
19,081
April
19,802
8,105
{April
March
13,885
15,327
3,825
March
I1,371
April
14,472
5,028
Taking the provinces as a whole, the returns are
N.-W. Provinces
April 1878.
157,326
·
April 1877.
78,498
}
And this is what comes of grinding the land revenue out of the people,
when there is no harvest to pay it from. The people starve dy masse, and
get into a condition from which there is no rescuing them. When standing
in the poor-house at Agra in February, with 2,0 per wretches crowding
into it, Dr. Tyler said to us-"They are too far ge now to do anything
for them: more than half of them will be dead in less than six weeks.""
This is the outcome, we say, of s ng the State machine over the people,
to grind the land revenue out of n, , when there is nothing to pay it with :
and of the "please discourage relierks in every possible way," policy.


THE disclosure that the total amount spe
upon the
relief of the people in the North-West, frn September
to the end of March last, was but 6 tak (£50,000 to
£60,000), furnished so absolute a corroboration of our
charges against Sir George Couper, that we felt it to be
needless for us to go on. The Pioneer did not to us
when this money
s spent, but even this mais 5'le
mockery of the peo need was not forthcoming-b691
after Mr. Knight's le had appeared in February
establishing our charge against Sir George Couper's admi
nistration we have been under the heavy disadvantage of
prosecutor, whose evidence consists mainly of the admissions
made by the other side. Sir George Couper shall himself
tell us when this outlay was made. If the reader will turn
to his defence he will see that Appendix A gives us the
number of people upon the relief-works, and in the poor-
houses from September to end of March, for but one
district only, Agra. Now we may be very sure that Sir
George has selected the district which speaks most favour-
ably for him; and what do we find even here?



(• 620 )
!
Daily average of relief, September 1877 to March 1878.
September
October
November
December
January
February
March
Relief-works. Poor-house.
2,250
325
5,500
$285

4,400
285-
4,400
200
2,80
450
22,00
900
20,00
1,300
The figures speak for themselves, and show clearly
that even the miserable 6 lakhs, for which Sir George
would take credit, was nearly all spent after public atten-
tion had been called to the truly horrible condition of the
people. The Pioneer of course knew this well enough, But
as honest cnogh to conceal it. If we assume that one-
half of this chef (31 lakhs), was spread over the first five
of the period, and the remaining 3/4 lakhs spent in
February and March, we shall make a sufficiently close
approximation to the facts. So it comes out finally that
the foresight, vigour, and humanity shown by Sir George
Couper and his L tenant, found their full expression in
an expenditure of out Rs. 2000 a day, spread over a
distressed popula on o 42 m ns of people, an indefi-
nite proportion
whom we suffering the horrors of


a bitter fami^e.
Relief Days
=
Rs.325,000 ÷ 150
Per day.
Rs. 2,100
There is the act. It is to trifle with the public intelligence
to speak of Sir George Couper's defence to our charges.
There is no defence. It stands out with lightning
clearness, that the people were left to perish, in accord-
ance with the instructions carried by Colonel Fraser to the
in October.
head-quarters of the various divi
And now for the other terrible in connection with
his course. We have seen that George Couper him-
elf wrote to the Supreme Government so late as Novem-
ber that any attempt to exact the land revenue from the
people would simply ruin the mass of revenue-payers."
He told that Government that it plainly did not
realize the fact that the khurreef had absolutely peri ned
that there was no harvest from which the people could
pay it, and that the zemindars had acted so nobly in
suspending the collection of their rents, that it would
be a reflection upon the State if it did not show the
same forbearance. And, though writing thus, he went




(
153 • )
straight on to the exaction of the kists, just as though
the people had reaped a harvest. The exaction went on
from November to the middle of January all over the
Provinces, the vast sum of £3,000,000 sterling or more
having to be wrenched from the people.
The exaction spread over sixty days means Rs. 500,000
per day. See now what British rule really is. Under
native rule the demand would have been remitted al-
together, because there was no harvest to meet it. Wh
our eyes wide open to the fact that the exaction wo
simply ruin them, the State machine moves on cruel
destiny, crushing Rs. 500,000 per day out of the mise
able people, for sixty long days together, and showing
our humanity" by allotting Rs. 2,100 per day for their relief,
under rigorous task work. We demand solen.nly and
with passionate earnestness-Has the world ever seen
a rue like this before?
(
V
And then we wonder that the people prefer native rule to
our own; and we appoint Famine Commissions to find
out how it is that the people die in millions, when they
lose their harvest. Without a poor law, without machinery
of any kind for the relief of the people, we proceed calmly
with our 'administration of the country, and wonder
that it does not succeed. Now that the veil is lifted by
the merest accident, we see a brilliant gal Court
gaily dancing, banquetting, legislating and ministering'
in Calcutta ; a poor, apathetic, sleeping creare whom we
call Lieutenant-Governor doing his dancing, pirouetting
and 'administering' at Allahabad, and the great State ma-
chinery of cast iron, going rolling and crushing on over
the people as though they were cane in a sugar mik,
and leaving ghastly heaps of the crushed dead behind
it, WITHOUT ANY ONE EVEN KNOWING IT till a jour-
nalist "seeking notoriety" and going that way, complains
that the atmosphere is faint and heavy, and that he fears
there is something wrong.
We tell the Government plainly that knowing, as it well
that nothing gives the people such relief in famine
ae suspension of the land revenue, our exaction of it
in these North-West Provinces, when we knew. what its
effect would be-has made us guilty of the blood of the
poor, heart-broken, crushed, despairing people, who laid
down and died as our State Juggernauth rolled over them,
to the distant music of their banquetting and pirouetting
T

64)
of exa
Rulers. Do not accuse the Statesman of exaggerating mat-
tex. Accuse yourselves! For long weary years have we
demar ded the suspension of these kists when famine
and in vain. With no poor laws in the land; and the old
Pol
more set up of letting the people pull
once
ɔmes
or die" as they can, and with the vernacular
press which alone witnesses the people's sufferings,
silenced by a cruel necessity-we and our contemporaries
must speak without reserve, or be partakers in the guilt
of these multitudinous murders committed by men binded
to the real nature of what we are doing in the country
1.

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
3 9015 00922 7318