FREE TRADE 
 
 AND 
 
 COLONIZATION 
 
 OF 
 
 INDIA. 
 
 8 9 3 ' Q i
 
 rt*
 
 A VIEW 
 
 OF 
 
 THE PRESENT STATE 
 
 AND 
 
 FUTURE PROSPECTS 
 
 OF THE 
 
 FREE TRADE & COLONIZATION 
 
 OF 
 
 INDIA. 
 
 SECOND EDITION, ENLARGED. 
 
 I 
 " No sovereign, I confidently believe, lias ever yet traded to profit ; no trading company, 
 I greatly fear, has yet administered government for the happiness of its subjects." 
 
 SfiKh of Lord Grenville, April 9, 1813. 
 
 LONDON : 
 JAMES RIDGWAY, 169, PICCADILLY, 
 
 AND 
 
 EGERTON & JOHN SMITH, LIVERPOOL. 
 
 1829. 
 Price Two Shillings.
 
 CD 
 
 C2 5^ 
 
 A VIEW, 4Lc 
 
 A thorough freedom of commercial intercourse V)et\vcen the 
 European and Indian dominions of the Crown, and an nnre- 
 ^ stricted settlement of Englishmen in India, are the grand and 
 c/5 essential instruments for improving our Eastern Colonies, and 
 >- rendering them useful to the mother country. Every one 
 ^ knows that it is the freedom which has existed in respect to 
 — these two essential and indispensable points which, even in 
 spite of blundering legislation, neglect of the mother country, 
 inauspicious localities, and occasional imprudence on the part 
 of the settlers, has assured the rapid prosjjerity of almost every 
 colony which England ever possessed ; and it is unquestionably 
 5^ the interdiction of the same freedom which has made the 
 '~ Indian commerce always insignificant — often retrogressive ; — 
 ^ which has made our Indian territory, from our first acquisition 
 ,._ of it down to the present moment, a heavy burden to the 
 mother country, and which has, for the most part, after sixty 
 years rule, kept our Indian fellow-subjects in the same un- 
 altered state of poverty and barbarism in which we found them. 
 The few following pages will be devoted to an examination 
 of the question of Free Trade and Colonization in India; and 
 we imagine it will be no difficult matter to demonstrate to all 
 accustomed to a fair exercise of their reason, that, v\ hether as 
 regards the interests of Indians or of Englishmen, both are 
 equally useful, equally safe, and equally necessary. We may 
 truly aver, that for a full century at least, reason, common sense, 
 W^and the principles of science, have been alike set at defiance 
 to serve the purposes of a party ; set at defiance, as experience 
 has amply attested, for the virtual purpose of obstructing the 
 commerce of England, and arresting the progress of improve- 
 naent in India. It is impossible to recur without pain and 
 
 B 
 
 35-46 { li-
 
 mortification to the too successful efforts which were so perse- 
 veringly made, even as late as the year 1813, nay, as late as 
 1821, to mislead and abuse the judgment of the nation and 
 legislature in respect to the government and commerce of India. 
 We were told, in a tone of oracular authority, and on the 
 alleged experience of two centuries, that the trade between 
 Great Britain and India was wholly incapable of extension ; 
 that we could furnish nothing new which the Hindoos wanted, 
 nor the Hindoos produce any thing new which we required. 
 We were told, in one breath, that the Hindoos were so peculiar 
 a people, that they would be driven into a rebellion, which 
 would cost us the loss of our dominion, on account of the mere 
 resort of British merchants to their country; and in another, 
 that if such resort were permitted, India would soon be peo- 
 pled with Englishmen, and her gentle aboriginal inhabitants 
 exterminated, or reduced to the condition of helots. Then we 
 were told that the Hindoos were a good and moral people, 
 and would only be depraved by an intercourse with English- 
 men. And, finally, we were assured that the existing admini- 
 stration was quite perfect ; in short, that the Indians, hating 
 changes of every description, were enamoured of monopoly 
 and of all its consequences. 
 
 Let us first attend to the triumphant refutation which the 
 free trade has given to the statements and predictions of its 
 opponents. In the year 1794, or the first of their former 
 Charter, the East India Company exported to India and China 
 to the official value of £2,924,829. In 1814, or the last of 
 the Company's enjoyment of an exclusive monopoly, they 
 exported only £1,699,125. Their trade in twenty years, in 
 short, had not increased, but fallen oft' by £1,225,704. But 
 lest this should be considered an unfair statement, we shall 
 go furtlier back, and view the progress of the Company's trade 
 by periods of six years, from the year 1790 to 1814 inclusive. 
 In the first period, the average of the Company's annual ex- 
 poitations was £2,520,871 ; in the second it was £2,362,375; 
 in the third it was £2,153,288; and in the fourth only 
 £1,740,137, or more than 30 per cent, less than it was in the 
 first During the whole time in question, the Company had 
 an exclusive monopoly against their countrymen : during a 
 great part of it, the French, the Dutcli, the Danes, and the 
 American* were driven by the arms of Great Britain from the
 
 3 
 
 field of competition. During the whole of it they ha(J not less 
 than forty millions of native subjects, and latterly half a.% 
 many more, and at the moment they enjoyed the least trade, 
 they were in full occupation of all the French, all the Danish, 
 and all the Dutch possessions ; in short, they had a field of 
 commercial enterprise which was limited only by the Cape of 
 Good Hone on the one side, and ])y Cape Horn on the other. 
 
 In the first three years of free trade, the official value of the 
 exports from Great Britain to India and China averaged 
 £2,364,358 ; in the second they rose to £3,002,662 ; and in 
 the third to £4,294,487 ;* the free traders having to sustain 
 the unfair competition of the East India Company, and the 
 competition of all the commercial nations of Europe and 
 America, while they were wholly excluded from the market of 
 China. In short, in nine brief years they had raised the Indian 
 exports by 70 per cent, beyond what they had ever attained 
 under the East India Company, and by 146 per cent, beyond 
 what that East India Company had reduced them, after the 
 piddling of more than 214 years. 
 
 In 1814, the last year of the Company's enjoyment of the 
 exclusive monopoly, their whole exports from Great Britain 
 to India amounted, in declared value, to £1,571,245; in 1823 
 they amounted only to £458,550; in 1824 to £624,780; in 
 1825 to £598,553; in 1826 to £990,964; and in 1827 to 
 £804,778.f The average of the five years thus quoted makes 
 the trade of the East India Company to India, after they had 
 acquired a prodigious addition of territory, and an augmenta- 
 tion of subjects to the amount at least of three and twenty 
 millions, by £875,720, or 55 per cent, less than it was thirteen 
 years before. 
 
 Let us now advert to the progress of the free trade. In the 
 year 1824, or at the conclusion of the first ten years, the exports 
 by the free trader amounted, in declared value, to £2,839,796 ; 
 in 1825 to £2,574,660; in 1826 to £2,625,888, and in 1827 to 
 £3,903,006.+ The reader will not fail to contrast this steady 
 
 • East and West India Trade. — Ortlcrcd by tlie Honse of Commons to 
 be printed loth May, 1827. 
 
 f Eaut India Trade. — Ordered by the House of Commons to b« 
 printed 1 0th and 1 1th Jane, 1828. 
 
 t Ibid,
 
 progression of legitimate commerce with the fluctuation 
 always, and retrogression generally, of" monopoly traffic, as- 
 both are exhibited in these statements. 
 
 A statement of the East India Company's commerce vvi.b 
 China, where they enjoy an exclusive monopoly against their 
 countrjonen with 150,000,000 of the most industrious and 
 wealthy people of Asia, as well as the exclusive right of sup- 
 plying the United Kingdom with one of the first necessaries 
 of life, will afV"oi-d results equally unfavourable to them. In 
 1814, as we have already stated, the declared value of the 
 Company's exports to China was £987,788; in 1823 they fell 
 to £708,047; in 1824 they were £612,1.39; in 1825 they were 
 £744,858; in 1826 they were £852,030; and in 1827 they 
 were only £493315. :. ..r.,/^ 
 
 The average of these five years makes the trade £682,177, 
 or £305,611, or 30 per cent, less than it was in 1814. In 
 the year 1827 the whole exports to India, where the trade was 
 in some measure open, rose, in thirteen years, to £4,707,784, 
 or sustained an advance of nearly 200 per cent. In the same 
 year, under the close trade, the exports to China fell off to 
 £493,815, or sustained a decrease of 30 per cent. Such is 
 the result of a partial free commerce, still struggling against 
 restraints, against mischievous exclusions, against local mono- 
 polies, and against the competition of an arbitrary government ; 
 and such the result of the labours of a joint stock company 
 bolstered up by all the privileges and immunities which a mis- 
 taken legislation could confer upon it. 
 
 Turning to the import trade, we find that the sum total of 
 our imports from India and China, in the year 1814, amounted, 
 in declared value, to £6,298,386. On the average of the five 
 years ending 1827, they amounted to £10,543,417, or had sus- 
 tained an advance of £4,245,031. This shows an increase of 
 little more than 67 per cent, whereas the increase in the exports 
 is no less than 200 per cent. The difierence, although there 
 be many other obstacles to the import trade, is principally to 
 be accounted for by the stationary cliaracter of the trade in 
 tea, the great article of the consumption of this country im- 
 ported from the Indies. On the average of the first five years 
 rndinj; with IHl 1, tho importation of tea into this country 
 amounted, in value, to £3,229,497: on the average of the five 
 years rnding with IH27, it was £4,258,654, which shows an in-
 
 erfa«e only of about 32 per cent. Rejecting from the imports of 
 1814 the value of tea, or £3,527,320, the amount for that year 
 will be £2,771,066; and following the same course in regard 
 to the imports in the five years ending with 1827, they will be 
 found, on an average, to amount to £6,241,162, being an in- 
 crease, not of 32 per cent., but of 120 per cent. But for the 
 monopoly of tea, the increase, as in every other wholesome 
 branch of commerce, would have equalled the exports, and 
 both would, by this time, have been infinitely greater than they 
 are. Our whole imports from India and China amounted, 
 in 1814, as just stated, to £6,298,386. On the average of the 
 five years ending with 1827, those from India alone amounted 
 to £5,866,343 ; in 1826, they indeed exceeded them by £95,901 . 
 In the last year of which the statement is before us, or 1827, 
 (tea excluded in both cases,) they exceeded them by £3,089,013, 
 or by no less than 111 per cent. 
 
 In 1813, the East India Company assured us, that, "of 
 54,000 tons allotted for the private trade since 1793, only 
 21,806 tons had been actually used by private merchants, and 
 these filled w holly with commodities for the use of Europeans." 
 The reply to this is tolerably complete : in 1823, there entered 
 inwards 49,378 tons of shipping, and cleared outwards 50,016; 
 in 1824, 52,091 tons entered inwards, and 49,785 cleared out- 
 wards; in 1825, there entered inwards 43,934 tons, and cleared 
 outwards 57,990 ; in 1826, there entered inwards 58,968 tons, 
 and cleared outwards 56,577; and in 1827, there entered in- 
 wards 61,270 tons, and cleared outwards 73,890. The tonnage 
 for this last year, it will be observed, exceeds in amount, by con- 
 siderably more than a threefold proportion, the amount which 
 the East India Company thought sufhcient, and it ivas suffi- 
 cient, under their patronage, for the free trade of India for 
 twenty years together. — What proportion of the tonnage now 
 specified belonged to the East India Company, the official 
 returns afford us no means of determining, but that it was 
 notoriously a trifle ; and that that trifle was notoriously era- 
 ployed in carrying on a losing trade to the detriment of the 
 nation, there is no question. 
 
 But it is not the direct intercourse between India and Great 
 Britain alone which has been improved by the relaxation of 
 the East India Company's monopoly. The local commerce 
 of India has also benefited largely from the impulse given to
 
 6 
 
 it even by the small addition of British capital and enterprise, 
 which has followed the partial opening of the trade. Thus, the 
 whole export and import trade of Calcutta, in the last year of 
 the East India Company's close monopoly, was £6,9 1 1,774. On 
 the average of the first seven years of free trade, every article 
 of export or import having fallen greatly in price, the trade 
 rose to £11,158,889, being within a small fraction of the same 
 amount as the whole trade of the port of London 120 years 
 ago. 
 
 But perhaps the most remarkable example we have of the 
 success of free trade is exhibited in the history of the little set- 
 tlement of Singapore, a barren islet, and having only the 
 advantage of a convenient locality. In the commencement of 
 the year 1819, not ten acres of the primeval forest which 
 covered it was cleared, and its whole inhabitants consisted of 
 about three hundred beggarly Malays, not only possessing no 
 industrious habits, but notorious and dangerous pirates. We 
 have before us the account of its exports and imports for the 
 year ending the 30th of April, 1828, and find that their joint 
 amount was £2,875,800. The exports alone amounted to 
 £1,387,201, that is to say, they exceeded the declared value 
 of the exports of the East India Company from the whole 
 United Kingdom to all India and to all China, in the cor- 
 responding year, by £88,608, giving the Company the advan- 
 tage of all their civil and military stores ; but observing, on the 
 other hand, that they did not contribute a shilling towards the 
 amount of the Singapore exports. — Our whole trade in the 
 Straits of INIalacca, in 1814, was short of a million sterling. 
 At present it considerably exceeds £4,000,000. — The trade of 
 Bombay and its dependencies has, in like manner, sustained 
 a vast increase. 
 
 A rapid view of a few of the staple articles of export to India, 
 and of the staple productions of that country, will exhibit in a 
 clear and incontrovertible manner the evil effects of the exist- 
 ing system. We begin with the articles of export. The most 
 valuable and important export of this country to India consists 
 of cotton manufactures. This branch is nearly altogether in 
 the iiands of the private trader, and so it advances from 
 year to year. In the year 1814 the East India Company 
 exported manufactured cottons to the value of £16,252. 
 This was all that the Company effected for the grand staple
 
 nianufaclure of the kingdom. In the same year the free 
 trader exported to tlje value of £74,67:}. The total numher of 
 yards of cotton cloth exported to India in 1814 was 818,208, 
 and of cotton twist 81bs. In 1827 the value of cotton manu- 
 factures exported to India was £1,923,487, of which the East 
 India Company exported only £21,5<50 Is. lid. worth. The 
 total number of yards of cotton cloth exported was 42,919,222, 
 and of cotton twist, 3,063,968lbs. Of the first, the share of the 
 East India Company was 630,639 yards, and of the second, 
 4121bs. In thirteen years the East India Company's trade in 
 cotton manufactures had advanced very little more than 32 per 
 cent. ; that of the free trade had advanced in the same time by 
 3832 per cent. The export of cotton manufactures to India 
 constitutes little less than eleven parts in the hundred of our 
 exports to all parts of the world, in this grand staple of our 
 industry. This is undeniably a great and valuable branch of 
 the national commerce, but that it has not attained its acme 
 may easily be proved. It has hardly reached the Chinese 
 Empire at all, a country of rude manufacturing industry, in 
 comparison with Great Britain, and a country in which the 
 raw material is so dear as to be yearly imported in great quan- 
 tity. Hindostan alone contains 134 millions of people, for 
 whom the supply of 1827 will afford little more than three- 
 tenths of a yard a-head ; but to this must be added the popu- 
 lation of India beyond the Ganges, of the Indian Islands, of 
 Persia, and of Arabia, amounting in all, probably, to not less 
 than 50 millions. For this aggregate population of 184 mil- 
 lions, 42,919,222 yards would afford little more than two-tenths 
 of a yard lor the consumption of each individual. If we add 
 150 millions for the population of China, the supply will not 
 amount, for each individual, to much more than one-tenth of a 
 yard. There is nothing too sanguine in such speculations- 
 Any reasonable expectations may well be entertained of a 
 branch of trade which, labouring under many grievous restric- 
 tions, has, in the short period of thirteen years, advanced from 
 the paltry sum of £90,925 to £1,023,487, and which is con- 
 ducted with such skill and economy that the consumer now 
 receives his goods at about one-third of the price which they 
 cost at that time. 
 
 The East India Company have always dealt in woollens, 
 and, to the infinite detriment of the fair trader, they still perse-
 
 vere in doing so. The woollen trade, therefore, to India, not 
 to mention that the free trader is wholly excluded from China, 
 the great market for that commodity, affords a very different 
 result from the cotton trade. In 1814 the total value of 
 woollens exported to India, including China, was £1,084,435, 
 of which the East India Company exported £1,064,222, and 
 the free trader only £20,213. In 1827 the total exports of 
 woollens to India and China amounted in value only to 
 £817,159, or had fallen off by 23 per cent. The East India 
 Company exported of this amount to India £126,320, and to 
 China £413,412, or in all, £539,732, and the free trader to 
 India only £277,427. The export of the free trader had ad- 
 vanced, therefore, on the limited field of India, by above 1272 
 per cent, and that of the East India Company had declined by 
 49 per cent., or, in other words, fallen to nearly one-half of what 
 it had been thirteen years before. India, situated either within 
 the tropics, or within ten degrees of them, although affording a 
 considerable market for woollens, bears in this respect no com- 
 parison with the Chinese Empire, which stretches to the 53d 
 degree of north latitude ; China, in short, is the grand staple 
 for woollens. Even the transactions of the East India Com- 
 pany themselves show this incontestibly. In the year 1791, 
 when they had a complete monopoly both of the markets of 
 India and China, their exports of woollens to the fonner 
 amounted in value only to £8,680, whereas those to the latter 
 were worth no less than £486,993. An experience of six and 
 thirty years has not only not increased the Chinese exports of 
 woollens, but even reduced their amount by full 15 per cent. 
 
 The East India Company, notwithstanding these unsuc- 
 cessful and humiliating results, perseveres, with unaccountable 
 tenacity, in maintaining its monopoly of the woollen trade to 
 China : it even forbids the officers of its own ships from being 
 concerned in this favourite branch of trade; and in India, while 
 the exportation of every other article to China (Turkey opium 
 excepted) is free, it has enacted a law expressly prohibiting all 
 British subjects from supplying the Chinese with this great 
 staple of }'!itish industry! The incapacity of the Company 
 to supply the Chinese market has conferred a very useful pri- 
 vilege on the commercial rivals of this country. The Russians 
 supply the Chinese from the north, and the Dutch and Anie- 
 ricajia frum the iouth. The British trader hm the aatisfactiou
 
 of seeiiif^- the ships oj llje luLter iiutiuu leyaUy clear out t'rom 
 
 x\i^ ports o\' the United Kinj^dom with car{j;oes of woollens an<l 
 
 other British niunufuLtures, while no British ship can presumi; 
 
 to engage in such a commerce, and while the law declares 
 
 even a participation in the adventure, on the part of the British 
 
 merchant, to be a misdemeanour. The woollens alone sold by th i 
 
 Americans in China, in 182-5— G, amounted in value to £l4-'),460. 
 
 The woollens furnished by the East India Company t j 
 
 the Chinese nation, in 1827, were worth £413,412, which 
 
 would sup2)ly them with woollen clothing to the value of litUe 
 
 more than a halfpenny a-head ! In all reason this is surely 
 
 not sufficient to meet the demands of luxury in the southern 
 
 portion of the population, or those of necessity in the northern. 
 
 Tliat the East India Company does not adequately supply the 
 
 Chinese market, that is to say, supply it with woollens of 
 
 suitable quality, and at prices which will enable the Chinese 
 
 to purchase, is but too obvious, or the Americans, with their 
 
 small capitals, and their small demand for the staple produce 
 
 of Chinese industry, could not find it a profitable speculation 
 
 to supply them indirectly, through Great Britain, with a British 
 
 manufacture. We may safely then venture to predict, that in 
 
 the event of a free intercourse with China, British woollens 
 
 will inevitably become one of the first and most important of 
 
 our exports to that vast country. The Chinese, in reality, hav.; 
 
 nothing good or cheap enough to substitute for them, and even 
 
 at present they find their way to Pekin and TartarJ^ The 
 
 market for foreign furs which that country affords, and which 
 
 has been exclusively supplied by Russia and America for 
 
 many years, is a sufficient proof of the great demand for warm 
 
 clothing. In consequence of the destruction of the animals 
 
 affording those furs, they have become too high priced for ^the 
 
 Chinese to purchase to the former extent, and consequently 
 
 the consumption is gradually narrowing. Here is fresh evi. 
 
 dence of a demand for British woollens, the only cheap and 
 
 natural substitute for the furs in question. We put it to the. 
 
 common sense and common interests of the wool growers 
 
 and woollen manufacturers, whether the free trade, which, in 
 
 fourteen years, raised the cotton exports to India from £90,92;» 
 
 in 1814, to £2,059,374 in 1828, does not afford them a fairer 
 
 prospect of extending the consumption of woollens, than the 
 
 C
 
 10 ' 
 
 patronage of the East India Company, according to the ^ithful 
 statement which we have just rendered of its history ? 
 
 The East India Company had long been in the habit of 
 sending metals, as well as woollens, to India and China; and, 
 indeed, their exports to those countries were nearly altogether 
 confined to those two articles. On the average of the eleven 
 years, from 1781 to 1791, they exported to the yearly value of 
 £141,985 ; the export of the last year named amounting only 
 to £108,560, and being less by full £55,318 than that of 
 the first. They exported to China in the same period, to the 
 yearly value of £48,827, so that their total average exports 
 were £190,812. In 1814, the first year of the free trade, the 
 total quantity of metals exported to India was 14,334 tons, 
 and the total value £494,970. Of this the East India Com- 
 pany exported 9,813^ tons, value £374,583, and the free trader 
 only 4,520| tons, value £120,387. In 1827, the total quantity 
 exported rose to 34,093 tons, and the value to £768,985. Of 
 this quantity the East India Company exported only 8,512 
 tons, and the free trader 25,580 tons. This subject, however, 
 requires explanation. The metals exported in 1814 consisted 
 only of iron, steel, copper, tin, and lead : — the free trader has 
 now added brass, quicksilver, and spelter. The East India 
 Company deals only in iron, copper, and lead, relinquishing 
 the three last-named metals to the free trader, and the benefits 
 of this relinquishment are remarkable. 
 
 The total quantity of iron exported in 1814 was 11,108 tons, 
 of which the East India Company exported 7,085 tons, and the 
 free trader 4,023 tons. The quantity of iron exported in 1827 
 was 19,261 tons, an increase only of 73 per cent. Of this the 
 East India Company exported 5,423 tons, and the free trader 
 13,838 tons. In the first period the exports of the East India 
 Company exceeded those of the free trader by full 76 per cent. 
 In the last they fell short of them by 60 per cent. ! 
 
 Of the whole quantity of iron worth £282,098, China was 
 furnished only with 1,973 tons, and to the value of £26,336. 
 With a population nearly equal to all the rest of the Indies, 
 with wealth far superior, and a demand as effectual, she re- 
 ceived little more than one-tenth of the whole supply. The 
 competition of the East India Company has unquestionably 
 hindered the progress of this branch of trade ; that competition, 
 Lowever, is confined to their continental possessions and China
 
 11 
 
 it is owing to the freedom from it elsewhere that the trade has 
 chiefly advanced. The iron exported to foreign Indian posses- 
 sions in 1827, and in which the East India Company had no 
 share, amounted to 2,262 tons, and that to the British terri- 
 tories to 15,790 tons. From the latter, however, ought to be 
 deducted the exports to Ceylon as well as to the possessions in 
 the Straits of Malacca. We have no means of ascertaining the 
 amount of these, but we perceive that by the official account 
 of the commerce of Signapore, which did not exist as a port of 
 trade in 1814, that in 1827-8 the British iron re-exported from 
 that settlement alone, that is, the actual and bond fide sales to 
 the consumer, amounted to 4,942 tons. This alone will account 
 for a large share in the increased export of iron since 1814, so 
 that in all likelihood the advance, where the Company's com- 
 petition prevails, is very trifling, if any. 
 
 In 1814 the total quantity of copper exported to India and 
 China was 1,881 tons, valued at £242,239. Of this the East 
 India Company exported 1,505 tons, and the free trader but 
 376 tons. In 1827 the quantity exported was 2,613 tons, an 
 increase of 38 per cent. ; the East India Company now exported 
 only 168 tons, or about a ninth part of what they had exported 
 thirteen years before. The free trader exported 2,445 tons, or 
 between six and seven-fold more than he had done in the com- 
 mencement of his trade. The quantity of copper furnished to 
 China by the East India Company out of the 2,613 tons above 
 mentioned (but in which, however, is included brass and manu- 
 factures of the two metals) was 23 tons 14 cwts. 
 
 By the last Charter* the East India Company was com- 
 pelled to export, or to allow others to export, British copper to 
 the extent of 1,500 tons a year, and this whether copper was 
 high priced or low priced in England, and whether it was in 
 
 * 33d Geo. III. cap. ol, sec. 84. By the agreement made between the 
 Legislature and the East India Company, in 1769, the Company engaged 
 to export British merchandise to the yearly value of £380,837, when 
 they had an entire monopoly trade from the Cape of Good Hope to the 
 Straits of Magellan, and about forty millions of Indian subjects. This 
 is about one tenth part of the amount of what the free trader now 
 exports to India alone, and scarcely one- tilth part of what he exports 
 in the single article of cotton manufactures. This contrast surely en 
 titles us to exclaim, in reference both to the East India Company and 
 to the administration, in the lang\iagc of the French mcnhanl*. to the 
 French minister, " Let us alone."
 
 V2 
 
 demand in India or not in demand. The free trader, as will 
 be seen from the statement now given, exported 63 per cent, 
 beyond this quantity, without any compulsion at all, — without 
 the aid of an Act of Parliament, and sheerly for his own profit 
 and convenience, which, however, are equally the profit and 
 the convenience of the producer in England and the consumer 
 in India. The East India Company, when not compelled by 
 Act of Parliament, has exported scarcely more than one-ninth 
 part of what it did under legislative compulsion ! 
 
 In 1814 the total quantity of lead exported to India and 
 China was 726 tons, valued at £19,393; the East India Com- 
 pany exporting 605 tons, and the private trader 121 tons. In 
 1827 the exports amounted to 4,488 tons, of which the East 
 India Company exported 2,546 tons, a large portion of which, 
 however, appears to consist of military stores. The free trader 
 exported only 1,942 tons, which, however, is an advance of 
 more than 1,500 per cent, upon his first attempt. Of the ex- 
 ports of the East India Company, 1,660 tons, valued at £33,359, 
 were for the market of China. Deducting this, therefore, from 
 the whole amount of the Company's exports, there will remain 
 for India only 886 tons, which is exceeded by the free trade by 
 nearly 120 per cent. 
 
 The consumption of spelter or zinc in India has always 
 been large. About £50,000 worth of this commodity, under 
 the name of tutenague, used to be imjjorted from China, whence 
 it was smuggled, — the exportation of it from that country, as, 
 indeed, of all other metals, being contraband. In 214 years 
 the East India Company had not discovered that tutenague and 
 sj>elter were one and the same metal, under different niunes. 
 The free trader soon did, and spelter now forms one of the 
 most valuable and important of our exports to India. In the 
 fiye years ending with 1827, spelter was exported from this 
 country to India to the amount of 32,553 tons, (being at the 
 rate of upwards of 6,000 tons per annum.) and to the value of 
 £685,532. This branch of trade may, indeed, be considered as 
 one of entirely new creation, for India is the only market which 
 Great Britain has for the commodity. The Indians are now 
 supplied with this article at about one-fourth of its cost when 
 it was supplied by China, and probably to the extent of treble 
 the quantity. 
 
 There exists no longer a necessity for violating the Chinese
 
 13 
 
 mercantile system, for we perceive that, in the year 1826, Cal- 
 cutta, the principal Indian mart for zinc, was supplied from 
 that country only to the value of £5 14s. But we are far from 
 bein<^ the only dealers in this article; the French, the Dutch, 
 the Danes, and the Americans, have followed the example of 
 the British free trader, and export largely to India. 
 
 The East India Company has followed, but at a remote 
 and humble distance, the example of the free trader in respect 
 to zinc. In the five years already quoted, they exported to the 
 amount of 308 tons 1 1 cwts. or at the rate of 61 tons 14 cwts. 
 per annum, being in the proportion of 1 to 104 of the quantity 
 exported by the free trader in the same period. 
 
 To the metals now enumerated, we may add tin, steel, 
 wrought and unwrought brass, pewter wares, and tin plates, 
 plated ware, jewellery, machinery, small arms, and cannon. 
 These, which are all the produce of British industry, were ex- 
 ported in 1827, to the declared value of £766,375, or, exclud- 
 ing military stores exported by the East India Company, and 
 which must, of necessity, be exported by any British govern- 
 ment exercising the sovereignty of India, to the value of 
 £536,590. The exportation even of these minor articles then 
 exceeds by 40 per cent, the whole boon conferred by the Legis- 
 lature upon British manufactures and industry, when the East 
 India Company, bound hand and foot, came under obligations 
 to export British produce annually, to the pitiful amount of 
 £380,837. 
 
 But the great mart for the consumption of the metals is 
 China, and this, as is too well known, is still under all the 
 rigours of the monopoly. What may be effected by the British 
 trader and manufacturer in this market, may be gathered from 
 what has actually been performed under many obvious disadvan- 
 tages by the Americans. In the year 1825, the total amount 
 of the metals (consisting of quicksilver, copper, iron, and lead) 
 sold by them in China was 1687 tons, and its value £98,222. 
 Two years later, or in 1827, the (piantity of met;ils exj)orte(l 
 to China, by the East Intlia Comj)any, \»as 3656 tons; tliis, 
 however, consisted almost entirely of the low priced metals, 
 iron and lead, so that the dedared value was l)ut £62,582. 
 Deducting 25 per cent, from the American metals, in order to 
 approximate them to the declared value of the British metals, 
 Me shall find that the trade carried on by thr Anirricaus Mho
 
 14 
 
 have no nietnls of their own to furnish to the Chinese, but 
 who must go and seek for them in foreign countries, exceeds, 
 under the auspices of the East India Company, that of the 
 whole United Kingdom, abounding in metals, and in manufac- 
 turing industry connected with the metals, by full 17 per cent. 
 The unqualified assertion of the East India Company, in 
 1813, was, that after giving "facilities and enlargements"* to 
 private enterprise and adventure never enjoyed before, "not one 
 new article for the consumption of India had been exported," 
 in a period of nearly twenty years, and that there was " little 
 perceivable difference in the few articles of metals and woollens" 
 which had composed the routine of traffic under the monopoly. 
 The whole trade in cotton manufactures and cotton twist, in 
 lead, spelter, quicksilver, brass, tin plates, and machinery, and 
 the vast augmentation in quantity, and improvement in qua- 
 lity, to suit them to the taste of the consumer, in the exports of 
 woollens, iron, cutlery, and copper, are pretty satisfactory 
 
 • The " facilities and enlargements' ' here alluded to amounted to 
 3000 tons of shipping a year, of an inferior class to the Company's 
 own shipping, at freights, in peace, (of which, by the way, there was 
 none,) of £11 per ton, and in war, of from £22 to £26, or occasionally of 
 £44, when private freights had the honour of being conveyed in the Jirst 
 class of the Company's shipping, — the Company having, besides, the sole 
 disposal and sale of the free traders' property, and being protected by 
 statute from being answerable for loss, damages, or defalcation. It is 
 impossible, at this distance of time, not to wonder at the extraordinaiy 
 intrepidity of these speculations. We quote from the report of a Select 
 Committee of East India Directors, made in 1813. This notable docu- 
 ment concludes by a warm reprobation of the author of the " Wealth of 
 Nations," for having prognosticated a probable increase in the Indian 
 commerce, and a hearty approbation of the President Montesquieu, for 
 having difiered with Dr. Smith and agreed with themselves. "In the 
 period which has elapsed, of nearly forty years," say the Directors, 
 " since he (Dr. S.) first published his work on the Wealth of Nations, the 
 endeavours of all Europe and America have made no discovery of that 
 immense market for European manufactures which he said was offered 
 by the East Indies." Surely this is not fair of the Directors towards Dr. 
 Smith, when they themselves, armed with legislative privileges and mo- 
 nopolies, were the sole cause that prevented the Doctor's prognostic from 
 being fulfilled. A man who habitually stands at his door with a blun- 
 derbuss, threatening to blow out the brains of any one who crosses his 
 tlirfsliold, miglit just as well complain that he had no visitors — although 
 he miglit proclaim in the streets that his abode was the mansion of hos- 
 pitality.
 
 15 
 
 answers to these confident and lugubrious predictions. Otiier 
 articles might easily be added. Glass and earthenware, for 
 exam[)le, heretofore confined, under the monopoly, to the Eu- 
 ropean consumer, have now, by their cheapness, beauty, and 
 suitableness, begun to reach the natives of the East from China 
 to Arabia. The first of these articles is by far the most con- 
 siderable in amount; and we find that, on the average of the 
 five years ending with 1827, the total annual value of it sent 
 to India was £118,299. 
 
 To these proofs, that India is an extensive market for the 
 consumption of European productions — to this overwhelming 
 mass of evidence in support of what was once called " nothing 
 but a sanguine theory" and a " deplorable delusion,"* we do 
 not know that the advocates of monopoly have ventured to say 
 any thing beyond throwing out a hint now and then, that the 
 private merchant is carrying on " a losing trade." It is a 
 strange losing trade, that for fourteen years has gone on increas- 
 ing year after year, and which, at the end of the period, is near 
 40 per cent, more than at the beginning of it. The East India 
 trade, like all other distant branches of trade, is necessarily 
 precarious, from the imperfect information which is naturally 
 incident to great distance ; and if to these difficulties adven- 
 titious ones are superadded, (and many are,) the blame rests 
 with the rulers of India, and with those who legislate for India, 
 but cannot, with any show of decency, be charged to the pri- 
 vate merchant. What is indiscretion and folly, however, m 
 the free merchant, is to be considered, on the part of the East 
 India Company, as virtue, patriotism, and disinterestedness! 
 The East India Company itself has exhibited to us, in detail, 
 various specimens of the benefits in this way, which it has con- 
 ferred upon the nation. The following are examples of the 
 favours so conferred : — In the six years of the Charter which 
 terminated in 1793, they exported to their own settlements in 
 
 • " There seems to be a general and deplorable delusion respecting 
 the practicability of a vast extension of the sale of the manufactures of 
 this country in India and China, and of the productions of those countries 
 here. On the side of the merchants there is nothing but a sanguine 
 theory. On the side of the Company there is the experience of all the 
 nations of Europe for three centuries ; there is the testimony of ancient 
 history ; there are the climate, the nature, the usages, tastes, prejudices, 
 religious and political institutions of the Eastern people." — Tiqnn-t of tkf 
 Committee of Corresiwndence to the Court of Directors, 181:).
 
 16 
 
 India, British manufactures to the value of £1,563,016; upon 
 Avliich they sustained a loss of £27,966. In ten years of the 
 same Charter they exported to China and Persia British manu- 
 iactures worth £2,908,769, and here there was a dead loss of 
 £203,453. During their last Charter, their commercial losses, 
 by their own showing, amounted to four millions sterling, and 
 Lord Grenville was of opinion that the estimate was " much 
 within the truth." In the investigation which took place in 1820 
 and 1821, the Company exhibited a statement of its export 
 trade from Great Britain to China for six and twenty years, em- 
 bracing a portion of the present Charter ; and here it appeared 
 that they lost upon every year but three, and that in all they 
 sunk £1,668,000 of the capital of the nation. "Their losses on 
 export from this country (said the same illustrious statesman) 
 are not even disguised ; their advocates proclaim the fact, and 
 even boast of it : yet, if loss is incurred in this case, by whom 
 is it sustained ? Not by the Directors themselves, — that would 
 be wholly unreasonable ; not by the proprietors of India stock, 
 — they receive, and must receive, their undiminished divi- 
 dends. The loss falls on the public treasury — on the people 
 of England."* 
 
 We shall now advert to the staple productions of Indian 
 commerce, composing, for the most part, the imports into 
 Europe. 
 
 Of all the obstacles to the progress of the Indian trade, the 
 most injurious is the exclusion of the industry, example, and 
 capital of Europe. It is in vain to expect that either the 
 agriculture, the arts, or the commerce of India can ever become 
 of the vastness and importance of which they are susceptible, 
 until improved and extended by the unlimited and unshackled 
 application of British capital and intelligence. The free set- 
 tlement of Englishmen then is loudly called for, as a measure 
 not only of expediency, but of real necessity, if India is ever to 
 be rendered a valuable acquisition to this country. The whole 
 productions of Indian industry that are abandoned to the 
 exclusive management of the natives, through the restraints and 
 f)enalties of tlie monopoly, are inferior to the similar produc- 
 tions of every other tropical country; they are not only inferior 
 
 • Spcfdi of J,()i(l (iidivillc, ill liis place in f'arliainrnt, April 9,
 
 17 
 
 to the productions of British colonial industry, but to those of 
 French, Dutch, and Spanish, even to those of Portuguese in- 
 dustry ; they are in every case also inferior to the corresponding 
 productions of Chinese industry. To what is this to be ascribed, 
 but to the slovenliness and ignorance of a semi-barbarous 
 people ? The whole is a mere affair of civilization ; and in so 
 far as the Hindoos are inferior to Europeans and to Chinese in/ 
 real skill and intelligence, so must be the productions of their 
 agricultural, their manufacturing, or their any other kind of 
 useful industiy. 
 
 We shall bring before our readers, in a tabular form, a few 
 of the articles of East Indian produce, in which their great 
 inferioritj' to the corresponding productions of other countries 
 is exemplified. We give the highest quality in each case, a 
 comparison extremely favourable to East Indian articles ; for 
 it is only the very best qualities of these that ever find then- 
 way to the markets of Europe at all, the middling and lowest 
 kinds being either consumed on the spot, or exported for the 
 use of less fastidious consumers than those of Europe. Indigo, 
 the sole production of the Indian soil which receives any thing 
 like adequate benefit from European capital and direction, is 
 also the sole exception to the inferiority of Indian produc- 
 tions. What has been effected in this, it is clear enough may 
 be effected in every other commodity, if we do not wilfully 
 and wantonly make positive laws to prevent it, which, in 
 reality, is the course we have hitherto pertinaciously pursued. 
 
 ARTICLES. 
 
 
 d. 
 
 Sugar . -V cut 35 
 
 Cotton -V lb. 5 
 
 Cochineal^ lb. 1 2 
 
 Rice- ■Vcu'/. 23 
 
 Turmeric ^cl- 24 
 
 Tobacco Vlb. 2 
 
 Raw Silk ."T /6. 18 
 
 Castor Oil ' 18 
 
 Coffee ■ ■'^ cwt. 34 
 
 Indigo 9 10 
 
 Madder 30 
 
 47 
 8 
 
 8 
 
 40 48 38 
 
 81 I lol 
 
 11 0| 
 
 .37 0. 
 
 30 
 88 
 
 42 
 
 54, 
 
 38 
 
 
 I 
 028 
 
 5469 
 
 The soil and climate of India must, in no respect, be charged 
 with the rudeness and imperfection of Indian products. Our
 
 18 
 
 own dominions, extending from near the equator to at least 
 the thirteenth degree of north latitude, and from the sixty- 
 third to the ninety-sixth of east longitude, embrace a prodigious 
 diversity of soils and climates, capable of yielding an infinite 
 variety of useful productions, calculated to enrich the country 
 and to extend its foreign commerce, and for the improvement 
 or creation of which an infusion of European skill, capital, and 
 enterprise are alone necessary. It is notorious that without 
 these the unaided skill of the native Indians is unecjual to the 
 production of any commodity where such capital, skill, and 
 enterprise are demanded, so as to give them any chance 
 in a fair competition with the parallel products of other coun- 
 tries, similarly, or even less advantageously gifted. 
 
 What but the exclusion of European settlement hinders in 
 our Indian dominions the extensive culture of the peculiar 
 productions of America, and even of China ? The indigenous 
 products of India have been transferred to America, and there, 
 under the direction of European skill, they far surpass, in 
 goodness and quantity, those of their original country ; witness 
 the sugar-cane, the cotton plant, coffee, rice, and even indigo, 
 until, in its native country, the production of this last fell into 
 the hands of Europeans. Have the Indians retaliated upon 
 the American colonists ? Where is our Indian annatto ? 
 Where is our Indian cocoa, — our Indian vanilla ? The hardy 
 plant producing the annatto, (Bixa Orellanna) introduced from 
 America, is to be found as a garden plant throughout India, 
 but the drug obtained from it is wholly unknown to the In- 
 dians as an article of commerce. The plant producing the 
 cocoa, although cultivated in the Spanish, and even in the 
 Dutch East Indies, is unknown in the British possessions. 
 The cochineal insect, and the plant it feeds upon, introduced 
 into British India by an ingenious European, have, in rearing 
 and culture, reverted to the hands of nature and the care of the 
 Indians, and Mexican cochineal, consequently, exceeds it in 
 value by full 500 per cent. 
 
 India is in a similar predicament in regard to China : situ- 
 ated close to that country, in daily intercourse with it, receiving 
 yearly into our settlements thousands of emigrants from thence, 
 having a population of cheap labourers, by character peculiarly 
 adapted to the tedious manipulation indispensable to the pre- 
 paration of tea, an advantage which no other colony enjoys, or
 
 19 
 
 is libely for a long time to enjoy, and possessing the same soils, 
 climates, and physical aspects as the most favoured of the tea 
 provinces of that empire, not one pound ol tea has ever been 
 grown in our Indian possessions, — not one attempt has been 
 made to rear this valuable plant in British India, while such 
 efforts have been frequent in distant and uncongenial European 
 colonies. Owing to the superior skill of the Chinese, both 
 as agriculturists and manufacturers, they are enabled to export 
 a large quantity of sugar, of quality much superior to that of 
 India, although having to contend against the high rents inci- 
 dent to a country fully peopled, and where the price of corn is, 
 probably, not less than threefold as great as in the average of 
 the Indo-British dominions. We may add, that such is the 
 unskilfulness of the Indians in almost every thing a])proaching 
 to manufacturing industry, that the whole, or very nearly the 
 whole of the refined sugar consumed by Europeans in our 
 East Indian possessions, is imported from China, the natives of 
 the country being all the while acquainted with the process by 
 which the article is prepared, yet producing it in so careless 
 and slovenly a manner as to make it unfit for any table but 
 their own. 
 
 In whatever direction we turn our eyes, the effects of Indian 
 imbecUity and the baleful consequences of European exclu- 
 sion are equally conspicuous. The Indian forests, for example, 
 hardly afford any commodity fit for foreign exportation, be- 
 cause the Indians know not how to turn them to account, and 
 Englishmen are prevented, by express law, from doing so. In 
 1825, the United States of America exported no less than 
 18,479 tons of pot and pearl ashes, worth £430,038, and Eng- 
 land and her colonies form their principal market; for to these 
 we find that she exported no less than 13,322 tons uf the whole 
 quantity.* British India has never exported, or even manu- 
 factured, a grain of either commodity, although much of the 
 country be still under forest ; — although the manufacture of 
 these articles would greatly add to the facility and profit of 
 clearing the lands; — and although much of the forests in ques- 
 tion are not far distant from the British capital, and have the 
 convenient navigation of the Ganges and its tnbutarie> to the 
 
 • A general statement of goods, wares, and merchandise, of tlie jjrowth, 
 produce, and manufacture of the United States, exported \ cooinicniing 
 1st Ociol>er, 1^26, and ending 30th September, 1827.
 
 20 
 
 Tery port of Calcutta. The Chinese have a fanciful taste for a 
 certain root, called ginseng, which existing with them only in 
 small quantities in the wilds of Tartaiy, brought in former times 
 nn enormous price. Tlie Americans soon found out that the 
 same root (panax ginseng) existed in the wilds of America; they 
 acquired the art of preparing it for the Chinese market, and have 
 since largely supplied the Chinese with it. This supply, of 
 course, produced a great depreciation in the value of the article, 
 and yet, notwithstanding, we find that the Americans in the 
 season 1824—5 sold ginseng to the Chinese to the value of 
 £39,064. Now, British botanists have discovered the same 
 article in the British territories bordering on the Snowy moun- 
 tains, but the art of curing it remains unknown, and the British 
 trader has rever supplied the Chinese with a single pound ! 
 
 There is one article, however, the produce of the Indian 
 forests, of which something has been made, not, however, by 
 the East India Company, or by the native inhabitants, but by 
 the free trader ; this is lac, a production peculiar to India, and 
 which, as is sufficiently known, is the nest or dwelling of a 
 small insect abounding in a red colouring matter. The price 
 of the best*, description of the crude article in the market of 
 Calcutta is about 33s. per cwt. Some of the free settlers dis- 
 covered the art of extracting the dye and rendering it fit for the 
 European manufacturer. This valuable article is known in the 
 market by the name of " lac dye," and is about nine times the 
 value of the article as it was sent in ruder times to Europe. 
 But to this value we must add again what is called "shell-lac," 
 used in the making of varnish, and the manufacture of sealing- 
 wax, and which is obtained in the same process. This will 
 make the value of the whole produce by the new process, which 
 is attended with little labour or expense, eleven times as great 
 as that of the crude article ! The Indians, after a time, ac- 
 quired the art of preparing lac dye from the Europeans, but 
 the manufacture conducted by the first is still superior in value 
 to that conductefl by the second by near 60 per cent ! On the 
 averagf! of the years 1826 and 1827 the quantity of lac dye 
 imported into laigland from Bengal, to which the manufacture 
 is confined, was 744,484 lbs., and the value £107,121. This 
 article, which is little more than a fourth part of the price of 
 cotliiiieal, has, in many cases, become a substitute for it ia 
 the dying of scarlets. Here then is u fair example, although
 
 21 
 
 upon a small scale, of what FiUropean ingenuity is capable of 
 effecting in improving the productions, and consequently the 
 commercial intercourse with Europe, wherever there is the least 
 room for its exercise. 
 
 If we look to the mining operations of the Indians, we shall 
 find (as every one capable of taking a rational view of man in 
 such a condition of society must expect) conspicuous examples 
 of carelessness, incapacity, want of capital, and want of enter- 
 prise. The metals generally are not very abundant in the 
 British dominions in India, but iron is plentiful enough, and 
 even the supply of copper ore is said not to be deficient. The 
 iron manufactured by native Indians is so bad that it is not of 
 half the value of English iron, nor a third part of that of 
 Swedish iron ; in fact, when forged it loses one half its weight 
 in dross. Mineral coal is found in many parts of the British 
 dominions, and it is a singular proof in a country, where, for 
 the most part, fuel is remarkably high priced, — of ignorance, 
 poverty, and want of enterprise, tliat no coal mines were ever 
 opened until this was done by private European speculators. 
 At present, coal mines are wrought in one part of the countiy 
 only, and this by a private European adventurer ; but from the 
 want of machinery, capital, and competition, and the inferioritj' 
 of the coal, as is always found to be the case in the first stratum, 
 the article is still dear, and not in adequate quantity, so that 
 we find coals actually exported to the East India Company's 
 possessions from Great Britain, in 1827, to the amount of 
 4127 tons, besides a large quantity brought from New South 
 Wales, a country where British industiy is differently regulated. 
 
 But it will be necessary to give a more detailed account of 
 some of the staple articles of the Indian commerce, in order to 
 illustrate the advantages derived from European industry, the 
 mischiefs which arise out of its exclusion, and the long train- 
 of evils which originate in restrictions and monopolies. We 
 shall select the articles of indigo, cotton, sugar, tobacco, coffee, 
 and pepper, as the most prominent examples. 
 
 Indigo is the ailicle which suffers the least from the perni- 
 cious interference of the monopoly, and nearly the only one 
 which receives any considerable benefit from the direct appli- 
 cation of European skill and capital. Europeans first began 
 the culture and manufacture of indigo about forty-five years 
 ago. What was manufactured by the natives of India prior to-
 
 that time was trash unfit for the European market, then aJmost 
 wholly supplied by South America, which furnished England 
 alone with about 1,200,000 lbs. weight. There are at present 
 in Bengal 309 manufactories of indigo for exportation, of which 
 thirty-seven only are conducted by natives, and these in imita- 
 tion of the European process. The Indians, however, cannot 
 even imitate us to any advantage with so many examples be- 
 fore them, and in full possession of all the land, to the complete 
 exclusion of their competitors ; for the indigo thus prepared is 
 full 15 per cent, lower in value than that manufactured by 
 Europeans ; and as to indigo made by the old native process, 
 it is still wholly unfit for the foreign rriarket : and even when 
 re-manufactured by Europeans, which is sometimes done, it is 
 still, from the deterioration it has undergone in their hands, a 
 very inferior commodity. The average yearly quantity of 
 indigo produced for some time back in the British dominions 
 in India has ranged from eight millions five hundred thou- 
 sand to nine millions of pounds weight, worth from £2,700,000 
 to £3,300,000. Last year's produce, the greatest ever known, 
 amounted to 12,000,000 of pounds weight. Here is a property 
 worth, on an average, £3,000,000 per annum, created solely by 
 the skill, capital, and enterprise of British-born subjects living 
 in India, on mere sufferance. In 1786, the import of Bengal 
 indigo into this country was 245,000 lbs. On the average of 
 the four years ending with 1827, it amounted yearly to 
 6,054,799 lbs. an increase of nearly five and twenty-fold. Be- 
 fore Europeans undertook the culture and manufacture of 
 Indian indigo, it was, as already stated, so bad as to be unsale- 
 able in any foreign market. On an average it is now about 
 \2{ per cent, better than South American indigo. In short, 
 about four-fifths of the consumption of Europe, Asia, and 
 America, is now supplied with ffood Indian indigo, a commo- 
 dity which, five and forty years ago, had no existence. The 
 benefit which some of the most important manufactures of 
 <ireat Britain derive directly from this improvement on the 
 part of their countrymen in India, is too obvious to be insisted 
 upon. On the average of the four years ending with 1828, the 
 total yearly consumption of Great Britain was 2,421,879 lbs. 
 of which r»ne-eleventh part only was South American, the 
 whole of the rest being East Indian. The benefit generally 
 conferred by the manufacture of Indian indigo on themanufac-
 
 23 
 
 tures and coinmerce of this country, amount* to this, that it 
 is the principal, and ni'arly the only, means to be depended 
 upon, which the monopoly-principle leaves open to enable 
 India to pay for the manufactures of this country, and that it 
 does so to the yearly value of three millions sterling. 
 
 All that can be said in respect to indigo is, that it suffers 
 less than other articles from the injurious effects of the mono- 
 poly-principle. To say, however, that it does not suffer, would 
 be most untrue. The prohibition to hold lands, or to take secu- 
 rity on lands, — a tax equal to half the gross produce of the land 
 imposed upon those who hold it ; — the precarious and dependent 
 footing of Europeans living beyond the protection of the King's 
 Courts ; the imperfect administration of justice in the interior; — 
 and the hostile leaning of the Government and its agents towards 
 all the private enterprises of British subjects, — are most serious 
 obstacles to this branch of industry. One would, indeed, have 
 thought, without knowing the results, that they must have proved 
 insuperable impediments to a branch of industry which is the 
 only one that Europeans have been able to prosecute with success 
 in India upon a large scale. But the vigour and elasticity of 
 British enterprise are capable of conquering many difficulties, 
 and this is a proud example of it. The Company, indeed, does 
 not directly engage in the culture of the plant or manufacture 
 of the drug, and to this unusual forbearance may chiefly be 
 ascribed the success of this branch of industry. The drug, 
 however, is no sooner manufactured and arrives at the princi- 
 pal marts, than the usual interference of the Company com- 
 mences. Under pretext of remitting revenue, they enter into 
 a competition with the private dealer as purchasers in India, 
 and as sellers in England, totally reckless of consequences to 
 themselves or others, as must necessarily be the case with a 
 body to whom commercial gain or commercial loss must be 
 matter of equal indifference, since from the one they can derive 
 no advantage, and since from the other the public alone must 
 eventually suffer. 
 
 The following facts respecting the cotton trade will place 
 the principle, which it is our object to illustrate, in a very clear 
 point of view. In the year 1814, or the last of the East India 
 Company's close monopoly, the quantity of cotton wool im- 
 ported from India into Great Britain was* 3,850,318 lbs. ; in 1818 
 it rose to 67,456,411 lbs., but afterwards fell off greatly from
 
 24 
 
 this amount, and on the averag'e of the five years ending with 
 1827 it was only 18,821,217 lbs. The cause of this is obvious 
 enough. The rude produce of unassisted native industry is 
 wholly incapable of competing with the improved produce of 
 European industry in the different colonies of America and 
 elsewhere. The best East India cotton, which is that brought 
 to this country, (for the coarsest is consumed on the spot, and 
 the middling sort sent to China,) is inferior in value to the worst 
 that is brought from any other country. It is, in short, nearly in 
 the condition in which Indian indigo was before it was manufac- 
 tured by Europeans. The East India cotton in the London mar- 
 ket is inferior to the best West India cotton by threepence per 
 pound. It is just of half the value of Berbice cotton. The best 
 cotton of the Spanish main is by full 50 per cent, superior to it. 
 Pernambuco and modern Egyptian cotton* are at least 60 per 
 cent, better, while it must not be forgotten that the old Levant 
 cotton is just what it was before, — a coarse commodity, fit for 
 no purpose but that of making candlewicks, to which it is well 
 known to be appropriated. Bourbon, Manilla, and Sea Island 
 cottons are superior in a still greater ratio. To what is such 
 an inferiority owing, but to this, that the skill of Europeans is 
 directed to the culture and preparation of all these varieties, 
 while the East India cotton is left to the rude and slovenly 
 industry of the native inhabitants ? In fact, no attempt what- 
 ever has been made to improve the cotton of India. It 
 is grown and prepared just as it was three hundred years 
 ago, and in all likelihood three thousand. The soil and 
 climate of India must not be blamed for this. They are equal 
 in capability to those of any other portion of the tropical world 
 
 • The reader is not to imagine that the Turks, or the Arabs, or the 
 Copts of Ecrypt, acquired all at once the art of growing fine cotton, on 
 the mere Jiat of the Pacha. A Frenchman of the name of Jumel intro- 
 duced a new species, or, at least, variety, of the plant, and instructed 
 Mahomed Ali, his officers and slaves in general, in the European mode 
 of cultivation and preparation. As appears from the examination of 
 their mummies, the Egyptians seem to have been cultivating cotton to 
 little purpose, as far as quality is CDncerncd, for about four thousand 
 years ! Monsieur Jumol did more for the improvement of this branch of 
 husbandry in a few months, than the primitive civilization of the East, 
 when left to itself, had been able to effect in forty ages. So much for a 
 people who, in manners, customs, and civilization, are said to bear tlio 
 nearest resemblance, of all others, to the Hindoos !
 
 25 
 
 and superior to the i^reater number, ('ottoii is not un mticle 
 of (liflicult production, or one requiriu}^ a capricious Kelectioii 
 of soil and climate. The enumeration of varieties wluch we 
 have above given, shows that a moderate share of skilful culture 
 is sufficient to bring it to perfection in any soil of competent 
 fertility and suitableness in North and South America, in 
 Africa, and in Asia, from the equator to the thirtieth degree of 
 latitude, on both sides of it ; and, in longitude, from the Philip- 
 pine Islands, on the one side, round to the Mauritius on the 
 other. Why, it may be asked, do not British-born subjects 
 engage in the culture of cotton in the same manner in which 
 they engage in the culture and manufacture of indigo ? The 
 answer is easy. The quantity of British capital which is al- 
 lowed, under existing regulations, to benefit the agriculture of 
 India, is comparatively trifling ; and it is more advantageously 
 employed in producing indigo than in improving cotton. A 
 few hundred acres of land are sufficient to invest a large capital 
 in indigo, and a very small number of Europeans is sufficient 
 for superintendence. Thousands of acres would not be suffi- 
 cient for the same investment of cotton. From the small num- 
 ber of Europeans, there could be no adequate superintendence 
 over so wide an extent of country ; and there could be no secu- 
 rity against depredation, in a commodity far more liable to it 
 than the other. Moreover, to improve the cotton of India, the 
 present annual and coarse varieties must be supplanted by 
 perennial and fine ones, — a circumstance which would occasion 
 a complete revolution in this branch of husbandry, — a revo- 
 lution which could only be eflfected by European proprietors 
 or their tenants. Besides all this, the introduction of expen- 
 sive machinery, both for cleaning and packing, would be 
 necessary. What European in his senses, holding land at 
 high rent from a native proprietor, from year to year, in a 
 country where no civil suit is brought to trial under three 
 years from its institution, and often not under seven; and 
 where, by law, he may be removed from his property for ever, 
 ■with or without offence, would enter upon so precarious a 
 speculation ? 
 
 It must not be inferred from what has here been stated, that 
 the free enterprise and capital of Europeans have done nothing 
 towards improving and extending the Indian cotton trade. 
 They have effected a great deal which would have remained 
 
 £
 
 26 
 
 ttndoiie without them. Tlie wliole trade in this article with 
 China, one of the greatest branches of the Indian commerce, 
 is of European creation. European capital and agency ope- 
 rating under the most vexatious restraints, is employed in col- 
 lecting the cotton, and transporting it from the centre of India 
 to the sea-ports, compressing it by European machinery when 
 it arrives there, so as to reduce freights to half the old rates, 
 and in furnishing shipping for its transport to China. This is 
 the work of a few scattered Europeans, living in India on 
 sufferance, and in open opposition to the principle of the mo- 
 nopoly. Englishmen, in general, are wholly excluded from a 
 branch of trade which is of unlimited capability. Of this 
 capability we may give the following example. The quantity 
 of cotton wool brought to the market of Calcutta, in the year 
 1827, prinwpally for exportation, amounted to 18,509,696 lbs. 
 This, which forms the largest portion of the export trade of 
 India in raw cotton, appears considerable, until compared in 
 amount, and still more in value, to the export of the same 
 commodity from the United States. The latter, in 1827, or the 
 same year, amounted in quantity to 294,310,115 lbs. or to 
 about fifteen times as much. The value of the East Indian 
 produce on the spot was but £270,830, and that of America 
 £6,330,651, being above three and twenty-fold the value of the 
 Calcutta produce. Had the 18,509,696 lbs. of Bengal cotton, 
 in lieu oi" being coarse and dirty, been equal in quality to the 
 American cotton, instead of being worth £270,830, it would 
 have been worth £398,138, or 47 per cent. more. Wherever 
 we turn, evidence of this nature crowds upon us.* 
 
 The consumption of cotton in Great Britain for the last 
 ten years has been nearly doubled, and in 1828 it amounted 
 to 732,152 bags. Let us see to what extent the British domi- 
 nions in India, adding to them those of tributaries, with a 
 suitable soil and climate, with 134,000,000 of inhabitants, and 
 with 1,280,000 square miles of territory, have contributed, 
 under the manae;ement of the East India Company, to the 
 promotion of lh(i greatest and most important of all our 
 manufactures. On the average of the years 1827 and 1828, the 
 annual consumption of Great Britain was 197,544,880 lbs.; of 
 which the United States of America furnished 151,834,800 lbs.; 
 
 • American exports and imports, for \821,—Cakutta Prices CurretU 
 Jvr 1827.
 
 27 
 
 'Brazil. 17,754,880 lbs; Egypt, 6,957,600 lbs.; the West Indies, 
 9,010,560 lbs.; and the East Indies, 11,987,040 lbs. The 
 deductions to be made from this statement are sufficiently 
 conclusive, but they are, at the same time, humiliating. We 
 depend upon a rival commercial nation, and a nation which 
 aims at becoming a manufacturing one in spite of nature and 
 circumstances, for near seventy-seven parts in the hundred 
 of the raw material of our great staple manufacture. The 
 colony of a nation not only less civilized than our own, but 
 emanating from one of the least civilized in Europe, furnishes 
 Tis, from territories in the southern hemisphere, corres- 
 ponding in latitude and in climate with much of the Biitish 
 dominions in the northern hemisphere, with nine parts in 
 the hundred of our consumption. Egypt, where the growth 
 of exportable cotton commenced only seven years ago, fur- 
 nishes us with four parts in the hundred of all we consume; 
 and the dominions of the East India Company, where British 
 sovereignty has been established for sixty-four years, contributes 
 only the pittance of seven parts in the hundred to the ma- 
 terial of our staple manufacture. This is, however, very far 
 from depicting the whole amount of the mischief done by the 
 exclusion of European improvement from the soil of India, 
 even in this limited view of the evil. The United States of 
 America not only furnish us with above twelve times the quan- 
 tity that the territories of the East India Company do, but 
 that quantity being full fifty per cent, more valuable, the true 
 amount contributed is in reality eighteen -fold as great. Brazil 
 not only furnishes us with above forty-eight per cent, more in 
 quantity than India does, but the quality of what she supplies 
 being by seventy-five per cent, better, she necessarily supplies 
 160 per cent, more in value. But what is still more mortifying 
 than all this, Mahomet Ali, the Pacha of Egypt, in as much as 
 the average of his cotton is above 80 per cent, better than the 
 average of Indian cotton, contributes more towards the support 
 of our great staple manufacture tliaw the Honourable East 
 India Company by 5 per cent. It appears by the American 
 accounts, that, in the official year ending the .30th of Sc[>tember, 
 1827, the ITnited States exported to (Jieat Britain and Ireland 
 212,707,481 lbs. of cotton wool, which would have afforded em 
 ployment to about 118, 170 tons oi slnpping * Iiy tlie same 
 
 * American rxports and nuports, for 1827.
 
 28 
 
 accounu it appears, that of the tonnage which cleared out 
 from the United States from Great Britain and Ireland in that 
 year, 218/519 tons were American, and 99,114 only British. 
 If the exportation of cotton wool was in a due prc^ortion to 
 that of other articles of merchandise, (and there is no reason for 
 supposing that it was not,) it would necessarily have afforded 
 emj^loyment to 81,297 tons of American shipping, but only to 
 36,873 tons of English shipping. On the other hand, were our 
 East Indian possessions capable of supplying us with the 
 cotton which we must now receive from the United States, the 
 British tonnage employed, instead of being 36,873 tons, would, 
 of course, amount to 118,170 tons, or there would be additional 
 employment for British shipping to the extent of 81,297 tons. 
 To what extent does the Indian cotton afford employment to 
 British shipping ? Just to the extent of 8,900 tons, as nearly 
 as we can estimate it.* If such statements as these, — state- 
 ments which no ingenuity or artifice can gainsay, do not open 
 the eyes of the merchants, the manufacturers, the shipowners, 
 and the landholders of the United Kingdom ; in short, of all 
 who are interested in the honour, power, and prosperity of 
 their country, to the flagrant evils inflicted by the system of 
 exclusion, we know not what will. 
 
 The quantity of sugar imported into Great Britain from the 
 East Indies, in 1814, was only 4,904,368 lbs.: in 1826 it rose 
 to 38,399,536 lbs. No less than 20,859,440 lbs., or more than 
 one-half of this last amount was the produce of the island of 
 Mauritius ; that is to say, the imports into this country from 
 a small island with an area of 372,528 acres, one-eleventh part 
 of which only is under any culture, and one-fifteenth only 
 under the culture of the sugar-cane ; — the imports from an 
 island with a somewliat precarious climate, and a fisrtility of soil 
 not very distinguished; — the imports from an island that at the 
 utmost contains a population of no more than ninety-five thou- 
 sand inhabitants; and, finally, the imports from an island of 
 which the British nation liad possessed the sovereignty buttwelve 
 short years, are greater in the grand staple of the tropical world, 
 not only than those of all British India, of which Me have 
 possessed thr sovcieignly five times as long, with its area of 
 
 * J:ast Indin Innlr. — t>idfrtd bv the Hour,c ol Comnions to be 
 printed : June, 1827.
 
 2P 
 
 600,000 square miles, its population of eighty-three millions, 
 its fertile soil and its genial climatt', but lar;;er than those of 
 the whole Eastern world put together, (the said small island 
 excepted,) embracing a population of certainly not less than 
 300,000.000 of people. In the first year of the free-tra<le 
 system, the importations of sugar from India rose to 13,023,(>H» 
 lbs., or owing to the mere impetus given by the cheap freights 
 and abundant capitiil of the English trader, they were aug- 
 mented at once by near 65 per cent. The Indian sugars, how- 
 ever, could neither be imported good enough, nor cheap enough, 
 for the consumption of Europe, and for some time the impor- 
 tations were little better than stationary. In due time, how- 
 ever, the manufacture of sugar commenced in the ISIauritius, 
 and within four years from the time that the system of free 
 trade came into operation, there were imported from that 
 island into Great Britain 5,678,888 lbs. ; this was in 1819. In 
 the following year there w ere imported from the same place 
 14,524,755 ; and in 1823, 27,400,887,— an augmentation of 382 
 per cent, in four years. It was not until 1823 that the duties 
 on Mauritius sugars were equalized with those of plantation 
 sugars, and the increased culture in consequence of this boon 
 did not affect an earlier period in the Mauritius than 1827, 
 when it was believed the produce of the island would equal 
 fifty millions of pounds. 
 
 The inequality of duty between Mauritius and other East 
 India sugars is not the cause that the trade in the one article 
 has been stationary, and in the other advancing with an 
 extraordinary rapidity of increase. A new soil, as yet un- 
 exhausted by bad husbandry, the introduction of European 
 machinery, and the su])erintendence of European resident pro- 
 prietors, are the true causes. During the last eight years there 
 have been sent to the islands of Bourbon and Mauritius, but 
 chiefly to the latter, by a single iron-founder, no less than two 
 hundred sugar mills,* the greater number of them with steam- 
 
 • Mr. William Fawcett, of Liverpool, a genticman of great ingenuity, 
 and who has for many years conducted one of the most extensive iron 
 foundries in the kingdom. Tlie rahie of mill-work and machinery ex- 
 ported to the Mauritius, in 1827, amounted, in value, to ill J,o32; -while 
 to the whole territories of the East India Comjiany, adding; to them the 
 jslantl of Ceylon, the exports were only £-2I,y8 4 ; the greater part of the 
 latter bciiiL; for the use of the local xovernnient.* 
 
 • Imports and exports. Ordered by the House of Coinmons to b« printed: Fob. 
 ■2i, 1829.
 
 m 
 
 engines attached. To the territories of the East India Com- 
 pany not one has been sent. There, under the present system, 
 no such improvements are introduced, or are capable of being- 
 introduced. The existing system is, in fact, based upon the 
 exclusion of European skill and capital, which is equivalent 
 to the exclusion of all effectual skill and capital, from the im- 
 provement of the soil and its productions. Consequently, the 
 sugar-cane continues to be grown in continental India by the 
 same rude husbandry, and to be manufactured by the same 
 miserable process as, in all probability, it was three thousand 
 years back. 
 
 A short description of the Indian modes of growth and 
 manufacture will, at once, show the reader that it is hopeless 
 to expect from them either a good or a cheap product. The 
 grower is a miserable peasant, without skill and without capital, 
 paying, as a tax, to the East India Company, from 50 to 60, 
 and even 70 per cent, of the gross produce of the soil, — who 
 neither manures his ground, understands how to relieve it by 
 a rotation of crops, or makes any attempt whatever to improve 
 the variety of the plant.* The sugar-mill consists of two small 
 roirers, from four to six inches in diameter, turned in opposition 
 to each other, by two men, or by a wretched bullock. The 
 boiling utensils are four small coarse earthen pots, of about 
 the value of twopence. The grinding, boiling, and distilling- 
 houses are one and the same, and consist of four stakes driven 
 in tlie ground, with a mat over them for a roof The first 
 manufacturer carries the process no further than expissating 
 the juice, the result being an ugly brown mass, containing 
 both the sugar and molasses. This unsightly product is car- 
 ried to another description of manufacturer, fifteen, twenty, or 
 even a hundred miles off, who re-dissolves it, and, with the 
 assistance of alkalis to neutralize the acid which has been 
 
 ♦ Thirty years ago the cane of Otahcite was introduced into the West 
 Indies, and from its vast superiority over the old varieties cultivated, both 
 •as to quantity and quality of produce, it soon superseded all others; in- 
 deed it may be said to have jirodueed a revolution in the value of tbc 
 land. This great improvement lias been introduced into Java, into the 
 rhilippine Islands, and universally adopted in the Maurititis. Not so in 
 that portion of the Indies under the special protection of the Honourable 
 lbc East India Company, where, down to the present day, it is as little 
 known as tlic tree of knoT^-lcdp;e — ;V/«,»(7/'i/',» Trcntisc on Sugar.
 
 31 
 
 generated throup^h the tedious and paltry process of his pre 
 decessDV, ^ets, after all, no more than 25 per cent, of sujijar, 
 and this ill ^^ranulated, and deficient in saccharine matter. 
 What chance can such barbarous child's-play as this have, 
 even in the fairest and openest competition, with the ingenuity, 
 the judicious economy, the enterprise, the skill, the capital, 
 the machinery, and, what is not less potent than all these, the 
 commercial probity of the European colonist? 
 
 The sugar-cane is known to be an indigenous product of 
 India, and in fact it is, more or less, a product of agriculture 
 in every considerable country of the vast regions comprehended 
 under that name, from the eighth degree of south, to the thirtieth 
 degree of north latitude, and from Persia to China, both inclu- 
 sive. Of all this wide extent, there is no portion more suitable 
 to its growth than our own possessions. This, indeed, is a 
 point so long admitted, that it would be useless to insist upon 
 it. To produce sugar in abundance, and to produce it of the 
 best quality, all that is requisite is to remove the idle and per- 
 nicious restraints on the settlement of Europeans. Tlie eftect 
 of this must be the immediate application of European capital, 
 skill, and machinery, to the production of the most important 
 of all tropical commodities ; and one without a free culture 
 and free commerce in which, half our expectations of extended 
 commerce with the East must end in disappointment. 
 
 Why, it may be asked, is the industry of the British so- 
 journer in India not employed in the production of sugar as 
 it is in that of indigo ? The reason is obvious enough : more 
 skill and more capitid are required in the one pursuit than in 
 the other : the culture of the indigo plant is simple, and the 
 returns rapid ; that of the sugar-cane comparatively complex 
 and tedious. An indigo crop is reaped in three months from the 
 time of sowing ; a crop of sugar-cane takes four times as long to 
 come to maturity. A crop of sugar-cane is liable to depredation 
 in an open, unfenced, and unprotected country ; one of indigo 
 to hardly any at all. Indigo works, capable of producing yearly 
 £10,000 worth of the dye, may be constrHcted for about the 
 sum of £700 ; sugar works, capable of yielding a produce of 
 equal value, would require an investment of capital to the 
 a,mount of £24,000. Who would invest such a capital, in a 
 country where he can neither buy nor sell land, nor take secu- 
 rity upon land; where the judge and the magistrate are hostile.
 
 9^ 
 
 because labouring under the usual prejudice and delusion of 
 their caste ; and w here the administration of justice is in such 
 a state that an appeal to it is nearly hopeless ? 
 
 Indian tobacco is a still more deplorable example of the slo-- 
 veuliness of Indian husbandry than even cotton or sugar. This 
 commodity has been so long and so generally cultivated, and 
 used tbroughout Hindostan, that, although unquestionably a 
 native of America only, some speculators have imagined the 
 probability of its being also indigenous to India. Notwith- 
 standing this long culture and long use, however, the tobacco 
 of India, owing to the sheer ignorance and negligence of the 
 native grower, is the very worst in the world, and nearly unfit 
 for any foreign market ; altogether so, indeed, for the market 
 of Europe.* We have in vain looked for the article of Indian 
 tobacco in the prices current of Antwerp, Rotterdam, Amster- 
 dam, and Hamburgh. Even in a London prices current we can 
 discover it but occasionally. In fact, only a trifling quantity, 
 sctircely worth naming, has now and then been imported for 
 trial in the urgency and difficulty of finding remittances. The 
 following is its condition : — The mere husbandry from the first 
 is conducted in the most slovenly manner. In gathering, the 
 footstalks are left appended to the leaves, with a due propor- 
 tion of earth and sand. The bales are packed in a careless 
 manner, and, consequently, the article is incapable of with- 
 standing the effects of a long voyage. In short, the commodity 
 reaches Europe in an unmarketable .state, wholly unfit for com- 
 petition with what has been grown, prepared, and brought to 
 market by a more intelligent and skilful industry. The very 
 lowest quality of American tobacco is worth in the London 
 market 20 per cent, more than the best Indian tobacco. The 
 average of all American tobaccoes is above 150 per cent, bette?. 
 'J he very finest tobacco of the United States is by 650 per cent, 
 more valuable than the finest Indian tobacco brought to the 
 l.iondon market. The reader is not to imagine that soil or cli- 
 mate has any thing to do with this inferiority. Tobacco is one 
 of the most hardy and most universal of plants, having a geo- 
 graphical range of at least fifty degrees of latitude on each side 
 
 • Trifling fpmiitities of tobacco arc sent to the Peguans and Malay*, 
 people less civilized than the Hindoos thcinsflvi's. Such are the total 
 fxports in thi* great sl.ipip, by one liundred nnd thirty four millions of 
 pco]>l«^ !
 
 33 
 
 of the equator. Skill, industry, and capital alone are wanted 
 to perfect it in India. Fine marketable tobacco is produced 
 in the Island of Java, between the sixth and seventh degrees 
 of south latitude, through Chinese industry, that country sup- 
 plying nearly the whole eastern arcliipelago. Still finer is 
 produced in the Philippines, in the sixteenth and seventeenth 
 degrees of north latitude. Every portion of the Chinese empire 
 yields good tobacco, and, notwithstanding the quantity of land 
 employed in the production of food, exports fine tobacco cheap 
 enough to supply the Chinese colonists of the neighbouring coun- 
 tries. In the western hemisphere, we find fine tobacco growing 
 in Cuba, St. Domingo, and Porto Rico, from the eighteenth to 
 the twenty-third degree of north latitude. In the Brazils, we 
 have good tobaccoes in the corresponding southern latitudes. In 
 Europe, tobacco prospers in France, in the northern provinces 
 of Holland, and in the Ukraine. The soil and climate of India, 
 instead of being ill-suited for the production of good tobacco, it 
 may be easily shown is even better adapted for the growth of this 
 commodity than the active and industrious regions which now 
 supply the United Kingdom with her principal consumption. 
 The heat of the climate, if not favourable to the production of 
 quantity, is unquestionably so to that of quality. The finest 
 tobaccoes in the world are produced in the warm climates of 
 Cuba, St. Domingo, and Porto Rico. Even in the American 
 markets these bring a higher price than any tobaccoes of native 
 growth. On the other hand, in the markets of Europe gene- 
 rally, the tobacco of Holland is in price and estimation 
 greatly below any American tobacco, and that of the Ukraine, 
 probably the joint effect of slovenly culture and unsuitable 
 climate, is the worst which is known in the markets of conti- 
 nental Europe. Now it is natural to believe that the culture 
 of this plant is at least as skilfully and carefully conducted in 
 France and Holland as in the United States. The inferiority 
 of the product, therefore, would seem to show that the climate 
 of Europe, although the plant grew in it vigorously, is, upon 
 the whole, ill-suited to its production. In Holland, the culture 
 of tobacco is at present not only free from all restraint and 
 from all duty, but protected by an impost on the foreign arti- 
 cle, and yet, notwithstanding this, American tobacco is better 
 and cheaper, and the great consumption of the country is in 
 the latter article.
 
 i4 
 
 With respect to the suitableness of India for the growth of 
 tobacco, it deserves notice that the finest sorts already grown 
 there, are produced in latitudes exactly corresponding with those 
 of the countries which we have just quoted, as yielding the com- 
 modity in the greatest perfection. In one or two districts, indeed, 
 even native industry has succeeded in producing some fine 
 parcels. It is from these that the celebrated snuff of Masuli- 
 patam is manufactured ; but the reader must not imagine that 
 this is the product of native ingenuity. The natives were first 
 instructed in the art of preparing it by the French, and those 
 who are curious in tracing inventions, will find it to this day 
 invariably packed in bottles of French manufacture. 
 
 In the year 1827, the quantity of unmanufactured to- 
 bacco imported into Great Britain was 33,459,897 lbs., and 
 of manufactured, 1 17,566 lbs., making a total of 33,577,463 lbs., 
 of which the quantity retained for home consumption was 
 18,695,779 lbs. Of the whole imports, the United States of 
 America furnished 32,736„585 lbs., and the territories of 
 the East India Company 5,849 lbs., or in the proportion of 
 one to 5,596 ! Of the quantity furnished by the East India 
 Company, 983 lbs. onlj% worth £8 3s. lOd., consisted of un- 
 manufactured tobacco. The manufactured tobacco amounted 
 to 4,866 lbs., and this consisted of snuft" and cigars ; the first, 
 originally at least, a French manufacture, as already stated, 
 and the second, to this day a manufacture of certain Dutch 
 colonists, resident in the British territories. The gross revenue 
 derived by the United Kingdom from tobacco, in the same 
 year, amounted to £2,835,584, of which the United States of 
 America appear to have furnished £2,743,975, or about ninety- 
 six parts in the hundred ; and the territories of the East India 
 Company, supposing the whole of the tobacco imported by 
 them to have been consumed in the United Kingdom, just 
 £2,336, or in the proportion of about one to 11 74 of the Ame- 
 rican contribution. So much for the aid given by our Indian 
 possessions towards the public revenue ! 
 
 According to the American official statements of exports and 
 imports for 1827, the United States furnished Great Britain 
 and her colonies with 36,726 hogsheads of unmanufactured 
 tobacco, equal to aflford freight for 18,463 tons of shipping. 
 According to the proportion already stated of the respective 
 quantities of American and British tonnage employed in the
 
 35. 
 
 export trade of the United States with Great Britain, 12,702 
 tons of this would have consisted of American shipping, and 
 but 5,761 of English. Were India to produce the commodity 
 in the same perfection as America, there would here be room 
 for the employment of 18,463 tons of shipping, instead of 
 5,761 tons, and this, along with the cotton already named, 
 would make above 136,000 tons. The quantity of shipping 
 employed in the conveyance of unmanufactured tobacco from 
 the British possessions in India to Great Britain, in 1827, 
 amounted only to 83 lbs. beyond three quarters of a ton ! , We 
 do not mean to assert that even under the most favourable 
 auspices, India could, or ought to be made to supply the 
 whole demand of the United Kingdom, either in cotton or in 
 tobacco. But that, under a colonial system of any ordinary 
 merit, she would supply a great deal which she does not now 
 supply, appears to us self-evident. Such suggestions as these 
 are not only of value to our Indian subjects, but we must also 
 add, that when a nation, in friendship with us, places our ex- 
 poils under restraints, equally hurtful and impolitic to both 
 parties, it may be useful to point out to her that we have in our 
 hands, through the simple and natural expedient of fair trade 
 and free settlement, the ample and just means of retaliation. 
 
 Of coffee, as the growth of British India, we have very 
 little to say, because, in reality, the production of this 
 article is too trifling to give room for details. Small quan- 
 tities of coffee have been produced, for some years back, by 
 European speculators in the southern parts of India, but 
 it will scarcely be credited, and yet it is strictly true, that 
 the coffee plant, introduced a century ago into every genuine 
 colonial possession of European nations, whether in Asia or 
 in America,* should only have been introduced into Bengal 
 in the year 1823, and this, too, although its native countiy be 
 within the limits of the East India Company's monopoly, and 
 although the Company's territory be nearer to, and has had all 
 
 * " Tn 1718 the Dutch bcpan to cultivate coffee in Surinam ; in 1721 
 the French began to cultivate it at Cayenne ; in 1727 at Martinico ; and 
 in 1728 the English began to cultivate it in Jamaica." — A treatise con- 
 cerning the properties and effects of coffee, by Benjamin Moseley, M. D. 
 " In the year 1752, or seventy-seven years ago, the export of coffee from 
 Jamaica was estimated at 60,000 lbs. weight, which is a great deal mort 
 than all British India at present exports of its own growth."—/^*/.
 
 36 
 
 along a far more extensive intercourse with, Arabia than any of 
 the parties which have elsewhere cultivated the plant so early 
 and so successfully. A few enterprising and intelligent Euro- 
 peans, encouraged thereto by the promise of permission to hold 
 lands on lease, (for this purpose only,) commenced the cultiva- 
 tion in the year which we have mentioned, and small quantities 
 of coffee of excellent quality have been already pr6duced. There 
 is no article of colonial produce which illustrates in a more 
 forcible manner the beneficial effects of European care and 
 superintendence than coffee. In fact, the success with which 
 it is grown and brought to market affords no mean test of the 
 civilization of the nation or party producing it. Its geogra- 
 phical limits embrace at. least thirty degrees on each side 
 of the equator. It is a hardy plant, easily acclimated; nor 
 is it remarkably fiistidious, even in point of localities, pre- 
 ferring only mountainous tracts unfit for the growth of 
 grain, the sugar cane, cotton, and other staples. It is only 
 necessary to cast our eye over a common prices current 
 to discover the comprehensive range which the success- 
 ful culture of this plant embraces. First of all we have 
 it in its parent country, Arabia, and then we have it in Java, 
 Sumatra, Celebes, the Malayan peninsula, the Philippine 
 Islands, the Island of Ceylon, and recently in continental 
 India, nearly from Cape Comorin to the twenty-third degree of 
 latitude. Again, we have it in almost the whole of the West 
 Indian Islands, in Brazil, Guiana, Colombia, and Mexico. If 
 we except its parent country, w here it still continues to be grown 
 in the greatest perfection, owing to localities or circumstances in 
 cultivation with which Europeans are unacquainted, it will be 
 found that its quality, everywhere else, rises in proportion to 
 the quantity of skill, intelligence, and capital employed in its 
 cultivation. Of this we shall give a few examples. The best 
 coffee which comes into the English market, excepting Mocha, 
 is Demerara, which, on an average, is, at present, worth 58s. 
 per cwt. ; then we have Jamaica worth 51s., Java and Ilavan- 
 nah worth 40s., Brazil worth 38s., St. Domingo worth 37s., and 
 Sumatra and Ceylon worth only 34s. Looking at this list, and 
 .adverting to the character of- the countries which produce 
 them, we can have no hesitation in pronouncing that soil 
 and climate, however favourable, confer little advantage, 
 except in so far as they admit of a more favourable, and.
 
 37 
 
 consequently, of a more careful and intelligent husbandry, 
 and that, generally speaking, all depends upon the skill of the 
 planter, and the address with which he brings his produce to 
 the market. The produce of Demerara is superior to the pro- 
 duce of Jamaica, only because the greater extent of good land, 
 and its superior fertility in that colony, admit of a more success- 
 ful culture. The produce of Jamaica is no less than 27 per 
 cent, better than those of the far superior islands of Cuba and 
 Java, a difference which can only be accounted for by the supe- 
 rior skill of the Jamaica planter, over the Spanish planter, in 
 Cuba, and over the Government monopolists in Java. The 
 produce of Cuba, on the other hand, is five per cent, better 
 than the produce of Brazil, which must be accounted for also 
 by the superiority of the Spanish over the Brazilian cultivator, 
 for the soil of Brazil is at least equal to that of Cuba, while 
 its climate approaches nearer to that of the parent country of 
 coffee. The coffee of St. Domingo, once the best in the West 
 Indies, is now excelled by that of Jamaica by above 33 per 
 cent. ; but the intelligence of the English planter is engaged 
 in producing the one, while the other is consigned to the rude 
 and slovenly management of a semi-barbarous people. The 
 lowest qualities of coffee in the European market are those of 
 Sumatra and Ceylon, which are grown, with little or no Euro 
 pean superintendence, by two of the most uncivilized races in 
 Asia, the Singalese and INIalays. 
 
 The total quantity of coffee imported into all Europe in the 
 year 1826, wa,s 85,200 tons, and the consumption was esti- 
 mated at 73,000 tons. In 1827, the importation was 111,000 
 tons, and the consumption 95,600 tons. In 1828, the impor- 
 tation was 108,400 tons, and the consumption 96,000 tons, — 
 the price in the latter instance having risen by 25 per cent, 
 which shows that the supply, great as it appears to be, is still 
 unequal to the dem;md. The average of the two la.st years' 
 importations quoted, gives 110,000 tons, which, at 50s. per 
 cut. shows that a commerce in this single article is conducted 
 by the Europeiui nations with the tropical regions of the world 
 to the extent of £5,500,000 per annum. To what extent does 
 the United Kingdom and her East Indian Colonies {participate 
 in, or contribute to this great and imjjoilant branch of trade ? 
 In 1826, England imported 17,800 tons of coffee, while the 
 single }X)rt of Hamburgh imported 17,600 tons, and the kin?-
 
 38 
 
 dom of the Netherlands 29,200 tons. In 1827, England 
 imported 21,400 tons, while Hamburgh imported 23,800 tons, 
 and the Netherlands 36,300 tons. In 1828, England impoited 
 only 16,500 tons, whereas Hamburgh imported 22,000 tons, 
 and the United Netherlands 40,900 tons, or no less than 147 
 per cent, more than the great emporium of European commerce. 
 
 Of the 21,400 tons of coffee imported by Gh-eat Britain in 
 1827, there was imported from the territories of the East India 
 Company only 1683 tons, the whole (within a trifle not worth 
 naming) consisting- of the coffee of Ceylon, Java, Sumatra, and 
 Mocha, brought for the most part circuitously and inconve- 
 niently to Great Britain through her Indian possessions. From 
 these possessions little or no coffee is sent any where else than 
 to England. Taking, therefore, the same valuation as in the 
 former case, the territories of the East India Company contri- 
 bute to a branch of trade amounting to £5,500,000 to the 
 extent only of £84,150, or to little more than one-sixty-fiflh 
 part of the whole ! 
 
 While the exclusion of European capital and industry in 
 India has hindered the culture of coffee in that countiy, it is in- 
 structive to learn what the capital and industry of an inferior 
 people has been able to accomplish in Brazil, a country, as we 
 have already said, which, of all others, bears, in soU and climate, 
 the nearest resemblance to our Eastern possessions. In the year 
 1820 the quantity of coffee produced in Brazil amounted only 
 to 14,900,000 lbs. ; in 1822 it was 24,300,000 lbs. ; in 1824 
 36,700,000 lbs. ; in 1826 4 1,600,000 lbs. ; and in 1827 57,900,000 
 lbs. Here is an increase, in seven years, of 43,000,000 lbs. The 
 culture of cofTee has been prosecuted in the territories of the East 
 India Company for a longer period than the one now stated ; 
 but the produce, instead of having increased, as in this case, 
 by 288 per cent, is so trifling, in amount, that the commodity 
 is not known, even by name, in the market of Europe. This 
 is a fair example of the effects of colonization, under very 
 unfavourable auspices, and of the consequences of restraints 
 and exclusions, under as favourable ones as can easily be ima- 
 gined, for, in the first case, we have Portuguese colonists, with 
 .slaves for labourers, and in the last, English capitalists, and a 
 po[>ulation of freemen to cultivate the soil. 
 
 Of pepper we have but a few words to say. The only por-
 
 39 
 
 lions of the Continental dominions of the East India Company, 
 where pepper is grown, is the coast of Malabar; and from 
 thence Europe was, at one period, sui)2)lied with the largest por- 
 tion of its consumption. That part of India (to judge from ety- 
 mological evidence) is the parent country of the plant, from 
 whence, however, it has spread to other parts of India, being, at 
 the same time, still confined to the Eastern world. The total pro- 
 duce of pepper for exportation has been estimated at 42,812,500 
 lbs., of which Malabar produces only 2,412,.500lbs., or little more 
 than one-seventeenth part. In 1812 the produce of pepper in 
 Malabar was 3,238,540 lbs. In 1826 it fell to 2,4 12,500 lbs. The 
 cause of this decrease in the cultivation is but too obvious : a heavy 
 export duty was at first levied upon the commodity, and then* a 
 land-tax still heavier, in the absurd and vexatious fonn of a tax 
 on each plant. The discussion of the East India Company's 
 servants., respecting the mode of levying duties on this article, 
 are exceedingly curious.* One officer proposed an export duty of 
 twenty-seven per cent., without considering that the Act of Par- 
 liament of 1813 did not authorize the local government 
 to impose new duties of customs, without certain inconve- 
 nient references to England. Another, more knowing, proposed 
 to evade the law by substituting a land-tax equal to one-fourth 
 of the gross produce, which, in fact, as in that thinly-peopled 
 country, where lands fitted for the growth of the pepper vine 
 exist in an abundance too great to be occupied, and where, 
 consequently, no rent can exist, was virtually a kind of excise 
 upon capital. The land-tax, for reasons evident enough, was 
 preferred. In the meanwhile, the culture of pepper was carried 
 on in Sumatra, Siam, and other barbarous countries free from 
 land-tax, free from rent, and free, for the most part, from export 
 duties ; nay, what is more remarkable still, it was carried on 
 under circumstances equally favourable in one of the Company's 
 own Eastern possessions. It was not in nature that the inha- 
 bitants of INIalabar should have been able to carry on the cul- 
 ture of pepper with such competition, and, consequently, the 
 pepper gardens fell into decay, or were abandoned. It is now 
 understood that the tax has been withdrawn, but in aU proba- 
 bility after the irretrievable ruin of the pepper trade. This is 
 a good instance of the indiscriminate, short-sighted, and inju- 
 
 • Revenue Selections, vol 3, p. 549.
 
 40 
 
 dicious rapacity of the Indian Government, and a striking 
 example of that ignorance of general principles which has often 
 characterized its fiscal arrangements. In the year 1824, the 
 quantity of pepper imported by Great Britain was 8,801,634 lbs., 
 and the exports 2,923,396 lbs. In the same year the United States 
 of America imported 3,306,954 lbs., and exported 2,236,933 lbs. 
 The expoits of Great Britain, in proportion to her imports, 
 therefore, were as thirty-four to a hundred, while those of 
 America were in the proportion of sixty-eight to a hundred, or, 
 in other words, exactly twice as great ; but this is by no means 
 all the difference in favour of the latter : for, independent of 
 the exports from America direct, to which alone we have now 
 alluded, she furnishes, from the places of growth, the greater 
 part of the consumption of the Continent of Europe as 
 well as that of Barbary, Egypt, Asiatic Turkey, and South 
 America ; in short, the principal part of the trade in this article 
 is in her hands, while Great Britain, or at least the mother 
 country, has no trade whatever of the same description. 
 
 It is scarcely necessary to say that the chief remedy for 
 the evils which we have pointed out in the foregoing pages is 
 European settlement, or, more explicitly, the introduction of 
 European example — of European skill — of European enter- 
 prise, and of European capital. The following are samples of 
 the arguments, if we may use such a name for them, which 
 have been adduced by the advocates of monopoly against it. 
 The Indians are a peculiar and a timid race, and if Europeans 
 were permitted to hold lands, they would, in due course, dis- 
 possess the native inhabitants. Englishmen are a brutal race 
 of men, excepting always the monopolists and their servants, 
 and, if permitted to mix indiscriminately with the Indians, 
 they would offer such violence to the peculiar usages of the 
 native inhabitants, that the latter would be utterly disgusted — 
 rebel against their masters, and expel these masters the coun- 
 try. If Europeans were to settle in India, they would soon 
 colonize the country, and then Great Britain would lose her 
 Indian possessions exactly in the same manner in which she 
 lost her American colonies. If we civilize the Indians, or, in 
 other words, if we govern them well, these Indians will become 
 wise and enlightened — rebel against us, expel us the country, 
 and establish a native government. By way of corollary to
 
 41 
 
 these ominous ami terrible objections, it is directly or iuiiirectly 
 insinuated that the East India Company is the fittest of all 
 human instruments for ooverninfj the Indians, — that nature, 
 as if it were, intended them for each other, — from all which 
 it necessarily follows, that there is no governing India unless 
 the administration monopolizes its commerce,* — that the 
 Indians are enamoured of monopolies of the necessaries of life, 
 or of staple articles of trade, — that they are generally fond of 
 paying heavy and fluctuating taxes, instead of light and 
 definite ones, such, for example, as paying yearly 50 or 5o per 
 cent, of the gross produce of the land to the Company, instead 
 of a fixed and moderate land-tax, — that they are especially 
 fond of being excluded from all oflfices of honour, trust, or 
 emolument, having an odd predeliction for placing their lives, 
 liberties, and properties, at the discretion of the Honourable 
 Company, — and, in short, that all innovation being hateful to 
 them, they abhor change, even when it is from absolute evil to 
 positive good. There are few who will think a serious refutation 
 
 • In the parliamentary investigation which preceded the renewal of 
 the Charter, no point was more insisted ui)on than the danger and inex- 
 pedience of separating the commercial from the political authority. The 
 power of the Company to carry on the administration, it was roundly 
 asserted, would be weakened by such separation. This, in short, was to 
 insist that an union which was scouted throughout civilized Europe, and 
 which existed, even in Asia, only under the worst and most barbarous 
 governments, whicli was not found in China, or in Japan, or in Persia, 
 or in Arabia, and to which even Hindostan was a stranger, under 
 all previous forms of government, was good and indispensable under 
 the government of the East India Company. Adam Smith says, 
 that, in all political questions affecting their own interests, the very 
 advice of merchants should be viewed with distrust. He certainly makes 
 no exception in favour of merchants exercising a monopoly, still less of 
 merchants exercising the powers of government, and whose interests are 
 not only opposed to those of the public, but to those of all other mer- 
 chants. The proposition that a monopoly of trade in the ruling authority 
 is useful and necessary towards carrying on the political concerns of a 
 great empire, is indeed too monstrous for reply. The French ministry, 
 since the restoration, when pressed to abolish the monopoly of tobacco, 
 admitted that if any other means could be devised of raising an equal 
 revenue they would be happy to be relieved from " the too onerous charge 
 of superintending the culture and manufacture of tobacco." Here we 
 have the East India Company praying to be burthened with the whole 
 details of the commerce of the East, and even insisting that it is unable 
 to carry on the political business of a mighty empire without it ! 
 
 G
 
 42 
 
 of sucli absurdities necessary; but in case there should be 
 any, we offer to them the following explanations, beginning 
 with a short review of the conduct pursued by the rest of man- 
 kind in all ages, in situations and circumstances parallel to our 
 own. 
 
 One would expect, from the assertions of the advocates of 
 restrictions, that such relations as subsist between the people 
 of India and ourselves had no parallel in the history of the 
 world. There are, however, many cases exactly similar in 
 every essential point, and we shall advert to a few of them. 
 The Mahomedans of Persia and Tartary kept these same 
 Hindoos in subjection for full seven centuries. They were 
 rude, they were intolerant, they persecuted for conscience' 
 sake. They were, at first at least, necessarily ignorant of the 
 language, manners, and habits of the aboriginal inhabitants; 
 and when they became acquainted with them, it was only to 
 treat them with derision or contempt. They altered the whole 
 laws of the kingdom ; they imposed Mahomedan institutions, 
 and a Mahomedan language. Yet, with all this, there were 
 few insurrections against their authority ; and in the above long 
 period of seven centuries not one successful case of rebellion. 
 One race of Mahomedans, and one dynasty succeeded to 
 another race and another dynasty, in the dominion of India. 
 The patient and docile Hindoos quietly looked on, and paid 
 their homage and their taxes to each successive conqueror. In 
 a word, they submitted to braver and more civilized races than 
 themselves, which was in the natural order of things. The Ma- 
 homedans were not prohibited from occupying the soil : they, 
 in fact, became possessed of extensive estates in land through- 
 out the country ; but the Hindoos were not, in consequence, 
 dispossessed. Tlie Moslems constitute, at present, through 
 emigration or conversion, full one-seventh part of the whole 
 population; that is, they amount to perhaps fifteen millions 
 of settlers. Still the Hindoos held, after so many centuries of 
 rude dominion, by far the larger portion of the land, down to 
 the moment when we ourselves became possessed of the so- 
 vereignty of the country. This is rather a strong case. It may 
 be rationally asked, will one of the most civilized and humane 
 of the nations of Europe, in a civilized age, act a worse, or a 
 weaker part than the semi-barbarians of Persia and Tartary, 
 in a very barbarous one ? Will any one be so irrational as to
 
 4a 
 
 argue, or any one credulous enough to believe, that the policy 
 on which these semi-barbarians acted — not only with safety 
 but with utility — nay, upon which their very existence depended, 
 may not be pursued, at least with impunity, by the European 
 administration of India, backed by the resources of a civilized, 
 powerful, enterprising, brave, and ambitious nation ? Are we, 
 through clumsy misrepresentation, and a fictitious picture of 
 national manners incompatible with history and with human 
 nature, to be cheated out of our common sense into a belief 
 that the very circumstances which enabled our predecessors to 
 make and to maintain conquests, are to cause the destruction 
 of ours ? These predecessors acquired dominion, and they 
 kept it for whole centuries, through mere fortuitous emigration 
 and settlement, and without any external support. We, on 
 the contrary, have the systematic support of a powerful and 
 willing nation. Yet, in the very same spot, we are told that 
 the dominion of one set of conquerors is to be overthrown by 
 the exact same means by which that of another was created 
 and maintained. We beg our easy, good-natured, but idle 
 countrymen, in judging of this very plain matter, to bring to 
 their aid a small portion of that common sense which they are 
 so fond of having ascribed to them on ordinary occasions, and 
 not suffer themselves to be deluded into a belief that what may 
 be dangerous to a monopoly of patronage, is equally so to the 
 interests of the state ! 
 
 One of the most remai'kable examples of dominion main- 
 tained by foreign conquerors for a succession of ages without 
 revolt, rebellion, or expulsion of the conquerors, there being 
 neither prohibition to the conquerors to own land, or colonize 
 in any other manner whatsoever, is that exercised by the pre- 
 sent race of Tartars over the vast empire of China, containing 
 double the area, and near twice the population of our East 
 Indian dominions. If the circumstances of this dominion be 
 considered, it will be found a much more wonderful event than 
 even the establishment of our own extraordinary empire. A 
 mere tribe of shepherds, having notliing but their good swords 
 to rely upon, effected the conquest of the greatest and most 
 civilized empire in the East, in a far shorter time than was 
 taken in the formation of our Eastern dominion, and they have 
 kept peaceable possession for 168 years. They govern that 
 empire apparently without any extraordinary difhtulty, and
 
 44 
 
 with as few insurrections as can well be expected in an orer- 
 peopled country, liable from that circumstance to dearths and 
 famines, and consequently to the anarchy and disorder which 
 arise out of them. They go a little farther than we do ; main- 
 taining the military power, they surrender the civil into the 
 hands of the native inhabitants ; we are not quite so generous ; 
 we seize the whole military and the whole civil power, to the 
 entire exclusion of the conquered ; we take the most effectual 
 means to exclude capital from the country, as well as to with- 
 hold from the Hindoos the example of morals, industry, arts, 
 and science ; and we end by pronouncing such a fonn of ad- 
 ministration the most acceptable, popular, and appropriate 
 which human wisdom could devise for the government of eighty 
 or ninety millions of people, fifteen thousand miles distant 
 from the power that essentially rules them. What figure would 
 the conquerors of China have made in maintaining their domi- 
 nions, had they contented themselves with the expedient of 
 sending an army of some forty thousand men, with a few civil 
 functionaries from the wilds of Tartary, to the rigid exclusion 
 of the settlement and colonization of the rest of their country- 
 men ? The Chinese, united and intelligent far beyond the in- 
 habitants of Hindostan, would not have endured the silly ex- 
 periment for a moment ; and fortunately for the Manchou Tar- 
 tars, they had no East India Company to persuade them into 
 such a blunder. 
 
 The illustration afforded by the history of Turkish and 
 Russian conquest and dominion is, perhaps, more in point than 
 any otliers, and we shall briefly refer to them. The history of 
 Turkish conquest is shortly, but with sufficient accuracy, as fol- 
 lows : — A tribe of shepherds from Tartary wrests its Asiatic 
 dominions from the remnant of the Roman Empire, — passes 
 tlie Hellespont, — overwhelms the most civilized state of the 
 frfteenth century, and keeps possession of the finest portions of 
 Europe for three hundred and seventy-six years, the conque- 
 rors, even when fully settled and colonized, not exceeding in 
 number one-fifth part of the conquered inhabitants; many 
 of the latter being scarcely less warlike than themselves ; — 
 being for the most part opposed to them in religion, manners, 
 and interests ; and being, moreover, excited to, or abetted in, 
 rebellion for at least a century back by a j)ovverful and warlike 
 neighbour. To «hat arc we to ascribe this permanency in the
 
 45 
 
 Turkish dominion, under ausj)ices apparently so unpropitious ? 
 No doubt in a great measure to the same causes which give 
 stability to our own dominion in India, and which promise, 
 under almost any probable circumstances, however blundering 
 and unskilful our management, to give it a long duration, 
 nimely, the diversity of languages, manners, religions, and 
 interests of the conquered; their ignorance of, and indifference 
 to, political freedom, and the facility consequent upo^ all 
 this, of employing them as tools for securing each other's sub- 
 mission. About a dozen nations speaking as many languages 
 form the aggregate of the Turkish population. Among twenty- 
 four millions of people, the conquerors scarcely form, through- 
 out, above one-fifth part; yet this fraction has been sufficient, 
 taking the average of Turkish conquests, to have maintained a 
 dominion of four centuries' duration. It is needless to add, 
 that the making and maintaining of the Turkish conquests has 
 depended solely on the principle of settlement and coloniza- 
 tion. Two millions of Turks, possessing as governors no good 
 quality, save personal courage, have, when settled in Europe, 
 proved adequate to a long maintenance of authority over eight 
 millions of Christians, and others; but surely nine hundred 
 or a thousand Turks, the proportion of the English to their 
 Indian subjects, never could have effected such a purpose. 
 The extravagant and unprofitable experiment, which the skill 
 of the English on the one side, and the superior docility of the 
 Hindoos on the other, has rendered practicable in our case, 
 would, in reference to the blundering barbarism of the Turks, 
 and the superior energy and intelligence of their subjects, be 
 too ridiculous to imagine. 
 
 The history of Russian conquests is still more to our pur- 
 pose. The Russians proceed on principles diametrically op- 
 posite to those we have adopted in our Indian administration, 
 and it is obvious to common sense, that they owe their success 
 and their security to doing so. The nations subject to the 
 Russian dominion amount to about seventeen millions of 
 people spread over an area said to be equal to a ninth part of 
 the habitable globe, and that part too, one abounding in ex- 
 traordinary difficulties of communication. Russia, like Great 
 Britain and Turkey, owes, no doubt, much of the facility with 
 which she maintains her dominion, to the diversity of tribes, 
 religions, languages, customs, and modes of civilization almost
 
 46 
 
 infinite, which prevail among the people subject to her au- 
 thority- Among these there are about sixty distinct nations, 
 with as many languages ; and, as to forms of religion, we have 
 the Christian and Mahomedan, with all their sects; we have 
 Jews, Hindoos, worshippers of fire, and followers of the Grand 
 Lama. The aggregate of energy, of the warlike spirit, and of 
 the rude spirit of independence, is, however, far greater in the 
 conquered subjects of Russia, than in the Indian population 
 subject to Great Britain. If to this, again, we add the inferior 
 resources of Russia, in comparison to England, or, what is the 
 same thing, her inferior civilization, and we take also into 
 account the greater distance of her resources, or, what is 
 equivalent to this, her inferior means of speedy communication 
 with her distant conquests, we shall be convinced, at once, 
 that the task which Russia has to perform, in maintaining her 
 dominion, is a far more difficult and gigantic one than ours 
 in maintaining our Indian. 
 
 Is it by creating monopolies ; by excluding the conquered 
 nations from all share in their own government ; by confiding 
 the administration to a little band of the friends of monopoly, 
 taken at haphazard from the conquerors : is it by prohibiting 
 the colonization and settlement of Russian merchants, lest 
 Russian merchants, by their violence, should excite rebellion, 
 or by their coarseness and immorality pollute her Bashkires, 
 her Buriats, and her Calmouks, — that Russia has proved so 
 eminently successful in holding a most discordant mass of 
 conquered people in easy subjection ? With respect to mono- 
 polies, there exists but two throughout the Russian dominions, 
 originally conquered, or acquired by cession, those of ardent 
 spirits and of salt.* In every thing else industry and com- 
 merce are perfectly free, and no distinction is drawn between 
 the conquerors and the conquered. With respect to exclusion 
 from office there is none. In Russia, every office is open to 
 every class of the inhabitants, nay, foreigners are admitted to 
 the greater number. This is not a matter of virtue but of 
 necessity on the part of the Russian Government. The task 
 
 • The Russian salt monopoly is extremely mild ; it is, in fact, little 
 more than a piece of imj)erial ostentation, and brings very little revenue 
 to the state. The (Jnvernracnt supplies the whole empire at the same 
 juice, and that price does not exceed 2id. per bushel.
 
 47 
 
 of administration, in fact, is rather too difficult to be trifled with, 
 and therefore talent and fitness have some preference over 
 favour. Were the Tartars as docile as the Hindoos, and as 
 good tax payers, we have no doubt the Russian Autocrat 
 and his Ministers would soon contrive to make a civil appoint- 
 ment to Siberia or Kamschatka worth, like an Enj^lish one to 
 Hindostan, four or five thousand pounds sterlin«r.* 
 
 With respect to colonization, every one knows that it is the 
 policy of Russia, not only not to discouratfe it, but to give it 
 the most positive encouragement. The Russian Government 
 having no preserve of patronage to hedge in, — no territorial re- 
 sources to throw away, affects no unfounded jealousy of Russian 
 subjects. On the contrary, it has recourse to colonization as the 
 cheapest, safest, and most efficacious means of maintaining its 
 authority in its distant possessions. This course it has systema- 
 tically pursued for full three centuries, and with a safety, success, 
 and advantage which are sufficiently known. Russians are found 
 as colonists from Wologda and Woronesch to Kamschatka and 
 to Chinese Tartary. But the liberality of Russia is far from 
 being confined to native Russians, or to Russian subjects. The 
 Russian Government may be said to invite all the world to settle 
 in its dominions, and to have no more apprehension of strangers 
 than of its own subjects. Among colonists of the latter de- 
 scription are to be found Servians, Albanians, Wallachians, 
 Moldavians, Poles, Germans, French, and even English and 
 Hindoos ! The Germans alone amount to near half a million. 
 Has the misconduct of these colonists driven the conquered 
 inhabitants into rebellion ? — have they polluted the simple man- 
 ners of the natives ; or have they proved idle and useless in- 
 truders where they have settled ? Quite the contrary ; — they 
 have raised flourishing cities in the heart of Siberia ; explored 
 mines of the useful and precious metals in the same country ; 
 cleared, cultivated, and peopled the desert banks of the Wolga, 
 
 • The following; (in 1823) is the testimony of Malte-hrun (no admirer 
 either of the Russians or their Government) touchina; the conduct of 
 Russia to her conquered siil)jects. After observing that all forms of 
 worship are free, he proceeds thus, — " Le fjouvernment Russe respecte, 
 avec une politique cclairee, tous les droits acquis, tous les privilesfes de 
 provinces, de villes, de classes ; les seuls, chani^emcns que les pouples 
 conquis eprouvent, sont, en tfeniral, favourablcs a la libertt- personeIIe«, 
 industrielle ct religieuse." — Precis de la Gi-mtraphw Unhvritelle. — T. vi.
 
 48 
 
 and, by the introduction of the silk-worm, the vine, and the 
 olive, given a new character and a new aspect to the Crimea.* 
 
 Such are the cheap, natural, and efficient means by which 
 the Russian Government not only holds in subjug-ation wild, 
 disorderly hordes of barbarians, often 3000 miles distant from 
 its natural frontier, but by which it promotes the civilization of 
 these hordes, cultivates and improves its territory, and extends 
 and confirms its own authority. Instead of pursuing this ob- 
 vious course, how would matters have stood with Russia had she 
 followed the policy we have pursued in India P What figure 
 would the Russians have made in maintaining- their authority 
 over such countries as Astrachan, Siberia, the Crimea, Georgia, 
 or the Mahomedan provinces recently acquired from Persia, 
 had the Czar delegated his power to a joint stock company of 
 Russian merchants residing in St. Petersburgh, bolstering up 
 their authority by a monopoly of the trade with China, and 
 conferring upon them the exclusive right of vending tea, now 
 a necessary of life in Russia, to the rest of his subjects ? 
 
 Our own country affords remarkable examples of a peace- 
 ful submission to foreign conquerors, and of the benefits derived 
 from the amalgamation of conquerors with conquered. The 
 Romans (the relative states of society in the world being con- 
 sidered) were, when they conquered Britain, substantially as 
 distant from it as we are now from India; yet they subjugated 
 a people more brave, more untractable, more untameable than 
 the Hindoos — occupying a country less accessible to invasion 
 and conquest ; and, imposing upon them their language, laws, 
 and institutions, held them in peaceful subjection for between 
 three and four centuries. There was no prohibition to Roman 
 subjects to settle, to colonize, or, in a word, to improve the 
 natives by their capital, their industry, or their example. The 
 stability of the Roman dominion appears to have been con- 
 firmed by a policy the very reverse of this. Hume, speaking 
 of Agricola, the ablest and the wisest of the conquerors of 
 
 * To these advantap^es, derived from the prineiplcs of eoh)iii7,ation, 
 may be athled, the ji;rowing trade of Russia with Cliina, wliich is now 
 established at two other places on the frontier besides Kiachta. The 
 extent of this brancli of trade may be inferred from the quantity of 
 tea, 20,'J00,(J00 lbs. yearly imported and consumed l)y the Russians. It 
 appears from this that the eonimerce of Russia with t.'hina is only second 
 in iinjioitaiice to that of (jnat Hiituiu.
 
 49 
 
 Britain, eulogizes him in the following strain, for doing that 
 which a company of merchants would have us believe must 
 ruin us: — " He introduced law and civility amonjr the Britons, 
 taug'ht them to desire and raise all the conveniences of life, 
 reconciled them to the Roman language and manners, in- 
 structed them in letters and science, and employed every 
 expedient to render those chains which he had forged both 
 easy and agreeable to them. The inhabitants having ex- 
 perienced how unequal their own force was to resist that of 
 the Romans, acquiesced in the dominion of their masters, and 
 were gradually incorporated in that mighty empire." — The 
 Romans were succeeded by the Saxons, a rude and ferocious 
 people, who were equally successful in maintaining their 
 authority. The Saxons were succeeded by the Danes, and 
 these by the Normans. The Ancient Britons never regained 
 their independence. In fact, where shall we find in the page 
 of history one example of a rude people permanently con- 
 quered by a brave and more civilized race than themselves, 
 regaining their liberty and independence, and expelling their 
 conquerors ? Another race of foreign conquerors may supplant 
 us in India; but we have nothing whatever to fear from its 
 native inhabitants. The people of the East are, and have been 
 in all ages, more passive and pusillanimous than the people 
 of the West. The dark-coloured races are more passive than 
 any of the fairer races of men. The Roman dominion over the 
 more manly and freer nations of the West scarcely lasted six 
 hundred years ; over the timid and subservient nations of the 
 East it lasted one thousand years longer : — such a prospect 
 as this ought to satisfy our thirst for oriental dominion. 
 
 The first argument of the monopolists against permitting 
 Englishmen to hold lands in India, and to settle in the country, 
 is the imagined risk which would arise from it, of imposing 
 upon the facility and simplicity of the natives, and hence, by 
 fraud or violence, dispossessing them of their lands, reducing 
 them to the condition of helots, or exterminating them as if 
 they had been North American savages. Such an event has 
 never occurred in the world, in any period of the history of 
 mankind, unless in a very few insulated cases of the most bar- 
 barous conquerors, in the rudest ages, and yet, to serve an in- 
 terested purpose, it is now imagined to be quite possible 
 of Englishmen, and in the nineteentli century. 
 
 H
 
 50 
 
 The only spots witliin our immense dominions, in which 
 Englisliinen are permitted to hold lands, are the towns of 
 Calcutta, Madras, Bombay, Prince of Wales's Island, Singa- 
 pore, and Malacca. There they hold lands generally on the 
 same conditions, and under the same laws with the natives. 
 These (and they are so many little Tadmors amidst a vast 
 desert of despotic misrule and insecurity) are the only spots 
 iu which English capital can be invested in the soil ; whereas, 
 native capital has the range of some 600,000 square miles. It 
 might be expected, then, that under these circumstances Eu- 
 ropeans would be the holders of the greater portion of the 
 landed property in such settlements : the very reverse is the 
 case. The Indians are the holders of all the native buildings 
 in Calcutta, of all the public markets, and of the majority of 
 the houses built by or for Europeans. This is still xnore 
 remarkably the case at Madras. At Bombay the greater por- 
 tion of the landed property of the island is owned by the 
 Persees. At Prince of Wales's Island, Malacca, and Singapore, 
 the Chinese, and natives of Malabar, share at least equally 
 with Europeans in the property of the soil. 
 
 The limited and partial experiments made elsewhere, show, 
 in a manner the most indisputable, that wherever Europeans 
 have established themselves, their presence has not only not 
 alienated the affections of the native inhabitants, but been 
 productive of unmingled good.* In the single article of 
 indigo, their skill has created a property to the yearly value 
 of two millions sterling, an effectual addition to the real 
 wealth and resources of the country, greater than it can 
 rationally be proved, the East India Company has produced 
 in two whole centuries. The introduction of the indigo 
 culture into a district is notoriously the j)recursor of order, 
 tranquillity, and satisfaction : wealth is diffused through it ; 
 and the public burdens, levied before with difficulty, and 
 often only with tlie aid of a military force, are punctually 
 
 ♦ Bishop Heber, with his usual tjood sense and freedom from those 
 local prejudices, so apt to bewilder the jud>,rment of other Indian obser- 
 vers, insists upon the necessity of "encouraj^ing instead of forbidding the 
 purelmse of lands by the English." On the desirableness of this last 
 measure, as the most prolrable means of im|)roving the country, and 
 attaching the peasantry to ourfJovernment, .say.s he, " I find, in Caleutta, 
 little (lill'erence of (ipinion." — Uehir's Journul, vol. ii, j). 30G.
 
 51 
 
 discharp^ed. Even tlio advocates of the system of restriction 
 are obliged to confess this beneficial result. We have not 
 time for much quotation, and tlierefore we shall content our- 
 selves with one strong; case. Mr. St. CJeorge Tucker, a 
 Director of the East India Company, formerly a Commissioner 
 of Land Revenue in Bengal, and principal Secretary in the 
 same department, tells us, in nearly as many words, when 
 describing the necessary inequality of assessment to the land- 
 tax, that in a particular estate the introduction of the culti- 
 vation of indigo alone will be sufficient " to double the value 
 of the produce." A country, of which the produce of the 
 soil is doubled by the introduction of a single article of culti- 
 vation and manufacture, cannot, it ought rationally to be sup- 
 posed, be much injured in any other way by those who confer 
 such a boon upon it. 
 
 In whatever part of India Europeans have resided longest, 
 and in greatest numbers, there we are sure to find the best 
 understanding subsisting between them and the Indians, and 
 surely this is what common sense would teach us to expect. 
 There is one remarkable example of this, exclusive of that of 
 the great commercial towns, which may be worth quoting. 
 The cultivation of indigo has been longest, most extensively 
 and most successfully conducted in the district of Tirhoot, a 
 portion of the province of Bahar. Here are to be found the 
 most numerous and wealthy English planters, and the cor- 
 diality which subsists between them and the Indians is so 
 remarkable as to be held up as a model, even by the servants 
 of the East India Company themselves, though incapable 
 of assigning the true cause for it. 
 
 The British settlers in the provinces, notwithstanding the 
 unquestionable and substantial benefits which they have con- 
 ferred upon the country, became during the parliamentary in- 
 vestigation, in 1813, the subject of indiscriminate invective on 
 the part of the East India Company and its advocates. The 
 "civil wai's of the indigo planters," as they were called, were 
 spoken of as things calculated to subvert an empire ! It 
 is remarkable that the whole of the disputes in question, — 
 disputes enoimously exaggerated, have all had their origin in 
 the restrictions imposed by the East India Company itself, or 
 in laws which they are incapable of executing. As \\c have 
 already said, a British settler can ncithn buy land nor take
 
 52 
 
 a mortgage upon it. As to the state of law and police, beyond 
 the limited jurisdictions of the Kin^s Courts, the following is 
 no exaggerated picture of it. Justice is there administered by 
 one hundred and fifty unprofessional Europeans, — in this 
 number being included judges as well as magistrates, assistants 
 as well as chiefs, judges of appellate as well as of primary juris- 
 dictions. Limiting the jurisdiction of these persons to 500,000 
 square miles, and to 75,000,000 inhabitants, it follows that 
 each of the above unprofessional Europeans must administer 
 justice and maintain police over an area of 3,266 square miles, 
 and over half a million of people, ignorant of the locality of 
 five square miles of the area in question, not acquainted with 
 fifty persons out of the 500,000, and having at best, as the 
 natural and inevitable consequence of their being strangers, 
 but a sorry acquaintance with the language, manners, or 
 usuages of any one man amongst so vast a multitude. It is 
 no wonder that a King's Chief Justice in Bengal, in writing to 
 a Minister of state upon this subject, should exclaim, " You 
 may rely on it, and I hope the truth may not be learned in a 
 more unpleasant manner, that the present system cannot go 
 on."* 
 
 The principal quarrels which the indigo planters have had 
 with the natives, (and they have had them just as often with 
 each other,) are disputes respecting boundaries, the most fre- 
 quent of all others in India, and which are, indeed, inseparable 
 from such a state of the law as prevails in the British provinces. 
 " The commitments for breaches of the peace," says the fifth 
 report of the House of Commons, " arising from boundary 
 disputes, and other contests concerning landed property, are 
 ascribed to the great though unavoidable arrear of untried 
 cases, standing in some of the courts ; since, by necessarily 
 protracting for years the decision of suits, it frequently drives 
 the suitors to despair, and induces them to run the risk of 
 taking justice into their own hands, by seizing the object in 
 dispute, rather than to await the tardy issue of a process which 
 threatened to excised the probable duration of their own lives." 
 Matters have by no means improved since this passage was 
 written. In 1815 it appears that the decision of a suit in the 
 Supreme Court of Appeal required three years and three 
 months ; in the provincial courts of appeal, three years ; and 
 
 • Chief Justice East's Letter to the Earl of Liverpool.
 
 53 
 
 in the provincial couits of first instance, seven and thirty 
 months.* Is it to be wondered at, that in a country where 
 justice is nearly unattainable, the strong should be disposed 
 to take advantage of the weak ; or that when men are for the 
 most part left to themselves, opposed to all the aits of craft 
 and chicanery, they should occasionally commit acts of 
 violence ? There is no magic in the name of an indigo 
 planter that he should be able to escape from the difficulties 
 which the very state of the law itself imposes upon him. 
 Reform, then, would be more becoming than invective in those 
 who object to his conduct. Even the excellent and learned 
 Bishop Heber, the author of the most interesting, popular, in- 
 structive, and, therefore, useful book ever written on India, 
 joins in the unmeaning clamour raised by the friends of ex- 
 clusion against the indigo planters ; he states, in plain terms, 
 that this enterprising class of English sojourners has done 
 much towards disgusting the natives of India with the British 
 character. This, to be sure, is but a casual expresssion in a 
 private letter to a friend ; and as no such opinion is contained 
 in his journal, it is probable that it was not his deliberate con- 
 viction, fomied on a more mature consideration of the subject. 
 We have, in fact, carefully perused the journal and the letters, 
 and cannot discover that the Bishop ever held any intercourse 
 with an indigo planter, or with any native oppressed by an 
 indigo planter. On the contrary, his Lordship almost inva- 
 riably partook of the hospitality of, and received his information 
 from, the high privileged sen'ants of the East India Company, 
 men opposed to the planters by habits, interests, and preju- 
 dices. His Lordship ought to have done, in this case, as he 
 has done in almost every other, exercised his own better judg- 
 ment, and not have given the sanction of his high authority to 
 a calumny without a tittle of evidence. It is pleasing, indeed, 
 to reflect that the Bishop has refuted himself in a passage in 
 another letter, at least as authentic as the first, where he informs, 
 as we have already stated, that the purchase of lands by the 
 English, instead of being forbidden, ought to be encouraged, 
 as the most probable means of improving the country, and 
 attaching the peasantry to the Government. f 
 
 • Judicial Selections, vol iv. p. 20. 
 
 f The following is the Bishop's own account of the slate of law, and 
 of the manners and character of those to ttIiohi the planter is exposed 
 
 \/
 
 54 
 
 Except when the laws are bad, or badly administered, and 
 a country consequently reduced to a state of anarchy, the strong 
 cannot dispossess the weak. If the laws be tolerably adminis- 
 tered in India, Englishmen cannot possess themselves of the 
 lands of the Hindoos, except by giving a valuable consideration 
 for them. Unquestionably the Hindoos will not part with them, 
 except for such consideration, for they are a parsimonious peo- 
 ple, and in all affairs of property a careful and acute people. 
 If an Englishman give a just equivalent for the real property of 
 a Hindoo, it is not necessary to say that this is an accommoda- 
 tion and an advantage to the Hindoo, and not a matter of 
 injustice or of oppression. The Hindoo proprietor may have 
 more land than capital ; he may be involved in pecuniary 
 difficulty like the proprietors of other countries. By selling a 
 portion of his estate, he may not only improve the remainder, 
 but relieve himself from his difficulties. To deny him access, 
 therefore, to the best market for his land, is not only no pro- 
 tection, but a positive injury, as well to himself as to the whole 
 society to which he belongs. 
 
 What would the landed gentlemen of England say of a 
 law which prohibited the wealthy capitalists of London, of 
 Liverpool, of Glasgow, and of Bristol from becoming purchasers 
 of the estates, which they were anxious to dispose of? Would 
 they deem such a law a protection to their property ; or rather 
 would they not reprobate it in an act of deliberate spoliation ? 
 What would be thought of a law, made for the protection of 
 the Irish, which prohibited English capital from being invested 
 in the soil of Ireland, and made it a misdemeanour for an 
 Englishman to be found in that country without a license from 
 
 without laws: — "The greatest evil of the land hero, as elsewhere in 
 India, is the system of the Adowlut Courts, — their elaborate and intri- 
 cate machinery, — their intolerant and expensive delays, and the severity 
 of their debtor and creditor laws." Vol. 2, page 145. — " They are decid- 
 edly, by nature, a mild, pleasing, and intelligent race ; sober, parsimo- 
 nious, and, where an object is held out to them, most industrious and 
 persevering. Hut the magistrates and lawyers all agree, that in no 
 country are lying and perjury so common, and so little regarded. Not- 
 witlistanding the apparent mildness of their manners, the criminal 
 calendar is generally as full as in Ireland, with gang robberies, setting 
 fire lo buildings, stacks, &c. &c.; and the number of children who are 
 decoyed aside, and murdered for the sake of their ornaments, Lord Am 
 herst assures mc is dreadful." — Ibid, page 30H.
 
 55 
 
 a Secretary of Stale ^ 'I'lie same general principles which are 
 applicable to Ireland, are Cfjually applicable to India. There 
 may be triOinu; ditlerences in the modes of their application, 
 but these will be found trivial and unimportant. Human 
 nature is pretty much the same in all apjes and climates. What 
 is fundamentally true of it under a fail complexicjn, is equally 
 .so under a brown or a black one. It cannot be transmuted to 
 serve the interested purposes of patronage or party. When 
 we legislate for the Hindoos, in short, we legislate for men, and 
 not for creatures of a clouded and egoistical imagination. 
 
 It would be in vain to attempt to trace all the evil conse- 
 quences which arise out of this prohibition of Englishmen, to 
 invest their property in the soil; but there is one of a very 
 striking and comprehensive character to which we shall allude. 
 The interest of money in the commercial towns, where English 
 law exists, is, certainly in no case, above one half of what it is 
 in the provinces, where the enactment and execution of the 
 law is left to the East India Company. This, however, is not 
 all ; British subjects, beyond the limits of the towns in ques- 
 tion, being prohibited from investing their capital in the soil, 
 can receive no security upon lands, or tenements, and the lands 
 and tenements of the protected towns are far too small in 
 value to afford security for any considerable portion of the 
 available capital of India. The effects of this are striking and 
 monstrous. There is no lending of money on the security of 
 real property, and the public funds necessarily become the 
 only certain investment. While the profits of stock are much 
 larger in India than in England, the local government in India 
 is, notwithstanding, always enabled to raise money at an interest 
 very little higher than the Government of the Crown in Eng 
 land, at a moment that private merchants, even of the higliest 
 credit, will have to pay half as much more, and often double as 
 much. During the Burmese war the East India Company bor- 
 rowed money at five per cent., while the most respectable mer- 
 chants and agents of Calcutta were paying ten. The East India 
 Company, in short, as here exhibited, has taken advantage of 
 its own wrong. It commands the money market by a law of 
 its own enacting, an obvious encouragement to wasteful and 
 profligate expenditure. The capital, which would naturally go 
 to improve the agriculture and commerce of the country, is 
 tlius unjustifiably drawn off to the puV)lic treasury.
 
 56 
 
 The second eg^tion of the East India Company is, that 
 if Englishmen were permitted to mix indiscriminately with the 
 Indians, their offences against native usages would produce 
 dangerous insurrections and rebellions, which would place our 
 very dominion in jeopardy. This proposition, it should be 
 recollected, is at direct vai'iance with the last, and, therefore, 
 if true, would prove too much. In the first case, the Hindoos 
 are represented as so timid and obsequious, that they will 
 submit to be turned out of their possessions without resistance ; 
 in the last, they are imagined to be so sensitive, so irascible, 
 so pugnacious, so formidable, that they will brook no insult ; 
 they will rise in rebellion if the first settlers do not understand 
 their languages and peculiar usages, — kick us, as it were, out of 
 Hindostan for sheer ignorance. Both assertions imply a fla- 
 grant misunderstanding of the character of the Hindoos, — of 
 their well known history for many centuries. The Hindoos 
 are a prudent, a discreet, a money-making race ;* they will 
 endure a great deal for money's sake ; they will oppose violence 
 by an appeal to law, if they have laws to appeal to ; and if 
 they have not, no European will be a match for them, with 
 those weapons of fraud and chicanery, which the necessity and 
 practice of ages have taught them to wield most dexterously. 
 There will, in short, be more need to protect Europeans against 
 them, than them against Europeans. This has, in fact, been 
 found to be more or less the case, wherever the two races have 
 come into collision or competition, without adequate laws for 
 the protection of person and property, an occurrence but too 
 frequent. 
 
 The danger to the stability of our empire from the indis- 
 criminate resort of Europeans was one of the points most per- 
 
 * The parsimonious character of the Hindoos, and the facility, not- 
 withstanding the pretended allegations of the East India Company to 
 the contrary, with which they accommodate themselves to the manners of 
 strangers, arc strongly exemplified in the little colonies which they have 
 estahlished in Ava, Siam, the Malay Peninsula, Java, and other islands 
 of the Eastern Archipelago, hut still more strikingly in those which they 
 have formed in Asiatic Russia. Malte-brun, on the authority of a Ger- 
 man traveller, gives the following account of the manners of the Hindoos 
 at Astrachan ; " Leur principal metier est I'usure. Lcs Tartares, livres 
 au petit commerce, sont toujours debiteurs des Iiidiens, au point de leur 
 remcttre en gago ct en usiifruit leiir^ propres femmes ; de ce commerce 
 descendent lei Tartares Achrichanski." — Pixii$ de la (ieographie Unixei- 
 mJU. — T. vi.
 
 severiiifjly laboured by llic i^usl India ( uiupany in llie discus- 
 sions whicli It;d to the renewal ul their lust Cliaiter. Jieadiiiji 
 questions to this effect were constantly put to the cloud of 
 witnesses which they brouji^ht to the bar uf the House of Com- 
 mons, — to the same witnesses who confidently predicted tlie 
 total impossibility of extending- free trade, and who insisted 
 that the Indians could consume nothinj)- which we produced, 
 and produce little which we required. The answers were 
 always prompt, and the assertion broad and unqualified, that 
 there was the utmost danger to be apprehended from the resort 
 of Englishmen. The kind of offences against native usages, 
 which, it was alleged by the Company and its friends, might 
 tend to endanger our Indian empire, it is not very easy to 
 render a distinct account of, because the charges in their very 
 nature were as vague as they were silly and unfounded. The 
 following is hardly a parody : — Englishmen might perhaps 
 shoot peacocks ; they might not step aside to save the life of a 
 pismire ; they might plague monkeys, or treat cows with less 
 reverence than horses ; peradventure they might even slay kine 
 to indulge a national propensity ! When challenged to adduce 
 examples of violations of native usages, such as could lead any 
 rational being to imagine might be productive of insurrection 
 or rebellion, of course not one case capable of bearing the 
 slightest examination could be brought forward. One of the 
 most intelligent witnesses adduced the case of an European 
 suttler as one very much in point. He, the witness, had, in 
 the exercise of his public duty, given the said suttler permis- 
 sion to live in the unoccupied house of an absent native : the 
 native returned, and the suttler refused to quit the house at 
 his requisition, and without the specific authority of the person 
 from whom he derived his permission, which appeared reason- 
 able enough on the part of the suttler. It turncil out that the 
 suttler in question, however heinous his offence, was not a 
 British-born subject, but a Dane; one, in short, of the most 
 orderly creatures of the European race ! " Had he been an 
 Englishman," continued the w itness in his evidence, " he would 
 most probably have kicked out the owner ibr presuming to 
 molest an Englishman in his castle, and it would have required 
 a suit at law to eject him !" Here was evidence on which to 
 legislate for an empire ! 
 
 Another witness, an officer of high rank, and of some forty 
 I
 
 58 
 
 Years' experience, haviuir been challenged to produce an ex- 
 ample of the evil consequences of the settlement of Europeans 
 in India, upon which he had expatiated in general terms, 
 adduced the case of two Europeans who lost their lives for 
 having' offended the prejutlices of certain Brahmins by shooting 
 a monkey. The Brahmins pelted them with stones. To effect 
 their escape, they made an attempt to swim the river Jumna 
 on horseback, and in that attempt were drowned. Here it 
 turned out that the offenders were not merchants or agricul- 
 turalists, but servants of the East India Company, a couple of 
 cornets of dragoons. The reader may imagine, that a people 
 who take violent umbrage at so venial a peccadillo as the shoot- 
 ing of a monkey, must be rather hard to deal with. The case, 
 therefore, deserves this short explanation : the martyred monkey 
 in question was not a wild monkey, as his untravelled fancy 
 might suppose, but a pet monkey, — one of a herd of pet mon- 
 keys belonging to certain learned Brahmins at the celebrated 
 seminary of Mattura, and daily fed from the hands of these 
 clerical worthies. There is not an admirer of pet monkeys in 
 England, lay or clerical, who would not have been equally 
 indignant upon a like occasion. 
 
 The prejudices of the Hindoos, on the point just alluded to, 
 have been mightily exaggerated. It is true they believe 
 that the soul of a drunken grandsire may be embodied in a 
 hog ; of a wise one in that of an elephant ; or of a pious one in 
 that of a bull. They do give credence to such fooleries, and to 
 various others ; and they have, consequently, a kind of disin- 
 clination, but not a very violent repugnance, to be accessary to 
 the deatli of such possible progenitors ; but this is all, and 
 they certainly do not, as some have supposed, actually worship 
 any description of animals. It is notorious, that cattle and all 
 other animals are slaughtered in thousands, in all the prin- 
 cipal tovvn.s, long resorted to by strangers ; the Hindoos not 
 only not taking offence, but often, as owners of markets, as 
 merchants, and as shopkeepers, deriving emolument from such 
 pnjcet.'ding.* 
 
 • " I had ahvays hiaiii, auJ fully bulieveJ till I caine to India, that 
 it was a grieviMis crime, in the (>})inii)n of the lirahinins, to eat the flesh, 
 or shi-d the blood of any liviny; creature whatever. I have now, myself, 
 seen Uraliuiins, of the hii^hest caste, cut ofT the heads of goats as a sa-
 
 69 
 
 The belief of animal worship, on the part of the Hindoos, 
 however, was, at one time at least, pretty current among' 
 Europeans. We remember hearing rather a curious example 
 of this, in as far as re^^arded an alleged worship of peacocks. 
 A British officer, at the head of a detachment, entered the 
 Mahratta frontier, and, laudably resolvinjj to respect the pre- 
 judices of the natives on this head, gave the following; sample 
 of his acquaintance with Hindoo mythology, in an order of the 
 day : — " Peacocks being the gods of this country, no one to pre- 
 sume to shoot them on any account whatsoever." Now, tlie real 
 history of this supposed peacock-worship was as follows: — There 
 are few or no wild peacocks in the northern parts of India, 
 but a great many domestic ones, the common property of the 
 villages, roosting on the tops of the houses, nesting in the 
 neighbouring groves, and feeding in the corn-fields belonging 
 to the peasantry. In short, they are pretty much in tlie same 
 state, but a good deal tamer, than the pheasants of a preserve 
 in this country. The above good-natured officer was right in 
 his conduct, but wrong in the motive. A French general, in- 
 vading this country, and desirous of conciliating a very in- 
 fluential and respectable class of the inhabitants, might just as 
 reasonably have issued such an order as this to his army : — 
 " Pheasants and partridges being the gods of the country 
 gentlemen of England, no one to shoot them on any pretence 
 whatsoever." 
 
 The two cases above alluded to were the only examples of 
 the evil consequences of settlement and colonization brouglit 
 forward by the East India Company during a discussion of 
 three years' continuance. In reference to them, Mr. Courtenay, 
 then Secretary to the Board of Control, stated, in his place in 
 Parliament, that the examples adduced amounted to such 
 twaddle as could not be listened to w-ith common patience. 
 Even the late Lord Londonderry' acknowledged that the idea 
 
 crifice to Doorga; and I know, from the testimony of Brahmins, as well 
 as from other sources, that not only hecatombs of animals are often 
 offered in this manner as a most meritorious act, (a Raja, about twenty 
 five years back, ofVcred sixty thousand in one fortnight,) but that any 
 person, Brahmins not excepted, eats readily of the flesh of whatever has 
 been offered up to one of their divinities, while among almost all the 
 other castes, mutton, pork, venison, tish, (any thintv but beef and fowls.) 
 are consumed as readily as in Europe " — Hiftn't Jovmol, vol. ii. p. 3*9.
 
 60 
 
 of colonization in India, with all its attendant dangers, were s 
 pure chimera.* 
 
 Who, it may be asked, are most likely to ofi'end the preju- 
 dices of the natives of India ? — the flights of raw aspirants for 
 place and power poured annually by the East India Company 
 into India, — persons vested with the name or authority of Go- 
 vernment ; or merchants and traders, who have no connexion 
 ^\'hatever with it, M'ho are even publicly denounced by it as 
 intruders, and whose success, safety, and comfort, must there- 
 fore depend upon prudence, forbearance, and conciliation ? 
 We pronounce, from long experience, that for one trader who 
 violates the prejudices or usages of the natives, there will be 
 found twenty ci\ il and military etnploijes who will do so ; but 
 by whatever party such offences are given, they are but trivial, 
 and of very little moment. As the settlers and colonists in- 
 crease, the number of such offences must diminish, because in- 
 formation on both sides will have improved. After the first 
 few months — even in the most desperate cases, after the first 
 k\v years — no European offends native prejudices, nor do the 
 natives offend his : a very limited period, indeed, is sufficient 
 to reconcile them to each other. If this be the case with the 
 original settlers, where is to be the danger from their posterity, 
 born and bred in the country ? 
 
 It is beyond all doubt, that the present system of ruling 
 India is distinctly chargeable with all the vices and incon- 
 veniences which are so liberally ascribed to settlement or colo- 
 nization. Tlie very essence of that system is to bring into 
 perpetual collision with the Indians a perennial stream of 
 youthful strangers at the most indiscreet and imprudent age, — 
 these strangers, too, tax-gatherers or task-masters. Surely 
 human ingenuity could not have devised a more effectual 
 method of keeping a people governing and a people governed 
 in a condition of more real alienation and estrangement from 
 each other than this contrivance, — a contrivance which, al- 
 though the creature of accident, and the offspring of the false 
 and foolish theory of an ignorant age, is declared by its friends 
 to be the very perfection of human wisdom ; a plan, in short, 
 devised, as if it were by nature herself, for rendering one hun- 
 dred millions of the human lace mutually useful to each other, 
 
 » Speech in thr Hou>r of Cominnns, Miinh ■22, 1813.
 
 01 
 
 and happy and contented in all their relations. Under this 
 hiuded system the {jjoverncd rarely see the j^overiiinp^ party 
 before the ii'^e of Ifi or 18. If the fjovernin^ party be "ood for 
 any thing, they seldom see them beyond five and forty. By 
 the rigid principles of this anti-social system the conquerors 
 and the conquered ought not to see each other's infancy or 
 childhood, or early youth, or old age, or even the whole ma- 
 turity of each other's manhood. Englishmen, by this system, 
 are never to be naturalized in India. They are never to ap- 
 pear to the Hindoos in the relation of fellow-countrymen. 
 The i^arties, in short, are to have no mutual interests, no 
 mutual sympathies, no opportunity of knowing or being known 
 to each other. 
 
 Those portions of our dominions in India in which the 
 greatest number of European settlers exist, are invariably 
 found to be the most orderly, tranquil, wealthy, and prosperous. 
 Those in which they are carefully excluded are not only the 
 poorest, but the most subject to insurrection. The acts of the 
 Government and of its servants have occasioned a good many 
 tumults, a good many insurrections, and a good many military 
 mutinies, but the advocates of restriction have never ventured 
 to assert that a private merchant, or a private triuler, has been 
 implicated in any act of public disorder. The mutiny and 
 massacre at Vellore were produced by the impertinent and ill- 
 judged interference of the public officers of Government with 
 the dress and pay of the troops. The tumult at Benares was 
 produced by an attempt to impose an unpopular tax. The 
 more serious insurrection in Rohilcund was produced by the 
 same cause. The mutiny of the native troops at Barrackpore, 
 and the massacre which lollowed it, were notoriously occasioned 
 by the Government or its officei-s I'efusing to listen to some 
 pal])able, and afterwards acknowledged and redressed, griev- 
 ances. No private individual, black or white, had imy share 
 in the transaction. The general rising of the province of Cut- 
 tack, which took the Calcutta authorities by surprise, was pro- 
 fUiced by the misconduct of a public officer. There was not a 
 merchant or trader in this extensive but poor province at 
 whose door the blame might be laid. But these are liglit and 
 modern insUmces. The further we go back in the history of 
 our connexion with India, the more flagrant are the examples 
 which \\ ill occur to us. In proportion as we find the charac-
 
 62 
 
 ter of merchant and sovereign united in the Indian government, 
 — in proportion as the private adventurers are few in number, 
 and as trade and government are, exclusively, or almost ex- 
 clusively, in the hands of the Company, examples of oppression 
 and rebellion become more numerous and more notorious. We 
 shall quote one or two strong and incontestible cases. In the 
 year 1781, the rash, arbitrary, and unjustifiable conduct of 
 Warren Hastings, in offering an unprovoked insult to native 
 prejudices and native feelings, threw the great and populous 
 province of Benares into a state of general insurrection, which 
 nothing could quell but a large army. This was the much- 
 admired Governor of the East India Company, a man of un- 
 doubted talent, versed in the languao^es, manners, and institu- 
 tions of the natives of India, and who was brought up in 1813, 
 before ihe House of Conmions, to give evidence, touching the 
 impossibility of extending the commercial intercourse of Great 
 Britain with India, the danger of violating native usages, the 
 excellence of the existing order of things, and other matters 
 equally true and edifying. Now, had the said Warren Has- 
 tings been a merchant, or an indigo planter, in all human 
 probability he would not have touched a hair of the Rajah 
 Cheit Singh's head ; certainly he would not have wantonly 
 arrested his pei-son, and, by this flagrant insult to the prejudices 
 of his subjects, brought on a formidable insurrection. To be 
 guilty of such indiscretion, it was necessary to be duly clothed 
 with authority ! 
 
 The most noted examples, however, of the misconduct of the 
 Company's servants, and of the evils arising out of the union 
 of trade and power, are those which took place immediately 
 after the victories which led to our eventual sovereignty in 
 India. In Bengal, not only the Company, but the Company's 
 servants, claimed an exemption of duties on trade for them- 
 selves, but insisted upon an infliction of duties upon all others.* 
 This necessarily threw a complete monopoly of the whole trale 
 
 • His patience (the Naoob's) was nearly exhausted ; he now, there- 
 fore, executed his resolution of abandoning all duties on the transit of 
 poods, and laid the interior trade of his country perfectly open. The 
 conduct of the Company's servants, upon this occasion, furnishes one of 
 the most remarkable instances upon rccurd of the power of interest to 
 rxtiniiuish all sense of justice, and even of shame. They had hitherto 
 insisted, contrary to all right and all precedent, that the government of
 
 of tlie country into their hands ; the native inliabitants were 
 deprived of their commerce, and the prince of his revenues. 
 Anarchy, wars, and revolutions of nine years' continuance, were 
 the consequence. The Court of Directors, it is true, acknow- 
 ledged that the disorders in question were produced by the 
 misconduct of their servants: they disapproved of that conduct, 
 and forbade the private trade ; but they had no sooner pos- 
 sessed themselves of the sovereignty of the country, than they 
 seized upon salt, the principal branch of it, as an article of 
 monopoly for their own benefit, and salt is at the present mo- 
 ment vended to the Indian consumer at about four times the 
 price which it cost in the period of anarchy just alluded to ! 
 
 In the discussions of 1813, the East India Company was 
 not satisfied with a mere denunciation of the general principle 
 of the free settlement of Englishmen in India ; they declared 
 that the bare circumstance of a partial opening of the trade 
 must produce such an inundation of true-bom Englishmen as 
 would sap the foundation, and finally overthrow the whole 
 fabric of our Indian empire. The experience of the last four- 
 teen years has not verified this ominous prognostication. The 
 whole number of European settlers in Bengal, unconnected 
 with the public service, is about two thousand seven hundred, 
 and this, let it be observed, includes foreigners as well as 
 British-born subjects; in 1813 it was one thousand six hun- 
 dred. At the other presidencies, the whole accession, certainly, 
 has not amounted to two hundred persons. The inundation, 
 therefore, which was immediately to sap the foundations, and 
 finally to overthrow the vast fabric of our empire, has amounted, 
 in fourteen years, only to about one thousand three hundred 
 persons, all employed in the peaceful pursuits of industry, 
 without an hour's leisure for politics or squabbling ! 
 
 The advocates of restriction have further urged that free 
 settlement would especially give rise to a dangerous influx of 
 needy and profligate adventurers. How are needy and profli- 
 gate adventurers to pay for a passage across half the globe ? 
 Do needy and profligate adventurers undertake a voyage of 
 
 the country should exurapt their goods from duty. They now insisted 
 that it should impose duties upon the goods of all other traders ; and 
 accused it as guilty of a breach of peace toward the English nation be- 
 cause it proposed to re.nit them." — MiWii History of British India, vol. ii.
 
 64 
 
 similar expense to Mew South Wales, where room and climate 
 are more suitable, and the distance not much greater ? Needy 
 and profligate adventurers go to the latter country with the 
 assistance of the State; they could only find their way to 
 India with similar assistance, which it is to be hoped the State 
 will never grant. In fact, the existing restrictions are answer- 
 able for any disproportion of exceptionable persons which may 
 now exist in the European population of India ; and, after all, 
 the number is very trifling.* Men of character in general are 
 unwilling to infringe the existing laws, bad as they are ; men 
 of indiff"erent character infringe them without scruple ; and the 
 worst class of Europeans in India are, in fact, runaways from 
 the East India Company's own ships, notorious among British 
 shipping for the badness of their crews, — men who, but for 
 this channel, could never find their way to India at all, or who, 
 if they did, would, in a free intercourse, constitute but a trifling 
 fraction of the whole. In reality, from the very nature of 
 things, the free adventurers to India would of necessity be 
 composed of the most respectable emigrants that ever quitted 
 one shore for another. The length of the voyage — the state of 
 society in India — the character of the climate, would inevitably 
 preclude the resort of such emigrants as were not possessed of 
 what India stands so egregiously in need of — capital — talent 
 — acquirement — integrity, and enterprise. For vice and 
 profligacy the Indians have no demand ; the market is already 
 stocked ! 
 
 The account now given is amply corroborated by an official 
 statement made in the House of Commons during the last 
 Session of Parliament, on the presentation of certain petitions 
 from the inhabitants of Calcutta.f It appeared from this, 
 that in a period of eleven years, or from the opening of the 
 trade in 1814, down to 1825, the total number of persons, in- 
 
 • " The English part of the population (of all India) is perhaps as 
 respectable a community as any in the universe." — Sir J. Malcolm. The 
 •worthy author, after this compliment to his countrymen in India, having 
 another purpose to serve, which it is not our present object to touch 
 upon, proceeds to draw a subtile, but truly incom])r('liensible distinction 
 between " a public " and " a community." 
 
 t Speech of the Ri^Oit Hon. ('has. AV. Wynu in his place in Farlia 
 nient, June 1828.
 
 (>5 
 
 eluding men, wrnueii, anJ cliildiyn, wliu liuil ajjplif-cl for Ie:ive 
 to proceed to India, iimuiuited only to 943, and that ol these 
 159 were refused permission. If the whole applications, then, 
 had been complied with, the overthrowers of our Indian empire 
 — the invaders who were to subvert the dominion of the suc- 
 cessors of the Mogul, with their st:mclin<i army ol 300,000 
 men, — would have amounted to about 8o pcM- annum, (mis- 
 chievous women and children included !) But as the wisdom 
 and prudence of the Directors of the East India Company 
 averted a portion of the danger, the invaders in question 
 amounted only to 71 and a fraction. The Directors, it seems, 
 had refused permission to two humlred persons, but, in forty- 
 one cases, their judgment, in this important matter, was over- 
 ruled by the Board of Control. Of the one hundred and fifty- 
 nine persons who received no satisfaction, some weie refused 
 because they were servants, and might interfere with half- 
 castes; some because they were intended as clerks to mercantile 
 houses, and might displace the same half-castes; and some 
 because they could not satisfy an East India Director, that 
 they could live in India without his assistance. With respect 
 to the first class of persons, it is enough to say, that half-castes 
 are never employed as servants in India, and therefore the 
 ground of objection is invalid. With respect to the second 
 class, the meaning of the objection can only be this, that the 
 East India Company's regulations having, contrary to all 
 justice, incapacitated the children of Europeans, bom of native 
 mothers, from all elevated and honourable office, the Company 
 coolly turns round upon its commercial rival, fixes a minimum 
 for their wages as clerks, and saddles the free trader with tlie 
 whole charge of maintaining them. With regard to the third 
 class of persons objected to, one would suppose that a man 
 who can afford to take the trouble of dancing attendance at 
 the East India House for a license, for a month or two ; who 
 must canvass for sufficient interest to obUiin it ; who can give 
 security to the Company to the extent of five hundred jwunds; 
 (for this is always taken,) who can afford to pay £30 sterling 
 in fees and stamps for his license; and who can further afford 
 to pay for a four or five months' passage to India, — may 
 safely be lefl to his own exertions and his own resources, and 
 is not likely to become a burthen to the East India Company 
 or any one else. The truth is, that the love of a little pa- 
 
 K
 
 66 
 
 tionage, and no apprehension either of settlement or coloniza- 
 tion, was at the bottom of the refusals. For the first few years 
 after the opening of the free trade, the number of licenses, in 
 despite of the spirit and letter of the act of Parliament, was 
 limited to a very few, in order to create or maintain that 
 patronage, and it is only very lately, and chiefly since the 
 parliamentary investigation in 1820, that they have been 
 granted with comparatively less difficulty. This country is 
 overflowing- with capital, and, above all, with an unemployed 
 population, and the Government of the country acknowledges 
 the fact, legislates for it, and even advances large sums of 
 money to encourage emigration. The East India Company 
 is actuated by different motives, and steps forward to coun- 
 teract the provisions of the Legislature, by exacting fines and 
 illegal indentures from the emigrant to aggravate the natural 
 difficulties and expenses of a passage over half the globe ! 
 
 The next objection to the settlement of Englishmen in 
 India is, that if this were to take place, the native inhabitants 
 would be exterminated, and the colonists, in due course, de- 
 clare their independence of the mother country, after the 
 example of America. This most chimerical and absurd posi- 
 tion hardly deserves an inquiry, or a serious answer ; but in 
 case there should be any one, unknown to us, silly enough to 
 give it credence, we shall condescend to the trouble of refuting 
 it. The first thing which must occur to every rational being is, 
 that there is not one point of similitude in the pretended 
 parallel between India and America. Colonization in India, 
 in the .strict meaning of the term, is impossible, without the 
 extermination, or the very next thing to it, of above one hun- 
 dred millions of human beings: we might as reasonably talk 
 of colonizing Ireland, and exterminating the Irish ! 
 
 Now, with respect to the extermination of the Indians, a 
 very few words will suffice. No agricultural people have ever 
 been exterminated, even by the most barbarous conquerors. 
 Notwithstanding the badness of the Spanish Government of 
 America, and the cruelties first inflicted upon the American 
 Indians, modern inquirers are distinctly of opinion that the 
 Peruvians and Mexicans are, at the present day, more numer- 
 ous than they were under Atahualpa and Montezuma. Savages 
 have been exterminated in a few cases through their own vices, 
 — through the use of ardent spirits, idleness and its concomi-
 
 67 
 
 tants, poverty and starvation. But the Hindoos arc no 
 savages; they are far more civilized than the Mexicans an<l 
 Peruvians ever were ; and as Englislmien of the nineteenth 
 century, it is hoped, are not inferior to the Spaniards of the 
 sixteenth in humanity, there is surely as little g-round to expect 
 their extermination. 
 
 Anglo-America and India stand as it were in complete con- 
 trast and opposition to each other in reference to the question 
 of colonization. America, when colonized, was destitute of 
 inhabitants, or very nearly so, and at the moment of emanci- 
 pation the wages of day labour were perhaps not less than 
 £70 a year. The British territories in India are peopled 
 throughout to the extent of one hundred and twelve inhabitants 
 to a square mile, and the wages of common labour are not 
 above £3 per annum. America, when ripe for independence, 
 was peopled by one race of free men, having the same insti- 
 tutions, manners, religion, language, and interests : in India 
 there are at least thirty tribes or nations, speaking as many 
 distinct languages. There are several forms of religion, and 
 these again are broken down into sects and castes, the fol- 
 lowers of which are full of antipathies towards each other. 
 The Indian nations, in short, unknown to each other, destitute 
 even of a common medium of communication, have no com- 
 mon interests, and, therefore, no common feeling of national 
 independence.* The notion of their conspiring or combining 
 to rid themselves of the dominion of strangers is purely 
 chimerical. Who, in fact, in this vast heterogeneous mass, 
 are to be deemed the strangers ? The Mahrattas are as much 
 strangers to the people of Bengal, or to those of the Carnatic, 
 
 • " This part of their character, but in a ruder and wilder form, 
 and debased by much aUoy of trcaclur}' and violence, is conspicuous 
 in the smaller and less good-looking inhabitants of Rajpootana and 
 Mahva J while the mountains and woods, wherever tluv oicui, sho\> 
 specimens of a race entirely different from all these, and in a state of 
 society scarcely elevated above the savages of New Holland or New 
 Zealand ; and the inhabitants, I am assured, of the Deecan, and of the 
 presidencies of Madras and Bombay, arc as diflirent from those which 
 1 have seen, and from each other, as the French and Tortuguesc from 
 the Greeks, German, or Poles; so idle is it to ascribe uniformity of cha 
 ractcr to the inhabitants of a country so extensive, and stibdividcd by so 
 many almost impassable mountains and jungles." — Jlcbir's Jourvnl. vol 
 ii. p. 380.
 
 68 
 
 as we arc, and, without doubt, would be much more unwel- 
 come ones. The Seiks are strangers to the Mahrattas, and 
 either would submit to the other's barbarous rule far more 
 unwillingly than to ours. Some fifteen millions of Mahome- 
 dans, differing from each other in nation, in sect, and often 
 in language, are opposed to a Hindoo population of some 
 eighty-five millions — nay, opposed among themselves to each 
 other. Where are the materials for unanimity of purpose, for 
 conspiracy, or for combination, in this most discordant mass 
 of human beings ? 
 
 The Americans, when ripe for independence, were a free,^ 
 bold, manly, energetic, and highly-civilized people. The In- 
 dians know not what freedom is : they are, for the most part, 
 a timid, often an effeminate, and, as a nation, a feeble race of 
 semi-barbarians. In every circumstance, in short, in which it 
 can be possible to institute a comparison, the Indians and 
 Anglo-Americans are the very antipodes of each other. The 
 states of society in the two countries are, without exaggeration, 
 more dissimilar than in China and Lapland. We and others 
 conquered the Hindoos, because they were feeble and disunited. 
 They are now, and they always have been, readily retained in 
 subjection, for the same reason that they were easily conquered. 
 
 The colonization of Intlia, as may be seen from this state- 
 ment, is impracticable ; but, although there may be no room 
 for colonization, there is ample room for settlement, in a country 
 of fertile soil, far more thinly peopled, after all, than any part 
 of Europe, and a country, too, without capital, knowledge, 
 morals, or enterprise. Mere day-labourers, of course, there is, 
 generally speaking, no room for ; but there is ample room for 
 skilful mechanics, for agricultural, for commercial, and even 
 for manufacturing capitalists. The free settlement of all these 
 classes, under equal and suitable laws, will prove the only 
 means of civilizing and humanizing the inhabitants of India.. 
 Our countrymen, living amongst them, will instruct them in 
 arts, in science, and in morals; the wealth and resources of the 
 country will be improved; the Hindoos will rise in the scale of 
 civilization, for they have sufficiently evinced that they possess 
 both the capacity and inclination to do so. We leave it to tlic 
 abettors of restriction to point out what evils arc likely to 
 spring from such changes ! 
 
 We have said that there is no room for colonization in India,
 
 at least for European colon izution. There are some exceptions 
 to this rule : India, lakinfj it as a whole, is not a densely, but 
 u thinly peopled country ; one hundred and twelve inhabitants 
 to the square mile, is not such a population as a territory of 
 such general fertility and extent ought and might maintain 
 The fact is, that many parts of India are over-peopled, others 
 very thinly j)eopled, and some, indeed, almost tlestitutc ol' 
 inhabitants. Some fertile tracts in the alluvial plain of the 
 Ganges contain four hundred, five hundred, and even six hun- 
 dred inhabitants to the square mile, while the table lands are 
 thinly peopled, and the mountains often destitute of inhabi- 
 tants altogether. Many of the rich valleys of the great snowy 
 range, for example, would, for room, temperature, and salubrity, 
 admit of the settlement of European colonies. As the climate 
 is remarkable for its salubrity, European colonization is here 
 gradually admissible ; we say gradually, because from distance 
 and expense, there is, obviously, no other means of introducing 
 it. Even in some of the warmer parts of India^ colonization 
 is not impracticable. The first settlers, in such situations, 
 would naturally consist of capitalists, and the better order of 
 mechanics, who, from their habits, would suft'er little inconve- 
 nience from tlie climate. Their posterity, even if they de- 
 scended to the rank of day labourers, would be acclimated, and, 
 like the Spaniards of the pure blood, in the torrid plains ol' 
 America, suffer no inconvenience from heat, but in this respect 
 be on a perfect equality with the aboriginal inhabitants. Our 
 own West India Islands, notwithstanding their heat, the gene- 
 ral insalubrity of their climate, and the discouragement to 
 colonization ofl'ered by slave labour, contain between sixty and 
 seventy thousand colonists of the European race, the greater 
 number of whom are genuine Creoles. In Barbadoes alone, 
 according to Edwartls, there were forty years ago above 16,000 
 whites. But even in India, notwithstanding the care taken to 
 prevent it, we find among the lower orders of Europeans" a 
 good many cases of genuine Creoles. These may be seen 
 serving in the army, side by side, with their European com- 
 rades, and not distinguishable from them by any ditlerence in 
 strength, complexion, or courage. In fact, the races of men, 
 like the species of many animals, are easily acclimated in 
 regions in which they were not born to dwell, and by necessary 
 change in habits and manners, are readily accommodated to
 
 70 
 
 their new situations. The colonial history of every European 
 nation, in fact, teaches us that the physical frame of the 
 European race affords no obstacle to its permanent location 
 in tropical countries.* 
 
 The only thing like colonization which we see passing before 
 our eyes in the East, is that of the Chinese, in the thinly 
 peopled countries in the neighbourhood of their own. There 
 are about one hundred thousand of them in the Dutch, Spa- 
 nish, and British possessions ; and, perhaps, little fewer than a 
 million in Siam, and other adjacent countries. This, however, 
 is a very unfavourable experiment ; for, by the laws of China, 
 the men cannot be accompanied by their families. Had not 
 the emigration of women been forbidden by the laws of China, 
 we should, by this time, probably, have seen the half-desert 
 countries in question peopled from the swarming inhabitants 
 of that empire. Unfavourable as are the circumstances under 
 which this Chinese emigration takes place, it is instructive to 
 remark, that to it we owe more than half the prosperity of all 
 the countries in which it has occurred ; such is the efficacy 
 of a little infusion of civilization into semi-barbarous commu- 
 nities. In the countries in question, the Chinese colonists 
 generally cany on their whole foreign trade. They mine and 
 smelt their metals, and they manufacture their whole sugar. 
 In short, the most prominent branches of their industry would 
 have no existence but for these useful auxiliaries. 
 
 With the fullest and freest liberty to settle, the European 
 colonists in India will still constitute a prodigious minority. 
 To imagine their revolt, therefore, is nothing less than ridicu- 
 lous. Their security for centuries — as long as they continue 
 a distinct race — as long as their faces remain white, and they 
 speak the English language — must depend upon the mother 
 country. Instead of endangering our dominion, therefore, 
 
 * " The emigration from the motlier couiitr}' to tliis island (Barbadoes) 
 was indeed so great during the commotions in England, that in 1650 it 
 was computed there were 20,000 white men in Barbadoes, half of them 
 able to bear arms, and furnishing even a regiment of horse to the num- 
 ber of 1000. The ease seems to have been, that the Governor granted 
 lands to all who applied, on receiving a gratuity for himself; and the 
 <laim of the proprietor, whether disputed in the Island, or disregarded 
 amidst the confusions at home, was at length tacitly relinquished. * * 
 The rolony, left to its own cfl'orts, and enjoying an unlimited freedom of 
 trade, flourished beyond example."— 7>/«ff/vAs'.v History of the West Indies.
 
 71 
 
 they will become its natural, and, through their knowledge and 
 influence, its best, its cheapest, and its firmest supports. 
 The very charge of danger allegetl against their free settle- 
 ment may, with infinite truth and justice, be urged against 
 the system of restricting it. The Hindoos, instead of being a 
 p'jople difficult of management, are, in reality, of all the con- 
 quered people that ever existed, the most easy. Had they 
 been otherwise, the barbarians of Persia and Tartary could 
 not have held them in easy subjection for seven centuries; 
 nor could the commercial and exclusive government of the 
 East India Company have lasted for a single day. The ad- 
 ministration of the East India Company is, in itself, a proof 
 with how little government — with how imperfect a govern- 
 ment, the Hindoos may be kept in subjection. The adminis- 
 tration of India, as it is now constituted, disclaims all support 
 derived from the influence or public opinion of Englishmen. 
 It creates in its own hands enoimous and pernicious mono- 
 polies ; it refuses to grant, or is incapable of bestowing, an 
 adequate administration of justice; it denies to the people all 
 share in their own government ; it places all power in the 
 hands of a small party, or faction, of its own countrymen ; it 
 rules the country by an army, chiefly levied from a disfran- 
 chised and insulted population ; and, finally, the spirit and 
 tendency of its constitution is, to leave to the precarious guar- 
 dianship of about thirty thousand Europeans, the sovereignty 
 or dominion over an empire of one hundred millions of people. 
 This is a real trial of the docility of the Hindoos; such a trial 
 of men's temper and forbearance as was never made before in 
 any age or climate; a scheme, the object of which must ap- 
 pear, to any rational and impartial observer, as little better 
 than an experiment to ascertain the extent of the danger and 
 jeopardy to which a people, in the wantonness of selfishness 
 and error, may hazard a vast and costly acquisition. 
 
 In the teeth of all history, and of all experience, the Hin- 
 doos, the most docile of mankind, and for a people so uncivi- 
 lized, surprisingly addicted to commerce, have been repre- 
 sented by the advocates of restriction as a mass of inflammable 
 materials, capable of being ignited by simple commercial con- 
 tact with the most commercial nation in the universe. Meta- 
 phor has been resorted to to colour the alleged precariousness 
 of our tenure of Indian dominion from such an intercourse.
 
 72 
 
 ■Sometimes a sword is held dangling over our heads ; sometimes 
 we are sitting on a barrel of gunpowder, an English merchant 
 the incendiary to light it. But of all others, the most favourite 
 figure of speech upon such occasions consists in representing 
 all Hindostan as suspended by a pack-thread, which "the 
 touch of chance," or the indiscretion of a free trader, might 
 break, sending our dominion, of course, at once to perdition. 
 One strong and indisputable fact will settle this question at 
 once in the mind of every man of sense. We hold our Indian 
 empire by the power of the sword. Saving the honour, firm- 
 ness, probity, and intelligence of the national character, our 
 civil institutions are valueless, and our administration of justice 
 avowedly imperfect and insufficient. They, in fact, aflTord very 
 little support to the army. That aimy is the smallest in the 
 world in proportion to the population of the country, and it is 
 inconceivably small if we consider that it is not a national 
 army, maintaining subordination to national laws, but that it is 
 the instrument of maintaining authority over a vast and distant 
 conquest. The whole Indian army, regulars and militia, does 
 not, in round numbers, exceed 300,000 men, and this, let it be 
 recollected, is a perpetual war establishment. It is sufficient 
 to maintain internal tranquillity ; it is sufficient to protect us 
 from foreign invasion; nay, it is sufficient to enable us to 
 commit aggressions upon our neighbours, and to make external 
 conquests.* Including the native states, which receive sub- 
 sidiary forces from us, this army of 300,000 men holds in sub- 
 jection 1 15,000,000 of people. Its proportion to the popula- 
 tion, then, is as one to about 383 ; but then again, above 
 ninety parts in a hundred of this force is drawn from the con- 
 (juered inhabitants. The portion of the Indian army, in short, 
 composed of the conquerors, that is to say, the essential and 
 effective power which maintains our Indian dominion, stands 
 to the conquered population only in the proportion of one to 
 4,600. Let us compare the condition of India in this respect 
 with that of other countries. The militaiy force of Russia 
 bears the largest proportion to her population of any nation 
 
 * While \vc had an ariny exceeding 30,000 men before the fortress of 
 Bhurtpoor, we liad another at the distance of between two and three 
 thousand miles from it, within two or three forced marches of the Bur- 
 man capital. In a contest of two years' continuance, the army was not 
 augmented by a single battalion.
 
 7:) 
 
 whicli is known tons; llml force on its peace estnblishment 
 amounts to 800,000 men, and tho population is largely esti- 
 mated at 60,()0(),()()0. The army to the people, then, is as one 
 is to 75. The army of F" ranee, on its peace establishment, 
 including colonies, is in the proportion of one to 140 of the 
 population. The British army, excluding that portion of it 
 serving in India, is in proportion to the population of the 
 United Kingdom, African and American colonies included, as 
 one is to 274. The population of India, then, instead of being 
 diflficult, is more easy to retain in subjection than that of any 
 other country existing, and, probably, than any country that 
 has ever existed in the records of history. 
 
 The facility of maintaining our dominion over Indi% in 
 truth, is a thing unquestionable. The docility of the great 
 body of the people, arising out of their singular institutions, 
 and the disunion, incoherence, and incongruity of the masses 
 of which the conquered inhabitants are composed, are, no 
 doubt, the chief causes of this facility ; but there is also another, 
 the great strength of our natural frontier. If we cast our eyes 
 over that frontier, we shall find it, not only encompassed in 
 every direction by the sea, or by mountains, forests, and rivers, 
 but protected from foreign aggression by the still stronger bar- 
 rier of universal weakness and barbarism on the part of our 
 native neighboui"s, — a weakness and a barbarism, indeed, so 
 great, that their excess alone, by tempting aggression on our 
 side, becomes, in reality, our only source of danger. 
 
 As connected with this subject, we may mention, among 
 the dangers conjured up to alarm us for the stability of our 
 Indian dominion, the apprehended increase of the mixed race. 
 A very few words will suffice for the refutation of this allega- 
 tion. The greater number of the half-castes, or, as they have 
 been recently called, Kurasians, are to be found in the Bengal 
 provinces. Now, the number of grown males of this descrip- 
 tion here is just 215, and even among these there is included 
 several of the most respectable of the class called Portuguese 
 native Christians. The genuine half-castes throughout India, 
 men, women, and children, we are convinced will be overrated 
 at one thousand. This is the formidable body that is to wrest 
 the dominion of a hundred millions of people from us ! 
 
 So much for the genuine half-castes, or immediate de- 
 scendants of an European parent with a native one. In 
 
 L
 
 74 
 
 Calcutta, the whole descendants of Europeans of every nation, 
 including those in the nearest, as well as in the remotest de- 
 grees, do not exceed five thousand persons. For all British 
 India, they would certainly be overrated at three times this 
 number. The natives converted to Christianity are numerous 
 in the Southern parts of the peninsula, but are docile, even 
 beyond the Hindoos themselves. 
 
 The restrictions of the East India Company have given 
 rise, in a great measure, to the class of Eurasians. Among the 
 British in India, there is a most extraordinary inequality 
 among the sexes. The women are certainly not in the pro- 
 portion of one to twenty of the opposite sex, and hence the 
 men form connexions with the females of the country. Yet 
 the number of the half-castes, small as it is, is either stationary 
 or decreasing : the females generally intennarry with Euro- 
 peans, and the offspring of this connexion is no longer reckoned 
 in the class. The men, especially those of the lower orders, 
 intennarry, or form connexion with native women, and the 
 offspring is frequently lost in the native Christian population. 
 The number of half-castes has also decreased of late years, 
 owing to the more frequent resort of European females to 
 India than heretofore. There is a natural repugnance in the 
 races of different colours to intermix ; or at least there is a 
 decided repugnance on the fairer side. Tiiis is a principle, 
 whatever may be the consequences, which, in all likelihood, 
 must long preserve the different races inhabiting India in a 
 great measure distinct. The prejudice of caste, with difference 
 of language and lineage, will tend to a similar effect. 
 
 It is singular, indeed, to remark how completely such dis- 
 tinctions are kept up. The Persees, or worshippers of fire, 
 fair and handsome amidst tlie squat and sooty population of 
 Bombay and Surat, are as unmixed as on the day they came 
 from Persia. The Afghan and Mogul Mahomed ans are un- 
 mixed ; the higher ranks of Hindoos (justly believed by 
 antiquarians to be colonists also) are unmixed. The different 
 nations of Hindoos never intermarry, and are perfectly dis- 
 tinct ; it is only among the very lowest classes that there is 
 much intermixture : all this, no doubt, throws a difficulty in 
 the way of establishing a good administration ; — it will prove 
 a complete obstacle, for ages, to the establishment of any 
 thing like a national government ; but in proportion as it does
 
 60, it is a secunly ftn- tlie domination of the most intelligent, 
 civilized, and, therefore, powerful class. 
 
 However little danger, present or iuture, we have to appre- 
 hend from the Eurasians, it is our duty to treat them with 
 fairness and justice. At present they are rigidly excluded 
 from all offices of trust, civil or military. From civil offices, 
 indeed, their exclusion is complete, and their highest promo- 
 tion in the military service is to the dignity of a sergeant or 
 drum-major! Their exclusion from trust in the country of 
 their birth, is unjust, ungenerous, and impolitic. They cannot, 
 indeed, overthrow our dominion, however we may maltreat 
 them, but the presence of a mass of discontented persons, as 
 they must necessaiily be, cannot but contribute, more or less, 
 to its insecurity. 
 
 The disabilities under which the descendants of Europeans, 
 by Indian mothers, labour, have all been created by the acts 
 of the East India Company, within the last five and forty years, 
 and have had their origin, like the restraints on British subjects 
 in general, and the exclusion of the native inhabitants of India 
 from places of honour or trust, in the principle of preserving 
 the monopoly of patronage entire. They are, in fact, in the 
 eye of the law, considered as natives, without enjoying all the 
 privileges of natives. Everywhere beyond the limits of the 
 principal towns, instead of being tried by British laws, they 
 are tried by the Mahomedan, as modified by the Honourable 
 Company. The liberal and enlightened conduct of His Ma- 
 jesty's Government, upon a recent occasion, is most strikingly, 
 and favourably contrasted with the policy of the East India 
 Company. By an Order in Council,* the disabilities to which 
 his Majesty's subjects, African, or of African descent, were 
 liable, in the island of Trinidad, (a colony under the exclusive 
 direction of the Crown,) arc for ever repealed and annulled, and 
 such persons are placed on a fair equality with their fellow- 
 subjects. While the Crown thus performs an act of justice to 
 the descendants of Spanish and African strangers, in a country 
 of recent acquisition, the East India Company disfranchises 
 the native inhabitants of India, and the immediate posterity of 
 British subjects, in territories of which we havje been more than 
 twice as long in possession. 
 
 • Order in Council, March 18lh, 1829.
 
 16 
 
 The natives converted to Christianity are still more harshly 
 treated than the immediate descendants of Europeans. Under 
 a Christian Government, they are seldom or ever employed in 
 a public capacity, in any part of India, and under the Madras 
 Government, are expressly excluded " by law" from such 
 humble employments as other natives are eligible to hold ! 
 
 From the confidence with which the arguments against 
 European settlement, as respects India, have been urged, one 
 might be almost tempted to believe that all experience was on 
 the side of the advocates of restriction ; and that the East 
 India Company was deterred, by some awful precedent, from 
 following the example of other people. Colonization has, 
 however, been pursued, even in India, not only with safety, but 
 with advantage, and that an advantage, too, invariably propor- 
 tioned to the extent to which it has been carried. The colo- 
 nists, in such cases, have not only produced no danger to the 
 mother country, but, in every emergency, proved its best sup- 
 port. The name of Portugal, from the feebleness of that 
 power in Europe, would hardly have been known in India in 
 the present day, had she not acted, from the very first, on the 
 principle of colonization and settlement. The consequence of 
 her having done so, however, is, that the Portuguese name and 
 language, and even Portuguese influence, are at present more 
 generally and widely diffused throughout the East, than those 
 of any other European nation. The free settlement of Euro- 
 peans has been acted upon in the Philippine Islands for about 
 four centuries, among a far less hospitable race than the Hin- 
 doos. It is not enough to say, in this case, that the practice 
 has been safe only ; the Spanish dominion could neither have 
 been established nor maintained without it ; the European 
 settlers not only preserve the country from insurrection, but 
 protect it from foreign aggression. It is their union and amal- 
 gamation with the natives of the country that has saved the 
 <lominion of the Philippines to Spain, even in her present state 
 of colonial weakness. 
 
 In tlie larger portion of the great island of Java, European 
 settlement has been tolerated for about two centuries, and 
 Dutch colonists hold great and extensive landed possessions. 
 This is just the part of the island where there has never been 
 any insurrection. On the othtT hand, insurrections and for- 
 midable rebellions have been frequent in ihose portions of
 
 / / 
 
 the country where European colonization has been forbidden 
 by law : nay, more, it is matter of notoriety, that the arbitrary 
 expulsion of European settlers, liolding leases of land, from 
 which the native proprietors were deriving signal advantage 
 in that interdicted portion, was one great cause of the present 
 ruinous war in the island. 
 
 The same principle has been acted on in Ceylon, with its 
 Hindoo, its Mahometlan, and its Cingalese population. When 
 we received over the government from the Dutch, eight out of 
 the twelve members of the council of government were colonial 
 landholders, men bred and born in the country. No sooner 
 did the administration fall into the hands of the East India 
 Company, than the danger of colonization was again conjured 
 up, and the usual prohibition duly enacted. His Majesty's 
 Goveniment, in humble imitation, continued it for a short 
 period, but, seemingly ashamed of such a piece of folly, took 
 oft' this prohibition in 1810, and still more completely in 1812.* 
 Some years after this a formidable insurrection took place in 
 the Candian provinces, where there were no European colo- 
 nists; if there had, most probably there would have been no 
 insurrection, or, at all events, that insurrection would not have 
 come upon the Government as it did, surprised and unprepared 
 The fourth assertion of the abettors of restriction is, — that if 
 we civilize the Hindoos, they will become enlightened, expel 
 us the country, and establish a native government. This 
 apprehension is utterly Turkish, but offensive as it is to good 
 taste and right feeling, we must reply to it. No doubt if the 
 Hindoos are to be arrested in their progress towards civiliza- 
 tion, and kept for ever in their present state of superstition, 
 feebleness, and debasement, the existing form of government 
 will answer the purpose well enough. But it is our duty to 
 
 • Proclamations of his Majesty's Government of Ceylon, datid Dec, 
 4th, ISIO, and July 21st, 1812. The liberal, safe, and manly policy 
 which dictated the measure described in the text, originated with Sir 
 Alexander Johnstone, at that time his Majesty's Chief Judge of Ceylon, 
 and First Member of Council. The Governor, and other members of 
 Council, concurred, and Sir A. Johnstone returned to England, with 
 full powers from his colleagues, to recommend the measure to liis 3Ia- 
 jcsty's Ministers. Our readers will recollect, that it is to the same gen- 
 tleman that India is indebted for the first introduction of jury trial, a 
 measure which has been found at once popular and efficient in the Island 
 of Ceylon.
 
 IS 
 
 improve them, let the consequences be what they may. We 
 are of opinion that these consequences will be auspicious, and 
 tend not only to increase the mass of human happiness, but 
 to strengthen and confirm our own dominion. It never 
 occurred to us to attempt the improvement of the Hindoos, 
 until 1813, although we had exercised dominion over them for 
 more than half a century. What we then did was but small, 
 and it did not originate with the rulers of the country, but in 
 the suggestions of private individuals. Out of a revenue of 
 sixteen millions sterling, the East India Company set aside 
 ten thousand pounds a year, as the statute, facetiously we 
 suppose, expresses it, — " for the revival and improvement of 
 literature, and the encouragement of the learned natives of 
 India, and for the introduction and promotion of a knowledge 
 of the sciences."* Our Indian subjects at the time were 
 reckoned fifty millions in number. The sum allotted, then, 
 by the bounty of the state, for the encouragement of literature, 
 ancient and modern, the encouragement of men of learning, 
 and the promotion of science, out of a revenue of sixteen mil- 
 lions, was at the moderate rate of the tithe of a farthing per 
 head ! An equal sum with that which is here dedicated to the 
 arts and sciences, among 50,000,000 of people, at the time of 
 the enactment, and now among some 90,000,000, is, in various 
 cases, given to an agent of the salt or opium monopoly, with- 
 out the least parade whatsoever, — without any special act of 
 Parliament. 
 
 It was not until eight years thereafter, however, that a 
 single step was taken to appropriate even this paltry sum to 
 its destination. The local government appears to have been 
 shamed into doing something about the year 1821, in con- 
 sequence of the extraordinary progress made by the Christian 
 missionaries, and other pious and benevolent individuals. A 
 few years earlier, the Government, not only did not encourage 
 useful education, but even made efforts to put it down. The 
 Serampore missionaries, whose labours have been since ac- 
 knowledged to have proved so useful and so safe, were obliged, 
 i n order to escape l)anishment, to fly for protection to a foreign 
 settlement, where they still continue to flourish. The British 
 Covernmonf even went the length of demanding the surrender 
 
 • 53 Geo. III. lap. 155, § 13.
 
 '{) 
 
 of tlieir persons, bul tlie fuieimi C«u\ernor liud tin; stnise, 
 humanity, and firmness to dicline compliance. 
 
 The Indian Ciovernment, while it seemed to have proscribed 
 European education, had, from an early period, given a certain 
 encouragement to Asiatic literature. There has, for example, 
 been long a Mahometlan and a Hindoo c(jllege at Calcutta, in 
 which the Arabic and Sanscrit languages are taught, together 
 with what is most absurdly termed — philosophy. The laws of 
 the Mahomedans, the most intolerant bigots of all Asia, are 
 administered in our courts of justice. Persian, the language of 
 tlie bigots in question, understood neither by the people nor 
 by their rulers — equally foreign to both parties — is preferred to 
 English, as the language of the courts of law, of the public 
 accounts, and of dijjlomacy. The Mahomedans, like all other 
 conquerors of ancient or modern times, imposed their own 
 laws, and their own language on the conquered people. To 
 establish our power, we pursue the very opposite course. One 
 might almost suppose that the real intention of such patronage 
 to dead or foreign barbarous dialects, to the exclusion of our 
 own language, was to keep all parties, not only in utter igno- 
 rance of each other, but in ignorance of every thing which an 
 uncivilized might learn from a civilized people — of all that 
 might tend to improve the character or happiness of our sub- 
 jects. By such a course of conduct, we make a mystery of 
 Government, — we convert it into a craft. Shall we not, in 
 this particular, apj)ear to impartial observers, as behaving more 
 like the wily priesthood of some ugly superstition, which 
 wraps its dogmas in a recondite language, the better to secure 
 its own power and pretensions, than the enlightened con- 
 querors of a great counti'v ?* 
 
 • " The task of enlightening the studious youth of such a nation 
 would seem to be a tolerably straight forward one. But though, for the 
 college iu Calcutta, (not Bishop's Cullcge remember, but the Vidalaya, 
 or Hindoo College,) an expensive set of instruments has been sent out, 
 and it seems intended that the natural sciences should be studied there, 
 the managers of the present institution take eare that their buys should 
 have as little time as possible for sudi jiursuits, by requiring from them 
 all, without exception, a laborious study of Sanscrit, and all the useless, 
 and worse than useless literature of their ancestors. In Benares, how- 
 ever, I found, in the institution supported by Government, a professor 
 lecturing on astronomy after the system of Ptolemy and .Albunazar, 
 while one of the most forward boys was at the pains of casting my 
 horoscope, and the majority of the school were toiling at Sanscrit
 
 so 
 
 There are some wlio contend that the culture and im- 
 provement of the native lang'uages, and not tlie instruction of 
 the Indians in the language of the conquerors, is the proper 
 channel through which they are to be civilized. If the Indians 
 and their invaders were, in point of improvement, on any tei-ms 
 of equality, — if they belonged even to the same race of the 
 human species, — if the Indian languages were one instead of 
 many, this opinion might be entitled to attention. When 
 there is any approximation in the condition of the conquer- 
 ing and the conquered parties, and where there exists no 
 repugnance in the genius of their languages, the usual and 
 natural result is the formation of a third language through 
 the amalgamation of the dialects of both parties. This cannot 
 easily happen in the case of the English language, and the 
 dialects of India, because their characters are as remote 
 from each other, as are the manners of those who speak them, 
 without producing a barbarous jargon. But if we were in 
 reality to discard our own language as the paramount one, 
 to which of the thirty dialects spoken in India should we 
 give the preference, — which ought we to adopt as the na- 
 tional speech ? Surely the language of a civUized people is 
 to be preferred to any of these barbarous tongues; a lan- 
 guage which has already the sanction of authority, of example, 
 and of fashion ; a language which is the road to preferment 
 and emolument.* In our situation to reject the English Ian- 
 grammar. And j^et the day before, in the same holy city, I had visited 
 another college, founded lately by a wealthy Hindoo banker, and intrusted 
 by him to the management of the Church Missionary Society, in which, 
 besides a grammatical knowledge of the Hindostanee language, as well 
 as Persian and Arabic, the senior boys could pass a good examination 
 in English grammar, in Hume's History of England, Joyce's Scientific 
 Dialogues, the use of the globes, and the principal facts and moral pre- 
 cepts of the Gospel, most of them writing beautifully in the Persian, and 
 very tolerably in the English character, and excelling most boys I have 
 met with in tlie accuracy and readiness of their arithmetic." — Bishop 
 Hvbcr's Journal, vol. ii, page 386. 
 
 • Among the lower orders the same feeling shows itself more bene- 
 ficially, in a growing neglect of caste, in not merely a willingness, but 
 an anxiety to send their children to our schools, and a desire to learn 
 and speak English, which, if properly encouraged, might, I verily be- 
 lieve, in fifty years' time, make our language what tlie Oordoo, or court 
 and camp language of the country (the Hindostanee) is at present. — 
 JJettrr's Journal, vol. ii, page ."JOG.
 
 81 
 
 ;giiajfe, and to adopt, instead uf it, one kI the barbaroii* and 
 uncultivated dialects of Hindostan, seems to lis to be little 
 better than wilfully preferring a defecii\e ma«liine to a perfect 
 one, and coolly insisting in doing so, that the desired end would 
 be accoin[)lished more speedily and efteetually with the first 
 than with the last. In a word, we do not hesitate to say, that 
 the endeavour to civilize the Indians, through the medium of 
 their own imperfect antl defective languages, seems an attempt 
 about as wise as would be a scheme to maintain our dominion 
 over them by relinquishing the use of fire arms and the bay- 
 onet, and, like some of the rudest of themselves, having recourse 
 to clubs, slings, bows, and arrows.* 
 
 No assertion is more frequent with the advocates of restric- 
 tion, tlian that the Hindoos are a people unchangeable in their 
 manners and oj)inions, and having a strong repugnance to all 
 that is foreign, — to every thing like change, necessarily includ- 
 ing every thing like improvement. The late Sir Thos. Munro, 
 a most distinguished public officer, expressed this opinion in 
 an unqualified manner, in his evidence at the bar of the House 
 of Commons, in 1813. Nothing can be more natural than that 
 such notions should be entertained by a few solitary Euro- 
 peans, living amongst millions of Hindoos, or of any other 
 people whatever. All advance in civilization is slow, and 
 nearly imperceptible, and no wonder that an isolated observer, 
 however great his natural acuteness, seeing the Hindoos sub- 
 jected to no material cause of change, should be re^dy to 
 pronounce their manners and character immutable. A iew 
 scattered Englishmen, living in Russia, in the commencement 
 of the reign of Peter the Great, would have pronounced the 
 Muscovites as unchangeable as the Hindoos are now pro- 
 nounced to be, and, if they did not reason from analogy, but 
 took it into their heads that Muscovites differed morally, if not 
 
 • The Chinese appear to be tlie only people upon whom their con- 
 querors have not imposed their language, or whose language has not 
 been altered by admixture with that of their invaders. The reason is 
 obvious enough. The conquered party in this case was far more civi- 
 lized than the conquering ; they were inferior to them only in military 
 prowess. Each side has here preserved its own language, while the 
 more civilized has imposed its laws, religion, and in some respect ita 
 manners, upon the less civilized. Even the language of the subjugated 
 party has become the general language of business.
 
 82 
 
 physically, tiom all the rest of mankind, they would have been 
 utterly incapable of forming any rational conception of the 
 vast progress which the Russians have made within the last 
 century. Such observers would have pronounced, without 
 hesitation, that a Russian would for ever continue to tremble 
 * at the sight ot a Sw ede, that Russians of rank would, to the 
 latest time, prefer quass and votka to burgundy and cham- 
 paigne; cabbage and grease to French cookery; that a Russian 
 nobleman would as soon have parted with his beard as a Per- 
 sian ;_ and that his head, to the latest posterity, must continue 
 as " populous " as Gibbon rei)resents that of the Emperor 
 Julian. Sir Thomas Munro's observations applied to some 
 thirteen millions and a half of Indians,* among whom there 
 were, exclusive of civil and military servants, certainly not a 
 hundred free settlers. As long as we take the utmost pains to 
 exclude all causes of change and improvement, no doubt there 
 will be neither change nor improvement-! Admit these causes, 
 and the Hindoos will be found as improveable as other races. 
 'J'he changes, and even improvements which the Mahomedans 
 effected, are alone sufficient proof that the Hindoos are neither 
 unalterable nor unimproveable. Every where they improved 
 the government, the laws, the arts, and even the literature of 
 the country. We are compelled at length, however reluctantly, 
 to abandon our extravagant and fanciful notions of ancient 
 Hindoo civilization, and to come to the rational conclusion, 
 that the Hindoos were always inferior to their conquerors, of 
 whatever denomination : these conquerors effected all, in im- 
 
 ♦ The population of the Madras Presidency, according to a census 
 taken a few years back, was found to amount to 13,508,335 souls. 
 
 f " Nor liavc their religious prejudices, and the unchangeableness of 
 their habits, been less exaggerated. Some of the best informed of their 
 nation, with whom I have conversed, assure me that half their most re 
 markable customs of civil and domestic life, are borrowed from their 
 Mahomedan conquerors ; and at present there is an obvious and increas- 
 ing disposition to imitate the English in every thing, which has alreadv 
 led to very remarkable changes, and will, probably, to still more inipor 
 tant. The wealthy natives now all affect to have their houses decorated 
 with Corinthian pillars, and filled with English furniture. They drive 
 the best horses, and the most dashing carri»ges in Calcutta. Many of 
 them speak Engli.sh fluently, and are toleral)ly read in English litera- 
 ture."' — Jhbtr^s Juurnal, vol. ii, j). 306.
 
 83 
 
 proving them, tluit was within the scope of I heir ability; but 
 still, as they wore not a very powerful, or a very civilized 
 people themselves, they are far indeed from havinir effected 
 what is in our power to accomplish. 
 
 The great majority of British sojourners in India are in the 
 Bengal provinces, and a vast majority of these within the 
 comparatively narrow limits of the town of Calcutta : the 
 whole number of such sojourners does not exceed three thou- 
 sand persons, of which we compute that about two-thirds are 
 inhabitants of Calcutta ; the remaining third, fjispersed and 
 powerless, being scattered over the nearly tiOO.OOO srjuare 
 miles beyond its limits. It is, therefore, in the European 
 towns alone, and especially in Calcutta, that there exists any 
 thing like an efficient cause for change and improvement; and, 
 considering the smallness of the means, change and improve- 
 ment have, since the era of the free trade, the short compass 
 of fourteen years, been great and remarkable. 
 
 One striking example may be given. Tlie native inhabi- 
 tants of Calcutta having been admitted two years ago to sit as 
 petty jurymen in criminal cases, an official list of qualified 
 persons was duly published. The qualification, in respect to 
 education, was, such a knowledge of the English language as 
 should enable the party to follow the judge in his charge ; and 
 in point of property, an estate of the value of £500 sterling, 
 or the payment of a house rent of £6 per annum. Persofis 
 possessing an estate of the value of £20,000 were exempted 
 from serving on common juries. The lists, admitted to be 
 imperfect, showed eighty-four qualified Indians, of whom no 
 less than fi fly-seven were men possessing an estate of £20,000 
 or upwards. 
 
 From this simple fact, several most interesting and im- 
 portant deductions may be drawn. Not many years ago, even 
 a miserable smattering of the English language was confined 
 to a few profligate persons, whose interests brought them into 
 immediate connexion with Europeans for no good purposes. 
 We have here persons representing property worth, at the 
 lowest possible estimate, £1,110,000, possessing not only a 
 knowledge of the English language, hut sufficient F',uroj)can 
 education to enable them to com[)rehcnd the charge of a 
 British judge to a jury. 01' the whole naiiiber of persofiB
 
 84 
 
 competent to serve on juries, more than sixty-seven in a 
 hundred are of this wealthy class, showing pretty clearly that 
 it is the higher and not the lower, or even middling orders, 
 that are most disposed to receive European education. In the 
 list of native jurors, there is not to be found a single Mahome- 
 dan name, either of Hindostan, Persia, or Arabia : the whole 
 16 composed of the alleged unchangeable Hindoos. Further, 
 the great majority of these wealthy persons are Brahmins, and 
 all of them men of high caste. The different reception which 
 the jury bill received at the commercial settlement of Calcutta, 
 where there is much intercourse with Europeans, and at the 
 uncommercial settlement of Madras, where there is very little, 
 ought not to be passed over. The natives of Madras held 
 meetings, and declared that it was repugnant to their habits, 
 institutions, religious prejudices, and inclinations, to sit on 
 juries. One niiuht almost suppose that the advocates of re- 
 striction in Europe had been reading them a lesson. Tlie 
 natives of Calcutta received the boon with satisfaction, and 
 set about preparing jjetitions to Parliament, praying to be 
 admitted to the privilege of sitting on grand, as well as petty, 
 juries. In the course of the present session these petitions 
 have been laid before Parliament. 
 
 The number of schools instituted at Calcutta and its vici- 
 nity, for the instruction of natives in English education, 
 during the last few yeare, is extraordinary. In the town, 
 there are twenty private religious, or benevolent institutions 
 engaged, directly or indirectly, in the promotion of European 
 education. In some of these, natives of the highest rank and 
 greatest wealth have associated themselves with Europeans. 
 Five years ago there were, in Calcutta or its neighbourhood, 
 forty-three private schools, for the instruction of the Indians 
 in English. As to disinclination to European learning, this 
 is wholly out of the question. On the contrary, both the in- 
 terests and the practical good sense of the natives lead them 
 to give it a decided preference, notwithstanding some foolish 
 attempts made to restrain them, by diverting their principal 
 attention to the barren field of their own languages, literature, 
 and philosophy ! Fa en the Hindoo religion seems to be 
 giving way before the light of reason ; and it is Avell it should, 
 for, independent of its spiritual consequences, the influence
 
 S6 
 
 which this degradinpf superstition exercises over civil soriefy, 
 is pernicious and demoralizing, far beyond that of any other 
 known form of worsliip.* 
 
 English laws and institutions, at least such as are suitable 
 and rational, are equally popular with the Hindoos, notwith- 
 suinding the pains taken at one period to convince the English 
 public to the contrary, and to make them believe that they were 
 unalterably atUiched to their own. What but this attachment 
 has peopled the towns of Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay ? 
 What but this partiality makes a real property in Calcutta 
 worth twenty years' purchase, when in the provinces it is not 
 worth five ? What but this makes a Hindoo contented with 
 an interest of five or six per cent, for his money in the capital, 
 when he might receive in the provinces twenty or twenty-four ? 
 The Indians, in short, are thoroughly imbued with a just 
 sense of the advantages of being considered Biitish subjects, 
 and of living under the protection of English law.f When 
 the natives, living within the pale of the English law, contrast 
 their own prosperity and security with the poverty, disorder, 
 and anarchy of the provinces, how should they feel otherw ise ? 
 
 Some eminent persons have expressed an opinion that the 
 Hindoos stood in no need of improvement, or at all events 
 that they were not likely to be bettered by any intercourse 
 with us. This wanton hypothesis is fortunately nearly obsolete. 
 
 • " But of all idolatries which I have ever read or heard of, the 
 religion of the Hindoos, in which I have taken some pains to inform 
 myself, really appears to me the worst, hoth in the degrading notions 
 which it gives of the Deity ; in the endless round of its burdensome 
 ceremonies, which occupy the time and distract the thoughts, without 
 either instructing or interesting its votaries ; in the filthy acts of un- 
 cleanness and cruelty, not only permitted, but enjoined, and inseparably 
 interwoven with those ceremonies; in the system of castes, a system 
 which tends, more than any thing else the devil has yet invented, to 
 destroy the feelings of general benevolence, and to make nine tenths of 
 mankind the hopeless slaves of the remainder; and in the total absence 
 of any popular system of morals, or any single lesson which the people 
 at large ever hear, to live virtuously, and do good to each other." — 
 Bishop Hv/ht's Journal, vol. ii. jiage 384. 
 
 t " .And it may be relied on, that tiie natives in generHl. but more 
 particularly the Hindoos of all ranks, arc proud of the distinction, 
 (British subjects under the protection of the laws of England) and 
 zealous for its full extension to ihem." — Cliie(' Justice EasC* frttcr to the 
 I'.arl of Lircrjmol.
 
 86 
 
 If it be right, that u mischievous, degrading, and often a blood- 
 thirsty superstition should be supplanted by rational religion, 
 — that knowledge should supersede ignorance, — that feebleness 
 and sloth should give way to energy and industry, — that 
 poverty should be exchanged for wealth, — then the Hindoos 
 stand in need of improvement, and it is our duty not to refuse 
 it to them. 
 
 We repeat, that the only suitable and efficient means of 
 improving our conquered subjects, — the only means by which 
 one people ever conferred lasting and solid improvement upon 
 another, — is a free and unshackled intercovirse between the two 
 parties. Will the stability of our dominion be impaired by the 
 improvement of the Hindoos ? Poor and ignorant nations are 
 always the most liable to delusion, and the most subject to in- 
 surrection ; wealthy and intelligent ones the least so. In pro- 
 portion, therefore, as the Hindoos become instructed, and are 
 rescued from their present poverty, they will only be the more 
 easy of management. This easy management, of course, sup- 
 poses the introduction of laws and institutions suitable to, and 
 keeping pace with, their advancement in civilization. They 
 cannot always be governed as mere helots ; nor would a nation 
 of helots be worth the governing : they must be gradually, and 
 as they improve, admitted to a share in their own administra- 
 tion. If this principle be prudently and liberally acted upon, 
 we may maintain our Indian dominion for many centuries. 
 Sooner or later, be our administration good or bad, and soonest 
 unquestionably in the latter case, we must lose it; for a relation 
 which separates the governors from the governed, by a naviga- 
 tion of 15,000 miles, (the latter being to the former in the 
 numerical proportion af seven to one,) cannot be a very natural 
 or a very useful connexion to either party. In the meanwhile, 
 such of the Hindoos as have partaken of liuropean c<^Iucation, 
 are not ambitious, — they are a frugal, and rather a mercenary 
 people, with very little disposition to engage in politics. 
 
 If the account which we have given of the predeliction of 
 the Hindoos and other Indians, for our language, literature, 
 useful institutions, and knowledge, be just, (and we have full 
 reliance upon its being so,) every Indian who acquires an 
 Rnglish (Hlucation becomes, of necessity, a convert to what 
 may be called our political opinions, and consequently an 
 additional support to our dominion. Should the natives
 
 ilbandon their (uvn superstitions, (tlu* nuitter is already in 
 prog^ress,) and adopt our religious opinions, this will be an 
 additional tie. 'J'lieir conversion, whether civil or religious, 
 must necessarily he ^'radual, and will be the safer and more 
 I'thcient for heinjj so, but every convert of either description 
 will bo an additional stay to the support of our dominion. 
 Every conqust of this description, which we make upon the 
 province of ionorance and dissatisfaction, will be a fresh acces- 
 sion to our own streni^th. The result, hitherto at least, has 
 been exactly what we are describinjj it. Those among the 
 natives who understand our language and manners, and whom 
 experience has taught to appreciate our institutions, are in- 
 variably found to be the most faithful of our subjects ; indeed, 
 perhaps the only portion of our Indi;in subjects at all attached 
 to our rule, — the only portion, in truth, who have any good 
 reason for it. This was felt and acknowledged during the 
 recent contest with the Birmans, and the insurrection of the 
 Jats. The Government, indeed, was so confident of the fidelity 
 of the great population of Calcutta, where those advantages 
 are chiefly felt and appreciated, that it did not scruple to 
 send away the principal militaiy force to the seat of war, 
 abandoning the capital with its three hundred thousand in- 
 habitants to the protection of a few companies of European 
 infantry, and the good-will of its inhabitants. A separation 
 between us and the Hindoos cannot reasonably be looked for 
 until the great majority of the latter think, speak, and act, — 
 in a word, are as wise as their masters ; an event which, with 
 modesty and caution be it spoken, cannot be expected to take 
 place under many centuries. 
 
 If we had no other object in view than to maintain an 
 easy rule over the Hindoos, it would be our duty to civilize 
 and improve them ; for there is no axiom in political science 
 riiore true than the one which we have already hinted at, — 
 that prosperous and industrious communities are the most 
 easy to govern, and poor and ignorant ones the most prone to 
 revolt, and the most obstinate in resistance when they have 
 revolted. Of this principle the history of the world is full of 
 illustrations. In the progress of her conquests, Rome found 
 the most civilized nations the easiest to subdue, and the most 
 easy to retain in obedience when subjugated, as in the case of 
 Egypt and of Greece, with the colonies of the latter in Italy and
 
 88 
 
 Asia Minor. She found the barbarous or savage tribes of Gaui, 
 Germany, Pannonia, Britain, Africa, and Arabia the most 
 difficult to conquer, ^aud the most prone to revolt when con- 
 quered. The two most wealthy, and upon the whole the two 
 most civilized countries of Asia, (China and Hindostan) have 
 invariably been ibund the most easy to conquer, and the least 
 liable to insurrection. China has been peaceably governed for 
 ages by a Tartar dynasty, while the poor and turbulent tribes 
 of shepherds, from whom that very dynasty sprung, and who 
 are still ruled by it, have been in a state of repeated and for- 
 midable revolt against it. We ourselves have found the 
 wealthiest parts of India the most easy conquests. The easy- 
 won battle of Plassy gave us the dominion of Bengal, and the 
 adjacent provinces, with twent}'^ millions of subjects, among 
 whom, in a period of sixty-eight years, there has not been an 
 instance of revolt — scarcely, indeed, of a tumult worth naming. 
 On the other hand, our conquests of poorer countries have 
 been attended witli difficulty, — have often been followed by 
 insurrection, and have been hardly worth keeping when made. 
 We have examples of this in Malabar, in Nepaul, and in our 
 recent contest with the Burmese. In the progress of Euro- 
 pean conquests among the Eastern islands, we find interesting 
 illustrations of the same principle. Java, the only rich, 
 civilized, and populous island of the Archipelago, is the only 
 considerable one of the wliole group which has been completely 
 subjugated by European arms. In the course of two centuries, 
 the Dutch and the English have hardly even made an im- 
 pression on the great, but comparatively, uncivilized islands 
 of Sumatra, Celebes, and Borneo. Their ephemeral conquests 
 in these have been followed by repeated revolts. Even the 
 petty spice islands have not been subjugated but with the 
 utmost difficulty, and their history is remarkable for the 
 frequency and pertinacity of their rebellions. The conquest 
 of Java itself, of which the inhabitants are much less civilized 
 than those of our Indian possessions, has cost the labour of 
 two centuries. The Spaniards have been for about four cen- 
 turies engaged in attempting the conquest of the Philippines 
 and adjacent, islands, and are as yet far from having accom- 
 plished their object Where conquest has actually been 
 ert'^icted by them, it has not been accomplished by the des- 
 j>otism of ."^jjiiin, or the valour of the Spanish armies, or the
 
 .^9 
 
 •kill of Spanish fiinctionaiies, or llic maj;ic ol' Spanisli mono- 
 polies, but by the quiet, yet eilicarious operation of the prin- 
 ciple of colonization, — through the inlUience of the lanj^uas^e, 
 the religion, the manners, and the knowledge of Europe. The 
 history of the East aftbrd>; no example of reidstance to Euro- 
 pean arms more memorable than that (ji" the uncivilized and 
 scanty population of Ceylon. While the Portuguese made, 
 for so small a nation, ample conquests on the continent of 
 India, and while their naval power was paramount from Africa 
 to Japan, they were foiled in every attempt to conquer the 
 poor and abject inhabitants of Ceylon. The Dutch, after 
 many years' efforts, succeeded no better. Even the English 
 were full twenty years in possession of the sovereignty of the 
 coast before they effected the conquest of the whole island, — 
 of an island containing about one-twentieth part of the popu- 
 lation of Bengal, which was won by a single battle in the very 
 infancy of our power. That conquest, too, was hardly com- 
 pleted when a most formidable insurrection broke out, which 
 nothing short of the direct efforts of the mother country, and the 
 powerful aid drawn from the British possessions on the Conti- 
 nent, was able to quell. Similar illustrations may be drawn 
 from the history of America. Compare the easy and perma- 
 nent submission of the Mexicans, Peruvians, and other prin- 
 cipal nations, with the brave resistance, often ending only with 
 extermination, of the smaller tribes of savages of the same 
 continent. 
 
 But if the resistance of n.ltioils, who have little property, 
 be obstinate, and their insurrections formidable, the revolt of 
 people who have no property at all, is still more to be appre- 
 hended. The insurrections, most dangerous to the Roman 
 power, were not those of revolted colonies, or conquered 
 nations, but of slaves and gladiators. The revolt of the slaves 
 of St. Domingo is an equally strong case. Embracing a 
 favourable moment, and favoured, indeed, by climate and by 
 distance, they succeeded in securing a national independence 
 against all the efforts of the two most powerful and civilized 
 nations of Europe. Had the fine island of St. Domingo, 
 instead of containing a scanty population of African slaves, 
 been peopled with five or six millions of Hindoos, who, that 
 knows the latter, can doubt but that it would, down to this 
 day, have been a French, or at least an English colony, ahd 
 
 N
 
 90 
 
 perad venture, in the latter case, a preserve of patronage to 
 some " Honourable Company of Merchants trading to the 
 West Indies," proclaiming the dangers of colonization, and 
 insisting upon the certain advantages that would accrue to the 
 British nation, if the Legislature would but confide to it the 
 exclusive right of supplying the lieges with rum, coffee, and 
 muscovadoes ! 
 
 It is very true that there are other elements besides the 
 mere wealth or poverty of nations, — besides their knowledge or 
 their ignorance, which may materially affect the facility or 
 difficulty of subduing or governing them. The seat of the 
 most civilized nations will commonly be in open plains tra- 
 versed by rivers, and this locality necessarily affords facilities, 
 both for subduing them and retaining them in subjection. The 
 seats of barbarous people, on the other hand, will often be in 
 mountains, fastnesses, and forests, affording obstacles to the 
 invader, and throwing difficulties in the way of retaining the 
 conquered party in subjection. A civilized people, again, will 
 afford the invader the resources calculated to maintain them- 
 selves in subjection, while the circumstances of a barbarous 
 people will necessarily deny them. It is needless to say, that 
 we make no reference to the case of civilized nations possess- 
 ing national independence, civil liberty, and high intelligence. 
 There are none such to be found in the East, nor are there 
 likely to be for ages. Our posterity, four or five centuries 
 hence, may have to provide for such a contingency, but it is 
 surely not our business, as an honest people, deliberately to 
 obstruct the progress of civilization from a remote apprehen- 
 sion of its occurrence. 
 
 There is one argument which has been used against the 
 free settlement of Englishmen in India that we have not yet 
 noticed, but which richly deserves exposure. It has been said 
 that the natives ought to be patronised and protected — mean- 
 ing protected from British emigrants; and that, with this view, 
 all intercourse with them ought to be confined to the public 
 functionaries of the Government. It has even been asserted that 
 in all parallel cases, nations with despotic governments have 
 been found to make the best masters, and nations with free in- 
 stitutions the very worst. Without hesitation we engage to 
 prove that this doctrine is contradicted l)y all history, and that 
 the very reverse of it is strictly true, without an exception.
 
 91 
 
 We ask, in the first place, what the leuder \s oulcl think of a 
 project for civilizing the Irish, based on the principle of ex- 
 cluding Englishmen, or the descendants of Englishmen, from 
 improving the soil of Ireland, — based on placing all commer- 
 cial intercourse with England under severe restrictions, — and 
 based on confining the whole intercourse between the Irish and 
 English nations to the judicial officers, constables, tax-gatherers, 
 and tithe-proctors temporarily nominated by the latter ? Such 
 a scheme would be quite perfect, if the object was to keep the 
 Irish in inextricable barbarism and certain misery ; and yet it 
 is a fair parallel of the project of the East India Company for 
 civilizing the Hindoos, for securing their happiness, and im- 
 proving their condition. 
 
 The proojess of nations in valuable improvement and 
 effectual civilization has never been brought about in any age 
 or climate, except through an intercourse with strangers, — 
 operating most beneficially through commerce, immigration, 
 and peaceable settlement, but also operating beneficially, even 
 through conquest itself. Primitive civilization has been con- 
 fined to a very few spots of the globe. Wherever it has existed, 
 it will be found, when abandoned to its own efforts, immature 
 and insipid. It is the forest fruit tree transferred to the orchard, 
 but of which, while denied the benefit of grafting, no care can 
 improve the fruit. We have only to refer for proof to the 
 civilization of the Hindoos themselves, especially where there 
 has been the least of admixture with strangers, — to the civiliza- 
 tion of ancient Egypt, — of Assyria, — of Arabia, before the time 
 of Mahomed, — of ancient Persia, — of China, — and of Peru and 
 Mexico, before the Spanish invasion. In all these countries des- 
 potism was established, — the people were slaves, — society made 
 a certain progress, and then it stood still for ages, apparently 
 incapable of moving onwards. Wherever civilization has strack 
 a vigorous root, and produced wholesome and mature fruit, 
 it will invariably be found to have been brought about by an ad- 
 mixture with strangers, — in short, by the ingraftment of exotic 
 improvement on the rude stock of domestic acquisition. The 
 Greeks were barbarians, until their intercourse with Italians, w ith 
 Egyptians, with Persians, and even with Indians. The Romans 
 were a rude people until their collision with strangers ; they 
 chiefly owed their civilization to their admixture %vith the 
 Greeks. The Western nations of ancient Europe owed almost
 
 f>2 
 
 every thing to their subjugation by Rome, and the planting- 
 amonii- them of Roman colonies. The nations in the immedi- 
 ate neighbourhood of China have, at one time or another, been 
 conquered by that people, who settled among them, ccwnmuni- 
 cated to them their language, lau^s, arts, and customs. In pro- 
 portion as Chinese conquest and Chinese intermixture has 
 taken place, will these nations be found improved ; and it is a 
 conclusive fact, that the few tribes excluded from this advart- 
 tage, continue to the present day in a savage state. The nations 
 bordering upon Hindostan are civilized, or otherwise, just in 
 proportion to the degree in which they have intennixed with 
 the Hindoos, or been isolated from them. The Hindoos them- 
 selves, again, have been improved by an admixture with Tar- 
 tars, Persians, and Arabs, as is sufficiently attested by the 
 disappearance of human sacrifices, and other atrocities, of the 
 existence of which, and in times not very remote, their own 
 writings, if good for nothing else, afford sufficient evidence. 
 The Arabs, left for ages to themselves before the time of 
 Mahomed, continued in a stationary condition, but made a 
 sudden start in civilization as soon as they went abroad, and 
 came into collision with strangers. The intermixture of these 
 Arabs with Persians and Tartars, through conquests made 
 upon the latter, improved the Persians and Tartais. In the 
 great Eastern Archipelago, the Hindoos and the Arabs, each in 
 their turn, have improved the inhabitants. That improve- 
 ment has just been in proportion to the commerce held with 
 these strangers, and where that commerce has not taken place 
 at all, the Islanders are either cowering savages, or ferocious 
 cannibals. 
 
 Our own country is an example not less instructive. What 
 would the inhabitants of the British isles themselves have been 
 at this tlay, had the Romans forborne to invade our country, — 
 had they left our ancestors in undisputed possession of their 
 frcectom, tlieir painted skins, and their human sacrifices ? Has 
 civilization not advanced amongst us with every new admix- 
 ture with strangers, whether lioman, Saxon, Danish, or Nor- 
 man i' and this, too, although the intermixture was accompanied 
 on all these occasions by violence, the very occu])aiits of the soil 
 being often expelled from their possessions. In later times, and 
 in a diffo'.cnt form, we have derived abundant advantages from 
 the sctlhmenl of foreigners amongst us: we are under serious
 
 m 
 
 obligation!?, on tliis lio;i<l, to .lews, Flemings, and Lombards. 
 But surely all this is too obvious to be insisted upon. The 
 only wonder is how any man of sense shoukl have thought o( 
 making the Hindoos, in their relation to us, the sole exception 
 to a principle which has always embraced, and still continues 
 to embrace, all the rest of mankind. Are the English and the 
 Hindoos the only two people to which society, in the course 
 of thirty ages, and amidst all her freaks, has given birth, who 
 are wholly unfit to be entrusted to a social intercourse with 
 each other ? 
 
 We are next to examine, briefly, the question, whether in 
 reference to our Indian administration, a free, or a despotic 
 form of government, is the most likely to conduce to the im- 
 provement and happiness of our Indian subjects, for even such 
 a cfuestion has been mooted. It has been distinctly asserted 
 that the Indians would havi; been better treated under the 
 subjects of a despotic, than of a free government. History has 
 been appealed to in support of this hypothesis, which, not- 
 withstanding the authority of Montesquieu, and its recent 
 revival by a distinguished and experienced member of the 
 British Legislature, we do not hesitate to pronounce a mere 
 paradox, and a paradox, too, at direct variance with all 
 authentic experience having any legitimate reference whatever 
 to the question at issue.* The free states of Greece and Italy 
 
 * " He wished he could agree with his Right Honourable Friend (Sir 
 James Mackintosh) in what had fallen from him on the subjeet of the 
 intercourse between the inhabitants of India and the Europeans. He 
 was sorry to say, if Uc looked back to all history, if he investigated the 
 character and conduct of his own countrymen, that he was obliged to 
 come to this conclusion, that the more free the government was at home, 
 tiic more persons who had been used to such a government, held others, 
 who had not the hajipiness to enjoy the same privileges, in contempt, — 
 tlie more they abused their feelings, and despised aconditlim which they 
 ought rather to commiserate. Though this might not be, as he darcA 
 say, a common doctrine, yet, certainly, he held it. He did believe that 
 if India were subjeet to persons who had been under a des])()tic govern- 
 ment at home, they would be treated much better tlian by those who had 
 enjoyed the blessings of a free government. In the minds of the latter, 
 the condition of the i>eople iu India would be sure to generate contempt. 
 Look at the Spartan government ; was there ever a more free government ? 
 Were there ever more harsh or more cruelly severe masters than the 
 Spartans? L'jok at home, and tlicy would find the same thing to have 
 been the case there. Hi periectiv ronturrcd with the doctrine of his
 
 94 
 
 treated the nations which they conquered generally with 
 barbarity. By the laws of war in ancient times, prisoners 
 Avcre either put to death, or doomed to perpetual slavery. 
 They escaped one or other of these lots, only when they were 
 too numerous, and when, therefore, it was too dangerous for 
 the conqueror to carry the law into effect ; or possibly in some 
 cases, when the latter might have the wisdom to discover that 
 it was more profitable to protect than to exterminate or dis- 
 franchise. The despotic states of antiquity followed the same 
 course as free nations, and the humanity of the Persians was 
 not a whit more distinguished than that of the Greeks and 
 Romans. All this then proves nothing, except that the 
 nations of antiquity throughout were, in this particular at 
 least, mere barbarians. All barbarous nations of modern times 
 follow precisely the same course as those of antiquity. In the 
 wars carried on between the Birmans and Siamese, captives of 
 rank who cannot work, and who might intrigue, are put to 
 death, and the lower orders are condemned to slavery. The 
 Chinese, and people of Hindostan being somewhat more 
 civilized, treat their prisoners somewhat better. The nearer 
 nations are to each other, and the smaller the tribe; the more 
 violent is the collision between them, the more rancorous and 
 inveterate their hostility, and consequently the severer the lot 
 of the conquered party The contest in such a case becomes a 
 kind of family feud. The most remarkable example of this 
 description, and one often quoted, as an illustration of the 
 misconduct of freemen towards their dependents, is that of the 
 Spartans to the helots. Two small neighbouring nations of 
 Greece have a quarrel : the one conquers the other, and 
 provoked by repeated revolts, dooms the conquered party to 
 perpetual slavery. The conquerors in this case were, even in 
 comparison with the rest of their countrymen, a fierce and 
 uncivilized people, remarkable only for their courage and their 
 love of liberty. Now, we seriously ask what possible bearing 
 
 Right Honourable Friend, that it was wise to blend the conquerors with 
 the conquered ; but the system which liad been hitherto pursued would, 
 under the course pointed out by his Right Honourable Friend, be ex- 
 tremely unsafe, until years of experience and rejjaration had undone the 
 mischief that liad already been effected." — Sjwrch of the Right Honour- 
 nhlc Charlis Hi/nn, f)i his place in Pajliamcnt, June Mlh, 1828 — Timet 
 Newspaper.
 
 9'} 
 
 the case of two petty nei^liltouring tribes of ancient Greece, the 
 one treating- the other with a degree of rigour even beyond the 
 practice of the age, can have upon that of modern Britain and 
 modem India, separated from each other by half tlie circum- 
 ference of the globe, and whose joint numbers probably exceed 
 in a fifty-fold proportion that of all Greece put together ? 
 
 Hostile political factions, even in the freest and most polished 
 states of ancient Greece, often treated each other worse than 
 the Spaitans did the helots. They proscribed, banished, extir- 
 pated one another ; but as well might this be quoted as an ar- 
 gument against liberty in general, as the brutality of the Spar- 
 tans towards the helots be imagined of the English in reference 
 to the Hindoos. In modem times, and amongst rude nations, 
 we have many cases akin to the conduct of the Spartans. The 
 tribes of the great Island of Celebes, for example, like those of 
 ancient Greece, speak, for the most part, the same language, 
 have the same laws, the same religion, the same institutions, 
 and (after a fashion of their own) enjoy perhaps a lai'ger share 
 of personal and political liberty than any people of Asia. 
 This does not hinder them from being in a perpetual state of 
 warfare with each other, and the nearest neighbours are always 
 the bitterest enemies. The constant practice of the victorious 
 party, when it can be done with safety, (for they are perfect 
 Spartans in this respect,) is to declare the conquered to be re- 
 duced to the state of slavery. It cannot be fairly inferred, 
 however, from the conduct of these barbarians, that the 
 people of Boni represent the English, or those of Macassar the 
 Hindoos. 
 
 The maltreatment of the African race, in a state of slavery, 
 by the free nations of Europe and America, and their alleged 
 better treatment on the part of nations w ith despotic govern- 
 ments, has been cited as examples of the benefits of despotism 
 to the subjugated parly. The relation between the Africans 
 and their European masters, and that between the Indians and 
 the modern conquerors of Hindostan, have no one point of 
 similitude that we can perceive. The African is a slave — the 
 Indian only a subject. European Governments early declared 
 the first to be a chattel, but the Britit>h Government has made 
 no such enactment in regard to the latter. Their very legisla- 
 tures themselves, in the case of the African, sanctioned and
 
 9G 
 
 autliuiized the wide distinction drawn between the Africail 
 and European races. They declared a man witli a black skin 
 to be the property of a man with a white skin, and setting 
 out with such a principle, they have little right to charge any 
 unpleasant collision which may have ensued from the exer- 
 cise of rights deliberately conferred by themselves, upon 
 liberty in the abstract. But besides this there prevailed in 
 Europe, at one time, and perhaps it is not yet absolutely ex- 
 tinct, a strong prejudice against flat noses and sooty complexions 
 veiy hurtful to the temporal interests of the African. Some, 
 indeed, carried their antipathy so far in this respect as to believe 
 that an acute facial line could not, by any possibility, be accom- 
 panied by a due proportion of humanity, and this was, of 
 course, an additional aggravation. As far as the conduct of 
 masters can be good, under such circumstances as those in 
 which the Africans are placed in reference to their European 
 superiors, the example of the United States of America is a 
 sufficient proof, that the conduct of the freest nation is not in- 
 ferior to that of the most despotic. It is enough to state that 
 the Africans, within the territory of the Union, although living 
 in a climate more foreign to their race than any other, are the 
 only persons in the same condition, whose numbers rapidly 
 augment, or, indeed, augment at all, through natural increase. 
 Our own history, for the last thirty years, evinces that as our 
 notions of liberty improve, so does our conduct towards the 
 slave population of our colonies, and this fact applies not only 
 to the Legislature and people of England, but even to the Colo- 
 nial Legislatures, and to the very slave proprietors themselves. 
 
 The conduct pursued by different European nations, at 
 different periods, towards the aboriginal natives of America, 
 illustrates the same truth. The early conduct of the Spaniards 
 towards the Indians, when there was surely no want of despo- 
 tism in their government, and when the administration of the 
 Spanish settlements was notdespotical alone, but had not even the 
 semblance of law, is a very proverb for its cruelty and brutality. 
 The patronage which it afterwards bestowed, and which sprung 
 rather out of religion than policy, was scarcely less hurtful to 
 the Americans, than their previous persecution. Under the 
 free governments of America, these natives are now admitted 
 to equal rigljts with their fellow-subjects, and some of them
 
 97 
 
 iiave ev(Mi Httuinecl soals ui ilicir Lt-f^islaUires. During the war 
 carried on against the despotism of Spain, the excitement pro- 
 duced elicited from them a degree of energy and enterprise 
 little to be expected from the long lethargy in which their 
 characters had lain, and if accounts are to be relied upon, they 
 are now advancing rapidly in improvement. It was when our 
 own notions of liberty were crude and imperfect, that we 
 hunted down and exterminated the savage tribes of North 
 America. Both we and our descendants now treat the rem- 
 nant of these same savages with a consideration and humanity 
 unknown to our ancestors.* 
 
 The history of European ascendancy in India itself is to 
 a similar effect. The despotism of Spain and Portugal are the 
 only two Governments which ever instituted any thing like a 
 religious persecution of the natives. It was only when the 
 Spaniards and Portuguese had themselves colonized, and, in 
 religion and manners, assimilated with the native inhabitants, 
 that their conduct became tolerant, and their administration 
 conciliatory. The Dutch, whose Indian Government Ut least, 
 had always been purely despotical, because, for the most part, 
 vested in a corporate body little subject to the control of the 
 
 * " At the establishment of the Federal Government, under the 
 present constitution of the United States, the principle was adopted of 
 considering; them (the savage tribes) as foreign and independent powers, 
 and also as proprietors of lands. They were moreover considered as 
 savages whom it was our policy and our duty to use our influence in 
 converting to Christianity, and bringing within the pale of civilization. 
 As independent powers, we negotiated with them by treaties ; as pro- 
 prietors, we purchased of them all the lands which we could prevail 
 upon them to sell j as brethren of the human race, rude and ignorant, 
 we endeavoured to bring tliem to the knowledge of religion and letters. 
 The ultimate design was to incorporate, in our own institutions, that por- 
 tion of them which could be converted to the state of civilization. In the 
 practice of European states, before our revolution, they had been considered 
 as children, to be governed ; as tenants at discretion, to be dispossessed 
 as occasion might require j as hunters, to be indemnified by trifling con- 
 cessions for removal from the grounds upon which their game was extir- 
 pated." — This quotation, which is from the last speech of 3Ir. President 
 Adams to Congress, will, we presume, be considered as a fair representa- 
 tion of the policy of the United States of America towards the savage 
 tribes living within its territory. We do not hesitate to say, that the 
 history of despotism, ancient or modern, may be looked into in vain for 
 any thing parallel to it. 
 
 O
 
 98 
 
 State, were, tlirouohout, remarkable for their mismanagement 
 of the Indians. The French, and surely their Government 
 was despotic enough under Louis XV, were, notwithstanding 
 the known amenity of their manners elsewhere, eminently un- 
 successful in conciliating the natives of India; and it is a cir- 
 cumstance well ascertained, that their violations of native 
 rights and usages contributed, in no small degree, to their 
 failure in that country. Their conduct, in this respect, was 
 always less discreet, and even less humane, than ours, with 
 our free Government and our free institutions. Our East 
 India Company must not take the merit of this to themselves, 
 for the French also had their East India Company and their 
 East India monopoly. 
 
 What, however, will perhaps be considered as more to the 
 point than all that has now been adduced, is this, that every 
 improvement made by ourselves towards rendering the Go- 
 vernment of India a government by law, — every admission 
 either of Englishmen or of Indians to a share, however small, 
 of constitutional rights, — every departure from a Government 
 purely arbitrary, has increased our popularity with the native 
 inhabitants, and tended to the consolidation of our power. 
 
 During the first twenty years of our Indian rule, virtual, 
 or sanctioned by treaty, our government of India was purely 
 arbitrary ; the East India Company administered territory, and 
 resources, without any legal authority whatever. Was this 
 period distinguished by a conciliatory conduct towards the 
 native inhabitants, — by attention to native rights, usages, and 
 institutions ? Quite the contrary ; it was characterized by vio- 
 lation of native rights, fraud and corruption on the part of the 
 public officers, confusion, anarchy, and rebellion. Reform com- 
 menced with the interference of Parliament, and wherever it has 
 interfered, to bestow constitutional rights, our good treatment of 
 the inhabitants has kept pace with it. It will be sufficient to 
 refer to the restoration by its authority, of proprietors to lands, 
 of which they had been dispossessed ; — the institution of courts 
 of justice, independent of the civil governments, the most 
 popular and useful innovation of all ; — the appointment, in- 
 stead of the officers of the Company's Government, of English 
 statesmen to be governors, — with the local improvements intro- 
 duced by these; — the extension of the commercial intercourse 
 with Great Britiiin, with tlie increased intercourse between the
 
 9& 
 
 English and Indians, to which it has necessarily ^iven rise; and 
 finally, the conferring upon the natives the right of sitting 
 upon juries. There is scarcely one of these innovations that 
 was not deprecated at the time of its introduction, and not one 
 that has not proved eminently beneficial. 
 
 The project of bestowing peculiar patronage on the weak 
 and disfranchised classes of society is one from which arbitrary 
 governments have often endeavoured to draw to themselves a 
 little popularity. The East India Company, Mice others of the 
 same family, has repeatedly come forward as tlie champion of 
 the Hindoos. Having themselves already loaded these Hin- 
 doos with taxes, and disfranchised them, they manfully step 
 forward to protect them against imaginary danger from others. 
 We have one notable example on record of the consequences of 
 such patronage, the protection which Spain afforded to the 
 American Indians against its own European subjects or their 
 descendants. The case is so much in point that it deserves to 
 be adverted to. By the code of laws made for the protection 
 of the native Americans, they were pronounced to be of pure 
 blood ; their chiefs had the privileges of Spanish nobles ; the 
 natives who lived in separate villages were restrained from 
 wandering from them, with the most patriarchal tenderness for 
 their safety ; they were governed exclusively by officers of their 
 own tribes; above all, neither Spaniards nor persons of the 
 mixed races, were allowed to settle among them, — to buy, or in 
 any manner to encroach upon their lands. To prevent their 
 simplicity from being abused, the Indians were prohibited from 
 disposing of their real property, even amongst themselves, with- 
 out the intervention of a magistrate ; — they could neither con- 
 tract nor conclude bargains for a greater sum than the value of 
 three Spanish dollars. Every species of oppression to which 
 they were exposed was minutely guarded iigainst by law, and 
 a suitable remedy provided for it. In a word, they were placed 
 under the protection of all the constituted authorities of the 
 Spanish Government, who were bound to defend them from in- 
 justice and secure them from wrong. Sudi were the elaborate 
 pains taken by the Government of Spain for the protection of 
 its Indian subjects. The consequences are too well known.* 
 
 • The following description of these conscqucmcs is taken from 
 the review of the Baron Humboldt's strcat work, in llu l(3th rol. of the 
 Edinburgh Jxciitiv. Wo copy it the more readily, from knowing that it
 
 100 
 
 The Indians, not only deprived of all national independence, 
 but reduced to a state of" pupilage by the affected securities be- 
 stowed upon them, lost all energy of character, even that little 
 which belonged to them under their native Government, while 
 the mixed races, and Creoles, who not only had no patronage or 
 peculiar securities, but, on the contrary, were subjected to in- 
 numerable disabilities, have, in spite of all the efforts and op- 
 pression of Spain, acquired a force of character, the results of 
 which are sufficiently known. There are so many features of 
 resemblance between the sort of protection which Spain be- 
 stowed upon the American Indians, and that which we our- 
 selves would affect to bestow upon the Hindoos, that it is im- 
 possible the reader should not be struck with the similarity. 
 There are, to be sure, circumstances in the condition of the 
 Hindoos, and in the nature of our relations with them, which 
 must always prevent the pretended patronage of the East 
 India Company from becoming so mischievous in its operation 
 as that of the Spanish Government. In the first place, our pa- 
 tronage is not carried so far, because the Hindoos, a people far 
 more elevated in the scale of society than the Mexicans and 
 Peruvians, would not for a moment endure such vexatious and 
 pernicious trammels. In the next, a competition for labour on 
 the part of foreign settlers cannot take place in a denselj^- 
 peopled country like India, as it did in the thinly-peopled re- 
 gions of America. The American could afford to be idle, to be 
 a mere drone, or the next thing to it, while the settler or emi- 
 grant laboured. On the contrary, the stimulus of necessity im- 
 
 is from the pen of a great philosopher and an eloquent writer, tiie late 
 Professor Playfair. — " This system of favour and ])roteetion to the In- 
 dians," says he, after a description of the laws enacted in their behalf, as 
 we have transcribed them in the text, " was, no doul)t, dictated by 
 motives of humanity ; but it may be questioned whether some of its 
 2)rovisions have not contributed essentially to retard their progress in 
 culture and civilization. 'J'he permission conceded to them, of living in 
 separate communities, under Caeiciues of their own nation, without any 
 intermixture of strangers, exeludes them from instruction, perpetuates 
 their ignorance, and subjects them to the oppression of magistrates, 
 against whom they have no means of redress, as they are seldom ac- 
 quainted with any other language than their own. The state of pupil- 
 age in which they are kei)t, us a protection against fraud and imposition, 
 destroys the energy of their character, and detains them in perpetual 
 childhood."
 
 101 
 
 parts to the Hindoo a certain portion of industry which protects* 
 him from an equal debasement. Tlie Hindoos then arc not in 
 a condition that will admit of their being reduced by particular 
 patronage to the state of dull and ai)alhetic ig'norance to which 
 it has reduced the American Indian. An impertinent pro- 
 tection, however, and the exclusion of all those means which 
 have contributed to the improvement of other races of men, 
 may keep the Hindoos stationary for ever, and its influence, in 
 effecting this purpose, has been exerted unquestionably with 
 no inconsiderable success during the last half century ; ever 
 since the rigid proscription of interlopers, the virtual exclu- 
 sion of English enterprise and capital ; ever, in a word, since 
 the East India Company became the avowed and exclusive 
 patrons of the people of India. 
 
 For a government administering a country, occupied by 
 various races, in different and opposite states of society, there 
 is, if the Legislator desire to escape from the evil of perpetuat- 
 ing the feebleness and degradation of the great mass of the 
 people on the one hand, and the domination and tyranny of a 
 caste on the other, but one safe course to pursue, viz. to confer 
 upon all the same rights and immunities, and the same just 
 and equal administration of laws. Any departure from this 
 principle inevitably leads to injustice, inconvenience, and con- 
 fusion. Peculiar patronage to the weak is especially a danger- 
 ous illusion. The feeble and ignorant must be placed in a 
 state of wholesome collision, and fair emulation with the strong 
 and the intelligent, as the only practicable means of sharpen- 
 ing and invigorating their faculties, and raising them in the 
 scale of society. Such has ever been tlie nature of the disci- 
 pline by which, in every well-regulated community, the indus- 
 trious and talented of the lower classes have been raised to an 
 equality with the middling orders, — that the middling orders, 
 with similar endowments, have emulated, or equalled the 
 higher ; — and that the higher themselves have been hindered 
 from degenerating into drones or tyrants. India, indeed, is not 
 exactly the held u lierc tiie most rapid improvement can be 
 looked for, even under the freest operation of this indispensable 
 principle. Here there are obvious circumstances connected 
 with distinctions of race, of complexion, of religion, and of 
 manners, which will, more or less, obstruct or narrow its bene- 
 ficial influence ; but it would be utter idleness to imagine that
 
 102 
 
 the main-spring of social improvement in every other age and 
 climate should lie dormant and inoperative, — nay, should be 
 even prejudicial in reference to British India. 
 
 It has been often asserted, that India ought not to be held 
 for the exclusive benefit of England, and that the security and 
 protection of our Indian subjects ought to be the main object 
 of our policy. * This assertion supposes, according to our 
 judgment, one of the most untenable doctrines ever advanced; 
 it supposes that the mother country may be benefited by the 
 misgovemment of its colony, and that, in short, their interests 
 are opposite and divided : they are, however, inseparable and 
 indissoluble; it is impossible to misgovern the one without in- 
 flicting an injury upon the other ; the wealth and prosperity of 
 India are sure to produce advantages to England, while her 
 poverty, oppression, or unfair and unequal treatment, even 
 under the guise of favouring metropolitan industry, are sure, 
 in the long run, to render all intercourse with her unprofitable 
 or valueless. Did England benefit by the restraints imposed 
 upon Irish industry, although advowedly imposed for her own 
 interest ? or, ratlier, is it not notorious that these restraints 
 were equally prejudicial to both parties, and, that in propor- 
 
 * " He was glad to see, and hoped there would be a much more ex- 
 tensive communication between Europeans and India; but then, he re- 
 gretted to say, there must be a continuance of the same strict regulations. 
 He held it absolutely necessary that the inhabitants of India should be 
 protected. That ought to be their chief object. India must not be held 
 solely for the benefit of this country, — solely as a means of wealth to 
 England. They had a higher duty to perform in providing for the secu- 
 rity and happiness of the inhabitants." — Sjjecch of the Right Honourable 
 C. IV. Wynn, late President of tlie Board of Control, in his place in Parlia- 
 metit. Times Newspaper, \6th June, 1828.— We have preferred quoting in 
 this, as in former instances, the opinions of a man of talent and informa- 
 tion, to those of vulgar objectors, chiefly because they exhibit the preva- 
 lence of, what we deem to be, serious errors, even in the highest quarters. 
 Mr. Wynn is the author of the only measure of a generous and consti- 
 tutional character which has been enacted for the good government of 
 India for many years past, — the admission of Indians to the right of 
 sitting on juries ; and, therefore, we cannot be suspected of any dis- 
 respect or disinclination towards him. The liberal sentiments, indeed, 
 contained in many parts of the speech from which we have quoted, it 
 may be added, arc quite new in an official man, and afford a cheering 
 evidence of the progress of just opinions on the most vital questions 
 connected with Indian Icgislali'm.
 
 10:J 
 
 tion as lliey have been removed, Ijoth have been benefited? 
 The case cannot be otherwise in rejjard to the connexion 
 between Great Britain and India. 
 
 Previous to the year 1814 both England and India had suf- 
 fered sufficiently from the system of restriction under which 
 we had acted, but England undoubtedly was the greatest suf- 
 ferer of the two. There had then been incurred, on the credit 
 of the British nation, for the use of India, a debt of one sort or 
 another amounting at the very lowest calculation to thirty-four 
 millions sterling : the people of England paid before then, as 
 they now do, on account of a monopoly which we have been 
 often told was for the benefit of the people of India, a yearly 
 contribution of some two millions sterling, and the commerce 
 of the people of England had been excluded from half the 
 world, — all for the supposed benefit of the people of India. 
 What advantage did England derive to compensate for these 
 enormous sacrifices, no one, we think, has ever ventured even 
 to conjecture. Under the ancient system of restriction then, 
 and matters are as yet not very materially altered, the principal 
 disadvantages of the connexion were on the side of England, 
 although we are very far indeed from believing that India 
 reaped corresponding benefits. The allegation that the settle- 
 ment of Pjnglishmen in India, — their purchase of lands, — their 
 introduction of capital, of arts, of industry, and of useful ex- 
 ample, are injurious to the people of that country, is a delusion 
 which we have already sufficiently exposed. The admirers of 
 the ancient order of things — those who, when in possession of 
 the government, created monopolies of the staple articles of the 
 country, and who themselves exercised a right of pre-emption in 
 the Indian markets, have since gone the length of j>retending that 
 the introduction of cheap British manufactures was a grievous 
 infliction upon the inhabitants. How a province, not from the 
 nature of things a manufacturing country, can possibly be in- 
 jured by receiving manufactures from the mother country, emi- 
 nently a manufacturing one, and at about one-third the price 
 which the province could possibly make them for itself, is to us 
 incomprehensible, and the more especially so, when it is con- 
 sidered that this introduction of cheap manufactures has been 
 accompanied by large increased exports of the raw produce, of 
 every species, which that province is capable of producing. 
 There is, however, an inequality in the duty levied respectively
 
 104 
 
 in England and India upon each other's manufactures, and this 
 lias afforded grounds for some vague declamation. The duty 
 levied upon British cottons in India is 2| per cent, whereas 
 the duty levied upon Indian cottons in England is 10 percent, 
 making a difference in favour of the English manufacturer of 
 7| per cent, which is, no doubt, a very foolish thing, but, it 
 must be added, at the same time, that the distinction, in con- 
 sequence of the vast disproportion in the cost of the two 
 descriptions of manufacture, is wholly inoperative, — that the 
 discriminating duty, in short, is a dead letter. Were the dif- 
 ference, in reality, to be given as a bonus on the importation 
 of the Indian manufactures, instead of being nominally im- 
 posed upon it, it is impossible they should become articles 
 of considerable consumption in this country. We exported 
 cotton manufactures to India, last year, to the value of above 
 two millions sterling, that is, we furnished the Indians for about 
 three millions sterling, with commodities, which, in the good 
 olden times, would, probably, have cost them about nine mil- 
 lions. Who is injured by this proceeding P It is answered, 
 the Indian operative weavers, who formerly furnished the Com- 
 pany's investment, and in the produce of whose labour the 
 Company exercised a right of pre-emption. These weavers, at 
 the utmost a few thousands in number, represent then, the in- 
 juries inflicted on a hundred millions of people ! But is it 
 really true that even these persons have been injured by the 
 obvious benefit conferred upon the rest of their countrymen ? 
 We think it can be very easily shown that they have not. The 
 quantity of Indian cotton goods imported into England, in the 
 year 1814, that is, before the free trade could have operated to 
 their prejudice, was 2,028,126 pieces. In 1828, it was only 
 435,543 pieces. The loss of market then to the Indian weaver, 
 from the free trade, on a period of fourteen years, amounts yearly 
 to 1,646,585 pieces. These may be valued at present according 
 to the custom-house returns, at £798,119. Cotton, however, is 
 not the only material in which weavers are employed in India. 
 The quantity of pieces of Indian silk (Chinese excluded) im- 
 ported in 1814, was only 76,550. In 1828 it was 163,906, 
 being an advance of 88,356 pieces, worth about one pound a 
 piece. This reduces the loss of market to tlie Indian weaver 
 lo £709,763. But, besides this, the free trader now supplies 
 the Indian weaver with a new material for his loom, unknown
 
 105 
 
 to him in former times, viz. cotton twist. Including domestic 
 and foreign, there were exported of this commodity, last year, 
 to the value, within a small fraction, of £400,000, reducing the 
 loss of market to the Indian weaver to £309,703. It may rea- 
 sonably be supposed that the additional quantity of the raw 
 produce from India taken by the English market, and which 
 in the three articles of cotton, indigo, and sugar, (Mauritius 
 excluded,) exceeded in value, in 1828, what it was in 1814, 
 by above one million six hundred thousand pounds, is some 
 compensation to India for the no very considerable sum by 
 which the consumption of Indian manufactures has decreased 
 in this country. After the account we have given of the 
 export of cotton twist, and this extenuated representation of 
 the injury done to the weavers, we should not be much sur- 
 prised to hear the woes of India, from the miseries of free 
 trade, transferred from the latter to the cotton spinners; in 
 which case, the representatives of all India would, necessarily, 
 be reduced to a handful of old women ! 
 
 Setting, however, all reasoning from such facts as we have 
 now adduced, out of the question, has any one ever heard of 
 an Indian weaver being thrown out of employ, through the 
 introduction of British manufactures .•' We believe not ; nor 
 in such a state of society as exists in India, do we think the 
 thing possible. There may have taken place some modifica- 
 tion of the manner in which his labour is employed, but 
 nothing more. We send no coarse fabrics to India, for this 
 obvious reason, that the quantity of skill and labour, added 
 to the prime cost of the raw material, is comparatively trifling; 
 and of this description it is a well ascertained fact, that the 
 production in India, both for consumption and for exportation, 
 has materially increased since the introduction of the free 
 trade. New markets for them have been found in South 
 America, while the old ones, amongst the Indian Islands, 
 the adjacent countries, Persia and Arabia, have been much 
 extended. Instead, then, of manufacturing fine articles for 
 luxury, such as were formerly exported, the Indian weaver 
 now manufactures articles of necessity, of which the con- 
 sumption is far more general, and for the fabrication of which 
 his qualifications are much better suited. But, if the whole 
 of India were, after all, supplied with British manufactures, 
 what harm would result P The Indian weaver is, in almost 
 
 P
 
 106 
 
 every case, also a cultivator, — passing part of the day at his 
 loom, and part at his plough. In a rude country, compara- 
 tively understocked with labourers, where the natural direction 
 of capital is not to manufacturing but to agricultural industry, 
 it would be inflicting no great injury upon him, if he were 
 compelled to employ the whole of his time at the latter only. 
 From being, as always happens in such cases, a bad artisan 
 and a bad husbandman, there might be some prospect of his 
 making a tolerable proficiency in the latter capacity. 
 
 y 
 
 THE END. 
 
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 Publishing by RIDGWAYS, 1C9, PICCADILLY, 
 
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 IMPROVEMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
 
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 THE BRITISH FARMER'S (QUARTERLY) MAGAZINE, 
 No. XVIII., for February 1, ISyi ; devoted t-xclusively to Agricultural 
 and Rural affairs. 
 
 Contents — liraiich I. Orij;inal Communications. — Portr»it, and description of an 
 Ayrshire Cow, tiie properly of tiie Diuluss of Leeds. — I'oiliait, and description of a 
 Sonthdown I'rize W etlier, exiiibited, by command, to His Majoty, at Hrif;liton. 
 
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 — Remarks on improving the Breed of the Cattle of Anglesea. — On Weeds in Ara- 
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 of the English l^)or Laws, \c. — Alarming State of the Nation considered. — On the 
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 Cropping. — Sale of Cattle at Philadelphia. 
 
 Agricultural Societies' Meetings: Elintshire. — Bath and West of England. — 
 Arundel. — Sir C. Morgan's. — Tredegar. — Kent and Canterbury. — Smithfield. — 
 Lewes. 
 
 Agricultural Quarterly IJeports : For England. — For Scotland. — Corn Trade, 
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 Fairs. 
 
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 Dedicated to the King, and Addressed to British Farmers. 
 
 POLITICAL SUICIDE ; or, THE DEATH OF ENGLAND BY 
 HER OWN HANDS. By the Author of Nimrod's Letters. 
 
 " Farewell, sad isle, farewell; thy fatal glory 
 Is summ'd, cast up, and cauceli'd in this story."
 
 A SYSTEM FOR MANAGING HEAVY AND WET LANDS 
 WITHOUT SUMMER FALLOWS ; under which a considerable Farm 
 in Hertfordshire is kept perfectly clean, and made Productive. By 
 TIIo^^As Gkeg, Esq. Tliird Edition, with an Appendix, pointing out 
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 the infallibility of the Plan; as presented to the Board of Agriculture, 
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 AN ESSAY ON THE WEEDS OF AGRICULTURE; with 
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 and G. Sinclair, F.L.S. F.H.S. Author of "Hortus Gramineus Wobur- 
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 living Plants. Price 5s. Gd. (nearly ready.) 
 
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 not according to its hulk, but its importance, and follow Mr. Holditch, and his 
 editor (for it is only the 1st chap, that is strictly, in its present form at least, attri- 
 butable to the former) through their respective chapters on ' Weeds which infest 
 Samples of Corn ; Fallow Weeds ; Weeds which are principally objectionable, as 
 they encumber the soil, or whose Roots are annual, and whose Seeds pass the corn- 
 sieve ; Weeds that never rise in the crop, nor come hito the sickle ; Pasture Weeds, 
 &c. &c.' * * * The passages we have marked in our progress, as worthy of quo- 
 tation, might form a valuable little Manual for the Practical Farmer." — Monthly 
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 DAIRY HUSBANDRY. 
 
 THE COMPLETE HISTORY of DAIRY HUSBANDRY ; and 
 
 particularly with reference to the System pursued for many years at the 
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