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ADMINISTRATION 
 
 OP 
 
 THE EAST INDIA COMPANY. 
 
THE 
 
 ADMINISTRATION 
 
 THE EAST INDIA COMPANY; 
 
 A HISTORY 01 INDIAN PROGRESS. 
 
 BY JOHN WILLIAM KAYE, 
 
 n 
 AUTHOR OF "the HISTORY OF THE WAR IN AFGHANISTAN." 
 
 SECOND EDITION. 
 
 "THKEE AKE MAXY KINDS OF WAK AKD KANT DEOHEBb OF HEROIC BKKOWM, 
 BUT THE HIGHEST PBAISE IS DUE TO THOSE WHO, BT THEIB VICTOEIOTJS AEM3, 
 HAVE OPENED NEW SCENES FOE THE CIVILISATION OF MANKIND, AND OVEB- 
 COME BAEBAEISM IN SOME IMPOETANT POBTION OF THE WORLD." 
 
 Banke's " Civil Wars and Monarchy in France.' 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 EICHAED BENTLET, NEW BTJELINGTGN STEEET. 
 
 ynbUs^er in Minart) to $er fiit^tsir^, 
 
 MDCCCLHL 
 
 IThe right of publishing a French Translation of this work is reserved.'] 
 

 tti 
 
 r^^^ 
 
! f 
 
 Cim AND MILITARY SERVICES 
 
 OB 
 
 THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 
 
 THIS VOLUME, 
 EIPE WITH RECORDS OF THEIR GOOD DEEDS, 
 
 RESPECTFULLY INSCKIBED. 
 
 London, April 25, 1853. 
 
 v-^o4o> J. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 I OFFER this volume to the public as a contribution 
 to the general stock of information relating to India 
 and her affairs — information which, in the present 
 junctm'e, it is very desirable to possess. It contains 
 much that is scattered over a great number of printed 
 books, and much besides that is not to be found in any 
 printed books. It will be seen that it is written almost 
 entirely in a narrative form — that there is little of the 
 disquisitional and controversial in it — and that I have 
 not attempted to elucidate the great question of the 
 future Government of India, except by throwing on it 
 such Hght as is derived from illustrations of the past. 
 
 Perhaps, indeed, the volume may best be described 
 as a series of historical illustrations of Indian Govern- 
 ment, arranged with some regard to completeness and 
 uniformity of design, but not at all pretending to the dig- 
 nity either of a perfect history of the internal adminis- 
 tration of India, or a finished picture of Indian Institu- 
 tions. The exigencies of time and space b ave compelled 
 me to pass hastily over the consideration of many mat- 
 ters, of the interest and importance of which I am fully 
 sensible, and in one or two instances I have been neces- 
 sitated to throw into an Appendix papers illustrative 
 of certain topics of inquiry of which I had intended to 
 treat in the body of the work. The subject of Indian 
 Administration, indeed, is so vast ; it branches out into 
 so many different channels ; and the materials at my 
 disposal for its illustration have been so ample, that the 
 
Vm PREFACE. 
 
 more I have drawn upon them the further off I have 
 seemed from then' exhaustion. 
 
 In dealing with a subject of such magnitude, the 
 writer has the choice of two courses which lie before him. 
 He may either so compress his materials into a narrow 
 compass as to divest his fasciculus of facts of all living 
 interest and external grace. Or he may select certain 
 prominent topics of discourse, and illustrate them with 
 that copiousness of detail which, by limiting its range 
 of inquiry, necessarily subtracts from the encyclopaedic 
 value of the work, but imparts a vitality to it which 
 I cannot help thinking extends its utility by increasing 
 its attractions. I have followed the latter course. 
 I believe that the reading public is less instructed 
 than it should be on Indian subjects, because it has 
 been less interested than it might have been, if writers 
 had taken more pains to appeal to the common sym- 
 ' pathies of mankind. I am not insensible of the value 
 of statistics, and, indeed, I have dealt somewhat 
 largely in them ; but it is principally by representing 
 men in action that the writer on Indian affairs must 
 hope to fix the attention of the piiblic. 
 
 It is mainly to anticipate any objections which may 
 be raised on the score of omissions, that I make these 
 remarks regarding what may be caUed the machinery 
 of my work. Of the purpose and tendency of the 
 work itself I have spoken elsewhere; and shall now 
 only add the expression of a hope that, in considera- 
 tion of what I have done, I shall be forgiven for what 
 I have necessarily left undone in such a volume as 
 this. 
 
 liOndon, April, 1853. • 
 
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITIOK 
 
 I AM unwilling to suffer the present edition of this 
 volume to pass into circulation without adding a few 
 words to what has already been written under this 
 introductory head. 
 
 Since this account of the Administration of the 
 East India Company was presented to the public, 
 a few months ago, the great question of the future 
 Government of India has been discussed, and, for 
 the present, disposed of by the Parliament of Great 
 Britain. No opinion of the merits or demerits of the 
 India Bill of 1853 is called for in this place. But I 
 may, without impropriety perhaps, avail myself of 
 this opportunity of referring to the frequent allusions 
 which, in the course of the Debates, were made to the 
 present work. I may say generally of these allusions, 
 that, as far as they related to myself, they only did me 
 too much honor, and that they would have afforded 
 me more gratification if I had not been painfully con- 
 scious, whilst I was cited as a teacher of others, that 
 I had myself so very much to learn. But I wish to 
 observe more particularly, at the same time, that 
 though I wrote not without a hope that such a col- 
 lection of facts might be an aid to the formation of 
 
X PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 
 
 sound opinions by others, these chapters of administra- 
 tive history were not written with the intention of re- 
 cording any views, or propounding any doctrines, of 
 my own. It was my object, in a word, to accumulate 
 facts, not to express opinions. I endeavoured, as much 
 as was possible, to abstain from argumentation, and to 
 preserve the historical character of the book ; and, on 
 carefully reperusing what I have written, it appears to 
 me that, if in this new edition I had expunged every 
 line that is not of this purely historical character, the 
 book would have lost almost as little in bulk as it 
 would lose in permanent interest and value. 
 
 There was a time, perhaps, when I might not have 
 hesitated to pronounce the most confident opinions 
 upon the whole question of Indian Government — when 
 I might not have shrunk from accepting the title and 
 the office of the Judge. But I have read too much, 
 and thought too much in later years, not to appreciate 
 the difficulties of that question. India, with all its 
 local peculiarities and ethnological varieties, is so vast 
 and comprehensive a subject, that with increased study 
 and reflection comes increased diffidence. The light of 
 knowledge, the nearer it approaches, throws out into 
 bolder relief the ignorance of the student. There is 
 no subject, indeed, on which it becomes a man to 
 write or to speak ^vith more modesty and reserve. 
 For my own part, though now for nearly twenty 
 years I have been, with little interruption, reading 
 and writing about India — ^though aU this time it has 
 been the business of my life to collect facts and to 
 mature opinions relating to this great subject — though 
 both in the East and the West the companions of 
 
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. XI 
 
 my solitude and my social life, the books and the men 
 with whom I have been familiar have been mainly 
 such as are depositories of Indian information — al- 
 though I have had access to such stores of unpub- 
 lished documents — ^the wealth alike of public and of 
 private archives — as few men have had the good for- 
 tune to approach or the patience to examine — I am 
 not ashamed to confess that there are many great 
 questions connected with the administration of our 
 Indian Empire upon which I am competent to ex- 
 press only a quaMed, hesitating opinion — or none at 
 all. I know, for my own part, that, after acquiring 
 facts illustrative of such a subject as this, it is very 
 difficult to form opinions ; though it would seem, in- 
 deed^ to be the easiest thing in the world to form these 
 opinions before acquiring the facts. 
 
 I am not, however, without a belief that what has 
 been stated in these volumes has had some effect in 
 moderating the opinions of candid and unprejudiced, 
 though imperfectly-informed readers. Nor am I with- 
 out a hope, now that the subject of Indian Govern- 
 ment has ceased to be one of the pressing topics of the 
 day, and the book is divested of the controversial cha- 
 racter which was conferred on it rather by this outward 
 pressure of the times than by its own internal attri- 
 butes, that it wiU induce many more to believe with me, . 
 that a History of the Administration of India, under 
 the Government of the East India Company, truth- 
 fully and conscientiously written, is really a History 
 of Indian Progress. That the present system of Indian 
 Government is perfect, or that its agents are faultless, 
 I have nowhere said, and nowhere implied. It is un- 
 
Xn PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 
 
 deniable that they are capable of revision and improve- 
 ment. To this revision and improvement they have 
 continually and unceasiQgly been subjected. The 
 progressive tendency towards good government has, 
 under each new charter, been more and more strikingly 
 developed; and if the ameliorative changes of the 
 next twenty years only keep pace with those of the 
 last, the historian of 1873 wiQ address himself to his 
 work with the delightful conviction that it is his 
 to chronicle a series of good deeds done for the ex- 
 tension of civiKsation and the advancement of human 
 happiness, which, whether we regard the magnitude 
 of the end, or the difficulties to be encountered on 
 the way, may be ranked among the greatest ad- 
 ministrative effi)rts which History has ever recorded, 
 or the World has ever beheld. 
 
 September, 1853. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAET I. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. PAGB 
 
 The Claims of the Governed on the Governing — How they have been dis- 
 charged — England's Opportunities in India — Impediments to Domestic 
 Improvement — Administrative DiflSculties in England and India — Crime 
 and Poverty in the two Countries— Encouragements to Exertion . . 1 
 
 CHAPTER n. 
 
 INDIA UNDER THE MOGULS. 
 
 India under the Moguls — ^The Arab and Tartar Conquests — The House of 
 Toghlak— Feroz Shah— The First Indian Canal— The House of Timour 
 — The Emperor Akbar — His Internal Administration — Shah Jehan — 
 Public "Works — Decline of the Mogul Empire— Comparison of Mogul and 
 British Rule— Their General Effects on the Happiness of the People . 17 
 
 CHAPTER m. 
 PROGRESS OF ADMINISTRATION. 
 Our European Predecessors — The Portuguese in India — ^The Dutch— Dis- 
 couragements at the Outset — Progress of Empire— Our First Administra- 
 tive Efforts— The Conquest of Bengal— Efforts of Clive and Hastmgs— 
 The Regulating Act — Cornwallis and the Regulations— Subsequent Ad- 
 ministrative Advances 57 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE HOME GOVERNMENT. 
 Establishment of the East India Company— Early Management of its 
 Affairs— Becomes a Joint- Stock Company— Its successive Charters- 
 Progress of the Interlopers— The English Company— Union of the Two 
 Companies— Territorial Rights— The Regulating Act— Pitt's India Bill 
 —The Charter Acts of 1793, 1813, and 1833— Present State of the 
 Company 109 
 
xiv CO:^TENTS. 
 
 PAET II. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 THE REVENUES OP INDIA. PAGE 
 The Revenue System of the East India Company— English and Indian 
 Systems of Taxation — The Land Revenue— The Salt Tax — The Opium 
 Revenue — The Customs —The Abkarree — State of the East India Com- 
 pany's Finances — Evils of War-making 139 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE PERMANENT SETTLEMENT OF BENGAL. 
 
 First Possessioji of the Dewanee — Primal Efforts at Revenue Collection — 
 Instructions to the Supervisors— Quinquennial Settlements — Hastings, 
 Francis, and Shore — Arrival of Lord Cornwallis — The Decennial Settle- 
 ment — The Permanent Zemindaree Settlement — Its Results . . .162 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 THE LAND REVENUES OF MADRAS. 
 Our First Territory in Madras— The Northern Circars — Old Revenue 
 System — The Committee of Circuit— Permanent Assessment — The Bara- 
 mahl — Read and Munro — The Ceded Districts — The Ryotwar System — 
 Village Settlements — Their Discontinuance — Return to the Ryotwar 
 System— Its Results 202 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 SETTLEMENT OF THE NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES. 
 
 The Settlement of the North-West Provinces — First Acquisition of the 
 Country — Primal Measures of our Revenue OflBcers — Their InsuflSciency 
 — Injustice to the Old Proprietors — Frauds of Native Officials — Grovem- 
 ment Measures— Commissioners Appointed — Partial Remedies — Further 
 Enactments — Mr. R. Bird— The New Settlement — Its Agents— Its Cha- 
 racter—Its Results 234 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 PUBLIC WORKS. 
 
 Famines in Upper India — Importance of Irrigation — Early Mahomedan 
 Works— Our first Canal Eflforts— The Western Jumna Canal— The 
 Eastern Jumna Canal — The Great Granges Canal — The Baree Doab 
 Canal— The Great Trunk Road— Other Public Works— Their Cost- 
 General Financial Results 27") 
 
 PART III. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 JUDICIAL SYSTEMS. 
 The first Judicial Tribunals— The Mayor's Courts— Efforts of Warren 
 Hastings — The Supreme Court of Calcutta— Cornwallis and the Regula- 
 tions — Tlie Provincial Courts— Reforms of Lord William Bentinck — 
 Increase of Native Agency— Present State of the Company's Courts . 318 
 
CONTENTS. Xy 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THUGGEE. PAGE 
 
 Thuggee — Increased Knowledge of tlie.Habits of the People— Its Results — 
 Antiquity of Thuggee — Its Progress— Manners and Customs of the Thugs 
 — Thuggee Expeditions — Efforts for the Suppression of Thuggee — The 
 Thuggee Department— Colonel Sleeman and his Associates — Complicity 
 of the 2femindars — Success of our Eflforts — Decrease of the Crime . . 354 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 DAKOITEE. 
 Dakoitee— Its Antiquity — Measures of Warren Hastings— Hereditary Rob- 
 ber Castes — Their Customs — Local Dakoitee — Complicity of the Zemin- 
 dars and Moostajirs — Efforts for the Suppression of Dakoitee— Appoint- 
 ment of a Special Commissioner for Lower Bengal — New Act — General 
 Remarks 380 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 JUDICIAL AGENCIES. 
 The Company's Civil Service — Its Rise and Progress — The Cornwallis Sys- 
 tem—Causes of its exclusiveness — Native Agency — Present State of the 
 Service 417 
 
 PAET lY. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE NON-REGULATION PROVINCES. 
 The Non-Regulation Provinces— Civil and Military Administrators— Evils 
 of Exclusiveness — Sindh — Defects of the purely Military System — Sir 
 Charles Napier's Government — Arracan — Improvement of the Province 
 — The Punjab — The Board of Administration — The Lawrences — Mr. 
 Mansell — The Subordinate Administrative Machinery — Settlement of the 
 Revenue — Financial and General Results 433 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 THE CIVILISATION OP SAVAGE TRIBES. 
 Progress of Civilisation — Humanising Efforts of British Officers — Mair- 
 warra — Dixon and the Mairs — Candeish — The Bheels — Outram and the 
 Bheel Corps — Ovans and the Bheel Colonies— Reclamation of Savage 
 Tribes — Augustus Cleveland — General Results 463 
 
 CHAPTER IIL 
 HUMAN SACRIFICE. 
 Operations in Goomsur— The Hill Tribes of Orissa — Religion of the Klionds 
 — Prevalence of Human Sacrifice — Efforts for its Suppression— Captain 
 Macpherson— His Measures and Success — Subsequent Efforts — General 
 Results 'i'J3 
 
XVI CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 SUTTEE. PAGE 
 
 Suttee — Its Antiquity — Its Origin — General Features of the Practice — Its 
 outward Manifestations — Suttee under the Moguls — Its frequency under 
 British Rule— First Idea of its Suppression— Lord Amherst — Lord Wil- 
 liam Bentinck — Opinions and Instructions of the Court of Directors — 
 Views of the Company's; Servants — Suppression of Suttee in the British 
 Provmces— Our Eflfofts in the Native States 522 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 INFANTICIDE. 
 Infanticide — Varieties of the Crime — Love of Offspring among the Hindoos 
 — Rajpoot Honor — Its Excesses — Causes of the prevalence of the Evil — 
 Our First Remedial Efforts— Jonathan Duncan — Colonel Walker— Failure 
 of our First Endeavours — Disparity of the Sexes — Renewed Attempts 
 — Mr. Willoughby — Major Ludlow— Increased Success — Present State of 
 Infanticide in India 545 
 
 PART V. 
 
 CHAPTER L 
 NATIVE EDUCATION. 
 
 Native Education — Parliamentary Enactments — Encouragement of Oriental 
 Literature — Rise and Progress of the Hindoo College — Substitution of the 
 English System — Lord William Bentinck's Measures — Native Agency — 
 Education in the North-Western Provinces — In Bombay — The Jubbulpore 
 School of Industry — The Roorkhee College — Missionary Efforts — Statis- 
 tics of Education 587 
 
 CHAPTER n. 
 
 CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA. 
 The Past and the Present — The First Indian Chaplains — Rise and Progress 
 of the Church Establishment— Charles Grant— The Charter of 1813— The 
 First Indian Bishop — Increase of the Church Establishment— Missionary 
 Efforts — Progress of Christianity — Concluding Remarks . . . .625 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 The Salt Duties — The Opium Monopoly — Cotton Cultivation — The Re- 
 venue Survey — ^The Baree Doab Canal — The proposed Sutlej Canal — 
 The Jubbulpore Schools of Industry — Public Works in Scindej . . 665 
 
 ADDENDA. 
 Indian Bridges — Taxation in India and in England 713 
 
THE ADMINISTRATION 
 
 EAST INDIA COMPANY. 
 
 PART I. 
 
 CHAPTER L 
 
 The claims of the Governed on the Governing — How they have been discharged 
 — England's Opportunities in India — Impediments to Domestic Improvement 
 — Administrative DiflSculties in England and India — Crime an^ Poverty in the 
 two Countries — Encouragements to Exertion. 
 
 When Mr. Barlow, then Secretary to the Indian Go- 
 vernment, drew up the elaborate minute, on which 
 the Bengal Regulations of 1793 were based, Sir Wil- 
 liam Jones, to whom this important document was 
 submitted, struck his pen across the three first words. 
 The correction which he made was a significant one. 
 Barlow had written : " The two principal objects 
 which the Government ought to have in view in all 
 its arrangements, are to insure its political safety, and 
 to render the possession of the coimtry as advanta- 
 geous as possible to the East India Company and the 
 British Nation." Sir William Jones, I have said, 
 erased the three first words. Instead of " the tivo 
 principal objects," he wrote: "two of the primary 
 objects ;" and then he appended this marginal note : 
 " I have presumed to alter the first words. Surely 
 the principal object of every Government is the hap- 
 
 B 
 
' *2' •' • ' ' ' ixTIlODrCTORY REMARKS. 
 
 piness of the governed."* Sixty years have passed 
 away since that significant connection was made, and 
 it is now a moot question, whether the practice of the 
 British Government in India, throughout that time, 
 has been in accordance with the words of Mr. Barlow, 
 or those of Sir William Jones. 
 
 Not, however, that Barlow, who may he supposed, 
 in tliis case, to represent the general body of the Com- 
 pany's servants in India, had overlooked the *' happi- 
 ness of the governed." In the next paragraph he 
 wTote : " It is a somxe of pleasing reflection to know, 
 that in proportion as we contribute to the happiness 
 of the people and the prosperity of the country, the 
 nearer we approach to the attainment of these objects. 
 If the people are satisfied with our government, we 
 shall be certain that they wish for its continuance ; 
 and as the country increases in wealth, the greater 
 wiU be the advantages which we shall derive from the 
 possession of it." The " happiness of the governed" 
 was to be considered as a means to an end — not as the 
 end itself. But in those early days of Anglo-Indian 
 rule, it was something to think of the people at all. 
 It was no small matter, indeed, to recognise the great 
 truth, that the prosperity of the governing and the 
 governed are mutually dependent upon each other; 
 that, to secure the former, we must, at all events, 
 promote the latter. The servants of the Company had 
 been for nearly two centuries regarding the natives of 
 India only as so many dark-faced and dark-souled 
 Gentiles, whom it was their mission to over-reach in 
 
 • MS. liecords. — I have copied this was drawn up by me, and contained 
 
 from the original note in Sir W. Jones's my suggestions to Lord Cornwallis. 
 
 handwriting. The draft, which con- The notes in the margin are by Sir 
 
 tains the autograph corrections of Lord W. Jones, for whose opinion it was 
 
 Cornwallis, as well as the marginal submitted. The corrections in the body 
 
 notes of Sir W. Jones, is thus endorsed are those made by Lord Cornwallis." 
 
 by Sir George Barlow: "This is tlie I need not say that the document is 
 
 minute which led to the funiKitioii uf an extremely interesting one. I jnir- 
 
 the constitution of the govcnmunt of i)08e to make larger references to it in 
 
 our possessions in India, in 17<J3. It another work. 
 
THE clat:sis of the governed. 3 
 
 business, and to overcome in war. But out of these 
 hucksters and spoliators had now arisen a race of 
 embryo statesmen with dawning perceptions of the 
 duties and responsibilities of governments and the 
 rightful claims of the people. Barlow, who sate at the 
 feet of Cornwallis, was far in advance of his predeces- 
 sors — far in advance of the great mass of his cotem- 
 poraries. There may be expressions in his suggestive 
 minute to jar upon the sensitive chords of modem 
 philanthropy ; but we must read it, not mth the eyes 
 of meridian enlightenment, but ^Aith the hazy vision of 
 men just awakening, as it were, from dreams of con- 
 quest, and only then ceasing to look upon the inhabi- 
 tants of India as a race of men to be defrauded and 
 subdued. 
 
 " A spirit of industry," continued Barlow, '' has 
 been implanted in man, that in seeking his own good 
 he may contribute to the public prosperity. The hus- 
 bandman and manufactm'er will toil incessantly, if 
 they are permitted to reap the profit of their labom^s." 
 But a question arose in practice, and one which has 
 not yet received any very satisfactory solution, as to 
 the extent to which, regard being had to the pros- 
 perity of the State, the people might be suffered to 
 " reap the profit of their labom's." If the question 
 had been satisfactorily solved, that would have been 
 achieved by Indian administrators, which, as far as the 
 range of my own knowledge extends, has yet been 
 achieved by no administrators under Heaven. This, 
 humanly speaking, indeed, is the greatest problem in 
 the world. It is nothing, therefore, to say, that in 
 India the rights of labour have not been determined — 
 that its claims have not been acknowledged — in a 
 manner to give entire satisfaction to every benevolent 
 mind. Under the most favourable circumstances, we 
 can only arrive at something of an approximation. 
 
 b2 
 
4 INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 
 
 And what ought now properly to he considered is, not 
 whether India has heen governed hy its European 
 conquerors after any imagined model of abstract per- 
 fection, hut whether, all circumstances duly consi- 
 dered, all obstacles and hindrances fairly weighed, as 
 much has been done, within a certain time, and with 
 certain appliances and means at our disposal, as rea- 
 sonable men might rightfully expect. 
 
 All government is, more or less, an experiment. In 
 India, it is, especially, an experiment ; and it is one on 
 a gigantic scale. We have been compelled to experi- 
 mentalise upon a foreign people not easy to under- 
 stand — upon a people whose character and institutions 
 are not only extremely dissimilar to our own, but so 
 fenced in with exclusiveness, so bristling with aU. kinds 
 of discouragements and denials, that it is difficult, 
 above all things, to acquire that comprehensive know- 
 ledge of their' feelings and opinions which alone can 
 enable us to adapt our legislation to their moral and 
 physical requKcments. It is the great evil of English 
 legislation, that it is based upon an imperfect know- 
 ledge of the wants and wishes of the people. But an 
 English legislator may converse with whomsoever he 
 will, on any subject, in his own language. He may 
 walk into the poor man's cottage, and ascertain for 
 himself what are the poor man's wants. He has some- 
 thing in common with the poorest. He was born on 
 the same soil — he speaks the same tongue — -he prays 
 to the same God. The two classes, to a certain extent, 
 may be severed by imperfect sympathies ; but there is 
 some bond of sympathy to unite them. They are not 
 utterly strangers and aliens to each other. They do not 
 regard each other as infidels and blasphemers. They 
 cross the threshold of the same temple together, and 
 they may eat, without contamination, from the same 
 dish. There is a vast difference, I repeat, between St. 
 
IMPEDIMENTS TO BENEFICENCE. 6 
 
 James' and St. Giles'. The aristocrat of Belgravia 
 but imperfectly comprehends the feelings of the inha- 
 bitants of the clanging rookeries. Tlie great terri- 
 torial lord has little in common with the wretched la- 
 bourer who poaches by night on his overgrown estate. 
 And hence the blunders of English legislation. But 
 these privileged classes cannot help knowing more 
 about the natural history of their own countrymen, 
 however T\dde the distinction of rank, than the pri- 
 vileged classes of British India — the English con- 
 querors — ^know about the dark-faced inhabitants of the 
 coimtry which they have subdued. 
 
 It is little more than sixty years since we began to 
 govern India at all. Lord Cornwallis is the first In- 
 dian ruler who can be properly regarded as an admi- 
 nistrator. Up to the time of his arrival, the English 
 in India had been engaged in a great struggle for 
 existence. Olive conquered the richest province of 
 Hindostan. Hastings reduced it to something like 
 order. But it was not until Cornwallis carried to 
 India the large-minded liberality of a benevolent Eng- 
 lish statesman, that our administrative efforts took 
 shape and consistency, and the entire internal manage- 
 ment of the country under our rule was regulated by 
 a code of written laws,* intended to confer upon the 
 natives of India the benefits of as much European 
 wisdom and benevolence as was compatible Avith a due 
 regard for the character of native institutions. During 
 those sixty years, India has never enjoyed any pro- 
 tracted season of rest. We have continually been 
 engaged in wars and contentions, which have resulted 
 in the extension of our empire, until it has reached 
 the confines of the Afghan dominions ; and many who 
 
 ♦ Barlow, in the minute of which I bly erased it, and substituted the word 
 have spoken above, always used the "regulations." 
 word "laws:" but Cornwallis invaria- 
 
6 rXTRODTJCTORY REMARKS. 
 
 would fain have been peaceful administrators, have 
 been conquerors in spite of themselves. During the 
 sixty years of which I speak, we have been building up 
 om' present enormous empire. When, therefore, we 
 come to consider the time at our disposal, and the 
 opportunities at our command, mth reference to the 
 ameliorative measures wliicli have emanated from the 
 British Government, we must not take accoimt of the 
 result, as though we had been for sixty years in pos- 
 session of our present territory, and those sixty years 
 had been years of settled tranquillity ; but as though 
 we had all that time to do with an empire inchoate 
 and imperfect, calling for measures — in the first in- 
 stance, of defence, then of aggression — ^which have left 
 neither leisure to consider, nor money to provide the 
 means of domestic improvement. 
 
 Por let us only just glance at the history of India 
 during the last century — at the reigns of om^ different 
 chief Governors, from Clive to Dalhousie, and see 
 how they have been consecutively engaged, mth but 
 two exceptions, in great and engulphing wars. Think 
 of the wars in Madras and Bengal — the E/ohilla wars — 
 the Mysore wars — the Mahratta wars — the Nepaul war 
 — the Pindarree war — the Burmese war — the Afghan 
 war — the Sindh war — the Sikh war — ^with all kinds of 
 minor wars occupying smaller space in the great his- 
 tory of Indian conquest. Of all our Governors-General, 
 either reared in India, or despatched thither from our 
 English bureaux. Shore and Bentinck alone contrived 
 to surround themselves with an atmosphere of peace 
 during the entire period of their administration. And 
 yet all these warriors and statesmen, who were con- 
 tinually pouring their battalions into the field, were 
 not aU of them men, "out of measure addicted to 
 fighting" — men of large ambition, greedy of conquest, 
 
Om CAREER OF CONQUEST. ^ 
 
 iinminclful of the blessings of peace and the claim of 
 an industrial people. Cornwallis — IVIinto — Amherst — 
 Auckland — Hardinge — Dalhousie — were all by nature 
 peace-Governors. Neither Hastings — commoner nor 
 peer — can be justly accused of unscrupulous aggres- 
 siveness. And yet, somehow or other, all these rulers 
 have been arrested in their career of internal improve- 
 ment, or utterly prevented from giving a thought to 
 it, by the necessity of concentrating their efforts on 
 great schemes of military organisation, for the subjec- 
 tion of enemies who have threatened the security of 
 our frontier, and compelled us to possess om^selves of 
 new territory to enable us to retain possession of the 
 old. 
 
 It is not for me now to consider in detail, whether 
 this or that war " might have been avoided." The 
 more thoughtful reader of Indian history will, perhaps, 
 arrive at the general conclusion, that although some 
 of our wars with our immediate neighbom^s might have 
 been delayed, few, if any, could have been avoided.* 
 It is enough for my present purpose, that the English 
 in India, though not fairly chargeable with that lust 
 of conquest which is often said to have marked our 
 whole career in the East, have been, for a century, . 
 engaged in an almost continued struggle, which has/ 
 paralysed the humane efforts of men, the desire of 
 whose hearts has ever turned towards the domestic im- 
 provement of the country. If it had been possible for 
 us to have held possession of a single province — say 
 the rich province of Bengal — ^never to have gone be- 
 yond its limits — ^never to have been distm-bed by fears 
 of invasion — ^never to have been engaged in warlike 
 operations, offensive or defensive — we might, perad- 
 
 * I say " with our immediate neigh- parated from U8 by an extensire tract 
 hours," for where we hare crossed the of intervening territory, this necessity 
 frontier to attack another country, se- is not to be pleaded. 
 
8 INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 
 
 venture, have established a model empire on the 
 banks of the Hooghly. An overflowing treasury, at the 
 command of an enlightened statesman, never arrested 
 by any threatenings from without, in his quiet career 
 of beneficence, never, indeed, looking beyond the 
 limits of his own narrow territory, might, in the 
 course of a century, have enabled us to build up an 
 Eastern principality, so compact in itself, and com- 
 plete in all its internal arrangements, as to leave little 
 or nothing for the philanthropist to desire. But Pro- 
 vidence has not willed that such should be our Eastern 
 Empire. If one of the little handful of European 
 officers, who, a century ago, in gaiters and perukes, 
 followed the fortunes of Lawrence in the Carnatic, 
 were now to stand again on Indian soil, and in one of 
 our North- Western cantonments, to spread out before 
 him a map of our Eastern Empire as now established, 
 he would be overwhelmed Avitli astonishment and in- 
 credulity. He would declare, that not one of his co- 
 temporaries, in the wildest flight of imagination, ever 
 contemplated the possibility of the erection of such an 
 empire as we have now built up in the East. But, in 
 these times, it is equally difficult to imagine the exist- 
 ence of such an empire — ^limited, unexpansive, com- 
 pact — as the Anglo-Indian of 1750, regarded as the 
 extreme result of our conquests in the East. Grown 
 A\'ise by experience, we now declare that it is in ac- 
 cordance with a law of nature, universal and immu- 
 table, that our empire should have so expanded. Be 
 this as it may, the history of India has been liitherto 
 a history of expansion — of acquisition ; and it is only 
 by so considering the fact, that we can rightly estimate 
 the much or the little which the British conquerors of 
 the Indian world have done to promote the happiness 
 of the people who inhabit it. 
 
PROGRESSIVE IMPROVEMENT. 9 
 
 Many great political problems are yet unsolved — 
 many great social evils are yet unremedied. Much, 
 doubtless, has yet to be done before the voice of com- 
 plaint can be authoritatively called upon, in the name 
 of reason, to be still. Unqualified commendation in 
 such a case would be as unreasonable as unqualified 
 censure — not because it is unqualified commendation 
 of the Indian Government, but l^ecause it is unqualified 
 commendation of a terrestrial government, and, there- 
 fore, of one prone to all sorts of short-comings, and 
 liable to all kinds of error. If there were nothing 
 more to be complained of there would be nothing 
 more to be done. Now, in India, it must be acknow- 
 ledged that there is much to be done. But in England, 
 also, there is much to be done. The Government of 1 
 England has been, ai^d is, a Government of Progress. 
 We are astonished at the evils which our fathers per- 
 mitted, and our sons will be astonished at those which 
 we in our turn are permitting. And yet generations 
 of Englishmen have boasted, and will boast, of the 
 blessings of the British Constitution. We have not to 
 consider whether this or that Government has attained 
 perfection, but whether it is making reasonable efforts 
 to approximate to it ; we have not to consider whether 
 the mass of the people are positively happy under any 
 particular Government, but whether they are happier 
 than they were fifty or twenty years ago under that 
 Government. Progressive improvement is all that we 
 have a right to expect, or a vocation to consider. 
 
 The history of Civilisation is the obituary of Error. 
 We are continually burying defunct fallacies, and 
 making Suttees of huge practical mistakes. I am not 
 an old man. I have seen little more than half of the 
 years allotted to humanity, and yet I have lived in 
 times which, compared with the present, were years 
 
10 lyTRODrCTOllT EEMARKS. 
 
 of barbarism and darkness. I hare witnessed the 
 cremation of social and political evils, the existence of 
 which, in such recent times, my children will scarcely 
 credit. When I was a boy, the green slopes of Old 
 Samm were my habitual play-ground. There was a 
 little inn on the white chalk-road which sent tvvo 
 members to Parliament, whilst Manchester and Bir- 
 mingham sent none. A Roman Catholic could not 
 sit in our Legislative Assemblies, or in our Municipal 
 Corporations, or lead a regiment or command a ship. 
 Slaves were held as property by English gentlemen in 
 the colonies, and bought and sold like sheep. A man 
 might be transported for seven years for knocking 
 down a partridge or a hare. Such was the general 
 eifect of the game-laws, that it was said of them that 
 "for every ten pheasants fluttering in a wood, one 
 EngKsh peasant was rotting in gaol."* The Court of 
 Chancery, with its agonising delays and its desolating 
 voracity, made playthings of human life and human 
 reason, and wrote its fearful annals on the walls of 
 the lunatic's cell and the grave of the suicide. The 
 state of our prisons was so detestable, that a yoimg 
 and modest gM thrown into gaol for some trifling 
 offence, or perhaps Avrongfully accused, came out an 
 abandoned criminal. The gibbet was in such repute, 
 that a man might be hanged for stealing a yard of 
 silk from a shop-counter, for destroying a tree, or 
 breaking down the embankment of a river. And it 
 was no uncommon thing for men to be lured on to 
 the gallows by a detective police, who made it their 
 business to associate in flash houses with thieves and 
 prostitutes, and incite them to the commission of 
 crimes which it should have been their duty to pre- 
 vent. 
 
 • Sydney Smith. 
 
POVERTY AND CRIME. 11 
 
 These are a few of the social and political evils 
 which I have lived to see aholished l)y the interven- 
 tion of a humane legislature. Perhaps I. may be 
 spared to see many more great changes; for many 
 more great changes are needed, and this is an age of 
 progressive amelioration. But although I see clearly 
 around me many things wliich I know cannot be 
 right, and I hope earnestly that some day they may 
 be remedied, I know how difficult it is to devise a fit 
 remedial application, and how the best efforts of bene- 
 volent statesmen may be baffled by the magnitude 
 and obstinacy of the disease. There are clamorous 
 social evils crying out for redress almost under the 
 walls of the Palace at Westminster. Prom the win- 
 dows of the committee-rooms of that great costly 
 senate-house, our legislators may look out upon hun- 
 dreds of miserable dwellings, overcrowded with squalid 
 and hungry tenants, whose sufferings far surpass any • 
 endured bv the inhabitants of a villas^e in Beno;al. It 
 is not long since it was stated in Parliament by a 
 nobleman, who has made the misery and the crime of 
 the London poor his peculiar study, that " there were 
 30,000 naked, fiilthy, deserted, roaming, lawless chil- 
 dren, who formed the seed-plot of 19-20ths of the 
 crime which desolates the metropolis ;" and again re- 
 peated at a public meeting, " that ninety-nine cases of 
 crime out of every hundred were the result of want of 
 honest occupation." I have no wish to dwell upon 
 these things. I would only say that it becomes us, 
 before we indignantly expatiate upon the sufferings of 
 the people of India, to think of the suffering at our 
 own doors ; and to consider whether we have yet con- 
 trived, with all our Ministerial Cabinets, our Legis- 
 lative Assemblies, our great corporate bodies, and our 
 gigantic press, to furnish anything like a remedy for 
 
12 INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 
 
 this the greatest of social evils — ^the physical necessity 
 of crime. The most enthusiastic advocate of the Go- 
 vernment of the East India Company would not claim 
 for it the merit of abolishing poverty and wretchedness, 
 and annihilating crime ; but the people of India are 
 not driven to crime by want of honest occupation. It 
 is easy to conceive what would be said on the subject 
 if they were. 
 
 I would say something, too, regarding material 
 wants. A well-informed practical man, writing in 
 1822, says, " The fertile plains of [ ], [ ], 
 
 and [ ], are separated from each other by a de- 
 
 serted country, hitherto nearly an impassable barrier. 
 This large district comprehends upwards of 900 square 
 miles ; in many places it is very populous. As might 
 be expected under such circumstances, the people are 
 turbulent, and their houses, being inaccessible for want 
 of roads, it is not surprising that during the disturb- 
 ances of 1821-22, this district was the asylum for 
 smugglers and robbers, and that stolen cattle were 
 drawn into it as to a safe and impenetrable retreat." 
 The blank spaces which I have left at the commence- 
 ment of this extract the reader will, doubtless, feel dis- 
 posed to fill with the names of some Indian cities or dis- 
 tricts. But the fertile plains, separated from each other 
 by a deserted country, the populous places rendered 
 inaccessible, and the people turbulent and lawless by 
 want of roads, are not in any part of the mighty Indian 
 peninsula, but in a little island upon the other side of 
 the Irish Channel. The places whose names I have 
 omitted are Limerick, Cork, and Kerry.* " Notwith- 
 standing," adds the writer, " its present desolate state, 
 
 • The extract is taken from a re- througli the press, this esteemed writer 
 
 port by Mr. Griffith, quoted in Mr. and valuable public servant has paid 
 
 Porter's admirable work on the " Pro- the ordinary penalty of a life of unceas- 
 
 gress of the Nation." I grieve to think ing intellectual labour, and that his 
 
 that during the passage of this volume career of usefulness is at an end. 
 
ADMINISTRATIVE DIFFICULTIES. 13 
 
 tliis country contains within itself the seeds of future 
 improvement and industry." 
 
 It would he easy to multiply instances of tracts of 
 country in Ireland, containing within themselves the 
 seeds of improvement and industry, which, even at the 
 present time, are little better than howling wildernesses. 
 But I have no wish to enlarge upon the failures of our 
 domestic administration. I merely desire to express my 
 conviction that such failures, though deeply to he 
 lamented, furnish no proof of the general incompetency 
 of the Government which has unwillingly permitted 
 them ; I w^ould not argue that because Ireland has 
 been and is misgoverned — that, because there are large 
 tracts of desolate country, and thousands of inhabitants 
 in an extreme state of physical and moral destitution, 
 the repeal of the Union is an event to be desired as an 
 act of justice to the Irish people. I would give the 
 British Government credit for the best intentions — I 
 would believe that it has laboured, and not laboured 
 in vain, for the benefit of the people, though it has left 
 much to be done for their amelioration before we can 
 congratulate ourselves on the general result. I will- 
 ingly believe that it is no easy thing to govern Ireland, 
 although it is a small island within a few hours' 
 journey, by land and sea, from the senate-house of 
 Great Britain, and contains less than eight millions of 
 souls, aU speaking the same language, and worshipping 
 the same God. 
 
 But believing as I do that it is no easy thing to 
 govern Ireland — ^no easy thing to govern England — 
 no easy thing in one island or the other, to abolish 
 human misery and eradicate human crime, I would 
 wish it also to be believed that the Government of 
 India, a country whose area it is difficult to com- 
 pute, and whose population it is difficult to number, 
 whose people present almost as many varieties of cha- 
 
14 IXTRODrCTORY KEMAUKS. 
 
 racter and language as tlie entire continent of Europe, 
 and the whole of which are utterly dissimilar to our 
 own, may be also difficult to govern. 
 
 I would \Yisli it to be believed that in the govern- 
 ment of such a country some credit is due for what is 
 done well, and some allowance to be made both for 
 what is done amiss and what is not done at all. I am 
 afraid that too many amongst us are prone to make a 
 severe reckoning of the errors and short-comings, and 
 of the good deeds and successful results to take no sort 
 of account. 
 
 It is because I believe that, under the Government 
 of the East India Company much has been done for 
 the benefit of the people of India of which little is 
 known in this country, or if known, purposely ignored, 
 that I now desire to throw together, in an historical 
 form, some information, derived from a variety of 
 sources, relative to the administrative results of British 
 connexion with the East. In a word, I desire to show 
 what we have done for India, and what we have 
 attempted to do. The review may not at all points 
 present matter for congratulation, for our efforts in 
 India, as elsewhere, have not always been crowned 
 with success. But I believe that, \dewed in a calm, 
 candid, judicial spirit, without passion and without 
 prejudice, the aggregate result reflects no little honor 
 on the Company and their servants, and may be honestly 
 applauded by men jealous of the interests of mankind. 
 
 And assuming that there is much yet to be done — 
 that much has been left undone which ought to have been 
 done — ^that those to whom the administration of India 
 is entrusted, require at times to be roused and stimu- 
 lated by the consideration that there is a great tribunal 
 at home — ^the tribunal of the British public, wliich takes 
 cognizance of all their doiugs — I cannot help tliinking 
 that the great object of securing the zealous activity of 
 
ENCOURAGEMENTS TO EXERTION. 15 
 
 our Indian administrators is best to be attained by 
 recording and commending their good deeds, than by 
 an indiscriminate condemnation of what are presumed 
 to be their bad. I doubt, indeed, whether the eflPect 
 of all the vague general censure which is lavished upon 
 British administration in the East, has not a tendency 
 rather to cramp and repress than to foster and develop 
 the beneficence of our exiled countrymen who consti- 
 tute the executive Government of our Indian Empire. 
 But I am certain, on the other hand, that nothing is 
 more likely to develop all their best feelings, and stimu- 
 late all their energies and activities, than the knowledge 
 that their exertions are not overlooked by their bre- 
 thren at home — that their good deeds are duly reported 
 to the British public, and by the British public read 
 mth interest, and commented on with applause. If 
 there be full warrant for the belief that the British 
 pubKc will not be left in profound ignorance of all the 
 good that is done in our far-off Indian possessions, 
 nothing is so animating, so invigorating as the re- 
 flection, " What ^vill be thought of tliis at home ?" But 
 if the only response that can be given to the stirring 
 question is " Kothing" — ^if a general conviction is left 
 to impress itself on the minds of Englishmen in India, 
 that, let them do what they may, and suffer what they 
 may for the people, scorning delight and living labori- 
 ous days, still one general sentence of condemnation 
 wWl be passed on our Indian administration — still 
 ignorance and malevolence Tvill be obstreperous in their 
 denunciations — it is easy to conceive how all warmth 
 may be chilled, and all activity paralysed ; how in time 
 they may be made to conform to the erring judgment. 
 People are very prone to become what the world 
 beKeves them to be. 
 
 Influenced by such considerations as these — ^rooted 
 in the faith that I shall best subserve the interests of 
 
16 INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 
 
 India and her teeming millions of inhabitants, by en- 
 couraging the zealous and stimulating the active, than 
 by Avriting what can only dishearten and repress, I 
 purpose, in the following chapters, to show what our 
 countrymen have done, and what they have attempted 
 to do, for the better government of India, and the 
 amelioration of the condition of the people — as evi- 
 denced in the development of the industrial resources 
 of the country, the purification of justice, the civilisa- 
 tion of savage tribes, the suppression of unholy rites 
 and cruel abominations, and the general diffusion of 
 enlightenment and truth. It will be my privilege, in 
 the course of this attempt, to record some incidents of 
 our Indian rule, little known beyond the area that has 
 been the scene of them, but which are not to be 
 chronicled without the strongest emotions of national 
 pride. And if ever such chronicle of good deeds done 
 by English gentlemen, under the fiery skies of the 
 East, isolated from their kind, far removed from all 
 the ordinary incentives to exertion, amidst dangers 
 and difficulties more than sufficient to repel the brave 
 and deter the resolute, should stimulate one other 
 Indian exile to go and do likewise, I shall not have 
 written in. vain, and I shall not be without my reward. 
 
INDIA UNDER THE MOGULS. IT 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 India under the Moguls — The Arab and Tartar Conquests — The House of 
 Toghlak— Feroz Shah— The first Indian Canal— The House of Timour— The 
 Emperor Akbar— His internal Administration — Shah Jehan — Public Works 
 — Decline of the Mogul Empire — Comparison of Mogul and British Rule — 
 Their General Effects on the Happiness of the People. 
 
 I DO not know that it is of much real importance to 
 inquire whether the people of India would have been 
 more or less happy and prosperous if they had been 
 left to the government of their old Mahomedan con- 
 querors and rulers. The inquiry must, at best, be un- 
 satisfactory and inconclusive. But, from the days of 
 Eurke to the days of Ellenborough, the insatiable 
 benevolence, the magnificent philanthropy, of the old 
 Oriental despots has been so often vaunted, either 
 as a reproach or an encouragement to us, that I can- 
 not persuade myself to pass on without devoting a few 
 pages to the subject. 
 
 The rulers whom we supplanted were, like ourselves, 
 aliens and usurpers. We found the Hindoos a con- 
 quered people, and, little by little, we substituted one 
 yoke for another. The tide of conquest had hitherto 
 set in from the inland northern counties. It was rolled 
 back by a power whose approaches commenced from 
 the southern sea-board. Prom the Oxus and the 
 Jaxartes, from the borders of the Aral lake, and 
 from the snowy mountains, had come the overwhelm- 
 ing desolating stream of northern conquest. The 
 Greeks and Arabs, who had preceded the Tartar 
 hordes, scarcely passed the limits of the country which 
 modem history knows as Hindostan. British arms 
 
 c 
 
18 INDIA UNDER THE MOGULS. 
 
 have now again extended the Indian Empire to the 
 banks of the Indus, and our legions have encamped 
 themselves, permanently and securely, upon the seat 
 of the old Macedonian conquests. But of neither 
 Greeks nor Arabs can it be said that they conquered 
 India. A race of men, in whom the shepherd and 
 the soldier were strangely blended, streamed from the 
 countries watered by the Oxus and Jaxartes, and es- 
 tablished themselves in Afghanistan; looking down 
 from which, as from a platform of observation, upon 
 India, they sighed for its legendary treasures, and 
 meditated the invasion of the coveted land. 
 
 How at the dawn of the present millenium, before 
 the Norman William, on the southern coast of Eng- 
 land, had stricken down the last of the Saxon kings, 
 Mahmoud of Ghuznee, the son of a Toorkhee slave, 
 crossed the waters of the Jumna, and mth a multi- 
 tudinous army, appeared before the stately walls of 
 Canoorj — ^how he attacked, plundered, and destroyed 
 Muttra ; and how he returned to Ghuznee laden with 
 glittering spoil, and attended by a train of five thou- 
 sand captives ; — ^how, at another time, crossing the 
 great desert, he poured his battalions into Goozrat, 
 and made the walls of the far-famed idol-temple echo 
 with the cry of Allah AkJihar — ^how he desecrated that 
 beloved Pagan shrine and carried off its hoarded 
 wealth ; and how, on its backward march to Afghan- 
 istan, his army perished miserably on the burning 
 sands ; — are great historical events, not less interesting 
 for their remoteness, at which it is scarcely necessary 
 to glance. Eor although Mahmoud entered India — 
 fought and conquered — he never there established an 
 empire. He coveted the fabulous treasures which, it 
 was believed, were hidden in its gorgeous palaces and 
 rich idol-shrines ; and his lust was satisfied with the 
 gold and jewels, which he bore away from this ro- 
 
THE HOUSE OF TOGHLAK. 19 
 
 mantic land. But he was a spoliator, rather than a 
 conqueror; and his victories left upon India little more 
 than the impress of transient calamities. 
 
 It was hy a prince of less note in the page of his- 
 tory — ^by Shahah-oo-deen, of the house of Ghor, that 
 India was first really conquered. It is hard to say why 
 the life of one who reduced to subjection almost the 
 entire country from Ajmere to Bengal, and left at his 
 death the conquered provinces under his own officers, 
 or under tributary princes, should stand out with so 
 little individual distinctness from the great level of 
 the Mahomedan chronicles. Little, however, is popu- 
 larly recorded of his personal history and character. 
 On his death, about the time when the great Charter 
 of English privileges was signed at Uunnymede, India 
 became an independent Mahomedan kingdom, under 
 the rule of the conqueror's favorite slave ; and the 
 dynasty of the Slave- Kings was commenced. Then 
 the Empire of Delhi was established. Hindostan was 
 nominally subject to one sovereign, the extent of whose 
 real influence was mainly dependent on the energy of 
 his personal character, and the vigor with which he 
 held his satraps in control.* Much of his time was 
 consumed in efforts to suppress the rising power of his 
 provincial governors ; and those governors, instead of 
 concerning themselves about the welfare of the people, 
 were continually striving to advance what they be- 
 lieved to be their own. Some splendid architectural 
 remains, conspicuous among which is the Kootah 
 Mmar of Delhi, still bear pleasing testimony to the 
 
 ♦ " All Hindostau, except some in- ceed the rest, and the princes who re- 
 
 sulated portions, now acknowledged tained the internal government of their 
 
 the government of Delhi; but the obe- territories would be quite submissive 
 
 dience of the different portions was in and obedient in general politics ; but 
 
 different degrees, from entire subjection two or three weak rulers would again 
 
 to very imperfect dependence; and in throw all into confusion; new princes 
 
 this state, with various fluctuations, it would start up, and old ones would be- 
 
 remained till the end of the Mogul Em- come unruly, until the next vigoroua 
 
 pire. In a succession of strong reigns, monarch had almost to begin the con- 
 
 the subject country would greatly ex- quest anew."— [£//)Aim<on«.] 
 
 c2 
 
20 INDIA UNDER THE MOGULS. 
 
 magnificent tastes of the Slave-Kings ; but, as peaceful 
 administrators and guardians of the public weal, they 
 can lay little claim to the approbation of posterity. 
 Indeed, the judgment is not over harsh-which would 
 pronounce them, for the most part, either unscrupulous 
 tyrants or indolent debauchees. Nor were their Ghilji 
 successors of a higher class. Their efforts at internal 
 administration often took the shape of arbitrary inter- 
 ference of the most irritating kind, and they most in- 
 censed the people when they interfered most in their 
 domestic affairs. 
 
 Of the succeeding dynasty — ^the house of Toghlak — 
 one of the greatest monarchs was a madman.* His 
 successor — Peroz Shah — left behind him, perhaps, the 
 brightest name of all the early Mahomedan princes. 
 Considering the age in which he Kved, and the circum- 
 stances by which he was surrounded, he was really an 
 enlightened prince. Greatly in advance of his prede- 
 cessors, he initiated many important public works ; and 
 though the accounts of them which have come down 
 to us are somewhat vague and general, and perhaps 
 fairly open to some suspicion of their accuracy, it is 
 not to be doubted that he did much to promote the 
 prosperity and to advance the civilisation of the country 
 which he governed, t By Peroz Shah was constructed, 
 in the middle of the fourteenth century, the first Indian 
 
 • Mahmoud Toghlak. publicity to the demands of the state. 
 
 t " His reign, though not brilliant in . . . Tiie following list is given of his 
 
 other respects, was distinguished for public works, for the maintenance of 
 
 the enlightened spirit of his regula- which, lands were assigned:— 50 dams 
 
 tions, and the extent and utility of his across rivers, to promote navigation ; 
 
 public works. He limited the number 40 mosques; 30 colleges; 100 caravan- 
 
 of capital punishments, and put a stop serais ; 30 reservoirs for irrigation ; 
 
 to the use of torture and the practice 100 hospitals; 100 public baths; 150 
 
 of mutilation, which last prohibition bridges ; besides many other edifices 
 
 was the more meritorious, as it was for pleasure or ornament." Elphin- 
 
 at variance with the Mahomedan law. stone, from whom this account is taken, 
 
 He i.bolished a great number of vexa- adds — "The round numbers, as well as 
 
 tious taxes and fees, put an end to all the amount of some of the items, sug- 
 
 fluctuating and precarious imposts, and gest doubts of the accuracy of the list; 
 
 fixed the revenues in such a manner but the works of Feroz which still re- 
 
 as to leave as little as possible to the main, afford sufficient evidence of the 
 
 collectors, and to give precision and magnitude of his undertakings." 
 
REIGN OF FEROZ SHAH. 21 
 
 canal. The water seems to liave been drawn from the 
 Chetang nullah^ at the foot of the lower range of 
 Himalayahsjwest of the Jumna, and the line extended 
 thence to Hissar, where were the favourite hunting- 
 grounds of the emperor. Wliatever may have been 
 the pui'poses for which it was constructed — and I see 
 no reason to question that it was designed for the 
 irrigation of the country, and the benefit of the people 
 — it was but a little time in full fertilising operation. 
 Not very long after the death of Eeroz Shah, it seems 
 to have been dried up ; and it is believed that it never 
 drew a permanent flow of water, until, two hundred 
 years afterwards, the Emperor Akbar issued an order 
 for its restoration.* 
 
 In 1389, full of years and trouble, Eeroz Shah was 
 gathered to his fathers. It was during the reign of his 
 grandson, only a few years later, that India was laid 
 prostrate by that stupendous calamity, the invasion of 
 Tamerlane. Girt with the strange legend of miracu- 
 lous conception, the lame shepherd-prince, with a frame 
 of iron, and a heart of stone, came with a mighty Tartar 
 army, bristhng with pikes and javelins, from the country 
 beyond the Oxus, and over-ran the provinces of Hin- 
 dostan. Lust of conquest — ^nothing else — ^brought him 
 to Delhi. He had no ^vrongs to redress — no insults 
 to ^Wpe away. But he had conquered the countries of 
 Central Asia lying nearer to his home. Persia, Georgia, 
 Mesopotamia, Syria, had fallen before his arms. He 
 had captured Herat — thus made himself master of 
 Khorassan — and thence crossing the Punjab, moved 
 
 * Elphinstone says that it was dis- Shah Badshah, two hundred and ten 
 
 used, "perhaps, since the death of years ago, brought water from the 
 
 ITeroz" (in 1389); but it seems, from nullahs and drains in the vicinity of 
 
 the following passage in a curious docu- Sudhourah, at the foot of the hills, to 
 
 ment discovered in Khytul, by Lieute- Hansi and Hissar, and by which, for 
 
 nant S. A. Abbott, to have been in ope- four or five months of the year, water 
 
 ration at a later date. It is an edict of was there available, has in the course 
 
 the Emperor Akbar, relative to the res- of time, and from numerous obstacles, 
 
 toration of the canal, commencing thus : become so choked, that it is scarcely dis- 
 
 "The Chetang Nuddi, by which Feroz cerniblo," &c, &c. — {^Calcutta Review.] 
 
22 INDIA UNDER THE MOGULS. 
 
 down with irresistible force on the beautiful capital of 
 the Indian Empire. No language can exaggerate the 
 horrors of that invasion — horrors which have rendered 
 the name of " Timour the Tartar" familiar to every 
 school-boy in Western Europe, as the type of an in- 
 satiable tyrant and a scourge of the human race. 
 
 It is certain, indeed, that these Mahomedan con- 
 quests were achieved at an enormous cost of human 
 life — that the misery which the conquerors diffused in 
 their desolating careers, makes by comparison the vic- 
 torious progress of British arms in the East a mild and 
 merciful migration. The Arabs and the Tartars were 
 equally remorseless. Each in turn murdered and pil- 
 laged with as little pity and compunction as the other. 
 In the first, the spirit of proselytism was the stronger. 
 They went forth as children of the Prophet, and fought 
 and conquered in his name. A genuine religious en- 
 thusiasm stirred the hearts of those early Mahomedan 
 invaders. But the Tartar hordes were little better than 
 lukewarm neophytes. They over-ran a new country ; 
 they made its treasures their own; but they rather 
 merged themselves into the general population, and 
 took shape from the surrounding mass, than stamped 
 their own conformation upon it. It was in no spirit of 
 toleration and forbearance, however, that they spared 
 the idols of the Hindoos.* Their enthusiasm found 
 vent through other channels than those of religious 
 zeal. They murdered the idolaters, and plundered 
 their temples, only because they delighted in cruelty, 
 and were greedy of spoil, t 
 
 • This is only metaphorically and represented. When the former broke 
 
 apiritually true. Literally and sub- the graven deities of the Hindoos into 
 
 stantially, it is incorrect. The Maho- pieces, they did so to see what they 
 
 medan conquerors often did not spare contained. 
 
 the Hindoo idols ; but their icono- f The history of the Mahomedan 
 
 clasm was very different from that of dynasties in India is full of lament- 
 
 the Spanish conquerors of South Ame- able instances of the cruelty and rapa- 
 
 rica. The latter, when they struck city of the early conquerors. Take, 
 
 down the idoU of the Mexicans, struck as illustrative of Arab cruelty, the 
 
 at the false gods which the images following from Elphinstone's account 
 
CHARACTER OF MAHOMEDAN CONQUEST. 
 
 23 
 
 Tamerlane was proclaimed Emperor of Delhi, but he 
 soon withdrew his army from India, leaving anarchy 
 
 whilst the rest dashed themselves to 
 pieces from the works, or burned 
 
 of Casim's conquest of Sindh: — " Ca- 
 sim at first contented himself with 
 circumcising all the Brahmins ; but 
 incensed at tlieir rejection of this sort 
 of conversion, he ordered all above the 
 age of seventeen to be put to death, 
 and all under it, with the women, to be 
 reduced to slavery." And again, from 
 the same writer — " The women and 
 children were first sacrificed in flames 
 of their own kindling ; the men bathed, 
 and with other ceremonies took leave 
 of each other and the world ; the gates 
 were then thrown open, the Rajputs 
 rushed out sword in hand, and, throw- 
 ing themselves on the weapons of their 
 enemies, perished to a man. Those of 
 the garrison who did not share in this 
 act of desperation, gained little by their 
 prudence: the city was carried by as- 
 sault, and all the men in arms were 
 slrtuiihtered in the storm. Their 
 families were reduced to bondage." 
 
 themselves, with their wives and chil- 
 dren, in the houses; so that not one of 
 the whole body survived." In Persia, 
 Mahmoud seems to have been even 
 more remorseless than in India. " He 
 invaded Irak, and, ungenerously, if not 
 perfidiously, seized the person of the 
 prince who had trusted himself in the 
 camp before Rei. He then took pos- 
 session of the whole territory, and 
 liaving been opposed at Ispahan and 
 Cazvin, he punished their resistance by 
 putting to death some thousands of the 
 inhabitants of each city." "Perhaps, 
 however," says Elphinstone, " the most 
 odious trait of his religious wars is 
 given incidentally by a Mahomedan 
 author, quoted in Price, who states, 
 that such was the multitude of captives 
 brought from India, that a purchaser 
 could not be found for a slave at four 
 
 Speaking more generally of the cha- shillings and sevenpence a head.' 
 
 racter of Arab conquests, he says: 
 " On the first invasion, each city was 
 called on, as the army approached, to 
 embrace the Mahomedan religion or to 
 pay tribute. In case of refusal, the city 
 was attacked, and if it did not capitu- 
 late, all the fighting-men were put to 
 death, and their families were sold for 
 slaves. Four cities held out to this 
 extremity; and in two of them the 
 number of soldiers who refused quarter 
 is estimated at 6000 each." 
 
 Take the following from the record 
 of the career of Mahmoud of Ghuznee: 
 — "During a halt of twenty days, the 
 city (Muttra) was given up to plunder, 
 the idols were broken, and the temples 
 profaned. The excesses of the troops 
 led to a fire in the city, and the efiects 
 of this conflagration were added to its 
 other calamities. . . . This expedition 
 was attended with some circumstances 
 more than usually tragical. At Ma- 
 bawan, near Muttra, the Rajah had 
 submitted, and had been favorably 
 received; when a quarrel accidentally 
 breaking out between the soldiers of the 
 two parties, the Hindoos were mas- 
 sacred and driven into the river, and 
 the Rajah, conceiving himself betrayed, 
 destroyed his wife and children, and 
 then made away with himself. At 
 Munj, after a desperate resistance, 
 part of the Rajput garrison rushed out 
 through the breaches of the enemy, 
 
 Again : — " Shahab-u-din was more 
 sanguinary than Mahmoud. When he 
 took Ajmir, he put some thousands of 
 the inhabitants, who opposed him, to 
 the sword, reserving the rest for 
 slavery." But it is in the history of 
 such conquerors as Genghis Khan and 
 Tamerlane that the horrors of these 
 Mahomedan inroads are most clearly 
 revealed. I can aflbrd space only for 
 one more example, taken from Elphin- 
 stone's account of the • latter, " He 
 (Tamerlane) then proceeded to Batner, 
 and massacred the country people who 
 had taken refuge under the walls. The 
 place afterwards surrendered on terms; 
 but, by one of those mistakes which so 
 constantly accompanied Tamerlane's 
 capitulations, the town was burned, 
 and all the inhabitants put to the 
 sword. He then marched to Samana, 
 where he joined his main body, having 
 slaughtered the inhabitants of every 
 place he passed. From Sam an a the 
 towns were deserted, and consequently 
 there were no more general massacres. 
 Many prisoners were, however, taken; 
 and on reaching Delhi, Tamerlane put 
 to death all of them above fifteen years 
 of age (to the number, according to 
 the exaggerated accounts of the Mus- 
 sulman historians, of 100,000) 
 
 Delhi surrendered under a solemn pro- 
 mise of protection, and Tamerlane was 
 publicly proclaimed Emperor of India. 
 
24 INDIA UNDER THE MOGULS. 
 
 and desolation behind him. The great cities were de- 
 populated. The country was without a government. 
 The empire had been gradually falling to pieces since 
 the early years of the reign of Mahomed Toghlak, and 
 when now, after the withdrawal of Tamerlane, an 
 attempt was made to re-establish imperial power in 
 Hindostan, it was found that the sceptre of the new 
 dynasty was waved over only a renmant of the exten- 
 sive kingdom which had owned the sovereignty of the 
 princes of Delhi. Everywhere independent monarchies 
 had risQn up, and it was not until a descendant of 
 Tamerlane — known to the present generation by one of 
 the pleasantest autobiographies ever written by sove- 
 reign or subject, a memoir as instructive as Xenophon's, 
 and as amusing as Pepys', — came from the countries 
 which had poured forth tjie teeming multitudes with 
 which his great ancestor had conquered India, fol- 
 lowed in his footsteps, and re-conquered Delhi, that 
 any attempt was made to consolidate these distracted 
 provinces. Baber found the empire broken up into a 
 number of small principalities. Bebellion after rebel- 
 lion in distant provinces had shorn the throne of Delhi 
 of its strength, and reduced it almost to a pageant. 
 In some of the principalities there was a sort of no- 
 minal dependence, in others there was not even that. 
 But the successor of Tamerlane, having established 
 himself in the imperial city, had no thought of halting 
 there, or of returning to his royal home. He had not 
 come merely as a conqueror and a spoliator. He had 
 
 What followg is so constant a con- impassable by heaps of dead; and the 
 comitant of Tamerlane's promises of gates being forced, the whole Mogul 
 protection, that we are at a loss whe- army gained admittance, and a scene of 
 ther to ascribe it to systematic perfidy, horror ensued, easier to be imagined 
 or to the habitual ferocity and insub- than described.' — Brigy's Ferishta. " 
 ordination of the troops. On this oc- We fear that the insatiable cruelty of 
 casion, the most credible accounts at- the Mahomedan conquerors stands re- 
 tribute the commencement to the latter corded upon more undeniable authority 
 cause. Plunder and violence brought than the insatiable benevolence of the 
 on resistance; 'this led to a general Mahomedan rulers. 
 mtfssacre; some streets vere rendered 
 
THE REIGN OF BABER. 25 
 
 come to establish a great empire on the banks of the 
 Hindoo rivers ; and he realised, in the fuhiess of time, 
 the pregnant dreams of his imaginative boyhood. 
 
 Baber was sixth in descent from Tamerlane. A 
 space of time, exceeding a century and a quarter, in- 
 tervened between the invasion of the latter and the 
 accession of the former prince.* And again, after the 
 death of Baber, was the succession interrupted by the 
 revolt of a noble of the house of Ghor, who wrested 
 the sceptre from the hand of the descendant of Tamer- 
 lane, and established himself on the throne of Delhi. 
 Shir Shah reigned only nine years ; but his reign was 
 a lustrous one. No prince had, up to this time, done so 
 much for the improvement of the conquered country. 
 He devoted himself, when not actually in the field, to 
 the better ordering of the civil administration, and the 
 construction of great public works. He improved both 
 the fiscal and judicial systems of the empu^e. And the 
 native annalists head the list of great works which he 
 accomplished, with an account of a broad road, which 
 in those days it took four months to traverse, stretch- 
 ing from Bengal to the banks of the Indus at Rhotas, 
 along which noble rows of trees, and wells of good 
 water at short intervals, shaded and refreshed the tra- 
 veller ; and caravanserais, at every stage, supplied with 
 food for the poor, and attendants, alike for Mahome- 
 dan and Hindoo, invited the weary and the himgry to 
 enter, t 
 
 * India, during that interval (from found the highways shade«l by trees, 
 
 1399 to 1526), was governed by the with resting-houses and wells at regular 
 
 Sayuds and the house of Lodi. It intervals along a great part of the coast 
 
 was a period of great intestine com- of Malabar, then under the Hindus; 
 
 motion, and little appears to have and in an inscription lately discovered, 
 
 been done for the improvement of the which there is every reason to think is 
 
 country. of the third century before Christ, there 
 
 t It is not, however, to be supposed is an especial order by the king for 
 that he was the first monarch who digging wells and planting: trees along 
 gave his attention to these things, the public highways." Ibn Batuta, 
 " The roads," says Elphinstone, " may however, makes no mention of the ex- 
 have been improved by Shir Shah; but istence of any such works as these in 
 Ibn Batuta, 200 years before his time, Northern India, where the greater part 
 
26 INDIA UNDER THE MOGULS. 
 
 The revolts which interrupted the reigns of Shir 
 Shah's successors paved the way for the restoration of 
 the house of Timour. Ahout the middle of the six- 
 teenth century, the expelled son of Baber recovered a 
 portion of his lost dominions ; but only survived by a 
 few months his return to the capital after sixteen years 
 of ignominious exile. An accident deprived him sud- 
 denly of life ; and history would, in all probability, set 
 down against him that he had done nothing to earn 
 the gratitude of posterity, if he had not begotten the 
 greatest monarch who ever sat on the throne of Hin- 
 dostan. 
 
 Akbar was thirteen years old when he began to 
 reign. Our English Mary was then lighting up the 
 fires of Smithfield in honor of the Pope of Rome. 
 The Portuguese had rounded the Cape of Storms, and 
 established themselves in Southern and Western India ; 
 but the British merchant had not yet begun to freight 
 his argosies with the rich silks and fine muslins of the 
 Indian world. India itself was then broken up into 
 many principalities. The empu'e of the young king, 
 on his accession, extended little beyond the government 
 of the Punjab and the country about Delhi and Agra. 
 A series of revolutions had destroyed, not only the in- 
 tegrity of the empire itself, but the regularity of civil 
 administration and the continuance of social order and 
 prosperity. But the royal pupil, as he entered on 
 
 of his time was spent, but says, on the a journey of two months, along the 
 
 other hand, that the highways were shore from Sindabur to Kawlara. The 
 
 infested by robbers. According to this whole of the way by land lies under 
 
 traveller, the South was in a more ad- the shade of trees, and at the distance 
 
 vanced state of civilisation, for he says of every half mile there is a house made 
 
 that theft was unknown in Malabar, of wood, in which there are chambers 
 
 " Should anything fall from a tree, none fitted up for the reception of comers 
 
 except its proper owner would attempt and goers, whether they be Moslems or 
 
 to touch it." This was supposed to be infidels. To each of these there is a 
 
 the result of the extreme severity of the well, out of which they drink, and over 
 
 laws. The account of the great Mala- each is an infidel appointed to give 
 
 bar roafl, alluded to by Elphinstone, is drink."— [T/ze Travels of Ibn BatutUy 
 
 worth quoting. " We next came into translated from the Arabic^ by the Rev. 
 
 the country of Malabar, which is the Samuel Lee.} 
 country of black pepper. Its length is 
 
AKBAR. 27 
 
 manhood, soon began to perceive the true character of 
 the work which then lay before him. He determined 
 to restore the integrity of the old empire of Hindostan, 
 and to place its internal administration upon a secure 
 and permanent basis. Year by year he extended his 
 conquests, until the rich country of Bengal lay at his 
 feet, and Cashmere became a province of the empire. 
 He again reduced to subjection his hereditary kingdom 
 beyond the Indus, and then, turning his eyes towards 
 the southern countries, meditated the conquest of the 
 Deccan. He was, indeed, continually engaged in war, 
 up to the time of his death ; but in spite of these ex- 
 ternal distractions, he found time to fix his thoughts, 
 as his heart was ever fixed, upon schemes of domestic 
 improvement. He was at once a conqueror and an 
 administrator. He had no delight in conquest. He 
 fought when it was necessary to fight — and he fought 
 with courage and vigor seldom surpassed. But he 
 was happiest when engaged in the work of civil admi- 
 nistration; and history delights to contemplate him 
 rather as a philanthropic statesman, whose internal 
 policy has placed him in the first rank of the great 
 kings of all ages and all countries, than as a warrior 
 whose victories have secured him the applause of more 
 vulgar and unreflecting minds. 
 
 I wish briefly and fairly to state what the Emperor 
 Akbar did for the improvement of the country and the 
 people of Hindostan. He improved the system of land- 
 assessment, or rather he improved upon the improve- 
 ments instituted by Shir Shah. He adopted an imi- 
 form and improved system of land-measurement, and 
 computed the average value of the land, by dividing it 
 into three classes, according to the productiveness of 
 each. This computation being made, one-third of the 
 average produce was fixed as the amount of tax to be 
 paid to the state. But as this was ordinarily to be 
 
28 INDIA UNDER THE MOGULS. 
 
 paid in money, it was necessary to ascertain the value 
 of the produce, and this was done upon an average of 
 the nineteen preceding years, according to local cir- 
 cumstances ; and if the estimate was conceived to be 
 too high, the tax-payer was privileged to pay the assess- 
 ment in kind. These settlements were at first made 
 annually, but afterwards were fixed for a period of ten 
 years. The regulations for the collection of the re- 
 venue enforced by Akbar, were well calculated to pre- 
 vent fraud and oppression, and, on the whole, they 
 worked well for the benefit of the people ; but it has 
 been said of them, and with truth, that " they con- 
 tained no principle of progressive improvement, and 
 held out no hopes to the rural population, by opening 
 paths by which it might spread into other occupations, 
 or rise by individual exertions within its own."* 
 
 The judicial regulations of Akbar were liberal and 
 humane. Justice, on the whole, was fairly adminis- 
 tered. All unnecessary severity — all cruel personal 
 punishments, as torture and mutilation, were pro- 
 hibited, except in peculiar cases, and capital punish- 
 ments were considerably restricted. The police ap- 
 pears to have been well organised, and subject to 
 specific instructions, involving perhaps a little more 
 interference than it was expedient to entrust to such 
 hands, but, on the whole, not ill suited to the temper 
 of the people and the character of the government. 
 His enactments were, on the whole, of a humanising 
 tendency. He prohibited those trials by ordeal, of 
 which it is difficult to say whether they are more cruel 
 or more absurd ; he suppressed the barbarous custom 
 of condemning to slavery prisoners taken in war ; and 
 he authoritatively forbade the burning of Hindoo 
 widows, except with their own free and uninfluenced 
 consent. He even interfered in person to suppress the 
 
 ♦ Elphinstone. 
 
akbar's civil administration. 20 
 
 horrid rite, when he believed that an unwilling^ victim 
 was about to proceed to the funeral-pile. It is re- 
 corded in the Akbar-Nameh, that when the llajah of 
 Joudpore was about to force his son's widow into this 
 horrible self-immolation, the Emperor mounted his 
 horse, rode to the scene of the intended sacrifice, and 
 prevented its consummation.* 
 
 That something of the historical lustre which sur- 
 rounds the name of the Emperor Akbar was derived 
 rather from the personal character of the man than 
 from the great things that he accomplished, is, I 
 think, not to be denied. His actual performances, 
 when they come to be computed, fall short of his re- 
 putation. But his merits are to be judged not so 
 much by the standard of what he did, as of what he 
 did with the opportunities allowed to him, and under 
 the circumstances by which he was surrounded. Akbar 
 built up the Mogul Empire, and had little leisure 
 allowed him to perfect its internal economy. He was 
 
 * No mention is made, by the his- this water was distributed is but faintlj 
 torians of his reign, of Akbar's efforts indicated. The Mir-ab was to deter- 
 to extend the system of canal irrigation mine the number of cuts necessary for 
 initiated by Feroz Shah. But from each pergunnah, and in a spirit of equal 
 the edict discovered by Lieut. Abbott justice, he is directed to be careful that 
 some information may be gleaned. It all parties, rich or poor, strong or weak, 
 is thus epitomised by the Avriter already share alike. From other sources of 
 quoted, in the Calcutta Review : " The information, it is supposed that the 
 indications given of his canal system amount of water-rent was rated accord- 
 are faint and feeble, and may be con- ing to the time the heads of the cuts, 
 densed into few words. A superin- probably of fixed dimensions, remained 
 tendent of canals was nominated, under open. While the necessities of the Ze- 
 the title of Mir-ab (chief of the waters), mindars were thus ministered to, the 
 with absolute authority throughout his comfort of travellers was not forgotten ; 
 jurisdiction. In his hands were vested and it is directed, " that on both sides 
 the charge of the works, the distribu- of the canal, down to Hissar, trees of 
 tion of the water, in short, all executive every description, both for shade and 
 revenue and police details connected blossom, be planted, so as to make it 
 with the canal. The works would ap- like the canal under the tree in Para- 
 pear to have been constructed by forced dise, and that the sweet flavor of the 
 labor, since all local officers are en- rare fruits may reach the mouth of 
 joined to furnish laborers, &c., with- every one, and that from these luxuries 
 out delay. To those, however, who a voice may go forth to travellers call- 
 complied with this requisition, water ing them to rest in the cities, where 
 is promised during the season of culti- their every want will be supplied.' " 
 vation, and for the entire year. How 
 
30 INDIA UNDER THE MOGULS. 
 
 SO much in the stirrup, that the wonder is his portfolio 
 sent forth what it did. But he was a man of a large 
 and plastic mind, and so readily adapted himself to 
 external circumstances, that the transitions from the 
 camp to the council-chamber but rarely disquieted 
 and unhinged him. 
 
 The successor of this great and wise king was a 
 monarch of a very different stamp. Jehanguire inhe- 
 rited the vast possessions of his father, but none of his 
 father's greatness of soul. There was no element of 
 greatness in his character. He was, indeed, a very little 
 man. Inconstant and self-indulgent, easily pleased 
 with trifles so that there was some stamp of novelty 
 upon them, he lived a careless, sensual life ; now ex- 
 cited by wine, now stupified by opium, oblivious of 
 the responsibilities of his station, and regardless of the 
 welfare of his people. But he made great progresses to 
 Cashmere, and the way was made pleasant for him. 
 His public works were such only as benefited himself. 
 Around the elegant licentiousness of the voluptuous 
 monarch the genius of the poet may throw a halo of ro- 
 mance, but all that the historian can say of him is, that 
 he was a marvellously poor creature and a singularly 
 bad king. It is true that there was one not unlike him, 
 who wrote letters from " our palace of Westminster," 
 beseeching him to cherish and support our English 
 traders, by the continuance of his favorable assistance 
 and protection ; but I am not sure that the character 
 of Jehanguire will gain much by the admission that 
 he was not, either as a monarch or a man, worse than 
 our first James. 
 
 The most interesting personage to be met with in 
 all the annals of Mahomedan India is, doubtless, the 
 Emperor Akbar ; but it was during the reign of his 
 grandson, Shah Jehan, that the Mogul Empire reached 
 
FAME OF THE GREAT MOGUL. 31 
 
 its highest state of prosperity.* Old travellers, who 
 found their way from Europe to the Empire of the 
 Great Mogul, speak with rapture of the paternal 
 government of Shah Jehan, and of the grandeur of 
 the cities which dotted his vast empire. It was the 
 good fortune of this prince to reap the benefit of his 
 predecessor's conquests. He was not free from the 
 distractions of war, hut the wars in which he was 
 engaged were for the most part carried on beyond the 
 limits of his own dominions, so that they were not 
 torn and desolated by the fierce conquests which, both 
 before and after his reign, had rent and convulsed the 
 provinces of Hindostan. If great public works were 
 ever executed in India under the sway of the Moguls, 
 it was whilst Shah Jehan ruled over the country from 
 the Peacock throne of Delhi. 
 
 Shah Jehan was the cotemporary of our first Charles. 
 Like that prince, he reigned for more than thirty years, 
 and was then violently deposed. The Company of 
 English merchants, who, under the sanction of his 
 predecessor, had established factories at Surat and on 
 the coast of Coromandel and Malabar, were struggling 
 for a precarious existence against their powerful rivals, 
 the Dutch. It would be difficult to exaggerate the 
 idea which in those days was entertained by our 
 countrymen of the power, wealth, and grandeur of the 
 Great Mogul. Ear above all kings and emperors, in 
 the imaginations of men, ranked this mighty Eastern 
 potentate ; and two centuries later, the name of the 
 Great Mogul capped, with its traditionary magnifi- 
 cence, those of all the potentates of the earth, in the 
 nursery-sports of English children. Nor did the con- 
 ception owe much to the prodigality of the imagina- 
 
 • " Khali Khan, the best historian and finances, and the good administra- 
 
 of those times, gives his opinion, that tion of every department of the state, 
 
 although Akbar was pre-eminent as a no prince ever reigned in India that 
 
 conqueror and lawgiver, yet, for the could be compared to Shah Jehan." — 
 
 order and arrangement of his territory {^Elphinstone.'] 
 
32 INDIA UNDER THE MOGULS. 
 
 tion. The prince who covered acres of land with car- 
 pets of silk and gold, who reared above them stately 
 pavilions glittering with emeralds and rubies, whose 
 elephants and horses were lustrous with trappings of 
 jewels and gold, whose crimson tents stretched out 
 over long miles of level country, and whose throne the 
 practised eyes of European lapidaries valued at six 
 millions of English money, might well be regarded as 
 the most magnificent sovereign of the earth. But 
 magnificence is not benevolence. It must be admitted 
 that the most lavish of our English viceroys has never 
 been more than partially sultcmised* Our splendor 
 is at best but tinsel and tawdriness beside the radiant 
 magnificence of the Mogul Courts. We have never 
 attempted to compete with them in this direction. 
 Let credit be allowed them for their royal progresses 
 — ^their stately palaces — ^their gorgeous tombs. The 
 genius of our country does not display itself in de- 
 monstrations of this kind. But we have far greater 
 wonders to show — ^far grander spectacles to exhibit. 
 When we have got millions to spend, we do not lock 
 them up in peacock-thrones. 
 
 Did these royal progresses benefit the people ? I 
 am very certain that they did not. The approach, 
 indeed, of the Mogul camp was something like the 
 dreaded descent of a great flight^of locusts. The in- 
 habitants of the country through which the Emperor 
 progressed shrunk from the contact of the royal tra- 
 veller. The honor may have been great, but the 
 injury was greater. Even if the personal character of 
 the monarch himself was such as to cause him to de- 
 sire the full indemnity of the people, his influence was 
 not sufficient to secure it. If his benevolence dictated 
 
 ♦ Sir James Mackintosh spoke of any man who ever went out to India, 
 
 Lord Wellesley as a " sultanised Go- but at best ho was only a very little 
 
 vernor-General." Lord Wellesley had *' Great Mogul." 
 as good an idea of vice-regal pomp as 
 
EFFECT OF THE ROYAL PROGRESSES. 33 
 
 payment to the uttermost pice of every one who sup- 
 plied the royal camp, it may not uncharitably be 
 doubted whether his satraps were equally scrupulous 
 and equally honest. My impression is that the people 
 paid heavily for the honor of these royal visits. There 
 is one legend, at least, Avhich favors the idea that the 
 coming of the Great Mogul was looked upon almost 
 with as much horror as English people, in these days, 
 anticipate the approach of the Cholera. The Emperor 
 had constructed a sort of regal hunting-box, at a place 
 called, in his honor, Badshah-mehal. The waters of 
 the Doab canal ran past it, and supplied its sporting 
 fountains and its marble baths. Thither went Shah 
 Jehan, with his courtiers and his servants, his wives 
 and his concubines. Brief, however, was their rusti- 
 cation. Erom this pleasant retreat the Court, as tra- 
 dition asserts, was soon scared away in fluttering con- 
 fusion. At the foot of the hills, that disfiguring dis- 
 ease so well known among Alpine residents, the goitre, 
 happened to be very common. There were some clever 
 people in the neighbourhood of Badshah-mehal, who 
 turned it to good account. Assembling a number of 
 women so afficted, they sent them into the Zenana 
 with supplies. At the sight of the unseemly facial 
 appendages with which these poor women were deco- 
 rated, the ladies of t^e Court, filled with horror and 
 pity, eagerly asked what had produced such cruel de- 
 formities. Well-instructed beforehand, the women 
 answered, that the air and water of the place had 
 caused these ailments — that no one ever escaped the 
 affiction who resided long in these parts — and that 
 the ladies would soon discover this unhappy truth for 
 themselves. Such alarming intelligence as this burst 
 like a loaded shell among the inmates of the Zenana. 
 They soon appealed to the Emperor. Would he leave 
 them in such a pestiferous country, to be so afficted 
 
 D 
 
34 INDIA UNDER THE MOGULS. 
 
 and disfigured? Their entreaties are said to have 
 prevailed. He sent them away from Badshah-mehal, 
 spent a week or two in the surrounding forests, en- 
 joying the pleasures of the chase, and then followed 
 the ladies into a part of the country more favorable 
 to the retention of their charms.* He never made 
 his appearance in so dangerous a locality again. 
 
 Whether, after this mischance, the waters of the 
 canal continued to flow in the direction of the regal 
 hunting-box, does not very clearly appear. The 
 ground upon which we here tread is rough with con- 
 troversial asperities. They who, desiring to produce 
 strong contrasts unfavorable to the British-Indian Go- 
 vernment, greatly extol and exaggerate the beneficence 
 of the Mogul Emperors, are ever pointing to the re- 
 mains of the great aqueducts and reservoirs, which the 
 traveller in India stumbles upon and pauses over; 
 whilst another party, perhaps, with equal want of 
 candor, declares that the Mogul princes were nothing 
 better than selfish tyrants, and that all the roads 
 which were made, all the trees that were planted, all 
 the wells that were dug, all the caravanserais that 
 were erected, and all the canals that were excavated 
 by them, owed their origin to nothing more ennobling 
 than a desire to render their journeys more agreeable 
 and their residences more habitjtble to their Imperial 
 Majesties themselves. In all probability, the truth is 
 to be found midway between these two extremes. To 
 a certain extent, both parties are right. The Mogul 
 Emperors may not have been wholly immindful of the 
 interests of their subjects. They were never unmind- 
 ful of their own. Fortunately for the former, the 
 claims of the two were not wholly antagonistic. Ii 
 
 * I have borrowed this story from never met with it elsewhere ; and it is 
 
 the article on " Canals of Irrigation j)robable that the ingenious and ex- 
 
 in the North-West Provinces," in the perienced writer derived it from local 
 
 Calcutta Review, No. XXIII. I have tradition. 
 
GHAEACTER OF MAHOMEDAN BENEFICENCE. 35 
 
 the Emperor had shut himself up in a single palace, it 
 is possible that the fine causeways and the noble aque- 
 ducts, over the remains of which we now shed our 
 archaeological tears, would not exist to agitate the 
 sources of our regret. But as the Great Mogul was, 
 by nature, of the peripatetic class — as he delighted in 
 change of scene and change of residence — it was ne- 
 cessary that there should be roads over which to move 
 the material mass of his leviathan camp, and it was 
 desirable that the sultriness of his regal halting-places 
 should be mitigated by baths and fountains, supplied 
 with a constant flow of the refresliing element. The 
 roads were made, and they benefited the people. The 
 canals were dug, and they benefited the people. But 
 when the Emperor ordered the construction of a road, 
 or the excavation of a canal, and determined the di- 
 rection which either should take, it may be doubted 
 whether the line that was taken was always that which 
 most promoted the internal traffic or the agricultural 
 ii-rigation of the country. The personal convenience 
 of the Emperor himself was of more account than the 
 happiness and prosperity of the people. But the hap- 
 piness and prosperity of the people were not wholly 
 forgotten. The Mogul Emperors somewhat reversed the 
 sentiment contained in Barlow's initiatory minute on 
 the Begulations of 1793.* " It is a source of pleasing 
 reflection," they thought, "to know that in proportion 
 as we contribute to the happiness of ourselves and the 
 prosperity of the Court, the nearer we approach to 
 these objects" — L e., the welfare of the people. The 
 " principal object" of the Mogul Government was 
 certainly not the happiness of the governed. 
 
 That Shah Jehan did much which in effect pro- 
 moted the prosperity of the country, is not to be de- 
 nied. He was aided by the greatest executive officer 
 
 * Sec ante, page 2. 
 
 d2 
 
86 
 
 INDIA UNDER THE MOGULS. 
 
 who ever served a Mogul prince. Ali Murdan Khan, 
 an architect and engineer, who would have heen conspi- 
 cuous in any age in any country, was at the Emperor's 
 right hand. The Delhi canal was his work.* The 
 Eastern Jumna, or Doah canal, is also said to be his 
 work. The former appears to have been more or less 
 in^ operation up to the year 1753. The efficacy of 
 the latter was more short-lived. Indeed, it has been 
 questioned whether it very long survived the panic of 
 the Court ladies at the sight of the disfigured throats 
 of the poor women who entered the Zenana with their 
 
 ♦ I give the following account of the 
 direction it took, and the countries it 
 traversed, from an article, already 
 quoted in the Calcutta Review^ by the 
 best historiographer of our Indian 
 canals: 
 
 " Ali Murdan Khan's first line parted 
 from Feroze's canal at a place called 
 Madlonda, and pursuing a southerly 
 course to Korana, it there entered an 
 extensive natural hollow, the head of a 
 great drainage line, and following that, 
 in a highly embanked channel, as far as 
 Gohana, it turned thence to the south- 
 east by Intoula, and, nearly on the ex- 
 isting line, entered Delhi. On the first 
 opening of the new canal, it was found 
 that the embankments near G hana 
 were inadequate. The water, entering 
 the great hollow there, found no eflfi- 
 cient line of escape: it gradually rose 
 over, and ultimately burst, the banks, 
 and committing fearful devastation, de- 
 stroyed the town of Lalpur, the exten- 
 sive ruins of which are still to be seen 
 in a hollow near Rohtuk. The inefli- 
 ciency of the line having been thus 
 fatally demonstrated, an entirely new 
 channel was excavated from Rehr to 
 Intoula, traversing the anticlinal ridge, 
 or natural water- shed of the country, 
 until it reached the vicinity of Bowana. 
 Between this point and the city of 
 Delhi, very low land intervenes ; and 
 to carry the canal successfully across 
 this hollow much caution and skill 
 were required. To give command over 
 the supply, an escape or outlet was 
 constructed at the upper extremity of 
 the line of embankment, by opening 
 which the surface-level of the canal 
 could be greatly reduced. Over the 
 lowest part of the hollow the canal was 
 carried by a masonry aqueduct, be- 
 
 neath which the drainage-water of the 
 country found escape. Clearing the 
 low land, the canal wound for some 
 distance along the base of the Aravulli 
 hills, and, at a favorable point, boldly 
 crossed this ridge by a channel cut 
 through the solid rock, no less than 
 sixty feet deep at the crest. It then 
 flowed through the city in a masonry 
 bed, throwing off to the right and left 
 innumerable minor streams, by which 
 the residences of the nobles, and the 
 various divisions of the city, were 
 abundantly supplied. Throughout the 
 great halls, and courts, and private 
 apartments of the imperial palace, the 
 plentiful stream was carried in nu- 
 merous channels, both above ground 
 and below, supplying the graceful foun- 
 tains, filling the marble baths, watering 
 the rich fruits and flowers of the ad- 
 joining gardens, and adorning, through- 
 out its entire extent, that truly regal 
 abode in a manner worthy of the mag- 
 nificent taste of its great architect. 
 
 " The success of Ali Murdan Khan's 
 labors was complete. The immense 
 number of old water-courses along the 
 whole line of the Delhi canal show to 
 how great an extent the agriculture of 
 the country benefited by its existence. 
 Traditions of incredible amounts of 
 revenue having been realised from vil- 
 lages on its banks still linger among the 
 people there; and a proverbialism, cur- 
 rent at Delhi, intimates that the clear 
 returns from the canal were sufficient 
 for the maintenance of 12.000 horsemen. 
 The permanent establishment, main- 
 tained for purposes of police and repair, 
 consisted of numerous bildars (diggers), 
 1000 armed peons, and 500 horse, sta- 
 tioned, under their officers, at points 
 three or four miles apart." 
 
AURUNGZEBE. 37 
 
 supplies. But if the goitre had not destroyed it, 
 there were engineering difficulties of too formidable a 
 character to be surmounted even by Ali Murdan 
 Khan ; and though an attempt was made long after- 
 wards to re-open it, it seems wholly to have failed.* 
 
 The reign of Shah Jehan may be regarded as the 
 golden age of Mogul rule. Soon after his deposition, 
 it was evident that the seeds of decay had been sown 
 in that vast empire. Aurungzebe was a prince of 
 greater energy of character ; but it was not permitted 
 to him to enjoy the blessings of repose, and to turn its 
 opportunities to the advantage of the people. His reign 
 was a long and troublous one. He lived in an atmo- 
 sphere of strife. And what were the effects of these 
 civil wars may be gathered from the letters of our oavti 
 people. Industry was paralysed ; trade was at a stand- 
 still. People buried their money in the ground : " It 
 does not a little trouble us," wrote one of the Company's 
 chief servants, " to pay nine per cent, interest for what 
 money we shall be forced to take up for your account 
 towards providing of goods for the next year, and at 
 that rate little to be had, every one rather burying 
 
 ♦ The following account of the East- palace at Ranup, fell into the river 
 
 em Jumna, or Doab canal, is from the nearly opposite the city of Delhi 
 
 same source as the preceding note : " The great diflSculties at the head of 
 
 "In common with the Delhi branch, the canal were doubtless beyond the 
 
 the construction of this canal is ordi- skill of the Mogul engineers : and, as 
 
 narily attributed to Ali Murdan Khan, there are no signs of irrigation in the 
 
 Its head was established immediately southern part, and no masonry works 
 
 under the sub-Himalayan, or Sowalik of any kind, it may be concluded that, 
 
 hills; possession having been taken of after the first opening, which is said to 
 
 an old bed of the river, bearing at this have been followed by great injuries to 
 
 day the name of the ' Budha Jumna.' the towns of Behut and Saharunpur, 
 
 Passing by the hunting-palace of Shah the attempt to maintain the supply was 
 
 Jehan, called Badshah-mehal, it entered abandoned. 
 
 the bed of the Raipur-nala, and, carried " About 1780, Zabita Khan, Rohilla, 
 
 thence in an excavated channel across is said to have re-opened the channel, 
 
 the Intunwala and Nowgong mountain and to have brought a stream of water, 
 
 torrents, it was thrown into a low through the bed of the Kirsunni river, 
 
 ravine near the town of Behut, which to the site of the great city projected 
 
 it followed until it reached the head of by him in the neighbourhood of Jella- 
 
 the Muskurra river, near the village of labad, Thana Bhown, and Lohari, in 
 
 Kulsia. Entering there upon the high the district of Muzuffernuggur. But 
 
 land, the canal was carried past Saha- his canal could have been open only for 
 
 runpur, Kampur, Jcllalabad, Shamli, a few months; and with the first ram- 
 
 and other large towns, until it de- flootls, it was doubtless seen that the 
 
 scended again into the valley of the difficulties were too formidable to be 
 
 Jumna, and, passing another imperial overcome.'* 
 
38 INDIA TJNDEE THE MOGULS. 
 
 their money than adventuring to trust it out in this 
 time of war."* And with good reason, too, was the 
 treasure huried deep in the ground, for another of the 
 old Company's servants writes, ahout the same time, 
 that " upon any occasion of war the king will either 
 have the purses, or else purse and head."t Nothing 
 was more dangerous, in those days, than to he the pos- 
 sessor of a little avaHahle coin. The Mogul princes 
 opened their loans at the edge of the scimetar. 
 
 In the eyes of the general hody of Mahomedans, 
 Aurungzehe stands upon a liigher pinnacle of reputa- 
 tion than any one of his predecessors. He was the 
 most magnificent of potentates, and the most arhitrary 
 of despots. He was every inch a king, according to 
 the Mussulman standard of consummate royalty. No 
 man was more prodigal of money, or more prodigal of 
 life. The gorgeousness of his Court, and the unscrupu- 
 lousness of his acts, reached a height that had not heen 
 attained during the reign of his predecessors. By this 
 time European intercourse with the countries of the 
 East had greatly increased; and we have, therefore, 
 more vivid and more faithful pictiu^es of the splendor of 
 Aurungzehe' s Court, and more detailed accounts of the 
 general state of the empire during his reign, than the 
 Mahomedan historians have handed do^ai to us. And 
 it must he acknowledged that no traveller, hefore or 
 since, has dazzled the world with such a glitter of 
 words, signifying gorgeous realities, as the pleasant 
 Erench physician J who accompanied the royal camp 
 from Delhi to Cashmere, and has told us in rapturous 
 language, of the stately spectacle of Rowshera Begum, 
 on her Pegue elephant, "glitteriQg mth gold and 
 azure, followed hy five or six other elephants almost as 
 stately as her own," and " a troop of Tartarian and 
 
 • Nathaniel Wyche to the Company, I f Henry Revington and others to the 
 Feb. 14, 1658-59. India House Records, i Company, 1659. India House Records. 
 MS. 1 MS. 
 
 f Bcrnier. 
 
DISREGARD OF THE PEOPLE. 39 
 
 Cashmerian maids of honor around her person, all fan- 
 tastically dressed." 
 
 But the only question to be considered is, what 
 effect had all this upon the happiness of the people ? 
 It is certain that regal magnificence is no test of 
 national prosperity. The wealth which was lavished 
 upon all the sumptuous palaces and the panoramic 
 camps of those restless Emperors, must have been 
 primarily extracted from the people. How the im- 
 perial coffers were filled it is not difficult to conjecture. 
 Some of the early Mogul conquerors enriched them- 
 selves by a series of stupendous burglaries. If we 
 could trace the career of any particular emerald or ruby 
 from the days of Mahmoud of Ghuznee to those of Shah 
 Jelian, there are few who would not rather think of 
 the costly jewel in the blaze of the peacock's tail, than 
 in the deep obscurity of the bowels of a hideous idol. 
 But we have no means, amidst so many broken dynastic 
 chains, of establishing any imperial succession of this 
 kind; and we might fairly assume, even if we had 
 nO/ positive evidence to rest upon, that, directly or in- 
 directly, the people paid the price of all the gorgeous 
 magnificence which rendered the Court of the Great 
 Mogul a type of regal splendor throughout the whole 
 of the civilised world. It is stated that the progresses 
 of Shah Jehan had no perceptible effect upon his cof- 
 fers — that all his vast undertakings, indeed, were ma- 
 naged with so much economy that he left an overflow- 
 ing treasury, and a jewel-house groaning with wealth.* 
 We may gather from this significant fact some idea of 
 what it was that caused the people to regard with un- 
 mingled horror the approach of the Mogul Court. It 
 would be curious to ascertain what was the amount of 
 
 * Elphinstone, Bernier computes the " he is not likely to exaggerate, for 
 
 amount at something under 6,000,000/. he makes Shah Jehan's revenue 
 
 ofour money, Khafi Khan at 24,000.000/., 23,000,000/., whilst it is generally 
 
 "and," says the historian, in a note, reckoned to have been 32,000,000/." 
 
40 INDIA UNDER THE MOGULS. 
 
 forced labor extracted from the people, and to what 
 extent they were paid for their supplies. It is easy to 
 " manage vast undertakings with economy," if little or 
 nothing is to be paid for work or materials. And I 
 hardly think that with such data before us — as costly ex- 
 peditions undertaken at little cost, and the popular dread 
 of the Emperor's approach — it is very unfair to assume 
 that the rights of the people, inhabiting the country 
 through which the despot dragged the cumbrous length 
 of his gorgeous camp, were very slenderly regarded 
 either by the sovereign himself, or the officers who at- 
 tended his Court.* 
 
 That the Mogul Emperors left behind them some mag- 
 nificent works, rests not merely on the authority of the 
 Mahomedan historians. There are many picturesque 
 evidences of the fact still patent to the senses of all who 
 journey through the provinces of Hindostan. But only 
 a small portion of these works ever conferred any sub- 
 stantial benefit on the people, and a still smaller portion 
 were intended, primarily, to promote their happiness. 
 If they did, it was more by accident than by design. 
 Many of the works of which traces are still to be seen, 
 were in active operation for any one's benefit but for 
 an extremely short space of time. Many of them had 
 served their purpose when a particular king ceased to 
 migrate in a particular direction. There is nothing more 
 remarkable, indeed, in this florid picture of Mahomedan 
 beneficence, than the fact that there is nothing of a sus- 
 tained character about it. The beneficence of the Mogul 
 Emperors was personal and accidentaL It was never the 
 growth of any fixed principle inherent in the Govern- 
 ment, and, as such, handed down from one representative 
 of monarchical power to another; but was dependent 
 ntirely on individual character, which was often only 
 
 ♦ It is evident from Akbar's Canal in his time, were excavated by forced 
 Act, quoted ante, page 29, that canals, labor. 
 
INSECURITY OF LIFE AND PROPERTY. 41 
 
 another name for individual caprice. Fortunately, these 
 individual changes were then of occurrence unusually rare 
 in Mahomedan countries. The epoch of which I am now 
 writing extended over a period of about a century and a 
 half, and embraced only four reigns. Akbar ascended 
 the throne in 1556, and Aurungzebe was carried to the 
 tomb in 1707. The evil, therefore, of that capricious 
 exercise of power, of those frequent mutations in the 
 system of government, which are inseparable from all 
 despotisms, was not experienced to that extent which is 
 entailed upon a people when they have not merely to con- 
 tend against the caprices of an individual, but against the 
 caprices of a series of capricious mdividuals. Still I con- 
 fess that I have little faith in the happiness of the people 
 under such a despotism as that of the Great Moguls.* 
 
 Neither life nor property was secure under their rule. 
 The Mahomedan conquerors took what they wanted, and 
 executed whom they would. If a merchant possessed 
 gold or jewels, he was careful to hide his wealth. If an 
 artisan was more than commonly ingenious in his craft, 
 
 * I am speaking here of the flower the person so informed of is put to 
 of the Mogul princes. It is almost death, and his property is given to the 
 superfluous to allude to the cruelties of informer." Again : *' Upon a certain 
 the earlier Mahomedan rulers. Ibn day, vrhen I myself was present, some 
 Batuta says that owing to the tyranny men were brought out who had been 
 of the Emperor, Delhi, when he entered accused of having attempted the life of 
 it, was almost a desert. " The greatest the Vizier. They were ordered accord- 
 city in the world had the fewest in- ingly to be thrown to the elephants, 
 habitants." The particular instances which had been taught to cut their vic- 
 of the prince's cruelty which are given, tims to pieces. Their hoofs were cased 
 are too numerous for citation — one or with sharp iron instruments, and the 
 two instances will suffice: " One of the extremities of these were like knives. 
 Emirs of Fargana came to pay him a On such occasions the elephant-driver 
 temporary visit. The Emperor re- rode upon them; and when a man waa 
 ceived him very kindly, and bestowed thrown to them, they would wrap their 
 on him some rich presents. After this trunk about him and toss him up, then 
 the Emir had a wish to return, but take him with the teeth and throw him 
 was afraid the Emperor would not between their forefeet upon the breast, 
 allow him to do so; he began, there- If the order was to cut him to pieces, 
 fore, to think of flight. Upon this, a the elephant would do so with his irons, 
 whisperer gave intimation of his design, and then throws the piece among the 
 and the Emir was put to death; the assembled multitude; but if the order 
 whole of his wealth was then given to was to leave him, he would be left lying 
 the informer. For this is the custom, before the Emperor, until the skin 
 that when anyone gives private inti- should be taken off and stuffed with hay, 
 mation of the designs of another, and and the flesh given to the dogs." 
 his information turns out to be true, 
 
4i2 INDIA UNDER THE MOGULS. 
 
 he concealed the extent of his skill. It was dangerous 
 to be rich. It was dang^erous to be clever. It was 
 dangerous in any way to be a marked man. If the sove- 
 reign was accessible to his subjects, so was the execu- 
 tioner. Justice was administered with such extraordi- 
 nary promptitude, that oflfenders were hurried into the 
 presence of their Maker almost before they knew that 
 they had committed any offence. Nor was the personal 
 clemency of the sovereign himself any defence against 
 such gross abuse of arbitrary power. He had no means 
 of communicating his own mild nature to the provincial 
 viceroys and governors who ruled over remote parts of 
 his empire, or even to the ministers of his own imme- 
 diate cabinet.* His delegated authority was often cruelly 
 abused. Old travellers tell of barbarous acts committed 
 even in the presence of European gentlemen, at the re- 
 cital of which humanity shudders, and credulity is well- 
 nigh staggered.f There is hardly a native of India in 
 
 ♦ Behram, Akbar's prime minister, tice, it is little likely that the corn- 
 was a great man, and, on the whole, monalty escaped, 
 not a bad one. But it is recorded of f Take, for example, the following 
 him, that " he took advantage of from the travels of John Mandelslo, 
 Akbar's absence on a hawking-party, written in 1640, The governor of 
 to put to death Tardi Beg, the former Ahmedabad had invited the principal 
 governor of Delhi, without even the directors of the English and Dutch 
 ceremony of taking the king's orders on trades to an entertainment, of which, 
 80 solemn an occasion. One day, while as usual, displays of dancing-girls 
 Akbar waS amusing himself with an were among the chief features. One 
 elephant- fight, one of these animals party having danced themselves out, 
 ran oflf the field pursued by its antago- another was sent for ; but they refused 
 nist, and followed by a promiscuous to come, for a reason which need not be 
 crowd of spectators ; it rushed through given, and were then forcibly dragged 
 the tents of Behram, some of which into the presence of the governor. He 
 were thrown down ; thus exposing the listened to their excuse, " laughed at 
 minister himself to danger, whilst it it, but immediately commanded out a 
 threw all around him into the utmost party of his guard, and ordered their 
 confusion and alarm. Irritated by this heads to be struck off. They begged 
 seeming affront, and, perhaps, suspect- their lives with horrid cries and lamen- 
 ing a design against his life, Behram tations ; but he would be obeyed, and 
 ordered the elephant-driver to be put caused the execution to be done in the 
 
 to death A nobleman, room before all the company — not one 
 
 of consequence enough to oppose of the lords then present daring to make 
 
 Behram, was put to death on some the least intercession for those wretches, 
 
 slight ciiarge by that minister. The who were eight in number. The stran- 
 
 king's own tutor, Pir Mahomed Khan, gers were startled at the horror of the 
 
 narrowly escaped the same fate, spectacle, and inhumanity of the action, 
 
 and wa« banished on pretence of a which the governor taking notice of, 
 
 pilgrimage to Mecca." If men of fell a laughing, and asked them what 
 
 rank were treated to this wild jus- they were so much startled at." 
 
CONDITION OF THE PEOPLE. 43 
 
 the present day, who does not hug to himself the precious 
 thought that there is no longer any power in the state 
 that can order, under the mfluence of a gust of passion, or a 
 spasm of caprice, even the meanest laborer to be trampled 
 to death by elephants, or disembowelled with a sharp 
 knife. The poorest Cooley is entitled to all the solemn 
 formalities of a judicial trial, and the punishment of 
 death, by whomsoever administered, and on whomsoever 
 inflicted, without the express decree of the law, is a mur- 
 der for which the highest functionary in the Company's 
 territories is as much accountable as a sweeper would be 
 for the assassination of the Governor-General in Durbar. 
 
 It must be admitted that the later Mogul Emperors 
 were not intolerant — that they seldom or never gave 
 way to the littleness of religious persecution. It would 
 seem that the earlier Tartar monarchs filled all the chief 
 oflices of the state with strangers and aliens, and that 
 the Hindoos were almost wholly set aside. But the 
 princes of whom I am now writing were more tolerant 
 and more liberal. The claims of the Hindoos were not 
 disregarded. Men were appointed to offices of high trust 
 and emolument, without reference to the religion which 
 they professed, or the country from which they drew 
 their origin. 
 
 It is not easy to arrive at a clear conception of the 
 general condition of the great mass of the people during 
 the reign of the Mogul princes. Materials are greatly 
 wanting. Early travellers and historians tell us much of 
 the Court — little or nothing of the people. Ibn Batuta, the 
 Arab traveller, whom Mahomed Toghlak made Judge of 
 Delhi, tells us nothing of the condition of the inhabitants 
 of Northern India, but leaves us to infer that the country 
 was considerably over-run with robbers and wild beasts. 
 Of the country on the coast of Malabar, however, he 
 gives a flourishing account. "In all this space," he says, 
 " of two months' journey, there is not a span free from 
 
44 INDIA UNDER THE MOGULS. 
 
 cultivation. For everybody has here a garden, and his 
 house is placed in the middle of it, and round the whole 
 of this there is a fence of wood, up to which the ground 
 of each inhabitant comes." The Italian travellers, who 
 visited India about the same time, speak with rapture of 
 the flourishing state of Guzerat and Cambay; and de- 
 scribe the populous towns, the rich orchards, and the 
 beautiful gardens which everywhere decorated the banks 
 of the Ganges, and indicated the prosperity of the people. 
 But the knowledge possessed by these travellers was su- 
 perficial in the extreme; what they saw they but im- 
 perfectly comprehended, and of what they heard they 
 had but scanty means of estimating the truth. One fact 
 was always related to them, and always carefully set 
 down in their tablets. In every city that they passed 
 were stored up immense heaps of jewels and gold. That 
 there were, in those days, vast accumulations of this kind 
 of unproductive capital is not to be doubted. But the 
 many profited little by the hoarded wealth of the few. 
 The indications of national prosperity were, I believe, 
 local and accidental ; and I have no faith in the general 
 result. The wealth of India may have been great, but it 
 did not circulate. It is now diffused over a larger space 
 — is more reproductive. That, to some extent, these 
 once stored-up treasures have, by a gradual process 
 of extraction, been drained out of the country, is not to 
 be denied. But the residue is of more service to the 
 people than the gross amount secretly garnered up in the 
 most affluent days of the old Mahomedan kings.* 
 
 Of this gorgeous display of imperial wealth our own 
 
 * A very experienced and intelligent native chiefs, Mahrattas, and others, 
 
 friend, to whom this work is indebted was dazzling — what has become of it? 
 
 for some of its most valuable details, Has it, I asked — has it not spread 
 
 writes, with reference to this and the among the people, and so raised the 
 
 passage at p. 24 : " The question here general level, though the eminences 
 
 suggested is a very curious one, and may have been lowered ? Skinner 
 
 one regarding which I once had a talk would not admit this— at least, not to 
 
 with James Skinner. Even so late as the extent I desired — and maintained, 
 
 in the days of his youth, the exhibition with the Shroffs and Bunneahs, that 
 
 of wealth at the great gatherings of we drain the land." — [3/5. Notes."] 
 
STATE OF THE HIGHWAYS. 45 
 
 countrymen spoke in the same exalted strains, but they 
 contrasted it with the general poverty of the people. 
 " Touching the wealth of the king," wrote one of the 
 oldest of the Company's servants, in the reign of Je- 
 hanguire, "though I cannot be otherwise persuaded 
 than that it is very great, yet I cannot beheve it to 
 amount to that exceeding height that Captain Hawkins 
 hath very fabulously written of it ; but howsoever, it is 
 certainly marvellously great; and this he raiseth two 
 principal ways, by the rent of his lands, and by the 
 goods of his noble subjects, for almost the whole estate 
 of all the greater persons of his kingdom retumeth to 
 him after their decease. The main sum of his wealth 
 consisteth partly in ready money in his coffers, whereof 
 he is said to possess wonderful store ; for there is still an 
 importation of all sorts of money into his country, but 
 never an exportation ; and partly in rich stones, pearls, 
 and jewels, wherewith he is reported to be better fur- 
 nished than any prince on the face of the earth." And 
 the same writer adds, that though some of the courtiers 
 are very wealthy, " the plebeian sort is so poor, that the 
 greatest part of them go naked in their whole bodies, 
 saving about their [middle] which they cover with a 
 linen coverture;"* a state of beatitude in respect of 
 which they, in no degree, differ from the people of the 
 present day. 
 
 Of the dangerous state of the public ways at this time, 
 a clear conception may be gained from the statements 
 of the same "writer. " On my passage from Surat," he 
 says, " over a large tract of country as far as Agra, I was 
 subject to a world of dangers on the way, it being well 
 known that no country more dangerous to travel is in 
 the whole world than this, by reason of many thousands 
 of blood-sucking villauis, that for so much as one of their 
 
 ♦ Joseph Salbank to the Company, Nov. 22, 1617. India House Records,M.S, 
 
46 INDIA UNDER THE MOGULS. 
 
 brass pieces of money that counten^ailetli the thu-dpart of 
 a penny sterhng will cut a man's throat, wliich doth appear 
 by the example of one of our poor countrymen, travelling 
 about a year past betwixt Surat and Agra, over certain 
 woody and desolate parts of the country, was so often 
 assaulted by thieves on the way, whereof some stripped 
 him of all his little money about him ; yet when cha- 
 ritable people did offer him money to buy him victuals, 
 he would take none of them, knowing he should quickly 
 be deprived of it, besides the fear of his life, but con- 
 tented himself only with such poor food as people pre- 
 sented to him." " Howbeit," adds the writer, in a spirit 
 of grateful veneration, "I for my part passed through all 
 those hellish weapons that these cannibal villains used 
 to kill men withal, securely enough, through the tender 
 mercies of my gracious God."* This does not bring out 
 in very favorable colors the internal administration of 
 the Moguls. 
 
 Some stress has been laid upon the amount of revenue 
 raised under the Mahomedan dynasties ; but I do not re- 
 gard this as any real test of the prosperity of the coun- 
 try. Ibn Batuta says that the revenue raised from the 
 district of Dowlatabad, in " taxes and fines," amounted 
 to seventeen crores of rupees, or seventeen millions of 
 our money. What the extent of country subject to the 
 lieutenantcy of Dowlatabad may have been, is only to 
 be vaguely gathered from the assertion that " it extends 
 through a distance of three months," i, e., a three months' 
 journey. During the reigns of the later Mogul Emperors, 
 from Akbar to Aurungzebe, the revenue seems to have 
 averaged from twenty-six to twenty milUons of our money. 
 During these reigns, varying according to the personal 
 character of the monarch, a considerable amount was 
 realised from the questionable sources of fines and pr^- 
 
 • Joseph Salbank to the Ompanxfy November, 1617. India House Records. 
 
STATE OF THE KEVENUE. 47 
 
 sents. Besides these, there was Httle else than the land- 
 tax to recruit the royal treasury.* It would seem that 
 in Akbar's reign, Upper India yielded more, and Lower 
 India less, than at the present period. A comparison of 
 the wealth of the difterent districts will be in some re- 
 spects to our advantage ; in others, to our disadvantage. 
 But, on the whole, rightly estimated, the balance is not 
 against us.f 
 
 There have necessarily been great changes, and of those 
 changes advantage has been taken by writers eager to 
 elevate the Mahomedan rule at the expense of that of 
 the British Government in India. Doubtless, some once- 
 prosperous places exhibit now no sign of prosperity — 
 doubtless, there is nothing but waste and ruin visible in 
 spots which were once smiling with cultivation, or stately 
 with the evidences of mercantile wealth. But look at the 
 state of England at the present time. If a traveller were 
 
 * It should be borne in mind that, two with us, in opposition to seven with 
 
 under the government of the Mahome- the MoguL We have selected the above 
 
 dan princes, the productiveness of the almost at a venture, and on the other 
 
 soil was more uncertain and accidental hand it would be unfair not to mention 
 
 than under our own. The disturbed several districts where the balance 
 
 state of the country often caused large seems in favor of the old scheme, 
 
 breadths of land to remain fallow for These, it may be augured, are mostly 
 
 some years, and when they were again in Upper India, nor were the mighty 
 
 brought under cultivation, the yield resources of Bengal ever brought into 
 
 was necessarily great. full play by the Mahomedan sovereign 
 
 f A very able writer in the Calcutta or by the ablest of his viceroys. Ke- 
 Review (Article, The Life and Times of maon, under the great financier of 
 Akhar) has given some interesting de- Akbar, paid in ten lakhs at least, and 
 tails of the relative amounts of revenue it is now set down as giving only two. 
 raised from different districts in Akbar's Bahar showed twenty-one lakhs, and 
 time and in our own : — " We will take its actual land-revenue is probably 
 at random the revenue of different about the same, and Agra, which is 
 zillahs in various parts of the kingdom, now thought rich at fifteen, is set down 
 and the balance- si leet will be struck in as giving the almost incredible return 
 our favor. Chittagong or Chatgaon, of fifty-one lakhs of rupees. [This, 
 in Abul Fazl's scheme, paid three lakhs however, may be explained away. In 
 a year. Now, though over-run with the Subah were probably comprehended 
 jungle, and burdened with an extra- several smaller Sircars or zillahs, as 
 ordinary revenue and judicial esta- Muttra,Furrukabad, Etawah.&c] But 
 blishment, it yields almost six. Pumea our present great strength lies in the 
 gave barely two: it now yields above revenues of Bengal and Behar. Here 
 twelve. Tirhut gave hardly five lakhs, we surpass the best days of the Mus- 
 and it now produces fourteen : Budaon sulmans, and to this alone we trust for 
 shows us a balance of nine lakhs, and a corps de reserve when war or the ex- 
 it gave eight in the time pf Akbar: pensesof a province unable to pay itself 
 Allahabad presents a score of twenty- have drained the coffers of the state." 
 
48 INDIA UNDER THE MOGULS. 
 
 now to undertake a journey into the interior by road, he 
 would stumble upon many signs of what, with equal 
 candour and truth, might be declared to be evidences of 
 the decadence of Great Britain. He would pass through 
 many once-flourishing country towns, now in a state of 
 visible desertion and prostration. He would enter once- 
 magnificent caravanserais (posting-houses and hotels), 
 on the spacious court-yards of which the grass is now 
 growing. If the windows are not broken, and the house 
 and the stables empty, the probability is that the traveller 
 will find the many-roomed edifice inhabited by the an- 
 cient landlord, now a needy farmer, and the parish curate, 
 who finds there permanent accommodation at a lower 
 rent than is demanded by any other inhabitant of the 
 place. The little town, which once was in a continual 
 state of bustle and excitement, is now like a city of the 
 silent. Little children play securely in the streets, un- 
 scared by the clanging hoofs of post-horses, or the smack- 
 ing of post-boys' whips. But, for all this, England is not 
 in a state of decay. The tide of trafiic and the course of 
 our pleasure-progresses run in a different direction. If 
 old towns are falling into decay, new ones are springing 
 up. As it is in England, so is it in India. It would be 
 as reasonable to declare that the prosperity of Great 
 Britain is declining, because there are evidences of decay 
 along the Great North Road, as to comment upon the de- 
 crepitude of the Indian Empire, because about the grand 
 imperial highway from Delhi to Cashmere there are 
 indications of a state of bygone road-side grandeur, 
 in the shape of ruined caravanserais and wells. The 
 similitude is not a perfect one, but its imperfections 
 are decidedly to the disadvantage of my argument. 
 The change is, in the one case, from a state of things in 
 accordance with the interests of the people, to another 
 state of things, under altered circumstances, advantageous 
 to the interests of the people. In the other case, the 
 
EXPENDITURE OF THE REVENUE. 49 
 
 change is from a state of things advantageous to the 
 Emperor and his immediate followers, to a state of things 
 advantageous to the general mass of the people. The 
 evidences of decline which we see around us in India, are 
 evidences, in reality, of little more than the decline of the 
 paramount power of imperial selfishness. We need not 
 much concern ourselves about such a decadence as this. 
 
 I have touched upon the subject of the relative amount 
 of revenue raised under the Mogul dynasties and under 
 the British-Indian Government. But of far more im- 
 portance and interest than the question of the amount 
 of revenue raised, is the question of the manner of its 
 expenditure. I doubt whether the revenue actually col- 
 lected under the most prosperous Mogul Government 
 ever exceeded that now raised by our own. I am certain 
 that, whatever the amount may have been, it was less 
 beneficially expended. Now it is paid into what is 
 emphatically called the public treasury. It is held in 
 trust, and expended for the benefit of the people. But 
 in the old times, much of the money collected from the 
 people by legitimate, and much besides that was extorted 
 from them by illegitimate means, was poured into the 
 coffers of the Emperor and his dependents. Save in 
 rare exceptional cases, there was a lavish waste of money 
 on the costly accompaniments of a licentious Court — 
 on dancing-girls and fighting animals, and pleasure-pro- 
 gresses and great panoramic camps. The contributions 
 of the people were not sown, as it were, in the national 
 soil, to spring up speedily again multiplied into a rich 
 harvest. That which was taken from the husbandman 
 did not return to him, but went, perhaps, to decorate 
 the tail of a jewelled peacock, or to beautify the costly 
 mosaic on the tomb of a Mussulman dame. It is very 
 true that the English in India have erected no Taj- 
 Mehals. If a Governor-General were to attempt to spend 
 a tithe of the hundreds of thousands of pounds which 
 
 £ 
 
50 INDIA AND THE MOGULS. 
 
 the Taj is said to have cost, on the tomb of a defunct 
 wife, he would be recalled long before the work could 
 be completed, and impeached soon after his recall. 
 
 I have no wish to blacken the character of the Ma- 
 homedan Emperors. I am anxious to give them credit 
 for all that they have done. But I am almost ashamed 
 of myself for having spent so much time in showing — 
 what is so patent to the unaided comprehension of all who 
 have not contented themselves with ignorance or aban- 
 doned themselves to prejudice — the manifest inferiority, 
 in the scale of benevolence and beneficence, of even the 
 best of these Mahomedan despots, as rulers of Hindostan, 
 to the most indolent and selfish of our own Governors- 
 General. It is enough, indeed, to write that they were 
 despots. Under such a despotism, the people could not 
 have been prosperous or happy. There was no security 
 for life or property. The luxurious selfishness of the 
 Emperors depressed and enfeebled the people. It could 
 not be otherwise. The country, indeed, is still prostrated 
 by that great curse of Mogul tyranny. It has never re- 
 covered from the corrupting influences of the slavish 
 fear which that great domination engendered. India 
 owes the confirmed debasement of her morals, no less 
 than her mosques and cenotaphs, to the Moguls. It 
 may be that a conquered people are always, more or 
 less, a false people — that it is not in the nature of men 
 to be truthful with the yoke on their necks. But the 
 form of government observed, and the character of 
 the religion professed by the conquerors, must always 
 regulate the degree to which political prostration is 
 accompanied by moral debasement. Falsehood is the 
 child of fear. And who can estimate the tremendous 
 amount of falsehood against which the English legis- 
 lator has now to contend ? — falsehood which baffles the 
 wisdom of the enlightened, and sets at nought the best 
 efforts of the humane. The state of things which ex- 
 
CORRUPTING INFLUENCE OF MOGUL DESPOTISM. 51 
 
 isted under the rule of the Mogul despots was too 
 surely calculated to corrupt both Mahomedans and 
 Hindoos — to perpetuate among both classes the selfish- 
 ness and faithlessness which years of milder rule and 
 more ennobling example have yet scarcely even begun 
 to eradicate. 
 
 We found the people of India abject, degraded, false 
 to the very core. Mussulman domination had called 
 into full activity all the bad qualities which Hindooism 
 has in itself a fatal tendency to generate. To the esoteric 
 vices inseparable from such a religion were added the 
 exoteric vices born of circumstances, injurious to any 
 people, but to such a people fatal in the extreme. The 
 faithlessness, if not engendered, aggravated, and per- 
 petuated by Mussulman despotism, is now the grand 
 stumbling-block of British legislation. There is hardly 
 an hour of his official existence in which it does not 
 present itself in the path of the Christian functionary, to 
 impede his advance and embarrass his movements. It is 
 as patent to him as the Taj-Mehal, or the Kootab-Minar ; 
 and, go where he will, it is sure to stare him in the face. 
 
 It has not been my object in this chapter to draw any 
 regular comparison between the general features of Ma- 
 homedan rule and those of our own dominion in the East. 
 There is one point of difference, which will readily 
 present itself to the mind of even the most inexperienced 
 reader. It will at once occur to him, that the Mussul- 
 man conqueror, though differing in rehgion, and to a 
 certain extent in manners, from the Hindoo, was still 
 a member of the same great Oriental family, and ex- 
 hibited, in his ordinary intercourse with the inhabitants 
 of the conquered land, as many points of resemblance as 
 of difference, and even in the latter very often assimilated 
 his own customs to those of the country of his adoption. 
 He sat on the ground ; he ate his dinner with his fingers; 
 he covered his head and uncovered his feet in-doors; he 
 
 E 2 
 
62 INDIA UNDER THE MOGULS. 
 
 secluded his women; and if he did not bring with him the 
 same amount of regard for ceremonial observances, and 
 the same rigid ideas on the subject of the cleanliness and 
 uncleanliness of external things, he was very soon impreg- 
 nated with them. The Mahomedan conqueror rapidly 
 became Hindooised. He fused himself into the general 
 mass of the people. He was not a Tartar, or an Afghan, 
 but a Mahomedan Indian. India was his country ; he 
 was not merely in it, but of it. He, or his father, or some 
 more remote ancestor, had emigrated thither, and had 
 forgotten the country he had left behind. But between 
 the English conqueror and his Hindoo subject there is 
 an impassable gulf There is nothing in common be- 
 tween them. The British gentlemen, who fill all the 
 principal offices of the state, are not Christian Indians, 
 but Christian Englishmen. They have brought their own 
 costume and their own customs with them, and they keep 
 them on the banks of the Ganges as they would on the 
 banks of the Thames. They live alone — ^utterly sepa- 
 rated from the mass of the people — and are surrounded 
 with a prestige of superior wisdom and superior strength ; 
 but still, in many respects, an astonishment and a reproach 
 in the eyes of our benighted brethren. 
 
 It is within the scope of this inquiry only to consider 
 the very obvious difference of which I speak in relation 
 to the happiness and prosperity of the people. And, 
 on this point, it needs not that much should be said. 
 The more you know of a man's circumstances — the 
 more clearly you understand his character, and are 
 acquainted with his feelings and opinions — ^the more 
 familiar you are with his domestic habits, and the more 
 unrestrained is your intercourse with him — the more good 
 you may do him, if you will. But the greater, at the same 
 time, is the injury which these advantages enable you 
 to inflict upon him. Doubtless the orientalism of our 
 Mahomedan predecessors might have wrought mightily 
 
CHARACTERISTICS OF MUSSULMAN RULE. 53 
 
 for the benefit of the people of India, but it may be fairly 
 doubted that it did. It was used rather as an engine of 
 oppression than of protection. It manifested itself rather 
 in arbitrary interference than in kindly concernment. It 
 was insolent and magisterial, rather than tender and 
 paternal in its demonstrations. If the familiarity of the 
 Mahomedans with the language, the usages, the feelings, 
 and opinions of the people of India had been associated 
 wth our own earnest and sustained desire to turn these 
 advantages to account, great, doubtless, would have been 
 the gain. But it was the study of the Mahomedans to 
 turn them only to their own account, and they were 
 rarely used as anything more than instruments of extor- 
 tion and oppression. 
 
 Apart from these considerations, it is probable that the 
 points of resemblance between the conquerors and the con- 
 quered rendered the yoke more irritating and oppressive. 
 The greater the difference between the master and the 
 servant, the less intolerable is the state of servitude. But 
 not merely upon this account is the latter less restless 
 beneath it. It is certain that under the Mahomedan 
 Governments the people were continually breaking out 
 into revolt. Under the British Government internal re- 
 bellion is a thing almost unknown. I believe that this is 
 in no small measure attributable to the approximation in 
 the one case, and the divergence in the other, of which 
 I have been speaking. When the difference between the 
 master and the servant is slight, the latter is little able to 
 understand why the relationship should exist, and little 
 willing to suffer its continued existence. He does not 
 recognise either the physical or the moral superiority 
 which should place one in subjection to the other. And, 
 therefore, he is restless under the yoke, and endeavors 
 to cast it off. But when the master comes from a distance 
 — from some far-off fabulous country — when he speaks 
 another language, has another complexion, wears another 
 
54 INDIA UNDER THE MOGULS. 
 
 dress, and comes with all the environments of wealth, 
 and wisdom, and physical power, great alike in activity 
 and endurance — ^the servant recognises the necessity of 
 submission; his self-love is less wounded, he is more 
 patient under the yoke. Now, if the yoke is to be borne 
 at all, it cannot be borne too patiently. Every e£Port to 
 cast it off increases the cost of the subjugation. 
 
 I have one more argument to notice in this chapter, 
 which has swollen to a length which I did not contem- 
 plate at its commencement. It is said that if the 
 people of India were happier under our rule than under 
 that of their Asiatic conquerors, they would emigrate 
 largely into the British provinces from those states, as 
 Oude and Hyderabad, which are still under Asiatic 
 domination. And it has been urged by a very high 
 authority that this circumstance is to be attributed to 
 the fact that, although under British rule there is 
 more security and more tranquillity, our monopoly of 
 aU the chief oifices of the state more than counter- 
 balances these advantages, and deters men from seek- 
 ing our protection. But it appears to me that we need 
 not look further than the known character of the 
 people of India for the cause of their immoveability and 
 quiescence. The natives of India are not a migratory 
 people. They are not an enterprising people. Apathy 
 is one thiag ; content is another. Of the misgovem- 
 ment of the Oude and Hyderabad provinces I need not 
 speak in tliis place. It is argued that this misgovem- 
 ment is submitted to, because the natives under native 
 rule may rise to offices of dignity and emolument. But 
 how little, after all, does this affect the happiaess of 
 the great mass of the people. It is small consolation 
 to the husbandman whose crops are destroyed, or to 
 the artisan whose house is burnt to the ground, that 
 there is no law against his sitting as a judge, or com- 
 manding a regiment of horse. It is of far more im- 
 
OFFICIAL EMPLOYMENT, 55 
 
 portance to him that they who command regiments of 
 horse should protect instead of oppressing, and that 
 they who sit as judges should conscientiously admi- 
 nister justice to the people. It appears to me that the 
 view taken of this matter by the Court of Directors 
 of the East India Company is pre-eminently sound. 
 "Eacilities of official advancement," they wrote in an 
 admirable letter to the Supreme Government of India^ 
 enunciating their opinions respecting the interpretation 
 of the Charter Act of 1834, " can little affect the bulk 
 of the people under any government, and least under 
 a good government. It is not by holding out inceni 
 tives to official ambition, but by repressing crime, by 
 securing and guarding property, by creating confidence, 
 by ensuring to industry the fruit of its labors, by pro- 
 tecting men in the undisturbed enjoyment of their 
 rights, and in the unfettered exercise of their faculties, 
 ,that government best ministers to the public wealth 
 and happiness. In eflPect, the free access to office is 
 chiefly valuable when it is a part of general freedom."* 
 But it is time that this inquiry should cease. The 
 paper upon which I have written these last pages has 
 rested upon a folio " Blue Book," containing a return 
 "of all public works which have been completed in 
 India by the East India Company wdthin the last ten 
 years; including embankments, canals, and works of 
 irrigation, roads and bridges, buildings, factories, docks, 
 and all other public works." — "Also, a similar return 
 of all public works now in progress in India (with the 
 addition of any proposed railways), showing iq each 
 case the object of the work, the date of its commence- 
 ment, and (where terminated) its termination, the 
 amount of expense incurred, the amount estimated for 
 completion, and the probable time of completion, of all 
 
 ♦ The Court of Directors to the Governor- General of India in Council^ December 
 10, 1834. MS. Records. See post, pages 423, 424, 42r). 
 
56 INDIA UNDER THE MOGDXS. 
 
 unfinislied works ; with sucli statements or documents as 
 may be deemed necessary to explain or illustrate the 
 above returns." — (Ordered by the House of Commons 
 to be printed, August 1, 1851.) I shall have occasion 
 to refer to this, in less general terms, in a subsequent 
 portion of this work. In the mean while, there it is, 
 as a solid argument in itself, against which little can 
 be said by those who vaunt the superior beneficence 
 of the Mahomedan Emperors, and discourse upon the 
 short-comings of our British rule in the East. It may 
 not be all that I could desire ; but, even as it is, could 
 Akbar and his famous minister, Abul Fazul, have 
 brought out such a " Blue Book" as this ? 
 
 Note. — Illustrative of what I have for a very feeble state to leave very- 
 remarked, at page 39, on the subject of bulky vestiges to excite the admiration 
 forced labor employed in the construction and curiosity of succeeding generations, 
 of the great public works of the native What ancient Egypt suffered that the 
 princes of India, I find a passage in Pyramids might rise no one can tell ; 
 Mr. Robertson's very interesting work, and who thinks now of the 30,000 men, 
 " Political Incidents of the First Bur- women, and children, said to have 
 raese War," which I should have quoted perished, since this century commenced, ' 
 in the right place had the volume been to accelerate the excavation of the 
 in existence when I was writing on the canal connecting the Nile with Alex- 
 subject. Speaking of the remains of a andria ?" It was observed, too, by 
 great wall in Arracan, Mr. Robertson Lord Aberdeen, in the House of Lords, 
 says : " It is always to be borne in with reference to the " humiliating " 
 mind, in drawing conclusions from the fact of the " great works of the Mogul 
 great doings of ancient rulers, of whom Emperors," that we " might as well 
 no other record remains, that the power draw an inference from the Pyramids 
 unscrupulously exercised by the mo- of Egypt, and conclude that their 
 narchs of those early days, at least in builders were superior to us in moral 
 Asia and Africa, of compelling the qualifications." — ^Parliamentary Pro- 
 whole mass of their subjects to devote ceedings, March 11, 1853.] See also, 
 their labors to the accomplishment of on this subject, the chapter on "Public 
 any favorite design, rendered it possible Works," p. 296, and note. 
 
PROGRESS OF ADMINISTRATION. 57 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Our European Predecessors — The Portuguese in India — The Dutch — Discourage- 
 ments at the Outset — Progress of Empire— Our First Administrative Efforts 
 — The Conquest of Bengal — Efforts of Clive and Hastings — The Regulating 
 Act — Cornwallis and the Regulations— Subsequent Administrative Advances. 
 
 There is no need that, in pursuing the history of 
 Indian Administration, I should treat in detail of the 
 measures of our European predecessors on the great field 
 of Eastern adventure. They were traders ; they were 
 conquerors ; they were spoliators ; they were prose- 
 lytisers. But they were not administrators. 
 
 I would only speak of them in so far as their doings 
 influenced the rise and progress of our own power in the 
 East. On the last day of the sixteenth century the 
 London East India Company became a substantial fact. 
 The Portuguese had preceded us on the great pathways 
 ol the Eastern seas, and had even claimed a sort of ex- 
 clusive right to the trafiic of the far Indies. They had 
 led the way to the great discoveries, by which other 
 countries were eager to profit, and looked upon our 
 merchant-ships as piratical interlopers. Tliey had navi- 
 gated and traded ; they had fought and conquered ; they 
 had intrigued and proselytised, before the traders of 
 London had met at Alderman Goddard's house or 
 Founders' Hall, and taken measures to equip certain 
 vessels of their own " upon a pure mercantile bottom." 
 The commercial enterprise of the substantial Flemings, 
 
5 8 PROGRESS OF ADMINISTRATION. 
 
 too, had been roused into activity before our own, and 
 they sent out their heavy vessels to the spice-islands 
 before we had done more than talk about it. When, 
 therefore, we fairly started as adventurers in the Eastern 
 seas, we had rivals to cope with, whose antagonism cannot 
 be estimated by those who would measure it in accord- 
 ance with the relative powers of the three nations in the 
 middle of the present century. 
 
 The progress of the Portuguese on the Continent of 
 India had been rapid and dazzling. But the seeds of 
 decay had been planted deep in the constitution of the 
 Indo-Lusitanian power from its birth. Encouraged by 
 the first successes of their countrymen, all kinds of 
 adventurers, bound by no laws, and restrained by no 
 scruples, flooded into the country, and made a deluge of 
 Ucentiousness wherever they went. Soldiers swaggered, 
 and priests crept about the seaports. Forts and churches 
 rose up at their bidding. Strong in numbers, with all 
 the muniments and equipments of war by sea and by 
 land, they had no need to crouch to the native princes 
 and humbly solicit their protection. Insolence and 
 violence were the characteristics of the "braggard 
 Portugals," and for a little while they carried everything 
 before them. 
 
 It is not easy to arrive at a just conception of the 
 extent of Portuguese immigration in the sixteenth and 
 seventeenth centuries. Some, at least, of the statements 
 illustrative of this subject should be received with ex- 
 treme caution. It is related, for example, that when 
 the Moguls attacked Hooghly, where the Portuguese 
 were garrisoned, in 1632, ten thousand of the latter fell 
 in the course of the siege. Such statements as these may 
 be safely discarded. The stamp of exaggeration is too 
 plainly upon them to suffer us to hesitate about their re- 
 jection. But when every allowance is made for these 
 over-charged traditions, it still remains to be accredited 
 
THE PORTUGUESE IN INDIA. 59 
 
 that Portugal poured her thousands into India in tne 
 sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and that a large 
 proportion of them were desperate and unscrupulous 
 adventurers, who loved neither God nor Man. 
 
 The evil influence of the Portuguese was, in those 
 early days, recited as the main hindrance to our advance- 
 ment in the East. But it only kept us in check for a 
 time to contribute to our ultimate greatness. At first, it 
 would seem that the native powers, already alarmed and 
 irritated by the fortifying of the Portuguese, had done 
 their best to restrain a hke evil habit in the new tribe of 
 Feringhees ; but they began, after a whQe, to understand 
 that the countrymen of Hawkins and Koe could fight as 
 well by sea and land as the descendants of Albuquerque ; 
 and it was conjectured that we might expel the lawless 
 intruders, who had plundered their towns, massacred 
 their people, and broken their idols without remorse. 
 These things were in our favor. And whatever re- 
 proaches we may rightfully heap on the iniquitous career 
 of the Lusitanian conquerors, this much at least must be 
 conceded to them, that they were the first to breast the 
 heady torrent of Mussulman usurpation in Hindostan, 
 and to destroy the prestige of the invincibihty of the 
 Mogul. It was no light thing to bring the skill and 
 enterprise of western civilisation face to face with the 
 embodiment of that great Mahomedan power, which, 
 streaming fi:om its wild home in Central Asia, had over- 
 run so many countries, and absorbed so many princi- 
 palities. It was no light thing to drive a thorn into the 
 flesh which had swollen so proudly under the influence 
 of years of unbroken prosperity, and to raise festering 
 anxieties and misgivings where before had been only 
 security and triumph. 
 
 It is clear to me that the errors of the Portuguese 
 wrought mightily to our advantage. Not that we vo- 
 luntarily profited by them in the way of example, but 
 
60 PROGRESS OF ADMINISTRATION. 
 
 that we were compelled to avoid tlie excesses into which 
 they had hurried themselves, and those very excesses 
 tended to facilitate our gradual progress. We have 
 estabhshed ourselves in India, because our progress has 
 been gradual. Whilst we were slowly advancing step by 
 step, the Portuguese Empire in India was rapidly falling 
 to pieces. We need not look to any foreign sources for 
 the cause of its decline and fall. The enmity of the 
 Dutch may have precipitated the event, but sooner or 
 later it must have fallen to pieces by the innate force of 
 its own corruption. 
 
 Outwardly these Flemish adventurers, who were so 
 eager to grapple with the Portuguese, were our alHes. 
 But they were false friends, and, as such, more dangerous 
 than open enemies. Our own seamen and factors had 
 from the first been suspicious of the designs of these 
 " honest Dutch," and had written one to another, from 
 our insular establishments, warning them that they were 
 "our enemies to the utter ruin of our trade, so far as 
 their power wiU give them leave."* And this was very 
 soon apparent. They obstructed us, and dictated to 
 us. They compelled us to do what we did not wish, and 
 prevented us from doing what we did. They committed 
 excesses, and we paid the penalty of them in vicarious 
 forfeitures and imprisonments. They wronged us, and 
 lorded it over us ; and we were perpetually seeking 
 redress at home and abroad, but never succeeded even 
 in obtaining an instalment of tardy justice. According 
 to all human calculations at this time, the Dutch were 
 about to estabUsh a great empire in India, and the 
 English were about to be driven ignominiously into new 
 fields of enterprise in another quarter of the globe. All 
 that the Company could do at this time was to maintain 
 a gasping existence against the threatened danger of 
 total destruction. But the very obstructions which 
 
 * Letter of George Ball, from Macassar, to Bantam. India House Records. 
 
EARLY DISCOURAGEMENTS. 61 
 
 seemed to menace the life of the Company were the 
 elements of its permanent success. 
 
 For these very discouragements, which beset the 
 Company at the commencement of their career, averted 
 envy and compelled caution, and were therefore their 
 protection and support. If India had really embraced 
 ^\^thin its Hmits the " arva beata divites et insulas^' which 
 the imaginations of our coimtrymen pictured to them so 
 luxuriantly at the dawn of the seventeenth century — if 
 the traffic had been as profitable, if the fields of adven- 
 ture had been as alluring in reahty as in expectation — if 
 the young men of good family who went out in our early 
 fleets had met wdth brave entertainment from the native 
 princes, and had sent home dazzling accounts of their 
 marvellous success, there would soon have been an end 
 of the Company. A little cluster of London merchants 
 could never have kept in their own hands the privilege 
 of exclusive trade with the far Indies, if it had not been 
 that this privilege appeared to be little worth contest- 
 ing. The Company were opposed abroad and vilified at 
 home. Their dividends were unexpectedly low. Their 
 shares were at a discount. Their factors wrote home 
 that Enghsh goods " would not vent among the Gentiles;" 
 and the Lord Ambassador, whom King James sent out 
 to the Mogul, protested that " the country was mistaken." 
 This embassy seemed for a time to raise the dignity of 
 Indian adventure, and to give an impetus to the ignorant 
 ambition of the unprofitable classes at home. But they 
 soon discovered the error they had committed, and re- 
 turned home to report that there was no hopeful enter- 
 tainment for them in the kingdom of the Great Mogul. 
 The war in the Low Countries gave better prospect of 
 employment to our younger sons. And so, in this the seem- 
 ing hopelessness of Indian enterprise, lay strong and deep 
 all our hope. If the Company's monopoly had not been 
 preserved we should have established no Indian Empire. 
 
62 PROGRESS OF ADMINISTRATION. 
 
 Not that the Company ever thought of empire. The 
 London merchants, who looked anxiously for the return 
 of their rich argosies, when the Stuarts sat in White- 
 hall, and the Moguls ruled the empire of Hindostan from 
 the Peacock throne of Delhi, were no more than adven- 
 turous traders. They were never stirred by dreams of con- 
 quest, or perplexed by projects of government. Their 
 wildest speculations were bounded by the vision of a few 
 factories within sight of the white surf of the southern and 
 western coasts, or washed by the dark waters of the 
 Ganges. They were settlers only by sufferance of the 
 native princes, of whom they stood in continual awe ; and 
 it would have seemed as impossible to them to reduce the 
 ^' Great Mogul" to a pensioner and a suppHant, as to 
 float the continent of Hindostan into the British Channel, 
 and annex it materially to the British Isles. 
 
 In all their counsels at home — ^in all their instructions 
 to their servants abroad — the trader was everywhere 
 dominant. ' It was their policy to retain the slightest pos- 
 sible hold of the soil — to encumber themselves with as 
 little as possible that they could not carry off at a 
 moment's notice. They hated the thought of an increase 
 of "dead stock." The multipHcation of factories was 
 odious to them ; and a fort was an abomination. They 
 looked only for a brisk trade and a good dividend. And 
 although for " neglecting to establish fortified factories"* 
 they were nearly losing their monopoly altogether, they 
 reprehended their servants abroad for thinking of terri- 
 torial acquisition and miUtary defence. Indeed, so little 
 did it seem to them that there was any chance of ever 
 fighting with the natives of India, that, during the war 
 of succession at the end of Shah Jehan's reign, they ex- 
 ported ordnance and ordnance-stores " on a pure mercan- 
 tile bottom," calculating that there would be a demand 
 
 * This was one of the grounds assigned for the grant of the charter to 
 Courten's Association. 
 
STABILITY OF THE COMPANY. 63 
 
 for sucli articles of merchandise, and that the royal 
 princes would pay highly for goods which they could 
 turn to such profitable account. But the disposal of 
 events was far beyond the reach of that little handful 
 of London merchants. All things were working quietly, 
 but powerfully, when least they thought it, towards 
 the establishment of that great empire of the Merchant 
 Princes which now stretches firom Peshawur to Pegu. 
 
 Eager as the Company were, and earnestly as they tried, 
 to limit the number of their factories, the number con- 
 tinued to increase. Expansion seemed to be the natural 
 law which governed our position in the East. From the 
 Bombay coast, where the Company's factors first settled 
 themselves, they made their way by land to Agra, then 
 rounded Cape Cormorin, settled themselves on the 
 coast of Madras, and soon stretched up the Bay of 
 Bengal, to establish themselves in that rich province.* 
 This was not the result either of commercial cupidity or 
 territorial ambition. Naturally disposed towards slow and 
 cautious movement, the Company were hurried onward 
 by an irresistible power, which made them, in spite of 
 themselves. Merchant Princes and great territorial Lords. 
 Wonderfiil, indeed, was the manner in which the road 
 was cleared for the advance of the Company. Everything 
 was falling to pieces and decaying around them. The 
 Mogul power was crumbling at their feet. The Portu- 
 guese Empire was rotting away, devoured by worms and 
 maggots — a filthy mass of corruption. Nothing had any 
 vitahty and progressiveness in it, except that httle body 
 of London merchants, which seemed beyond the reach of 
 human accident to damage or to repress. Heavy blows and 
 great discouragements gave them only new courage and 
 
 * It was not, however, considered a '* is a hot country — the most of the 
 
 rich province in the early days of people very poor Gentiles." — [MS. 
 
 British adventure. Our factors looked Records of the East India Company.'] 
 askance at it. " Bengalla," they wrote. 
 
64 PROGRESS OF ADMINISTRATION. 
 
 new strength. He whose ways are not our ways wrought 
 for them deliverance out of peril — power out of weakness 
 — victory out of defeat. There is no more instructive 
 lesson in all history than this. The great structure of 
 our Indian Empire has been reared as no human intellect 
 would have designed, and no human hands would have 
 fashioned it. It has been reared for us as for a chosen 
 people, and mighty is the responsibility which a trust so 
 imposed upon us entails. The more we consider all the 
 circumstances of the Eise and Progress of the British 
 power in the East, the more palpable and obstinate ap- 
 pears the scepticism which would attribute so stupendous 
 and mysterious a movement to anything but the special 
 interference of an almighty Providence for a purpose 
 commensurate with the grandeur of the design. 
 
 It is not the object of this work to trace the triumphs 
 of British arms and the extension of our territorial 
 dominion. I have here to do only with matters of 
 internal administration, and I assume the possession by 
 the reader of a general knowledge of the sahent events 
 of Anglo-Indian histor}', from the day on which Captain 
 Best wrote to the Company, "we have settled in 
 Surat," to the time when Lord Dalhousie announced the 
 annexation of Pegu * We traded ; we conquered ; we 
 governed. It was long before this matter of govern- 
 ment came very palpably before us. At first, all that we 
 had to do was to govern ourselves, and this we did in a 
 very loose manner — rather according to laws of power 
 and impulses of passion, than to principles of justice and 
 reason. At the outset of our career the Company's 
 factors were under the immediate orders of their own 
 chiefs — Surat being the seat of the central authority — 
 but the " General," or commander of the Fleet, seems to 
 
 * We had a factory of old in Pegu— used to report that the coimtry was 
 but it was soon abandoned. Our traders full of rubies. 
 
NATIVE AND ENGLISH COURTS. 65 
 
 have had a controlling power. The factors complained 
 that he regulated their promotion,* and that the captains 
 of his ships sat in their councils and interfered with 
 their affairs.f As the British population of Surat con- 
 sisted, in no small measure, of the people of the Fleet, 
 perhaps this fusion of the two authorities was not alto- 
 gether unreasonable or inexpedient. The consultations 
 were often held on board the ships in the Koads; and 
 the chief of the factory signed his name after that of the 
 principal naval officer. 
 
 The laws under which our people lived at this time 
 were necessarily two-sided. In regard to all our trans- 
 actions with the native inhabitants of the place, we were 
 subject to the judicial tribunals of the country. On the 
 first estabHshment of our factory at Surat, Captain Best, 
 in his treaty with the Viceroy, had stipulated that " in 
 all questions, wrongs and injuries that shall be offered to 
 us and to our nation, we do receive from the judges and 
 those that be in authority speedy justice, according to 
 the quality of our complaints and wrongs done us, and 
 that by delays we be not put off or wearied by time or 
 charge. "J But our people had no great liking for these 
 native courts, and when it could be done without ma- 
 nifest danger, took the law into their own hands. Among 
 themselves justice was administered in criminal cases by 
 virtue of a King's commission under the Great Seal, 
 which empowered the Commissioners to punish and 
 
 * Joseph Salbank, one of the oldest f " Whereby the way your worships 
 
 of our factors, wrote home to the Com- may be pleased to take notice, that it 
 
 pany in 1617, complaining " that your may be a thing of ill consequence, when 
 
 proud Captain Keeling, towards whom you make commanders of ships to be 
 
 I have ever carried myself very gen- of your Council of India, though to be 
 
 teelly, or rather more humbly than I consulted without by your President 
 
 ought to have done, should offer me and Council in some things, especially 
 
 that indignity as to place me under such as concerns sea-affairs, hath been 
 
 punies and younglings to whom, for my their continual practice, and is also very 
 
 years' sake, I might be esteemed grand- necessary." — [F. G. Merry to the Com- 
 
 father— yea, this he did, though he pani/, January, 1649. MS. India Honse 
 
 never saw them to whom he gave pre- Records. ] 
 
 cedence above me."— IMS. India House % ^^- ^^^^^ House Record*. 
 Records. "l 
 
66 PROGRESS OF ADMINISTRATION. 
 
 execute offenders by martial law.* In civil cases the 
 will of tlie President or Chief of the Factory seems to 
 have been absolute. 
 
 As our factories increased in number, there became a 
 divided authority and control. The establishments on 
 the western coast and in the interior of the peninsula 
 were subordinate to Surat, whilst those on the Coro- 
 mandel coast were off-shoots from, and subject to, the 
 factory at Bantam. But the Company's servants in India 
 recommended a system of greater centralisation. " We 
 are told," they wrote, "to declare our opinions that 
 your affairs, like those of other nations which are far 
 greater, would be best managed if they were submitted 
 under one government, which you might place at your 
 pleasure either at Bantam or here (Surat), as you shall 
 find to stand with your most conveniency."f It could 
 hardly be questioned whether the central authority might 
 be fixed, more expediently, at Surat or Bantam. The 
 importance of our insular estabhshments had been great, 
 when it was doubtful whether we should be able to 
 
 * And this power was exercised too. loweth." [Here follow the crimes 
 I find among the Surat consultations, with which he was charged.] "Where- 
 as far back as February, 1616, the fore the said Gregory Lellington being 
 following record of criminal proceed- convicted by his own confession, it was 
 ings : generally resolved on, that as well in 
 
 " Consultations held on board the respect of the offence itself as for ex- 
 ship Charles, dated Swally Road, Feb. ample and prevention of others in the 
 23, 1616. Present, Captain H. Pep- like, that he should suffer pains of 
 well. Chief Commander of the fleet, &c. death whereof he received judgment 
 
 *' Whereas Gregory Lellington had on by the mouth of the Cliief Commander, 
 
 Sunday, the 16th of February last past, which was (according to his own 
 
 in or near the town of Surat in the desire), that he should the next day be 
 
 dominions of the Mogul, killed Henry conveyed ashore, and by the musketeers 
 
 Barton, Englishman, and belonging to of the guard be shot to death — and so 
 
 the company of the good ship the the Lord have mercy upon his soul. — 
 
 James, then riding in or near the Road Signed Henry Pepwell (Chief Com- 
 
 of Swally, it was concluded by the mander of the fleet) — Thomas Ker- 
 
 council aforesaid, that the said Lei- -ridgie, Chief of the Factory, &ic"— [MS. 
 
 lington should be called to answer for India House Records.'] I have given 
 
 the said murder ; which being effected, this at length, as the earliest account of 
 
 the King's Majesty's Commission, under our judicial proceedings in India with 
 
 the Great Seal, in point of authority and which I am acquainted, 
 
 power to punish and execute by mar- f William Tremlen and others to the 
 
 tial law, where need required, was read Company, Jan. 4, 1638. MS. India 
 
 publicly before the prisoner, and that House Records. 
 done it was laid to his charge as fol- 
 
THE ANGLO-INDIAN COUNCILS. 67 
 
 establish a trade with the continent of India, but it had 
 continued gradually to decline as our factories took root 
 on the great Indian peninsula, and we had become more 
 willing to leave the island trade to the Dutch. Surat 
 was therefore erected into a presidency. As time ad- 
 vanced, the control of the naval authorities was shaken 
 off; and the President at Surat became the chief repre- 
 sentative of the Company in the East. 
 
 The power which this officer possessed was great ; and 
 it was often fearfully abused. Everything depended 
 upon the personal character of the man ; and the Com- 
 pany were not always fortunate in their representatives.* 
 But great local changes were now impending. In 1653 
 the settlement of Madras, or, as it was now officially 
 known, of Fort St. George, was erected into a presidency. 
 In 1668 the island of Bombay, which had formed a por- 
 tion of the dowry of the Infanta on her marriage to our 
 second Charles, was granted to the Company, and placed 
 under the government of the Company's servants. It 
 soon began to rise into importance. But at this time 
 Bengal, which has now dwarfed the other Indian presi- 
 dencies, held the lowest place in the scale, and was sub- 
 ordinate to the Presidency of Madras. It was not until 
 the year 1715 that it was created an independent presi- 
 dency, under the name of the Presidency of Fort Wil- 
 liam, f Our first efforts at improved administration were 
 made upon the western coast. 
 
 On the first grant of Bombay to the Company, a Go- 
 vernor was appointed, with a Council, from among the 
 members of which a Deputy-Governor was to be selected 
 by the chiefs. But this Council was held subordinate to 
 
 ♦ It appears to me that as time ad- f In 1699 the villages of Chuttanut- 
 vanced, the character of the chiefs, or tee (or Calcutta) and Govindpore were 
 presidents, rather deteriorated than im- granted to the Company. Sir Charles 
 proved. The earliest were among the Eyre was sent out as chief agent in 
 best— Mr. Thomas Kerridge, for ex- Bengal, with instructions to build a fort, 
 ample, the first chief of Surat, seems to which, in honor of the reigning mo- 
 have been a man of great integrity and narch, was called Fort William, 
 ability. 
 
 f2 
 
68 PROGRESS OF ADMINISTRATION. 
 
 the President and Council of Surat, and in the following 
 year an effort was made by the Court of Directors to 
 place upon some better and more substantial footing 
 the general administrative agency of their several settle- 
 ments. It was then determined that the central authority 
 should consist of a President at Surat, with a Council of 
 eight members, fi.ve of whom were to reside permanently 
 at the Presidency * In this year, 1669-70, two Courts of 
 Judicature were established at Bombay. The lower 
 Court was presided over by one of the Company's civil 
 officers ; and the other, which was a Court of Appeal, 
 was composed of the Deputy-Governor and members of 
 Council. f The Deputy-Governor and three military 
 officers were to constitute a Court for the administration 
 of martial law. The Court of Directors took this matter 
 of the legal tribunals into their serious consideration at 
 this time ; and were anxious, whenever it was possible, 
 that trial by jury should be the practice in force. At the 
 same time they recommended the establishment of a 
 Mint. But they were extremely jealous of the growth 
 of military influence at their settlements, and turned 
 their soldiers into civilians and their civilians into soldiers 
 at discretion ; that the pure military element might not 
 anywhere assert itself in dangerous predominance. J 
 
 There was another advantage, too, in this. It ap- 
 peared to the Company that indifferent book-keepers 
 and accountants might make very decent soldiers ; and 
 that if their civilians were trained to arms, an occasional 
 hard bargain might be got rid of by the gift of a military 
 commission. Three-quarters of a century afterwards 
 the force of this reasoning met with the most remarkable 
 
 * Bruce. cil recommended the establishment of 
 
 The writer adds : " This plan merits a police force at Bombay, 
 
 particular notice, from being the first I Mr. Bruce relates that one Captain 
 
 example of a regular constitution, with Shaeton, who was sent to Bombay in 
 
 chiefs, in the Company's foreign de- command of troops, was made a factor 
 
 pendencies." forthwith, " that he might combine his 
 
 t In 1 672-73 the President and Coun- military with his civil duties." 
 
GROWTH OF THE CIVIL SERVICE. 69 
 
 illustration to be found in the history of the world. 
 There was a young man at Madras, who had gone out 
 as a writer on the establishment, but who made no 
 great progress vnth accounts, and exhibited no very 
 warm passion for the ledger. But he had been de- 
 scribed, when a boy, as one " out of measure addicted 
 to fighting," and no sooner were our settlements on the 
 coast threatened by the enmity of our French rivals than 
 he pushed aside the ledger, accepted a military com- 
 mission — and laid, broad and deep, the foundation of 
 our British Empire in the East. 
 
 The only recognised substantive service at the close of 
 the seventeenth century, was that which is now known 
 as the Civil Service. The Court of Directors were eager, 
 in those early days, to organise it after a fashion of 
 their own — a fashion, which was preserved unchanged 
 long after the Enghsh had become the lords-paramount 
 of the Indian world. The gradations of Writer, Fac- 
 tor, Merchant, and Senior Merchant, were then esta- 
 blished, and the names of the Company's servants en- 
 rolled in a regular seniority list.* They passed, however, 
 from one presidency to another ; and, it sometimes hap- 
 pened, that when any emergency arose — when the Com- 
 pany's servants were at strife among themselves, or the 
 trade of any particular agency was embarrassed — that 
 the Directors sent out one of their own body, or a rela- 
 tive of one of their chief members, to bring matters to a 
 favorable adjustment. It appears, too, to have been 
 
 * The following are the service re- years. And knowing that a distinc- 
 
 gulations as contained in the Court's tion of titles is, in many respects, ne- 
 
 letters: — " For the advancement of our cessary, we do order that when the 
 
 apprentices we direct that, after they apprentices have served their times, 
 
 have served the first five years, they they be styled writers ; and when the 
 
 shall have 10/, per annum for the last writers have served their times, they 
 
 two years ; and having served those be styled factors ; and factors, having 
 
 two years, to be entertained one year served their times, to be styled mer- 
 
 longer as writers, and have writers' chants; and merchants having served 
 
 salary ; and having served that year, their times, to be styled senior mer- 
 
 to enter into the degree of factors, chants." 
 which otherwise would have been ten 
 
70 PROGRESS OF ADMINISTRATION. 
 
 very much the custom, even in those early days when 
 the mercantile affairs of the Company were in a bad 
 way — when trade was slack and money was scarce, or 
 when their dead stock was consuming their revenue, to 
 send out instructions to reduce the pay of their servants, 
 and so to save a few hundreds a year.* This was not 
 the way to obtain good service, and to keep the Factors 
 and Merchants from trading on their own accounts at 
 a greater loss to the Company than would have been 
 entailed upon them if they had doubled, instead of re- 
 duced, the salaries of their servants. 
 
 It is in the records of the year 1679-80 that I trace, 
 for the first time, anything like a scheme of general 
 administration, embracing the whole question of Inland 
 Kevenue. In that year instructions were sent out to the 
 Local Government to make Bombay discharge its own 
 civil and military expenses. A duty was to be levied 
 on the houses in the island ; and the land was to be 
 surveyed and assessed — or rather let out on lease. 
 There was a dim idea, too, even in those days, of the 
 development of the resources of the country by means of 
 artificial works, and a system of drainage was recom- 
 mended, by which the low marshy grounds of the Bom- 
 bay island might be rendered fit for cultivation. 
 
 In 1681-82, Bengal was established as a distinct 
 agency, with instructions to communicate immediately 
 with the Court of Directors. This arrangement, however, 
 did not last long. The chief Agent, who had been sent 
 out directly by the Court, mismanaged affairs and mis- 
 conducted himself; and Bengal was accordingly brought 
 back again to its old subordination to Madras. About 
 
 ♦For example, in 1678-79, orders expenses of Bombay, civil and military, 
 went out to reduce the pay of the Pre- were limited to 7000/. a year. The 
 sident of Surat to 300/. a year, and to result of these measures was a rebel- 
 change his title to that of Arjent. The lion, headed by the chief military 
 senior member of Council was to have officer, which well-nigh lost Bombay to 
 80/. per annum ; and the Deputy-Go- the Company altogether, 
 vemor of Bombay 120/. The entire 
 
CORPORATION OF MADRAS. 7l 
 
 the same time Bombay was constituted an independent 
 settlement, and in 1685-86 it was erected into the chief 
 seat of the British power in the East Indies, whilst Snrat, 
 with a subordinate Agent and Council, was reduced to a 
 Factory. In April, 1686, a new charter was granted to 
 the Company, confirming all their former privileges, and 
 fiirther empowering them to erect courts of judicature, 
 to exercise martial law, and colq money at a Mint of 
 their own. The establishment of a Mint had long be- 
 fore been recommended to the Company by their ser- 
 vants abroad; and it had been much considered and 
 discussed, but had never before taken practical shape. It 
 was now, however, actually to pass into a fact by the ex- 
 press permission of the Crown. The Company regarded 
 it simply as an iustrument of trade, but their servants, 
 five-and-twenty years before, had been looking at the 
 matter of a Tankshall in the Deccan, in connexion with 
 the question of war.* 
 
 In 1687, Bombay, in imitation of the more ambitious 
 style of the Portuguese and the Dutch, was elevated to 
 the dignity of a Regency, and the Governor was created 
 General-in-Chief of all our Indian settlements. This was 
 a matter, however, merely of outward titles and digni- 
 ties. It is of more importance to record, that at this time 
 Madras was formed into a Corporation, with a Mayor 
 
 ♦ The factors at Rajapore — Henry account for, when your worships shall 
 
 Revington and others— wrote, in 1659, think fit to call the Persian to account 
 
 during the war of succession, recom- for his (and both together must be, if 
 
 mending the Company to take advan- ever you call the latter to account)? 
 
 tage of the weakness engendered by Will it not be necessary to have a 
 
 this internecine strife, to coin money Tankshall in the Deccan, and a coin 
 
 and make war on the MoguL " For that will be current to carry on a trade 
 
 your worships may please to know," here, as large as you please, during 
 
 they said, " that all these artificial your war with India, which will con 
 
 mines of money which were made in tinue no longer than you please? .... 
 
 time of peace, are now exhausted Then judge if you would not make the 
 
 through a civil war; and what better Tankshall cry as mournful to the King 
 
 time than now to make them sensible of India's ears as the liver, the foun- 
 
 ofthe benefit they have for many years tain of blood, should complain in a 
 
 received from you, and likewise of the natural body, and then what conditions 
 
 injuries, oppressions, and wrongs, that you may bring him to, is easy to fore- 
 
 you have received from them, which tel."— [.!/«>'. India Howie Records.! 
 •would be a good time to call them to 
 
72 PROGRESS OF ADMINISTRATION. 
 
 and Aldermen on tlie English model. But the charter 
 of incorporation came not from the King himself, under 
 the Great Seal, but under the seal of the Company. 
 Already had it been seen, in the case of legal no less 
 than of mihtary officers bearing commissions direct from 
 the Crown, that, in the words of the Court, " the 
 wind of extraordinary honor in their heads made them 
 haughty and overbearing." The Company, jealous of 
 8uch interference, argued against the use of the Great 
 Seal, and maintained their ground with such good effect, 
 that they carried the point in Council, and the Charter, 
 under their own seal, was duly engrossed, and sent out to 
 Madras.* 
 
 I set these things down in a fragmentary insequential 
 manner, because there is nothing of a sustained character 
 — no evidences of any comprehensive design — in these 
 L_early efforts of the Company at civil administration. 
 But it was about the period which I have now reached 
 that they began to think seriously of their position m 
 India — not merely as traders, but as representatives of a 
 great nation. The power of the Mogul had sensibly 
 diminished as their own power had increased. They had 
 become more conscious of their strength, and had begun 
 to weary of subservience to the native princes. Indeed, 
 it had become apparent that these proud Mussulmans 
 were no such formidable enemies after all. The enemies 
 whom they most dreaded at this time were much nearer 
 at home. A rival Company was starting up. The seas 
 were bristling with interlopers. The Company's own 
 servants were conniving at the piratical trade. The mer- 
 
 ♦ " The corporation of Madras, under fleers were to be elected by the mayor 
 
 this charter, were to consist of a mayor and aldermen, subject to the approba- 
 
 and ten aldermen (three to be Com- lion of the president. A sword and 
 
 pany's servants and seven to be natives), mace were to be carried before the 
 
 who were to be justices of the peace, mayor, and a silver one before ♦he 
 
 and to wear thin silk scarlet gowns, judge-advocate. A record was to be 
 
 and of one hundred and twenty bur- kept of their proceedings, and regularly 
 
 to wear black silk gowns ; a transmitted to the Court." — ^Bruoe's 
 
 town clerk and a recorder were to be Aniials of the East India Company.'] 
 appointed, and all the subordinate of- 
 
TRADE AND REVENUE. 73 
 
 cantile prosperity of the old corporation was threatened, 
 and with their increased establishments and accumulated 
 dead stock they were naturally alarmed by the thought 
 of the loss of their commercial profits. Thus situated, 
 they turned their thoughts with increased anxiety to the 
 matter of revenue, the importance of which had been 
 greatly enhanced by the jeopardy of the trade. " The 
 increase of our revenue," they wrote out to Bombay, " is 
 the subject of our care as much as our trade ; 'tis that 
 must make us a nation in India — without that we are but 
 as a great nimaber of interlopers, united by his Majesty's 
 Royal Charter, fit only to trade where nobody of power 
 thinks it their interest to prevent us — and upon this 
 account it is that the wise Dutch, in all their general 
 advices which we have seen, write ten paragraphs con- 
 cerning their government, their civil and military pohcy, 
 warfare, and the increase of their revenue, for one para- 
 graph they write concerning trade."* The drift of this 
 is not that the Company had become ambitious, but that 
 the trade had become precarious. It appeared to be a 
 necessity to think of revenue, if they were to maintain 
 their position at all. But the national phase of the ques- 
 tion would not have forced itself upon them with this 
 urgency if there had been more hopefulness in the aspects 
 of their commercial life. 
 
 Indeed, all this talk about the wise Dutch, their 
 military establishments and their warfare, seems to have 
 been httle more than a spasmodic outbreak of bitterness 
 incited by the evil circumstances of the trade, for instead 
 of increasing their armaments, we find the Company at 
 this time reducing them. They were wise enough, 
 
 ♦ Mr. Mill, quoting this passage, consequence an object of neglect." But, 
 
 says: "It thus appears at how early a it appears to me, that it had become 
 
 period, when trade and sovereignty not an object of contempt, or an object 
 
 were blended, the trade, as was abun- of neglect, but an object of uncertainty, 
 
 dantly natural, but no less unfortunate. If the trade had not been in jeopardy, 
 
 became an object of contempt, and from these paragraphs would never have 
 
 an object of contempt by necessary been written. 
 
74 PROGRESS OF ADMINISTRATION. 
 
 however, to look after their revenue and exert them- 
 selves to improve the internal condition of their settle- 
 ments — they kept a steady eye on the municipal insti- 
 tutions of Madras — approved of the erection of a new 
 Town-hall, " recommended that a Post-office and an 
 Insurance-office should be established, and repeated 
 their instructions to offer encouragement to artists who 
 were eminent for ornamenting cloths, to settle at the 
 Fort."* To accomplish these objects, the " revenue 
 was to be increased." But the Company's servants do 
 not appear to have been very successful in this depart- 
 ment, and circumstances were greatly against them, for 
 we are told that, at this time, the revenue of Bombay 
 had fallen down to less than a third of its previous 
 amount. External enemies and internal disputes had 
 embarrassed their fiscal proceedings ; and the Company's 
 debt continued to increase. 
 
 Those were cloudy days for the Company at the end 
 of the seventeenth century. They had made their way, 
 for a hundred years, against all kinds of impediments 
 and obstructions, foreign and domestic, and now a 
 greater peril than any stared them obtrusively in the 
 face. The interlopers, imder shelter of a needy Govern- 
 ment, glad to sell any privileges or patents for which 
 they could obtain purchasers, were consolidated into a 
 chartered company, which was intended to supplant the 
 centenarian association which had planted its settlements 
 along the whole coast of the Indian peninsula. But the 
 old Company did not lose heart. Allowed by their con- 
 stitution three years of grace, they determined to make 
 the best use of their time, and to battle it out manfully 
 with the intruders, still hopeful of driving them from 
 the field. t In the discreditable contest which then 
 
 * Brace's Annals. than two kings at the same time reg- 
 
 f They wrote out to their servants nant in the two kingdoms — that now a 
 
 in India that '* two East India Com- civil battle was to be fought between 
 
 ponies in England could no more subsist the old and new Company, and that two 
 
THE RIVAL COMPANIES. 75 
 
 ensued, all thought of tlie improvement of the internal 
 administration of our settlements was swallowed up. 
 The two Companies obstructed each other ; injured each 
 other ; maligned each other. And the character of the 
 nation suffered in the eyes of the princes and people of 
 India. But the old Company had wisely predicted that 
 such a contest could not last long, although they did not 
 foresee the manner in which it would be brought to a 
 close. I need not add that a compromise was effected ; 
 that the two Companies, sinking their animosities at home 
 and making arrangements about their stocks, were consoli- 
 dated into one ; and that in the year 1702 the " United 
 Company of Merchants trading to the East India" was 
 prospectively incorporated mider the Great Seal.* 
 
 The evil that this unseemly strife had engendered 
 '4ived after it." The violence of the Companies' ser- 
 vants in India did not easily subside. Whilst the affairs 
 of the two associations were being wound up, prepara- 
 tory to their practical incorporation as one joint stock, all 
 sorts of outrages were committed. There was no law, 
 there was no decency. The revenue fell off. The ad- 
 ministration was at a stand-still. They were evil days 
 for the dignity of Indian adventure. But when, in 1709, 
 the United Company were fairly in operation, a brighter 
 day began to dawn. The trade of the Company revived ; 
 their admmistrative affairs recovered something of order 
 and regularity. At all events, there was no open scandal 
 of a very notorious kind. Of government, as we xmder- 
 
 or three years must end this war, as 315,000/., and were therefore entitled 
 
 the old or the new must give way — that to trade annually to that amount." — 
 
 being veterans, if their servants abroad [ The Court of Directors to the Council of 
 
 would do their duty, they did not doubt Bengal, August 26, 1698. Bruce's An- 
 
 of the victory — that if the world nals.'] 
 
 laughed at the pains the two Companies * The union was not completed until 
 took to ruin each other, they could not 1709. The intervening years were de- 
 help it, as they were on good ground voted to tlie winding up of the concerns 
 and had a charter— that when the three of the two Companies, under a commit- 
 years expired, still they had revenues tee of management at home, composed 
 and possessions, and had a share in the of equal numbers of members belonging 
 new Company's stock, to the amount of to the two associations. 
 
76 PROGRESS OF ADMINISTRATION. 
 
 stand it, in these days there was little. We did not get 
 much beyond temporary shifts and expedients. There 
 was no system ; no uniformity. During the first quarter 
 of the eighteenth century there was a Court of Justice 
 at Bombay, and one at Madras, known as the Mayor's 
 Court ; but in Bengal there was none. The records of 
 these courts contain some curious illustrations of the 
 morals and maimers of the early settlers, and of the 
 natives, Portuguese and Indian, who clustered round 
 them at the presidencies. The people in whose cases 
 they adjudicated were for the most part the public or 
 private servants of the settlers themselves, or people 
 connected with the shipping in the ports. The Court 
 carried on all kinds of business. It was at once a civil, 
 a criminal, a military, and a prerogative court. It 
 proceeded with remarkable promptitude and despatch, 
 from the proving of a will to the trial of a murderer ; 
 from the settlement of a dispute regarding the sale of 
 a slave-girl to the punishment of a drunken trooper or 
 an extortionate witch. Plogging was the usual re- 
 medy prescribed. It was one of general application, 
 and fell with the greatest impartiality on all offenders, 
 old and young, male and female alike.* 
 
 But it was not on the southern or western coasts, 
 but on the banks of the Hooghly, on those low lands 
 of which our first settlers spoke contemptuously as of 
 a hot country inhabited by very poor Gentiles, that in 
 the early part of the eighteenth century there was 
 made the greatest administrative progress. In the 
 year 1715, as I have said, the English settlements in 
 Bengal were erected into an independent Presidency; 
 and some ten years afterwards a Mayor's Court was 
 established in Calcutta, which had become the chief 
 place of our trade in that part of the world. We 
 
 ♦ MS. India Home Records of the Mayors Court of Madras and Court of 
 Ju$tice of Bombay, 
 
JUSTICE IN BENGAL. 77 
 
 had become by this time Zemindars, or landed-pro- 
 prietors, under the Soubahdar of Bengal, and, in this 
 capacity, with the consent of the native Government, 
 we had before erected a criminal, a civil, and a revenue 
 court, with limited jurisdiction, in the neighbourhood 
 of Calcutta, for the trial of cases connected with the 
 people located upon our estates. The Cutcherry, in- 
 deed, was fast becoming an English institution. The 
 Company's servants were rising into administrative 
 importance as heaven-born judges and territorial finan- 
 ciers. They constituted themselves tribunals for the 
 trial of their own causes ; they had power without re- 
 sponsibility, and dealt in judgments without law. They 
 had liberty to fine, to imprison, to sentence to labor on 
 the roads, but they could not hang the subjects of the 
 Mogul. The lash, however, took the place of the gibbet, 
 and malefactors were whipped into another world by 
 the manual skill of the native flagellants. 
 
 Prom this time, up to the eventful day when Eobert 
 Clive, in the heavy turban and loose trousers of a 
 Mogul, escaped from Madras to Pondicherry, and 
 turned his back for ever on the drudgery of the desk, 
 no very noticeable events, bearing upon the progress 
 of English administration in India, present themselves 
 for specific mention. But great events were now 
 hurrying the English into an open manifestation of 
 national power, and tlieir territorial possessions, from 
 obscure farms, were fast swelling into rich principa- 
 lities. Clive and his little army appeared before Port 
 William, and the power of the Soubahdar of Bengal 
 was broken by a handful of English strangers. The 
 Prench, who had been contending with us for the 
 European mastery of the southern coast of India, had 
 taught us how to discipline the natives of the country, 
 and we had learnt that these hireling troops would 
 be true to the hand that gave them their salt. The 
 
78 PROGRESS OF ADMINISTRATION. 
 
 first great battle ever fought by the English in India 
 placed Bengal at our feet. In a little while, the De- 
 wannee, or administration of the provinces of Bengal, 
 Behar, and Orissa, with all their wealth, was placed 
 at our disposal by a power no longer able to stem the 
 irresistible tide of European domination; and terri- 
 torial revenue now began to take a substantial place 
 in the considerations of the East India Company, and 
 to attract the delicate regards of the Crown- 
 But although, in 1765, the revenues of these pro- 
 vinces became our own, motives of policy, natural but 
 short-sighted, impelled Clive to leave the actual ad- 
 ministration in the hands of the old native functionaries 
 to be carried on in the name of the Soubahdar. It 
 seemed expedient that we should be content with the 
 unambitious part of gorging ourselves upon the 
 revenues of the Dewannee, and leaving all the re- 
 sponsibility, and all the danger of its internal manage- 
 ment and its external defence, in the hands of the 
 native power. " The first point in politics which I 
 offer to your consideration," he wrote to the Select 
 Committee in 1767, " is the form of government. 
 We are sensible that since the acquisition of the 
 Dewannee, the power formerly belonging to the 
 Soubah of these provinces is totally, in fact, vested in 
 the East India Company. Nothing remains to him 
 but the name and shadow of authority. This name, 
 however, this shadow, it is indispensably necessary 
 that we should venerate. Under the sanction of a 
 Soubah, every encroachment that may be attempted 
 by foreign powers can effectually be crushed, without 
 any apparent interposition of our own authority, and 
 all real grievances complained of by them can, through 
 the same channel, be examined into and redressed. Be 
 it, therefore, always remembered that there is a Soubah ; 
 and that though the revenues belong to the Company, 
 
THE SOUBAHDARRY MASK. 79 
 
 the territorial jurisdiction must still rest in the chiefs 
 of the country, acting under him, and thus presiding 
 in conjunction. To appoint the Company's servants 
 to the offices of collectors, or, indeed, to do any act hy 
 any exertion of the English power, which can equally 
 be done by the nabob at our instance, would be 
 throwing off the mask, would be declaring the Com- 
 pany Soubah of the Province. Foreign nations would 
 immediately take umbrage, and complaints preferred 
 to the British Court might be attended with very em- 
 barrassing consequences."* It seemed, indeed, incon- 
 venient at this time to do anything but swallow the 
 emoluments of power; its risks and responsibilities 
 were to be studiously ignored. We were to remember 
 whenever there was an emergency, that there was a 
 Soubahdar. 
 
 But the mask had its pains and penalties, too; it 
 did not sit easily upon us, and it was now soon to be 
 discarded. Old Mr. Holwell, who had escaped the de- 
 stroying horrors of the Black Hole, to write pleasant 
 " tracts " in England, which now, after the lapse of 
 nearly a century, are still to be read with interest, had 
 protested strongly against this " ringing changes on 
 Soubahs," from the first. " Let us boldly dare," he 
 exclaimed, " to be Soubahs ourselves." " "We have 
 nibbled at these provinces," he added, " for eight 
 years, and notwithstanding an immense acquisition — 
 an immense acquisition of territory and revenue — 
 what benefit has resulted from our successes, to the 
 Company ? Shall we then go on nibbling and nibbling 
 at the bait, until the trap falls and crushes us ?" He 
 wrote this, and much more, in the same strain, in 
 
 * Olive had been appointed in 1764 their own authority, independently of 
 
 President and Governor in Bengal, with the existing Council. The Council en- 
 
 a Select Committee of four gentlemen, deavoured to resist their authority; but 
 
 They were empowered to act upon Olive beat down all opposition. 
 
80 PROGRESS OF ADMINISTRATION. 
 
 1765, just as Clive was receiving the Dewaimee from 
 tlie Soubalidar and the Emperor ; but we still con- 
 tinued " to ring changes on Soubahs," and to nibble at 
 the administration of the country. The collection of 
 the revenue, and the administration of justice, were 
 at first left uncontrolledly in the hands of the native 
 officers. It was found that, in every respect but the 
 promotion of their own interests, they were utterly 
 inefficient. It would be difficult, indeed, to exaggerate 
 the vices of such a system. Natives and Europeans 
 alike took advantage of it. There was no responsibi- 
 lity and no control. The strong preyed upon the 
 weak — and the weak had none to look up to for pro- 
 tection. Misgovemment brought its wonted bitter 
 fruit, and the revenue soon began to decline. So, in 
 1769, European supervisors were appointed as a check 
 to the native functionaries. The most elaborate in- 
 structions were issued to them. It is hard to say what 
 they were not expected to do ; — but still the double 
 government continued to work grievously. And there 
 were those who thought that the supervisors only made 
 confusion worse confounded and corruption more cor- 
 rupt.* 
 
 After all due abatement made for the rhetorical 
 exaggerations of florid writers and speakers, it is not 
 to be denied that our administrative agency was at 
 this time exceedingly vicious and corrupt. The temp- 
 tation to excess was very great, and the power of re- 
 sistance was of the slenderest order. The Company's 
 servants in Bengal did very much what they liked, 
 and grew rich on unhallowed gains without compunc- 
 
 ♦ Mr. Verelst says that it was im- commercial business; they were quite 
 
 possible at that time for the Company ignorant of the genius of the people, and 
 
 to have taken the management of the totally unfit for the work of adminis- 
 
 Dewannee into its own hands, for that tration. — [ View of the English Govern- 
 
 the number of civil servants was barely ment in Bengal, p. 62.] 
 adequate to the due performance of the 
 
ASSUMPTION OF THE EXECUTIVE GOVERNMENT. 81 
 
 tion or remorse. It was not to be supposed in those 
 days, it is not to be supposed in these, that men would 
 leave tlieir homes, to rot Hke sheep, among strangers, in 
 a destroying clhnate, without some adequate reward. 
 The Company's service, in all its open recognised con- 
 ditions, presented nothing that could be regarded as a 
 moderate compensation for all the pains and penalties 
 of Eastern exile. The pay was so miserably small that 
 the whole of it would not cover the house-rent of a 
 civilian, and the young writer was sometimes obliged 
 tQ go to bed soon after the early day-close of the tro- 
 pics, because he could not afford to supply himself 
 with the luxury of a candle or a supper.* Yet in 
 those days large fortunes were made — ^how, has often 
 been told before. The evil was one which necessarily 
 increased with the progress of the administration, for 
 the more determined the administrative character of 
 the Company's servants, the more important it was to 
 divest them of the prestige of dishonesty and rapacity, 
 and to withdraw them from the practice of such crimes. 
 Nothincr could be more clear than this to the soldier- 
 statesman Clive, who declared that the Company's ser- 
 vants should cease altogether to touch the profits of trade, 
 and never handle native money. On his return to India 
 in 1765, he had taken the resolution, to use his own 
 words, " to cleanse the Augasan stable;" and it is hard to 
 say how much the pm:ity of the civil service at tlie 
 present time is assignable to the efforts of the President 
 and the Select Committee. 
 
 But it was not until some time after the final de- 
 parture of Clive that the principle for wliich he con- 
 tended became the rule of the Company, and the ad- 
 ministrative business of our empire in the East was 
 performed by men receiving fixed salaries, propor- 
 tionate to the respectability of their position and the 
 
 * Forbes^ Oriental Memoirs. 
 G 
 
82 PROGRESS OF ADMINISTRATION. 
 
 services which they rendered to the State. There was a 
 season of shifts and expedients — of devices and experi- 
 ments — during which the character of the Company's 
 service continued to improve, because there was more 
 rigorous supervision, but did not reach a high standard 
 of integrity or efficiency. Affairs, indeed, at this time 
 were in a transition state. The Company, unac- 
 customed to their new character of great territorial 
 lords and incipient administrators, seemed to stagger 
 under the responsibihty which had been thrust upon 
 them, and to wonder what would come next. Thgy 
 were eager to confine their territorial possessions to 
 Bengal, and fearful of expansion on the side of Madras.* 
 Great questions of government were new to them. 
 They were suddenly called upon to administer the 
 affairs, not any longer of a few factories, but of an 
 empire of the internal concerns of which, except in 
 their commercial relations, they had the most limited 
 knowledge, and could hardly in reason be expected to 
 have more. In this conjuncture, they did the best thing 
 that could be done, though it grievously miscarried in 
 the issue. They sent out a Commission, consisting of 
 three gentlemen t of high character and extensive ex- 
 perience, with large powers of superintendence and con- 
 trol over all the Company's settlements, with instruc- 
 tions to inquire into and remedy all abuses, and to 
 dismiss without scruple any of the Company's servants 
 convicted of incapacity or corruption. What they 
 would have done it is impossible to say. They sailed 
 for Bengal in 1769, and nothing was ever heard of them 
 again. 
 
 * Even Clive shrunk from tlic idea ambitious and absurd, that no governor 
 
 of a further extension of dominion, and council in their senses can ever 
 
 " My resolution was, and my hopes adopt it, unless the whole scheme of the 
 
 will always be," he wrote in 1765, "to Company's interest bo first entirely 
 
 confine our assistance, our conquests, new-modelled." 
 
 and our possessions to Bengal, Behar, f Messrs. Vansittart, Scrafton, and 
 
 and Orissa. To go further is, in my Forde. 
 ©pimon. a scheme so extravagantly 
 
WARREN HASTINGS. 83 
 
 No noticeable changes in the internal administration 
 of Bengal took place under the governments of Mr. 
 Verelst and ]\Ir. Cartier; but in 1772 there succeeded 
 to the chief seat at the Presidency a man destined, in 
 the fulness of time, to take the very highest place 
 among our Indian statesmen. Warren Hastings, one 
 of the civil servants of the Company, was appointed 
 President of Bengal. The double government had by 
 this time fulfilled its mission. It had introduced an 
 incredible amount of disorder and corruption into the 
 state, and of poverty and wretchedness among the 
 people ; it had embarrassed our finances and soiled our 
 character, and was now to be openly recognised as a 
 failure.* On the 11th of May, 1772, it was proclaimed 
 that the Company had determined to " stand forth 
 pubHcly in the character of Dewan ;" and the whole 
 fiscal administration of the coimtry now passed avowedly 
 into our hands. 
 
 This was the greatest step in the progress of Anglo- 
 Indian administration ever made by the Company — the 
 greatest administrative revolution, perhaps, to which 
 Bengal had ever been subjected. But although the 
 Directors at home clearly enunciated the evils of the 
 old double government, and ordered that a new system 
 should be introduced directly in the name of the Com- 
 pany, they did not instruct their servants in India what 
 the nature of the new government was to be. They 
 
 *Theappointment of the supervisors, give relief to the industrious tenants, 
 intended to remedy some of the defects to improve and enlarge our investments, 
 of the system, wrought more harm than to destroy monopolies, and to retrench 
 good. The Court of Directors, who expenses, the end has by no means 
 seem to have been at this time consider- been answerable to the institution. Are 
 ably in advance of their servants, wrote not the tenants more than ever op- 
 to Mr. Hastings, in 1773, "We wish pressed and wretched? Are our invest- 
 that we could refute the observation ments improved? Have not the raw 
 that almost every attempt made by silk and cocoons been raised upon us 
 us and our administration mt your 50 per cent, in price? We can hardly 
 Presidency, for the reforming of abuses, say what has not been made a monopoly, 
 has rather increased them, and added And as to the expenses of your Presi- 
 to the miseries of the country we are dency, they are at length settled to a 
 anxious to protect and cherish. The degree we are no longer able to sup- 
 truth of this observation appears fully port." — [Minutes of Evidence on Hast- 
 in the late appointment of supervisors ings' Trial, quoted in MiWs History.'] 
 and chiefs, instructed as they were to 
 
 g2 
 
84 PROGRESS OF ADMINISTRATION. 
 
 left to their local officers the great work of sketch- 
 ing out the system and filling in the details ; and 
 fortunate was it that, at that time, the administration 
 was in the ablest hands to which it had ever been en- 
 trusted. 
 
 In subsequent chapters on the Revenue and Judicial 
 systems of India, some account will be given of the 
 changes introduced on the first standing forth of the 
 Company as Dewan. For a few days there seems to 
 have been an administrative hiatus. We had not yet 
 come very clearly to understand the duties and respon- 
 sibilities of government, or to take those clear consti- 
 tutional views of the relations subsisting between the 
 inilers and the ruled, and the necessity of a precise defi- 
 nition of authority, which are now inseparable fi:om even 
 the crudest ideas of Indian administration. The work- 
 ing of one machine was stopped, before another was 
 ready to be set in motion. It is instructive to contem- 
 plate a state of things, which in these days could have no 
 existence, and mark what progress we have made since 
 we first stood forth as Dewan. 
 
 But the new Regulations were hot upon the anvil, and 
 Hastings soon began to set the administrative machinery 
 again at work. I will only here state that he wisely de- 
 termined not to wield the besom of destruction at the 
 outset in too fierce and uncompromising a manner. He 
 knew that the first step towards the reform of the admi- 
 nistration of Bengal was the acquisition of mformation 
 relating to the institutions of the country. He knew 
 that the most experienced servants of the Company 
 were groping in the dark, amidst errors and delusions, 
 and that to base a system of the liighest abstract 
 excellence, on such errors and delusions, unsuited to 
 the character and the usages of the people, would be 
 to inflict greater injury upon them than had resulted 
 from the double government wliich had ground them 
 down to the dust. All that he did was of a proba- 
 
THE REGULATING ACT. 85 
 
 tionary, experimental cliaracter. He was tlie first to 
 come face to face with the inliabitants of the country 
 as their immediate ruler and protector, and he was the 
 first to acquire extensive information relating to the 
 people who bowed to liis rule and looked up to him for 
 protection. 
 
 But other great changes were now impending. By 
 this time the British Parliament and the British public 
 had begun to bestir themselves about Indian affairs. 
 There have been ever since that important year, 1772, 
 periodical spasms of intense interest in the details of 
 Indian administration, which come and go like the 
 cramp or the colic, and are very formidable whilst they 
 last, but do not seem to have any abiding effect upon the 
 constitution wliich they assail. The year 1772 was the 
 first spasm-year — ^but it was a great one. It opened 
 Avith an Indian paragraph in the King's Speech, and 
 closed with a report from a Select Committee of Secrecy 
 which had been intermediately appointed. India was 
 not so large a subject in those days as in these. The 
 folloT^dng year produced the Begulating Act. 
 
 I shall speak of this more fully in the next chapter. 
 I have only now to do with its effects on the constitu- 
 tion of the Indian Government. And those effects 
 were prodigious. A Governor and Council, consisting 
 of four members, was to be appointed to Bengal, with 
 supreme authority over all the presidencies of India ; 
 and a Supreme Court of Judicature was to be esta- 
 blished in Calcutta, with civil, criminal, and ecclesias- 
 tical jurisdiction over all persons except the Governor- 
 General and the Councillors. The appointment of the 
 Councillors, as of the Judges, was to be vested in the 
 Crown. One member of the Indian service, Mr. Bar- 
 well, was selected, and three strangers — General Cla- 
 vering, Colonel Monson, and Mr. Philip Prancis— were 
 sent out to Bengal. The Government of this new body 
 
86 PROGRESS OF ADMINISTRATION. 
 
 was declared by Act of Parliament to commence on the 
 1st of August, 1774, but the Councillors did not reach 
 Calcutta before the 19th of October. On the day fol- 
 lowing the old Government was formally dissolved, 
 and the Governor-General and Council entered upon 
 their administrative duties. 
 
 By the Act of 1773 (13th Geo. III., cap. 63) the 
 Presidency of Port William, or Bengal, was erected 
 into the seat of the chief power in India; and the Pre- 
 sidencies of Madras and Bombay were rendered subor- 
 dinate to it. The Bengal Council was to consist of a 
 Governor-General and four members, one of whom 
 was Commander-in-chief. The salaries of these oflB.cers 
 were fixed at 25,000^. for the Governor-General, and 
 10,000Z. for each member of Council — a tariff which 
 has existed without alteration up to the present time.* 
 The Governor- General had a casting vote in Council, 
 but no power to act independently of his colleagues. 
 There was a general authority vested in them " from 
 time to time to make and issue such rules, ordinances, 
 and regulations, for the good order and civil govern- 
 ment of the settlement of Port William, and other fac- 
 tories and places subordinate or to be subordinate 
 thereto, as shaU be deemed just and reasonable — such 
 rules, ordinances, and regulations not being repugnant 
 to the laws of the realm." They were empowered also 
 to act as Justices of the Peace, and to hold quarter 
 sessions four times a year within the settlement of Port 
 William. Such were the powers of the Governor- 
 General and Council under the Regulating Act. Por 
 any offence against this Act, or for any " crimes, mis- 
 demeanors, or offences" committed by them against 
 any of his Majesty's subjects, or any of the inhabitants 
 of India within their respective jurisdictions, they were 
 
 * It is said that Lord Clive rccora- havo an additional 5000/L a year for 
 mended that the councillori should each table-money. 
 
PARLIAMENTARY INTERFERENCE. 87 
 
 rendered amenable to the Court of King's Bench, and 
 liable, on conviction, to " such fine or corporal punish- 
 ment as the said Court shall tliink fit to inflict." 
 
 Thus, for the first time, was the administrative cha- 
 racter of the Company's government fixed and deter- 
 mined by Act of Parliament. Up to this period there 
 had been nothing more than a general recognition of 
 he Company's right to " have the ordering, rule, and 
 government of all their forts, factories, and plauta- 
 tions ;" and to " appoint governors and ofiicers for 
 the said forts, factories, and plantations."* But the 
 system of government and the powers of the governors 
 had been left entirely to the discretion of the Company 
 to define and limit. The administration of these distant 
 settlements had been matter of little concernment to the 
 Crown ; but now that the Company had become great 
 territorial lords, and the possessors of a large territorial 
 revenue, it became necessary for the Parliament of 
 Great Britain to fix and regulate the administrative 
 agencies and authorities to be established in the British 
 possessions in the East, and to exercise, through the 
 ministers of the Crown, a direct control over the 
 Directors of the Company themselves. The administra- 
 tion of the East India Company had now become a 
 great recognised fact. 
 
 The Act of 1773 continued in force up to the year 
 1781, throughout the whole of which time Warren 
 Hastings presided over the Supreme Council of India. 
 It was, in spite of the intestine strife which so embar- 
 rassed the administrative efforts of the Governor-General, 
 a period of progressive improvement. The Company's 
 servants had everything to learn as administrators, 
 
 • See the Charter granted by Wil- " to punish goyernors of plantationg 
 
 liam in. to the English Company, and in this kingdom for crimes by them 
 
 subsequently confirmed to the United committed in the plantations." It wai 
 
 Company. A subsequent Act was of general application to governors, 
 
 passed, 11 and 12 William IH., cap. 12, & c, of any colony beyond the sea. 
 
88 PROGRESS OF ADMINISTRATION. 
 
 and those great lessons were not to be learnt in a day. 
 But considering the strangeness of the duties which 
 then devolved upon them — the magnitude of the labor 
 imposed and the extreme difficulty of acquiring a com- 
 petent knowledge of the language, the institutions, the 
 usages, and the character of the people, in all their 
 multiform social aspects, a people whom before they 
 had only known in the one relation of trader, the 
 wonder is not that they advanced so little towards 
 good government, but that they advanced so much. 
 During this great experimental period of British rule 
 there was gradually springing up a race of trained 
 administrators, around whom the old commercial tra- 
 ditions did not cling — who had not graduated in 
 chicanery, or grown grey in fraud and corruption, and 
 Iwho brought to their work not only a sounder intel- 
 ligence but purer moral perceptions, and a higher sense 
 of what they owed to the people of the soil. When, 
 therefore, in 1786, it seemed to the authorities at 
 home expedient to appoint to the chief seat in the 
 council of India, not one of the Company's own 
 servants, but an English nobleman of good parts, 
 unsullied character, and extensive influence, the Go- 
 vernor-General so selected from the aristocracy of 
 Great Britain, found himself on his arrival surrounded 
 by a class of men with little resemblance to the old 
 denizens of the Augaean stable which, twenty years 
 before, Clive had so courageously ventured to cleanse. 
 The Shores and the Barlows were at his elbow — men 
 whose talents attracted admiration, and whose integrity 
 commanded respect. 
 
 Under the rule of Lord ComwalHs the progress made 
 in the internal administration was great and striking. 
 He gathered up the scattered fragments of government 
 which he found, and reduced them to one comprehen- 
 sive system. He gave substance and permanency to 
 
THE CORNWALLIS SYSTEM. 89 
 
 what had before been light and transient. He laid the 
 foundation of the present Indian constitution — not 
 hastily and unadvisedly, as has been often said, but 
 after much profound thought and earnest consideration, 
 with the advice and instruction of some of the ablest 
 and most experienced of the Company's servants. A 
 peculiar merit of the system which he introduced was 
 that, broadly enunciating the principles of the Govern- 
 ment, it created a code of written laws or regulations, 
 to which publicity was to be given ; it made legislation 
 thenceforth proceed in the presence of the people; it 
 taught the- Company's servants, clearly and distinctly, 
 the laws or regulations which they were to administer, 
 and opened the Indian statute-book to every man in the 
 country who had the will and the power to peruse it. 
 But its leading feature was the recognition of the great 
 constitutional truth that the legislative, the executive, 
 and the judicial powers of the State ought to be in 
 separate hands. It is true that no despotic Govern- 
 ment ever submits to the fetters imposed by this great 
 protective principle. But in no other way was Corn- 
 wallis's system an arbitrary setting aside of existing 
 usages, in disregard of native prejudices and predilec- 
 tions; it recognised those usages, it respected those 
 prejudices and predilections, and was most honestly 
 and humanely devised for the protection of the people. 
 
 Of the changes which, during this great adminis- 
 tration, were introduced in the Eevenue and Judicial 
 systems, I shall speak in detail when I come specially 
 to consider these important subjects. But this would 
 seem to be the right place in which to speak of the 
 legislative powers and functions of the Indian Govern- 
 ment, as they existed at that time. It has been seen 
 that the Charter of 1773 gave the Govemor-General 
 and Council authority to frame from time to time 
 
90 PROGRESS OF ADMINISTRATION. 
 
 rules, ordinances, and regulations for the good order 
 and civil government of the Company's settlements. 
 There was something rather vague and indeterminate 
 in this; but the Company's servants thought that they 
 discerned in it the indication of general legislative power, 
 and Barlow, who drew up the minute containing the 
 first rough draft of the new constitution, freely used 
 the word "laws," instead of "regulations," in all parts 
 of the document. 
 
 Clearly setting forth the principles by which the 
 Government were actuated, and establishing such a 
 system of checks as would leave it "for the Govern- 
 ment only in its collective capacity to have the power 
 to commit oppression," it proposed that every law 
 thenceforth to be passed by Government should be 
 printed and published, so that if it be unwise it may 
 stand in evidence against the fi-amers of it, and then 
 went on to say — " It may be urged that these ideas of 
 justice are incompatible with our political situation — 
 that as the people become rich they will feel their 
 power, and combine to subvert our Government. But 
 there appears to me to be no ground for such a suppo- 
 sition, for although we hope to render oirr subjects the 
 happiest people in India, I should by no means propose 
 to admit the natives to any participation in the legisla- 
 tive power." 
 
 The draft of this famous minute was submitted by the 
 Governor-General to Sir William Jones, Sir Robert 
 Chambers, and others, and was by them dihgently exa- 
 mined. Their verdict was all in its favor. " I return," 
 wrote Sir William Jones to Mr. Barlow, " Lord Corn- 
 wallis's incomparable minute, with which I have been so 
 charmed, that I have read it attentively ^ve or six times, 
 and I have scribbled a few marginal notes without 
 reserve. The plan is so perfect that I could suggest no 
 
OPINIONS OP JONES AND CHAMBERS. M. 
 
 material addition to it."* " In obedience to your lord- 
 ship's commands," wrote Sir R. Chambers to Lord Com- 
 wallis, ^' I have perused with attention the judicious and 
 elaborate minute which I received therewith."! But 
 there were one or two points contained in the document 
 which startled the Enghsh lawyers, and made them 
 hesitate before they could express thek entire approval 
 of all the contents of Barlow's minute. Against the 
 Regulation which made British residents in the Mofiissil 
 amenable to the local courts, they respectfully protested. 
 " I recommend," wrote Jones, ^' a serious re-consideration 
 of the article concerning British subjects residing in the 
 provinces." And Chambers recorded at some length an 
 opinion differing in no great measure from that of his 
 brother judge. J But that which seemed most to stagger 
 the English la^^yers was the assumption, indicated in the 
 minute, of legislative power by the Indian Government 
 — power of which the Judges of the Supreme Court 
 denied their possession. " Many passages in this excel- 
 lent minute," wTOte Sir William Jones, " seem to imply 
 a general legislative power in the Government, but I 
 
 * MS. Records. — Sir W. Jones to {^Mr. Burroughs to Mr. Barlow. — MS. 
 
 "Mr. Barlow. " Gardens — December 2, Correspondence.'] 
 1792." X The proposed Kegulation called 
 
 t MS. Records. — Sir E. Chambers to upon Europeans desiring to settle in 
 
 Lord Cornwallis, Feb. 4, 1793. A still the provinces to sign a bond making 
 
 stronger opinion was afterwards ex- them amenable in civil cases to the 
 
 pressed by Mr. (subsequently Sir) W. local courts. Jones doubted the legality 
 
 Burroughs. of such a process, and argued that the 
 
 " They (the Kegulation s)," -wrote the validity of such a bond would not be 
 Advocate-General, " are worthy of recognised in any court of justice; but 
 every praise which can be bestowed Chambers on the whole "inclined to 
 upon them, and would do credit to any the opinion that such a bond, if en- 
 legislator of ancient or modem times, forced in a proper manner and on a 
 I am, I do assure you, sincere in think- proper occasion, might be supported in 
 ing that they are as likely to prolong an English court of justice." But he 
 our empire in Asia, as they are certain contended that it would be expedient 
 of promoting the prosperity and happi- to confine the condition " to actions for 
 ness of the millions which inliabit it. small sums, such as a native manufac- 
 Should we ever, as probably we must, turer or mechanic living at a great dis- 
 be driven from our present power in tance from Calcutta, would find it diflS- 
 the East, they will remain a monu- cult to sue for in the Supreme Court." 
 ment of our justice and true glory, and —[Marginal Notes of Sir W. Jones, and 
 may continue to the people for whom MS. Correspondence of Sir R. Cham- 
 they have been framed many blessings bers."] 
 which under them they now enjoy." — 
 
92 PROGRESS OF ADMINISTRATION. 
 
 have searclied in vain for the statute by which such a 
 power is given. The rules a/nd orders of Courts may, 
 indeed, be called laws of those Courts; but I should 
 think rules and orders^ or regulations^ a clearer and 
 better expression than laws'' And again : " These and 
 many similar phrases in the minute seem to assert a 
 greater power of legislation than (I believe) the execu- 
 tive Government has been entrusted with."* Chambers 
 wrote a long letter on this especial subject to the Go- 
 vernor-General, urging that the 9th article of the pro- 
 posed Kegulations seemed to " take for granted a general 
 legislative power, and supposes that laws affecting pro- 
 perty and private rights may be passed by the Enghsh 
 Government in this country, just as they are by the Eong 
 and Parliament of Great Britain ;" and setting forth, 
 after a full statement of the argument, that " the con- 
 clusion which may be reasonably inferred from all these 
 particulars is, that the King and Parliament having 
 taken into their hands the legislation of this conquered 
 country, no subordinate legislature can exist here, but 
 such as is derived from Act of Parliament, or such as, 
 either expressly or by fair imphcation, is recognised and 
 allowed by Parliament." " And," continued this excel- 
 lent man, and upright judge, " it will, I believe, be found 
 on examination, that there is no general legislative 
 power here which can be so derived, or which has been 
 so recognised."! 
 
 Nor did the Enghsh lawyer stop here. He laid it 
 down as his opinion that even the British Parhament 
 
 * Marginal Notes of Sir W. Jones attached to the term Law^ which in- 
 fo rough draft of Minute. MS. — It voluntarily influences a more serious 
 is curious to observe the different and deliberate attention as to a solemn 
 views taken of this particular subject act of the legislature, which is not so 
 by the most eminent Company's ser- much excited by the less appropriate 
 vants. Mr. J. H. Harrington, to whom and more familiar term Regulation." — 
 the Minute had been submitted, wrote: [MS. Records.'] The lawyers, however, 
 ** Even the substitution of the term could not tolerate wliat they thought 
 Laws for Regulations, though it be but an abuse of the sacred word; and Lord 
 a verbal amendment, will, I am per- Cornwallis erased it. 
 suaded, tend to substantial advantages. f MS. Correspondence. 
 There is an habitual association of ideas 
 
RIGHTS OF THE NATIVES. 93 
 
 could not righteously interfere with the existing laws of 
 Maliomedans and Hindoos. '^ By the Parliament," he 
 wrote, " they certainly may legally be altered, for what 
 is enacted by the supreme legislative power must, ex vl 
 termmi, be legal. But it may be doubted whether even 
 the Parliament, after all that has been done and declared, 
 can consistently with prudence, mercy, and natural equity, 
 overturn the estabhshed doctrines of the Hindoos, or the 
 Maliomedans, or any of the subjects before enmuerated, 
 or on any other points wliich either of those two classes 
 of people consider as fundamental principles of their 
 respective religion. More especially when it is remem- 
 bered that their native princes, whether Mussulmans or 
 Idolaters, though they might sometimes infringe those 
 laws which they believed to be divine, never claimed 
 or pretended to have any right to abrogate or alter 
 them."* But it was this very overturning of the esta- 
 blished doctrines of the Hindoos and the Mahomedans, 
 w^hich the authors of the new constitution declared was 
 ever furthest from thek thoughts. The arguments, how- 
 ever, against the use of the word " laws " seem to have 
 prevailed, for Comwallis erased it and substituted Bules 
 or Regulations. 
 
 Many years afterwards Barlow, in his green old age, 
 looking back through a vista of half a century upon 
 those early days, when at the elbow of Lord Comwallis 
 he sketched the Regulations, which have since been the 
 basis of our Anglo-Indian code, wi'ote, in the clear 
 deHcate penmanship of his youth, these retrospective 
 notes : 
 
 " Great misunderstandings have prevailed with regard to the 
 new constitution for the civil government of the British posses- 
 sions in India, established by the Marquis CorawaUis in 1793, and 
 completed by his successor, Marquis Wellesley. The change did 
 not consist in alterations in the ancient customs and usages of the 
 
 ♦ MS. Correspondence, 
 
94 PROGRESS OF ADlVnNISTRATION. 
 
 country, affecting the rights of persons and property. It related 
 chiefly to the giving security to those rights, by affording to our 
 native subjects the means of obtaining redress against any infringe- 
 ment of them, either by the Government itself, its officers, or in- 
 dividuals of any character of description. 
 
 '* Every Government in the world, from the most free to the 
 most despotic, consists of the same elements. In each of these, 
 there must necessarily be a power to make laws, a power to 
 administer these laws, and a power to conduct what is termed 
 the executive branch of public affairs. The difference be- 
 tween the two descriptions of government consists chiefly in 
 the union or separation of these powers in the same or different 
 hands. In the despotic Government, all authority — the making 
 of laws, the administration of them, and all the duties of the 
 executive branch, are lodged in the same hands. In a free 
 Government these powers are lodged in different hands, so as to 
 ensure the enactment of good laws and the just administration of 
 them, and to provide for the due conduct of the executive duties. 
 The despotic Government may be compared to the natural world 
 in a state of chaos — the well-regulated Government to the natural 
 world with all the elements assigned to their proper purposes. In 
 this distinction consists the difference between an Asiatic or Turkish 
 Pashalick and British form of Government, and each is known by 
 its different effects on the lives, properties, and persons of the 
 people. 
 
 " Lord Cornwallis made no innovations on the ancient laws and 
 customs of the people. On the contrary, the main object of the 
 constitution which he established was to secure to them the en- 
 joyment of those laws and customs with such improvement as 
 times and circumstances might suggest. When he arrived in the 
 country the Government was, in fact, a pure despotism, with no 
 ether check but that which resulted from the character of those 
 by whom the Government was administered. The Governor- 
 General not only was the sole power for making all laws, but he 
 exercised the power of administering the laws in the last resort, 
 and also all the functions of the executive authority. The abuses 
 to which such a system of government is liable from corruption, 
 negligence, and want of information, are too well known to re- 
 quire being particularised. It is, in fact, from the want of a 
 proper distribution of these authorities in different hands that all 
 abuses in government principally proceed. 
 
POWERS OF THE GOVERNOR-GENERAL. 95 
 
 " His lordship's first step was to make it a fundamental law 
 (see Regulations XLIIL, 1793) that all laws framed by the Go- 
 vernment should be printed and published in the form prescribed 
 by that Regulation, and that the Courts of Judicature should be 
 guided by the laws so printed and published, and no other. It 
 had before been the practice to carry on the affairs of the Govern- 
 ment, and those of individuals, by a correspondence by letter with 
 all the subordinate officers."* 
 
 In this Barlow repeated what he had often em- 
 phatically insisted upon at the time. It was his wont 
 to declare that improvement was one thing — ^innova- 
 tion another; and that he had only improved upon the 
 laws of the Moguls.f 
 
 Lord Comwallis governed India with enlarged 
 powers. The " Regulating Act" had invested the Go- 
 vernor-General with no power independent of his Coun- 
 cil; and Pitt's India Bill, which passed into law in 
 1784, though it had given to the Court of Directors 
 the power of nominating and recalling the Governor- 
 General J and Councillors, had introduced no further 
 change into the constitution of the supreme Govern- 
 
 * MS. Memoranda. purpose. The distribution of the three 
 
 t " By improvement," he wrote, " I powers (which constitutes one of the 
 
 understand the gradual correction of essential differences between the present 
 
 defects in the existing Laws or Regula- and past arrangements) is calculated to 
 
 tions, and the providing by new regula- ensure to our subjects what they never 
 
 tions for cases which have never before enjoyed before, the full benefit of all 
 
 occurred. The new is thus in a manner laws and regulations ; and from the 
 
 the offspring of the old, always arising mode in which it operates renders the 
 
 out of it, and preserving a close relation ; introduction of any principles or mea- 
 
 but innovation proceeds in a different sures, which would afford ground for 
 
 way. It sets out with rejecting all the objections urged by the favorers of 
 
 connexion with the past, and adopts the Mogul system, next to impracti- 
 
 principles and measures that can never cable." — \_MS. Correspondence.^ 
 assimilate with it." —[November 26, X The recall clause in Pitt's India 
 
 1795.] And in the same letter he says: Bill runs thus— "And be it further 
 
 " The Regulations of 1 793-4-5 are filled enacted, that it shall and may be lawful 
 
 with injunctions for the observance of to and for the King's Majesty, his heirs 
 
 the Hindoo and Mahomedan law in all and successors, by any writing or in- 
 
 matters to which they have invariably strument under his or their sign 
 
 been applied, and contain all the specific manual, countersigned by the Secretary 
 
 rules affecting private rights and pro- of State, or for the Court of Directors 
 
 perty, about which alone the people can of the United Company, for the time 
 
 be immediately interested, that have being, by writing under their hands, to 
 
 passed during the last twenty years, remove or recall the present, or any 
 
 with alterations and amendments to future Governor-General," &c. — [Act 
 
 render them better fitted to the intended 24 George III., chap. 25.] 
 
96 PROGRESS OF ADMINISTRATION. 
 
 ment than that of the reduction of the number of 
 Councillors from four to three, on the occurrence of the 
 first vacancy. But two years afterwards, a Bill was 
 introduced to " explain and amend certain provisions^' 
 of this Act. It enacted that no person (except the Go- 
 vernors or Commanders-in-Cliief ) should be appointed 
 to the supreme or subordinate Councils who had not 
 " been twelve years at the least, in the whole, resident 
 in India, in the civil line of the Company's service ;" 
 and it empowered the Governor-General and minor 
 Governors in extraordinary cases to act without the 
 concm^rence of the Council, inasmuch as that such 
 power would tend greatly " to the strength and secmity 
 of the British possessions in India, and give energy, 
 vigor, and despatch to the measures and proceedings 
 of the executive Government." This was in effect a 
 public recognition of the utter failure of the system 
 under which Prancis* and his colleagues had been sent 
 out to India to "regulate," by their ignorance and 
 impetuosity, the proceedings of a really capable Go- 
 vernor-General, who had graduated in the Indian ser- 
 vice ; and though the restraint of Council has since the 
 passing of this Act been sometimes a little too loosely 
 regarded, the new provision was a salutary one. Under 
 this Act (26th George III., chap. 16) it was decreed 
 that all acts of the supreme or minor Councils should 
 be "expressed to be made" by the Governor-General, or 
 by the Governor or President "m Council — a nomen- 
 clature, expressive of the supremacy of the Governor, 
 which has been maintained to the present day.f 
 
 It was under this Act that Lord CornwaUis governed 
 our Indian possessions. In 1793 a new Charter Act 
 
 * Francis, who had been by this time Court of Directors should have tlie 
 
 returned to Parliament, endeavoured power of appointing their Governors 
 
 to introduce a Bill of his own, intended and Councillors without the approba- 
 
 to upset that which Dundas had framed tion of the Crown. — [2(ith George JIL, 
 
 — but he was unsuccessful. chap. 25.] This was subsequently con- 
 
 t A subsequent Act of the same year firmed by the Charter Act of 1793.— 
 
 (1786) decreed or explained that the l33rd George III., chap, 52.] 
 
THE MINOR GOVERNMENTS. 97 
 
 was passed, coutinuing the Company's privileges for 
 twenty years ; and in this the powers and responsibili- 
 ties of the Governor-General and minor Governors were 
 more clearly defined. It was then provided that they 
 should have no power to act without the concurrence of 
 their Councils in matters of purely civil government — 
 that is, in the words of the Act, in any matter which 
 shall come under their consideration "in their judicial 
 capacity" — " or to make, repeal, or suspend any general 
 rule, order, or regulation, for the good order and civil 
 government of the United Company's settlements, or 
 to impose of his own authority any tax or duty within 
 the said respective Governments or Presidencies."* By 
 this Act the Governor-General was empowered, during 
 his absence from the Presidency, to appoint one of the 
 members of his Council Vice-President, and Deputy- 
 Governor of Bengal, with authority coincidental with 
 that exercised, in Council, by the Governor of one of the 
 minor Presidencies. 
 
 Those minor Presidencies, under the Act of 1773, 
 had been left very much in the same constitutional state 
 as they were prior to the passing of the Bill. They 
 were at this time three in number — '' the Presidencies of 
 Madras, Bombay, and Bencoolen ;" their chief officer 
 was designated President ; the number of their Coun- 
 cillors was arbitrary, not limited by Act of Paiiia- 
 ment; and they were directed and required to pay 
 due obedience to the Governor-General and Council, 
 who had the power of suspending them from office. 
 But the Act of 1784 had decreed that " the Govern- 
 ment of the several Presidencies and settlements of Fort 
 St. George and Bombay shall, after the commencement 
 of this Act, consist of a Governor or President, and 
 
 * Act 33rd George IIL, chap. 52, Commissioners, " to suspend all or any 
 
 clause 51. — By clause 55 of this Act, of the powers hereby given to the Go- 
 
 the Court of Directors are empowered, vemor- General to act upon his own 
 
 with the approbation of the Board of sole authority." 
 
 H 
 
98 PROGRESS OF ADMINISTRATION. 
 
 three Councillors only" — of whom the Commander-in- 
 Chief was to be one. And this is the constitution of the 
 minor Governments as established in the present day. 
 At the same time it was enacted that the Governor- 
 General and Council of Fort William should have 
 *^ power and authority to superintend, control, and di- 
 rect the several Presidencies and Governments in all 
 such points as relate to any transactions with the 
 country powers, or to war or peace, or to the applica- 
 tion of the revenues or forces of such Presidencies and 
 settlements in time of war;"* and that this subordina- 
 tion to the Supreme Government might be complete, 
 another change was introduced, which compelled the 
 minor Governments to obey the orders of the supreme 
 authority, notwithstanding any doubts that they might 
 entertain of such instructions coming within the limits 
 assigned by the wording of the statute. By the sub- 
 sequent Charter Acts of 1793, this subjection to the 
 chief Presidency was confirmed; and the Act of 1833 
 more distinctly and minutely defined it. The general 
 authority of the Supreme Government is declared in 
 one clausef — and in another it is expressly enacted 
 that " no Governor or Governor in Council shall have 
 the power of making or suspending any regulations or 
 laws in any case whatever, unless in cases of urgent 
 necessity (the burden of the proof whereof shall be on 
 such Governor or Governor in Council), and then only 
 until the decision of the Governor-General in Council 
 shall be signified thereon ; and provided also that no 
 Governor or Governors in Council shall have the power 
 of creating any new ofiice or granting any salary, gra- 
 tuity, or allowance, without the previous sanction of the 
 Governor-General of India in Council."J 
 
 The Governments of the minor Presidencies had be- 
 
 * Act 2i Geo. Ill, chap. 25, clause 31. t Act 3 and 4 Will. IV., chap. 85, 
 t Act 3 and 4 Will. IV., chap. 85, clause 59. 
 clause 65. 
 
PRESENT GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. 99 
 
 fore this possessed the power of framing laws or regula- 
 tions for themselves, but this clause of the Charter Act 
 of 1833 deprived them wholly of this power, and ren- 
 dered their humiliation complete. The passing of this 
 Act is one of the most important events in the whole 
 history of Indian administration. The commercial privi- 
 leges of the Company were no longer recognised, and the 
 new Bill related, therefore, entirely to matters of govern- 
 ment. Under the Acts existing previous to this date, it 
 has been seen that there were three Governments, each 
 similarly constituted, with a Governor (or Governor- 
 General) and three Councillors, of whom the Com- 
 mander-in-Chief was one. The new Act left the minor 
 Governments with their old constitutions,* but re- 
 modelled the Supreme Government, and erected two 
 other subordinate Governments — the Governments of 
 Agra and Bengal. 
 
 Under this Act the Supreme Council of India was to 
 consist, and does now consist, of a Governor- General, 
 appointed by the Court of Directors, with the appro- 
 bation of the Crown, and four ordinary members of 
 Council, three of whom were to be servants of the 
 Company, civil or military, of ten years' service, ap- 
 pointed by the Court of Directors, and the fourth, a 
 member not of the Company's service, to be appointed 
 by the Court with the approbation of his Majesty, and 
 " not to be entitled to sit or vote in Council, except in 
 meetings thereof for making laws and regulations."t 
 The Commander-in-Chief might also be, and always 
 has been, an extraordinary member of this Council — 
 that is, he has always drawn the salary, and sometimes 
 he has taken his seat. The effect of the new law was 
 to constitute the Supreme Council of two members of 
 
 * The Act, however, conferred on f Known as the legislative member 
 the Court of Directors authority, with of Council, and selected always from 
 tlie consent of the Board, to reduce or the legal profession at home, 
 to abolish the Councils of the minor 
 Governments. 
 
 h2 
 
100 PROGRESS OF ADMINISTRATION. 
 
 the Bengal civil service — one member of the Indian 
 army, and a member of the legal profession from home. 
 Sometimes the Governor-General presided over it — 
 sometimes the Commander-in-Chief bestowed himself 
 upon it ; but these functionaries were more frequently 
 at a frontier station superintending an unhappy war, or 
 refreshing mind and body under the bracing influence of 
 the cool breezes of the northern hills. 
 
 Under this Act I have said two new Governments 
 were erected, that is, the old Presidency of Fort Wil- 
 liam in Bengal was " divided into two distinct Presi- 
 dencies, one of such Presidencies in which shall be 
 included Fort William, to be styled the Presidency of 
 Fort William, in Bengal, and the other of such Pre- 
 sidencies to be styled the Presidency of Agra." The 
 administration of the Lower Provinces of the Bengal 
 Presidency was entrusted to what is called the Bengal 
 Government, and its precise limits were to be defined 
 by the Court of Directors. The Governor- General was 
 to be eX'Officio Governor of Bengal, with power to 
 appoint one of his Councillors to act for him, in the 
 capacity of Deputy-Governor, with three members of 
 Council. The Presidency of Agra was to consist of 
 the Upper Provinces of the old Bengal Presidency ; 
 and its affairs were to be administered by a Governor 
 and Council of three.* The Court of Directors, how- 
 ever, had the power of determining, with the sanction 
 of the Board, whether there should or should not be 
 Councils in the subordinate Presidencies ; t and the 
 original design of the Bengal and Agra Governments 
 was revised. It was deemed expedient that these new 
 Presidencies should have no separate armies — no sepa- 
 rate civil establishments; and therefore it was con- 
 ceived that Councils were unnecessary. By a subse- 
 
 ♦ Clause 56, Act Z and ^ WiU. IV., f Clause 57, Act 3 and 4 Will IV., 
 chap. 85. chap. 85. 
 
THE BENGAL AND AGRA GOVERNMENTS. 101 
 
 quent Act,* " to authorise the Court of Directors of 
 the East India Company to suspend the execution of 
 the provisions of the Act of 1833, so far as they relate 
 to the creation of the Government of Agra, the Go- 
 vernor-General was empowered to appoint any member 
 of the Company's service, of ten years' standing, Lieute- 
 nant-Governor of the North-Western Provinces of India. 
 And such has been the system pursued up to the present 
 time. The two Governments of Bengal and the North- 
 Western Provinces administer, without a Council, but 
 with a separate Secretariat, the civil affairs, and have 
 the general domestic superintendence of, all that tract of 
 country, which previously constituted, and in respect of 
 military arrangements does still constitute, the Presi- 
 dency of Bengal. But they have no military or political 
 authority, and no financial control except in subordina- 
 tion to the Supreme Government. In fact, the system 
 is one of extreme centralisation, and the Governor of 
 Bombay or Madras, or the Governor of Bengal, being also 
 Governor- General of India, cannot lawfully entertain an 
 additional Cooley, on a salary of seven shillings a month, 
 mthout the recorded assent of the Governor-General in 
 Council. 
 
 But that which most of all imparted a distinctive 
 character to the new Act, was the earnestness with 
 which it addressed itself to the great matter of Indian 
 legislation. It recognised the necessity of constructing 
 a comprehensive code of laws for the protection and 
 restraint of our Anglo-Indian subjects, of all colors 
 and all creeds ;t it vested, as I have shown, the sole 
 
 * 5 and 6 Will. IV., chap. 25. common to all classes of the inhabitants 
 
 t " It is expedient that, subject to of the said territories, due regard being 
 
 such special arrangements as local cir- had to the rights, feelings, and peculiar 
 
 cumstances may require, a general usages of the people, should be enacted, 
 
 system of judicial establishments and and that all laws and customs having 
 
 police, to which all persons whatsoever, the force of law within the same tcrri- 
 
 as "well Europeans as natives, may be tories should be ascertained and couso- 
 
 subject, should be established in the lidated, and as occasion may require 
 
 said territories at an early period, and amended." — [ Preamble to clatise 53, 3 
 
 that «uch laws as may be applicable in and 4 of William IV^ chapter 85.] 
 
102 PROGRESS OF ADMINISTRATION. 
 
 power of legislating for all parts of India in tlie Supreme 
 Council, and it not only imparted to that Council a dis- 
 tinctive legislative character and a presumed legislative 
 efficiency such as it had never known before, but it 
 afibrded, by the establishment of a body of Law Com- 
 missioners, certain external legislative aids which were 
 calculated to contribute largely to the success of its codi- 
 fications. 
 
 This Law Commission, of which the legislative mem- 
 ber of Council was generally President,* was to consist 
 of not more than five members, selected by the Court of 
 Directors with the approbation of the Board of Control. 
 It was to be their care " fully to inquire into the juris- 
 diction, powers, and rules of the existing courts of justice 
 and police establishments, and all existing forms of judi- 
 cial procedure, and into the nature and operation of all 
 laws, whether civil or military, written or customary, 
 prevailing and in force in any part of our territories ;'* 
 and " fi:om time to time to make reports, in which they 
 shall fully set forth the result of their said inquiries, and 
 shall from time to time suggest such alterations as may 
 in their opinion be beneficially made in the said courts 
 of justice and police establishments, forms of judicial 
 procedure and laws, due regard being had to the dis- 
 tinction of castes, difference of religion, and the manners 
 and opinions prevailing among different races and in 
 different parts of the said territories.^' In a word, it was 
 their duty to supply the materials of legislation; and 
 considering the extent of the country, and the diversity 
 of its inhabitants, it would be difficult to over-rate the 
 magnitude of the task. 
 
 Excellent as was the intention, and apparently sound 
 in theory as was this provision of the Lcgislatiu-e, there 
 
 * This was a matter, I belicTC, of mission was principally composed of 
 prirate arrangement. It is not "so the Company's civil servants; and 
 nominated in the bond." The Com- dwindled down at last to one member. 
 
THE LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL. 103 
 
 were many grave reasons to doubt, if not to despair, of 
 its practical success. And some of the ablest members 
 of the Court of Directors looked upon the experiment 
 as one from which it would be expedient to abstain. 
 They questioned the wisdom of this centralisation of 
 the legislative power ; and contemplating the many 
 varieties of our Indian subjects — of a people with 
 different languages, different creeds, different social 
 institutions, different social usages, different tempers, 
 and different intelligences, they could not bring them- 
 selves to think that an uniform code of laws, appli- 
 cable to all these varieties of mankind, could be framed 
 by any number of men with the head of a Bentham or 
 a Romilly, and the heart of a Wilberforce or a Howard. 
 But, as a body, the Court of Directors, bowing to the 
 behests of the Legislature, accepted the scheme, for 
 better or worse, and wrote out to the Supreme Council, 
 exhorting them to do their best to give it beneficial 
 effect. Nothing could be more liberal than the spirit 
 of their instructions. They exhorted the Legislative 
 Council to legislate for the people ; and urged them to 
 spare no pains to obtain for themselves the aid of all the 
 wisdom and experience of the country, to whomsoever 
 it might belong, as the basis of their legislative enact- 
 ments.* 
 
 * The following extracts from this projects of laws, or regulations, which 
 
 letter will indicate the tenor of their any of the subordinate Governments 
 
 instructions: — " We shall say no more may propose to you ; but on this point 
 
 of the necessity of deliberation among we shall afterwards have occasion to 
 
 yourselves. Another point not less im- observe more particularly. The Act 
 
 portant, is to provide that in the work also, we need not say, contemplates 
 
 of legislation you shall, as far as may constant communications from the Law 
 
 be practicable, avail yourselves of ex- Commissioners, which communications 
 
 ternal aid. Persons who are not mem- are intended to furnish the grounds or 
 
 bers of your body may afford you valu- the materials for legislation. Useful 
 
 able assistance, either by suggesting intimations may also be derived from 
 
 laws that are required, or by pointing the Public Boards, from the Judges of 
 
 out what is improvable or objection- the Supreme Court, from all persons, 
 
 able, in the drafts or projects of laws whether native or European, invested 
 
 under consideration. With respect to with a judicial character, or holding 
 
 the suggestion of new laws, the Act, official stations of eminence ; from all 
 
 by clause 66, expressly requires you to colleges and other constituted bodies, 
 
 take into consideration the drafts or perhaps from the native heads of 
 
104 PROGRESS OF ADMINISTRATION. 
 
 It is possible that this scheme of uniform codification 
 would soon be forgotten — buried in that " Limbo of 
 Vanity," where all decayed errors and rotten fallacies 
 are stowed away — but for one circumstance connected 
 with it. It will be remembered by future generations, 
 wherever the English language is spoken or under- 
 stood, that the great historian of England, whose 
 captivating pages charm the young and fascinate the 
 old with equal power, was sent out to India, in the 
 year 1834, to take his place in the Council to which 
 sixty years before another great writer had imparted 
 an evil reputation. That Macaulay was for some years 
 an Indian legislator will be held in popular remem- 
 brance long after the duties of the legislative member 
 of the Supreme Council of India, and the labors of 
 the Law Commissioners, have ceased to be matters 
 known to any but the laborious student of remote 
 Indian chronologies, who perhaps, in those days when 
 the " New Zealander stands on the ruined arch of 
 London Bridge," and the Anglo-Saxon races of America 
 and Australia are contending for the empires of India, 
 China, and Japan, or are amicably partitioning these 
 vast territories among them, more as missionaries than as 
 conquerors, may be writing, after the manner of Gibbon, 
 a history of the " Decline and Fall of the British Empire 
 in the East."* 
 
 I would speak tenderly of the labors of the Commis- 
 sion. Some able English lawyers, and some of the 
 ablest of the Company's servants, have been connected 
 with it. They carried to their work as much zeal and 
 
 villages, or even private individuals of tions should bo received, and should 
 
 personal weight and influence. We do even be invited." — [The Court of Dircc- 
 
 not mean that tliese parties should by tors to the Supreme Council of India, 
 
 law be entitled to call on the Legislature December 18, 1834. MS. Records. 1 
 
 to discuss such suggestions, or to come * It was, I believe, for some time a 
 
 to any decision respecting them. No question whether Robert Grant or 
 
 such right belongs to those who petition Macaulay should be the first legislative 
 
 the Houses of Parliament in this coun. member of Council, 
 try. We mean only that their sugges- 
 
THE LAW COMMISSION. 105 
 
 industry, as ability and experience. Sucli men as Amos 
 and Cameron, Macleod, Eliott, and Miliett, were not 
 likely to address themselves carelessly to their new 
 duties, or to toil on without profitable results. They 
 have at least brought together an immense mass of ser- 
 viceable information — the raw materials of legislation ; 
 and what thev have done will ^o far to lif^hten, as in- 
 deed it has already lightened, the labors of those whose 
 duty it is to send out the fabric, full fashioned, from 
 the legislative loom. The mistake that was made, was 
 made by the British Legislature. It prescribed duties, 
 the adequate performance of which, according to the 
 intent signified in the Act of Parliament, was simply 
 an impossibility. The Law Commission were expected 
 to prepare a comprehensive code of laws — to suit men 
 of all denominations livinc^ in the territories of the East 
 India Company — Englishmen, Eurasians, Portuguese, 
 Armenians, Parsees, and every variety of Mahomedan 
 and Hindoo. But it was felt after a time that the 
 work entrusted to the Commissioners could not be 
 performed in all the integrity and completeness of the 
 original design. People looked impatiently for results 
 before results were forthcoming. The Court of Direc- 
 tors had written out to the Supreme Government, that 
 with respect to this matter of codification " no time 
 should be lost by delay — none should be worse than 
 lost by precipitation." Doubtless, there was some 
 precipitation at the outset; and afterwards there were 
 apparent delays, the result of an earnest desire on the 
 part of the Commissioners to sift all subjects of inquiry 
 to the bottom. The Commissioners did their duty, 
 but it was only in the nature of things that the Com- 
 mission should have disappointed public expectation, 
 and left the design of the Legislature unfulfilled. It 
 was suffered therefore, little by little, to die a natural 
 death; and it must be acknowledged that it has left 
 
106 
 
 PROGRESS OF ADMINISTRATION. 
 
 behind it only an impression that it was a failure, as 
 costly as it was complete.* 
 
 I think that this condemnation is far too sweeping. 
 It is not to be denied that the Act of 1833, under 
 
 * I may advantageously give here 
 the substance of the evidence given 
 before the Lords' Committee in 1852, 
 by Mr. C. Hay Cameron, lately legisla- 
 tive member of the Supreme Council of 
 India, and President of the Law Com- 
 mission, relative to the performances of 
 that body. " Practically, the functions 
 of the Law Commission have ceased. 
 Some years ago the Government dis- 
 continued filling up the vacancies as to 
 the now legal members of the Commis- 
 sion, and its existence would have been 
 entirely terminated, but for doubts 
 which began to be entertained whether 
 it was competent for the Government 
 to dispense with its maintenance as 
 directed by the Act. But it not being 
 considered necessary to incur the ex- 
 pense of paid Commissioners, certain 
 members were requested to act as Com- 
 missioners without additional salary, 
 simply that the Act might be complied 
 with, and that the only remaining paid 
 Commissioner might be enabled to 
 complete and submit to Government 
 some reports on which he was engaged. 
 ]Mr. Cameron stated, that when the Law 
 Commission was nearly extinct (con- 
 sisting only of two members, himself 
 and another), it proceeded, by reference 
 from the Governor-General in Council, 
 to examine the criticisms upon Mr. 
 Macaulay's Penal Code, made by all 
 tlie judges of the Supreme Court and 
 the judges of the Company's Sudder 
 Courts, which criticisms, it is said, had 
 accumulated to an unmanageable bulk. 
 Upon these the Law Commission re- 
 ported, recommending that the code, 
 as revised by that Commission, should 
 be passed into law. Permission for the 
 Commissioners to travel into various 
 districts, for the purpose of instituting 
 inquiries into slavery and other sub- 
 jects, was sought, but not obtained. 
 Plans were proposed for a Model 
 Criminal Court for the trial of ofiences 
 not of the gravest character; as well as 
 for a Model Civil Court and a plan of 
 civil procedure, under which the ad- 
 ministration of law and equity was to 
 be united, and the whole case brought 
 under the cognisance of one judge, 
 
 while small-cause judicature was not 
 to be committed to inferior judges, but 
 all causes, whatever their amount, were 
 to be cognisable in the same Courts. 
 In regard to appeals, the scheme of the 
 Law Commission was to have a general 
 Court of Appeal in each Presidency, 
 consisting of the judges of the Supreme 
 Courts and the judges of the Sudder 
 Courts, which should receive appeals 
 both in civil and criminal cases, and 
 from all the Courts in the country. The 
 Mahomedan law was to be codified, the 
 Hindoo law was to be codified, and a 
 third civil code, the lex lociy was to be 
 applicable to all but Mahomedans or 
 Hindoos. This was much wanted, as, 
 beyond the jurisdiction of the Supreme 
 Courts, there is difficulty in knowing 
 how to deal with foreigners. The course 
 of the Company's Courts is to inquire 
 what is the law of the country of every 
 man that comes before them. If a 
 Frenchman, they consult Prench au- 
 thorities; if a Portuguese, Portuguese 
 authorities; and so with regard to .'\11 
 foreign nations. The condition of the 
 Armenians, who consider themselves a 
 separate nation, is also peculiar, and 
 the position of the East India or half- 
 caste population seems unsettled. Then 
 in cases between persons of different 
 nations, as when one party is a French- 
 man and the other not, increased diffi- 
 culty arises. There was also to be a 
 single penal code, the Mahomedan law, 
 in this respect, being swept away, and 
 that substituted applying to all classes 
 of persons without exception, but vary- 
 ing the penalties according to the diver- 
 sities of birth, class, and circumstances. 
 The Courts of first instance all over 
 the country were to administer the 
 three codes of civil law, and the new 
 code of criminal law. Subsequently, 
 the Law Commission proposed a Small 
 Cause Court, with jurisdiction extend- 
 ing to 1000 rupees, but it was not 
 adopted. Certain parts of the lex loci 
 code, which protected converts from 
 Mahomedanism or Hindooism from loss 
 of ancestral or other property which 
 they previously incurred, have since 
 become law." 
 
RESULTS OF THE LAW COMMISSION. 107 
 
 which the legislative member of Council was appointed, 
 and the Law Commission established, found the laws 
 of India in a very confused and anomalous state, and 
 that now, after twenty years, it still leaves much ano- 
 maly and confusion behind it. But there is little room 
 to doubt that, since the passing of that Act, there has 
 been a great improvement in the character of Indian 
 legislation. The labors of the Law Commission may 
 not have resulted in any very large number of substan- 
 tial acts, but they have had a sensible effect upon the 
 working of the legislative forge ; and much of what the 
 Commissioners have done has been infused into the Acts 
 which, from time to time, have passed the Legislative 
 Council. * And I am certain that all future Indian 
 legislators vnW derive extensive benefit from the mate- 
 rials which they have amassed. Nor must it be for- 
 gotten, when speaking of the general progress of legis- 
 lation, that since the establishment of the Legislative 
 Council, the people of India, Europeans and natives, 
 have had a larger share in the manipulation of the law. 
 A draft of every new Act is now published ; the com- 
 munity are thus invited to comment on its provisions, 
 and often the result of these commentaries is discernible 
 in the modification, or even the withdrawal, of the pro- 
 posed law, when it has been found to be obnoxious to 
 the people. 
 
 Looking now to general results, it would appear that 
 this 'system of extreme concentration of power in the 
 hands of the Supreme Government has imperfectly 
 fulfilled the intentions of the Legislature. It has 
 
 ♦ With regard to the criminal code, referred to, and extracts are made from 
 
 ISIr. Prinsep, no great admirer of the it in any cases of importance that arise 
 
 Law Commission, but a great authority, where a law is required for the purpose ; 
 
 said in his evidence before the House of and several of its chapters have so been 
 
 Commons, in 1S51," A code of criminal incorporated, I believe, into the laws 
 
 laws has been prepared, but has not that have been passed from time to 
 
 been passed. It is, no doubt, frequently time." 
 
108 PROGRESS OF ADMINISTRATION. ^ 
 
 borne, indeed, the accustomed fruits of centralisation.* 
 It has dispirited and enervated the local Governments. 
 It has thrown upon the central authority an accumulated 
 burden, under which it has not made much progress in 
 the work of provincial improvement. I speak especially 
 with reference to the Governments of Madras and Bom- 
 bay. The Bengal and Agra Governments are imme- 
 diately under the eye of the Governor-General. He 
 passes from one to the other, traverses t^^whole tract 
 of country from Peshawur to Pegu, an^^^s a kindly 
 paternal interest in the welfare of all thos? provinces, 
 which, in spite of the divided administration, still in- 
 tegrally constitute the one great Presidency of Bengal. 
 The vast progress, therefore, which has been made, 
 under the Government of the North-Western Provinces, 
 can hardly be admitted as an argument in favor of this 
 excessive centralisation. We must look for arguments 
 on the southern and western coasts; and I fear that we 
 shall not gather, from the apparent results, any very 
 satisfactory proofs that the tendency of the system is to 
 kindle much administrative zeal, or to develop much 
 internal improvement. 
 
 * I think that Mr. Helps has 80 fairly completely the imperial ideas are likely 
 
 stated the advantages and disadvantages to be sacrificed to petty privileges and 
 
 of centralisation in the following pas- near-sighted interests. On the other 
 
 sage, that I am tempted to quote it. hand, if the central power prevails too 
 
 It is written with especial reference to much, the minds and energies of the 
 
 a " free Government," but it equally small communities dependent on it are 
 
 applies to such a Government as that weakened by disuse ; at the centre itself 
 
 of India : — " How much depends upon too much influence falls into the hands 
 
 the happy admixture of local and cen- of faction, so that sullenness becomes 
 
 tral authority. If there be too much the arbitress of national affairs ; and, 
 
 local power, how much time will elapse moreover, there is danger of everything 
 
 before the results of collected wisdom being sacrificed to any one idea or fancy 
 
 and the experience of the shrewdest prevailing at the seat of Government." 
 
 men in public affairs will be carried — [Friends in Council^ Book II.'] 
 into the local administration .... how 
 
THE HOME GOVERNMENT. 109 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Establishment oJ^B^ast India Company — Early Management of its Affairs — 
 Becomes a J^^^tock Company — Its successive Charters — Progress of the 
 Interlopers— ^le English Company — Union of the two Companies — Territorial 
 Rights— The Regulating Act— Pitt's India Bill— The Charter Acts of 1793, 
 1813, and 1833— Present State of the Company. 
 
 Having rudely traced in the preceding chapter the 
 progress of British administration in India up to the 
 present time, I proceed to give some account of the 
 Home Government — of the authorities and agencies 
 which direct the movements of the local Governments, 
 and to which the whole body of Indian administrators 
 are responsible — the Authorities and Agencies which 
 are now known as the Court of Directors of the East 
 India Company and the Board of Control, but which for 
 more than a century and three-quarters were all included 
 in the former. 
 
 The bells which rang out the year 1600 rang in the 
 first East India Company. It was incorporated, by 
 a charter from Queen Elizabeth, under the name of 
 " the Governor and Company of Merchants of London 
 trading into the East Indies." It was a , very small 
 beginning. A few English traders — ironmongers, clo- 
 thiers, and other substantial people of that kind — 
 headed by the Lord Mayor, subscribed 30,000/.,* and, 
 as soon as they obtained their charter, began to or- 
 
 ♦ The precise amount was 30,133/. set down opposite to the name of 
 —subscribed by 101 different parties. Messrs. Corkain and Co. — [India House 
 The highest subscription was 3000/., Records.'] 
 
110 THE HOME GOVERNMENT. 
 
 ganise their system of management, and to adopt mea- 
 sures for the equipment of their fleets. First seventeen 
 — then twenty-four — Directors, or, as they were called, 
 " Committees," were chosen, and from among them a 
 Governor was elected — the first being Sir Thomas 
 Smith, Alderman of London — to serve for a single year. 
 The Company in the first instance had not even the dig- 
 nity of a Joint-Stock. The adventures were promoted 
 by private subscription, and the profits divided in the 
 proportions of the sums subscribed by individual share- 
 holders. 
 
 The business of the Committees at this time consisted 
 mainly in the equipment of their ships, the purchase of 
 goods likely to have a ready " vent" among the Indians, 
 and the supply of bullion wherewith to procure the rich 
 produce of the Eastern world. Occasionally, at long 
 intervals, came in a letter from the commander, or 
 " general" of one of their expeditions, setting forth the 
 doubts which perplexed his mind, and the difficulties 
 which beset his career — how their eiOforts, in one quar- 
 ter, to establish a factory had proved fruitless, and that 
 there was " no way but to remove and go ;" how, in 
 another direction, " the bloodthirsty Turks" had come 
 down upon them, " murdered their distrustless naked 
 men, and seized their goods;" how the Portugals had 
 obstructed their trade until they had turned round and 
 '^ checked their insufferable saucy insolence by taking 
 one of their bragging frigates;" how the drunken 
 Flemings had hindered them less openly in another 
 place, and how our own people had been drinking with 
 the said Flemings, and trusting them over-much ; how 
 their goods would not vent among the Gentiles; how 
 the Gentiles, in their dealings, contrived to overreach 
 them, and how they were compelled to submit to heavy 
 losses, or else to carry back their damaged goods.* The 
 
 * India House Records. MS. 
 
THE FIEST COMMITTEES. Ill 
 
 record of these things still survives in quaint homely 
 English, and in spite of some obscurities of style and 
 penmanship, render the Indian correspondence of the 
 beginning of the seventeenth century as patent to the 
 historian as the effusions of '- our Governor-General in 
 Council" at the beG^inninej of last month. 
 
 There were other anxieties than these to disturb the 
 Committees in the infancy of the Company's existence — 
 anxieties generated by popular complaints at the very 
 doors of their council-chamber. The trade went on 
 briskly enough in one department of commerce, but 
 very flatly in another. It was nearly all buying — little 
 or no selling. English produce did not " vent" among 
 the Gentiles. It was necessar}', therefore, to export 
 large quantities of bulhon. This was nearly proving 
 fatal to the Company at the very outset of their career.* 
 There arose a cry in London that the India Company 
 was draining the country of its wealth. Men spoke 
 loudly against the system in places of pubhc resort, and 
 wTote wordy pamphlets against it. It is curious, now 
 that the English traders have well-nigh absorbed the 
 whole of India, whilst the prescient exclusiveness of 
 Japan has preserved its integrity inviolate, to read that, 
 two centuries and a half ago, the Company were seri- 
 ously meditating the abandonment of their trade with 
 the former country, and confining their efforts to the es- 
 tablishment of commercial intercourse with the latter. 
 
 For nearly a century this London Company continued 
 nominally to enjoy the exclusive privilege of traduig 
 with all parts of Asia, Africa, and America, beyond the 
 Cape of Good Hope eastward of the Straits of Magellan. 
 During that century eight successive charters were 
 granted by different monarchs to the London Com- 
 
 * " The Honorable Company, as they India, Bantam, &c, and their large and 
 
 write to us, make doubt of continuing hopeful intimations now lately given 
 
 their East India Trade, being daily them of the Japan trade"— [Factort/ 
 
 murmured at and scandalised for ship- Correspondence. India Housg liecords.^ 
 ping away so much money yearly for 
 
112 THE HOME GOVERNMENT. 
 
 pany.* The second of these charters, granted under 
 the reign of the first James, conferred upon them ex- 
 clusive privileges in perpetuity — or at least as long as 
 they could be continued without prejudice to the inte- 
 rests of the nation. Under this second charter, in the 
 year 1612, the Company became, by a resolution of its 
 members, a joint-stock ; money was no longer sub- 
 scribed arbitrarily for the promotion of a particular 
 adventure, but was thrown into a general fund, to be 
 managed according to the discretion of the Governor 
 and the Committees. In 1617-18 there were nearly a 
 thousand proprietors of India Stock, who in that year 
 had subscribed 1,600,000^. towards a new fund. There 
 w^as hopeful assurance in this. But increase of trade did 
 not bring increase of profit ; and in 1626-27 they had a 
 debt of 200,000^., and their shares were selling at a dis- 
 count of 20 per cent. 
 
 The charter of 1609 continued in force for more than 
 half a century. But those were not days when kingly 
 faith stood on a very lofty eminence. The needy 
 Stuarts and their profligate courtiers made what they 
 could out of the Indian trade, and many were the inju- 
 ries inflicted upon the Corporation by the hands of the 
 denizens of Whitehall. Just at the close of the first 
 James's reign that dissolute " Steenie," the Duke of 
 Buckingham, in his capacity of Lord High Admiral, 
 extorted 10,000Z. from the Company, as a douceur, to 
 obtain his sanction to the despatch of a fleet. Some 
 years afterwards, Charles, in one of those pecuniary 
 straits which always drove all sense of justice out of 
 him, bought up all the Company's pepper on credit, sold 
 it for cash, and never paid for it after all. 
 
 These, however, were mere temporary, accidental 
 hindrances. A heavier blow was aimed at the Com- 
 
 * That is, under date December 31, April 12, 1686; October 7, 1693; and 
 H^iif J«OD ; May 31, 1609 ; April 3, 1661 ; April 13, 1698. 
 October 5, 1677 ; August 9, 1683 ; 
 
courten's association. 113 
 
 pany, when back-stairs influence induced the needy 
 Stuart to strike at the monopoly which had been granted 
 by his predecessors, and to issue a license authorising 
 a private association to embark on those fields of com- 
 mercial enterprise which had hitherto been deemed, in 
 their relations to English trade, the exclusive domains 
 of the Company. 
 
 It has been observed, in the preceding chapter, with 
 no love of paradox, that the enmity of the Portuguese, 
 and the treachery of the Dutch, were long the defences of 
 the London Company. K any further proof of this be 
 needed, it may be found in the fact that, when the 
 English and Portuguese patched up a sort of covenant, 
 wliich promised to shield the former against the out- 
 rages of their unscrupulous rivals, and gave them, 
 moreover, access to their ports, competitors for a share 
 of the Indian trade rose up in London, and haunted 
 the back lobbies of Whitehall. The Indian trade was 
 now likely to become more profitable, and less dan- 
 gerous. So it seemed to the gentlemen of London that 
 a share of it was worth grasping. They had left the 
 Company to breast the storm alone; but now that 
 there was a glimpse of fine weather and smooth seas, 
 the "West-end people began to sound the depths of 
 Charles's fidehty, and to bait their hooks with the pro- 
 mise of a share of the contemplated spoil. A con- 
 venient gentleman of the bed-chamber, named Endy- 
 mion Porter, acted as the go-between. Sir William 
 Court en and others obtained a license for a new Asso- 
 ciation, and the King received a share in the venture. 
 
 Eor this violation of the charter, granted to the 
 London Company, it was necessary to find an excuse. 
 It was alleged, therefore, and duly set forth in the pre- 
 amble to the grant, that " the East India Company had 
 neglected to establish fortified factories, or seats of trade 
 to which the Kiug's subjects could resort with safety — 
 
 I 
 
114 THE HOME GOVERNMENT. 
 
 that they had consulted their own interests only, without 
 any regard to the King's revenue — and, in general, that 
 they had hroken the conditions upon which their charter 
 and exclusive privileges had heen granted to them." 
 
 It has always been the fate of the Company to be 
 subjected to charges of the most opposite and incon- 
 sistent character. One day they are charged with 
 doing too little — another, with doing too much. The 
 " Lord Ambassador," whom King James had sent out 
 to the Court of the Mogul, had recommended the Com- 
 pany to establish as few factories as possible, and not 
 to fortify them at all ; and now, in a pubhc document, 
 presumedly expressing the sentiments of the King, the 
 Company were charged with the offence of " neglecting 
 to establish fortified factories." The Company, indeed, 
 were in no hurry to fortify. Sir Thomas Koe had told 
 them that the Portuguese had " never made advantage 
 of the Indies since they defended them;" and that 
 " the Dutch, who had sought plantations by the 
 sword," had found that "their dead pays consumed 
 all their gain." Profiting by these cogent hints, 
 the Company had never forgotten that their position 
 in India was that of traders, and not of princes. 
 Territorial acquisition and military defence formed no 
 part of their policy. And as it was at the outset of 
 their career, so has it been from generation to genera- 
 tion. . It is nothing to say that no such empke as the 
 British Empu^e in the East has ever been built up 
 by the exercise of so little deliberate aggression, but 
 that nothing even remotely resembling it is to be found 
 in the history of the world. 
 
 But although the sun of royal favor brought Courten's 
 Association into life, that great chartered party of 
 Interlopers achieved no very briUiant success. They 
 endeavoured to carry everything before them — more 
 Jjusitanorum — by a series of rapid coups de main. 
 
EFFECT OF THE CIVIL WARS. 115 
 
 But the aggressive hostiKty of the Dutch, who treated 
 them as pirates, cramped their energies, and contracted 
 their efforts. They encountered many difficulties, and 
 were assailed by many disasters. But more than all 
 the malice of their enemies, did their own unscrupulous 
 conduct hasten their undoing; and when an arrange- 
 ment was made by which they were swamped into the 
 legitimate body of the London Company, they were 
 nearly at their last gasp. A failure such as this had 
 a natural tendency to discom^age private adventure in 
 the Indian seas. Domestic dissensions, too, which 
 filled men's minds, and evoked then' bodily activities, 
 shut out all thought of foreign speculation ; and when 
 new homes beyond the seas were dreamt of by men 
 weary of intestine strife and oppression, their imagina- 
 tions turned to the gentle clime and the green savannahs 
 of the western world, where, mth their wives and little 
 ones around them, they might live and pray in quietude 
 and peace. 
 
 The civil wars did not promote the Company's trade,* 
 but their tendency was to keep down competition, and 
 so far they benefited the Company. But when the 
 King's head had been brought to the block, and the 
 
 * Mr. Bruce, a staunch Royalist, the times, or the " austere manners of 
 says, under the year 1644-45, that the the Republicans," had this disastrous 
 King of Persia refused the usual /rwara effect upon the commercial prosperity 
 to the Company because our agents did of the country. The passage is not 
 not take off the wonted quantity of silk, very logical as it stands. It would 
 " It is a memorable proof," he adds, " of seem, however, that Mr. Bruce intended 
 the effects of the political distractions to build up an argument in favor of 
 in England at this period, that the absolutism, for he goes on to say, " If 
 agent was compelled to explain to the the convulsed and austere manners of 
 King of Persia the reason of this change England thus struck at the prosperity 
 to be, the distracted state of the Go- of the Company's trade in Persia, it is 
 vernment in England, in which the a remarkable contrast to find, at the 
 rigid and austere manners of the Re- same juncture, that the settled, though 
 publicans had rendered silks (an article absolute Government of Turkey, was 
 of former luxury) less an article in favorable to the introduction of the 
 demand than under the polished man- Company's trade ; because, under such 
 ners of a Court — a melancholy example a Government, articles of foreign im- 
 of the effect of political anarchy on port found a ready sale for the luxu- 
 commercial prosperity." It is not very ries of the great, whilst this luxury fa- 
 clear from this whether, in Mr. Bruce's cilitated the exports of Turkish pro- 
 estimation, the " political anarchy " of duce." 
 
 i2 
 
116 THE HOME GOVERNMENT. 
 
 monarchy for a time suspended, it was natural that the 
 general vindication of liberty should embrace liberty of 
 trade, and that the Company's monopoly should be in 
 danger; Dm^ing the first years of the Comimonwealth, 
 however, the war with the Dutch kept this experiment 
 in abeyance, and it was not until the peace had been 
 completed th-at the Company found that their exclusive 
 privileges were again threatened. It was not even then 
 that their charter was endangered by a general demand 
 for license to trade with the continent and islands of 
 India, but that some of the members of their own pro- 
 prietary body urged their right to be emancipated from 
 the trammels of the Joint- Stock, and under the name 
 of Merchant- Adventurers, set forth their grounds for 
 desiring to substitute for the existing system '' a free 
 regulated trade." An eager controversy then ensued; 
 argumentative petitions from both sides were laid at 
 the feet of the Protector, and for a time it seemed that 
 the chances of the contending parties were pretty equally 
 balanced. Certainly, as we regard with the eyes of 
 modem enlightenment the arguments which were thus 
 paraded by the two disputants, the Merchant- Adven- 
 turers have the best of the controversy. But the Free- 
 trade arguments of 1813-33, wliich are here fore- 
 shadowed, do not apply with equal force to the great 
 commercial question raised in 1654-55. The reasoning 
 of the Company in favor of the United Joint-Stock was 
 not unsound in its application to the existing state of 
 things, and when the question at issue was referred in 
 1656 to a committee of the Council of State, that body, 
 after hearing evidence, delivered a private opinion in 
 favor of the Joint- Stock, but left it to the Council to 
 pronounce an authoritative decision.* The Council 
 
 * Mr. Mill says : " These contending Council, as too difficult and important 
 
 pretensions were referred to a com- for the judgment of any inferior tribu- 
 
 mittee of the Council of State, and nal." There is here discernible some- 
 
 they, without coming to a decision, re- thing of the suppressio vert. The his- 
 
 mitted the subject to the Protector and torian ought to have stated that the 
 
THE MERCHANT-ADVENTURERS. 117 
 
 declared in favor of tlie " United Joint-Stock, exclusive 
 of all others," and CromAvell ratified the decision. 
 
 But in the mean while — -pendente lite — the Merchant- 
 Adventurers had subscribed 46,000/., fitted out a fleet 
 of three ships, appointed a committee of management, 
 and obtained a commission from Cromwell to trade 
 with the East Indies. Courten's Association had been 
 broken up, but it had left a trail of piratical spawn 
 behind it. The troubles of the Company and their 
 servants had been great ever since the evil " Khutput" 
 of Mr. Endymion Porter had covered the Indian seas 
 with these reckless corsairs, and now a new tribe of 
 chartered Interlopers were pouring in, seemingly with a 
 fair chance of superseding the Company altogether. 
 But the decision of the Council of State brought the 
 Merchant- Adventurers back to their old allegiance ; 
 they fused themselves agaia into the general Joint- 
 Stock, and the only interlopers left on the seas were 
 pkates without charter or commission. 
 
 But the days of the Commonwealth, adverse, doubt- 
 less, to corporations and monopolies, were numbered. 
 The people of England, though erring and straying, 
 for a little space, from their monarchical ways, like lost 
 sheep, were eager to retmrn to their old allegiance to a 
 royal master ; and the Restoration was at hand. They 
 were willing to try another of the false Stuarts, and 
 Charles the Second was proclaimed. 
 
 To the Company this seemed a propitious event. It 
 was natural that the restored monarch should have 
 looked with a benignant eye on all kinds of legiti- 
 macies, real or supposed — upon all vested interests and 
 corporate privileges, and especially those which had 
 
 committee reported that they had heard they deemed it expedient to refer it, 
 
 evidence on both sides, and that their with the papers, to the Council of State, 
 
 private opinion was, that the trade ought for their formal decision. This is duly 
 
 to be conducted on an United Joint- stated in " Bruce's Annals," to which 
 
 Stock, but that, as the subject was one Mill refers in the margin, 
 of 80 much difficulty and importance, 
 
118 THE HOME GOVERNMENT 
 
 been violated by the sacrilegious hand of the lawless 
 Protectorate. The opportunity was a good one — not 
 to be neglected by the Company ; and they sought 
 renewed protection from the Crown. They sought for 
 such a recognition and confirmation of their privileges 
 as would secure them against all intrusion, chartered 
 or unchartered; and they obtained for themselves a 
 new charter, which promised at least aU that they 
 desu'ed. 
 
 It promised them " for ever, hereafter," " the whole 
 entire and only trade and traffic to and from the East 
 Indies." It established them as a body politic and 
 corporate in perpetual succession. It gave them the 
 power to change and alter whatever might be for the 
 common interest and weal of the Company; to hold 
 general courts, to make by-laws, and to establish a 
 constituency, each adventurer voting according to his 
 stock. It gave them full control over all their plan- 
 tations, forts, factories, and colonies in the East Indies. 
 It empowered them to make peace and war with any 
 prince or people not being Christians, to build fortifica- 
 tions, and to send out soldiers and military stores. It 
 further gave them the power to seize and ship off to 
 England all unlicensed persons invading the Com- 
 pany's privileges ; in fact, it conferred upon the Com- 
 pany a strict monopoly with very large powers ; and it 
 acknowledged what in the time of the new King's 
 saiQted father had been authoritatively denied, that the 
 Company had for a long series of years been enjoying 
 the liberties and exercising the privileges granted to 
 them by Elizabeth and James " for the honor and 
 profit of the nation."* 
 
 This was the Company's third charter. It contiaued 
 without alteration or infringement until October, 1677. 
 
 ♦ Letters patent from King Charles tutional fiction, was called " the thir- 
 to the East India Company, April 3, teenth year of his reign." 
 1661, in what, by a pleasant consti- 
 
THE INTERLOPERS. 119 
 
 It had been granted, as I have said, under letters 
 patent from the second Charles ; but about this time 
 the legahty of such charters began to be questioned, 
 and people openly declared that nothing but an Act of 
 Parliament could legalise the monopoly which the 
 Company sought to enjoy. It was urged, moreover, 
 that they had forfeited their privileges, by divers acts 
 of omission and commission ; but the popular clamor 
 seems to have had little effect either on the fortunes of 
 the Company, or the favor of the King ; for letters 
 patent were again issued, under date October 5, 1667, 
 confirming to the Company " aU rights, liberties, and 
 franchises " granted by former charters. It gave them 
 also the further power of estabKshing mints in any 
 of the Company's settlements, and to issue money of 
 any kind, so long as it was not called by the name 
 of the current coin in other parts of his Majesty's 
 dominions. 
 
 In 1683, the Company received their fifth charter 
 from the Crown.* The " Interlopers" had, by this 
 time, risen to a height of daring which the Company's 
 powers were insufficient to repress. They appUed, 
 therefore, for additional powers to seize on the ships 
 and the merchandise of these lawless intruders, to try 
 them, as pupates, by martial law, and to execute them 
 upon conviction. The charter was granted. It em- 
 powered them to seize the ships and goods of Inter- 
 lopers, within the limits of their exclusive trade — to 
 hold forts, factories, and plantations — ^to make war — to 
 
 * Mr. Wissett, in his " Compendium volume. The Charter of 1683 was the 
 
 of East Indian Affairs, collected and fifth charter granted to the Company 
 
 arranged for the use of the Court of since its first establishment in the reign 
 
 Directors," say s, under this year (1683): of Queen Elizabeth . There were three 
 
 " The Company's trade having been charters granted by Charles IL, the 
 
 materially injured by the proceedings last of which was little more than an 
 
 of the Interlopers, Charles 11. granted act for the suppression of the Inter- 
 
 the Company a new charter (the fifth lopers. There were besides these the 
 
 in his reign)," &c., &c. It is fortunate grants of the Islands of Bombay and 
 
 that there is much more trustworthy St. Helena ; but they are not properly 
 
 information than this in Mr. Wissett's to be described as cliarters. 
 
120 THE HOME GOVERNMENT. 
 
 muster forces — to execute martial law — ^to erect Courts 
 of Judicature, and to appoint Judges thereof, who were 
 " to determine according to equity and good conscience 
 and the Laws and Customs of Merchants." But this 
 charter was not sufficient ; and three years afterwards 
 another was granted to the Company, giving them 
 further power " to make war on such Indian princes as 
 may hurt the Company," if satisfaction for injuries 
 should not he ohtained in a peaceable way, and authoris- 
 ing to use theii' ships in a martial manner, to appoint 
 Admirals, Vice- Admirals, Rear- Admirals, Captains, &c., 
 who may raise and muster seamen and soldiers on 
 board theu' ships. All the wrongs which the Company 
 had sustained at the hands of the native princes were 
 attributed to the Interlopers, who were recited to have 
 instigated the Mogul's people to make war upon the 
 lawful traders. 
 
 These charters granted by the Stuarts related almost 
 entirely to the foreign management of the Company's 
 affairs, but the next, which was conferred on them in 
 1693 (3rd and 4th of William and Mary, chapter 15), 
 related to their domestic arrangements. Various rules 
 and orders for the Company's observance were pre- 
 scribed by the Crown. Every subscriber to the Joint- 
 Stock was to be a member of the Company. A pro- 
 prietor of 1000/. stock was to have one vote in the 
 General Court. No proprietor was to hold more than 
 10,000/., or to have more than ten votes. Each Di- 
 rector or Committee-man was to be possessed of 1000/. 
 stock, and the Governor and Deputy-Governor of the 
 Company were to possess 4000/. stock. The Governor 
 (and in his absence the Deputy-Governor) was to have 
 a casting vote in all Comets. And the Company were 
 to be required to export to India goods " the growth 
 and produce of England," every year, of the minimum 
 value of 100,000/. 
 
KISE OF THE NEW COMPANY. 121 
 
 But these regulations were not altogether pleasing 
 to the Company, so they besought the King to modify 
 them. Letters patent were accordingly issued, on the 
 13th of April, 1698 (this was the eighth charter), by 
 which the qualification of voters, in General Courts, 
 was materially altered. The possession of 500Z. stock 
 was to confer one vote — 1000^. was to give two votes — 
 3000^. four votes — 4000Z. five votes — a much lower 
 qualification than exists at the present time — and it 
 became necessary for a Director to possess 2000Z. stock 
 at the lowest. 
 
 This was the last charter granted to the old London 
 Company, which, for the space of nearly a century, 
 amidst all sorts of difficulties and discouragements, 
 had maintained itself, with singular courage and con- 
 stancy; but whose existence was now threatened by 
 the promise of a charter to a new Company, made up, 
 in no small measure, of the Interlopers whom the old 
 corporation had resisted and assailed Tvdth so much 
 \dgorous severity, and against whom, it has been seen, 
 the principal provisions of more than one of their re- 
 cent charters had been directed. The London Com- 
 pany were at the mercy of the King. In 1693 they 
 had subjected themselves, by the non-fulfilment of their 
 engagement to pay a 5 per cent, duty on their capital 
 stock, to the entire loss of their charter ; and though 
 it had been confirmed to them by an act of grace, a 
 condition had been attached to its renewal, that the 
 Company's privileges should be temnnable at any time, 
 after three years' notice. The Kiag wanted money. 
 The Government, iudeed, of that period was in a 
 chronic state of financial embarrassment ; and some 
 instructive chapters of English history might be written 
 from existing materials, in the shape of the correspon- 
 dence of those whose chief business it was to provide 
 money for the requirements of the State and the exi- 
 
122 THE HOME GOVERNMENT. 
 
 gencies of the Court. It is no strange thing, therefore, 
 that now the temptation offered by the project of a new 
 India Company, willing to bid high for its commercial 
 privileges, should have been unresisted by the King. 
 The new Company offered to lend 2,000,000Z., at 8 per 
 cent, interest, to the Government — and the old Com- 
 pany's charter was terminable upon three years' notice. 
 The time seemed now to have arrived, therefore, for 
 the suppression of the London Company, and the ele- 
 vation of the new English Company upon the ruins of 
 its venerable predecessor. 
 
 Brief mention has been made in the preceding 
 chapter of the struggle which then ensued. The 
 reader is acquainted with the result. The United 
 Company of Merchants trading to the East Indies then 
 entered on an existence which endured for a century 
 and a quarter. The charter of 1698, under letters 
 patent of WiUiam III., granted to the English Com- 
 pany, and subsequently transferred to the " United 
 Company," supplies some of the materials of the present 
 constitution of the Courts of Directors and Proprie- 
 tors.* Twenty-fom' Directors were to be chosen, be- 
 tween the 25th of March and the 25th of April, every 
 year, by the members of the Company — or, as they are 
 now denominated. Proprietors of East India Stock. 
 The qualification for the Du^ection was the possession of 
 2000^. Every proprietor of bOOl. stock was entitled to 
 one vote, and no proprietor had more than one. The 
 Directors were chosen only for one year. Thirteen were 
 sufficient to constitute a Court. It was incumbent 
 upon them to convene a General Court of Proprietors 
 fom' times in the year, and these Courts were em- 
 powered to make by-laws, for the better regulation of 
 the Company. 
 
 * The charter decreed that the Company should " for ever hereafter freely 
 trade unto and from the East Indies, &c." 
 
THE UNITED COMPANY. 123 
 
 The Directors of the United Company, as it has been 
 shown, were, at first, elected every year. Every week, 
 on proceeding to discuss the business before them, they 
 appointed a new chairman. In 1714, tliis practice 
 passed into desuetude. A resolution was adopted, to 
 the effect that a chairman and a deputy-chairman 
 should be elected annually, and sit throughout the en- 
 tke year. And on the 14th of April, being the first 
 Court-day after the election of Directors, Chairs were 
 appointed by ballot. This arrangement has remained 
 unchanged up to the present time. The chairman and 
 deputy-chah^man are elected every year ; but the ge- 
 neral body of Dkectors are no longer subject to annual 
 election. In 1773, an Act was passed (13th of George 
 III., chapter 63) for the better management of the 
 Affairs of the East India Company, which contained 
 some important provisions affecting the constitution 
 both of the Cornet of Dkectors and the Court of Pro- 
 prietors. It was enacted that, at the next general 
 election, instead of twenty-four Directors being chosen 
 for one year, six should be elected for one year ; six for 
 two years ; six for three years ; and six for four ; and 
 that at the expiration of every year, six new Directors, 
 and no more, should be chosen. The effect of this 
 provision has been to constitute a body of thirty Di- 
 rectors, of whom six, forming a sort of non-effective 
 hst, go out every year by rotation. Eor although it is 
 competent upon the proprietors, at such annual elec- 
 tions, to choose six new members, the power is never 
 exercised. The Court of Directors, as thus estabhshed 
 by the Act of 1773,* the well-known " Regulating 
 Act," of which some mention has been made in the 
 preceding chapter, has survived to the present day. 
 
 * The Act recited the reason of the of their oflBce to so short a time, evi- 
 change— viz., that the annual election dently tended to weaken the authority 
 of Directors " had not answered the of the Court of Directors, and to pro- 
 good purposes intended thereby, but on duce instability in the councils and 
 the contrary, by limiting the duration measures of the said Company." 
 
124 THE HOME GOVERNMENT. 
 
 The last eighty years have seen no change in its con- 
 stitution. 
 
 By the same Act, the qualification of proprietors 
 underwent a revision, which has seen no subsequent 
 change. The possession of 500^. stock had qualified a 
 proprietor to vote ; but this system, as the Act recited, 
 had " been productive of much inconvenience," as 
 tending " to promote the mischievous practice of making 
 collusive transfers," and was, therefore, to be amended. 
 No member was to be thenceforth qualified to vote, 
 unless the proprietor of lOOOZ. stock. Two votes were 
 conferred by the possession of 3000Z. stock ; three 
 votes by 6000Z. ; and four votes by 10,000Z. These, as 
 I have said, are the qualifications in force at the pre- 
 sent time. 
 
 At this time, the East India Company continued to 
 enjoy the privilege of exclusive traffic with the East 
 Indies, under the charter of 1698, which conferred 
 these privileges upon them in perpetuity — or for as 
 much as perpetuity is worth in letters patent. But, 
 in 1781, when Indian affau^s were pressing impetuously 
 upon the attention of the Legislature, an Act (21st of 
 George III. , chapter 65) was passed, confirming these 
 privileges for a fixed period of ten years, at the end of 
 which the Company \^^ere entitled to three years' notice 
 of an intention to resume them. 
 
 Up to this date, it has been seen that the Home 
 Government of India was vested entirely in the East 
 India Company. The control which ParHament had 
 hitherto sought to establish was a control over the 
 Indian Governments. They had sent out fi'om Eng- 
 land new men — men without Indian antecedents, and 
 unconnected with Indian interests — ^to regulate the 
 proceedings of the local administration, by a fusion 
 of the English or Parliamentary element into the au- 
 thorities and agencies in operation at the seat of the 
 
PARLIAMENTARY CONTROL. 125 
 
 Supreme Government. But the experiment was a 
 failure. The control was at once too great and too 
 little — ^too great in evil, too little in good. It clogged 
 the wheels of Government ; it threw the affairs of the 
 administration into confusion; and really regulated 
 nothing except the continual supply of internal strife. 
 It was e^ddent that this was not the kind of check to 
 be advantageously interposed between India and bad 
 government. So Parliament began seriously to think 
 of some new scheme for the better ordering — not so 
 much of our Indian possessions, as of the Home Go- 
 vernment to which the welfare of those Indian pos- 
 sessions was entrusted. 
 
 The idea of the Board of Control took shape slowly 
 and gradually in the minds of om* English legislators. 
 In this year, however, the small end of the wedge was 
 introduced by Parliament. In the Charter -Act of 
 1781 a clause was inserted which gave one of the 
 Secretaries of State a controlling authority over the 
 Company's affairs. It was enacted " that the Court of 
 Directors should deliver to the Lords of the Treasury 
 copies of all letters and orders relating to the Revenues 
 of the Company, and to one of his Majesty's Secretaries 
 of State copies of all letters and orders relating to the 
 civil and military government and affairs of the Com- 
 pany, or of their servants in India ; and that the Court 
 should be bound by such instructions as they might re- 
 ceive from his Majesty, through one of the Secretaries 
 of State, so far as related to the conduct and trans- 
 actions of the Company and their servants with the 
 country powers in India, as well to the levying war as 
 to making peace."* 
 
 The following year was a year of inquiry. A Select 
 Committee of the House of Commons was appelated to 
 
 * Auber's Analt/sis of the Constitution of Charters and Statutes rdatiny to the East 
 the East India Company.— Collection of India Company, X^M. 
 
126 THE HOME GOVERNMENT. 
 
 investigate the subject of Indian administration, and 
 to consider how the British possessions in the East 
 could he governed with most advantage to Great 
 Britain and to the native population. And in the suc- 
 ceeding year (1783) leave was given to bring in a bill, 
 by which the Company's aflPairs were vested in the 
 hands of Commissioners, for the better government of 
 our Indian possessions. 
 
 I should like to dwell upon the events that ensued, 
 but I can only speak of the actual results. Charles 
 James Pox was then one of the cliiefs of the Coalition 
 Ministry. The Bill which was then introduced is 
 known in history as Pox's India Bill.* It was very 
 adverse to the Company. It proceeded on the assump- 
 tion that they had betrayed their trust — ^mismanaged 
 their affairs — oppressed the natives of the country, and 
 brought themselves to the verge of bankruptcy. It 
 proposed to place the entire territorial government of 
 India, for four years, in the hands of seven Dkectors, 
 to be nominated by Parliament, whilst its commercial 
 affairs were to be left in the hands of nine Assistant 
 Directors, to be elected by the Proprietors, but to act 
 under the instructions of the Directors nominated in the 
 Act, and removable by them.f It entirely degraded the 
 old Directors of the Company to the character and con- 
 dition of mercantile clerks. -The humiliating proposal 
 threw the Company into a ferment of indignation. 
 The Court of Directors appealed against it. The Court 
 of Proprietors appealed against it. Pitt, with the old 
 head on the young shoulders, then only a youth of five- 
 and-twenty, earnestly and eloquently denounced it. He 
 declared that the promoters of the Bill were " proceed- 
 ing to the protection of the oppressed abroad by an act 
 
 * Originally there were two Bills, government generally of the country, 
 
 one relating to domestic, the other to The two Bills were subsequently 
 
 foreign administration — one for vesting merged into one. 
 
 the government of India in the hands f Th^* "> vacancies subsequently 
 
 of Commissioners or Parliamentary Di- occurring were to be filled by the I'ro- 
 
 rectors, and the other for the revision prietors. 
 t^ the local authorities, and the better 
 
PITT S INDIA BILL. 127 
 
 of unparalleled oppression at home." But the House 
 of Commons were with the Minister ; and on the 8th 
 of December his Bill was carried by a majority of two 
 to one. 
 
 But the Company in the hour of their need had one 
 friend ; and that friend lived in a palace, and liis like- 
 ness was stamped on the coin of the realm. The India 
 Bill was obnoxious in the extreme to George ; he con- 
 ceived it to be an unconstitutional and dangerous move- 
 ment, and it was soon noised abroad how the King had 
 declared that no friend of his would support so oppressive 
 a measure. The Bill was carried up to the Lords, and 
 thrown out on the second reading. The Ministry was dis- 
 solved. The country, now about to subside into a chro- 
 nic state of Pittism, received the youngest of her states- 
 men as the chief of her councils. Early in the following 
 year, 1784, the new Minister moved for leave to bring 
 in a Bill for the better government and management of 
 the affairs of the East India Company. But the new- 
 Minister and the old Parliament could not carry on the 
 business of the country together. Pitt was outvoted 
 in his attempt to bring in an Indian BiU, and ParKa- 
 ment was dissolved. The new Parliament brought 
 with it a new temper ; and the young Minister carried 
 the House with him. On the 6th of July, 1784, he 
 introduced his India Bill. It did not seek to destroy 
 the East India Company, but to control them. It 
 neither stripped them of their commercial privileges, 
 nor divested them of their territorial rights. It left 
 the constitution of the Court of Directors imtouched, 
 but decreed that a Board of Commissioners, composed 
 of six Privy Councillors, of whom one of the Secre- 
 taries of State and the Chancellor of the Exchequer 
 were to be members, should be appointed by the 
 Crown, with authority to scrutinise and to control 
 the proceedings of the Company. They were to have 
 
128 THE HOME GOVERNMENT. 
 
 access to all the Company's papers. Drafts of all de- 
 spatches to be' sent out to India were to be submitted 
 for their inspection and revision. They were em- 
 powered to call upon the Court of Directors to prepare 
 despatches on any subject, and on their failure within 
 fourteen days, to do the required work themselves. The 
 Directors were at the same time required to nominate 
 from among the members of their own body a Com- 
 mittee of Secrecy, not exceeding three in number ; and 
 it was enacted, that if the Board of Commissioners 
 should be of opinion " that the subject-matter of any 
 of their deliberations concerning the levying of war, or 
 making of peace, or treating or negotiating with any 
 of the native princes or states in India, should require 
 secrecy, instructions should be sent to the said Secret 
 Committee, who should thereupon, without disclosing 
 the same, transmit their orders and despatches." Thus 
 was the constitution of the Secret Committee esta- 
 blished. Two years afterwards, it was enacted that 
 the members of the Secret Committee should be sworn, 
 and the words of the oath were prescribed.* 
 
 The famous Bill embodying these provisions — (Act 
 24th George III., chapter 25) — ^was carried trium- 
 phantly through both Houses, and the imperinm in 
 imperio was established. These provisions remain sub- 
 stantially in force up to the present time; but the 
 personal composition of the Board of Commissioners 
 has been materially changed. By the Charter Act of 
 I793t (33rd George III. cap. 52), which confirmed 
 the Company in their privileges for twenty years, the 
 
 * Act 2Uh Geo. III., cap. 16. shall not be lawful for the Governor- 
 t The Charter of 1793 repeats the General in Council, without the express 
 important clauses prohibitory of war- commands and authority of the Court 
 maJting, contained in the Act of 1784 — of Directors, or of the Secret Com- 
 " Forasmuch as to pursue schemes of mittee, by the authority of the Board 
 conquest and extension of dominion in of Commissioners for the affairs of India 
 India are measures repugnant to the (except where hostilities have actually 
 wish, the honor, and the policy of this been commenced, &c., &c. ), either to de- 
 nation ; ))e it further enacted, that it dare war, or commence hostilities, &c." 
 
WORKING OF THE BOARD. 129 
 
 Board was made to consist of certain members of the 
 Privy Council (of whom the two principal Secretaries 
 of State and the Chancellor of the Exchequer were 
 to he three) and two other members. The first named 
 in the letters patent constituting the Board, was to be 
 its President. The Commissioners were authorised to 
 appoint secretaries, and enjoined to " enter their pro- 
 ceedings in proper books." Under this Act the Secret 
 Committee was constituted, as under the Act of 1784, 
 with the further power of receiving, as well as for- 
 warding, certain despatches in the Secret Department. 
 
 Such is the constitution of the Home Government, 
 as it is represented by Acts of Parliament. But how, 
 in its infancy, the conjoint authorities worked together, 
 and to what extent the Board of Commissioners was 
 a really living operative power, is nowhere represented. 
 Something, however, of the secret history of the work- 
 ing of the Board may be gathered from the following 
 extract of a letter, written by Air. Beaufoy, one of its 
 first secretaries in 1795 : 
 
 ** Having mentioned that the Revenue despatch of the 30th of 
 April, 1794, was written by myself, you may, perhaps, be 
 desirous of knowing in what manner the correspondence to India 
 is conducted. In general, the business of preparing all despatches, 
 those in the commercial department excepted, is assigned by the 
 Directors to Mr. Johnson, a gentleman of very considerable talents, 
 and of great experience in their service. Two assistants are allowed 
 him, whose principal duty, when a letter is to be answered, consists 
 in examining the consultations of Government, together with the 
 proceedings of the subordinate Boards, and in marking all such 
 passages as furnish in detail the information which that letter 
 professes to convey. These passages are afterwards extracted by 
 the numerous writers at the India House, and enable Mr, John- 
 son to form his own opinion on the facts related and the sentiments 
 expressed, in the letter to which he replies. 
 
 '* The process is laborious, but, on the whole, is the easiest and 
 the best. As soon as the Directors have read and approved the in- 
 tended despatch, their secretary sends it to the office of the Com- 
 
 K 
 
130 THE HOME GOVERNMENT. 
 
 missloners for India affairs, and care is taken that the private copy 
 for my own use shall be accompanied by the volume of extracts 
 (often amounting to many thousand pages) on the authority of 
 which the despatch was formed. If doubts arise upon any point 
 as to the fairness of the extract, recourse is had to the original 
 record; but no instance in my time of intentional omission has 
 ever yet occurred. The labor of reading these extracts falls, of 
 course, upon the secretary, but this is the lightest of his employ- 
 ments; for as Mr. Dundas is seldom present at the Board, and 
 afterwards requires at very uncertain times, and often at the 
 shortest notice, complete information on such points in the de- 
 spatch as engage his particular attention, it becomes necessary to 
 form a written abridgment of these bulky materials. This the 
 custom of writing short-hand enables me to do. 
 
 " Before the Act of 1793, the Board of Commissioners for 
 India affairs was little more than nominal, except as the term 
 applies to the principal Commissioner; for as the papers, which 
 required their signature, were usually sent in circulation, they 
 seldom were convened, and I, who had been invited to the office, 
 as to a situation in which my services were particularly wanted, 
 was surprised to find that it not only had been a sinecure in the 
 hands of my predecessors, but that no active duties (the labor of 
 writing reports on points of extensive discussion excepted) ap- 
 peared to belong to the appointment. 
 
 ^'Fortunately, however, the Act of 1793 relieved me from the 
 embarrassment by declaring that the sentiments of the Board of 
 Commissioners for India affairs, upon any proposed despatch 
 transmitted to them by the Directors, shall be certified under the 
 hand of their chief Secretary by order of the Board. The conse- 
 quence of the Regulation is, that no public despatch can be trans- 
 mitted to India without a previous meeting of the Commissioners; 
 that information is expected from the secretary on all the principal 
 points of every such letter; and that his office has become efficient 
 and important."* 
 
 The Charter Act of 1813 introduced no material 
 change into the constitution of the India Board. The 
 alterations were merely those of detail management ; 
 but the Act of 1833 determined that in addition to the 
 principal Secretaries of State and the Chancellor of the 
 
 ♦ MS. Correspondence. 
 
THE PRESIDENT OF THE INDIA BOARD. 131 
 
 Exchequer, the Lord President of the Council, the Lord 
 Privy Seal, and the Pirst Lord of the Treasury, should 
 be eX'Officio Commissioners, and that such other Com- 
 missioners as the Crown might please to appoint should 
 also be members of the Board — ^the first named being 
 its President. The Act of 1793 had specified that there 
 should be two Commissioners — not of the Privy Coun- 
 cil ; and these two junior Commissioners had received 
 salaries, but had attended the meetings of the Board 
 or not, according to their conscience or convenience. 
 Under the Act of 1833, no junior salaried member has 
 been appointed. But an alteration has been introduced 
 into the constitution of the Secretariat ; for instead of 
 a chief secretary and an assistant secretary, as in Mr. 
 Beaufoy's time, two joint secretaries are appointed — 
 " each of the said secretaries to have the same powers, 
 rights, and privileges, as by any Act or Acts, now in 
 force, are vested in the chief secretary of the Commis- 
 sioners for the aifairs of India." The President and 
 the Secretaries are the paid working members of the 
 Board. All the rest is a mere fiction. 
 
 In fact, the Board of Commissioners for the affairs 
 of India is now one man — a fourth Secretary of State. 
 He may, or may not, have any knowledge of India, 
 acquired from actual experience or the study of books ; 
 but his power to control the proceedings of the Court 
 of Directors is absolute and complete. He has con- 
 stitutionally, in respect of all matters of internal 
 administration, only a controlling power ; that is, he 
 is empowered to correct the despatches of the Court 
 on aU subjects that come under their consideration. 
 But this unlimited power of correction is in effect co- 
 extensive with the power of initiation, and it would be 
 easy to name cases in which despatches, relating to 
 matters of internal administration, have lost imder the 
 hands of the Minister all traces of their original 
 
 k2 
 
132 THE HOME GOVERNMENT. 
 
 significance, and have been made to convey sentiments 
 the very opposite to those entertained by the members 
 of the Court. 
 
 In respect of all transactions with foreign powers — 
 all matters bearing upon questions of Peace and War 
 — ^the President of the Board of Control has authority 
 to originate such measures as he and his colleagues in 
 the Ministry may consider expedient. In such cases, 
 he acts, presumedly, in concert with the Secret Com- 
 mittee of the Court of Directors — a body composed of 
 the Chairman, Deputy-Chairman, and the Senior Mem- 
 ber of the Court. The Secret Committee sign the de- 
 spatches which emanate from the Board — ^but they 
 have no power to withhold or to alter them. They 
 have not even the power to record their dissents. In 
 fact, the functions of the Committee are only those 
 which, to use the words of a distinguished member of 
 the Court,* who deplored the mystery and the mockery 
 of a system which obscures responsibility and deludes 
 public opinion, could as well be performed " by a Secre- 
 tary or a seal."t 
 
 It should ever, therefore, be uppermost in the minds 
 of those who, considering the constitution of the Indian 
 Government, and its effects upon the happiness of the 
 people, would judge rightly of the responsibility of its 
 different Agencies and Authorities, that the whole 
 
 * The late Mr. Tucker. terms, complained of the Secret Com- 
 
 f How little, until very recently, the mittee: the letter which had come out 
 
 real constitution of the Indian Govern- to him being signed by the Chairman 
 
 ment had become known even to intel- and Deputy Chairman: this oflBcer felt 
 
 ligent men, living immediately under it, amazed, and MTote his letter to the 
 
 may be gathered from an anecdote told President of the Board of Control, 
 
 by Lord Hardinge, in his evidence be- When I heard of it, I wrote to him: 
 
 fore the House of Commons (1852). * I hope you have not sent the letter. 
 
 After stating that the constitution of for, though the order was signed by the 
 
 the Secret Committee was " a mystery Chairman and Deputy-Chairman, it in 
 
 not understood by the public," he went fact came from the President of the 
 
 on to illustrate his position. "I re- Board of Control,' with whom this 
 
 collect," he said, " an instance, in which officer was on friendly terms. This 
 
 an officer of very high position and officer did not understand the mystery 
 
 ability in India, had written a letter to of the President of the Board of Control 
 
 the President of the Board of Control, being in fact the Secret Committee; it 
 
 in which he had, in somewhat indignant is, however, a convenient arrangement.' 
 
EXTINCTION OF THE TRADE. 133 
 
 foreign policy of the East India Company is regulated 
 by the Board of Control — ^that in the solution of the 
 most vital questions — questions of peace and war — 
 affecting the finances of the country, and, therefore, 
 the means of internal improvement, the Court of 
 Directors have no more power than the Mayor and 
 Aldermen of any Corporation Town. The happiness of 
 the people of India is dependent less upon the will of 
 a deliberative body of four-and-twenty English gentle- 
 men, a large majority of whom have studied India 
 under an Indian sky — who are experienced in the 
 languages and the usages of the people, and to whom 
 the system of administration in all its details is as 
 familiar as household words — who have, as a body, no 
 connexion ^vitll Party, no dependence on the fate of 
 ministries, whose official lives do not hang upon an ad- 
 verse vote, and who can, therefore, pursue from year's 
 end to year's end a consistent course of administrative 
 conduct — than upon the caprice of a single man, who 
 may be gone to-morrow, who may preside over the 
 India Board and govern India for a fortnight, and 
 then be suddenly deposed by some gust of Parlia- 
 mentary caprice, by the mistaken tactics of an inex- 
 perienced Party leader, or the neglect of an inefficient 
 "Whipper-in." 
 
 The Acts of 1813 and 1833 affected, in a very 
 important maimer, the character of the Board of Con- 
 trol, and rendered its controlling powers more absolute 
 and entire. The authority of the Board had not ex- 
 tended to the trade of the Company. But now the 
 Company were about to be deprived of their trade, and so 
 of nearly all their remaining independence. The " United 
 Company of Merchants trading to the East Indies" 
 were fast ceasing to be a Merchant Company at all. 
 Ever since the British flas: had first waved over the 
 Soubahdarry of Bengal, it had been said that a trading 
 Company and a fighting Company were antagonistic one 
 
134 THE HOME GOVERNMENT. 
 
 with the other, and that in course of time the greater 
 would swallow up the less.* But it took nearly half a 
 century of increasing empire to absorb even the first 
 moiety of the Company's trading privileges. And then, 
 I fear it must be said of them, that they had lived their 
 time. At all events, they had outlived the patience 
 and forbearance of the people. The temper of the age 
 was growing less and less attuned to the conservation 
 of exclusive rights and corporate monopolies ; and 
 now, in 1813, the gigantic preserve, the legal bounda- 
 ries of which had been maintained for more than two 
 centuries, was about to be thrown open to the incur- 
 sions of all the vulgar traders of the land. I do not 
 know what I might have thought of the matter had I 
 been alive at that time. I have great respect for the 
 Company's trade. I believe that, under Providence, 
 to the preservation of the Company's monopoly we 
 owe our Empire in the East. But long before 1813, 
 it had fulfilled its mission ; and I can not look back 
 upon its extinction with regret. 
 
 Eor this much at least is certain — that when the 
 Company began to think less of trade, they began to 
 think more of government. Under the Charter Act of 
 1813, which deprived them of the monopoly of the 
 Indian trade, their administrative efficiency consider- 
 ably increased. But it was under the Act of 1833, 
 which left them without the compromise of the Cliina 
 monopoly — ^which deprived them of the last remnant 
 of their trading privileges, and took from them even the 
 name of a Merchant Company, that greater progress 
 
 * Old Zephaniah Holwell wrote, in defend them, and thus we shall go on 
 1765, " A trading and a fighting com- grasping and expending, until we 
 pany is a two-headed monster in nature cram our hands so full that they be- 
 that cannot exist long, as the expense come cramped and numbed, and we 
 and inexperience of the latter must shall be obliged to quit and relinquish 
 exceed, confound, and destroy every even that part, wliich we might have 
 profit or advantage gained by the held fast, if bounds had been set to our 
 former — new temporary victories sti- progress, which, upon the present 
 mulate and push us on to grasp at new system, we now see is utterly impos- 
 acquisitions of territory ; these call for sible, therefore a total change in our po- 
 a large increase of military force to litics becomes indispensably necessary." 
 
PRESENT TEMPER OF THE COMPANY. 135 
 
 has been made towards good government, than through- 
 out all the long years — the long centuries — when trade 
 was uppermost in their thoughts. I believe that the 
 Directors of the East India Company, since they 
 ceased to be the managers of a leviathan mercantile 
 firm, have taken more serious and enlarged views of 
 their duties and responsibilities as guardians of a 
 country inhabited by a hundred millions of fellow- 
 men. I believe that there has been more wisdom in 
 their councils — more nobility in their aims — more be- 
 neficence in their measures. They have now become a 
 purely administrative body; and it is impossible for 
 any one, tracing, step by step, as I have done, the 
 growth of that close connexion which now exists 
 between them and the people of India, not to mark a 
 progressive enlargement in the scope of their views, 
 and a progressive improvement in the character of their 
 measures. There have been more good thiags done for 
 India — ^there has been more earnest, serious, enlight- 
 ened legislation for the benefit of the people, under the 
 Act of 1833, than duriQg the previous two centuries 
 and a quarter of British connexion with the East. And 
 yet never has a benevolent Grovernment, recognising the 
 great truth that Peace is the mother of Improvement, 
 ever been confronted, ia its career of internal ameliora- 
 tion, by so many impediments to success. 
 
 That Act was a most important one in other respects 
 than in the total abolition of the Company's com- 
 mercial privileges. Of some of its provisions I have 
 already spoken. Indeed, the changes which it intro- 
 duced affected principally the local Governments. I 
 speak of it here mainly because I date from it the daAvn 
 of a brighter era — ^because I believe that under that 
 Act the administrative machinery of the Home Govern- 
 ment, divested of all commercial clogs and incum- 
 brances, began to perform its appointed functions as it 
 
136 THE HOME GOVERNMENT. 
 
 had never performed them before. It would have been 
 difficult for any Government, invested, by an Act of the 
 supreme Legislature, with new powers and responsi- 
 bilities, to have taken a more enlarged statesman-like 
 view of its position, or to have recorded its sentiments 
 in a more humane and enlightened spirit, than did the 
 East India Company in this great conjuncture. Re- 
 viewing the whole question of Indian Government, as 
 aifected by the provisions of the new Act, they wrote 
 out to the supreme Government of India a comprehen- 
 sive letter,* in which they earnestly exhorted the 
 local authorities to give, in all respects, the most liberal 
 interpretation to its enactments, and to make it the 
 instrument of conferring the greatest possible benefit 
 upon the people under then' rule. It can never, with 
 truth, be said that they had not a due sense of the 
 mighty responsibility entailed upon them as the rulers 
 of a hundred millions of their fellow-creatures, when it 
 is seen how reverently they bethought themselves of 
 their own obligations, and how earnestly they exhorted 
 the Indian Government to the due performance of 
 theirs. Speaking of their extended powers of legisla- 
 tion, they wrote in December, 1834 : 
 
 " In contemplating the extent of legislative power 
 " thus conferred immediately on our supreme Govem- 
 " ment, and in the second instance on om^selves, in 
 " considering that on the use of this power the differ- 
 " ence between the worst and the best of Govermnents 
 " mainly depends — in reflecting how many miUions of 
 " men may, by the manner in which it shall in the 
 " present instance be exercised, be rendered happy or 
 " miserable — in adverting to the countless variety of 
 " interests to be studied and of difficulties to be over- 
 " come, in the execution of this mighty trust, we own 
 
 * I have already quoted this letter with reference to the subject of legislation 
 in the preceding chapter. 
 
LIBERAL VIEWS OF THE COURT. 137 
 
 " that we feel oppressed by the weight of responsibility 
 " under which we are conjointly laid. Whatever 
 " means or efforts can be employed on the occasion — 
 " whatever can be effected by free and active discussion, 
 " or by profound and conscientious deliberation — ^what- 
 " ever aids can be derived from extrinsic counsel or 
 " inteUigence, all at the utmost will be barely com- 
 " mensurate with the magnitude of the sphere to be 
 ** occupied and of the service to be performed. We 
 " feel confident that to this undertaking your best 
 " thoughts and care will be immediately and persever- 
 " ingly applied ; and we invite the fuU, the constant, 
 " and the early communication of your sentiments in 
 " relation to it. On our part, we can venture to affirm 
 " that no endeavour shall be wanting in promoting your 
 " views and perfecting your plans. Others, also, who 
 ** are in a situation, by advice or exertion, to assist in 
 *' the work, will contribute to it, we hope, to the extent 
 " of their power. And w^e trust that by the blessing of 
 *' Divine Providence on our united labors, the just and 
 " beneficent intentions of this country, in delegating 
 " to our hands the legislative as well as the executive 
 " administration of the mightiest, the most important, 
 '' and the most interesting of its transmarine posses- 
 " sions, will be happily accomplished."* 
 
 Since this admirable letter was written, the general 
 principles which it enunciated have been repeatedly 
 illustrated, from time to time, in the correspondence 
 of the Com^ of Directors ; and I believe that nothing 
 would so much redound to their honor — nothing would 
 so clearly exliibit the progressive improvement in the 
 administrative earnestness and efficiency of the East 
 
 * 3/5. Records. Mr. Tucker was was written by Mr, James Mill, the 
 
 chairman at this time, and his is, historian of India, then at the head 
 
 therefore, the first name appended to of the Examiner's Department in the 
 
 the letter. It breathes much of his India House, and that Mr. Robert Grant 
 
 spirit. I believe that the original draft was concerned in its revision. 
 
138 THE HOME GOVERNMENT. 
 
 India Company, as a selection from their own de- 
 spatches. Shackled by debt — embarrassed by exhaust- 
 ing and distracting wars, of which they have been not 
 the authors, but the victims — ^they have not been able 
 to give ftdl effect to those measures of internal amelio- 
 ration which demand the material support of an over- 
 flowing treasury. But there is no good reason to 
 suppose that, under such circumstances, any other ad- 
 ministrative body would have done more ; and, if it 
 can be shown by a recital of what they have done, 
 that the progress of good government, all obstacles 
 and impediments fairly weighed and considered, has 
 been relatively commensurate with that in our own 
 country, I think that it would be more just and more 
 reasonable to commend them for their good deeds 
 than to censure them for theu^ omissions. The good 
 deeds are assuredly theirs. The omissions may be the 
 growth of Cu'cumstance. 
 
THE REVENUES OF INDIA. 139 
 
 PART II. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 The Revenue System of the East India Company — English and Indian Systems 
 of Taxation — The Land Revenue — The Salt-tax — The Opium Revenue — The 
 Customs — The Abkarree— State of the East India Company's Finances — Evils 
 of War-making. 
 
 It has been seen how, in time, with sore reluctance 
 the merchants of London trading to the East Indies 
 came to he great territorial lords. It has been seen, 
 in brief outline, how they came to establish revenue 
 and judicial systems, and to turn their ledger-keepers 
 and investment-makers into tax-collectors and judges. 
 From that time the welfare of millions of Hindoos 
 and Mahomedans became dependent upon the wisdom 
 and integrity of a little handful of European strangers. 
 The Revenue and Judicial Systems of the East 
 India Company are two extensive and important sub- 
 jects. An author cannot hope, in such a work as this, 
 to do more than render an unsatisfactory account of 
 them. In giving precedence to the former, he only 
 foUows, wisely or unmsely, the prevailing custom. It 
 is too much a characteristic of modern Indian admi- 
 nistration to exalt the Revenue branch of the public 
 
140 ♦ THE REVENUES OF INDIA. 
 
 service at the expense of the Judicial. And this 
 opinion is shared hy many of our ablest Indian ad- 
 ministrators. 
 
 The Revenue System maintained by the English 
 conquerors in India differs but little in its main 
 features from that which was before enforced by the 
 Moguls. The people of India being, for the most part, 
 a people wanting little and consuming little, the taxes 
 were necessarily few and comprehensive. They were 
 fitted to a state of society simple and primitive, and 
 were little aflPected by the mutations of time or the ad- 
 vances of civilisation. .' It was, doubtless, an uncom- 
 fortable necessity that presented itself to us, but it 
 was necessary to raise revenue for purposes of govern- 
 ment. And it was necessary that in so doing we 
 should subtract from the scanty means of subsistence 
 enjoyed by the great mass of the people. ' It was, 
 doubtless, a painful and deplorable fact ; but benevo- 
 lence could suggest no remedy for the evil — wisdom 
 could find no substitute for the thing so grievously 
 deplored. 
 
 Taxation is an evil, in aU countries, and at all times. 
 It is difficult to hit upon a good tax — a tax that is 
 not open to some very grave objection. It may be 
 admitted, therefore, that all the taxes which feed the 
 treasury of the Anglo-Indian Empire, are inherently 
 bad ; that something reasonably is to be said against 
 them ; that solid arguments may be adduced in demon- 
 stration of the fact that they are loaded with pernicious 
 results. I do not know any tax of general application 
 in this country of which the same may not truthfully 
 be said. But there is this difference between the fiscal 
 histories of the two coimtries — that whereas in Eng- 
 land we are continually throwing out new expedients 
 and fashioning new modes of taxation, in India we go 
 on from generation to generation without introducing 
 
TAXATION IN ENGLAND AND INDIA. 141 
 
 any substantial changes. In England, every new 
 Chancellor of the Exchequer has some new financial 
 scheme to propound. The taxation of the country is 
 the battle-field of party. We are continually being 
 taxed or untaxed in one direction or another. It 
 seems sufficiently easy and reasonable, if one scheme 
 of taxation is not found to answer, to try another. 
 The Einance Minister of the day stakes his reputation 
 and his place upon some pet project of his own which 
 is publicly enunciated in Parliament, and in the 
 course of twenty-four hours disseminated by the Press 
 throughout all the remote places of the empire. If the 
 project be unpopular, it is abandoned. The scheme 
 falls to the ground, and perhaps the Minister falls 
 with it. There is a little excitement for a few weeks, 
 but the popular indignation is soon appeased, and the 
 triumph is not that of the people over the Govern- 
 ment, as the representative of constitutional authority, 
 but over Government as the representative of a party. 
 Constitutional authority is not weakened by these 
 miscarriages. A new phalanx of administrators take 
 their place on the Government benches, and a new 
 experiment is made. The people of England have no 
 horror of change. Indeed, they do not think that 
 justice is done them if financial novelties of one kind 
 or another are not from time to time presented to the 
 country. They must have something for their money, 
 even though it be a change for the worse. 
 
 But nothing of this is applicable to India. In every 
 single respect the case is precisely the reverse. The 
 people of India mil bear a great deal so long as they 
 are used to it. They are very intolerant of change. 
 They do not understand it. They are timid and sus- 
 picious. Benevolence and wisdom may go hand and 
 hand in our measures, but the people are not easily 
 persuaded that what we are doing is for their good. 
 
142 THE REVENUES OF INDIA. 
 
 There is for them no Parliament and no Press. They 
 have the vaguest possible idea of the intentions of 
 their rulers. They do not think — ^they do not inquire 
 — ^but with child-like haste and impetuosity resent the 
 innovations which are intended to confer benefits upon 
 them. Eiscal changes are especially dangerous. We 
 cannot experimentalise without peril on such a people. 
 We may relieve them of old burdens, and impose 
 lighter ones upon them ; but the probability is, that 
 the open disafPection of the ignorant masses would 
 compel us to abandon our benevolent projects, with a 
 loss of dignity and an injury to the prestige of our 
 authority not easily to be computed. The failure in 
 such a case is not the failure of a party or the failure 
 of a man, bat the failure of the paramount governing 
 power in its abstract constitutional integrity. 
 
 It is necessary, to a right understanding of the sub- 
 ject of Indian taxation, that these considerations should 
 have reasonable weight. If the Government could be 
 administered without money, or if money could be 
 raised without taxation — one or both of which beati- 
 tudes some writers would seem to consider attainable — 
 we might leave the land unassessed, the salt untaxed, 
 and cease to cultivate the poppy. But we must assume 
 in this case not only the necessity of taxation, but the 
 necessity of maintaining such taxes as will embrace in 
 their network the largest possible area of population. 
 In such a country, and with such a people, there is 
 little choice left to the financier. Where the millions 
 live almost entirely on the produce of their rice-fields, 
 with only a rag about their middle, and a few brass 
 pots for their household goods, there is no very exten- 
 sive field for the display of financial ingenuity. There 
 are fifty different ways in which the English tax- 
 gatherer may get at the poor man. But in India the 
 approaches to the mud hut of the laborer are few ; 
 
INDIAN TAXES. 143 
 
 and the tax-gatherer must advance by them or keep 
 away altogether. He has been going for a long time 
 along the same beaten roads. The people have learnt 
 to look for him in certain directions, and even if better 
 paths to their domiciles could be found, they would 
 resent his approach by them. A tax on cultivation is 
 not a good thing — a tax on salt is not a good thing. 
 But the people cultivate the lands, and they eat salt ; 
 it would be difficult to find a substitute for these im- 
 posts, and if a substitute were found, it is probable 
 that the people would reject it. 
 
 The taxes of wliich I have spoken — the Land-tax 
 and the Salt-tax — are those which most immediately 
 affect the bulk of the people, and they are those which 
 yield the largest revenue.* Next in importance are 
 the Customs, the Opium sales, and the Abkarree, or 
 tax on spmtuous liquors. Besides these, there are the 
 Post-office, the Stamp-duties, the Mint, the Tobacco- 
 monopoly, and other smaller sources of income entered 
 in the Government returns. 
 
 Of the entire revenue of our Indian possessions the 
 Land-tax yields considerably more than half. It is 
 raised in different ways, and from different classes of 
 men, but in all cases it is in effect a rent paid to Go- 
 vernment for the use of the land. On the disputed 
 question of the rightful ownership of the soil I do not 
 intend to enter. A vast amount of learning has been 
 brought to bear upon its elucidation, but it has been 
 left in all its original obscurity, and I cannot hope to 
 throw light upon it. It is sufficient that when the 
 East India Company, as stewards of the Crown, be- 
 came, by right of conquest or cession, the disposers 
 first of one tract of country, then of another, they 
 
 * In saying this, I include also the in the Government returns under the 
 duty on imported salt, which is entered head of Customs. 
 
144 THE REVENUES OF INDIA. 
 
 began to lease it out to different tenants, upon no uni- 
 form system, but according to local circumstances and 
 personal convictions. Upon tlie different modes of 
 land assessment, whicli we have recognised in practice, 
 I shall presently come to speak in detail. It need here 
 only generally be set down that there are three principal 
 systems now in force, besides other modes, of limited 
 extent and partial application, which do not belong 
 either to one system or another. These three principal 
 systems are known as -the Zemin darry, or great land- 
 lord system, the chief seat of which is in the lower 
 provinces of Bengal; the Ryotwar, or petty cultivator 
 system, which is enthroned in certain parts of Madras; 
 and a mixed system, which aims at a less partial re- 
 cognition of rights, and is neither as permanent as the 
 one nor as fluctuating as the other — a system which 
 is principally represented by the " Settlement of the 
 North- Western Provinces." 
 
 The Zemindarry settlement of Bengal is a fixed 
 assessment, made with a certain class of landholders, 
 whom the Government of 1793 recognised, rightly or 
 wrongly, as the legitimate owners of the soil. The 
 amount payable to Government on each estate is fixed 
 in perpetuity. The productiveness of the land may 
 increase a hundred per cent., but still the Zemindar 
 carries the same amount of. revenue to the office of the 
 collector. He may lease it out as he pleases, in large 
 or in small holdings ; may make what amount of 
 money he can, directly or indirectly, fi:om the imme- 
 diate cultivators — but so long as he pays the fixed 
 amount of assessment punctually to the Company, he 
 and his descendants remain, at this fixed rate, continu- 
 ally in possession. The chief seat of this Permanent 
 Settlement is the lower part of what is known as the 
 Bengal Presidency — embracing the provinces of Bengal, 
 
SYSTEMS OF LAND REVENUE. 145 
 
 Behar, Orissa, and Benares. There are also some 
 tracts of land settled in perpetuity in some parts of 
 the Madras and Bombay presidencies. 
 
 The Byotwar system recognises the proprietary 
 right of the sovereign to the lordship of the soil, and 
 brings him into immediate communication with the 
 actual cultivator. No intermediate agency is em- 
 ployed. The Government let the land to the cultivator* 
 generally on an annual lease. The amount of rent is 
 increased or diminished each year according to the 
 ascertained value of the holding. The assessor fixes 
 the amount to be paid, and the B;yot takes it or not, 
 as suits his convenience. 
 
 The thu'd system, now in force, in the North- Western 
 Provinces of India, is neither that of a permanent 
 settlement nor of a fluctuating annual assessment. It 
 is a system of long settlements, or leases — settlements 
 made for twenty or thirty years, with different descrip- 
 tions of tenants. The village communities have been 
 recognised wherever they existed in a perfect state, and 
 each village, whether the proprietary right was claimed 
 by an individual or by a community, was made the 
 limit of a separate settlement. 
 
 Such, described in a few words, are the principal 
 arrangements entered into with different classes of 
 native tenants, for the supply of the territorial revenue 
 of India. The amount levied varies considerably, but 
 on the aggregate the assessment cannot be said to 
 be heavy. In the North-Western Provinces, of which 
 detailed statistics have been supplied by Government, 
 it is set doAvn at 1 rupee 12 annas, or 3s. 6d. the acre. 
 This average refers to the land actually under cultiva- 
 tion; and, perhaps, does not differ greatly from the 
 general average of the whole country. 
 
 * In some parts of Bombay tliero are Ryot war settlements made for thirty 
 years. 
 
 I. 
 
146 THE REVENUES OF INDIA. 
 
 The next source of Revenue which I have set down 
 is Salt. The article is one of universal consumption, 
 and contrihutes to the Revenue in three different ways. 
 Eirstly, there are the profits on the home-manufacture, 
 which is retained in the hands of Government. Se- 
 condly, there is the inland duty, levied in that part of 
 the country where the manufacture is not restricted ; 
 and thirdly, there is the Customs duty on imported 
 salt. The salt manufactured by Government, princi- 
 pally at the mouths of the Ganges, is sold for between 
 three and four rupees the maund (or 821bs.) . The prices, 
 generally " wholesale on account of Government, are 
 fixed with reference to the principle that they shall not 
 fall short of the cost of production, plus the duty on 
 imported salt." The tax, whatever form it may take, 
 may be estimated at about 2| rupees, or 5s. for the 
 821bs., being less than a penny a pound. It is calcu- 
 lated that each consumer pays on an average about 
 12 annas, or Is. 6d. a year, to the Treasury on account 
 of the article.* 
 
 The next item of Revenue is the Customs duties, 
 regarding which little need be said in this place. 
 The amount is principally derived from import duties, 
 of which the duty on imported salt constitutes a con- 
 siderable portion. With this exception, there is no 
 local peculiarity worthy of especial mention. 
 
 The next source of income, however, is one of a 
 peculiar and exceptional character. It is known as 
 the Opium-monopoly, t The Government reserves to 
 itself the right of cultivating the poppy, or rather the 
 right of purchasing, at fixed rates, the produce of 
 such cultivation. Opium is manufactured under the 
 auspices of the Company's servants, and sold by 
 auction to traders, who export it for the consumption 
 of the Chinese. It is, to a very limited extent, a tax 
 
 ♦ See Appendix A. f See Appendix B. 
 
THE LAND REVENUE. 147 
 
 upon our own subjects, and the objections which may- 
 be raised against it have little bearing upon the ques- 
 tion of the happiness of the people of India. Humanity 
 cannot allege against it that we sell opium, as we sell 
 salt, at a liigli price, but that we sell it at all. The 
 two "monopolies," to use the current word, are in 
 almost every respect the very reverse of each other. 
 
 It only remains that particular notice should be 
 bestowed upon one other source of Revenue — the 
 Abkarry, or spirit-tax. It is, in fact, a tax levied 
 upon spirit-licenses. Government farms out a par- 
 ticular district to the highest bidder, who under cer- 
 tain restrictions sells the privilege of spirit-vending, 
 at a profitable rate, to a number of small dealers. 
 
 It is now expedient to give some account of the 
 productiveness of these several taxes. The gross 
 receipts from the Land-assessment of the several pre- 
 sidencies now amounts to about fourteen millions and 
 a quarter of our money. It is thus derived, according 
 to the latest detailed statements yet published :* 
 
 Rupees. 
 
 Bengal 3,56,25,000 
 
 North- Western Provinces . . 4,97,50,000 
 
 Madras 3,52,89,200 
 
 Bombay 2,21,65,480 
 
 Total .... 14,28,29,680 
 
 The estimated receipts under the head of Customs 
 for the same financial year amount to nearly two 
 millions sterling, in the following divisions : 
 
 Rupees. 
 
 Bengal 1,02,73,500 
 
 North- Western Provinces . . 52,22,000 
 
 Madras 11,36,460 
 
 Bombay 31,13,600 
 
 Total .... 1,97,4.5,560 
 
 Both in Bengal and the North- Western Pro\inces 
 the principal item in the Customs receipts is the duty 
 
 * Finance Letter of the Court of Direc- Council, JuneSy 1852. Appendix to Cam- 
 ions to the Governor- General of India in mons* Report on Indian Territories. 
 
 l2 
 
148 THE REVENUES OF INDIA. 
 
 on salt. Ill the former alone, it amounts to more 
 than 61 lakhs of rupees. 
 
 This it will be understood is the duty on imported 
 salt. The gross receipts from the sale of the Salt 
 manufactured by Government, amounts to nearly a 
 million and three-quarters of English money. It is 
 thus derived : 
 
 Rupees. 
 
 Bengal 1,02,89,300 
 
 Madras 46,76,120 
 
 Bombay 22,79,560 
 
 Total .... 1,72,44,980 
 
 But from this is to be deducted for " advances 
 and charges" 48,31,139 rupees, leaving a balance of 
 1,24,13,841 rupees, or a million and a quarter. 
 
 The last estimate of the amount realisable for the 
 Opium sales — that for the year 1851-52 — is be- 
 tween three and four millions sterling ; thus divided 
 between Bengal and Bombay : 
 
 Rupees. 
 
 Bengal 2,99,71,184 
 
 ; Bombay 72,70,600 
 
 Total .... 3,72,41,784 
 
 Prom this, however, a deduction of something more 
 than a million sterling is to be made for " advances 
 and charges," and the net-receipts are thus reduced to 
 a sum little exceeding two millions and a half of our 
 money, or 2,68,78,184 rupees.* 
 
 Thus it will be seen that these four principal items 
 of Bevenue yield, in round numbers, twenty millions 
 of money : 
 
 Millions. 
 
 Land 14^ 
 
 Customs 2 
 
 Salt li 
 
 Opium 2| 
 
 Total 20 
 
 * In calculating the Indian Revenue, groas receipts are calculated actual 
 I carry to account only the net-receipts money advances, which when recovered 
 of salt and opium, because under the cannot properly be called Revenue. 
 
SOURCES OF INCOME. 149 
 
 There then remain six millions to be accounted for. 
 Of these the Sayer and Abkarree yield one million ; 
 thus : 
 
 Rupees. 
 
 Bengal 31,52,100 
 
 North-Western Provinces . . 29,50,000 
 
 Madras 33,44,430 
 
 Bombay 10,23,310 
 
 Total .... 1,04,69,840 
 
 Then come the following various items of receipt : 
 
 Rupees. 
 
 Stamps 46,37,490 
 
 Post Office 20,44,170 
 
 Marine 18,00,000 
 
 Subsidies from Native Princes . 65,10,181 
 
 Tobacco monopoly . . . 6,04,980 
 
 Calcutta — Mint (net receipts; . 1,14,162 
 
 Total .... 1,57,10,983 
 
 To these net receipts, now swollen by these last 
 additions to more than twenty-two millions and a half, 
 are to be added the revenues of Lahore, Sindh, the 
 Eastern Settlements, and the territories acquired from 
 the Burmese, Arracan, and the Tenasserim Provinces : 
 
 Rupees. 
 
 Lahore 1,30,00,000 
 
 Sindh 28,00,000 
 
 Eastern Settlements . . . 13,00,000 
 Burmese Territory . . . 20,00,000 
 
 Total .... 1,91,00,000 
 
 This amount added to the preceding, raises the net 
 receipts to about twenty-four millions and a half,* 
 which according to the last published accounts may be 
 set down, in round numbers, as the correct amount. 
 
 Having thus briefly given an account, in a rough 
 general manner, of the Revenues of India, I proceed 
 to make some statements relative to the expenditure 
 of the country. The principal heads under which this 
 expenditure may be ranged, are Revenue Charges, 
 Judicial Charges, Customs Charges, Marine Charges, 
 
 * Or twenty- six millions vt'ith the when calculating the receipts for the 
 addition of the million and a half, which salt and opium. 
 I have subtracted for advances, &c., < 
 
150 THE REVENUES OF INDIA. 
 
 Military Charges, Home Charges, and interest on the 
 Company's Debt. 
 
 The Revenue Charges, according to the estimate 
 for the financial year 1850-51, amount to two millions 
 sterling. The distribution, in the several presidencies 
 is this : 
 
 Rupees. 
 
 Bengal 40,37,376 
 
 North- Western Provinces . . 75,85,000 
 
 Madras 55,16,230 
 
 Bombay 28,74,460 
 
 Total .... 2,00,13,066 
 
 In these charges are included the expenditure on 
 account of the revenue surveys ; of canal irrigation in 
 the North- Western Provinces, and on the repair of 
 tanks in the Madras Presidency. The first item is 
 estimated at an amount somewhat exceeding 8 lakhs 
 of rupees (80,000Z.) ; the second at 30 lakhs of rupees 
 (300,000/.) ; and the last, at 9 lakhs (90,000Z.)— thus 
 reducing the cost of actual revenue collection to a 
 million and a half of English money. 
 
 The Judicial Charges are estimated at a sum 
 equal to about two millions sterling : 
 
 Rupees. 
 
 bengal 74,98,732 
 
 North- Western Provinces . . 59,88,000 
 
 Madras 34,74,155 
 
 Bombay 26,21,717 
 
 Total .... 1,95,82,604 
 
 The Customs Charges do not much exceed 200,000/. 
 
 Rupees. 
 
 Bengal 5,17,759 
 
 North-Western Provinces . . 8,80,000 
 
 Madras 2,14,010 
 
 Bombay 4,15,970 
 
 Total . . .* . 20,27,739 
 
 It will be gathered from these statements that the 
 purely civil charges of the Indian Government do not 
 exceed four millions and a quarter annually — less than 
 one-sixth of the Indian revenue. 
 
CHARGES. 151 
 
 The Marine Charges — belonging both to the War 
 and the Peace department — including, as they do, the 
 expenses of the Indian navy, the pilot establishment, 
 harbor duties, lighthouses, &c., are estimated at less 
 than half a million : 
 
 Rupees. 
 
 Bengal 19,41,200 
 
 Madras 1,36,613 
 
 Bombay 26,35,660 
 
 Total .... 47,13,473 
 
 To this amount is to be added, however, the cost of 
 Europe stores and coals, supplied to the Marine de- 
 partment and the Indian navy, amounting to upwards 
 of nine lakhs of rupees, and raising the entire amount 
 of Marine expenditure for the last estimated year 
 to 56,32,853 rupees. 
 
 Thus we see that the ordinary expenses of the Civil 
 establishments, including the Marine, do i^ot amount 
 to five millions of money : 
 
 Rupees. 
 Revenue charges, including Canals, Tanks, and Surveys . 2,00,13,066 
 
 Judicial charges 1,95,82,604 
 
 Customs charges 20,27,739 
 
 Marine charges 56,32,853 
 
 Total 4,72,56,262 
 
 The ordinary Military charges exceed ten millions 
 a year : 
 
 Rupees. 
 
 Bengal 5,57,57,700 
 
 Madras 2,72,60,540 
 
 Bombay 1,79,37,800 / 
 
 Total .... 10,09,56,040 
 
 This is exclusive of the cost of Europe stores sent 
 out from England, and charged to the Home accounts. 
 Under the head of military expenditure, also, are to be 
 accounted the "extraordinary military charges," in- 
 cluding the cost of " additional commissariat supplies, 
 extra allowances to the troops, donation batta, com- 
 pensation for loss of baggage, &c., &c.'* In the last 
 twelve years, the aggregate amount of these extra- 
 
152 THE REVENUES OF INDIA. 
 
 ordinary military charges (a deduction being made for 
 extraordinary military receipts) has reached a sum of 
 seven millions, making an average of nearly sixty 
 lakhs, or 600,000^. a year. 
 
 These heavy military charges could not be met with- 
 out increasing the Indian debt. The treasury being 
 exhausted, the Government were compelled to borrow 
 money where they could. This will be spoken of pre- 
 sently more in detail. It is sufficient to mention here 
 that the interest on the debt charged in the Bengal 
 accounts, reaches nearly to two millions and a quarter 
 sterling — ^that is, in Indian ciuTcncy : 
 
 Rupees. 
 2,22,38,918 
 To which is to be added the Interest on the Home Bond Debt 47,45,685 
 
 Total 2,69,84,603 
 
 Thus far I have accounted for about eighteen milHons 
 sterling : 
 
 Rupees. 
 Civil charges (including Revenue, Judicial, Castoms, and 
 
 Marine) 4,72,56,262 
 
 Ordinary Military charges 10,09,56,040 
 
 Extraordinary Military charges, on an average of 12 years 58,81,372 
 
 Interest on Debt . 2,69,84,603 
 
 Total 18,10,78,277 
 
 The next considerable items of expenditure are 
 those which are comprehended under the head of 
 General Charges, and which include the stipends and 
 allowances made to the native princes and chiefs who 
 have suffered by the assertion of our supremacy, the 
 expenditure upon public works, upon education, upon 
 the ecclesiastical establishments, and other component 
 parts of the great administrative machine. These gene- 
 ral charges amounted, according to estimate, in the 
 year under review, to nearly four millions and a half : 
 
 Rupees. 
 
 Bengal 1,28,52,640 
 
 North-Westem Provinces . . 72,44,000 
 
 Madras 93,18,008 
 
 Bombay 1,54,37,440 
 
 Total .... 4,48,52,088 
 
THE DEFICIT. 153 
 
 The charges, as we have seen, have now reached the 
 amount of twenty-two and a half millions. To these 
 are to be added the Home charges, amounting to two 
 millions and a half more, raising the total charges to 
 twenty-five millions, and leaving a deficit of half a 
 million.* 
 
 These statements are extracted from the last general 
 re^w of the Company's finances, taken by the Court of 
 Directors. But they are intended here rather to convey 
 a general idea of the revenues of India, and the charges 
 inciuTed in the government of the country, than to de- 
 termine the financial results of a particular year with 
 any degree of precision. Indeed, nothing is more diffi- 
 cult than to secure, in any such statement, an amount of 
 accuracy that \^dll satisfy all financiers. The accounts 
 are made up, by different authorities so differently, 
 that the inquirer is often staggered by the discrepancies 
 which look him in the face, and bewilder the under- 
 standing. As a general rule, it may, I think, be laid 
 down that the Indian financiers make out a more 
 favorable balance-sheet for the Company than those 
 who make their calculations in LeadenhaU-street. It 
 has been shown, for example, that the estimated deficit 
 for the year 1850-51, according to the Company's last 
 general financial letter, was about half a million of 
 money. But since the body of this chapter was written, 
 the Government of India have announced in their 
 finance Letter of December 16, 1852, that the actual 
 ultimate result in 1850-51 was a surplus of half a mil- 
 lion.! Estimates are generally more favorable than 
 actual results. But here we see that the actual results 
 of the Indian Government are better by a million 
 
 * The amount of deficit, according to clear as possible to the general reader, 
 
 estimate in the Home calculations for I have dealt principally with round 
 
 1850-51 (the last year in the Company's numbers. 
 
 Finance Letter of June last), is 678,709/. f Or 50,85,107 rupees. 
 Wishing to make the balance-sheet as 
 
154 THE REVENUES OF INDIA. 
 
 of money than the estimates of the Court of Di- 
 rectors. 
 
 The estimate of the last financial year 1852-53, is al- 
 most equally favorable. The surplus is again set down at 
 half a million. I give the statement as contained in the 
 Pinance Letter of the Indian Government. It wiU be 
 understood that it represents the gross revenues of the 
 country. 
 
 Sketch Estimates of the Revenues and Charges of India, for 1852-53. 
 
 The results are as follow: 
 
 Revenues. Charges. 
 
 Rupees. Rupees. 
 
 Bengal 11,44,71,845 12,93,81,137 
 
 North -Western Provinces, in- 
 cluding Punjab and Trans- 
 Indus Territory . . . 7,66,51,000 3,18,25,300 
 
 Madras . . . . . 5,26,22,820 4,97,68,660 
 
 Bombay 4,85,36,860 5,22,00,164 
 
 29,22,82,525 26,31,75,261 
 
 Rupees. 
 
 Probable Indian Surplus 2,91,07,264 
 
 Home Charges Estimated . . . . 2,41,57,854 
 
 Estimated Ultimate Surplus in 1852-53 . . 49,49,410 
 
 The Debt estimated to be increased in 1852-53 
 
 aggregates 8,35,96,021 
 
 Ditto to be paid oflf in ditto .... 8,64,24,364 
 
 Net amount to be paid off 28,28,343 
 
 The Cash Balances on 30th April, 1851, amounted 
 
 to 12,98,21,744 
 
 On 30th April, 1852 14,85,88,750 
 
 On 30th April, 1853, they are estimated at . 15,23,96,044 
 
 These results are regarded as in every respect most highly satis- 
 factory, and indicative of a very favorable condition of the 
 finances of India. It is hoped that the improvement now gra- 
 dually developing itself in the resources of India, may not only 
 
THE DEFICIT. 155 
 
 prove to be permanent, but progressive hereafter, as general tran- 
 quillity is restored to the country, 
 
 (Signed) Dalhousie. 
 
 F. CURRIE. 
 December 16, 1852. J. Lovvis. 
 
 These assurances are most cheering at a time when 
 people were beginning almost to fear that the deficit 
 had become clironic. 
 
 It is easy to trace the causes of this continued deficit. 
 In the financial year 1835-36 the Indian revenues 
 yielded a surplus of nearly a million and a half. In 
 the following year, the surplus was a million and a 
 quarter; in the next, three-quarters of a million. In 
 the next year (1838-39) the surplus had altogether 
 disappeared, and the awkward word " deficit " appeared 
 in the accounts. Then came the Afghan war. A 
 British army was pushed across the Indus ; and the 
 deficit for the year 1839-40 reached the alarming 
 amount of more than two millions sterling. From 
 this time to the year 1848-49 there has been an 
 average deficiency of a million and a half a year. 
 
 How these extraordinary expenses swelled the In- 
 dian debt may easily be seen. In 1836, the debt 
 amounted to less than thirty millions ; in 1850, it had 
 nearly reached forty-seven millions. The debt had 
 been reduced in the former year by the application to 
 that pm'pose of a portion of the Company's commercial 
 assets, realised on the cessation of their commercial 
 privileges. At the outset of the war in Afghanistan 
 there was an abundance of money flushing the public 
 Treasury. There was the happy surplus of three good 
 years to indent upon. It was not, therefore, until the 
 beginning of the year 1841, that the financial embar- 
 rassments of the Indian Government gathered so 
 oppressively around them, that they could only look 
 
156 THE REVENUES OF INDIA. 
 
 for extrication to the opening of a new loan. Then 
 they began to borrow money at five per cent, interest ; 
 and as affairs beyond the frontier grew worse and 
 worse, and a new war was undertaken to repair the 
 disasters of the old, it was not until the commence- 
 ment of 1843 that the subscription was closed. During 
 that interval five millions of money had been received 
 into the Treasury of India. The debt then in 1843 
 amounted to thirty-six millions sterling. A new four 
 per cent, loan was then opened ; but money came in 
 slowly at this rate of interest, and from Eebruary, 1843, 
 to October, 1846, only two millions and a half were 
 attracted to the hands of the Government financiers. 
 By this time the Sikh war had commenced, and more 
 money was required. It was necessary, therefore, to 
 stimulate the cupidity of the money-holders by the 
 offer of a higher rate of interest. The five per cent, 
 loan was therefore re-opened in October, 1846, and from 
 that time to April, 1851, during a portion of which the 
 second Sikh war was in full operation, eight millions 
 and a half were subscribed. The debt had then been 
 swollen by these additions to nearly forty- seven millions. 
 The increase of interest, since 1839, payable on this 
 debt, is ninety lakhs of rupees, or nearly a million 
 sterling per annum.* 
 
 But the full extent of the evil is not here adequately 
 represented. But for these exhausting wars we should 
 have had a continued surplus, and been able to reduce 
 the original debt. The cost of our military operations far 
 exceeded the amount subscribed to the loan. The aggre- 
 gate excess of ordinary military charges from the year 
 1838-39 to 1850-51 amounts to more than twenty 
 millions and a half ; and the excess of extraordinary 
 military charges to upwards of seven millions. The 
 
 Rupees. 
 
 * Interest on debt in I s.iii -4(1 I,.3I,99,549 
 
 Ditto in lHOO-51 2,22,.'38,918 
 
WAR CHARGES. 157 
 
 Company's financiers, indeed, estimate the cost of 
 these wars at thirty millions. "We have already,'* 
 they T^T'ite, " explained the grounds on which we have 
 come to the conclusion that 30 crores had been ex- 
 pended in increased military charges since 1838-39, and 
 we have now shown that Sj crores more have been 
 paid for interest on the money borrowed in India."* 
 And when these wars, beyond our north-western 
 frontier, commenced, the country was only beginning 
 to recover from the exhausting effects of another great 
 war beyond our south eastern boundary. The Burmese 
 war in 1824-26 cost fifteen millions of money. 
 
 Having briefly sIiotmi the present state of the Indian ^ 
 Revenue, I must say something about its antecedents. 
 Under the administration of Lord Cornwallis in 
 1792-93, the Indian Revenue amounted to eight mil- 
 lions of English money. Under Lord Wellesley's ad- 
 ministration in 1804-05, it had risen to n&di^\j fourteen 
 millions. At the close of Lord Minto's period of 
 government in 1813-14, it was set down at seventeen 
 millions. Under his successor. Lord Hastings, in 
 1821-22, it exceeded twenty -one millions, t And now, 
 at the present time, the gross Revenue is estimated 
 at twenty-nine millions. 
 
 But with all this increase of territory, and increase 
 of Revenue, we are poorer than we were. In the year 
 1792-93, when our gross Revenue was only eight mil- 
 lions, we had a surplus of a million and a half. In 
 1804-05, the drainings of the Mahratta war had 
 brought about a deficit of more than two millions and 
 a half. During Lord Minto's peaceful reign, our 
 financial position continued steadily to improve, and 
 at the close of it, there was a surplus of a million and 
 
 * Compam/s Finance Letter, June 3, Situation of the East India Company in 
 1852. 1824. 
 
 t Tucker's Review of the Financial 
 
158 THE REVENUES OF INDIA. 
 
 a half. In the course of Lord Hastings' long adminis- 
 tration, there were two had years ; hut at the close of 
 it, in 1821-22, there was again a surplus of more than a 
 million and a half.* In 1835-36, at the close of Lord 
 William Bentinck's administration, the disturhance in 
 the Exchequer occasioned by the Burmese war had been 
 allayed, and there was again a surplus of a million 
 and a half; but in 1839-40 the Afghan war having 
 been commenced, there was a deficit of two millions, f 
 Since that time the deficit, with some slight fluctua- 
 tions, has diminished ; and it has now been seen that 
 the Indian financiers are gratifying us by the unaccus- 
 tomed exhibition of a surplus. 
 
 These facts are worthy to be held in remembrance, 
 briefly indicating as they do the effect of all our great 
 Indian wars upon the finances of the country. But 
 although in India we would seem to live in a chronic 
 state of warfare, there is nothing discouraging in 
 them. They are, as it were, the accidents of our posi- 
 tion — external hindrances and encumbrances — but 
 there is real vitality within. All our principal sources 
 of revenue have been continually increasing. In 1834- 
 35 the Land-assessment, Sayer, and Abkarree, &c., 
 yielded thirteen millions gross revenue ; in 1850-51 
 they yielded nearly seventeen millions. In 1834-35 
 the Customs yielded a million and a half; in 1850-51 
 they yielded more than a million and a half, % although 
 in the interval the transit-duties had been abolished in 
 all the three presidencies. The Bengal Customs re- 
 ceipts, principally owing to the large importations of 
 salt, have increased nearly a hundred per cent, since 
 1842-43. In 1834-35 the Salt revenue yielded two 
 millions ; in 1849-50 two and a half millions ; in 
 1850-51 two millions, besides 610,000Z. derived from 
 
 * Tucker's Review. % The increase is 41,000/., upon the 
 
 t India House Returns. years mentioned. 
 
WAR AND FINANCE. 159 
 
 the duty on imported salt. In 1834-35 the Opium 
 revenue reached only to a million and a quarter ; in 
 1850-51 it exceeded three millions and a half.* In 
 1834-35 the Stamp-duties produced 350,000Z. ; in 
 1850-51 they had risen to 443,000/. In fact, every 
 branch of the Revenue has considerablv increased. 
 
 Lord Hastings, in 1822, declared that he saw no 
 reason why in time of peace the Revenues of India 
 should not yield an annual surplus of four millions. 
 Mr. Tucker, one of the ablest financiers who has ever 
 addressed himself to the illustration of Indian affairs, 
 wrote, in 1826, that a surplus of two millions might 
 be fairly looked for, but that from this sum must be 
 deducted a million and a half for Home charges. 
 There is no reason why, after a few years of peace, 
 we should not have a clear surplus of a million. 
 
 This subject of Indian finance is not an attractive 
 one, and it is not wise to dwell wearisomely upon it. 
 But it is absolutely necessary to the right understand- 
 ing of our pcsition in India that the financial status of 
 the Company should be clearly ascertained. What I 
 wish to be gathered from these statements is this — 
 that the welfare of the people of India mainly depends 
 upon the preservation of peace. The finances of India 
 have continuaUv been in an embarrassed condition, 
 because the Company have continually been, in spite 
 of themselves, engaged in great and engulphing wars. 
 The policy which they have avowed and honestly en- 
 deavom'cd to maintain has been pacific to the very core. 
 But they have seldom been permitted to see the dis- 
 turbance of their Exchequer more than readjusted be- 
 fore they have been again called upon to find money to 
 prosecute a new war. Under these repeated pressures 
 they have been compelled from time to time to borrow 
 
 ♦ Some may say that this is a bad rather than a good sign, inasmuch as that 
 this source of income is precarious. 
 
160 THE REVENUES OF INDIA. 
 
 money at a high rate of interest, and by so doing 
 have created a permanent embarrassment which has 
 kept them, and still keeps them, poor. So circum- 
 stanced, so impoverished, they cannot be generous — 
 they can barely afford to be just. They are compelled 
 to take a financial view of almost every question that 
 is presented to them. They are compelled to repress 
 humane instincts and kindly impulses — to narrow en- 
 larged schemes of policy, and to give themselves up to 
 petty shifts and temporary expedients. They are con- 
 demned on the one hand for exacting so much from 
 the E^evenue-payers, though they exact barely enough 
 to keep themselves from bankruptcy. And they are 
 condemned, on the other, for not spending more of the 
 Revenue which it is said to be shameful to collect. 
 Indeed, as far as I understood it, the whole drift of 
 the popular clamor which in some quarters is raised 
 against the existing Government of India, is that they 
 ought to have less money, and ought to spend more. 
 
 There are many things in the Government of India 
 which I would fain see amended — there are many 
 things to be done, and many things to be left undone 
 before any man of enlarged views and humane desires 
 can look on with complacency and content. But it 
 were well that it should be clearly understood how, at 
 the bottom of all our misdoings and our short-comings, 
 is this miserable want of money. With an overflow- 
 ing treasury impure taxes might be remitted, and great 
 public works might be completed. The interest alone 
 of the increased debt, which has accumulated since 
 1839, would have sufficed for the construction of some 
 great material work, which at the same time would 
 have increased our revenue and benefited millions of 
 people, or for the extensive diffusion among them of 
 the blessings of intellectual enlightenment and practi- 
 cal education. 
 
FUTURE PROSPECTS. 161 
 
 The past history of India is a history of revenue 
 wasted, and domestic improvement obstructed by War. 
 But there is no reason why we should not be hopeful 
 of the future. Abeady, as has been shown, is there a 
 marked improvement in the financial returns; and 
 there is every reason to believe that the Company will 
 soon be enabled to reduce their outstanding obliga- 
 tions. The reduction of the debt will release year by 
 year, for purposes of national improvement, sums of 
 money hitherto disappearing, under the name of "in- 
 terest," without a sign. The good or bad government 
 of India is mainly a question of money, and, therefore, 
 a question of War or Peace. 
 
 It has been shown in this chapter what the Revenues 
 of India are — ^what the moneyed resources of the Indian 
 Government. I purpose now to write more in detail of 
 these revenues and resources, and especially of the 
 great tax, which, in different parts of India, under 
 different systems, is levied upon the Land. It has 
 been briefly stated what these systems are. It will 
 next be shown how they took shape under our rule, 
 and what have been their effects upon the happiness of 
 the people. 
 
162 THE PERMANENT SETTLEMENT OF BENGAL. 
 
 CHAPTER 11. 
 
 First Possession of the Dewanee— Primal Efforts at Revenue Collection — 
 Instructions to the Supervisors — Quinquennial Settlements— Hastings, Francis, 
 and Shore — Arrival of Lord Cornwallis — The Decennial Settlement — The Per- 
 manent Zemindaree Settlement — Its Results. 
 
 The land-revenue of India is a very large subject. A 
 man of more than ordinary intelligence may confess, 
 "without discredit, that after thirty years' study he but 
 imperfectly comprehends it, in all its bearings and rela- 
 tions. I know very few men who have attained to any- 
 thing beyond this imperfect comprehension. It is a 
 subject on which volumes might be written without 
 exhausting it, and on which volumes, indeed, have been 
 written, only to leave it as obscure as before. As for 
 myself, I purpose only in this volume to give a very 
 slight account of the systems of land- assessment intro- 
 duced into different parts of India under the British 
 Government, and the influence which they seem to have 
 had upon the happiness of the people. 
 
 It was in the year 1765 that this great question of 
 land-revenue first opened out before us. Up to this time 
 the EngUsh in India had been buyers and sellers of pro- 
 duce — compelled at last to buy and sell under the pro- 
 tection of ships of war and battalions of Sepoys, but still 
 no more than traders, trading with military escorts at 
 their backs. With the taxation of the people for pur- 
 poses of government we had had little to do; for we 
 had owned no territory, and lorded it over no subjects. 
 
FIRST ACQUISITION OF THE DEWANEE. 163 
 
 But in 1765 the reigning prince conferred on the East 
 India Company a grant in perpetuity of the provinces of 
 Bengal, Behar, and Orissa ; and the whole civil and 
 military government of this fine tract of country fell under 
 our sovereign control. The country became our own, 
 and with it the revenue. So the matter of taxation from 
 that time became one in which we were vitally con- 
 cerned. 
 
 But it appeared at this time, no less to Clive^and his 
 associates in the local Government than to the Directors 
 at home, that it would not be expedient to interfere, 
 hastily and ignorantly, in the collection of the revenue. 
 The Company's servants at this time were dead hands at 
 investments ; but they knew nothing of landed ^tenures. 
 How could they be expected to know anything of them? 
 They had other things to do than to study either the 
 patriarch ahties of the Hindoos, the oligarchisms of the 
 Mussulman supplant ers, or the bastardising effects of 
 Mahratta intrusion. The philosophy of the question of 
 right-in-the-soil was quite out of their reach, and its 
 practicalities were equally beyond them. It was enough 
 that somehow or other the revenue had been collected 
 by the native officers of the Newab, from whom we 
 received the territory, and it was thought expedient that 
 the collection should remain, for a while at least, in their 
 hands. 
 
 But it was soon found that these native officers required 
 vigilant supervision and active control. So, in 1769, 
 supervisors were appointed from among the covenanted 
 servants of the Company to every district or province in 
 the new territory.* What these European officers were 
 
 * "Agreed unanimously, that in every dent of the Durbar, and managed as is 
 
 province or district, a gentleman in the expressly set forth and defined in the 
 
 service be appointed, with or without following letter of instructions," &c. — 
 
 assistance, in proportion to the extent [Proceedings of the President and Select 
 
 of the district, whose office or depart- Committee, Aug. 16, 1769.] 
 ment is to be subordinate to the Resi- 
 
 M 2 
 
164 THE PERMANENT SETTLEMENT OF BENGAL. 
 
 now instructed to do was no slight thing, considering that 
 they had had little or no training for business of this 
 description. They were ordered to collect and to report 
 information regarding " the form of the ancient constitu- 
 tion of the province compared with the present ;" to give 
 ** an account of its possessors or rulers, the order of their 
 succession, the revolutions in their families, and their 
 connexions ; the peculiar customs and privileges which 
 they or their people have established and enjoyed ; and, 
 in short, every transaction which can serve to trace their 
 origin and progress, or has produced any material change 
 in the affairs of the province." They were to report on 
 the state, produce, and capacity of the lands ; on " the 
 amount of revenues, the cesses, or arbitrary taxes, and 
 all demands whatsoever which are made on the Eyots, 
 either by Government, Zemindar, or collector, with the 
 manner of collecting them; and the gradual rise of every 
 new impost." These might have been considered duties 
 sufficiently onerous for men not much accustomed to the 
 work of drawing up elaborate reports of this kind. But 
 their studies were not to be limited to the nature of 
 landed tenures and the system of territorial assessment. 
 They were instructed also to report on the best means of 
 regulating the commerce of the country, with especial 
 reference to the development of its internal resources, 
 and the best means of removing all internal obstructions, 
 in the shape of unauthorised exactions between the pro- 
 ducer and the market, foreign or domestic. And having 
 dismissed the great agricultural and commercial questions, 
 they were required to report on the judicial system, or 
 no system, of the ceded country. I do not know whether 
 any of the reports so elicited are extant; but the paper 
 of instructions is a very curious and important one, for 
 they are the first which assume a real administrative 
 character, and in them the foundation of the Indian civil 
 
LAND-REVENUE UNDER THE MOGULS. 165 
 
 service seems to be laid, broad and deep, to future gene- 
 rations. 
 
 But I have spoken of this more generally in another 
 place. My immediate concern now is with the land- 
 revenue. And, in connexion with the question of as- 
 sessment and collection, under British administration, 
 this paper of instructions to the supervisors of 1769 is 
 very interesting and suggestive. It clearly sets forth the 
 difficulties with which we had to contend at the outset, 
 and shows that the revenue administration, which we 
 found in force on first assuming the Government of 
 Bengal, was vicious and corrupt in the extreme. In 
 fact, we had then, as we still have, to surmount the great 
 stumbling-block of native corruption. " It will require 
 the greatest care," so ran the paper of instructions, " to 
 enable you to form a general and particular ' hustabood,* 
 or rent-roll, of the districts ; you may perhaps find what 
 is called a ' hustabood ' in the suddur or principal cut- 
 cherry, but this, instead of satisfying must stimulate your 
 curiosity ; for the contents of it are merely adapted to 
 the private interests of the Zemindars (or landholders), 
 filled with representations designedly disguised to square 
 with their offers and accounts to Government, loosely, 
 unfaithfully, and partially formed in every instance. In 
 fact, they can supply you with little more than a pro- 
 gressive history of the present dismemberments, and only 
 suggest to you the degree of oppression which the multi- 
 plication of collectors and changes has, on that account, 
 fi:om time to time brought on the Ryots" (or cultivators 
 of the soil). Nothing, indeed, is more certain than that 
 when first we began to dabble in revenue matters, we 
 found that, whatever may have been the system of land- 
 assessment in force, it was bearing only the bitter fruits of 
 extortion and oppression. Every man tried in his turn to 
 pay as little to, and exact as much firom, liis neighbour 
 
166 the'permanent settlement of bengal. 
 
 ^s fraud and falsehood could compass. The revenue-col- 
 lector over-reached the landholders, and the landholders 
 over-reached the cultivators. Cruelty and chicanery had 
 full sway. 
 
 All this was plain enough. But the Indian revenue 
 system, or systems, so varied and unstable, were not 
 very readily intelligible to our merchants and factors. 
 This much, however, was clear — that, although the culti- 
 vation of the soil was the main source of revenue, the 
 cultivators were one class of people, and the revenue- 
 payers were another. The Company's servants may have 
 heard something of village communities, which had once, 
 perhaps, existed in the very districts over which they 
 had obtained a delegated sovereignty, and were still 
 flourishing inviolate in other parts of the country; but 
 they found that the actual payment of the revenue to the 
 collecting officers of Government was in the hands of a 
 -few responsible parties, known as " Zemindars," or land- 
 holders, who looked to the actual cultivators for the means 
 . of meeting the Government demands.* The titles of these 
 ^ landholders were often extremely doubtful. In many 
 ■ cases they had been fraudulently obtained. In all it 
 seemed that the landowners were a class who had very 
 little claim upon the sympathy and forbearance of the 
 governing body, whether native or foreign. The good 
 old rule, the simple plan was theirs, to take what they 
 could from the cultivators, and to keep all that they could 
 from Government. Often this was best accomplished by 
 ! means of collusion between the payers and the collectors 
 ! of the revenue. The strong tyrannised over the weak, 
 1 and authority was on the side of the former. 
 
 This was a state of things not to be upheld ; and it is 
 pleasant to see, that in the very first revenue-paper of 
 
 * I do not mean to say that the Ze- that it was principally, in operation 
 mindarry system was exclusively, but throughout the Dewanee. 
 
INSTRUCTIONS TO THE SUPERVISORS. 167 
 
 any importance emanating from the British-Indian Go- 
 vernment, on record, the claims of the cultivators to 
 our sympathy and protection were distinctly enunciated. 
 " The Ryot," it said, " should be impressed in the most 
 forcible and convincing manner, that the tendency of 
 your measures is to his ease and relief ; that every oppo- 
 sition to them is riveting his own chains, and confirming 
 his servitude and dependence on his oppressors; that 
 our object is not increase of rents, or the accumulation of 
 demands, but solely by fixing such as are legal, explain- 
 ing and abolishing such as are fraudulent and unautho- 
 rised, not only to redress liis present grievances, but to 
 secure him from all further invasions of his property.'* 
 And the supervisors were, in conclusion, earnestly ex- 
 horted to do everything that could conduce " to the im- 
 provement of the lands, the content of the Ryot, the 
 extension and rehef of trade, the increase and encourage- 
 ment of any useful manufacture or production of the soil, 
 and the general benefit and happiness of the province in 
 every consideration and point of view."* 
 
 But enhghtened as were the instructions thus issued 
 to the supervisors, the supervision was wholly inadequate 
 to the requirements of the case. The double Govern- 
 ment, as I have shown, did not work well.f It was al- 
 together a sham, and an imposture. It was soon to be 
 demolished at a blow ; and on the 11th of May, 1772, 
 a proclamation was issued, setting forth that the Honor- 
 able the Court of Directors had been pleased to divest 
 the Nabob Mahomed Reza Khan of his station of Naib 
 Dew an, and had determined to stand forth publicly 
 themselves in the character of Dewan. Three days after- 
 wards certain "regulations for the settlement and collec- 
 tion of the revenue" were passed ; and from that time 
 the collection of the revenue became one of the most 
 
 ♦ Proceedings of the President and Select Committee, 16th August, 1769.— 
 IColebrooke's Digest— Supplement.^ T See ante, page 83. 
 
168 THE PERMANENT SETTLEMENT OF BENGAL. 
 
 important duties of the civil servants of the Company, 
 and the European " collector" started into life.* 
 
 The management of the revenue having now passed 
 into our own hands, a new system of landed tenures was 
 to be introduced. The Court of Directors had instructed 
 the local Government not to introduce any very violent 
 changes into the existing system — not suddenly " to de- 
 prive the Zemindars, &c., of their ancient privileges and 
 immunities." What those ancient privileges and immu- 
 nities were was not very clearly understood. Indeed, it 
 had puzzled the servants of the Company from the first 
 to satisfy themselves regarding the rightful ownership of 
 the land. There it was, so many square miles of noble 
 country, yielding all sorts of produce, and a revenue of 
 two millions ; but, in whom the rightful ownership of all 
 these broad heegahs were vested, we knew no more 
 than we did of the landed proprietorship of the moon. 
 Whether we have yet arrived at any very satisfactory 
 solution of the great question, may yet admit of a doubt; 
 but in those early days, even the information, on which 
 the profound discussions of the present enlightened period 
 are based, was wanting to our English officials. Whatever 
 they did in those days could be regarded only as an 
 experiment. The first experiment was not a successful 
 one. The land was let to the highest bidder, for a fixed 
 term of five years. The country was at this time in an 
 impoverished condition, for there had been a mighty 
 famine in the land, and the farmers not sufficiently con- 
 sidering the results of this great calamity, and eager to 
 obtain the benefits of the five years' proprietorship, were 
 too liberal in their ofiers, and they failed. A large 
 number of defaulters appeared. f The machinery of 
 
 ♦One of the regulations was, that "collectors," insteadof the present ap- 
 
 •" as the Company have determined to pellation of " supervisors." 
 
 stand forth as Dewan, the servants f '^^^^ remissions, on the five years' 
 
 employed in the management of the leases, amounted to more than 118 lakhs, 
 
 collections shall be henceforth styled and the balances, mostly, irrecoverable 
 
HASTINGS AND FRANCIS. 169 
 
 collection, too, was not found to work as well as had 
 been anticipated. The European collectors were inex- 
 perienced in business of this kind ; and it was found 
 necessary to replace them by a staff of native revenue- 
 officers, known as aumils, to be controlled by a per- 
 manent Committee of Revenue, meeting daily at the 
 Presidency, and by occasional Commissioners, selected 
 from the Company's covenanted servants, and " deputed 
 to visit such of the districts as may require a local inves- 
 tigation." At the same time, other subsidiary regulations 
 were passed tending to facilitate the collections by a 
 new distribution of the collectorates, and a better system 
 of subordination to central control. 
 
 The settlement had been made for five years, com- 
 mencing on the 10th of April, 1772. As the period of its 
 expiration approached, the future arrangements for the 
 management of the land-revenue became a subject of 
 warm discussion in the Council- chamber. It was a 
 period of sharp intestine strife. The Governor-General, 
 in those days, had no absolute power. He had merely 
 a vote in council, like his colleagues, and was not 
 seldom out-voted. It is not to be denied that, on all 
 questions of internal administration, Hastings knew more 
 than all the other counsellors together. But Francis 
 was in hot and heady opposition. He was a man of 
 energy and ability, with an uncommon opinion of his 
 own importance, a weak judgment, and a bad heart. On 
 the great question of landed tenures in India, he knew 
 little or nothing. What could a clerk fresh from the 
 War-office be expected to know on such a subject? But 
 he knew how to avail himself of other men's experience, 
 and John Shore was at his elbow. In the unhappy 
 dissensions which then agitated the settlement, Shore had 
 taken part against the Governor-General, and was not 
 
 at the end of the time, had reached the nearly two millions and a half of our 
 
 still larger figure of 129 lakhs — in all, money. 
 
170 THE PERMANENT SETTLEMENT OF BENGAL. 
 
 unwilling to supply his enemies with information which 
 might be turned to profitable account. He was one of 
 the best authorities on questions of revenue in the 
 country, and he wrote with fluency and precision. 
 Francis' revenue minutes were mainly the work of Shore. 
 The counsellor seasoned them when necessary with the 
 due amount of acrimony, and then served them up as 
 his own. When Shore fell sick, Francis, it is said, was 
 silent, and Hastings smiled grimly at the ludicrous dis- 
 comfiture of his foe. 
 
 There were two points to which Hastings had espe- 
 cially directed his attention, two objects which he was 
 eager to carry out in furtherance of his plans for an 
 improved system of revenue collection. He desired to 
 get together the largest possible amount of information 
 on the subject of landed tenures, and the actual capabi- 
 lities of the lands, before committing himself to a settle- 
 ment with any class of men, or fixing the rates of assess- 
 ment for any protracted period of time.* And he was 
 anxious, in any future arrangement, fairly to recognise 
 and protect the claims of the actual cultivators of {he 
 soil.t The Eyots under the existing system, not having 
 their contracts with the landholders clearly defined, were 
 subject to all kinds of arbitrary exactions. " It is the 
 Zemindar's interest," wrote Hastings, in his minute of 
 November 1, 1776, "to exact the greatest rent he can 
 
 * " In whatever manner it may be them against arbitrary exactions. This 
 
 hereafter determined to form the new is not to be done by proclamations or 
 
 settlement of the provinces after the edicts, nor by indulgences to the Ze- 
 
 expiration of the present leases, it will miudars and farmers. The former will 
 
 be equally necessary to be previously not be obeyed, unless enforced by regu- 
 
 funiished with the accurate states of lations so framed as to produce their 
 
 the real value of the lands, as the own effect without requiring the hand 
 
 grounds on wliich it is constructed." — of Government to interpose its support; 
 
 {^Minute of Mr. Hastings' Revenue Con- and the latter, though it may feel the 
 
 sultationSf Nov. 1, 1776. — Colebrooke's luxury of the Zemindars, or the rapa- 
 
 Digest.^ city of the farmers, will prove no relict 
 
 t " Many other points of inquiry to the cultivator, whose welfare ought 
 
 will also be useful, to secure to the to be the immediate and primary care 
 
 Rybts the perpetual and undisturbed of Government." — [Ibid.'] 
 possession of their lauds, and to guard 
 
ESTABLISHMENT OF THE REVENUE BOARD. 171 
 
 from the Ryots ; and it is as much against his interest to 
 fix the deeds by which the Ryots hold their lands and 
 pay their rents, to certain bounds and defences against 
 his own authority. The foundation of such a work 
 must be laid by Government itself; all that I would 
 propose is to collect materials for it." Nothing could 
 have been more reasonable than this ; but the office 
 which he proposed to establish for the collection of this 
 information was to be under his immediate control, and 
 this was in itself sufficient to secure the opposition of the 
 imported counsellors to any measure, wise and beneficent 
 in itself, though signed by a Prophet, and sealed by an 
 Angel of light.* 
 
 But the ink with which this important minute was 
 written was hardly dry, before Colonel Monson fell a 
 victim to the climate of Bengal. Hastings was now 
 Governor, indeed. Barwell was by his side, to preserve 
 the balance of numbers, and the Governor-General had 
 the casting vote. The proposed office was therefore 
 established. Three experienced covenanted servants of 
 the Company, Anderson, Croftes, and Bogle, Avere ap- 
 pointed to superintend it, and a bevy of native officers 
 were sent into the country, " for the sole and express pur- 
 pose of collecting such accounts and information as have 
 reference to the business of the office." 
 
 The establishment was formed at the end of 1776. In 
 the April of the following year the old leases expired ; 
 but the expected instructions from the Court of Directors 
 relative to the new settlement had not, at that time, 
 arrived. When they came at last, in July, it was found 
 that they extended no further than to a temporary 
 arrangement for the collection of the current revenue. 
 
 * Francis fell upon the plan, in detail, wrest from the Conncil the ordering, 
 
 opposing it with a string of frivolous management, and government of the 
 
 objections. Clavering denounced it in territorial acquisitions, 
 sweeping language as an attempt to 
 
172 THE PERMANENT SETTLEMENT OF BENGAL. 
 
 The lands were to be let for a year on the best terms 
 procurable from the Zemindars, or others, the preference 
 being given to the Zemindars ; if on the terms of the old 
 contract so much the better, if not, at any rent " judged 
 adequate to their real worth."* An important change was 
 introduced at this time into the mode of obtaining secu- 
 rity for the payment of the Government dues. The 
 security was henceforth to consist in the right of selling 
 the estates of defaulting holders, for the realisation of the 
 arrears. " In case of their falling in arrears," said the 
 terms of the settlement, " they shall be liable to be dis- 
 possessed, and their Zemindarees, or portions of them, 
 shall be sold to make up the deficiency."! Here we have 
 the germ of the Sale law, which has since been produc- 
 tive of such mighty results. 
 
 The same plan of annual settlemeiits was adopted for 
 the three following years. It was a season merely of 
 experiment and preparation. The system was declaredly 
 instituted *' for the temporary purpose of introducing 
 another more permanent mode by an easy and gradual 
 change, by which the effects of too sudden an innovation 
 might be evaded."J It was now determined to place the 
 revenue administration of the provinces upon a more 
 permanent footing. So, at the commencement of 1781, 
 certain " regulations," relating to the machinery of col- 
 lection, were proposed in the Supreme Council. By 
 these regulations the provisional councils were abolished, 
 and a metropolitan Board of Revenue was appointed. 
 The Board was to consist of four members, all experienced 
 revenue-officers, Anderson, Shore, Charters, and Croftes. 
 
 * They were let eventually, on an the amount agreed upon in the original 
 
 average of the collections of the three lease. 
 
 preceding years. It was not to be "f Plan of Settlement^ in Revenue Con- 
 
 doubted that the assessment, under sultations, July 16, 1777. 
 
 the quinquennial settlement, had been + Introduction to Eesolutions for the 
 
 too high. Indeed, at the end of it Revenue Administration, ^c, §*c., Fe- 
 
 there was scarcely an estate paying 6ri/arv 20, 1781. 
 
ANNUAL LEASES TO THE ZEMINDARS. 173 
 
 It was left to them to propose a new plan for the settle- 
 ment of the revenue. In little more than a month after 
 their appointment they made their report.* " The two 
 principal objects," it stated, ^' for consideration are, the 
 amount of the settlement, and the form of it." " The 
 amount of the assessment," it continued, " must depend 
 on the capacity of the different districts. In some, the 
 assessment will be found already too great ; others again, 
 and the greatest part, will admit of an increase." The 
 country had by this time recovered from the effects of 
 the great famine of 1770; and the natural fertility of 
 the soil had begun to proclaim itself The four experi- 
 mental years of annual assessment had sufficed to restore 
 the balance which had been disturbed by the great 
 drought. And the measures, of which I have spoken, 
 seem to have brought together a sufficiency of accurate 
 information to enable the Board to fix the amounts of 
 assessment, without any very signal violation of justice 
 in subordinate cases. Having thus sufficient materials 
 for the ascertainment of the proper amount of settlement, 
 they proceeded " to consider the mode of it." " The 
 mode," they said, " which appears to the Committee the 
 most convenient and secure for the Government, and the 
 best for the Ryots and country, is, in general, to leave 
 the lands with the Zemindars, making the settlement with 
 them." The preference was, as in former instances, to 
 be given to the Zemindars, and only in the event of their 
 unwillingness, or disability, were the contracts to be con- 
 cluded with others. "The considerations," it was added, 
 " which ought to preclude the Zemindars, are their gross 
 mismanagement, oppression, or incapacity." The leases 
 were to be for one year, renewable by all who had punc- 
 tually paid their rents. The proposed plan was adopted 
 by the supreme Government, with some slight modifica- 
 tion not affecting the principles upon which it was based, 
 
 ♦ March 29, 1781. 
 
174 THE PERMANENT SETTLEMENT OF BENGAL. 
 
 and it was duly carried into effect, and remained in force, 
 but with no very brilliant results, until the arrival of 
 Lord Cornwallis. The Zemindars proved to be no better 
 paymasters than the Adventurers under the settlement of 
 1772 ; the revenue fell offj and the home Government 
 were alarmed and discouraged by the unfavorable out- 
 turn of events. 
 
 That full success did not crown our initial efforts in 
 the department of Land-Revenue, must be truthfully 
 admitted. But the work was altogether new to the 
 Company's servants at this time, and they may be for- 
 given if they only carried to it the amount of experience 
 which, in the ordinary course of events, had gathered 
 round such barren antecedents. It would seem, how- 
 ever, that they addressed themselves to their new labors 
 with a sincere desire to respect the rights both of the 
 Zemindar and the Ryot, and to develop the industrial 
 energies of the country. What their efforts seemed to 
 want at this time, was a sustained and systematic cha- 
 racter ; and this was now to be imparted to them, and 
 in such a manner as to excite a controversy which sixty 
 years of continued discussion have not sufficed to allay. 
 
 Lord Cornwallis arrived in India in the autumn of 
 1786. Mr. Shore, then appointed — in no small mea- 
 sure through the instrumentality of Warren Hastings — a 
 member of the Supreme Council,* sailed from England in 
 the same vessel with the new Governor-General, and 
 soon cemented a close friendship with him. Hitherto 
 India had been governed by men who had entered the 
 country in early youth, and risen to high place, through 
 all the gradations of service, mihtary or civil. Cornwallis 
 was an English nobleman, who had commanded araiies 
 in America, and sat in English Parliaments, but who 
 
 ^ • Shore had originally been a par- been mistaken in the man, and to 
 tisan of Francis, but he lived to repent cement a close friendship with Hast- 
 of this, to acknowledge that he had ings. 
 
LORD CORNWALLIS. 17 
 
 knew little or nothing of India, the nature of its institu- 
 tions, and the character of its people. But he was neither 
 a hasty, nor a self-willed man. Equally willing to obey 
 the instructions of his superiors and to profit by the 
 advice of his inferiors, he formed no visionary projects 
 of his own. He did not rush into authoritative execution 
 of ill-digested measures, in defiance of the remonstrances 
 of the experienced men by whom he was surrounded. 
 Judged by the remarks which have been passed upon his 
 civil administration by very opposite writers, he would 
 appear to have been a presumptuous and self-opinionated 
 man ; but he was the very reverse of this. He adopted 
 a measure only when it was his deliberate conviction that 
 the balance of evidence was in its favor, and that it was 
 his duty to carry it into effect. 
 
 As far as all predilections or prejudices for or against 
 any particular system of revenue administration are con- 
 cerned, it may be safely said, that when Cornwallis 
 quitted England, ^is mind was a blank?,j It is not to his 
 discredit to afiirm, that he knew nothing about the land- 
 revenue of Bengal and Behar. But the best revenue- 
 officer in India was his fellow-passenger on board the 
 Swallow ; and it may be presumed that, from his con- 
 versation with Shore, he derived at least some general 
 ideas of a subject of such pressing importance. His first 
 lessons in Indian revenue were, doubtless, learnt during 
 his passage to Bengal. But specific instructions had 
 been sent to him by the Court of Directors, and he was 
 not a man to toss them aside with haughty unconcern. 
 
 The Court of Directors had regarded with disapproba- 
 tion the recent proceedings of the Indian Government in 
 the Revenue department. They had seen that the mea- 
 sures adopted had not been successful ; that the annual 
 settlement had left the contractors, whether Zemindars or 
 farmers, heavily in arrears, and that whilst the Govern- 
 ment had been great losers by the system, it had bene- 
 
176 THE PERMANENT SETTLEMENT OF BENGAL. 
 
 fited no class of the community. They therefore laid 
 down as a fixed principle, for the future guidance of their 
 executive, that a moderate permanent assessment would 
 be more beneficial, both to the State and to the people, 
 than a heavy fluctuating one. "A moderate assessment, 
 regularly and punctually collected," they wrote, " unites 
 the considerations of our interests with the happiness of 
 the natives, and security of the landholders, more ration- 
 • ally than any imperfect collection of an exaggerated 
 jumma (assessment), to be enforced with severity and 
 vexation." The amount of the assessment was to be 
 determined by the experience of the four preceding 
 years, but not to be fixed without reference to the home 
 Government ; and, although it was intended by the 
 Directors that the assessment so determined should be 
 fixed in perpetuity, it was deemed expedient, at this 
 time, for special reasons, to introduce it by a settlement 
 instituted, in the first instance, for ten years. They 
 expressly declared their intentions, that the contract 
 should be made with the Zemindar — that " the humane 
 intention of the Legislature towards the native land- 
 holder should be strictly fulfilled." 
 
 Such was the tenor of the instructions written to the 
 Governor-General in Council, in April, 1786. Neither 
 fthe Zemindaree settlement, simply as such, nor the per- 
 petual Zemindaree settlement, was the growth of his 
 ^own imagination. He found that the idea had taken 
 root in Leadenhall-street, and when he arrived in India 
 he found that some of the most intelligent and expe- 
 rienced revenue-officers in the country were in favor of 
 the latter — nearly all in favor of the former. All men 
 seemed to have made up their minds that the claims of 
 the Zemindars, as proprietors of the soil, should be amply 
 recognised ; and many were of opinion that no eflfectual 
 settlement — a settlement advantageous to the State, to 
 the landholder, and to the actual cultivator — could be 
 
MR. LAW. 177 
 
 completed without embracing a permanency of tenure. 
 But so little disposed was Lord Cornwallis to complete 
 such a settlement " at once," that he hesitated even to 
 enter upon the decennial settlement recommended by the 
 Court as an initial measure. He did not think that the 
 information before the Government warranted such a 
 measure ; and he began his career as a civil adminis- 
 trator with a recurrence to the system of annual leases. 
 And whilst these annual leases were in operation, no 
 effort to increase the store of available information was 
 spared by the Governor-General and his colleagues. All 
 the most experienced revenue-officers were encouraged 
 to give their opinions, and other sources of information 
 were resorted to without stint. 
 
 A vast body of information was thus collected — " in- 
 formation" declared in the celebrated " Fifth Keport" to 
 be ^' too voluminous to lay before the House." Foremost 
 amongst those who advocated a perpetual settlement to 
 be made with the Zemindars, was Mr. Thomas Law,* 
 Collector of Behar, and afterwards a member of the 
 Council of Revenue. He had the strongest possible 
 faith in the virtue of a permanent Zemindarree settle- 
 ment, and he did not hesitate to lay his plans before the 
 Government, through the ordinary channel of the Board 
 of Revenue, with an overwhelming array of argument 
 in their support. Vigorously contrasting, in a series of 
 juxta-posed paragraphs, the farming and the permanent 
 system, he made out a strong case in favor of the latter. 
 " Every year (under the permanent system)," he wrote, 
 "increases confidence by length of possession. Every 
 man will lay out money in permanent structures, as such 
 works enhance the value of his estate, and promise fu« 
 ture benefit. If a scarcity happens, the landholders will 
 forego demands, and encourage cultivation to preserve 
 
 ♦ Mr. Law was a brother of tlie late, and uncle of the present Lord Ellen- 
 borough. 
 
178 THE PERMANENT SETTLEMENT OF BENGAL. 
 
 their tenants, who become a part of their necessary pro- 
 perty. The increasing independence will raise a class of 
 native gentlemen proprietors, who will gradually have 
 established themselves in good houses, with the various 
 comforts of life." In short, he wrote, after a long array 
 of detailed blessings, "The mocurrery (permanent) 
 system founds on a permanent basis the future secu- 
 rity, prosperity, and happiness of the natives, and ensures 
 stability. A long, and painful observation," he added, 
 '^ of the evils of the farming system, which have dwindled 
 great families into the commonalty, diminished rich cul- 
 tivation, and exhausted the country ; and a subsequent 
 war, which has not only drained the resources of public 
 credit, but the hoards of individuals, have induced me to 
 reflect upon the subject."* 
 
 Nor was it only the expression of speculative opinions 
 which Mr. Law forwarded to Government. He declared 
 that already, in -the districts of which he had the fiscal 
 management, the expectation of the permanent settlement 
 had produced the happiest results. He declared that 
 these results were developing themselves in an increase 
 of general confidence, and a corresponding increase of 
 revenue. Men of ancient family, who had been ruined 
 by our assumption of the Dewanee, who had mortgaged 
 all their available property, and were pining under the 
 aggravating contrast of their present penury with their 
 past splendor, now began again to breathe an atmo- 
 sphere of hope.t Other classes of the community, de- 
 
 • Mr. Law to the President and Mem- command of troops would naturally be 
 
 hers of the Revenue Board, Oct. 4, 1778. excluded from us by conquerors. Under 
 
 f " I cannot refrain," said Mr. Law, adventuring farmers they could not sub- 
 in a letter to the Board of Revenue, mit to extortion and insult, or expose 
 " from communicating the pathetic ex- themselves to caprice for temporary 
 pressions of the descendant of a great tenures. Look, sir, into our houses; 
 family. 'Our fathers,' said he, 'for ad- our widowed mothers, reduced to 
 hering to the Company's arms, obtained penury, in vain call upon us who 
 pensions and jagheers; and they fondly have mortgaged almost every valuable 
 imagined they had l)enefited their pos- in their support; our sisters pine in 
 terity, by introducing a mild adminis- celibacy for want of portions, and men 
 tration in lieu of feudal anarchy; they of property equal to tlieir rank; when 
 foresaw not that offices of state and we look forward, future misery adds 
 
ARGUMENTS OF MR. LAW. 179 
 
 pressed and impoverished by our previous operations, 
 were, he represented, eager for the introduction of the 
 permanent system, which was to restore them to their 
 lost property. The bankers were petitioning for it. 
 Under the old system, they said, they had no security 
 for the recovery of their advances to the agriculturists, 
 but that if the permanent system were introduced, they 
 " would be greatly encouraged, and could confidently 
 advance loans of money to the under-renters and Ryots," 
 and " by this means," they added, " two advantages are 
 apparent ; first, the Eyots will daily exert themselves in 
 improving the cultivation, and will become more capable 
 and responsible, while the bankers will have an eye to 
 the produce ; and secondl}^, if any mocurreydar (perma- 
 nent landholder) should happen to die, the accounts may 
 be kept open with his successor, and the debts will be 
 recovered without any risk whatever." All these things 
 were 'duly pressed upon the Revenue Board by Mr. 
 Law, until at last, overwhelmed by the formidable array 
 of facts and arguments poured forth by the worthy col- 
 lector of Behar, the President of the Board (Mr. Shore) 
 requested him to afibrd certain specific information re- 
 quired at the time, " without reverting to the compara- 
 tive advantages of the plan over any other system, as I 
 see no reason to doubt them.''* 
 
 But althoucrh Thomas Law was of all the servants of 
 the Company at this time the stoutest advocate of the 
 permanent system, he was by no means the only one. 
 
 poignancy to present want, and the from invasion, thus making the snpe- 
 retrospect of past splendor aggravates rior policy and discipline which sub- 
 all. But we have now a hope upon the dued us the sources of our happiness.' 
 mocurrery (permanent) plan, that some The look, the manner of the speaker," 
 may be favored with grants, and those added Mr. Law, "cannot be conveyed; 
 who have jewels or plate remaining much, therefore, is lost; yet I trust that 
 from the wrecks of their family may even this faint participation will l>e 
 purchase villages and at length settle, grateful to sensibility and reason."— 
 by degrees to become aflauent — our gra- [Mr. Law to the Board of Revenue, Nov. 
 titude daily increasing to the British 26, 1788.] 
 
 Government, who at once grant us * Mr. Shore to Mr. Law, Jan. 23, 
 
 places of tranquillity, and secure us 1789. 
 
 n2 
 
180 THE PERMANENT SETTLEMENT OF BENGAL. 
 
 Among others, Mr. Brook, collector of Shahabad, came 
 forward, with his unsought testimony, earnest and em- 
 phatic, in support of the proposed measure. " My 
 earnest desire," he wrote to the Board of Revenue, 
 " to see so beneficial a measure as a permanent quit- 
 rent carried into execution, has induced me to trouble 
 you with this public expression of my sentiments of 
 Mr. Law's benevolent plan — a plan which, with a few 
 subsidiary emendations, will ensure the reUef of anxious 
 millions, diffuse universal satisfaction through every de- 
 nomination of landholders, and extend the fame of our 
 justice through the remotest kingdoms of the East." 
 
 Of all the information which flowed in from the pro- 
 vincial revenue-oflicers, John Shore was the recipient. 
 He was in immediate communication with the Governor- 
 General, as member of the Supreme Council and chief 
 of the Revenue Board, and to him had been entrusted 
 the work of preparing the details of the new settlement. 
 He labored at it, in his own words, " like a galley- 
 slave." And in the summer of 1789 he was enabled to 
 report that the arduous task which had been assigned 
 to him, was complete. A masterly minute, dated the 
 18th of June, recorded his views on the subject of the 
 proprietary rights of the Zemindars, and took a compre- 
 hensive survey of the whole civil administration of the 
 Company's territories in Bengal. The plan now to be 
 carried into effect was a decennial Zemindarree settle- 
 ment. This had been suggested to the Governor-General^ 
 on his departure from England, three years before. But 
 the measure had, as has been seen, been delayed for 
 want of sufficient information to enable the Government 
 to give it detailed effect. During the interval, informa- 
 tion had been diligently sought and carefully collected. 
 The home authorities had rebuked Hastings nearly ten 
 years before for hesitating to mature a system of land--' 
 revenue on the ground of insufficient information. And 
 
OPINIONS OF THE CIVIL SERVICE. 181 
 
 now the ablest revenue-officer in the country reported 
 that the subject was exhausted, and that it was useless 
 further to discuss a matter which had been removed 
 beyond the regions of doubt. From all quarters came 
 assurances that the interests of the country could only be 
 promoted by a Zemindarree settlement. A remarkable 
 unanimity prevailed, upon this point, among all the civil 
 servants of the Company ; and the opinion which was so 
 generally expressed in India was shared by the Directors 
 at home. 
 
 I have never been able to understand how, in the 
 knowledge of such simple facts as these, it could ever be 
 asserted that the Zemindarree settlement was an idea 
 hastily conceived by Lord Cornwallis — the aristocratic 
 plan of an aristocratic statesman* — an ignorant Eng- 
 lishism^ in short, utterly unsuited to the country in 
 which it was desicfned to make it strike root. The 
 measure, whether good or bad, was not one of aristo- 
 cratic conception, English importation, or precipitate 
 execution. It was emphatically the work of the Com- 
 pany's civil servants — members of the middle classes, 
 who had come out to India in their boyhood — and they 
 had been incubating it for a quarter of a century. It 
 had nothing whatever to do with the personal character 
 of Lord Cornwallis. If Mr. Macpherson, who had been 
 a ship's husband, had remained at the head of the Go- 
 vernment, the settlement would still have been com- 
 pleted with the aristocratic Zemindars. 
 
 The terms of the decennial settlement were an- 
 nounced at the close of 1789 ; and it was then notified 
 to the proprietors, with whom the settlement had been 
 made, that at the expiration of the ten years the assess- 
 ment would be continued, and " remain unalterable for 
 
 * Mr. Mill says: " F'ull of the aristo- the Government avowed his intention 
 cratical ideas of modern Europe, the of establishing an aristocracy upon the 
 Aristocratical person now at the head of European model." 
 
182 THE PERMANENT SETTLEMENT OF BENGAL. 
 
 ever," provided that such continuance should meet with 
 the approbation of the Court of Directors. It is con- 
 tended that this was a mistake. Shore, who had been 
 the framer of the Zemindarree settlement, protested 
 against its hasty perpetuation. He did not urge that it 
 might not be rendered permanent; but that, such a 
 measure would bo premature under the circumstances 
 then existing. Law, on the other hand, had from the 
 first declared in favor of its permanency, arguing that, 
 under a perpetual settlement, every year increased the 
 interest of the holder in the prosperity of his estate, 
 whereas, under an arrangement for a term of years, as 
 every year brought him nearer to the close of it, and 
 therefore nearer to a chance of being dispossessed, his 
 interest naturally declined, and his efforts diminished. 
 Cornwallis recognised the force of this argument. But 
 other motives than these impelled him to recommend the 
 perpetuation of the settlement. He would have yielded 
 to Shore's weighty reasoning, but he feared that such a 
 concession would be fatal to the entire project. If he or 
 his colleague could have continued to watch the opera- 
 tion of the settlement during the ten years of probation, 
 and been supreme at their close, he would have been 
 contented to give a merely experimental character to the 
 new settlement. But he had no guarantee that the pre- 
 judices of his successor might not reverse the entire 
 scheme. He was thoroughly in earnest about it himself. 
 He believed that a great boon had been conferred on the 
 people of Bengal, and that every year would see an in- 
 crease in the prosperity of the country and the happiness 
 of the people. Anxious to secure to them what he re- 
 garded as so mighty a blessing, he recommended to the 
 Court of Directors that the settlement should be fixed 
 beyond the reach of reversal. And it was so fixed. 
 
 But if, in the month of September, 1789, Cornwallis 
 hastily announced his intention, with the permission of 
 
PROMULGATION OF THE PERMANENT SETTLEMENT. 183 
 
 the Court of Directors, to render the settlement irre- 
 versible, that permission was not hastily accorded. It 
 was not until September, 1792, three years after the first 
 promulgation of the terms of the decennial settlement, 
 with the conditional promise of its perpetual continuance, 
 that the Court of Directors completed their reply to the 
 reference of the Governor-General. The answer, when 
 it came, was one of concurrence and approbation. It had 
 been drawn up, after long consideration and much dis- 
 cussion, and was mainly, I believe, the work of the King's 
 Ministers — Pitt and Dundas, aided by Mr. Charles Grant.* 
 In the spring of the following year these instructions 
 reached Bengal, and on the 22nd of March a proclama- 
 tion was issued, setting forth that " the Marquis Corn- 
 wallis. Knight of the most Noble Order of the Garter, 
 Governor-General in Council, now notifies to all Ze- 
 mindars, independent Talookdars, and other actual pro- 
 prietors of land in the provinces of Bengal, Behar, and 
 Orissa, that he has been empowered by the Honorable 
 Court of Directors for the affairs of the East India Com- 
 pany, to declare thejumma, which has been or may be 
 assessed upon their lands under the regulations above 
 mentioned, fixed for ever. The Governor-General in 
 Council accordingly declares to the Zemindars, inde- 
 pendent Talookdars, and other actual proprietors of land, 
 with or on behalf of whom a settlement has been com- 
 pleted, that at the expiration of the term of the settle- 
 tnent, no alteration will be made in the assessment which 
 they have respectively engaged to pay, but that they 
 and their heirs and lawful successors will be allowed to 
 hold their estates at such assessment for ever." 
 
 * I gather this from a letter written the plan of a report, prepared by the 
 by Mr. Beaufoy, secretary to the Board secretary, from the original records." 
 of Control, to Sir G. Barlow. "The And he adds in a marginal note: "Par- 
 revenue letter of the last year," he ticnlar parts of the letter are said to 
 writes, " was considered as the sequel have been written by Mr. Dundas, and 
 of that which confirmed the decennial some by Mr. C. Grant."— [3/5. Corre- 
 settlement, and which was written apondence.'] 
 (principally, I believe, by Mr. Pitt) on 
 
184 THE PERMANENT SETTLEMENT OF BENGAL. 
 
 Such is the history of the permanent Zemindarree 
 settlement. It passed into law nearly seven years after 
 Lord Cornwallis descended from the quarter-deck of the 
 Swallow. It was sanctioned by the Court of Directors 
 and the Board of Control after at least two years of con- 
 sideration. It was approved, as a Zemindarree settle- 
 ment, by all the first revenue-officers in the country, and 
 as a permanent settlement by many of them. It was 
 based upon information acquired during twenty-eight 
 years of diligent inquiry. And yet it has been said that 
 Lord Cornwallis, an aristocratic personage, saturated 
 with aristocratic English ideas, hastily and unadvisedly 
 completed in perpetuity a settlement with the wrong 
 people. 
 
 I come now to speak of the results of this Bengal 
 settlement. It is a large subject fearfully overloaded 
 with controversy, and it is my desire in this work rather 
 to state facts than to deliver opinions. No measure that 
 ever emanated fi:om the Anglo-Indian Government has 
 been so warmly extolled on the one side, and so fiercely 
 assailed on the other. Clouds of witnesses to be gathered 
 from among the ablest revenue-officers of the Company, 
 may be cited on either side of the controversy; and 
 there is nothing in history which a one-sided writer, 
 not unwilling to make foul use of the materials within 
 his reach, may so easily color according to the com- 
 plexion of his own mind. Thus it has been asserted 
 that the utter failure of the experiment was palpable 
 within ten years of its initiation. But it was in the cold 
 weather of 1801-1802 that Sir John (then Captain) 
 Malcolm, who, in the capacity of Private Secretary, was 
 in attendance upon Lord Wellesley, then travelling 
 through Bengal, wrote to Mr. Barlow : '* We have, 
 3ince you left us, passed through one of the finest and 
 most highly cultivated tracts of country in the world. 
 What adds to my pleasure in contemplating these scenes. 
 
THE SALE LAW. 185 
 
 is to hear every man I ask tell how jungles have been 
 cleared, and waste lands brought under cultivation. I 
 cannot but envy your feelings on this subject. I confess, 
 before I travelled through these provinces, I was not 
 perfectly reconciled to your system. I have now ob- 
 served its effects, and must ever think it one of the most 
 wise and benevolent plans that ever was conceived by a 
 Government to render its subjects rich and comfortable. 
 We can only hope that a sense of gratitude will be the 
 primary feeling in the breasts of those who benefit by 
 this admirable system, and that they will repay the State 
 for the care it takes of their interests by a firm and last- 
 ing attachment."* 
 
 It was one of the main objects of the Permanent Settle- 
 ment to give the landholder such a beneficial interest in 
 the improvements of the land as would induce him to 
 venture upon this reclamation of the jungle. The theory 
 was excellent, and so, up to a certain point, was the 
 result. But there were errors of detail which threatened 
 to vitiate the broad and beneficent principle. The Go- 
 vernment reserved to itself the right of selling the estates 
 of defaulting Zemindars for arrears of revenue, and|it is 
 not to be doubted that, in the first instance, whilst the 
 authority of the Zemindar over the Ryot was insufficient 
 to enable him to obtain his dues, the power of the State 
 over him was exercised in too summary a mannerj The 
 period of grace allowed to the landholders was too brief. 
 The revenue-officers were empowered at any time in the 
 course of the year to bring the lands of defaulting Ze- 
 mindars to auction if the monthly instalment were not 
 paid. And under the operation of this law a large 
 number of estates were put up to sale. Some of the 
 oldest and most respectable families in Bengal were, it is 
 said, to be found in the list of defaulters. It seqmed, 
 
 * MS. Correspondence, quoted bi/ me in the Calcutta Revieto. 
 
186 THE PERMANENT SETTLEMENT OF BENGAL. 
 
 indeed, that the old aristocracy of the country was about 
 to be speedily extinguished.* 
 
 The grievance was a palpable one, and Government 
 was not unwilling to redress it. Accordingly, in 1799, a 
 regulation! was passed, decreeing that sales of land for 
 arrears of revenue should not take place until the end of 
 each year. As the Zemindar was invested, at the same 
 time, with the power of summary distraint over the goods 
 of the defaulting Ryot, he was thus enabled to realise his 
 own dues before he was called upon to give strict account 
 to the Government ; and it was the opinion of the larger 
 number of experienced revenue-officers that he was now 
 sufficiently protected. The Zemindars had alleged that 
 the dilatory payments, or the actual non-payments of the 
 cultivators, had been the occasion of their default ; but 
 under the new regulation they could not any longer 
 put forward this extenuating plea. The whole question 
 N> was sifted by Government. A series of interrogatories 
 was circulated among the collectors, and their collective 
 answers exhibit the result of the Zemindarree settlement 
 during the first ten years of its operation. Among the 
 most important questions submitted to the revenue- 
 officers was this : " Are the existing regulations calcu- 
 lated to enable Zemindars to obtain payments from the 
 Ryots without affording them ready means of oppres- 
 sion ?" J Several collectors stated in reply, without quali- 
 fication, that the regulations answered every purpose — 
 
 * I give this as the received version of Birbhum makes answer, that " the 
 of the story; but it is my belief that existing regulations are most favor- 
 " the old aristocracy" had nearly dis- able for realising the rents from the 
 appeared before 1 793. under-farmers and Ryots, and in general 
 t Act VII., 1799. are acknowledged to be so by the Ze- 
 X A few of these answers may be mindars, and other description of land- 
 briefly given. Mr. Ricketts of Tirhoot holders." Mr. Smith of Dinagepore 
 replies, that " the regulations are well curtly answers : " I conceive tliat they 
 adapted for the purposes intended." are." Mr. Wright of Rungpore says: 
 Mr. Elphinstone of Sarun says: "The "The regulations which have been 
 regulations are perfectly well calculated issued for the benefit of the landholders 
 for the purposes intended." Mr. Cowell have answered the purposes intended." 
 
THE ZEMINDAR AND THE RYOT. 187 
 
 that the Zemindar had the power of obtaining punctual 
 payment of his rents, and had not the power of oppress- 
 ing the Ryots. Several stated that the Zemindar had 
 the power of obtaining his rents, but that the system did 
 tend to the oppression of the Ryots. A few stated, on 
 the other hand, that the Regulations enabled the Ryot 
 to cheat the Zemindar ; and Sir Henry Strachey stated 
 outright that there was not a Zemindar left in Bengal. 
 
 |Now, the trutli appears to have been this. Immaculate 
 Ryots do not grow in Bengal any more than unmaculate 
 Zemindars. As there was tyranny on the one hand, 
 there was fraud on the other. But the balance of wrong- 
 doing must have been greatly on the side of the Zemin- 
 dar. The ignorant husbandman was no match for the 
 landed proprietor — still less was he a match for the 
 middle-man or agenfTj Cunning he may have been — 
 dishonest he may have been ; but he was weak and 
 cowardly too, and had little heart to systematise fraud, 
 and to fight it out boldly with his superiors. He paid 
 his rents when he could. He generally paid them, 
 indeed, when there was no attempt to overreach hun ; 
 
 Mr. Seton of Kishnaghur replies: "The am of opinion that, since the Regula- 
 
 powers vested by the regulations in the tion VII. of 1799 has been generally 
 
 Zemindars, and other proprietors and known and enforced in the Mofussil, 
 
 farmers, holding lands immediately of the Zemindars have been very well able 
 
 Government, are fully adequate to en- to realise their rents." " Lands," says 
 
 able them to collect their rents from Mr. Grant, collector of Midnapore, 
 
 their under-farmers and Ryots." Mr. "being now exempted from sale for the 
 
 Le Gros of My men sing answers in recovery of arrears of revenue till the 
 
 almost the same words: "The existing end of the year, it appears to me much 
 
 regulations are perfectly well calculated less necessary to expedite the sale of 
 
 for enabling Zemindars and other pro- distrained property than it was before 
 
 prietors of land, and farmers of land Regulation VII. of 1799 was issued, 
 
 holding their farms immediately of Go- when they were liable to be sold every 
 
 vernment, to realise their rents from month. ... I have frequently had 
 
 their under-farmers and Ryots." Mr. occasion to state to the Board that, as 
 
 Hayes of Murshedabad emphatically far as my experience goes, I have found 
 
 declares that the " Zemindars, and that the common Kyots, or the lowest 
 
 other descriptions of landholders, are tenants, who are the cultivators of the 
 
 unanimous in acknowledging that the soil, pay their revenues with great 
 
 existing regulations, for enabling them punctuality. . . . They are much 
 
 to realise their rents from the under- more apt to submit tamely to exaction, 
 
 farmers and Ryots, are well calculated than to hazard a contest with a Ze- 
 
 for the purposes intended;" and the mindar; and they pay a kist or two in 
 
 Collector of Midnapore commences a advance much oftener than they fall in 
 
 long able minute with the words: "I arrear." 
 
 s/ 
 
188 THE PERMANENT SETTLEMENT OF BENGAL. 
 
 but when he fell into arrears, and the war began, he did 
 all that he could, in his weakness, with fraud and lying 
 and the collusion of his friends, to outwit his antao-onist. 
 He got the start, when he could, of his enemy, carried 
 off all his moveables to a neighbour's house, cut his 
 standing crops in the night time, concealed them by the 
 connivance of his friends, and met the distraining party 
 with no worldly goods in his possession, but the rag 
 about his middle, and a few earthenware pots in his 
 house. The Zemindars certainly did complain that in 
 this way the weapon of distraint became a telum imhelle 
 in their hands ; that they had great difficulty in obtaining 
 the assistance of the police — that, if a small party went 
 to distrain, they were beaten ; and that, if a large party 
 went, the expense was so heavy, that it was better not 
 to distrain at all ; and that, as to suing the defaulter in 
 our law courts, the process was so tedious, and the cost 
 of maintaining the defendant in prison so onerous, that 
 they seldom gained anything but a heavy loss by the 
 proceeding. 
 
 jSuch was the plaint of the Zemindars. I do not 
 doubt that such things happened. But the power of the 
 Zemindar to oppress the Ryot must have been far greater 
 than that of the Ej'ot to outwit the ZemindarTj The 
 husbandman was generally better disposed to submit to 
 imposition than to battle it out with the proprietor, or 
 the agent, who was sure to be a greater tyrant than his 
 master. The Eyot had not much to lose, it is true ; and 
 it is argued that the constitutional indolence of the native 
 character made him look upon mere loss of liberty as no 
 evil, and that he was content to exist in gaol at the ex- 
 pense of his oppressor. But indolent and debased as he 
 may have been, he was not utterly hardened and reck- 
 less. He could not meet with indifference a calamity 
 that severed all family ties, and left wife and children at 
 the mercy of the spoiler, and exposed. to all the accidents 
 
SUFFERINGS OF THE RYOT. 189 
 
 of life. He had, too, whatever he may have thought of 
 the immunities of gaol-hfe, a horror of the police — a 
 horror of the long journey to the justice-seat — and of a 
 thousand vaguely apprehended evils, to which even the 
 natural litigiousness of his character could not fortify 
 him to look forward with complacency. VThe balance, ^ 
 indeed, was greatly against him, and he had sense enough 
 to know it. He seldom invited a contest, which he 
 knew must end in his ruin. It was better, he thought, 
 to compromise with fate, and bear the lesser evil of the 
 two/]] So he acceded in patience to the extortionate de- 
 mands made upon him, when he could ; when he could 
 not, the Regulations took their course. And how de- 
 structive that course was, may be gathered from the evi- 
 dence of Mr. Rees, the collector of Purneah, who speaks 
 of "repeated instances of families, nay whole villages, 
 reduced to penury and distress by their (the middle-men's 
 and agents') oppressive use of that power of distraint, 
 which is vested in them with equal authority as in the 
 actual proprietor of the soil." It was not till ten years ]%^ ^ 
 afterwards that the Zemindar was prohibited from seizing 
 even the agricultural implements and farm cattle of the 
 Ryot : it was not till ten years afterwards that he was 
 compelled to give due notice of his intention to distrain 
 before coming down, with one fell swoop, upon all the 
 property of his debtor.* 
 
 If, then, the large estates, under the Permanent Settle- 
 ment, continued to fall to pieces, and the wealthy Zemin- 
 dars were still stripped of their lands, it would hardly 
 appear that the cause of this decadence of the old aris- 
 tocracy is to be found in the fact that " Government 
 had given to themselves the benefit of summary process 
 with regard to the Zemindars, but had left the Zemin- 
 dars to the tedious progress through all the technical 
 forms of the courts in extracting payment from the 
 
 • Author in the Calcutta Review. . 
 
190 THE PERMANENT SETTLEMENT OF BENGAL. 
 
 llyots."* Nor was it that the assessment itself was 
 excessive. Under able and economical manaorement the 
 estates yielded readily the required revenue. . But the 
 V management, in most instances, was neither able nor 
 economical. The Zemindars were often indolent and 
 extravagant; they mismanaged their estates, left them 
 to the superintendence of underlings ; and were fatally 
 given to ruinous litigation. These causes combined to 
 stimulate the Sale Act into unhealthy excited action ; and 
 many of the families (old or new) whom we found in pos- 
 session of the land, were doubtless brought to ruin by 
 them.f Property has undergone a great revolution, 
 since the Regulations of 1793 brought the Zemindars of 
 Bengal dkectly into the hands of the English collector. 
 Mr. Law was of opinion that the Permanent Settlement 
 would ^' raise a class of native gentlemen proprietors, 
 who would establish themselves in good houses, wish 
 the various comforts of life ;"J and it certainly did raise 
 a class of native proprietors — of mushroom gentlemen — 
 who built up their prosperity upon the ruins of others 
 more unfortunate or improvident than themselves. 
 
 The Bengal officials admitted this — but they doubted 
 whether the change was to be greatly deplored. I think 
 that they treated the matter of this,^_^at revolution in a 
 very cool and off-hand manner, and^^by no means share 
 in the satisfaction expressed by some of them at the 
 
 ♦ MUrs History of India. delay of an adequate remedy to hasti- 
 t A very able writer on Indian ness. jBut, in a far greater number of 
 affairs, speaking of the revolution of instances, the change of circumstances ! 
 property in India, states the causes very would be owing to the culpable indiffer- • 
 truthfully and forcibly, in the following ence, or the reckless extortion of the 
 jpassage : " A minute inquiry into the landlords ; to the rack-rent of evil ad- . 
 ^ fcauses which had transferred landed visers or agents; to a spirit of litiga- ' 
 property from the older families to the tion which is unrivalled in the forensic \ 
 traders and merchants, who owe their annals of Europe, and to a forgetfulness 
 rise to the Company, might in a very of the memorable aphorism that the 
 few instances certainly prove that the immutable laws of Providence have de- 
 transfer had been occasioned by causes creed vexation to violence, and poverty 
 beyond the control of the proprietor; to rapine." — [Letters on tlie Government 
 by lamine, by drought, by inundation, of Jiidia. — Morning Cfironicley March^ 
 by the over-assessment of a zealous 1853.] 
 revenue- officer, by the absence or the % See ante, page 178. 
 
 ^ 
 
DISMEMBERMENT OF LARGE ESTATES. 191 
 
 thought that the extinction of the large Zemindarries, 
 however much to be regretted as affecting the individual 
 proprietor, would probably be beneficial to the country 
 at large, from the estate falling into the possession of 
 more able and economic managers. But I am in- 
 clined to believe that the evils of this revolution have 
 been considerably over-stated. I Indeed, it is remarkable 
 that the Permanent Settlement is charged with two 
 oiFences of an antagonistic and wholly irreconcileable 
 character. It is said, on the one hand, that the settle- 
 ment was completed with men who had no title to the 
 privileges it accorded to them ; and on the other, that it 
 has stripped the ancient gentry of Bengal of privileges 
 inherited from remote ancestral generations. One of 
 these may be the rule ; the other, the exception. They 
 cannot both be the rule. 
 
 It is not, however, to be denied, even by those who 
 recognise nothing but evil in the Regulations of 1793, 
 that the cruel operation of the Sale Law is rather an acci- 
 dent of the Past than of the Present.* In spite of the 
 publicity given to the new Regulations, the Zemindars 
 were at first but imperfectly acquainted with them. 
 They had been accustomed to personal coercion, but not 
 to the sale of their lands ; and they may, in the first in- 
 stance, have believed that the threat would not be car- 
 
 * Mr. Campbell, one of the most missions are occasionally made on the 
 strenuous as he is one of the ablest ground of natural calamities, but they 
 opponents of the Permanent Settlement, are small in amount. The regularly 
 makes candid admission of this. "The settled estates of 1848-49 bore a rent 
 general view," he says, " of the present of 3,45,98,603 rupees, of which upwards 
 working of the Permanent Settlement, of 90 per cent, was realised within the 
 shown by the last reports, proves that year, along with 87 per cent, of the last 
 the Bengalees now understanding our year's balance, showing that the greater 
 system, and the bad estates having portion of the 10 per cent, current 
 fallen to Government, the revenue is Italance is the portion due at the end of 
 realised with considerable punctuality, the year, and collected in the next year. 
 A good many sales for arrears still take A little more than 1 per cent, was re- 
 place, but they are principally of small mitted or transferre4 to defaulters' 
 estates. Some, probably, are per- register. . . Of the total demand on 
 mitted to go to the hammer by those account of land-revenue, the whole is 
 wishing to dispose of them, and to give eventually realised within 1 to 1^ per 
 a good title to the purchasers. Re- cent." — {CampbelPs Modem India, \S52.'\ 
 
192 THE PERMANENT SETTLEMENT OF BENGAL. 
 
 ried into effect. It was often the interest of the accent to 
 keep the Zemindar himself in ignorance of the danger 
 which threatened his estate, and he awoke perhaps, from 
 the false security in which he had been lulled, only to 
 find himself stripped of his lands, and his agent, under 
 cover of some man of straw, in actual possession of a 
 large portion of the dismembered estate. Bat when 
 the proceedings of the collector's office became better 
 understood, and the larger and more unmanageable 
 estates fell to pieces, the operation of the Sale Law lost 
 all its severity. The assessment, originally light, has be- 
 come lighter by the improvement of the land, and the 
 cases of default are few. The unrealised balance every 
 year does not exceed one and a half per cent, on the en- 
 tire revenue of the land under assessment. 
 
 But there are still more important considerations than 
 the transfer of these proprietary rights. It is time that I 
 should say something of the effect of the measure on 
 the general happiness of the people. When, in 1802, 
 Malcolm wrote that the visible results of the settlement 
 were of the most satisfactory description, he only wrote 
 what now, fifty years aftenvards, every traveller through 
 sj' Bengal would cheerfiilly endorse. ^The aspect of the 
 country, under the operation of the Perpetual Settle- 
 ment, seems to give the lie to the assertion that the 
 people are ground down and depressed. There is hardly 
 a rood of land not under cultivation. The jungle has 
 entirely disappeared. '^ A man," says a recent writer, 
 " may go for miles in any direction, east and north of 
 the metropolis, and see plains succeeding to plains, 
 where there is not one higah of unproductive soil, and 
 where many thousands of higahs give their return of two 
 crops in the year, without irrigation, and without that 
 careful labor which seems indispensable, in the Upper 
 Provinces, to successfiil agriculture. More new bazaars 
 will be found to have been established within the last 
 
FLOURISHING STATE OF BENGAL. 193 
 
 thirty years than old bazaars to have decayed. The 
 circulation of money in the interior of such districts is 
 very considerable. The number of men who derive 
 competence and consequence from the soil, is large. Is 
 it fair to say that all these results are independent of the 
 Perpetual Settlement?"* 
 
 It would seem then, that if the old aristocracy have been 
 ruined, the country has not been ruined with them. The 
 provinces under the Perpetual Settlement are the most 
 thriving provinces in India. It is a great thing I know 
 that they have enjoyed, under British rule, nearly a 
 century of unbroken peace. Nature, doubtless, too, has 
 done much for them. Their natural fertility is great. 
 They are independent of artificial irrigation. But it is 
 only since the Permanent Settlement was introduced 
 that the country has been exempted from the curse of 
 periodical famine ; and some of the ablest men who have 
 ever given themselves to the study of Indian affairs, fore- 
 most among whom were Edmonstone and Tucker, f have 
 
 * Calcutta Review, of this system hare all been brought up 
 + Sir Henry Russell says in his pub- in Bengal, where they have seen no 
 lished Letters: other in action. Among the eminent 
 " In one of my last conversations on authorities on this subject, Mr. Hodgson 
 the subject with Mr. Edmonstone, to is the only one I remember, who, having 
 whose guidance and instruction I owe madehimself conversant with both sys- 
 anything that I may have learned in tems, gives the preference to that of 
 India, and whom I have looked up to Bengal. With this single exception, 
 all my life with reverence and affection, as far as I am aware, the whole of those, 
 he ascribed the present exemption of who have witnessed the working of the 
 Bengal from those periodical famines, two, are in favor of the native ma- 
 to which it was formerly subject, and chinery of the Ryotwar system." 
 by which other tracts are occasionally The testimony of Mr, Tucker may be 
 visited, to the influence of the perma- added: "I never," he wrote to a brother 
 nent system, jln this I cannot concur, ]>irect()r, " can be persuaded that the 
 without depreciating the value of good Regulations of 1793 were not framed 
 government, uniform protection, and on sound and just principles— but no 
 shelter behind a wide and secure boun- person will contend that the Permanent 
 daryH Unquestionably many able men, Settlement was not concluded with un- 
 besides Mr. Edmonstone, have been due haste, and upon defective materials; 
 from the first, and still are, the advo- but if the measure had not been pro- 
 cates of the Zemindatry system. The secuted at the time, it would probable 
 fact is, that we all of us lean to the never have been undertaken, and thy 
 doctrine of the school we have been country and the people would have re- 
 brought up in. Independently of the raained in the wretched condition to 
 force of habit, we cannot easily bring which they had been reduced under 
 ourselves to think that that, which we short and corrupt settlements. If this 
 have spent our lives in learning, is of great measure had no other merit, I 
 no gubstance or effect. The advocates would say that (under Providence) the 
 
194 THE PERMANENT SETTLEMENT OF BENGAL. 
 
 declared their opinion that it mainly is to the settlement 
 that this exemption (under Providence) is to be attri- 
 buted. This in itself is no small thing. It is no small 
 thing to know that the peasantry of Bengal are never 
 starving. '' As to the poverty and misery of the actual 
 Ryot," says the writer I have quoted above — one of the 
 ablest men now in India — "so much insisted on by 
 several writers at the present day, we deny that matters 
 are as bad as represented. What strikes the eye most in 
 any village, or set of villages, in a Bengal district, is the 
 exuberant fertility of the soil, the sluttish plenty sur- 
 rounding the Grihasta's (cultivator's) abode, the rich 
 foliage, the fruit and timber-trees, and the palpable evi- 
 dence against anything like penury. Did any man ever go 
 through a Bengallee village and find himself assailed by 
 the cry of want or famine ? Was he ever told that the 
 Eyot and his family did not know where to turn for a 
 meal ; that they had no shade to shelter them, no tank to 
 bathe in, no employment for their active limbs ? That 
 villages are not neatly laid out like a model village in an 
 English county, that things seem to go on, year by year, 
 in the same slovenly fashion, that there are no local im- 
 provements, and no advances in civilisation, is all very 
 true. But considering the wretched condition of some 
 of the Irish peasantry, or even the Scotch, and the 
 misery experienced by hundreds in the purHeus of our 
 great cities at home, compared with the condition of the 
 Ryots, who know neither cold nor hunger, it is high time 
 that the outcry about the extreme unhappiness of the 
 Bengal Ryot should cease." 
 
 I quote this, instead of putting forward the same 
 truths on my own authority, because it was written in 
 Bengal, only a few months ago, by one whose opinions 
 are supported by the evidence of his own senses, and 
 
 absence of that frightful scourge, fa- periodically visited, is mainly to be at- 
 mine, with which the country had been tributed to it." — IMS. Correspondence. 1 
 
THE PEASANTRY OF BENGAL. 195 
 
 who speaks of what he sees around him. I know that 
 the Bengal Eyot lives in an enviable state of sans- 
 culotteism. I know that he enjoys the inestimable 
 privilege of living with only a rag about his middle — 
 
 O fortunati agricolaj! sua si bona norint! 
 
 I know that the abode in which he dwells is one of very 
 primitive construction. I know that he does not drink 
 beer, or eat beef, or read the newspaper by a sea-coal 
 fire.* I know that he does not trouble himself much 
 about Government paper, or other public securities, and 
 that he lives from hand to mouth, in a rude, simple 
 manner, well content if he can feed himself and the 
 other inmates of his clay-built cottage. *^^ut all that I 
 gather from my knowledge of these facts is, that Bengal 
 is very much unlike England, and that what is a hard- 
 ship in England is not a hardship in Bengal/^ 
 
 The peasantry of Bengal are unquestionably poor. I 
 do not know any peasantry who are rich. "Eiches," 
 however, is, after all, only a comparative term, and the 
 question is whether, according to their wants and re- 
 quirements, the peasantry of Bengal are poorer than the 
 peasantry of any other part of the world. I do not 
 think that they are. Doubtless, there are some evils in- 
 herent in the system under which they live. In some 
 parts of the Lower Proviaces there is a system of under- 
 letting which is very injurious to the cultivator. There 
 is a middle-man, or more than one middle-man, between 
 him and the Zemindar, and a profit must be made by 
 
 * This may appear to be trifling, but sured him that it would not be long be- 
 I can assure the most solemn of my fore the beneficial action of the Crown 
 readers that it is not. It is a fact that Courts would clothe them all in shoes 
 many people who have never visited and stockings. This is an old story in 
 India look upon the condition of the India— but it may not be equally well 
 Bengal peasantry with English eyes, known in England. I may add to it, 
 and bring all their ideas of English that Lord George Bentinck was re- 
 poverty and destitution to bear upon ported by the London papers to have 
 the subject. Thus it is related that Sir alluded, in a famous speech on the 
 Elijah Impey, on his first arrival off Sugar Question, to the necessity of the 
 Calcutta, told " brother Hyde " to look hundred millions of the people of India 
 at the nakedness of the people, and as- having to go without sugar in their tea. 
 
 o2 
 
196 THE PERMANENT SETTLEMENT OF BENGAL. 
 
 each. But is this peculiar to Bengal — is it peculiar to 
 India ?* It is the commonest thing possible in England. 
 A tradesman in a country village, or a little townlet, Avill 
 take a lease of a stack of cottages, each with a little 
 garden behind it. He will let these cottages severally, 
 without the gardens — realise from his tenants collectively 
 much more than the entire rent of the estate — then 
 throw all the gardens into one and let them, at a high 
 rent, to some well-to-do person whose grounds are con- 
 tiguous to them, and who is anxious to increase his domain. 
 In this manner the middle-man will, perhaps, double the 
 rent that he pays to the actual landlord ; and all at the 
 expense of the peasants who are compelled to submit to 
 his terms. In the towns, too, this system of under-letting 
 is carried to a still more abominable extent. Think 
 what are the profits derived by the middle-man from a 
 London lodging-house, and what those lodging-houses 
 are. The tenants pay from 200 to 400 per cent, above 
 the actual value of the accommodation as estimated by 
 the real owner of the house, which is parcelled out 
 among a number of families, or let to a promiscuous 
 crowd of nightly occupants reeking with fever and 
 filth. 
 
 There is nothing in any part of India, except in famine- 
 times — and famine- times have ceased in Bengal — to in- 
 dicate the misery and degradation of which these London 
 lodging-houses are the visible signs. I am speaking now 
 of them, however, only in connexion with the subject of 
 middle-men, simply as respects the matter of rent. It 
 
 * Mr. Shore (Lord Teignmouth), in The farmer of a division pays to the 
 
 his famous minute of June 18, 1789, farmer of a Pergunnah. 5th. The 
 
 thus described the intermediate agency : farmer of a Pergunnali pays to the Ze- 
 
 " The Ryots who cultivate the soil pay mindar. And 6tli. The Zemindar car- 
 
 their rent to a Mundel (head Ryot) or ries his rent to the office of the Govern- 
 
 Gomastah (agent), of which each village ment." This classification, in all its 
 
 has one or more, according to its extent, details, only applies to the very large 
 
 2nd. The Mundel pays his rent to a estates, but with more or less modifica- 
 
 renter of two or three villages. 3rd. tion it may be said to represent the 
 
 The renter pays to the farmer of a divi- general system. 
 sion comprehending many villages. 4th. 
 
EVILS OF MIDDLE-MEN. 197 
 
 may be said that with the Indian cultivator rent means 
 something more than house accommodation. The land 
 which is let to him by the middle-man is the arena of 
 his industry — the source of his subsistence — in fact, that 
 the middle-man stands between him and the very well- 
 spring of life. But this, too, is the commonest thing pos- 
 sible in England. We have heard a great deal lately 
 about the " sweating s3'-stem," and other vile systems, 
 which intercept and diminish the rightful earnings of 
 the working-man, and enrich the intermediate agent. 
 These are great evils. It were well that we should 
 think about them sometimes, when we are volubly dis- 
 coursing of the sufferings endured by the unhappy Bengal 
 Ryot. It were well that we should think, too, whether 
 we may not lay them at the door of Free-trade, or the In- 
 come-tax, or the new Police, or the Great Exhibition, as 
 reasonably as we may attribute the poverty and misery 
 of the Bengal Ryot to the Permanent Zemindarry Settle- 
 ment. 
 
 Again, it is unquestionable that the Ryot suffers much 
 under the burden of that great calamity, debt. He bor- 
 rows money at an exorbitant rate of interest, and the 
 " Mahajun," who lends it to him, compels him to purchase 
 everything he requires from people in whom the usurer 
 is interested, and in whose gains he participates. But is 
 not this a system again well understood in England ? It 
 little matters in what manner this payment of interest 
 diminishes the daily comforts of the poor man — whether 
 it reduces -the profits of his own little cultivation or the 
 wages paid to him as the cultivator of other men's lands. 
 There is nothing from which our own people suffer more 
 than from this slavery of debt. I do not beheve that the 
 Ryots in any part of India suffer as much from the ava- 
 rice of the Mahajuns as our own workmen have suffered, 
 and do suffer, from the " truck" and the " tally" systems, 
 and other schemes by which advantage is taken of the im- 
 
198 THE PERMANENT SETTLEMENT OF BENGAL. 
 
 providence of the poor. Our tradesmen prey as greedily 
 upon the peasantry who once get on their books, and 
 intercept their earnings mth as ruinous a gripe, as the 
 most wily Mahajun in Jessore. 
 
 It may be alleged that the Kyot is driven into debt by 
 the exactions of the Zemindar, and that the great in- 
 herent vice of the Permanent Settlement is, that whilst 
 the amount leviable from the landed proprietor is defi- 
 nitely and permanently fixed, there is no definition of the 
 claim to be made by him upon the under-tenant. It has 
 been said, indeed, that "in the permanently settled dis- 
 tricts of Bengal, nothing is settled, and little is known, 
 except the Government assessment."* And there is no 
 doubt that this is the great blot of the Permanent Settle- 
 ment. The Zemindars, except in a few special cases, 
 exact from the Ryots as much as they can be made to 
 pay ; and there is no doubt that what is left to the actual 
 cultivator, after all these exactions, is little more than 
 suffices to keep the souls and bodies of the peasantry to- 
 gether. Hastings, it has been seen, was especially anxious 
 to " secure to the Ryots the perpetual and undisturbed 
 possession of their lands, and to guard them against arbi- 
 trary exactions,"! and he maintained that it was the duty 
 of Government " to fix the deeds by which they hold 
 their lands and pay their rents, to certain bounds and 
 defences against the authority of the Zemindar." But the 
 ablest revenue-officers in the country admitted that it 
 was difficult, if not impossible, to reduce such a fixation 
 to anything like system ; and the attempt was abandoned 
 in despair. It was decreed, indeed, that the Ryot had 
 no rights, and he was left to fight it out with the Zemin- 
 dar. 1 The result is, that the assessment levied upon the 
 actual cultivator is extremely variable, but that it seldom 
 falls far short of the amount which, with extreme diffi- 
 
 * Report of the Calcutta Finance Com- f See ante^ pp. 155, 156. 
 mttee, July 12, 1830. 
 
INCREASED VALUE OF THE LAND. 199 
 
 culty, lie can contrive to pay.* He is, in fact, left with 
 what is sufficient only to supply the bare necessities of 
 life. But there is nothing in this peculiar to the state of 
 the rural population of Bengal. "In every country," 
 says Sismondi, '^ the share assigned to the laborer is 
 most frequently only just what is sufficient to support his 
 existence." Existence is easily supported in Bengal ; 
 and I believe that, in proportion to his wants, the pea« 
 sant is as well supplied in that flourishing province as in 
 any part of the world."3 
 
 It is readily admitted that, if the advantages derivable 
 from the mcreased productiveness of the settled districts 
 could have been shared between the Zemindar and the 
 Ryot, instead of passing entnely into the exchequer of 
 the former, the arrangement would have afforded greater 
 matter for congratulation. Under the existing system, 
 the increased value of the land directly benefits neither 
 the Government nor the people. But the men, who 
 stand between the Government and the people, are 
 greatly the gainers by it. The residuary produce is 
 theirs. The effect has been to raise up a body of mode- 
 rate capitalists, whose existence is decidedly advantageous 
 to the State ;f and, though I fear much cannot be 
 said in favor of their enlightenment and liberality — of 
 their practical recognition of the duties and responsi- 
 bilities which property entails, it may be hoped that they 
 will learn in time the great truth that, by serving others, 
 
 • " The standard," said Mr. Shore, view of the Financial Situation of the 
 "was so indeterminate, that the Ryots East India Company in 1824," says: 
 neither knew what they liad to pay, " Tliere are persons who, witnessing the 
 nor could the oflScers of Government, flourishing condition of the Bengal pro- 
 without the most diflScult investigation, vinces, and knowing that the rents and 
 ascertain whether the Eyots had been income of the Zemindars have, in many 
 imposed on, or not;" and again the instances, been immoderately increased, 
 same authority declared, that " of all seem disposed to impute to Lord Corn- 
 subjects relating to the Revenue, this, wallis an improvident sacrifice of the 
 though the most important, was, at the public revenue. The inference is as 
 same time, the most diflBcult to ex- gratuitous as the imputation is unjust, 
 plain," and that " he distrusted his own The prosperity of the country and the 
 knowledge, and still more his ability, to growing opulence of the Zemindars are 
 render it intelligible." the happy eflects of the Permanent 
 
 t Mr. Tucker, in his very able " Re- Settlement." 
 
200 THE PERMANENT SETTLEMENT OF BENGAL. 
 
 they serve themselves — that nothing contributes so 
 largely to the wealth of the landlord as the prosperity of 
 his tenantry, and that nothing so surely hastens his ruin 
 as grinding the faces of the poor. 
 
 I cannot afford to pursue the subject further in this 
 place. Indeed, I had intended to confine myself en- 
 tirely to the record of events ; and having briefly given 
 the history of the incubation of the Permanent Settle- 
 ment, to speak of its present results only so far as they 
 are exemplified by ascertained facts. What I have 
 shown, or proposed to show, is this : 
 
 1. That the Revenue System, which we found in ope- 
 ration on the assumption of the Dewanee, was not con- 
 ducive to the happiness of the people. 
 
 2. That our initial experiments of brief leases and fluc- 
 tuating assessments were advantageous neither to the 
 Government nor to the people. 
 
 3. That all the ablest revenue-officers in the country 
 were in favor of a Zemindaree Settlement, and that 
 the Court of Directors and the ablest statesmen in Eng- 
 land held the same opinion. 
 
 4. That these officers had been for a great number of 
 years collecting information whereupon to base this 
 settlement — and that the Court of Directors were of 
 opinion that sufficient information had been collected. 
 
 5. That Lord Cornwallis came out to India instructed 
 to complete this settlement — that he was not, in any 
 way, the author or originator of it — and that he sought 
 for further information before carrying it into effect. 
 
 6. That three years after his arrival in India he pro- 
 mulgated the terms of the settlement — a decennial Ze- 
 mindaree settlement — with an intimation, that with the 
 consent of the Court of Directors, it would be rendered a 
 permanent one. 
 
 7. That three years after this promulgation the Court 
 of Directors and the King's Ministers consented to the 
 
GENERAL CONCLUSIONS. 201 
 
 perpetuation of the settlement ; and that nearly seven 
 years after liis arrival in India Lord Cornwallis made 
 the Permanent Zemindaree Settlement of Bengal the 
 law of the land. 
 
 8. That the first effect of the ref^ulations was to brino;. 
 under the operation of the Sale Law, a large number of 
 estates to the hammer, and greatly to impoverish several 
 influential Zemindars. 
 
 9. That a new Act— Act VIL of 1799, which relaxed 
 tlie extreme strictness of the Sale Law, and gave the 
 Zemindar increased power over the defaulting Ryot, 
 greatly improved the condition of the former, and dimi- 
 nished the number of sales. 
 
 10. That by successive enactments the relations of the 
 Zemindar and Ryot were further improved ; and that at 
 the present time the quantity of land sold for arrears of 
 revenue is very small in proportion to the area under 
 assessment. 
 
 IL That the assessment is in itself a moderate assess- 
 ment, and does not press severely upon the industrial 
 energies of the people. 
 
 12. That from the very first the provinces have pros- 
 pered under the Permanent Settlement — that large tracts 
 of waste land have been reclaimed — ^that capital has ac- 
 cumulated — and that the country has been exempted 
 from the periodical famines which had so grievously 
 afflicted them before. 
 
 Lastly, that the peasantry of Bengal, in so far as their 
 happiness is affected by the Revenue Regulations, cannot 
 be said to be more miserable than the peasantry of other 
 parts of the world.* 
 
 * Since this chapter was originally India and the United Kingdom," which 
 
 printed, I have read in the Morning I have inserted, among other papers, 
 
 C/ironidc a very able and interesting at the end of the present edition, 
 letter on "The Laboring Classes in 
 
202 THE LAND-REVENUE OF MADRAS. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Our First Territory in Madras— The Northern Circars — Old Revenue System — 
 The Committee of Circuit Permanent Assessment — The Baramahl — Read and 
 Munro — The Ceded Districts — The Ryotwar System — Village Settlements — 
 Their Discontinuance — Return to the Ryotwar System — Its Results. 
 
 Whilst in the latter years of the last century the ser- 
 vants of tlie Company in Bengal were endeavoring to 
 frame a system of land-revenue advantageous alike to tlie 
 Government and the people, a similar experiment was 
 being carried on under the Presidency of Madras. We 
 had possessed ourselves of territory in that part of the 
 Mogul Empire at about the same period that first saw us 
 assuming, on the banks of the Hooghly, the new dignity 
 of territorial lords. A portion of the country known as 
 the " Northern Circars"* Avas granted to the British by 
 the Mogul, at the request of Lord CHve, in 1765. This 
 is the country which lies on the northern extremity of 
 the present Madras Presidency between the seaboard and 
 the Orissan hills. 
 
 On our first acquisition of these territories the Com- 
 pany's servants did very much what they were doing m 
 Bengal. They knew nothing about landed tenures and 
 
 * The Northern Circars formed part Company; but on the capture of Ma- 
 
 of the ancient kingdom of Ooria and sulaputam by the British in 1759, they 
 
 Telinga. The territory which passed reverted to the government of the Ni- 
 
 into our hands, and which consisted of zam. They were made over to us in 
 
 Chicacole, Rajahmundry, EUore, and 1765, and in 1788 Guntoor, upon which 
 
 Condapelly, had been granted by Sala- we had a post obit, was added to our 
 
 but Jung to the French East India possessions. 
 
THE NORTHERN CIRCARS. 203 
 
 revenue settlements. They could carry 'tlie revenue to 
 account, when it was collected ; but they did not know 
 how to collect it. So they let the native administration 
 take its course — they entered into engagements with one 
 or two large capitalists, for the payment of a certain 
 amomit of annual revenue or rent, and left them to col- 
 lect it from fanners and under-tenants and others, and 
 did not much concern themselves about the manner of 
 its collection. 
 
 This arrangement, however, was but of brief continu- 
 ance. In 1769, the native administration was abolished, 
 and the management of the Circars was placed in the 
 hands of the Company's servants — of certain provincial 
 chiefs and councils, who had no administrative know- 
 ledge or experience of any kind, and could not talk the 
 native languages with more fluency or correctness than 
 a cadet in the first year of his inexperience, or a Chief 
 Justice at the end of his career. But the condition of 
 affairs before their interference had been so irredeemably 
 bad, that they could not introduce greater disorder into 
 the admmistration, or greater misery among the people. 
 There were two kinds of landed tenures then recognised. 
 There were Zemindarry lands — Elands held by certain 
 chiefs as their hereditary estates, paying tribute to the 
 Government of the day; and there were "Havelly" lands, 
 or " portions of territory not in the hands of Zemindars, 
 but in those of the Government, and in which it was, 
 therefore, optional to adopt any system of management 
 for collecting the land-revenue from the Ryots."* The 
 land was for the most part leased out to speculators, 
 grasping Dubashes and others, who had as little regard 
 for the welfare of the cultivators as the worst of the Ze- 
 mmdars. On both descriptions of lands the Ryots were 
 defrauded and oppressed. The Zemindars, or contrac- 
 
 * Fifth Report. 
 
204 THE LAND-REVENUE OF MADRAS. 
 
 tors sub-rented the lands. The middle-man had to make 
 his profits, and so it happened that little more than 
 a fifth or sixth of the produce could be retained by the 
 actual cultivator. 
 
 On the Circars passing into our hands, the Company's 
 servants were glad to make any arrangement which 
 would save them the necessity of a detailed management 
 of unfamiliar business, so they allowed the Zemindars and 
 large renters to appropriate the revenues on condition 
 of their paying certain stipulated amounts to Govern- 
 ment. The provincial chiefs, ignorant of the language, 
 and inexperienced as revenue-collectors, w^ere obliged 
 to conduct all inquiries through their native imderlings, 
 or rather to leave them to do all the business for them- 
 selves. Little or no progress was made towards good 
 government, and, probably, none for some time would 
 have been made, but that the state of aflairs in the 
 Northern Circars fixed the attention of the home 
 authorities ; and in those days the Court of Directors 
 greatly surpassed their Indian servants in enlightenment 
 and benevolence. They were eager to see a better 
 system of administration introduced into their Madras 
 territories, and they ordered that a Special Commission, 
 or, as it was denominated, a Committee of Circuit — to be 
 composed of certain members of the Madras Council — 
 should proceed into the districts and institute rigid inqui- 
 ries into their general condition, with a view to the defini- 
 tion of the rights and the protection of the interests of all 
 classes. The instructions of the Court of Directors were 
 conceived in a liberal and enlightened spirit, and clearly 
 and emphatically expressed. But the Committee of 
 Circuit was a failure. The Provincial Courts thwarted 
 its operations. The Zemindars would render the Com- 
 missioners no assistance, but rather endeavoured to throw 
 dust in their eyes. They could not speak the native Ian- 
 
EARLY SETTLEMENTS. 205 
 
 giiages, and all their information readied them through 
 the lying medium of men who were interested in con- 
 cealing or distorting the truth. 
 
 So it happened that though the Committee of Circuit 
 continued its operations from year's end to year's end, 
 no fixed system was introduced. Annual leases were 
 granted in the first instance — then settlements for three 
 or five years. The "Havelly" lands were let, in most 
 cases, on the system of Village Settlements, but they 
 were very imperfectly made. And altogether the hu- 
 mane intentions of the Home Government were most in- 
 adequately fulfilled. But the tendency of all our admi- 
 nistrative efforts at this time was towards gradual im- 
 provement. In 1786, a Board of Kevenue, after the 
 Bengal fashion, was established at Madras ; but it was 
 in contmual collision with the Provincial Councils, which 
 obstructed the working of its machinery^ whilst they did 
 no good by themselves. So Lord Hobart, who was 
 then Governor of Madras, abolished the Provincial 
 Councils, and appointed collectors in their stead. But 
 the collectors, Kke the other functionaries of whom 1 
 have spoken, had small acquaintance with the native 
 languages, and were compelled to leave the minutias of 
 revenue detail to their Dewans and Dubashes, and other 
 native underlings, who throve upon the ignorance of 
 their masters. 
 
 But the PeiTnanent Zemindaree Settlement had been 
 by this time introduced into Bengal ; and it had many 
 advocates in high places both at home and abroad. The 
 Madras Board of Revenue had been studying tlie 
 minutes of Shore and Cornwallis; and the Court of 
 Directors had written out, that " being thoroughly 
 sensible of the propriety and expediency of the late 
 revenue and judicial regulations established in Bengal, 
 they directed the Madras Government to consider the 
 expediency of adopting similar plans for the Northern 
 
206 THE LAND-REVENUE OF MADEAS. 
 
 Circars, including the Jaghire and the Ceded Districts." 
 This was written in 1795, but at this time the Board 
 were hardly prepared to recommend the perpetuation of 
 the settlement ; they required time for the collection of 
 further information; and it was not until 1799 that they 
 reported to the Supreme Government that they were 
 possessed of materials for a permanent Zemindarry settle- 
 ment. Lord Wellesley, who had by this time succeeded 
 to the Governor-Generalship of India, earnestly sup- 
 ported the plan of his predecessor, and recommended its 
 extension to Madras. The Court of Directors supported 
 the recommendation, and early in 1801 wrote to the 
 Government of Madras that " they had determined to 
 concur in the instructions of the Governor-General for 
 proceeding at once to the permanent assessment of the 
 lands on the coast." A special Commission was accord- 
 ingly appointed to carry out these instructions, and be- 
 tween the years 1802 and 1804 the northern districts of 
 Madras were permanently assessed.* 
 
 Thus were the principles of the Permanent Zemindarry 
 Settlement applied to that tract of country, under the 
 Madras Presidency, which first passed into our hands. 
 The country, too, around Madras, known as "the Jag- 
 heer," which had been obtained from the Newab of 
 Arcot, partly in 1750, and partly in 1763, in return for 
 services rendered to that state, was at the same time 
 subjected to the same process.f But whilst all these 
 measures for the settlement of the ancient territories of 
 
 * The manner of the assessment, in yielding from 1000 to 5000 star pagodas 
 respect of the dirision of estates, is thus annual rent, but in some instances 
 indicated in the Fifth Report. "The more, were sold at public auction, sub- 
 lands already in the hands of Zemindars ject to the terms of the Permanent Ze- 
 were confirmed to them in perpetuity mindarry tenure." A pagoda is about 
 on the prescribed conditions. The 3i rupees, or 7 shillings, 
 assessment on each Zemindarry neces- f " The l*ermanent Settlement of the 
 sarily yaried according to the local Jaghire took place in 1802, the lands 
 extent. In some it considerably ex- having been divided into sixty-one 
 ceeded a lakh of star pagodas; in others estates, bearing an assessment of from 
 it was under 1000 star pagodas. The 2000 to 5000 star pagodas, and sold to 
 Havelly lands having been parcelled individuals in the same manner as the 
 out into estates of a convenient size, • Havellys ' of the Northern Circars. 
 
THE NEW TEERITORIES. 207 
 
 the Company at Fort St. George were in progress, 
 we were adding new territories to that Presidency, 
 and the question of land-assessment came up again for 
 discussion and decision, in connexion with new countries 
 ceded to us far down in the Southern Peninsula. In 
 1792, the first war with Tippoo placed a considerable 
 tract of country, which had before owned the Sultan of 
 Mysore for its master, in the hands of the Company. A 
 treaty was signed, which delivered over to the British 
 the Baramahl (or Salem) and the provinces of Din- 
 dighal and Malabar. The second war with Tippoo, 
 which overthrew the only power in Southern India 
 which dared to resist or molest us, added to our terri- 
 tories Canara and Soondah ; and in 1801 all the pos- 
 sessions of the Xewab of Arcot in the Carnatic were 
 made over to us by that prince. We had now new 
 problems of revenue to solve, new districts to settle. 
 
 The Court of Directors, when unfolding their opinions 
 regarding the application of the permanent system to the 
 Madras territories, had pointed out the peculiarities of 
 our new acquisitions in the Carnatic, and had suggested 
 that, as they were not so far advanced in civilisation as 
 the Bengal provinces, they might not be ripe for the re- 
 ception of the benefits and blessings intended for them — 
 that indeed " any attempt to introduce a regular system 
 of order or just sentiments respecting the value of per- 
 manent rights, would be idle and nugatory till their 
 minds were to a certain extent prepared to feel the im- 
 portance of these benefits." The success which had 
 attended our efforts to establish a fixed system in the 
 Northern Circars had not been sufficient to encourage us 
 to extend the experiment to the new lands obtained by 
 cession and conquest in the Southern Peninsula. We 
 
 The data on which the land-tax, pay- certain accounts of the produce and 
 
 able by the Zemindars to Government, gross collections in preceding years." — 
 
 was calculated and determined, were \^Fifth Report.'] 
 the actual state of the resources and 
 
208 THE LAND-REVENUE OF MADRAS. 
 
 found, too, that a different description of landed tenures 
 had existed under the native governments ; and we had 
 always endeavoured to assimilate our system of revenue 
 collection to that which had presumedly obtained before 
 our assumption of the fiscal management of the country. 
 Moreover, on the cession of these tracts of Tippoo's old 
 country, the duty of settling the ceded districts had been 
 entrusted to a class of men very different from those who 
 had carried out the settlement of Bengal and the Northern 
 Circars. It was entrusted — not to the Company's civil 
 servants, but to a little band of soldiers, who brought to 
 this new work more zeal than knowledge, more honesty 
 than experience, and who, whatever may be the opinion 
 entertained of the result of their labors — whether it be 
 determined that they carried out " a system which en- 
 sures, at the same time, the just dues of the Government 
 and the just rights, not of a new-made Zemindar, but of 
 an industrious peasantry,"* or one which has " resulted 
 in the impoverishment of the country, the people, and 
 the Government itself "t — still deserve all honor for the 
 benevolence of their intentions, the singleness of their 
 aims, and the unwearying perseverance with which they 
 prosecuted their labors. 
 
 At the head of the Commission first appointed in 1792 
 was Captain Read, an officer who had been for some 
 time employed on the staff of the Madras army, and who 
 had exhibited great aptitude for business as well as an 
 intimate acquaintance with the language and manners of 
 the people. J With him were associated three jimior 
 
 * Calcutta Review, vol. xvii. Article : and by fair means too ; but he was so far 
 
 " The Land Revenue of Madras" — a from taking advantage of his situation 
 
 very valuable and interesting paper, for this purpose, that he even gave up his 
 
 compiled principally from manuscript bazaar and many other perquisites of 
 
 records. I am indebted to it for many his military command, and received 
 
 of the details contained in this chapter, nothing but his prize-money and com- 
 
 t H. St.G. Tucker. mission, which altogether, I believe, 
 
 X The following is Monro's account amounted to about 6000/. Whatever 1 
 
 of the man at whose feet he sat as a might have done, had I been left to my- 
 
 revenue student: " Read is no ordinary self, I could get no pickings under such 
 
 character. He might, in Mysore, have a master, whose conduct is invariably 
 
 amassed as much money as he chose, regulated by private honor and the 
 
EFFORTS OF CAPTAIN READ. 20O 
 
 officers, Macleod, Graham, and Munro — a name which 
 lias become inextricably associated with all our ideas of 
 the land-revenue of Madras. " Our only system," said 
 Munro, " is plain hard labor." " We have only to guard 
 the Ryots from oppression, and they will create the 
 revenue for us." But in these days, when so much has 
 been written about diflferent systems of Land-revenue, 
 the working of all of which involves no inconsiderable 
 amoimt of " plain hard labor," it is necessary to adopt a 
 more specific style of description. The system was that 
 which is now (under fuller development) known as the 
 " Ryotwar system." It recognised the Government as 
 proprietor of the soil, and undertook to deteraiine the 
 rights of every man who paid a single rupee to the Sircar. 
 It was a settlement to be made directly with the Ryots 
 themselves ; and its object was to protect the interests of 
 the actual cultivators of the soil. 
 
 It was, however, in the first instance only an experi- 
 ment. What Read and his associates did, at this time, 
 was not to determine a system, or to settle the future 
 mode of assessment, but to collect information and to 
 ascertain rights, with a view to ulterior measures. How 
 they proceeded has been detailed by Munro himself. 
 " Captain Read," he wrote in 1794, "in order to be en- 
 " abled to turn his attention to general arrangements, 
 "has divided the ceded countries, among his assistants^ 
 
 public interest. These, and unwearied says: "If any further testimony were 
 zeal in whatever he undertakes, consti- necessary to the indefatigable zeal ;ui(f 
 tute the great features of his character, pure unaffected philanthropy of this 
 The enthusiasm in the pursuit of na- excellent man, the whole of the pultlic 
 tional objects, which seizes others by records and the traditions of the district 
 fits and starts, is in him constant and afford it in ample abundance; and there 
 uniform. These qualities, joined to an is something peculiarly interesting in 
 intimate knowledge of the language and comparing in these local records, the 
 manners of the people, and a happy speculative views, the imperfect sen- 
 talent for the investigation of every- tences, and even the imperfect spelling 
 thing connected with revenue, eminently of this pioneer in Indian Kevenue, with 
 qualify him for the station which he the clear and decisive views, the trans- 
 now fills with so much credit to him- parent style, and the strong practical 
 self and benefit to the people. "—[G/ety's decision of the pupil then rising into 
 Lxfe of Sir Thomas Munro.'} The writer fame." 
 in the Calcutta Beview^ quoted above, 
 
210 THE LAND-REVENUE OF MADRAS. 
 
 " into three divisions.* These are again subdivided 
 " into ' Tehsildarrees/ few of which are under ten or 
 " above thirty thousand pagodas, f The Tehsildars, 
 "who have charge of them, are mere receivers of 
 " the Revenue^ for they cannot either raise or lower 
 " the rent of a single individual. They are not per- 
 " mitted to give any decision, unless on matters of the 
 " most trifling nature — to refer all disputes respecting 
 " property to a Court of Arbitration, to order the 
 " members of such Courts to assemble, to receive the 
 " kists (instalments) from the head farmers of the 
 " villages, and the accounts from the village ac- 
 " countants, and to transmit them to the collector of 
 " the division, is the whole of their duty. Every 
 " Tehsildarree is farmed out in villages to the ' gours,' 
 " or head farmers, who, having the management of 
 " the details of cultivation, may be considered as 
 " renters of the country, though they are in fact 
 " answerable only for the amount of their own par- 
 " ticular lands, for the whole inhabitants are jointly 
 " answerable for the Revenue of the village, which is 
 " seldom less than ten pagodas, or more than one 
 " thousand. Every man, who pays a single rupee to 
 " Government, has the rent of his land fixed by the 
 " division collector, for which he has a roll, signed by 
 " him, specifying the nature and quantity of it, and the 
 " periods of pa}Tnent. As the gour can demand no 
 " more than the stipulated rent, he can, of course, 
 " gain nothiag by the Ryots, and as every man enjoys 
 " the profits of his own lands, it is for these reasons 
 " that the whole are made jointly responsible for the 
 " deficiency." J 
 
 Such, as described by Munro, were some of the main 
 features of the system as our Government found it,§ 
 
 * Munro, Macleod, and Graham. % Captain Munro to Captain Allen^ 
 
 f That is to say, the amount of the June 8, 1794. — Gleig's Life of Munro. 
 
 revenue raised from each was seldom § " Hyder's system of finance was 
 
 under 10, or aboro 30,000 pagodas. much the same as under all other native 
 
READ AND MUNRO. 211 
 
 and as it was now to be experimentally continued. 
 But the young oflSicer clearly saw that there was a 
 vital defect in it, which it was incumbent on the new 
 Government to remedy. " The exertions of industry/' 
 he ^vrote, "have always been restrained by the de- 
 mands of Government keeping pace with their profits, 
 and often outrunning them."* It was in obviation 
 of this very evil that the Bengal administrators had 
 introduced the Permanent System into the Soubah- 
 darry ; and Munro gave his evidence, indirectly but em- 
 phatically, in favor of that system, when he wrote : 
 " The ceded countries have, however, many natural 
 " advantages, and are capable of great improvements. 
 " The first step for the attainment of this object must 
 " be the settlement of the lease at a moderate rent, for 
 " all attempts to better their situation will be in vain 
 " as long as the land-tax is not only high, but arbi- 
 " trary." It would have been well if, a few years 
 afterwards, this truth had been held more distinctly in 
 remembrance. 
 
 This, indeed, was the principle that Eead enunciated, 
 and on which he desired that the settlement should be 
 based. " Correspondent with my original design," he 
 wrote, " you will find my grand objects are these : 
 The securing the Eevenue its dues, to the industrious 
 their fair advantages, and to all the inhabitants every 
 accommodation consistent with good pohcy." There 
 was obviously at that time some leaning in his mind 
 towards the Permanent System so much favored in 
 
 governments; he rented the country in vinces. His last was much the same 
 large districts to Aumildars, who were as we have now in the Ceded Pro- 
 pretty regular in their payments, be- vinces." — [Capt. Munro to Capt. AUen^ 
 cause the terms were favorable; but, June 8, ll^^.-^Gleig's Life of Munro.'] 
 besides collecting the public revenues, ♦ ** The tanks are few," he added, 
 they amassed large sums for themselves " and having been neglected ever since 
 . . . Tippoo began his reign with Hyder made himself master of Mysore, 
 changing every civil and military ar- are in so ruinous a condition, that it will 
 rangement of his father, and he changed require a considerable sum to save the 
 his almost every year, and always on present produce of the land beneath 
 these occasions framed new codes of them from being lost altogether." — 
 Kegulations to send to different pro- [/6u/.] 
 
 p2 
 
212 THE LAND-REVENUE OF MADRAS. 
 
 high places, both in India and in England; but he 
 was a man much given to speculation, and he was 
 little disposed to pronounce a decisive judgment in 
 emphatic support of one kind of assessment or another. 
 He called upon his assistants to expound their views, 
 and they all responded to the call. Munro sent in a 
 lengthy and elaborate paper, which has never yet been 
 given to the world, reviewing the whole question of 
 Kyotwaree Settlement, and pronouncing a strong opinion 
 in its favor. The plan — he wrote in conclusion, 
 summing up the practical suggestion, each one of 
 which is powerfully elaborated in the body of the 
 letter — " The plan," he wrote, " which it appears to 
 " me would be best calculated to secure to the people 
 " the fruits of their industry, and to Government a 
 " permanent Revenue, is comprised under the following 
 " heads : — 1. A reduction of 15 per cent, to be made 
 " on the lease settlement. 2. The country to be 
 " rented immediately of Government by small farms 
 "as at present, every one receiving just as much land 
 " as he demands. 3. Settlements to be annual ; that 
 "is to say, every man to be permitted to give up or 
 " take whatever land he pleases every year. 4. Every 
 " man to have a part, or the whole of his lands on 
 " lease who wishes it : and in order to encourage the 
 " application for leases, all lands held under annual 
 *' tenures to be taken from the occupants and given to 
 " such other farmers as may demand them in lease, or 
 " their paying to Government, as purchase-money, one 
 " year's rent for any particular field, or one half year's 
 *' for the whole farm. 5. Villages and districts to be 
 " responsible for all individual failures. 6. All lands 
 " included in the lease should remain invariably at 
 " the rent then fixed after the proposed reduction of 
 "15 per cent. 7. All lands, not included in the lease, 
 " should be rented at the average of the village to 
 
MUNRO'S PLAN. 213 
 
 " whicli they belong. 8. Lands included in the lease, 
 " being given up and allowed to lay waste, for any 
 " number of years, should, when again occupied, pay, 
 " the very first year, the full rent as before. 9. All 
 " castes, whether natives or aUens, to pay the same 
 *^ rent for the land. 10. No additional rent ever to be 
 " demanded for improvements — the farmer, who by 
 ^' digging a well, or building a tank, converts dry land 
 '^ into garden or rice-fields, to pay no more than the 
 " original rent of the ground. 11. No reduction of 
 " the established rent ever to be allowed, except 
 " where the cochineal plant, mulberry, &c., are culti- 
 " vated."* 
 
 This was the plan conceived by Munro, when an 
 assistant to Colonel Read, in the Baramahl — but 
 although, in those days as now, there was a good deal 
 of lengthy writing, there was no lack of working too ; 
 and the materials for the settlement were being col- 
 lected apace. " The Baramahl has now been com- 
 pletely surveyed, and the rents of it fixed," wrote 
 Munro, in September, 1798. " They are on an average 
 nearly what they were under Tippoo. The inhabitants 
 paid the same then as now; but the deficiency of his 
 receipts arose from the peculations of a host of revenue- 
 officers. The rent here, as I believe in every other 
 part of India, is too high."t The rent was certainly 
 too high in Madras, for Colonel Read ascertained and 
 reported, that whilst in Bengal the rent paid to Go- 
 vernment amounted to forty-seven pagodas the square 
 mile, in Madras it was not less than seventy. " The 
 increase to the public revenues," wrote Graham to 
 his chief, "has been obtained in consequence of Go- 
 vernment having added thereto that portion of the 
 
 * MS. Records, quoted in the Cal- the dates of the original documents 
 
 cutta Review. It is to be regretted that which he quotes, 
 
 the author of this able and interesting f Gleigs Life of Sir Thomas Munro. 
 paper has not, in all instances, given 
 
214 THE LAND-EEVENUE OF MADRAS. 
 
 produce wMcli is the life of future exertions in hus- 
 bandry, and, as a compensation for a variety of disasters 
 pecuhar to the country, ought undoubtedly to go to 
 the former. Upon this view of the subject, although 
 it may be deemed unusual official language, yet I 
 hesitate not to regret every pagoda that has been 
 thus added to the jumma, because I am sensible of its 
 evil tendency, and because I have ever been taught to 
 believe that the affairs of Government flourish in pro- 
 portion to the prosperity of its servants."* The assess- 
 ment, too, varied greatly in the different divisions. 
 The average assessment per acre was, on the dry lands, 
 in the Southern Division, two rupees ; in the Centre, 
 one and a half; and in the Northern, one. On the 
 wet lands, it was in the Southern Division, eleven ; in 
 the Centre, six and a half; and in the Northern, five and 
 a half rupees, t The average rent may be set down at 
 little more than three shillings an acre on the common 
 soils ; and the average contribution of each farmer was 
 about seventy shillings a year. J 
 
 Whilst the revenue settlement of the lands ceded to 
 the British, after the war of 1792, was still in an ex- 
 perimental state, the field of investigation was greatly 
 enlarged by the results of the second war with Tippoo. 
 Our possessions in Southern India were extended by 
 the conquest of Mysore in 1799. Eead and Munro 
 both joined the grand army. After the fall of Se- 
 ringapatam, the former resigned his office, as chief 
 collector of the Baramahl ; and Munro, who ought to 
 have succeeded him, was sent to settle the revenue of 
 
 * Records quoted in Calcutta Review, of the lowness of the rent, and not any 
 
 f Calcutta Review. fault of the soil; for at least three- 
 
 j "The average rent of cultivated land fourths of the lands in cultivation are 
 
 in this country is not more than three capable of producing cotton, sugar, 
 
 shillings an acre. Waste lands pay and indigo; but though the Ryots have 
 
 nothing The average rent of the little money, I imagine that they suffer 
 
 ■whole body of farmers is not more less real distress than the peasantry of 
 
 than ten pagodas each This Europe."— [Jiwwro to his Father, May, 
 
 extreme poverty is the principal cause 1796. — Gleig's Li/e.^ 
 
CHARACTER OF MUNRO. 215 
 
 Canara. The appointment was unwelcome — the duties 
 were irksome to him — but he was soon removed to 
 another and more extended sphere of action. In 1800, 
 the country, which on the partition of Tippoo's domains 
 had been made over to the Nizam, was ceded by him to 
 the British ; and on the districts passing into our hands, 
 Munro was made chief collector, or superintendent, with 
 a staff of civil assistants to conduct the detail duties 
 under his eye.* 
 
 It was during the seven years that followed the 
 cession of these districts that Munro perfected himself 
 in the science, in which he had graduated under Kead. 
 And whatever may be thought of the theories which 
 he advocated, all men will admit that, in practice, he 
 was the model of an Indian administrator. He was 
 one of the first who, in that part of the country, 
 carried to the work of revenue-settlement a thorough 
 acquaintance with the language and manners of the 
 people. He was, in the happy language of Mr. 
 Webbe, an undubashed officer — one who moved about 
 familiarly among the rude villagers without an inter- 
 preter at his elbow, and who not only kncAv and under- 
 stood all classes, but had a heart to sympathise 
 with them. They looked up to him with veneration; 
 called him their father; and whatever might be their 
 condition, knew that he would respect their rights. 
 From year's end to year's end he toiled on unremit- 
 tingly, scorning delight and living laborious days, but, 
 in the weariness and waste of a life of continued labor 
 and isolation, in an unhealthy climate, preserved in 
 all his early freshness and warmth, by the good home 
 
 * That excellent man, Mr. Webbe, Mr. Thackeray, who has received the 
 
 the chief secretary of Madras, of whom reward for the Gentoo language ; Mr. 
 
 Wellington said that he was one of tlie Stodart, who has been for a long time 
 
 ablest men he ever knew, wrote to assistant to one of our northern col- 
 
 ^lunro, " The assistants may be Mr. lectors ; and some other undubashed 
 
 Cochrane, Clive's head-assistant, who Persian if I can find him." 
 is master of Persian and Hindostanee; 
 
216 THE LAND-EEVENUE OF MADRAS. 
 
 feeling which was perpetually bubbling up within him. 
 His strong natural sagacity was remarkable. He 
 read character at a glance. But he had more valuable 
 qualities even than these. It was the conscientious- 
 ness of the man which raised him to high station. No 
 man-^not even the great captain, w^ho was the friend 
 and correspondent of " dear Munro," and who wrote 
 him pleasant letters about his first victory at Assye — 
 had a stronger sense of the paramount claims of duty. 
 The character and career of such a man should be held 
 in affectionate remembrance by every young soldier in 
 the Indian army. There is not one of them whose 
 unaided talent, industry, and integrity, may not raise 
 him to the same high eminence as was attained by 
 the young Scot, who began his career without a pagoda 
 in his pocket, a blanket to cover him at night, or a 
 pillow whereon to lay his head. His schoolfellows 
 said of him that, as a boy, he carried everything be- 
 fore him, by " his coolness, his courage, and his un- 
 -equalled endurance." The same characteristics, in the 
 moral, no less than in the physical signification of the 
 words, made the fortune of the man. And there is 
 not a cadet who joins in the general salute, on the 
 examination day at Addiscombe, for whom the due 
 exercise of the same high qualities may not win the 
 same high reward. 
 
 For seven years Munro labored diligently and un- 
 ceasingly in the Ceded Districts. He has given us, in 
 his own clear, forcible words, an account of the labors 
 of a collector, and of the general system of collection 
 in the Ryotwaree country, which sparkles up, fresh 
 and bright, amidst a somewhat dreary waste of " Re- 
 venue Selections," and makes the whole process of 
 assessment intelligible to the dullest understanding. 
 ** The collector," he wrote, " sets out on his circuit in 
 " September or October, when the early crops begin to be 
 
SYSTEM OF ASSESSMENT. 217 
 
 " reaped, and tlie late ones to be down. On arriving in a 
 " district he assembles all the Rjots of the four or five 
 " nearest villages. The first business is, to learn how 
 " far the cultivation of the present year is more or less 
 " than that of the last. This is soon done, by the help 
 " of the Tehsildars' and Curnums' accounts, compared 
 " with the reports of the Potails and Ryots. Where 
 " there is a decrease it is commonly owing to deaths, 
 ^' emigrations, or loss of cattle. Where there is an 
 " increase, it is usually derived from new settlers, or 
 " additional lands being occupied by the old ones. In 
 " the case of decrease, the rent of the lands thrown up 
 " is deducted from the settlement of last year; in that 
 " of increase, the rent of the land newly occupied is 
 '^ added; and in both cases the rent of the remaining 
 " lands remains the same as before. The rent of the 
 •' land newly occupied is determined by the accounts 
 " of what it was in former times; or, if such accounts 
 " cannot be procured, by the opinions of the most in- 
 " telligent Ryots : but the full rent of waste land is 
 " not exacted until it has been in cultivation from two 
 
 to seven years. The number of years, and the gra- 
 
 dational rise in each year, depend upon the nature 
 " of the land and the custom of the village. They are 
 
 known to all parties ; and all doubts are removed by 
 ^ their being detailed in a proclamation, or cowle 
 
 namah, under the collector's seal, circulated to every 
 " village. 
 
 " If the cultivation is the same as last year's, and 
 " no failures occur among the Ryots, the rents remain 
 " unaltered. If the crops are bad, and it appears that 
 '^ some of the poor Ryots must have a remission, the 
 " loss, or a part of it, is assessed upon the lands of the 
 '' rest, where it can be done without causing any ma- 
 " terial inconvenience. This assessment never exceeds 
 " ten or twelve per cent., and is much oftener relin- 
 
 IC 
 
218 THE LAND-REVENUE OF MADRAS. 
 
 " quished than carried into effect. In cases where it 
 " can be easily borne, it is frequently agreed to witli- 
 " out difficulty ; and if opposition is made, it is gene- 
 " rally soon got over, by the mediation of the Eyots 
 " of the neighbouring villages present. These discuss 
 " the point in question with the Eyots of the objecting 
 " village, tell them that it is the custom of the country, 
 " use such other arguments as may be applicable to the 
 " subject, and never fail in persuading them to accede to 
 ^^ the demand, unless it is really too high, in which event 
 " it is lowered. 
 
 " Wherever individuals or villages object to their rent, 
 '' it is always the most expeditious and satisfactory way 
 " of settling the dispute, to refer it to the Ryots of other 
 " villages, who do more on such occasions in half an 
 " hour than a collector and his cutcherry in a whole 
 " year." 
 
 All this, however, was merely experimental. The 
 question of the eventual settlement of these districts 
 remained still in abeyance. But experience had 
 strengthened Munro's convictions; and the plan 
 which he had recommended, as the disciple of Read, 
 in the Baramahl, was now, Avith some modifications, 
 more authoritatively enunciated by the chief collector 
 of the Ceded Districts. Writing, in August, 1807, to 
 the Board of Revenue, Munro thus particularised the 
 terms of his proposed Ryotwaree Settlement — " The 
 " following articles contain the principles on Avhich 
 "the settlement should be formed: — 1st. The settle- 
 " ment should be Ryotwaree. 2nd. The amount of 
 " the settlement shall increase and decrease annually, 
 " according to the extent of the land in cultivation. 
 " 3rd. A reduction of 25 per cent, on all land shall 
 " be made in the survey rate of assessment. 4th. An 
 " additional reduction in the assessment of 8 per cent., 
 " or 33 per cent, in all, shall be allowed on all lands 
 
MUNRO S TLAN. 219 
 
 " watered by wells, or by water raised by machinery 
 " from rivers and nullahs, provided the cultivators 
 '^ keep the wells or embankments (dirroas) in repair 
 " at their own expense. A similar reduction shall 
 '' be allowed on the lands watered by small tanks, 
 "■ wherever the cultivators agree to bear the expense 
 '^ of repairs. 5th. Every Ryot shall be at liberty, at 
 *' the end of every year, either to throw up a part 
 " of his land, or to occupy more, according to his 
 " circumstances ; but whether he throw up or occupy, 
 " shall not be permitted to select, but shall take or 
 " reject proportional shares of the good and bad toge- 
 " ther. 6th. Every Ryot, as long as he pays the rent 
 '^ of his land, shall be considered as the complete 
 " owner of the soil, and shall be at liberty to let it to 
 " a tenant, without any hesitation as to rent, and to 
 " sell it as he pleases. 7th. No remission shall be 
 " made, on ordinary occasions, for bad crops or other 
 '' accidents. Should failures occur, which cannot be 
 " made good from the property or land of the de- 
 " faulters, the village in which they happen shall be 
 " Hable for them, to the extent of 10 per cent, addi- 
 " tional on the rent of the remaining Ryots, but no 
 " further. 8th. All unoccupied land shall remain in 
 " the hands of Government, and the rent of whatever 
 " part of it may be hereafter cultivated, shall be added 
 "• to the public revenue. 9th. All taxes on houses, 
 " shops, and professions, all duties, licences, &c., shall 
 " belong exclusively to Government. The Ryot on 
 " whose land houses or shops may be built, shall not 
 '' be entitled to receive a higher rent from them than 
 '' the equivalent of the survey rent of the ground 
 " which they occupy. 10th. The repairs of all tanks, 
 " which are not rendered private property by an extra 
 " remission, or duswimdum enam, shall be made at the 
 " expense of Government. 11th. Tuckavy (advances) 
 
220 THE LAND-REVENUE OF MADRAS. 
 
 *' shall be gradually discontinued. 12th. Potails, Cur- 
 " nums, and all other village servants, shall remain as 
 " heretofore, under the collector. 13th. Private credi- 
 " tors, who may distrain the property of Ryots, shall 
 " discharge the rent which may be due from such Ryots 
 " to Government, and shall give security for it before 
 " they begin the distraint." 
 
 But this Ryotwaree system, to which Munro clung 
 with the tenacity of a man of strong convictions, was 
 doomed to see many remarkable vicissitudes before it 
 achieved an ultimate triumph. In the first instance, 
 he who had graduated as a revenue-officer in the 
 Baramahl, and there first propounded his scheme of 
 assessment, was condemned to see that tract of country 
 given up to the Permanent Zemindarry system. Im- 
 perative orders were forwarded from the higher autho- 
 rities to carry out the Bengal plan of perpetual assess- 
 ment. In the years 1803-4-5 these lands were divided 
 into Zemindarries, or allotments, of different sizes, and 
 sold upon terms fixed in accordance with the original 
 settlement. " The extent of the available resources of 
 each Zemindaree was shown from the original surveys, 
 imder the heads of cultivated, fallow, and cultivable 
 lands."* But these surveys had been somewhat loosely 
 conducted. There was an entire want of uniformity 
 in them, except in one particular — that all the lands 
 were more or less over-assessed. Upon the introduc- 
 tion of the Permanent Zemindarry system this became 
 miserably apparent. The new settlement, of course, 
 was a failure — not because the system was bad in 
 itself, but because it was applied to districts not pre- 
 pared for its reception. It failed, indeed, because the 
 early Ryotwaree men had gi'eatly over-assessed the 
 lands, and no system could have borne up against such 
 an exorbitant valuation. 
 
 • Calcutta lieview. 
 
CLEVELAND AND MUNRO. 221 
 
 In 1807, Munro returned to England. Whatever 
 may be thought of Kyotwaree or Zemindaree settle- 
 ment, it is certain that during his long residence in 
 the Ceded Districts he conferred substantial advan- 
 tages on the people. It was said of him by the head 
 of the Madras Government, that "under his adminis- 
 tration the inhabitants, from disunited hordes of law- 
 less freebooters, had become as far advanced in civili- 
 sation, submission to the laws, and obedience to the 
 magistrates, as any of the subjects under the Madras 
 Government; that every one seem satisfied with his 
 situation, and that the regret of the people was uni- 
 versal on the departure of the principal collector."* 
 He had been thinking of Cleveland, who had " esta- 
 blished the Company's Raj in the hearts of the hill- 
 people of Bhaugulpore "f — whose name, after the 
 lapse of half a century, is still held in affectionate re- 
 membrance by the people of that country, and to 
 whom even now the Court of Directors often refer, 
 with approbation, in encouragement of others of their 
 servants whom they desire ''to do likewise." J 
 
 Of the general results of Munro's Eyotwaree settle- 
 ment two or three years after his departure from 
 India, the Committee of the House of Commons, in 
 their Fifth Report, expressed a most favorable 
 opinion. § But he had scarcely turned his back upon 
 
 * Minute of President of Fort St. the examinations which they have made 
 
 Georye, Oct. 26, 1807. into the effects of the Ryotwar principle 
 
 t VVriting from Canara of the dis- of settlement, throughout the modern 
 
 trust of the villagers, he said: "Per- possess.ons of the Company under the 
 
 severance on my part, however, brought Madras Presidency, that it has greatly 
 
 over some deserters, and by talking to improved the situation of the cultivator 
 
 them as your friend Cleveland would by limiting the bounds of the public 
 
 probably have done, they brought over assessment and adjusting the actual 
 
 more, and I am now getting on as well den)and on each person according to his 
 
 as I can expect."— [^/unro to Cockburn. ability to satisfy it. . . So favorable 
 
 — Gleig's Life.'} a change in their condition has neces- 
 
 + See letters of the Court, quoted in sarily excited a confidence annmg the 
 
 subsequent chapters, on the Civilisation Kyots in the equity and justice of the 
 
 of the Bheels and the Hill Tribes of Company's government," &c, &c. — 
 
 Orissa — Part IV. [P'fih^ Report of the House of Commons, 
 
 § '* It appears to the Committee, from 1810.] 
 
222 THE LAND-REVENUE OF MADRAS. 
 
 Madras, when instructions were received by the Go- 
 vernment of that presidency, which compelled them to 
 abandon the principle for which Mnnro had contended. 
 The system of individual responsibility, which brought 
 each separate cultivator into immediate communication 
 with Government, was now to be given up ; and the 
 old system of joint responsibility, or the assessment 
 of villages, was, under certain modified rules, to be re- 
 stored. 
 
 This was a system of leases granted, for a certain 
 number of years,* to the chief cultivator of each vil- 
 lage, who was to farm the revenue, or wherever it 
 w^as practicable to the whole body of the Eyots col- 
 lectively. ^' It differed from the Eyotwar chiefly in 
 the assessment being fixed on the entire aggregate lands 
 of the village, not on each distinct and separate field ; 
 in its being concluded with all the Eyots collectively,, 
 not with each individually ; and in its giving up to the 
 Eyots not only the revenue to be derived from the 
 arable lands, but that also to be obtained by after exer- 
 tion from the waste also. In fact, in leaving, in con- 
 sideration of a contract to pay a given sum as public re- 
 venue, the entire internal administration of affairs to the 
 village community. "t 
 
 " The object in view,'' continue the same high au- 
 thorities, " was to adapt the revenue administration 
 to the ancient institutions and ancient usages of the 
 country, to which the Hindoos are proverbially at- 
 tached ; to suit the system to the people, and not to at- 
 tempt to bend the people to the system." And there 
 were practically many advantages in such an arrange- 
 ment, not the least of which was that stated by Mr. 
 Place, that " no difficulty occurs in fixing the value of 
 all the lands together of one village, but it would be 
 
 * First for three, then for ten years. January 5, 1818. — Madras Revenue 
 t Minute of Madras Board of Revenue^ Selections. 
 
VILLAGE SETTLEMENTS. 223 
 
 nearly impossible to assign to every small allotment 
 its portion so exactly, and with such due regard to 
 fertility of soil, and other circumstances, that some 
 should not benefit and others suffer." At all events, it 
 did not to the same degree, if at all, place the people 
 bound hand and foot at the mercy of unscrupulous Teh- 
 sildars. 
 
 I cannot afford to dwell, as I could wish, upon the 
 discussions which arose respecting the advantages and 
 disadvantages of this village system. I am greatly 
 disposed to think that the Madras Board of Revenue, 
 who contended strongly in its favor, had the best of 
 the argument. But they had not the best of the 
 struggle which then ensued. The higher authorities 
 were against them. Munro's visit to England had pro- 
 bably not been without its effect upon the opinions of 
 the Court of Directors and the Board of Control ; and 
 towards the close of 1817 instructions were received at 
 Madras for the abolition of the village system, and the 
 confirmation in all practicable cases of the plan of 
 Ryotwar Settlement, with individual holders. It was 
 alleged that the village system had been tried and had 
 failed. The highest revenue authorities declared that 
 it had not been subjected to a fair trial, and that it had 
 not failed. They alleged, too, that the home authori- 
 ties had decided hastily on insufficient evidence. " The 
 judgment," they wrote, " which has been pronounced in 
 England against the village system, is founded on a very 
 partial and unfavorable view of its results ; for it does 
 not appear that the authorities at home had, at the time 
 when that judgment was passed, any information before 
 them respecting any other portion of it than its com- 
 mencement, the triennial settlement."* And they urged 
 
 * Minute of Madras Board of lievenue, January 5, 1818. 
 
224 THE LAND-EEVENUE OF MADRAS. 
 
 that the result of that settlement was no test of the 
 success or failure of the system, masmuch as that the 
 lands had been subjected to an over-assessment, "fomided 
 upon the fallacious data of the Ryotwar collections." 
 ^*In fact, it was nearly everywhere," they said, " a mere 
 rack-rent." 
 
 But the Ryotwar system was in favor at home, 
 and orders were sent out for its re-introduction, in all 
 possible cases, under certain modifications prescribed 
 by the Court. At this period, the different districts 
 of the Madras Presidency were subject to three diffe- 
 rent systems. In Ganjam, Vizigapatam, Rajahmundry, 
 Masulapatam, Guntoor, Salem, Chingleput, the Cud- 
 dalore district, and the Western, Southern, and Chit- 
 toor Pollams, the Permanent Zemindarry system pre- 
 vailed. In Malabar, Canara, Coimbatore, Madura, 
 and Dindigul, the Ryotwar system was in force. Into 
 the Ceded Districts, Nellore, the two divisions of 
 Arcot, Palnaud, Trichinopoly, Tinivelly, and Tanjore, 
 the village system had been introduced. For a quarter 
 of a century now under the Madras Government a 
 series of experiments in land-revenue had been going 
 on. One system had been displaced to make way for 
 another ; each had been tried in turn, and it was alleged 
 that in turn each system had failed. They had all failed, 
 more or less, because the lands had been over- assessed. 
 They had none of them been fairly tried under a light 
 assessment. 
 
 But there were evils peculiar to the old Ryotwar 
 system, which its own advocates acknowledged, and 
 which now, from the new modified system, were to be 
 erased. Indeed, under the force of circumstance and 
 the mutations of time, they had pretty well erased 
 themselves. The introduction, in 1802, to the Madras 
 Presidency, of the Cornwallis regulations, which " en- 
 
IIMPROVED SYSTEM. 
 
 225 
 
 grafted on the Indian codes the principles of British 
 justice," rendered the arhitrary and illegal acts* which 
 were perpetrated for the enforcement of the Hyotwar 
 system no longer practicable. "The new Regula- 
 tions," it was well said, '^ declared revenue to be sub- 
 ordinate to justice, while the Uyotwar system had 
 rendered justice entirely subordinate to revenue." 
 " The new laws," it was added, " by their general 
 principles, and not by any specific enactment, took 
 from the native revenue-officers the power to ' punish 
 and confine,' which they had exercised to coerce the 
 Ryot to cultivate, and annually to take from him all 
 that he was able to pay."t Under the improved 
 
 * What these arbitrary and illegal 
 acts were, may be gathered from the 
 following, which the Madras Board 
 declare to be " no exaggerated descrip- 
 tion:" — " Ignorant of the true resources 
 of the newly-acquired countries as of 
 the precise nature of their landed 
 tenures, we find a small band of foreign 
 conquerors no sooner obtaining posses- 
 sion of a vast extent of territory, 
 peopled by various nations, differing 
 from each other in language, customs, 
 and habits, than they attempt what 
 would be deemed a herculean task, or 
 rather a visionary project, even in the 
 most civilised countries of Europe, of 
 which every statistical information is 
 possessed, and of which the Govern- 
 ment are one with the people — viz., to 
 fix a land-rent, not on each province, 
 district, or country, not on each estate 
 or farm, but on every separate field 
 within their dominions. In pursuit of 
 this supposed improvement, we find 
 them unintentionally dissolving the 
 ancient ties, "the ancient usages" which 
 united the republic of each Hindoo vil- 
 lage, and by a kind of agrarian law, 
 newly assessing and parcelling out the 
 lands which from time immemorial had 
 belonged to the village community col- 
 lectively, not only among tlie indi- 
 vidual members of the privileged order 
 (the Meerassidars and Cadeeras), but 
 even among their inferior tenantry 
 (the Pyacarries) ; we observe them 
 ignorantly denying, and by their denial 
 abolishing private property in the land ; 
 resuming what belonged to a public 
 
 body (the Grama manium), and con- 
 ferring in lieu of it a stipend in money 
 on one individual; professing to limit 
 their demand on each field, but in fact, 
 by establishing for such limit an un- 
 attainable maximum, assessing the Ryot 
 at discretion; and, like the Mussulman 
 Government which preceded them, 
 binding the Ryot by force to the 
 plough, compelling him to till land 
 acknowledged to be over-assessed, 
 dragging him back to it if he absconded, 
 deferring their demand upon him until 
 his crop came to maturity, then taking 
 from him all that could be obtained, 
 and leaving to him nothing but his 
 bullocks and his seed grain — nay, per- 
 haps obliged to supply him even with 
 these in order to renew his melancholy 
 task of cultivating, not for himself, but 
 for them." 
 
 f Madras Board of Revenue. — And 
 how this was done may be gathered 
 from the continuation of the passage 
 describing the good effects of the Corn- 
 wallis Regulations :—" The Tehsildar 
 was stripped of the ketticole or hand tor- 
 ture, the stone placed on the head under 
 a burning sun, the stocks, and other of 
 his former insignia of office, by the dis- 
 play and occasional use of which he 
 had been enabled to saddle the Ryots 
 with the rents of such lands as he 
 deemed proper. The lictor deprived of 
 his fasces was no longer terrible to the 
 people." This is a worthy illustration 
 of the progress of British justice. We 
 wonder now how anything of the kind 
 could ever have existed. 
 
 Q 
 
226 THE LAND-REVENUE OF MADRAS. 
 
 E/yotwar system this miglity oppression was now to be 
 formally repudiated and renounced. All compulsion 
 or restraint on the free labor of the Hyot was to cease 
 under the new system, and the native revenue-officers 
 were to be especially warned against the assumption 
 and exercise of improper power. Freedom of labor 
 was declared by the Court of Directors to be the basis 
 of the new settlement, and the Madras Board of 
 Revenue enforced upon the collectors the paramount 
 duty of restraining their native underlings, and pro- 
 tecting the liberties of the people. Under the new 
 system, too, proprietary rights were to be recognised, 
 which had not been recognised before ; and, above all, 
 the heavy assessment, which had pressed so severely 
 on the industrial energies of the Ryots, was to be con- 
 siderably reduced. The orders of Government were 
 "to fix such a rate of assessment'' as was calculated 
 to " give encouragement to agricultural industry, and 
 thereby promote the general prosperity of the coun- 
 try." 
 
 All the necessary preliminaries having been gone 
 through — the village leases having expired — ^many of 
 the new Zemindarries, or " Mootahs,"* having lapsed, 
 or been bought in, the improved Ryotwar system was 
 declared to be established in Madras; and Munro 
 himself, who had been appointed to the chief place in 
 the Government, took his seat just in time to give the 
 finishing stroke to the act of final restoration. In the 
 spring of 1820, the Uyotwar system was formally en- 
 throned at Madras. 
 
 It would appear, on an impartial review of all the 
 circumstances I have here briefly recited, that many 
 of the defects of the original Eyotwar system, as 
 founded at the close of the last century by Colonel 
 
 ♦ That is, the allotments into which introduction of the Permanent Settle- 
 the Baramahl lands were divided, on the ment.— See ante, page 220. 
 
EVILS OF THE OLD SYSTEM. 227 
 
 Eead, and since developed and maintained by Sir 
 Thomas Mum^o, have been to a great extent remedied 
 or removed under the system which is now in force. 
 The old system was generally better than that which 
 we found on assuming the government of the ceded 
 districts. Read and his assistants may have made 
 many mistakes, and the subordinate revenue-officers, 
 doubtless, committed many excesses. But, compared 
 Avith the oppression to which the people had been sub- 
 jected under the Mysore princes, the defective admi- 
 nistration which resulted from our infant experiments 
 must have sat lightly on the people. That these 
 experiments, though carried on ia good faith, and 
 T\ith the most benevolent intentions, by very honest 
 and very able men, were extremely faulty in principle 
 and unsuccessful in result, is not to be denied. It was 
 wholly impossible, not merely for a little knot of sol- 
 diers, fresh from their military duties, but for thrice 
 the number of experienced revenue-officers — the 
 " crack collectors" of the present day — to have ade- 
 quately superintended the assessment of the immense 
 number of small holdings iQto which each village was 
 parcelled. Every field was to be assessed ; and these 
 multiplied assessments were necessarily left to the 
 *' Tehsildars," or native revenue-officers — an extremely 
 corrupt and licentious set of men, who plundered the 
 people without stint, and oppressed them without re- 
 morse. The assessments made, under the circum- 
 stances, were extremely unequal; but excessiveness 
 was their general character. These excessive assess- 
 ments were the curse of the country. They brought 
 everything to ruin. Eu^st one system was tried — then 
 another. But over-assessment brought them all to the 
 ground. It can not be said, that under the Per- 
 manent Zemindarry settlement, Bengal is over-as- 
 sessed. 
 
 q2 
 
228 THE LAND-REVENUE OF MADRAS. 
 
 Such would seem to liave been the causes of the 
 failure of all our initial efforts during the first quarter 
 of a century of experiment. But it is only just that 
 we should separate what may be called accidental 
 circumstances of this kind from the inherent defects of 
 the system. Over-assessment, it may be said, is one 
 thing — ^the Ryotwar system is another. But I am 
 not sure that it may not be fairly answered, that al- 
 though over-assessment is not an inherent defect of 
 the system, it is the result of one of its defects. If 
 the land is not fairly assessed, it is pretty certain to be 
 over-assessed. There is little fear of the valuation 
 falling short of the mark. Now, the principal feature 
 of the Byotwar system is the multiplication of hold- 
 ings ; and the greater the number of rights to be ad- 
 justed, the greater the chance of their not being fairly 
 adjusted. In this point of view, the over-assessment, 
 from which so much evil arose, was a result of the 
 system. But it was so far accidental, that it was 
 remediable. It was not necessarily inseparable from 
 the system. It might be eradicated by an equitable 
 revision. The assessments may be rendered less bur- 
 densome, and it is to be hoped that the people will 
 soon reap the benefit of the change. 
 
 The grievance of enforced tenancy — of the com- 
 pulsory occupation of undesired lands — under which 
 the Byots were for some time compelled to suffer, was 
 a pure abomination. The practice was never openly 
 recognised, and it is to be hoped that the European 
 officers were never cognisant of it. It arose out of a 
 state of things peculiar to the Byotwar settlement ; 
 for the great division of responsibilities — the minute 
 parcelling of the territory — necessarily caused a run 
 upon the good lands, and exposed Government to the 
 risk of having aU the indifferent soil throwQ upon their 
 hands. When it was resolved that this cruel, most 
 
EVILS OF THE OLD SYSTEM. 229 
 
 outrageous system should be openly suppressed, the 
 chief revenue authorities, though eager for its sup- 
 pression, could not help admitting this practical evil, 
 and acknowledging that the result of the reform would 
 be injurious to our finances. But they declared that 
 it was thenceforth " to be clearly understood that the 
 revenue is to continue, as at present, subordinate to 
 justice." It needed that nothing more should be said 
 to give the death-blow to every argument in favor of the 
 old Ryotwar settlement, than that it could not exist 
 cotemporaneously with an improved system of justice. 
 Another inherent defect in the system of annual 
 settlements was, that it gave the tenant no proprietary 
 interest in his improvements — that under such an ar- 
 rangement every man, who by his own industry or 
 enterprise had increased the productiveness of the soil 
 under his cultivation, w^as liable at the end of the year 
 to pay the penalty of his exertions in the increased 
 assessment of his lands. But an evil, at once so unjust 
 to the cultivator, and so disadvantageous to the great 
 Government landlord, was not likely to be perpetuated 
 by administrators w^ho, as time advanced, took pro- 
 gressively more sound and more liberal views alike of 
 their interests and their duties. I believe that under 
 the modified Ryotwar system of 1820, some efforts 
 have been made to remedy this evil, and to give the 
 cultivator a proper interest in his improvements. In 
 1834, a series of questions was proposed by Lord 
 William Bentinck to some of the principal revenue- 
 officers of Madras, relative to the working of the Ryot- 
 war system. Among .these questions was the follow- 
 ing : " If a Ryot improves a field that has always been 
 in his occupancy, by making a weU, or by other extra- 
 ordinary application of capital, is his assessment in- 
 creased, and if increased, is the increase either not im- 
 mediately taken, or so moderate as to give him an 
 
230 THE LAND-REVENUE OF MADRAS. 
 
 ample return for his expenditure ?" To this question 
 the principal collector of Coimbatore replied : " If a 
 Ryot makes a well on his 'punjah' land that has 
 always been in his occupancy, in order to convert it 
 into garden land, he receives a cowle or lease, on favor- 
 able terms, to give liim ample return for his expendi- 
 ture ; this cowle extends to a period of five years ; 
 punjah rent is paid for the first two years ; half garden 
 rent for the third year; three-quarters rent for the 
 fourth ; and in the fifth year he pays a full garden 
 rent, being about quadruple of the original rent of 
 the punjah field, of whatever class it may be." So 
 it would seem from this, that if a man improved his 
 holding so as to convert it from a field into a garden, his 
 rent was quadrupled at the end of five years. This 
 was the practice in Coimbatore. But the principal 
 collector of Salem, in answer to the same question, 
 said : "In the Salem district no increase of assessment 
 follows improvement eflPected at the expense of the 
 cultivator."* I believe it may be generally stated, 
 that although the cultivator has more interest in the 
 improvement of his lands than he had under the old 
 Ryotwar settlement, it would be far better if he had 
 still more. 
 
 In reply to a question, put by Lord William Ben- 
 tinck, relative to the amount of land not under cul- 
 tivation, the Salem collector repUed that in his district 
 one half of the culturable land was uncultivated, t 
 The reply of the Counbatore collector was much more 
 favorable. He repeated that there was about 22 per 
 
 * Replies to the Governor-General — f The writer in the Calcutta Review 
 
 Lord William Bentinck's queries respect- already quoted, whose statistics princi- 
 
 ing the Ryotwar system of Revenue Ad- pally relate to the Salem district, says 
 
 ministration in the Presidency of Fort SU that some of the best lands there are 
 
 George, by tfie principal Collectors of Co- lying waste, on account of over-assess- 
 
 hnbatore and Salem. — These papers were ment. No one will venture to take 
 
 printed for official use ; but I do not lands the cultivation of which must be 
 
 know whether they have ever been unproductive of profit, if not produc- 
 
 published. tive of loss. 
 
REALISATION OF THE REVENUE. 231 
 
 cent, of waste land in his district. These local varia- 
 tions may sometimes he accounted for by a reference 
 to the state of the country when it first passed under 
 our rule, but they are commonly regulated by the 
 amount of the assessment. And looking at the 
 general state of the districts under the Ryotwar 
 settlement, it would seem not to have been favorable 
 to the progress of cultivation. In 1821, Muoro ac- 
 knowledged that there was no means of bringing more 
 land imder cultivation, and so increasing the reve- 
 nue, except by reducing the assessment. And twenty 
 years afterwards Lord Elphinstone enunciated the 
 same truth. But although in all parts of the Bengal 
 Presidency imder the Zemindarry and Village Settle- 
 ments cultivation has greatly increased, the most 
 recent authorities on the subject of the Uyotwar 
 settlements admit that we are " still collecting the 
 revenue inherited from the most oppressive of native 
 governments."* 
 
 Still, in spite of the over-assessment, the revenue 
 is collected with considerable punctuality. The un- 
 realised amounts are not large, though much larger 
 than they were. " The Byotwar system," wrote the 
 Salem collector, in 1834, *' having now been in opera- 
 tion here for many years, and the Ryots being aware 
 of the exact sum they have each to pay, and of the 
 time in which it must be paid, are in general pretty 
 regular in their instalments." This authority gives a 
 tabular statement of ten years, from which it appears 
 that the net-settlement in the first was 1,690,240 
 rupees, and in the last 1,410,624 rupees, but that 
 whereas the per-centage of irrecoverable balance in 
 the first year was 7 annas, 6 pie (or less than 1) per 
 cent., in the last it was 2 rupees, 3 annas (or 2 -V) per 
 cent. In Coimbatore we have a similar account of 
 
 ♦ Calcutta Beviewj June, 1852. 
 
232 THE LAND-KEVENUE OF MADEAS. 
 
 diminished receipts and increased balances. The net- 
 revenue had diminished in the last ten years ; and the 
 per-centage of the balance has risen from 2 annas, 
 6 pie (or about \) per cent., to 2 rupees, 10 annas (or 
 more than 20 per cent. To what extent this may be 
 attributable to the increased forbearance of the re- 
 venue-officers, I do not know ; but it would be just to 
 take it into reasonable account. The legitimate means 
 of coercion are principally distraint and attachment. 
 But sometimes the native revenue-officers resorted to 
 illegitimate means of extracting blood from a stone. 
 The heads of the villages, too, are said to have " oc- 
 casional recourse privately to various unauthorised 
 modes of stimulating the tardy payer ; such as con- 
 fining, placing him in the sun, obliging him to stand 
 on one leg, or to sit with his head confined between 
 his knees, till the constrained position becomes pain- 
 ful." But all such violent modes of coercion are 
 merely the remains of native barbarism — relics of old 
 customs favored by the mild Hindoo under the native 
 governments. The European functionary has ever set 
 his face steadfastly against them, and has not been slow 
 to punish, on conviction, such cruelties as these* Even 
 imprisonment is seldom or never resorted to in these 
 days. " No defaulters have been confined in gaol of 
 late years," said the collector of Coimbatore in 1834; 
 " in cases of mere default this measure is not deemed 
 essential." 
 
 Looking impartially at all these things, I think it 
 must be admitted that, although the Byotwar settle- 
 ment was undertaken, not hastily or heedlessly, but 
 after due consideration, and with a sincere desire to 
 benefit the people, the results do not indicate the suc- 
 cess of the experiment. But unsuccessful experiments 
 are no uncommon things in the history of human ad- 
 ministrations. There is nothing more remarkable, as 
 
HUMAN FAILURES. 233 
 
 there is nothing more mortifying than the fact, that 
 many of the best efforts which have been made for the 
 advancement of the happiness of mankind have re- 
 sulted only in the extension and perpetuation of human 
 suffering. It would be easy to multiply instances 
 illustrative of this. But I conceive it to be one of 
 those admitted facts which need only to be asserted.* 
 
 I turn now to another great revenue experiment, 
 the results of which, as far as they have yet been 
 ascertained, are only cheering evidences of the fore- 
 thought and wisdom which have designed and fashioned 
 it — I turn to that great experiment known as the 
 settlement of the North- West em Provinces, f 
 
 ♦ " It is mortifying to the pride of come centres of infection. The very 
 
 human wisdom to consider how much police which is necessary to make our 
 
 evil has resulted from the best and cities habitable, give birth to the odious 
 
 least exceptionable of its boasted in- vermin of informers, thief-catchers, and 
 
 stitutions — and how those establish- suborners of treachery — and our pri- 
 
 ments which have been most carefully sons, which are meant chiefly to reform 
 
 devised for the repression of guilt or the guilty and secure the suspected, are 
 
 the relief of misery, have become them- converted into schools of the most atro- 
 
 selves the fruitful and pestilent sources cious corruption, and dens of the most 
 
 both of guilt and misery in a frightful inhuman torture." — [LordJejfery.'] 
 and disgusting degree. Laws, without f I regret very much that in writing 
 
 which society could not exist, become, this chapter, I had not the assistance of 
 
 by their very multiplication and refine- Mr. Dykes' interesting volume, " Salem 
 
 ment, a snare and a burden to those — an Indian Collectorate," which ap- 
 
 they were intended to protect, and let peared about the same time as the first 
 
 in upon us the hateful and most in- edition of this work. It may be studied 
 
 tolerable plagues of pettifogging chica- with very great advantage by all who 
 
 nery and legal persecution. Institutions would make themselves acquainted 
 
 for the relief and prevention of poverty with the working of the Madras rc- 
 
 have the effect of multiplying it tenfold venue- system. 
 — hospitals for the cure of diseases be- 
 
234 SETTLEMENT OF THE NOETH-WESTEEN PROVINCES. 
 
 CHAPTEK IV. 
 
 The Settlement of the North- West Provinces— First Acquisition of the Country 
 — Primal Measures of our Revenue-Officers— Their Insufficiency— Injustice to 
 the Old Proprietors— Frauds of Native Officials— Government Measures- 
 Commissioners Appointed— Partial Remedies — Further Enactments — Mr. R. 
 Bird — The New Settlement — Its Agents— Its Character— Its Results. 
 
 When the armies of Lake and Wellesley broke the 
 Mahratta power on tlie banks of the Jumna and the 
 plains of Berar, and the north-western provinces of Hin- 
 dostan became subject to the white men, who ruled in 
 the Carnatic, the Deccan, and Bengal, and had established 
 themselves in the priestly city of Benares, the settlement 
 of the revenue of the ceded and conquered districts became 
 a matter of primal concernment. Somehow or other the 
 thing was to be done ; and it was to be done quickly. 
 The country was conquered, and now it was to be forced 
 to give up its treasures to the conqueror. Those treasures 
 were no longer to be found in a state of glittering conden- 
 sation, hidden in the bowels of grotesque idols, in gorgeous 
 Pagan fanes, or buried in the palaces of prostrate princes. 
 The wealth of our new possessions was spread over a 
 vast surface. It was to be found only in the soil; and 
 being so found, there arose a question regarding the 
 mode of acquisition and appropriation — a question not 
 quite so easy as that presented for the solution of Mah- 
 moud of Ghuznee, when the treasures of the conquered 
 country dazzled the eyes and stirred the heart of the 
 invader. 
 
 The territory first ceded was a portion of the great 
 
ACQUISITION OF OUDE. 235 
 
 province of Oude. Lord Wellesley was Governor-Ge- 
 neral of India. His two brothers, Arthur and Henry 
 Wellesley, had followed the fortunes of tlieir vice-regal 
 relative, and were now within reach of his directing 
 hand. The soldier was laying broad and deep the foun- 
 dation of his military renown. But provision had to 
 be made for the civiUan. Mr. Henry Wellesley was in 
 a more equivocal position than the major-general, who 
 was about to lead a division of the British army against 
 the Mahrattas of Berar. He was not a Company's ser- 
 vant. He had not graduated as an Indian administrator. 
 He was simply what in the case of common men would 
 be called an adventurer — a hanger-on. Lord Wellesley 
 now made him lieutenant-governor of the ceded districts 
 in Oude.* 
 
 It would be difficult to conceive a more onerous and 
 more dehcate duty than that which was entrusted to 
 him. It was his to superintend the entire administra- 
 tion, fiscal and judicial, of a new and extensive tract of 
 country, inhabited by a race of people officially declared 
 to be " unaccustomed to any regular system of order or 
 law, and habituated to commit the utmost excesses of 
 violence and oppression." It demanded a thorough 
 knowledge of the country and the people, but that which 
 was not possessed at all by Mr. Wellesley, was possessed 
 to some small extent by his coadjutors. A board of 
 commissioners was associated with him ; and under them 
 were set to work the required array of judges, and 
 magistrates, and collectors, with their Regulations in 
 their hands. The misrule, which preceded oiu- assump- 
 tion of dommion, and the disorder which we found in 
 every department, were so vast, that it would have been 
 a miracle if any great amount of success had attended 
 
 * I do not wish to convey the im- new provinces. Such an arrangement 
 
 pression that this was merely a job, may have given something of character 
 
 for there may have been sound policy, and dignity to the new movement not 
 
 at that time,' in placing the brother of to be derived from any other personal 
 
 the Governor-General at the head of source, 
 the provisional administration of the 
 
236 SETTLEMENT OF THE NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES. 
 
 our initial operations. A triennial settlement was un- 
 dertaken, mainly with the landholders, on the expira- 
 tion of the current financial year; and a Permanent 
 Settlement was promised, after two more experiments 
 similar to the first, of three and four years' duration. 
 
 But soon to these ceded Oude districts were added 
 those which we had gained, by right of conquest, from 
 the Mahratta chieftains — a large and noble tract of coim- 
 try between the Jumna and the Ganges. The Bengal 
 Regulations, already applied to the Oude districts, were 
 now to be presented to our newly-acquired North- 
 western Provinces. There was, after the current year, 
 to be a three years' settlement, and then a four years' 
 settlement, and then a settlement in perpetuity. So 
 strongly impressed was Lord Wellesley with a conviction 
 of the advantages of the Permanent System, and so eager 
 was he to promise those advantages to the North- 
 western Zemindars, that he omitted in the Regulations, 
 which he promulgated to make the permanency of the 
 settlement, conditional on the confirmation of the Court 
 of Directors.* The omission was subsequently repaired 
 by his successor. A new Regulation announced to the 
 landholders that the permanency of the settlement was 
 to depend upon the will of the authorities at home. 
 
 The system of land-revenue which obtained at this 
 time was based upon the old establishment of village 
 communities. These institutions existed but in an im- 
 perfect, fragmentary state; and when the ofiicers of the 
 British Government began hastily and loosely to esta- 
 blish some intelligible system of revenue collection, or at 
 all events to make out clearly the parties to whom the 
 State were to look for the apportioned amount of re- 
 venue, they groped about painfully in the dark. All 
 sorts of claimants arose, with titles good, bad, and in- 
 
 * In 1803 and 1805. The provisional leslcy settled his accounts and returned 
 Government was dissolved at the be- to England, 
 ginning of the former year. Mr. Wei- 
 
PERMANENT SETTLEMENT PROMISED. 237 
 
 different, and flocked to the Collector's Court at the 
 chief station, urging their proprietary rights. Embar- 
 rassed by these conflicting claims, the Collector placed 
 himself in the hands of the " Canoongo," or native 
 Registrar, and decided according to his dictum upon the 
 claims that were laid before him. There was little or 
 no inquiry, and the decision was wrong. The amount 
 of revenue had then to be fixed ; and here again the 
 authority of the village functionary was generally foU 
 lowed, and the valuation was generally ^^Tong. 
 
 The difficulty of the task was very great, and it would 
 have been strange if our first efforts had been more 
 successful. One thing alone was certain at tliis time 
 — that the amount of information possessed by the 
 revenue-officers in the Ceded and Conquered Provinces 
 was not sufficient to enable the Government, mth any 
 hope of doing justice to its subjects, to introduce a 
 permanent system of assessment in that country. 
 ^Tien, therefore, under the government of Lord 
 Minto, who had taken up the revenue opinions with 
 the high office held by Cornwallis and Wellesley, and 
 had notified to the Zemindars and other proprietors 
 (by Regulation X., 1807) that the assessment under 
 the existing settlement would remain fixed for ever, if 
 the arrangement should receive the sanction of the 
 Court of Directors, a Special Commission was deputed 
 to the Ceded and Conquered Country to give effect to 
 tliis declaration, it is not strange that they should 
 have hesitated to commit the State irrevocably to a 
 measure which its executive officers were not prepared 
 to recommend, and the country was not prepared to 
 receive. A settlement, fixed in perpetuity at that 
 time, could only be based upon error, the results of 
 wliich would be laden with injury to the State and in- 
 justice to the people. 
 
 The Commissioners of whom I speak were Mr. H. 
 
238 SETTLEMENT OF THE NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES. 
 
 St. George Tucker and Mr. R. "W. Cox. Setting out on 
 a tour of inquiry early in the cold season of 1807, they 
 yisited all the different coUectorates, and diligently 
 sought the opinions of all the different collectors. They 
 had the strongest possible faith in the principles of the 
 Permanent System, but the further they proceeded the 
 more obvious it became, that such a measure as the 
 declaration of a perpetual assessment would then be 
 premature and dangerous.* 
 
 The collectors were nearly all of this opinion. They 
 recommended short settlements, further inquiries, and 
 detailed surveys. It was clear to them, and it was 
 clear to the Commissioners, that the Ceded and Con- 
 quered Provinces did not at all resemble Bengal. 
 *' When we reflect," wrote the latter, "that the mise- 
 ries of famine have perhaps been averted in Bengal by 
 the lamented patriot who gave the Permanent Settle- 
 ment to that country, we feel the utmost repugnance 
 at the idea of opposing its extension to our new pos- 
 sessions. But Bengal is different in many particulars. 
 The land is more easily cultivated, and is fertilised by 
 a periodical inundation; water is easily procm'ed; 
 wells, reservoirs, and aqueducts are unnecessary ; and 
 a large capital is seldom required for agricultural pur- 
 poses. The inferior landholders, and even the pea- 
 santry, can carry on the cultivation of their lands 
 without those aids which must be furnished to secure 
 
 * Mr. Tucker, in after years, often I ventured to counsel delay, upon the 
 
 spoke of this Commission ; and I am ground that we were not at the moment 
 
 enabled, therefore, clearly to state, on in a state of preparation to consummate 
 
 his own authority, the course which he so great an undertaking; but it never 
 
 pursued at this time, and the opinions occurred to my mind that the principle 
 
 which he entertained. " I was ap- of the measure was to be abandoned, or 
 
 pointed in 1807," he wrote, " to carry that the landholders who had received 
 
 into execution a measure which sue- from us the most solemn pledge given 
 
 cessive administrations had considered in the most authentic form, were to be 
 
 to be essential to the prosperity of the denied for ever the promised benefit, 
 
 country. Although concurring most and that in the end they were to be 
 
 unreservedly in the opinion that it was cast aside as a mere incumbrance upon 
 
 wise and salutary, and that it contained the earth. That pledge can never be 
 
 a vital principle which must in due effaced, although it remains unfulfilled." 
 
 season work out all the good anticipated, — [3/aS. JRecords.'] 
 
VIEWS OF THE COUHT OF DIRECTORS. 239 
 
 the prosperity of the "Western Provinces. But, above 
 all, we were in every respect better prepared in Bengal 
 to undertake a measure, wliich, at a future period, we 
 shall gladly see extended to the rest of our posses- 
 sions."* 
 
 The reluctance of the Commissioners, though not 
 altogether acceptable in Calcutta, t found favor in 
 Leadenliall-street. The Court of Directors approved 
 of these recommendations, and wrote out earnest letters 
 to Bengal, cautioning the local Government against 
 committing them to any system of unalterable assess- 
 ment. " Before undertaking so arduous a task as that 
 of irrevocably settling in perpetuity the lands of a pro- 
 vince, and fixing the demand of Government upon 
 those lands in perpetuity, we have always considered a 
 patient and laborious scrutiny of individual rights, a 
 careful investigation of local peculiarities, together with 
 a minute and detailed survey of the extent, cultiva- 
 tion, and productive powers of the territory, as indis- 
 pensable Supposing that in Bengal our ex- 
 pectations had been realised to their fuU extent, it 
 would not follow that a plan of settlement which had 
 succeeded in a country, of which we had been from 
 twenty or thirty years in possession, was equally ap- 
 plicable to provinces which have lately devolved under 
 authority." J And a few months later they wrote still 
 more decidedly on the subject — " The object of this 
 present despatch is to caution you in the most pointed 
 manner against pledging us to the extension of the 
 Bengal fixed assessment to our newly-acquired territo- 
 
 * Report of Messrs. Cox and Tucker, — " There is room for regret that the 
 April I3th, 1808— Revenue Selections.— gentlemen to whom the execution of the 
 This elaborate and very able report was measure was committed should have 
 •written by Mr. Tucker. It is not only put into deliberation not the best means 
 full of valuable information, but it con- for carrying it into effect, but the ex- 
 tains the expression of sound states- pediency of the measure itself which 
 manlike views on many questions of they were selected to execute." 
 general policy. X Court's Letter to Bengal, February 
 
 t Mr. Colebrooke recorded a long 1, 1811. 
 minute on the subject, in which he said 
 
240 SETTLEMENT OF THE NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES. 
 
 ries. We are aware of your resolution not to declare 
 any settlement permanent till it has obtained our 
 sanction and approbation. It is not, however, without 
 anxiety that we have learned from your late despatches 
 that a triennial lease has been concluded in the Upper 
 Provinces, which expires, we believe, in the course of 
 April, 1812, whereby the assessment in the tlih^d year 
 of the lease has been declared by you to be permanent, 
 provided that we shall confirm the terms of settlement, 
 because this arrangement may have excited an expecta- 
 tion on the part of the natives which we are not by 
 any means prepared to satisfy."* 
 
 Thus was the question of the permanent assessment 
 of the Ceded and Conquered Provinces settled, at all 
 events for a time.f In the mean while short leases 
 were granted, from three to five years, to proprietors, 
 or pseudo-proprietors of different kinds, to Zemindars, 
 to independent Talookdars, and other claimants ; but 
 even during those short periods it was often necessary 
 to re-adjust the amount of assessment. All this 
 created much discontent. Many, unjustly deprived of 
 thek proprietary rights, clamored for redress, and 
 were told to appeal to the civil courts. This, in effect, 
 was a mockery and a delusion. The perplexity was 
 only increased. The errors of the revenue were often 
 perpetuated by the judicial department ; and the 
 suitor involved in new embarrassments more painful 
 than the old. "Decrees," it is said, "were constantly 
 passed so irreconcileable mth truth and justice, that it 
 was absolutely impossible to execute them." 
 
 The mode of collecting the revenue tended equally 
 to the perpetuation of injustice. The collectors en- 
 
 ♦ Court's Letter, Nov. 27, 1811. Tucker, advocated the introduction of 
 t The question was from time to the Permanent Settlement into the 
 time revived at the India House, and North- West Provinces ; but the ma- 
 some very able members of the Court, jority of the Court did not entertain 
 including Mr. Edmonstone and Mr. the project. 
 
WRONGS OF THE OLD LANDHOLDERS. 241 
 
 deavoured to guard against default by placing watch- 
 men over tlie standing crops. If, in spite of this precau- 
 tion, there was a deficiency of revenue, the property of 
 the registered landholder was distrained, and he himself 
 thrown into prison. Then the estate was put up to 
 sale, and perhaps purchased, at a nominal sum, by some 
 astute native official — often a stranger from the lower 
 provinces.* But as these large estates, although standing 
 on the Government records in the name of some one 
 recognised proprietor, were in reality often held in co- 
 parcenery among a number of sharers, of whom Govern- 
 ment had no knowledge, it happened often that the de- 
 fault of a few caused the punishment of many. All 
 were immersed in one indiscriminate ruin. The here- 
 ditary cultivators were deprived, hastily and absolutely, 
 of their rights, and compelled to sue for leases under 
 some fortunate, perhaps fraudulent, purchaser, whom 
 they hated and despised. 
 
 The processes by which the old landholders were 
 defrauded of their proprietary rights varied, more or 
 less, according to circumstance and to character, but 
 they all belonged to one common family, and had many 
 features of general resemblance. Many personal sketches 
 might be given in illustration of the trickery practised 
 upon unsuspecting proprietors by astute native officials. 
 One, however, will suffice for the purpose ; it is a striking 
 one ; and I give it almost in the words in which the 
 story was related to me. During the prevalence of the 
 hot winds of 1818, a zealous and intelhgent civil officer 
 in the judicial department was abroad in his district, on 
 duty. He was fixing the position of a line of police- 
 stations for the protection of the highways, when he 
 came upon a sequestered village, near the banks of the 
 
 * Nearly one-half of the Cawnpore and Allahabad districts passed into the 
 hands of native officials. 
 
 R 
 
242 SETTLEMENT OF THE NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES. 
 
 Jumna, and halting upon one of those artificial mounds 
 which in that part of the country mark the sites of 
 ancient villages, was quietly enjoying the noble sunset 
 and the fine prospect around him. Whilst thus engaged, 
 an old and respectable-looking Hindoo crawled out of a 
 neighbouring hut, and approached him. The European 
 official and the native villager soon fell into conversation. 
 There was something in the language of the latter which 
 fixed the attention and excited the interest of the English 
 gentleman, and after a while he asked the native who he 
 was. " Who I am, do you ask ?" answered the man. 
 " I am the owner of that hut which you have just seen 
 me leave. Who I was, would you know ? I was the 
 chief of all that your eye can take in from this height."* 
 
 The English gentleman asked how this had happened- 
 " Oh !" said the old man, " in the usual manner, by a 
 neelam'' (auction). And when the sahib pushed his 
 inquiries further, told his story nearly in these words: — 
 " When yont rule was first established in these parts, I 
 had never seen an European, and naturally sought for 
 some native authority through whom to make my ap- 
 proaches towards the personage of this new race, who 
 was henceforth to be the ruler of my native province. 
 
 '' I was advised to apply to a certain Nusser Ali, then 
 the Dewan, and reported to possess great influence with 
 the European collector. To him, accordingly, I repaired. 
 His story was, that the collector was like a tiger, and 
 that I ought, for my own safety, to shun his fearful pre- 
 sence. To enable me to pay my revenue without 
 incurring this risk, he advised me to send every instal- 
 ment as it became due to him, and promised that he 
 would pay the amount faithfully to the collector. 
 
 ♦ Whether the Hindostanee word meaning conveyed was, that he had 
 was malih^ zemindar, or what other, my been the chief landed proprietor in 
 informant does not remember; but the that part of the country. 
 
VALUE OF A NAME. 243 
 
 " In an evil hour I took his advice, and sent my money 
 regularly to Nusser Ali. And so things went on very 
 well for a year or two, when suddenly I was alarmed by 
 the announcement that a stranger had appeared on my 
 domain, and was enjoining all the cultivators to pay 
 their several dues to him. I sought the stranger out, 
 and asked hhn how he came to exercise such authority 
 within the limits of my estate. ' Oh !' said he, ' I have 
 bought this estate at auction ; and it is mine.' I had 
 never heard the word {neelam) before, and I hardly 
 knew what it meant. But I hastened to Cawnpore, and 
 there discovered that the Dewan, to whom I had paid 
 the Government dues, had kept back the amount re- 
 mitted, so as to throw the estate into arrears ; he had 
 then obtained an order for its sale, which, possessed of 
 early information, he had easily managed to prevent, and 
 had finally got it purchased for himself, under a fictitious 
 name. 
 
 " The fictitious name stood on the records until the 
 Dewan retired fi:om official life, when his own name was 
 inserted as purchaser by private sale from the man of 
 straw, and thenceforth the estate was openly held as his 
 own." 
 
 This is one of many instances which might be cited in 
 illustration of the evils attending our first hasty efibrts to 
 " settle" the revenue of the North- Western Provinces, 
 But perhaps the largest amount of iujustice inflicted 
 upon the landed proprietors at this time arose out of a 
 confiision of terms. Many a man found that he had lost 
 his old territorial rights simply because the new English 
 rulers had described him by a certain word, the dire 
 import of which he himself by no means clearly imder- 
 stood. The revenue-payers under the first settle- 
 ment were set down in the Government records, with 
 
 r2 
 
244 SETTLEMENT OF THE NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES. 
 
 few exceptions, as Moostajirs, or Farmers. There was 
 another column, headed with the word Malik^ signifying 
 Proprietor, which was generally a blank in the original 
 books. The landholder little knew the relative importance 
 of the two words — ^little dreamt that, in the course of a 
 few years, the ominous title under which he was regis- 
 tered would prove fatal to his claims to the continued 
 occupancy of the land. But when the period for which 
 he had first contracted was at an end, he found how 
 "the letter killeth." The astute native functionaries, 
 who had followed the British revenue-officers from the 
 Lower Provinces, hit the blot in a moment. They saw 
 how they could turn it to account, and devised a scheme 
 whereby a large portion of the land was swept into their 
 own possession. When the original lease granted to the 
 recorded "Moostajirs" was at an end, the native function- 
 aries reported that the first contractors were only farmers 
 — that they had no proprietary rights at all — but that 
 certain other men, whose names they mentioned (princi- 
 pally Mussulman names), were the legitimate proprietors, 
 and ought to be so entered in the Government books. 
 The collectors placed too much confidence in these 
 specious stories, and the names of some men of straw — 
 some relatives or dependents of the native officials — crept 
 into the columns of the register, headed with the "i^ord 
 Malik. The man of straw made way in due time for the 
 real Jacob. And such was the wholesale work of these 
 supplanters, that one man (a Dewan, or chief native 
 functionary under the collector) contrived to possess 
 himself of ninety large villages, " whilst another had 
 become sole proprietor of the whole pergunnah, or sub- 
 division, which at first constituted his official jiu-isdiction 
 as Tuhseeldar.''* No wonder that it was said, with asto- 
 
 * Mr. Roberfson's " EemarksJ* 
 
REVOLUTION OF PROPERTY. 215 
 
 nishment, by the people of the Upper Provinces — " Yours 
 is a strange rule. You flog a man for stealing a brass 
 pot, and reward him for stealing a pergunnah I"* 
 
 Thus were all the estates in the country passing away, 
 one by one, from the hands of the ancient proprietors, 
 who stood, bewildered, confused, dismayed, scarcely 
 knomng by what strange juggle they were suddenly, but 
 almost imperceptibly, deprived of their rights. Many, 
 as their descendants related, died of a broken heart. 
 Others, less capable of silent endurance — high-caste and 
 high-spirited Rajpoots — stung by this authoritative in- 
 justice, took the law into their own hands, and boldly as- 
 serted their rights — the rights of centuries of possession — 
 in the teeth of the upstart claimant who had been yester- 
 day installed by the fall of the Government hammer, or 
 the juggle of a fraudulent Dewan. Acts of open violence 
 — even midnight murders — were committed under a 
 sense of this intolerable wrong. The eyes of Govern- 
 ment were then opened. It had become clear that some- 
 thing must be done. 
 
 It must not be supposed, however, that the civil 
 servants of the Company were wholly ignorant of, or in- 
 different to, the wrongs which were thus pressing upon 
 the very existence of the old proprietors. The eyes, at 
 least of some of them, were opened to this monstrous in- 
 justice, and strenuous efforts were made to redress the 
 grievances which stared them so obtrusively in the face. 
 Foremost among these may be mentioned the names of 
 Mr. Henry Newnham and Mr. Thomas Campbell Robert- 
 son. In 1813, Mr. Newnham took charge of the col- 
 lectorate of Cawnpore. He examined into many of these 
 
 * There were three settlements made some other equally real newly-dis- 
 
 during our first ten years' possession covered proprietor, was inserted; and 
 
 of the North- Western Provinces (from in the third, that of Nusser All, ex- 
 
 1803 to 1813). In the first book, the Dewan, or some other of the same class, 
 
 column headed Malik (Proprietor) was was registered as purchaser from the 
 
 almost entirely a blank. In the second, said fictitious Mahomed Roostum. 
 the name of Mahomed Roostum, or 
 
246 SETTLEMENT OF THE NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES. 
 
 cases of fraudulent transfer of property, and reported 
 upon them to the Revenue Board at Furruckabad. The 
 Board, however, had no power to interfere, and the 
 sujQferers were referred, for their remedy, to the civil 
 courts. Many suits were then instituted, but the word^ 
 again, was more potential than the fact. Our judges read 
 the unhappy word " Moostajir," and could not possess 
 themselves of the idea that a Moostajir could be any- 
 thing but a temporary leaseholder, in the English sense 
 of the term, and so either the case was dismissed, or the 
 plaintiff was nonsuited. 
 
 Matters were in this state when, in the early part of 
 1817, Mr. Robertson assumed the office of Judge at 
 Cawnpore. He had heard little or nothing of the 
 peculiar cases of which I am now writing, and took up 
 the first on the file without any idea of its especial im- 
 portance. He saw at once the hideous injustice of oust- 
 ing a man in actual possession, solely on the strength of 
 the word under which his name had been entered in the 
 Government books, and he called for proof of the title 
 under which the supplanting Meer Roostum, who had 
 crept in so insidiously as '^ Malik," held the litigated estate. 
 No proof, of course, was forthcoming; so the English 
 judge ignored his claims, and decided in favor of the 
 original " Moostajir," who was shown at the same time to 
 have been, from time immemorial, the head man of the 
 village, and as such, the legitimate contractor. When 
 this decision was pronounced, an excited buzz ran through 
 the court-house, and the excitement was caught up by 
 the natives outside the walls. The triumph of the 
 village landholders was great ; but unfortunately it was 
 short-lived. The case was referred to the Court of 
 Appeal at Bareilly, and the court cancelled the decision. 
 It was held that any man's title was better than that of 
 the unfortunate contractor who had once been registered 
 as a Moostajir. 
 
DECISIONS OF THE COURTS. 247 
 
 Fortunately, Mr. Robertson was not a man to be 
 checked, v/hen on the right path, by such obstructions as 
 this. The court continued to reverse his decisions ; but 
 on a special appeal to the Sudder Court of Calcutta, of 
 which Mr. Courtenay Smith was a member, there was 
 some inclination in that highest quarter to side with the 
 Cawnpore judge. The process, however, was too dila- 
 tory for Mr. Robertson's eager sense of justice, and he 
 took the irregular course of translating some of the 
 awards of the Court of Appeal, and forwarding them 
 with a letter to Government. This mode of procedure, 
 though unusual, was not unsuccessful. In 1821, a Re- 
 gulation was passed recognising the injustice which, 
 under cover of the Sale Law, had been done to "poor 
 and ignorant men," and appointing Commissioners to in- 
 quire into all the transfers of property which had taken 
 place during the first eight or ten years of our govern- 
 ment of the North-Western Provinces, and the general 
 state of the landed tenures. 
 
 Little permanent benefit resulted from this. The ma- 
 chinery was not suited to the purpose. It was too stately 
 and formal. An immense quantity of work was thrown 
 upon it ; some inquiries were instituted ; some unjust 
 decisions were reversed, and many compromises were 
 effected. A partial remedy was applied to individual 
 cases ; but the root of the evil was not touched. Indeed, 
 these judicial tribunals were not suited to such a purpose 
 as the adjustment of territorial claims.* They who had 
 thought most on the subject were of opinion that the 
 required settlement was best to be effected by revenue- 
 ofiicers, moving among the people, conversing freely 
 with them, and altogether extricating themselves from 
 the formal incumbrances of official state. 
 
 * The first commissioners appointed advantageously; but when they were 
 
 ■were Mr. W. W. Bird and Mr. H. G. conferred on all the commissioners of 
 
 Christian, and as long as the special revenue, without regard to their espe- 
 
 powers, so created, were in the hands cial fitness, the consequences were most 
 
 of such men, the regulation worked pernicious. 
 
248 SETTLEMENT OF THE NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES. 
 
 Poremost among these was Mr. Holt Mackenzie, a 
 man of large and liberal views, and of a thoughtful 
 nature, who told the collectors to shoulder their guns, 
 to go out among the people, and bring back infor- 
 mation with their game. Views of this kind led to 
 the framing of a regulation — ^very famous in the his- 
 tory of Indian Land-Uevenue — ^known as Eegulation 
 VII. of 1822, which was, doubtless, an advance upon 
 anything that had been before promulgated, but which 
 was not without inherent defects. It was stuffed too 
 full of requirements. It imposed upon a limited agency 
 almost unlimited duties. It emanated from one, in- 
 deed, who had not graduated in the revenue depart- 
 ment, and who had over-estimated the amount of detail 
 work which our revenue-officers could adequately per- 
 form. The principle was sound — ^the proposed system 
 was excellent — ^but for want of sufficient means to 
 carry it into effect, it was one of difficult accompKsh- 
 ment. So it happened that the work of revision went 
 on so slowly, that when ten years had elapsed from the 
 time of its initiation, it was calculated that it would 
 take sixty more years to render the work complete. 
 
 Erom all that I have written up to this point the 
 reader will gain no very clear conception of what is 
 the nature of the revenue settlement existing in the 
 North- Western Provinces of India. Up to this point, 
 indeed, there is little but confusion and obscurity in 
 my pages, as there was little but confusion and ob- 
 scurity in the revenue administration of that part of 
 the country. We found that a great variety of tenures 
 had been recognised by the native governments, prior 
 to the cession of the provinces ; and we took what we 
 found without considering whether we were adopting 
 indigenous institutions, or merely the corrupt growth 
 of usurpation and abuse. We were not answerable 
 for the fruits of disorganisation and misrule, which 
 
PLAN OF A NEW SETTLEMENT. 249 
 
 •came ripe to our hands; nor could we obviate the 
 necessary evils of that worst of all transition-states 
 — the transition of a people from one government to 
 another. It would have been strange if, at such a 
 time, there had not been a scramble ; it would have 
 been strange if some impostors had not stepped in, if 
 just rights had not been temporarily obscured and 
 fraudulent claims erroneously recognised. Our British 
 administrators, in this epoch, knew just as much as 
 they could reasonably be expected to know. They had 
 a clear conception of a Zemindar, and some idea of a 
 Ryot. All the proclamations and regulations issued 
 at this time, were addressed to "Zemindars, inde- 
 pendent Talookdars, and other proprietors." Doubt- 
 less, there were such personages in the Ceded and 
 Conquered Countries, but the " other proprietors" in- 
 cluded a far more important class. The collectors, 
 who were pushed up damp from Bengal, knew little or 
 nothing of the village communities, which, from re- 
 mote generations, had flourished in Upper India. But 
 from year to year, as time advanced, knowledge dawned 
 more clearly upon them. The darkness began to dis- 
 appear. Our revenue-officers saw with greater and 
 greater distinctness facts instead of fictions before 
 them. They had peopled the provinces in the first 
 instance with the latter, carrying their own precon- 
 ceived notions of landed tenures and agricultural sys- 
 tems to a country which knew little or nothing of the 
 things which their new rulers had stereotyped in their 
 minds. But in time, the ancient institutions which 
 had been shrouded from them, or which they only saw 
 in a glass darkly, they now saw face to face ; and with 
 this knowledge came the conviction of the burden of 
 wrong which our ignorance must have brought upon 
 the land. 
 
 The settlement of the North- Western Provinces is 
 
250 SETTLEMENT OF THE NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES. 
 
 now officially described as a " Putteedaree" Settle- 
 ment* — ^that is, a settlement made with the " Puttee- 
 dars," or sharers of estates. But in our earlier revenue 
 transactions in the Upper India little or no account 
 was taken of such people as " Putteedars." f They were 
 the proprietors of the several allotments of estates 
 held under the old village system — ^that system which 
 our administrators in the early part of the present 
 century trod down so remorselessly in their chase of 
 Zemindars and Talookdars, and other great individual 
 proprietors or contractors of the same class. We 
 had, indeed, contrived almost to crush these village 
 communities, and had committed the great cardinal 
 error of governing the people after any other fashion 
 than their own. But with a progressive increase of 
 knowledge came a progressive improvement in the 
 administration of our new provinces, and we began 
 more and more to shape our system in accordance 
 with the institutions and usages of the people. It 
 would be easy to trace through the E/Cgulations of the 
 first quarter of the present century growing indications 
 of this expansion of knowledge — of this ever-increasing 
 desire to lessen the gulf between the rulers and the 
 ruled, and to adapt our forms of government to the 
 real requirements of the country. But it was long 
 before so difficult a subject — one so intricate in itself, 
 
 * Land-Revenue definitions are no as may have been agreed to among 
 
 easy things to write, so I gladly borrow themselves, in distributing the aggre- 
 
 a description of the Putteedaree Settle- gate assessment. In the event of 
 
 ment from the " Statistical Papers re- individual default, a joint responsibility 
 
 lating to India," recently prepared at attaches to the whole proprietary;body; 
 
 the India House: — "Under the Puttee- but any proceedings instituted by the 
 
 daree tenure the same estate is par- Government for the realisation of the 
 
 celled out into allotments, and thence- deficiency, would be directed, in the 
 
 forward the shares in the net profits first instance, against the defaulting 
 
 are commuted for equivalent portions allotment. The characteristic of the 
 
 of land. Each proprietor or shareholder Putteedaree tenure is cultivation in 
 
 undertakes the agricultural manage- severalty with joint responsibility." 
 ment of his separate allotment, paying f The first Regulation which I can 
 
 through the representative of the pro- find, manifesting anything like an 
 
 prietary body (the lunikerdar, or, per- acquaintance with the Putteedaree 
 
 haps, the head man of the village) such system, is Regulation IX. of 181 1, 
 instalment of the Government revenue 
 
VILLAGE SETTLEMENTS. 251 
 
 and to the eye of a foreigner rendered doubly in- 
 distinct and mysterious by the social exclusiveness of 
 the people — was fully mastered, in all its bearings. 
 The more we learnt, the more clear it became that we 
 had committed a grievous mistake in overlooking the 
 village communities, and the more eager we became 
 to make atonement for the evil we had done. 
 
 The new Regulation, of which I have spoken, was a 
 prodigious advance upon all its predecessors. It indi- 
 cated a larger knowledge and a purer benevolence. It 
 pledged the Government to ascertain, and when ascer- 
 tained to recognise, the territorial rights of all classes. 
 It was its object " to introduce a general and scientific 
 survey of the country, to mark carefully and to record 
 the boundaries of every village, to register the sepa- 
 rate possessions, rights, privileges, and responsibilities 
 of those communities who hold their lands in severalty, 
 and of the several interests of those who hold land in 
 common."* 
 
 The sum payable to Government by every individual 
 shareholder was to be recorded ; but every individual 
 shareholder was not to have immediate transactions 
 with Government. The payments of the share- 
 holders were to be made collectively, by the head 
 man of the village, or other representative; and a 
 joint responsibility was recognised. " It was intended," 
 says Mr. Campbell, " to combine the advantages of the 
 Ryotwar system with that of village leases. "f It 
 
 * Raikes' " Notes on the North- Western In this case the great proportion of the 
 
 Provinces of India." —A very interesting land is cultivated by tenants ; and the 
 
 work, which all should consult who de- sharers have not their shares sepa- 
 
 sire further information regarding the rately divided off— the tenants are the 
 
 history of this great settlement, and tenants of all in common. The pro- 
 
 the nature of landed tenures in the prietors generally live in the village. 
 
 North- West. A clearer conception of and their own cultivation is taken into 
 
 the village communities is to be derived account at lower rates. The whole col- 
 
 from it, than from any other work with lections are brought together, the re- 
 
 which I am acquainted. venue paid, and the surplus divided 
 
 t Modern India, page 323.— "The among the proprietors, according to 
 
 most common tenure of all in the the fractional share possessed by each. 
 
 North-West," says Mr. Campbell, " is When there are many proprietors, one 
 
 that where a village belongs not to a or two are chosen representatives and 
 
 single individual, but to a single family. maDfl'^'^ " 
 
252 SETTLEMENT OF THE NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES. 
 
 afforded ample protection to individuals without clogging 
 the wheels of the administrative machinery with a mass 
 of individual contracts. 
 
 Such, briefly stated, was the intent of the new system 
 of revenue administration which was to be introduced 
 into the North- Western Provinces of India. But the 
 great reform, as I have said, did not proceed apace, for 
 want of an efficient agency to reduce it to energetic prac- 
 tice. Ten years passed away, and the progress towards 
 a thorough revision of the settlement was painfully small. 
 It was plain, therefore, that the machinery must be im- 
 proved. 
 
 Lord William Bentinck was at this time Governor- 
 General of India, and he was on a tour through the 
 Upper Provinces. He saw at once that it was neces- 
 sary to do something to give more effective operation 
 to the provision of the famous Regulation VII. of 1822. 
 Halting at Allahabad, where a Board of Revenue for the 
 North- Western Provinces had been recently established, 
 he took counsel with all the best authorities on the spot, 
 and the result was another famous regulation, known as 
 Regulakon IX. of 1833, under which the present settle- 
 ment has been prosecuted, with so much vigor, to its 
 completion. It embraced all the objects of the previous 
 regulation, with other collateral aims, and it greatly 
 improved the machinery of revision, and enlarged the 
 personal agency to be employed. Special settlement 
 officers were to be appointed, not burdened with other 
 duties ; civilians, with all their time and all their energies 
 to bestow upon the great work that opened out before 
 them. 
 
 The objects which it was now proposed to embrace 
 were these : 
 
 1. The revision of the assessment. 
 
 2. The better division of the instalments of revenue 
 payable to Government. 
 
OBJECTS OF THE SETTLEMENT. 253 
 
 3. The demarcation of the exterior boundaries of 
 estates and villages. 
 
 4. The correction of the system of accounts at the 
 Tehsildar's offices, and the arrangement of their records. 
 
 5. The formation of a fund for the construction of 
 roads. 
 
 6. The establishment of a provision for the support of 
 the village police. 
 
 7. The resumption of all hidden rent-free tenures 
 brought to light by the surveys. 
 
 8. The recasting or retention of the large tenures. 
 
 9. The demarcation of the component portions of 
 every village ; the recording of the several rights com- 
 prised therein, and providing for their maintenance; 
 and the registering of all rights which may spring up 
 hereafler. 
 
 The tract of country subject to these operations 
 equalled in extent the whole of England and of Scotland. 
 It stretched from Goruckpore on the south-east, to Hissar 
 on the north-west, across a line of 700 miles, for the most 
 part along the valleys of the Ganges and the Jumna.* In 
 
 * The North-West Provinces con- general revision of the revenue in 
 
 tain, by the last and most accurate those parts of the Benares division, 
 
 returns, 71,985 square statute miles, of which the Government demand was 
 
 with a population of 23,199,668 souls, permanently fixed in the year 1795. 
 
 The land-revenue, demanded from The revenue has there remained un- 
 
 thera in 1846-7, amounted to rupees altered, except in cases where an 
 
 4,05,29,921; in addition to which they estate had always been farmed, and 
 
 paid in the same year a nett sum of the demand had therefore never been 
 
 rupees, 16,60,901 (including collections determined in perpetuity ; or where 
 
 due for former years), on account of the permanent demand had broken 
 
 Abkari, and of rupees 12,33,903 for down, and required reduction 
 
 stamps. The customs duties, levied In extent of territory, therefore, 
 
 on the frontier during the same period the provinces which, with the above 
 
 (by far the greater part of which must partial exceptions, have come under 
 
 be considered a tax upon these pro- settlement, are about equal to Eng- 
 
 vinces), amounted to about rupees land and Scotland, without Wales. In 
 
 26,00,000; thus making up, with other point of population, they about equal 
 
 minor sources of income, a total re- Italy, including Sicily and Sardinia; 
 
 venue of more than five crores of while the gross revenue, realised from 
 
 rupees. The whole territory is di- them, exceeds by one-half that of the 
 
 Tided into thirty-two districts, which kingdom of Belgium. Following the 
 
 are classed in six divisions. The line of the Ganges and Jumna, the 
 
 whole of these have come under sur- extreme distance, from Goruckpore on 
 
 vey; but there has, of course, been no the south-ea«t, to Hissar on the north- 
 
254 SETTLEMENT OF THE NORTH- WESTERN PROVINCES. 
 
 this country was embraced a large variety of soils and 
 climates, and numerous races of people, differing from 
 each other in language and character and in the institu- 
 tions which they favored and developed. Between the 
 country to the east of the Ganges, and that which Hes 
 westward of the Jumna, the difference is peculiarly 
 striking. On one side noble forests and mango-groves, 
 fields rich with an abundant harvest, sparkling streams 
 and pools of water vary and refresh the landscape, whilst 
 on the other there is little more than a dull uniformity of 
 arid plain. Between these two extremes lies the Doab, 
 the country between the two rivers. Here there are 
 signs of a more advanced civilisation — of a fuller develop- 
 ment of industrial energy and skill. Here are the large 
 towns and the more important villages, and here the 
 labor of man has striven to compensate for the deficien- 
 cies of nature, and to make the soil yield abundant 
 produce without the aid of the heavenly nourishment, 
 which is seldom wanting in the country to the west. 
 Mainly upon artificial irrigation is the country dependent 
 for the security of the crops. Within the boundaries of the 
 North-West Provinces there are soils of all kinds, from 
 wet clays to light sands, adapted to the growth of various 
 descriptions of produce — of sugar, of wheat, of rice, of 
 cotton — and as many varieties of cultivators as there are 
 soils under cultivation — Rajpoots and Brahmins, Jats and 
 Goojurs, with different manners, different characters, 
 and different descriptions of landed tenures, different 
 methods of measurement and modes of assessment, differ- 
 ent distributions of property, different laws of inheritance. 
 
 ■west, is nearly 700 miles. In this wide Delhi, have all peculiarities which dis- 
 expanse of country, much diversity of tinguish them, not only from other 
 race, language, and character, is natu- tribes, but also from men of the same 
 rally met with among the occupants tribe in other places. — ^Calcutta Re- 
 of the soil. The Rajput of Azimghur, view, No. xxiv. Article : " The Set- 
 the Brahmin of Cawnporc, the Ahir tlement of the North- Western Pro- 
 of the ravines of the Jumna, the rinces."] 
 Gujur of Meenit, and the Jat of 
 
DESCRIPTION OF THE PROVINCES. 
 
 255 
 
 There were, of course, generic resemblances establishing a 
 certain unity of descent ; but the varieties were so distinct 
 as to render it necessary that nothing should be done 
 without a close study of the local peculiarities which dis- 
 tinguish the different members of the great family.* 
 
 ♦ The writer of the Settlement 
 article in the Calcutta Review, above 
 quoted, gives the most graphic picture 
 of the general outward characteristics 
 of the North- West Provinces with 
 which I am acquainted. 
 
 "The North-West Provinces," he 
 writes, " are situated almost entirely in 
 the valleys of the Ganges and Jumna; 
 the principal part of them lying between 
 those rivers. There is little variety in 
 the flat alluvial soil to attract the admi- 
 ration of a passing traveller, accus- 
 tomed to the interchange of hill and 
 dale in other countries. Nevertheless, 
 if he leaves the high road, and pene- 
 trates into the more secluded parts of 
 the country, he will acknowledge that, 
 even here, the hand, * which makes all 
 nature beauty to his eye,' has not been 
 wanting. If he visits the districts to 
 the east of the Ganges, which border 
 on the Sub-Himalayan hills, he will 
 find much of the luxuriance of tropical 
 vegetation, together with a brisk air 
 and healthy climate in the winter 
 months, such as few tropical regions 
 can boast. There he will see the groves, 
 of which Virgil bad heard, 
 
 ' Quos gerit India lucos ; 
 
 ubi aera vincere summum 
 
 Arboris baud uUae jactu potuere sagittse.' 
 The tiger and the elephant still dwell 
 in the remains of the primaeval forests, 
 and magnificent mango topes cover 
 large tracts not yet required for the 
 plough. There the fields are rich with 
 abundant harvests, produced with slight 
 labor, and subject to few uncertain- 
 ties. The little hamlets, with their 
 low thatched roofs, stand closely to- 
 gether, but do not yet contain a popu- 
 lation adequate to the full occupation 
 of the land. Patches of bush and grass 
 jungle are thus interspersed with the 
 cultivation, and relieve its uniformity ; 
 nor have the palm and bamboo, the 
 banian and the peepul, yet been pro- 
 scribed as intruders. Streams and 
 pools abound on every side, and assist 
 in varying the landscape. 
 
 " If the traveller now crosses into the 
 Duab, he will perceive a considerable 
 change. There is no longer the same 
 moisture in the soil or climate, nor 
 the same spontaneous fertility. The 
 industry of man has succeeded to the 
 profusion of nature. He now meets 
 with more towns of note from their size 
 or antiquity. The villages are larger, 
 and stand further apart ; while their flat 
 roofs, and the height to which, in the 
 course of ages, they have risen above 
 the plain, give them an imposing ap- 
 pearance from a distance. The walls, 
 with which they are often enclosed; the 
 mud fort, perhaps, at the foot of which 
 they are built ; the distance which the 
 people have to go to their daily labor; 
 all point to those former troubled times, 
 when a defenceless cottage in the open 
 fields was a most insecure habitation. 
 Yet the face of the country is by no 
 means bare or unpleasing so long as the 
 crops are on the ground. These are 
 raised with greater toil than in the more 
 humid districts, but are generally plen- 
 tiful, except in seasons of peculiar 
 drought. Wheat, sugar, and rice, are 
 less extensively raised ; but cotton, as a 
 valuable article of produce, in some de- 
 gree supplies their place. The trees, 
 which love the water side, have disap- 
 peared, but many remain; and some of 
 these, as the mhowa, the tamarind, and 
 the jamun, still attain a noble size. It 
 is not till the visitor reaches the arid 
 plains to the west of the Jumna, from 
 Etawah to Hissar, on the extreme verge 
 of the British territory, that vegetation 
 really languishes. There the red sand- 
 stone hills rise through the hitherto 
 level surface. Except in those favored 
 spots where wells can be formed, or 
 down the line of the Delhi Canal, the 
 husbandman trusts almost entirely to 
 seasonable rains. The hardy babul 
 and ferash alone break the line of the 
 horizon, and everything betokens the 
 nearer approach to the deserts of Mar- 
 war and Bikanir. 
 "In common with most parts of 
 
256 SETTLEMENT OP THE NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES. 
 
 It was a great work, assuredly, which now had to be 
 done, and it required all the energies of a great man to 
 carry it out. It was not to be done by one man — 
 not by a score of men — but it was necessary that over 
 the extensive agency now to be employed should be cast 
 the equal light of one directing mind. There was fortu- 
 nately a man at hand fitted for the work, and eager to 
 accomplish it. Mr. Robert Mertins Bird was a member 
 of the chief Board of Revenue at Allahabad. He had 
 been reared in the judicial department; but during a 
 connexion of some twenty years with the law courts he 
 had brooded over the great question of Indian revenue, 
 and had, perhaps, as large a knowledge of the subject as 
 
 Southern and Central Asia, the fertility 
 of the soil in this part of India depends 
 mainly upon artificial irrigation. When 
 the means for this are available, not 
 only will a sandy soil yield a good crop, 
 but the nature of the soil itself is often 
 gradually improved. Vegetable matter 
 accumulates in the course of years from 
 the remains of former harvests, and from 
 the manure, which it is worth the while 
 of the cultivator to expend upon the 
 land. If, on the other hand, water be 
 wanting, the produce is always uncer- 
 tain ; the cultivation is less cared for ; 
 and the usually light soil drifts about 
 with the fierce winds of May and June, 
 till pure silex alone is left in it, or till 
 the barren under stratum of kunkur, or 
 of red indurated clay, appears. The 
 lands nearest the villages are naturally 
 those which receive most attention, and 
 are worked up to the greatest produc- 
 tiveness. These lands often bear two 
 crops in the year, and pay rents of ten 
 rupees, or more, the acre. Their extent 
 varies according to the populousness 
 and prosperity of the village, and to the 
 classes who inhabit it, but seldom ex- 
 ceeds six or eight per cent, of the total 
 area of the estate. Next to these come 
 the second-rate lands, varying up to 
 twelve per cent, of the whole ; while the 
 great bulk of the area is thrown into 
 the third or lowest class. This three- 
 fold division, with the additional dis- 
 tinction of irrigated and non-irrigated, 
 is prevalent under different names in 
 
 most parts of the country. Other local 
 peculiarities are of course everywhere 
 to be found. In the vicinity of the 
 rivers it is necessary to distinguish be- 
 tween the low khadir land on the borders 
 of the stream, and the baugur land on 
 the level of the high bank. In other 
 places the gentle undulations of the sur- 
 face cause a succession of clayey hollows 
 and sandy ridges, each of which has 
 its peculiar products and capabilities. 
 Even in level tracts, there is often much 
 difference in the stiffness and strength 
 of the soil, according as the sand, which 
 forms its principal basis, is mixed with 
 more productive ingredients. Some 
 local soils are noted for their suitability 
 to peculiar articles, as a certain wet 
 clay in the eastern parts of Goruckpur 
 for sugar, and the black soil of Bundel- 
 cund for the Al root. The quantity of 
 saline matter in the earth and water is 
 another point, deeply affecting the value 
 of the land. Where the water is 
 brackish, the agriculturist is much re- 
 stricted in his choice of crops; many 
 refusing to grow at all under such cir- 
 cumstances, and others requiring an 
 abundant supply of rain-water to coun- 
 teract the quality of that drawn from 
 the wells. Where much soda is present 
 in the soil, large plains are found en- 
 tirely destitute of vegetation from this 
 cause, nor has any remedy yet been dis- 
 covered for the sterility thus produced." 
 — {^Calcutta Review^ No. xxiv.] 
 
MR. R. M. BIRD. 257 
 
 any man in the country who had been trained in that 
 branch of the service. The measures which he was now 
 summoned to carry out " had been many years previously 
 planned and elaborated by him, as measures of a purely 
 judicial character when he was holding a judicial office, 
 and had no prospect of ever being connected with the 
 revenue department. His experience in the discharge 
 of his functions as a judicial officer led to the conviction 
 in his mind that the existing tribunals were insufficient 
 for the ascertainment of rights or their protection, and 
 that the combined effect of the revenue and judicial sys- 
 tems would be injurious and oppressive, unless those sys- 
 tems could be made to bear a more exact relation to the 
 institutions and habits of the people."* The opinions 
 thus formed in the judicial department had taken further 
 shape and consistency, when, as Commissioner of Go- 
 ruckpore, in 1829, he had first been directly concerned 
 in the revenue management of the country; and when, 
 on his subsequent elevation to the Kevenue Board, the 
 chief control of the settlement operations passed into his 
 hands, he brought to the work a combination of rare 
 qualities almost without a parallel in the entire range of 
 a service bright with the names of distinguished men. 
 All men do not concur in his opinions, for he pushed 
 them too far, but all acknowledge his merits. All ac- 
 knowledge that he had a large grasp of mind, great energy 
 of character and honesty of purpose, catholic sympathies, 
 and a warm heart. They who served under him regard 
 him reverently and affectionately, as with the faith of a 
 disciple and the love of a son, and seldom mention his 
 name without an inward genuflexion. He selected his 
 own agents, and he selected them well. And when he 
 had made his choice, he did not withhold his confidence. 
 
 * Despatch of the Court of Directors, August 13, 1851 (a very raluable docu- 
 ment). See also Mr. Bird's Report. 
 
 S 
 
268 SETTLEMENT OF THE NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES. 
 
 He was a man of too genial a temperament and too kindly 
 a nature to wrap closely around him a cloak of official 
 reserve. He kept up a familiar intercourse with his 
 subordinates, encouraged and upheld them. It was not 
 to be expected that among so large a number of agents 
 there should not have been some who disappointed him. 
 It is said that he was not very tolerant of carelessness, or 
 very patient of dulness, but examples of these irritating 
 qualities were few ; it fell to the lot of Robert Bird to 
 commend far more frequently than to censure ; and whilst 
 he made few enemies he drew around him many friends. 
 The duty of revising the settlement of the North- 
 Western Provinces was entrusted to a number of young 
 civilians, who went out into the country, pitched their tents 
 in the neighbourhood of the villages, summoned the vil- 
 lagers around them, and instituted their inquiries into the 
 state of the different tenures. The Court of Directors of 
 the East India Company, reviewing in 1851 the whole 
 question of revenue settlement in the North- West Pro- 
 vinces, declared that the review had left on their minds 
 an impression " of the high honor reflected on the civil 
 service by the zeal, industry, ability, and good feeling of 
 the several officers employed, necessarily with differences 
 of degree, but with so little room for exception, that it 
 would be invidious to particularise where there is such 
 ample ground for general satisfaction." And the praise 
 thus bestowed was not undeserved. Doubtless there 
 were " differences of degree." Some men carried to the 
 work of revision a larger zeal and a clearer understanding 
 than others. And two different pictures of a settlement 
 officer might be drawn by those who are expert in such 
 limnings.* Hence it is that we read on one side of " the 
 
 * There is so much vitality in the experimentally acquainted with the 
 
 annexed sketch of the life of a settle- work of settlement, it is associated 
 
 ment oflScer, that I cannot refrain from with the remembrance of severe exer- 
 
 quoting it : — "To all who have been tion, but at the same time of great and 
 
SETTLEMENT OFFICERS. 
 
 269 
 
 fair-haired Saxon youth opposing his well-trained intel- 
 lect to the new difficulties which crowd around hira " 
 
 varied enjoyment. We look back, as 
 through the vista of many years, and 
 see the white camp rising in the long 
 aisles of the ancient mango tope. We 
 see the fair-haired Saxon youth op- 
 posing his well-trained intellect to the 
 new difficulties that crowd upon him. 
 We see him exerting daily, and with 
 no vain or fruitless result, all his facul- 
 ties of observation, of research, of pene- 
 tration, of judgment. It is a strange 
 sight — a wonderful proof of the power 
 of intellectual and moral education — 
 to watch the respect and confidence 
 evinced by grey-headed men towards 
 that beardless youth. We see him, in 
 the early morning mist, stretching at 
 an inspiring gallop over the dewy fields. 
 Not unmindful is he of the hare, which 
 scuds away from his horse's feet ; of 
 the call of the partridge from the brake ; 
 or of the wild-fowl on the marsh. The 
 well-earned holiday will arrive, when 
 he will be able to follow these, or per- 
 haps nobler game; but at present he 
 has other work on hand. He is on his 
 way to some distant point, where mea- 
 surements are to be tested, doubts re- 
 solved, or objections investigated. This 
 done, he returns to his solitary break- 
 fast, cheered by the companionship of a 
 book, or perhaps by letters from a far- 
 distant land — doubly welcome under 
 such circumstances. The forenoon is 
 spent in receiving reports from the 
 native officers employed under him ; 
 in directing their operations ; in exa- 
 mining, comparing, analysing, and ar- 
 ranging the various information which 
 comes in from all quarters. As the 
 day advances, the wide-spread shade 
 begins to be peopled with living figures. 
 Group after group of villagers arrive in 
 their best and whitest dresses : and a 
 hum of voices succeeds to the stillness, 
 before only broken by the cooing of the 
 dove, and the scream of the parroquet. 
 The carpet is then spread in the open 
 air ; the chair is set ; litigants and 
 spectators take their seats on the 
 ground in orderly ranks ; silence is 
 proclaimed, and the rural court is 
 opened. As case after case is brought 
 forward, the very demeanor of the par- 
 ties, and of the crowds around, seems 
 to point out on which side justice lies. 
 
 S 
 
 No need here of ex parte decisions, or 
 claims lost through default. All are 
 free to come and go, with little trouble, 
 and at no expense. No need of length- 
 ened pleadings. A few simple ques- 
 tions bring out the matter of the suit, 
 and the grounds on which it rests. No 
 need of lists of witnesses. Scores of 
 witnesses are ready on the spot, alike 
 unsummoned and untutored. No need 
 of the Koran, or Ganges water. The 
 love of truth is strong, even in an In- 
 dian breast, when preserved from coun- 
 teracting influences ; still more so, then, 
 when the sanction of public opinion 
 assists and protects the rightful cause. 
 In such a court Abraham sat, when 
 arbitrating among his simple-minded 
 herdsmen. In such a court was justice 
 everywhere administered in the child- 
 hood of the human race; before wealth 
 increased, and with wealth complicated 
 interests, and law became a science re- 
 quiring a life's study to understand. 
 
 " Strange must that man's character 
 be, and dull his sympathies, who, in the 
 midst of occupations like these, does 
 not find his heart accompanying and 
 lightening his labors. He sees the peo- 
 ple in their fairest light ; he witnesses 
 their ceaseless industry, their contented 
 poverty, their few and simple pleasures, 
 their plain sense of justice, their general 
 faithfulness to their engagements. He 
 finds them, as a nation, sober, chaste, 
 frugal, and gifted with much of that 
 untaught politeness in which the rustic 
 classes of colder climes are so often de- 
 ficient. For months together he uses 
 no language, enjoys no society, but 
 theirs. To these causes of attachment 
 is added that powerful tie which unites 
 us to those whom we have labored long 
 to benefit. The knowledge and feelings, 
 thus acquired under the greenwood tree, 
 will not be forgotten in after days, when 
 the dark side of the picture will alone 
 be presented to his view ; when he has 
 to deal with roused passions and selfish 
 desires, uncontrolled by a true Faith ; 
 when his intercourse with the people is 
 confined to the prisoner at the bar, or 
 to the vakils of a grasping plaintiff, and 
 of a fraudulent (perhaps because op- 
 pressed) defendant." — [^Calcutta Re- 
 view. '\ 
 
 2 
 
260 SETTLEMENT OF THE NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES. 
 
 and see him compared with the patriarch " Abraham 
 arbitrating among his simple herdsmen," and " adminis- 
 tering justice in the childhood of the human race ;" and 
 on the other we are told of ignorant upstarts, slenderly 
 acquainted with the native languages, and not at all 
 acquainted with native feelings, laying down the law, 
 according to the most approved principles of generalisa- 
 tion, and committing errors of the most irritating kind 
 with an incredible amount of assurance and conceit. It 
 is very possible that examples of both kinds might be 
 found ; but, taking them as a whole, the settlement 
 officers went about their work zealously and conscien- 
 tiously, and carried to it a remarkable amount of ser- 
 viceable intelligence. Perhaps they sometimes acted in 
 disregard of judicial principles, and were impatient of 
 restraints imposed by laws of evidence and rules of judi- 
 cial practice. Perhaps they did not always make sufficient 
 allowance for the differences of race and the provinci- 
 alisms of locality ; perhaps they did not always under- 
 stand the precise character of the various tenures upon 
 which they adjudicated. And so it happened that the 
 people sometimes shrugged their shoulders and went 
 away surprised and disappointed, perhaps angry, at the 
 decisions which cost the English gentlemen so little 
 trouble, but which were to them such matters of life and 
 death concernment.* But, as a whole, the new settle- 
 ment compared with the old was as light to darkness. 
 The people gained mightily by it. There was an admi- 
 
 ♦ One illustration of the manner in deadly malaria renders it perilous to 
 which fixed rules were often set aside, traverse the intervening terai. A young 
 and local circumstances disregarded, deputy-collector, however, having a re- 
 may be given in this place. It is a sumption-suit before him, in which the 
 standing rule that in districts bordering defendant was one of this class of dwell- 
 upon the hills, no man having posses- ers on the hills, took it up and decided 
 sions in the plains, but habitually re- it ex parte daring this very season of 
 siding in the hill country, shall be im- the malaria, when the party had every 
 pleaded on acc;)unt of such possessions ri^ht to believe that he was for the time 
 during that season of the year when the secure against any such proceedings. 
 
OLD AND NEW SCHOOLS. 261 
 
 rable system of checks. If sometimes the settlement 
 officers went wrong, there were the Commissioners to 
 rectify their errors ; above them there was the Sudder 
 Board; and supreme over all was the Lieutenant-Gover- 
 nor of the North-Western Provinces. 
 
 It was not to be expected that all these authorities 
 should entertain similar opinions and convictions. The 
 most important portion of the settlement work was ac- 
 complished when Mr. Eobertson (of whose proceedings 
 as Judge of Cawnpore I have already spoken) was Lieu- 
 tenant-Governor of the North-Western Provinces. This 
 gentleman — one of the ablest and most distinguished civil 
 servants of the Company — was not one of the new school 
 of revenue-officers. He had seen in Bengal, perhaps, a 
 little too much of the off-hand manner in which landed 
 tenures of old standing were dealt with by young civi- 
 lians, and he was rather suspicious of the operations of 
 the clever but inexperienced youngsters to whom this 
 important work was entrusted. He thought that they 
 were too fond of generalising, that they started with cer- 
 tain fixed principles which they believed to be of uni- 
 versal application ;* that their predilections, for example, 
 in favor of the villagje communities often led them into 
 error; that in their eagerness to create an extensive sub- 
 division of property they committed many acts of injus- 
 tice ; and that their resumption operations were frequently 
 harsh and ill-advised. " The settlement officer," he de- 
 clared, " swept up without inquiry every patch of unre- 
 gistered land ; even those under ten beegahs, exempted 
 by a subsequent order, which did not come out until 
 five-sixths of the tenures had been resumed ;" and added, 
 
 * The Sudder Board disclaimed all faction at finding "the sentiments of 
 
 sympathy with these generalising views, the Board so directly opposed to what 
 
 and declared that they were eager to he imagined that he had occasionally 
 
 discourage them. Upon this the Lieu- detected in the writings of their subor- 
 
 tenant- Governor expressed his satis- dinates." 
 
262 SETTLEMENT OF THE NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES. 
 
 that " in one district — that of Furruckabad — the obli- 
 gations of a treaty and the direct orders of Government 
 were but lightly dealt with, and in all a total dis- 
 regard was evinced for the acts even of such men as 
 Warren Hastings and Lord Lake." And this opinion 
 was afterwards confirmed by the Court of Directors, who 
 declared that it was always their desire that the resump* 
 tion measures should be carried out with great lenity 
 and forbearance. " In many instances," they added, 
 " it has been so. In others, the results have been 
 attended with much hardship. But the solicitude of the 
 several Lieutenant-Governors has been carefully directed 
 to remedying the evil in question, by money provisions of 
 more or less duration. We think this is the best method 
 of disposing of such cases. It provides for the incum- 
 bents and their families, and secures the ultimate rights 
 of Government." 
 
 Still, when we come to consider the aggregate results 
 of the settlement, how much food is there for hearty 
 congratulation. " The first settlement," it has been 
 said, and truly said, " ruined the persons for whose bene- 
 fit it was devised. The last settlement saved millions of 
 much-enduring men from ruin and misery." The expe- 
 diency of the measure, too, was as clear as its justice. 
 The revenue progressively increased under it, and the 
 sales for default of payment diminished with equal steadi- 
 ness. In the course of six years* the amount of pro- 
 perty sold on this account had decreased by more than 
 five-sixths.f The lightness of the assessment, which is 
 computed to average less than a third of the gross pro- 
 duce, has tended to increase alike the prosperity of the 
 people and the State. Over-assessment was found in 
 practice to be as injurious to the one as to the other. 
 
 * From 1842-43 to 1847-48, inclusive. 
 
 t That is, from 259,686 rupees to 40,616 rs. 
 
RESULTS OF THE SETTLEMENT. 263 
 
 The principle, in spite of occasional deviations, was one 
 of moderation; and the Court of Directors, reviewing 
 the proceedings of the settlement officers, lost no oppor- 
 tunity of declaring in favor of moderate assessments. 
 Where the result showed that a district had been 
 over- assessed, they recommended a revision of the set- 
 tlement. 
 
 The happy effects, indeed, of this light assessment are 
 visible upon the face of the country. There is no lack of 
 cheering evidence of good government. The indications of 
 the advancing prosperity of these fine provinces are, such 
 as he who runs may read, across the whole length and 
 breadth of the land. A mild and equable rule, giving 
 security to person and to property, repressing the violent 
 and the lawless, encouraging the peaceful and the in- 
 dustrious, has borne its accustomed fruit. Many illustra- 
 tions of this might be readily adduced ; but none more 
 satisfactory than the following, written in 1852 : 
 
 " I have just marched," writes a distinguished British 
 functionar}^, "to this place along the strip of country 
 reaching from the Sutlej to the Jumna by Hansi and 
 Hissar. You must remember that country when it was 
 inhabited by a wild and lawless set of people, whom no 
 one could manage. Native chiefs would not take the 
 lands at a gift. Our own troops were frequently re- 
 pulsed by the communities of Eangurs, and Bhuttees, and 
 others, who lived in large fortified villages and subsisted 
 by plunder. Now the country is thickly inhabited and 
 well cultivated, and the most peaceful that could pos- 
 sibly be. This year the ' Khurreef ' crops have failed 
 entirely, and very little ' Rubbee ' had been sown. Yet 
 the revenue had been paid up without a balance, and 
 had occasioned no perceptible distress. This is the effect 
 of firm rule and a light assessment. Mr. R. Bird (all 
 honor to his name !) insisted, at the late settlement, on 
 a considerable reduction of the assessment. The con- 
 
264 SETTLEMENT OF THE NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES. 
 
 sequence is, that land which before was worthless now 
 bears a high value, and a people who were before 
 lawless now yield implicit obedience to the laws. It is 
 a cheap Government of which the strength consists in 
 low taxation." * 
 
 The secondary advantages sought to be obtained by 
 the settlement were not all so clearly established. The 
 division of the revenue payments into four instalments, 
 falling due after full time has been allowed for the sale 
 of the produce, was unquestionably a boon to the culti- 
 vators. But the creation of the road-fund met with 
 considerable opposition ; and the establishment of a paid 
 village police was still more generally unpopular. The 
 people were slow to appreciate the advantages of good 
 roads, and were very unwilling to pay for them. But 
 they came in time to be satisfied with the arrangement, 
 and, perhaps, to understand that the trifling per-centage 
 devoted to this purpose was in reality not an addition to 
 the assessment, but a deduction from it. The advan- 
 tages, however, of the salaried village police dawned more 
 slowly on their comprehension; and writing in August, 
 1851, the Court of Directors could say nothing more 
 than that they were " disposed to hope that, with careful 
 supervision, it may be found satisfactory to the people."f 
 
 Of the resumption of the rent-free tenures I have 
 already spoken. There are one or two other points of 
 considerable importance which require to be mentioned- 
 The tendency of the settlement operations was towards 
 
 ♦ MS. Correspondence. as must cause heart-burnings and mor- 
 
 f Mr. Robertson had always been op- tifications in that class of our subjects 
 
 posed to this measure. He expressed a whose affections it is most our interest 
 
 strong opinion to tlie effect that such a to conciliate. An abatement in the 
 
 functionary as a paid watchman could number of thefts and burglaries is but 
 
 never be acceptable to the people, even a sorry compensation for such a con- 
 
 if it entailed no additional charge upon sequence, or for the no less pernicious 
 
 them. Such an oflScial, he said, would result of the Zemindar taking advan- 
 
 be likely to lord it over the Brahmin tage of the presence of a paid police- 
 
 and Rajpoot on his own domain. "There officer to exonerate himself from all 
 
 is in this," he observed, " an inversion responsibility for what occurs." 
 of the social order of the country such 
 
SEPARATE RESPONSIBILITY. 265 
 
 the disruption of the large estates. There was a class 
 of large landed proprietors, known as Talookdars — the 
 territorial aristocracy of the country. The settlement 
 officers seem to have treated these men as usurpers 
 and monopolists, and to have sought every oppor- 
 tunity of reducing their tenures. It was not denied 
 that such reduction was, on the whole, desirable, inas- 
 much as that these large tenures interfered with the 
 rights of the village proprietors. But the reduction was 
 undertaken in too precipitate and arbitrary a manner; 
 and the Court of Directors acknowledged that it had 
 caused great practical embarrassment to Government, 
 against whom numerous suits were instituted in the civil 
 courts by the ousted Talookdars, and many decided in 
 their favor.* 
 
 Another point of great importance was this. It has 
 been shown that, under the original imperfect settlement 
 which succeeded our first occupation of the country, 
 much injustice was done, and much confusion created, 
 by the indiscriminate sale of lands held in coparcenery 
 by several sharers, for the shortcomings of one or more 
 defaulting partner. The new law accorded the privilege 
 — for so it w^as esteemed — of separate responsibility.! 
 The shares of each member of the community were 
 
 * The Mrriter in the Calcutta Review the settlement, and it has not been 
 
 questions the justice of these deci- always possible to have these proceed- 
 
 sions. The cases were generally tried ings set right on appeal." 
 
 — " always in the first instance, and f That is to say, whenever the pri- 
 
 frequently also in appeal — by the un- vilege was claimed. But the right was 
 
 covenanted judges;" and the result, only partially exercised. "There are 
 
 he says, " has not been satisfactory." great differences in the extent to which 
 
 The tendency, it is added, of the lower separate responsibility prevails. In 
 
 courts, "has been to look only at the some districts it is universal; in some 
 
 records of past settlements, though the instances are numerous; in some 
 
 these were confessedly imperfect or few; in others none." — [^Report of the 
 
 erroneous ; and finding the plaintiff Court of Directors.'] Mr. Thomason 
 
 therein mentioned as Zemindar, to con- (September, 1848) wrote: "In practice, 
 
 sider him as being the sole and exclu- it is customary to attempt to realise 
 
 sive proprietor. This feeling, on the first from the individual, then to offer 
 
 part of the inferior courts, together his property to any coparcener who 
 
 with the expense and delay of a civil will pay up the arrears, and if no one 
 
 suit, felt of course most by the poorer accepts the offer, then to hold the 
 
 party, have caused many of the deci- entire body jointly responsible for the 
 
 sions to be adverse to those passed at balance." 
 
266 SETTLEMENT OF THE NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES. 
 
 distinctly parcelled out and recorded, and each separate 
 defaulter suffered for his own particular default by the 
 sale of his individual share. But as this might have a 
 tendency to introduce strangers into the coparceneries, 
 and destroy the integrity of the village communities, the 
 right of pre-emption was given to the other shareholders ; 
 so that, to a certain extent, the remedy lay in their own 
 hands. The provision, indeed, would have been an 
 excellent one, but that it was set aside by the custom of 
 granting fictitious mortgages, " against which," says the 
 Court, '' there appears to be no remedy but a valuation 
 on fixed principles, at which the right of pre-emption 
 shall be given to the community." And some of the best 
 authorities— as Lord Metcalfe, Mr. Kobertson, and Mr. 
 Thomason — were of opinion that the system of joint re- 
 sponsibility on the whole is advantageous to the village 
 communities.* No alteration of the existing law is pro- 
 posed ; but every effort is made by the Government of 
 the North- Western Provinces to induce them to adopt 
 voluntarily the system of joint responsibility ; and in this 
 view the Court fully concurs. 
 
 Viewed as a whole, it is difficult not to regard the 
 settlement of the North- Western Provinces as a great 
 work. It is not free from errors of design and execution. 
 Its originators do not claim for it the credit of being a 
 perfect conception carried out to perfection in all its 
 parts. The truth is, that every large scheme with the 
 stamp of thorough upon it involves more or less error of 
 detail. No one will ever achieve anything great who is 
 haunted by the fear of exceptional cases and small 
 mistakes. Mr. Bird was, at least, in earnest. His dis- 
 ciples were in earnest. They did not falter ; they did 
 not hesitate. They went intrepidly to their work, with 
 a firm faith in the excellence of the design, and an honest 
 
 ♦ The question is very fairly argued by Mr. Thomason, in his Minute of 25th 
 September, 1848.' 
 
STATE OF THE PROVINCES. 267 
 
 intention to carry it out worthily and well. And in spite 
 of errors — errors not many and large in proportion to 
 the magnitude of the undertaking — resulting from original 
 defects or inefficient agency, they may, without any large 
 amount of self-glorification, look back on what they have 
 done, and proudly compare the present state of the agri- 
 cultural population with what it was before their labors 
 commenced.* 
 
 The North-Westem Provinces of India have now been, 
 for half a century, under British rule. The great experi- 
 ment of Indian government has there been pushed for- 
 ward with remarkable energy and uncommon success. In 
 no part of India are the signs of progress so great and so 
 cheering. There is a freshness, a vigor, a healthy robust 
 youth, as it were, apparent everywhere in the administra- 
 tion of these provinces. The physical improvement of 
 the country, and the moral improvement of the people, are 
 advancing, under our eyes, with a rapidity which would 
 fill the bygone generation of Indian administrators with as 
 much astonishment as the ancient race of soldiers would 
 experience at the sight of the magnificent dimensions of 
 our Indian Empire. I do not believe that there is in the 
 world a more conscientious and more laborious class of 
 
 * The collateral advantages derived the peaceable adjustment of disputes 
 from the settlement are thus summed regarding real property, than all the 
 up by its historian in the Calcutta Re- terrors of the penal law could ever 
 view : — " The revision of the settlement have effected. While in progress, the 
 has made us better acquainted with the settlement afforded the best school for 
 people, whom we have been called upon fitting men to fill other offices of every 
 to govern, than we might otherwise description ; and, even now, the neces- 
 have been in centuries. It has given sity of maintaining its arrangements, 
 us an insight into their condition, feel- and acting up to its provisions, supplies 
 ings, desires, and wants. It has thrown a training of nearly equal efficacy, 
 a flood of light on all the relations of Those who, after such a training, are 
 the people with the State. It has fur- called to preside in a civil court, are 
 nished the Government with means, enabled by the settlement arrangements 
 never before possessed, for encouraging and records to decide confidently, where 
 industry and protecting private rights ; they must before have groped hope- 
 while it has accustomed our subjects lessly in the dark. A measure, which 
 themselves to familiar intercourse with has been followed by such results, be- 
 their rulers, and has inspired them sides its more immediate object of equal- 
 with confidence in our moderation, and ising taxation, must deserve the atten- 
 reliance on our justice. It has done tion of all who take qny interest in the 
 more to prevent affrays, and to lead to welfare of India." 
 
268 SETTLEMENT OF THE NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES. 
 
 civil functionaries than those who, under one of the best 
 men and ablest administrators who have ever devoted 
 their lives to the service of the people of India, are now 
 bearing the burden and heat of the day, in serious toil- 
 some efforts to make the yoke of foreign conquest sit 
 lightly on the native subjects of the British Crown. 
 Earnestness and energy are contagious ; and in the North- 
 Western Provinces of India the heavy-paced are soon 
 roused into activity — the phlegmatic into tingling life. 
 What Thomason and his associates have done for Upper 
 India can only be fairly appreciated by those who know 
 what was the state of the Ceded and Conquered Provinces 
 of India fifty, or even twenty, years ago. It is not easy to 
 represent the true character of these great achievements 
 to those who, in Westminster or Belgravia, sit in judgment 
 upon British rule in the East, and decide that our admi- 
 nistrators have done nothing, because they do not know 
 what they have done. But the servants of the East India 
 Company may find abundant consolation in the fact that 
 the happiness of the people of the East is not to be 
 gauged by the knowledge of the people of the West. 
 
 There is one characteristic of the present Government 
 of the North- Western Provinces of which I would further 
 speak in this place, though perhaps it might more fitly be 
 introduced into another chapter. There is a communi- 
 cativeness about the system, which is a peculiar feature 
 of the administrative progress now making in India. The 
 representatives of the paramount power have there shaken 
 off their secrecy and reserve. They no longer live with 
 a cordon of official exclusiveness around them ; they no 
 longer move about with sealed lips and veiled faces. The 
 doors of their palanquins are thrown back; the sides of 
 their tents are drawn up ; and the people are invited to 
 come fi-eely to them. The Lieutenant-Governor, who is 
 continually moving about from one district to another 
 and watching the results of the great measures with which 
 
LIBERAL SYSTEM OF GOVERNxMENT. 269 
 
 he is so honorably associated, is one of the most acces- 
 sible of men ; and his subordinates emulate the courtesy 
 and openness of his demeanor. But it is not so much of 
 this personal diiFusiveness of which I would speak, as of 
 the great efforts which are being made, principally through 
 the agency of the press, to render the people familiar with 
 the acts and principles of Government — to help them 
 thoroughly to understand the manner in which we are 
 endeavoring to administer their affairs. " Compendi- 
 ous treatises," says Mr. Raikes, " embracing not only the 
 rules of revenue process, but also the principles of revenue 
 science, have been drawn up. Translations of these have 
 been distributed right and left. The more intelligent of 
 the people are being thus fast led to co-operate with their 
 rulers, whose principles are better understood and appre- 
 ciated. All candidates for Government employ find the 
 necessity of mastering the existing revenue code. The 
 consequence is, that numbers of books in the language of 
 the country, some of considerable merit, are issuing firom 
 the press at Agra, Delhi, and elsewhere, explanatory of 
 the laws affecting landed tenures and of the principles of 
 agriculture and rural economy. The collectors of revenue 
 have been encouraged to disseminate memorials of useftil 
 knowledge, suited to the capacity of the rising generation, 
 among the students at the village schools. Such books^ 
 for which, also, the people have to thank the Govern- 
 ment of the North- Western Provinces, will, we trust, 
 supersede the trash which has hitherto been taught at 
 these schools." 
 
 Let these efforts be weighed, and let it be remembered 
 that in 1811 an old Indian Chief Justice — Sir John An- 
 struther — asked, tauntingly, in the House of Commons, 
 with reference to the freedom of the Indian press, 
 "whether it was intended to illuminate the people of 
 India ?" — " Was this exactly desirable ?" he continued. 
 " Would it be very expedient to inform them of the pecu- 
 
270 SETTLEMENT OF THE NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES. 
 
 liar tenure by which the British Government hold their 
 power ?" There was nothing starthng, at the time when 
 they were asked, in such questions as these — but we look 
 at them now as we would at a thumb-screw, or any other 
 relic of a barbarous age. The principle of modern In- 
 dian Government is thoroughly to illuminate the people, 
 and to render them as familiar as they can possibly be 
 with all the tenures by which they are connected with 
 their foreign rulers. It is not concealed that this en- 
 lightenment may have the effect of breaking all these 
 tenures; but when the people of India are ripe for self- 
 government, England will have fulfilled her mission, as a 
 ruler, in the East ; and she must be prepared to abide 
 the result. 
 
 I cannot conclude this chapter without remarking that 
 the instructions sent by the Court of Directors to their 
 servants in India, and the opinions expressed regarding 
 the settlement operations, have been uniformly con- 
 ceived in a liberal and enlightened spirit. It has been 
 their leading desire so to carry out the work, with 
 leniency and moderation, and with a due regard to the 
 feelings of the people, as to render it a blessing to them 
 and their successors. I can trace no signs of covetous- 
 ness and rapacity in their recommendations ; but rather 
 a sincere desire to allow the cultivators to till the fields 
 mainly for their own benefit, and to reap the reward of 
 their own ameliorative efforts. The settlements, as I 
 have said, were made some for twenty and some for 
 thirty years. One of the principal arguments in favor 
 of the permanent settlement is, that it holds out the 
 strongest inducement to landholders to improve their 
 estates. There is not an Englishman who does not 
 shrink from expending money on property, whether 
 house or land, of which he holds but a brief lease. He 
 increases the value of the estate, and in return his 
 landlord raises his rent. The Court of Directors have 
 
VIEWS OF THE COURT. 271 
 
 already begun to consider " whether an agriculturist on 
 the renewal of a settlement shall be allowed the full benefit 
 of his improvements, or whether the Government shall 
 be held entitled to a share of the additional value which 
 his capital and industry, aided by other circumstances, 
 have added to the land." And they have expressed their 
 opinion, that "the only satisfactory principle upon which 
 all future renewals of settlements can be made, will be 
 that reference must be had to the value of the land at 
 the time, a liberal consideration being given for the im- 
 provements attributable only to the efforts of the tenant 
 himself, and especially with regard to such as are of a 
 comparatively recent date, and with regard to which he 
 has reaped the advantage only for a short period under 
 the old settlement." 
 
 Indeed, the unvarying tenor of the Court's instruc- 
 tions to their servants in India is to impress upon them 
 the duty of fixing light assessments, and passing only 
 such Regulations as will encourage agricultural improve- 
 ment, and raise the condition of the cultivators of the 
 soil. It is their earnest effort to stimulate production by 
 light assessments ; and so far from their fiscal measures 
 being conceived in an extortionate spirit, or having a 
 tendency in execution to restrict the cultivation of such 
 staples as cotton and sugar, they have consistently im- 
 pressed upon their servants the duty of encouraging such 
 production, by keeping down the assessment of the 
 lands so cultivated to an equitable valuation. " Our 
 object," they wrote some years ago, " is to prevent 
 the land from being assessed in such a manner as to 
 impose a tax upon those commodities — it being con- 
 trary to our intention that such commodities should be 
 taxed. The land bearing a particular product should 
 never be so assessed as to give an artificial value to 
 such product — in other w^ords, raise its price by force of 
 taxation — which the imposing a higher assessment on 
 
272 SETTLEMENT OF THE NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES. 
 
 land, whenever it is made to bear that particular pro- 
 duct, obviously does." And when it was suggested by- 
 one of their chief servants in India that such Hberal 
 measures would occasion a considerable loss of revenue, 
 they repHed, with happy irony : " We are aware that 
 when a tax is abolished the revenues which it yielded 
 ceases to be received." They scouted, indeed, this nar- 
 row view of a great question, and trusted rather to the 
 general results of a Hberal policy than to such individual 
 details. 
 
 Of the general results of the administration of the 
 Indian land-revenue by the British Government, it is 
 almost unnecessary to write, as they will be gathered 
 from the details of these last three chapters. As far 
 back as 1815, the Marquis of Hastings recorded an ela- 
 borate minute, the result of a tour through Upper India, 
 on the Revenue Administration of the Presidency of 
 Fort William, which takes, in one of its sections, a con- 
 densed view of the general advantages of our system. 
 He sums them up thus in a few paragraphs : 
 
 The advantages of our system over those of former Govern- 
 ments may be summed up in a few words. The former systems 
 left entirely at the discretion of the Aumils the lives and pro- 
 perties of all the population of their several jurisdictions. There 
 was only an appeal to the immediate sovereign of the state, and 
 he was generally inaccessible. 
 
 From the moment of the establishment of our Government, the 
 lives of all were secured under the shield of the law ; and the sub- 
 stitution of the practice of contracting only for the realisation of a 
 fixed assessment, instead of contracting for the revenue of a given 
 district, to be raised at the discretion and the cost of the contractor, 
 secured their properties also, except against minor abuse and 
 covert villany. The annihilation of the contract system in all 
 its branches has now, in some degree, given protection against 
 those evils. 
 
 Instead of the population being subjected to the arbitrary 
 exactions of every Aumil, and of every farmer he might choose 
 to impose, an uniform and universal system has been introduced, 
 
LORD HASTINGS ON REVENUE ADMINISTRATION. 273 
 
 under which every one may know his rights, and be secure of 
 having them respected. The system is certainly not yet suffi- 
 ciently perfect for its ministerial officers to know of themselves 
 the exact amount of revenue which is demandable from all ; but 
 that is only because they cannot ascertain the actual amount of 
 produce, the requisite information being suppressed from interested 
 motives. All that is wanting, however, to give perfection on this 
 point, is a fixed criterion, from which the amount of produce may 
 be known or fairly estimated, so that settlements may be formed 
 on uniform principles and data, known to be correct, instead of 
 only believed to be so, as at present. 
 
 It is this very desideratum whicli the new settlement 
 has so beneficially supplied. 
 
 It were worth while to quote further : 
 
 The advantage to the country is, however, best judged of by 
 its effects. There is, at present, little or no emigration of tho 
 agricultural class; indeed, it is found that proprietors, before 
 driven into exile, or into the search of other means of livelihood,, 
 such as military service, daily return to reclaim the lands they 
 had been obliged to abandon, in the certainty that they must now 
 have ceased to be unprofitable. 
 
 The wages of agricultural labor are much higher than they 
 used to be, which is solely attributable to the increased demand 
 for labor of this description. The more valuable articles of 
 produce are also cultivated with much more spirit ; and the most 
 astonishing efforts are daily made to conquer natural defects of 
 soil, as well as to preclude the evils of casual calamity'' of season. 
 
 There can be no doubt, indeed, that the produce and the profit, 
 of agriculture have been increased in a very surprising degrees 
 since the country fell under our administration. The comparative 
 prosperity of the several cities may form a good criterion of this ; 
 and the rapidity with which they are increasing, both in size and 
 population, is scarcely credible. 
 
 The abolition of those arbitrary sayer imposts which each 
 Zemindar conceived himself entitled to levy on all goods that 
 entered his domain, has now left open to every proprietor a free 
 market for all his produce, to which it may be carried, without 
 the fear of violence or exaction in the transport. 
 
 The beneficial system on which the customs and town-duties 
 are now collected here, at the same time, left the rates of that 
 
 T 
 
274i RESULTS OF OUR REVENUE ADMINISTEATION. 
 
 market free from the operation of any local circumstances, and 
 solely regulated by the broad commercial interests of the whole 
 of India. In consequence of these facilities, commercial capital 
 and enterprise have been turned towards the land, and an activity 
 has been infused, of which every class begins to feel the benefits. 
 
 The display of wealth is no longer avoided as dangerous ; but 
 perhaps the most direct and positive advantage to the landed 
 interest which has resulted from our occupation of the country is, 
 the discontinuance of the arbitrary practice of quartering troops 
 on districts, from which they were to be provided gratis, in addi- 
 tion to the public dues of Government, as well as the requisition 
 of free gifts of several descriptions, besides the obligation gratui- 
 tously to furnish supplies, laborers, artificers, and carriage of 
 every sort, whenever circumstances might bring a man in power 
 or a body of troops to the neighbourhood of a village. The occa- 
 sions for demands of this description were unlimited, and payment 
 never was offered, nor could it be asked with safety 
 
 The above advantages are amongst those which have particu- 
 larly attended our revenue-administration, and are in addition to 
 those incalculable benefits resulting from the comparative total 
 absence of external or internal violence, induced by the strength 
 of our political Government and the authority of the law. 
 
 More than thirty-five years have passed since these 
 passages were written; and the prosperous condition of 
 the North- Western Provinces is now as much in ad- 
 vance of what it was under the administration of Lord 
 Hastings, as, at that time, it excelled the old state under 
 the Mahrattas. The abolition of the Transit-duties, and 
 the new Settlement, have ripened and perfected the 
 blessings which Hastings saw only immature and unde- 
 veloped ; and there are others, of which he had but a 
 dim conception, now spreading themselves over the land, 
 under the saving influence of a great remedial agent, of 
 whose power he was not wholly unconscious, though it 
 was left to his successors to give it free scope and per- 
 manent expression.* 
 
 ♦ I feel that in this chapter I ought paper in the Appendix (D), and to the 
 
 to have made more particular mention excellent work of Captains R. Smith 
 
 of the operations of the Kevenuo Sur- and Thuillier, of the Artillery, 
 vey. I must refer the reader to a brief 
 
PUBLIC WORKS. 275 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Famines in Upper India — Importance of Irrigation — Early Mahomedan Works — 
 Our first Canal Efforts — The Western Jumna Canal — The Eastern Jumna 
 Canal — The great Ganges Canal — The Baree Doab Canal—The Great Trunk 
 Koad — Other Public Works— Their Cost — General Financial Results. 
 
 The chapter which I have just written on the Revenue 
 Settlement of the North-Western Provinces is a testi- 
 mony, however imperfect its execution, to the industry 
 and ability of the men employed on this great work. 
 But there was one thing which might at any time mar 
 the results of all this industry and ability. If the 
 heavens should deny to the country their wonted tri- 
 bute of rain, the Settlement, though it might mitigate 
 the evil of a famine, could not wholly prevent it. 
 
 Over a large portion of these fine provinces all the 
 staple products of the land are at the mercy of the 
 seasons. The effects of a drought are more terrible 
 than language can describe. Upper India has been 
 visited by periodical famines, the terrors of which all 
 the wisdom and aU the resources of the best and 
 strongest Government have scarcely even mitigated. 
 The famine of 1837-1838 is stiU fresh in the recollection 
 of many European gentlemen, who saw then what they 
 ^vill remember to their dying day, and yet were power- 
 less to alleviate the suffering which gathered around 
 
 t2 
 
276 PUBLIC WORKS. 
 
 them. Parents sold their children for a few shillings, 
 and were glad not merely to fill themselves with " the 
 husks that the swine did eat," but to dispute with 
 the ravenous crows for the filthy refuse of the grain 
 which had already fed the horses of the troops on the 
 line of march. 
 
 There could be nothing more worthy of a humane 
 Government than the prevention, as far as human 
 wisdom can prevent these providential calamities, of 
 such a gigantic evil as this. There was but one 
 manner of meeting it, and this was by an extensive 
 system of canal irrigation. The Mogul Emperors had in 
 their uncertain, spasmodic way, addressed themselves 
 from time to time to the consideration of this great 
 prophylactic measure. The extreme value of water in 
 such a country is dwelt upon, by many incidental re- 
 ferences, in the oldest writings extant. Kings and 
 Sages combined to punish the waste of the precious 
 element, and to reward the profitable disposal of it. 
 In the code of Menu the breaker of a dam is sentenced 
 to long immersion under water, and in the Institutes 
 of Timour it is ordained that " whosoever undertakes 
 the cultivation of waste lands, or builds an aqueduct, 
 or makes a canal, or plants a grove, or restores to 
 culture a deserted district, nothing shall be taken from 
 hun in the first year ; in the second year what the sub- 
 ject voluntarily tenders ; and in the third year the 
 Government dues according to regulation." But the 
 word which is here translated *' canal," has but a 
 limited signification, and by no means represents those 
 great works which some of the later Mahomedan Em- 
 perors designed and executed, and which the British- 
 Indian Government is now carrying out on a scale far 
 beyond the speculations of the most large-minded of 
 the Mogul princes. 
 
 It has been said that "God meant rivers to feed 
 
EARLY CANAL EFFORTS. 
 
 277 
 
 canals."* Upper India abounds in canal-food. The 
 numerous rivers which flow from their mountain 
 homes on the great Himalaya range supply volumes 
 of water, of which commerce has little need ; whilst 
 thirsty agriculture would not suffer a single foot to 
 escape. The conversion of this water to agricultural 
 purposes is now the main object of the great engineer- 
 ing operations, which for many years, Avith some 
 temporary interruptions, have been progressing in the 
 Ceded and Conquered Provinces of Hindostan. 
 
 Soon after these territories passed into our hands 
 the subject of canal irrigation attracted the attention 
 of some of the most earnest of our British officers. 
 The remains of the old Mahomedan works seemed to 
 look us encouragingly in the face.f But those were 
 days when our ideas of internal administration were 
 somewhat crude, and the development of the resources 
 
 * " To no country in the world, per- 
 haps, does the emphatic declaration of 
 the famous Brindley, that ' God meant 
 rivers to feed canals,' apply more em- 
 phatically than to those fertile and 
 populous plains which stretch away 
 southward from the Himalayas in irre- 
 ^lar forms between the 70th and 34th 
 parallels of longitude, and the 34th and 
 24th of latitude, and are traversed by 
 the numerous rivers which flow from 
 the great range. These rivers, in the 
 upper portion of their courses, are com- 
 mercially useless ; agriculturally they 
 ^re, or with a little skill might be, made 
 invaluable." — [Calcutta Review, vol. vi. 
 Article : " Canals of Irrigation in the 
 North-Western Provinces."]— This ex- 
 cellent treatise — a very mine of informa- 
 tion relating to Indian canals, has been 
 80 often publicly attributed to Lieu- 
 tenant Baird Smith of the Bengal En- 
 gineers, the accomplished author of the 
 work on "Italian Irrigation," that I 
 believe I am guilty of no impropriety 
 in naming him as my chief authority 
 for the statements in this chapter. 
 
 t In connexion with these old Ma- 
 homedan works there is a curious cir- 
 cumstance, very interesting to geolo- 
 gists: 
 
 " When describing the excavations of 
 Feroze, Ferishta mentions incidentally 
 that the workpeople employed upon 
 them found near the lower hills quan- 
 tities of * giants' bones.' For nearly two 
 centuries and a half this seemingly fa- 
 bulous statement passed unnoticed. To 
 minds familiar with discoveries in fossil 
 geology the old chronicle had, however, 
 a faint gleam of significance ; and, 
 guided by its feeble light, English offi- 
 cers of the canal department re-exa- 
 mined the localities indicated, and found, 
 associated with others of diflerent di- 
 mensions, not ' giants' bones,' but 
 bones most gigantic, from which, in 
 course of time, they were able to add 
 to the system of nature many new and 
 strange animals before unheard of. 
 Pursuing their labors at remote sta- 
 tions in Upper India, drawing their 
 materials for comparison from the fo- 
 rests and rivers around them, denied 
 many of the facilities for research which 
 happier local positions would have af- 
 forded, they yet won for themselves 
 European fame, and rewards ranked 
 among the highest which the courts ot 
 science in their own land had it in their 
 power to bestow." — [Calcutta Beview.} 
 
278 PUBLIC WORKS. 
 
 of the countiy was little studied by its rulers. Mr. 
 Mercer is said to have offered to open, at his own 
 expense, the old Delhi Canal, which lay before him a 
 lifeless excavation, if he were suffered to receive the 
 proceeds for twenty years. The offer did not meet 
 with acceptance, and it was not until 1810 that, under 
 the administration of Lord Minto, any steps were 
 taken to inquire into the state of the old canals, and 
 the expediency of restoring them to efficiency. A 
 Committee of Survey was then appointed to report on 
 the lines, both east and west of Jumna. But nothing 
 came of the effort. The higher scientific authorities, 
 as the Chief Engineer and the Surveyor-General, when 
 called upon for their opinions, poured over the sur- 
 vey report such a flood of contradictory learning, 
 and seemed to take such antagonistic views of the 
 great question, that the Government, sorely perplexed 
 and bewildered, and utterly unable to derive wisdom 
 from the multitude of councillors, seem to have aban- 
 doned the worthy project in despair. 
 
 But under the subsequent administration of Lord 
 HastiQgs, the vast importance of these works was re- 
 cognised. A beginning was made. And from that 
 time up to the present period, the work has pro- 
 gressed with more or less constancy and vigor, accord- 
 ing to the state of the public finances, and the temper 
 of the local Government. It has met, from time to 
 time, with temporary hindrances and obstructions. 
 It has fallen on evil days under one ruler, and basked 
 in vice-regal sunshine under another. But it has 
 gone on through evil report and good report, and there 
 is satisfaction in the aggregate result. 
 
 I must speak of these measures and their results 
 more in detail. The liae of the Western Jumna, or 
 Delhi Canal, was first surveyed by Lieutenant Blaine, 
 of the Engineers, an officer of rare promise, which he 
 
LORD HASTINGS' MINUTE. 279 
 
 barely lived to fulfil. He had been directed to report 
 on the practicability of re-opening the canal, and on the 
 expenses that would attend the operation, before the 
 breaking out of the Xepaul war. The engineer was 
 called to the field, and for a time the work was sus- 
 pended ; but Lord Hastings, in his famous minute of 
 September 21, 1815, the result of his tour to the Upper 
 Provinces, dwelt emphatically upon the advantages 
 that would attend its completion. " To the canal on 
 " the opposite side of the Jumna," he wrote, " generally 
 " known by, the name of the Delhi, or Ali Murdan's 
 '' Canal, it is necessary for me to call your attention. 
 " Measures were, I believe, taken, and were already in 
 " traiQ of execution, with a view to ascertain the ex- 
 " pense and practicability of re-opening it ; and though 
 " these measures were interrupted for a time only by 
 " the military operations incident to the Goorkha war, 
 " which required the services of Lieutenant Blaine in 
 " the field, I presume your Honorable Board will be 
 " disposed to resume them, now that the more impor- 
 " tant calls for the services of the engineer officers have 
 " ceased. 
 
 " I will only say," he adds, " that my own inspection 
 " has fully convinced me of the facility and the policy of 
 " immediately restoring this noble work. Setting aside 
 " the consideration of its certain effect, in bringing into 
 " cultivation vast tracts of country now deserted, and 
 " thereby augmenting importantly the landed revenue 
 " of the Honorable Company, the dues to be collected 
 " for the distribution of the water from it would make 
 " a most lucrative return. This is held so sure, that 
 " individuals (for propositions were made to me) would 
 " now undertake the business, were it fitting that the 
 " credit of a work so dignified, so popular, and so bene- 
 " ficial, should fall to the share of any but the Govern - 
 " ment. Were a lakh of rupees to be laid out yearly for 
 
280 PUBLIC WORKS. 
 
 '* three years on this object (and I believe I specify 
 " much more than would be actually required for per- 
 ** fecting the canal), it would be money laid out more 
 *' profitably for the Company than it could in any 
 " other mode of application." 
 
 The work was sanctioned. Lieutenant Blaine com- 
 menced operations. But Ms efforts were very limited 
 at the outset. There was altogether a want of faith in 
 the success of the experiment. The work seemed only 
 to proceed by sufferance. All sorts of shifts and expe- 
 dients were resorted to that money might be econo- 
 mised. "Earthen bunds were used for carrying the 
 canal across the beds of the intersecting mountain 
 streams. Pew if any bridges were considered neces- 
 sary, the canal being fordable throughout ; and natural 
 channels were invariably taken possession of in spite of 
 their defective levels and tortuous courses." But what- 
 ever could be done, with such scanty means and in face 
 of such difficulties, Blaine's skill and energy accom- 
 plished. He lived to see the canal re-enter Delhi, after 
 a suspension of half a century ; but not further to ex- 
 tend the good work of which he was the pioneer. He 
 was succeeded by Captain Tickle, of the Bengal En- 
 gineers, and subsequently by Colonel John Colvin, of 
 the same corps — whose name is still held in affectionate 
 remembrance by the people, for whom, bringing all 
 his professional skill to bear upon the labor of love, he 
 toiled with so much energy and such hearty good- 
 will. In 1823 lie was appointed to the general super- 
 intendence of the works of irrigation in the Delhi ter- 
 ritory, and from that time they continued to advance 
 to maturity with the steadiness which commands per- 
 manent success. There were many engineering diffi- 
 culties to be overcome, but they were overcome by our 
 resolute engineers ; and there were financial difficulties 
 — the growth of a false economy, which neither science 
 
RESULTS OF THE SYSTEM. 281 
 
 nor enthusiasm could easily overleap. But, in spite of 
 all hindrances and impediments, the Western Jumna 
 Canal was brought into effective operation throughout 
 the country it was intended to fertilise, and is now 
 conferring incalculable benefits upon its agricultural 
 population. 
 
 The canal extends from the foot of the Hills to 
 Delhi and to Hissar. Its total length is 425 miles. 
 It is spanned by 159 masonry bridges, 54 of woodwork, 
 and one suspension-bridge ; and there are nearly 700 
 irrigation outlets from the main channel. 
 
 Of some of the results of the Irrigation system I 
 would now speak. It would appear, from statistical 
 tables prepared by the Government of the IS'orth- 
 Western Provinces, that the extent of irrigated land in 
 different districts, mthin the influence of the Western 
 Jumna Canal, varies from one-half to one-tenth of the 
 entire area. In this computation the total area of 
 the irrigating villages is taken into account. But it is 
 not to be inferred that the whole extent of these lands 
 is actually watered by the canal. It is estimated that 
 from one-half to one-third is the average of land 
 brought under immediate irrigation — those irrigating 
 villages, which are fewer in proportion to the entire 
 area, using the water most freely. Thus the district of 
 Paniput, one-half of which is covered by irrigating vil- 
 lages, seems only to bring a third of the area of those 
 \iUages actually under irrigation, whilst Hissar, which 
 only shows one-tenth of its entire area to consist of 
 irrigated villages, actually waters one-half of the area 
 of these lands. '*The best watered of all," it is said, 
 " in proportion to its irrigable area, is the once sterile 
 district of Hissar, the chief towns of which were found, 
 in 1807, to be literally mthout an inhabitant. The 
 canal here has almost called into being an active, con- 
 tented, and prosperous peasantry."* 
 
 • Baird Smith, in the Calcutta Beview. 
 
282 PUBLIC WORKS. 
 
 The progressive extent to which the people have 
 availed themselves of this artificial water-supply may 
 now be shown by a reference to tables of receipts on 
 accomit of water-rents. A small rent-charge, ranging 
 between one shilling and ten shillings an acre, accord- 
 ing to the nature of the ground and the value of the 
 produce, is made for the water supplied ; and, in the 
 course of twenty-seven years, from 1820-21 to 1846-47, 
 the amount received has not much fallen short of 
 355,000^. The annual receipts have progressively in- 
 creased. In 1820-21 the amount received on account 
 of irrigation was about 1450Z. ; in 1846-47 it was 
 26,250^. The last returns before me show for one half 
 year in 1851 a water-rent of 13,341Z. ; or 26,681^. on 
 the entire year. 
 
 "The exceedingly unsettled state," it is said, "of 
 the agricultural population, the constant fluctuations 
 of the summary settlement of the Government land- 
 revenue, and the novelty in many localities of continual 
 irrigation, were the chief causes of this slow progress. 
 The permanent settlement of the land-revenue gave a 
 great impetus to the extension of canal irrigation ; and 
 1837-38, the year of the great famine, fatal as it was 
 to districts not protected by canals, exhibits a remark- 
 able increase — a fact pregnant with meaning." 
 
 It is calculated that in that grievous famine-year the 
 gross value of the crops grown on land irrigated from 
 the "Western Jumna Canal, the greater part of which 
 land would have been totally unproductive without 
 the use of canal- water, amounted to a million and a 
 half of English money. Of this sum about one-tenth, 
 or 150,000^., was paid to Government, as land and 
 water rent, whilst the remainder " supported in com- 
 fort, during a period of devastating famine, the in- 
 habitants of nearly 500 villages." 
 
 But the water-rents, paid on account of irrigation, 
 do not constitute the sole profits of the canal. Some 
 
THE EASTERN JUMNA CANAL. 283 
 
 revenue is raised from the rents paid by the pro- 
 prietors of flour-mills* in the neighbourhood of Kur- 
 naul, Delhi, and Hissar. Between the years 1822-23 
 and 1846-47, the sum derived from this source ex- 
 ceeded 31,400Z. In the first of these years the re- 
 ceipts amounted to only 302^. ; in the last they had 
 risen to nearly 1500Z. ; and in 1850 had exceeded that 
 amount. There are also smaller sums receivable from 
 certain pastoral villages, wliich depend entirely upon 
 the canal for the means of watering their cattle ; and 
 others paid, in the shape of transit-duties, principally 
 upon timbers floated down by the canal. 
 
 The Eastern Jumna Canal is a work of inferior 
 proportions. The entire length of it is estimated at 
 155 miles. It runs for the most part along a beau- 
 tiful country between the Ganges and the Jumna. 
 "Most beautiful in all parts it truly is," says the 
 canal-liistorian, "with its broad road smooth as an 
 English laAvn, its double rows of trees drooping over 
 the stream, its long graceful sweeps, its rich bordering 
 of the most luxuriant crops, its neat station-houses, 
 and the peculiar care with which all its works are 
 maintained. It is certainly one of the most interest- 
 ing and attractive of Indian sights. The gem of the 
 whole is the southern division, where, for nearly sixty 
 miles, the visitor passes through a country which is 
 the garden of the North- West, and finds constant 
 cause to admire the beautiful, although limited scenes, 
 which every turn of the canal brings before him." t 
 
 * The following account of these chines do not economise more than 
 mills is taken from the authority thirty per cent, of the effective power 
 already quoted. It affords an apt il- of the water, and are liable to be inter- 
 lustration of the unprogressiveness of fered with during the rainy season by 
 the natives of India: " These mills con- back water, yet they are so much pre- 
 sist of substantial buildings of masonry, ferred by the native community to any 
 located near the large towns of Kumaul, more complicated arrangement, that 
 Delhi, and Hissar. The machinery is of every attempt to supersede them by 
 the most primitive kind, being a small machinery of European form has sig- 
 vertical wheel, with oblique horizontal nally failed." 
 spokes, slightly hollowed, on which the f Baird Smith. 
 water impinges. Although these ma- 
 
284 PUBLIC WORKS. 
 
 Towards the close of the year 1809, the Board of 
 Commissioners called the attention of Government to 
 the canal, '^ generally known as Zahita Khan's, from 
 an attempt which he made to re-estahlish it, and which, 
 previous to its being suffered to fall into decay, must 
 have fertilised in its windings an extent of country of 
 not much less than 200 miles."* The senior Commis- 
 sioner had visited the head of the canal, and taken 
 counsel with the chief engineer, who had reported 
 favorably upon the expediency of restoring the great 
 work. " On the important advantages," said the Com- 
 missioners, '' which may be expected to result from 
 the measure, if feasible, there can be no difference of 
 opinion. Several Pergunnahs, now almost entirely 
 desolate, will be rapidly restored to cultivation, and 
 plenty will soon be di£Pased over a part of the country 
 where wild animals now usurp the dominion over 
 mankind." t The recommendations of the Commis- 
 sioners were not without effect. Captain Tod, of the 
 25th Native Infantry, was ordered to survey the line 
 of canal, and to report upon the feasibility and the 
 cost of its restoration. He sent in a rough estimate 
 of the probable expenditure, which was set down at a 
 lakh and a half or two lakhs of rupees. But either 
 the same cause which had deferred the restoration of 
 the Western Jumna Canal, or imwillingness on the 
 part of Government to incur the estimated expendi- 
 ture, postponed also this experiment, and for some 
 years nothing was done. 
 
 But in 1822 the line was surveyed by Lieutenant 
 Debude, of the Engineers, and active operations were 
 
 * Report of the Board of Commis- a stream of water through the bed of 
 sioners, October 7, 1809 — quoted iw ordu the Kursunni river to the site of the 
 Moira's Minute, September 21, 1815. great city projected by him. . . . But 
 Revenue Selections.— It is doubtful, how- his canal could have been open only for 
 ever, whether in Zabita Khan's time the a few months ; and with the first rain- 
 canal was long in operation. " About floods it was, doubtless, seen that the 
 1780," says the canal-historian in the difficulties were too formidable to over- 
 Calcutta Review, already quoted, '* Za- come." 
 bita Khan Kohilla is said to have re- f •^^''^• 
 opened the channel, and to have brought 
 
THE EASTERN JUMNA CANAL. 285 
 
 commenced. On liis removal to other duties, lie was 
 succeeded by Colonel Robert Smith, under whose 
 superintendence it was prosecuted to the completion of 
 the original design in 1830. But much still remained 
 to be done. There were serious defects in the execu- 
 tion of the plan, which threatened the destruction of 
 many of the works almost as soon as the canal was 
 opened;* and Captain Cautley was appointed to rectify 
 these errors. The professional skill of this eminent en- 
 gineer overcame every difficulty. He carried out many 
 great improvements, and recommended others, which, 
 on his removal to the higher appointment of chief 
 superintendent of canals in the North- Western Pro- 
 vinces, were carried into effect by Lieutenant Baird 
 Smith, who succeeded him in charge of the eastern 
 line of works, and has since won for liimself so high 
 a reputation. 
 
 Deducing from statistical tables the same results 
 as in the case of the Western Jumna Canal, it would 
 seem that the proportion of irrigated to unirrigated 
 lands ranges from a fourth to a ninth of the entire 
 area in different districts; and that of these lands 
 from a third to a fifth is actually watered by the 
 canal. There has been the same progressive increase 
 in the consumption of water, and, therefore, a pro- 
 gressively increasing revenue. The gross amount 
 derived from water-rent between the years 1830-31 
 and 1846-47, inclusive, is 109,500^. In the first year of 
 the series the amount realised was only 6001. In the 
 last it was 10,770/. In 1837-38, the great famine 
 year, the rents were more than doubled. They rose 
 
 ♦ " On the 3rd of January, 1830, the on the steep slopes between the bridges 
 
 canal was opened for the first time, and and working back, as such rapids in- 
 
 by the 20th of the same month nearly variably do, they exposed the foundat 
 
 every bridge north of Scharunpore, and tions, and in course of time would hare 
 
 south of Surrowli, was in imminent completely undermined the works." — 
 
 peril of total destruction. Rapids es- ICalcutta Jltview.'} 
 tablished themselves at different points 
 
286 PUBLIC WORKS. 
 
 at once from 4400^. to 9100Z. In that calamitous year 
 it is estimated that the value of the crops grown on 
 irrigated land, " the greater part of which land would 
 have heen totally unproductive hut for the canal- 
 water," fell very little short of 500,000/. ; of this a 
 tithe, or 50,000Z., went into the Government treasury, 
 and the remainder was hestowed upon the people hy 
 the agency of the canal. Of the other sources of re- 
 venue from the water-supply, it may be stated, that 
 the mills have furnished to the amount of about 
 8300/. within the years above mentioned; that the 
 cattle-supplies have yielded only about 190/. ; the 
 transit-duties 450/. ; and the plantations about 2200/.* 
 To combine in one view the financial results of 
 these canal operations, and to exhibit the progressive 
 demand that has been made upon the Government 
 water-supply, the follomng facts, gathered from more 
 detailed tables, may be stated : 
 
 WESTERN JUMNA CANAL. 
 
 £ 
 Gross receipts from 1821 to 1846-47 . . . . 420,000 
 Gross expenditure 353,000 
 
 EASTERN JUMNA CANAL. 
 
 £ 
 Gross receipts from 1830 to 1846-47 .... 125,000 
 Gross expenditure 198,000 
 
 WESTERN JUMNA CANAL. 
 
 £ 
 
 Income in 1821-22 2,700 
 
 Licome in 1846-47 30,000 
 
 * " In addition to the plantations of maturity, they have proved very suc- 
 
 forest trees, grafted mango gardens have cessful— the demand for grafts and fruit 
 
 lately been established with the view being much in excess of the means of 
 
 of introducing a superior fruit into the supply. The native community, for 
 
 country adjoining the canal. Of these whom they were chiefly intended, have 
 
 gardens five are in existence, contain- shown their appreciation by purchasing 
 
 ing about 300 trees each, and being a large number of grafts; and there is 
 
 from three to five acres in extent. The every probability that the intention of 
 
 result of their establishment has been Government in sanctioning the project 
 
 very satisfactory; and, although only will be fully realised."— [Ca/cu«a Be- 
 
 one of the number has yet arrived at vteu^.] 
 
ORIGiy OF THE GREAT GANGES CANAL. 287 
 
 EASTERN JUMNA CANAL. 
 
 £ 
 
 Income in 1830-31 800 
 
 Income in 1846-47 12,000 
 
 In both cases the highest amount is to be found 
 opposite the last year of the series, and with slight 
 deviations only the increase has been regularly pro- 
 gressive. The surplus revenue derived from the two 
 canals amounted in the year 1846-47 to 15,000Z. 
 
 I come now to speak of the great Ganges Canal — a 
 work still in progress of execution, which, when com- 
 plete, wtU scarcely bow to a rival in any part of the 
 world. It is one of comparatively recent conception, 
 for it took birth only since the passing of the last 
 charter-act. The originator of tliis great design was 
 Colonel Colvin, who did so much to bring to perfection 
 the Western Jumna Canal. It seems to have taken 
 shape in his mind about the year 1836, at which period 
 he held the office of Superintendent-General of Canals. 
 But although he met mth little encom^agement at the 
 time, he had full faith in the success of the experiment 
 — ^he beheved that the waters of the great river might 
 be made to contribute abundantly to the wants of the 
 thirsty soil of the Doab, to fertilise the land, and to 
 em^ch the people. The subject, though replete with 
 interest alike to the pliilanthropist and the man of 
 science, was then, and might still have continued to be, 
 one only of speculation and discourse. But the winter 
 of 1837-38 witnessed a grievous famine in Upper India. 
 The whole staff of bread was broken. The heavens had 
 not yielded their rain in due season, and the earth had 
 not yielded her increase. The calamity came suddenly 
 upon the people, and in this mortal extremity their 
 rulers could do little for them. But it set such men as 
 Colvin and Cautley thinking over the great project of 
 the Ganges Canal, and it prepared Lord Auckland — a 
 man of a humane nature, and, wh^n left to himself, of 
 
288 PUBLIC WORKS. 
 
 sound discretion in quiet times — to give it favorable 
 acceptance. The Governor-General sanctioned a full 
 practical inquiry. Major Cautley was entrusted to 
 examine the country through which the proposed 
 canal would pass, and to send in a report on the subject. 
 His first report was completed in May, 1840. It fully 
 established the practicability of the great design. 
 
 It was now left to the Government to determine the 
 scale upon which they would give effect to the project 
 — the nature and the extent of the works of which they 
 would sanction the execution. The times were not 
 propitious. The war in Afghanistan, and the miserable 
 encumbrance of the Douranee Empire, which only 
 British money could sustain, was causing a chronic 
 derangement of our Indian finances. But the Court 
 of Directors saw clearly the immense benefits which 
 such an extensive system of irrigation would confer 
 upon the people of Upper India, and they worthily de- 
 termined to sanction the proposed undertaking on such 
 a scale as would secure an adequate water-supply to 
 the whole of the country lying between the Ganges, 
 the Hindun, and the Jumna. 
 
 But ordinary prudence dictated that so great a work 
 should be cautiously approached — that the fullest exa- 
 mination should precede the final setting of the seal of 
 authority upon this costly undertaking — so a Commit- 
 tee, composed of three of the ablest engineer officers in 
 the country, Prederick Abbott, Baker, and Cautley, was 
 appointed to ascertain and to report upon the best me- 
 thod of giving effect to the liberal views of the Court. 
 In Eebruary, 1842, they submitted their report. In 
 Pebruary, 1842, Lord Ellenborough arrived in India. 
 
 Lord Ellenborough went out to India to emulate 
 the magnificent philanthropy of the Mahomedan Em- 
 perors. He returned to England to speak of the 
 humiliation he had experienced on witnessing the 
 
THE GANGES CANAL. 289 
 
 great works of those native rulers, and contrasting 
 them with our own. But one of his first measures, as 
 Governor-General of India, was the suspension of the 
 great undertaking of the Ganges Canal, which his pre- 
 decessor had sanctioned. A vigorous prosecution of the 
 work had been ordered. Lord Ellenhorough arrested 
 its progress. 
 
 There may have been State reasons for this with 
 which I am not acquainted. I think that public writers 
 are too hasty in condemning measures with the secret 
 history of which they have but imperfect acquaintance. 
 Lord Ellenhorough may have arrested the progress of 
 the great Ganges Canal, because the political crisis 
 which had arisen seemed to render it imperative upon 
 him to devote every rupee in the public treasury to the 
 equipment of the armies w^hich were retiring from 
 Afghanistan — or he may have required for more war- 
 like uses all the engineer officers at his command — or 
 he may have had good reason to apprehend that the 
 projected work, if it rescued the people from famine, 
 Avould destroy them by disease — or he may have be- 
 lieved that navigation was more important than irri- 
 gation, and that in this case they were antagonistic 
 objects. He may have been moved by one, or all, of 
 these considerations. All I would say is, that no one 
 knows so well as a Governor-General the difficulties 
 with which, in such cases. Government have to con- 
 tend, and that no one should be so slow to condemn 
 the omissions which paramount circumstances may 
 have enforced. 
 
 A season of dreary stagnation ensued, and when 
 again there were symptoms of revival, the activity 
 wliich was manifested was almost worse than the 
 quiescence; Lord Ellenhorough turned his thoughts 
 towards the Ganges Canal, and dkected that it should 
 be primarily a canal of navigation. The projectors of 
 
 u 
 
290 PUBLIC WORKS. 
 
 the great enterprise stood aghast at this decision. 
 Irrigation was the great object of the contemplated 
 works, and now it was proposed that only the surplus 
 water, after securing the navigation of the canal, should 
 be devoted to its original purpose. The Colvins and 
 the Cautleys — the Abbotts and the Bakers — who 
 knew Avell what were the real wants of that part of 
 the country, had regarded the great question not in its 
 commercial, but in its agricultural bearings. They 
 remembered the great famine of 1838 ; and they were 
 eager to prevent the recurrence of its horrors. It was 
 not for tliis that Cautley had been bringing all his 
 science to bear upon the survey of the line.* But a 
 new Governor- General soon came to preside over the 
 Councils of India ; and the whole question was re- 
 considered. Another difficulty had started up in the 
 way of the great project, and had come to arrest the 
 progress of the work. It was suggested that the canal 
 would have a fatal effect upon the climate of the sur- 
 roundino: district — ^that the miasma which it would en- 
 
 * The Court of Directors entirely possibly be'impaired by specially adapt- 
 
 concurred in the riews of the engineer ing it to purposes of navigation; the 
 
 officers, and wrote out to the Supreme expense of its construction will cer- 
 
 Govemment, clearly enunciating their tainly be very much increased ; the in- 
 
 views in favor of irrigation: — "Major jury occasioned to the banks by the 
 
 Cautley's original plan was for a canal passing of boats will probably add to 
 
 of irrigation, adapted, as far as could be the costs of the annual repairs; and it 
 
 done consistently with its efficiency in must not be left out of view, that the 
 
 that respect, for navigation also ; in canal, as a means of transit, may be 
 
 1844, the Government determined that hereafter superseded by the construc- 
 
 the canal should be constructed witli a tion of a railway. These considerations 
 
 view to navigation in the first instance, must be borne in mind in determining 
 
 and that irrigation should be made a on the expediency of adapting tlie Canal 
 
 secondary object. We altogether dis- to purposes of navigation ; and we 
 
 approve of this project ; and we are would desire you to consider whether 
 
 satisfied that its employment as a the sum which would be saved out of 
 
 navigable canal should in any case be its cost by making it a canal of irriga- 
 
 made altogether subordinate to its use tion exclusively, miglit not be better 
 
 as a means of irrigation ; the advantage applied in improving the ordinary 
 
 of possessing a good line of water com- means of coinmunication throim-h that 
 
 munication through the centre of the tract of country, cither l>y cloaring the 
 
 Doab is undoubted, more especially if rivers of existing obstructions, by im- 
 
 the navigation of the Ganges above proving the roads, and eventually to the 
 
 Cawnpore should be rendered imprac- construction of a railway." — [^Court of 
 
 ticable from the abstraction of its water. Directors to the Governor- Gaient I, Juhi 7, 
 
 On the other hand, the efficiency of the 1847.] 
 canal for purpoies of irrigation may 
 
THE GANGES CANAL. 291 
 
 gender would be destructive to the health of the people ; 
 and that, therefore, it would be prudent to pause until 
 the medical question had been fully examined. So a 
 Committee, of which Major Baker and Dr. Dempster 
 were the chief members, was appointed, and, after a 
 temporary interruption, caused by the Sikh invasion 
 and the military operations which followed, they for- 
 mally reported the result of their labors. 
 
 The report was satisfactory, and so were its results. 
 Lord Hardinge fully recognised the merits of the 
 scheme. He clearly saw the engineering practica- 
 bility of the work in such hands as those to which it 
 had been entrusted; and he saw, too, the immense 
 effect which it would have in promoting the prosperity 
 of the country and the happiness of the people. He 
 gave it, therefore, his entire sanction and approval. 
 Men and money were freely forthcoming. The Court 
 of Directors readily consented to the expenditure of 
 more than a million of money upon the prosecution of 
 tliis gigantic enterprise.* And the work was pushed 
 for^^ard with becoming vigor. It is now in rapid 
 progress towards completion. One-half of the money 
 granted has been expended, and if the predictions of 
 1851 be verified, the present year will see the admis- 
 sion of water to the main lines. 
 
 The great Ganges Canal is the most magnificent 
 work ever undertaken in India — one of the most 
 magnificent works in the world. It traverses with its 
 several branches more than 800 miles. The reader 
 will do well to place the map of India before him and 
 trace the course of this gigantic work. He must start 
 from Hurdwar,t which he will find by following the 
 
 * The first revised estimates -were a the river Ganges, and, flowing past the 
 
 million and a quarter — but they were sacred ghats, and under the picturesque 
 
 subsequently raised to a million and a buildings of the town, follows a course, 
 
 half. generally parallel to that of the parent 
 
 t " At about 2i miles north of Hurd- stream, which it rejoins at a point 30 
 
 war, a branch leaves the right bank of or 40 miles to the southward. 
 
 L 2 
 
292 PUBLIC WORKS. 
 
 30th degree of latitude till it intersects the 78th of 
 longitude ; and from Hurdwar he must proceed south- 
 east in a slightly circular direction to Alighur. This 
 distance is 180 miles. Here the canal follows two 
 different lines — one towards the Ganges at Cawnpore, 
 a distance of 170 miles — ^the other towards the Jmnna 
 at Humeerpore, which may be computed at about the 
 same amount.* These are the main lines ; but, having 
 traced them, the reader must go back to the great 
 trunk which he followed from Hurdwar to Alighm% 
 and between these points three lesser canals branch off 
 — one to Puttehghur, on the Ganges, a distance of 170 
 miles — another stretching to Bolundshahur, a distance 
 of 60 miles ; and a third to Coel, the length of which 
 is estimated at 50 miles. The total length is officially 
 computed to be 810 miles — ^thus : 
 
 Miles. 
 
 Hurdwar to Alighur 180 
 
 Alighur to Cawnpore 170 
 
 Alighur to Humeerpore 180 
 
 Branch to Futtehghur 170 
 
 Ditto to Bolundshahur .... 60 
 
 Ditto to Coel 50 
 
 810 
 
 As the work is still only a work in progress, no 
 complete account of it can yet be given ; but from the 
 many interesting details before me, one or two may be 
 selected in illustration of its nature and extent. " The 
 grand, indeed the only, obstacles to the construction of 
 
 " Possession has been taken of the rainy season ; and 2nd, of a regulating 
 upper portion of this branch for the bridge across the canal bed, having 
 head of the canal ; and through it the 200 feet of water-way in 10 openings 
 supply of 6750 cubic feet per second of 20 feet each, fitted with all the ma- 
 will be brought to Myapur, a point chinery necessary for regulating the 
 about l\ miles south of Hurdwar, admission of water into the canal. The 
 where the artificial channel commences, dam and bridge are connected by a 
 
 "The first masonry works are con- long line of masonry revetement; and, 
 
 structed at Myapur. They consist — 1st, on the opposite bank, tlie similar line 
 
 of a dam across the branch of the of revetement with bathing ghats, &c., 
 
 Ganges, having 38 openings of 10 feet complete the works at the head of the 
 
 each, fitted with gates or sluices and artificial channel." — [Calcutta Beview.'^ 
 
 flank overfalls, by which a clear water- ♦ In the India House Statistics it is 
 
 way of 517 feet is secured for the passage set down at 180 miles. I see that some 
 
 of floods from the Ganges during the other writers say 105 miles. 
 
COURSE OF THE CANAL. 293 
 
 tlie canal," says Captain Baird Smith, " are met with 
 on the first twenty miles from the head, or between 
 Hurdwar and Eoorkhi. These difficulties arise from 
 the course of the canal intersecting at right angles the 
 whole of the drainage of the Sub-Himalayas, of which 
 the western valley of the Ganges is the receptacle. 
 
 " This drainage, independently of numerous minor 
 channels, which are unimportant, is collected into 
 three great lines, being the valleys of the Puthri, the 
 Huthmu, and Solani rivers, draining respectively about 
 six, eleven, and eight miles in length of the hill 
 country. The Putliri drainage, being divided among a 
 number of minor channels, is not difficult to control ; 
 but the Euthmu and Solani are impediments of the 
 highest class. 
 
 " The artificial channel of the canal leaves Myapur 
 mth a transverse section, having a constant width at 
 bottom of 140 feet, and a variable width at top, de- 
 pendent on the depth of excavation, but which may be 
 stated generally to be about 200 feet. The depth of 
 W2tter provided for is 10 feet, and the slope of the bed 
 about 18 inches per mile. After pursuing its course 
 for about 6} miles, and crossing several lines of drain- 
 age, which are disposed of either by dams, or inlets 
 and outlets, the canal is lowered into the valley of the 
 Puthri river by means of the Bahadurabad Palls, which 
 consists of two descents in masomy of 8 feet each, 
 exactly similar to, although on a very much larger 
 scale than, those of the Eastern Jumna Canal. These 
 ^\ill be very massive works; and when the canal is 
 opened, and its huge volume of water is poured over 
 them, the sight will be a most striking one. Even 
 with the small supply of the Eastern Jumna Canal, the 
 turmoil at the base of the Belka Palls, which are 15 
 feet in height, is most formidable to behold. What 
 
294 PUBLIC WORKS. 
 
 then will it be, when ten times the quantity of water 
 is thrown over walls 16 feet ?" 
 
 Engineering difficulties are of one kind ; financial 
 difficulties are of another. Where there is a suffi- 
 ciency of skill the magnitude of the work is nothing, if 
 the labor and materials can be supplied. The great 
 trunk line of the Ganges Canal has to be brought 
 across the Solani river. " The river itself," says the 
 same high authority, '^ is crossed by a masonry aque- 
 duct, which will be not merely the largest work of 
 the kind in India, but one of the most remarkable for 
 its dimensions in the world. The total length of the 
 Solani aqueduct is 920 feet. Its clear water-way is 750 
 feet, in 15 arches of 50 feet span each. The breadth 
 of each arch is 192 feet. Its thickness is 5 feet ; its 
 form is that of a segment of a circle, with a rise of 8 
 feet. The piers rest upon blocks of masonry, sunk 20 
 feet deep in the bed of the river, and being cubes of 
 20 feet side, pierced with 4 wells each, and undersunk 
 in the manner practised by natives of India in con- 
 structing their wells. These foundations, throughout 
 the whole structure, are secured by every device that 
 knowledge or experience could suggest ; and the quan- 
 tity of masonry sunk beneath the surface will be 
 scarcely less than that visible above it. The piers are 
 10 feet thick at the springing of the arches, and 12^ 
 feet in height. The total height of the structure above 
 the valley of the river will be 38 feet. It will not, 
 therefore, be an imposing work, when viewed from 
 below, in consequence of this deficiency of elevation ; 
 but when viewed from above, and when its immense 
 breadth is observed, with its line of masonry channel, 
 which, when completed both north and south of the 
 river, will be nearly 3 miles in length, the effect must 
 be most striking. 
 
THE SOLANI AQUEDUCT. 295 
 
 " The water-way of the canal is formed in two sepa- 
 rate channels, each 85 feet in mdth. The side walls 
 are 8 feet tliick, and 12 deep, the expected depth of 
 water being 10 feet. Various buildings are provided at 
 tlie flanks of the aqueduct, and many minor arrange- 
 ments are made, which it would be wearisome to 
 describe here. A continuation of the earthen aque- 
 duct, about 1^ of a mile in length, connects the masonry 
 work mth the high bank at Roorkhi, and brings the 
 canal to the termination of the difficult portion of its 
 com'se. Such details convey but a very imperfect idea 
 of the work. They are, however, the only substitutes 
 for plans, or other graphic representations ; and it may 
 be hoped that they are intelligible enough to give some 
 conception of the magnitude of the structiu-es. 
 
 " It will perhaps give additional clearness to what 
 has now been stated, if some details of the amount of 
 labor, and the quantity of materials, wliich will be 
 required to complete the work within six years, are 
 exhibited ; and with this view the following calcula- 
 tions made by Major Baker, late director of the canal, 
 are given : 
 
 Calculation of means required to complete the Solani Aqueduct in six years. 
 
 " For 8,749,524 cubic feet of masomy in aqueducts 
 and revetements will be required : 
 
 L. B. D. 
 
 Bricks (12" X 6" X 2^) . . 69,996,192 
 
 Surkhi (1,924,894 cubic feet). . . 13,474,258 
 
 Total of Bricks . . . 83,470,450 
 
 Lime 962,447 cubic feet. 
 
 Or say eighty-four millions of bricks, and one million 
 cubic feet of lime. 
 
 " The workpeople required in preparing and using 
 the materials are as follow : 
 
 Brickmakers. Laborers. 
 
 In Brickmaking (inclusive of wood cutting) . . 141,666 3,143,333 
 
 Masons. 
 
 In building Masonry and laying Floors . . . 306,233 781,946 
 
 In pounding Surkhi 641,632 
 
 In undersinking the foundation Blocks . . . 311,040 
 
 In earthwork of Aqueduct (exclusive of draught cattle) 1,972,750 
 
296 PUBLIC WORKS. 
 
 (( 
 
 The total labor required is therefore — 
 
 Brickmakers 141,666 
 
 Masons 306,233 
 
 Laborers 6,850,701 
 
 " The brickmaking, to be completed in five years, 
 alloAving 190 days each year (deducting Sundays and 
 rainy seasons), would require per diem 149 brick- 
 moulders and 3309 laborers. The remaining work, to 
 be completed in six years, allowing 250 working days 
 per annum, would require per diem 204 masons for five 
 years, and for the sixth year 2471 laborers. The work- 
 shops will require 50 smiths, and 80 to 100 carpenters 
 per diem. An establishment of about 1000 bullocks 
 (exclusive of contract carriage) will be required for the 
 earth waggons, and other purposes." 
 
 This will be something to leave behind us, in those 
 future days when we shall no longer sit at the receipt 
 of custom among Mussulmans and Hindoos, and our 
 Empire in India is a dream of the past.* It will be 
 something to leave behind us ; and it will be something, 
 too, that it should be said that every laborer em- 
 ployed on this gigantic work received his wages on 
 the appointed day, and that for every beast of burden 
 the lawful hire was duly paid.f 
 
 * " Five centuries," says Baird Smith, be, with a boon never before extended 
 
 "were not suflBcient to obliterate the to India under any dynasty— a blessing, 
 
 canals of Feroze, and these, as com- I really believe it may be fairly termed 
 
 pared to the works of the British Go- a Christian one, a lever which has 
 
 vernment, were limited in extent, tern- never been applied except in the Chris- 
 
 porary in construction, and feeble in tianera to the elevation of the masses — 
 
 their powers of resistance to the de- money- wages, 
 stroying hand of time." *' We have been slow enough in mark- 
 
 t A passage in a little book by Sir ing our career with great works of 
 
 Digby Neave (" Three Days in Con- utility ; thank God these modern 
 
 nemara ") has attracted ray attention triumphs of civilisation, which are 
 
 whilst this sheet is passing through the striking through the jungles, will be 
 
 press. Writing primarily on the sub- unspotted with blood. They will not; 
 
 ject of Irish famines, and the measures be made as the tanks, the pyramids, and, 
 
 which have been taken, in case of their in our days, as the Mahmoody Canal, 
 
 recurrence, to mitigate their severity, with men's, women's, and children's 
 
 the tourist alludes to Indian famines, lives, and a villanous calculation of the 
 
 and what has been done to prevent powers of human endurance, but by a 
 
 them, and comments on the money- fair day's wages for a fair day's work, 
 
 wages paid for the people's work. Then will the Christian be had in 
 
 "The country," he says, "is being honor among the heathen, and his creed 
 
 opened up, for the civilising process is in reverence among the nations. 
 now begun, coupled, as I trust it will " 'Le physique influo sur la moralo, 
 
CANAL IRRIGATION. 297 
 
 Of tlie estimated agricultural results of this great 
 enterprise it is time to speak. I continue to quote the 
 same authority, because I know the evidence to be the 
 best : 
 
 " The first point to determine is the extent to which 
 the Doab will be irrigated by the canal and its 
 branches ; and fortunately, by means of the invaluable 
 statistical tables prepared by the Agra Government, 
 this can be done with a degree of accuracy not before 
 attainable. The districts to which the influence of the 
 Ganges Canal and its branches will extend, together 
 with details of their assessed areas, are given below. 
 From the areas of Saharunpur, MuzufPernuggur, and 
 Meerut, we have deducted the portions already pro- 
 vided mth means of irrigation from the Eastern Jumna 
 Canal. We have taken from the tables only the culti- 
 vated and cultm^able areas, because it is for these alone 
 that irrigation has to be provided. 
 
 Cultivated area in acres. Culturable area in acres. 
 
 1. Saharunpur . 
 
 . 501,606 
 
 392,508 
 
 2. Muzuffernuggur 
 
 . 505,830 
 
 236,216 
 
 3. Meerut . 
 
 . 972,213 
 
 476,427 
 
 4. Bolundshahur 
 
 . 657,071 
 
 359,713 
 
 5. Alighur 
 
 . 901,405 
 
 129,710 
 
 6. IVIuttra 
 
 . 676,323 
 
 106,129 
 
 7. Fumickabad 
 
 . 652,075 
 
 305,095 
 
 8. Mynpuri 
 
 . 613,338 
 
 182,000 
 
 9. Etawah 
 
 . 477,901 
 
 139,850 
 
 10. Cawnpore . 
 
 . 781,173 
 
 163,565 
 
 11. Futtehpur . 
 
 . 518,812 
 
 123,985 
 
 12. AJlahabafI . 
 
 . 997,508 
 
 231,597 
 
 Totals . , 8,255,255 2,846,795 
 
 " The total area, cultivated and culturable, of the 
 above twelve districts, is therefore 11,102,048 acres. 
 
 " Now, supposing that the full supply of the canal, 
 being 6750 cubic feet per second, is rendered available 
 for irrigation, as ultimately we have no doubt it will 
 be, we know, from experience on the canals of the 
 
 et la morale sur le physique.' I do not action is placed, as the imperious de- 
 recite the remark for the truism it mands of the * physique ' must take 
 containi, but to call attention to the precedence of the requirements of the 
 just order in vhich this reciprocating • morale." " 
 
298 PUBLIC WORKS. 
 
 Jumna, that each cubic foot of this discharge is suffi- 
 cient for the irrigation during the year of 218 acres. 
 The total area which would be actually watered during 
 the year would consequently amount to 6750 x 218= 
 1,471,500 acres, or, for facility of calculation, say 
 1,500,000 acres. 
 
 "Assuming, as a standard of comparison for the 
 whole of the Doab, the best irrigated districts on the 
 Eastern Junma Canal, namely, the western portion of 
 Meerut, we find, by reference to the statistical tables, 
 that irrigating villages actually water one-third of their 
 total areas. Consequently the supply of the Ganges 
 Canal would furnish abundant irrigation for an area of 
 1,500,000 X 3=4,500,000 acres. 
 
 " In districts benefiting by canal irrigation, it is 
 found that for such localities as, from position, difficul- 
 ties of level, or other causes, cannot be provided with 
 water, irrigation from wells is extensively employed. 
 Erom data given in the Special Committee's report, it 
 would appear that, in the best irrigated district on the 
 Western Jumna Canal, the proportion of canal to well 
 irrigation is as five to one ; assuming this for the Doab, 
 we should have an area, irrigated from wells, amount- 
 ing to 900,000 acres. 
 
 " The total area for which irrigation would be pro- 
 vided would accordingly amount to 5,400,000 acres. 
 But the whole irrigable area of the Doab is, as formerly 
 shown, 11,102,048 acres. This tract of country would 
 therefore be irrigated to the extent of very nearly one- 
 half its surface — a proportion equal to that of the best 
 district west, and nearly double that of the best district 
 east, of the Jimma. In making this comparison, it 
 should not be overlooked that the best districts on 
 existing canals have been selected as standards for the 
 whole Doab — a measure which tends to give a more 
 limited range to the influence of the Ganges Canal than 
 
PREVENTION OF FAMINE. 299 
 
 would liave been the case had inferior tracts been 
 selected. But we are anxious to avoid all appearance 
 of exaggeration in estimating the benefits to be antici- 
 pated from this great work, and, as a rule, will select 
 such data as give minimum results, believing these to 
 be abundantly convincing.'' 
 
 Having shown the actual amount of the land to be 
 brought under irrigation, it remains only to exhibit its 
 value, and to indicate the increased produce which the 
 canal system will secure to the producer. 
 
 Calculation of the gross value of crops which will be secured from injun/ in famine 
 seasons by the grand Ganges Canal. 
 
 KHURIF CROPS. 
 
 Rupees. 
 250,000 acres of Sugar and Indigo, at Rs. 80 per acre . 2,00,00,000 
 125,000 „ of Cotton, at Rs. 48 per acre .... 60,00,000 
 
 375,000 „ of Rice and Sundries, at Rs. 38h per acre . 1,44,37,500 
 
 RUBBI CROPS. 
 750,000 „ of Wheat, Barley, &c., at Rs. 48 per acre . 3,60,00,000 
 
 1,500,000 Total . . . 7,64,37,500 
 
 " Of this sum (upwards of 7^ millions sterling per 
 annum) about one-tenth will retm^n to Government in 
 the form of land and water-rent, while the remainder 
 will be the property of the agricultm^al community. 
 It is needless to dwell on the importance of placmg 
 property, equal to between one-fifth and one-sixth of 
 the value of the agricultural produce of the entire 
 Presidency of Agra, beyond the influence of the sea- 
 sons, and of insming to the cultivators, under all 
 cu'cumstances, a certain return for their labor. The 
 influence of the canal on the improvement of the Doab 
 must necessarily be immense. This great tract will 
 become the garden of the North-Western Provinces ; 
 and we shall hear no more of those devastating famines, 
 which have hitherto swept across it, bringing physical 
 wretchedness and moral degradation in their train. 
 
 " In addition to the certainty of returns, the actual 
 
300 PUBLIC WORKS. 
 
 produce of irrigated land exceeds materially that of 
 land iinirrigated. Prom data collected during the 
 progress of the Revenue Survey, it appears that the 
 excess on irrigated over unirrigated land may be taken 
 from the Ruhbi, or cold weather crops, as being about 
 5501bs. per acre for wheat, and about 7301bs. for 
 barley. Assuming the average of these for the general 
 excess, we have the following estimate of the increase 
 of produce due to the existence of the canal : 750,000 
 acres under E/ubbi crops will amount, 
 
 at 640lbs. per acre, to ... . 480,000,000lbs. 
 
 The value of this increase, allowing the market rate 
 to be one maund, or 801bs. per rupee, would amount 
 to rupees 60,00,000, or 600,000Z. per annum. 
 
 " We have not data sufficient to enable us to esti- 
 mate in detail the increase on the Khurif crops ; but 
 considering that this season, including as it'does sugar, 
 indigo, and cotton, is by far the most profitable to the 
 cultivator, and that irrigation exercises an equally 
 beneficial effect upon it, as upon the produce of the 
 Uubbi, we may with great safety conclude that the 
 increase during the Khurif will be at least equal to 
 that during the E/ubbi. Hence the total increase of 
 the value of the produce would amount to 1,200,000?. 
 per annum, a sum nearly equal to the total capital 
 invested in the canal."* 
 
 Leaving the line of the Ganges, let us now cross the 
 Sutlej and see what is doing in the Punjab to fertilise 
 the thirsty land. The development of the resources 
 of the country by means of improved methods of 
 irrigation and channels of communication, was from 
 the very first one of the leading ideas in Lawrence's 
 mind. He was continually pressing upon the Su- 
 
 * It may be mentioned here that the will yield an annual surplus of 350,000/. 
 
 writer very clearly demonstrates that —more than twenty per cent, on the 
 
 the great Ganges Canal, after paying capital invested, 
 for repairs and increased establishment, 
 
THE BAREE DOAB CANAL. 301 
 
 preme Government the expediency of devoting large 
 sums of public money to the construction of roads and 
 canals, and urging that such an expenditure would 
 soon return itself tenfold, in increased revenue, to the 
 treasury of the State. " If the Punjab," such was the 
 language of the Lahore Board, " is to be made to pay 
 its expenses ; if we can hope to keep up efficient mili- 
 tary and civil establishments, while taxing the people 
 less than they have been taxed by previous rulers (and 
 imless we can do so we assuredly cannot expect to win 
 their good will) ; if we Avisli to feed the thousands of 
 human beings whom the change of rule must neces- 
 sarily throw out of employment, we cannot more 
 readily do so than by cutting new canals, and improv- 
 ing the beds of the old ones."* 
 
 To no one could an earnest appeal of this kind have 
 been addressed mth greater certainty of eliciting an 
 echo responsive to every word than from Lord Dal- 
 housie. " Since I first addressed the Court of Directors 
 on this subject," he TVTote in a minute dated December 
 6, 1850, " I have personally visited the several districts 
 of the Manjliir, as well as the southern portion of the 
 Earee Doab, near Mooltan, and the lower portion of 
 the Sindli Saugur Doab, and of the Trans-Indus pro- 
 vince. Everywhere I found evidence of the wonderful 
 effect produced by irrigation, wherever the means could 
 be obtained ; eveiyvvhere I found lands of vast extent, 
 fertile properties now lying comparatively waste, but 
 wanting only water to convert them into plains of the 
 richest cultivation ; and everywhere I found among the 
 people the keenest anxiety to be supplied with that by 
 wliich alone they could be enabled to turn their labor 
 to good account. It is impossible to exaggerate the 
 political importance of holding out to the people of this 
 
 * Secretary of Lahore Board to Secretary of Supreme Government, Nov. 29, 1S50. 
 2IS. Records. 
 
302 PUBLIC WORKS. 
 
 Doab an early prospect of the formation of canals 
 throughout its length and breadth, whilst the statements 
 which have recently been, and which now are, submit- 
 ted to the Court, appear to afford satisfactory proof that 
 the revenue of the new province \^all fairly warrant this 
 large expenditure, and that the undertaking itself will 
 be richly profitable to the treasury of the State."* 
 
 As freely and as earnestly as the Grovernor- General 
 responded to the Lahore Board, the Court of Du'ectorS 
 responded to the Governor-General. "We have al- 
 ready," they wrote, " in our despatch of the 5th De- 
 cember, 1849, shown the importance which we attach 
 to the extension and improvement of public works in 
 the Pimjab, and concurring entirely in the views taken 
 by the Governor-General of the advantages, social, poli- 
 tical, and financial, likely to result from the construc- 
 tion of the canal in question, we readily give our cordial 
 assent to the undertaking, in the full confidence that 
 the utmost care will be exercised in selecting officers 
 competent in every respect for designing and carr^dng 
 into execution, with efficiency and a due regard to eco- 
 nomy, a work involving so large an expenditure of the 
 public money, "t 
 
 The great work here recommended is known as the 
 Baree Doab Canal. The i)rojected line stretches from 
 the Bavee river, some miles below the fort of Shalipoor, 
 across the Baree Doab, west of the town of Butteeala^ 
 and falls again into the Bavee sixty miles above Mooltan. 
 The entire length of the canal, with its several branches, 
 will be 450 miles. J It vnH be available for navigation 
 
 * MS. Records. land between the Ravee and the Beeas, 
 
 t Court of Directors to Governor' will throw off" a large branch at the 
 
 General, April 25, I8!i\. village of Tibbree, eight miles below 
 
 X The course of the canal^ with its Deena-nuggur. This branch will supply 
 
 branches, is thus described by Colonel two channels terminating in the Sutlej 
 
 Napier, of the Engineers, under whose — the one at Sobraon, the other at 
 
 Fuj)erintcndcnce the work is proceeding: Kussoor. The main channel passes 
 
 " The Baree Doab Canal will leave the west of the town of Butteeala, nearly 
 
 Kavee some miles below the fort of parallel with which it again throws off* 
 
 Shalipoor, and following the highest a branch, which will water the country 
 
THE BAREE DOAB CANAL. 303 
 
 as well as irrigation. Its estimated cost is 500,000/. ; 
 and it is calculated tliat it may be completed witliin 
 ^ve years from the date of its commencement. 
 
 Of the immediate productiveness of such a work — 
 apart from the after-results of increased cultivation — there 
 seems to be little doubt. An equitable water-rate would 
 yield, after deducting all expenses of establishment and 
 repairs, 24 per cent, annually on the outlay. '' Sup- 
 posing," says Colonel Napier, ^' that 2500 cubic feet of 
 water will be available for irrigation, and adopting 
 Colonel Cautley's data for the Ganges Canal, that one 
 cubic foot of water per .second will irrigate 350 beegahs, 
 or 21 8 J English acres, 2500 cubic feet of water, at the 
 rate of 1 rupee per Punjab beegah, or E. 2 6 10 per 
 acre, will yield a return of - 
 
 Rupees. 
 
 Water Rent ' . . 13,27,311 
 
 Water Mills 40,000 
 
 Transit-duties and sale of canal produce .... 30,000 
 
 13,97,311 
 Deduct annual expense of establishment and repairs . 1,90,000 
 
 Balance .... 12,07,000" 
 
 or 24 per cent, upon the outlay. But I have written 
 too much already on the advantages of canal irrigation, 
 to render it necessary for me to say, in this place, that 
 the direct money return for the sale of the water is but a 
 small element in the financial consideration of the ques- 
 tion, and has no bearing upon the moral aspects of the 
 case.* 
 
 I have shown what are the grand material results 
 already reahsed or anticipated, on the securest data, of 
 the system of canal irrigation, which the British Go- 
 vernment is now carrying out so vigorously in Upper 
 India. How it will change the whole face of the 
 
 in the neighbourhood of Lahore, and Ravee sixty miles above Mooltan."— 
 
 will fall into the Ravee about thirty [Afemorandum by Colonel Napier. MS. 
 
 miles below that city. The main line Jiecords.'] 
 
 continues its course down the centre • See for further details of the Baree 
 
 of the high land, and falls into the Doab Canal, Appendix E. 
 
S04i PUBLIC WORKS. 
 
 countiy, and what will be the magnificent effect, when 
 the entire scheme, including that of the proposed 
 Sutlej Canal,* is perfected in all its parts, I leave it to 
 the imagination of the reader to conjecture. I have 
 heard a man, advanced in life, who had retired to 
 this country after years of honorable service, declare 
 that the completion of the great Ganges Canal would 
 take him back to India on a pleasure tour. 
 
 Of the moral results of these great reproductive 
 works I need not particularly speak, for they are those 
 which ever attend increased security and prosperity, 
 the accumulation of capital, and the diffusion of wealth. 
 To fertilise the land is to civilise the people. It is im- 
 possible to conceive anything that wiU have a greater 
 effect upon the civilisation of the inhabitants of Upper 
 India than the great remedial measure which guards 
 them collectively against all the barbarising and demo- 
 ralising effects of famine, and secures to every man 
 indi^ddually his daily bread, f 
 
 ♦ See Appendix E. quote; for the lesson it conveys is an 
 t Before quitting this attractive sub- important one: — "I have thought it 
 ject of canal irrigation, I may mention right to say these few words on the 
 that Captain Baird Smith, during his comparative dimensions of Italian and 
 recent furlough to Europe, visited Italy, Anglo-Indian canals, because I found 
 and inspected the great canal works of that nothing whatever was known of 
 Lombardy and Piedmont, and after- the latter among the intelligent en- 
 wards, with a similar scientific object, gineers of Lombardy and Piedmont, 
 the United States of America, at the Nor do I wonder at this, for in England 
 expense of the East India Company, there is nearly equal ignorance; and I 
 He has now returned to India, and has cannot refrain from saying that I think 
 been appointed, I believe, to superin- the Government of India does itself 
 tend the execution of the great Ganges the most grievous injustice by taking 
 Canal. The results of the Italian tour no measures whatever to convey to the 
 have been given in a very important public authentic information regard- 
 work on Italian irrigation, in which ing these great works, which with 
 the writer thus comprehensively states equal advantage to its subjects and 
 his impression of the relative merits itself, it has been occupied in de- 
 of the Italian and Indian works:— "As veloping vigorously during the last 
 regards the works themselves, whether thirty years. The impressions of the 
 reference is had to their designs or character of the British Government 
 modes of execution, I do not think that in India, among intelligent foreigners, 
 the Italians are superior to ourselves ; I found to be of a "very unsatisfactory 
 and in regard to the manner in which kind, and it was gratifying neither to 
 the eflSciency of the work is main- my national nor my personal feelings, 
 tained, I must frankly say decidedly to have to rectify the idea that we had 
 inferior." There is another passage done little or nothing to improve the 
 in his work which I am tempted to condition of the people. As men's 
 
IRRIGATION IN MADRAS. 305 
 
 I have devoted so much space to these great works 
 of irrigation in the North-Western Provinces of India, 
 that I cannot afford to A\Tite much in detail of the 
 lesser public works which every^vhere dot the country. 
 A list of these works occupies a folio volume. Some 
 of them, of course, are of limited extent; but they 
 indicate the continued, quiet, beneficial action of an 
 enlightened Government, eager in small things as in 
 great, to contribute to the happiness of the people. I 
 am necessarily obliged, in such a work as this, to pass 
 over very much that might be adduced in illustration 
 of the great subject of Indian Progress, for time 
 and space are alike restricted, and even at a period 
 of unusual excitement, the patience of the public, in 
 respect of matters of Indian administration, has no 
 very extensive limits. Much might be said of the 
 irrigation system of Southern India, differing as it does 
 greatly from that of the North ; but stiU most benefi- 
 cially affecting the productiveness of the soil and 
 the prosperity of the country. The works kno^^n as 
 the " Cauvery Annicut" — works intended to se- 
 cure, by embankments, the waters of the Cauvery 
 river in the Southern Peninsula for purposes of irri- 
 gation, are approaching towards completion. Similar 
 Vv^orks for the Godavery and Kistnah rivers, in 
 the northern parts of the Madras Presidency, have 
 been sanctioned, and are in progress of execution. 
 In 1849, an expenditm^e of 91,000^. was sanctioned 
 for the former work; and in 1850, 150,000/. for the 
 latter.* 
 
 minds in Northern Italy were was, however, ' Why are no accounts 
 
 thoroughly familiar with the nature of such works communicated to the 
 
 and influences of works of irrigation, world?' And I earnestly hope it may 
 
 I found that, even the imperfect yet be considered desirable that a 
 
 accounts that I was able to give of worthy record of them should be 
 
 wliat the English in India had already made." 
 
 effected in this department, were pro- * With reference to the Kistnah 
 
 ductive of good. The constant com- Annicut, the Court observe in their 
 
 raentary on the information given letter of January 8, 1851: "Tlic pro- 
 
306 
 
 PUBLIC WOEKS. 
 
 Whilst these great works of Irrigation were in pro- 
 gress, the improvement of the means of internal land- 
 communication, in all parts of the country, was engaging 
 the attention of the Indian Government, and evoking the 
 energies of their executive officers. And steadily and 
 effectually has the good work been prosecuted. Fore- 
 most among recent achievements is the great Trunk 
 Koad. It stretches from Calcutta to Delhi, and thence 
 to Lahore and Peshawur. Its total length is estimated 
 at 1423 miles, and is thus divided: 
 
 Calcutta to Delhi . 
 Delhi to Kurnaul . 
 Kurnaul to Loodliianah . 
 Loodhianah to Ferozepore 
 Ferozepore to Lahore 
 Lahore to Peshawur 
 
 Miles. 
 
 887 
 78 
 
 124 
 74 
 50 
 
 210 
 
 Total 1,423 
 
 This fine road was commenced soon after the Act, 
 under which India is now governed, came into opera- 
 tion. It has been completed, as far as Kurnaul, a dis- 
 tance of 960 miles, and is now being pushed forward 
 with vigor. It is a metalled or macadamised road, 
 " smooth as a bowling-green," and has hitherto cost about 
 lOOOZ. per mile. It is estimated that the cost of keeping 
 
 ject has been submitted to the exami- 
 nation of those whose scientific ac- 
 quirements, general experience, and 
 local knowledge render them the most 
 competent to form an opinion as to its 
 merits, and has received the strongest 
 recommendation from those authorities 
 under whose consideration it has passed. 
 We hare carefully examined the papers 
 Bubmitted to us, and have satisfied our- 
 selves that every possible means have 
 been adopted to obtain the fullest assur- 
 ance of the practicability of tlie pro- 
 posed undertaking, and that the greatest 
 care has been taken to prevent future 
 disappointment in respect to the esti- 
 mates, both of costs and returns. Under 
 these circumstances, and concurring 
 fuUy in the observation of Sir Henry 
 
 Pottinger, that independently of the 
 undoubted benefit which must in due 
 time accrue to the State by a great 
 increase of revenue, it is * a positive 
 duty which the British Government 
 owes to the inhabitants of the districts 
 which the Annicut is meant to fertilise, 
 to adopt a measure which, under Grod's 
 blessing, will for ever avert the horrors 
 of famine under which they have before 
 so deplorably suffered,' we readily give 
 our cordial sanction to the undertaking, 
 and trust that matters will be so ar- 
 ranged, that the establishment employed 
 on the Godarery Annicut may not be 
 broken up and dispersed, but may be 
 made fully available for the works on 
 the Kistnah." 
 
THE GREAT TRUNK ROAD. 
 
 307 
 
 the entire line in repair will not fall short of 50,000^. per 
 annum. 
 
 Of the amount of traffic on tliis road, some idea may 
 be gathered from the following statement, derived from 
 statistical tables published by the Government of the 
 North- Western Provinces. " During the year 1846-47, 
 a party of five individuals, with one overseer, were 
 stationed at the two principal bridges. The men re- 
 lieved each other night and day. The following figures 
 may convey some idea of tlie importance of this great 
 artery in the body politic, of the traffic which annually 
 passes along this great channel of communication ; and 
 of the advantages which might be anticipated from a 
 railway. During the year 1846-47, there passed along 
 the road at the Paudu-bridge, as transport — 
 
 /■Laden. 
 TTo«v«»;«a 3 48,489 weight of goods at 20 maunds each, 
 nacKenes -< xjnladen. 
 
 Il4,417 
 
 /'Laden. 
 
 Camels } ^'''^^ " " at 6 maunds each, 
 
 j Unladen. 
 (. 3,766 
 
 Maunds. 
 969,780 
 
 58,692 
 
 Bullocks 
 and 
 
 /- Laden. 
 
 J 16,261 
 
 Buffaloes. l^tT" 
 
 at 4 maimds each 65,044 
 
 Total weight of Goods ... 1,093,516 
 
 Besides these, there passed travelling,- 
 
 Foct Passengers ... 565,347 ... Sheep and Goats... 21,738 ... Buggies 617 
 
 Coolies and Banghis 7,883 ... Elephants 287 ... Behlis ...9,950 
 
 ... Horses and Ponies 40,304 ... Palkis ...1,798 
 
 Total 573,230 
 
 62,329 
 
 12,365* 
 
 Of the measures which have been taken to give 
 security to the traveller along this great pubhc way, 
 something may be said in this place. A very recent 
 writer — a gentleman of high character and elevated 
 
 * Statistics of Cawnpore, quoted in Calcutta Review, 
 
 x2 
 
308 PUBLIC WORKS. 
 
 official position — speaking immediately with reference to 
 the state of the country about Cawnpore, which does 
 not unfairly represent the general condition of the Upper 
 Provinces of India, says : — 
 
 " Since the year 1848, numerous measures have been 
 adopted for the comfort and protection of travellers. 
 Besides the halting-grounds for troops, serais have been 
 erected at convenient intervals, and provision depots 
 have been established by Government, which stations its 
 own contractors there, and compels them to conform to 
 rules framed for the prevention of extortion or exor- 
 bitance. So that the traveller finds board and lodging, 
 and accommodation for man and beast, at road-side inns 
 provided by the State. For the protection of the road, 
 there are fixed, at intervals of not less than two miles, 
 either guard-houses with two watchmen each, or police- 
 stations of greater or smaller calibre, according as the 
 locality may require. Taking the number of the watch- 
 men, and of the regular police employed upon the road, 
 into consideration, there cannot be much less, upon an 
 average, than one officer, of one kind or other, to every 
 half mile of road."* 
 
 * Calcutta Beview. Article: " Sta- sent from the magistrates court to each 
 
 tistics of Cawnpore." I may add in con- end of his district. The written parole 
 
 firmation of the above statement, the is returned by the district post, so that 
 
 following by another writer, who speaks the authorities have proof that once, at 
 
 of Ais part of the country : all events, each night, the horsemen 
 
 " The arrangements for watching the patrol their portion of the road. To 
 
 Grand Trunk Road in the district with keep all up to this work, along the 
 
 which we happen to be best acquainted, forty miles of road, three mounted 
 
 are as follow: Every two miles along jemadars are stationed, who send in 
 
 the road there is a police-station, with written reports every morning of the 
 
 three policemen. These men are drafted exact spot where they passed each 
 
 from the body of the district police, horse or foot patrol during the night, 
 
 are well armed, and wear a becoming In the district to which we allude, in 
 
 uniform. The hours of their respective addition to the forty miles of Grand 
 
 night-watches are fixed, and each man. Trunk Road, there is, at least, an equal 
 
 on joining a road police-station, has a length of Branch Trunk Road leading 
 
 written notice given him, specifying towards Agra, which is watched and 
 
 the precise duties of his office From patrolled in the same manner. During 
 
 10 p.m. to 4 a.m. two of the three the past year, no one single case of 
 
 night guards patrol the roads. Horse highway robbery has taken place ; and 
 
 patrols are stationed at convenient though the traffic has been great, the 
 
 distances, and to keep them on the amount of property stolen at night 
 
 alert, a written and verbal parole is from travellers at halting-places, so far 
 
THE BOMBAY AND AGRA BO AD. 309 
 
 Let these statements be compared ^vitli what I have 
 sho\ATi to be the security of the highways in the time 
 of the Emperor Jehanguire, and let us strike the 
 balance with an honest hand.* 
 
 TSvo other trunk roads, of lesser proportions, but 
 still of very considerable extent, have also been com- 
 menced and carried some way towards completion. 
 The Bombay and Agra Trunk Eoad was commenced 
 in 1840, under the government of Lord Auckland. 
 Its total extent is 734 miles. The expense of con- 
 struction has amounted to 243,676^. — about S301. per 
 mile. It is not metalled, except in parts, t The cost 
 of repair is calculated at about 5000Z. per annum. 
 The formation of the Calcutta and Bombay mail 
 road was sanctioned by the home Government in 
 1840. A portion of the distance — that is, from Bom- 
 bay to Ahmednuggur — 158 miles, had been pre- 
 ^dously completed. The remaining distance from 
 Ahmednuggur to Calcutta is upwards of 1000 miles. 
 The estimated expense is about half a million. J 
 
 as can be ascertained, does not exceed perty worth ten rupees, the losses of 
 1200 rupees (900 of which are the value merchants by theft, in the two roads, 
 of a bale of silk cut oflf a cart under cannot be set down at more tlian 
 the nose of a sleepy watchman), two pie per hundred rupees, and by rob- 
 When it is considered that in this dis- bery 7iiL And as no single instance of 
 trict there are no restraints put upon cattle theft occurred during the year 
 travellers as to where they shall halt, on the road, either of loaded or not 
 and that parties of wearied merchants loaded cattle, the ten pie per hundred 
 are spending the night all along the road rupees must be reduced to at least three 
 under the canopy of heaven ; when the pie per hundred rupees, or fourpence 
 following table of traflBc, too, is taken per hundred pounds sterling." — IRaikes' 
 into account, it will be acknowledged North- Westei-n Provinces.'] 
 that due care is taken to protect the • See ante, pages 45, 46. 
 commerce of the country. Of loaded f Whether the highly metalled roads 
 carts (of one to eight bullocks each) are acceptable to the people, is some- 
 there were 28,168 drawn by 99,714 what doubtful — admirable as, in many 
 bullocks. The beasts of burden, camels, respects they are, and greatly as they 
 bullocks, horses, &c., carrying loads, contribute to the furtherance of im- 
 amounted to 34,820. This is the account proved means of communication. We 
 of what passed on the Grand Trunk must not, at all events, look at the sub- 
 Road alone, in the year 1851. Above, ject with our English eyes, for the 
 I.e., to the west of the point where the natives of India seldom shoe their cattle, 
 Agra Branch Road meets the Grand and they complain that the metalled 
 Trunk Road, from and to Agra along roads wear out the hoofs of their beasts, 
 the branch road, an almost equal They are often to be seen travelling by 
 amount of traflSc passed. Now, allowing the sides of the trunk roads — any- 
 thateach bullock and beast of burden where rather than on them. 
 drew or carried on an average pro- J India House Statistics. 
 
310 PUBLIC WORKS. 
 
 Of the cross-roads wMcli intersect all parts of the 
 country, it would be impossible to give any detailed 
 account. These roads are made and repaired by means 
 of funds raised, in some places from the tolls on public 
 ferries, in others, from a rate of one per cent, paid 
 by the landholders on the Government Hevenue, 
 and which in reality is a remission to that amount.* 
 One local example \\dll illustrate both the extent of 
 these roads, and the manner of their management. 
 " The district," says a recent writer on the Statistics 
 of Cawnpore, ''is intersected in every direction by 
 unmetalled roads, passable for nine months in the 
 year. These roads are repaired every year after the 
 rains. Exclusive of the trunk road (which is under 
 the superintendence of an engineer officer), the aggre- 
 gate length of road under charge of the committee 
 amounts to 500 miles. The members of the com- 
 mittee are composed partly of European and partly of 
 native gentlemen." 
 
 I have spoken of what has been done in the Punjab 
 for the irrigation of the country by means of the Baree- 
 Doab Canal. I may add here that smaller canals of irriga- 
 tion have been opened out, or old ones have been repaired. 
 Good roads, too, are starting up everywhere. In less 
 than two years the great trunk road — one of the finest in 
 the world — ^will be extended to Peshawur, and so link 
 the capital of British India with the fi-ontier of Afghan- 
 istan. Cross-roads are being made in every direction. 
 Already eight hundred miles of new road have been laid 
 down in the Lahore district alone. At every stage along 
 the new main roads serais have been constructed, and 
 police posts established at an interval of every two or 
 three miles. Thousands of trees have been planted by om* 
 English administrators ; and soon, from one end of the 
 country to the other, the reproach of want of verdure 
 will be wiped away. 
 
 * See preceding chapter, page 264. 
 
MADRAS ROADS. 311 
 
 The state of the roads in the Madras Presidency would 
 seem to vary according to local circumstances. An ex- 
 penditure of fom' lakhs of rupees a year upon the trunk 
 roads has been authorised by the Court of Directors; 
 but it does not seem that progress has been made com- 
 mensurate Avith this liberality. Some of the district re- 
 ports represent the roads in the interior to be in a state 
 of decay, whilst others show that internal communication 
 has been greatly facilitated by their excellent condition. 
 From Salem, for example, the reports are very favorable. 
 " The roads in this district," it is said, " are kept in re- 
 pair without expense to Government. It is worthy of 
 remark, that in 1847, there were no less than 400 miles 
 of road traversed by carriages without obstruction at all 
 seasons, besides branch roads, which only require some 
 bridges to place them in equally good condition. The 
 amount expended by Government from 1821 to 1840, 
 was large, but the results were also very great. In 1848, 
 the number of carts employed by the community ex- 
 ceeded that of the previous year by eighty, which is at- 
 tributed to extended trade from the improved state of the 
 roads."* A more recent writer, who brings down the 
 statistics of this district to the beginning of 1852, shows 
 that the improvement has been progressively increasing. 
 " Next to freedom of commerce," he says, " we would 
 place the facility of locomotion, the state of public roads j 
 and on this subject we can speak with unmixed satisfac- 
 tion. From one end of the district to the other, from 
 north to south, and from east to west, excellent roads, 
 bordered by flourishing avenues, do honor to the zeal 
 and perseverance of several collectors, who have suc- 
 cessively turned their attention to this subject; and, 
 above all, to the late Mr. John Orr. The whole extent 
 of roads within the district, which has been completed, 
 
 * Official Returns— Beport on Public Worksj 1851. 
 
312 PUBLIC WORKS 
 
 planted, guarded by ditches, and with few exceptions 
 marked by mile-stones, amoimts to 726 miles. They are 
 traversed, night and day, by hmidreds of coimtiy carts, 
 without let or hindrance, and may be traversed by 
 any English traveller in his own carriage."* From 
 Tanjore, too, it is reported that " considerable im- 
 provement has recently been effected throughout the 
 province in the formation and opening out of roads, 
 and the bridging of streams. The public have been 
 greatly benefited by the completion of the repairs 
 sanctioned in 1847 for the lines between the towns of 
 Tanjore and Tivady, Tanjore and Combaconum, and 
 the chain of communication is thus rendered perfect."t 
 
 One more illustration of the progress that has been 
 made, in some parts of the Madras Presidency, may 
 here be advantageously adduced. It is stated that 
 the number of bridges built in the Salem district 
 amoimts to eighty-four. In connexion with this fact, a 
 curious circumstance is stated by a local writer. 
 "When the district was first handed over to our 
 Grovemment, an application was made to Colonel 
 Read, by the officer commanding, for bricklayers to 
 assist in building the officers' bungalows. Colonel 
 Read's answer is on record, and states that no such 
 person as a bricklayer existed in the district. In the 
 last two seasons a bridge has been bmlt over the river 
 Cauvery of twenty-six arches, each of sixty feet span, 
 chiefly by bricklayers and artificers of the Salem 
 district."? 
 
 Under the Bombay Presidency considerable progress 
 has been made, especially in the improvement of in- 
 ternal communication. Something had been done 
 before the Act under which I^dia is now governed 
 
 • Cidemtia Review, Jmme, 185S. SL GtBrge.—Rqtort m East India Pub- 
 Arliek : •* Land Reeenme of MadnuT he Wwks, Ammttt t, 1831. 
 t Return fnm the Prtsukney of Fort % Cakmtta Review. 
 
I 
 
 IN BOMBAY. 313 
 
 passed into law. The administration of Sir John Mal- 
 colm saw the construction of the Bhore Ghat road, 
 which opened the communications along a line of 
 country upon wliich even military stores had been pre- 
 viously carried on the backs of bullocks, or on coolies' 
 heads. There has been for some years an excellent 
 road from Bombay toPoonah, and another from Bombay 
 to Thannah, now soon to be superseded by the railway. 
 Under the administration of Sir George Clerk, the 
 Phonda Ghat road from Vizier-droog to Kolapore and 
 Belgaum has thrown open the Southern Mahratta 
 country. The road from Bombay to Sattarah has been 
 greatly improved ; and within the latter newly-acquired 
 country there has been a large outlay on the public 
 thoroughfares. Considerable progress has been made 
 in the execution of the Thull Ghat road imder Major 
 Peat of the Engineers ;* and a good road fronl Shola- 
 pore to Xassick commenced in a season of famine, with 
 the object of supplying work to the star\'ing people, 
 has conferred substantial benefits on that part of the 
 country. Of the lesser lines of communication I can- 
 not afford to speak. I believe, too, that the only ex- 
 tensive irrigation works under the Bombay Presidency! 
 are those in Kandeish, where the "bundarahs," by 
 means of which the country was formerly watered, 
 have been restored. In Bombay, as elsewhere, the 
 want of money has been severely felt ; and I am not 
 sure that more would not have been done, if there had 
 been less of centralisation in our system. 
 
 I have confined myself almost entirely, in this 
 chapter, to the subject of roads and canals. Of the 
 
 * This is part of the line betwQcn and tanks. The revenue-officers are 
 
 Bombay ard Agra, a continuation of empowered to supply the agriculturists 
 
 the Thama road. with money for the improvement ot 
 
 t The principal irrigation of the these works, 
 country is effected by means of wells 
 
314i PUBLIC WORKS. 
 
 construction of railways and their effects on the 
 prosperity of the country it is too early a day to speak 
 in detail. In each of the three Presidencies of India 
 the construction of a line of railway has been sanctioned 
 by the home Government, and commenced under the 
 auspices of a private company. The East India Com- 
 pany have guaranteed the payment of interest on the 
 subscribed capital to the extent of from 4| to 5 per 
 cent.* The Electric Telegraph has also been intro- 
 duced into India. A line of wires between Calcutta 
 and Kedgeree, near the mouth of the Hooglily, now 
 flashes the message from the ship to the counting- 
 house. The success of tliis experiment, conducted by 
 a member of that service to which science in various 
 branches is so much indebted — the medical service of 
 the East India Company — convinced the Cornet of Di- 
 rectors of the practicability of a vast extension of the 
 system, and, under the superintendence of Dr. W. 
 O'Shaughnessy, an entu^e line of telegraphic commu- 
 nication, extending to 3150 miles, and connecting Cal- 
 cutta, Madras, Bombay, Agra, Simlah, and Lahore, is 
 now speedily to be established. The estimated cost is 
 35L per mile, or 110,250/. for the entire distance.f 
 
 The amount, according to the official returns, ex- 
 pended on " Public Works in India, comprising Eoads, 
 Bridges, Embankments, Canals, Tanks, and Wells," 
 is shown to be, on the average of the last fifteen years, 
 about 300,000/. a year. J But averages of this kind, as 
 I have said, are not worth much ; and it is my object 
 to show not the average, but the progressive expen- 
 diture on these works. In 1837-38, the first year of 
 the series, the total expenditure was little above sevcn- 
 
 * That is, in Bengal, 5 per cent, on rations, as the Trigonometrical Sur- 
 
 the first million; 4i on the second. In vey, &c., I may, perhaps, allude in an- 
 
 Madras, 4)[. In Bombay, 5 per cent. other place. 
 
 t To this, and other scientific ope- J In exact figures, 299,732/. 
 
ESTIMATED EXPENDITURE. 315 
 
 teen laJdis of rupees (170,000^.) ; iii 1851-52, the esti- 
 mated expenditure was nearly seventy lakhs of rupees 
 (700,000^.)* ^f ^l^s latter sum, nearly fifty lakhs of 
 rupees (500,000Z.) are debited to the expenditure of 
 the North- Western Provinces, including the Punjab, 
 and are appropriated mainly to the great works of 
 u'rigation, of which I have given this hasty account. 
 In these estimates of expenditure no account is taken 
 of the salaries or allowances of the civil and military 
 servants employed in the superintendence of the con- 
 struction and repak of the works. Neither is any 
 credit given for the cost of convict labor, which, for the 
 five years between 1833 and 1838, is estimated at 
 156,000/. It is to be borne in mind, also, that, in 
 Bengal, the Zemindars are under an obligation to 
 repah* the roads and embankments of rivers in their 
 several estates, and as these disbursements are in reality 
 met by proportionate remissions of revenue, the pay- 
 ments are in fact made by Government. They are 
 estimated at not less than 100,000/. a year. 
 
 Therefore, although the total amount of the expen- 
 diture on public works, set down in figured state- 
 ments, amounts to no more than four millions and a 
 halff during the last fifteen years, this amount does 
 not fairly represent the cost of their construction and 
 repair. It is to be remembered, too, that these state- 
 ments only relate to Roads, Bridges, Embankments, 
 Canals, and WeUs, and that " aU buildings, civil or 
 military, except so far as they are connected mth such 
 works, as bridges or roads, are excluded." J 
 
 The estimated expenditure on Canals, Roads, &c., 
 for the year 1850-51, has been sho^vn to be 700,000/.— 
 precisely quadruple the amount expended on similar 
 
 * That is, in 1837-38, 17,35,913 ru- t 4,49,59,921 rupees, 
 
 pees; and in 1851-52, 69,35,290 rupees. j India House Statistics. 
 
316 PUBLIC WORKS. 
 
 works in 1837-38. Eut even this amount inadequately 
 represents the annual expenditure at the present 
 time. " There can be no doubt," we are told, on official 
 authority, " that the disbursements in the two or three 
 years follomng 1850-51, mil be greatly in excess of 
 the expenditm'e of that year, inasmuch as in addition 
 to the ordinary outlay they must include the larger 
 proportion of the sum of two millions sterling, which 
 has been specially sanctioned for the construction of 
 the Ganges and Punjab canals, the former of wliich is 
 fast approaching to completion."* 
 
 On the whole, it would appear from these statements 
 that there has been a progressive tendency, on the 
 part of the Indian Government, both in its local and 
 its home relations, to promote great works of public 
 utility. That the amount of money expended on such 
 works is miserably small in comparison with the im- 
 mense sums lavished on unproductive wars, is a fact 
 which cannot be too deeply deplored. But there is no 
 single truth which ought to stand out so prominently 
 from every picture of Indian Progress as this — that the 
 exhausting wars, which have swallowed up the re- 
 sources of India, have obstructed and limited this 
 progress ; and that roads have not been made, canals 
 have not been dug, bridges have not been built, in the 
 number and to the extent which the interests of the 
 country demanded, and the benevolence of its rulers 
 desired, solely because the money, which was necessary 
 to the construction of such works, has been abstracted 
 from the public treasury to meet the expenditure in- 
 curred by the ruinous wars in which we have been 
 
 * India Home Statistics. — ^It is stated in India, it appears most desirable to 
 
 by the same authority, that "In 1847 determine the direction in which these 
 
 sanction was given for an annual expen- lines shall traverse the country, before 
 
 diture of 40,000/. for a system of trunk incurring any great outlay on ordinary 
 
 roads in Madras. No great progress ap- roads, which for tlie most part must bo 
 
 pears tohave been made by the local Go- altered in their directions so as to bc- 
 
 vernment in this work; but as a system come subsidiary to the great arteries of 
 
 of railroads is now about to be established communication. " 
 
GENERAL RESULTS. 317 
 
 engaged. It is a truth to be wept over by every friend 
 of humanity, that, within the last fifteen years, whilst 
 some five millions of money have been spent on great 
 national works, tending to the development of the 
 resources of the country, and the promotion of the 
 happiness of the people, thirty millions have been 
 spent on War. And, in every consideration by Parlia- 
 ment or Press, by communities or individuals, of the 
 good or bad government of our Indian possessions, 
 this should be the foremost fact of all. It is right 
 that, when account is taken of what has been done, 
 and what has been left undone by the rulers of our 
 Indian possessions, we should measure not only the 
 progress that has been made, but what, judging by 
 actual results under the most unfavorable circum- 
 stances, would have been made, if, throughout the last 
 fifteen years of which I have been speaking. Peace had 
 smiled down upon the land. It is right that, in every 
 investigation of the working of the administrative 
 machinery of what is called the East India Company, 
 an inquiry into the causes of the melancholy retarda- 
 tion of domestic improvement should be prominently 
 instituted ; and that the responsibility of all this la- 
 mentable waste of public money, which, properly ex- 
 pended, might have conferred incalculable benefits on 
 millions of our fellow- subjects, should be traced to its 
 legitimate source.* 
 
 * See, for some interesting facts on the subject of Indian Bridges, " Addenda'* 
 at the end of the volume. 
 
318 JUDICIAL SYSTEMS. 
 
 PAET III. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 The first Judicial Tribunals— The Mayor's Courts— Efforts of Warren Hastings— 
 The Supreme Court of Calcutta— Cornwallis and the Regulations— The Pro- 
 vincial Courts— Reforms of Lord William Bentinck — Licrease of Native 
 Agency — Present State of the Company's Courts. 
 
 I WOULD proceed now to speak of the administrative 
 efforts whicli have been made by the British Government 
 in India for the protection of life and property, and the 
 suppression of crime; and to inquire into the effect 
 which these efforts have had upon the general happiness 
 of the people. 
 
 In the early chapters of this work it has been briefly 
 shown in what manner the first settlers provided for the 
 occurrence of those mischances of lawlessness which 
 are inseparable from all conditions of society,* and, 
 most of all, from such a condition of society as ob- 
 tained amongst us when we first planted our factories in 
 the East. Collisions, whether civil or criminal, with the 
 natives of the country, subjected our people to the de- 
 cisions of the native tribunals ; and when we fell out 
 among ourselves, in matters affecting property or person, 
 our disputes, if of the former character, were settled by 
 the President, or if of the latter, a Court was held, under 
 
 ♦ See ante, pages 65, 66. 
 
THE FIRST TRIBUNALS. 319 
 
 the King's Commission, probably on board one of the 
 vessels in the roads, and the offender was dealt with as 
 its members, consisting of the chief naval and mercantile 
 fimctionaries, might determine and decree. 
 
 As time advanced, and the number of British sub- 
 jects on the eastern shores steadily increased, and with 
 the increase necessarily arose more complicated relations 
 both with the natives of the country and among our- 
 selves, it became necessary to establish in our settle- 
 ments judicial tribunals with more defined powers. The 
 Charter of 1661 empowered the Company to appoint 
 Governors and other oflficers in their several factories, 
 and decreed that " such Governor and his Council may 
 exercise civil and criminal jurisdiction in the said 
 factories, &c., according to the laws of England;" "and 
 if the offence," continued the Letters Patent, " shall be 
 committed in a place where it cannot be tried, the 
 offender may be sent to such other plantation or fort, 
 where there is a Governor and Council to try him, that 
 justice may be done." A further clause set forth, that 
 "the King's subjects, employed by the Company in the 
 limits aforesaid, shall suffer such punishment for offences 
 there committed as the Company's President and Council 
 shall think fit and the quality of the offences require, 
 and in case of appeal the offender shall be sent home for 
 punishment. And for the better discovery of offenders, 
 all persons may be examined on oath before the Com- 
 pany's President and Council, touching the same.'* In 
 the grant of the island of Bombay, in 1669, the Court of 
 Proprietors, or the Governor and Committees of the 
 East India Company, were authorised " to make and 
 pubUsh, under the Company's seal, laws and constitutions 
 for the good government of the island and its inhabitants, 
 and to impose punishments and penalties extending to 
 the taking away of life or member, when the quality of 
 the offence shall require it ; so that the punishment and 
 the penalties are consonant to reason, and not repugnant 
 
320 JUDICIAL SYSTEMS. 
 
 to, but as near as may be agreeable to, the laws of Eng- 
 land, and subject to the provisos and restrictions con- 
 tained in the Charter." The proviso was that the offender 
 did not appeal; but as every man sentenced to death 
 was pretty certain to appeal, it would not seem that 
 these Courts had any great power over the life of 
 an offender, so long as they respected the letter of the 
 Charter. 
 
 It "was, probably, this restriction wliich rendered the 
 Courts, so established, ineffective for the restraint of 
 crime. At all events, in 1726, the Court of Directors 
 laid at the foot of the throne a representation that " there 
 was great want at Madras, Fort William, and Bombay, 
 of a proper and competent power and authority for the 
 more speedy and effectual administering of justice in 
 civil causes, and for the. trying and punishing of capital 
 and other criminal offences and misdemeanors." That 
 they had good reason for this plaint is not to be 
 doubted. The records which still remain of the pro- 
 ceedings of the Courts of Justice anterior to this period, 
 exhibit some curious instances of the manner in which 
 men sat in judgment in their own cases, and put their 
 names to sentences against prisoners whom they them- 
 selves had really prosecuted. Strange charges were made, 
 and stranger punishments decreed — but they are to be 
 judged, not by a reference to the state of our judicial 
 administration, either in England or in India at the 
 present time, but to Avhat it was, even in Great Britain, 
 at the close of the seventeenth and the commencement 
 of the eighteenth century. Such an entry, as the fol- 
 lowing, has a strange appearance in these days, but, 
 a century and a quarter ago, there may have been no- 
 thing startling in it. It is taken from the records of the 
 Court of Justice at Bombay : 
 
 *' July 5, 1724, a woman named Bastook, accused of diabolical 
 practices, having been before whipped for the hke, it appearing to 
 pi-oceed from her ignorance, which leads her sometimes to mingle 
 
THE MAYOR S COURTS. 
 
 321 
 
 rice and other foolisli ceremonies, which she thinks effectual 
 to cure sick persons, ordered she receive eleven lashes at the 
 church-door, and afterwards she and all persons that are found 
 guilty of the like, do such penance in the church as customary."* 
 
 So ignorance was to be whipped, and to stand in a 
 sheet, at the church-door. But as not very long before 
 the same ignorance was burnt at the stake in England, 
 there was nothing, at that time, very noticeable in such 
 a sentence. 
 
 Certainly the plaint of the East India Company at 
 this time was not without just cause. But the remedy, 
 which was sought to be applied, was scarcely a shade 
 better than the disease. Justice gained little by the 
 establishment of the Mayor's Courts. The Letters Patent 
 of September, 1726, which established these tribunals, 
 really did but little to advance the interests of substan- 
 tive justice.f These Courts were to consist of a Mayor 
 
 * MS. Becords. — This Court took 
 cognisance also of military offences, 
 and sentenced insolent troopers to be 
 flogged. Take the following specimen, 
 which I have extracted from the re- 
 cords of the Court: 
 
 " Court of Justice at Bombai/, theWor- 
 shipful John Hope, Chief Justice. — 
 April I5th, 1724.— Mr. Braddyll, having 
 been much insulted by a trooper last 
 Monday night, when he was walking 
 out with his lady, having been almost rid 
 over, and ^Mr. Braddyll calling to him 
 bidding him take care and keep off, he 
 returned in answer, ' God d — n you ; if 
 I had a pistol I would shoot you 
 through the head for a farthing.' Mr. 
 Braddyll answering, ' Would you so?' 
 he again returned, ' Yes, I would— you 
 are a rogue and a rascal.' On inquiry 
 being made who was down on duty that 
 time of night, one Matthew Bogle was 
 fixed upon, who denies it ; but the cor- 
 poral of the first guard declaring that 
 it was him and no other, and the officer 
 of the guard confirming of the same, 
 and tAvo witnesses to the insult, besides 
 Mr. Braddyll, viz.. Captain Montague 
 and Ensign Mainwaring, both at the 
 time in the same place with Mr. Brad- 
 dyll, the Court considering the circum- 
 stances, the voice agreeing (no other 
 trooper at that time being at the fort), 
 
 the corporal's confirmation, the words 
 plainly proved, and nothing to the con- 
 trary but a plain denial, the Court 
 condemned him to receive thirty-nine 
 lashes in the public bazaar, and to be 
 sent on board one of the Company's 
 vessels, there to serve during the Go- 
 vernor's pleasure, without pay." — (Mr. 
 Braddyll himself was one of the Court 
 which tried him and signed the sen- 
 tence.) 
 
 t The Mayor's Court of Madras had 
 existed before this, but with less de- 
 fined judicial constitution, and less ex- 
 tended powers. " They have a mayor 
 and aldermen," says an old writer, at 
 the commencement of the eighteenth 
 century, " who exercise the same autho- 
 rity as in corporations in England. 
 Quarrels, small debts, and other busi- 
 ness of the meaner sort, are decided by 
 them at a Court of six Aldermen, held 
 twice a week in the Town Hall. Black 
 merchants commonly apply to this 
 Court, but Europeans usually seek 
 favor of the Governor. When any are 
 not satisfied with the Mayor's Justice, 
 they may appeal to a higher court, 
 where for much money they have little 
 law, with a great deal of formality. 
 Here a judge allowed by the Company 
 presides, who, on the report of a jury, 
 gives a final decree. Of European male- 
 
322 JUDICIAL SYSTEMS. 
 
 and nine Aldermen, seven of whom, with the Mayor, 
 were to be British subjects. They were, in fact, com- 
 posed of the Company's mercantile servants — men of the 
 slenderest legal attainments, and the slightest judicial 
 training. They undertook all kinds of business, civil, 
 criminal, and prerogative — but were, to a certain ex- 
 tent, controlled by the executive Governments, which 
 were constituted Courts of Appeal. The President and 
 Council and the members of the Mayor's Courts were 
 thus often brought into collision ; and between the two, 
 I fear that neither law nor justice was treated with much 
 respect. 
 
 I have little doubt that the excesses committed by 
 these early Courts have been considerably exaggerated 
 by writers, who, not belonging to the privileged class of 
 Company's servants, looked askance at their doings, 
 and magnified their misdeeds. But making every allow- 
 ance for these exaggerations, it would still appear that 
 justice was administered in a very arbitrary manner, and 
 that law was held of little account. It was a story 
 very current in those days that as the Company's Courts 
 had power only to inflict capital punishment for piracy, 
 the widest possible interpretation was given to the word, 
 and men were hanged as pirates who had committed some 
 offence that had no sort of likeness to it.* The laws 
 
 fectors they hang none but pirates, tice, the cause generally going according 
 though, formerly here, have been men to the favored inclination of the Go- 
 put to death for other crimes, whence vernor." Another writer, the well-known 
 I am apt to think that the Governors Captain Hamilton, who was an inter- 
 had then great powers." — [Account of loper, says : " If any private trader is 
 the Trade in India, by Charles Lockyer, injured by the tricks of a Governor, 
 1711.] The same writer adds: "Law- and can find no redress, if the injured 
 yers are plenty, and as knowing as can person is so bold as to talk of lex talionis, 
 be expected from broken linendrapers he is infallibly declared a pirate." The 
 and other crack'd tradesmen who seek captain gives one or two instances of 
 their fortunes here by their wits." the extensive application of the word. 
 * "A private trader," said one writer, " They have no martial law," he says, 
 " if he has the misfortune to incur the " at Fort St. George, so they cannot 
 displeasure of the Governor, is soon inflict the pain of death any other way 
 found guilty of piracy." Speaking of the than by whipping or starving, only for 
 Mayor's Court of Madras, he says, " In piracy they can hang, and some have 
 matters of consequence, a few pagodas, been so fond of that privilege, that Mr. 
 well placed,could turn the scales of Jus- Yale hanged his groom (Cross) for 
 
EXTENDED JURISDICTION. 328 
 
 against piracy were wound up to a state of extreme 
 stringency, and the Company's servants, maddened by 
 the insolence and audacity of the interlopers, doubtless 
 abused the power which was vested in them by those 
 laws, and committed many grievous excesses. 
 
 But such as they were, these Mayor's Courts existed 
 for half a century. As time wore on, the evil of a de- 
 fective administration of justice became more painfully 
 apparent. So long as these tribimals took cognisance only 
 of cases, civil or criminal, in which the hangers-on of the 
 Factories were concerned — such as deserters from the 
 shipping, small traders of Portuguese or Eurasian stock, 
 native dubashes, speaking the English language, and 
 others who lived upon the English connexion — the evil 
 consequences of an ineffective judicial system and an im- 
 perfect judicial agency were comparatively limited. But 
 when our territorial dominion was extended — when on 
 the banks of the Hooghly we became occupants of land 
 which we called our own, and the natives of India sub- 
 mitted themselves to our authority and protection, it be- 
 came obvious that we required something more than the 
 power of administering justice according to the laws of 
 England, and that the whole question of judicial admi- 
 nistration demanded our most serious thoughts. The 
 natives of India knew nothing of English law, and if 
 they had known anything of it, would have seen at a 
 glance how utterly inapplicable it was to the social con- 
 dition of either Mahomedans or Hindoos. We had a 
 very sanguinary code in those times. There were many 
 offences, which to English eyes in the present day have 
 a strange effect with the word *^ capital" prefixed to them. 
 The enormitj^ of these crimes no native of India could 
 possibly be made to understand. And yet the people of 
 Bengal, in and around Calcutta, were brought within the 
 
 riding two or three days' journey oflfto as an act of land-piracy. It should be 
 take the air" — probably for horse steal- mentioned, that these cases refer to a 
 ing, which Mr. Yale, perhaps, regarded period anterior to 1726. 
 
 y2 
 
324 JUDICIAL SYSTEMS. 
 
 network of these laws, and were sometimes made to feel 
 tlieir terrible significance. The powers of the Courts 
 were extended by law; our judges made other exten- 
 sions for themselves; and the natives of India were 
 hanged for the commission of acts which they behoved to 
 be justifiable, if not commendable, in the eyes both of 
 God and man. One example of this will suffice. It is 
 given on the authority of Mr. Yerelst : 
 
 " In the year 1762 a native detected one of his women in an 
 act of infidelity. Throughout the East women are wholly subject 
 to the will of their masters, and every husband is the avenger of 
 his own wrongs. The man, therefore, satisfied of her guilt, pro- 
 ceeded to punishment by cutting oflf her nose. He was arraigned 
 at the Calcutta Sessions. He confessed the fact, but urged that 
 he had done nothing to offend the laws and customs in which he 
 had been educated — that the woman was his property, and that 
 by such customs he had a right to set a mark upon her for her 
 infamy — that he had never heard of the laws by which they tried 
 him, but desired to put one question to the Bench — Did they 
 believe that if he had known the punishment to be death, he would 
 ever have committed what they now called a crime ? The man, 
 notwithstanding this defence, was condemned and hanged — for if 
 the Court possess jurisdiction, they must proceed according to the 
 English laws." 
 
 This state of things could not be long endured. The 
 people cowered beneath this new terror — a terror 
 doubly terrible, because they could not discern the shape 
 thereof It might meet them, at any time, in strange 
 places — come upon them unawares, and destroy them 
 suddenly in their sleep, ere they had time to understand 
 the unexpected danger that was coiling around them. 
 In this extremity they presented, in March, 1765, a 
 petition to the President and Council of Fort William, 
 setting forth " the general consternation, astonishment, 
 and even panic with which the natives at all parts, under 
 the dominion of the English, are seized by this 
 example of Radachurn Mettre. They find themselves 
 
TERROItS OF THE ENGLISH LAW. 325 
 
 subject to tlie pains and penalties of laws to wHcli they 
 are utter strangers, and are liable, through ignorance, 
 unwillingly to incur them ; as they are no ways interested 
 in those laws, they cannot tell when they transgress them, 
 many things being, it seems, capital by the English laws, 
 which are only fineable by the laws of your petitioners* 
 forefathers, subject to which they have hitherto been 
 bred, lived, and been governed, and that till very lately 
 under the British flag." The hand of the English lawyer 
 w^as plainly discernible beneath the transparent covering 
 of this petition,* as beneath other petitions of much more 
 recent date ; but it really represented the feelings of the 
 more intelligent native inhabitants of Calcutta and the 
 surrounding country. At all events, there was abundant 
 reason on thek side, which there is not always in native 
 petitions. It is characteristic of the people of Bengal, 
 that as soon as they began to obtain some little insight 
 into the powers of the Mayor's Court, and to understand 
 the class of offences which the Court was competent to 
 punish with extreme severity, they began to avail them- 
 selves of the existence of those powers as an instrument 
 of oppression among themselves, and to set forth charges 
 one against another of such a character as would bring 
 them most perilously under the heavy hand of the Eng- 
 lish law. 
 
 But a time was now approaching when the necessity 
 of looking more seriously at the whole question of 
 internal administration, could no longer be withstood. 
 The Dewanee passed into our hands ; and although we 
 did not at once stand forth as administrators, it became 
 our duty to keep a watchful eye upon the system, which 
 
 * The petition was primarily for the not have been arraigned thereon had 
 
 remission of the sentence passed on he been versed in the laws to make his 
 
 RadachurnMettrefor forgery. Thepeti- exception thereto— Lord Chief Justice 
 
 tioners are made tosay: "And further Hales saying, that 'there is great 
 
 your petitioners are advised that the exactness required in indictments where 
 
 said indictment was very erroneous and life is at stake.* " 
 naught, and that the said prisoner could ^^. 
 
 » >» 
 
326 JUDICIAL SYSTEMS. 
 
 was to be maintained under tlie double Government, 
 and to endeavour to give it more beneficial eflfect. The 
 Mayor's Courts had yet some years of life remaining; 
 but the evils of which I have spoken diminished under a 
 growing conviction, on the part of the chief servants of the 
 Company, that English law was wholly inapplicable to 
 the usages of native society. We began now, more and 
 more, to look into the practice of the Native Courts, and 
 to endeavour to understand the laws which their own 
 magistrates administered. A great and solemn duty was 
 now spreading itself out before us — the duty of infusing 
 the principles of English justice into the administration 
 of the Mahomedan law — of regulating and purifying the 
 dispensation of that law, and improving existing insti- 
 tutions, rather than demolishing them. During the years 
 intervening between the grant of the Dewanee, and our 
 open assumption of the duties of Dewan, the Company's 
 servants had acquired some knowledge and experience, 
 which might be turned to profitable account. But they 
 were not then competent to take into their own hands 
 the entire management of the Courts of Justice. The 
 experiment at that early period would have been a 
 dangerous one, and Hastings knew too well the character 
 and the attainments of his associates to incur so for- 
 midable a risk. 
 
 When, therefore, by the public announcement that 
 the Company had determined to stand forth in the cha- 
 racter of Dewan, the whole responsibihty of the civil 
 administration of the country was thrown upon the 
 President and Council, Hastings, though he was pre- 
 pared to turn his supervisors into collectors of revenue, 
 was not prepared to deUver into their hands the admi- 
 nistration of criminal justice. He established in each 
 district two Courts of Judicature — a civil and a crimi- 
 nal court.* Over the former the European collector of 
 
 * Known as the "Dewanee Adawlut" and "Fouzdaree Adawlut." 
 
DISTRICT COURTS. 327 
 
 each district was to preside, on the part of the Com- 
 pany, attended by the provincial native Dewan, who 
 with his officers was to he appointed by the President 
 and Council. Over the others the old Mogul judicial 
 officers were to preside, with two Moulavees, or Maho- 
 medan doctors, to expound the law. The Company's 
 European servants had no immediate connexion with 
 the business of these criminal courts. But the collector 
 was ordered to exercise a sort of general superintend- 
 ence over their procedm'e — " so as to see that all neces- 
 sary evidences are summoned and examined ; that due 
 weight is allowed to their testimony, and that the de- 
 cision passed is fan* and impartial, according to the 
 proofs exliibited in the course of the trial."* 
 
 At the same time were established two superior 
 courts, which were to sit at the chief seat of Govern- 
 ment — ^the one known as the Sudder Dewanee Adaw- 
 lut, and the other as the Sudder Nizamut Adawlut. 
 The first of these, or chief civil cornet, was to be pre- 
 sided over by the President and two members of Comi- 
 cil ; the latter by a Mahomedan judge, or " chief 
 officer of justice," appointed by the Nazim, and 
 attended by a sufficient staff of Mahomedan law 
 officers. Over the general procedure of tliis comi; the 
 same control was to be exercised by the President and 
 Council as was vested in the collectors over the pro- 
 ATQcial criminal courts. 
 
 These Sudder Com'ts were Courts of Appeal from 
 the different civil and criminal tribunals in the pro- 
 vinces. Then' precise powers and duties were clearly 
 defined; whilst, at the same time, many subsidiary 
 regulations for the furtherance of justice were laid 
 down and publicly announced. They exhibit on the 
 whole a sincere desire to secure equal justice to the 
 
 * General Regulations for the Admi- Colebrooke's Digestj Supplementary vo- 
 nistration of Justice^ August 15, 1772. — lume» 
 
328 JUDICIAL SYSTEMS. 
 
 people — to protect the rights of all men without en- 
 couraging the litigiousness which is so formidable an 
 ingredient in the native character.* As the first essay 
 towards the establishment of a judicial system for our 
 new territories, these Regulations of 1772 are very 
 creditable to our infant administrators. And it must 
 not be omitted in any statement of the benefits they 
 conferred on the people, that the oppressive exactions, 
 under the head of fines and fees, which had fed the 
 revenue and paid the law ofiicers, under Mogul ma- 
 nagement, were abolished, " conformably to the wise 
 and humane instructions of our honorable masters, 
 who, from the same spirit of equity have renounced the 
 right, hitherto exercised by the country Government 
 and authorised by the Mahomedan law, to a commis- 
 sion on the amount of all debts, and on the value of 
 all property recovered by the decrees of the Courts — a 
 practice repugnant to every principle of justice."! 
 
 Such were the Regulations in force throughout the 
 Presidency of Bengal when the " Regulating Act" was 
 passed. The thirteenth clause of this Act recited, that 
 "whereas his late Majesty George II., by Letters 
 Patent, dated January 8, of the 26th year of his reign, 
 
 * Thus, on the one hand, it was country, in their suits and complaints, 
 ordered — "That as nothing is more is often productive, not only of incon- 
 conducive to the prosperity of any venience and vexation to their adver- 
 country than a free and easy access to saries, but also of endless expense and 
 justice and redress, the collectors shall actual oppression, it is to be observed, 
 at all times be ready to receive the as a standing rule, that complaints of 
 petitions of the injured; and further to so old a date as twelve years shall not 
 prevent their being debarred this be actionable; and further, should they 
 access, from motives of interest, par- be found guilty of flying from the one 
 tiality, or resentment, in the officers or court to the other, in order to prevent 
 servants of the Cutcherry, that a box and protract the course of justice, the 
 shall be placed at the door of the Cut- party so transgressing shall be non- 
 cherry, in which the complainants may suited, and liable to fine or punish- 
 lodge their petitions at any time or ment." And again, that "persons 
 hour they please. That the collector found guilty of preferring groundless, 
 shall himself keep the key of the box, litigious, or vexatious appeals, shall be 
 and each court-day have such urzees punished at the discretion of the Sudder 
 as he may find in it read immediately Dewanee Adawlut by an enhancement 
 in his presence by the Arzbeggy of the of the costs, &c., &c." 
 court." And on the other it was de- f Letter of the Committee of Circuit to 
 creed — "That as the litigiousness and Council of Fort William, August 15, 
 perseverance of the natives of this 1772.— Colebrooke's Diysstj Supplement, 
 
ESTABLISHMENT OF THE SUPREME COURT. 329 
 
 granted to the said Company his Eoyal Charter to 
 constitute Courts of Civil, Criminal, and Ecclesiastical 
 Jm^isdiction, and which Charter does not sufficiently 
 provide for the due administration of justice, &c., it is 
 therefore enacted that it shall be lawful for his Majesty 
 to erect a Supreme Court, to consist of a Chief Justice 
 and three other Judges, which said Supreme Court 
 shall have full powers to exercise all civil, criminal, 
 admiralty and ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and appoint 
 such clerks and other ministerial officers, mth such 
 salaries as shall be approved of by the said Governor- 
 General and Council, &c., and also, shall be at all 
 times a Court of Record, and a Court of Oyer and 
 Terminer, and a gaol delivery, in and for the said Town 
 of Calcutta, and factory of Port William in Bengal 
 and the limits thereof, and the factories subordinate 
 thereto."* The old Mayor's Court was superseded by 
 this new tribunal ; and English lawyers went out to 
 administer English law after the most approved West- 
 minster model. 
 
 Then began the great strife, the history of which has 
 been written in language so attractive, that few are 
 disposed to censure the exaggerations with wliich it is 
 crusted over. A great and scandalous error was com- 
 mitted by Parliament in not more clearly defining the 
 jurisdiction of the Cro^vn Court ; and the new English 
 judges were not disinclined to take advantage of the 
 obscurities of their Charter. They carried with them 
 to India the most inflated ideas of the beauties and 
 benignities of English law. They went out to save, 
 and they destroyed. Instead of maintainmg order 
 and preserving peace, they threw the settlement 
 
 * The Letters Patent which the King tion of the Supreme Court— wliich had 
 
 was empowered in the Regulating Act been less clearly stated in the Rcgulat- 
 
 togrant,wasdated26thof March, 1774. ing Act— but it still left them very 
 
 It contained a great many clauses in- vague and uncertain, 
 tended to define the powers and jurisdic- 
 
330 JUDICIAL SYSTEMS. 
 
 into confusion, and engendered the most unseemly 
 strife. Instead of a blessing, they conferred a curse 
 upon the people — instead of security, terror. I believe 
 that they were honest and able men — that they believed 
 they were fufilling the intentions of the Legislature, and 
 shielding the people from Avrong; but they went out 
 with the most exaggerated ideas of the inefficiency and 
 the tm'pitude of the Company's Courts, and believed 
 that so long as they were in antagonism T\ith the Com- 
 pany's servants, they were nobly fulfilling their mission 
 as representatives of English law. The whole admi- 
 nistration of the country was well-nigh brought to a 
 stand-still.* It is charitable to suppose that these 
 ermined Interlopers, fresh from Westminster Hall and 
 the Inns of Court, did not know what they were doing. 
 They had little acquaintance with the system of internal 
 government, which the Company's servants had built 
 up on the basis of the old Mogul administration. They 
 knew nothing of the language, the institutions, the cha- 
 racter and the usages of the people. They scarcely 
 knew a Mahomedan from a Hindoo, or the difference 
 between a Cauzee and a Dewan. But it was ever up- 
 permost in their thoughts that they had come out to 
 administer the English law, as it was administered at 
 Westminster ; and they believed that it was their first 
 duty to uphold the dignity and to maintain the integrity 
 of that "perfection of human wisdom," which they 
 inscribed on then' banners when they went out to fight 
 the Company and their servants. There were evils, 
 
 * " Every class of the population," vernment, withstood the miserable 
 
 says Mr. Macaulay, " English and na- catchpoles, who, with Impey's writs in 
 
 tive, with the exception of the ravenous their hands, exceeded tlie insolence and 
 
 pettifoggers, who fattened on the mi- rapacity of gang-robbers, he was flung 
 
 sery and terror of an immense com- into prison for contempt. The lapse of 
 
 munity, cried out loudly against this sixty years — the virtue and wisdom of 
 
 fearful oppression. But the judges were many eminent magistrates, who have 
 
 immoveable. If a bailiff" was resisted, during that time administered justice 
 
 they ordered the soldiers to be called in the Supreme Court, have not effaced 
 
 out. If a servant of the Company, in from the minds of the people of Bengal 
 
 conformity with the orders of his Go- the recollection of those evil days." 
 
EXCESSES OF THE SUPREME COURT. 331 
 
 doubtless, to be remedied; but the remedy was far 
 worse than the disease. The man who rides down a 
 field of corn to drive out a hare or pheasant that is 
 nibbling at his crops, is a faint emblem of the Supreme 
 Court during the first years of the Regulating Act. 
 The new Judges went out to India to eradicate certain 
 administrative defects, and they rode doA^^ the whole 
 administration of the country without a feeling of 
 remorse. Well might it have been said in the peti- 
 tions which were presented to Parliament, that unless 
 relief were granted to the Company, they would soon 
 have ports without trade ; possessions without revenue ; 
 and laws without inhabitants. 
 
 The prayers of these petitions were not unheeded.* 
 The excesses of the Supreme Cornet were taken into 
 due consideration by Parliament, and, in 1781, an Act 
 was passed (21 George III., chap. 70) defining and 
 limiting its powers. t Practically, the evil had some- 
 what abated before the new Act was brought into 
 operation. The Judges may have seen the error of 
 
 * The petition from the British sub- to the jurisdiction of the Court. The 
 
 jects in Bengal, Behar, and Orissa, was old Act had rendered all persons in the 
 
 drawn up by Mr. Shore, afterwards employment of the Company amenable 
 
 Lord Teignmouth. It set out by say- to the CroAvn Court, and the judges 
 
 ing that " Whereas your petitioners had decided that all tlie Zemindars, 
 
 obseryed -vdth the deepest concern and and revenue-farmers, and contractors, 
 
 affliction, that at the passing of the Act were servants of the Company, and had 
 
 (3 George III.), and previous to it, issued process against them. The new 
 
 very erroneous reports had been pro- Act decreed that " no person shall be 
 
 pagated, and injurious ideas entertained subject to the jurisdiction of the Su- 
 
 of the principles and practices of the preme Court for or by reason of his 
 
 British subjects residing within these being a landowner, landholder, or 
 
 provinces, from which it was inferred farmer of land, or of land-rent . . . 
 
 that they required more vigorous re- or those who are his under-tenants in 
 
 straints and coercions than have usually virtue of his farm . . . within the 
 
 been imposed upon Englishmen," &c. Provinces of Bengal, Behar, and 
 
 f It was enacted "that the Court Orissa." It enacted that judicial 
 
 should not have, or exercise, any juris- officers in the Country Courts should 
 
 diction in any matter concerning the not be liable to actions in the Supreme 
 
 revenue, or concerning any act or acts Courts for wrongs done in their judicial 
 
 ordered or done in the collection offices ; and expressly declared the 
 
 thereof, according to the usage and incompetency of the Court to deter- 
 
 practice of the country, or the regula- mine any indictment or information 
 
 lations of the Governor- Greneral and against the Governor-General and 
 
 Council." It then went on to declare Council, 
 the description of persons to be subject 
 
332 JUDICIAL SYSTEMS. 
 
 their ways, or they may have been subjected to private 
 influences ; but the confusion into which the settlement 
 had been thrown was fast subsiding, when the Legisla- 
 ture formally curtailed their power and crushed their 
 licentiousness. Prom this time, to the present, the 
 Cro^iTi Courts have mamtained themselves in a state of 
 comparative quiescence, and though, ever and anon, 
 they have come into collision mth the Company's 
 servants, there have been none of those open scandals 
 and insolent outrages which in the first years of the 
 Eegulating Act convulsed society, and well nigh-over- 
 turned the administration. 
 
 Meanwhile, the Company's Courts were in process of 
 gradual improvement. Prom time to time certain 
 changes had been introduced by Warren Hastings and 
 his associates in the Government, but they had not 
 been moulded into " any general and uniform system." 
 But in April, 1780, they took shape in certain Regula- 
 tions which gave the Company's servants a more clearly 
 defined judicial character then they had been invested 
 with under the Regulations of 1772. Under these 
 Regulations the Collectors had been appointed, ex 
 officio, Presidents of the Civil Pro\dncial Courts ; but 
 now distinct judicial officers, from among the Com- 
 pany's European servants, were appointed to preside 
 in these Courts, under the title of superintendents of 
 Dewanee Adawlut, with instructions to hold their 
 Courts " three times in every week, and as frequently 
 as occasion may require, but that no cause shall be de- 
 termined except in open Court, and in the presence of 
 some of the principal officers."* These Com'ts were 
 to take cognisance of all ordinary civil business ; but 
 Revenue suits were to be decided by the Provincial 
 Councils. 
 
 * liegulationa passed by the Governor-General and Court, April 11, 1780. — 
 Cokbrooke'a Digest, Supplement. 
 
EXTENSION OF EUROPEAN SUPEUINTENDENCE. 333 
 
 In 1781, another change was introduced, which 
 brought the Company's servants into a still closer con- 
 nexion A^ith the administration of justice in Bengal. 
 The Judges of the Civil Courts were invested with the 
 power, as magistrates, of apprehending Dakoits and 
 persons charged Avith the commission of any crime or 
 active violence, within their respective jurisdictions — 
 but they had no power to try them. And in this state, 
 the administration of criminal justice being still in the 
 hands of the native officers, Lord Cornwallis found the 
 judicial system of Bengal on his first arrival in the 
 country. As much had been done, as under all cir- 
 cumstances could have been reasonably expected, to 
 bestow upon the natives of India the blessings of a 
 mild and equable dispensation of the law, and imper- 
 fect as were these initial efforts, it is still apparent that 
 the system which Warren Hastings introduced, and 
 the practice which he enforced, were great improve- 
 ments upon those of the Moguls.* 
 
 Lord Cornwallis went out to India with definite m- 
 structions from the Court of Directors, but with con- 
 siderable discretionary power. On the subject of the 
 administration of justice, the Court declared that it was 
 their desire " to accommodate their views and interests to 
 the subsisting manners and usages of the people, rather 
 than to any abstract theories dra^Ti from other coun- 
 tries, or applicable to a different state of things." t And, 
 having thus enunciated general principles, the sound- 
 ness of which is not to be questioned, they proceeded 
 to deliver themselves of specific instructions. They 
 ordered that the Provincial Civil Courts should be again 
 placed under the superintendence of the Collectors, 
 
 * See for a very fair statement of the f -^«''^ ^ '^^ Governor- General in 
 advantages conferred upon the people Council, April 12, 1786. 
 by our earliest administrative efforts 
 Mr. Shore's (Lord TeignmoutKs) Minute 
 of Feb. 10, 1790. 
 
334 JUDICIAL SYSTEMS. 
 
 and that the administration of criminal justice should 
 remain as before, in the hands of the Mahomedan 
 officers. Accordingly a series of Regulations, " re- 
 vised and adapted to the system established by the 
 orders of the Court of Directors," was passed on the 
 27th of June, 1787, and translated into Persian and 
 Bengallee, for the information of the people. They re- 
 yoked all former Regulations, and ordered " that the 
 office of judge of the several Provincial Courts be 
 respectively held by that person who hath, or shall 
 hereafter have, the charge of the revenue in each 
 respective place."* On the same day a series of Regu- 
 lations for the administration of justice in the Criminal 
 Courts was passed by the Governor-General in Council. 
 The Collectors, as under the Regulations of 1781, were 
 empowered to act as magistrates in their several col- 
 lectorates ; but these powers were now to be extended. 
 Before, the magistrates had been authorised only to 
 apprehend and commit ; now they were empowered " to 
 hear and determine, without any reference to the 
 Eouzdarry (or native criminal) Courts, all complaints 
 or prosecutions brought before him for petty offences, 
 such as abusive or calumny, inconsiderable assaults or 
 affrays, and to punish the same, when proved, by cor- 
 poral punishment, not exceeding fifteen rattans, or 
 imprisonment not exceeding the term of fifteen days ; 
 but that in all cases affecting either the life or limbs 
 of the party accused, or subjecting them to a greater 
 punishment than that above specified, the cause be 
 remitted as above prescribed to the hearing of the 
 nearest Criminal Court." We were begirming to nibble 
 at the administration of criminal justice ; and it was 
 not long before it passed bodily into our hands. 
 
 On the 3rd of December, 1790, a new series of Regu- 
 lations was issued. The preamble set forth that '* the 
 
 * Special exceptions were made of Moorshedabad, Patna, and Dacca. 
 
FIRST EFFORTS OF CORNWALLIS. 335 
 
 numerous robberies, murders, and other enormities, 
 which have been daily committed throughout the 
 country, evinced that the administration of criminal 
 justice was still in a very defective state," and that 
 therefore the Governor-General in Council had deter- 
 mined " to resume the administration of criminal jus- 
 tice throughout the pro\dnces." Courts of Circuit 
 were accordingly created — ^four in number ; three for 
 the province of Bengal and one for the province of 
 Behar — and each of these Courts of Circuit was to 
 be superintended by two covenanted civil servants 
 of the Company, to be denominated Judges of the 
 Cornet of Circuit. The Sudder Nizamut Adawlut, or 
 cliief crimiaal court, which was to be established in 
 Calcutta, was to be presided over by the Governor- 
 General and members of Council, who were to exercise 
 all the powers lately vested in the Naib Nazim, or chief 
 nunister of justice. 
 
 But although the Mahomedan judges were thus re- 
 moved from office, the Mahomedan law was still left 
 supreme in the Courts. One of the Regulations of the 
 IN'ew Code emphatically ordered " that the decisions of 
 the Court be in all cases regulated by the Mahomedan 
 law."* The Mahomedan modes of punishment were, 
 however, to be renounced. It has been seen that the 
 Begulations of 1787 recognised the cruel punishment 
 of mutilation, which was practised in the Pouzdarry 
 Courts a quarter of a century after we became the 
 rulers of the land. But on the 10th of October, 1791, 
 Cornwallis ordained " that the punishment of mutila- 
 tion shall not be inflicted on any criminal in future." 
 Instead of the loss of two limbs, an offender was to be 
 sentenced to fourteen years' imprisonment ; and instead 
 
 * One or two exceptions were made, decreed that if the heir of the slain 
 
 as for example that " the relations of a should pardon the murderer, sentence 
 
 murdered man be debarred from par- should not be passed by the Courts of 
 
 doning the offender." But a subsequent Circuit, but the case forwarded to the 
 
 Regulation modified this exception, and Sudder, or chief court, at Calcutta. 
 
336 JUDICIAL SYSTEMS. 
 
 of the loss of one limb, to be imprisoned and kept to 
 hard labor for seven years. 
 
 But the time was now approaching when all these 
 shifts and expedients were to give place to one definite 
 and comprehensive system of judicial administration. 
 The benevolent mind of Lord Cornwallis had long been 
 brooding over the defects of the existing E/Cgulations, 
 and the discouraging results of all that had yet been 
 done for the protection of the inhabitants of the British 
 Provinces in Bengal. He believed that the establish- 
 ment of the Courts of Ch-cuit and the reorganisation of 
 the Police had conferred substantial benefits upon the 
 people. But it was painfully obvious that the Civil 
 Comets, presided over as they then were by the revenue- 
 officers, had been converted into instruments of oppres- 
 sion, and that the inhabitants of the provinces were 
 groaning under the ^vrongs which had been inflicted 
 upon them by officers in whom the fiscal and judicial 
 authorities had been so unwisely combined, and who 
 consummated in one capacity the injuries wliich they 
 originated in the other.* There seemed, indeed, to be 
 no remedy, in the existing state of things, for this 
 great evil of unchecked power. The greater part of 
 the people, it was clear, would rather submit to the 
 
 * " In these various capacities," said tration of collectors having never 
 
 Lord Cornwallis, " there is not an reached the ear of Government, until 
 
 individual in the district whose person despair getting the better of the terrors 
 
 or property is not, at some time or of power, the people flock to the Pre- 
 
 other, within the reach of his authority, sidency to impeach their oppressor. 
 
 Such power, vested in an individual, When the complaint has been brought 
 
 and at a great distance from the seat before the Government, what is the 
 
 of supreme control, excites terror in result? If the inquiry into the conduct 
 
 the minds of the people instead of of the offender is to be made on the 
 
 inspiring them with confidence in its spot, there is no court of justice in 
 
 protection ; and as they can form no which it can be made. The ojfender 
 
 judgment of our government but as it himself is the sole and chief magistrate 
 
 is thus shown to them in our repre- of the country. ... If the inquiry 
 
 sentative the collector, there is little is to be made in Calcutta, by whom is 
 
 encouragement for them when op- it to be conducted? The time of the 
 
 pressed to rely upon our justice for supreme Government cannot be given 
 
 relief. By the operation of these up to a long and intricate investiga- 
 
 causes we are to account for whole tion." — [3finute of Lord Cornwallis, 
 
 provinces silently submitting for years written by Mr. Barlow. MS. Records.'] 
 to oppression and for the mal-adminis- 
 
THE REGrLATIONS. 337 
 
 oppression than undertake the difficult and dangerous 
 work of endeavoring to obtain redress. 
 
 With these facts before liim — surrounded by mse 
 counsellors — ^by the recommendation of some of the 
 ablest servants of the Company, and with the en- 
 couraging approbation of the judges of the Supreme 
 Court, Cornwallis determined to strike at the very root 
 of the existing system. The first thing to be done was, 
 "to vest the collection of the revenues and the ad- 
 ministration of justice in separate officers." With a 
 very different appreciation of the relative importance of 
 the two offices, from that which obtains in the present 
 day, he proposed to appoint the existing collectors 
 judges of the Civil Courts,* whilst their head-assist- 
 ants were appointed to the different coUectorates, for 
 which, said the Government minute, "they will be 
 found sufficiently qualified." t At the cities of Moor- 
 shedabad, Dacca, Patna, and in the vicinity of Calcutta, 
 Provincial Courts, each presided over by four judges, 
 were to be established — ^their jurisdiction over the 
 different coUectorates to be co-extensive with that held 
 by them as judges of the Courts of Circuit. A right of 
 appeal to these Courts was to lie from the several 
 district Courts, and from them again, in civil business, 
 to the Sudder Dewanny Adawlut, or Chief Civil Court 
 at Calcutta, and in criminal business to the Sudder 
 Nizamut Adawlut, or Chief Criminal Court. In order 
 
 * The judges of these Courts were finance and the admmistration of jus- 
 
 also to be magistrates ia their respec- tice — nor can any reasons be assigned 
 
 tive districts. why the name and business of the one 
 
 t Some of the joint remarks of Corn- should be merged in the other. Con- 
 
 wallis and Barlow on the degradation of sistently with the same principles all 
 
 the judicial office, may be still read with salaries and emoluments continue to be 
 
 advantage. The system is thus de- annexed to the oflSce of collector of the 
 
 scribed: "The administration of justice revenue. The collector receives no 
 
 was considered as a subordinate duty salary as judge of the Court of Justice, 
 
 attached to the office of collector of the or as magistrate of the district. These 
 
 revenues. To this day, all Kegulations two oflBces are considered as appendages 
 
 respecting the administration of justice to that of collector, and the duties of the 
 
 are passed in the revenue-department, two former oflBces stand still whenever 
 
 although no two departments of Govern- they interfere with those of the latter." 
 
 ment can be more unconnected than — IMS. Records.'] 
 
338 JUDICIAL SYSTEMS. 
 
 to expedite the gaol-deliveries, two of the judges were 
 to take one-half of the division, and the two others the 
 other half, and thus, it was said, " the duties of the 
 Circuit would be rendered easy to them, and leave 
 ample time for the discharge of the duties of a Civil 
 Court."* Thejudgesliips, so established, were to be con- 
 sidered appointments '' the first in importance in the 
 civil service." — "The persons selected to fill them," it 
 was added, " should be distinguished for their integrity, 
 abilities, and knowledge of the manners, customs, and 
 languages of the natives, and their allowances should be 
 proportionate to the greatness of their trust." t The 
 judges of these Courts were also to be judges of Circuit. 
 
 Such was the new constitution of the Company's 
 civil service. But the judicial reforms of Lord Com- 
 wallis were not confined to this redistribution of the 
 different agencies for the internal administration of 
 the country. I have shown how keenly alive he was 
 to the evils of that uncontrolled exercise of power, on 
 the part of the Em'opean functionary, which placed the 
 native suitor naked and bleeding at his feet. Eager to . 
 remedy this great e\al — ^to give the native inhabitants 
 of the provinces the means of redress against all 
 arbitrary exactions and illegal usurpation of authority, 
 he proposed that " native individuals should be per- 
 mitted, under certain restrictions, to prosecute the 
 ofi&cers of justice in the Courts of justice, for injuries 
 which they may sustain in their persons and properties 
 in opposition to the existing regulations." 
 
 Having defined the agency to be employed in the 
 administration of justice, Cornwallis turned his atten- 
 tion to the great subject of Codification. Whether 
 
 * Cornwallis' Minute. MS. these Courts of Appeal, and the dignity 
 
 + It was natural that the elevation of -which was to attach to the office of 
 
 the judicial character should have given judge, Sir William J. wrote : ** This sys- 
 
 great satisfaction to the judges of the tem is so perfect tliat I cannot suggest 
 
 Supreme Court. On the margin of that any material addition to it." 
 part of the minute, which sketched 
 
THE REGULATIONS. 339 
 
 they were "laws," or whether they were "regulations,'** 
 which were now to be passed by the supreme authority 
 in India, there was no one point on which Cornwallis 
 and liis advisers felt more strongly, than on the neces- 
 sity of giving them permanent expression and substan- 
 tial shape, for the guidance alike of those who were to 
 administer and those who were to appeal to them. 
 The Regulations were to be numbered, arranged, 
 printed, and circulated. They were to have a home 
 in every Government office, and to be transmitted to 
 the authorities in England. Hitherto they had existed 
 partly in manuscript, partly in a printed shape, on 
 detached slips of paper, to be lost with the greatest 
 ease and consulted with the greatest difficulty. All 
 this was now to be reformed. And in order that the 
 greatest possible amount of knowledge, experience, and 
 legislative ability might be brought to bear upon the 
 framing of these Regulations, the Company's servants 
 were to be invited to send in their suggestions through 
 the authorised channels, and point out the expediency 
 of making new additions to the code, or modifying and 
 amending any of its existing provisions. Order and 
 regularity were to be substituted for perplexity and 
 confusion, and instead of an exclusive unintelligible 
 system, there was to be one seeking the largest possible 
 publicity, inviting discussion, and coveting the ready 
 comprehension of the people for whose welfare it was 
 designed. 
 
 In all honesty and sincerity this was sought. But 
 it was not in all respects attained. Nothing could 
 have been more simple than the original design of this 
 great judicial reformation ; but when it came to be 
 moulded into shape, when the great principles for 
 which Cornwallis and Barlow contended came to be 
 formed and fashioned into Regulations, they lost much 
 
 • See ante, pages 91-2-3, for the cotemporary discussions on this subject. 
 
 z2 
 
34iO JUDICIAL SYSTEMS. 
 
 of their original simplicity, and were encumbered with 
 perplexing details. An over-anxiety to improve and 
 perfect may have led to the complication of forms of 
 procedure, and what was designed to give full effect to 
 the protective machinery, to some extent, may have 
 embarrassed its action, encumbered its movements, and 
 restricted its utility. Eut I cannot think otherwise 
 than that it was a great work, and that to admit the 
 existence of some practical defects, is only to admit 
 its humanity. 
 
 It is no new thing — it is nothing peculiar to Bengal 
 that justice should defeat its own ends — that the very 
 earnestness and laboriousness of its efforts should re- 
 coil upon itself. In two ways now, was this observ- 
 able. That justice should be cheap and the judgment- 
 seat accessible, are two of the first essentials of a pure 
 judicial system, and Cornwallis endeavored to secure 
 both the accessibility and the cheapness of the Courts. 
 But he did this for the benefit of a people out of measure 
 addicted to litigation; and it soon followed that the num- 
 ber of suitors so blocked up the doors of the Court, that 
 the judge was not accessible to the most clamorous, and 
 justice was not attainable at any cost. It seemed, too, 
 that the new English judges, eager to administer the 
 law strictly and conscientiously according to the Begu- 
 lations, and to observe all the prescribed formalities, 
 brought so few cases to an issue, that business accu- 
 mulated fearfully upon thek files, and the people wi'ung 
 their hands in despair to think what a laggard was 
 English justice with the weight of the Begulations on 
 its back. In good truth it could not keep pace with 
 the litigiousness of the native character. And so it 
 happened that the very measures which seemed to 
 entitle our administrators to the gratitude of the 
 people, worked grievously to their hurt. 
 
 It then appeared that justice was too cheap, and 
 
THE CORNWALLIS SYSTEM. 341 
 
 that our Courts were too accessible. A supposed remedy- 
 lay very close at hand. Its application has been 
 severely condemned. It was proposed to make justice 
 dearer, and, therefore, the Courts less accessible, by 
 taxing litigation and so frightening suitors from their 
 doors. The old system of the deposit-fee on the insti- 
 tution of a suit was revived,* and for a time this mea- 
 sure seemed to have the desired effect. But although 
 the subordinate judicial agency had been greatly in- 
 creased by investing the Hegisters of the Courts with 
 power to determine suits, and the appointment of duly 
 qualified nativesf to decide on disputes of small j^mount, 
 the accumulation of business was only temporarily 
 kept down ; and it was found, at the beginning of the 
 new century, that such Avas the enormous number of 
 imdecided cases on the files, that many of the suitors 
 must wait years for a decision ; and in one district it 
 was said that in the ordinary course of events some of 
 them would hardly live to witness the adjudication of 
 theu^ suit S.J The evil was always admitted — always 
 striven against. The judicial agency was from time 
 to time increased ; but still justice was in arrears. The 
 judges despatched a greater amount of business, but 
 still there was an accumulation. The fatal tendency 
 of the people of India to rush into the meshes of the 
 law was not to be repressed. § 
 
 * And subsequently by a Eegulation decided in the course of the pre- 
 
 requiring that, in all but the lowest ceding period (from 1793) was, in the 
 
 courts, law proceedings should only be Courts of Appeal, 667 ; by the City and 
 
 valid when written on paper bearing the Zillah judges, 8298 ; by their registers, 
 
 Government stamp. 14,124; and by the native commia- 
 
 f Known as " Commissioners," after- sioners, 328,064. 
 wards as Moonsiffs. § In 1810, the Committee of the House 
 
 X It appears that the number of of Commons, in their fifth report, said, 
 
 causes depending on the 1st of Janu- that up to that time the evil had little 
 
 ary, 1802, before the five Courts of abated; but that credit was due to the 
 
 Appeal was, 882; before the judges European functionaries for what they 
 
 of the twenty -eight City and Zillah had done; and added that, "incompa- 
 
 Courts 12,262; before the registers rison with what is commonly expe- 
 
 of the last-mentioned courts 17,906; rienced in Europe, the advantage in 
 
 and before the native commissioners point of despatch would probably be 
 
 131,921. It appears further, that found to be in favor of the courts of 
 
 the number of causes which had been India. 
 
342 JUDICIAL SYSTEMS. 
 
 The acciunulation of undecided causes was, doubtless, 
 a great evil. But there was evil, too, in the haste with 
 which, at a subsequent period, eflPorts were made to 
 keep down the accumulation. There was a tendency 
 to estimate the zeal and efficiency of our judicial 
 officers, not by the soundness of their decisions, but by 
 the number of them. Men decided a certam number 
 of suits and the official returns showed that they were 
 not inactive. This foot-rule system, encouraged by the 
 higher authorities, who applied so false a test to the 
 efficiency of their officers, doubtless bore bad fruit in 
 its day. Thus ever whilst endeavoring to avoid one 
 evil we fell into another. Even the stamp system, 
 which was intended to suppress unjust Htigation, had 
 a tendency to foster injustice. The stamp gave a sort 
 of respectability and validity to all the proceedings that 
 it covered. It seemed to have the Regulations inscribed 
 on it, and it carried men through a world of chicanery 
 and fraud — often of violence and oppression.* Indeed, 
 this outside show of the Kegulations covered a multi- 
 tude of sins. Men of weak judgments and indolent 
 habits were apt to become mere formalists under their 
 shadow, and never to give a thought to anything 
 beyond the letter of the written law. But I am not 
 sure that this is peculiar to our possessions beyond the 
 seas. 
 
 Of the immediate results of our new system of 
 criminal justice something must be said before I pass 
 on to consider the general effect of the Cornwallis 
 system, and the changes which were subsequently in- 
 troduced. When our European functionaries were first 
 
 * " I remember," writes a friend to professional Goindahs, or informers, 
 me, "a case, and I almost blush in my said in his reply, 'What could I do? 
 closet to write it down, where a magis- The complaints were all written on duly 
 trate, being called upon to justify his stamped 8-anna paper, and the process 
 conduct in having allowed numbers of issued on each was precisely that en- 
 respectable men to be arrested and joined by the liegulations, and no 
 brought into the station on charges pre- more." '* 
 ferred by a set of men known to be 
 
ACCUMULATION OF BUSINESS. 343 
 
 brought face to face with the crime of the country 
 they were startled by the hideousness of the picture 
 that presented itself, and believed that the inhabitants 
 of India were the most demoralised people in the world. 
 The sketches of national character, which appear in the 
 answers returned to the interrogatories circulated in 
 1802 to the judges and magistrates, are limned with 
 so harsh a pencil, that we must believe either that 
 they were grossly exaggerated, or that the people have 
 greatly improved.* Wlien asked what had been the 
 effect of our system upon the moral character of the 
 people, they answered that it had been various — ^partly 
 advantageous, partly disadvantageous; but that the 
 balance was in favor of the former. Sir Henry Stra- 
 chey, whose authority is usually cited against the 
 Cornwallis Eegulations, declared that violence of all 
 kinds, except Dakoitee, had diminished, and that the 
 poor looked up to the law for protection as they had 
 never done before, t To the question whether the 
 number of crimes had diminished since 1793, the most 
 conflicting answers were returned. Some said that 
 they had increased, others that they had diminished ; 
 and the causes both of the asserted increase and de- 
 crease were almost as various as the respondents. All, 
 however, seemed to agree that Dakoitee had not 
 
 * Take, for example, the following, the morals of the people. They are, 
 
 from the evidence of Mr. Paterson, of probably, somewhat more licentious 
 
 Dacca: — " Their minds are totally un- than formerly. Chicanery, subornation, 
 
 cultirated ; of the duties of morality fraud and perjury, are certainly more 
 
 they have no idea. They possess in a common." But he added, " Oppres- 
 
 great degree that low cunning which sion, cruelty, violence of all sorts, ex- 
 
 generally accompanies depravity of cept that of Dakoits, are grown much 
 
 heart. They are indolent, and grossly less frequent. The ill-treatment of 
 
 sensual. They are cruel and cowardly, women, of servants, of slaves, have 
 
 insolent and abject. They have super- nearly ceased. The same may be said 
 
 stition without a sense of religion ; and, of the corporal severities formerly ex- 
 
 in short, they have all the vices of ercised in collecting the revenues. The 
 
 savage life without any of its virtues." poor look up to the laws, and not as 
 
 t "In my opinion," he said, "the heretofore, to a patron for protection." 
 system has little direot influence on 
 
344 
 
 JUDICIAL SYSTEMS. 
 
 diminished; and many attributed this to the com- 
 pKcity of the police. One gentleman replied that the 
 leniency of the British Government was not at all cal- 
 culated " to ameliorate the moral character of men so 
 prone to vice, and ready to take advantage of every 
 species of liberty granted to them.* 
 
 As represented by figured statements, the results of 
 the new judicial system, during the first ten years of its 
 operation, do not wear a very favom^able complexion. 
 But these figured statements scarcely afford a fair test 
 of the results of our administration. It was generally 
 admitted by the Company's judicial officers that the 
 country had improved under our rulef — that popula- 
 
 * Answers to Interrogatories. — A se- 
 lection from these was published in the 
 Appendix to the Fifth Keport. I quote 
 from a complete set in MS. 
 
 f Take a few of the answers to in- 
 terrogatories. Mr. Webb, of Shahabad, 
 emphatically answered — " The district 
 is in a state of improvement in every 
 particular. I found my opinion on 
 experience. I have no particular facts; 
 the improvement is too notorious to 
 require them." Mr. Paterson, of Dacca, 
 answered — " When I look back to the 
 effect of the famine in 1787, I cannot 
 but conclude that the district is in a 
 state of improvement with respect to 
 cultivation and population." Mr. 
 Paterson added : " There are, however, 
 large tracts of the Zillah which still 
 show the effect of the above-mentioned 
 famine— and which from the vast depo- 
 pulation occasioned by that scourge are 
 so overrun with jungle and annoyed 
 with elephants and other wild beasts, 
 that they have become almost deserts." 
 Mr. Wordsworth, of Rungpore, answered 
 — '' I am of opinion that the population 
 of the district under my jurisdiction has 
 increased considerably of late years, 
 and that cultivation has been greatly 
 extended within these last six years." 
 
 Some of the answers to the following 
 question are still more significant: 
 
 " Are you of opinion that the in- 
 habitants in general of the city under 
 your jurisdiction, consider their private 
 
 rights and property secured by the 
 present constitution of the country 
 against infringement, either by the 
 executive officers of Government, or 
 even by the supreme executive autho- 
 rity itself, or by individuals? 
 
 Mr. Webb, of Shahabad, briefly an- 
 swered : " In my opinion they do." — Mr. 
 Paterson, of Dacca, answered: " Those 
 who frequent the Courts of Justice, or 
 who by their connexions with those 
 who do, are enabled to form a judg- 
 ment of the principles on which tlie 
 regulations are framed, acknowledge 
 the security of their private rights and 
 property. Those who have not that 
 intercourse (which is the greater mass 
 of the people) still entertain their 
 old jealousies and prejudices, nor will 
 it be easy to inspire them with confi- 
 dence in that security, which the insti- 
 tutions of the Government are intended 
 to afford, as they have no idea of power, 
 but what is absolute and arbitrary ; 
 and under that notion, consider the 
 regulations of the Government as tem- 
 porary only — liable to be rescinded and 
 altered at pleasure by the same autho- 
 rity which enacted them. It must 
 require a long experience to change 
 these sentiments. The idea of a su- 
 preme executive authority prescribing 
 laws and limits for itself, is not easily 
 conceived by them." — Mr. Wordsworth, 
 of liungpore, made answer: " I am 
 clearly of opinion that the inhabitants 
 
LORD WILLIAM BENTINCK. 315 
 
 tion and cultivation had increased, and that there was 
 a greater sense of the security both of life and property 
 imder our administration, than under that of the 
 Mogul. Such a system as that introduced by Corn- 
 wallis and Barlow was not to be tested by a trial of a 
 few years. Such as it was, it lasted without any 
 material modifications for nearly forty y(?ars, and it is 
 not easy to believe that where there has been any de- 
 parture from its leading principles, the change has 
 contributed to the happiness of the people.* 
 
 All through the administrations of Lord Wellesley — 
 of Sir George Barlow — of Lord Minto — of Lord 
 Hastings, and of Lord Amherst, the Cornwallis system 
 of internal administration continued in force, only with 
 such modifications as the mutations of time and cir- 
 cumstance naturally engrafted upon it. But in 1828, 
 Lord William Bentinck arrived in India. Of all the 
 Governors avIio succeeded Cornwallis, he most re- 
 sembled that benevolent and upright statesman. As 
 CornwalHs was a reformer, so was Bentinck. He had 
 abundant time to devote himself to measures of do- 
 mestic improvement, for no miserable war was sitting 
 like a curse upon his arm and paralysing his adminis- 
 trative energies. No honester man ever went out to 
 India; and no man ever addressed himself to the 
 solution of difficult problems of government, and the 
 initiation of dangerous experiments with a larger 
 
 in general of the district under my established. This, however, was but 
 jurisdiction, consider their private short-lived; and, under 39th and 40th 
 rights and property to be secured by George III., chapter 79, the Supreme 
 the present constitution of the country Court of Madras was established three 
 against infringement, either by the years afterwards. The Supreme Court 
 executive oflBcers of Government, or of Bombay was not erected until 1823, 
 even by the supreme executive autho- under Act 4th George IV., chapter 71, 
 rity." when the Recorder's Court was abo- 
 * Not to interrupt the continuity of lished. In respect of the Company's 
 the narrative, I may state here that the courts, the Bengal system has been sub- 
 Mayor's Court of Madras was abolished stantially followed in all places subject 
 in 1797, when, under 37th George III., to the Regulations. The local variations 
 chapter 142, a Recorder's Court was scarcely call for detailed notice. 
 
346 JUDICIAL SYSTEMS. 
 
 amount of moral com^age. Of some of the acts, which 
 have most rendered his administration illustrious, as 
 the suppression of Suttee, and the extension of Native 
 Agency I shall speak at another time. I have here 
 only to do with the changes wliich he introduced into 
 the judicial system of the country. These changes 
 were great and sweeping. 
 
 He aboKshed the Provincial Courts.* These Courts, 
 it must be acknowledged, had, in progress of time, 
 sunk into something very different from what Corn- 
 wallis and Barlow had contemplated in their erection. 
 It has been seen how eager they were to raise the 
 dignity of the judicial character — to appoint to these 
 Provincial Courts some of the ablest men in the 
 country. And yet Lord William Bentinck spoke of 
 them " as resting-places for those members of the 
 service who were deemed unfit for higher responsi- 
 bilities." The fact is that the revenue branch of the 
 service, under successive administrations, had been 
 gradually treading down the judicial. The very e^dl 
 which CornwaUis and Barlow had sketched so forcibly 
 in their inaugural minute had been asserting itself, 
 with progressive virulence, ever since theu' removal 
 from the scene of their labors. And now Lord William 
 Bentinck found the Provincial Comets of Appeal and 
 Circuit, which were to have been objects of ambition 
 to the ablest and best men of the Company's civil 
 service, little better than refuges for the destitute and 
 incapable. 
 
 I do not doubt that under this degradation of the 
 judicial service, the Provincial Courts had become 
 wofully inefficient. They required picked men to 
 render them efficient, and they had been presided over 
 
 ♦ The Provincial Courts of Appeal Presidency, were not abolished till some 
 and Courts of Circuit, in the Madras time afterwards. 
 
THE PROVINCIAL COURTS. 347 
 
 by the refuse.* As Courts of Circuit they were 
 especially defective. They held a gaol-delivery twice 
 in every year. The period between commitment and 
 trial was infinitely too long. The prisoner was kept, 
 unjustly, perhaps, for months in confinement, and the 
 prosecutor and his witnesses were carried away from 
 their homes, to eat theh* hearts out around the walls of 
 the Com^t-house, wliilst all then' affairs were being en- 
 gulfed in ruin. Any measure, the effect of which was 
 to increase the number of gaol- deliveries, could not 
 fail to be a blessing to the people. 
 
 This Lord William Bentinck accomplished. But he 
 did much more than tliis. He struck at the very root 
 of the system which Cornwallis had initiated, not 
 merely at the mode of procedure. It was a great 
 thing to increase the number of gaol- deliveries, but it 
 was not necessary to this end that the functions of the 
 judge and the tax-gatherer should again be combined 
 in the same person. Lord William Bentinck abolished 
 the Provincial Courts, and turned the Bevenue Com- 
 missioners into Judges of Circuit. They were to su- 
 perintend both the finance and the criminal justice of 
 their different divisions. They were to look after the 
 Company's coin, and they were to sit in judgment upon 
 gang-robberies — a blending of Somerset House and 
 the Old BaHey. 
 
 I need hardly say that this plan was not a successful 
 one. Some of the ablest and most experienced mem- 
 bers of the Court of Directors protested against it ; 
 and Lord William Bentinck himself soon found that it 
 was a mistake. So he transferred the duties of the 
 Sessions to the civil judges, and decreed that they 
 
 ♦ It is probable, also, that the minds ing to his own prejudices, without a 
 
 of these provincial judges had a ten- chance of haying them rubbed off by a 
 
 dency to deteriorate, under a system contact with superior intelligence. I 
 
 which made them little magnates in am indebted for this suggestion to an 
 
 their several divisions, perhaps at vari- intelligent and experienced friend, 
 ance with one another, and each cling- 
 
348 JUDICIAL SYSTEMS. 
 
 should hold a gaol-delivery every month. There was 
 no ohjection to this arrangement, provided that the 
 judges had sufficient time for the due discharge of the 
 circuit duties without neglecting their other ohliga- 
 tions, and if their new duties were compatihle with the 
 old. But this was not the case. The civil judges, 
 imder the existing system, were also the magistrates. 
 It was necessary, therefore, to divest them of their 
 magisterial duties. So another class of functionaries 
 was to he found to take up these dropped responsi- 
 hnities ; and, accordingly, they were flung to the col- 
 lectors. The warmest admirers of Lord William 
 Bentinck and his system admit that this was a mistake. 
 The new arrangement worked as hadly as could have 
 been expected, and few reasonable men could have 
 predicated anything but failm-e as the result. The 
 office of thief-catcher was of course postponed to that 
 of the financier; and the department of Police was 
 the worst regulated of any branch of the administra- 
 tion. The whole system, indeed, was that of the 
 degradation of the office which ought to have been 
 dignified and exalted. But instead of this, by the 
 reversal of the Cornwallis system, the protection of life 
 and property was presumed to be a matter of minor im- 
 portance, and the responsibilities of the criminal judge 
 and the police magistrate were flung about from one 
 class of public functionaries to another, as though it 
 mattered not by whom they were assumed as an ap- 
 pendage to other graver duties. 
 
 But there were other reforms instituted by Lord 
 William Bentinck of which too much cannot be said 
 in praise. When Lord Cornwallis projected his scheme 
 of internal administration, he had to look no further 
 than Benares for the limit of its field of operation. 
 Lord William Bentinck found an empire extending 
 nearly to the Sutlej ; and yet there was but one Court 
 
NATIVE AGENCY. 349 
 
 of final Appeal tliroughout the whole Presidency of 
 Bengal. Suitors had to travel a thousand miles in 
 search of justice, to brave a new climate and mix with 
 a new race of men. It could not, therefore, he other 
 than a blessing to the people to establish a Court of 
 Appeal in the IS'orth-West Provinces of India. Lord 
 William Bentinck erected a Sudder Court at AUaha- 
 bad, to which appeals lay from aU the local judges. 
 And he relieved the pressure upon those judges by an 
 extension of native judicial agency and the enlargement 
 of the authority of the native servants of the State. 
 
 The enlargement of the judicial machinery of the 
 country, by means of an extension of Native Agency, 
 had long been contemplated by the Court of Directors. 
 As far back as the year 1824,* they had written : 
 
 "We are satisfied that to secure a prompt administration of 
 justice to the natives of India in civil cases, native functionaries 
 must be multiplied, so as to enable them to dispose, in the first 
 instance, of all suits of that description, and, as appears to us, 
 without regard to the amount at stake, their decisions being, of 
 course, liable to revision under appeal, where this check may be 
 deemed indispensable ; and what, perhaps, is of no less import- 
 ance, their general conduct being subject to a constant and 
 vigilant supervision on the part of the European functionaries in 
 the districts where they are stationed. It should be the duty of 
 the latter not only to hear appeals, but to inquire into and report 
 to Government periodically, on the efficiency of the native agents 
 employed more immediately under their eyes, and the degree of 
 estimation in which they are held by the community ; whilst it 
 should equally be the care of Government to reward the deserv- 
 ing, and to testify, in the most marked manner, its displeasure 
 against persons of an opposite character." 
 
 The wishes thus clearly expressed were subsequently 
 many times repeated ; but it was not imtil the year 
 
 * Before this, indeed, the importance now one of the most distinguished of the 
 
 of the subject had been insisted upon Directors of the Company, written in 
 
 both by the Company and their servants. 1821. 
 See minute of Mr. Butterworth Bayley, 
 
350 JUDICIAL SYSTEMS. 
 
 1831, that, under the administration of Lord Wil- 
 liam Bentinck, any steps were taken in India to 
 give effect to the recommendations of the Court. 
 Then, for the first time, the claims of the people of 
 the country to a due participation in the duties and 
 emoluments of puhlic employment were publicly 
 recognised. Lord William Bentinck placed in their 
 hands a large share of the judicial duties of the country, 
 and there is no doubt that thereby the effective work- 
 ing of the machinery of justice was greatly improved. 
 
 I shall speak of this important subject more gene- 
 rally in another place. I have here only to do with its 
 effects upon public justice. In 1831, a higher grade of 
 native judgeships was established. Previous to that 
 period there had been but two classes of native judges, 
 with very limited powers and very smaU salaries. The 
 higher class was known as " Sudder Aumeens," the 
 lower as "Moonsiffs." The Moonsiffs, originally de- 
 nominated ''Commissioners," had been appointed by 
 Lord Cornwallis to relieve the pressure on the Euro- 
 pean judges. In 1793 they were empowered to de- 
 termine suits relating to accounts not exceeding 50 
 rupees. In 1803, the office of Sudder Aumeen was 
 instituted, with a jurisdiction extending to suits of 
 100 rupees. In 1821, after some intermediate en- 
 largement of the powers of both classes, the Moonsiffs 
 had been empowered to try suits extending to 150 
 rupees, whilst the Sudder Aumeen took cognisance 
 of cases to the amount of 500 rupees. In 1827, the 
 authority in the latter case had been doubled, and 
 the Sudder Aumeen, if so empowered by the Sudder 
 Court, had jurisdiction over cases extending to 1000 
 rupees. 
 
 Lord William Bentinck now established a superior 
 class of judicial officers, known as " Principal Sudder 
 Aumeens," with enlarged powers and higher sala- 
 
DEPUTY MAGISTRATES. 351 
 
 ries. They were subsequently autliorised to try cases 
 involving property to any amount ; and an appeal 
 lay from them to the European judges. The highest 
 salary of these officers was 720Z. a year — a sum not to 
 be estimated according to om' English ideas of income, 
 but to the requirements of the natives of India and 
 the general wages of the country. 
 
 The machinery of civil justice having thus been 
 greatly enlarged, the expediency also of a more ex- 
 tensive employment of uncovenanted agency in the 
 criminal branch of the judicial department, forced 
 itself on the minds of our administrators. But 
 it was not until the year 1843, that an act was passed 
 by the Legislative Council, reciting that the exigencies 
 of the public ser\dce required that this department 
 should be strengthened by a larger employment of un- 
 covenanted agency, and empowering both the Bengal 
 and Agra Governments to appoint in any Zillah or 
 district one or more uncovenanted deputy-magistrates. 
 Under this act several excellent public officers have 
 been appointed, selected from all classes of society — 
 Europeans, natives, and men of mixed blood. The 
 local Governments are authorised to confer full magis- 
 terial powers on these officers, and the authority has 
 sometimes been exercised with good effect. 
 
 About this time a further attempt was made to 
 improve the general efficiency of the machinery of 
 criminal justice, by the elevation of the superior 
 native police-officers, kno^Ti as " Darogahs.''* Their 
 
 * The duties of the Darogah are thus sition of his witnesses, and makes such 
 
 briefly stated : " On the receipt of in- inquiries as may appear to him proper, 
 
 formation by the Darogah of the occur- and, if the case be proved, forwards his 
 
 rence of a heinous offence, he is re- proceedings, together with the defen- 
 
 quired to submit a notice thereof to the dant, to take his trial before the magis- 
 
 magistrate, and proceed himself to the trate. In cases of simple burglary and 
 
 spot, to hold a preliminary investiga- theft, the Darogah is forbidden to hold 
 
 tion. On his arrival he sends for the any investigation, unless a petition is 
 
 prosecutor or aggrieved party, takes presented to him by the injured party, 
 
 concisely his deposition and the depo- or he be ordered to do so by the magis- 
 
352 JTJDICIAL SYSTEMS. 
 
 salaries, which had been inexpediently low, were now 
 considerably raised. But they still continued inadequate 
 to the required end ; and the department of police still 
 demanded the most vigilant superintendence of the 
 European officer to restrain it from becoming a mighty 
 engine of injustice and oppression. Prom the very 
 first our administrators had contended in vain against 
 this gigantic evil, the evil of a corrupt police — a police 
 continually in league with the greatest criminals in the 
 country, receiving their pay, sharing their spoils, 
 screening their offences, and probably carrying off in- 
 nocent men to the magistrate's court in their stead. 
 Erom the time when, in 1792, Lord Comwallis, de- 
 claring ''the establishment of an efficient police 
 throughout the country, whereby offenders may be 
 deprived of all hopes of eluding the pursuit of the offi- 
 cers of justice," to be "as essential towards deterring 
 people from committing crimes, as the speedy and im- 
 partial trial of offenders when apprehended," had taken 
 the management of the police immediately into Go- 
 vernment hands, we have been endeavouring to secure 
 the services of a well-organised detective force; but 
 continually acknowledging that this very Police is the 
 weakest point of our administration. If the remedy had 
 been as apparent as the disease we should soon have era- 
 dicated the latter. But crime in India was so vast, and 
 its organisation so intricate, that it seemed hopeless to 
 construct out of such materials a police force really effec- 
 tive for the protection of the country. We had, indeed, 
 to contend against difficulties unknown in tliis country. 
 To convey to the untravelled reader some idea of what 
 these difficulties were, and at the same time to show 
 how our officers have endeavoured to overcome them, 
 
 trate." — [Calcutta Review.^ Tliis prohi- venality and oppressiveness of the 
 
 bition, which may appear strange to police, who turned these inquiries to 
 
 the European eye, was intended by purposes of extortion. 
 Lord William Bentinck to check the 
 
THUGGEE AND DAKOITEE. 
 
 353 
 
 I proceed now to the consideration of some of those 
 great crimes, which from generation to generation have 
 rendered both life and property frightfully insecure in 
 India, and of the efforts which, under British administra- 
 tion — efforts, the difficulty of which few who have never 
 visited India can rightly appreciate* — have been made 
 for their suppression. I do not know that there is any 
 subject to which, in such a work as this, ampler space 
 should be devoted than to Thuggee and Dakoitee. 
 
 * Astonishment has been sometimes 
 expressed that systematic murder 
 should have so long been perpetrated, 
 almost unchecked, in dominions subject 
 to the British Crown. But it was only 
 the other day (whilst the present edi- 
 tion of this work was going through 
 the press) that Mr. Justice Jackson, at 
 
 the Monaghan Assizes, declared that in 
 that part of Ireland "for a few shillings 
 parties may be found to take the life 
 of an individual, however respectable, 
 although he may not have given him 
 the slightest cause of offence, or even 
 be known to the murderer." 
 
 2 a 
 
354 THUGGEE. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Thuggee— Increased Knowledge of the Habits of the People— Its Results- 
 Antiquity of Thuggee— Its Progress— Manners and Customs of the Thugs- 
 Thuggee Expeditions— EflPorts for the Suppression of Thuggee— The Thuggee 
 Department — Colonel Sleeman and liis Associates — Complicity of the Ze- 
 mindars — Success of our Efforts — Decrease of the Crime. 
 
 There is nothing more remarkable in our recent con* 
 nexion with the East than our increased knowledge of 
 the manners and customs, the literature and the rehgion, 
 the vices and the virtues, of the people. We had been 
 nearly two centuries connected with them, by ties at least 
 of commerce, before we knew very much more about the 
 natives of India than that they were a race of black people, 
 with bare legs, carrying the greater amount of their 
 apparel piled up on the top of their heads. We looked 
 upon them for a great number of years simply as a people 
 to be trafficked with — a people with whom it was our 
 mission to drive hard bargains for muslin or silk. In 
 time we came to look upon them as a people to be sub- 
 dued; and then, having subdued them, we began to 
 regard our dusky subjects as so many millions of re- 
 venue-payers — people from whom it was our duty to 
 extract so much in the shape of rent or taxes in recog- 
 nition of their subjection. Then, after another lapse of 
 years, we looked upon them as a people to be governed. 
 We invented, as has been seen, new codes of laws for 
 their restraint and correction, and we did our best, 
 whilst keeping them in order, to protect their properties 
 and their Uves. But it is only within very recent times 
 
INCREASED KNOWLEDGE OF THE COUNTRY. 355 
 
 that we have thought it worth our while to know any- 
 thing about the natives of India, and to turn our know- 
 ledge to profitable account. 
 
 The study of books in India preceded the study of men. 
 Learned orientalists, at the close of the last century, took 
 counsel with the Pundits and Moulavees, and wrote 
 elaborate dissertations upon the Hindoo and Mahomedan 
 codes and scriptures, which they diligently translated for 
 the benefit of the Christian world. From these ancient 
 authorities they derived a vast deal of very recondite 
 information, which did not, however, in our commerce 
 with the people, prove to be of much use. That which, 
 perhaps, we most required to know was not set down 
 in these books. It was not, indeed, set down anywhere 
 in written characters ; but it was stamped, broadly and 
 deeply — seemingly, indeed, ineffaceably — upon the heart 
 of Indian society. It was not, however, of that kind 
 which he who runs may read. It was not blazoned upon 
 the mosques or inscribed upon the pagodas. An English 
 traveller might make his way from one end of the country 
 to the other and see nothing of the things with which 
 it was so profitable to make permanent acquaintance. 
 He acquired the scantiest possible knowledge of the 
 habits and customs of the people. He passed through 
 them, perhaps lived amongst them, but he only saw the 
 surface of society. Perhaps he did not desire to look 
 beneath the outer shell. Perhaps he beheld feebly some 
 indications of hidden mysteries which he did not care 
 to fathom. Certain it is, that he left much for his suc- 
 cessors to drag into the clear light of day. We have 
 much to learn even now. But honor is still due to 
 our cotemporaries for what they have revealed — for 
 what, by stubborn inquiries, by deep probings and subtle 
 anatomisations, they have mastered, and comprehended, 
 and exposed. Little was it that we could do for India 
 until we knew something of the people whom Providence 
 
 2 a2 
 
356 THUGGEE. 
 
 had committed to our care. How could we address 
 ourselves to the remedy of the evUs which were preying 
 upon the vitals of Indian society, whilst we had no dis- 
 tinct understanding of what those corrosive evils were ? 
 
 I do not write this in condemnation or reprehension 
 of our predecessors on Indian soil. It was natural — 
 almost necessary, indeed — that there should have been 
 such short-comings as these. There are truths not to 
 be arrived at except by long and patient induction. 
 There are secrets buried deep beneath the surface which 
 it is a work of time and toil to extricate from the decep- 
 tive clay which clings around them. Institutions, pur- 
 posely veiled in darkness, of a strange, mysterious, almost 
 incredible character, were likely to have escaped the 
 notice of the European eye. .It was long before we 
 suspected the systematic war against life and property 
 which had been carried on for years in almost every part 
 of the country from Oude to the Carnatic. It was long 
 before we could bring ourselves to understand that 
 organised bands of professional and hereditary murderers 
 and depredators, recognised, and indeed, to a certain 
 extent tolerated by their fellow-men, were preying upon 
 the uninitiated and unwary sections of society, and com- 
 mitting the most monstrous crimes with as much fore- 
 thought and ingenuity as though murder were one of the 
 fine arts, and robbery a becoming effort of human skill ; 
 nay, indeed, glorying in such achievements, as acts wel- 
 come to the deity, and bringing them to perfection with a 
 due observance of all the ceremonial formalities of a che- 
 rished religious faith. 
 
 But in time we began to understand these things. We 
 obtained a clue and we followed it up, until the hideous 
 mystery was brought out into the clear light of day. 
 There is not an intelligent reader at the present time 
 who does not know what a Thug is. The word, indeed, 
 has been adopted into our own language, and has been 
 
ORIGIN OF THUGGEE. 357 
 
 applied to other depredators than those who worship the 
 Goddess Davee. It is well known that a Thug is a pro- 
 fessional murderer. We found the Thugs carrying on 
 their fearful trade, and as soon as we came to under- 
 stand them we made war upon, and struck them down. 
 The servants of the East India Company have extirpated 
 Thuggee. It is an exploit worthy to be celebrated by 
 every writer who undertakes to chronicle the achieve- 
 ments of the English in the East — one which it is im- 
 possible to dwell upon without pleasure and pride. 
 
 Of the antiquity of Thuggee there is no doubt. In the 
 creed of its votaries it had, of course, a divine origin. 
 Everything monstrous and abominable in India has the 
 sanction of some puerile or obscene legend to recommend 
 it to the superstitious and the depraved. The legend 
 which declares the divinity of Thuggee is preposterous 
 even for an Oriental tradition. I do not know a more 
 absurd chapter in all that monstrous farrago of absurdi- 
 ties, the Hindoo mythology, than that which sets forth 
 how the Goddess Kalee made war upon a gigantic 
 monster, every drop of whose blood became a destructive 
 demon; how the blood of these demons generated other 
 demons, until the earth was in a fair way to be overrun 
 by the noxious brood; how, at length, the goddess hit 
 upon the notable expedient of creating from the celestial 
 ichor which exuded from her trenchant arm two men, to 
 whom she gave handkerchiefs, or waistbands, with orders 
 to destroy the demons by strangulation without shedding 
 a drop of blood; and how, the demons having been so 
 destroyed, the grateful goddess gave the handkerchiefs 
 to her myrmidons, and told them that thenceforth they 
 and their descendants might cany on a profitable trade 
 by exercising the destroying implements upon the human 
 race. The Thugs, of course, claim to be descended 
 from these unbegotten heroes, and are very proud of the 
 
358 THUGGEE. 
 
 descent. ** I am a Thug of the royal records," said one 
 of these professional stranglers; *'I and my fathers have 
 been Thugs for twenty generations."* 
 
 And what was this royal profession of which the 
 members were so proud ? It was simply the cowardly 
 strangling of unsuspecting travellers in remote places, 
 generally committed under circumstances of falsehood 
 and treachery of the deepest dye. These Thugs, leagued 
 together in a great brotherhood of crime, having taken 
 the sacrament with all possible solemnity ,f went about 
 the country murdering in their cold bloodless style all 
 the unwary wayfarers whom they could seduce into their 
 toils. There was nothing to distinguish these artists 
 from ordinary travellers. They assumed many different 
 disguises, and played many different parts. They sepa- 
 rated on the road, straggled into the towns and villages 
 in little parties of three and four, and met as though they 
 were strangers to each other. Perhaps one of the gang 
 
 ♦ Thevenot, who travelled in India with her, and finding her beautiful, 
 in the seventeenth century, has given offers her his assistance, which she 
 an account of the Thugs, from which it accepts ; but he hath no sooner taken 
 appears that in those days they em- her up behind him on horseback than 
 ployed female decoys : — " Though the she throws the snare about his neck 
 road I have been speaking of, from and strangles him, or at least stuns 
 Delhi to Agra, be tolerable, yet hath him, until the robbers, who lie hid, 
 it many inconveniences. One may meet come running to her assistance, and 
 with tigers, panthers, and lions upon complete what she hath begun." 
 it; and one had best also have a care f 'The sacred element was a kind of 
 of robbers, and above all things not to coarse sugar. According to the Thugs 
 suffer anybody to come near one upon the deity entered largely into it, and 
 the road. The cunningest robbers in there was a kind of transubstantiation, 
 the world are in that country. They which wrought mightily upon the corn- 
 use a certain slip, with a running municants. At all events, they de- 
 noose, which they can cast with so clared that the sacred sugar changed 
 much sleight about a man's neck, when their whole nature. " It would change 
 they are within reach of him, that they the nature of a horse," they said, 
 never fail, so that they strangle him in " Let any one once taste of that sugar 
 a trice. They have another cunning and he will be a Timg, though he know 
 trick also to catch travellers: they send all the trades and have all the wealth 
 out a handsome woman upon the road, in the world." " My father made me 
 who, with her hair dishevelled, seems taste of that fatal sugar," said a Thug 
 to be all in tears, sighing and com- to Colonel Sleemau, " when I was yet 
 plaining of some misfortime which she a mere boy ; and if I were to live a 
 pretends has befallen her. Now, as she thousand years, I should never be able 
 takes the same way that the traveller to follow any other trade." 
 goes, he easily falls into conversation 
 
I 
 
 HABITS OF THE THUGS. 359 
 
 travelled in some state, as a man of rank, accompanied by 
 numerous attendants, and a few palanquins or doolies, in 
 which were said to be the ladies of his family, though in 
 reality they contained little but the implements of their 
 profession. On the road, so disguised, with nothing 
 about them to awaken suspicion, these traders in death 
 would fall, as though by accident, into the company of 
 other wayfarers, and watching a favorable opportunity 
 on the skirts of some jungle, or in some secluded place 
 bordering upon a convenient watercourse, would throw 
 the murderous waistband or turban-cloth round the neck 
 of their victim, and scientifically do him to death. One 
 man threw the fatal noose, another, seizing the other 
 end of the rope or cloth, drew it tightly round the help- 
 less wretch's neck, the two together pressing his head 
 forward with their disengaged hands, whilst a third 
 seized him by the legs and threw him to the ground. 
 There could be no resistance. The work was quickly 
 done. The body was then stripped, the property 
 secured, and very soon the corpse was buried. The 
 consecrated pickaxe, plied with miraculous silence, soon 
 dug a grave for the body.* If a stranger approached 
 whilst they were thus engaged, they laid a cloth decently 
 and reverently over the carcase of the murdered man, 
 and kneeling down beside it, lifted up their voices and 
 wept, over the death of a beloved comrade. 
 
 Various were their artifices — great their cleverness. 
 They were, indeed, consummate actors. If the locality 
 were a dangerous one, the country much frequented, 
 
 * The pickaxe, forged with due so- seventh day? Is it not our standard? 
 
 lemnity, and then consecrated with Is its sound ever heard, when digging 
 
 certain prescribed formalities, was held the grave, by any but a Thug ? And 
 
 in especial veneration by the Thugs, can any man ever swear to a falsehood 
 
 It wa« forbidden to bury the dead with upon it?" Another asked, " How could 
 
 any other instrument; for it was the we dig with any other instrument? 
 
 symbol of their profession, and a legacy This is the one appointed by Davee and 
 
 left, it wai believed, by the goddess consecrated; and we should never have 
 
 herself. " Do we not worship it," said survived the attempt to use any 
 
 a Thug to Colonel Sleeman, " every other." 
 
360 THUGGEE. 
 
 they would throw up a slight enclosure of canvas, pre- 
 tending that their women were behind the screens, and 
 bury the body within it. Or, warned of the approach of 
 travellers by one of their scouts, some clever member 
 of the gang would throw himself down by the wayside, 
 and simulate the spasms and convulsions, or the exhaus- 
 tion and prostration of a dying man ; and whilst the 
 sympathising travellers were gathering round him and 
 administering such simple remedies as were within their 
 reach, his companions would conceal the body of their 
 victim, and clear away the traces of their guilt. Some- 
 times the locality favored a readier and easier mode 
 of disposing of the corpse, which was flung into a neigh- 
 bouring river, or dropped into a convenient well. 
 
 Thus were these murders — systematically, artistically — 
 perpetrated, with an adroit avoidance of detection which 
 seldom or never failed. Human hfe in India is not of 
 much account. A corpse by the wayside in England 
 fills nearly a whole county with horror and astonish- 
 ment. In India, even a humane English gentleman 
 passes it by on the other side, and is only so far con- 
 cerned at the spectacle, that probably his horse has shied 
 at it, as it would at the trunk of a tree. Every one is 
 accustomed to the sight of human bodies drifting down 
 the river — floating islands inhabited by gorging birds of 
 prey ; or if you should chance to reside in a villa on 
 the river-side, you are not concerned by the knowledge 
 that the round white balls which dot your lawn like 
 snow-flakes, or with which your little children are play- 
 ing, are so many human skulls. Still less do the natives 
 of India, by whom the European gentleman is infected, 
 in due time, with this apathy, bestir themselves, body 
 or soul, about these indications of our frail mortality. 
 Death in India comes in many sudden shapes. If a cer- 
 tain Moodoo-sooden, or Rungoo-Lal, is missing from his 
 
NUMBER OF VICTIMS. 361 
 
 accustomed place, or does not reach the end of a journey 
 (should any one expect him), his anxious relatives take 
 it for granted that he has been bitten by a serpent — 
 that the cholera has preyed upon his vitals, or a wild 
 beast has eaten him up. No descriptions of the missing 
 one are inserted in the newspapers, and no members of 
 the detective police are employed to discover the cause 
 of his disappearance. Somehow or other he has been 
 absorbed. " Mur-gyd' — He has gone dead. 
 
 And so it happens that hundreds of natives of India 
 disappear;* and their disappearance is either hardly 
 noted, or it creates no astonishment or alarm. A journey 
 in India is an affair of many months; and numerous 
 are the perils which beset the path of the unprotected 
 pedestrian. Hence it is that whole hecatombs were 
 sacrificed to the Goddess Davee, and no one took account 
 of the victims. Travellers likely to be missed were not 
 especial objects of regard with the Thugs. They suffered 
 such noticeable personages to pass on their way un- 
 heeded. Or, if tempted by the largeness of the spoil 
 which glittered before them, they were betrayed into a 
 departure from their ordinary cautious mode of procedure, 
 they summoned to their aid something more than the 
 common artifices of their profession, and surpassed them- 
 selves in cunning and skill. Sometimes the very envi- 
 
 ♦ I ought rather to have written respectability, in 1833 declared that 
 
 thousands. A correspondent in the ** one hundred Thuys slaughter, on an 
 
 Thuggee Department wrote me a few average, eight hundred persons in a 
 
 years ago : " In India hundreds of month. It is not, therefore," added 
 
 thousands disappear in a year or two, the writer, " going beyond the truth 
 
 without the most distant clue but to aflSrm that, between the Nerbudda 
 
 Thannadar's reports, to ascertain whe- and the Sutlej, the number murdered 
 
 ther they have not been foully mur- every year is not less than ten thou- 
 
 dered. Villagers have assured me that sand." The writer calculates that 
 
 to their own certain knowledge scores within these limits a hundred Thugs 
 
 of men murdered by robbers, or in were always out on their murderous 
 
 affrays, have been reported dead of expeditions — probably many more were 
 
 cholera, snakebites," &c. It is not so employed. And this calculation only 
 
 easy to arrive at a correct estimate of relates to a certain tract of country, 
 
 the number of people murdered an- I am inclined, however, to think that 
 
 nually by the Thugs. A native news- the individual performances of the 
 
 paper (the Sumachar Durpan) of great Thugs is here Bomewbat overrated. 
 
362 THUGGEE. 
 
 ronments of the marked man favored the escape of his 
 murderer. The Thugs always knew their men. They 
 never threw the noose without previously acquainting 
 themselves with the circumstances of their victim. If 
 they murdered a Company's Sepoy, on leave to his native 
 village, carrying his savings wrapped up in his waistband, 
 they knew that it would be long before he would be 
 missed, either by his own family, or the adjutant of his 
 regiment ; and that, if missed by the former, his dis- 
 appearance would be attributed to ordinary death, or if 
 by the latter, to desertion. If they murdered a con- 
 fidential pubhc or private servant, bearing treasure from 
 one station to another, they knew that the absence of 
 the man, or the party of men at the accustomed place, 
 would be attributed to the dishonesty of the treasure- 
 bearers ; and that whilst the police, if set upon the track, 
 were in search of him, they would be far away from the 
 district through which his journey had lain. They took 
 care to leave behind them no living witnesses of their 
 guilt. If they hunted down a man of note, they 
 destroyed all his attendants. They always went for- 
 ward ; they never presented themselves in a town or 
 village through which one of their victims had passed. 
 So that even if they went on, riding the horses or 
 wearing the clothes of the men they had murdered, their 
 appearance excited no mistrust. They had always a 
 ready story at command. They had always a given 
 character to assume. They understood each other tho- 
 roughly, and they acted in concert, though often they 
 appeared to be strangers. They had a secret dialect of 
 their own ; but often more serviceable than this were the 
 secret signs by which they silently communicated with 
 each other. They played their parts, indeed, with con- 
 summate address ; and they passed on unsuspected to 
 pursue their dreadful trade in the next convenient lo- 
 cality. For such localities they had keen and disciplined 
 
HOMES OF THE THUGS. 363 
 
 eyes, as artists have for the picturesque or sportsmen for 
 good covers ; and their faces sparkled and their hearts 
 swelled when they chanced on these good murder- 
 grounds. 
 
 It might seem from this account of the depredational 
 excursions of these professional robbers, that they were 
 men without a local habitation or a name, flitting from 
 place to place, and never establishing for themselves 
 such social connexions as were likely to cause their 
 migrations to be matter of observance, or, indeed, to 
 attract any kind of continued notice. But such was not, 
 by any means, the case. They belonged for the most 
 part to particular villages, where they left their wives 
 and children ; and they outwardly followed some peace- 
 ful calling. They cultivated the fields — rented a few 
 acres of ground — or, perhaps, embarked as agriculturists 
 on a larger scale, and employed laboring men to work 
 under them.* Their occasional absence from the village 
 was necessarily remarked. Sometimes the real cause 
 was not suspected ; but often it was a matter of open 
 notoriety. A Thug set out on his dreadful journey, and 
 every one in the village knew the cause of his departure — 
 except, perhaps, his own wife. 
 
 It was not, indeed, a matter of much concernment to 
 the villagers that these migratory murderers should set 
 out upon their journeys to remote places, and return 
 richer than they went. They did not murder their 
 neighbours. Indeed, the village directly benefited by the 
 blood-money that was brought home. The Zemindar, 
 or head man, had an immediate interest in the success 
 
 * Take from among many instances occasionally, but they knew not that I 
 
 the following, from the evidence of was a murderer."— Again :" I remained 
 
 Colonel Sleeman's approvers ; — " I re- in my own house for two months after 
 
 mained in my own house for about a this, cultivating in my fields, for I 
 
 year and a half at Guntoulee, working rented three or four beegalis of land, 
 
 upon my own fields as a cultivator, for chiefly, however, as a blind to conceal 
 
 I rented 100 beegahs of land, and em- that I was a Thug, and to make a show 
 
 ployed laborers ; the villagers knew that I was a cultivator. I started again 
 
 that I was a man who went horn home on Thuggee." 
 
364 THUGGEE. 
 
 of the expedition. A certain amount of tribute, or hush- 
 money, was always paid to him; and the police officials, 
 in the same manner, were bribed into silence.* Often, 
 indeed, the brothers, or other near relatives of the village 
 police, were members of the Thug gangs; and Thugs 
 themselves have been known to wear the official brass- 
 plates on their breasts which stamped them as Govern- 
 ment employes. The protection of the Zemindars often 
 went the length, especially in the native states, of overt 
 and violent interference, and pitched battles have been 
 fought in defence of the tribute-paying criminals when 
 extermination has threatened the gangs.f The payments 
 made by the Thugs and other depredational leagues, of 
 which I shall speak presently, formed no inconsiderable 
 item of their revenue. They looked to it, indeed, as to 
 a perennial source of income from which they could 
 make good any deficiencies in the amount of the Govern- 
 ment claim, and sometimes applied the screw with such 
 freedom that the unhappy Thugs, alarmed by their in- 
 creasing exactions, migrated altogether from the extor- 
 tionate village, and sought a resting-place where they 
 might dwell without disgorging so large a share of their 
 murder-gotten wealth. At one time, it may be added, 
 so openly was the traffic carried on, that merchants often 
 came from a distance to purchase the plunder brought 
 home by the migratory gangs; but it would seem that 
 the extension of the Company's judicial machinery, and 
 
 ♦ " I always," said one approrer, two companies of infantry to secure 
 " after my journey, was obliged to them. Tlie head man of the village 
 give the Zemindar, Ragonauth Sing, was determined to protect them, in 
 of my village, some present, for the consideration of the share of the booty 
 whole village knew that I was a Thug, they had always given him. An action 
 and the 2^mindar would have had me took place, in which several lives were 
 put in .irons but for these presents, lost, while the camp of the Governor- 
 All Thugs thus propitiate their Zemin- General of India, Lord William Ben- 
 dars." tinck, and that of the Bayza Bhaee, 
 
 t " At last," said another approver, were within hearing of the guns. The 
 
 " being traced by the Saugor guardi. Thugs all made their escape, in dis- 
 
 thc G walior Regent, Bayza Bhaee, was guise, with the women, but were soon 
 
 induced, at the suggestion of the British after taken." 
 Affent, to send out a detachment of 
 
AUGURIES OF THUGGEE. 365 
 
 the greater vigilance of its officers, soon indicated the 
 necessity of greater caution in the disposal of the spoil.* 
 It may be doubted whether any class of natives ever 
 followed their peculiar avocations with a keener relish 
 than these Thugs.t They were brought up from early 
 youth to the dreadful trade. Thuggee was to them not 
 merely a profession. It was a religion. They believed 
 that the Goddess Davee smiled down upon their exploits, 
 and communicated with them through the agency of 
 certain recognised sights and sounds. They performed 
 ceremonial rites in propitiation of the deity, and then 
 looked eagerly for the anticipated omens. No augurs, 
 in remote ages of classical antiquity, ever consulted the 
 auspices with more solemn outward observances, or a 
 firmer inward faith in the expected revelations. A larger 
 range of deity-directed signals was, however, embraced 
 in the code of these Eastern soothsayers. Men and 
 women, of different kinds, and in different situations, 
 were pressed into the service as omens, and various 
 animals, wild and tame, were believed to have the same 
 commission from the goddess. There seems to have 
 been no harmony and consistency observed in the inter- 
 
 ♦ The following, from a very interest- to make it seem almost incredible that 
 ing Report, by the late Captain Lowis, they should give protection to such 
 on River Thuggee, contains a very de- criminals, have, in fact, done so, for it 
 cided opinion on the subject of the appears out of the question that the 
 complicity of all classes of the village total population of a village should be 
 communities : — "To conclude, there Thugs engaged in the regular practice 
 seems no doubt that this horrid crime of Thuggee, and several of them fre- 
 has been fostered by nearly all classes quently apprehended on the gravest 
 of the community — the landholders, suspicion of that crime, without the 
 the native oflBcers of our courts, the cognisance of the Zemindars." 
 police, the village authorities — all, I f I have alighted upon only one 
 think, have been more or less guilty, statement which militates against this 
 My meaning is not, of course, that general assertion, and, perhaps " prores 
 every member of these classes, but that the rule." A Thug, named Dhosoo, 
 individuals, varying in number in each examined by Captain Paton, at Luck- 
 class, were concerned. The Foujdaree now, declared " we only thug from 
 police gomastahs have, in many in- necessity, not from pleasure — it is 
 stances, been practising Thugs ; and fearful business." But I could pile up 
 the cliowkedars, or village watchmen, proofs of the relish with which they 
 frequently so. It is much to be feared pursued their trade, 
 that men so respectable in position as 
 
366 THUGGEE. 
 
 pretiDg of these divine manifestationa. Thus a lame 
 man and a dancing-master — a potter and an oil-seller, 
 were equally unpropitious. Of the brute creation, the 
 donkey and the jackal were regarded as the most impor- 
 tant members, and various were the sights or sounds of 
 encouragement, or warning, eagerly looked for from the 
 unconscious beasts. Certain months of the year, and cer- 
 tain days of the week, were proscribed as of ill omen ; and 
 it was necessary that they should regulate both their diet 
 and their toilet in the manner of which Davee was sup- 
 posed to approve. If they were fortunate, they ascribed 
 all their good fortune to a due regard of these heavenly 
 directions, and if misadventure befel them, they attri- 
 buted it, with praiseworthy candor, to their own mis- 
 interpretations, or neglect of the omens through which 
 the goddess had frequently vouchsafed to make known 
 her wishes to her people. " Even the most sensible 
 approvers," writes Colonel Sleeman, " who have been 
 with me for many years, as well Mussulmans as Hin- 
 doos, believe that their good or ill success always de- 
 pended upon the skill with which their omens were 
 discovered and interpreted, and the strictness with which 
 they were observed and obeyed. One of the old Sin- 
 douse stock told me in presence of twelve others, from 
 Hyderabad, Behar, the Dooab, Oude, Rajpootana, and 
 Bundelcund, that had they not attended to these omens 
 they could never have thrived as they did ; and that in 
 ordinary cases of murder a man seldom escaped after 
 one of them; while they and their famihes had for ten 
 generations thriven, though they had murdered hundreds 
 of people. * This,' said he, ' could never have been the 
 caae had we not attended to omens, and had not omens 
 been intended for us/ Every Thug present concurred 
 with him from his soul." 
 
 When once the omens had shown themselves to be 
 
INSENSIBILITY OF THE THUGS. 367 
 
 propitious, and Davee had smiled down upon the enter- 
 prise, murder became not only a religious duty, but a 
 pleasant task. No compunctions then visited the en- 
 lightened Thug. " And do you never feel sympathy 
 for the persons murdered — never pity or compunction ?'' 
 asked Colonel Sleeman of a Thug, who had turned 
 approver. " Never," was the answer. " How can you," 
 pursued the English officer, " murder old men and 
 young children, without some emotions of pity — calmly 
 and dehberately as they sit with you, and converse with 
 you — and tell you of their private afiairs — of their hopes 
 and fears — and of the wives and children they are going 
 to meet, after years of absence, toil, and suffering?" 
 And the answer returned was : " From the time that the 
 omens have been favorable, we consider them as vic- 
 tims thrown into our hands by the deity to be killed, 
 and that we are the mere instrument in her hands to 
 destroy them; that if we do not kill them, she will 
 never be again propitious to us, and we and our families 
 will be involved in misery and want." " And," ques- 
 tioned Colonel Sleeman, " you can sleep as soundly by 
 the bodies, or over the graves of those you have mur- 
 dered, and eat your meals with as much appetite as 
 ever?" And still the answer was: "Just the same — 
 we sleep and eat just the same — unless we are afraid of 
 being discovered." These last words do not indicate 
 the fulness of faith which we should have expected to 
 find in such a worshipper of Davee; for it was the 
 professed belief of the Thugs, that if the omens were 
 properly observed and interpreted, they never could be 
 discovered. 
 
 Indeed, such was their confidence in the protective 
 power of the goddess, that they believed that she would 
 not only, if religiously served, shield them fi'om harm, 
 but visit with her wrath all who injured them. Nor was 
 this beUef confined exclusively to the Thugs. Their 
 
368 THUGGEE. 
 
 ravages were regarded with something of superstitious 
 awe even by influential chiefe. At least, such was the 
 statement of the murderers themselves, and there is 
 other evidence to support the supposition. When Colonel 
 Sleeman asked an approver if he knew any instances of 
 influential natives suflering for acts of enmity or oppo- 
 sition to the Thugs, he was answered : " A great many. 
 Was not Nanha, the Rajah of Jhalone, made leprous 
 by Davee for putting to death Bodhoo and his brother 
 Khumoolee, two of the most noted Thugs of their day ? 
 He had them trampled under the feet of elephants, but 
 the leprosy broke out upon his body the very next day." 
 *' Did he believe," asked Colonel Sleeman, " that this 
 punishment was inflicted by Davee for putting them to 
 death ?" " He was quite sensible of it," was the answer. 
 " Did he do anything to appease her ?'^ was then asked. 
 " Everything," replied the approver. " Bodhoo had begun 
 a well in Jhalone; the Rajah built it up in magnificent 
 style ; he had a tomb raised to their name, fed Brahmins, 
 and consecrated it ; had worship instituted upon it — but 
 all in vain; the disease was incurable, and the Rajah 
 died in a few months a miserable death. The tomb and 
 well are both kept up and visited by hundreds to this 
 day, and no one doubts that the Rajah was punished for 
 putting these two Thugs to death." This was but one of 
 many instances which Colonel Sleeman's approvers were 
 eager to relate. One man, when asked if he knew any 
 other cases of the same kind, replied, " Hundreds ! When 
 Madhajee Scindiah caused seventy Thugs to be executed 
 at Multoun, was he not warned in a dream by Davee 
 that he should release them ? and did he not the very 
 day after their execution begin to spit blood ? and did 
 he not die within three months ?" Then other witnesses 
 were ready with other proofs of the omnipotence of Davee, 
 and told how, when certain Rajpoot chiefs arrested 
 eighty Thugs, all their families were afflicted, how they 
 
FIKST KNOWLEDGE OF THE THUGS. 369 
 
 all perished, '^not a child left;" and how one who had 
 imposed certain fines upon the gang, the very daythat 
 he took the money lost his only son, *' and the best 
 horse in his stable ; and was himself taken ill, and died 
 soon after a miserable death." But they all acknow- 
 ledged that even Davee could not withstand the good 
 fortune of the Company. "The Company's good fortune 
 is such," they said, " that before the sound of your drums, 
 sorcerers, witches, and demons take flight — and how can 
 Thuggee stand ?" 
 
 Thuggee did not stand — it fell. The great work of 
 rooting out these monstrous depredational leagues was 
 accomplished in a few years by the energies of a few 
 European officers. Up to the year 1829 but little had 
 been done to suppress the abomination. Occasional 
 evidences of the crime had presented themselves some 
 years before, and a few gangs of professional m^urderers 
 had been arrested. In 1810, General St. Leger, then Com- 
 mander-in-Chief, issued an order cautioning the troops, 
 especially the Sepoys, about to proceed on leave to their 
 homes, against " a description of murderers denominated 
 Thugs," who infested the districts of the Doab, and other 
 parts of the Upper Provinces. About the same time 
 some of the more active of our magistrates in Upper 
 India had succeeded in securing the persons of a 
 number of these murderers, but although several of 
 them confessed, and the property of the murdered men 
 was found in their houses, the higher judicial authorities 
 did not consider that the evidence was sufficient to con- 
 vict them. " Mr. Wright apprehended seventy-six, of 
 whom seventeen made confessions which strongly cri- 
 minated the remaining fifty-nine, who denied. Those 
 who denied, and those who confessed, were alike released 
 by one sweeping order from the Nizamut Adawlut with- 
 out security or anything else ;"* and sent back to carry 
 
 * Letter from G. StockweU^ joint magistrate, Etawah, to T. Wauchope, magistrate, 
 Bundekundj December, 1814. 
 
 2b 
 
370 THUGGEE. 
 
 on their old trade, emboldened by impunity and suc- 
 cess. 
 
 These were but fitful eflforts resulting in nothing. 
 The subject excited little general interest, and no or- 
 ganised efforts, on an effective scale, were made to root 
 out the enormous evil. Indeed, its extent was imperfectly 
 known even to the best informed of our officers until 
 about the time which I have indicated, under the go- 
 vernment of Lord William Bentinck, operations were for- 
 mally commenced, and a regular " Department" for the 
 suppression of Thuggee instituted by that enlightened 
 nobleman. And so vigorously was this great work 
 prosecuted — with such remarkable intelligence, and such 
 admirable perseverance were all our measures shaped, 
 and all our projects executed — that, ten years afterwards, 
 Colonel Sleeman, to whose benevolent energies we are, 
 under Providence, mainly indebted for the success of the 
 undertaking, was enabled to write: — "In 1830, Mr. 
 George Swinton, who was then Chief Secretary to the 
 Supreme Government of India, and our best support in 
 the cause which Mr. F. C. Smith and I had undertaken, 
 wrote to him to say that he feared success must be 
 considered as altogether unattainable, for he had been 
 given to understand by those who appeared to be well 
 informed on the subject, that the evil had taken deep 
 root in all parts of India, and extended itself to almost 
 every village community. There were certainly at that 
 time very few districts in India without these resident 
 gangs of Thugs ; and in some, almost every village com- 
 munity was more or less tainted with the system, while 
 there was not one district free from their depredations. 
 No man aware of the fearful extent of the evil could 
 ever have expected to see so much progress made in its 
 suppression within so short a time ; because no man 
 could have calculated on those many extraordinary com- 
 binations of circumstances upon which our success has 
 chiefly depended — combinations which it behoves us 
 
ITS SUPPRESSION. • 371 
 
 gi'atefully to acknowledge, as Providential interpositions 
 for the benefit of the people entrusted to our rule — 
 interpositions which these people themselves firmly be- 
 lieve will never be wanting to rulers whose measures are 
 honestly intended, and wisely designed for the good of 
 their subjects."* 
 
 How this great work was accomplished is soon told. 
 These vast criminal leagues had hitherto thriven upon 
 the ignorance of the British authorities. We could do 
 nothing to suppress them, for, indeed, we knew little or 
 nothing about them. They were mighty secrets — hidden 
 mysteries — dimly guessed at, not at all understood. But 
 now Sleeman and his associates, resolved that this trade 
 of Thuggee should no longer be any more a mystery than 
 tailoring or carpentering, began to initiate themselves into 
 all the secrets of the craft, and were soon, in their know- 
 ledge of the theory of the profession, little behind the 
 professors themselves. 
 
 It need not be said that all this information "was 
 derived fi:om fi:equent intercourse with the Thugs them- 
 selves. Our officers having apprehended some of these 
 professional stranglers, selected the likeliest of the party, 
 and by holding out to them promises, not only of pardon, 
 but of employment, soon wormed their secrets out of 
 them. In a little time Sleeman and his associates had 
 learnt from these " approvers" all that was to be learnt 
 from them — all the mysteries of their craft, the whole art 
 of Thuggee — how the murder-gangs set out on their 
 journey, how they propitiated the goddess, how they con- 
 sulted the omens, how the victim was first beguiled, how 
 the noose was thrown, how the body was buried — how 
 they brought up their children to the trade, how genera- 
 tion after generation of Thugs lived prosperously and 
 securely, and how it happened that the native chiefs 
 
 * Sleeman. Preface to published Re- the Thug gangs of Upper and Central 
 port on the Depredations committed by India. Calcutta, 1840. 
 
 2b2 
 
372 THUGGEE. 
 
 either protected or stood aloof from them, whilst the 
 English were ignorant of their doings. Everything that 
 these approvers, turning their backs for ever on Davee, 
 and bowing down before the irresistible ikhal of the 
 Company, now revealed — and they were tolerably loqua- 
 cious in their revelations — was carefully noted down, 
 and the statements of one informant collated with those 
 of others. From these men Sleeman and his associates 
 learnt not only the whole theory and practice of 
 Thuggee, but gathered no small amount of knowledge 
 concerning the gangs that were in actual operation, and 
 the men who were connected with them. With such 
 clues as the approvers afforded, it was now easy to hunt 
 down the different gangs which were scattered over the 
 country, and many large captures were made. New 
 approvers were brought upon the lists of the " Depart- 
 ment," and new gangs were hunted down. Many crimi- 
 nals were thus brought to trial, convicted, and sentenced 
 either to be hanged, transported, or imprisoned.* 
 
 These captures struck terror into the hearts of the 
 whole fraternity of Thugs. And far more terrible than 
 the English officers, environed with the prestige of that 
 irresistible ikbal of the Company, which was acknow- 
 
 * One or two extracts from Colonel condemned to death, twenty-one to 
 Sleeman's Reports will suffice to convey imprisonment for life, eleven to limited 
 an idea of the extent of these captures imprisonment, and three acquitted." 
 and their results : — "When they arrived Again: " Capt. Borthwick having re- 
 at Dakhola, Captain Borthwick having ceived inteUigence of the residence of 
 heard of their proceedings, detached a these gangs, arranged for their appre- 
 party of horse to apprehend them. The hension as soon as a party of them re- 
 horsemen came upon the gangs un- turned from one of their excursions. He 
 awares, while encamped outside a vil- proceeded with Capt. Macmahon and 
 lage, and accused them of stealing about 200 of the Jhowrah cavalry, and 
 opium ; they were glad to have an came upon their villages before day- 
 opportunity of clearing themselves of light, and so completely surrounded 
 this unfounded accusation, so accom- them that the capture of the whole 
 panied the horsemen to the village for gang was effected without the escape 
 the purpose of being examined ; im- of a single individual — in all fifty-three 
 mediately on their arrival they were Thugs ; four of whom were made ap- 
 secured and taken to Captain Berth- provcrs, twenty-two executed, eleven 
 wick, of whom seventy-nine were made transported, three sentenced to limited 
 prisoners — viz., five made approvers, imprisonment, and thirteen released for 
 seventy-four tried by Colonel Stewart want of evidence." 
 (resident at Hyderabad), thirty-nine 
 
ITS SUPPRESSION. 373 
 
 ledged to be too powerful for Davee to combat, and his 
 well-armed, well-mounted followers, was the knowledge 
 that their own brethren were turning against them, and 
 that ever at the stirrup of the Thug-hunting Englishmen 
 went one or more apostate members of their own mur- 
 derous Guild. It was plain to them, now that all their 
 secrets were revealed — that there was no safety any 
 longer to be derived from the ignorance of the dominant 
 power — that let them go where they might in the Com- 
 pany's territories, the Thug-led Thug-hunters would be 
 upon their track. Some endeavouring to find in the 
 neighbouring native states a fair field for their operations, 
 or to obtain service under the native chiefs, fled hastily 
 across the boundary-line; but there, too, the Philistines 
 were upon them. English humanity was not brought to 
 a stand at the confines of the country subject to our own 
 regulations, and guarded by our own police. From 
 Northern Oude to Southern Hyderabad our influence at 
 the native Courts, and the labors of our political officers, 
 produced the same results as in our own provinces; and 
 even there some, hopeless of eventual escape, and weary 
 of a life of unceasing anxiety, rushed into the presence of 
 the English officer, flung themselves at his feet, and im- 
 plored him to receive them as approvers.* 
 
 * Indeed the operations of our officers ing the object on which they are em- 
 
 in the Deccan and in Oude do not ployed, dare not openly at any rate 
 
 constitute the least interesting chapter throw any obstacles in their way. In 
 
 in the great history of Thuggee-sup- the Nizam's territory, however, the case 
 
 pression. There were greater difficulties is very different ; a few of the principal 
 
 to be overcome by those who operated Talookdars evince the greatest readi- 
 
 in the native states— difficulties such ness to afford me prompt assistance 
 
 as are here set forth by Captain Mai- whenever called on by Government to 
 
 colm : *' No analogy," he writes, " exists do so. Their authority, however, does 
 
 between the proceedings in the Thug not extend to the villages held on mili- 
 
 Department within the territories of tary and other rent-free tenures wita 
 
 the Honorable Company, or any other which their districts are studded, aph 
 
 well-regulated state, and those which the Potails of which affect to attend to 
 
 are carried on in the Nizam's domi- no orders but those emanating from 
 
 nions, in which no system of police can their immediate superiors. The conse- 
 
 be said to exist. In the former, the quences frequently are, that when a 
 
 parties charged with this duty are Thug is traced into a village of this 
 
 armed with a warrant, before which the class, the gates are shut in the face of 
 
 gates of every village are thrown open, the pursuing party; or should they 
 
 and the police, if not aiding or further- have been allowed to enter from igno- 
 
374i THUGGEE. 
 
 But great as was tlie personal energy and ability 
 brouglit to bear upon the suppression of the crime of 
 Thuggee, it was hardly probable that our officers should 
 have achieved complete success unless armed with peculiar 
 powers — unless a certain relaxation of the law, war- 
 ranted by the extraordinary character and the extreme 
 enormity of the crime, had been legalised by the Supreme 
 Government. For some years we had been trying men 
 accused of Thuggee; but they had almost invariably 
 escaped. It had been difficult, to a degree perhaps not 
 readily appreciable by English lawyers or any other 
 residents in this little island of Great Britain, to convict 
 men, upon clear judicial evidence, of specific acts of 
 Thuggee. The migratory character of the murder-gangs 
 — the vast extent of country which they traversed — the 
 number of local screens and fences — the difficulty of 
 personal identification — the craft and subtlety of the 
 offenders themselves — the unlimited amount of false 
 swearing and of false impersonation which, at any time, 
 they could bring into our criminal courts — were obstruc- 
 tions to the course of justice, under a strict interpretation 
 of the existing law, which were seldom or never over- 
 come. A timid or even a cautious — perhaps I ought to 
 write a " conscientious " judge, would be sure to acquit 
 even a notorious Thug for want of satisfactory evidence 
 of the commission of a specific offence. Some of the 
 causes which I have recited contributed largely, also, to 
 the embarrassment of the question of jurisdiction. A 
 murder was committed in one part of the country, and 
 the murderers were apprehended in another, perhaps 
 some hundreds of miles distant from the scene of the 
 
 rance of the object of their visit, the selves. Serious collisions have in con- 
 Government orders, when produced, are sequence arisen, in Avhich several of 
 treated with the utmost contempt ; and my men have at times been severely 
 if the party do not quietly take their wounded, and at others treated with 
 departure, they are generally forced to the greatest indignity." — [^Captain Mal- 
 do so by the armed men stationed at colm to Captain Reynolds. Preface to 
 the place on the part of the Jagheer- Captain Sleeman's Report.'] 
 dars, or by the armed villagers them- 
 
SPECIAL ENACTMENTS. 375 
 
 atrocity. To limit the jurisdiction in such a case to the 
 particular Zillah in which the crime was committed, was 
 to throw up all sorts of difficulties and delays, and almost 
 to ensure the prisoner's escape. These impediments to 
 the strict and prompt administration of justice were won- 
 derfully protective of Thuggee. The more complicated 
 the machinery, and the more formal the procedure of our 
 courts, the better for these professional stranglers. They 
 throve upon the legal niceties and the judicial reserve of 
 the English tribunals, and laughed our Kegulations to 
 scorn. 
 
 It was wisely determined, therefore, after dije con- 
 sideration by the supreme Government of India, to 
 make the case of Thuggee an exceptional case, and to 
 sanction a relaxed application of existing laws and regu- 
 lations to members of the great fraternity of Thugs. 
 Accordingly an Act was passed in 1836, by which a 
 man convicted of belonging, or having belonged, to a 
 gang of Thugs was rendered amenable to imprisonment 
 for life, wliilst at the same time, prisoners accused of 
 Thuggee were made liable to the jurisdiction of any of 
 the Company's Courts, without reference to the locality 
 of the alleged offence, and the formality of the Maho- 
 medan Futwah was dispensed with as a preliminary 
 to the trial of this class of proscribed offenders.* The 
 
 * The act being conveniently short, gulation contained, notwithstanding. 
 
 I may as well give it in a note: (3) And it is hereby enacted, that no 
 
 Act XXX., 1836.(1) "It is hereby en- court shall, on a trial of any person 
 
 acted, that whatever shall be proved to accused of the offence made punishable 
 
 have belonged, either before or after the by this Act, require any Futwah from 
 
 passing of this Act, to any gang of Thugs, any law officer." 
 
 either within or without the territories A supplementary Act (No. XVIII. 
 
 of the East India Company, shall be of 1837) decreed that " any person 
 
 punished with imprisonment for life charged with murder by Thuggee, or 
 
 with hard labor. (2) And it is hereby with the offence of belonging to a gang 
 
 enacted, that every person accused of of Thugs, made punishable by Act No. 
 
 the offence made punishable by this XXX. of 1836, may be committed by 
 
 Act, may be tried by any court, which any magistrate, or joint magistrate, 
 
 would have been competent to try him, within the territories of the East India 
 
 if his offence had been committed with- Company, for trial before any criminal 
 
 in the Zillah, where that court sits, court competent to try such person on 
 
 anything to the contrary, in any Re- such charge." 
 
376 THUGGEE. 
 
 good effect of these enactments were soon felt. They 
 were all that the Thuggee officers needed to enable 
 them to carry out the great work which was placed in 
 their hands. The strong defences of the Thug gangs 
 were now struck down. They had no longer our igno- 
 rance on the one side, and our judicial over-scrupulous- 
 ness on the other, to protect them. So the work of 
 suppression went on bravely. The gangs were hunted 
 down ; our gaols were filled with Thugs ; conviction 
 and condemnation were no longer unattainable ends ; 
 and a great institution which had existed for centuries 
 was broken up in a few years. 
 
 I do not say that there is no such thing as Thuggee, 
 at the present time, in any part of the Company's do- 
 minions. It is probable that still an occasional traveller 
 may, from time to time, be strangled by the wayside. 
 But the cases are few in number, and comparatively 
 insignificant in character. The system is destroyed ; the 
 profession is ruined ; the Guild is scattered, never again 
 to be associated into a great corporate body. The craft 
 and the mystery of Thuggee will no longer be handed 
 down from father to son. A few English officers, acting 
 under the orders of the supreme administrative autho- 
 ritiesj have purged India of this great pollution. If we 
 have done nothing else for the country, we have done 
 this one good thing. It was a great achievement — a 
 great victory. And it is one to be contemplated with- 
 out any abatement of satisfaction, or any reservation of 
 praise. 
 
 It is a greater exploit than the conquest of Sindh 
 or the Punjab, or the annexation of Pegu; and the 
 names of the commander of that little army of Thug- 
 hunters and of his unffinching lieutenants, ought, in every 
 History of India, to have honorable mention, and by 
 every student of that history to be held in^ grateful re- 
 
CAPTAIN BORTHWICK. 
 
 377 
 
 inembrance. I cannot conclude this chapter better than 
 by the mention of them. They are Sleeman, Borth- 
 wick,* Eamsay, Keynolds, Malcolm, Etwall, HoUings, 
 
 * Two examples of gangs captured 
 by Captain, now Colonel, Borthwick, 
 are given in a note at page 372, from 
 Colonel Sleeman's Report. But the first 
 of these is so remarkable, not only for 
 the interesting character of its details, 
 but also from the circumstances of its 
 being an account of the capture of^ I 
 believe, the first considerable gang of 
 Dacoits convicted and punished in any 
 part of India, that I am indaced to give 
 in this place an amplified version of the 
 story almost in the words that it was 
 related to me : — " Captain Borthwick 
 was at the time Political Agent of the 
 western division of the province of 
 Malwa, in which the principality of 
 Rutlam is comprehended. The chief of 
 this state was then a minor — a circum- 
 stance which occasioned a more fre- 
 quent and minute interference in the 
 administration of its affairs than com- 
 monly characterised our political control 
 over the native states of that province. 
 So situated, the Political Officer was 
 necessarily kept constantly informed of 
 all that transpired, both by the Akhbar- 
 Nowese, or news-writer, whom he had 
 stationed in the principality for the 
 purpose, and by the minister himself of 
 the state. In the course of almost 
 daily communications from these indi- 
 viduals, Borthwick received an account 
 stating that five bodies of the Bunnyah 
 or Sudookar class had been discovered 
 in the jungle, a few paces from the high 
 road, ten or twelve miles to the south- 
 ward of Rutlam, the capital of the state. 
 They were slightly covered with stones, 
 and had the appearance of having been 
 recently murdered. The part of the 
 country where these bodies were stated 
 to have been discovered, was much in- 
 fested by predatory Bheels, and on 
 reading the report, Borthwick's first 
 impression was that the crime had been 
 committed by them. The unusual 
 atrocity of it, however, determined the 
 British agent immediately to proceed 
 to Rutlam and investigate the case. 
 The inquiry was accordingly com- 
 menced ; but it had not proceeded far 
 before Borthwick saw that the Bheels 
 were in no way concerned in the 
 murders, but that the perpetrators were 
 
 evidently Thugs. At the same time it 
 transpired that six or eight days pre- 
 viously, about which time it was sup- 
 posed that the murders must have been 
 committed, a large body of travellers 
 had passed through that part of the 
 country along the highway towards 
 Ilindostan. They had the appearance, 
 and, indeed, gave out that they were 
 pilgrims returning to their homes, after 
 having paid their devotions at a shrine 
 of peculiar sanctity in the western part 
 of Guzerat. All this tended so strongly 
 to excite Borthwick's suspicions that 
 these travellers were the authors of 
 this atrocious deed, that he resolved 
 upon taking immediate measures for 
 arresting them. It was observed that 
 they were travelling very leisurely, but, 
 after the lapse of so many days, they 
 could hardly have proceeded to a 
 distance of less than 100 miles. Re- 
 solved, however, upon making the at- 
 tempt to effect their seizure, and hav- 
 ing obtained from different persons, 
 who had well observed and even con- 
 versed with some of them, a full de- 
 scription of their appearance, he de- 
 spatched a party of native horsemen, 
 under the command of a smart and 
 intelligent officer, in pursuit of them, 
 with the strictest orders, when once he 
 came up with them, not to lose sight of 
 them until they were secured and 
 brought in for examination. Furnished 
 with a description of the supposed gang, 
 and with requisitions on the local au- 
 thorities of the villages and districts 
 through which they would have to 
 pass, calling upon them in the name of 
 the British Government to afford him 
 every assistance in their power to effect 
 this object, the party set out in pursuit. 
 It was only at the village of Dekhola, 
 about 150 miles from Rutlam, whence 
 they were despatched, that they came 
 up with the gang. Having satisfied 
 himself that they were the people of 
 whom he was in pursuit, the officer 
 went to the principal man of the place 
 and presented his requisition for aid; 
 but finding the latter was unable to 
 give him tlie assistance he required 
 (the village being a small and poor 
 one), he had recourse to a piece of 
 
378 
 
 THUGGEE. 
 
 Lowis, Graham, Paton, Kiddell, Ludlow, Birch, Miles, 
 Marsh, Whiteford, and others of good service and good 
 
 strategy, which is worthy to be held in 
 remembrance for the sake of its own 
 cleverness as well as for its excellent 
 results. The Government of India had 
 established a strict monopoly of opium 
 over Malwa, Avhich had then existed for 
 some time, and these very horsemen 
 formed a portion of the body of troops 
 employed by Captain Borthwick, and 
 posted at the different commanding 
 outlets to prevent the unauthorised 
 export of the drug. So it occurred to 
 the officer, on finding the village could 
 not supply him with means sufficient 
 to use coercion, to take advantage of 
 this circumstance — to denounce the 
 gang as smugglers, and charge them 
 with having contraband opium in their 
 possession. Too glad to find there was 
 not the slightest insinuation thrown out 
 as to their real characters, they were 
 eager with their offers to submit their 
 luggage at once to the officer's inspec- 
 tion. This, however, not suiting his 
 purpose, he pretended that no inspec- 
 tion at so paltry a village, where there 
 were no authorities of sufficient im- 
 portance to testify to the result, would 
 be satisfactory to the British Agent, 
 and signified his desire to have it made 
 at a place where it could be effected in 
 a more open and authoritative manner. 
 After some hesitation on the part of 
 the gang they agreed to go back with 
 him to Bhulwara, a stage to the south- 
 ward of Dekhola, which they had passed 
 a day or two before. At Bhulwara there 
 was a large body of Sebundies, or police 
 soldiers, which, on arriving there, the 
 authorities, in compliance with the 
 requisition presented by the officer, 
 placed at his disposal. He now con- 
 sidered he had sufficient means to make 
 a capture of tlie gang, and thinking it 
 no longer necessary to disguise his sus- 
 picions and intentions regarding them, 
 openly charged them with being Thugs, 
 and declared his determination to carry 
 them before Captain Borthwick, to be 
 subjected to a strict examination. 
 Boldly and clamorously they attempted 
 to repel the charge. They declared 
 themselves to be innocent and inofien- 
 sive people returning from their pilgrim- 
 age to shrines in the west of Guzerat. 
 To all this he paid no attention, but 
 
 was not a little staggered on a paper 
 being presented to him by one of the 
 leaders, which was asserted to be a 
 passport of the English Government, 
 under the protection of which he (the 
 leader) declared they were travelling. 
 This caused doubt and anxiety to the 
 officer, which, however, was in some 
 measure appeased by considering the 
 strictness of his orders, and in feeling 
 assured that if it came to pass that a 
 mistake had been made, every allow- 
 ance would be shown to him. All his 
 fears, however, were speedily dispelled 
 by one of the gang, in a paroxysm of 
 fear, coming to him and confessing that 
 they were Thugs, and offering, if his 
 life were assured to him, to make a full 
 disclosure of all their proceedings. This 
 was a contingency for which Captain 
 Borthwick had fortunately prepared 
 him, and he accordingly on the instant 
 separated this proffered approver from 
 the gang, and kept him from that mo- 
 ment away from all intercourse with 
 his comrades. In the mean while 
 Captain Borthwick himself, after de- 
 spatching the officer and party from 
 Rutlam, proceeded to Joura, a small 
 town twenty miles to the north of the 
 former, there to await the result of the 
 measures he had taken. Shortly after- 
 wards he received a report from the 
 officer of the success that had attended 
 him, Avhich was speedily followed by 
 his arrival at Joura with the gang in 
 his custody. Borthwick immediately 
 entered upon the examination of the ap- 
 prover. Of the information which was 
 thei'feby elicited, that part which con- 
 tained a full and particular account of the 
 murders committed by the gang, from 
 the time they passed Rutlam until they 
 were overtaken at Dekhola, claimed 
 his immediate attention. The approver 
 gave an account of no less than 
 eighteen different murders committed 
 in that short interval; and in order to 
 confirm this part of his evidence, Capt. 
 Borthwick sent him the following day 
 under a guard, and accompanied by a 
 native writer, to note all that transpired 
 along the line of road upon which the 
 murders were stated by him to have 
 been perpetrated. In every instance 
 stated, the place where the body of the 
 
THUGGEE OFFICERS. 379 
 
 repute. Many of these were afterwards distinguislied as 
 agents for the suppression of professional Dakoitee. But 
 to this important subject I must devote another chapter. 
 This chapter, however, would hardly seem to be com- 
 plete without some mention of a fact, more prominently 
 noticed elsewhere, illustrative of the completeness of 
 the efforts which were made for the entire suppression 
 of Thuggee. Through the instrumentality of Colonel 
 Sleeman and one of his assistants, Lieutenant Brown, 
 Schools of Industry were established at Jubbulpore, with 
 the view of affording employment to adult approvers, 
 and of educating their children — so that the Httle ones, 
 instead of bemg initiated into the fearful mysteries of 
 Thuggee, were trained to the miderstanding and the 
 practice of useful trades, and the rising generation of 
 professional murderers turned into industrious artisans.* 
 
 murdered person was deposited was provers having come forward, the guilt 
 
 pointed out. The several bodies were of the gang, individually and collec- 
 
 disinterred, and each instance was tively, was fully established by a mass 
 
 verified by the village authorities of incontrovertible proof." 
 
 nearest to the spots. Thus a complete * See the Chapter on Education, and 
 
 corroboration Tof the approver's state- the papers in the Appendix, for a fur* 
 
 ments was obtained ; and other ap- ther account of these schools. 
 
380 DAKOITEE. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Dakoitee — Its Antiquity — Measures of Warren Hastings— Hereditary Robber 
 Castes — Their Customs — Local Dakoitee — Complicity of the Zemindars and 
 Moostajirs — Effects on the Suppression of Dakoitee — Appointment of a 
 Special Commissioner for Lower Bengal — New Act — General Remarks. 
 
 The efforts of these energetic and indefatigable officers 
 at the head of the Thuggee Estabhshment had hitherto 
 been mainly directed to the suppression of that great 
 crime which gave the name to their Department. But 
 when they had reason to believe that their measures had 
 broken up the greater number of gangs, and suppressed 
 the activity of the evil, if they had not wholly rooted it 
 out, they began to address themselves to the eradication 
 of another foul disease of cognate origin and kindred 
 aspect, which, if not so terrible to contemplate, was more 
 extensively disseminated, and scarcely less fatal in its 
 effects upon the general peace and happiness of the 
 people. 
 
 It was no new thing to the comprehension of English 
 residents in India at this time that robberies, attended 
 with violence, often, indeed, with murder, were frequently 
 committed in dwelling-houses by gangs of armed men. 
 For three-quarters of a century had these gang-robbers 
 been known as Dakoits, and every one in India, or, in- 
 deed, every one with the commonest knowledge of India 
 and her affairs, knew well that Dakoitee, or gang-robbery, 
 was a crime of very frequent occurrence in all parts of 
 Hindostan. Ever since we had established police-bands 
 to capture, and law-courts to try, offenders of any kind, 
 
GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 381 
 
 we had been capturing and trying Dakoits, and passing 
 laws against tliem, tinged with more or less of the severity 
 or the leniency of tlie times. In the days of Warren 
 Hastings, when a sort of miser upulous vigor, not in 
 effect so injurious to humanity as it seems to be in 
 description, was brought to bear upon the disorders of 
 the country, it was decreed that not only should every 
 convicted Dakoit be executed in his own village, but 
 that the village should be fined *' according to the enor- 
 mity of the crime^ each inhabitant according to his 
 substance, and that the family of the criminal should 
 become the slaves of the state, and be disposed of for 
 the general benefit and convenience of the people, ac- 
 cording to the discretion of Government.'^* 
 
 ♦ General Regulations for the Ad- 
 ministration of Justice, August, 1772. 
 This measure was recommended by the 
 Committee of Circuit at Cossimbazaar. 
 The arguments with which they sup- 
 port it are curious : — " We have judged 
 it necessary to add to the regulations a 
 proposal for the suppression and extir- 
 pation of Dakoits, which will appear 
 to be dictated by a spirit of rigor and 
 violence very different from the caution 
 and lenity of our other propositions, as 
 it in some respects involves the inno- 
 cent with the guilty. We Avish a milder 
 expedient could be suggested, but we 
 much fear that this evil has acquired 
 a great degree of its strength from the 
 tenderness and moderation which our 
 Government has exercised towards 
 these banditti, since it has inter- 
 fered in the internal protection of the 
 provinces. We confess that the means 
 which we propose can in nowise be 
 reconcileable to the spirit of our own 
 constitution ; but tiU that of Bengal 
 shall attain the same perfection, no 
 conclusion can be drawn from the 
 English laws that can properly be ap- 
 plied to the manners or state of this 
 country. * ♦ ♦ We have many 
 instances of their meeting death with 
 the greatest insensibility ; it loses, 
 therefore, its effect as an example, but 
 when executed in all the forms and 
 terrors of law in the midst of the 
 
 neighbours and relations of the cri- 
 minal ; when these are treated as ac- 
 cessories to his guilt, and his family 
 deprived of their liberty, and separated 
 for ever from each other, every pas- 
 sion which before served as an incentive 
 to guilt, now becomes subservient ta 
 the purposes of society, by turning 
 them from a vocation in which all they 
 hold dear, besides life, become forfeited 
 by their conviction ; at the same time 
 their families, instead of being lost to 
 the community, are made useful mem- 
 bers of it, by being adopted into those 
 of the more civilised inhabitants. The 
 ideas of slavery, borrowed from our 
 Ajuerican colonies, will make every 
 modification of it appear, in the eyes 
 of our own countrymen in England, a 
 horrible evil. But it is far otherwise 
 in this country ; here slaves are treated 
 as the children of the families to which 
 they belong, and often acquire a much 
 happier state by their slavery than 
 they could have hoped for by the en- 
 joyment of liberty, so that in effect 
 the apparent rigor thus exercised on 
 the children of convicted robbers, will 
 be no more than a change of condi- 
 tion, by which they will be no sufferers, 
 though it will operate as a warning on 
 others, and is the only means which 
 we can imagine capable of dissipating 
 these desperate and abandoned societies 
 which sub3i:3t on the distress of the 
 
882 DAKOITEE. 
 
 But although in those days our early administrators 
 were not without some general knowledge of the habits 
 of this " race of outlaws, living from father to son in a 
 state of warfare against society,"* though it was known 
 that Dakoitee was something more than an accident, a 
 casual blot, a su perficial excrescence, it had been but 
 imperfectly ascertained to what extent, and in what per- 
 fection, it was an integral institution. But when the 
 same process that had been applied to the exposition 
 of Thuggee, with all its systematised enormities, its 
 creeds, and its rituals, was brought to bear upon the 
 kindred crime of Dakoitee, there was found to be as 
 much system in it, as stern a faith, as engrossing a super- 
 stition. It was seen then that Dakoitee was the normal 
 condition of whole tribes born and bred to the profession, 
 that there were robber-castes in India just as there were 
 soldier-castes or writer-castes, and that men went out 
 to prey upon the property of their fellows — and, if need 
 be, on their lives — with strict religious observance of 
 sacrament and sacrifice, strong in the belief that they 
 were only fulfilling their destiny, and doing good service 
 to the deity whom they adored. 
 
 I do not mean that there was no such thing as acci- 
 dental Dakoitee — that men not bred and born to the 
 
 general community." The logic of this our predecessors in India had a very 
 
 seems rather to halt in the concluding fair general knowledge of the subject: 
 
 passages; for if the sale of the families — " The Dakoits of Bengal are not, like 
 
 of the Dakoits was calculated to better the robbers in England, individuals 
 
 their condition and enliance their hap- driven to such desperate courses by 
 
 piness, it could not have operated as a sudden want. They are robbers by 
 
 very effectual warning. The Commit- profession, and even by birth ; they are 
 
 tee of Circuit seem to have recom- formed into regular communities, and 
 
 mended the proposed measure as a their families subsist by the spoils 
 
 severe and deterring punishment, and which they bring home to them ; they 
 
 then taken the greatest trouble to de- are all, therefore, alike criminal 
 
 monstrate that it would be no punish- wretches who have placed themselves 
 
 ment at all. — [Le«er of the Committee o/* in a state of declared war with Govern- 
 
 Circuit at Cossimbazaar, August 15, ment, and arc, therefore, wholly ex- 
 
 1772, in Colebrookc's Digest. Suppk- eluded from every benefit of its laws." 
 
 mentary Volume.'] ^^^[Letler from the Committee of Circuit 
 
 * Warren Hastings (1773). The fol- to the Council of Fort William, dated at 
 
 lowing description of the Dakoit bands, Cossimbazaar, August \b, 1772. Cole- 
 
 written eighty years ago, shows that brooke's Digest. Supplementary Vt^ume.'] 
 
ROBBER-CASTES. 383 
 
 profession never, under the force of accidental circum- 
 stances, took to Dakoitee for a livelihood — ^but that it 
 was established upon a broad basis of hereditary caste, 
 and was, for the most part, an organic state of society. 
 ''I have always followed the trade of my ancestors — 
 Dakoitee," said Lukha, a noted Dakoit, who subsequently 
 became approver. " My ancestors held this profession 
 before me," said another, "and we train boys in the 
 same manner. In my caste, if there were any honest 
 persons, i.e.^ not robbers, they would be turned out and 
 not kept with us." The first of these belonged to a 
 robber-tribe known as Budducks^ one of the largest 
 and most exclusive of the depredational castes ; the 
 other was of the tribe of Hurrees. Sometimes boys 
 were adopted into these robber-castes. " I was hitherto 
 a Beree by caste," said another approver, " and converted 
 into a Kheejuck (another robber- tribe) by one of Jeeteen 
 of that caste, who, seeing me begging and distressed, 
 took me under his protection, and gave me maintenance." 
 Sometimes they married into a robber-caste, and took 
 up the trade with their wives. Sometimes they inherited 
 the profession from the mother's side. "Man Singh, a 
 very noted leader of Budducks," said the same Lukha, 
 whose evidence I have above quoted, " was a Gosaen 
 and not a Dakoit, but he united himself to a Budduck 
 woman^ by whom he had Man Singh. This man had 
 been engaged in a hundred enterprises." 
 
 Such, read by the light thrown upon this deeply inte- 
 resting subject by the investigations of our British officers, 
 were the hereditary robber-castes of India ; the Budducks, 
 the Kheejucks, the Hurrees, the Dosads, and others. 
 The gangs, composed of these men, were for the most 
 part distinguished by their exclusiveness and uniformity. 
 Dakoitee was conducted by them with all becoming 
 solemnity ; it was, like Thuggee, a mysterious institution 
 
384 DAKOITEE. 
 
 not to be lightly approached — one into the hallowed 
 precincts of which admission was to be obtained only by 
 formal initiation. But though there were robber-castes, 
 and many gangs of Dakoits composed of these exclusive 
 fraternities, all Dakoitee was not of this constitutional 
 character. There were gangs of a less formal and select 
 kind — gangs composed of men of different tribes * often 
 strangers to each other; and there were Dakoits not of 
 the hereditary class, lay members, as it were, of the pro- 
 fession, who troubled themselves little about presiding 
 goddesses, and set about their work in a less scientific 
 way. But although in these gangs might be discerned a 
 Hision of many castes, they all seemed to rally round the 
 men of the hereditary robber-castes, without whose 
 agency they believed that they could accomplish little. 
 "^ A convicted Dakoit in the Purneah gaol," writes an 
 intelligent officer of the Thuggee Department, to whose 
 investigations we are indebted for much of our know- 
 ledge of the robber-castes of India, '' from whom I sought 
 information, confessed to me his having been with three 
 different gang-leaders, with whom he had been concerned 
 in ten different Dakoitees within the Purneah district. 
 These gangs were promiscuously composed, but the 
 nucleus was composed of the robber-castes, and he laid 
 it down as a rule, well known by the robber fraternity, 
 that no gang could retain its organisation and efficiency 
 without an admixture of the ' janam chors^ as he styled 
 them, or ^ born robbers.' This man was one of the in- 
 dustrial castes which are called by the robber-castes 
 
 * " The Budducks," said an approver 24 miles), others only 1 or 2 coss (2 or 
 of one of the local Purneah gangs, " de- 4 miles), therefore, those who live near 
 predate with men of their own caste them are well known to all, and those 
 alone, and no others ; and we in this who live far oflf are only known to 
 part of the country depredate with Moostajirs and Sirdars. The members 
 people of all castes, and the houses of of the gang, then, do not all know each 
 the different men are not in one place, other, but only the Sirdars and Moo- 
 but various distances remote the one stajirs know all." — [Evidence of Bofdtai, 
 from the other, some 1 or 1 2 coss (20 or Mistri/.'] 
 
ROBBER-CASTES. 385 
 
 ' janwarsy a common terra for simplicity and clownish- 
 ness in India, but by which is here meant the uninitiated. 
 He assured me that his ' oostad^ or teacher, was a Dosad 
 (a notorious robber-caste), and that on one occasion, 
 when he proposed to set up a gang himself, this man 
 told him that without the assistance of the hereditary 
 robber-castes, no gang ever was or ever could be esta- 
 blished, for that to them alone had descended, through a 
 long line of ancestors, the ' ilm^ or secret lore necessary 
 for the purpose."* 
 
 This at all events was something to know — but there 
 was much more to be known. The hereditary robber- 
 castes constituted the aristocracy of depredational crime. 
 They were the leaders and instructors of these organised 
 bands of robbers — the pivots upon which the whole 
 machinery turned. Every gang was more or less regu- 
 lated by them, but every gang was not mainly composed 
 of them. The most noticeable thing of all was the 
 extraordinary extent of these depredational leagues — 
 the thousands of members that they numbered. There 
 seemed, indeed, to be a network of organised plunder 
 spread over the whole face of the country. It was a 
 tremendous suggestion which staggered the credulity, 
 and baffled the comprehension even of men accustomed 
 to the excesses of great criminal leagues. But they set 
 themselves to work vigorously — to learn all they could, 
 and do all they could — believing that as they had 
 stricken down Thuggee, Dakoitee could not stand up 
 much longer before the ikhal of the Company. 
 
 The first approaches to a full understanding of the 
 subject were made without stumbling on any great 
 difficulties. The greater the segregation of this or that 
 class, the easier is it to trace out and to illustrate its 
 idiosyncrasies. Now the Budducks and Khejucks were 
 not only exclusive, but migratory castes. They carried 
 
 * MS. Notes of Captain Hippisley Marsh. 
 
 2c 
 
386 DAKOITEE. 
 
 on their depredations at a distance from their own 
 homes, and set out in gangs composed entirely of their 
 own fraternity. It was as easy to ehcit a full revelation 
 of the practices and observances of the Budducks or 
 Khejucks, as of their fellow-adventurers, the Thugs. 
 Indeed, our previous investigations into the physiology 
 of the one, facilitated our enquiries into the habits of 
 the other, and guided us more directly to the truth. 
 There were many points of analogy between them. 
 They had a secret dialect, and secret signs. They 
 assumed various disguises. They offered up sacrifices. 
 As with the Thugs, so with the Budducks, the goat 
 was the favorite victim. They consulted the auspices. 
 They had the same overflowing faith in the cry of the 
 jackal. They swore oaths of fidelity and secrecy. They 
 were altogether the same sort of comfortable religionists, 
 with the same utter disregard for the happiness of their 
 fellow-men.* 
 
 The ordinary practice of these gangs was to set out, 
 after the usual ritual preliminaries, in parties of thirty, 
 or forty, disguised as travellers, or pilgrims, or bird- 
 catchers, or anything else that might promise good 
 chance of concealment. The principal implement of 
 their profession was the spear. The spear-head they 
 carried about with them, concealed on their persons ; 
 
 * Captain Marsh says that the habits till is only to make a show, and screen 
 
 and organisation of the robber-castes of their real profession. No Budduck 
 
 Purneah were analogous with those of gang would ever dream of attacking a 
 
 the Budducks of Western India. " It is house without the preliminary rites and 
 
 wonderful," he observes, " how perfectly poojah of Kalee — ditto, the gangs of the 
 
 similar are the habits and organisation robber-castes of Purneah. Every Bud- 
 
 of the Western Budducks and of the duck Dakoit has a peculiar fashion of 
 
 robber-castes of the Purneah district, girding his breast, back, and loins, so 
 
 No Budduck can exist without wine — as to offer no impediment to his move- 
 
 i. e., fermented liquor— ditto, the robbers ments, and to protect him from blows, 
 
 of Purneah. No Budduck reaches full a fashion not used by any description 
 
 manhood without being initiated into of peaceable men— ditto, the Purneah 
 
 the mysteries and dialects of the caste robber-castes. All this I have learnt 
 
 — ditto, the robber castes of Purneah. from their own lips and their own 
 
 No Budduck ever heartily consents to showing." — [jProwi an unfinished demi- 
 
 till the soil, but will escape it on the official Letter from Captain Marsh to 
 
 first opportunity — ditto, the robber- Major Sleeman.^ 
 castes of Purneah. The little land they 
 
RESEMBLANCE TO THE THUGS. 387 
 
 the handles they either converted into walking-sticks, or 
 buried in a convenient place. One of the party sent on 
 in advance, or some confederate at a distance — a corre- 
 sponding member of the society — either brought or sent 
 in tidings to the effect that he " had his eye on a rich 
 house." A full description of the locality — of the build- 
 ing itself, of its inhabitants, of the probable means of 
 defence, as far as they could be ascertained, was com- 
 municated to the leaders of the gang ; and then the 
 night and hour of the attack being determined upon, 
 the gang was duly mustered, and an estimate formed of 
 its adequacy to the intended enterprise. If the party 
 were not considered strong enough to secure success, 
 some " auxiliaries " were called in. These were mem- 
 bers of robber-tribes, or local Dakoits, resident in the 
 neighbouring villages. With their party thus augmented 
 they took counsel together, and determined on their 
 plan of operations. It was their policy then to separate 
 for a day or two before the meditated attack, a nd then 
 to meet at a given hour — an hour after night-fall — and 
 to advance at once to the enterprise. They then col- 
 lected the handles of their implements, fixed them into 
 the spear-heads and axes, prepared their torches, divested 
 themselves of all their superfluous clothes, and advanced 
 to the attack. 
 
 It was always a nocturnal surprise. With flaming 
 torches, and spears glittering in the broad light, they 
 came suddenly on the sleeping inhabitants of the doomed 
 house, and either roused them with their noise, or 
 pricked them up with the points of their weapons. 
 Thus suddenly startled from their sleep, finding them- 
 selves surrounded by armed men, whose numbers their 
 fear greatly exaggerated, the unhappy merchants, or 
 bankers, so surprised, could seldom muster either their 
 senses or their courage sufficiently to conduct an effec- 
 
 2 c 2 
 
388 DAKOITEE. 
 
 tive defence. If by any chance the resistance was obsti- 
 nate, the Dakoits, who had not always the stoutest hearts 
 to sustain them, were in a fair way to be beaten back. 
 But the chances were greatly in their favor. A party 
 suddenly surprised is always at a disadvantage. So it 
 often happened that the luckless inhabitants, confused, 
 bewildered, panic-struck, like people under the influence 
 of a fearful dream, did all that they were directed to do 
 — pointed out the places where their wealth was hidden, 
 and went like sheep to the slaughter. 
 
 Though the ritual formalities of which I have spoken 
 may have been peculiar to particular classes of Dakoits, 
 the mode of procedure here described seems to have 
 been common to all. With the more demonstrative part 
 of the business, indeed, we had been long acquainted. 
 What we now discovered was not only the very curious 
 inner history of the social organisation and religious en- 
 vironments of Dakoitee, but all the secret mechanism 
 of those screens and defences, only dimly known before, 
 which enabled the great crime to run riot over the 
 whole length and breadth of the land. That the location 
 in an Indian village of numbers of professional robbers, 
 ever and anon setting out on depredational journeys, and 
 returning with much spoil in their hands, should be un- 
 known either to the villagers, high or low, or to the rural 
 police, was clearly an impossibility. It was a matter, 
 indeed, of notoriety in the village. It could not be 
 otherwise. In such cases, amongst us, knowledge is 
 exposure and extermination. A gang of robbers could 
 not exist for a day in an English village after their loca- 
 tion were once discovered. Every influential man in 
 the neighbourhood would be eager to secure their capture 
 and imprisonment, and the county constabulary would 
 soon beat up their haunts. But in India all this is re- 
 versed. The squirearchy and the police are alike inte- 
 
INNER HISTORY OF DAKOITf:E. 
 
 389 
 
 rested in the protection and sustentation of Dakoitee. 
 The Zemindar and the Thannadar grow rich upon it. 
 They do not foster the rank weed for nothing. Dakoitee 
 is highly remunerative. The head man of the village 
 shares the spoil with the successful robbers. He has his 
 seigneural rights.* He is a harborer of thieves on a 
 large scale. They come and go freely, uninterruptedly, 
 so long as they are disposed to pay for the privilege ; and 
 as their very existence depends upon the payment, they 
 must perforce submit to the exaction. They are, so to 
 speak, the servants or children of the great men, who 
 tsupply them in time of need with food and clothing, and 
 make moneyed advances to them when they set out upon 
 their expeditions. Indeed, the robber-gangs are often 
 
 ♦ From the depositions of a Budduck 
 approver, named Lukha, we gather a 
 full-length picture of a model Zemindar 
 of this kind, whose exactions at last 
 drove a profitable association of Dakoits 
 clean off his estate. 
 
 "Five hundred rupees out of this 
 booty," says the approver, after detail- 
 ing the circumstances of a Dakoitee, 
 " were given to Thakur Dhotal Sing, 
 the great landholder of the village in 
 which we resided." 
 
 And again, after another enterprise: 
 
 " We gave a share of one -fourth of 
 the booty to Thakur Dhotal Sing, the 
 landlord of Sepreea." 
 
 The fourth of the spoil, however, did 
 not suflBce him. He grew more ex- 
 orbitant in his demands : 
 
 "In five or six days we reached 
 home in safety; but the landlord, 
 Dhotal Sing, exacted from us more 
 than a fourth of this booty as his share. 
 The rest we divided, but the rapacious 
 landlord got us all seized and bound, 
 and taking from us all the gold and 
 bullion, gave us only one hundred 
 
 rupees each We prepared to 
 
 leave this man's estate, but he implored 
 us to remain, and swore solemnly never 
 again to behave dishonestly to us," 
 
 It seems that they consented to re- 
 main ; but in a little time the greedy 
 landlord was at his old tricks: 
 
 " Dhoulut and I got about a hundred 
 rupees, but we had no sooner got home 
 
 than Thakur Dhotal Sing came with 
 his son and the other joined proprietors 
 of the estate, seized us all, tied our 
 arras behind our back, and demanded a 
 fourth of our booty. We brought out 
 one of the two hundred rupees, and de- 
 clared that was all we had gained by 
 the enterprise, but they would not be- 
 lieve us. We protested and remon- 
 strated, and told them that we would 
 leave their estate, as it would never do 
 for us to take all the risk and trouble 
 of Dakoitee, and for them to take all 
 the profit. They were a senseless set 
 of peasants, and all we could say seemed 
 to make no kind of impression upon 
 them — as we committed Dakoitees on 
 others, they committed them on us. 
 They were a short-sighted people, or 
 they would have seen the advantage of 
 observing the same good faith with 
 us that we always observe with our 
 patrons." 
 
 This time they acted up to their 
 threats, and betook themselves to an- 
 other village: 
 
 "Dhotal Sing," says the ill-used 
 Dakoit, " the chief of Sepreea, was a 
 rapacious man, and used to extort from 
 us, in some mode or other, a good deal 
 more than the fourth of our booty, 
 which we considered the seigneural, or 
 Zemindaree right; so we went to reside 
 in the village of Bigholee, not far 
 distant." 
 
390 DAKOITEE. 
 
 attended either by one of these landowners in person, or 
 by a delegate from his immediate family. The connexion 
 between them is of the closest kind. Each is necessary 
 to the well-being of the other. 
 
 The bare outside fact of this criminal participation 
 of the landlords was no discovery of modern times. It 
 had attracted the attention of Warren Hastings,* who 
 saw at a glance that it was wholly impossible to suppress 
 Dakoitee without proclaiming the responsibility of the 
 Zemindars as accessories to the crime, and in all cases of 
 conviction punishing them with as much severity as the 
 active offenders, f He would have made short work of 
 these nursing mothers of crime, and hung up the fattest 
 Zemindar with as little compunction as the leanest 
 Dakoit. As I have said before, the most vigorous mea- 
 sures are often the most humane; and I have little doubt 
 that if these recommendations had been carried out and 
 persevered in, and a heavy blow thus struck at conniving 
 landlords, we should not now be hearing, after the lapse 
 of three-quarters of a century, that around the imme- 
 diate seat of the supreme Government — almost under the 
 
 * See Proceedings of Gfeveraor and dare not complain, it being an esta- 
 
 Council, April 19, 1774, quoted in blished maxim with the Dakoits to 
 
 " Colebrooke's Digest," supplementary punish with death every information 
 
 volume. given against them." 
 
 " At this time I have repeated com- f The words of the recommendation 
 plaints from all parts of this province are worth quoting: "That such of the 
 of the multitude of Dakoits which have Zemindars or farmers as shall be con- 
 infested it for some years past, and victed of having neglected to assist the 
 have been guilty of the most daring Foujdars in the execution of their trust, 
 and alarming excesses. I know not shall be made responsible for any loss 
 whether the knowledge of these evils sustained by such misconduct, or other- 
 has been officially communicated to the wise fined according to the nature of 
 members of the Board. To me it has the offence ; but that all persons, of 
 only come through the channel of whatever degree or profession, who shall 
 private information, as I do not recol- be convicted of receiving fees or other 
 lect to have heard the slightest intima- pecuniary acknowledgments from rob- 
 tion of them from the Zemindars, bers, knowing them to be such, or of 
 farmers, or other officers of the revenue ; abetting or conniving in any shape at 
 which may appear extraordinary, but their practices, shall be adjudged equally 
 that I am assured that the Zemindars criminal with them, and punished with 
 themselves too frequently affiard them death ; and that this be immediately 
 protection, and that the Ryots, who are made public throughout the province." 
 the principal sufferers by these ravages, — [ Warren Hastings, 1774, ut supra.'} 
 
PARTICIPATION OF THE ZEMINDARS. 391 
 
 shadow of the vice-regal palace itself — "gang-robberies 
 have increased to such an extent that a feeling of general 
 insecurity has arisen in the minds of the people of these 
 districts." These are the words, not of Warren Hastings, 
 but of Lord Dalhousie. The Governor of 1852 only 
 repeats the complaint of the Governor of 1774. The 
 immunity which the landlords have enjoyed in the inter- 
 val has been the main cause of the perpetuation of the 
 evil. We have been much too slow in our interference 
 with their vested interests in robbery and murder. Lord 
 Cornwallis, when he re-organised the Police Department, 
 in 1792, proclaimed that landlords, convicted of being 
 accessories to the commission of a robbery, should be 
 "compelled to make good the value of the property, 
 stolen or plundered."* So that, even if the regulations 
 had been put into effect against the Zemindars, it would 
 have been merely a matter of calculation with them — a 
 mere question of profit and loss — the balance being pretty 
 certainly in favor of the former. It is not strange, 
 therefore, that under such regulations the landlords con- 
 tinued to carry on the old trade, and to participate 
 largely in the professional emoluments of the Dakoits. 
 
 Warren Hastings complained that the farming system 
 had a tendency to extend and perpetuate this evil. And 
 the same fact is insisted upon and demonstrated on the 
 evidence of the Dakoits themselves, by the present gene- 
 ration of British functionaries. The small Moostajirs, 
 indeed, are the great harborers of Dakoits — the great 
 promoters of Dakoitee. " There could be no Dakoitee 
 without the Moostajirs," was the statement almost in- 
 
 * " Landholders and farmers of land effectual assistance to prevent their 
 
 are not in future to be considered re- escape, or omitted to afford every assist- 
 
 sponsible for robberies committed in ance in their power to the officers of 
 
 their respective estates or farms, unless Government for their apprehension, 
 
 it shall be proved that they connived in either of which cases they will be 
 
 at the robbery, received any part of the compelled to make good the value of 
 
 property stolen or plimdered, harbored the property stolen or plundered." 
 the offenders, aided, or refused to give 
 
392 DAKOITEE. 
 
 variably made by the approving Dakoits examined by 
 Captain Marsh and other officers.* Old European resi- 
 dents in the Mofussil confirmed this testimony. " It is 
 my firm opinion," wrote an Indigo planter of long standing 
 in Purneah, " that each and every native Moostajir must 
 of necessity be a Dakoit leader, because, in the first 
 instance, he must know the character of residents in his 
 villages, otherwise he would be constantly subject to 
 have unprofitable tenants ; and, secondly, because it is 
 utterly impossible that large gangs could assemble and 
 cross the country in different directions at night without 
 being stopped by the heads of villages, and as the ap- 
 provers themselves say that no gang will dare to move 
 out without a Moostajir, it appears to me beyond all 
 doubt that one or two Moostajirs are the actual leaders 
 of every Dakoit-gang."f 
 
 It would seem, too, if the evidence of the approvers 
 is to be trusted, that if there could be no Dakoit ee without 
 the assistance of the Moostajirs, neither could there be 
 Moostajirs without the assistance of the Dakoits. " There 
 is no petty Moostajir," said one man, " free firom con- 
 nexion with Dakoitee ; and whoever has a repugnance so 
 
 * A few specimens of the evidence Question. — Since the Moostajir knows 
 
 on this head, contained in the Official he has robbers in his villages, does he 
 
 Reports, will suffice : make no effort to turn them out ? 
 
 Question. — If the Moostajir be not in Answer. — If he gains much by re- 
 league, cannot the professional robbers maining, why should he turn them out? 
 practise Dakoitee? He keeps them for his own benefit. — 
 
 Answer. — It cannot be done without \Evidence of Jhubban, approver.^ 
 
 the Moostajir. — [Evidence of Hazaree Question. — Is this true, that without 
 
 Dhurkar.'] a Moostajir or Sirdar, no Dakoitee can 
 
 Question. — Can there be no Dakoitee take place ? 
 
 without Moostajirs? Answer. — If the Moostajirs do not 
 
 Answer. — There can be no Dakoitee join, and there be no Sirdar, how could 
 without Moostajirs, for, tlirough their poor robbers commit Dakoitee ? without 
 influence, the Thannah people cannot the command of the Moostajir and the 
 lay hold of us robbers from fear of the Sirdar no Dakoitee can be carried on. 
 Moostajirs; and the use of the Moos- Under disguise of landholders the Moos- 
 tajirs is this, that they find the robbers tajirs set Dakoitee on foot. — [Evidence of 
 in food and clothes, and lend them Jhubban^ Kuraria.'] 
 money, and give them liquor, and in f Evidence relating to Dakoitee, 
 every way protect our families and printed in Calcutta, 
 ourselves. This is the use of Moosta- 
 jirs. — [Evidence of Suroofa Hulwaee."] 
 
PARTICIPATION OF THE MOOSTAJIRS. 393 
 
 to connect himself, will not take a Moostajiree." "With- 
 out being a rogue," said another man, "a Moostajir's 
 profession could not be carried on. No class of rogues 
 come up to the Moostajirs. ... If there were no 
 robbers in the village, then none would take Moosta- 
 jiree, and now every class of men become Moostajirs 
 in this hope that they may share in the spoils of Dakoitee.'* 
 '' Moostajiree of villages," said a third, "is taken for 
 purposes of Dakoitee. ... By becoming a Moostajir 
 he cannot manage without forming a connexion with 
 Dakoits." There is every reason to consider this evidence 
 to be trustworthy, as far as it goes. It relates, however^ 
 almost entirely to a particular part of the country ;* and 
 the extent to which the evil prevails in other parts may 
 not be safely predicated from it. But the complicity, 
 after one fashion or another, of the landholders, whether 
 Zemindars or Moostajirs, in the depredations of the 
 Dakoits, is not local and accidental, but general and con- 
 tinual. The same system, with slight superficial vari- 
 ations, which prevails in Bengal, prevails also in Oude.f 
 The landholders are the arch-offenders. 
 
 Associated with them, in the protection of the more 
 active criminals, are the equally corrupt members of the 
 police. This was no new discovery. Warren Hastings 
 had as clear a perception of the fact as any Superintendent 
 of Police in the present day. But although the Indian 
 constabulary force has been modelled and re-modelled — 
 though first one system has been tried and then another, 
 every description of organisation that has yet been at- 
 tempted has been found to be equally inefficacious for the 
 
 ♦ The Purneah district. tecting landlord was a powerful Zemin- 
 
 t With certain variations, of course dar. In the instances cited by the 
 
 dependent upon the nature of the Khejucks of the Purneah district, the 
 
 landed tenures. In the example, which territorial offenders were principally 
 
 we have quoted from the evidence of a small Moostajirs, or Revenue-farmers. 
 Budduck practising in Oude, the pro- 
 
394 DAKOITEE. 
 
 protection of life and property, and the detection and pu- 
 nishment of crime. Instead of protecting life and pro- 
 perty, these men, under whatever name they draw a 
 certain amount of salary, whether they belong to the 
 regular police, or are the village watch, only protect 
 rapine and disorder. To such at least point their own 
 unaided instincts ; but European superintendence, though 
 powerless hitherto to convert the Indian police into an 
 effective body, has done something to control its excesses. 
 There is still much more to be done. It is the weakest 
 point of our Indian administration. But to break up a 
 gigantic league of this kind, a confederacy between the 
 landlords and the police so contrived, so glossed over — 
 each playing into the hands of the other — as to baffle 
 almost every effort to convict the suspected offenders of 
 actual participation in the delinquencies of the Dakoits, is 
 a work of no very easy accomplishment for a handful of 
 European strangers. The network of this foul conspiracy 
 stretches up to the very doors of the magistrate's cut- 
 cherry. It embraces all classes, from the wealthy 
 Zemindar and the influential Amlah to the ill-paid and 
 insignificant village watchman, who, perhaps, is a mem- 
 ber of a robber-caste.* The more intricate the machinery 
 
 * See the following evidence of a Answer. — No: they do not go on Da- 
 
 Dakoit approver : koitee, but know all about the Dakoits. 
 
 Question. — What class of people be- Whoever leaves his house for Dakoitee, 
 
 come Chokeedars (watchmen) ? he does so with the knowledge of the 
 
 Answer. — Dosaud, Hurree, Kurraria, Chokeedars ; and they do not go on Da- 
 
 &c., &c. (robber-castes) ; these princi- koitee for this reason, that in a village 
 
 pally furnish the Chokeedars. all kinds of people dwell ; if any person 
 
 Question.— In the course of the month should be discovered absent by the Naka- 
 
 what does such person realise ? Buskundaz, he would be reported to the 
 
 Answer. — Two rupees a month for Thannadar (native police superinten- 
 
 each Chokeedar is levied on the Ryots ; dent), therefore, the watchmen at night 
 
 and they (the Chokeedars) realise a great do not leave their village, but go on the 
 
 deal from thieves and robbers and Da- rounds and set robberies on foot, and 
 
 koits, and this is the real reason why take share from robbers and Dakoits. — 
 
 they undertake to be watchmen — to [Evidence of Bokai, Mistry, taken by 
 
 feather their own nests — else no one Captain Marsh, July 19, 1842.] 
 
 would willingly undertake so detestable Again : 
 
 an occupation. Question. — Are the Chokeedars of 
 
 Question. — Do the Chokeedars ever go your caste (Hurree) all thieves ? 
 
 on Dakoitee f Answer. —They call themselvcB Cho- 
 
SCREENS AND FENCES. 395 
 
 of our own law-courts, and the more extensive our police 
 establishments, the more subtle become the contrivances 
 by which the conspirators endeavour to cloak the crimes 
 which they are all interested in concealing. Eighty years 
 ago, Warren Hastings regretted that " the regularity and 
 precision which have been introduced into our new courts 
 of justice," should be "among the causes of the increase 
 of robbers." It is not to be doubted, I fear, that in these 
 days the more complicated machinery which we have 
 introduced in furtherance of the improved administration 
 of justice has had a tendency to raise up so many screens 
 or barriers between the eye of the British functionary 
 and the crimes which are committed around him. 
 
 Upon this subject, in its general bearings, important as 
 it is, I cannot now afford to enlarge. But this is the 
 proper place in which to speak of the effects of our 
 present system upon the great crime of Dakoitee. It is 
 a distinguishing feature of the practice of these pro- 
 fessional depredators that they adapt their ways, with 
 wonderful precision, to the legal machinery which is 
 brought to bear upon them — that they even turn the 
 very engine which is designed for their destruction, into 
 an instrument of defence. They adapt their organisation 
 to our own, and the more intricate it is the greater are 
 their chances of evasion and escape. ''The English," 
 writes an officer of great intelligence and experience in 
 the intricacies of these criminal leagues, " having divided 
 the country into districts and Thannas, the robbers have 
 made it a fundamental maxim and sine qud non to 
 attach themselves by divisions to Thannas, in order to 
 bribe every man of real and actual influence over the 
 villagers to enter into a league with their paymasters — 
 their principle being to sacrifice much in order to retain 
 
 keedars, and by this deceit engage in and Dakoits. — {^Evidence of Jhoomuk^ 
 robbery and Dakoitee ; all the Chokee- Hurree, taken by Captain Marsh, July 
 dars of the Hurree caste are robbers 20. 1842.] 
 
396 DAKOITEE. 
 
 a little in certainty and safety. Now the two classes 
 which have supreme actual influence among the village 
 population are the Thannadars (with their myrmidons) 
 and the Revenue-farmers (with theirs). These then are 
 the persons held in the pay of the Dakoits. To ensure 
 regularity in this necessary particular, a robber-division 
 is attached to a Thanna, and a subdivision to a par- 
 ticular form. This robber-division is under a Sirdar 
 (or chief) of robbers ; and it is among the first of his 
 duties to pay monthly with his own hand the shares 
 respectively of the Thannadar and the Revenue-farmer."* 
 
 Nor does the corruption, as I have already intimated, 
 stop here. " The Sirdars," says another writer, an intel- 
 ligent and zealous magistrate, "are men who travel 
 in their palkis (palanquins), and arrange all these little 
 affairs first with the local police, next with the magis- 
 trate's Amlah, and eventually with the Sessions' Amlah 
 and the law officer."f " In short," to use the comprehen- 
 sive words of another civil officer, the highest authority 
 on such a subject in Bengal, '•'■ the whole plan has been 
 got up to meet our rules of evidence, and it is carried on 
 with the help of our ministerial and police Amlah."J 
 Whatever we have done, indeed, the Dakoits have turned 
 our doings to their own uses — our revenue system, our 
 police system, our judicial system, have all been impressed 
 into their service. Whatever may have been our admi- 
 nistrative organisation, they have adapted to it, with con- 
 summate skill, the organisation of their criminal leagues, 
 and out-manoeuvred us at all points. 
 
 Nor did the triumphs of these astute criminals stop short 
 
 * MS. Correspondence. — The same "Sircfars (or captains), and to each iVaifi- 
 
 writer thus calculates the number of Sirdar four burglar gangs, and to every 
 
 robbers located within one Thanna (or burglar gang five men each. Thus, 
 
 police division) : — " I calculate to every 1 X4x4x4x4x 5 =1280 members 
 
 Thannadar four Revenue-farmers resi- of the depredational league in one 
 
 dent in a Thanna ; on every Revenue- Thanna." 
 
 farmer's farm four Sirdars (or chiefs ), f MS. Correspondence. 
 
 with their respective divisions of rob- J Ibid. 
 bers. To every Sirdar four Naib- 
 
DEVICES OF THE DAKOITS. 397 
 
 even at the doors of the Sessions Court. They reached to 
 the very judgment-seat. So protected by the Amlah, 
 it would have been hard if the Dakoits could not have 
 brought into court any amount of false evidence to secure 
 their acquittal. It never, by any chance, happened that all, 
 or even the most influential, members of a robber-gang 
 were arrested ; and they who were at large never failed 
 to exert themselves to obtain the liberation of their more 
 unfortunate comrades who had fallen into the grasp of 
 the law. False witnesses were readily obtainable from 
 among their own people, willing and able to swear him 
 off. The manner in which this evidence was got up was 
 often very clever and ingenious. "It is quite out of my 
 power," writes Mr. Wauchope, magistrate of Hooghly (of 
 whose services I shall come to speak presently), to the 
 Superintendent of Police in the Lower Provinces, ^' to de- 
 scribe on paper the delight with which the Dakoits with 
 me talk about their exploits — of the pleasure parties which 
 Kartich Koura, a famous Sirdar, used to take from Cal- 
 cutta to his native village, whence they never returned 
 without committing one or more Dakoitees ; how on one 
 of these occasions their Sirdar had three of his fingers cut 
 off; how he was arrested and committed to the sessions; 
 or the roars of laughter with which they give the details 
 of the trial before the judge, where he was acquitted on 
 the evidence of a most respectable Brahmin, and a still 
 more respectable Kait — the first being Sirdamund Tha- 
 koor, a first-rate leader in the gang, and the second 
 Syud Mytee, now an approver with me, and only lately 
 sentenced to transportation for life."* 
 
 A system so complete in its organisation as this was 
 not to be put down by the ordinary judicial machinery 
 applied to accidental offences, and by the ordinary 
 ministers of the law. It was apparent that, as in the 
 
 * MS, Records. 
 
398 DAKOITEE. 
 
 case of Thuggee, a necessity existed for the adoption of 
 specific measures of a more stringent character, and of a 
 less regular type. Neither the law courts nor the law 
 officers, as then constituted and appointed, were suf- 
 ficient for the suppression of an evil so complex and so 
 extensive. Something more required to be done. 
 
 It was in the month of April, 1837, that the first 
 attempt was made to suppress Dakoitee by means of 
 special measures directed to that one end, and a special 
 machinery employed for their execution. Sir Charles 
 Metcalfe was, at this time, Lieutenant-Governor of the 
 North- Western Provinces. The subject had been for some 
 time pressing urgently upon the consideration of the 
 authorities, and the time had now come for action. A 
 Commission for the suppression of Dakoitee was esta- 
 blished ; and Mr. Hugh Fraser, a civil servant of good 
 capacity, was appointed Commissioner, with a liberal staff 
 of auxiliary subordinates. Special powers were conferred 
 on him. Throughout the whole of the North- Western Pro- 
 vinces he was invested with magisterial authority. All 
 the magistrates were instructed to co-operate with him, 
 and the police were directed to render every possible 
 assistance to his agents. But the year and a half, during 
 which the Commission was in operation, were distinguished 
 by no important results. There was an attempt rather 
 to strike at accidental symptoms, than to probe down to 
 the seat of the disease. It aimed rather at the conviction 
 of Dakoits than the suppression of Dakoitee. The great 
 subject itself, in all its length and breadth — in all its in- 
 tricacies and complexities — was not sufficiently studied. 
 But Sleeman had reduced Thuggee to its elements, and 
 he was obviously the proper man to submit to a similar 
 process the kindred crime of Dakoitee. He had already, 
 indeed, acquired much available information regarding 
 the professional robber-castes ; and his associates in the 
 
EFFORTS FOR ITS SUPPRESSION. 399 
 
 Thuggee Department had approved themselves to be men 
 of the right stamp to co-operate with him. The union of 
 the two offices of the General Superintendent of measures 
 for the suppression of Thuggee and the Commissioner 
 for the suppression of Dakoitee, seemed, indeed, to be 
 recommended by many important considerations, not the 
 least of which was the peculiar fitness of the man who 
 had long held so worthily the former appointment ; and 
 now Lord Auckland, at the end of the year 1838, being at 
 Simlah, and holding in his own hands the government of 
 the North- Western Provinces, determined to unite the 
 two offices imder the superintendence of Colonel Sleeman. 
 At the commencement of the following year the junction 
 was formally effected, and from that time all the mea- 
 sures for the suppression of Dakoitee under the Bengal 
 Presidency, with the exception of those in the Lower Pro- 
 vinces, which were conducted by the " Superintendent of 
 Police," were under the direction of the man who had 
 done so much to root Thuggee out of the land. 
 
 The same system now which had been employed so 
 successfully for the extirpation of Thuggee, was brought 
 into play against the great fraternities of Dakoits. Slee- 
 man's head-quarters were to be in Rohilkund. His as- 
 sistants were spread out all over Upper India. The plan 
 now to be pursued was simply, as described by Sleeman 
 himself, to hunt down the Dakoits by a simultaneous, 
 vigorous, and well-sustained pursuit throughout all parts 
 of India, and thereby to break up their little communities, 
 and compel them to blend with the rest of mankind in 
 public service or private industry, and by degrees to lose 
 their exclusive feeling, and forget their exclusive lan- 
 guage. And this was to be done, firstly by the agency of 
 informers, who were to set our officers on the track, and 
 enable us to detect the offenders ; and secondly, by spe- 
 cific legislative enactments, to enable us to punish them. 
 
 There was no scarcity of informers. Our gaols were 
 
400 DAKOITEE. 
 
 fall of Dakoits. It was astoiiishing what a mass of ser- 
 viceable information was locked up within our prison- 
 walls. The whole art and mystery of Dakoitee was 
 there to be had for the asking. Professors proud of their 
 knowledge, and rejoicing in the opportunity of giving free 
 vent, in voluble discourse, to the cherished reminiscences 
 of bygone days, talked without stint to the British 
 officers about their depredational achievements, and 
 openly avowed the eagerness of their desires to be again 
 at the exhilarating work. They could not understand 
 that their profession was not as honorable as it was 
 lucrative and exciting. They had no shame, and they 
 had no remorse. They gloried in their exploits as 
 sportsmen do, and talked over a successful gang-robbery 
 with its attendant murders as our European gentlemen 
 talk over their boar-chases or tiger-hunts. " Whilst 
 talking over their excursions," wrote one of Sleeman's 
 assistants,* "which were to me really very interesting, 
 their eyes gleamed with pleasure, and beating their 
 hands on their foreheads and breasts, and muttering 
 some ejaculations, they bewailed the hardness of their 
 lot, which now ensured their never being able again to 
 participate in such a joyous occupation." It was a 
 pleasant life, and a lucrative employment, beside which 
 the hard labor and slender earnings of honesty cut but 
 a sorry figure in the eyes of the work-eschewing Hin- 
 doostanee. When asked, after many years spent in 
 prison, if he would not on regaining his liberty be- 
 take himself to honest courses, the gaol-bird would 
 always return the same discouraging answer : " No, no," 
 shaking his head and laughing, " that would never do. 
 Why should I become an honest man — work all day in 
 the sun, rain, and all weathers, and earn what ? Some 
 five or six pice a day ! We Dakoits lead very agreeable 
 
 ♦ Capt. W. M. Ramsay. See Colonel Sleeman's Bhudduck Report. Calcutta, 
 1849. 
 
EFFORTS FOR ITS SUPPRESSION. 401 
 
 and comfortable lives. When from home, which is 
 generally only during the cold season, we march some 
 foiuteen or sixteen miles a day, for perhaps a couple of 
 months, or say four at the outside — commit a Dakoitee, 
 and bring home money sufficient to keep us comfortable 
 for a year, or perhaps two. When at home we amuse 
 ourselves by shooting, and visiting our friends, or in any 
 way most agreeable — eat when we please, and sleep 
 when we please — can what you call an honest man do 
 that ?"* 
 
 But however discouraghig all this may have been 
 viewed with regard to any hope that may have been 
 entertained of the reformation of Dakoits, the freedom 
 with which the convicts spoke of their professional 
 achievements promised well for the success of our 
 endeavours to root them out of the land. The Dakoits, 
 indeed, were not to be reformed — they were to be extir- 
 pated. It was characteristic of English benevolence that 
 we should have been slow to resort to such a remedy as 
 this — that we should have sought rather to convert these 
 depredational tribes into industrial classes by holding 
 out to them sufficient inducements to honest exertion. 
 But all such projects were seen, upon a closer exami- 
 nation, to be worthy only of an Utopian country, and a 
 Satumian age. People talked about buying up Dakoitee 
 — about sending out a general invitation to these here- 
 ditary robbers to come and settle upon grants of land 
 appropriated to them by Government, and to Hve a life 
 of peaceful integrity for the remainder of their days. 
 But " the difficulties and risks of such a measure were," 
 as Colonel Sleeman well remarked, " little understood. 
 Our territories did not contain one twentieth part of the 
 great body which we should have had to collect ; and 
 we should have found it impossible to collect them by 
 mere invitation, without offering them as little labor, and 
 
 * Substance of conversation held with Captain W. M. Ramsay. 
 
402 DAKOITEE. 
 
 as mucli luxury, as they then enjoyed in their wild 
 state, with all the same hopes of rising to wealth and 
 distinction. We should have had to give a leader of 
 robbers and murderers, with his four or five wives, more 
 pay than we give to a native commissioned officer, who 
 had served our Government faithfully thirty or forty 
 years, who had his breast covered with medals, and his 
 body with honorable scars. Had we at any time in- 
 creased the labor from absolute idleness, or diminished 
 their subsistence from absolute luxury, they would have 
 been off to their native forests and ravines."* 
 
 All this was undeniable. The arguments against so 
 wild a project as the estabhshment of colonies of reformed 
 Budducks, to be supported at the expense of the indus- 
 trious inhabitants of the country, were so conclusive, that 
 the scheme was soon reasoned down. Indeed, we had 
 begun to discover by this time that humanity, like am- 
 bition, sometimes " overleaps itself, and falls on the other 
 side." Nothing is more remarkable in the history of 
 Dakoitee than the fact of the large number of notorious 
 offenders who have escaped conviction and punishment, 
 partly through the agency of false witnesses and the cor- 
 ruption of the native officers of our law courts, and partly 
 through the unwillingness of the European judicial func- 
 tionaries to convict and punish, except in cases substan- 
 tiated by the clearest possible evidence of the commission 
 of a specific offence. The judicial axiom that it is better 
 that twenty guilty men should escape than that one inno- 
 cent man should be punished, however sound it may be 
 in the abstract, had not certainly, in its application to the 
 case of these great depredational leagues, any tendency 
 to advance the interests of mankind. Such tender mer- 
 cies as were exhibited, with the best possible intentions, 
 by our enlightened European functionaries, were in effect 
 cruel. Seventy years before, Warren Hastings had clearh' 
 
 * Colonel Sieeman's Report Calcutta, ISA9. 
 
SPECIAL ACTS. 403 
 
 discovered the impossibility of suppressing Dakoitee by 
 judicial proceedings in harmony with our refined English 
 ideas of justice, and a strict observance of rules of evi- 
 dence as recognised in our English law courts. He saw 
 that such mercy was in effect unmerciful, and that there 
 was no real humanity but vigor. As time advanced, 
 and the machinery of our law courts became more 
 complicated, and our European law officers became more 
 and more the representatives and exponents of the high 
 abstract principles of Western civiUsation, it was not 
 likely that the scruples which stood in the way of a larger 
 growth of real justice and humanity should have been 
 less influential upon the decisions of our judicial tribu- 
 nals. The Dakoits, indeed, from generation to genera- 
 tion, laughed at us and our law courts, " Do you think 
 that we shall succeed in extirpating you?" asked Captain 
 JRamsay. *' If you go on in the way the Thugs have 
 been put down," was the answer, "you certainly will; 
 but in the customary way, that is, requiring proof to con- 
 vict of specific acts of Dakoitee, never — it is impossible — 
 we should go on increasing from year to year." 
 
 These words, which were spoken in 1839, contain the 
 pith of the whole question of Dakoitee-suppression — the 
 evil laid bare and the remedy suggested. But it was not 
 until 1843 that the remedy was applied. It has been 
 seen that in 1836 an act was passed for the suppression 
 of Thuggee, declaring that any one proved to have be- 
 longed at any time to a gang of Thugs should be liable 
 to conviction and punishment on the general charge, and 
 now it was proposed that a similar exemption from the 
 necessity of convicting for specific offences should be 
 applied to the case of professional Dakoitee.* " It is 
 
 * The preamble of the Act stated suits in different parts of the country." 
 
 " professional Dakoits, who belonged The reader, bearing these words in 
 
 to certain tribes, systematically em- mind, will perceive that the specifica- 
 
 ployed in carrying on their lawless pur- tion contained in them subsequently 
 
 2d2 
 
4«04 DAKOITEE. 
 
 hereby enacted," said tlie new Act — No. XXIV. of 1843 
 — ^' that whosoever shall be proved to have belonged, 
 either before or after the passing of this Act, to any gang 
 of Dakoits, either within or without the territories of the 
 East India Company, shall be punished with transporta- 
 tion for life, or with imprisonment for any less term with 
 hard labor." The Act at the same time gave general 
 jurisdiction to all magistrates to try offences of this class 
 wheresoever committed, without the formality of "any 
 Futwa from any law officer." It was impossible that 
 such a law as this should not be productive of salutary 
 effects. The difficulty of conviction of a specific offence 
 was great to a degree not readily appreciable in this 
 country. For these gangs of Dakoits, for the most part, 
 depredated at a distance of some hundreds of miles from 
 their homes ; and the necessity of bringing witnesses 
 from remote places to give evidence in our law courts 
 was an evil of so intolerable a nature, that, whatsoever 
 might have been the sufferings of men, whatsoever their 
 hopes of justice or their desire after revenge, they shrunk 
 from the long journey to the distant tribunal, and silently 
 submitted to their wrongs.* 
 
 Nor were these the only legal measiu-es adopted for 
 the suppression of the great crime. Dakoitee was not an 
 enormity peculiar to the Company's temtories. On the 
 contrary, both Thuggee and Dakoitee liad thriven with 
 peculiar luxuriance in the native states. Oude, indeed, 
 had long been the hot-bed of both. It often happened 
 that in these native states prisoners had been tried, con- 
 victed, and sentenced, as Thugs and Dakoits, but had 
 subsequently contrived to escape ; and, having escaped, 
 
 embarrassed the Bengal Government, conceal their sufferings, and often 
 
 and compelled the passing of another denied that they liad ever been at- 
 
 Act, generalising the application of the tacked, when the dearest members of 
 
 former one. — See post, page 409. their family had been killed or wounded, 
 
 * " To avoid the great loss and in- and all they had in the world been 
 
 convenience which the necessity of this carried off." — [Sleemans Budduck Be- 
 
 attendance involved, it was found that port, 1849.] 
 the sufferers did all in their power to 
 
EFFORTS IN THE NATIVE STATES. 405 
 
 had not only returned to their old trade of robbery and 
 murder, but had fearfully persecuted all who had con- 
 tributed to their previous detection.* An Act was there- 
 fore passed, declaring that all prisoners convicted in 
 native states by a tribunal in which an European cove- 
 nanted servant was one of the presiding judges, might be 
 received into our gaols to undergo their sentence."f It 
 is a feature, indeed, of our English administration in 
 India, that, in all our humanising measures for the suppres- 
 sion of Suttee, Female Infanticide, Thuggee, Dakoitee, 
 and other kindred abominations, we have not stopped 
 short on the borders of the provinces subject to our own 
 regulations. We have exerted our influence to the 
 utmost to indoctrinate the native courts with our own 
 views, and have seldom failed to elicit their acquiescence 
 and assistance. Grudgingly, perhaps, these may have 
 been given. The zeal with which such measures have 
 been prosecuted by the native princes has fallen greatty 
 short of our own. But we have had British officers at 
 their Durbars to see that their promises are fulfilled, and 
 in reality the measures which they have authorised have 
 been practically our own.J 
 
 * " Either," says Sleeraan, " from the contemplated seizure of a gang of Da- 
 negligence or connivance of the guards, koits Avas to thwart the undertaking 
 or the wish of the officers of such courts (for if the Court knew, the Auuiils 
 to avoid the cost of maintaining them." knew; and if tlie Aumils knew, the Da- 
 t Act XVIII. of 1843. koits knew what was goingon), and yet 
 J Since the British Government in was unwilling to co-operate without the 
 India have entered more heartily into consent of the Court. An example of 
 the great work of extirpating Thuggee this is worth giving. In 1822, the widow 
 and Dakoitee, and have not only issued of a jemadar of Dakoits went to the 
 specific enactments, but appointed an judgeatCawnpore, and stating that she 
 especial and independent Department to had been refused her legitimate share of 
 carry out these enactments, the native the plunder taken by her late husband's 
 princes and chiefs have rendered us associates, boldly denounced the gang 
 more assistance than they were wont to the British functionary. A certain 
 to do, when the detection and appre- village in the Oude territory was named 
 hension of Thugs and Dakoits was left as the place in which property captured 
 to the ordinary civil establishments, in several Dakoitees would be found, 
 Indeed, before the adoption of these and the houses of the receivers were 
 special measures, it was often found a indicated by the woman. Immediately 
 work of difficulty to obtain the hearty afterwards the judge, under cover of a 
 co-operation of a British Resident at a tiger-shooting expedition, visited the 
 native Court, who felt that to commu- village pointed out to him, and the truth 
 nicate with the Court respecting the of the woman's story was confirmed. 
 
406 DAKOITEE. 
 
 Thus aided by special legislative provisions, Colonel 
 Sleeman and his colleagues set to work as vigorously for 
 the extirpation of the Budduck, and other professional 
 robber-gangs, as they before had done for the extirpation 
 of the Thugs, and, learned in all the mysteries of the 
 craft, and aided by professional approvers, they hunted 
 down large gangs, culled new approvers from the list of 
 detected culprits, and carried on the war with remai'k- 
 able success. And whilst in the upper provinces of 
 Bengal these energetic officers were thus vigorously em- 
 ployed, in the lower provinces Mr. Dampier, the Super- 
 intendent of Police, with one or two of the old assistants 
 in the Thuggee Department, were about the same excel- 
 lent work. But although the haunts of a large number 
 of robber-gangs were beaten up, and Dakoits were cap- 
 tured and catalogued by himdreds, Dakoitee was not 
 suppressed. I do not underrate the services of Sleeman 
 and his detective police. Those services were very great. 
 An immense deal of good was accomplished. If they did 
 nothing else, they drew away the veil which shrouded 
 the mysteries of Dakoitee. We have advanced a long 
 way towards the cure of a disease when we have learnt 
 thoroughly to understand it. I believe that Dakoitee is 
 now thoroughly understood. But the " Department " 
 did much more than this — they actually captured (as I 
 have said) and either punished or turned into approvers 
 vast numbers of Dakoits.* But, like all men of earnest- 
 ness and enthusiasm, they were run away with by an 
 idea. The idea was a new and a striking one. It was 
 
 On returning to Cawnpore the judge, tachment had not proceeded far, when 
 eager to turn the information he had the Kesident's heart failed him, and 
 obtained to good account, wrote to the after a march or two the detachment 
 Resident at Lucknow, suggesting to was recalled. — IMS. Notes."] 
 him to send out a detachment of local * The approvers themselves are con- 
 troops to aid the agents of the civil victs. Sentence is passed upon them, 
 oflScer in the capture of the gang. The but not carried into effect. They are 
 Resident consented not without some indulgently treated, but of real liberty 
 •cruple, and the Nazir was sent with they have none. They are, in fact, 
 the woman to accompany the party and prisoners at large, for life, 
 point out the offenders. But the de- 
 
DAKOITS IN BENGAL. 407 
 
 the great idea of the hereditary robber-tribes of India. 
 It was a very important and a deeply-interesting subject, 
 but they gave themselves too exclusively to it. This 
 matter of the professional robber-castes was a great 
 feature of Dakoitee, but it did not in itself constitute Da- 
 koitee. Sleeman and his associates struck at the rob- 
 ber-castes, and I believe that they were well-nigh ex- 
 tinguished. At all events, as great brotherhoods of 
 crime, they were utterly broken up and dispersed. 
 
 Still Dakoitee was not suppressed. Subdued in one 
 form and in one part of the country, it seemed to 
 take a new shape and to break out in another place. 
 The general effect of such measures is to urge the evil, 
 against which they are directed, into more remote 
 demonstrations — to drive the offenders into distant 
 parts of the empire, to carry on their depredations be- 
 yond the reach of central supervision. Thus, some little 
 time ago, when there was a great outcry against the 
 practices of the London beggars, and these professional 
 mendicants were, for a time, hunted out of the metropolis, 
 it was observed by all dwellers in the home counties that 
 there was a vast increase of rural mendicity. But in 
 Bengal the effect was directly the reverse of this. Da- 
 koitee,- like Government, began to centralise itself, and 
 Calcutta was surrounded by banditti. The men consti- 
 tuting these gangs did not apparently belong to the here- 
 ditary robber-tribes of India. They seemed rather to 
 make up an indistinct and heterogeneous posse comitatus 
 than a great homogeneous guild or brotherhood. Whether 
 these gangs were partly composed of men who had lost 
 their occupation in the provinces, and, unable any longer 
 to preserve their aristocratic exclusiveness, had fused 
 themselves into the general mass of Dakoitee,* and re- 
 signed themselves to the usual conditions of that misfortime 
 
 * It would appear from Mr. Wau- seen on writing this, that thej were. — 
 chope's last report, which I had not See p. 412. 
 
408 DAKOITEE. 
 
 whicli is said to bring together strange bed-fellows, I do 
 not pretend to know ; but I grieve to say that an alarming 
 increase of Dakoitee in the lower provinces of Bengal 
 has recently manifested itself, and that only last year 
 gang-robbers were swarming, in a state of intense ac- 
 tivity, under the walls of the Supreme Court of Calcutta. 
 
 It was at the commencement of the year 1852, 
 that the Superintendent of Police in the lower pro- 
 vinces of Bengal submitted to Government a letter re- 
 ceived from Mr. Wauchope, magistrate of Hooghly, 
 "forwarding a list of 287 Dakoits concerned in 83 Da- 
 koitees." In this letter the magistrate reported that the 
 287 Dakoits mentioned by his approvers were connected 
 with only three gangs ; and he added, that he knew at 
 least thirty-five gangs committing similar depredations 
 within fifty miles of Calcutta. Of the Dakoits whom he 
 had catalogued his approvers could give him no detailed 
 account ;• unlike the Budduck and Khejuck approvers, 
 they seldom knew the parentage or caste of their confede- 
 rates ; but it was ascertained that, for the most part, they 
 had come from some Mofassil village, which they occa- 
 sionally visited, and located themselves in Calcutta or 
 Chandemagore. To arrest the progress of the evil, it 
 was now suggested by the Superintendent of Police that 
 a Commissioner for the suppression of Dakoitee in Lower 
 Bengal should be appointed, armed Avith special powers, to 
 operate under the provisions of the Act (XXIV. of 1 8 43) 
 for the suppression of professional Dakoits, belonging to 
 certain tribes systematically employed in carrying on 
 their lawless pursuits. " I feel perfectly convinced," he 
 added, " that unless the Thuggee system is brought into 
 operation against these gangs, we shall fail in putting 
 them down." 
 
 Fortunately, it was not difficult to name an officer well 
 qualified for the performance of this important work. 
 The Hooghly magistrate, who had sent in the list of 287 
 
MR. WAUCHOPE. 409 
 
 Dakoits, was just the man for such an enterprise. Mr. 
 Wauchope, an officer of rare energy and intelligence, had 
 studied well the habits and practices of the Dakoits, and had 
 a large acquaintance with the personal composition of the 
 principal gangs in the neighbourhood of his court. On one 
 occasion a notorious Dakoit chief was brought up before 
 him under an assumed name. The man loudly declared 
 his innocence — protested he had never been concerned 
 in Dakoitee of any kind, or even suspected of such an 
 offence. Mr. Wauchope heard him out, and then laugh- 
 ingly replied that the story was doubtless a very good 
 one, but that it was not good enough for him — that he 
 knew something more about the matter ; that the man, 
 to his certain knowledge, had been arrested under such 
 a name, as concerned in such a Dakoitee, by the magis- 
 trate of the twenty-four Pergunnahs, and again in Howrah, 
 under another name, for participation in another Dakoitee ; 
 that his real name was so-and-so, but that, to distinguish 
 him from another Dakoit of the same name, he went by 
 a certain nickname in the gang — and by that nickname 
 Mr. Wauchope called him. Astonished and alarmed by 
 this display of knowledge — all his secret history thus laid 
 bare by one whom he had thought to cozen in the old 
 way, by hard lying — the unhappy man felt that he was 
 at the mercy of the English magistrate, and cried out, 
 "Pardon me, my lord ; I am ready to tell you all I know." 
 It was plain that this was the kind of man to deal with 
 the old Bengal Dakoits, of whom it was truly said that 
 " they would never confess unless they saw that they 
 were in the hands of a man from whom there was little 
 or no hope of escape." So Mr. Wauchope was recom- 
 mended for the office of Special Commissioner for the 
 suppression of Dakoitee, and Government sanctioned the 
 appointment.* But although the man was ready, the 
 
 * The appointment was made on the one year, to be reported on at the ex- 
 26th of April, 1852, experimentally for piration of that period. 
 
410 DAKOITEE. 
 
 Act was not. A question had arisen, in the course of 
 the preceding year, as to whether Act XXIY. of 1843* 
 could be brought into operation against the Dakoit 
 bands of Lower Bengal ; for although the wording of the 
 two first sections was of a general character, and seemed 
 to include in their provisions all kinds of Dakoits prac- 
 tising in the Company's territories, the preamble only spe- 
 cified certain tribes of professional robbers ; and to these, 
 therefore, the operation of the Act, strictly interpreted, 
 might be limited. The principal judicial authorities were 
 at variance on the subject, and the supreme Government 
 had expressed its unwillingness to alter the existing law 
 unless it were clearly shown by a judicial decision that 
 its provisions were insufficient. It was proposed, there 
 fore, that the legality of the application of the Act in 
 question to the case of ordinary Dakoits should be tested 
 by certain trials in the Hooghly Court, and the decisions 
 of the Sudder thereupon. This, however, did not go far 
 to solve the ambiguity. One man was tried under the 
 doubtful Act, and the Sudder Court sentenced him to be 
 transported for life. But it was understood that the 
 judges were not all of one opinion on the subject; and it 
 was possible, therefore, that the next case might meet 
 with a different fate. 
 
 In the mean while, however, the attention of Govern- 
 ment had been called, through another channel, to the 
 alarming increase of crime in the lower provinces of 
 Bengal. A petition had been received from several 
 respectable inhabitants of the districts of Burdwan, 
 Hooghly, and Kishnaghur, setting forth that thefts and 
 gang-robberies had increased to such an extent that there 
 was a general feeling of insecurity throughout the 
 country — an evil mainly to be attributed to the in- 
 efficiency of the police, and especially the village watch. 
 This was not an appeal likely to be disregarded. An Act 
 
 * See ante, page 404. 
 
RECENT RESULTS. 411 
 
 '' for the further repression of Dakoity and other crimes 
 in the lower provinces of Bengal" was drafted, and 
 read for the first time on the 27th of June, 1851. The 
 preamble set forth that, " whereas Dakoitees and other 
 heinous crimes are of frequent occurrence within certain 
 zillahs of the Presidency of Fort WilUam, in Bengal, and 
 whereas it has been doubted whether the laws in force 
 agahist Dakoits and professional robbers can be put in 
 force, except in the case of those who belong to certain 
 tribes referred to in the preamble to Act XXIV., 1843, 
 and it is expedient that such doubts be removed, and 
 that further provision be made for the more regular and 
 due appointment of the village watchmen ;'^ and the first 
 section decreed that "the provisions of Act XXIV., 1843, 
 shall apply to and be put in force against all persons be- 
 longing, or who have at any time belonged to, or robbed 
 in company, with any gang of persons associated for the 
 purpose of practising robbery or extortion, and every 
 such person shall be deemed a Dakoit without reference 
 to the tribe or caste to which he belongs." 
 
 The results of Mr. Wauchope's appointment, as far as 
 they are yet apparent, are of the most satisfactory kind. 
 He was appointed provisionally for a year, and ordered 
 to report progress upon the expiration of it. In the 
 mean while the accounts, which he has furnished to his 
 immediate superior, are of the most satisfactory com- 
 plexion. He reports, within the first six months of his 
 operations, a very large duninution of crime. He has 
 hunted down and broken up some extensive gangs ; and 
 the immediate result of his active measures is, that the 
 number of ascertained cases of Dakoitee within his juris- 
 diction are shown, in 1852, to be only one-half of those 
 which were committed within a corresponding period of 
 the preceding year; and seventy-five per cent, less than 
 those, within a similar space of time, just before his 
 assumption of office in the spring of last year. But there 
 
412 DAKOITEE. 
 
 is one great impediment to complete and permanent 
 success, which Mr. "Wauchope reports to the Superin- 
 tendent of Police. Spealdng of the detailed results of 
 his labors, he says : "In all, about 1250 men have 
 been denounced as Dakoits — 131 have been arrested ; 
 47 of them from Calcutta ; almost all of these are 
 well-known Dakoits, driven by the Mofussil Police to 
 take shelter there. The arrest of so many criminals in 
 Calcutta has dispersed the gangs in that city, but un- 
 fortunately they have not far to go for a place of 
 refuge. The Prench settlement of Chandernagore is 
 now swarming with Dakoits driven from Calcutta, or 
 the remnants of Mofussil gangs. Prom the Prench 
 territory they sally out and commit depredations in 
 the neighbouring districts. They are perfectly safe, be- 
 cause, having for the most part assumed false names, 
 I cannot call on the Prench authorities to deliver them 
 up. Neither can my people follow them into the foreign 
 territory to discover their places of concealment."* 
 
 Here then the matter rests for the present. The 
 result of all our recent efforts for the suppression of 
 Dakoitee seems to be this — that very much has been 
 done to break up, and indeed to exterminate, the gTcat 
 depredational leagues, consisting of members of robber- 
 castes, often entirely composed of men of one caste, 
 which have been from generation to generation go- 
 verned by fixed laws and observant of ancient religious 
 usages — ^that the more regular and complicated ma- 
 chinery of predatorial crime which the Budducks 
 and Khejucks, and other cognate tribes, had long kept 
 in vigorous action, now either moves languidly, or not 
 at all. And so far, Sleeman and his associates have 
 done great thmgs, and rendered life and property 
 more secure in the provinces of Upper India. But to 
 
 * Mr. Wauchope to Superintendent of Police, Lower Provinces, December 2, 1852. 
 MS. Records. 
 
RECENT RESULTS. dl3 
 
 establish a reign of terror among any class of criminals 
 in one part of a country, is naturally to drive them 
 into another. Many were convicted and punished; 
 many, it is to be hoped, alarmed by the new dangers 
 which surrounded their profession, fell back upon 
 the peaceful calling of the husbandman. But some, 
 it seems, of the scattered fragments of the great 
 leagues which had been broken up in the Mofussil, 
 sought a place of safety under the walls of the Su- 
 preme Com't of Calcutta. There they were met by 
 a vigorous and experienced Company's officer, who, 
 armed with new powers under a special Act of the 
 Legislature, soon assured them that they had mis- 
 calculated their chances of immunity in that part of 
 the world. Another resting-place was, therefore, to be 
 sought ; and they found it in the Prench settlement 
 of Chandernagore. They knew that they were not 
 safe within the Company's territories, and they 
 found a little slip of foreign land whereon to locate 
 themselves out of reach of the Company's officers. 
 Dakoitee seems now to be in a desperate strait, and 
 I doubt whether it will ever be restored to its old 
 vitality and vigor. 
 
 Ever since we have had any connexion with the in- 
 ternal administration of India, Dakoitee has been the 
 curse of the country. There is nothing more difficult 
 to ascertain correctly than the statistics of crime. It 
 is almost impossible to discriminate between an in- 
 crease or decrease of committed offences and an in- 
 crease or decrease of detected ones. Wliat appears to 
 be the increased criminality of the people may, after 
 aU, be only the increased vigilance of the police. I see 
 little room to doubt that throughout the coimtry gene- 
 rally Dakoitee has greatly decreased. Even if there 
 had been no improvement in the police, our improvetl 
 revenue-systems would by themselves have sufficed to 
 
414 DAKOITEE. 
 
 diminish Dakoitee. Although there donhtless were 
 gangs of hereditary robhers, who, delighting in their 
 profession, and proud of their descent, were bom and 
 bred to be Dakoits, and followed the hereditary calling 
 irrespectively of all the ordinary inducements to crime 
 and of all accidental circumstances, there were many 
 others who were driven to it, in hard famine times, 
 who took to it when agricultm^e was precarious and 
 provisions were scarce — the relatives or connexions, 
 perhaps, of members of robber - castes, who were 
 easily persuaded in such seasons to adopt a service 
 which could not fail, so long as there was any property 
 to be plundered. And the members of the robber- 
 castes themselves, who were often agriculturists as well 
 as depredators, were roused into unwonted activity 
 when the crops were failing around them. At all 
 events, it has been ascertained, beyond all question, 
 that, in seasons of scarcity, Dakoitee has always in- 
 creased. Now, as the tendency of our revenue-systems 
 has been to develop the resources of the country and 
 to prevent the occurrence of these seasons of scarcity, 
 it is reasonable to believe that Dakoitee must have 
 subsided, to some extent, under the healing influence 
 of general prosperity. "Wliatsoever has a tendency to 
 civilise the people must diminish such an evil as this. 
 
 That Dakoitee is far less insolent and \iolent in its 
 demonstrations — far less sanguinary and unscrupulous, 
 and less openly defiant of authority, than in the early 
 days of our administration, is a fact that admits of no 
 dispute. Dakoitee is now in comparatively few cases 
 attended with murder. At the close of the last century 
 it was no uncommon thing for gangs of Dakoits to 
 kill, with brutal torture, the unhappy wTctches whom 
 they had plundered, to hack their bodies to pieces, 
 and to hang the bloody trophies of their successful 
 crime on the neighbouring trees, as they passed on 
 
RECENT RESULTS. 415 
 
 to commit new atrocities, flushed with victory, and 
 carrying everything insolently before them. 
 
 It may be said that, after all, what I have written 
 only goes to show that Dakoitee has not been sup- 
 pressed. It is very true that we found Dakoitee in 
 India, and that if we were to quit the country to- 
 morrow, we should leave it there. All that I have 
 attempted to show is the increased vigor and policy 
 of our measures, and the symptoms of eventual suc- 
 cess which have recently been developed. Much, 
 indeed, has been done, earnestly and wisely, for the 
 suppression of this monster evil, Avithin the last twenty 
 years of our rule. But it is no easy thing to " abolish 
 crime." Even in the best-governed countries, and 
 A^ith the most elaborate detective establishments, the 
 science of crime is perfected under the very eyes of the 
 police. The greatest evils that can exist under the 
 sun are seen, known, and understood by our detective 
 force, and yet nothing can be done to eradicate the 
 disease mth which they are so familiar.* 
 
 * Take, for example, the following platforms, in the pump-rooms, and at 
 melancholy fact in the last annual re- concerts, they disarm suspicion. The 
 port of Mr. Davis, the Chaplain of detective police will readily point out 
 Newgate: — "It is a fact much to be to the magistrates several establish- 
 regretted that the metropolis contains ments for such education in different 
 gangs of men who not only live to- parts of the metropolis, some of which 
 gether for the purposes of stealing, but are visited by them almost daily in 
 who educate young persons of profli- consequence of their notorious charac- 
 gate habits in the most ready and dex- ter. In some of them as many as 20 
 terous methods of stealing. Some are or 30 boys have been, and probably- 
 instructed how to pick pockets, others are now, kept in constant occupation, 
 how to use false keys and picklocks; well fed, handsomely clothed, strictly 
 some, not far advanced in crime, are guarded and taken out by the elder 
 induced to give information and to pro- offenders, and by them violently beaten 
 cure impressions of valuable keys. The if they give any information to others 
 law against such persons is not yet or umbrage to their thievish masters, 
 strong enough. Youth such as I have These persons are frequently seen by 
 referred to are clothed by their em- the detective police, who know their 
 plovers as well as if they were the names and nicknames, and watch their 
 children of respectable parents. They movements, but have no power until 
 are fed extravagantly and indulged in some overt act is committed to put a 
 vice. Some are taken to all the large stop to their iniquity. Men and boys 
 towns and places of fashionable resort of this dangerous character are seldom 
 in the kingdom, and obtain great plun- convicted of great crimes, which cir- 
 der by their skill in picking pockets, cumstance shows that a distinction 
 They are so dressed and so taught that should be made between great crimes 
 in first-class railway carriages, on the and great criminals." 
 
416 DAKOITEE. 
 
 There is one great difficulty with which in India, 
 they whose duty it is to endeavour to suppress Da- 
 koitee, have to contend, but of which nothing in 
 these days of a kindred character is known in England 
 — I mean the curse of evil landlords, who harbor and 
 encourage Dakoits, and gorge themselves with a share 
 of the spoil. I cannot help thinking, in this case, of 
 that old mythological simile, which did such good 
 service in my school-boy days — dra^vn from the story 
 of Hercules and the Hydra. He had no sooner smitten 
 off one head, than another sprung up tauntingly from 
 the bleeding carcase of the monster, and so he might 
 have gone on for ever, if the serviceable lolas had not 
 cauterised the wound with a hot iron, and bm^nt out 
 the productiveness of the flesh. It appears to me that 
 if we would thoroughly suppress Dakoitee, so that 
 smitten down in one place it may not spring up in 
 another, we would do well to apply the searing-iron to 
 the productive Zemindars.* 
 
 * It must be borne in mind that it I have written must be regarded rather 
 
 has been my design in this chapter to as an illustration of the subject than as 
 
 treat of one great series of operations a general treatise on Dakoitee. 
 under the Bengal Presidency. What 
 
THE company's CIVIL SERVICE. 417 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 The Company's Civil Service — Its Rise and Progress— the Cornwallis System 
 Causes of its Exclusiveness — Native Agency — Present State of the Service. 
 
 In the early part of this work I have briefly spoken of 
 the rise of the Company's service and its first organisa- 
 tion. I have before me a copy of the first complete list 
 of the Company's civil servants ever sent home to Eng- 
 land. It would not occupy half a page of this book. It 
 was compiled in 1615; and it contains thirty-two names. 
 Twenty-one of these were factors, and the rest " attend- 
 ants on the factory." They were stationed at four different 
 places. The civil servants of the Company are now spread 
 all over the Regulation Provinces of India ; and instead of 
 managing the trade of a few petty factories, preside over 
 the internal administration of an immense Empire. 
 
 Warren Hastings turned the merchants into revenue- 
 collectors. Lord Cornwallis turned them into judges. 
 The natives of India were thus stripped, little by little, 
 of all the offices they had held under the Moguls. The 
 new men so employed were doubtless better than their 
 predecessors. The system was infinitely better than any 
 which had preceded it. The system, indeed, was better 
 than the men ; and it kept the men greatly in check. 
 But, after all, it was only an experiment, and the wonder 
 is that, all things considered, both the men and the sys- 
 tem did not turn out much worse than they did. 
 
 2e 
 
418 THE company's civil service. 
 
 There was one thing which, more than any other, se- 
 cured the gradual improvement of the Company's civil 
 servants. In the old times, their recognised pay was 
 little better than a name. In England it Avould have 
 been the merest pittance. To think that any man would 
 have taken a six months' voyage, and braved an un- 
 healthy climate to earn it, was simply an absurdity, 
 which no man for a moment entertained. The factor 
 had other means of growing rich. Partly, they were 
 recognised means ; partly, they were unrecognised. The 
 privileges which were granted to him he generally ex- 
 ceeded, and he made up for what was wanting in his 
 legitimate profits by practices which are only to be 
 palliated by a reference to the temptations which beset 
 his career. 
 
 But all this was in time amended. Clive and Hastings 
 had both recognised the expediency of paying substan- 
 tial salaries to the Company's servants, so that the temp- 
 tation to grasp at illicit gains might be diminished, if not 
 wholly removed. The civilians, in those days, were 
 slowly rising out of the pure mercantile state, and 
 assuming some administrative importance. But, mider 
 Lord Comwallis, the administrative character became 
 fully developed. All the most important offices of the 
 State, fiscal and judicial, were held by the covenanted 
 servants of the Company; and it was fitting that they 
 should receive fixed salaries in proportion to the dignity 
 of the offices which they held and the responsibilities 
 entailed upon them. Even under the influence of this 
 saving change, men who had been accustomed to sit 
 loosely to their obligations, were not suddenly braced 
 up into a rigid observance of official propriety ; but, as 
 the old men made way for a new race, who had not 
 been stalled in the Auga?.an stable, the character of the 
 service greatly improved. With the morality of the 
 men their intelligence rose also ; they began to take a 
 
DEBASEMENT OF THE NATIVES. 419 
 
 pride in their profession and an interest in the people. 
 They were trained and disciplined, too, for the service. 
 Colleges were established for their instruction alike in 
 the learning of the East and the West; and in time they 
 became not only the best paid service in the world, but 
 one of the most efficient.* 
 
 And as the character of the Enghsh gentlemen as 
 administrators continued to improve, the debasement of 
 the natives of India became more complete. Durmg the 
 first quarter of the present century they continued in 
 a state of dreary stagnation. There was no awakening 
 of the faculties — no sign of progress within or without. 
 There was nothing surprising in this. The intel- 
 ligence of the people of India had, for many years, 
 been held in small esteem by their rulers; and they 
 were not likely to rise much above the level which had 
 been practically assigned to them by those who shaped 
 the destinies of the nation. Our system, indeed, had 
 
 * Although I think that under the the decision to a punchayut, or jury of 
 
 circumstances which had arisen in India, five persons; two were chosen by the 
 
 the " Regulations" were much wanted plaintiff, two by the defendant, and the 
 
 to remedy the prevailing oflScial laxity, fifth by myself, from among these 
 
 I am well inclined to admit that tho- elders. I had by this means the satis- 
 
 roughly good men were likely to get on faction of pleasing 100,000 inhabitants, 
 
 better without them. I find the fol- who only made one appeal to the 
 
 lowing account of the simple style in superior Courts at Baroche or Bombay, 
 
 which old Mr. Forbes, of the Bombay I was delighted with the simplicity of 
 
 civil service, administered justice in their mode of proceeding. lYom having 
 
 Goozrat about the year 1780, which been an alderman and sheriff at Bom- 
 
 certainly furnishes a refreshing con- bay, and for some years worn the black 
 
 trast to one of our Regulation courts : — gown as a pleader in the courts ot 
 
 " I dedicated one day in the week, and justice at that Presidency, I was not 
 
 more when necessary, to the adminis- entirely unacquainted with English law; 
 
 tration of justice, in which I was as- but had I equalled Blackstone in know- 
 
 sisted by four principal Brahmins; the ledge of British jurisprudence, it would 
 
 Cazee and three Mahomedans, con- have availed little among a people com- 
 
 versant in the laws of the Koran; with pletely attached to their own customs, 
 
 some respectable merchants, and the and influenced by the prejudices of 
 
 heads of other castes. These persons caste. I was, therefore, happy to ac- 
 
 advised me, in doubtful cases, and commodate myself to their usages. I 
 
 especially on points relating to the re- believe I may truly say that not a pre- 
 
 ligious ceremonies and customs of the sent was ever made to an individual 
 
 Hindoos. The carpet of justice was belonging to the Adawlut, nor was a 
 
 spread on the large open hall of the court fee under any description ever 
 
 Durbar, where the arbitrators assem- exacted." — [^Forbes^ Oriental MemoirSy 
 
 bled ; these I always attended, and, voL ii, p. 2.] 
 agreeably to ancient custom, referred 
 
 2e 2 
 
420 THE company's civil service. 
 
 been one of depression. Under the administration of 
 Lord Cornwallis, as I have said, all the higher offices of 
 the State had been conferred on European gentlemen — 
 the Covenanted Civil Service of the Company. The 
 practice thus instituted had been followed by subsequent 
 administrators; and the official condition of the natives, 
 in course of time, had rather deteriorated than im- 
 proved. In fact, it was not only that the highest 
 offices were conferred on the Europeans, but that none 
 but the lowest were bestowed upon the natives. There 
 may have been, in 1790, some wisdom in this. Perhaps 
 it was not so much that Cornwallis and his advisers 
 mistrusted the native, as that they mistrusted the 
 European, functionaries. Cornwallis found his higher 
 European agency, not in the state which had roused 
 the energies of Clive to the great work of " cleansing 
 the Augsean stable," but very far removed from the 
 purity and efficiency which it has attained in the 
 present day. He saw, doubtless, that the native 
 functionary in the hands of his European colleague, or 
 superior, might become a very mischievous tool — a 
 ready-made instrument of extortion — and he de- 
 termined, therefore, not to mix up the two agencies so 
 perilously together. It is probable that, at that time, 
 many of the higher European judicial functionaries 
 would have exerted themselves to secure the appoint- 
 ment of their own tools to offices immediately beneath 
 them, and by throwing upon the native judges the actual 
 duty of deciding cases in which their patrons were 
 interested, work the mine of corruption beneath the 
 surface, and so cover the worst abuses. The native 
 agent in such a case never betrays his employer ; so 
 the European functionary would have been secure. It 
 may not, therefore, I say, have been mistrust of the 
 natives, so much as mistrust of the Em-opeans, which 
 deterred Cornwallis and his advisers from mixing up 
 
EEMOVAL OF DISABILITIES. 421 
 
 the two agencies in the general administration of the 
 country. 
 
 But a very different state of things presented itself 
 to the Indian statesman and the British legislator, 
 when, forty years later, the terms of the new Act, 
 under which India was to be thenceforth governed, 
 came to be weighed and considered. The European 
 functionary was then an honest and enlightened English 
 gentleman, who performed a fixed duty for a fixed salary, 
 who had little temptation to yield to besetting influences, 
 and who would not have yielded, if he had been beset. 
 There was no danger then, as far as he was concerned, 
 in bringing him into immediate contact mth native 
 functionaries. There was far more likely to be a gulf 
 between the two, than any bond of fellowship between 
 them. It was, at that time, indeed, as expedient as it 
 was just, to give the natives of the country a larger 
 share in its actual administration. The system of 
 exclusiveness had been pushed too far. New opinions, 
 indeed, had taken shape before the Act of 1833, for the 
 better government of India, was hot on the legislative 
 forge. But, in that Act, there was for the first time a 
 specific recognition of the equal claims of all classes of 
 the Anglo-Indian community to employment in the 
 Company's service ; and it need not be said how great 
 an impulse such a recognition was calculated to give to 
 the progress of native education. 
 
 The 87th clause of the new Act in which this prin. 
 ciple was embodied was brief, but emphatic. It went 
 straight to the point : — "And be it enacted," it said, 
 " that no native of the said territories, nor any natural 
 born subject of his Majesty resident therein, shall by 
 reason only of his religion, place of birth, descent, color, 
 or any of them, be disabled from holding any place, 
 office, or employment, under the said Company." 
 
 There was nothin2j in the whole Act, viewed in all 
 
422 THE coivipany's civil service. 
 
 naked significance, more important than this ; but it 
 was something which in effect might have a mighty- 
 influence upon the future administration of British 
 India, or it might be a mere nullity. It was obvious 
 that the mere removal of legal disabilities, whatever 
 shape they may have taken before, would not open 
 the higher offices of the State to any class of men, so 
 long as there were other barriers to their admission, 
 just as operative as though they were constructed by 
 an Act of Parliament. The primary effect of the 
 clause was, of course, to place in the hands of the 
 Court of Directors a discretionary power to confer 
 writerships and cadetships on young Hajpoots or 
 Parsees. Everything, therefore, depended upon their 
 practical interpretation of the law. But the Act of 
 Parliament, though it opened the services to men of 
 aU colors and creeds, did not remove one other great 
 disability. It did not open the doors of office to in- 
 competent candidates for admission. There were, 
 henceforth, to be no external disqualifications. The 
 disqualifications were to be aU from within. It was, 
 in any view of the case, a matter of the gravest im- 
 portance in the eyes of the Court of Directors, and 
 one to which it was incumbent on them to give the 
 profoundest consideration. They did give it this con- 
 sideration ; and having maturely formed their opinions, 
 they placed them on record, and forwarded them to 
 the supreme Government of India. They decided that 
 if, as they believed they were justified in assuming, the 
 people of India were not yet ripe for employment in 
 the highest branch of the public service, it was 
 clearly the duty of their rulers to render them so with 
 the utmost possible despatch. It was desirable, they 
 said, that by the improvement of the native mind the 
 people of India should be qualified to compete at no 
 disadvantage with their European competitors. This 
 is the language of the Court : 
 
VIEWS OF TUE COMPANY. 423 
 
 By clause 87 of the Act, it is provided hat no person, by 
 reason of his birth, creed, or color, shall be disqualified from 
 holding any office in our service. 
 
 It is fitting that this important enactment should be under- 
 stood, in order that its full spirit and intention may bo transfused 
 through our whole system of administration. 
 
 You will observe that its object is not to ascertain qualification, 
 but to remove disqualification. It does not break doAvn or de- 
 range the scheme of our Government as conducted principally 
 through the instrumentality of our regular servants. Civil and 
 Military. To do this would be to abolish, or impair the rules 
 which the Legislature has established for securing the fitness of 
 the functionaries in whose hands the main duties of Indian ad- 
 ministration are to be reposed ; rules, to which the present Act 
 makes a material addition in the provisions relating to the 
 College at Hayleybury, but the meaning of the enactments we 
 take to be, that there shall be no governing Caste in British 
 India, that whatever other tests of qualification may be adopted, 
 distinctions of race or religion shall not be of the number ; that 
 no subject of the King, whether of Indian, or British, or mixed 
 descent, shall be excluded, either from the posts usually conferred 
 on our uncovenanted servants in India, or from the covenanted 
 service itself, provided he be otherwise eligible, consistently with 
 the rules, and agreeably to the conditions, observed and exacted 
 in the one case and in the other. 
 
 In the application of this principle, that which will chiefly fall 
 to your share, will be the employment of natives, whether of the 
 whole or the mixed blood, in official situations. So far as re- 
 spects the former class, we mean natives of the whole blood, it is 
 hardly necessary to say, that the purposes of the Legislature have, 
 in a considerable degree, been anticipated. You will know, and 
 indeed have in some important respects carried into effect, our 
 desire that natives should be admitted to places of trust, as freely 
 and extensively as a regard for the due discharge of the functions 
 attached to such places will permit. Even judicial duties of 
 magnitude and importance are now confided to their hands, 
 partly, no doubt, from considerations of economy, but partly also 
 on the principles of a liberal and comprehensive policy, still, a 
 line of demarcation, to some extent in favor of the natives, to 
 some extent in exclusion of them, has been maintained. Certain 
 offices are appropriated to them ; from certain others they are de- 
 
424 THE company's civil service. 
 
 barred ; not because tliese latter belong to the covenanted ser- 
 vice, and the former do not belong to it ; but professedly on the 
 ground that the average amount of native qualifications can be 
 presumed only to rise to a certain limit. It is this line of demar- 
 cation which the present enactments obliterates, or rather, for 
 which it substitutes another, wholly irrespective of the distinction 
 of races. Fitness is henceforth to be the criterion of eligibility. 
 
 To this altered rule it will be necessary that you should, both 
 in your acts and your language, conform. Practically, perhaps, 
 no very marked difference of results will be .occasioned. The 
 distinctions between situations allotted to the covenanted service, 
 and all other situations of an official or public nature, will remain 
 generally as at present. 
 
 Into a more particular consideration of the effects that may 
 result from the great principle which the Legislature has now for 
 the first time recognised and established, we do not enter, be- 
 cause we would avoid disquisition of a speculative nature. But 
 there is one practical lesson, which, often as we have on former 
 occasions inculcated it on you, the present subject suggests to us 
 once more to enforce. While, on the one hand, it may be an- 
 ticipated that the range of public situations accessible to the 
 native and mixed races, will gradually be enlarged, it is, on the 
 other hand, to be recollected that, as settlers from Europe find 
 their way into the country, this class of persons will probably 
 furnish candidates for those very situations to which the natives 
 and mixed race will have admittance. Men of European enter- 
 prise and education will appear in the field, and it is by the 
 prospect of this event that we are led particularly to impress the 
 lesson already alluded to, on your attention. In every view it is 
 important that the indigenous people of India, or those among 
 them who by their habits, character, or position, may be induced 
 to aspire to office, should, as far as possible, be qualified to meet 
 their European competitors. Hence there arises a powerful ar- 
 gument for the promotion of every design tending to the im- 
 provement of the natives, whether by conferring on them the 
 advantages of education, or by diffusing among them the treasures 
 of science, knowledge, and moral culture. For these desirable 
 results, we are well aware that you, like ourselves, are anxious ; 
 and we doubt not that, in order to impel you to increased ex- 
 ertion for the promotion of them, you will need no stimulant 
 beyond a simple reference to the considerations we have here 
 suggested. 
 
NATIVE AGENCY. 425 
 
 While, however, we entertain these wishes and opinions, we 
 must guard against the supposition that it is chiefly by holding 
 out means and opportunities of official distinction, that we expect 
 our Government to benefit the millions subjected to their au- 
 thority. We have repeatedly expressed to you a very different 
 sentiment. Facilities of official advancement can little affect the 
 bulk of the people under any Government, and perhaps least 
 under a good Government. It is not by holding out incentives 
 to official ambition, but by repressing crime, by securing and 
 guarding property, by creating confidence, by ensuring to in- 
 dustry the fruit of its labor, by protecting men in the undis- 
 turbed enjoyment of their rights, and in the unfettered exercise 
 of their faculties, that Governments best minister to the public 
 wealth and happiness. In effect, the free access to office is chiefly 
 valuable when it is a part of general freedom.* 
 
 Ever since this admirable letter was written, tlie natives 
 of India have had a larger and a larger share in the ad- 
 ministrative agency of the country, and have been better 
 qualified to maintain their official position. The system, 
 as now established, is this. The lowest grade of judicial 
 oflScers is that of the "MoonsifF." He is selected from 
 among persons who have passed an examination before a 
 local Committee, and is approved by a Sudder Commit- 
 tee at the Presidency. He is empowered to try suits to 
 the amount of 30/. His salary never amounts to more 
 than 200/. a year.f From these Moonsiflfs the next higher 
 grade of judicial officers — the Sudder Aumeens — are 
 chosen. Their jurisdiction extends to suits of 100/. 
 Their salary ranges from 240/. to 420/. a year. From 
 these Sudder Aumeens the principal Sudder Aumeens 
 are chosen. There is, at present, no limit to the juris- 
 diction of this latter class. 
 
 The administration of civil justice is at present al- 
 most entirely in the hands of these native oflftcers. 
 Appeal Hes from the lower^ to the higher grades. But 
 in respect of all suits above 500/., whether tried by 
 
 ♦ Tlie Court of Directors to the Go- f The salaries of the Moonsiflfs, how- 
 vemment of India^ December, 1834. -— ever, are likely ere long to be raised. 
 MS. Records. 
 
426 THE company's civil service. 
 
 the Principal Sudder Aumeen, or by the European 
 Zillah judge,* the appeal is only to the Sudder Court, 
 or chief tribunal. The Principal Sudder Aumeens are 
 thus placed on a level with the highest European 
 functionaries, except the Sudder judges, with this re- 
 servation, however, that the European judge has the 
 power of withdrawing any suits from the native courts, 
 and trying them in his own. 
 
 In the dispensation of criminal justice the natives of 
 India have less share, but they are not wholly ex- 
 cluded from it. A class of deputy magistrates has 
 been established, the members of which are sometimes 
 vested by the local Governments with the same powers 
 as are possessed by the European magistrates. In 
 this capacity they are competent to pass sentences ex- 
 tending to imprisonment for three years. 
 
 Beyond this the power of the European magis- 
 trates does not extend. All cases demanding se- 
 verer punishment are sent to the Sessions judge, 
 who is empowered to sentence to 14 years' impri- 
 sonment. If this extent of punishment does not 
 appear to meet the criminality of the case, it is 
 sent, with a written letter from the Sessions judge, 
 stating his opinions, to the chief criminal court, or 
 Sudder Nizamut Adawlut. If the Sudder judges con- 
 cur in the opinions of the lower court, and the offence 
 is not one demanding the punishment of death, it is 
 sufficient for one judge to try the case. If he dis- 
 sents from that opinion, or capital punishment seems 
 to be demanded, the case is heard by two judges on the 
 bench. 
 
 On the whole, it may be said that the extended em- 
 
 * In aU such cases, whether original suits, howerer, are decided by the 
 
 suits or appeals, tlie European judge is European judges. It would appear from 
 
 competent to withdraw the case from official statistics, that under the Go- 
 
 the court of the principal Sudder vernmeut of the North- Western Pro- 
 
 Autneen, and dispose of it himself— vinces, in 1849, only 20 original suits 
 but in either case the appeal lies only were so decided, whilst nearly 4t 
 to the Sudder. Very few original were decided by the native judges. 
 
NATIVE AGENCY. 427 
 
 ployment of native agency in the administration of 
 justice has worked as well as there was reason to expect 
 — but not so well as to lead any unprejudiced observer to 
 beUeve that in not throwing open the doors of office more 
 unreservedly to them any great mistake has been com- 
 mitted.* It appears to me that nothing can be sounder 
 in theory, or more beneficial in practice, than the system 
 by which a people, long deprived of power, are gradually 
 restored to it. • The process of restoration can hardly 
 be too gradual. We need look for no better proof that 
 the Court of Directors, when reviewing the famous 87th 
 clause, did not look too disparagingly upon the qua- 
 lifications, and too grudgingly upon the claims of their 
 native servants, than the fact that the passage I have 
 quoted, though written twenty years ago (and those 
 years have witnessed great improvement in the moral 
 and intellectual character of this class of Government 
 employes), is as applicable to the present state of things 
 as if it had been written to-day. 
 
 The admission of the natives of India to the highest 
 offices of the State is simply a question of time. ^^I 
 beheve," said a distinguished member of the Company's 
 service, f before the Committee of the House of Com- 
 mons, " that our mission in India is to qualify them for 
 governing themselves. I say, also," he continued, " that 
 
 * Mr. Halliday, who nas had the best them as compared with the confidence 
 
 opportmiities of observing the working they have acquired in the Europeans, 
 
 of this system of native agency, and there is not generally in the minds of 
 
 whose testimony is entitled to great the natives such a complete reliance 
 
 weight, when asked by the Committee upon the impartiality and incorrupti- 
 
 of the House of Commons " Is the bility of the courts under native judges 
 
 impression upon the minds of the na- as could be wished; but I believe it will 
 
 tives of India generally, that the law as grow up in tbe course of time, espe- 
 
 it is, is impartially and honestly ad- ciaUy as the courts themselves within 
 
 ministered by the authorities who my observation and knowledge have 
 
 administer it ?" replied, " Speaking of manifestly improved in regard to in- 
 
 the native courts, that is to ?ay of the tegrity and trustworthiness, and as the 
 
 courts presided over by natives, with- natives know and see them to improve, 
 
 out desiring to attribute to them faults, their suspicions of course will be lulled, 
 
 I must say that at present, owing to the and they will gradually acquire in them 
 
 long experience of the natives of the the same confidence that they have in 
 
 corruptibility of their own countrymen, the courts presided over by Europeans," 
 and their great want of confidence in f Mr. Halliday. 
 
428 THE company's civil service. 
 
 tlie measures of the Government, for a number of years 
 past, have been advisedly directed to so qualifying them, 
 without the slightest reference to any remote conse- 
 quences upon our administration." Long before it be- 
 came their duty to review the clauses of the Act of 
 1833, the Court of Directors had continually exhorted 
 their servants in India to prepare, through the agency 
 of improved systems of education, the natives of the 
 country for higher official positions than they had yet 
 been qualified to hold. And these exhortations had 
 not been thrown away. What the ultimate effect of these 
 great educational measures must be, it is not difficult to 
 conjecture. Our mission will be fulfilled sooner or 
 later. The only question is a question of time. 
 
 In the mean while, though the administrative agency 
 to which the internal management of the country is en- 
 trusted is not without inherent defects, it seems to be a 
 matter of extremest difficulty to suggest a safe substitute 
 for it. There has been an outcry raised of late against 
 the Company's courts and the Company's judges; but 
 some of the best authorities are of opinion that the 
 natives of the country have unHmited confidence in both.* 
 There may, perhaps, be some local exceptions, and in- 
 stances of occasional malversation have from time to time 
 been made public. But in almost every case in which a 
 civil servant of the Company has been charged with cor- 
 rupt practices, a brother civilian has been the accuser. 
 There is no efibrt to screen the delinquent, but rather an 
 
 * Take, for example, the following as to the acuteness and intelligence of 
 
 passage from Mr. Halliday's evidence some of the judges; and I dare say 
 
 before the House of Commons: — "Have that, as compared with the acuteness 
 
 they (the natives) complete confidence and intelligence of the native judges, 
 
 in the administration of justice in those those qualities in the English judges 
 
 ^the Company's) Courts by the English are often in the minds of the natives at 
 
 judges? As far as regards the into- fault; but in the integrity, and in the 
 
 grity of the judges, their confidence is honest and earnest desire of the English 
 
 complete; they have little or no notion judges to do justice inipartially between 
 
 of the possibility of corrupting an Eng- man and man, the natives have the 
 
 lish judge; it scarcely ever enters into highest possible confidence." — [3/r. 
 
 their imagination. They may, perhaps, Halliday's Evidence,'] 
 have sometimes a diflference of opinion 
 
DEFECTS OF THE SYSTEM. 429 
 
 earnest desire, on the part of the general body of the ser- 
 vice, to bring his offences to Hght. As to those judicial 
 inconsistencies and other Mtises which have been cited 
 so freely from the records of the Company's Com'ts in 
 Madras, it appears to me that nothing could be easier than 
 to cite from the records of any courts an equal array of 
 unintelhgible decisions. I have a great respect for the 
 English Bench, and the utmost faith in the honesty and 
 ability with which justice is administered in this country ; 
 but if incomprehensible decisions, startling sentences, and 
 furious inconsistencies are to be cited as proofs of incapa- 
 city and corruption, it would not be difficult to fill a 
 volume with such proofs culled from the Assize Intelli- 
 gence contained in a twelvemonth's file of a London 
 journal.* 
 
 It is admitted that there are many defects in the 
 existing system — that justice is administered by men 
 wanting in judicial training, perhaps with no legal habits 
 of mind, and sometimes deficient in ordinary acumen. 
 But there are, probably, even greater wants than these 
 — a want of knowledge of the people — knowledge of 
 their character, of their language, of the habits of their 
 every-day life. There is always, more or less, an imper- 
 fect acquaintance with these things. A right knowledge 
 of them is not easy to attain — we only see the outside 
 of the natives, disguised for better or for worse. But 
 this is an evil not peculiar to the condition of the 
 exclusive service of the Company, but inseparable from 
 our position as strangers and aliens in the East. Under 
 the existing system, indeed, it is less felt than it would 
 be under any other. If a young man expressly educated 
 for the service, taught perhaps from early boyhood to 
 
 * The fact is, that the printed report read reports of cases wliich he has 
 
 of a case seldom fairly represents its heard decided, and admitted that he 
 
 merits, even when it is given with much should never have known the reason of 
 
 amplitude of detail for the amusement the decision if he had not been himself 
 
 of newspaper readers. Every man has in court. 
 
430 
 
 THE COMPAKY S CIVIL SERVICE. 
 
 look forward to an Indian career, proceeding to India at 
 an early age, perhaps to a home whither his father and 
 brothers have preceded him, cannot sufficiently enlace 
 his interest and his affections with the realities of Indian 
 life, how much less likely is one, coming at a comparatively 
 mature nge, fresh from the Inns of Court, to acquire a 
 competent Imowledge of the things in which, with all 
 his advantages, the young \vriter is avowedly deficient ?* 
 It was said by Canning, during the debates on the 
 India Charter of 1813, that there could not be anything 
 radically ^vrong in the system which had produced all 
 the able Company's servants who had given their evi- 
 
 * I think that Sir Edward Ryan's 
 evidence regarding the appointment of 
 English barristers to Indian judgeships 
 is quite conclusive on the subject. " Do 
 you believe that the administration of 
 justice would be improved in India by 
 the selection of barristers from England 
 and from India for that purpose?— I do 
 not think so; barristers from England, 
 I presume, could not go out until per- 
 haps of the age of twenty-five; they 
 •would hardly be barristers till that 
 time. I do not know what would tempt 
 many barristers of that age to proceed 
 to India, because it is quite clear that 
 upon their first arrival in that country 
 they would be quite incompetent to 
 fill the oflBces of judges in the interior. 
 The first thing they have to learn, of 
 course, is the native languages, which 
 would not be so easily acquired at that 
 age as at the earlier age at which civil 
 servants proceed to India; they would 
 have no opportunity of acquiring that 
 species of judicial training to which I 
 have before alluded; namely, becoming 
 familiar with the natives in the trans- 
 action of business in the various ways 
 in which civil servants obtain that 
 familiarity in the oflBce of the collector. 
 Not possessing this knowledge of the 
 languages, nor this familiarity with the 
 manners, and usages, and habits of the 
 natives, I do not see how they could 
 become efficient judges in the interior 
 of the country, especially with reference 
 to this; it is not the knowledge of the 
 science of the law which is so much 
 required iu the Mofussil Courts, it is 
 the administrative art which is so re- 
 quired, and that can only arise from 
 
 familiarity with the people, and a know- 
 ledge of the people themselves. It is 
 facts that the Court have to deal with; 
 in dealing with facts in a country like 
 that, you are surrounded with infinitely 
 more difficulties than you are here. In 
 the Supreme Court the opportunities 
 and power of dealing with facts are 
 greater than in the Mofussil Courts in 
 one respect; the judge in the Supreme 
 Court, indeed, is unacquainted with the 
 native languages, the greatest part of 
 the witnesses are natives, speaking the 
 native language; but before a witness 
 is produced in that Court he is carried 
 to the office of the attorney, the attorney 
 has under him a principal native ma- 
 nager, that native manager is familiar 
 with the English and the Vernacular 
 languages ; he sifts the witness in the 
 office, and he communicates the result 
 of that to the attorney; the attorney 
 communicates it to the barrister. The 
 witness is called in Court after all this 
 preliminary lifting, he is then examined 
 in Court in liis own language, by inter- 
 preters, who in my time were men of ex- 
 traordinary ability, he is cross-examined 
 of course in the same way ; and after that 
 sifting from the commencement at the 
 attorney's office, and his examination 
 and cross-examination, the judge has 
 verj'' constantly the greatest possible 
 difficulty in coming to a conclusion 
 upon the evidence so sifted. Now what 
 would be the position of an English 
 family in the Mofussil, totally devoid 
 of all those aids, and without the 
 information wliich the civil servants 
 acquire by tlie species of training to 
 wliich I before alluded ?'* 
 
AIDS TO THE CUOTTN. 431 
 
 dence before the Parliamentary Committees. Forty 
 years later the same remark might be made, — with this 
 pungent addition : The system cannot be radically wrong 
 which has produced the able Company's servants whom 
 the Queen's Ministers have selected from time to time, 
 not merely to govern the Crown colonies, but to extri- 
 cate them from difficulties into which they have been 
 thrown by the intemperance or incapacity of men who 
 have not been trained in the Indian service. When 
 great colonial embarrassments arise — and they do arise 
 sometimes — it is commonly to the talent, to the temper, 
 to the discretion, to the firmness, and to the integrity of 
 some servant of the Company, that the perplexed Minis- 
 ter looks for the saving hand that is to extricate him 
 from his dilemma. 
 
 Yet these men are said to be the minions of a corrupt 
 system. The patronage of the East India Company, it 
 is sometimes alleged, is at the bottom of all this vile mess 
 of administrative uncleanliness. Justice is put to the most 
 miserable shifts that the friends of the thirty magnates of 
 LeadenhaU-street may draw so many thousands a year 
 from the territorial revenues of India; and the conclu- 
 sion is, that therefore the doom of the Court ought to 
 be sealed without hesitation or delay. I am told by the 
 Chaplain of Newgate that the reason why, if I send a 
 bank-note, or a ring, or a watch-chain in a letter, it runs 
 no small risk of being stolen by a letter-carrier, is that 
 " the vacancies in the Post-office are filled up by parties 
 recommended to the Postmaster-General by members of 
 Parhament."* To this system Mr. Davis attributes the 
 
 * I may as well quote the passage to public service where we meet with most 
 
 which I refer, in Mr. Davis's last an- failures is the Post-ofl5ce. Post-office 
 
 nual report : — " The watchful care of cases, involving, as they do, not merely 
 
 masters over their servants, to inquire, a serious breach of public trust, but 
 
 from time to time, into their habits of cases of domestic misery that baffle 
 
 life and pursuits in private, should description, hare engaged my most 
 
 apply to the public establishments of earnest attention. In more than one 
 
 the country. The moral reputation of little pamphlet I have addressed the 
 
 public servants ought to be taken into dishonest parties among those employed 
 
 consideration, but that branch of the by the Post-office, in the hope, by some 
 
432 THE co^ipany's civil service. 
 
 frequent occurrence of a crime '^ involving cases of 
 domestic misery that baffle description." From this we 
 may learn the great lesson, that a mischievous adminis- 
 tration of the patronage of the State may not only he co- 
 existent with, but be fostered and encouraged by, an 
 institution on which the liberties of the country are 
 mainly dependent. And if letter-carriers' appointments 
 are so jobbed between Ministers and Members of Par- 
 liament — and to turn to another case of recent notoriety 
 — the great Conservative scandal of the spring of 1853 
 — if Dock yard appointments are bartered for votes by 
 ministerial underlings, with the knowledge of their 
 chiefs — how would writerships and cadetships fare in 
 the same immaculate hands ? 
 
 such appeal to their better feelings, to from rumour, the vacancies in the Post- 
 correct their errors, and if possible pre- office are filled up by parties recom- 
 vent the crime. I should like still more mended to the Postmaster-General by 
 to be done in this way, so far as it can, members of Parliament. It is easy to 
 without offence and with hope of sue- imagine that for services rendered to 
 cess ; but I greatly fear that some por- these gentlemen they are glad of any 
 tion of this unenviable distinction in opportunity of doing a kindness for 
 servants of the Post-office, namely, that great zeal and activity in serving thera. 
 a greater number are convicted and Hence there may not be such a rigid 
 transported in that than any other de- inquiry into the past life and habits of 
 partment, arises in some measure from the men recommended as seems essen- 
 the manner of their appointment. As tial in a duty so important." 
 far as I can learn, but I speak only 
 
THE NON-REGULATION PROVINCES. 433 
 
 PART IV. 
 
 CHAPTEE I. 
 
 The Non-Regulation Provinces — Civil and Military Administrators — Evils of 
 Exclusiveness — Sindh — Defects of the purely Military System — Sir Charles 
 Napier's Government — Arracan — Improvement of the Province — The Punjab 
 — The Board of Administration — The Lawrences — Mr. Mansell — the Sub- 
 ordinate Administrative Machinery — Settlement of the Revenue — Financial 
 and Greneral Results. 
 
 I HAVE done with the Regulations. I have said enough 
 of the manner in which the affairs of those provinces, 
 which have long been subject to our fixed Revenue and 
 Judicial systems, are administered by the civil ^rvants 
 of the Company. There are provinces, more recently 
 brought under our rule, which do not bow down to the 
 letter of the Regulations, but are governed after a ruder 
 and simpler fashion — by an executive composed partly 
 of civilians and partly of soldiers, upon a mixed system, 
 into which the spirit of the Regulations is infused in such 
 a manner as to cause it to harmonise and blend itself 
 with all that is good in the spirit of native institutions, 
 and to be respected in the local usages of the country. 
 
 The Non-Regulation Provinces are these: — Under the 
 Bengal Presidency are the Saugor and Nerbudda terri- 
 tories ; Jaloun and Jhansi ; Mairwarra ; Assam, Arra- 
 can, and the Tenasserim provinces ; Goalpara ; the dis- 
 tricts on the South- Western fi-ontier, as Sumbulpore, 
 Ramgurh, &c. ; the Cis-Sutlej states, including Umballah, 
 
 2f 
 
434 THE NON-REGULATION PROVINCES. 
 
 Loodhianah, Khytul, Ferozepore, and tlie territory re- 
 cently held by the protected Sikh chiefs ; and the whole 
 country of the Punjab. These are subject to the con- 
 trolling authority of the Governor-General, or the Go- 
 vernor of Bengal, and are administered by officers ap- 
 pointed by them. Under the government of the North- 
 western Provinces are the Dehra Doon ; Kumaon and 
 Gurhwal ; the Butty territory ; Ajmere; Nimaur ; Jaunsar 
 and Bawur. Under the Madras government are Gan- 
 jam ; Vizigapatam ; and Kurnool. And under the go- 
 vernment of Bombay are Colaba, Sindh, and Sattarah. 
 
 The system under which the affairs of these provinces 
 are administered has generally worked well. It has been 
 as successful in the North -West as in the South-East. 
 In Arracan we have tried it for a quarter of a century, 
 and the results have been as advantageous to the go- 
 verned as they are honorable to the Government. In 
 the Punjab we are only beginning to try it — we are in 
 the first stage of the experiment ; but the brightness of 
 the dawn promises a brilKant meridian success. 
 
 It m"Vist not, however, be assumed that, because this 
 less elaborate and less costly administration has answered 
 every purpose of government in the provinces to which 
 it has been applied, that therefore the more elaborate 
 and expensive machinery which we have set at work in 
 the Regulation provinces has been altogether a mistake. 
 The fact is, that the extension of our empire has brought 
 us closer and closer to the outskirts of civihsation, and 
 that having to do with a ruder people, we have expe- 
 diently subjected them to a ruder system of government. 
 Bengal had been a quarter of a century in our hands be- 
 fore Cornwallis and Barlow framed their famous Regula- 
 tions. But imagine what Napier in Sindli, Lawrence in 
 the Punjab, Dixon in Mairwarra, Bogle in Arracan, or 
 toy other British officer among a rude people newly 
 brought under our rule, could have made of those Regu- 
 
THE ADMINISTRATION OF SINDH. 435 
 
 lations which the ablest lawyers in India pronounced to 
 be worthy of Justinian. What a people suddenly finding 
 themselves under the sovereignty of a new set of rulers 
 most requires, is a government very little in advance of 
 that from which they have been transferred. All abrupt 
 and violent changes are as injurious to the constitution of 
 a nation as they are to the constitution of a man. If you 
 find a creature dying from inanition, and begin to gorge 
 him, you are sure to kill him outright. If you take a 
 drunkard suddenly from his stimulants, the chances are 
 that you cure him of his drunkenness only by sending 
 him to his grave. Changes for the better must be gra^ 
 dual, or they are Hkely to be changes for the worse. If 
 we find a people groaning under a despotism, we must 
 be despotic ourselves. A little tyranny is absolutely 
 necessary at such times to the welfare of the people, and 
 it is not to be doubted that, on the whole, a military 
 government is best suited to such a state of society. 
 Doubtless the rough ways of Sir Charles Napier were 
 better adapted to the feelings and habits of the Beloo- 
 chees, after the conquest of Sindh, than the refined 
 tendernesses and the judicial niceties of the gentlest and 
 wisest statesman that ever loved and toiled for a people. 
 '' Unsophisticated human nature," it was truly written 
 by the conqueror of Sindh, " and military nature, must 
 both be studied in dealing with barbarians ; they would 
 not bear from a civilian arrangements suited to civilisa- 
 tion, but crossing their prejudices ; yet to the stern 
 behests of a soldier chief they would bow in sub- 
 mission."* 
 
 But we must be carefiil, in such cases, that we do not 
 rush fi:om one extreme into another equally dangerous. 
 The quick eye of Sir Charles Napier saw at once that 
 too much civilianism would be the ruin of Sindh ; but, 
 having seen this, he let down before those quick eyes a 
 
 * Sir W. Napier's " History of Sir Charles Napier's Administration ofScinde" 
 
 2f2 
 
436 THE NON-REGULATION PROVINCES. 
 
 shade of strong prejudice, and he did not see, or would 
 not see, that there might be danger in too little civi- 
 lianism. He took into his hands the whole Kevenue 
 and Judicial management of the country, and, with all 
 his energy and all his ability, it was too much for him. 
 In the Judicial department he may not have greatly 
 erred, for he had to deal with men who were little 
 accustomed to technical formalities, and who could better 
 appreciate summary justice than legal delays. Few clear- 
 headed and impartial, men will go very wrong, when 
 honestly endeavouring to administer justice among a 
 people not utterly vitiated by the contiguity of venal 
 courts, and taught to rely on falsehood and corruption. 
 But the settlement of the landed revenue of a country is 
 a very difficult matter ; and our new military judges had 
 often to decide upon complicated Revenue cases. It was 
 in the adjudication of these cases that they most fre- 
 quently erred, for, as they were utterly inexperienced in 
 Revenue matters, they were not likely to be very com- 
 petent to decide upon them. It was indeed a strange 
 thing to see these " miUtary commissions" sitting in judg- 
 ment on disputed land-tenures. " I have sat on scores of 
 them," writes one of the Sindh officials, " and have re- 
 peatedly been compelled to swear on the Gospel that I 
 would adjudicate and decide on disputed titles to lands 
 ^ according to the custom of war in like cases.' "* 
 
 Sir Charles Napier did not choose his subordinates 
 unwisely. Such men as Brown and Goldney, for ex- 
 ample — I speak of them because I knew and loved them, 
 but there are others, doubtless, well worthy of honorable 
 mention — were suited, no less by their talents than by 
 their energies, to further the efforts of their gallant chief. 
 But neither they, nor their colleagues, were experienced 
 in the work of civil administration. A few covenanted 
 officers of the civil service had been sent down to Sindh, 
 
 • MS. Notes. 
 
EVILS OF AN EXCLUSIVE SYSTEM. 437 
 
 on the first annexation of the province, to assist in the 
 details of its revenue and judicial administration ; but 
 Sir Charles Napier, who had an equally low opinion of 
 old and of young civilians,* very soon obtained their 
 dismissal, and the entire management of the country 
 was transferred to the hands of the soldiers. They were 
 zealous and for the most part able men — ^but they had to 
 transact business that was new to them, and it is no dis- 
 credit to Sir Charles Napier and his assistants, whose ex- 
 perience as financiers extended little beyond the manage- 
 ment, under the tuition of a pay-havildar, of the accounts 
 of a company of Sepoys, that they should have failed in 
 the revenue administration of such a country as Sindh. 
 
 It is true that these military administrators, from Sir 
 Charles Napier do^svnwards, being men of no common 
 energy and ability, might have made themselves proficients 
 in the civil duties entrusted to them, but that they had the 
 work of war to do, no less than the work of peace. The 
 restlessness of the predatory hill tribes demanded \dgor- 
 ous coercion, and Sir Charles Napier, pushing aside the 
 portfolio of the civil Governor, mounted his horse, and 
 took the field against the robber clans. He was not a 
 man to delegate such work as this to another. Nor was 
 it likely, when he heard from afar the first mutterings of 
 
 ♦ It is hard to say whether Sir and extravagance madness." Of the 
 Charles Napier thought a young civilian old civilians, he says : " Length of re- 
 or an old civilian the more dangerous sidence and sensual indulgence weaken 
 person to meddle with a newly-con- body and mind, and give only aptness 
 quered country. Of the former, he for official details without enlargement 
 said : " Young, and often very inca- of ideas ; and most of these persons 
 pable, men are sent to acquire experi- generalised as Old Indians, because 
 ence and fortunes at the expense of the they have worn out originally vigorous 
 proprietors' dividends by misgoverning appetites and feeble minds whilst en- 
 newly-conquered countries. Unknow- joying large salaries and the adulation 
 ing how to rule even a settled country, of black clerks, who do all their duties, 
 they have to create every branch of imagine that they only know the East." 
 administration, and must necessarily — [Sir C. Napier's Letters in Sir W. 
 manipulate roughly, and, as it were, Napier's ^^Administration of Scinde"'] 
 with homy hands, when the nicest Utrum horum mavis accipe ; and it is 
 touch is essential — meddling arbitrarily clear that in the estimation of Sir 
 and ignorantly with social and financial Charles Napier no civilian is fit to take 
 affairs, where error may give mortal a part in the administration of a new 
 offence, where parsimony njay be folly, country. 
 
438 THE NON-REGULATION PROVINCES. 
 
 the coming storm on the Sutlej, that he would remain 
 glued to his desk. Where, then, at such times, was the 
 civil Governor? And where were his collectors and 
 deputy- collectors? Sir Charles Napier was at the head 
 of his men, and his military civilians were exerting them- 
 selves to collect supplies, and to forward them to the 
 troops moving through the country. Such distractions 
 were not favorable to the progress of civil administration 
 in Sindh. The necessary European superintendence was 
 withdrawn, and the native officials were left, in many 
 places, to carry on the work by themselves. And how 
 it was carried on may be gathered from the statements 
 of a writer, thoroughly acquainted with all the details of 
 British administration in Sindh, who declares that the 
 system in force at this time might not unfaithfully be de- 
 scribed as " the retention of all that was oppressive or 
 evil in the old system, the discarding of all that was 
 useful, and adding much evil of our own ; whilst experi- 
 <?nce and honesty were exchanged for inexperience in the 
 superintendence, and fraud and oppression in the sub- 
 ordinate branches."* The fact is, that a shght infusion 
 of civihanism was required, and this Sir Charles Napier 
 had impetuously rejected. All the evil is here traceable 
 to the exclusiveness of the system. The administrators 
 were not merely military men in civil capacities. They 
 were mihtary men distracted from the performance of 
 their civil duties by demands made upon them in their 
 military character. They were not permitted, quietly 
 and uninterruptedly, to accommodate themselves to their 
 new duties ; but whilst they ought to have been peace- 
 fully settling the country, they were maturing measures 
 for the coercion of refractory tribes. 
 
 But although Sir Charles Napier, being like most 
 earnest, energetic men, imbued with strong prejudices, 
 
 * Calcutta Jieview, No. xxvii. Art. : a paper which seems to be written with 
 " British Administration of Scinde"— remarkable fairness and impartiality. 
 
AMELIORATIVE MEASURES. 439 
 
 fell into tliis extreme of anti-civilianism, and erred ac- 
 cordingly, I believe that he really had the good of the 
 Sindliians sincerely at heart. He professed himself to be 
 anxious, " wliilst fastening on the country a strong military 
 gripe, to apply all softening and healing measures to the 
 vanquished race — all protective and encouraging measures 
 to the liberated population;"* and I do not doubt that he 
 was. Slavery was aboHshed by a stroke of the pen. It had 
 not existed, among the Sindhians, in any very intolerable 
 shape, but it was well even that the name of such an evil 
 should cease to have legal sanction. Infanticide was very 
 common among the Sindhians. He exerted himself to 
 suppress it. Female life, infant or adult, was held of so 
 little account among them, that men murdered their 
 wives with impunity, and believed that it was as lawful 
 as the killing of sharks. When Sir Charles Napier 
 talked of hanging the murderers, the chiefs asked with 
 astonishment if he would hang a man " for only killing 
 his wife;" but he did hang them, and the gallows in time 
 abated the evil. Then he disarmed the people, and 
 curbed the frequent arbitrement of the sword, and the 
 blood-spillings of private strife. ''He also," says Sir 
 William Napier, " put down the practice of Suttee, which, 
 however, was rare in Scinde, by a process extremely 
 characteristic. For judging the real cause of these 
 immolations to be the profits derived by the priests, and 
 hearing of an intended burning, he made it known that 
 he would stop the sacrifice. The priests said it was a 
 
 * "To meet the requirements of these misgovemment. The trading Hindoo 
 
 different races in the present circum- will then attach himself to a system 
 
 stances my policy must be, whilst fast- which protects his calling, and opens a 
 
 ening on the country a strong military wider scope for its exercise. He will, 
 
 gripe, to apply all softening and healing for his own sake, give timely intelligence 
 
 measures to the vanquished race, all of designs to restore the oppressive yoke 
 
 protective and encouraging measures of the Beloochees, and the rich Banians 
 
 to the liberated population — to make have a wonderful knowledge of all that 
 
 strong even-handed justice be univer- is passing." — [Letter of Sir Charles 
 
 sally felt — to draw forth the abundant Napier, quoted in Sir William Napier's 
 
 natural resources of the country, and '■^ Administration of Scinde."'] 
 repair the terrible evils of the Ameers' 
 
MO THE NON-REGULATION PROVINCES. 
 
 religious rite which must not be meddled with — that all 
 nations had customs which should be respected, and this 
 was a very sacred one. The general, affecting to be struck 
 with the argmnent, repHed, ' Be it so. This burning of 
 widows is your custom. Prepare the faneral pile. But 
 my nation has also a custom. When men burn women 
 alive we hang them, and confiscate all their property. 
 My carpenters shall therefore erect gibbets on which to 
 hang all concerned when the widow is consumed. Let 
 us all act according to national customs.' " " No Suttee," 
 adds the historian, " took place then, or afterwards."* It 
 may be questioned, indeed, whether many had taken 
 place before. The population of Sindh is, for the most 
 part, a Mahomedan population, and Suttee is a Hindoo 
 rite. 
 
 On the subject of the taxation of the people of Sindh 
 the historian must enter with caution. It has been said, 
 on the one hand, that Sir Charles Napier abolished all 
 the oppressive taxes which he found in operation ; and 
 on the other, that he not only greatly increased them, 
 but, moreover, collected them in the most vexatious 
 manner. It has been said, indeed, that the very courte- 
 sans of Hyderabad paid a portion of their earnings to the 
 collector. It does not, however, appear impossible to 
 reconcile these conflicting statements. Sir Charles Napier, 
 on his first assumption of the Sindh government, seems 
 to have resorted to all the existing sources of revenue ; 
 but at a later period some injurious imposts were abolished 
 which pressed heavily on the industrial energies of the 
 people. These were, firstly, a tax upon shops, which 
 fell with some severity on the Mahomedan artificers ; 
 secondly, a tax upon fishermen ; and, thirdly, a tax upon 
 Hindoo communities, levied in the aggregate on towns 
 and villages, and divided into individual portions by the 
 tax-payers themselves. By the abolition of these taxes a 
 
 * Sir Waiiom Xapirr': '• Admiii'st ration o/Scinde." 
 
CAUSES OF FAILURE. 441 
 
 considerable source of revenue was abandoned where 
 revenue was much wanted ; but it did much to secure 
 the confidence of the people. It was after Napier's 
 return from his hill campaigns that these imposts were 
 abolished. 
 
 To the great subject of artificial irrigation, also, Sir 
 Charles Napier applied the energies of his vigorous 
 mind. He was eager to increase the productiveness of 
 the country by an improved system of water supply. 
 Beyond the tracts of country watered by the Indus itself, 
 this could be effected only by canal-irrigation, and in 
 some parts by the sinking of wells. He had this sincerely 
 at heart, but the results did not keep pace with his desires. 
 There was a scarcity of money, and a scarcity of labor ; 
 and such works demanded an abundance of both.* There 
 were adventitious circumstances, too, inseparable from 
 the character of the local government, which rendered it 
 impossible that the benevolent impulses of Sir Charles 
 Napier should ever bear the desired fruit. The element 
 of failure lay in the accident of his position. 
 
 It is greatly to be deplored that this question of the 
 Administration of Sindh has been overlaid with such a 
 superincumbent mass of controversy, that the truth is to 
 be seen with difficulty glimmering beneath it, let us dig 
 and scrape as we may. Perhaps, however, if leaving the 
 antagonistic writers on either side, we turn to Sir Charles 
 Napier's own official letters, we may attain to something 
 like an approximation to the fact. " I will now con- 
 clude," he wrote to Lord Ripon, *^by saying that, though 
 the officers with me and myself might have done more 
 and better, no one will deny that we have had many and 
 
 * For the same reasons, perhaps, the last year or two than throughout the 
 
 work of road-making proceeded slowly, previous years of our occupation of 
 
 or not at all. It was reserved for Sir Sindh. A good road between Sukkur 
 
 Charles Napier's successors to give ef- and Shikarpore is now in course of 
 
 feet to a scheme for the improvement of construction ; its completion will be 
 
 the land communications of the pro- attended with excellent results. Sec 
 
 vince. More has been done within the Appendix I, at the end of the volume. 
 
442 THE NON-REGULATION PROVINCES. 
 
 great difficulties to struggle with — war and pestilence in 
 its utmost virulence, the destruction of a whole harvest 
 by locusts, and the greatest part of another by a sudden 
 and unprecedented fall of the inundation before the grain 
 was mature, have been amongst the evils afflicting Scinde 
 since 1843. In the midst of an extensive military com- 
 mand, I have had to construct the entire machinery of a 
 civil government, assisted by young officers who had at 
 first starting Httle or no experience, but whose zeal and 
 abilities have enabled them to serve me well ; and by 
 diligence they have overcome the great obstacle of total 
 want of experience, which was at first almost insuperable 
 in the collection of the revenue. How we have succeeded 
 we must leave the world to decide."* The world, 
 doubtless, will decide that in this paragraph Sir Charles 
 Napier has candidly set forth the inherent defects of the 
 system under which he administered the affairs of this 
 important province. When we consider that the civil 
 government was conducted ^' in the midst of an extensive 
 military command," and that the collection of the revenue 
 was entrusted to young military officers, whose qualifica- 
 tions for such duties consisted in "a total want of ex- 
 perience," the only wonder is, that the experiment should 
 have been half as successful as it was. 
 
 The administration of the Arracan provinces has been 
 almost exclusively in the hands of military men ; but it 
 has not been an " essentially military" government in 
 the sense that Sindh was to be so regarded under the 
 rule of Sir Charles Napier. The chief magistrate of the 
 province has never been, at the same time, the Com- 
 mander of the Forces. The civil and mihtary authorities 
 
 * Sir Charles Napier to Lord JRipotij acquire experience and fortunes at the 
 
 quoted in Sir William Napier's '^Adminis- expense of the proprietors' dividends by 
 
 tration of Scinde." — The reader may ad- misgoverning a newly-acquired country, 
 
 vantageously compare this passage with Not knowing how to rule a settled 
 
 one quoted in a note, at page 437, where country, they have to create every 
 
 Sir Charles Napier, speaking of young branch of administration, and must ne- 
 
 civilians, complains that "young, and cessarily manipulate roughly," &c, &c. 
 often very incapable, men arc sent to 
 
EARLY ADMINISTRATION OF ARRACAN. 443 
 
 have been distinct from each other, and never have the 
 latter had the least control over the former. It has been 
 all governing and no fighting ; and thus far circumstances 
 have favored the development of the system. But if 
 such had not been the case, the necessity of coercing any 
 refractory tribes would not have suspended or impeded, 
 in so far as related to adequate European superintendence, 
 the entire civil administration of the country. 
 
 When the pestiferous jungles of Arracan became a 
 component part of the British Empire in the East, the 
 province which it was our new duty to govern was Httle 
 better than a howling wilderness. Thinly inhabited, 
 scantily cultivated, it presented to the outward eye of the 
 administrator only a discom^aging prospect of mortifying 
 failure. It was the very reverse of a land of promise. 
 In 1825, IMr. Robertson was appointed Agent in Arra- 
 can, but the Burmese war then entailed upon him 
 pressing duties, from the performance of which he 
 could not turn aside ; and all that he could do in the way 
 of internal organisation was to maintain the heads of 
 villages or tribes, known as " Moosoogrees," in their 
 several posts, and to place some portion of the country 
 under the old chiefs, who, after many years of exile spent 
 under our government at Chittagong, now returned to 
 their native land, eager to render good service to the 
 British.* Clearly perceiving the importance at such a 
 time of conciliating the Mug chiefs, Mr. Robertson 
 abstained from anything like a vexatious meddling with 
 details. But upon his departure from Arracan, the 
 superintendence of the province was made over to Cap- 
 tain Paton — a man of gigantic stature, largely acquainted 
 with the native languages — especially the Bengallee — 
 but slenderly endowed with administrative talent and 
 discretion. He had been summoned round from Calcutta, 
 
 ♦ They rendered important service ordinary supplies, but by furnishing us 
 to our army, not only by procuring with the means of housing the army. 
 
444 THE NON-REGULATION PROVINCES. 
 
 where he had held the office of police magistate ; but he 
 talked better than he ruled, and amidst so much to 
 dispirit and to discourage — ^for the troops were dying like 
 sheep with the rot, and there was a general impression 
 that the province would be abandoned — it was little likely 
 that the work of internal administration should proceed 
 with any good effect. The treaty of Yandaboo was con- 
 cluded, and then a Commission, of which Captain Paton 
 and Mr. Richard Hunter of the civil service were the 
 members, was appointed for the civil government of the 
 country. It did not work well. Mr. Hunter was a man 
 of those ordinary business qualifications which make use- 
 ful public servants in settled offices, the duties of which 
 are clearly defined and well understood. But something 
 more than this was required. Everything went wrong. 
 The Commissioners irritated the chiefs, whom Mr. 
 Robertson had placed in authority, and upon some 
 rumor of disaffection disbanded the Mug levy which he 
 had raised.* But Paton died, and Hunter left the 
 country; and Captain Dickenson, who had commanded 
 the first Mug levy, and was employed, I believe, in its 
 reconstruction, was then appointed Commissioner. He 
 was a man of good parts, but of a quick temper ; and an 
 unhappy dispute with a subordinate aggravated his 
 natural irritability, and added nothing to his efficiency as 
 an administrator. Little progress was made during his 
 rule. But better times were beginning to dawn upon 
 the province. 
 
 About the year 1835-36, Captain Bogle, who had been 
 in political charge of an extensive district in Assam, 
 was appointed to the Arracan Commissionership. At 
 this time the unhealthiness of the province stiU continued 
 
 ♦ This levy had done good serrice turbulent natives of the country, who 
 
 at a time when both our European otherwise might have given us some 
 
 and native troops were prostrated by trouble, and who, indeed, on the dis- 
 
 the pestilence. It furnished employ- bandment of the corps, became regular 
 
 ment, moreover, to some of the more Dakoits. 
 
IMPROVEMENT OF AllHACAN. 445 
 
 to be a proverb. It was no uncommon thing, at certain 
 seasons of the year, to find more than half the European 
 officers attached to the civil and military establishments 
 either prostrate on their beds, or cruising about the Bay 
 of Bengal in a state of doubtful convalescence. I have 
 heard it said, that in one year half the European popula- 
 tion died during the rains. The deadly fevers of the 
 country, too, struck do^vQ the natives of Hindostan — 
 soldiers and servants, by scores. An order to embark for 
 Arracan was held to be little better than a death-warrant. 
 A few days oflen did the work. A single ride along the 
 skirts of one of those pestiferous jungles would send a 
 young man, in the full flush of youthful health and 
 vigor, to his grave within a week of his arrival in the 
 province. 
 
 But within the space of a very few years Arracan ac- 
 quired a new reputation. Men who had narrowly escaped 
 with their Uves from the influence of the destroying 
 climate, or who remembered how their friends, one after 
 one, had returned, gaunt scarecrows, from that deadly 
 coast, after a few months, or perhaps a few weeks of ab- 
 sence, were startled when they read in the Calcutta papers 
 that English gentlemen and ladies in the vice-regal 
 city were making up pleasure parties to proceed by steam 
 to Arracan, for the sake of the fine sea-breezes. Many 
 went; and all returned strengthened and exhilarated. 
 The province, under Bogle's management, had lived 
 do^vn its bad reputation, and was actually growing into 
 a fashionable sanitarium. 
 
 This was only one of the results of the activity and 
 good management of our military administrators. The 
 pestilent jungles in the neighbourhood of our principal 
 stations had been hewn down, and burnt out of the soil ; 
 but much more than this had been done. They who had 
 seen the wilderness which passed into our hands in 1825, 
 were delighted on visiting the country some fifteen years 
 
446 THE NON-REGULATION PROVINCES. 
 
 afterwards, to find themselves in one of the most prospe- 
 rous and well-governed provinces under the Presidency 
 of Bengal. Arracan, indeed, was fast earning for itself 
 the name of the " granary of Southern India." A large 
 export trade in rice was established, and the ports, 
 which had before been well-nigh deserted, were soon all 
 alive with shipping. The prosperity of the cultivators 
 continued to increase. Every man's rights were clearly 
 determined ; and every man knew precisely the amount 
 which was due by him to the Government. Many carried 
 a memorandum of their liabilities, written on a scrap of 
 palm-leaf, rolled up into a small cylinder, and fastened 
 into a hole through the lobe of their ears. 
 
 The vast improvement which has been effected in the 
 internal condition of Arracan is the work entirely of 
 military administrators. No civiUan has been officially 
 employed in the province since the time of Mr. Eichard 
 Hunter. In Bogle and Phayre the Government of India 
 possessed two ojQScers of strong natural sagacity and un- 
 wearying perseverance ; and they were not suddenly taken 
 from their regiments to be turned into judges and col- 
 lectors. The former had served for some years in Assam, 
 imder one of the ablest civil administrators in India, and 
 something at least of his efficiency may be attributed to 
 the advantages of that training. His success clearly 
 shows, that under the government of military officers, 
 the civil administration of a province may be so con- 
 ducted as to confer extensive benefits both on the Go- 
 vernment and the governed ; but it does not show that 
 it is safe to place untrained men, clever captains and 
 active adjutants, fresh from their troops or companies, in 
 responsible offices, demanding administrative experience 
 such as is not acquired from the study of the order- 
 book, or the Articles of War. 
 
 But of all the experiments of government which have 
 recently been made, the greatest is that which has for its 
 
LAHORE UNDER THE REGENCY. 447 
 
 seat tlie country beyond the Sutlej. When that great ar- 
 tillery battle of Goojrat had been fought — when the Sikh 
 Empire lay prostrate at the feet of the Governor-General 
 of India, and an order had gone forth declaring the 
 'kingdom of Runjeet Singh then and for ever eiFaced from 
 the catalogue of Indian principalities, it was no insignifi- 
 cant problem which presented itself for the solution of 
 our Indian statesmen. No tract of country, so vast and 
 so important, had been annexed to our British dominions 
 in the East since, at the dawn of the present century, 
 those " North- Western Provinces," which now form so 
 flourishing a part of our Indian Empire, were first brought 
 under our rule. The Punjab, being conquered, was now 
 to be " settled." We had tried, in other parts, various 
 kinds of " settlement.'' We had subjected new provinces 
 to different forms of administration, from the purely civil 
 to the purely military, and we had recognised more or 
 less of defectiveness in all the great experiments which 
 had been made, and with an amount of success shedding 
 no faint honor upon the character of oirr Indian adminis- 
 trators. But the difiiculties encountered had been great, 
 and errors had, doubtless, been committed. It was now 
 to be seen how far our Indian statesmen would profit by 
 the lessons of a century of varied experience, and turn to 
 fruitfiil account the legacies bequeathed to them by their 
 predecessors. 
 
 If this were a great work now to be undertaken by 
 Lord Dalhousie, it is certain that he addressed himself to 
 it with unusual advantages on his side. The Punjab was 
 not to us a new country; the Sikhs were not a new 
 people. A considerable tract of country, known as the 
 Jullindur Doab, the lands lying between the Sutlej and 
 Beeas, had been under British administration ever since 
 our first triumphant entry into Lahore. And over the 
 large expanse of territory still left nominally in the hands 
 of the infant son of Runjeet Singh, our British officers 
 
448 THE NON-REGULATION PROVINCES. 
 
 had been exercising that kind of influence which every 
 Englishman of the right stamp may derive from his 
 official position at a native Court, and which, in the pre- 
 sent instance, far exceeded the ordinary extent to which 
 the dominion of superior intelHgence is asserted. A 
 Council of Regency had been established at Lahore, and 
 a British mihtary officer, well versed in diplomacy, had 
 been appointed nominally to assist its deliberations, but 
 substantially to control its acts. This officer was Henry 
 Lawrence, a captain of the Bengal Artillery, who had 
 been for some years graduating in the school of diplo- 
 macy, and had, on the death of Major Broadfoot, in the 
 murderous conflict of Ferozshahur, been summoned by 
 Lord Hardinge from Nepaul, where he was then Political 
 Agent, to conduct our negotiations with the Sikhs. I 
 shall come presently to speak more in detail of his cha- 
 racter and quahfications. It is enough now to say, that 
 by a British officer, aided by a staff of assistants, young 
 and enterprising men of both services,* from the com- 
 mencement of the year 1846 up to the time of the final 
 dissolution of the Sikh Empire, the civil affairs of the 
 Punjab had been chiefly administered. Ill supported by 
 a corrupt and selfish Durbar, Lawrence and his associates 
 had been gradually compelled to come forward, far more 
 than they desired, in the character of administrators. In- 
 stead of confining themselves to the work of advising and 
 instructing the Sikh officers, and preparing them to take, 
 on the withdrawal of the British, the entire government 
 into their own hands, our English officers had often been 
 necessitated, in spite of their honest endeavours to remain 
 in the background, to assume a more prominent position 
 in the actual direction of affairs. The formality of the 
 Sikh Durbar was there, but the real administration was 
 
 * I must not deny myself the plea- Pollock, &c., of the military service ; 
 
 sure of naming such men as George and Messrs. Melvill, Cocks, Vans Ag- 
 
 Lawrence, Herbert Edwardes, James new, Bow ring, &c., of the civil. 
 Abbott, Lumsden, Taylor, Nicholson, 
 
THE SETTLEMENT OF THE PUNJAB. 449 
 
 our own ; and tlie broad stamp of Britisli beneficence 
 was upon it. After the maintenance of general tran- 
 quillity, the development of the resources of a neglected 
 country was the chief thought of the English officer, and 
 he w^orked as strenuously towards the attainment of this 
 great end as though the coimtry had been actually our 
 own.* 
 
 Therefore I say, when the " settlement" of the Punjab 
 became, by our actual possession of the country, a matter 
 of primal concernment to the Governor-General, he ad- 
 dressed himself to the task under such advantages as 
 have been seldom enjoyed by his predecessors. To use 
 a vulgar but expressive plirase, he had " something to go 
 upon." He had not to commit the government of the 
 country to the manipulation of unskilled hands. It was 
 not altogether a vague experiment on which he was 
 about to enter. There were British officers at his dis- 
 posal, with Lawrence at their head, who knew the 
 country well, and had already initiated a system of in- 
 ternal administration wliich promised the best results. 
 The men, who had already done so well in connexion 
 with the Sikh Durbar, were obviously those to whom he 
 might, with safety, entrust the further government of the 
 country, openly and independently, as the recognised 
 rulers of the land. The training which they had under- 
 gone was of the best kind. They knew the country ; 
 and they knew the people. And abeady, under their 
 
 * " The whole country had been sur- Colonel Lawrence, anxious to have a 
 
 veyed, and the system of taxation laid very simple code of laws, founded on 
 
 down on fixed principles; the fiscal Sikh customs, reduced to writing and 
 
 and excise systems had been re-ad- administered by the most respectable 
 
 justed, and oppressive duties and Go- men from their own ranks, assembled 
 
 vernment monopolies of all sorts abo- for the purpose at Lahore some fifty 
 
 lished. A census had been made, and Sikh heads of villages, grey-beards of 
 
 the population and trades of Lahore good local reputation, under the imme- 
 
 determined ; and the Durbar had sane- diate superintendence of Lena Singh ; 
 
 tioned the outlay of 30,000/. on roads and they had actually prepared the code 
 
 and bridges, to be increased to 60,000/. before ill health compelled Colonel Law- 
 
 ■when the state of the country allowed." rence to proceed to England. — [MS. 
 
 — [^Buist's Annals of India for the Year Notes.'\ 
 1848.] To this it may be added, that 
 
 2 G 
 
450 THE NON-KEGULATION PROVINCES. 
 
 benign influence, the land was beginning to recover from 
 the exhausting effects of years of continued misrule. 
 
 Lord Dalhousie had no prejudices, for or against any 
 particular class of Company's officers. He recognised the 
 merits and the claims of both services. And he believed 
 that the form of administration best suited to the Punjab 
 would be one embracing a judicious intermixture of the 
 civil and military elements — one in which civilians and 
 soldiers might meet on equal terms as executive officers, 
 and the qualification for employment should be simply 
 the individual capacity of the officer seeking to be em- 
 ployed. It was necessary that at the head of such a 
 body of administrators there should be some supreme au- 
 thority, combining the advantages of local knowledge, 
 military energy, and experience in civil details. But to 
 find such a man was more than difficult. It was im- 
 possible. Colonel Lavn:ence had local knowledge and 
 military energy. He had more civil experience, too, than 
 most soldiers, for he had been long employed in the 
 Revenue Survey, and, as a political officer, had atten- 
 tively watched the systems of government in the Native 
 States. But something more than this was needed to 
 place so great an experiment beyond the risk of failure. 
 It seemed fit, therefore, to Lord Dalhousie to place the 
 government of the Punjab not under the entire control of 
 a single functionary, but to appoint a Board of Administra- 
 tion, combining in the persons of its several members all 
 the necessary administrative qualifications. At the head of 
 this Board was placed Colonel — then Sir Henry — Law- 
 rence, who knew the Sikh country, the Sikh chiefs, and 
 the Sikh people well ; a man of rare energy and ability, 
 sagacious in council, prompt in action, and of so brave a 
 resolution that all difficulties vanished before his uncon- 
 querable will. He had almost everything to fit him for 
 his post but physical health ; and in the untiring dis- 
 charge of his duties, in his eager, restless beneficence, of 
 
SIR HENRY LAWRENCE. 451 
 
 tliis want he took little account. Often was he moving 
 from place to place, far away from all the appliances of 
 civiHsed life, at a time when his weakened frame required 
 the comforts and restoratives of a well-ordered home. 
 His friends often trembled for his safety ; but he never 
 thought of himself. He had work to do, and he would 
 do it. He knew how much depended on his own personal 
 energies, and whilst there was any need of his activity, he 
 was not one to be still. 
 
 But what rendered Lawrence so peculiarly fitted for 
 the post was this. Though largely endowed with that 
 ready vigor — that self-reliant promptitude of action, 
 which is alarmed by the presence of no responsibility, and 
 deterred by the intervention of no false scruples — though 
 he was prepared to strike suddenly and effectively, and 
 was quite the man in an imminent conjuncture for a great 
 and successful coup^ his desire ever was to evoke, not the 
 feai', but the gratitude of the people, to elevate and en- 
 courage them, not to coerce and repress. His benevo- 
 lence was of the right kind. He knew that a strong 
 Government is in the end a merciftd Government — that 
 want of vigor is want of kindness and want of sense — 
 that in such a country as the Punjab a ruler must do 
 something more than study Bentham in an easy-chair. 
 But whilst ever on the alert, ever ready to crush any 
 dangerous manifestations of disaffection, his mind was 
 continually brooding over the means of advancing the 
 happiness of the people. He knew that what the country 
 most needed was repose, and that this could only be 
 secured by a display of vigor at the right time ; but it 
 was towards a kindly paternal government that his im- 
 pulses were ever directing him, and the welfare of a 
 long-oppressed people was the thought dearest to his 
 heart. He disarmed the population of the Punjab ; but 
 he opened out to them new fields of peaceful employ- 
 
 2g2 
 
452 THE NON-REGULATION PROVINCES. 
 
 ment, and gave back to tliem the long alienated right of 
 cultivating their rich lands in security and peace. 
 
 Associated in the Board of Administration mth this 
 large-minded captain of artillery, were two Bengal 
 civilians. Mr. Mansell had long been favorably known, 
 throughout the Presidency to which he belonged, as one 
 of the ablest financiers in the country. He was a man of 
 a thoughtful nature, and, I am inclined to think, of an 
 original turn of mind ; but he was not one to put his 
 ideas, with much promptitude, into action. He was 
 somewhat wanting, indeed, in energy and activity, and 
 his abilities, though of a very high order, found more 
 congenial employment in a settled than in a new country. 
 He was not quick enough and enthusiastic enough for the 
 work that lay before him ; and he was, doubtless, glad 
 after a tiine to be relieved fi:om duties better suited to 
 men of a more sanguine temperament and less abhorrence 
 of responsibility. His colleague, Mr. John Lawrence, 
 had been in charge of the administration of our first 
 territorial acquisition in the Punjab — the JuUindur Doab 
 — and he had acquitted himself, in that capacity, with 
 remarkable address. He was a first-rate civil officer. 
 The extensive experience which he had acquired in the 
 North-Western Provinces of India had been stored up in 
 liis mind, as something too precious to lose, and was now 
 ready to be turned to the most profitable account. He 
 understood both the Revenue and the Judicial systems of 
 the country well. He knew the native character ; was 
 familiar with native institutions ; and thoroughly versed 
 in all those matters of agricultural detail which are the 
 very life itself of a rural population. A " settlement" 
 was to him nothing new or mysterious. He knew how 
 the boundaries of estates were determined ; how their 
 productiveness was to be increased ; how revenue was to 
 be raised in a manner most advantageous to the State, 
 
THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE PUNJAB. 453 
 
 and least injurious to the people. And with all this ex- 
 tensive knowledge were united energy and activity of the 
 highest order. He had the enthusiasm of youth with the 
 experience of age ; and envy and detraction could say 
 nothing worse of him than that he was the brother of Sii* 
 Henry Lawrence. 
 
 Of such materials was formed, on its first institution, 
 the Lahore Board of Admmistration. In communication 
 immediately Avitli the Governor-General, and aided by a 
 staff of ci\il and military assistants, of whom I shall 
 presently speak more in detail, these three members of 
 the Lahore Board conducted the entire internal adminis- 
 tration of the great country conquered by our arms. 
 They worked together — separately and collectively. Li 
 respect of detail work there was a division of labor ; but 
 all official papers were cii'culated to the three members 
 of the Board, and each member recorded his opinion on 
 every question that came before them. The result was 
 that all matters of importance were well and carefully 
 considered by the entire Board, whilst each individual 
 member brought his own particular experience to bear 
 upon the illustration of administrative details. 
 
 The system of administration introduced by Lord 
 Hardinge into the Cis-Sutlej and Trans-Sutlej states in 
 1846, was followed in 1849, when the entire country 
 was subjected to our rule. The great province was 
 divided into four commissionerships, and each of these 
 commissionerships were divided into fom* or five dis- 
 tricts.* The Deputy-Commissioners, who are placed in 
 charge of these districts, perform all the functions of 
 magistrates and collectors, and ai'e invested with some ot 
 the offices of the Judge. To each district, moreover, are 
 attached one or two assistants, chosen from the cove- 
 
 * The districts of Hazareh and Pe- but they have since been created into 
 shawur were, until the commencement an independent commissionersliip under 
 of 1852, kept directly under the Board; Colonel Mackeson. 
 
454 THE NON-REGULATION PROVINCES. 
 
 nanted services, and also an iincovenanted extra assistant, 
 all of whom are employed in the courts, civil, fiscal, and 
 police. To these last-named appointments natives are 
 eligible ; and it has been greatly the desire of the Board 
 to induce the Punjabees to accept employment of this 
 kind, and also to take service as Tehsildars, Thannadars, 
 &c. ; but hitherto no great success seems to have crowned 
 our efforts at the employment of native agency in the 
 Punjab. The Punjabees are not very expert in the use 
 of rules and regulations, and though these are pressed 
 into the service, much less in this part of the country 
 than in the provinces of India, it may still be questioned 
 whether they are not too extensively employed. 
 
 It may be doubted whether any men in any part of 
 the world ever addressed themselves to the great work of 
 governing a conquered people, so as to make the yoke 
 easy and the burden light, with more singleness of pur- 
 pose and benevolence of aim than Lawrence and his 
 gifted associates. It was their desire " to make the basis 
 of their rule a light and equable assessment ; a strong, 
 vigorous, though uninterfering police ; and a quick hear- 
 ing in all civil and other cases."* And they set to work 
 with an untiring energy, a resolute perseverance, and a 
 disregard of all selfish considerations, with scarcely a 
 parallel in the history of Indian Government. The Re- 
 venue Survey was pushed forward with all possible de- 
 spatch (Henry Lawrence, as I have said, had once been 
 a Revenue surveyor), and the revision of the settlement, 
 which few men in India were more competent to super- 
 intend than John Lawrence, advanced with rapid strides 
 towards completion. The term of years for which the 
 assessment was settled varied according to the nature of 
 the land. The contracts were principally made with the 
 village communities, which exist in a more perfect state 
 
 • MS. Correspondence. 
 
RESUMPTION MEASURES. 455 
 
 in the Punjab than in any other part of our Eastern pos- 
 sessions. In tracts of country already brought into a 
 high state of cultivation, the settlement has been made 
 for thirty years, but where the tract embraces consider- 
 able breadth of waste land, and is readily improvable, the 
 assessment has been fixed only for a period of ten years. 
 The amount of the assessment is considerably lower than 
 it was under the old Sikh Government. The reductions, 
 varying from five to fifty per cent., may be set down at 
 an average of about twenty-five per cent, on the whole, 
 or a total amount of thirty lakhs of rupees. 
 
 The difiicult and delicate question of the resumption 
 of rent-free tenures had to be dealt with by the Board of 
 Administration. They found in the Punjab large tracts 
 of Jagheer land, of the annual value of twenty-five lakhs 
 of rupees. Much of this had been held by the chiefs on 
 the condition of their furnishing certain quotas of troops 
 to the Dnrbar ; and now that this contingency no longer 
 existed, it seemed that the claims of the Jagheerdars to 
 this kind of immunity was gone. But there has been no 
 hasty resumption. These rent-free tenures are inquired 
 into and reported upon, and not until a thorough investi- 
 gation has been instituted, and the justice of the measure 
 clearly ascertained, is any Jagheerdar deprived of his 
 lands. Even then the resumption is generally so ordered 
 as to press with as little severity as possible on the privi- 
 leged classes ; though, doubtless, w^hilst the great bulk of 
 the industrial population gain mightily by our innova- 
 tions, the aristocracy of the Punjab are sufferers by the 
 change. This, however, is inseparable from a system 
 which has for its object the emancipation of the industrial 
 classes from the wretched thraldom to which they had 
 been reduced by the tyranny of the Sirdars. We could 
 not elevate the many without depressing the few. 
 
 In the mean w^hile the efforts of the Board for the 
 suppression of crime, and the protection of life and 
 
456 THE NON-REGULATION PROVINCES. 
 
 property, have been at least partially successful. A vi- 
 gorous, well-organised detective police has already done 
 good work in the Punjab. Dakoitee is said to be ^xel\- 
 nigh suppressed. We have hunted down these robber 
 gangs, brought them to justice, and made quick work of 
 their punishment. During the first year of our inde- 
 pendent administration, nearly a hundred Dakoits were 
 publicly executed, some six or eight at a time. And 
 such terror did these vigorous measures strike into the 
 profession at large, that Dakoitee is now said to be more 
 rare in the Punjab than in any part of the Regulation 
 provinces. In the suppression of minor offences it is 
 admitted that we have been hitherto less successful ; and 
 in the dispensing of civil justice the Punjabee Courts 
 have not achieved all that was desired. Earnest endea- 
 vours, however, are being made to simplify the law, to ex- 
 pedite its administration, and to render justice accessible 
 to the meanest cultivator in the land. These are stereo- 
 typed expressions, often meaning nothing; but in the 
 mouths of such earnest-minded men as the Lawrences 
 there is a real significance in them. The Punjab, as I 
 write, has been less than four years under our rule. I 
 should think less hopefully of the ultimate result if its 
 administrators insisted upon the perfect success of their 
 experiments in every department of the state. But they 
 claim for themselves no such extraordinary merit. They 
 honestly acknowledge that they have not been uniformly 
 successful, and are candid enough even to drop a hint 
 that perhaps they have attempted too much. 
 
 Of the external signs of progress in this newly-acquired 
 country, I have already spoken. But the Lawrences are 
 not men to attempt the regeneration of the Punjab only 
 by strivings from without. The great agency of education 
 is being brought to bear upon the inner life of the people. 
 Not that much has yet been done in this direction. These 
 are too early days, indeed, for us reasonably to expect 
 
FINANCIAL RESULTS. 457 
 
 that anything should have heen done. But we know 
 that abeady a good English and vernacular school has 
 been established at Umritsur, and that the Board of 
 Administration are devising measures for the extension 
 of their educational machinery, especially with a view 
 to the practical training of the Punjabees for the 
 public service, and their instruction in those useful 
 sciences which mil fit them for employment as engi- 
 neers and medical practitioners. 
 
 Of the financial results of the annexation of the 
 Punjab something should be written in this place. 
 Por many years the bare mention of the possible 
 acquisition of the- dominions of Runjeet Singh kindled 
 a fever of expectancy in the minds of the English in 
 India. Their imaginations grasped the grand idea of 
 a country of inexhaustible wealth, whose annexation 
 to our own territories would supply a general remedy 
 for all om- financial diseases, and strike the word 
 " deficit" for ever out of the vocabulary of Indian 
 Chancellors of the Exchequer. Omne ignotum pro 
 magnifico. Much had been related of the exceeding 
 splendor of the Sikh Court — of the almost fabulous 
 value of the gems which shone upon the gorgeous 
 head-dresses of the Sikh chiefs, and of the inde- 
 scribable splendor of the jewels and gold which 
 glittered upon the trappings of their horses. But we 
 knew little of the natural resources of the country, or 
 brought anything but our grosser senses to bear upon 
 the consideration of its reputed wealth. Otherwise we 
 might have reflected that it was hardly in the nature 
 of things that a country so governed should be a rich 
 country. The dream, however, was one from which 
 the reality of a hostile collision soon awakened us ; 
 and when the annexation of the Punjab became some- 
 thing more than an object of vague cupidity, the 
 gorgeous El-Dorado dissolved before our eyes, and a 
 
458 
 
 THE NON-REGULATION PROVINCES. 
 
 ruder reality looked us in the face. It was then openly 
 doubted whether such an extension of empire would not 
 rather aggravate than relieve our financial embarrass- 
 ments — whether with a frontier extended to the Indus 
 we should not be poorer than before. 
 
 And such, indeed, judged by present results, is ac- 
 tually the case. The Punjab is not yet remunerative. 
 Some little time must elapse before the revenues of the 
 country can be made to exceed the cost of its protec- 
 tive and administrative establishments. The estimated 
 amount of revenue for the years 1851-52 is 130 lakhs 
 of rupees,* with about four lakhs of additional receipts 
 in the shape of proceeds of confiscated Sikh property 
 and refunded charges. The total expenditure is esti- 
 mated at about 120 lakhs of rupees. This leaves only a 
 surplus of 14 lakhs for the maintenance of the regular 
 troops posted in the Punjab; and, as a large reduction 
 of the army might have been — indeed, would have 
 been, effected but for the annexation of the Sikh states, 
 it cannot be argued that the military expenditure is 
 not fairly chargeable to the province. It is true, of 
 course, that the possession of the Punjab has enabled 
 us to withdraw a considerable body of troops from the 
 line of country which constituted our old frontier, and 
 that a deduction, on this score of frontier defence, must 
 be made from the gross charges of the regular military 
 
 * Of this more than a hundred lakhs is derived from the land-rerenue. I may 
 as well set down the several items as contained in the Company's last general 
 finance letter : 
 
 Land Revenue 
 
 Sayer 
 
 Abkarree 
 
 Salt 
 
 Customs 
 
 Post Office 
 
 Stamps . 
 
 Judicial fees, &c. 
 
 Sale of Presents 
 
 Miscellaneous Receipts 
 
 Rupees. 
 1,03,00,000 
 
 23,00,000 
 
 1,50,000 
 
 1,00,000 
 
 90,000 
 
 10,000 
 
 55,000 
 
 Total 
 
 130,05,000 
 
REVENUES OF THE PUNJAB. 459 
 
 establishment employed beyond the Sutlej. Still, the 
 cost of the regular troops fairly chargeable to the Punjab 
 absorbs the estimated surplus, and leaves a balance against 
 the newly-acquired states. 
 
 It is necessary, however, to a right understanding of 
 the financial results of the acquisition of the Punjab, that 
 a more minute examination should be made of the last 
 balance-sheet. Although the cost of the regular troops 
 is not set down among the charges, there is a consider- 
 able defensive establishment — an establishment of those 
 Local Corps and Military Police which Lawrence so 
 judiciously established — charged against the province. 
 Under the heads of ''Civil and Military Police" and 
 " Local Corps," there is an entrance of 40 lakhs of ru- 
 pees.* To this extent, therefore, it pays for its own de- 
 fence and protection. This is a charge which I hardly 
 think can be further reduced without burdening the 
 Indian treasury to a larger amount for the maintenance 
 of regular troops. 
 
 Under the head of "Political Pensions, &c.," there 
 is an entrance of 18-i- lakhs of rupees. t As these pen- 
 sions are principally, if not entirely life pensions, ter- 
 minable with the present recipients, this item of ex- 
 penditure will gradually disappear. The charges of 
 revenue collection amount to 11 -\ lakhs of rupees, and 
 the judicial charges to nearly 14 lakhs. The latter, it 
 is probable, cannot be advantageously reduced. The 
 former, at first sight, appears to be somewhat immo- 
 derate, and altogether irreconcileable with our know- 
 ledge of the generally simple and uncostly administra- 
 tive machinery of the Punjab, for the cost of collection 
 
 * In the estimate for 1850-51, the had been only 15 lakhs. The increase 
 
 amount set down, under tliese heads, is is probably the result of the Resurap- 
 
 little short of 47 lakhs. I conclude tion operations of the Board. The ab- 
 
 that this is to be accounted for by a re- sorption of large tracts of Jagheer land 
 
 ference to the incidental expenses in- has compelled thera to grant compen- 
 
 curred by the levying and equipment sation to the Jagheerdars, in many 
 
 of new corps. cases, in the shape of life pensions. 
 
 t The estimate for the preceding year 
 
460 THE NON-REGULATION PROVINCES. 
 
 amounts to about one-seventh of the land-revenue, 
 whilst in India generally it is less than one-ninth. 
 But it is to be remembered that hitherto in the Punjab 
 we have had not merely to collect, but to settle the 
 revenue. 
 
 But there are other items which, as time advances, 
 will undergo a gradual process of reduction in the 
 ordinary course of events. The " extraordinary 
 charges" will be greatly diminished, for many of them 
 are incidental to the occupation of newly-acquired 
 territory. Sixteen lakhs and a half are set down as 
 the estimated cost of " Buildins^s and Works" for the 
 last financial year. This is not to be regarded as 
 current expenditure, but as an outlay of capital on 
 reproductive works ; and it would be false economy to 
 desist too soon from such profitable expenditure as this . 
 It is to such a wise outlay of the public money that 
 we must look for- the permanent blessing of a surplus 
 revenue. But the years of such necessary expenditure 
 are not many, and we may look forward to a not very 
 remote period when the outlay on public works mil 
 diminish as the revenue increases. A niggardly policy 
 at such a time would be an erroneous — indeed, an ex- 
 travagant one. The Punjab has vast capabilities, but 
 it has suffered, and is still suffering, from the effect of 
 long years of misrule, and it demands all the fostering 
 care of a wise and benevolent Government to repair 
 the waste of vital energy resulting from a system 
 which struck in its greed of present gain at the very 
 sources of productiveness, and paralysed the industry 
 of the country. 
 
 Beturning to the administrative results, I think I am 
 justified in saying that they have hitherto presented a 
 most satisfactory appearance ; and that no purely civil 
 administration, like that which obtains in the Regula- 
 tion provinces — no purely military government like that 
 
GENERAL ADMINISTRATIVE RESULTS. 461 
 
 wliicli Lord EUenborougli established in Siiidh — would 
 have accomplished so large an amount of good within so 
 limited a space of time. The success of the experiment is 
 to be attributed partly to the system, and partly to the men. 
 Under no other system could so many rare administra- 
 tive qualities have been fused into one governing body — 
 could so many excellent parts have been combined into 
 one excellent whole. No system of agency will work 
 well where the agents themselves are deficient in the 
 qualities wliich contribute to success. Indolence and 
 dulness Avill render inoperative the best-devised schemes 
 of Government. But there are, on the other hand, modes 
 of administration so faulty in themselves that no amount 
 of energ}' and ability can wholly overcome their inherent 
 defects. Lord Dalhousie was, doubtless, fortunate in his 
 men ; but it was only because he recognised the ex- 
 pediency of establishmg a system of admmistration, to be 
 carried out by a mixed civil and military agency, that he 
 was enabled to associate these men in the Government of 
 the Punjab. He brought the two services into friendly 
 competition with each other — and such men as Henry 
 and John Lawrence — Mansell and Mackeson — Mont- 
 gomery and Macgregor — Edwardes and Cocks — Lake 
 and ^lelvill — Abbott and Bowring — all found scope for 
 tlie exercise of their several qualities, and each, after his 
 kind, contributed to the " full force and joint result" of 
 the entire success. 
 
 But we must not, therefore, as I have said, hastily 
 assume, that because this system of administration has 
 worked well in these newly-acquired countries, the more 
 costly and exclusive system wliich obtains in our old 
 Regulation provinces is altogether a mistake. Two 
 very important considerations are necessary to the right 
 understanding of the matter. The one is that the mili- 
 tary administrators, both of the past and present genera- 
 tion, who have distinguished themselves so greatly in all 
 
462 THE NON-REGULATION PROVINCES. 
 
 the Presidencies of India, have been and are the elite of 
 the service. We should err if we were to regard the 
 Munros and Malcohiis, the Sutherlands and the Law- 
 rences, only as average specimens of the class to which 
 they belong. And the other consideration to be kept 
 steadily before us is this : that it is one thing to admi- 
 nister the affairs of a newly-conquered country, where 
 population is meagre, wealth scanty, and rights simple ; 
 and another to deal with those more complicated rela- 
 tions to which property in its accumulation and trans- 
 mission has given birth in the more settled and thickly- 
 peopled districts which have long been under our rule. 
 The Punjabee system is admirably suited to the Pimjab, 
 but it would be a dead failure in Bengal. 
 
 Moreover, in these settled districts, we have got the 
 *' Regulations" for better or for worse, and they are to be 
 handled skilfully only by men who have been trained, 
 from their youth upwards, in the use of them. Whether 
 any other system than that now in force, if adopted a 
 century or half a century ago, would have conferred 
 greater benefits on the country, it is now of Httle use to 
 inquire. I have my opinion on the subject, and else- 
 where I have expressed it. But if I had taken an oppo- 
 site view of the question, I should still perceive plainly, 
 and admit freely, that it is one thing to apply a tentative 
 system to a new country, where virgin soil presents itself 
 for our experiments, and another to pull down an exist- 
 ing system, and to introduce a new one which might have 
 been adapted to the people as we found them, but cer- 
 tainly is not to the people as we have made them. The 
 idea of turning clever adjutants into Zillah judges, and 
 hoisting dashing majors into the Sudder, is a conception 
 worthy of the man who made a consul of his horse.* 
 
 ♦ Since this chapter was written, the But the benefits conferred on the coun- 
 Lahore Board has been dissolved, and try both by the system and the man 
 Sir Henry Lawrence has left the Punjab, will live long after them. 
 
THE CIVILISATION OF SAVAGE TRIBES. 463 
 
 CHAPTER H. 
 
 Progress of Civilisation — Humanising Efforts of British OflBcers — Mairwarra — 
 Dixon and the Mairs— Candeish — The Bheels — Outram and the Bheel Corps — 
 Ovans and the Bheel Colonies — Keclamation of Savage Tribes — Augustus 
 Cleveland — Greneral Kesults. 
 
 They are good things of which I have spoken in the 
 preceding chapter. I do not think, indeed, that there is 
 any reason to doubt that the transfer of these provinces 
 to the dominion of the British has been attended with 
 substantial benefits to the people. Our English rulers 
 are not now chargeable with obliviousness of their obli- 
 gations as representatives of Christianity, and agents of 
 Civilisation. Every year they address themselves with 
 greater earnestness to the good work of social regenera- 
 tion ; every year they bring their solemn convictions — 
 solemn convictions of the duty of responsible men, loaded 
 with a weight of obligation, of the due discharge of 
 which, to the utmost tittle, they will have to give strict 
 account — to bear more forcibly and effectually upon the 
 practical consideration of their measures for the govern- 
 ment of the nations brought under their rule. 
 
 I wish that the necessities of this work did not restrain 
 me fi:om dwelling at a length commensurate with the 
 importance and the attractiveness of the subject upon 
 these civilising measures — upon the successful efforts 
 which have been made, on the acquisition of new tracts 
 of country, to reduce the people thus newly brought 
 under our rule to a state of civilisation unknown to 
 
464 THE CIVILISATION OF SAVAGE TRIBES. 
 
 them under their native masters. It is to be feared that 
 very little of all tliis is known in England. It is to be feared 
 the general impression is, that in India, when the work of 
 subjugation is done, we think only of the work of taxa- 
 tion — that war and revenue are the only two things 
 earnestly considered by the British officer in the East — 
 and that, so long as we can successfully prosecute the 
 one and make a good show of the other, he is happy and 
 content in himself, and vastly applauded by his masters. 
 But there can be no greater error than this. The 
 history of India, truly and sufficiently written, would 
 contain many a chapter, full of cheering facts, illustrative 
 of the brighter side of English conquest in the East. 
 Tiie " Victories of Peace" and the " Triumphs of Civih- 
 sation" are not the stereotyped promises of florid orators 
 at home, but the substantial performances of men, 
 striving and toiling under the fiery skies of India, and 
 sacrificmg often life itself in their efforts to elevate the 
 social condition, and to increase the daily happiness of 
 the people by whom they are smTounded. In such 
 chapters of Indian history would be found many pic- 
 tures not to be dwelt upon mthout feelings of national 
 pride and Christian gratitude — pictures of Enghsh gen- 
 tlemen in the deep recesses of a strange country, isolated 
 from their kind, devoting themselves to the noble work 
 of reclaiming the savage people of a newly-acquired 
 province, and making their way, slowly and painfully, 
 through jungles of ignorance and barbarism, folly and 
 superstition, to the great reward of full success. Such 
 success is often the only reward which these good deeds 
 secure to the man of peace and the agent of civilisation. 
 He may win the approbation and the confidence of his 
 employers, but I only utter a threadbare commonplace 
 when I add that a brilliant charge of horse, or an assault 
 on a petty fortress, will secure for him more popular 
 renown, and achieve for him, by the unpremeditated act 
 
HUMANISING EFFORTS. 465 
 
 of a casual half hour, more honorary distinction than can 
 be acquired by years of philanthropic toil. It is the 
 glory of such men as Cleveland and Wilkinson, Dixon, 
 Ovans, and Macpherson, that they have labored on in 
 the cause of humanity, without any of the ordinary en- 
 couragements and incentives to exertion, unknown to 
 their brethren at home, almost forgotten by their brethren 
 in India, without the stimulating and sustaining aid of a 
 single note of popular applause. 
 
 And yet what great things have been done in India 
 by a few European officers — perhaps by a single Euro- 
 pean officer, located in the heart of a newly- acquired 
 province, and surrounded by rude barbarians, slaves to 
 the most degraded superstitions, and habitual practisers 
 of almost every vice ! Look at the case of Mairwarra.* 
 Thirty years ago we found in that country a race of 
 savage marauders — with httle or no regard for human 
 life or hberty — ^murdering their daughters, selling their 
 mothers, committing every kind of atrocity without 
 shame and without remorse. They were many of them 
 fugitives from other states — men whom society had 
 spued out — ^the rugged elements of a fearless race of 
 bandits. They were robbers, indeed, by profession and 
 by practice. Everywhere they took what they could, and 
 kept Avhat they could, and lived in continual strife with 
 their neighbours. Their vicinage was always uncom- 
 fortable — often dangerous — and when we came into 
 contact with them we swallowed them up. In 1821 we 
 subjugated the country, and brought these freebooters 
 under British rule. 
 
 No sooner had the act of absorption been accomplished 
 than the British officers, to whom the " settlement" of the 
 
 • The untravelled reader must look Provinces, and contiguous to Ajmere. 
 
 for Mairwarra in the map of India, "It is bounded," says Colonel Dixon, 
 
 between the Chumbul river and the "by Ajmere to the north, and separates 
 
 Arabala hills, which stretch almost Meywar in the east from Marwar on 
 
 from Delhi to Goojrat. It is under the the west; to the south are the hill pos- 
 
 Government of the North- Western sessions of Meywar." 
 
 2h 
 
4i66 THE CIVILISATION OF SAVAGE TRIBES. 
 
 new country had been entrusted, began to address them- 
 selves to the work of humanising these wretched people. 
 "The duty to be performed was of no ordinary cast ; it 
 was one of considerable anxiety and difficulty. The 
 people had been conquered without calling for the 
 exercise of any extraordinary force or much solicitude. 
 This had proved a matter of comparative ease. We had 
 now to gain their affections, to command their good will 
 in following the path pointed out to them, to win them 
 over to habits of industry, and to habituate them to 
 customs of civilised life. We had to prove to them that, 
 in subduing them, our chief source of sohcitude was to 
 improve their social condition, and in all respects to ad- 
 minister to their comfort and welfare." To effect this, it 
 was necessary, in the first instance, to put down the open 
 violence of these marauding clans by an imposing display 
 of force. When we first took charge of the district, au- 
 thority was openly set at defiance. Armed bands paraded 
 the country, or occupied the passes. The servants of 
 Government were cut off; prisoners were rescued. There 
 was no safety on the public ways. To control these 
 desperate banditti it was necessary to show that on the 
 side of constituted authority there was a power stronger 
 even than their lawless ferocity. And this was speedily 
 done. 
 
 It is the rule of the British Government, in these 
 cases, to make the rude barbarians themselves the agents 
 of their own civihsation. We abstain, whenever such 
 forbearance is possible, fi:om a display of foreign force. 
 In Mairwarra, as elsewhere, it was deemed expedient to 
 raise a local battalion, composed of the people of the 
 country, and to employ their energies in the suppression 
 of crime, and the support of the civil authorities. By the 
 estabhshment of such corps another object is attained. It 
 opens a field for the exercise of a world of restless energy 
 — it reduces to discipline, and holds out objects of honor- 
 
HALL IN MAIRWARRA. 467 
 
 able competition, to men who have hitherto warred 
 against their neighbours on their own account, and Uved 
 in a constant state of predatory strife. 
 
 The Mairwarra local battalion was placed under the 
 command of Captain Hall, of the 16th Bengal Native 
 Infantry — an officer who, in the quartermaster's depart- 
 ment of the army, had exhibited considerable ability and 
 force of character — and who, now virtually invested with 
 the political charge of the country, brought all his energies 
 to bear upon the reclamation of these savage tribes. The 
 Mairs, disciplined ailer our European fashion, proved them- 
 selves to be good and loyal soldiers, and the criminal 
 combinations, which had thrown the whole district into 
 confusion, were suppressed by the brethren of the men 
 who constituted the robber-gangs. And this primal 
 measure accomphshed, Captaiu Hall took the next great 
 step along the road of civilisation, and addressed himself 
 to the permanent protection of life and property by the 
 introduction of a judicial system in keeping with the cha- 
 racter and the requirements of the people. 
 
 The Mairs had always had the most primitive ideas of 
 justice. It had been of the wild kind which degenerates 
 iuto revenge — or else it had ascended only to the scale 
 of trial by ordeal. Either the contendiug parties, backed 
 by their sympathisiag kinsmen, resorted to the arbitre- 
 ment of the sword ; and blood-feuds were handed down 
 among them from sire to son; or the accused was 
 challenged to prove his innocence by thrusting his hand 
 into boiling oil, or grasping a red-hot shot. But imder 
 British government a new and better system was intro- 
 duced. Except iu the highest class of offences, resort 
 was had to the Punchayut^ or arbitration system — a 
 system well adapted to the temper and condition of the 
 people, which worked with the best results; and was 
 one of the most important remedial agents applied to the 
 cure of all these social ills. " It is a strong argument," 
 
 2 h2 
 
468 THE CIVILISATION OF SAVAGE TRIBES. 
 
 says Colonel Dixon, " in favor of tMs system of dispensing 
 justice, that during the last twenty-six years, the period 
 of our rule in Mairwarra, no appeal has been made beyond 
 the superintendent of the district." 
 
 But the plough was the chief civiliser. Hitherto the 
 land had been so difficult of cultivation that no one 
 cared to possess it. Mairwarra is a mountainous district, 
 and, without artificial means of retention, the rain that 
 fell was soon lost. The falls of rain, too, were uncertain. 
 Sometimes the water supplies totally failed; and cultiva- 
 tion was at a stand-still. In 1832 there had been a 
 great drought, and the country had been nearly depopu- 
 lated. The industrial energies of the people were para- 
 lysed by this calamity. They lost all faith in agriculture 
 as a means of subsistence, and fell into their old marauding 
 habits. This, indeed, in a greater or a less degree, was 
 the result of every drought, and droughts were of frequent 
 occurrence. To remedy this evil, it plainly appeared 
 would be not only to increase the financial prosperity of 
 the people, but to open out the sources of moral reforma- 
 tion, and to reclaim them from their lawless ways. 
 Nothing could be more readily comprehensible than this, 
 or seemingly more easy of achievement. 
 
 Compelled by ill-health to abandon his post, Hall was 
 succeeded in 1835 in the charge of Mairwarra by Captain 
 Dixon, an officer of the Bengal Artillery, whose zeal in the 
 cause of humanity, evinced when in no responsible pohtical 
 employment, had secured for him the good opinion and 
 confidence of Sir Charles Metcalfe, who now selected him 
 for a post in which his benevolence might have free scope 
 for active expression. The trust could not have been 
 confided to better hands. Dixon entered upon his new 
 duties with all the energy and zeal of a man whose heart 
 is in the good work. He saw at once what was the 
 great want of the country. Eager to develop the produc- 
 tiveness of an unyielding soil, and to stimulate the industry 
 
DIXON IN MAIRWARRA. 469 
 
 of an unsettled people, he addressed himself to this great 
 matter of the water-supply, and left untried no effort to 
 secure it. He appealed to Government. He appealed 
 to the people. Money and labor were both soon at his 
 disposal ; and the great want was supplied. By a ju- 
 dicious management of the water-supply, by the digging 
 of tanks and wells, and the construction of embankments, 
 the wasted jungle was soon reclaimed. The plough was in 
 active operation. Every man was encouraged, by small 
 advances of money, to apply himself to agricultural 
 pursuits. The financial results of the experiment were 
 highly favorable. The moral results were more favorable 
 still. A lai'ge number of professional robbers were con- 
 verted into industrious farmers, and peace smiled upon 
 the land.* 
 
 Having thus created, by his exertions, a class of 
 peaceful agriculturists, Dixon's next effort was to settle 
 a community of busy traders in this neglected land. 
 Hitherto the Mairs had depended principally upon 
 Ajmere and Nusserabadf for their supplies. Itinerant 
 dealers visited the neighbourhood at times, but their 
 transactions were confined to the Sepoys of the local 
 battalion. With the general population they had no 
 commerce. They seemed to mistrust the Mairs. The 
 object, however, was a great one, and to Dixon it appeared 
 of no very difficult attainment. It seemed to him that 
 if a city were built there would soon be found traders to 
 inhabit it. So a city with a spacious bazaar sprung up at 
 his bidding. It rose with the rapidity of magic. Three 
 months after the laying of the first stone the bazaar was 
 
 * " During the last eleven years the outlay on public works, there is a sur- 
 
 sums expended on works of irrigation plus given of 4,00,121 rupees. This 
 
 amounted to 2,41,112 rupees; whilst large amount is our gain in a pecuniary 
 
 during that period the excess of revenue point of view ; as far as affects the moral 
 
 beyond the summer of the first year of improvement of the people, the advan- 
 
 the present incumbent's superinten- tages are beyond calculation." 
 
 dence in 1835-36 is 6,41,234 rupees. f Distant thirty-two and thirty-si:? 
 
 After reimbursing ourselves for the miles from Mairwarra, 
 
470 THE CIVILISATION OF SAVAGE TRIBES. 
 
 opened for traffic. At first tlie Mairs had looked coldly 
 and mistrustfully at the proposal. They thought that 
 the location among them of a party of foreign traders 
 would only have the effect of subjecting them to unac- 
 customed exactions. But they soon found the advantage 
 of the imdertaking, for it supplied them with profitable 
 employment ; and they learnt in time that the settlement 
 of capitalists among them, and the centralisation of trade, 
 must be beneficial to indigenous producers. By the Ma- 
 hajuns, or traders themselves, this want of confidence 
 was reciprocated. As they brought in their merchandise 
 to the new city, they began to tremble for its safety. The 
 very quiescence — the seeming forbearance of a race of 
 men habituated to plunder, roused their suspicions ; and 
 they argued among themselves that the Mairs were only 
 holding back until a richer spoil had been accumulated 
 within the circle of the new city. In this conviction, the 
 trading classes asked that a wall should be built around 
 the town for their protection; and what they sought was 
 granted to them. The Government of India had watched, 
 with lively interest, this worthy experiment, had approved 
 and applauded the noble efforts of the superintendent, 
 and were in no case slow to listen to his suggestions. 
 Now, therefore, the present "proposition received the 
 same favorable attention that had characterised the 
 Government in all measures referring to the improvement 
 and happiness of the Mairs." And so the city of Nya- 
 nuggar was built, and a wall was built around it, and 
 the Mahajuns brought in their goods, and in a short 
 time it was reported that nearly two thousand families, 
 engaged in various manufacturing and commercial opera- 
 tions, were located within the wall. 
 
 In the mean while, the agricultural improvements were 
 going on bravely. Tanks were being dug ; wells were 
 being sunk ; and a regular supply of water was being 
 secured to the fields. The jungle was being cleared; 
 
IMPROVEMENT OF MAIRWARRA. 471 
 
 the people, many after an absence of years, were return- 
 ing to their native country, drawn by the report of our 
 amehorative efforts. To one village ninety families had 
 returned, after the lapse of four generations, to occupy 
 the lands of their progenitors. A general spirit of im- 
 provement was possessing these long-degraded Mairs. 
 When money could no longer be advanced by Govern- 
 ment, they cast about for the means of raising it for 
 themselves ; and by the sale of cattle and the betrothal 
 of their daughters, sometimes acquired the necessary capi- 
 tal for the prosecution of the reproductive works, from 
 which they had been taught to look for such ample 
 returns. 
 
 And with all these great commercial and agricultural 
 changes, the moral improvement of the people was ad- 
 vancing with prodigious strides. As early as 1827 
 Colonel Hall had reported "the complete and voluntary 
 aboHtion of the two revolting customs — female infanticide, 
 and the sale of women."* The re-marriage of widows 
 was also provided for, and the worst forms of slavery 
 abolished. The predatory habits of the people disap- 
 peared. They had once been beyond measure lawless 
 and intractable. They now became docile and obedient, 
 and there was something of child-like confidence in the 
 reliance which these untutored savages began to place in 
 the wisdom and kindliness of the European superin- 
 tendent, f They had, indeed, an overflowing faith in the 
 man ; and he was worthy of their veneration. What 
 
 * For a fuller notice of this see the involved. . . . Captain Dixon has 
 
 chapter on Infanticide. no European assistance; but his native 
 
 f "The high degree of prosperity establishment is so admirably disci- 
 
 whichit(Mairwarra) has now attained, plined and controlled, that whether in 
 
 arises, however, from the system intro- the construction of tanks, in the assess- 
 
 duced by Captain Dixon. He may be ment of the revenue, or the adminis- 
 
 said to Live amongst the people. He tration of justice amongst this simple 
 
 knows minutely the condition of each and primitive people, these establish- 
 
 village, and almost of its inhabitants in- ments conduct all matters to almost as 
 
 dividually ; is ready to redress not only happy an issue as he could do himself." 
 
 every man's grievances, but to assist — [Report of Colonel Sutfierlandt March 
 
 them to recover from any pecuniary or 17, 1841.] 
 other diflSculty in which they may be 
 
472 THE CIVILISATION OF SAVAGE TRIBES. 
 
 Colonel Dixon did, he did single-handed; he had not 
 one brother-officer to aid him. He worked alone in 
 Mairwarra ; and, assuredly, it was no light work that he 
 undertook. The success of the great experiment entirely- 
 hinged, in his own words, on the untiring zeal and vigi- 
 lance of the supermtendent. " To carry through his pro- 
 jects, it would be necessaiy that he disengage himself 
 from all private pursuits and pleasures, and devote his 
 entire undivided energies to the fulfilment of the object. 
 His presence would be essential to inspect every large 
 and small work in each village, and to encourage the 
 people in the undertakings on which they were engaged. 
 He must be constantly in camp, without reference to 
 burning heat or drenching rain ; in a word, until all diffi- 
 culties were overcome, all works of irrigation completed, 
 and permanent prosperity secured, he must be a slave to 
 duty. It remained with him to choose whether he 
 would seek personal comfort and ease in restricting 
 himself to ordinary duties, as is done by some pubhc 
 officers, or whether he would face the difficulties and 
 undergo the toil which must be inseparable from an 
 midertaking of such magnitude, continuing through a 
 long vista of years. Happily, little consideration was 
 required in making his election. He chose usefulness at 
 the expense of personal comfort."* And his name will 
 live as the regenerator of the Mairs. It is no small 
 privilege to the compiler of such a work as this, to 
 chronicle, even in a few imperfect pages, the recent 
 annals of Mairwarra, and to show how a wild and lawless 
 people were reclaimed by a smgle European officer taken 
 from an Expense Magazine, f 
 
 ♦ Dixon's Mairwarra. This very in- f It has been hinted to me, from 
 
 teresting quarto volume, with abundant more than one quarter, but always in a 
 
 maps, plans, and graphic illustrations, friendly spirit, that in a former work I 
 
 was published at the expense of the displayed something of a tendency to 
 
 East India Company, and has not, I over-rate the achievements of officers 
 
 believe, found its way extensively into belonging to the Bengal Artillery. 
 
 general circulation. Perhaps the same charge may be 
 
CANDEISH. 473 
 
 In the mean while, in the same western regions, but 
 many miles lower down to the south, in that part of the 
 country with which the English in India first made ac- 
 quamtance — in the provmce of Candeish, where one of 
 our earliest settlements was located — another great experi- 
 ment was going on.* Candeish, in the old days of Ma- 
 homedan rule, and during the first half century of British 
 sovereignty in the East, was a great and flourishing 
 province. But in 1802 the Mahrattas had ravaged the 
 country; and in the following year a great famine had 
 desolated the land. What Holkar and God's providence 
 commenced, the mis-rule of the Peishwah's officers com- 
 pleted. The province was reduced to a state of anarchy 
 and desolation not easily to be described. It was, indeed, 
 for some years, almost depopulated ; and when the people 
 began slowly to return to their old possessions, a new 
 calamity descended upon them. The Pindarrees ravaged 
 the open country, and some Arab tribes, estabhshing 
 themselves in the hill fortresses, laid the neighbouring 
 country under heavy contribution.! 
 
 In this province of Candeish were located certain 
 Bheel tribes, constituting in all about an eighth of the 
 population. J When the country was in a settled and 
 flourishing state, these people had been principally em- 
 ployed as village-watchmen; and village-watchmen have 
 
 brought against me with reference to will be readily found in the map to the 
 
 this work. I confess that I do not re- south of the Sauthpooree Hills. It is, 
 
 cord the doings of Colonel Dixon in however, not to the entire province, 
 
 Mairwarra with less pleasure because but to a district, consisting of various 
 
 he belongs to that distinguished regi- portions of it, acquired in the Mahratta 
 
 ment (though he is personally as much war of 1818, and formed into a coUecto- 
 
 a stranger to me as if he had fought rate under the Bombay Government, 
 
 under Lord Olive), but the praises that my remarks, in so far as they relate 
 
 which I have bestowed upon him fall to our operations for the civilisation of 
 
 short of those which have been lavished the Bheels, mainly refer, 
 
 upon him by his oflScial superiors, and t Captain Graham's Historical Sketch 
 
 confirmed by the general voice of all of the Bheel tribes, inJiabiting the province 
 
 who have ever given a thought to the of Candeish. See, also, Reports of Colonel 
 
 subject. Robertson and Mr. Gibeme. MS. 
 
 * Candeish — an extensive province % Report on Vie Bheels of Candeish, by 
 
 in Western India, through the northern W. S. Boyd, Esq., 1833. MS. 
 jwrtion of which the river Tapty runs, 
 
474 THE CIVILISATION OF SAVAGE TRIBES. 
 
 in no part of India been celebrated for the regularity of 
 their habits or the honesty of their pursuits. In the best 
 of times it does not seem that these clans were other 
 than a lawless and unscrupulous people. Pohtical dis- 
 order and social confusion were, indeed, greatly to their 
 taste. They now rejoiced in the convulsions which rent 
 the province. Their legitimate calhng was at an end, 
 and they took readily to the open exercise of a profession, 
 which before they had secretly practised under cover of 
 then- recognised pursuits. For many years they existed 
 merely as a group of robber-gangs — either aiding the 
 depredational excesses of more powerful marauders, or 
 working independently for themselves. Heavy retribu- 
 tion often descended upon them. They knew what was 
 the penalty, and they were prepared to pay it. They 
 lived without law, and they often perished without law. 
 It was no uncommon thing, under native rule, for them 
 to be massacred by hundreds Sometimes, however, a 
 combined effort of the different clans enabled them to 
 beat down constituted authority. On one occasion ten 
 thousand of the Guicowar's troops, sent to coerce them, 
 were driven back defeated and disgraced.* 
 
 It was in 1818, at the close of the Pindarree war, that 
 certain parts of this once thriving province of Candeish 
 were brought under British rule. They had been regularly 
 ceded to us by Holkar ; but the Arab colonists had oc- 
 cupied a great part of the country, and they could be 
 driven from it only by force. The subjugation of the 
 district, therefore, became necessary. And it was easily 
 subjugated. The Arabs submitted. But the Bheels, 
 who had never been elevated to the dignified position of 
 a recognised enemy, still remained unconquered and un- 
 reclaimed. They had suffered too miserably at the hands 
 of other govermnents to have any faith in the new rulers, 
 who now called upon them to enrol themselves as their 
 
 ♦ Captain Graham's Historical Sketch. 
 
PRIMARY EFFORTS IN CANDEISH. 475 
 
 subjects. They believed that if they came in, they 
 would be massacred without remorse. Native govern- 
 ments would have dealt with them in this way ; and they 
 thought that the English troops were only waiting for an 
 opportimity to shoot them down or bayonet them to a 
 man. 
 
 So, although the British flag was hoisted in Candeish, 
 and British rule proclaimed, the Bheels held possession of 
 the hill-tracts, defied all authority, and violated all law. 
 It was vain to think of settling the country until these 
 people were coerced. There was little protection for life 
 or property in Candeish beyond the range of our guns. 
 Various measures were attempted without success. Con- 
 ciliatory proclamations were of no avail, for the Bheels 
 would not believe our promises. Recourse was had to 
 arms ; but the country and the climate baffled the 
 gallantry of our troops. The Pohtical Agent, Major 
 Briggs, a man of comprehensive knowledge and enlarged 
 humanity, proposed to pension the marauding Bheels; 
 but the plan was not officially sanctioned.* Liberal 
 landed settlements were offered, but this attempt also 
 failed. The Bheels clung to their old habits. Long 
 oppressing, and long oppressed, they were suspicious and 
 mistrustful ; and it seemed that they were neither to be 
 subjected nor reclaimed. The effect of that great civihser, 
 the gibbet, was tried; some summary executions were 
 ordered ; vigorous measures, for a while, took the place 
 of conciliatory schemes — but they were equally unsuc- 
 cessful.f 
 
 • Captain Graham's Historical Sketch, predecessor. " I will only, on taking 
 
 Reports of Colonel Robertson and Messrs. leave of the Honorable Court's observa- 
 
 Gibeme and Boyd. MS. tions, suggest," he says, " that should a 
 
 t The Court of Directors were in- tabular picture be formed from the 
 
 clined to think that Major Briggs correspondence regarding the Bheels, of 
 
 threw too much severity into his mea- the measures of Major Briggs on the 
 
 sures; but it does not seem that he be- one hand, and of the repeated rejection 
 
 took himselfto violence until conciliation of all advances, the frequent breaches 
 
 had failed. Colonel Robertson, in his of engagements, the reiterated aggres- 
 
 Report on the Bheels of Candeish, 1 825, sions of the Bheels, and the consequent 
 
 nobly vindicates the character of his sufferings of the people on the other — 
 
476 THE CIVILISATION OF SAVAGE TRIBES. 
 
 It was time now, after some years of continued ill- 
 success, to look the matter steadfastly in the face. The 
 Court of Directors had earnestly addressed themselves to 
 the consideration of the subject, and, taking a most 
 humane and liberal view of the question, had recom- 
 mended the continued prosecution of conciliatory mea- 
 sures. They could not bring themselves to believe that 
 these Bheels, who, if they had been much sinning, had 
 also been much sinned against, were altogether irre- 
 claimable ; and there were British officers on the spot 
 who entertained the same opinions. It required, it is 
 true, that a large amount of knowledge and sagacity — of 
 patience on the one hand, and energy on the other- 
 should be brought to bear upon the work. It was, 
 indeed, no easy task that lay before them. The Bheels 
 of Candeish might not be wholly irreclaimable ; but we 
 knew enough of their character to feel assured that the- 
 civilisation of such a people could only be accomplished, 
 under Providence, by such a combination of wisdom and 
 vigor, in planning and achieving, as had seldom been 
 displayed before. They were a wild and predatory 
 people, without laws, without ritualities, almost even 
 without a rude sense of natural religion. Reckless and 
 migratory, they passed from one place to another, throw- 
 ing up a cluster of rude huts in the course of a few hours, 
 and delighting not in more permanent habitations. Any- 
 thing like honest industry they abhorred. Indolent and 
 improvident, they lived as they could, from hand to 
 mouth ; they hunted down the game in the jungles ; 
 collected wild berries and roots ; or, by a successful 
 border foray or marauding expedition, secured a suffi- 
 ciency of plunder to feast them sumptuously for a while. 
 
 carefully, in all instances, marking the cords.'] The Court, as the sequel proved, 
 
 dates — it would prove that we begun were right in reconimeuding coneilia- 
 
 with conciliation, and, though one-half tory measures ; but conciliatory mea- 
 
 of the crimes of the Bheels are not re- sures are never so potential before, as 
 
 corded, continued it longer, it is pro- after we have shown our ability to 
 
 bable, than was prudent."— [J*/«S'. lie- punish. 
 
CHARACTER OF THE BHEELS. 477 
 
 A few days were spent in dissipated idleness, and then 
 the exhaustion of their stores sent them forth after new 
 pillage. They were the Ishmaelites of that part of the 
 world. Their hands were against every man, and every 
 man's hand was against them. Murder and robbery 
 were habits which sat easily upon them. They streamed 
 down jfrom their mountain-homes, sacked and fired the 
 villages on the plains, drove away the cattle of the 
 villagers, and carried off their head men for the sake of 
 the ransoms they would fetch. Drunkenness, too, was 
 one of their favorite infirmities. They delighted in long 
 debauches. They maddened themselves with burning 
 spirits. It would have been hard to find a more licen- 
 tious or unscrupulous race, or one with fewer redeeming 
 qualities. It seemed a matter of almost utter hopeless- 
 ness to reclaim such savages as these. 
 
 But there were, fortunately, men in Western India at 
 this time whom the seeming hopelessness of the task 
 only inspired with courage, and roused to vigorous action. 
 It was assuredly a great and worthy experiment that was 
 now to be made. The more irreclaimable these savages, 
 the greater the glory of reclaiming them. The oppres- 
 sions of the native governments had driven these people 
 to desperation, and made them the reckless criminals 
 they were. The reformatory measures of our benevolent 
 predecessors had consisted chiefly of a number of dread- 
 ful massacres. The wells had been choked up with the 
 trunkless heads of the offending Bheels. Whole famihes 
 had been hewn down and extirpated. They believed 
 that the curse of God had descended upon them, and that 
 it was their fate to be hunted and destroyed — hunted and 
 destroyed like the wild beasts of the forest — and there- 
 fore, like the wild beasts, they turned and stood at bay 
 before civilised men. To dispel these delusions, and to 
 win their confidence, was therefore the first step towards 
 
478 THE CIVILISATION OF SAVAGE TRIBES. 
 
 the great reformation which our English administrators 
 yearned to achieve. 
 
 Mountstuart Elphinstone was, at this time, Governor 
 of Bombay. Bringing all his quick intellect, his sound 
 sense, his warm benevolence to bear upon this great 
 matter of the reclamation of the savage Bheels, he soon 
 worked his way to the conclusion that, if a few Enghsh 
 gentlemen could be brought into intimate relations with 
 the barbarous tribes — if they could acquaint themselves 
 with the habits, study the feehngs, and in time win the 
 confidence of the Bheels, by familiarly associating with 
 them, and proving that the British Government were 
 eager only to do them good, success might be eventually 
 accomplished. It was his desire to turn them from 
 their lawless pursuits by finding other employment, alike 
 more pleasant and more profitable. If, for example, we 
 could convert them into disciplined soldiers and peace- 
 ful colonists, not by proclamations and vague offers 
 of reward, but by the immediate influence of English 
 officers living among them, it seemed that we might over- 
 come the barbarism of the tribes in the manner most in 
 accordance with the suggestions of reason and the dictates 
 of humanity. 
 
 It seemed to him, 2n the first place, that if we could 
 induce the Bheels to enter our military service — if we 
 could raise a corps of these savage men, under the 
 command of British officers — we might win the confi- 
 dence of a few, and through them of many, and, in time, 
 make the Bheels themselves the agents of their own 
 civilisation. He had recommended this course both to 
 Colonel Briggs and his successor. Colonel Robertson; but 
 the political agents, thinking perhaps that the arms which 
 we put in the hands of these lawless men would be turned 
 against ourselves, had not furthered the suggestion. But 
 events soon developed themselves which strengthened 
 
JAMES OUTRAM. 479 
 
 Elphinstone's conviction of the wisdom of the measure, 
 and an order went forth for the formation of a Bheel 
 corps. 
 
 This difficult and dangerous duty was entrusted to an 
 officer who has since earned for himself one of the 
 brightest names in the recent history of India. It was 
 entrusted to James Outram, then a lieutenant in the 
 Bombay Native Infantry, who had already foreshadowed 
 those fine soldierly qualities which a quarter of a century 
 of continued action have ripened and refined. He was 
 then a very young man, full of animal spirits, active and 
 courageous; but with all his energies and activities, 
 tempered with strong sense and soimd judgment; and 
 he went about his work eagerly, and yet thoughtfully, 
 measuring its difficulties aright, but resolute to overcome 
 them. And he soon had practical proof of their nature 
 and extent. The Bheels were at this time* in the very 
 height of their lawlessness. They were carrying on 
 their depredations up to the very picquets of the British 
 camp, and sweeping off our cattle in triumph. A strange 
 behef held possession of them, that we shrunk fi:om 
 encountering their robber bands, or following them to 
 their mountain homes. And they thought that all this 
 pretence of raising Bheel corps, and offering their people 
 regular pay in the service of the Company, was only a 
 snare to draw them into our camps, and to cut them off 
 in detail. And so the enlistment of the Bheels was, for 
 some time, only a thing talked of and desired. The 
 people would not come at our call. 
 
 It is characteristic of Outram that he should have desired 
 to show the Bheels at the outset, what our troops were 
 willing and able to do, and to convince them that in no 
 part of the country were they secure from the vengeance 
 of the British Government. He longed to attack them 
 on their own hills ; and he soon found fitting opportunity 
 
 * In 1825. 
 
480 THE CIVILISATION OF SAVAGE TRIBES. 
 
 With a handful of his old regiment he beat up their 
 quarters, surprised a strong party just as they were about 
 to start on a marauding expedition, and scattered them 
 like chaff. A cry was raised that the red-coats were upon 
 them, and the Bheels were soon in panic flight. A few 
 were killed ; but far more important, a few were captured, 
 and the prisoners, whom Outram had taken in their own 
 mountain homes, enabled him to lay the foundation of his 
 corps. 
 
 Releasing some of his captives, and despatching them 
 with friendly messages and offers of employment to their 
 relatives, he contrived to draw the people to his tent, and 
 soon effected an intercourse with some of their leaders. 
 With them he went about, freely and fearlessly, in their 
 jungles. He listened to their stories; he joined in their 
 pastimes ; he feasted them when they were well, and doc- 
 tored them when they were ill; in his own words, he ''won 
 their hearts by copious libations of brandy, and their confi- 
 dence by living unguarded among them ;" and it might 
 have been added, their admiration, too, by proving how 
 bold a hunter he was. Keen sportsmen themselves — 
 trusting often to the chase for their daily food — with 
 something of religious faith in the accidents of the field, 
 these wild heathens looked with wonder on the exploits 
 of the Christian Nimrod, and recognised a mighty spirit 
 in him.* It did not seem that he had come among them 
 
 * I am no sportsman myself, but lating to Bheel civilisation, I have 
 I can appreciate all developments of chanced upon a memorandum by Col. 
 manliness, and I know that the fine Outram, containing the following cu- 
 sportsman-like qualities of the English rious anecdote relative to the super- 
 have done much to raise them in the stitions of the chase, to which I have 
 estimation of all the hardier Indian made allusion in the text. "The 
 tribes. It is not difficult to imagine Bheels," he says, " have the belief that 
 the efiect which such prowess must those who slay a tiger maintain power 
 have had upon the Bheels, especially over that animal in the next world ; 
 when we learn that during Outram's but that those slain by a tiger are ren- 
 connexion with the corps, he and his dered hereafter subservient to the 
 comrades killed 255 tigers ; 18 panthers ; animal. On the occasion when Cundoo 
 42 bears ; 19 wild buffaloes ; and nume- Havildiir was mortally wounded, he 
 rous hogs, deer, and other smaller implore<l me to hasten to kill the tiger, 
 game. Among a number of papers re- whilst he was yet alive, saying that as 
 
THE BHEEL CORPS. 481 
 
 as an enemy, but as a friend and a companion. He was 
 himself, indeed, one of them ; and they felt unconstrained 
 in his presence. 
 
 And recruits came in at last — slowly at the outset, it is 
 true; but there was no fear of ultimate success when the 
 beginning had once been made. His muster-roll, at first, 
 contained the names of only five men ; but the number 
 had soon swollen to twenty-five, and a few months after- 
 wards had risen to a hundred. And in spite of temporary 
 hindrances — in spite of the occasional recurrence of their 
 old fears and suspicions, and the false reports of evil men,* 
 the Bheel corps, once doubted and despaired of, became a 
 substantial fact. Outram brought his wild recruits into 
 familiar contact with high-caste Sepoys of his own regu- 
 lar corps — Brahmins and Rajpoots — and the conciliatory 
 manners of the old soldiers, who conversed freely with 
 them as comrades, and courteously presented them with 
 beetle-nut, went far to rivet the confidence which the bold, 
 frank manner of their young leader had engendered within 
 them. And soon did they settle down into orderly subjects 
 
 he had marked the animal down, and off instead, by literally staring him out 
 left scouts to watch him, its death of countenance. Often in critical mo- 
 would be attributable to him, and he ments when hunting on foot has a tiger 
 might then die in peace. I succeeded been turned from me by my faithful 
 in slaying the monster, and hastened to Bheels ; and on one occasion when a pan- 
 assure Cundoo of the fact. He was ther had got me down, they killed him 
 just dying when I went to him, but had with their swords, when rolling with 
 sense left to understand and express me on the ground, with my head in 
 his satisfaction, immediately after which his mouth." — [_MS. Becords/] 
 he expired. Several gentlemen wit- * " They were told at one time by the 
 nessed my interviews with the poor evil-disposed, that the object was to 
 Bheel before and after the death of the link them in a line like galley slaves, 
 tiger, and were much affected by the and to extirpate their race ; and for a 
 anxiety he expressed at the former long time there was a fear existing in 
 time, and the satisfaction and resigna- the minds of most that this assembly 
 tion he evinced at the latter. On all oc- or corps were merely drawn together to 
 casions of danger the Bheels displayed be destroyed. At the very place where 
 astonishing presence of mind and /)/«cA; the head-quarters had been fixed, 
 and almost invariably when in tracking Dhurmgaun, there had been a most 
 a tiger they suddenly came upon the cruel and treacherous massacre of those 
 animal, they caused him to slink off, people under the former Government, 
 from tlie bold front they maintained. This strengthened their suspicions." — 
 Whether the Bheel singly became op- [^Report on the Bheels of Candeish^ by 
 posed to a tiger, or several were to- George Gibeme, Esq., Collector, 1828. 
 gether, he never thought of turning or MS. Records'] 
 running, but caused the brute to walk 
 
 2 I 
 
482 THE CIVILISATION OF SAVAGE TRIBES. 
 
 and good soldiers — learning the English drill system with 
 diligence and attention, and keeping all their old bad pro- 
 pensities in control. So peaceful was their bearing, that 
 it was soon officially reported that, for many miles around 
 the neighbourhood where they were encamped, no excesses 
 had for some time been committed by the Bheels. Indeed, 
 they not only reformed themselves, but helped to reform 
 the manners of their brethren, and began to exercise very 
 efficiently the duties of a military police. A year after 
 the first attempt to establish the corps, Outram wrote to 
 Mr. Bax, collector of Candeish : " I believe there is no 
 offender at large now within many miles of my head- 
 quarters, and no robbery is ever now heard of within 
 thirty miles of it ; and I trust that in the course of a short 
 time the beneficial influence of the corps will extend over 
 the whole province."* 
 
 In the mean while our civil officers in Candeish were 
 exerting themselves to bring other remedial measures to 
 bear upon the reformation of the offending Bheels. Several 
 European officers, under the denomination of Bheel Agents, 
 were appointed to aid the Candeish collector in carrying 
 out this good work. They were instructed, by every means 
 in their power, " to preserve the peace of the country ; to 
 ameliorate the condition of the Bheels ; to keep a watchful 
 eye of superintendence over those in the range committed 
 to their charge; to inspire them with confidence in the 
 Government ; to encourage them to turn their attention 
 to industrious pursuits ; to be careful that those on whom 
 pensions were conferred were duly paid ; to attend to and 
 redress their complaints against each other, as well as 
 against other classes — under certain circumstances point- 
 ing out the means of redress against other classes; to act 
 as arbitrators when the parties mutually agreed; to appre- 
 hend offenders and commit them for trial, if of a serious 
 nature — if otherwise, to inflict such punishment as might 
 
 ♦ Lieutenant Outram to Mr. BaXy July 1, 1826. MS. Records. 
 
REFORMATORY MEASURES. 483 
 
 be customary among themselves ; and if advisable, a pun- 
 chayut of their own tribe might be resorted to ; and, 
 lastly, to superintend such military operations as might be 
 considered necessary to reduce to order any tribes or bands 
 committing depredations." " To superintend the Bheels," 
 it was added, " the agents should call upon them to give 
 an account of the manner in which they obtain their live- 
 lihood ; to restrict them from assembling in masses ; to 
 prevent them from quitting their regular places of abode 
 without intimation of the same, and to check all assemblage 
 in hutties under any pretence whatever. Security should 
 be taken from all against whom strong suspicions are en- 
 tertained, and in failure thereof the agents are called 
 upon to report all the circumstances of each ease to the 
 collector. The agents, to a certain extent, should reward 
 meritorious conduct in aiding the police, or for remarkable 
 industry — such rewards as land, rent-free for a given time, 
 a bullock or plough, or other implements of husbandry or 
 grain, &c., might be given ; they should call on the Potails 
 for correct returns of all the Bheels in their range of the 
 mode by which they subsist; and when not adequately 
 provided for, should recommend land and " tuccavee" to be 
 given. The Potails should be encouraged to assist in pro- 
 moting these objects ; and on their distinguishing them- 
 selves it should be reported, &c., and marks of approba- 
 tion should be bestowed."* 
 
 Such substantially, stated in official language, were the 
 measures by which it was hoped the reformation of the 
 erring Bheels might now be accomplished. And all this 
 was to be done mainly, as Outram had done his work, by 
 mixing familiarly with the people — by disarming them of 
 their suspicions — by showing that we were really their 
 friends. The great thing was to convert them, if it were 
 possible, into an agricultural population — to convince them 
 that there were better modes of earning a subsistence than 
 
 * Report on the Bheels of Candeish, by George Gibeme^ Esq.,, Doolea CoUector^ 1828. 
 
 2i2 
 
484 THE CIVILISATION OF SAVAGE TRIBES. 
 
 by ravaging the country and plundering their neighbours; 
 and to give them every facility for entering advantage- 
 ously upon their new avocations. Immunity was, there- 
 fore, granted for past offences, with written engagements 
 to this effect. At the same time grants of land for cultiva- 
 tion were given to them, under the signature of the Bheel 
 agents, and formally recorded.* And soon a number of 
 peaceful little colonies were established, and a number of 
 ploughs were at work. 
 
 The foundation of these Bheel settlements was laid by 
 Mr. Graham, then assistant to the Candeish collector, in 
 whose hands was the charge of the Agency until the autumn 
 of 1825, when it devolved on Major Ovans, whose name 
 has since become especially identified with these measures. 
 The experiment was at first considered a hopeless one ; 
 and, doubtless, the difficulties in the way of its success are 
 not easily to be exaggerated. But the might of mildness 
 was everywhere triumphant. One by one the chiefsf were 
 induced to present themselves at the Agency, to receive 
 their grants of land, their written engagements with the 
 Bheel agent, and, perhaps, the advance of money or farm- 
 stock, which was necessary to enable them at once to com- 
 mence their operations. Many kindly influences were set 
 at work to secure the adhesion of these men to the great 
 reformatory scheme. " The Bheel," wrote Major Ovans, 
 in a very able report of these proceedings, submitted to 
 
 * The following is a translation of cultivate, and this Kowl is written and 
 
 one of these engagements : presented to you that you may remain 
 
 " To Bheel, of the village of , in your village and cultivate, and thus 
 
 Pergunnah, . gain your livelihood. After this, if you 
 
 " You have lived in the hills, and again commit any offence, your former 
 
 plundered the roads and country of the crimes will not be considered as for- 
 
 Sirkar, and committed thefts and va- given, but you will have to answer both 
 
 rious crimes ; now you are prevented for tliem and the new crime. 
 
 and have petitioned the Sirkar that if (Signed) " , Bheel Agent." 
 
 pardoned you will not again offend, — [Captain Graham's Historical Sketch.} 
 and that if Tuccavee be given to you f I use the word most familiar to the 
 
 you will cultivate and thus earn a sub- English reader. These head-men were 
 
 sistence ; on this your prayer has been known as " Naicks." The Bheels clus- 
 
 considered, and the Sirkar has sliown tered together under the government 
 
 favor to you, and has this once pardoned of these men, and submitted themselves, 
 
 your past crimes, and has given you for in all things, to their guidance, 
 your support Tuccavee and land to 
 
MILD RESTRAINT. 485 
 
 Sir John Malcolm, then Governor of Bombay, " is wonder- 
 fully susceptible of being worked upon by kind and liberal 
 treatment. By attention to his little wants and petitions 
 — by a present to his women, and by showing that you 
 take an interest in him and his affairs, anything may be 
 done with him. The true secret, however, of the power 
 we now possess over the minds of this wild people is, that 
 they feel themselves secure in the faith of our 'kowls' (en- 
 gagements). This they never did before ; and it is owing 
 to this implicit reliance on the sanctity of our word that 
 they submitted themselves so readily, and have re-esta- 
 blished themselves so generally with their wives and 
 children in the villages on the plains, where upwards 
 of six hundred families are now settled at the plough 
 alone."* 
 
 But although much reliance was to be placed on the 
 good feelings of these poor people, it was hardly to be 
 supposed that the erratic desires and habits of a life were 
 to be rooted out in a few months. Ovans wisely deter- 
 mined, therefore, to surround the colonies with a cordon 
 of mild restraint. He established a system of registra- 
 tion, whereby he was enabled to deal with the Bheels of 
 the Agency each in his own individual distinctness. They 
 were required never to leave their village, even for a day, 
 without the permission of the Naicks or Potails ; and if 
 this rule was infringed the offence was at once reported 
 at the Agency. A darogah, or police superintendent, was 
 appointed to each talook, or division, whose duty it was 
 to proceed from village to village, and to see that these 
 regulations were enforced, whilst in every colony one of 
 inferior rank was appointed to control and report upon the 
 proceedings of the colonists. 
 
 Nor was the establishment of these colonies the only 
 ameliorative measure which took shape under the hands of 
 the Bheel agents. It was a great thing now to re-organise 
 
 ♦ Major Ovans to Sir John Malcolm, August, 1830. MS. Records. 
 
486 THE CIVILISATION OF SAVAGE TRIBES. 
 
 the police of the country, and to call the Bheels back 
 again to their old profession of village watchmen. In- 
 denting upon each village for the materials of this protec- 
 tive body, and providing for them the means of subsist- 
 ence in such a manner as to warn them against the neces- 
 sity of ever again resorting to their old predatory ways, 
 he established an effective village police. In conformity 
 with their ancient usages, he placed these men under the 
 supervision of salaried superintendents, residing in their 
 own villages, and entrusted with the preservation of the 
 general peace of the district ; and nothing could have 
 worked better than this organisation of Bheel police. 
 
 The good effect of these humanising measures was soon 
 apparent. At the very commencement of 1829, the col- 
 lector reported that the province was in the enjoyment of 
 entire repose. ^' For upwards of five-and-twenty years," 
 he wrote, " Candeish has been subject to regular organised 
 bodies of Bheels headed by desperate leaders. The enor- 
 mities committed by them have been so often stated that 
 on the subject no remark is required. But how satis- 
 factory it is to report that the past year is the first after 
 this long period, during which not a single gang or leader 
 of Bheels has existed. The liberality of Government — 
 the anxiety and exertions of its agents towards the reform 
 of this class, is now amply repaid. The same characters 
 exist. Their evil propensities can certainly not be yet 
 eradicated 5 but the wise measures in force have corrected 
 the one and checked the other."* 
 
 From this time the civilisation of the Bheels, under 
 the superintendence of our English oflScers, a mixed 
 agency of soldiers and civilians, proceeded rapidly to its 
 consummation. Occasional local outbreaks showed that 
 in parts which our influence had not yet reached, the 
 natural character of the Bheels remained unchanged ; but 
 even these grew more and more rare, as our operations 
 
 ♦ Mr. Giberne's Police Beport^ January, 1829. MS. Becords. 
 
AMELIORATIVE RESULTS. 487 
 
 proceeded, and the country which had once, across its 
 whole length and breadth, been visited by continual fierce 
 spasms of unrest, was soon lapped in general repose. 
 " The districts," to use the comprehensive language of 
 one of the ablest of the Bheel agents, " formerly the scene 
 of every outrage, where neither life nor property were 
 secure, now enjoyed tranquillity ; the roads formerly 
 hazardous for the armed party, were traversed at all hours 
 by single passengers, the formidable list of crimes had 
 dwindled down to the report of a few petty thefts, and 
 the Bheels, from outcasts, had become members of the 
 society, daily rising in respectability and appearance, 
 and becoming useful and obedient servants of the State. 
 It was matter of astonishment to behold the rapid 
 change produced by the liberal system of Government, 
 in a race of miserable beings, who without a rag to 
 cover their backs, and hardly a morsel of food to put 
 into their mouths, had so shortly before sued for life 
 and food from the foreigner, and were now fat and 
 sleek and decently clad, living in their own huts, sur- 
 rounded by swarms of healthy children, ploughing their 
 own lands, and many in the honest possession of flocks 
 and herds. . . . The Bheel now feels a relish for 
 that industry which renders subsistence secure, and life 
 peaceful and comfortable ; he unites with the Ryot in the 
 cultivation of those fields which he once ravaged and laid 
 waste, and protects the village, the traveller, and the pro- 
 perty of Government, which were formerly the objects 
 of his spoliation ; the extensive wilds which heretofore 
 afforded him cover during his bloody expeditions, are 
 now smiling with fruitful crops ; and population, industry 
 and opulence, are progressing throughout the land."* 
 
 This was written towards the close of 1843. The lan- 
 guage of the Bheel agent is not exaggerated. It reflects 
 no more than the truth. Indeed, the whole is not yet 
 
 » Captain Graham's Historical Sketch. 
 
488 THE CIVILISATION OF SAVAGE TRIBES. 
 
 told. If there were anything to qualify our admiration of 
 the vigorous humanity of Colonel Dixon in the Mair- 
 warra country, it is the fact that this able and benevolent 
 administrator has thought less of educational measures 
 than I should have expected or desired. There is no 
 remedial agent like the schoolmaster. He was not for- 
 gotten in the Bheel country. Outram introduced him to 
 his rude levies — and the civil officers soon dotted the 
 province with schools. A new generation of Bheels is 
 now springing up, among whom the lawlessness and vio- 
 lence of their tribes are mere traditions. A quarter of 
 a century has passed since the work of civilisation com- 
 menced. The crooked ways have been made straight, 
 and the rough places plain ; and now a new race, 
 trained to habits of peace and industry, are gradually re- 
 placing the old marauders who had been bred and nurtured 
 in violence and wrong. There can be no fear now of a 
 relapse. The schoolmaster has taken the young Bheel 
 in hand ; the life of an outlaw has no charms for him. 
 He has been brought within the pale of civilised life; 
 and he is well contented to abide there. 
 
 I need hardly say that such measures as these received 
 the earnest support and warm encouragement of the Com- 
 pany. The Court of Directors had from the first recom- 
 mended the adoption of kindly, conciHatory measures 
 towards the erring Bheels, believing that they were not 
 irreclaimable; and in April, 1835, they wrote out to the 
 Bombay Government to express their hearty, unqualified 
 approbation of what had been done. " From the period," 
 they wrote, '' when measures of severity were abandoned 
 and conciHatory means resorted to, the rapine and disor- 
 der which had prevailed for years previously without any 
 sensible diminution, and in spite of the strongest efforts 
 for their suppression, almost immediately ceased, and the 
 admirable conduct of the officers to whom the immediate 
 executive duties were confided, especially of Major Ovans 
 
SENTIMENTS OF THE COURT OF DIRECTORS. 489 
 
 and Lieutenant Outram, has been the means of effecting 
 a complete change in the habits of the Bheel tribes. 
 They have universally abandoned their predatory habits ; 
 they are now a prosperous agricultural community ; from 
 among them a corps has been formed, which has attained 
 so high a state of discipline and efficiency that to its pro- 
 tection the tranquillity of the country is now in a great 
 degree confided ; and by its means a degree of security 
 both of person and of property appears to be maintained, 
 which is scarcely excelled in any part of India. 
 
 "This signal instance," continue the Court, "of what 
 we have so often impressed upon you — the superior effi- 
 cacy of conciliatory means in reducing uncivilised and pre- 
 datory tribes to order and obedience — is one of the most 
 gratifying events in the recent History of British India ; 
 and we trust that the success of your measures will im- 
 press upon our Indian Governments the policy, as well as the 
 humanity, of pursuing the same course in all similar cases. 
 This wise and benevolent policy was first adopted by the 
 late Mr. Cleveland in the district of Bhaugulpore, some 
 fifty years ago, and was attended with singular success in 
 reclaiming the Hill people of that district from a state of 
 the utmost barbarism ; and the memory of that excellent 
 officer is, we understand, held in reverence, even at the 
 present day, by the rude tribes that inhabit the hills as 
 well as by the inhabitants of the more civilised portion of 
 the district."* 
 
 * MS. Records. — Although I have deserves prominent notice in such a 
 
 incidentally mentioned the name of volume as this. Even now 1 may do 
 
 Cleveland in connexion with this great something to repair the omission. The 
 
 subject of the civilisation of savage history of the civilisation of the Hill 
 
 tribes, I cannot help experiencing people of Bhaugulpore is well sketched 
 
 a feeling of shame and self-reproach in an early volume of the Asiatic Be- 
 
 as I read this affectionate notice of searches, from which I may not dis- 
 
 his labors in the above letter of advantageously exhume it : 
 the Court of Directors. I have been " Colonel Brown, in his account of 
 
 anxious, for the most part, to draw these hills, forwarded to Government 
 
 my illustrations from more recent his- in 1779, observes that it was about fif- 
 
 tory; but the good deeds of one, who teen years since the Hill people had any 
 
 at the early age of twenty-eight had government among themselves of a ge- 
 
 done so much to reclaim the savage neral nature, during which period they 
 
 people by whom he was surrounded, had become dangerous and troublesome 
 
490 
 
 THE CIVILISATION OF SAVAGE TRIBES. 
 
 I trust that these pictures will not be thrown away. 
 They are to be pondered over thoughtfully, and I would 
 
 to the Low Country, that their ravages 
 had been the more violent, as they were 
 stimulated by hatred against the Ze- 
 mindars, for having cut off several of 
 their chiefs by treachery. The colonel 
 might have added, that during that 
 interregnum or dissolution of govern- 
 ment, it was a common practice for the 
 Zemindars on the skirts of the hills 
 to invite the chiefs in their vicinity 
 with their adherents to descend and 
 plunder the neighbouring Zemindarees, 
 for which, and for the passage through 
 their lands, the mountaineers divided 
 the booty with them ; thus, at one time, 
 from repeated acts of treachery in the 
 Zemindars, the mountaineers were pro- 
 voked to take ample vengeance on 
 them and their unhappy Ryots ; and 
 at other times, from their engaging 
 the chiefs to make predatory incur- 
 sions, to which they were strongly in- 
 cited, no less from a desire of plunder- 
 ing their more opulent neighbours, 
 than from the diflSculty of obtaining 
 salt and tobacco from the boats, all 
 friendly intercourse was at a stand, 
 the low country bordering on the hills 
 was almost depopulated, and travellers 
 could not pass with safety between 
 Bhaugulpore and Furruckabad, nor 
 could boats, without danger of being 
 plundered, put to for the night on the 
 south side of the Ganges between the 
 before-named places. It was at this 
 period of double treachery on the part 
 of the Zemindars, and predatory hosti- 
 lities on the part of the mountaineers 
 (from which it may not be a strained 
 inference, that the machinations of the 
 former were in a great measure the 
 cause of that necessity which com- 
 pelled the latter to such frequent and 
 fatal descents, when these public and 
 private incendiaries were making largo 
 strides in ruining these once fertile 
 districts), that Captain Brooke was 
 stationed with a corps of light infantry 
 to avert their utter destruction. On 
 this duty it is well known that he 
 acquitted himself with great credit, 
 from his uncommon exertions and suc- 
 cess in pursuing the unfortunate moun- 
 taineers into their hills, where numbers 
 must have unavoidably fallen ; for it 
 became unquestionably necessary to 
 impress them with a dreadful awe of 
 our prowess ; and in this harassing and 
 
 unpleasant warfare I have been well 
 informed, by oflScers who were with 
 Captain Brooke, that his gallant con- 
 duct could not be too much com- 
 mended. He made them sensible of the 
 ineflScacy of opposing him in the field, 
 and invited the chiefs to wait upon 
 him, and negotiate, when he gave a 
 feast to those who came in, and made 
 them presents of turbans. But before 
 any permanent establishment took 
 place, he was succeeded in the com- 
 mand of the light infantry by Captain 
 Brown, who made further progress in 
 conciliating the minds of the discom- 
 fited mountaineers. He placed them 
 on the road from Furruckabad, near 
 Calgong, to protect the Dawks, on 
 which duty they still continue. 
 
 "From this and other measures of his, 
 Captain Brooke, and he, it will be 
 allowed, laid the foundation for the 
 most permanent and happy settlement 
 concluded with the Hill Chiefs by the 
 late Mr. Augustus Cleveland, that 
 could possibly be attained: he was sen- 
 sible from the rapine and decay of these 
 districts, that the peaceable deport- 
 ment of the mountaineers ought to be 
 purchased ; and while he was recon- 
 ciling them to become subject to the 
 British Government, he bestowed liberal 
 presents, in money and clothes, to the 
 chiefs, and to all the men and women 
 who came down to him. Of his gene- 
 rosity they speak with gratitude ; and 
 for the blessings and benefit which they 
 derive from the wise and judicious 
 conditions which he granted, and which 
 were confirmed by Government, I hope 
 they will ever have reason to be thank- 
 ful: as long as that Government lasts, 
 the comforts and happiness which they 
 derive from them must ever ensure 
 their obedience. To engage their con- 
 fidence, Mr. Cleveland, in the early 
 part of his intercourse with the moun- 
 taineers, entertained all who ofiered 
 their services as archers, and appointed 
 many of the relations of the chiefs, 
 officers; they were not (nor are they as 
 rangers, though they very seldom now 
 ask their discharges) bound to serve for 
 any limited time; the corps, of course, 
 constantly fluctuated, and was fre- 
 quently, I understand, above a thousand 
 strong: he clothed them, and in less 
 than two years after they were formed. 
 
AUGUSTUS CLEVELAND. 
 
 491 
 
 hope beni^nantly, by those who affect to believe that our 
 career in India has been one of continued spoliation and 
 
 from the confidence he had in their 
 attachment and fidelity, obtained fire- 
 arms for them, in the use of which, I 
 may venture to observe, that they are 
 expert, and have address; and I can 
 also without hesitation assert, that they 
 are capable of as liigh a degree of dis- 
 cipline as any native corps in the ser- 
 vice ; and I trust I shall have the hap- 
 piness to prove this in due time. Ex- 
 clusive of having thus employed so 
 many of the mountaineers, Mr. Cleve- 
 land fixed the salary of ten rupees per 
 month for each cliief of a Tuppah, three 
 rupees ditto for each of his Naibs, and 
 two for the Maungy of each village, 
 from wliich there shall be a man en- 
 rolled in the hill rangers ; but from 
 such as supply not a man, the inferior 
 ^laungy receives no monthly allow- 
 ance. In consideration of these esta- 
 blishments, I understand the chiefs are 
 not only responsible for the peaceable 
 deportment of their own adherents, but 
 bound to deliver over all delinquents 
 and disturbers of the public peace 
 within their own limits to the collector, 
 to be tried by an assembly of the chiefs, 
 either at Bhaugulpore or Kajamahall, 
 as already related. It has ever been 
 customary on these occasions to feast 
 
 the chiefs so assembled ; when any re- 
 port is to be made to the collector, it is 
 the duty of a Naib to wait on him with 
 it, should the chief be indisposed or 
 otherwise prevented. 
 
 " From these happy and admirable 
 arrangements, digested by Mr. Cleve- 
 land, whose name ought to be dear both 
 to the natives of the hills and low- 
 lands, the ease, comfort, and happiness 
 of the former is ensured (for which they 
 are grateful, and speak of him with 
 reverential sorrow), and peace and 
 safety secured to the latter; and if they 
 have any goodness, they ought not to 
 be less thankful. These solid and es- 
 sential benefits are attended compara- 
 tively with but a trivial expense, and 
 must ultimately be an advantage to 
 Government. I have been led to say 
 more on this subject than I intended ; 
 yet it may not be thought foreign to 
 it to add, that the Aumlah and Ze- 
 mindars erected a monument to the 
 memory of Mr. Cleveland, nearly in 
 the form of a pagoda, and that another 
 was also erected at the expense of 
 Government, by the order of the Ho- 
 norable the Governor - General and 
 Council; on which is the following in- 
 scription : 
 
 " 'To the memory of Augustus Cleveland, Esq., 
 
 Late collector of the districts of Bhaugulpore and Kajamahall, 
 
 Who without bloodshed or the terror of authority, 
 
 Employing only the means of conciliation, confidence, and benevolence, 
 
 Attempted and accomplished 
 
 The entire subjection of the lawless and savage inhabitants of the 
 
 Jungleterry of Kajamahall, 
 
 Who had long infested the neighbouring lands by their predatory incursions, 
 
 Inspired them with a taste for the arts of civilised life, 
 
 And attached them to the British Government by a conquest over their minds ; 
 
 The most permanent, as the most rational, mode of dominion. 
 
 The Governor-General and Council of Bengal, 
 
 In honor of his character, and for an example to others. 
 
 Have ordered this monument to be erected. 
 
 He departed this life on the 13th of January, 1784, aged 29.' " 
 
 Fewofmy readers, it is probable, are so afflicted by the intelligence of his 
 
 acquainted with the above, but few are 
 not acquainted with Bishop Heber's 
 delightful " Journal," in which there is 
 a becoming notice of this "excellent 
 young man." 
 
 Cleveland was the cousin and be- 
 loved friend of John Shore, who was 
 
 " Let History tell the deeds his wisdom plann'd. 
 His bloodless triumphs o'er a barbarous land. 
 Bright in his hand the sword of justice gleam'd, 
 But mercy from her eyes benignant beam'd— 
 
 death, that his health was severely 
 injured by the blow. After a while he 
 gave vent to his sorrow in verse, and 
 an elaborate *' monody " was the result. 
 There is so little verse in this volume, 
 that perhaps I shall be forgiven for ex- 
 tracting a few lines from the piece: 
 
492 THE CIVILISATION OF SAVAGE TRIBES. 
 
 oppression. A philosophical modern historian, in a work 
 which is laid before me whilst I am writing these sheets — 
 it is the first sentence of his book — has truthfully written, 
 "There are many kinds of war and many degrees of 
 heroic renown, but the highest praise is due to those who 
 by their victorious arms have opened new scenes for the 
 civiHsation of mankind, and overcome barbarism in some 
 important portion of the world."* This overcoming of 
 barbarism is very pleasant to write about. It seemed a 
 very difficult thing to achieve in Mairwarra and Candeish, 
 but English benevolence and English energy accomplished 
 it at last ; and the victory has been complete. The ser- 
 vants of the Company have reclaimed men whose savage 
 propensities had been aggravated and seemingly perpe- 
 tuated by the cruel discipline, the unscrupulous oppression 
 of their native masters. Instead of endeavouring to extir- 
 pate, we endeavoured to civilise them. The good work 
 was done. It was done by the personal energy — the 
 fearless courage — the patience and charity of a very few 
 English gentlemen hoping against hope, and finding pos- 
 sibilities in the impossible. 
 
 And mercy won the cause; — the savage band 
 Forsook their haunts and bowed to his command ; 
 And where the warrior's arm in vain assail'd, 
 His gentler skill o'er brutal force prevail'd — 
 As some fond sire mistrusts his darling son, 
 With fostering care he led wild nature on ; 
 And now, where Rapine mark'd the blood-stained field, 
 The well-till'd glebes a smiling harvest yield ; 
 Now mended morals check the lust for spoil, 
 ' And rising letters prove his generous toil. 
 
 The traveller secure pursues his way, 
 Nor dreads the ruflBan ambush'd for liis prey ; 
 And gaping savages with ravished eyes. 
 See their lord's name in magic symbols rise. 
 Humanity surveys her rights restored, 
 And nations yield, subdued without a sword." 
 
 I need hardly say that these lines are * Ranke's Civil Wars and Monarchy 
 
 as applicable to the civilisation of the of France in (lie Sixteenth and Seventeenth 
 
 Mairs and the Bheels, as to the civili- Centuries. Translated by M. A. Garvey. 
 sation of the hill-people of Rajmahal. 
 
HUMAN SACRIFICE. 493 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Operations in Goomsur — The Hill Tribes of Orissa — Religion of the Khonds — 
 Prevalence of Human Sacrifice — Efforts for its Suppression — Captain Mac- 
 pherson — His Measures and Success — Subsequent Efforts— General Results. 
 
 I CANNOT dismiss this subject without adducing another 
 noble illustration of the truth with which I prefaced the 
 last chapter. I have taken one example from Bengal, 
 and another from Bombay. I now take a third from 
 Madras. 
 
 In the district of Ganjam, which lies on the northern 
 frontier of the Madras Presidency, is the Zemindarry of 
 Goomsur. It was tributary to the British Government; 
 and this relationship might have continued, but that the 
 tribute was not paid, and, after a vain attempt to bring 
 about an amicable arrangement, resort was had to a 
 mihtary force. Early in November, 1835, the British 
 troops occupied Goomsur. The adherents of the Zemindar 
 fired on our camp. Martial law was proclaimed. The 
 forfeiture of the Zemindarry was declared. A reward was 
 offered for the apprehension of the offending chief. And 
 before long it became clear that we were about to be in- 
 volved in an inglorious but difficult campaign. 
 
 The whole country, indeed, was now in a state of open 
 rebellion. Favored by their local knowledge, the in- 
 surgents fired from their hills and jungles securely on our 
 advancing troops. We warred against invisible enemies; 
 and one invisible enemy greater than all the rest was 
 striking down our people by scores. The pestilential 
 climate was doing its sure work. Everything, indeed, was 
 against us. We had not a friend in the district. The 
 
494 HUMAN SACRIFICE. 
 
 people abandoned their homes at our approach. Nothing* 
 but forsaken fields and deserted huts greeted us as we 
 advanced. No offer of reward — no threat of punishment 
 — brought in adherents to our cause. It seemed alto- 
 gether a hopeless, profitless adventure. We were being 
 beaten by an enemy whom we could not reach, and 
 perishing in a country which we could not hold. 
 
 The Zemindar fled to the hills. The Khond tribes re- 
 ceived him with hospitality, and promised him their pro- 
 tection ; but be was not sufiered to live to see the re- 
 demption of their pledge. It seemed that we had hunted 
 him to death ; for in the first pause of the chase he laid 
 himself down and died. Twenty years before, the ladies 
 of his Zenana had been dishonored by a British force, and 
 now, witb his dying breath, the Goomsur chief, solemnly 
 as in the presence of their gods, bound the tribes not to 
 suffer the capture of his family,* in any event, by our 
 advancing troops. 
 
 A detachment of British soldiers was sent forward to 
 penetrate the mountain passes, and to secure possession of 
 the family of the deceased. The attempt was, in the first 
 instance, successful. The family of the Goomsur chief 
 were seized ; but the tribes, eager to redeem their pledge 
 to the utmost, came down upon a party of our troops, who 
 were escorting some members of the family, overwhelmed 
 them in a difficult defile, and put to death seven ladies of 
 the Zenana, to save them, as they believed, from threat- 
 ened dishonor. Heavy chastisement descended upon the 
 offending tribes; but they had partially redeemed their 
 pledge. 
 
 There was then a lull in our operations. The pestilence 
 which fell upon our troops compelled a season of inactivity. 
 But with the cold weather the war was recommenced. A 
 fresh force of all arras prepared to attack the tribes in 
 their mountain homes. We demanded their unconditional 
 
 ♦ Captain Macpher son's Khond Report. CaicuttOy 1842. 
 
OUB FIRST KNOWLEDGE OF THE KHONDS. 495 
 
 submission. We demanded the surrender of their patriar- 
 chal chiefs. We demanded the betrayal of the officers of 
 the Goomsur Zemindar, who had trusted themselves to 
 the protection of the tribes. But they refused to bring 
 either their guests or their patriarchs to the scaffold ; 
 and so our troops were let loose upon the land. I need 
 not dwell upon the history of this " little war." I only 
 wish to speak of its results. Here, on this chain of hills 
 skirting the great province of Orissa, our English officers 
 were first brought face to face with a new and a strange 
 people. The tribes of whom I have spoken were the 
 Khonds. Up to this time, the English had known nothing 
 of the Khonds. And the Khonds had known nothing of 
 the EngHsh. They had dwelt for nearly a century within 
 a short distance of each other, but there had been no 
 intercourse between them. Now, therefore, when the 
 civilised white men, after the first excitement of war was 
 over, began to inquire into the nature and habits of the 
 heathen barbarians by whom they had been opposed, 
 they found that they had been brought into contact with 
 a people possessing religious creeds and rituals, national 
 usages and social customs, utterly unlike any with which, 
 in all their ethnological experience, they had ever made 
 acquaintance before. 
 
 It was at first, to our unaided comprehension, something 
 rather vague and astonishing than clear and intelligible. 
 We only caught glimpses of what we desired to know. 
 We had for a long time, indeed^ only a dim perception of 
 the religion of these strange people. Their external 
 usages and ceremonials were speedily revealed to us, but 
 it was only after the patient investigation of years, that 
 we learnt all the articles of faith upon which these usages 
 and ceremonials were based. And then it was mainly, if 
 not wholly, to the laborious researches of one man — re- 
 searches prompted by the best feelings of humanity, that 
 
496 HUMAN SACRIFICE. 
 
 we were indebted for our knowledge of the inner life of 
 the Khond tribes of the Orissan hills. 
 
 The officer of whom I speak, Lieutenant Charters 
 Macpherson, of the Madras Army, during the Goomsur 
 war, in 1838-37, had been employed in the survey 
 of a part of the country at the foot of the hills ; and 
 being naturally a man of a thoughtful and inquiring 
 nature, and of an energetic benevolence of the best kind, 
 he no sooner obtained a little general outside knowledge 
 of the peculiarities of the Khond tribes than he formed the 
 determination of pushing his investigations far beneath 
 the surface, and of mastering the whole subject of the 
 religious and social life of the strange people who had 
 awakened such a kindly interest within him. 
 
 Goomsur was subjugated — pacified — and the Khond 
 tribes of that district became British subjects.* There 
 were many other tribes who owed no allegiance to us, and 
 with whom we had no intercourse. But it was enough 
 for Macpherson to prosecute his inquiries among those 
 with whom his official duties brought him into contact, 
 and he spared no pains to acquaint himself intimately with 
 all the peculiarities of this strange variety of mankind. 
 One of the first things which had arrested his attention 
 was the painful fact, that among these people the bar- 
 barous rite of human sacrifice was observed — that the 
 tribes were in the habit of offering up to their deities 
 living sacrifices purchased or bred for the purpose.f 
 And it was mainly with the humane desire of rooting out 
 these abominations that Macpherson now labored to 
 render himself familiar with the social institutions of the 
 Khonds, and with all the peculiarities of the dark faith 
 
 • Goomsur was exempted from sub- as with some of the more civilised 
 
 jection to the llegulations. tribes of Central and Western India, a 
 
 t It was not until some time after- practice held in no dishonor, but gene- 
 wards that he discovered how female rally observed by the heads of families 
 infanticide was with other Khond tribes, as a matter of social convenience. 
 
THE RELIGION OF THE KHONDS. 497 
 
 which either ordained or sanctioned such iniquities as 
 these. 
 
 What this belief is may be briefly told. The Khonds 
 are divided into two great sects. They have certain 
 common articles of faith. They all believe that the 
 vSupreme Being, or God of Light, the source of all good, 
 created for himself a consort, who became the Earth- 
 Goddess, and was the source of all evil. The Supreme 
 Being, the source of good, created the world and loved it ; 
 and the Earth-Goddess became jealous of God's people. 
 Then she rebelled against the Supreme Being, and intro- 
 duced moral and physical evil into the world, and from 
 that time there was strife between the powers of Light 
 and Darkness. 
 
 And so far this is the common faith of the Khond 
 tribes. But here begin the divergences of sectarianism. 
 The issue of this great strife between the powers of 
 Light and Darkness is the grand subject of dispute be- 
 tween the two contendinor sects. The one believes that 
 the God of Light utterly overcame the Earth-Goddess, 
 and has ever since held her in thrall, employing her as 
 the aorent of his will — the instrument of his rule. The 
 other holds that the Earth-Goddess is still unconquered ; 
 that she holds in her hands the balance of good and evil 
 — that the destinies of man are under her control — and 
 that whatever of happiness is vouchsafed to him is only 
 by her sanction or concession, by the dispensation of 
 blessings in her own gift, or the withdrawal of that an- 
 tagonism which might prevent their emanation from the 
 God of Light. And thus regarding the supremacy of 
 the Earth-Goddess, they recognise the necessity of a 
 propitiation, and they believe that, only by the worship of 
 the power of Darkness, through the agency of human 
 sacrifice, her favor can be purchased for the tribes. 
 
 Therefore, by this one great sect of the Khonds the 
 abomination of human sacrifice is esteemed a sacred rite. 
 
 2 k 
 
498 HUMAN SACRIFICE. 
 
 The atoning efficacy of the sacrificial blood is an article of 
 faith among these barbarous people, cherished with as 
 much solemn conviction as it has been by some of the 
 most civilised nations of the world. It is necessarily a 
 very lively, operative faith, one that can never exist in 
 a state of serai-animation ; it must be everything or 
 nothinor to a man. If he entertain it at all, it must be a 
 part of his daily Hfe. It must enter largely into all his 
 worldly calculations. The health of his children, the 
 state of his crops, the condition of his flocks and herds, 
 his immunity from the ravages of wild beasts, from 
 the assaults of his enemies, from the storm-blast and the 
 lightning-stroke, all depend upon the observance of this 
 one ceremonial rite. To neglect it is, in the belief of 
 these people, to draw down upon them the anger of the 
 Earth-Goddess, and with it all human ills. Of all super- 
 stitions it is the most enslaving ; for it is based on fear, 
 abject fear of immediate retribution. The worshipper of 
 Tari Pennu, or the Earth-Goddess, dare not neglect the 
 act of propitiation. All that he has is too immediately 
 under her almighty control. 
 
 The Mexicans, before the Spanish invasion, sacrificed 
 human victims by thousands and tens of thousands. The 
 bloody oblations which they offered to their false gods 
 are too stupendous in the recital for human credulity to 
 entertain. And yet their extent is susceptible of proof 
 No such wholesale sacrifices as these ever defiled the 
 country of the Khonds. The victims were comparatively 
 few.* They were furnished by a regular class of pro- 
 curers, who either supplied them to order, or raised them 
 on speculation. They were bought, perhaps, from their 
 parents in hard famine-times, or they were kidnapped on 
 
 ♦ It was very difficult to ascertain an approximative estimate, it may have 
 
 the number of victims offered up every been about 600 a year. But even this 
 
 year — especially as many portions of approximation I venture upon with 
 
 the Khond country were unvisited by great diffidence. 
 our officers. As far as I can arrive at 
 
ITS CEREMONIALS. 499 
 
 the plains ; or were perhaps the children of the pro- 
 curers themselves. Devoted often in their childhood to 
 the Earth-Goddess, they were suffered to grow up as 
 consecrated, privileged beings, to marry wives, to hold 
 lands, and flocks and herds, and other worldly goods — 
 cherished and endowed by the community, for whom they 
 were to die, and in spite of the tremendous curse that 
 overshadowed them, leading happy lives to the last. 
 
 It would seem that these human sacrifices were of two 
 kinds. Principally they assumed an associative character ; 
 they were the joint offerings of certain tribes or villages 
 on the occasion of their public festivals. But sometimes 
 they were individual — exclusive — intended to avert the 
 wrath of the Earth-Goddess, when there was special reason 
 to believe that it had been awakened against a particular 
 family, and could only be so averted. 
 
 " The periodical common sacrifices," says Captain Mac- 
 pherson, '' are generally so arranged by tribes and divi- 
 sions of tribes, that each head of a family is enabled, at 
 least once a year, to procure a shred of flesh for his fields, 
 and usually about the time when his chief crop is laid 
 down." In the protective virtue of this shred of human 
 flesh the worshipper of the Earth-Goddess had unbounded 
 faith. A representative of each tribe or village was sent to 
 the place of sacrifice to obtain it, whilst his brethren at 
 home, in rigid fast and solemn prayer, awaited his return. 
 Bound to a stake, the victim received the first signal blow 
 from the officiating priest, and then the crowd of attendant 
 deputies rushed forward with their axes, completed the 
 sacrifice, and tore the quivering flesh from the Meriah's 
 bones.* The human shred was then carefully wrapped in 
 leaves, carried home to the village, laid on a cushion of 
 grass in some public place, where the heads of families, 
 attended by the priest, went out to give it solemn recep- 
 
 * This was the most generally reccired other modes of immolation. Sometimes 
 ceremonial of sacrifice — but there were the rictim was destroyed by a slow fire. 
 
 2 k2 
 
500 HUMAN SACRIFICE. 
 
 tion. Then the priest divided the sacred flesh into two 
 parts — one of which he buried in the ground, whilst the 
 other he subdivided into minute particles, and distributed 
 amoncr the attendant heads of families. A scene of wild 
 excitement followed. There was shouting and holloaino^ — 
 wrestling and fighting — heads were broken, and houses 
 thrown down. This over, the recipient took his ap- 
 portioned remnant of the sacrifice, and buried it in his 
 favorite field. Then the people returned to their homes — 
 ate, drank, and were merry. Three days of ritual observ- 
 ance followed ; on the fourth, " they assembled at the place 
 of sacrifice, slaughtered and feasted on a buffalo, and left 
 its inedible portions as a gratification to the spirit of the 
 Meriah."* 
 
 Such is the history of these human sacrifices as ascer- 
 tained and recorded, after much laborious inquiry, by Cap- 
 tain Macpherson. But, long before we had this amount 
 of knowledge to base our remedial measures upon, our 
 English officers had been endeavouring to root out the 
 horrid custom from the hill districts under our rule. As 
 early as 1836, the broad fact had been announced by Mr. 
 Russel; and it was afterwards ascertained that other 
 Khond tribes were in the habit of murdering their female 
 children, in their infancy, purely as a matter of family 
 convenience. Indeed, among some of the tribes, save in 
 the case when a woman's first child was a girl, no single 
 female infant was spared.f These were lamentable facts, 
 which early arrested the attention of the British au- 
 thorities, but until the Zemindarry had been formally re- 
 sumed and the settlement of the country commenced, it 
 was not probable that our consideration of the remedial 
 measures to be adopted should take any definite shape. 
 
 * Macpherson's Account of the Religion f "Villages," says Captain Mac- 
 
 qf the Khonds in Orissa, Transaciiuns pherson, " containing a hundred houses, 
 
 of the Asiitic Society. — At the place of may be seen without a single female 
 
 Bacriflce there were three days of feast- child." 
 ing, attended with much sensual license. 
 
EARLY REMEDIAL MEASURES. 501 
 
 But as soon as these objects had been attained, Mr. 
 Russel began fairly to consider the " best mode of effect- 
 ing the abolition of this barbarous custom." In an 
 elaborate paper on the subject, he declared that he was 
 "fully impressed with the belief that it can be accom- 
 plished only by slow and gradual means." He sincerely 
 believed that " a law denouncing human sacrifices and 
 providing for the punishment of persons engaged therein 
 would, as a general measure, prove abortive, and involve 
 a compromise of character which should not be hazarded.'' 
 " In my judgment," he added, " our aim should be to im- 
 prove to the utmost our intercourse with the tribes nearest 
 to us, with the view to civilise and enlighten them, and 
 so reclaim them from the savage practice, using our moral 
 influence rather than our power."* In these views the 
 Madras Government entirely concurred. Time and the 
 contact of civilisation were to be left to do their slow 
 work. 
 
 It does not, however, seem that this resolution was 
 persevered in to the entire exclusion of all active efforts 
 for the suppression of the practice. But the measures 
 which from time to time were adopted seemed rather to 
 attack incidental symptoms than to strike at the root of 
 the evil. On one occasion, for example. Captain Camp- 
 bell, assistant to the collector of Goomsur, ascended the 
 ghauts, with a party of armed peons, just before the 
 periodical season of sacrifice, and rescued a hundred 
 victims. In 1838, Mr. Bannerman, the collector, went 
 himself upon a tour of inspection among the Hill tribes, 
 and determined to surprise a Khond village just as the 
 people were preparing for the ceremony of the sacrifice. 
 "The preparations for the ceremony," he wrote, "ap- 
 peared to have been completed. The entrance to the 
 hamlet, which was in the form of a square, had been newly 
 fitted up with wickerworks, and in the centre, close to 
 
 ♦ MS. Records, quoted in the Ccdcutta Review. 
 
502 HUMAN SACRIFICE. 
 
 the rude village idol, had been erected a bamboo pole 
 about forty feet high, on the top of which was an effigy 
 in the shape of a bird, with peacock's feathers." This 
 was the stake to which the wretched victim was to have 
 been bound, previous to the sacrifice. " A young woman 
 from the plains" had been prepared for immolation; but 
 she was rescued by the British officer from her cruel fate. 
 And subsequently seven other victims, concealed in dif- 
 ferent villages, were reluctantly given up to him. He at- 
 tempted to reason with the chief people ; but he found 
 that their perceptions were somewhat clouded and obscured 
 by the strong liquors which they had drunk, in anticipa- 
 tion of the murderous festival, and nothing came of the 
 controversy. No new light broke in upon the mind of the 
 benevolent British functionary; and on his return from 
 this expedition he could only report that, sensible as he 
 was of " the anxiety felt by Government to put a stop to 
 the barbarous custom of sacrificing human victims," he 
 could but " feel difficulty in proposing any practicable 
 measure with the view of carrying its humane wishes into 
 efiect."* 
 
 There was a suggestion, however, in his report, which 
 seemed worthy of all attention. I have said that the Me- 
 riah victims were supplied by a regular class of procurers. 
 It had been decreed that no compassion should be shown 
 to this abominable race of men. They were, therefore, 
 when occasion ofiered, apprehended, and tried in our 
 criminal courts. But it was not easy to satisfy all the 
 formal requirements of these tribunals, and to substantiate, 
 by a regular chain of recognisable evidence, as evidence is 
 considered by such courts, the actual commission of the 
 offence as set forth in the indictment. This had been the 
 difficulty in the cases of Thuggee and of professional Da- 
 koitee, and it had been found necessary to authorise a 
 certain relaxation of the law for the purpose of checking 
 
 * Report of Mr. Bannerman. MS. RecoicU, quoted in the Calcutta Review. 
 
LORD ELPHIN stone's SCHEME. 503 
 
 the progress of these crimes.* It was now suggested by 
 Mr. Bannerman that a similar relaxation of the law should 
 be authorised in the present instance, and that a regularly 
 appointed officer should have the power of dealing sum- 
 marily with persons charged with the offence of trafficking 
 in human life. This measure had, I believe, the approba- 
 tion of the Court of Directors. It seemed a good idea to 
 strike terror into the minds of the procurers, and so to stop 
 the inhuman traffic. But it does not seem that any special 
 enactment emanated from the Legislature. 
 
 In fact, for some two or three years after these expe- 
 ditions to the Hill country, great as was the desire of both 
 the civil and military officers in the Goomsur country to 
 suppress the barbarous practice, and praiseworthy as 
 were their efforts, little or nothing of an effectual charac- 
 ter was really done. Lord Elphinstone was at this time 
 Governor of Madras. It must be recorded to his honor, 
 that he was deeply interested in the painful subject, and 
 that he addressed himself, in an earnest and enlightened 
 spirit, to its consideration. In an elaborate minute on the 
 subject, written in 1841, he acknowledged that hitherto 
 our measures for the suppression of Meriah sacrifice had 
 been attended with little success; and he recommended a 
 more systematic and comprehensive scheme than any 
 which had yet been tried — though some of its details had 
 been previously recommended — embracing, ^r5%, the 
 opening of routes and passes through the wild tracts in- 
 habited by the Khond tribes ; secondly^ the encouraging 
 of commercial intercourse between the hills and the plains 
 by all available means, and the establishment of fairs and 
 marts for that purpose ; and thirdly^ the raising of a semi- 
 military police force from among the Hill men. And the 
 better to carry out these objects, it was proposed that a 
 special agent should be appointed, under the Commissioner 
 
 * Set llie chapters on Thuggee and Dakoitee—ante, pp. 354 — 380. 
 
504 HUMAN SACRIFICE. 
 
 of Goomsur, to proceed into the Khond country, to obtain 
 the assistance of a petty Rajah on the other side of the 
 Hills, towards the opening of the communication. This 
 measure was sanctioned by the supreme Government ; 
 but when delivering their assent, they thought it neces- 
 sary to issue a caveat to the effect that the Agent ''should 
 cautiously approach any inquisition into human sacrifices, 
 and confine himself very closely to the immediate purposes 
 of the Mission." 
 
 The officer to whom this Mission was entrusted was 
 Captain Macpherson,* of whose first acquaintance with 
 the Khond tribes I have already spoken. He had sent in 
 an elaborate report upon the social and religious institu- 
 tions of these strange people — indeed, had brought to- 
 gether a mass of information relating to them, which 
 sufficed at once to indicate that there was no other officer 
 in the service to whom this difficult and delicate work 
 could be more advantageously entrusted. With charac- 
 teristic earnestness he set about his work ; but at every 
 step as he advanced, formidable difficulties met the in- 
 quirer. They were very much the same difficulties as, in 
 the Bheel country, had stared Outram and Ovans in the 
 face. There was the extreme unhealthiness of the climate,f 
 and the seemingly insuperable mistrust of the people. 
 But Macpherson determined to brave the one, and to 
 spare no effort to overcome the other. Sickness assailed 
 him ; his life was threatened, but he did not turn aside 
 from his purpose. The people fled at his approach. The 
 villages were deserted. But Macpherson did not despair. 
 He halted ; he waited ; he did everything that could be 
 done to assure the tribes ; to prove that he was a man of 
 
 ♦ Captain Macpherson, during the stone, he wrote the elaborate report 
 
 first exploring expedition, had suffered which is the basis of our information 
 
 80 severely in his health, that he was respecting the manners and customs of 
 
 compelled to seek change of air at the the Khonds. 
 
 Cape of Good Hope, lie returned to f In the space of twenty-eight days 
 
 Madras in the cold weather of 1840-41, ninety percent, of the attendants of the 
 
 when by the direction of Lord Elphin- Mission were struck down by fever. 
 
EFFORTS OF CAPTAIN MACPHERSON. 505 
 
 peace ; and to bring the fugitives back to their homes. 
 And little by little he succeeded. In the neighbourhood 
 of the white man*s camp, the villagers who had fled at 
 his approach, soon began to shake off* their fears. It was 
 plain that he had not come among them to destroy the 
 people and desolate the country; so they emerged from 
 their protecting forests, and a few of them, doubtfully and 
 mistrustfully at first, came unarmed to the British tents, 
 and were received with encouragement and kindness. 
 Then others, who had been anxiously awaiting the results 
 of the experiment, cautiously crept forward, and were in 
 turn encouraged and assured. And then Macpherson 
 moved forward into the hills ; halted again ; and again 
 the people came around him ; until hostile tribes con- 
 tended for his favor, and what he sought lay within his 
 reach.* He learnt from the Khonds themselves what 
 were their social institutions, and he learnt — but with 
 greater diflSculty, and often longer delay — what was their 
 religious belief. 
 
 From any direct interference with the practice of 
 human sacrifice, Macpherson was at this time precluded 
 by the nature of his instructions. But he cautiously felt 
 the ground before him, and spared no pains to ascertain 
 the state of feeling among the Khond patriarchs regard- 
 ino- the wishes and intentions of the British Government. 
 And this much he soon ascertained. " Two general im- 
 pressions prevailed among them. The first was, that the 
 Government was indifferent to the sacrifice. This view 
 was founded upon the fact, that no decisive and compre- 
 hensive measures had been adopted with respect to it, 
 while partial interference had taken place. . . . The 
 second was, that although Government certainly disap- 
 
 * The line of Macpherson's advance flcing sects— among the latter of which 
 •was between the tracts of country in- female infanticide obtained, 
 habited by the sacrificing and non-sacri- 
 
506 HUMAN SACRIFICE. 
 
 proved and desired the abolition of the practice, it was 
 conscious that it had no just right to interfere with it."* 
 
 It was plain that no spasmodic efforts for the sup- 
 pression of the abominable rite could be attended with 
 any general or permanent results. Macpherson did not, 
 therefore, attempt to rescue any particular Khond victims. 
 But he exerted himself to imbue the chiefs with a thorough 
 knowledge of the views and wishes of the British Govern- 
 ment ; and he especially endeavoured to impress them 
 with the conviction that our " designs were those of 
 paternal benevolence alone." In this he was at least 
 partially successful. He mixed familiarly and conversed 
 freely with them. He made the men presents of cloth 
 and tobacco, and gave them money to purchase liquor. 
 At every station he distributed beads among the women, 
 who received them with expressions of gratitude and 
 delight. It was his object to conciliate them by every 
 means in his power ; and he soon made them believe 
 that he had no hostile desio^n in his visit to their moun- 
 tain homes. He had no lack of argument, either, for their 
 benefit, and perhaps he may have done something to 
 shake their belief in the efficacy of human sacrifice. 
 
 As time advanced, it seemed to Macpherson that his 
 prospects of success were beginning to brighten. In the 
 month of June, 1842, "the two tribes of Goomsur, which 
 were best known, most under influence and most ac- 
 cessible, freely and intelligently consented to place them- 
 selves in practical subjection to the British Government, 
 on the condition of receiving its protection and justice." 
 They " stipulated that Government should support them 
 with its whole authority in making this diffident and 
 trembling movement."f Nay, indeed, they sought more 
 than this. Still clinging to the old belief in the retri- 
 
 ♦ Captain Macpherson to Mr. Ban- t The same to the same, September, 
 nerman, April, 1842. MS. Records. 1843. MS. Records. 
 
INFLUENCE OF JUSTICE. 507 
 
 butory power of the Earth-Goddess, they demanded that 
 they should have full permission to denounce to their 
 gods the British Government in general, and certain of 
 its servants in particular, as the grand authors of their 
 apostacy, and so to render us the vicarious recipients of 
 the divine wrath. 
 
 But although even such doubtful concessions had some 
 encouragement in them, it did not seem that, until we 
 could more securely establish our position and our in- 
 fluence as their rightful rulers and protectors, any 
 permanent advantages would result from such uncertain 
 demonstrations as these. " I conceive," said Captain 
 Macpherson, " the establishment of distinct relations 
 with these tribes as subjects, to be the necessary basis of 
 the authority by which, combined with influences derived 
 from every source within our power, we may hope to effect 
 the suppression of the rite of sacrifice. The relations 
 which I propose to establish are for the nearer tribes — 
 submission to laws directly administered by us. For 
 those more remote the practical acknowledgment of our 
 supremacy."* This matter of the administration of justice 
 among the Khonds was the great pivot upon which all 
 Macpherson's measures subsequently turned. These 
 strange Hill people had a wild unsatisfactory method of 
 settling all disputes among themselves, and they were 
 eager for the establishment of better ordered tribunals to 
 which, in their diflficulties, they might betake themselves 
 for substantive justice. They saw at once, indeed, the 
 advantages of this appeal to a power beyond the reach of 
 all sinister influences, and they were glad to divest them- 
 selves of the undivided and unsupported responsibility 
 which entailed upon them a world of difficulty and em- 
 barrassment, and often involved them in internecine strife. 
 
 ♦ Captain Macpherson to Mr, Bannerman, August, 1842. MS. Records. 
 
508 HUMAN SACRIFICE. 
 
 » 
 
 Macpherson undertook to preside over their judicial 
 councils, and they hailed the offer with delight.* 
 
 It would have been something to see one of those 
 primitive Khond Courts — Macpherson, under a tree, in a 
 Khond village, sitting on a chair, with his chief people, 
 native assistants and others, on their carpets on either 
 side — the Khond chiefs sitting opposite, in tiers, three or 
 four deep, according to their rank — the plaintiff and de- 
 fendant volubly pleading each his own cause, and bring- 
 ing in his several witnesses — and the fluctuating crowd 
 of people in the background eagerly watching the pro- 
 ceedings, made up a picture as suggestive to the inner 
 sense as it was striking to the outer. The case was 
 stated. The witnesses were heard. Then the chiefs, one 
 by one, were called upon to pronounce their opinions. 
 And soundly and intelligently for the most part these 
 opinions were pronounced. Then all having been heard, 
 and notes of their several decisions taken, Macpherson 
 proceeded to state what was the collective result. The 
 judgment which he then pronounced was the judgment of 
 the chiefs themselves ; and they never doubted that the 
 final decree of the Court w^as a correct exposition of their 
 wishes.f 
 
 This great boon of pure and systematic justice worked 
 mightily among them. '^ The result," said Macpherson, 
 " surpassed my expectations. A movement began which 
 gradually acquired force and distinctness. The estimate 
 formed by these tribes of the value of the justice dis- 
 pensed, which relieved society from the accumulation of 
 public and private questions by which it was distracted, 
 was higher than I could have imagined, and the direct 
 
 • It was his especial object not to Court were carried on in the Khond 
 
 supersede their authority, but to as- language, but it was interpreted into 
 
 sociate himself with, and to support, the Oorea, through which dialect Macpher- 
 
 chiefs in the administration of justice, son always communicated with the 
 
 after their own fashion. Khonds. 
 
 t The general proceedings of the 
 
PROTECTION OF COMMERCE. 509 
 
 authority, therefore, derived from its administration was 
 great. But that justice was not less important, regarded 
 as a means of subjecting the people to the influences 
 best calculated to sway them. The adherents and the 
 opponents of the religious change sought it alike. But 
 none could sue for it without full exposure, in some mea- 
 sure, at the discretion of its dispensers, to all the general 
 and personal influences which could be devised to promote 
 the extension and confirmation of the movement."* And 
 under these influences, after a little while, 124 victims 
 were voluntarily given up to the British oflScer. 
 
 Nor was the assistance thus rendered to them in the 
 administration of justice the only benefit which they de- 
 rived from their close connexion with the British. In- 
 creased facilities of traflic w^ith the Low Country were 
 afforded to them. Hitherto they had been much exposed 
 to the chicanery and extortion of the merchants and 
 dealers on the plains. These wild mountaineers were no 
 match for the astute traders of the more civilised districts,t 
 
 * Captain Afacpherson to Mr. Banner- Khonds having given over sacrificing 
 
 man, September, 1843. MS. Records. victims, so will 1 give up robbery from 
 
 The following illustration of the re- this day, and will never commit thefts; 
 
 suits of this administration of justice, and if there be any others that rob, he 
 
 taken from the letters of Macpherson's would bring them to my master.' 
 
 moonshee, Baba Khan, is worth read- Whereupon the poor fellow was pitied 
 
 ing, for more reasons than one: and forgiven. He has now reformed, 
 
 " My master had not at all an incli- and associates with the best of Khonds 
 
 nation to punish those prisoners as very honestly, subsisting himself en- 
 
 those that steal in the Low Country, for tirely by work and traflSc." — [ J/*?.] 
 these had thought that in plundering f The Hill people, however, laughed 
 
 they only obeyed the Rajah's orders at the superior civilisation of the Low 
 
 and the Deity's will. But if he had not Country, and reasoned about it in a 
 
 done so, the sacrificing Khonds and very anmsing manner: 
 those others who carried on thefts *' The Khond witnesses who came to 
 
 would not be in future afraid. The give their evidences against the pri- 
 
 principal ringleader of these thieves soners lived in Lunjapilly, a village of 
 
 could not be apprehended at first; but Soondera Singh's, granted to him by 
 
 on hearing the punishment awarded to Government. One morning on a sun- 
 
 the prisoners, he came in most submis- shiny day, while Soondera Singh was 
 
 sively of his own accord to my master, coming in his palanquin to see my 
 
 and prostrated himself at his feet, at master with these Khonds, one of them 
 
 full length, holding a bit of straw in remarked with astonishment and laugh- 
 
 his mouth, which is the general custom ter, * See! that palanquin was made in 
 
 in surrendering to a superior, and the Low Country; it is very beautiful, 
 
 begged my master's pardon and protec- painted with colors, fixed with boards, 
 
 tion, and declared that ' the Khoiid lined with cloth, and iron fixed to it — 
 
 country is now the Sircar's (British how well it looks!' Another said, ' The 
 
 Government's), and that I cannot hide sensesofthe Low Country people are not 
 
 myself anywhere in its hills, and as the worth a cowry. How many men must 
 
510 HUMAN SACKIFICE. 
 
 and when they came down from the hills to buy and sell, 
 bringing their turmeric (it is the best that is sold in Lon- 
 don) to market, and taking back in exchange scarlet cloths, 
 brass pots, and other commodities in demand among them, 
 they were generally overreached and defrauded. Especial 
 protection was now given to their trade. They were 
 enabled to buy and to sell on better terms than had ever 
 been obtainable from their neighbours. Fairs were esta- 
 blished for their especial advantage ; and soon they found 
 themselves in the enjoyment of such commercial prosperity 
 as they had never even dreamt of before. This was some- 
 thing readily intelligible to the most obtuse, and appreci- 
 able by the most apathetic ; and greatly it tended to 
 strengthen and perpetuate British influence among the 
 Khonds. 
 
 But these successes, great as they were, had some ele- 
 ment of discouragement in them. And for a time, Mac- 
 pherson was perplexed by new doubts and opposed by new 
 difficulties. In spite of the pledges given, occasional 
 sacrifices, from time to time, were consummated.* His 
 authority was obviously insufficient for the full accomplish- 
 ment of so great a work. Government had not declared 
 themselves with sufficient distinctness, and there was an 
 enemy in the way. One Sam Bissye,f a Hindoo here- 
 
 (it) have taken — how much trouble in Low Country people have, I think, little 
 making the palanquin! They felled sense.'" [M S. Correspondence of Baba 
 wood, sawed it into planks, placed them Khan, MoonsheeJ] 
 together, and formed them into a pa- * These, however, were very few. 
 lanquin — and then it is only comfort- There was always a small recusant mi- 
 able for one individual — and great nority, who desired to practise the rite, 
 wastage of money, whilst on account of against the wishes of the general body, 
 one person many suffer much labor. But the tribes collectively never wa- 
 if that man were to walk and go, he vered, and their anger against the of- 
 would save his money and not give fending exceptions was great, 
 trouble to others. Is not this a wise t It is not easy to describe the exact 
 business? If a quarter part of the position of this man. He was a kind of 
 money expended by Soondera Singh on agent or minister to the tribes, manag- 
 that palanquin was spent on purchasing ing their internal affairs, and communi- 
 good meat and the marrow-bones of eating, on their behalf, with foreign 
 buffaloes for himself, and all was so Courts, lie was rich, clever, and of 
 consumed by him, it would give vast great personal influence. He had been 
 strength to his limbs, be palatable to set over the general body of the tribes 
 his mouth, and fill his stomach for a by the British Commissioner, on our 
 \oug time to his heart's content. The first settlement of the country. 
 
IMPEDIMENTS TO SUCCESS. 511 
 
 ditary office-bearer, whose influence with the tribes had 
 been diminished by Macpherson's ascendancy, was striving 
 manfully to neutralise all the efforts of the English officer. 
 He declared that the authorities, to whom Macpherson 
 was subordinate, had sanctioned the continuation of the 
 sacrifices; he promulgated a dangerous report to the effect 
 that the British were about to tax the tribes ; and for a 
 time it seemed that the machinations of this man would 
 arrest the onward progress of reform. 
 
 In spite of shattered health, the English officer set him- 
 self bravely to work to counteract the evil influence of 
 the wily Hindoo. Watching his opportunity, he contrived 
 to blacken the face of Sam Bissye in the eyes of the tribes, 
 and to exercise his own authority in matters very dear to 
 them, so as to increase his own influence over them, and 
 to prove that the higher authorities were with him. In a 
 little while the overthrow of Sam Bissye was complete. 
 He was suspended from office, and seized as a criminal.* 
 
 * From the interesting letters writ- count of your having discontinued the 
 
 ten by Captain Mac pherson's moon shee, sacrifice. Come and see; I am going 
 
 I take a passage or two, illustrative of to kill a sacrifice.' He gave them food, 
 
 the evil machinations and the punish- and liquor to drink, and asked a Mul- 
 
 ment of Sam Bissye. Of the former, lick, a chief man in Rissinghur, a friend 
 
 the writer says : " Last season the old of his, whether he would kill a sacrifice 
 
 ■wolf-faced Sam Bissye summoned the now or not — that leave was granted by 
 
 Khonds, on whom he had engrafted Mr. B. He replied : ' If you give me au- 
 
 nectarious (nefarious? ) words, and told thority I will do ic' When Sam Bissye 
 
 them ' Captain Macpherson has agreed gave his consent a victim was sacrificed, 
 
 •with the Government to assess and and the flesh was taken away by the 
 
 raise taxes in the Khond country, for Khonds. A sacrifice was also executed 
 
 his own profit, when you give up the at Rodunghia, but very secretly, and 
 
 Meriah sacrifices; consequently he is immediately buried. This is the way 
 
 now allowing you all very civilly. Sam Bissye is throwing severe obstacles 
 
 Should you, therefore, discontinue from in our way." 
 
 sacrificing, the whole of us will be Another instance given in the same 
 utterly ruined, and, also, it is very letters has double value, as an illus- 
 •wrong to desist from our ancient rites, tration, partly of Sam Bissye's influ- 
 If you hearken to the advice of Captain ence — partly of the domestic history of 
 Macpherson, at least perform the sacri- these Meriah sacrifices. Such a com- 
 fice in secret.' This season Sam Bissye plication of misfortunes as is here de- 
 was with Mr. B(annerman), the col- scribed might well have sent a wavering 
 lector, while we were in the Hill Khond back to his victim-medicine, 
 country, and after our return he pro- " My master questioned Jeetoo Mullick. 
 ceeded to his country and summoned * Why did you sacrifice?' He answered: 
 all the Khonds, and told them that ' My family were sick. A bam fell un- 
 ' Mr. B. has given me permission to awares on my wife, and she died; a 
 sacrifice six victims, and my whole tiger devoured my buffalo; and another 
 body is aflTected with leprosy, on ac- woman died in childbirth; and I also 
 
512 
 
 HUMAN SACRIFICE. 
 
 And for a while the tide of success was turned in his 
 favor. In May, 1844, he was able officially to report to 
 the Madras authorities : " I have the high satisfaction to 
 state that the great season of sacrifice is past, and that 
 there has been no apparent tendency to sacrifice, in any 
 part of the Khond country of Goomsur." 
 
 So far as the Goomsur tribes were concerned, Mac- 
 pherson's success was well-nigh complete. But now arose 
 the great question of the extension to other tribes of 
 these ameliorative measures. The sacrificing tribes were 
 scattered over a portion of the Hill districts of Orissa 
 partly under the Madras, and partly under the Bengal Pre- 
 sidency.* Macpherson's authority extended only to the 
 former; and in the tracts subordinate to the Bengal 
 Government, though efforts had been made to suppress 
 the inhuman rit,e, they had not assumed a sustained 
 
 was dangerously ill.' Then Gnnda 
 MuUick told me, ' What are all these 
 sufferings? Why not sacrifice a victim? 
 I will go and take Sam Bissye's per- 
 mission to offer one, as I have heard 
 that he has got permission from the 
 Sircar (British Government) to sacri- 
 fice victims?' Then I told Gunda M. 
 that * I have no victims to sacrifice, and 
 am unable to go just now. You had 
 better go for me.' Upon which Gunda 
 M. said : ' You have a piece of land in 
 Hodzogher, and I will procure you a 
 victim for it ; then sacrifice and get the 
 better of your sickness.' Then Gunda 
 M. went to Sam Bissye and related of 
 Jetoo'a ailment. Sam Bissye stated to 
 him, that although the Sircar prevents 
 you from sacrifice, do not you relinquish 
 it, as that is the most precious medicine, 
 and no other medicine is worth." 
 
 The moonshee, in another place, thus 
 graphically relates, after his own 
 fashion, the story of Sam Bissye's 
 seizure: — "While my master sat on a 
 chair, the Zemindarry Sherishtadar of 
 the collector's cutcherry, the principal 
 assistant agent's magistrate's moonshy, 
 with Soondersing and myself of the as- 
 sistant cutcherry, and several of the 
 Sirdars and principal men of the vil- 
 lages. Ryots, Peons, &c.,8tanding around, 
 Sam Bissye came up with twenty Peon 
 
 attendants, brought a goat, some oranges 
 and yams, to my master, and one rupee 
 laid at his feet, and stood before him. 
 My master then told Sam Bissye as 
 follows: ' Government has sent orders 
 to suspend you, and you are suspended 
 from this day, and to be placed in con- 
 finement.' When Sam Bissye heard 
 this, he stood as a post of wood, not 
 uttering a single word, and all those 
 present at that moment were motion- 
 less as a flock of sheep, flocked together 
 in the evening. Awhile, after every 
 one began to disperse, frightened in 
 their minds as the same sheep, when a 
 tiger gets into the flock and devours a 
 large sheep out of it. The large-toothed 
 like a jungle hog, Madara Poricha, who 
 was always Sam Bissye's right arm, was 
 also there ; but weapons were taken 
 from him, and he ordered into confine- 
 ment, with Sam Bissye, because he was 
 accused of robberies. When the Peons 
 went to take them into confinement, 
 Sam Bissye told the twenty Peons who 
 came with him, * Oh children, come!' 
 But my master told him that he had 
 nothing to do with them, nor they any- 
 thing with him." — [MS. Correspon- 
 dence.'] 
 
 * And partly, it might be added, in 
 the Nagpore territory. 
 
ESTABLISHMENT OF TIIK MEKIAII AGENCY. 513 
 
 character. So the Khonds argued among themselves that 
 it was plain the Government had no very strong im- 
 pressions on the subject of human sacrifice — that, indeed, 
 their desires and intentions respecting the suppression of 
 the practice were anything but clearly manifested, and 
 that probably, after all, they cared little or nothing about 
 the matter. The two Governments seemed not to be acting 
 in concert with each other, if it were not indeed altogether 
 the crotchet of a single inferior officer, whose acts would 
 not be supported by the authorities above him. This 
 was, indeed, a stumbling-block in the way of the move- 
 ment; and Macpherson represented the diflSculty to the 
 Government. It was plain that if his labours were to be 
 effectual, he should be invested with authority more ex- 
 tensive and more defined. Nor were his representations 
 without avail. Early in 1845 he was appointed Agent to 
 the supreme Government for the suppression of human 
 sacrifice and infanticide in the Hill tracts of Orissa. 
 
 Macpherson's course was now comparatively easy. 
 This authoritative manifestation at once convinced the 
 tribes what was the will of the supreme Government. 
 Armed, therefore, with these new powers, and sur- 
 rounded by the prestige of authority, the Khond Agent 
 stepped at once across the boundary and began to extend 
 his effort to the tribes inhabiting the great district of 
 Boad, under the Bengal Presidency. They had been 
 watching with intense interest the progress of the great 
 experiment that had been going on in Goomsur. Moved 
 by a strong spirit of inquiry, they had crossed the border, 
 attended the Goomsur councils, mixed famiharly with the 
 proselytes, and received from them distinct ideas of the 
 advantages of the relationship subsisting between them 
 and the British Agent. The new light, indeed, had 
 already broken in upon the mind of the Boad tribes. 
 They not only understood the nature of the change, but 
 they clearly saw its advantages. They saw how peaceful 
 and prosperous the country had become, and how happily 
 
 2l 
 
514 HUMAN SACRIFICE. 
 
 their neighbours lived under the reformation. There was 
 a great Hving argument, indeed, better than all theories 
 and speculations, in support of the advocated change. 
 The Goomsur tribes had ceased to defile their hands 
 with the sacrificial blood of their fellow-creatures ; and 
 yet there had been two unusually healthy seasons, and 
 two unusually abundant harvests. Providence, in this, 
 had wrought mightily for us. The Boad tribes viewed 
 the result with wondering admiration. They called us 
 Boora Pennu's people — the agents of the God of Light — 
 and believed that superhuman power w^as in the hands of 
 the people who had done such things. The wrath of «the 
 Earth-Goddess, it was clear, could not avail against us. 
 
 It was Macpherson's wont, I believe, in all his argu- 
 ments with these poor people, to deal tenderly with the 
 abomination of human sacrifice, rather as a religious 
 error than as a great practical crime. He did not fail, 
 indeed, to tell them that other nations had, at different 
 periods of time, clung to a belief in the efficacy of human 
 blood as a means of propitiation, but that as those nations 
 had advanced in civilisation, they had abjured the false 
 faith, and abandoned the pernicious practice. And he 
 especially dwelt upon the fact that our own nation, once 
 sunk in darkness and barbarism, had practised the un- 
 hallowed rite ; but that since we had abandoned and 
 denounced it, we had become the kings of the earth. 
 These arguments were now repeated to the Boad tribes, 
 and listened to with marked respect.* 
 
 In the mean while, in the Goomsur country, the crown 
 was set upon the great reformation, and a brilliant inci- 
 dent inaugurated the appointment of the Khond Agent. 
 On a given day, the entire body of the Khond tribes pre- 
 pared, in their several villages, publicly to perform a 
 simultaneous ceremony of final abjuration of their murder- 
 worship, and their adoption of the religion of the God of 
 
 ♦ It i» only fair, however, to say that tended that it was not impossible that, 
 the Khonds were by no means wanting by reason of their sacriticcs, all the 
 in polemical adroitness, for they con- world had been saved. 
 
PROCEEDINGS OF THE BOAD TRIBES. 515 
 
 Light. And now the tribes of the non-sacrificing sect 
 really believed that the reformation was complete and 
 permanent, and began to associate with them as brothers. 
 They were no longer polluted by drinking the same 
 water, and using the same fire ; and they welcomed the 
 erring ones, fully and unreservedly, into their own fold. 
 
 Then the Boad tribes, seeing how matters had pro- 
 gressed in the Goomsur country, prepared to follow the 
 example of their neighbours. They declared, not that all 
 along they had been in error — that their worship had been 
 false — but that a change was now imposed upon them by 
 the triumph of the God of Light. Taking, therefore, so- 
 lemn farewell of the great distinctive doctrine of their 
 sect, by a stupendous act of immolation, they slaughtered 
 120 victims, and with this valedictory offering to the Earth- 
 Goddess, declared that they had turned their back upon 
 her for ever. 
 
 Knowing that they were in this state of mind, Mac- 
 pherson prepared to take advantage of it. But a new 
 element of difficulty presented itself, and it needed some 
 address to deal with it aright. The Rajah of Boad, a 
 tributary chief of influence and authority over the tribes, 
 looked askance at his operations. It was Macpherson's 
 desire to ally the Rajah's power with his own, and when 
 he went into the Boad country, the man promised to assist 
 him with all the influence he possessed over the tribes. 
 A meeting was then arranged between the Rajah and the 
 British officer, in the presence of the assembled Khond 
 chiefs. But sinister influences had been at work upon 
 him ; and when the time came, he was ready only with 
 vague assurances and delusive protestations. He said 
 that the tribes were opposed to the abandonment of a prac- 
 tice which had been observed by remote generations of 
 their ancestors — that he could only so far overcome their 
 obduracy as to induce them to give up a few victims — and 
 he promised that some twenty Meriahs should be handed 
 over to the British Agent. They were all, he said, of 
 
 2l2 
 
516 HUMAN SACRIFICE. 
 
 whom he had distinct cognisance. Macpherson held in 
 his hand an authenticated list of some hundreds of Boad 
 victims, but the Rajah still continued to protest that he 
 could do no more with the tribes. 
 
 So Macpherson appealed to the assembled Boad chiefs, 
 who had heard the Rajah's declaration. He had brought 
 with him some of the ablest and most zealous of his prose- 
 lytes, and he now called upon the people of the other dis- 
 trict to hear what the men from Goomsur had to say of 
 the great change which had been effected. Well and 
 earnestly the converts bore witness for the truth. Elo- 
 quent and striking were their enunciations. But the 
 Boad chiefs declared that they needed not this evidence 
 to convince them. They had crossed the border them- 
 selves, and seen with their own eyes the grand results of 
 the reformation. They knew all that the Goomsur men 
 advanced. They admitted, too, that the great oblation of 
 which I have spoken was intended to be a final act of 
 sacrifice, and they declared their willingness to surrender 
 all the victims in their hands. And in the course of a few 
 days a hundred and seventy were in Macpherson 's camp. 
 In the mean while Macpherson had given the Boad 
 tribes a specimen of the manner in which he assisted the 
 Goomsur Khonds to settle their internal disputes. A day 
 was spent in the investigation of a difficult case. And the 
 adjudication was so satisfactory, that one of thestaunchest 
 of the opponents of the proposed reform cried, "Now we 
 understand the magic by which the Goomsur Khonds have 
 been gained." 
 
 Finding the Boad Khonds were in this satisfactory state 
 of mind, and always desiring to practise as little inter- 
 ference as possible, Macpherson now prepared to withdraw^ 
 across the border, and to leave the rest to be worked out 
 by the Rajah. But it soon appeared that this man, 
 wrought upon by evil advisers, was bringing all his secret 
 influence to bear upon the counteraction of the Agent's 
 designs. He spread a report that it was Macpherson's 
 
DISTURBANCES IN ORISSA. 517 
 
 intention first to disarm, then to tax them, and to reduce 
 them to a general condition of servility identical with 
 that of the Khonds of the plains. The horror of this 
 loss of liberty was great. It was intended by the in- 
 sidious circulation of the report, to incite the Khonds to 
 rebellion ; and by these, and similar representations, he in- 
 duced them to demand back the victims they had surren- 
 dered. Victims no longer, for their atoning efficacy had 
 been destroyed — their sacred character profaned — they 
 were given up to the Kajah. The responsibility of their 
 safety, and the onus of this retrograde movement, were 
 thrown upon him ; but, indeed, without this protection 
 they would have been safe. There was no fear after this 
 pollution of their being sent to the stake. 
 
 Fearing that he might be visited by the displeasure 
 of the British Government, the Rajah now declared his 
 wilHngness to co-operate zealously with Macpherson. But 
 a storm was impending over the country. Rebellion was 
 breaking out on both sides of him. The people were 
 rising both in Ungool and in Goomsur. These move- 
 ments were unconnected with the question of Meriah 
 sacrifice ; but it devolved upon Macpherson to super- 
 intend, in his political capacity, the operations which 
 then became necessary. And here the inquirer, who up 
 to this time has been intent on tracing only the beneficent 
 measures of a British officer engaged in an honorable 
 warfare, as the champion of civilisation and humanity, 
 with barbarism, cruelty, and superstition, finds himself 
 plunged at once into a sea of troubled controversy from 
 which he hastens to extricate himself. The disturbances 
 in Ungool and Goomsur brought new actors upon the 
 scene. The political and military authorities came into 
 collision. General Dyce, who commanded the troops, 
 ordered Macpherson out of the country, and sent in a 
 string of charges against him. Sir Herbert Maddock, 
 who was then Deputy-Governor of Bengal, and President 
 of the Council, dismissed Macpherson and all his assist- 
 
518 HUMAN SACRIFICE. 
 
 ants, down to the lowest native servant of the Mission,* 
 and with that his connexion with the Khonds, for whom 
 he had done so much, was brought precipitately to a close. 
 I make no comment on these things. It is sufficient 
 to state that one of the ablest of the Company's civil 
 servantsf was commissioned to inquire into the charges 
 against Macpherson — the substance of which was that 
 his maladministration had driven the people to rebellion, 
 and was keeping it alive among the tribes — and that the 
 result of the inquiry was a most honorable acquittal 
 upon every charge. " Captain Macpherson," said the Go- 
 vernor-General in Council, "has, with a very little ex- 
 ception, cleared himself and his administration of all 
 General Dyce's accusations ;" and he would have taken 
 an opportunity of evincing his undiminished confidence 
 in Macpherson, had he not been compelled, by ill health, 
 to return to Europe. That justice was rendered to the 
 two assistants of the Khond Agency, Dr. CadenheadJ 
 
 ♦ It would seem, however, that Sir sumption of the extensive Zemindarry 
 
 Herbert Maddock had resolved on of Surabhulpore, was selected for the 
 
 Macpherson's removal before General important and delicate task of bringing 
 
 Dyce's charges had been received. its rude and turbulent population under 
 
 t Mr. John Peter Grant. the immediate authority of the Govern- 
 
 J When, in 1844, Capt. Macpherson ment. That duty he executed so as to 
 
 was driven by sickness from his post, command the entire approbation of his 
 
 Dr. John Cadenhead, of the Madras oflBcial8uperiors,while, by his unceasing 
 
 army, was appointed to act for him, devotion to the interests of the people, 
 
 and carried on the Khond work for alike in the lines of public and of pri- 
 
 above twelve months with entire sue- vate duty, he gained in an extraordinary 
 
 cess. At the close of the inquiry re- degree their confidence and affection, 
 
 ferred to, the supreme Government Amongst his works of private benevo- 
 
 adopted the following estimate, formed lence may be noticed the institution of 
 
 by the Commissioner of Dr. Caden- a school, which opened in April, 1850, 
 
 head's recent conduct and services: — with seven pupils, who soon increased 
 
 " During the whole of this period of to sixty, including youths of the highest 
 
 three months and a half, from the first families in the district. The system of 
 
 outbreak in Gullery, he was constantly, tuition was that pursued by Dr. Duff, of 
 
 in good health or in bad health, scouring Calcutta. On Dr. Cadenhead's death, 
 
 these unwholesome jungles and hills, the people of Sumbhulpore petitioned 
 
 accompanying the troops in all their the Government to maintain the school, 
 
 movements, and present with them in The Commissioner warmly seconded 
 
 every action ; . . . . and my opinion of their petition, " not only for the direct 
 
 those proceedings is, that they were good which would accrue from the per- 
 
 conducted with rare spirit and energy, nianent establishment of the school 
 
 and with great skill, and that they re- under Government patronage, but as a 
 
 fleet great credit on the conductor of monument of the active and charac- 
 
 them." teristic benevolence of the founder." 
 
 Dr. Cadenhead was afterwards ap- The Government immediately appor- 
 
 pointed principal assistant in the South- tioned the sum of 240/. per annum for 
 
 West frontier agency, and on the as- its efficient maintenance. 
 
PROCEEDINGS OF COLONEL CAMPBELL. 519 
 
 and Lieutenant Pinkney, by immediately appointing them 
 to offices of equal responsibility. 
 
 But although Maepherson had been removed from 
 office, and soon after the conclusion of the investigation 
 into his proceedings he was driven home by the warnings 
 of a constitution shattered by long residence in the 
 Khond country, the good that he had done lived after 
 him. It does not seem that, during the disturbances 
 which rent the country, his proselytes fell back into their 
 old errors, and resorted to their old evil practices. The 
 Khond agency survived, though Maepherson had been 
 recalled ; and Colonel Campbell, who had long been em- 
 ployed in that part of the country, was appointed to fill his 
 place. The good work is going on, under diminished diffi- 
 culties, towards a prosperous conclusion. It was obviously, 
 indeed, a work of which the beginning may almost be 
 said to be also the middle and the end. The Khonds 
 offered human sacrifices because they believed that in no 
 other way they could propitiate the Earth-Goddess, and 
 that their failure to lay these dreadful offerings at her 
 feet would be visited with the infliction of the most 
 terrible calamities to which humanity is exposed. The 
 'premier pas was everything in such a case. " The first 
 operations," it is truly said by Colonel Campbell, " among 
 a wild and strange people, always the most difficult and 
 the most hazardous, having been successful, those of suc- 
 ceeding seasons, if the same principles are adhered to, 
 are mere gleanings."* The sacrificing Khonds had 
 made the terrible experiment, and yet the earth had 
 yielded her increase with unwonted prodigality, and the 
 pestilence, which walketh in the darkness, had never been 
 so idle before. And the result was, that in the minds of 
 all the intelligent men in the Khond districts — and the 
 Khonds were by no means wanting in intelligence — the 
 
 * Colonel Campbell to Supreme Government, April 10, 1852. MS. Records. 
 
520 HUMAN SACRIFICE. 
 
 omnipotence of Tari Fermu, the Earth- Goddess, sank 
 down into a delusion and a sham.* 
 
 But although the way was smoothed by these initial 
 successes for all subsequent efforts, the later operations 
 in the Khond country ought not to be passed over with 
 this brief incidental notice. Colonel Campbell, as I 
 have said, has been carrying on, with undiminished 
 success, the good work commenced by Macpherson. 
 He has pushed on his inquiries and exerted his autho- 
 rity among tribes unvisited by his predecessor, and the 
 result of each new visit to the hills, in succeeding cold 
 seasons, has been a progressive diminution in the ex- 
 tent of the great crime. Tribe after tribe has yielded 
 to the good influences of the Christian oflBicer.t Victims 
 have been brought in ; pledges have been subscribed ; 
 and the promises which have been freely made have 
 been faithfully performed. The last report of the Agent 
 for the suppression of Meriah sacrifice contains the 
 most cheering evidence ol the progress of the good 
 work ; and it may reasonably be hoped that a few more 
 years of continued activity, animated by the same hu- 
 manity and intelligence, will see the utter extinction of 
 
 * The Court of Directors watched illustration of the character of his pro- 
 these proceedings with the greatest in- ceedings and the difficulties which he 
 terest, and wrote out to recommend has overcome. One of the tribes re- 
 the same mild, conciliatory measures garding his approach with fear and sus- 
 as Cleveland and Ovans had prosecuted picion, " I used my best endeavours," 
 with such good success. " We would he says, " for several days to undeceive 
 recall to your recollection," they said, these wild people, but they either did 
 " the happy effects produced at a for- not comprehend me, or there was some 
 mer period by the benevolent and underhand influence at work which I 
 judicious arrangements of Mr. Cleve- could not detect. After repeated threats 
 land, the then Collector of Bhaugul- and demonstrations, emboldened by the 
 pore, to effect the civilisation of the Hill sraallness of the force at my disposal 
 tribes of that district, who bear a strong and excited by liquor, about three hun- 
 reserablance in many particulars to the dred of them attacked my camp, shout- 
 barbarous tribes in the Goomsur coun- ing and yelling more like demons than 
 try. Similar measures hare also been men, supported by as many more, utter- 
 successfully pursued to improve the ing cries of encouragement from the 
 condition of the various Bheel tribes rocks and jungle which surrounded the 
 in different parts of our territory." — camp, but a steady and resolute advance 
 {Court's Letter^ June 16, 1847. MS. soon drove them off, a few shots over 
 liecords.'] their heads, which did no harm, com- 
 
 t I must give at least one extract pletod the rout, and we pursued them 
 
 from Colonel Campbell's last report, in rapidly over the mountains till they 
 
FINAL RESULTS. 
 
 521 
 
 the barbarous rite throughout all the tracts of the 
 Orissan hills.* 
 
 were lost in the jungle dells on the other 
 side. The next day delegates arrived 
 from the several villages of the confede- 
 ration, and the day following, all came, 
 made their submission, delivered up 
 their Meriahs, entered into the usual 
 agreement to forsake the sacrifice of 
 human beings forever; confidence was 
 established, and my camp was crowded 
 with our late foes, gazing with astonish- 
 ment at all they saw. The whole popu- 
 lation of the neighbouring Mootahs, in- 
 cluding those of Chinna Kimedy, were 
 intensely watching the result of the 
 struggle at Lumbragaum, the success- 
 ful termination of which exercised a 
 most favorable influence on the proceed- 
 ings which followed in the large Mootah 
 of Sirdapore."— [3/S. Becords.^ 
 * The following passage froBa Colonel 
 
 Campbell's report, touching upon the 
 subject of the colonisation of the res- 
 cued Meriah victims, to whom grants of 
 land were made by Government, will 
 be read with considerable interest: — 
 " The several Meriah families settled as 
 cultivators in Goomsur, are doing very 
 well— about a third of the number 
 (those originally established) have this 
 year, for the first time, paid the rent of 
 their land. From a third the full 
 amount was collected; but remitted to 
 support them till next harvest and for 
 seed; and a third or more, recently 
 settled, are maintained at the expense 
 of the state. By the next harvest I an- 
 ticipate that nearly all will be in a con- 
 dition to support themselves." — [Colonel 
 Campbell to the Supreme Government^ 
 April 12, 1852. MS. Records.'] 
 
522 SUTTEE. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Suttee — Its Antiquity — Its Origin — General Features of the Practice— Its out- 
 ward Manifestations — Suttee under the Moguls — Its frequency under British 
 Kule — First idea of its Suppression — Lord Amherst — Lord William Bentinck 
 — Opinions and Instructions of the Court of Directors — Views of the Com- 
 pany's Servants — Suppression of Suttee in the British Provinces — Our Efforts 
 in the Native States. 
 
 In the preceding chapters I have endeavoured to show 
 the manner in which the energies and activities of 
 British officers in India have been put forth for the civiU- 
 sation of savage tribes inhabiting tracts of country brought 
 under our rule, within comparatively recent periods of 
 Indian history, and not subjected to the formal adminis- 
 trative system embraced by the Regulations. In conti- 
 nuation of this interesting inquiry, it is proposed to devote 
 the two following chapters to the consideration of certain 
 specific measures of the same humanising tendency, not 
 confined to any particular tract of country — measures for 
 the suppression of those abominations of cruelty and 
 unrighteousness, engrafted upon the social institutions of 
 the country, which generation after generation of priest- 
 ridden Hindoos, in their ignorance and credulity, have 
 practised. 
 
 Foremost among these abominations is the unholy 
 custom of " Suttee," or widow-burnmg. Whence it 
 came — what its origin, it is hard to say. Religious 
 sanction it has none.* The great Hindoo lawgiver 
 
 * I have come to this conclusion after docs," quotes no less than eight texts 
 much consideration and inquiry. Mr. from the Hindoo sacred writings in re- 
 Ward, in his " Account of the Hin- commendation of the practice— one of 
 
ORIGIN OF SUTTEE. 623 
 
 ordained it not. Constructively he legislated against it. 
 All that can be said positively on the subject is, that it 
 was an ancient custom handed down to the present 
 generation of Hindoos, from remote periods centuries 
 before Christ. 
 
 Little more is known about it than this. But many 
 conjectures have been hazarded. It has been suggested 
 by some that the custom was instituted to check an ill 
 habit common among Hindoo wives, who were, it is 
 said, addicted to the vice of poisoning their husbands. 
 Others attribute it, in no small measure, to the selfish- 
 ness of surviving relatives eager to possess themselves of 
 the widow's share of the inheritance. Then, again, it is 
 said to be only the unhappy result of the degradation 
 to which the Hindoo widow is reduced — a cruel escape 
 from the miseries of a more cruel existence. These are 
 different shapes assumed by the expediency-side of the 
 question. But more tolerant interpretations are not 
 wanting ; and charity sometimes assumes that it is an 
 enthusiastic desire to win Heaven for her lord and for 
 herself, that guides the Hindoo widow to the funeral 
 pile of the departed. 
 
 Of course it has a traditional origin. Every atrocity and 
 absurdity in Hindooism has some sort of traditional 
 origin. It is said of Suttee, that on the demise of the 
 mortal part of Brabma, his wives, inconsolable in their 
 misery, determined not to survive him, and burnt them- 
 selves mth his corpse — that the wives of the chief 
 Rajahs and other great personages followed this heroic 
 example — and that the early Brahmins gave currency to 
 
 which is from the Big -Veda, and is Some high authorities, howerer, as 
 thus translated—" O Fire, let these Kammohun Roy, Colebrooke, and Wil- 
 women with bodies anointed with cla- son, deny that tliis is the correct inter- 
 rified butter, eyes colored with stibium pretation of the text. The subject is 
 and void of tears enter thee, the parent of so much importance, in its practical 
 of water, that they may not be sepa- relations to the question of Suttee-sup- 
 rated from their husbands, but may be pression in the native states, that I 
 in union with excellent husbands, be shall advert to it again ia a note at the 
 sinless, and jewels among women." end of the chapter. 
 
524 SUTTEE ; 
 
 the doctrine, that the spirits of those heroines, then 
 purged of their guilt, ceased from their transmigrations 
 and entered into Paradise without further probation. 
 Others of less note, encouraged by these promises, sought 
 the privilege of dying in the same heroic style, and Suttee 
 became engrafted on the customs of the Gentoos. But 
 for all this, it can hardly be said that widow-bummg 
 "was ever a national custom. At no time has the practice 
 been so frequent as to constitute more than an exception 
 to the general rule of self-preservation. Still, even in 
 this exceptional state, it was something very horrible and 
 deplorable in Christian eyes, and something to be sup- 
 pressed, if suppression were possible, by a Christian go- 
 vernment established in a heathen land. 
 
 But horrible and deplorable as was the practice, even 
 a Christian writer may say, that there was often an un- 
 earthly grandeur in the bearmg of the deluded woman, 
 which filled the spectator with scarcely less of admiration 
 than of pity. You saw a young woman — one, m our 
 eyes, perhaps, little more than a child — ascend, with 
 heavenly composure, the funeral pile of her husband, and 
 with an unaltered countenance resign herself to a cruel 
 death. You saw her calmly and gracefully performing 
 the last offices due to the dead, and the last courtesies 
 to the living; serenely decorating her person, as for a 
 bridal, and in an unbroken voice repeating the formulas 
 of prayer dictated by the unpitying priests ; then walking 
 with steady tread around the pyre, mounting it without 
 a shudder of fear, and perishing without a murmur. No 
 martyr, in tlie grand old times of Apostolic Christianity, 
 died with a nobler fortitude, than often did these unhappy 
 women, under the curse of a degrading superstition. But 
 it was not always in this wise. Sometimes the miserable 
 victim went feeble, trembling, in a state of pitiable reluct- 
 ance, to the funeral pile, was forced upon the sacrificial 
 faggots by the bamboos of the by-standers, and held 
 
ITS CEREMONIALS. 525 
 
 down among the flames, while the noise of the surround- 
 ing drums and the shouts of the spectators drowned the 
 shrieks of the wretched woman, as the flames gathered 
 closely and destroyingly around her. 
 
 There are not many of my readers who have not pe- 
 rused, in some volume of travels, or of ethnological re- 
 search, a touching narrative of the self-immolation of a 
 Hindoo widow. I have a pile of books before me, from 
 any one of which I might take a fitting illustration ; but 
 I do not know any better than the following, which is 
 given in old Mr. Hoi well's tracts. The incident here 
 narrated occurred more than a century ago, " at the 
 Company's factory in Cossimbazaar, in the time of Sir 
 Francis Russell's chiefship." The author and several 
 other gentlemen of the factory were present, and the 
 details were written down at the time. " At five of the 
 clock on the morning of the 4th of February, 1742-43," 
 thus runs the story, " died Ram Chund Pundit, of the 
 Mahratta tribe, aged twenty-eight years ; his widow (for 
 he had but one wife), aged between seventeen and 
 eighteen, as soon as he expired, disdaining to wait the 
 time allowed her for reflection, immediately declared to 
 the Brahmins and witnesses present her resolution to 
 burn. As the family was of no small consideration in 
 Cossimbazaar, and her relations left no argument to dis- 
 suade her from it. Lady Russell, with the tenderest 
 humanity, sent her several messages to the same purpose ; 
 the infant state of her children (two girls and a boy, the 
 eldest not four years of age), and the terrors and pain of 
 the death she sought, were painted to her in the strongest 
 and most lively coloring. She was deaf to all. She 
 gratefully thanked Lady Russell, and sent her word she 
 had now nothing to live for, but recommended her chil- 
 dren to her protection. When the torments of burning 
 were urged in terrorem to her, she, with a resolved and 
 calm countenance, put her finger into the fire, and held it 
 
526 
 
 there a considerable time ; she then with one hand put 
 fire in the pahn of the other, sprinkled incense on it, and 
 fumigated the Brahmins. The consideration of her chil- 
 dren left destitute was again urged to her. She rephed 
 that ' He who made them would take care of them.' 
 She was at last given to understand she should not be 
 permitted to bum ; this for a short space seemed to give 
 her deep affliction, but soon recollecting herself, she 
 told them death was in her power, and that if she 
 was not allowed to bum, according to the principles 
 of her caste, she would starve herself. Her friends, 
 finding her thus peremptory and resolved, were 
 obhged at last to assent. The body of the deceased 
 was carried down to the water's side early the following 
 morning. The widow followed about ten o'clock, accom- 
 panied by three yerj principal Brahmins, her children, 
 parents, and relations, and a numerous concourse of 
 people. The order of leave for her burning did not 
 arrive till after one o'clock, and it was then brought 
 down by one of the Soubah's own officers, who had 
 orders to see that she burnt voluntarily. The time they 
 waited for the order was employed in praying with the 
 Brahmins and washing in the Ganges. As soon as it 
 arrived, she retired and stayed for the space of half an 
 hour in the midst of her female relations, amongst whom 
 was her mother. She then divested herself of her 
 bracelets and other ornaments and tied them in a cloth, 
 which hung Hke an apron before her, and was conducted 
 by her female relations to one comer of the pile. On the 
 pile was an arched arbor, formed of dry sticks, boughs, 
 and leaves, open only at one end to admit her entrance. 
 In this the body of the deceased was deposited, his head 
 at the end opposite the opening. At the corner of the 
 pile to which she had been conducted, the Brahmins had 
 made a small fire, round which she and the three 
 Brahmins sat for some minutes. One of them gave into 
 
ITS CEREMONIALS. 527 
 
 her hand a leaf of the bale- tree (the wood commonly 
 consecrated to form part of the funeral pile), with 
 sundry things on it, which slie threw into the fire; one 
 of the others gave her a second leaf, which she held over 
 the flame, while he dropped three times some ghee on it, 
 which melted and fell into the fire (these two operations 
 were preparatory symbols of her approaching dissolution 
 by fire) ; and whilst they were performing this, the 
 third Brahmm read to her some portions of the Augh- 
 torrah BJiade^ and asked her some questions, to which she 
 answered with a steady and serene countenance ; but the 
 noise was so great we could not understand what she 
 said, although we were within a yard of her. These 
 over, she was led with great solemnity three times round 
 the pile, the Brahmins reading before her; when she 
 came the third time to the small fire, she stopped, took 
 her rings off her toes and fingers and put them to her 
 other ornaments; here she took a solemn majestic leave 
 of her clnldren, parents, and relations; afi^er which one 
 of the Brahmins dipped a large wick of cotton in some 
 ghee, and gave it ready lighted into her hand, and led 
 her to the open side of the arbor. There all the Brahmins 
 fell at her feefr. Afi;er she had blessed them, they retired 
 weeping. By two steps she ascended the pile and 
 entered the arbor. On her entrance she made a pro- 
 found reverence at the feet of the deceased, and ad- 
 vanced and seated herself by his head. She looked, in 
 silent meditation, on liis face for the space of a minute, 
 then set fire to the arbor in three places. Observing 
 that she had set fire to leeward, and that the flames blew 
 from her; instantly seeing her error, she rose, set fire to 
 windward, and resumed her station. Ensign Daniel, 
 with his cane, separated the grass and leaves on the 
 windward side, by which means we had a distinct view 
 of her as she sat. With what dignity and undaunted a 
 countenance she set fire to the pile the last time and 
 
528 SUTTEE 
 
 assumed her seat, can only be conceived, for words can- 
 not convey a just idea of her. The pile being of com- 
 bustible matters, the supporters of the roof were presently 
 consumed and tumbled in upon her." 
 
 Simply and truthfully told, and with an authenticity 
 of detail, abundantly corroborated by other narrators, 
 this story may be taken as a fitting illustration of the 
 unholy practice as it existed under the Mahomedan 
 Governments, and for too many years under our own. 
 But the account is less curious in itself than it is for the 
 comments which accompany it — comments which exhibit 
 the state of feeling among English gentlemen before the 
 conquest of Bengal regarding a practice at once so dread- 
 ful and so absurd. '^ If we view," says Mr. Hoi well, " these 
 women in a just light, we shall think more candidly of 
 them, and confess that they act upon heroic as well as 
 upon rational and pious principles ;" and then he pro- 
 ceeds to show how their " ideas are raised to a soothing 
 degree of dignity befitting angelic beings." " Although 
 these principles," he adds, " are in general so diametri- 
 cally contrary to the prevailing spirit and genius of our 
 fair countrywomen, who (firom a happy train of educa- 
 tion) in captivating amusements and dissipation find 
 charms sufficient in this world to engage their wishes for 
 a perpetual residence in it, yet we will depend upon 
 their natural goodness of heart, generosity, and candor, 
 that they will, in future, look on these, their Gentoo 
 sisters of the creation, in a more favorable and consistent 
 light than probably they have hitherto done ; and not 
 deem that action an infatuation which results from prin- 
 ciple. Let them also recollect that their own history 
 afibrds illustrious examples in both sexes of voluntary 
 sacrifices by fire because they would not subscribe even 
 to a different mode of professing the same faith." There 
 was little hope for the suppression of Suttee, whilst the 
 question was argued in this manner by the most intelli- 
 
UNDER THE MOGULS. 529 
 
 gent of the Company's servants. The practice, liowever, 
 was not always so regarded as one based upon angelic 
 pnnciples to be respected by Christian men. Mr. Hol- 
 well himself admits that " there have been instances 
 known when the victim has by Europeans been forcibly 
 rescued from the pile. It is currently said and believed 
 (how truly we will not aver) that the wife of Mr. Job 
 Chamock was by him snatched from this sacrifice." 
 
 I have said that this practice of Suttee has never been 
 anything more than an exceptional abomination. It 
 never has been miiversal throughout India — never in any 
 locality has it been general. '' It never," says Elphin- 
 stone, " occurs to the south of the river Kishna ; and 
 under the Bombay presidency, including the former 
 sovereignty of the Brahmin Peishwas, it amounts to 
 thirty-two in a year. In the rest of the Deck an it is 
 probably more rare."* Mr. Forbes, who Hved during 
 the greater part of his life in Western Indin, and mixed 
 largely with the people, says that he never saw a Suttee. 
 In Bengal and Hindostan Proper, it has been more com- 
 mon — I believe, that in no part of the country has the 
 abomination flourished more than in the immediate 
 neighbourhood of Calcutta. 
 
 Under the Mahomedan Governments the practice of 
 Suttee seems at least to have been tolerated. Akbar, it 
 is true, discountenanced it, and by something more effec- 
 tual than empty words. His abhorrence of the cruel rite 
 was expressed by an act of personal interference. On one 
 occasion when other means had failed to save a doomed 
 widow from the funeral pile, he rode out to the place of 
 cremation and carried her off on his horse. But it does 
 not seem that his successors exhibited any like noble in- 
 
 * Mr. Orme in one of the notes of his which we suppose to be the honest but 
 
 Historical Fragments, says :—" The Je- enthusiastic credulity of missionaries 
 
 suits in Jarrie say that three hundred lamenting the infernal state of the 
 
 and seventy- five women burnt with the heathens they wished to convert." 
 Naique of Tanjore, who died in 1602— 
 
 2m 
 
530 SUTTEE. 
 
 stances of humanity. The Hindoos were compelled to 
 obtain the permission of the Mahomedan officers before 
 a widow proceeded to the sacrifice ; but this permission 
 was never withheld. It seems, indeed, to have been a 
 source of profit to the local authorities. The Mussulman 
 governors had their pickings before the Brahmins came 
 in for their share. It seems, however, that some com- 
 punctions bubbled up in the midst of their cupidity, or 
 that they made a pretence of endeavouring to dissuade 
 the wretched creature from burning herself, for Taver- 
 nier says, " The governor, finding that no persuasion 
 will alter the woman's resolution, but more especially 
 perceiving by the signs which his secretary makes him 
 that he has received the coin, in a surly manner gives the 
 woman leave, bidding the devil take her and all her 
 kindred." 
 
 And, practically, for a great many years, it must be 
 admitted, this was our own mode of dealing with the 
 evil. We let the women bum according to their plea- 
 sure — or according to the pleasure of their fi:iends — or 
 according to the pleasure of the priesthood. Indeed, we 
 officially recognised the right of these poor people to 
 destroy themselves by issuing regulations against the 
 compulsory performance of the ceremony. A circular 
 order of the Nizamut Adawlut* of Bengal set forth the 
 particular circumstances under which the performance of 
 Suttee would be illegal in the British provinces, and so 
 recognised its general legality. The result, as might be 
 expected, was that the abomination steadily increased, f 
 
 * April 10, 1810. Mr. Harrington, the policy pursued by the two Govern- 
 in a minute, dated Feb. 18, 1827, says ments for the purpose of checking 
 that Mr. H. Colebrooke prepared this Suttee. The supreme Government 
 order — but Mr. Colebrooke denied the has promulgated circular orders, con- 
 charge, alleging that he was at the taining as well a recognition of the 
 Cape when the order was issued. ceremony as a prohibition against its 
 
 t The Bombay Government, how- compulsory performance. The Bombay 
 
 ever, claimed credit for having acted Government has, on the contrary (ex- 
 
 with greater wisdom in this matter, cept in the instance of the form in 
 
 *' There is a marked difference," wrote which the pile was to be constructed, 
 
 Mr. Warden, in a council minute, "in and in respect to which I now regret 
 
INCREASE IN BENGAL. 531 
 
 It appears by the Bengal returns for 1819, that 650 
 cases of Suttee were reported, of which 421 were said to 
 have occurred in the Calcutta division alone. The latter 
 number was 43 m excess of the gross amount reported 
 throughout all the Bengal provinces in 1815. The re- 
 ported increase, it was alleged, might be partly attribut- 
 able to the greater vigilance of our officers. It might not 
 have been, it was said, so much that more cases had 
 occurred as that more cases had been detected. But 
 making all due allowance for the result of the more 
 energetic inquiries that were instituted, I fear it must 
 still be admitted that the circular orders which had been 
 issued in 1810,* with the humane intention of diminishing 
 the extent of the evil, in reahty tended to increase it. Mr. 
 Courtenay Smith, one of the ablest and best judges who 
 ever sat on the Indian bench, officially declared that 
 these orders had " spread and confirmed the execrable 
 usage." It is true that many offenders had been tried 
 and punished for abetting the illegal, or irregular per- 
 formance of the rite, but it was of little use to strike at 
 accidental symptoms — to prune the ofishoots and excres- 
 cences, whilst we were laying manure to the very root 
 of the evil itself. 
 
 That it was a very grievous and intolerable evil — that 
 the abomination was one to be deplored and execrated 
 by all Christian men, need hardly be asserted in this 
 place; but the Company's servants although, with one 
 consent, they deplored and execrated, were not all of 
 
 that we interfered at all), kept the re- clearest and most unmistakeahle man- 
 
 cognitionary principle of the law en- ner. Would they not have legalised 
 
 tirely in the background and promi- murder if they had issued an order 
 
 nently brought forward and enforced its decreeing that the people should 
 
 prohibitionary provisions. . . . The thenceforth only kill each other with 
 
 effects have been equally remarkable, regulation swords? 
 It has gradually declined in the old and * April 10, 1810. See also circular 
 
 new provinces dependent on Bombay, orders of 29th April, 1813, January, 
 
 but seems stationary under Bengal." 1815, 25th of June and 1 1th September, 
 
 It appears to me, however, that in pre- 1817. The police were instructed to 
 
 scribing a regulation pattern of funeral ascertain that the ceremony was per- 
 
 I»le, the Bombay Government recog- formed in conformity with the rules of 
 
 nisedthe legality of the practice in the the Shastre. 
 
 2m2 
 
532 SUTTEE. 
 
 one opinion regarding the duty or the expediency of 
 authoritative interference with a custom hallowed at 
 least by time. Many doubted and wavered — were 
 timid and irresolute — unwilling to take the initiative and 
 recommend the withdrawal of the constructive sanction 
 which had been given to the ceremonial murder of 
 Hindoo women. But the Court of Directors had for 
 some time been brooding over this painful subject — 
 " the killing," as they described it, " the killing (and that 
 in the most horrid mode) of an individual at the desire 
 of the party slain ;" a great movement had taken place 
 among them and clearly perceiving their duty, as a 
 Christian Government, they did not hesitate to declare 
 their righteous convictions, and to endeavour to secure 
 their practical enforcement. "It is undeniable," they 
 wrote, " that in tolerating the practice, imder any regu- 
 lations or restrictions whatsoever, you tolerate what you 
 have virtually forbidden in those regulations, and afford 
 the natives grounds for concluding that the practice of 
 Suttee was to be excepted from their operation." 
 
 They then proceeded to state the ground on which 
 they believed that the toleration of the practice might be 
 withdrawn. They urged — Istly. That Suttee is not 
 founded on or enjoined by any Hindoo law, and is only 
 recommended, not enjoined, by the Shastres ; and as to 
 the law, it is, on the contrary, continuall}^ discouraged by 
 their most eminent and venerated lawgiver. Menu, whose 
 decree for the guidance of widows is thus translated by 
 Sir W. Jones. " Let a widow emaciate her body by 
 living voluntarily upon pine-flowers, roots, and fruits, and 
 let her not when her lord is deceased even pronoimce 
 the name of another man. Let her continue imtil death 
 forgetting all injuries, performing harsh duties, avoiding 
 all sensual pleasure, and cheerfully practising the incom- 
 parable rules of virtue, which have been followed by 
 such women as were devoted to one only husband," &c. 
 
VIEWS OF THE COURT. 533 
 
 2ndly. That other barbarous customs and unknown 
 Hindoo practices had been prohibited without dangerous 
 consequences — without even exciting disaffection or 
 murmur. 3rdlv. That the British Government having 
 ceased to recognise the impunity of Brahmins without any 
 evil consequences, there could be no ground for sup- 
 posing that the abolition of Suttee would have an ill 
 effect. 4thly. That there is a great difference of opinion 
 on the subject of Suttee among the Hindoos — that it is 
 discountenanced among the upper and educated classes 
 — that in some districts it is unknown, and in others of 
 rare occurrence. 5thly. That the practice was not per- 
 mitted by the Foreign States when they held power and 
 territory in India. 
 
 And lastly, say the Court, " which we think in itself 
 conclusive of the practicability of abolishing the practice, 
 or, at least, of the safety wdth which it might be prohi- 
 bited, that in many instances it has been actually and 
 effectually prevented from taking place, without exciting 
 even a murmur, by either direct interference on the part 
 of the local authority, or by refusal of permission, or by a 
 procedure similar to that which was adopted by the cri- 
 minal judge of the Zillah of Masulipatam as we have 
 recently noticed." 
 
 This was written in 1824. Lord Amherst was then 
 Governor-General of India. There were some very able 
 men around him, and there were, too, some very able 
 men on the Sudder bench. The question now to be 
 submitted to them, and to all the leading civil and po- 
 litical officers in the three presidencies, was one of the 
 deepest interest and the most pressing importance. Called 
 upon to express freely their opinions, they enunciated 
 their \dews upon all its rehgious and legal, its social and 
 political bearings; and never, perhaps before or since, 
 has any question of Indian policy been so thoroughly 
 sifted and so minutely explored. I can only afford to 
 
634 SUTTEE. 
 
 give a few illustrations of the varied opinions whicli were 
 recorded in response to tlie inquiries tlien instituted by 
 the supreme Government. 
 
 Foremost among those who recorded a strong opinion 
 in favor of the withdrawal of all authoritative sanction 
 of the cruel rite was Mr. Courtenay Smith, one of the 
 judges of the Sudder. " There would be no discontent," 
 he wrote,* "no disturbance — no general disturbance, 
 certainly, anywhere ; and if any local and partial disturb- 
 ance occurred it might be put down as easily as any 
 breach of the peace. Our native military, were it neces- 
 sary to call them in, would assist as readily on this as on 
 
 any other occasion I sincerely hope that this foul 
 
 stain will be removed from the Company's Government 
 before its final expiration, supposed to be near at hand. 
 .... So long as having the power we want the will, or 
 having the power and the will, we want the energy to 
 aboUsh it, it may be fairly doubted whether we are de 
 jure rulers of the country." 
 
 Mr. Alexander Ross, another judge of the Sudder — 
 a man of a benevolent and thoughtful nature, whose quiet 
 manner and retiring habits were the outer teguments of 
 moral courage and resolution of a very liigh order, thus 
 wrote with reference to the report which had been 
 called for from the Nizamut Adawlut — " In the report 
 on Suttee now to be submitted to Government, I think 
 the Court should again urge its total abolition. . 
 My opinion is that an enactment prohibiting the sacrifice 
 of Suttee would be regarded by the native army with 
 nearly total indifference, as the civil enactments of the 
 Government generally are." 
 
 Another judge of the Sudder, Mr. R. H. Rattray, 
 when called upon for his opinion, boldly declared that 
 he recommended the authoritative suppression of Suttee, 
 and was prepared personally to give effect to his recom- 
 
 * Not. 1, 1826. 
 
VIEWS OF THE COMPANY'S SERVANTS. 535 
 
 mendation. " I would have," he wrote,* " a regula- 
 tion prepared with a studied perspicuity, explaining 
 in simple but forcible language the religious, the 
 moral, and the legal grounds upon which this rite, 
 abhorrent to God and man, could no longer be tole- 
 rated ; and by this enactment I would abolish the 
 sacrifice at once and for ever. I would not recommend 
 for execution by others what I should shrink from or 
 evade myself. If this danger be apprehended, and as 
 an executive officer my personal services can aid this 
 consummation so devoutly to be wished, I am as ready 
 to support it as I am to urge the measure ; but I 
 maintain that nothing is necessary to its accomplish- 
 ment but the expressed fiat of the ruling power." 
 
 But there were able and conscientious men in the 
 Company's service at this time, who doubted the ex- 
 pediency of any comprehensive measure for the au- 
 thoritative extinction of Suttee in the Company's 
 domains. At the beginning of 1827, Mr. Butterworth 
 Bayley, one of the most distinguished and experienced 
 administrators in the country, drew up an elaborate 
 minute, in which he recommended that experiments 
 should be made in the first instance in the Non- 
 Begulation Provinces. About the same time Mr. 
 Harrington, who fully concmTcd in this suggestion, 
 drew up a Eegulation, declaring the inhuman practice 
 of burning or burying alive the widows of deceased 
 HiQdoos, to be illegal and punishable by our criminal 
 courts. He did not believe that the time had yet 
 come when publicity could be given to such an order, 
 but he submitted it for futiu'e consideration. About 
 the same time Mr. C. B. Elliott, after expressing a 
 very strong opinion regarding the iniquity and ille- 
 gality of the custom, recommended that the experi- 
 
 ♦ August 26, 1828. 
 
536 SUTTEE. 
 
 ment of abolition should be made in the Ceded and 
 Conquered Provinces, because the practice was com- 
 paratively rare in that part of the country, whilst it 
 was rife in Bengal. 
 
 Upon a review of all the opinions that had been laid 
 before him, Lord Amherst came to the mortifying 
 conclusion that it would not be wise to authorise any 
 direct interference with a hoary custom which the 
 priesthood had an immediate interest in maintaining 
 inviolate. It appeared to him that the wisest course 
 would be to trust to the progress of education, and to 
 leave Suttee to die a natural death. " I am not pre- 
 pared," he wrote, in March, 1827, " to recommend an 
 
 enactment prohibiting Suttees altogether I 
 
 must frankly confess, though at the risk of being con- 
 sidered insensible to the enormity of the evU, that I 
 am inclined to recommend our trusting to the progress 
 now making in the diffusion of knowledge among the 
 natives, for the gradual suppression of this detestable 
 superstition. I cannot believe it possible that the burn- 
 ing or burying alive of widows will long survive the 
 advancement which every year brings mth it in useful 
 and rational learning." 
 
 Nor did further consideration and further informa- 
 tion induce him to modify this opinion. " The reports 
 of our different officers," he wrote in the following 
 year, " do not appear to me to point out any specific 
 course short of absolute prohibition, by which this 
 barbarous practice could be suddenly checked, or 
 the number of victims very suddenly reduced. But 
 I think there is reason to believe and expect that, 
 except on the occurrence of some very general sick- 
 ness, such as that which prevailed in the lower parts 
 of Bengal in 1825, the progress of general instruction 
 and the unostentatious exertions of our local officers 
 
AMHERST AND BENTINCK. 537 
 
 will produce the happy effect of a gradual diminution, 
 and at no very distant period the final extinction of 
 the barbarous rite of Suttee."* 
 
 But the period of Lord Amherst's tenure of ofiice 
 was fast drawing to a close. Before the year in which 
 this minute was written had expired, his successor was 
 occupying the vice-regal chair. The high moral courage 
 of Lord William Bentinck faced the abomination Avith- 
 out shrinking. He knew that it was his duty, as a 
 Christian statesman, to incur some risk with so great 
 an object before him as the emancipation of the 
 country from the cruel slavery which an interested 
 priesthood had long riveted upon it. But he did not 
 fling himself hastily and heedlessly into the good work. 
 He advanced with energy, but with caution. He 
 sought the opinions of all qualified to declare them- 
 selves with authority on the subject ; and having 
 weighed these opinions — many they were and most 
 conflicting — ^he deliberately formed his own. One 
 thing he knew, which greatly encouraged and sustained 
 him. The Court of Directors had, some time before, 
 spoken out in plain, unmistakeable language, clearly 
 enunciating their views of this great question, and 
 combating all the arguments that could be adduced 
 against the abolition of the rite. The Governor- General, 
 therefore, if he had not before leaving England re- 
 ceived the instructions of the Court, or listened to 
 their recommendations, knew that he would be sup- 
 ported by the home authorities if he struck a blow at 
 the abomination. He did not needlessly protract his 
 investigations, or hesitate when once he was in a 
 position to decide. So before the year 1829 had worn 
 to a close, an act was passed in the Council Chamber, 
 prohibiting, under stringent penal enactments, the 
 
 * MinuU of Lord Amherst, April 10, 1828. Published Papers. 
 
538 SUTTEE : 
 
 practice of Suttee throughout the provinces subject to 
 our rule. The importance of the measure induces me 
 to give the Eegulation entire : 
 
 A JRegulation for declaring the practice of Suttee , or of burning or 
 hurying alive the widows of Hindoos, illegal, and punishable by the 
 Criminal Courts. Passed by the Governor- General in Council on 
 the Uh December, 1829. 
 
 The practice of Suttee, or of burning or burying alive the 
 widows of Hindoos, is revolting to the feelings of human nature. 
 It is nowhere enjoined by the religion of the Hindoos as an im- 
 perative duty; on the contrary, a life of piety and retirement on 
 the part of the widow is more especially and preferably inculcated, 
 and by a vast majority of people throughout India the practice is 
 not kept up or observed. In some extensive districts it does not 
 exist ; in those in which it has been most frequent, it is notorious 
 that in many instances acts of atrocity have been perpetrated 
 which have been shocking to the Hindoos themselves, and in 
 their eyes unlawful and wicked. The measures hitherto adopted 
 to discourage and prevent such acts have failed of success, and the 
 Governor-General in Council is deeply impressed with the con- 
 viction that the abuses in question cannot be effectually put an 
 end to without abolishing the practice altogether. Actuated by 
 these considerations, the Governor-General in Council — without 
 intending to depart from one of the first and most important prin- 
 ciples of the system of British government in India, that all classes 
 of the people be secure in the observance of their religious usages, 
 so long as that system can be adhered to without violation of the 
 paramount dictates of justice and humanity — has deemed it right 
 to establish the following rules, which are hereby enacted to be in 
 force from the time of their promulgation throughout the terri- 
 tories immediately subject to the Presidency of Fort William. 
 
 I. The practice of Suttee, or of burning or burying alive the 
 widows of Hindoos, is hereby declared illegal, and punishable by 
 the Criminal Court. 
 
 II. First. All Zemindars, Talookdars, or other proprietors of 
 land, whether Malguzaree or Lakhcraj ; all Sudder farmers and 
 under-renters of land of every description ; all dependent Talook- 
 dars: all Naibs, and other local agents; all native officers em- 
 
ITS ABOLITION. 539 
 
 ployed in the collection of the revenue and rents of lands on the 
 part of the Government or the Courts of Wards ; and all Mun- 
 duls and other head men of villages, are hereby declared especially 
 accountable for the immediate communication to the officers of 
 the nearest police-station of any intended sacrifice of the nature 
 described in the foregoing section, and any Zemindars, or other 
 description of persons above noticed, to whom such responsibility 
 is declared to attach, who may be convicted of wilfully neglecting 
 or delaying to furnish the information above required, shall be 
 liable to be fined by the magistrate in any sum not exceeding two 
 hundred rupees, and in default of payment, to be confined for any 
 period of imprisonment not exceeding six months. 
 
 vSecond. Immediately on receiving intelligence that the sacrifice 
 declared illegal by this Regulation is likely to occur, the police 
 Darogah shall either repair in person to the spot, or depute his 
 Mohurrir or Jemadar, accompanied by one or more Burkundazes 
 of the Hindoo religion ; and it shall be the duty of the police- 
 officers to announce to the persons assembled for the performance 
 of the ceremony, that it is illegal, and to endeavour to prevail on 
 them to disperse, explaining to them that in the event of their 
 persisting in it, they will involve themselves in a crime, and 
 become subject to punishment by the criminal courts. Should 
 the parties assembled proceed, in defiance of these remonstrances, 
 to carry the ceremony into effect, it shall be the duty of the 
 police-officers to use all lawful means in their power to prevent 
 the sacrifice taking place, and to apprehend the principal persons 
 aiding and abetting in the performance of it ; and in the event of 
 the peace-officers being unable to apprehend them, they shall en- 
 deavour to ascertain their names and places of abode, and shall 
 immediately communicate the whole of the particulars to the 
 magistrate, or the joint magistrates, for his orders. 
 
 III. Should intelligence of a sacrifice, declared illegal by this 
 Regulation, not reach the police-officers until after it shall have 
 actually taken place, or should the sacrifice have been carried into 
 effect before their arrival at the spot, they will nevertheless in- 
 stitute a full inquiry into the circumstances of the case, in like 
 manner as on all other occasions of unnatural death, and report 
 them for the information and orders of the magistrate to whom 
 they may be subordinate. 
 
 IV. First. On the receipt of the reports required to be made 
 
540 SUTTEE 
 
 by the police Darogahs, under the provision of the foregoing 
 section, the magistrate, or joint magistrates, of the jurisdiction in 
 which the sacrifice may have taken place, shall inquire into the 
 circumstances of the case, and shall adopt the necessary measures 
 for bringing the parties concerned in promoting it to trial before 
 the Court of Circuit. 
 
 Second. It is hereby declared, that after the promulgation of 
 this regulation, all persons convicted of aiding and abetting in 
 the sacrifice of a Hindoo widow, by burning or burying her alive, 
 whether the sacrifice be voluntary on her part or not, shall be 
 deemed guilty of culpable homicide, and shall be liable to punish- 
 ment by fine or by imprisonment, or by both fine and imprison- 
 ment, at the discretion of the Court of Circuit, according to the 
 nature and circumstances of the case, and the degree of guilt 
 established against the offender ; nor shall it be held to be any 
 plea of justification that he or she was desired by the party sacri- 
 ficed to assist in putting her to death. 
 
 Third. Persons committed to take their trial before the Court 
 of Circuit for the offence above mentioned, shall be admitted to 
 bail, or not, at the discretion of the magistrate, subject to the 
 general rules in force in regard to the admission of bail. 
 
 V. It is further deemed necessary to declare, that nothing con- 
 tained in this Regulation shall be construed to preclude the Court 
 of Nizamut Adawlut from passing sentence of death on persons 
 convicted of using violence or compulsion, or of having assisted 
 in burning or burying alive a Hindoo widow, while laboring 
 under a state of intoxication or stupefaction, or other cause im- 
 peding the exercise of her free will, when, from the aggravated 
 nature of the offence proved against the prisoner, the Court may 
 see no circumstances to render him or her a proper object of 
 mercy. 
 
 The event justified the expectations of those who 
 believed that no danger would result from the publi- 
 cation of this prohibitory enactment. It was a great 
 experiment, and a successful one. Its success was 
 fraught with a great lesson. The prime want of 
 human governments is a want of faith. A bold policy 
 is generally a successful one. It is always successful 
 
UNDER THE NATIVE STATES. 54^1 
 
 when the boldness is the result of a strong determina- 
 tion to do what is right, and to leave secondary con- 
 siderations to themselves. We have been continually 
 conjuring up bugbears in the distance only to 
 discover, upon a nearer approach, that they are the 
 merest conceptions of the brain. If we could only 
 beheve the great truth, that a righteous policy is sure, 
 in the end, to be a successful one, how much gromidless 
 alarm and unnecessary anxiety we should be spared 
 in all our dealings with our fellows. 
 
 In our own provinces the work was now complete. 
 The promulgation of the Act gave the death-blow to 
 Suttee throughout the Company's dominions. But it 
 still was a living reality in other parts of India, and 
 had many homes in the Native States. The British 
 Government knew well the existence of the evil under 
 the rule of the native princes, but at first they rather 
 desired its suppression than sought to suppress it by 
 any direct exercise of their influence or authority. In 
 these Native States we have always a staff of British 
 political or diplomatic officers. In the internal ad- 
 ministration of the country, they are expressly pro- 
 hibited from interfering; but the influence of these 
 representatives of the paramount power at the native 
 Courts, though it may differ according to the personal 
 character of the functionary himself, is in all cases very 
 considerable. It is the influence partly of superior in- 
 telligence, partly of the weight of authority derived 
 from the accident of his position. Without any direct 
 interference, any open attempt to dictate or to control, 
 he may, by friendly intercourse with the native officials, 
 and a gentle insinuation of serviceable truths, quietly in- 
 stil sound opinions, and bring about great reforms. To 
 what extent this influence was exercised, during the few 
 first years after the suppression of Suttee in the British 
 
542 SUTTEE. 
 
 provinces, to induce our native allies to follow our ex- 
 ample, I do not pretend to know. I believe, however, that 
 little was done until about the year 1840, when a great 
 movement seems to have been made in Western India 
 and the Guicowar, and several princes of less note, 
 prompted by our British officers, issued proclamations to 
 their subjects prohibitory of Suttee. 
 
 But of all the efforts made in the Native States, that 
 made in Rajpootana is the most noticeable, both on ac- 
 count of the obstacles to success, and the energy and 
 adroitness with which they were overcome. In that 
 part of India nothing of the kind had ever been at- 
 tempted before. Colonel Sutherland, Political Agent in 
 Eajpootana, one of the most distinguished Oriental 
 diplomatists, a man of equal courage and humanity, 
 had never conceived the idea of interfering with an 
 ancient custom held in such high esteem by these 
 sensitive people. It was supposed to be *^ against 
 the principles of Government" to interfere with such 
 things. 
 
 But there was one of his assistants, at that time in charge 
 of our relations with the Jyepore state, who had long been 
 brooding over the great iniquity, and thinking whether 
 something could not be done at least to mitigate the evil. 
 Major Ludlow had achieved great success in an effort to 
 induce the states to co-operate in a measure tending to 
 check the crime of female infanticide; and it occurred to 
 him that, perhaps, his influence might be exerted with the 
 same result to check the kindred abomination of Suttee. 
 But he was obliged to tread warily in such a work — warily 
 but very firmly. First of all, he won over the Finance 
 Minister to his cause — and, through the Finance Minister 
 he contrived to enlist the sympathies and stir the convic- 
 tions of the High Priest. The arguments of the British 
 officer told upon the sacerdotal mind, and in less than 
 
LUDLOW IN RAJPOOT ANA. 
 
 543 
 
 six months he put forth a document, publicly declaring 
 that the right of Suttee had no warrant in the Hindoo 
 Scriptures.* Such a manifesto as this was not without its 
 due effect on the minds of the Jyepore chiefs. The Coun- 
 cil of Eegency began to waver. Some of the small tribu- 
 tary states actually abjured the rite; then the Jyepore Go- 
 vernment, on the 23rd of April, 1846, publicly declared 
 the act illegal ; and before the end of the year eleven out 
 of the eighteen Rajpoot states had publicly renounced 
 the rite. Other states subsequently gave in their adhe- 
 sion. The most important recent adhesion is that of the 
 Rajah of Joudhpore. Of the same clan (Rhatore) are 
 the chiefs of Bekaneer and Kishengurh, who may be 
 expected very soon to follow the example of Joudhpore. 
 
 * There is a very interesting record 
 of Colonel Ludlow's measures in Raj- 
 pootana, in a recent article in the 
 Quarterly Review, which has doubtless 
 rendered them familiar to the public. 
 I give the account of Ludlow's first step: 
 " As an essential condition to success, 
 and on pain of having his operations 
 summarily suspended, Major Ludlow 
 was compelled to work unseen. He 
 determined, if possible, to induce two 
 or three trustworthy and influential 
 natives to undertake the cause; to ply 
 them with the critical objection drawn 
 from the older Scriptures ; and lay de- 
 claring his own resolution to remain 
 neutral till public opinion had declared 
 itself, to excite in them the ambition of 
 taking the lead. He found a person 
 admirably adapted to his purpose in 
 the Financial AOnister of the Court at 
 which he was accredited. Seth Ma- 
 nick Chund belonged to a sect whose 
 distaste for destruction in all its forms 
 is singular even in the East. The Oswal 
 tribe do not wilfully slay the meanest 
 animal. . . . One result of this ten- 
 derness for life in every form is, that 
 they disapprove of Suttee. To the 
 Financial Minister, therefore, and to 
 his own head Moonshee, Major Ludlow 
 communicated all the arguments he 
 thought Ukely to be of use ; and thus 
 charged, they betook themselves to the 
 High Priest of Jyepore. . . . Warily, 
 
 and as if on their own account, they 
 pressed this important dignitary with 
 the omission of all mention of Suttee in 
 the Code of Menu ; with the inferential 
 prohibition of the rite in the denun- 
 ciations contained in that work against 
 suicide; and Avith its promise to widows 
 living chastely of eternal felicity with 
 their husbands — whereas even the wri- 
 tings which countenanced the sacrifice, 
 limited the duration of its recompense 
 to the comparative bagatelle of forty- 
 five millions of years. . . . Major Lud- 
 low wound up these arguments by a 
 shrewd appeal to national pride. Suttee 
 (urged his emissaries), unwarranted by 
 Menu, was the evident invention of 
 some degenerate race, whose women 
 were worthless, and whose widows, if 
 they survived, would bring reproach on 
 the memory of their lords. To such it 
 might be left. The honor of Rajpoot 
 husbands was in safer keeping, and the 
 fair fame of their daughters was aspersed 
 by the mere retention of so disgraceful 
 a security. The High Priest received 
 these representations with surprising 
 candor. In less than six months he 
 was induced to put forth a document, 
 in which he adopted all the theological 
 arguments, and declared authoritatively 
 that the self-immolation of widows was 
 less meritorious than their practising 
 * the living Suttee of chastity and de- 
 TOtion.' " 
 
5M 
 
 SUTTEE. 
 
 With the exception of Oodepore, the Rajpoot states, 
 which are not yet ranged among the abohtionists, are, 
 as regards position and influence, comparatively unim- 
 portant. 
 
 In distant parts of India, the good example was 
 largely followed ; and before the end of 1847, the Go- 
 vernor-General, Lord Hardinge, announced that " Suttee, 
 Infanticide, and Slavery, are prohibited throughout the 
 territory* forming the remotest Hindoo principality of 
 India."t 
 
 * Cashmere. A proclamation was 
 issued by Golab Singh, declaring that 
 Suttee, Slavery, and Infanticide, were 
 *' hateful to God and man," and setting 
 forth that if any persons were con- 
 victed of these crimes, the whole of 
 their property should be confiscated, 
 and they themselves imprisoned. Lord 
 Hardinge published in the Gazette an 
 abstract translation of this proclama- 
 tion, and recited at the same time the 
 names of other native chiefs who had 
 pursued the same righteous line of 
 policy. The members of the Bombay 
 Government considered whether it 
 would be expedient also to publish the 
 names of the principal chiefs under 
 that presidency who had suppressed 
 the atrocities mentioned ; but Sir 
 George Clerk declared his opinion that 
 they did not like to be gazetted. 
 
 t In a note at the commencement of 
 the chapter I said that I should refer 
 
 again to the alleged sanction given by 
 the Kig Veda to the practice of Suttee. 
 I had collected some authorities, from 
 the writings of Colebrooke, Rammohun 
 Roy, &c., but the attention of Professor 
 Wilson has recently been drawn to 
 the subject, and he has examined the 
 doubtful texts. At all events, in a lec- 
 ture delivered in January to the Asiatic 
 Society, he thus settled the question, 
 and I am quite satisfied with the settle- 
 ment: — " It was scarcely to be expected 
 that any warrant should be found for 
 the burning of widows, as that practice 
 is not enjoined by the lawgiver Menu, 
 a later authority. One passage in the 
 Rig, cited as authority, has been veri- 
 fied, but with a very unexpected result ; 
 for the only passage relating to widow- 
 hood inculcates the very reverse of self- 
 immolation. In fact, it seems almost 
 certain that they did not burn but bury 
 their dead." 
 
FEMALE INFANTICIDE. 545 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Infanticide — Varieties of the Crime — Love of Offspring among the Hindoos — 
 — Rajpoot Honor— Its Excesses — Causes of the prevalence of the Evil — Our 
 First Keraedial Efforts — Jonatlian Duncan — Colonel Walker — Failure of our 
 First Endeavours — Disparity of the Sexes — Renewed Attempts — Mr. Wil- 
 loughby — Major Ludlow — Increased Success — Present State of Infanticide in 
 India. 
 
 In this Christian country it is to be feared that the dark 
 crime of infanticide is painfully increasing amongst us. 
 Tliis much at least has been said of late by wise judges 
 on the bench, and by earnest writers in the public jour- 
 nals ; and the records of our criminal courts unhappily 
 show that this is no imaginary complaint.* It is a grave 
 fact, wretchedly significant of the state of morals amongst 
 us. Still it is only a crime — incidental, exceptional. In 
 some parts of India it has been, for many generations, a 
 custom. 
 
 It is curious to contrast the causes of the crime in the 
 two countries. A sagacious Rajpoot arguing the question 
 Avith us, might, perhaps, point triumphantly to the cir- 
 cumstances which engender the crime in England, in 
 justification of the custom which obtains among his 
 own people. It is, he might say, in anticipation and 
 prevention of those very circumstances that the dreadful 
 practice has been instituted. But to demonstrate the 
 fact is not to prove the justification. 
 
 * Mr. Raikes, in his very interesting of our own Saxon forefathers, we can 
 
 volume of " Notes on the North- Western scarce name a country unstained by the 
 
 Provinces of India," says : "Infanticide blood of its infant children." Would to 
 
 is a world-wide crime. Except the land God that we were free from the stain I 
 
 2n 
 
546 FEMALE INFANTICIDE. 
 
 In England infant life is secretly destroyed by unmar- 
 ried females. In an agony of shame and terror a poor 
 girl who has become a mother, but is not a wife, strangles 
 or suffocates her illegitimate babe. In all probability 
 she has been betrayed and deserted, and there is a male 
 offender, of whom the law takes no cognizance, more 
 guilty than the actual murderess. Still, it is the un- 
 chastity of the female that is the proximate cause of the 
 crime. The Eajpoot assumes that imchastity is the 
 necessary condition of unmarried life. And to preserve 
 the purity of his daughters, and the honor of his family, 
 he murders his female children a few hours after their 
 birth. 
 
 Marriage, in both cases, is the remedy ; but the dif- 
 ficulties in the way of its application are diametrically 
 the reverse. In England, marriage is honorable; but 
 celibacy is not disgraceful. In India, celibacy is dis- 
 graceful. An unmarried daughter is a reproach to her 
 parents, and a reproach to herself.* Indeed, more or 
 less, the birth of a daughter is always a calamity. It is 
 a disappointment in the first instance, because to beget 
 sons is glorious in the estimation of a Hindoo, and there 
 cannot be too many born into his house. And it is a 
 care to him afterwards, because marriage is a necessity, 
 and the circle of suitability is narrowed by the exclusive 
 ness of caste. The higher the social degree of the 
 family, the greater the difficulty. In England infan- 
 ticide is peculiar to the lower orders ; in India it is 
 peculiar to the higher. In England it is the activity of 
 degradation ; in India the activity of pride. In England 
 male and female infants are murdered with equal reck- 
 lessness. In India the destroying hand is laid only on 
 the latter. But in both cases, it is the non-attainment 
 
 * " So great a disgrace," says Ward, were married to an aged Koolin Brah- 
 
 in his account of the Hindoos, " is in- min, as his friends were carrying him to 
 
 curred by remaining unmarried, that the river to die." 
 on one occasion a number of old maids 
 
EXTENT OF THE CRIME. 547 
 
 of honorable marriage in esse^ or in posse, which impels 
 to the commission of the crime. 
 
 In a country where polygamy is common, and concu- 
 binage not dishonorable — ^where an unconnected man, 
 indeed, is rarely to be found — it might seem that women 
 would be too much in demand to warrant, at any stage 
 of existence, the destruction of female life. And, in 
 truth, the customs of the country are such that any 
 widely-diffused system of female infanticide must be 
 wholly incompatible with them. Their co-existence 
 would be a physical impossibility. The number of 
 child-murders, committed in the worst of times, has 
 never been sufficiently great to have any general effect 
 upon the population. But confined as it has been to 
 certain localities, and to certain tribes, the sacrifice of 
 life, viewed in connexion with those limits, has been 
 something terrible to contemplate. It has amounted, 
 indeed, to an almost total annihilation of female life in a 
 large number of high-caste families. 
 
 The infanticide of which I am now writing is, the 
 systematic female infanticide of Central and Western 
 India. Child-murder among the Hindoos has as- 
 sumed other forms, but the evil has been less extensive, 
 and more easily repressible when it has been the growth 
 of religious superstition, and has taken a more overt 
 and violent shape. In the latter case, it has been an 
 open sacrifice, with the intent of propitiating one of the 
 bloody deities of the Hindoo mythology. In Southern 
 and Eastern Bengal, children of both sexes have been 
 offered up by their parents sacrifices to Gunga. Here, 
 however, the object that is sought to be attained by the 
 commission of the atrocity, is the very opposite of that 
 which the Eajpoot of Malwah, Jusselmere, or Goojrat 
 sets before him when he commits, or decrees the com- 
 mission of the crime. In Bengal and Orissa these sacrifices 
 have been consummated in fulfilment of a vow, and are 
 
 2n2 
 
548 FEMALE INFANTICIDE. 
 
 thank-offerings in return for a favorable response to tlie 
 prayers for offspring witli which childless women hg-ve 
 wearied their gods, when the curse of barrenness has 
 seemed to press heavily upon them. Slaves to a dreadful 
 superstition, they vow to offer up their firstborn to Gunga 
 if the deity will answer their prayers. In the fulness of 
 time the vow is consummated. The child, doomed from 
 the hour of its birth, is suffered to live long enough to 
 root itself deeply in the affections of its parents, and 
 then, on a given day, is deliberately thrust into the cruel 
 stream.* These, however, are exceptional cases — acci- 
 dental crimes. The law can reach them, and has 
 reached them ; and it may be said that they are now 
 almost blotted out from the catalogue of Pagan atro- 
 cities. The love of offspring — the desire to surround 
 themselves with children — ^has driven these wretched 
 people to offer up these dreadful sacrifices to their false 
 gods. But among the Kajpoots of Central and Western 
 India, it is the desire to lessen the number of their chil- 
 dren that impels them to destroy the infant life of their 
 female offspring. There is nothing of a religious sacrifice 
 about it. It is simply a matter of convenience. In 
 very many parts of the world infanticide is a common 
 thing — a rite, a custom. But I believe that in no part 
 of the world is there anything nearly resembling the 
 female infanticide of which I am now writing. 
 
 In all parts of India the desire for offspring is very 
 strong. A childless woman is a miserable woman — a 
 
 * " The people in some parts of India, children, the eldest is nourished till a 
 
 particularly the inhabitants of Orissa, proper age, which may be three, four, 
 
 and of the eastern parts of Bengal, or nine years, according to circum- 
 
 frequently offer their children to the stances, when, on a particular day. 
 
 Goddess Gunga. The following reason appointed for bathing in a holy part of 
 
 is assigned for the practice: When a the river, they take the child with them 
 
 woman has been long married, and has and offer it to this goddess; the child is 
 
 no children, it is common for the man, encouraged to go further and further 
 
 or his wife, or both of them, to make a into the water till it is carried away 
 
 vow to the Goddess Gunga, that if she by the stream, or is pushed off by 
 
 willbestow the blessing of children upon its inhuman parents." — ^Ward on the 
 
 them, they will devote their firstborn Hindoos.'] 
 to her. If after this vow they have 
 
RAJPOOT HONOR. 549 
 
 hissing, a reproach. She believes that a curse is upon 
 her. She is despised by herself, and scorned by her 
 husband. She thinks — and if she gives birth to children 
 who are taken away from her by death, the same 
 thought comes upon her — that she is thus afflicted for 
 some grievous sin committed in a pre-existent state. 
 The parental instinct is as strong among these people as 
 among any in the world. And even where the parental 
 instinct is not, the tenderness with which strong bearded 
 men devote themselves to the care of young children, 
 is as touching as it is remarkable. It is not indifference, 
 therefore, to infant life, out of which this horrid practice 
 emanates. It is simply the existence among these '' chi- 
 valrous" Rajpoots of a strong delusion, which some call 
 honor, some pride of birth, and others grossness of igno- 
 rance, deadness of conscience — barbarism — devilry — 
 what you will. 
 
 It is hard to designate the feeling aright. I shall not 
 attempt to provide the fitting nomenclature. It would 
 be better to illustrate than to define. A score of ex- 
 amples of the strange working of Eajpoot honor readily 
 sucrorest thcmselvcs ; but I know not one more striking^ 
 than the following, which Mr. Forbes, an old Bombay 
 civilian, has set down in his " Oriental Memoirs :" — 
 ^' About four years before my appointment to Baroche," 
 he writes, of the last quarter of the eighteenth century, 
 " some Mahomedans, walking through a village where a 
 family of Rajpoots resided, approached their house, and 
 accidentally looked into a room where an elderly woman 
 was eating. They intended no insult ; they saw her at 
 her meal, and immediately retired. But this accident 
 occasioned a disgrace on the Rajpoot lady for which, on 
 her part, there could be no expiation. She at that time 
 lived with her grandson, a fine young man, who was 
 absent when the Mahomedans committed their trespass; 
 
650 FEMALE INFANTICIDE. 
 
 on his return home she related the circumstance, and her 
 determination not to survive it. She therefore entreated 
 him earnestly to put her to death — a step which she had 
 only deferred that she might fall by his hand. The 
 youth's affection and good sense induced hitn to remon- 
 strate with his venerable parent, whom he endeavoured 
 to dissuade from her purpose, by alleging that none but 
 her own family knew of the disgrace, the very men who 
 were the innocent cause of it being unconscious of the 
 offence. Persevering, however, in her resolution, but 
 unable to persuade either her grandson or any other 
 person to perform the sacrifice, she calmly waited until 
 he next went from home, and then beat her head against 
 the wall with dreadful violence. On his return he foimd 
 his venerable parent in this agonising and shocking state. 
 She again entreated he would finish the sacrifice, and 
 release her from misery; he then stabbed her to the 
 heart."* 
 
 This is Rajpoot honor — Rajpoot chivalry. It may 
 be called by ennobliDg names, but, in reality, it is no- 
 thing but the densest barbarism. It is easy to under- 
 stand, and even to admire, the feeling which impels the 
 Tartar warrior, at the approach of a victorious enemy, to 
 slaughter his wives and children. All nations, more or 
 less, comprehend the great aphorism, '^ Death is better 
 than dishonor." We know what is that dishonor 
 which foUows the assault and capture of a hostile town. 
 But the dishonor incurred by an old woman seen by a 
 
 * Forbes' Oriental Memoirs, vol. i., found a bill for murder; the petty jury, 
 
 p. 490. — The sequel of this story is composed half of Europeans and half 
 
 worth telling, if only as a proof that in of natives, found him guilty; and the 
 
 those days such atrocities were not judges condemned him to death. The 
 
 sheltered, under any plea of religion or Rajpoots in general have a noble mien 
 
 custom, from the just vengeance of the and dignified character; their high 
 
 law. "By the English laws," says Mr. caste is stamped on their countenance; 
 
 Forbes, " he was secured as a mur- this young man possessed them all. I 
 
 derer, sent to Bombay for trial, and saw him receive his sentence, not only 
 
 confined in the common prison until with composure, but with a mingled look 
 
 the ensuing sessions. The grand jury of disdain and delight not easy to de- 
 
DISGRACE OF CELIBACY. 551 
 
 passing stranger, in tlie act of eating her dinner, is not 
 very readDy appreciable. The only thing that is very 
 clear about the matter, is that, if a woman is so easily 
 dishonored, it were better that she should eat her 
 dinner in a place where curious travellers cannot see 
 her. 
 
 But such being the turgid sense of honor which in- 
 flates these chivalrous Rajpoots, it is not strange that 
 the disgrace of unmarried daughters — a disgrace of 
 which all Hindoos are more or less sensible — should be 
 keenly appreciated by them. An overweening idea of 
 the necessities of caste and the suitability of matrimonial 
 alliances renders marriage a matter of difficult achieve- 
 ment. A husband is to be found for the Rajpoot nee 
 damsel among the members of her own caste. On no 
 account must she a41y herself with one of inferior rank. 
 Within this narrow circle she must find a husband, or 
 the family is disgraced. Nor does the difficulty end 
 with the attainment of the husband. Among the Hin- 
 doos there is always a wretched waste of money, varying, 
 of course, according to the rank of the parties, on oc- 
 casion of marriage ceremonies. Ajuong the people of 
 whom I am speaking, it is a point of honor that these 
 festivals should be celebrated at a cost which must press 
 heavily upon the financial resources of men mth whom 
 poverty and pride are too often yoke-fellows. It is not 
 
 scribe. Unconscious of the crime laid mon prison — acts so contrary to every- 
 
 to his charge, he said that he had thing which he esteemed right and 
 
 nothing to accuse himself of except honorable, that the sooner he was 
 
 disobedience to his parent, by permit- transferred to another state of exist- 
 
 ting humanity and filial affection to ence the better. However inclined the 
 
 supersede his duty and the honor of Government might be to clemency, it 
 
 his caste; that life was no longer de- would evidently have been fruitless; 
 
 sirable; nor, if acquitted by the English the noble Rajpoot would not survive 
 
 laws, would he survive the ignominy the disgrace, and the sentence of the 
 
 of having been confined with European law was executed, in the hope that it 
 
 culprits and prisoners of the lowest might prevent others from following 
 
 castes, with whom he had been com- liis example." 
 pelled to eat and associate in a com- 
 
552 FEMALE INFANTICIDE. 
 
 convenient, therefore, that daughters should grow up in 
 the house. They must be sarf-kardy or cleared away. 
 
 Such are the causes of female infanticide as it exists in 
 certain parts of Hindostan. There is no religious warrant 
 for it. The Hindoo Shastres are sufficiently clear on the 
 subject of the enormity of child-murder. Indeed, it is 
 almost the one exceptional case of a barbarous custom, 
 that has not the sanction expressed or implied, by pre- 
 cept or example, of the monstrous faith which these 
 people profess. There are, doubtless, some obscure 
 fables, some dim traditions, among them, in which it 
 is pretended that the origin of the enormity is to be 
 found; but even these do not impute to it a divine 
 origin. No god commanded the horrid rite, or set the 
 example of its perpetration. The patron saint of female 
 infanticide is at best no better than " a powerful Eajah."* 
 
 It w^as not likely that on such an iniquity as this the 
 English in India would look with passive unconcern. It 
 was an evil very palpable to the understandings of men, 
 but the proper remedy was not equally apparent. It 
 was, indeed, something very difficult to deal with — an 
 abomination propped up and sustained by feelings deeply 
 implanted in men's hearts, and not to be eradicated 
 without such rendings and revulsions of the whole 
 social and domestic system as might be fraught with 
 the most dangerous results. Still the effort was to be 
 
 * Colonel Walker says : " The Jlia- cess's remaining unmarried, by having 
 rigahs relate that a powerful Rajah of recourse to the desperate expedient of 
 their caste, who had a daughter of sin- putting his daughter to death. The 
 gular beauty and accomplishments, de- Kajah was long averse to this ex- 
 sired his Raj-goor, or family priest, pedient. The Raj-goor at length re- 
 to affiance her to a prince of rank and moved his scruples by consenting to 
 descent equal to her own. The Raj- load himself with the guilt, and to be- 
 goor travelled over many countries come in his own person responsible for 
 without discovering a chief possessed all the consequence of the sin. Ac- 
 of the requisite qualities. In this di- cordingly the princess was put to death, 
 lemma the Rajah consulted the Raj- and female infanticide was from that 
 goor, and he advised him to avoid the time practised by the Jharigahs." 
 disgrace which would attend the prin- 
 
JONATHAN DUNCAN. 553 
 
 made — made, wheresoever British influence extended, 
 not merely in districts under our immediate administra- 
 tion, but in parts of the country where the native princes 
 held dominion ; and we could only exercise indirect 
 control over the acts of the people through the agency 
 of the British Residents at the foreign Durbars. And 
 it is to the honor of the Company and their officers, 
 that, in spite of all discouragements and denials, all diffi- 
 culties and all obstacles, they have now for half a cen- 
 tury been engaged in this good work, and have achieved 
 an amount of success which, if not full and entire, is at 
 least meet reward and glorious compensation for all the 
 painful labor it has cost. 
 
 In the van of those active and benevolent British 
 officers, who have endeavoured to suppress this inhuman 
 practice, stands Jonathan Duncan, many years Resident 
 of Benares, and afterwards Governor of Bombay. He 
 was a simple-minded man, of enlarged benevolence, who, 
 wheresoever his lot was cast in the East, made for him- 
 self a place in the affections of the people by whom he 
 was surrounded. Mackintosh said of him that he had 
 been Brahmanised by long residence in India ; but the 
 word, coined for the purpose by the accomplished Re- 
 corder of Bombay, conveys but a half-truth. Inasmuch 
 as that Duncan knew the people of India well, conversed 
 with them as freely as though they had been his own 
 countrymen, and from long intercourse with them, had 
 contracted some Oriental rust, which, in the eyes of one 
 fresh from the literary coteries of the English capital, 
 was something new and strange, he had been Brahman- 
 wed. But the word unfitly describes the character of 
 one who regarded the people around him, from the 
 highest to the lowest, with deep paternal interest, and 
 whose enlarged toleration and extended sympathies par- 
 took not at all of the cruel exclusiveness of the priestly 
 aristocracy of Hindostan. He had been Indianised in- 
 
554 FEMALE INFANTICIDE. 
 
 deed, but not Bralimanised. He had no toleration of 
 tilings, wMcli Brahmanism not only tolerates, but en- 
 courages ; and lie set himself against the iniquities which 
 were done in the name of the religion, and sanctioned 
 by the priesthood of the country. And foremost among 
 these iniquities was the female infanticide of Central and 
 Western India. He had first been made acquainted with 
 the existence of the evil in the neighbourhood of Juan- 
 pore,* about the year 1789; and had subsequently, on 
 his removal to Western India, clearly traced the exten- 
 sion of the cruel system to the provinces of Cutch and 
 Kattywar. " I am well assured," he wrote, with respect 
 to the former, " and it is, indeed, here generally believed 
 (and being so, it is my duty not to keep such enormities, 
 however sanctioned by usage, firom the knowledge of 
 Government), that it is- no unfrequent practice among 
 the tribe of Kajkoomar to destroy their daughters, by 
 causing the mothers to refuse them nurture ; whence this 
 race of men do often, from necessity, marry into other 
 Eajpoot families. The greatest exception to this melan- 
 choly truth that I can find is, that men — and these the 
 more wealthy Rajkoomars — will sometimes spare and 
 bring up their female issue, especially when they happen 
 to have none of the male line. This horrid custom is 
 said to exist also among some other tribes, more espe- 
 cially in the Vizier's dominions, and it is thought to be 
 founded in the extravagant desire of independency enter- 
 
 * Sir John Shore, in 1794, speaks of covered in 1789 only that the custom of 
 
 this in a communication to the Asiatic putting to death their female offspring 
 
 Society: — "That the practice of iufanti- had long subsisted, and did actually 
 
 cide," he says, "should ever be so ge- then very generally prevail among them, 
 
 neral as to become a custom with any The Kesident at Benares (Mr. Duncan, 
 
 sect or race of people, requires the most afterwards Governor of Bombay), in a 
 
 unexceptionable evidence to gain belief; circuit which he made tlirough the 
 
 and I am sorry to say that fhe general country where the Rajkoomars dwell, 
 
 practice, as far as regards female infants, had an opportunity of authenticating 
 
 is fully substantiated with respect to a the existence of the custom from their 
 
 particular tribe on the frontiers of own confessions ; he conversed with 
 
 Juanpur, a district of the province of several ; all unequivocally admitted it» 
 
 Benares, adjoining to the country of though all did not fully admit its 
 
 Oude. A race of Hindoos called liaj- atrocity." 
 kooraars reside here; and it was dis- 
 
ENGAGEMENT WITH THE EAJKOOMARS. 555 
 
 tained by this race of men, joined, perhaps, to the sup- 
 posed necessity of procuring a suitable settlement in 
 marriage for those devoted females were they allowed to 
 grow up, and the disgrace which would ensue from any 
 omission in that respect. Nor is this species of atrocity 
 of recent institution ; for a similar prejudice, as existing 
 among the Indians, was known by the ancient Greeks 
 and Komans, as is found in the relations they have left of 
 this quarter of the world."* 
 
 This was written in October, 1789, and is remarkable 
 as containing the first official notice of the subject of 
 female infanticide in India. In less than tliree months 
 from the day on which Jonathan Duncan announced his 
 discovery of the horrid custom, he wrote to Lord Com- 
 waUis that he had taken measures for its suppression. 
 " I have prevailed on those situated within our frontier," 
 he wrote, " to agree to renounce in future this horrid 
 practice, to which effect they have entered into the 
 eno^ac^ement which mil be fomid translated in the accom- 
 panying extract of my proceedings." The words of the 
 covenant are worth quoting: — " Whereas," proceeds this 
 curious document, " it hath become known to the Go- 
 vernment of the Honorable East India Company, that 
 we of the tribe of Rajkumar do not suffer our female 
 children to live ; and whereas, this is a great crime, as 
 mentioned in the Brehma Bywant Parana^ where it is 
 said that kiUing even a foetus is as criminal as killing a 
 Brahman ; and that for kilHng a female or woman, the 
 punishment is to suffer in the Naraka, or Hell called Kat 
 Shutala, for as many years as there are hairs on the female's 
 body, and that afterwards such person shall be born again, 
 and successively become a leper and afilicted with the 
 jakhima ; and whereas, the British Government in India, 
 whose subjects we are, hold in detestation such mur- 
 
 ♦ Jmaihan Dimcan to Lord ComwaUis, October 2, 1789. Moore's Hindoo 
 Infanticide. 
 
556 FEMALE INFANTICIDE. 
 
 derous practices, and we do ourselves acknowledge that 
 although customary among us, they are highly sinful ; we 
 do therefore hereby agree not to commit any longer such 
 detestable acts, and any among us who shall (which God 
 forbid!) be hereafter guilty thereof, or who shall not 
 bring up and get our daughters married to the best of 
 our abilities among those of our own caste, shall be ex- 
 pelled from our tribe, and shall neither eat nor keep 
 society with us, besides suffering hereafter the punish- 
 ments denounced in the above Purana and Shastra. We 
 have therefore entered into this engagement. — {Dated 
 17th December, 1789.)" 
 
 For many years it was believed that this engagement 
 had been observed, and that the Rajkoomars had ceased 
 to murder their female infants. But excellent as was 
 the intention of the covenant, and undeniable as were 
 the truths set forth in its preamble, this great measure 
 had everything in the world to recommend it but prac- 
 tical success. 
 
 Meanwhile, happy in the belief of the beneficent issue 
 of his ameliorative efforts in Central India, Jonathan 
 Duncan, now appointed Governor of Bombay, was en- 
 deavouring, in like manner, to suppress the barbarous 
 custom as he found it to exist among the Jareejah Raj- 
 poots of Cutch and Kattywar. He was fortunate in the 
 agency he employed. In Major Walker he found an 
 officer combined in whom were the purest philanthropic 
 zeal, sound intelligence, and unfailing perseverance. The 
 difficulties to be encountered were many and formidable. 
 The natives around him declared that the custom would 
 never be suppressed until the Company should take pos- 
 session of the country in their own name. But, in spite 
 of these discouragements, Walker entered on the great 
 undertaking with sanguine expectations of success. " I 
 conceived," he said, "that reason and feeling would 
 effect the relinquishment of a barbarous custom uncon- 
 
EFFORTS OF COLONEL WALKER. 557 
 
 nected with the principles of society, and which all the 
 passions of the human mind, and all the forms and 
 maxims of religion were combined to destroy. As it was 
 evident, also, that the most disinterested humanity had 
 led the Honorable Company to interfere for the aboU- 
 tion of female infanticide, I conceived that this reflection, 
 and the respect due to their mediation, would have dis- 
 posed the Jareejahs to comply with a request which it 
 was scarcely to be supposed could be at variance with 
 their own sentiments." All this, however, was a mere 
 amiable delusion, and Major Walker was compelled pre- 
 sently to acknowledge that " sentiments of nature and 
 humanity have no influence with the Jareejahs," and 
 reluctantly to abandon his favorable expectations of 
 success. 
 
 Undaunted, however, by the discovery that nothing 
 was to be hoped for from the good feelings of the Jaree- 
 jahs, Walker began now to turn his thoughts towards a 
 new course of action. It was a distasteful — a sickening 
 game that he was called upon to play. The amount of 
 selfishness and bigotry — of falsehood and avarice — of 
 cowardice and chicanery — that he had to encounter, can 
 hardly be over-estimated. But the English officer looked 
 it all steadily in the face. He made this great matter 
 of Female Infanticide the subject of continual discussion, 
 oral and written, with the Jareejah chiefs. He behoved 
 that it would be no small thing to famiharise their minds 
 with the idea that the practice of female infanticide, so 
 long unquestioned, was sometliuig at least of questionable 
 propriety — something which other nations, and especially 
 that great nation from which springs the paramount 
 power in India, regarded with horror and detestation. 
 And, at all events, from this constant obtrusion of the 
 subject there came this amount of good — that the 
 chiefs seeing how extreme was the eagerness of the 
 British Government to carry this point of the aboHtion 
 
558 FEMALE INFANTICIDE. 
 
 of Female Infanticide, betliought themselves of turning 
 our solicitude to profitable account, and trading upon our 
 humanity. These chivalrous Rajpoots seemed not un- 
 willing to yield, for a consideration, at least an outward 
 assent to the proposals of the British officer. And it 
 seems to have been mainly in expectation of some ad- 
 vantage to themselves that at last they consented, in a 
 cowardly reluctant manner, each endeavouring to push 
 the other forward, to become parties to an engagement 
 similar to that which Mr. Duncan had extracted from 
 the Eajkoomars in the neighbourhood of Juanpore. 
 They did sign the covenant at last ; and Major Walker 
 saw many good reasons for believing that they would 
 fulfil the promises they had made. And so it came to be 
 considered that, both in Central and in Western India, 
 Infanticide had been suppressed by Duncan and Walker ; 
 and learned writers in Encyclopgedias, and in brave inde- 
 pendent quartos of their own, set forth the gratifying 
 announcement without a doubt of its truth. 
 
 But though Duncan and Walker deserved success, it 
 was not in their power to command it. They were the 
 pioneers of humanity and civilisation in that direction, 
 and bravely they labored with axe and hatchet to clear 
 away the dense jungle of barbarism that lay before them ; 
 but they did not apply the fire to the root, and the 
 noxious wilderness soon sprung up again above the 
 delusive clearings they had made. For a while it was 
 believed that the horrid custom had been suppressed, 
 alike in the East and the West ; little or nothing was 
 heard of the abomination, and no new efforts were made 
 to suppress it. But about the year 1816 it was officially 
 announced that the Rajkoomars were murdering their 
 children after the old fashion. Mr. Shakespear, then 
 acting as Superintendent of Police, reported that though 
 the Regulations of 1795 and 1804 " contain provisions 
 for the prevention and punishment of the inhuman prac- 
 
CONTINUANCE OF THE EVIL. 559 
 
 tice prevalent among tlie tribe of Rajkoomars of causing 
 tlie female infants to be strangled to death, there is reason 
 to believe that this practice still obtains among them to 
 nearly the same extent as formerly, though a greater 
 degree of caution is preserved to prevent detection ;" and 
 the Governor-General in Council expressed his regret 
 that " the measures adopted by Mr. Duncan whilst Resi- 
 dent at Benares, and the provisions of the Regulations, 
 had failed to prevent the inhuman practice." The same 
 lamentable tidings came also from Western India. Major 
 Carnac, Resident at Baroda, officially reported to the 
 Bombay Government that " the aboHtion of the inhuman 
 practice in Cutch had not been accomplished." And m 
 the following year Captain Ballantine reported, with 
 reference to the Rajpoots of Goozrat, that " the object 
 of our interference for the suppression of this singular 
 custom has too generally failed to select any individual 
 party for the just vengeance of Government and offended 
 nature." To make the extent of the evil, as then exist- 
 ing, more apparent, this energetic officer drew up a sta- 
 tistical report, containing a register of all the Jareejah 
 families known in Kattywar, with " the age and number 
 of their female offspring saved, or now living, since the 
 introduction of the Infanticide arrangement by Colonel 
 Walker in 1808 ;" and from this census it appeared that 
 during the space of ten years only sixty-three female 
 Jareejah children had been preserved in the whole of 
 Kattywar ; that in none of the large talooksj or estates, 
 of the Jareejah chiefs, was there more than one female 
 child to be found, and in some not even one, though 
 containing four hundred families.* Such, in spite of the 
 laudable efforts of Duncan and Walker, was the result of 
 our first humane efforts to suppress this dreadful abomi- 
 nation. 
 
 But this mortifying discovery moved the Company's 
 
 * Parliamentary Papers, quoted in the Calcutta Beview, whose admirable 
 summary I haye mainly followed. 
 
560 FEMALE INFANTICIDE. 
 
 Government and the Company's servants to order, and 
 to prosecute new efforts for the suppression of the great 
 crime. The Court of Directors wrote out to the Bombay 
 Government, "enjoining them in the most serious and 
 earnest manner to be unremitting in their endeavours to 
 accomplish this humane object in the countries where 
 British influence can be felt and exerted." But it was 
 not very clear, even to the most hmnane and energetic 
 servants of the Company, how these unremitting en- 
 deavours were to be prosecuted, so as to accomplish the 
 great object. The difficulty, indeed, was very great, 
 and, seemingly, insurmountable. Some of the most large- 
 minded men, believing that we could make an impression 
 on the evil only by the adoption of measures so ob- 
 jectionable that it might be questioned whether the 
 remedy were not worse than the disease, seemed, in 
 spite of the strong instincts of humanity which urged 
 them forward, almost inclined to counsel an adherence 
 for the future to the old measures of moral discourage- 
 ment, which had proved so abortive in the past. The 
 great standing difficulty was this. The general preva- 
 lence of the crime was acknowledged. Its results were 
 sufficiently apparent in the fact, that the number of 
 female children to be found among the Jareejahs was 
 only one-sixth of the number of males. But it was dif- 
 ficult — indeed, impossible — to bring to light specific acts 
 of infanticide without such an intrusion into the domestic 
 privacy of high-caste Rajpoot families as would be re- 
 garded with horror, and resented with indignation. This 
 systematic child-murder, indeed, was altogetlier an affair 
 of the Zenana. The mother was herself the executioner. 
 " She rubbed the nipples of her breasts with opium, and 
 the babe sucked in poison with its first milk.* Every- 
 
 * A significant hint from the fathers, " told me he was sitting with Pre- 
 
 not conveyed in words, generally sealed duin Singh, the present Thakoor, wlien 
 
 the fate of the child. " Simtook he heard the hirth of a female child 
 
 Kain, minister of Amjherra," writes whispered in his ear. He saw him 
 
 Sir John Malcolm in his Central India, preparing between his fingers the 
 
SECRECY OF THE CRIME. 561 
 
 thiiig was done so secretly behind the purdah — even the 
 very birth of the child was so little noised abroad, that 
 the disappearance of whole families of female children, 
 one after another, in individual succession, could not be 
 clearly traced. Public notoriety pointed vaguely to the 
 general fact. But the lips of all who were competent to 
 speak to individual offences were closed. No man Avill- 
 ingly bore witness against his neighbour. How, then, 
 were we to penetrate the obscurity, and break down the 
 exclusiveness of domestic life — an exclusiveness so 
 jealously guarded, so religiously maintained, that it 
 almost seemed as though dishonor would enter the 
 female apartments with the sunbeams or the west mnd ? 
 It was proposed that hired infonners should be employed; 
 but the proposal did not find favor in the eyes of au- 
 thority. Mount-Stuart Elphinstone — a statesman of equal 
 wisdom and hmnanity — set his face steadfastly against it. 
 " No effectual check," he wrote, " can be imposed on this 
 atrocious practice, so long as it is so completely congenial 
 to the general feelings of the people, unless by employing 
 liired agents, as proposed by Major Ballantine, whose 
 duty it should be to detect offenders of this description ; 
 and such a measure would lead to so much intrusion into 
 the most private and domestic proceedings of the superior 
 castes (among whom alone infanticide prevails), and 
 would be open to so many abuses on the part of the 
 informers, that I do not think the chance of success 
 would compensate for the disaffection which it would 
 create. It may also be doubted how far we have a right 
 to interfere to such an extraordinary pitch with the 
 private life of a people, with whose civil government 
 and internal policy we do not pretend to have any con- 
 cern. We must therefore be content to follow the foot- 
 
 fatal pill of opium (the usual signal), little girl (added Simtook Ram), now 
 but he implored that the child might eight years of age, is always called my 
 live: his request was granted, and this daughter." 
 
 2o 
 
562 FEMALE INFANTICIDE. 
 
 steps of our predecessors (without attempting to go 
 beyond them) in their most meritorious endeavours to 
 discountenance this enormity ; and we may safely flatter 
 ourselves, that as the manners of the people become 
 softened by a continuance of tranquilhty and good order, 
 they will gradually discontinue a practice which is not 
 more inconsistent with reason than repugnant to natural 
 instinct." 
 
 This was written in 1821. There was, seemingly, 
 nothing very hopeful in it. The laisser^aire system was 
 to be tried again. Moral discouragements were to be 
 left to work out their slow results. "In speaking to 
 those natives," writes Sir John Malcolm, Avith reference 
 to the Eajpoots of Central India, " who enjoyed superior 
 rank and station mider the authority or control of the 
 British Government, I have always expressed my horror 
 at self-immolation (Suttee), and my hope that through 
 their influence in society, and their desire not to outrage 
 the feehngs of their European superiors, it would in time 
 be abolished. But with reg;ard to infanticide I have 
 ever, when it was mentioned, stated my abhorrence of 
 the murders that were committed under the plea of this 
 usage, and refused to see those who practiced it. Such 
 sentiments," he added, " were never known to give 
 offence." In Western India the same discouraefcments 
 
 o 
 
 were at work; and they were not wholly without success. 
 Many good and able European ofiicers, among whom 
 may be especially named Colonel Miles, Major Barne- 
 well, and Mr. Blaine ; and, subsequently, in the regions 
 of Cutch, Henry Pottinger and Alexander Bumes 
 exerted themselves to put down the abomination by 
 such gentle, moral force as they conceived themselves 
 justified in applying, and the result was not wholly a 
 blank. It is officially reported, that whilst the number 
 of female children belonging to the murderous tribes in 
 Kattywar, preserved from destruction in 1808, only 
 
SUCCESS IN MAIRWARRA. 563 
 
 amounted to 32, it had risen, in 1817, to 63 ; and in 
 1824, to 266. In Cutch, the numbers had increased 
 irom 93, in 1823, to 143 in 1826; and, a few years 
 later, Captain Bumes reported that the number had 
 risen to 211. This last calculation was made from a 
 census of more than a hundred villages, in which it was 
 ascertained that there were, at the same time, 1167 male 
 children; the girls being thus shown, in proportion to 
 the boys, to be little more than as one to six. These 
 returns, however, must be received with some caution. 
 It is difficult to obtain a correct census of the people in 
 these Rajpoot villages ; and the returns, therefore, must 
 be regarded rather as approximations, than as accurately 
 ascertained results. 
 
 In the interval, however, of which 1 am now writing, 
 between the years 1820 and 1830, there is one successful 
 episode in the history of this great war against infanticide, 
 which is worthy of especial recital. Among the rude 
 people of Mairwarra, Colonel Hall had exerted himself 
 to some purpose ; for in a report dated July 31st, 1827, 
 he reported " the complete and voluntary abolition of 
 the two revolting customs — female infanticide and the 
 sale of women." " Both crimes," he wrote, " were closely 
 connected, having had their origin in the heavy expense 
 attending marriage contracts. The sums were payable 
 by the male side, were tmalterable, equal for the rich and 
 the poor, without any abatement whatever in favor of 
 the latter. What first established the payment is un- 
 known ; but it was so sacred and inviolable, and even a 
 partial deviation so disgraceful, that the most necessitous 
 of the tribe would not incur the imputation. . . . Hence 
 arose Infanticide. The sums payable were beyond the 
 means of so many, that daughters necessarily remained 
 on hand after maturity, entailed immortal disgrace, and 
 thus imposed a necessity for all female progeny becoming 
 victims to their family honor. On the establishment of 
 
 2o2 
 
564j FEMALE INFANTICIDE. 
 
 British rule, both evils gradually diminished 
 
 Female Infanticide was at once prohibited, and though 
 many, no doubt, still fell secret sacrifices from the great 
 faciUty of undetected destruction, yet the danger, aided 
 by improved feeling, increased the survivors so consider- 
 ably, as to force upon the Mairs a due sense of the root 
 of the evil, and a general wish for its removal by a 
 reduction of the regulated sum of contract ; but they 
 were averse — indeed, declared their inability — to alter 
 their long-established sacred custom themselves, and ear- 
 nestly entreated that it might be done by an order of 
 authority, binding all to obedience by heavy penalties. 
 This was promised in a general way in case of necessity ; 
 but as there were many points to be settled, and it was 
 advisable to ascertain the general feeling with accuracy, 
 as well as to avoid interference, if possible, a general 
 punchayut was strongly urged either to decide the 
 matter, or, at all events, aid in the fi:aming of appropriate 
 regulations. After the lapse of a few months allowed for 
 consideration, the wlijole was settled in public punchayut, 
 and its resolutions were confirmed without the slightest 
 alteration ; so that the proceeding originated with, and 
 has been carried through by, the inhabitants themselves; 
 nor has there been a single petition against it, either 
 pending or subsequent to adjustment. They have lowered 
 the sum payable on marriage contracts, abolished all 
 right of subsequent sale, and fixed a year s imprisonment, 
 <jr 200 rupees fine, with exclusion from caste, as the 
 punishment for deviation."* The result seems to have 
 justified the sanguine expectations of Colonel Hall. 
 Writing more than twenty years afterwards, his suc- 
 cessor. Colonel Dixon, says : " Thus Infanticide received 
 its death-blow through the diminution of the expenses 
 attending on marriage, which was now brought within 
 the reach of all sections of society. For many years 
 
 • Report of Colonel Hally July^ 1827, quoted in Dixon*s Mairwarra, 
 
SUMPTUARY REGULATIONS. 5G5 
 
 past no female children have been put to death. The 
 practice has fallen altogether into desuetude. Indeed, so 
 greatly have the ideas of the people changed on this and 
 other usages since the introduction of our rule, that the 
 commission of such an act would now be viewed as a 
 most heinous crime."* 
 
 Thus the first unequivocal success resulted from the 
 establishment of sumptuary regulations. But it was 
 easier to deal with these rugged Mairs, just rescued from 
 a state of extreme barbarism, than with the " chivalrous " 
 Rajpoots of Central and Western India. It is not im- 
 probable that if the British, or any other Government, 
 had undertaken to portion the Jharijah girls, the dread- 
 ful custom would have been annihilated. The plan was, 
 indeed, proposed, and negatived by the higher authorities. 
 And the extreme alternative of putting down the abo- 
 mination by force was rejected upon the ground that the 
 Rajpoots of Western India were not our subjects, but 
 our allies, and that such a mode of procedure would be 
 inconsistent with the terms of our treaties. In 1831 Sii' 
 John Malcolm, then Governor of Bombay, went down to 
 Booj and addressed the assembled Jharijah chiefs on the 
 enormity of the crime so prevalent among them. He 
 told them that so strong in England was the feeling 
 against such abominations, that the nation would call 
 upon the East India Company to sever their connexion 
 with a people so polluted. The chiefs, seemingly 
 abashed, falsely denied their participation in the prevail- 
 ing guilt — and promises and pledges were not wanting. 
 Indeed, the "chivalrous" Rajpoots were at no time 
 chary of their promises and pledges — and now, as our 
 English officers became more and more energetic in 
 their efforts to put down the abomination, these promises 
 and pledges became more and more plentiful. 
 
 In Central India, promises were as readily made and 
 
 * Dixon's Mairwarra. 
 
566 FEMALE INFANTICIDE. 
 
 as readily broken as in the West. Many earnest-minded 
 men were exerting themselves, about this time, in Raj- 
 pootana, to push forward the good work. Distinguished 
 among these was Mr. Wilkinson, whose name is ever to be 
 held in remembrance by those who would record the 
 good deeds of the Company's servants. He was a man of 
 the kindliest and the most catholic sympathies, of large 
 intelligence, and unwearying perseverance. He lived 
 and toiled for the people, and he died, at his post, 
 amongst them, warmly loved and deeply deplored. All 
 that earnest desire and energetic action could do to wean 
 the Eajpoots of Central India from the accursed practice 
 of Infanticide, was now done by this fall-hearted civilian. 
 He assembled the chiefs ; he addressed them ; he reasoned 
 with them ; he expostulated with them ; and at last he 
 persuaded them to adopt certain resolutions, by an ad- 
 herence to which it seemed probable that the iniquity 
 might be suppressed. And many of the petty sovereigns 
 of Eajpootana not only undertook to prohibit the practice, 
 but issued proclamations declaring it illegal. Other 
 officers in Central India, as Colonel Sutherland, Captain 
 Richards, Captain Ludlow, and others, had been exerting 
 themselves in the same good cause, and there were 
 many encouraging promises and seemingly genuine re- 
 nunciations to reward their labors. 
 
 The Rana of Oudipore, the chief of the independent 
 sovereigns of Rajpootana, was forward to set the example 
 — a potential one — of prohibition; and in January, 1834, 
 Lord William Bentinck wrote to express the " pure and 
 unmixed satisfaction" which he felt, and to utter words 
 of further encouragement ; but all these promises and 
 renimciations were mere unmeaning words. The princes 
 and chiefs had not been convinced, or they feared to 
 reduce their convictions to practice. At all events, 
 Wilkinson, who had labored so long and so dihgently, 
 and whose heart was so thoroughly in his work, was 
 
WILKINSON AND WILLOUGHBY. 567 
 
 forced back upon the mortifying conclusion that no real 
 impression had been made upon the minds of the mag- 
 nates of the land. Only two months after he had ex- 
 plained to the cliief people the enormity of the crime of 
 mfanticide and received their assurances of renunciation, 
 he ascertained that two of their number had since put 
 their daughters to death. The promised proclamations 
 might have been issued; but no pains were taken to 
 circidate them. He found, in the course of liis cncuits, 
 that some of the States had not even heard of the pro- 
 hibitory edict ; and, under the government of that very 
 Rana of Oudipore whom Lord William Bentinck had so 
 commended, some of the people told Mr. Wilkinson that 
 it was true they had heard it whispered " that female 
 infanticide had been prohibited some time before along 
 with the killing of peacocks." 
 
 All this was very discouraging — but still Mr. Wilkin- 
 son did not despair of the effect of moral influence. He 
 secured the services of some learned Brahmins to write 
 pamphlets condemnatory of the crime, which he circu- 
 lated among the people. He bethought himself, too, of 
 the effect upon their minds of pictorial representations ; 
 but all this was of no avail. *^ It has been my object," 
 he wrote, " to excite such a genuine and general feeling 
 of execration as should lead to a voluntary abandonment 
 of the practice. Still, when we reflect on the inveteracy 
 of habit, and the extreme tardiness with which new 
 ideas are spread in the world, it would be idle to hope 
 that the abandonment of the practice will be effected by 
 the measures already taken." 
 
 In the mean while a great experiment was being 
 initiated in Western India. In 1831, Mr. J. P. Wil- 
 loughby, of the Bombay Civil Service, was appointed 
 Political Agent in Kattywar. He soon began to give 
 his thoughts to the painful subject of Female Infanticide, 
 and collected all the information he could acquire 
 
568 FEMALE infa:nticide. 
 
 regarding the dreadful practice and all that had been 
 done towards its suppression. Reviewing the labors of 
 his predecessors, and deriving wisdom from the past, he 
 sent in an elaborate report to Government, in which he 
 took a comprehensive view of the results of our bygone 
 elForts, and then sketched out a plan of future pro- 
 ceedings. 
 
 The measures suggested by Mr. "Willoughby were these. 
 Fit^st, that steps should be taken to obtain a complete 
 census of the Jharijah population, as without it no data 
 could exist for computing the number of female infants 
 who were born, and thence deducing an approxunation to 
 the number actually destroyed. Second, that every Jha- 
 rijah chief should be called upon to furnish a half-yearly 
 register of all the marriages, betrothals, births, and deaths 
 occurring among his tribe residing in his district; and 
 that, if he failed in this obligation, or furnished a false 
 return, he should be severely pmiished.* Third, that the 
 Political Agent should furnish an annual report on the 
 subject of Infanticide, together with a register of all 
 marriages, betrothals, births, and deaths that have oc- 
 curred among the tribe within the year reported on. 
 Fourth, that a proclamation should be issued by the 
 British Government throughout Kattywar, requiring the 
 Jharijah chiefs to enforce the observance of their Infan- 
 ticide engagements, and noticing in terms of approbation 
 or condemnation their adherence to or departure from 
 these engagements, and guaranteeing to all able or will- 
 ing to supply information relating to the commission of 
 the crime, a reward in proportion to the rank of the 
 
 * Mr. Willoughby, in the admirable such intermediate reports as might he- 
 Report which contains these suggestions, come necessary, one general statement 
 sliows that this important matter had should be submitted at the end of each 
 not escaped the attention of the Court year, showing how far the amended 
 of Directors. ** This is no new sugges- system had been acted on and observed, 
 tion," he says, " on my part, for in the what deviations are known or suspected 
 correspondence on my records I find to have been made from its rules, and 
 allusion made to instructions issued what measures pursued for their en- 
 many years ago by the Honorable forcement, with an estimate of the 
 Court of Directors, that in addition to number of lives saved." 
 
willoughby's measures. 569 
 
 party convicted, and the protection of the British Go- 
 vernment. Fifths that every Kajpoot in Kattywar should 
 be enjoined to make it an express stipulation in every 
 marriage contract on giving his daughter to a Jharijah 
 chief that the issue of the union should be preserved. 
 Sixths that presents of cloth, money, &c., should be 
 made, out of the Infanticide Fimd, to the chiefs and 
 inferior members of the' Jharijah tribes who preserved 
 their female children.* 
 
 These measures, approved and sanctioned by the 
 higher authorities, were pushed forward with prompti- 
 tude and energy. The vigilance of the British officers 
 was not without its results. In the course of eighteen 
 months, it was reported that seventy-three female infants 
 were preserved by the Jharijah tribes ; of these, forty, it was 
 said, would have perished but for om* humane interven- 
 tion. Still, in spite of all our efforts, there remained the 
 lamentable fact, that at least one-half of the female infants 
 bom were murdered by their remorseless parents. It was, 
 however, no small thing to convict certain offenders of 
 specific acts of infanticide ; and charges were now brought 
 and fiilly established against the chief of Raj kote. " The 
 barbarous insensibility evinced by him on the occasion, 
 proved him to have little claim to forgiveness." He was 
 fined 12,000 rupees, to be paid to the Infanticide Fund; 
 and his estate was attached as security for its payment. 
 This conviction produced the most salutary effect through- 
 out Kattywar, and was soon followed by other cases. 
 Another petty chief, convicted on the clearest evidence of 
 
 * " The Infanticide Fund was esta- From this source occasional remissions 
 blishei in 1825. It is composed of all of tribute, presents to the chiefs, and 
 fines, under 20,000 rupees, imposed pecuniary assistance on the marriage 
 upon the tributaries for breaches of the of their daughters, have been granted 
 peace or other misconduct, and of reali- to those who have practically renounced 
 sation under the head of Mohsullee. the custom ; and another mode of testi- 
 The British Government set the ex- fying approbation to those who have 
 ample. His Highness the Guicowar, preserved their daughters, is by post- 
 being subsequently induced to consent poning the payment of the tribute to 
 that all fines imposed upon his tribu- suit their convenience." — \_Mr. ^YU• 
 taries should be similarly appropriated, loughby's Report'] 
 
570 FEMALE INFANTICIDE. 
 
 the same offence, was sentenced to suffer twelve months' 
 imprisonment, and to pay a fine of 3000 rupees. These 
 were followed by other cases of detection and punish- 
 ment. But though the evil sensibly diminished under 
 these influences, it was not entirely suppressed. Here 
 and there a case was brought struggling into light, but 
 scores of cases of cruel child-murder, behind the sanctity 
 of the purdah, escaped detection and exposure. 
 
 Perhaps, it would have been unreasonable to expect 
 in such a case anything more than progressive improve- 
 ment. It was, indeed, the hardest task that we had ever 
 set ourselves — the hardest we have ever set ourselves 
 siace. I believe that in this country, where we all of us 
 live comparatively out of doors — coram poptilo — an 
 extensive system of Female Infanticide might be carried 
 on without detection. I believe that married women in 
 England might murder their sucklings by hundreds with- 
 out suspicion. A little seemingly accidental neglect — a 
 little want of active care at particular periods, will snap 
 the thread of infant life, and give no sign of premeditated 
 crime. But the nursery of the Hindoo woman, even of 
 the poorest, is surrounded by social screens and fences 
 which, however flimsy may be their material structure, 
 are morally so impassable, so impenetrable, that the vigi- 
 lance and activity of authority is utterly baffled and re- 
 pelled by them. It was this that rendered the task so 
 difficult — that rendered success, even imder the best and 
 most encouraging circmnstances, so vague and micertain. 
 With such formidable obstructions before us it was a 
 great thing to make any progress. It was a great thing 
 that the Bombay Government should be enabled to write : 
 " The complete suspension of the crime, originating in 
 ignorance, prejudice, and false pride, must doubtless be 
 the work of time ; yet, looking back to the past, and 
 seeing how much had been accomplished within the last 
 few years, they were encouraged strongly to hope that a 
 
PROGRESSIVE IMPROVEMENT. 571 
 
 steady and constant perseverance in the measures in 
 operation would, in the end, be rewarded by full and 
 complete success." 
 
 Mr. Willoughby, promoted to higher office, quitted 
 Kattywar in 1835, and was succeeded in the Political 
 Agency by JMr. Erskine, who continued the good w^ork 
 which had been pushed forward so energetically by his 
 predecessor. But it was plain still that there was much 
 to be done. In 1837, upon a census of twenty-seven 
 districts, it appeared that there were 1422 boys, and only 
 409 girls. In 1841, Captain Jacob, who was associated 
 with Mr. Erskine on this crreat field of humanisingr 
 labor, reported that the number of males under the age 
 of twenty was 2923, whilst the females reached the en- 
 couraging amount of 1209, little less than one-half of the 
 entire juvenile population. The result, indeed, led 
 Captain Jacob to obsen'e : " It must be highly gratifying 
 to those benevolent men who had labored for the sup- 
 pression of Infanticide, to see the progressive return to 
 the order of nature, in the relative proportion of sexes, 
 that must be attributed to their labor alone ;" and called 
 forth the commendatory remark of the Bombay Govern- 
 ment, which I have quoted above. 
 
 Nor were these anticipations of the gradual suppression 
 of the horrid practice unjustified by the result. I cannot 
 afford to trace, year by year, the progressive improvement 
 in the appearance of the census of the male and female 
 population of Kattywar. But, perhaps, the good effects 
 of our humanising measures may be best illustrated by 
 passing on at once to the cheering details contained in the 
 two last Infanticide Keports which have made their way 
 into official record. In the Infanticide Report for the 
 year 1849, from Katt}^var, of which Major Lang, who 
 has long been zealously employed in that province, is 
 now Pohtical Agent, there is this cheering announcement : 
 " The proportion of female children to males in all the 
 
572 FEMALE .INFANTICIDE. 
 
 tribes is now so nearly equal, and the progressive increase 
 of the female population so regular, that if the returns 
 can be depended upon in other respects, there would ap- 
 pear to be every ground for believing that the practice of 
 Infanticide must have become almost entirely extinct in 
 this province." And then he goes on to report these en- 
 couracnno^ statistical facts. " When the census for 1845 
 was forwarded with my Keport of the 25th of August, 
 1846, there were two Jharijahs with five daughters each, 
 
 19 with four, 105 with three, and 387 with two 
 
 By the returns now submitted there are one Jharijah with 
 six daughters, 11 with five, 49 with four, 159 with three, 
 and 522 with two."* The Eeport of the following year, 
 though less detailed, is equally satisfactory. It shows 
 that the female Jharijah population has increased to a 
 greater extent than the male. The former had increased, 
 during the year 1850, by 186; the latter only by 149. 
 " The only accusation of Infanticide," writes Major Lang, 
 " which was brought forward during the year under re- 
 view, was that reported in my letter of the 25th of Sep- 
 tember, 1850, which was found on investigation by my 
 assistant, Captain Barr, to be entirely groundless."! But 
 to make the progressive results of these great measures 
 fully apparent, it would be well to give a brief tabular 
 statement of the male and female Jharijah population of 
 Kattywar, extending over the six years from 1845 to 
 1850, inclusive :ltl 
 
 * Major Lang to Bombay Government, has attended our measures for the ex- 
 
 MS. Records, December 31, 1850. I tirpation of the crime of Female In- 
 
 have omitted the details of the smaller fauticide from Kattywar and Cutch 
 
 tribes, which are no less gratifying. has been far greater and much more 
 
 f Major Lang to Bombay Government, rapid than the most sanguine could 
 
 December 26, IS51. MS. Records. have anticipated. It was my good for- 
 
 J Well might Mr. Willoughby, when tune to have been the originator of 
 
 a seat in the Bombay Council gave him these measures, the success of which 
 
 an opportunity of commenting on such is mainly to be attributed to the vi- 
 
 results as these, congratulate himself gorous manner in which I dealt with 
 
 on the success of his measures. several proved cases of Infanticide be- 
 
 " I trust I shall be pardoned the ex- fore I left tlie province. I recollect 
 pression," he wrote, " of the high gra- that, by some whose opinion I valued, 
 tification I have derived from the pe- I was thought to have invaded too 
 rusal of this and other similar Reports, strictly the sanctity of R:ijpoot domes- 
 establishing that the success which tic privacy, and that the measures I had 
 
SUCCESS IN KATTrVVAR. 
 
 573 
 
 
 1845. 
 
 1846. 
 
 1847. 
 
 1848. 
 
 1849. 
 
 1850. 
 
 Males 
 
 Females 
 
 6617 
 2334 
 
 6600 
 2429 
 
 6844 
 2779 
 
 7356 
 3090 
 
 7353 
 8273 
 
 7502 
 3423 
 
 
 It must necessarily take many years to restore the 
 balance of the sexes, fearfully disturbed as it has been 
 from generation to generation ; but with such results as 
 these before me, remembering that the time was when 
 the number of female children to be found among the 
 Jliarijahs was only one-sixth of the number of males, 
 and that on some large estates containing as many as 400 
 families not one female child was to be found,* I think I 
 am justified in saymg that what has been done is most 
 honorable to the British nation, and that the rest is but 
 " a work of time." 
 
 Whilst these measures were being thus energetically 
 pursued in Western India, another group of British officers 
 were carrying out the same good work in the Central 
 Eajpoot states, with the approval and co-operation of 
 the princes and chiefs themselves. The process, how- 
 ever, by which they hoped to attain the same great 
 result, differed from that which Mr. Willoughby had 
 introduced into Kattywar. It was based upon the ad- 
 mitted fact, that in those states the one great sustaining 
 cause of the unholy practice was the extreme costliness 
 of marriage ceremonials. To marry his daughter was 
 often to ruin a man. There was a wretched brood of 
 men known as " Charans " and " Bhats," who turned to 
 vile uses two of the noblest functions of humanity, and 
 degraded the priestly and the bardic office into a sort of 
 
 recourse to were too harsh, and likely 
 to outrage the feelings of the whole 
 Rajpoot community. But I argued 
 that those philanthropic men, Governor 
 Duncan and Colonel Walker, never in- 
 tended that the engagements which 
 they induced the Jharijahs to enter 
 into should be waste paper ; and al- 
 though I was aware that I was touch- 
 ing on delicate ground, I felt assured 
 
 that I should find a powerful ally in 
 those feelings of parental affection 
 which exist in the human breast in 
 every stage and degree of civilisation. 
 The result has certainly proved I was 
 not mistaken."— [3/i«w/e, March 28, 
 1851. Bombay Consultations. MS. Re- 
 cords.'] 
 
 * See ante, pages 559, 560. 
 
574 FEMAXE INFANTICIDE. 
 
 tyrannous mendicancy, whicli the Rajpoots feared to 
 resist. The exorbitant fees claimed by these men,* who 
 would have cursed the grudging giver, or, worse still in 
 the estimation of the proud and sensitive Rajpoot, pil- 
 loried him with ridicule, constituted the heaviest tax 
 levied upon the luckless father. It was admitted that 
 these large sums of money were reluctantly paid — that 
 the thraldom of this aristocratic custom sat heavily 
 upon the tribes. f They would have escaped from it if 
 they could, but they feared to take the responsibility of 
 such an innovation upon themselves. The Durbars, 
 timid and hesitating, though not unwilling to co-operate 
 for the suppression of what they knew and acknowledged 
 to be an abomination, shrunk from an authoritative 
 demonstration without the open support and encourage- 
 ment of the paramount power. They were fearful, 
 indeed, of taking the initiative in such a procedure ; but 
 if they could push forward the British Government as 
 the instigators of the needed reform, they might venture 
 to co-operate with us and set their seal upon the sump- 
 tuary enactments which our officers were eager to 
 suggest. 
 
 The right men were in Rajpootana. Colonel Suther- 
 land, Major Thoresby, and Major Ludlow, all gave their 
 hearts to the work. The two great objects were these : 
 firstly to limit the influx of these bards on the occasion 
 of nuptial ceremonies — to keep out the incursion of 
 foreigners, J who swelled the chorus of hungry appli- 
 
 * It is said that the Rana of Odey- of Infanticide-suppression. " Far from 
 
 pore, though in an impoverished state having prejudices to combat (as we 
 
 at the time, gave a lakh of rupees to should unquestionably have as regards 
 
 the chief bard. The profession, being the rite of Suttee, and to a certain ex- 
 
 a lucrative and not a laborious one, is tent in the question of Surna), we shall 
 
 considerably over-stocked. The Joud- in the course proposed carry with us 
 
 pore Vakeel stated that there were the sense of the whole of the Eajpoot 
 
 20,000 Charans in Marwar, and some- tribes, who have hitherto been forced 
 
 times 4000 or 5000 graced the nuptials reluctantly by the tyranny of custom to 
 
 of an important chief. destroy their female offspring."— [3fa- 
 
 t This is very clearly stated by one jor Ludlow to Major Thoresby, MS. Re- 
 
 of our political officers in Kajpootana, cords.'] 
 
 who has been forward in the good work X That is, of Charans and Bhats not 
 
LUDLOW IN RAJPOOTANA. 575 
 
 cants ; and secondly, to fix a ratable amount to be 
 paid to the domestic bards who were suffered to have a 
 legitimate right to enrich themselves on these occasions. 
 It was not difficult to persuade the princes of Rajpootana 
 to enter into engagements for the enforcement of these 
 measures, and to issue edicts enunciating them. Thus, 
 instigated by Major Ludlow, the Jyepore Durbar, which 
 was then the organ of an infant prince, sent forth ^' a 
 proclamation of the Eaj of Jyepore made by Major 
 Ludlow and the Council of Regency," containing a 
 forcible denunciation of the crime of Infanticide* and 
 a clear specification of the suggested remedies. The law- 
 ful tax thenceforth to be paid was not to exceed a tithe 
 of the annual income of the father of the bride. This 
 was to be the maximum sum payable by the Jagheedars, 
 but people with a less settled income were allowed only to 
 disburse a smaller amount. The Jyepore authorities 
 enforced these regulations with good effect; and Ludlow 
 was soon able to report that an incursion of foreign 
 bards had been successfully resisted, and had with- 
 drawn, ungorged, unsatisfied, without a breach of the 
 peace. 
 
 Nor was this all that was done. The other states, 
 through Ludlow's instrumentality, were induced to fol- 
 low the example of Jyepore. They responded, indeed, 
 with acclamation to the appeal, and followed the letter 
 of the Jyepore proclamation. Not one of the states, 
 after these edicts were issued, admitted the foreign bards 
 to their nuptial ceremonies. Indeed, so glad were the 
 
 belonging to the particular part of the these persons upon those who are not 
 country in which the marriage was in circumstances to satisfy them to the 
 celebrated, but who scented a far-off extent of their demands. The act of 
 wedding as a jackal scents carrion, Infanticide is a grievous tyranny and 
 and hurried in flocks to their prey. a great sin, which attaches alike to 
 ♦ "It is notorious that many Raj- those who perpetrate it, and the sove- 
 poots kill their female daughters at the reign in whose territory it occurs, and 
 birth, and the cause would appear to therefore the amounts receivable in 
 exist in the distress and annoyance future by Bhats, Charans, &c., are re- 
 arising from the demand of Tyag (nup- presented in this proclamation, &c., &c." 
 tial presents) on marriage occasions — [MS. Records.'] Cause and effect are 
 made by Charans, Bhats, &c., and from here very plainly indicated. Sublatd 
 the abuse and revilings showered by causd toUitur effectus. 
 
576 FEMALE INFANTICIDE 
 
 Thakoors to rid themselves entirely of the intolerable 
 tyranny under ^vhich they had groaned so long, that 
 they made the proclamations an excuse for not listemng 
 to the claims of their own " Bhats," and " Charans," 
 whom they now learnt to send away empty-handed, 
 under the pretext that the order of the Durbar for their 
 payment must be first obtained. These people were 
 tlie terror of Rajpootana. Their influence is now 
 thoroughly broken down ; and they dare not even en- 
 force the payment of the tithe permitted by the Sump- 
 tuary Regulations. 
 
 The effect of these measures on the great crime itself 
 in Central India did not so distinctly appear as in the 
 case of the Jharijah and other tribes of Kattywar, inas- 
 much as the results were not represented by a detailed 
 census of the population. But it was not to be doubted 
 that at least one great thing had been done. A change 
 had been wrought in public opinion. It was clearly the 
 interest of all classes of Rajpoots to resist a tax which 
 often involved them in frightful pecuniary embarrass- 
 ments. Nor was this all that was done. There was 
 something more than an appeal to their purses. In 
 Jyepore, Ludlow, seeing clearly where lay the only real 
 remedy, exerted himself to appeal to their intelligence. 
 He did everything that he could to encourage the diffu- 
 sion of education in the states. And neither Suttee, nor 
 Infanticide, nor Thuggee, nor human sacrifice, nor any 
 other kindred abomination, can long stand up against so 
 mighty a conqueror as that. 
 
 These measures for the suppression of Female In- 
 fanticide in Kattywar and in the Rajpoot states of 
 Central India, it must be understood by the European 
 reader, were carried on not within the dominions of the 
 East India Company, but in the territories of the native 
 princes over which we exercise only a moral control 
 through the agency of our British R(^sid(Mits. But it may 
 be asked whether, all this time, in our own provinces, 
 
IN AHMEDABAD. 677 
 
 there was no such thing as Female Infanticide. And I 
 am afraid it must be answered that there was. The ex- 
 tent to which the crime was perpetrated, under our own 
 immediate rule, was very limited ; and it was confined 
 to one or two collectorates. But still under the very 
 eyes of British authority child-murder was going on, for 
 some time, unchecked. The Pm'dah screened it from 
 our sight. It was long before we ascertained the fact. 
 And when we did ascertain its existence, both in Western 
 and Central India, the evil appeared to be one not easily 
 to be held in subjection. It may be thought that no- 
 thing could be easier than to drag the offenders into our 
 criminal courts, and to convict them of the capital offence. 
 And so it would have been if a woman had beaten out 
 the brains of her child against the walls of the cutcherry 
 or the magistrate's house. But perpetrated as the crime 
 w^as in secret, nothing was more easy than accusation — 
 nothing more difficult than conviction. The Regulations, 
 powerful as they were, could not deal with this abstruse 
 abomination. 
 
 The districts in Western and Central India, under 
 which it was discovered that the crime of Infanticide 
 was practised by certain tribes, were Ahmedabad, in the 
 Bombay Presidency, and M3nipooree, under the govern- 
 ment of the North-Western Provinces. In Ahmedabad 
 the existence of the crime was first brought to the notice 
 of Government by Mr. Fawcett, at the end of 1847. 
 The disparity of the sexes had been pointed out to him 
 by a native functionary, and he knew the meaning of 
 that terrible sign. The native officer was instructed to 
 exert himself to bring the chief people into an arrange- 
 ment tending to annihilate the dreadful practice. They 
 were not unwilling to discuss the subject. They as- 
 sembled and set forth the facts of the case. Admitting 
 the truth of the charge, they said it was simply the 
 extreme costliness of marriage ceremonials which com- 
 
 2p 
 
578 FEMALE INEANTICIDE 
 
 pelled the people of tlie child- murdering tribes to suppress 
 the growth of female life. They knew that it was a 
 great evil; and they entered into an agreement to reduce 
 the sums paid, on these nuptial occasions, to less than an 
 eighth of the old amount.* But, I fear that those com- 
 pacts were not observed ; and that the great evil was 
 unsubdued. " Past experience," wrote Mr. Willoughby, 
 in a Council-minute, " has unhappily elsewhere proved, 
 that written agreements are insufficient to extirpate the 
 offence, unless unceasing vigilance is exercised to secure 
 adherence to them." And he then, in 1848, recom- 
 mended that an annual census of the castes, in which the 
 offence was supposed to be committed, should be for- 
 warded to Government; and that the Sudder Judges 
 should be requested to issue a circular to all magistrates, 
 directing them to institute inquiries as to whether the 
 crime was perpetrated in any part of the country within 
 their jurisdiction. The result of that investigation was, 
 that only among the marked tribes in the Ahmedabad 
 and the Kaira collectorates were there any indubitable 
 traces of the existence of the atrocity. Broach was sus- 
 pected, but upon closer examination the suspicion was 
 shown to be unfounded.! 
 
 * The compact was entered into by did the records of this magistracy in any 
 
 fifty-eight villages, inhabited by the way assist me ; they were absolutely 
 
 Lewa Koombee tribe. The chief people silent on the subject. Neither should I 
 
 promised to reduce the expenses paid up to the present time have improved 
 
 them from 3800 to 480 rupees. The Lewa my stock of information, but for acci- 
 
 Koombees of the city of Ahmedabad dentally meeting with an able article 
 
 afterwards came into the arrangement, in the Calcutta Review for August, 1844, 
 
 and undertook to reduce their expenses from which, it appears, that Parlia- 
 
 to one-third of the whole amount. — mentary Papers have been published 
 
 \_Minute of Mr. Willoughby, Sept. 9, giving the results of all the inquiries 
 
 1848. MS. Records.'] set on foot into the practice of female 
 
 f In one of the answers returned, a infanticide in Central and Western 
 
 circumstance is mentioned which illus- India; and I must here be permitted to 
 
 tratCB the benefit derived from the pub- suggest respectfully that a copjrof this 
 
 lication of those summaries of facts record would be of material importance 
 
 which make np the staple-contents of in every Zillah, not only as conveying 
 
 "review articles :" the most authentic information hitherto 
 
 " Opposed to the conclusions thus collected upon a most interesting topic, 
 
 derived," wrote one of the magistrates, but as leading the uninformed into ap- 
 
 " I confess to having approached the sub- proved channels of further inquiry." — 
 
 jttct with no knowledge of my own, nor {MS. Records.'] 
 
IN MYNPOOBIE. 579 
 
 Turning now to another part of the country, I 
 would show what has recently been done in the neigh- 
 bourhood of Mynpoorie. A statement on this sub- 
 ject was recently drawn up by Mr. Charles Kaikes, 
 magistrate and collector of that district. Originally 
 published in a local periodical,* it was subsequently 
 printed in a detached shape, and, in accordance with 
 that system of difPusiveness of which I have spoken in 
 another part of this work, widely circulated by order 
 of the Government of the North-Western Provinces.f 
 I cannot do better than quote from this paper the fol- 
 lowing statement of encouraging facts : 
 
 " Many of our readers will recollect the famine of 1838 (none, 
 indeed, who were then in the N. W. Provinces will ever forget 
 it), when mothers sold their children for a morsel of bread, when 
 the rage of hunger obliterated even the distinctions of caste, and 
 the Brahmin might be seen devouring the leavings of the Dhom. 
 Nowhere did hunger and disease press heavier than in the plains 
 of the mid Doab. Whole villages were depopulated, and every 
 effort of public or private benevolence failed to meet the wants of 
 a starving population. The Government did much to relieve the 
 sufferers at the time, but a merely temporary assistance was not 
 sufficient, and it became necessary to lower the revenue demand 
 in many villages. Mr. Unwin, then collector of Mynpoorie, was 
 in 1842 engaged in fixing the amount of this revision, and his 
 camp was pitched in the midst of the villages of the Chohan Kaj- 
 poots. In the course of his proceedings it was found desirable to 
 ascertain how far the population had been affected by the famine, 
 and with this object Mr. Unwin determined to take ten villages in 
 each pergunnah, and selecting one house in each of these villages, 
 to count in person every head in it. ^ In so doing,' we use his own 
 words, * I observed what previous information led me to expect, 
 that no single Chohanee (female Chohan), young or old, was 
 forthcoming. I remarked this to the Zemindars and people them- 
 selves, who, of course, were in numbers all about me on these oc- 
 casions, and told them I knew the cause, and should look after 
 them in future.' 
 
 * The Benares Magazine. volume of " Notes on the North -Western 
 
 f It -was subsequently embodied in Provinces of India," from which I now 
 Mr. Kaikes' pleasant and instructive quote. 
 
 2p2 
 
580 FEMALE INFANTICIDE 
 
 *' Mr. Unwln acted with zeal and discretion, and above all things 
 (in India) with promptitude. At once and on his own responsi- 
 bility he established, a system of watchful inspection, which was 
 thus described by the officiating magistrate of Mynpoorie (in 
 1848), in reply to a call for information from the Court of 
 Directors : 
 
 *^ * In Chohan villages the watchmen are ordered to give infor- 
 mation of the birth of a female child forthwith at the police- 
 station. A burkundauze goes to the house and sees the child, the' 
 thanadar informs the magistrate, upon which an order is passed, 
 that after one month the health of the new-born child should be 
 reported. The watchmen are further bound to give information 
 if any illness attack the child, when a superior police-officer 
 (either thanadar, jemadar, or mohurrir) at once goes to the vil- 
 lage, sees the child, and sends a report to the magistrate. In sus- 
 picious cases the body of the child is sent for and submitted to the 
 civil surgeon.' 
 
 " The effect of Mr. Un win's measures was soon felt in the dis- 
 trict. Amongst other incidents we may quote the following, as 
 partaking of that almost grotesque character which in these matter- 
 of-fact days seems peculiar to India. The Government had 
 watched Mr. Unwin's proceedings with approbation, and took an 
 early opportunity to notify in a public manner the interest which 
 was felt in the success of his measures. 
 
 " There is at Mynpoorie an old fortress, which looks far over 
 the valley of the Esun river. This has been for centuries the 
 stronghold of the Rajahs of Mynpoorie, Chohans whose ancient 
 blood, descending from the great Pirthee Raj and the regal stem of 
 Neem-rana, represents /a creme de la creme of Rajpoot aristocracy. 
 Here, when a son, a nephew, a grandson, was born to the reigning 
 chief, the event was announced to the neighbouring city by the 
 loud discharge! of wall-pieces and matchlocks; but centuries had 
 passed away, and no infant daughter had been known to smile 
 within those walls. 
 
 ** In 1845, however, thanks to the vigilance of Mr. Unwin, a 
 little grand-daughter was preserved by the Rajah of that day. 
 The fact was duly notified to the Government, and a letter of con- 
 gratulation and a dress of honor were at once despatched from 
 head-quarters to the Rajah. 
 
 " We have called this incident, the giving a robe of honor to a 
 man because he did not destroy his grand-daughter, a grotesque 
 
IN MYNPOORIE. 
 
 581 
 
 one ; but it is very far from being a ridiculous incident. When 
 the people see that the highest authorities in the land take an 
 interest in their social or domestic reforms, those reforms receive 
 an impetus which no lesser influences can give them. The very- 
 next year after the investiture of the Rajah, the number of female 
 infants preserved in the district was trebled! Fifty-seven had 
 been saved in 1845 ; in 1846, one hundred and eighty were pre- 
 served ; and the number has gone on steadily increasing ever 
 since. This is the best answer to those who would sneer at the 
 paternal style of government, and who would advocate mere red- 
 tape, law, and bayonets for the people of India. 
 
 '* Influence is everything in Hindostan. Indeed in all countries 
 good government, like true religion, depends upon influences and 
 motives quite as much as upon mere rules and restrictions. In 
 England, influence does much ; in India, we repeat, it does alL 
 To go against the law is nothing to the native of India, but he 
 rarely consents to go against the magistrate. When a govern- 
 ment of mere law comes in, when codes instead of men are to rule 
 India, the sooner the English are ofi* to their ships the better. 
 Let us see what local influence, supported by the influence of the 
 Government, but scarcely assisted by legal sanction, has done 
 for the suppression of female infanticide in Mynpoorie. In 1843, 
 not a single female Chohan infant was to be found in the district ; 
 at the present moment there are fourteen hundred girls living, 
 between the ages of one and six. We subjoin an extract from 
 the official Registers, from 1844 to 1850, inclusive. The girls 
 born during the year, and still alive at the end of the year, are 
 only entered. 
 
 Name of 
 Thannah. 
 
 1844. 
 
 1845. 
 
 1846. 
 
 1847. 
 
 1848. 
 
 1849. 
 
 1850. 
 
 Total. 
 
 Girls of 6 years 
 and under, liv- 
 ing in May, 
 1851. 
 
 Koorowlie ... 
 Shekoabad ... 
 Bhowgong ... 
 Koosmurra 
 
 Kurhul 
 
 Sumao 
 
 Mynpoorie ... 
 
 Ghurour 
 
 Sirsa-gunge 
 
 Kylejee 
 
 Phurrah 
 
 7 
 
 9 
 
 5 
 
 11 
 
 1 
 
 58 
 
 28 
 
 15 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 2 
 
 8 
 4 
 3 
 7 
 8 
 10 
 9 
 2 
 4 
 
 
 19 
 
 2 
 
 3 
 
 3 
 
 5 
 
 35 
 
 57 
 
 21 
 
 2 
 
 25 
 
 8 
 
 1 
 
 6 
 
 8 
 
 2 
 
 4 
 
 44 
 
 57 
 
 41 
 
 2 
 
 43 
 
 1 
 
 15 
 13 
 
 8 
 
 I 
 
 53 
 77 
 36 
 1 
 29 
 15 
 
 15 
 
 15 
 
 7 
 
 3 
 
 7 
 
 46 
 
 97 
 
 61 
 
 
 
 38 
 
 13 
 
 24 
 22 
 10 
 17 
 10 
 43 
 108 
 57 
 1 
 43 
 13 
 
 83 
 
 75 
 
 45 
 
 44 
 
 43 
 
 287 
 
 434 
 
 240 
 
 8 
 
 182 
 
 50 
 
 119 
 
 80 
 
 60 
 
 55 
 
 33 
 
 145 
 
 353 
 
 234 
 
 8 
 
 140 
 
 38 
 
 Total 
 
 134 
 
 57 
 
 180 
 
 209 
 
 261 
 
 302 
 
 348 
 
 1491 
 
 1265 
 
582 
 
 INFANTICIDE 
 
 " To check these results, a census of the entire Chohan popula- 
 tion of the district, of six years old and under, has been made in 
 the present year. The plan adopted was, first to call upon the 
 village accountants to report the number of boys and girls, up to 
 the age of six, living in their respective villages. These returns 
 were then tested as closely as possible by other independent 
 officials, and, as the result of that examination, the number of 
 females was reduced eleven per cent. The return thus corrected 
 is as follows, and is given for pergunnahs, not for the thannahs, 
 noted in the former table . 
 
 Names of Pergunnahs. 
 
 Boys 6 years 
 and under. 
 
 Girls 6 years 
 and under. 
 
 Ghurour 
 
 Souj • 
 
 Kurhul 
 
 Koorowlie 
 
 Mustufabad and Shekoabad 
 
 Kishnee Nubbee Gunge 
 
 Munchuna 
 
 Bhowgong 
 
 Aleepoor Puttee 
 
 297 
 
 376 
 
 52 
 
 33 
 
 474 
 
 261 
 
 364 
 
 283 
 
 21 
 
 194 
 
 219 
 
 33 
 
 17 
 
 299 
 
 102 
 
 246 
 
 150 
 
 3 
 
 Total ... 
 
 2161 
 
 1263" 
 
 I will only add to this that Mr. Haikes himself has 
 been active in this good work, and that he is now, I 
 believe, pushing forward, with unabated energy and 
 undiminished success, the enterprise of which he is 
 here the exponent. 
 
 One more illustration of the good results of British 
 interference must be adduced before I bring this chapter 
 to a close. The practice of female infanticide was very 
 prevalent on those Orissan hill-tracts, where Macpher- 
 son and Campbell achieved such great things for the 
 suppression of the rite of human sacrifice. In some of 
 the tribes it prevailed to such an extent, that no female 
 infant was spared except when a woman's first child was 
 a female. Villages containing a hundred houses were to 
 be seen without a single female child. The practice had 
 its origin in the social customs of the people, very dif- 
 ferent from those which obtain among the Eajpoots, 
 
AMONG THE KHONDS. 583 
 
 of whom I have heretofore spoken. " So far," says 
 Captain Macpherson, "is constancy to her husband 
 from being required in a wife, that her pretensions do 
 not, at least, suffer diminution in the eyes of either sex 
 when fines are levied on her convicted lovers ; while, 
 on the other hand, infidelity on the part of a married 
 man is held to be highly dishonorable, and is often 
 pimished by the deprivation of many social privileges. 
 A vrife, moreover, may quit her husband at any time, 
 except within a year of her marriage, or when she 
 expects offspring, or within a year after the bu'tli of a 
 child ; and she may then return to her father's house, 
 or contract a new marriage; while no man who is 
 without a wife may, without entailing disgrace on 
 himself and his tribe, refuse to receive any woman 
 who may choose to enter his house and establish her- 
 self as its mistress. Now, a bridegroom gives for a 
 wife of these tribes in which so few women are brought 
 up, a large consideration in cattle and money. The 
 sum is chiefly subscribed by his near relatives and his 
 branch of his tribe, and is paid to his wife's father, 
 who, again, distributes it amongst the heads of families 
 of his own branch. But, when a wife quits her husband, 
 he has a right to reclaim immediately from her father 
 the whole sum paid for her ; while the father, at the 
 same time, becomes entitled to levy a like sum from 
 any new husband to whom she may attach herself. 
 And, it being observed that every man's tribe is at once 
 answerable for all his debts, and bound in honor to 
 enforce his claims, it will be understood that these resti- 
 tutions and exactions, whether to be made bet^vixt 
 persons belonging to different tribes or to different 
 branches of the same tribe, must be, even in the 
 simplest cases, productive of infinite difficulty and 
 vexation ; while they have given rise to three-fourths 
 
584 FEMALE INFANTICIDE 
 
 of the sanguinary quarrels and hereditary feuds which 
 distract the Khond country. Thence, say the Khonds 
 — ' To any man but a rich and powerful chief, who 
 desires to form connexions, and is able to make large 
 and sudden restitutions, and to his tribe — a married 
 daughter is a curse. By the death of our female 
 infants before they see the light, the lives of men 
 without number are saved, and we live in comparative 
 peace.' " 
 
 I cannot afford to trace in detail the efforts which 
 were made by Macpherson to root out this dreadful 
 custom from among the Khonds. His exertions were 
 characterised by the same energy and the same success 
 as had attended his great crusade against human sacri- 
 fice. To use his own words : " The practice of female 
 infanticide was suppressed in the greatest portion of 
 the Khond country of Sooradah, including Coradah, 
 before the middle of 1844, and early in the present 
 year throughout those Zemindaries — ^that the mea- 
 sures by which that change was accomplished mate- 
 rially affected the system of life and the chief interests 
 of the Khond tribes, their aim being to establish an 
 ascendancy over the Khond population founded upon a 
 sense of benefits derived from their connexion with the 
 Government — such as the benefit of justice, and that 
 of protection in their intercourse with the low coun- 
 tries, and to remove the principal causes of infanticide, 
 by preventing or settling disputes connected with pro- 
 perty involved in marriage contracts, &c."* To this 
 must be added, at least, an allusion to the interesting 
 fact that the female victims, whom Macpherson had 
 rescued, were given from time to time, when of ripe 
 age, in marriage to men of the Khond tribes, and 
 that these women put forth their influence most suc- 
 
 ♦ Capt. Macpherson to" Mr. Hallidat/, Nov. 11, 1846. MS. Records 
 
AMONG THE KHONDS. 585 
 
 cessfully to wean the people from the hoary custom 
 which had dwelt so cruelly among them. 
 
 There is every reason to believe that in this part of the 
 country the efforts of our British officers have been at- 
 tended with complete success, and that the good results 
 of their humane efforts are lili:ely to be abiding. The 
 last report from the Khond agency contains these en- 
 couraging words : — " The lateness of the season," says 
 Captain Campbell, *' and the difficulty of procuring a 
 sufficiency of water for my camp, prevented my \isiting 
 the infanticidal tribes, but many of the chiefs and a 
 great number of the Meriah females, who had been mar- 
 ried to Klionds of these tracts, visited me at Sooradah 
 with their children, and from them I learnt with satis- 
 faction that female children were now generally pre- 
 served ; and in cases where they were destroyed it was 
 done with great secrecy, and not openly as in former 
 times. An officer of the Sebundies, weU acquainted 
 with the infanticidal tribes, and employed in superin- 
 tending them, confirms this report."* 
 
 These good deeds require no gloss — I leave such state- 
 ments to make then' own way. It would be difficult 
 to supply a fitting commentary, and impertinent to com- 
 ment upon them in language not rising to the height 
 of so great an argument. There are works which the 
 English will leave behind them, mightier than any ma- 
 terial fabrics w^hich human skill can fashion and human 
 labor construct. Let us rear what great substantial 
 structures we may — and even in such works we are 
 far surpassing the Moguls — History ^vill be able to re- 
 cord nothing better of British rule in the East than that 
 imder the Government of the East India Company the 
 widow ceased to bum herself on the funeral pile of her 
 husband — the mother ceased habitually to destroy the 
 
 ♦ Colonel Campbell to the Government of India, April 10, 1852. MS. Records. 
 
586 PEMALE INEANTICrDE. 
 
 infant life of her daughters — ^men ceased to purchase 
 and to rear children for sacrifice to a cruel goddess — 
 murder ceased to he a science and its practice an honor- 
 able profession — and that many wild tribes, by the con- 
 ciliatory efforts of the servants of the Company, were 
 weaned from a life of rapine, and raised from a state of 
 barbarism, to become peaceful agriculturists and civi- 
 lised rational men.* 
 
 * I have said nothing in this chapter India, was assured by the Rao (how 
 
 about^the suppression of Female Infan- interesting must have been a conversa- 
 
 ticide in Cutch, not because I was un- tion on such a subject between two 
 
 mindful of tlie subject, but because I such men) that there had been, for 
 
 could not afford any further to extend some years, a gradual diminution of 
 
 the dimensions of this chapter. I be- the great crime ; and the assertion was 
 
 lieve that very gratifying progress has satisfactorily proved by detailed sta- 
 
 been made in that part of the world, tistics. 
 My friend, Dr. Duff, when in Western 
 
NATIVE EDUCATION. 587 
 
 PART V. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Native Education — Parliamentary Enactments — Encouragement of Oriental 
 Literature — Rise and Progress of the Hindoo College — Substitution of the 
 English System — Lord William Bentinck's Measures — Native Agency — Edu- 
 cation in the North- Western Provinces— In Bombay — Tlie Jubbulpore School 
 of Lidustry — The Eoorkhee College — Missionary Efforts — Statistics of Edu- 
 cation. 
 
 In the two preceding books, I have treated largely of 
 what may he called the institutional crimes of India. 
 I have shown how human wickedness, on a gigantic 
 scale, has been fostered by error and superstition ; and 
 how the servants of the Company have brought aU 
 their humanity, aU their intelligence, and aU their 
 energy, to the great work of rooting out the enormi- 
 ties, which from generation to generation have griev- 
 ously afflicted the land. I have shown how they 
 have toiled and striven, and with what great success, 
 to win the benighted savage to the paths of civilisa- 
 tion, and to purge the land of those cruel rites which 
 their false gods were believed to sanction. There is 
 nothing in all history more honorable to the British 
 nation than the record of these humanising labors. 
 It is impossible to write of them without a glow of 
 pleasure and of pride. 
 
 But noble as have been these endeavours, and great 
 as has been the success, which up to a certain point 
 
588 NATIVE EDUCATION. 
 
 has attended them, there is something incredibly pain- 
 ful in the thought that, after all, they are fixed upon 
 an insecure basis ; that hitherto the action has been 
 rather from without than from within ; that we have 
 not generally made an abiding impression upon the 
 native mind; and that, therefore, there is always 
 danger of relapse. In many of the cases which I have 
 selected to illustrate the great victories of European 
 civilisation, it will have been seen that it was the 
 weight of external authority and personal influence 
 which, more than anything else, enabled our country- 
 men to push forward their civilising measures to any- 
 thing like a successful termination. The grand obstacle 
 to complete and permanent success, was the gross 
 ignorance of the people — ^that twofold ignorance which 
 includes the darkness of the intelligence and the dead- 
 ness of the moral sense. It was hard to awaken the 
 heathens to a living belief in the absurdity of the 
 superstitions to which they bowed themselves, and the 
 wickedness of the practices which they observed. 
 
 In most cases, I say, the people yielded to the influ- 
 ences of authority, or were moved by self-interest, to 
 conform outwardly to the wishes of their masters — ^but 
 they were seldom convinced. It was a great thing to 
 bring about even a diminution of the great crimes 
 which had inflicted so much misery upon countless 
 thousands of om' fellow-creatures. But having achieved 
 this amount of success, our oflB.cers by no means 
 thought that the work was complete. They felt it might 
 often happen that the people, withdra^vu from the im- 
 mediate sphere of these good influences, would subside 
 into their old evil ways — ^that, indeed, we might be 
 only casting out devils, to return again to find their old 
 habitations swept and cleansed for their reception, and 
 to wanton there more riotously than before : and they 
 one and all said that the only certain remedy, to which 
 
LEGISLATIVE ENACTMENTS. 589 
 
 they could look for an abiding cure, was that great re- 
 medial agent — Education. 
 
 In many cases, tlie men of whose benevolent labors 
 I have spoken, did their best, with the slender means 
 at their disposal, to employ this great remedy in fur- 
 therance of their more substantial outward measures ; 
 but such educational efforts were necessarily local and 
 accidental, and of limited application. Thus Sleeman 
 had established Schools of Industry, at Jubbulpore, 
 for the children of the Thugs; Outram had put to 
 school in Candeish, the little Bheels, whose fathers he 
 had reclaimed ; and Macpherson had turned to si- 
 milar account his opportunities in favor of the victims 
 whom he had rescued from the hands of the sacrificing 
 Khonds. And, doubtless, these benign endeavours 
 wiU bear good fruit in their season. But the disease, 
 at which we have to strike, is eating into the very life 
 of the whole country ; and it is only by a great and 
 comprehensive effort that we can hope to eradicate it. 
 
 It is only mthin a comparatively recent period that 
 the education of the people has taken any substantial 
 shape in the administration of the British Government 
 in the East. There was a sort of dim recognition, in 
 some of the early charters, of the Cliristian duty of 
 instructing the Gentoos; but it was not until the 
 year 1813 that there was anytliing like a decided 
 manifestation of the win of the Government in con- 
 nexion -with this great subject. The Charter Act, 
 passed in that year, contained a clause, enactiag that 
 " a sum of not less than a lakh of rupees in each year 
 shall be set apart and applied to the revival and im- 
 provement of literature, and the encouragement of the 
 learned natives of India, and for the introduction and 
 promotion of a knowledge of the sciences among the 
 inhabitants of the British territories in India."* What 
 
 • Ad 53rd George III., chap. 155, clause 43. 
 
590 NATIVE EDUCATION. 
 
 this might precisely mean was not very clear ; but it 
 seemed to point rather to the encouragement of 
 Oriental than of European learning, and those were 
 days in which the former was held to be of pro- 
 digious account. JSTothing, however, for some years, 
 of a practical character emanated from tliis decree of 
 the Legislature. The money thus appropriated, was 
 left to accumulate, and not imtil ten years after the 
 Act had passed did the local Government take any 
 steps to carry out its intentions. Then a Committee 
 of Public Instruction was established in Calcutta, and 
 the arrears of the Parliamentary grant were placed at 
 their disposal. 
 
 Such, in a few words, are all the noticeable officiali- 
 ties of native education up to the year 1823. But 
 there was a movement going on of which no record is 
 to be found in official papers. All that the Govern- 
 ment even at this time thought of doing for the educa- 
 tion of the people, was through the agency of Pundits 
 and Gooroos ; but there were men then in Bengal who 
 held Oriental learning at its true worth, as an instru- 
 ment of civilisation, and thought that better things 
 were to be found in the writings of the great masters 
 of the English language. Eirst in time, and foremost 
 in enthusiasm among these, was Mr. David Hare. He 
 was a man of a rude exterior and an uncultivated mind 
 — ^by trade, I believe, a watchmaker. He lacked the 
 power of expression both in oral and written discourse. 
 But for these wants a large infusion of earnestness and 
 perseverance in his character did much to atone ; and 
 he achieved what learned and eloquent men might 
 have striven to accomplish in vain. He originated the 
 Hindoo College of Calcutta. He stirred up others to 
 carry out his designs. The seed which he scattered fell 
 on good ground. Sir Hyde East, then Chief Justice of 
 Bengal, took up the project with hearty good will; 
 
INSTITUTION OF THE HINDOO COLLEGE. 591 
 
 and on the 14th of May, 1816, a public meeting was 
 held in his house for the furtherance of this great ob- 
 ject. The scheme was fuUy discussed by European and 
 native gentlemen — and a few days afterwards, at an 
 adjom-ned meeting, it was resolved that an institution 
 should be foimded to bear the name of the " Hindoo 
 Oollege of Calcutta." A committee and certain office- 
 bearers were then appointed to give effect to the reso- 
 lution. 
 
 It is generally the fate of great undertakings to be 
 assailed by difficulties at the outset, and to struggle 
 slowly into fuU success. The Hindoo College of Cal- 
 cutta, in its infancy, put forth nothing but indications 
 of a complete and humiliating failure. In January, 
 1817, the school was formally opened in the presence 
 of Sir Hyde East, Mr. Harrington, and other influen- 
 tial gentlemen. Upwards of 6000^. had been raised 
 by private contributions to give effect to the benevo- 
 lent views of the projectors. But for some time there 
 were thirty members on the committee, and only 
 twenty pupils in the school. After the lapse of a few 
 months the number on the books rose to seventy, and 
 there for six years it remained. Every effort was made 
 to render the institution acceptable to the natives of 
 Calcutta. All sorts of compromises were attempted. 
 The Bengallee and Persian languages were taught in 
 the school — ^but still the people hung back, awed by 
 the efforts to make their cMdren familiar with the dan- 
 gerous literature of the Eeringhees. The coUege, indeed, 
 was almost at its last gasp. European and native sup- 
 porters were alike deserting it, when Mr. Hare came 
 to the rescue. He sought the sustaining hand of Go- 
 vernment ; and he obtained what he sought. 
 
 This was in the year 1823, when, as I have said, the 
 local Government first timied their serious attention to 
 the subject of Native Education. They acceded to the 
 
592 NATIVE EDUCATION. 
 
 request that was made in behalf of the Hindoo College ; 
 and stretched out their hands in time to save the in- 
 stitution from the premature extinction that menaced 
 it. They had money then at their command for edu- 
 cational purposes, and although the encom^agement of 
 Oriental learning was uppermost in their thoughts, 
 they consented to contribute towards the funds of the 
 new institution, and undertook to erect a building for 
 its use.* But having granted this material support, 
 they naturally desired to exercise some authoritative 
 control over the proceedings of the managers. It was 
 proposed therefore to appoint, on the part of Govern- 
 ment, a Visitor ostensibly to see that the money-grant 
 was prop^4y appropriated, but really to watch over 
 and direct the management of the institution. This 
 at first the Baboos resented; but there were some 
 among them who were ready candidly to acknowledge, 
 that after seven years' operation the college had pro- 
 duced nothing better than a few "krannees,"t and 
 that little in the way of enlightened education was to 
 be expected, except from a larger infusion of European 
 energy and talent into the agency employed to carry 
 out the designs of its founders. 
 
 The native managers yielded ; and a medical ojficer 
 in the service of the Company was appointed in the 
 capacity of Visitor to give effect to the wishes of the 
 Government. The Indian medical service, from that 
 remote period when Joseph Hume called himself an 
 assistant-surgeon, down to the present time, when the 
 science of William O'Shaughnessy is about to annihi- 
 late space between the Indus and the Cauvery, has 
 been bright with the names of distinguished men. But 
 
 ♦ That is, it was resolved to construct hardly translatable into our language, 
 
 a building which would answer the pur- as it by no means represents the high 
 
 poses both of a Sanskrit and a Hindoo intelligence of the clerks in our own 
 
 college. public estiiblishments, or iu our banking 
 
 t A krannee is a clerk, in a Govern- and mercantile firms. 
 ment or other ofiBce— but the word is 
 
THE HINDOO COLLEGE. 593 
 
 I do not know that there is one member of that pro- 
 fession who has earned for himself a wider European 
 reputation than Horace Hayman Wilson. He it was 
 who, a quarter of a century ago, was appointed by au- 
 thority to bring into good working order the fast-fail- 
 ing institution. A man of very varied accomplish- 
 ments,* but with a predominant taste for Oriental lite- 
 rature, he was not likely to push to an excess the great 
 educational reform which was now beginning to take 
 shape in Bengal. But he threw no common amount 
 of energy into all his proceedings. Under his hands 
 paralysis became activity; exhaustion, strength; de- 
 cadence, stability. The institution was soon in a state 
 of vigorous energetic action. The Hindoo College be- 
 came the fashion. Even the old bigoted Hindoo Ba- 
 boos sent their children there without reluctance ; and 
 in the course of a few years, under Wilson's auspices, 
 the class-lists contained the names of four hundred 
 young Bengallees, many of them of good family and 
 position, and all eager for the new knowledge Avhich 
 was opening out its fascinations before them. 
 
 But still there was nothing like a decided movement 
 in favor of European learning. The Orientalists were 
 paramount alike in the Yice-E^egal city and the Pro- 
 vincial towns, t and Wilson himself was among the 
 
 * The following sketch of Professor written on the antiquities, the numis- 
 
 Wilson's varied accomplishments is raatology, on the history, literature, 
 
 really not overcharged. It is written chronology, and ethnology of Hindostan; 
 
 by one who differs widely from him on and on all these subjects not even 
 
 many essential points, and is uninflu- Colebrooke himself has written so much 
 
 enced by personal friendship : — " Per- and so well. His works show all the 
 
 haps no man since the days of the ' ad- erudition of the German school, without 
 
 mirable Crichton,' has united in him- its heaviness, pedantry, and conceit; 
 
 self such varied, accurate, and appa- and his style is the best of all styles, 
 
 rently opposite talents and accomplish- the style of an accomplished English 
 
 raents. A profound Sanskrit scholar, a gentleman."— [Ca/ci/«a 7?eu/ew.] 
 
 grammarian, a philosopher, and a poet, f The oldest educational institution 
 
 he was at the same time the life of in India supported by Government, is 
 
 society and a practical clear-headed the Mahomedan Madressa, established 
 
 man of business. On the stage as an ama- in 1781, under the auspices of Warren 
 
 teur, or in the professor's chair as the Hastings. About ten years afterwards 
 
 first Orientalist of our time, he seemed the Sanskrit College, at Benares, was 
 
 always to be in his place. He has founded by Jonathan Duncan. 
 
 2q 
 
594 NATIVE EDUCATION. 
 
 chief of them. " Previous to 1835," says Mr. Kerr, 
 the present principal of the Hindoo College, in his 
 Eeview of Public Instruction in Bengal, '* all the 
 larger educational establisliments, supported by Go- 
 vernment, with the exception of the Hindoo College 
 of Calcutta, were decidedly Oriental in character. 
 The medium of instruction was Oriental. The mode 
 of instruction was Oriental. The whole scope of 
 the instruction was Oriental, designed to conciUate 
 old prejudices, and to propagate old ideas." Pro- 
 fessors and teachers of the Oriental languages were 
 liberally paid. Stipends were given to the students in 
 the Oriental Colleges. Large sums of money were 
 spent on the printing and the translation of books. 
 But under the influence of such a system, little pro- 
 gress was made in the enlightenment of the natives of 
 India. Such efforts did not rouse them from the 
 sleep of apathy, or stimulate their appetite for 
 knowledge. The whole thing, indeed, was a dreary 
 failure, consummated at a large expense. 
 
 Nothing was clearer than this fact. It was as clear 
 in LeadenhalL-street as it was in Calcutta. The Cornet 
 of Directors, before the close of 1830, had openly 
 recognised the expediency of a vigorous movement in 
 favor of European education, and had written out 
 simultaneously to the Government of all the three 
 Presidencies, clearly enunciating their views on the 
 subject.* The letters which were then despatched to 
 
 * See, for example, the following pas- the best equivalent in our power to 
 
 gage of tTie letter of the 1 8th of February, these classes for the advantages of which 
 
 1829, to the Bombay Government: — the introduction of our Government has 
 
 " It is our anxious desire to afford to deprived them ; and for this and other 
 
 the higher classes of the natives of reasons, of which you are well aware, 
 
 India the means of instruction in Euro- we are extremely desirous that their 
 
 pean science, and of access to the education should be such as to qualify 
 
 literature of civilised Europe. The them for higher situations in the civil 
 
 character which may be given to the government of India, than any to which 
 
 classes possessed of leisure and natural natives have hitherto been eligible." 
 
 influence, ultimately determine that of The letters to the Bengal and Madras 
 
 the whole people. We are sensible, Governments arc in the same strain, 
 moreover, that it is our duty to afford 
 
MEASURES OF LORD \V. BENTINCK. 595 
 
 India were conceived in a liberal and enlightened 
 spirit. There was no reservation of the truth in 
 them. They admitted that our assumption of the 
 administration of the country had so far been in- 
 jm'ious to^the higher classes of the people of India as 
 that it had deprived them of official employment ; and 
 urged that it was, therefore, the duty of the State to 
 afford them "the best equivalent in their power." 
 Kothins? better could be offered than that sound 
 European instruction which would gradually qualify 
 them for restoration to much of the official employ- 
 ment of which they had been deprived. Lord Wil- 
 liam Bentinck was at this time at the head of the 
 Government of India. His own unaided judgment 
 had led him to similar conclusions ; and he was well 
 prepared to lay the axe to the trunk of the great 
 tree of Oriental learning, with all its privileges and 
 patronages, its monopolies and endowments. But it 
 was not until 1835 that, thinking that as the old 
 Charter of 1813 had been bm'ied, the errors to which 
 it had given birth might die with it, he gave the death- 
 blow to the Oriental system, and in a famous minute, 
 dated March 7, thus declared his opinions : — 
 
 " His Lordship in Council is of opinion that the great object of 
 the British Government ought to be the promotion of European 
 literature and science among the nations of India, and that all the 
 funds appropriated for the purposes of education would be best 
 employed on Enghsh education alone. 
 
 " It is not the intention of his Lordship to abolish any college or 
 school of native learning, while the population shall appear to be 
 inclined to avail themselves of the advantages it affords. 
 
 " His Lordship in Council decidedly objects to the practice 
 which has hitherto prevailed, of supporting the students during 
 the period of their education. He conceives that the only effect of 
 such a system can be to give artificial encouragement to branches 
 of learning, which, in the natural course of things, would be su- 
 perseded by more useful studies ; and he directs that no stipend 
 
 2q2 
 
596 NATIVE EDUCATION. 
 
 shall be given to any student, wlio may hereafter enter at any of 
 these institutions; and that when any professor of Oriental learn- 
 ing shall vacate his situation, the Committee shall report to the 
 Government the number and state of the class, in order that the 
 Government may be able to decide upon the expediency of ap- 
 pointing a successor. 
 
 '' It has come to the knowledge of his Lordship in Council, that a 
 large sum has been expended by the Committee in the printing of 
 Oriental works. His Lordship in Council directs that no portion 
 of the funds shall hereafter "be so employed. 
 
 " His Lordship in Council directs that all the funds, which these 
 reforms will leave at the disposal of the Committee, be henceforth 
 employed in imparting to the native population a knowledge of 
 English literature and science through the medium of the English 
 language." 
 
 Never was any reformation more complete and irre- 
 sistible than this. The Orientalists stood aghast before 
 it, for there lay their idol broken at their feet. The Pre- 
 sident of the Educational Committee, Mr. Shakespear, 
 had thrown up his office in anticipatory disgust. But 
 there were men of higher intelligence on the other side 
 — men who had prompted Lord William Bentinck, and 
 were now eager to support him. Eoremost among 
 these were Macaulay and Trevelyan.* The former 
 
 * I had written this before the ap- Benaresis the great seat of Brahmanical 
 
 pearance of Mr. Cameron's "Address learning; Delhi, of Arabic learning. If 
 
 to Parliament on the Duties of Great we retain the Sanscrit College at Be- 
 
 Britain to India in respect of the Edu- nares and the Mahometan College at 
 
 cation of the Natives," made me ac- Delhi, we do enough, and much more 
 
 quainted with the language of Mr. than enough in my opinion, for tlie 
 
 Macaulay's minute of the 2nd of Eastern languages. If the Benares and 
 
 February, 1835, in wliich he reviews, in Delhi Colleges should be retained, I 
 
 a masterly manner, the whole question would at least recommend that no sti- 
 
 of Government patronage of education, pends shall be given to any students 
 
 I cannot refrain from quoting the con- who may hereafter repair thither, but 
 
 elusion of this paper: that the people shall be left to make 
 
 " I would strictly respect all existing their own choice between the rival 
 interests. I would deal even generously systems of education without being 
 with all individuals who have had fair bribed by us to learn what they have 
 reason to expect a pecuniary provision, no desire to know. The funds which 
 But I would strike at the root of the would thus be placed at our disposal 
 bad system which has hitherto been would enable us to give larger en- 
 fostered by us. I would at once stop couragement to the Hindoo College at 
 the printing of Arabic and Sanscrit Calcutta, and to establish in the prin- 
 books. I would abolish the Madrassa cipal cities throughout the Presidencies 
 and the Sanscrit College at Calcutta, of Fort William and Agra schools in 
 
THE VERNACULAR. 597 
 
 seated himself in the vacant President's chair; and 
 from that time English education has heen as domi- 
 nant in the chief Government schools throughout India, 
 as hefore it was languid and depressed. 
 
 But hy the reader ignorant of all the bearings of 
 the great educational controversy which twenty years 
 ago agitated the learned world of Bengal, and was 
 echoed in the other presidencies of India, it must not 
 be supposed that Lord William Bentinck and his sup- 
 porters ever contemplated the degradation of the ver- 
 nacular. The blow which they struck was aimed not 
 at the living but at the dead languages of the country 
 — at the Sanscrit and the Arabic — at languages which 
 were not employed as vehicles of intercommunication, 
 and which contained little in then' books to elevate the 
 mind, to invigorate the understanding, or to facilitate 
 the business of life. The importance of the vernacular 
 language as a medium of instruction was admitted ; per- 
 haps, with no great heartiness and sincerity. The Court 
 of Du'ectors, however, had consistently urged upon the 
 local Governments the expediency of promoting the 
 extension of indigenous education.* And now the 
 
 which the English language might be than the paper on which they are 
 v^qW and thoroughly taught. printed was while it was blank; for 
 " If the decision of his Lordship in giving artificial encouragement to ab- 
 Council should be such as I anticipate, surd history, absurd metaphysics, ab • 
 I shall enter on the performance of my surd physics, absurd theology ; for rais- 
 duties with the greatest zeal and ing up a breed of scholars who find 
 alacrity. If, on the other hand, it be their scholarship an encumbrance and a 
 the opinion of the Government that the blemish, who live on the public while 
 present system ought to remain un- they are receiving their education, and 
 changed, I beg that I may be permitted whose education is so utterly useless to 
 to retire from the chair of the Com- them that, when they have received it, 
 mittee. I feel that I could not be of they must either starve or live on the 
 the smallest use there. I feel, also, public all the rest of their lives. Enter- 
 that I should be lending my counte- taining these opinions, I am naturally 
 nance to what I firmly believe to be a desirous to decline all share in the 
 mere delusion. I believe that the pre- responsibility of a body which, unless 
 sent system tends, not to accelerate the it alters its whole mode of proceeding, 
 progress of truth, but to delay the I must consider not merely as useless, 
 natural death of expiring errors. I but as positively noxious, 
 conceive that we have at present no " T. B. Macaulat." 
 right to the respectable name of a ♦ See the Court's letter to Bengal, 
 Board of Public Instruction. We are written in September, 1829: "We must 
 a board for wasting public money, for put you on your guard against a dispo- 
 printing bookB which are of less yalue sition of which we perceive some traces 
 
598 NATIVE EDUCATION. 
 
 educational authorities declared themselves in nowise 
 willing to deprive the people of the most ohvious 
 means of acquiring information through the spoken 
 languages of the country; and directed that in all 
 the Government colleges and schools the cultivation 
 of the vernacular should go hand in hand with that 
 of the English language.* 
 
 It was in furtherance of this great ohject of en- 
 couraging the study of the spoken languages of the 
 country, that in the heginuing of 1835, Mr. William 
 Adam, a gentleman of considerahle local experience, 
 and of a thoughtful inquiring mind, who had originally 
 gone out to India as a Baptist missionary, hut who 
 had lapsed into Socianism, and hecome the editor of a 
 Calcutta journal, was despatched by Lord WiUiam Ben- 
 tinck on a special commission, to inquire into the state 
 of indigenous education in Bengal and Behar. He 
 prosecuted his inquiries with great earnestness, and 
 amassed an immense store of information relating to 
 the state of the vernacular schools, and, indeed, the 
 general condition of native society in those pro- 
 
 in the general Committee, and still more ropean ideas and sentiments." — [ The 
 in the local Committee of Delhi, to un- Court of Directors to the Government of 
 derrate the importance of what may be Bengal, September ' 23j 1830, quoted in 
 done to spread useful knowledge among Mr. Willoughhy's Minute J] 
 the natives, through the medium of * See the following manifesto on the 
 books and instruction in their own Ian- subject put forth by the Committee of 
 guages. That more complete education, Public Instruction : 
 which is to commence by a thorough " The general committee are deeply 
 study of the English language, can be sensible of the importance of encou- 
 placed within the reach of a very small raging the cultivation of the vernacular 
 proportion of the natives of India ; but languages. That they do not consider 
 intelligent natives, who have been thus that the order of the 7th of March 
 educated, may, as teachers in colleges precludes this, and they have constantly 
 and schools, or as the writers and trans- acted on this construction. In the dis- 
 lators of useful books, contribute in an cussions which preceded that order, 
 eminent degree to the more general ex- the claims of the vernacular languages 
 tension among their countrymen of a were broadly and prominently admitted 
 portion of the acquirements which they by all parties ; and the questions sub- 
 have themselves gained, and may com- mitted for the decision of Government 
 municate in some degree to the native only concerned the relative advantage 
 literature, and to the minds of the native of teaching English on the one side, 
 community, that improved spirit which and the learned Eastern languages ou 
 it is to be hoped, they will themselves the other." 
 hare imbibed from the influence of Eu- 
 
MR. Adam's report. 599 
 
 vinces. The reports whieli he furnished to Govern- 
 ment are as interesting as they are instructive. The 
 great fact which they set forth, clearly and unniis- 
 takeahly, was, that there was very little education of 
 any kind in Bengal and Behar, and that that little was 
 lamentably had. In some thannas, or police divisions, 
 the per centage of educated youth — taking the period 
 of education to lie between the fifth and the four- 
 teenth years — ^was as low as two-and-a-half. In others 
 it was much higher. But it was shown, at the 
 same time, with equal clearness, that the per centage 
 of adult education was considerably lower. And Mr. 
 Adam arrived at the conclusion, " that within a com- 
 paratively recent period, certain classes of the native 
 population, hitherto excluded by usage from verna- 
 cular instruction, have begun to aspire to its advan- 
 tages, and that this hitherto unobserved movement in 
 native society has taken place to a greater extent in 
 Bengal than in Behar. Such a movement apparently 
 will have the effect which has been found actually to 
 exist — ^that of increasing the proportion of juvenile in- 
 struction as compared with that of adult instruction, 
 and of increasing it in a higher ratio in Bengal than 
 in Behar." This mission did something for vernacular 
 education ; but, doubtless^, it was not much. 
 
 The system established by Lord William Bentinck 
 has been maintained with little variation by his suc- 
 cessors. The Committee of Public Instruction, now 
 known as the Council of Education, has numbered 
 among its members some of the ablest and most en- 
 lightened men who have ever braved the damp heats 
 of Bengal.* Under their superintendence, encouraged 
 alike by the local and the home Governments, they 
 have given due effect to this system, and the result has 
 
 * The Council of Education is an pean gentlemen (some of them not in 
 honorary Board with a salaried secre- the Company's service) and partly of 
 tary. It is composed partly of Euro- natiyes. 
 
600 NATIVE EDUCATION. 
 
 been, that vnth. the aid of a highly-cultivated staff of 
 educational officers, they have rendered a large num- 
 ber of Hindoo and Mahomedan youths familiar mth 
 the amenities of Em^opean literature. The proficiency 
 attained in the principal scholastic institutions is such 
 as is very rarely acquired by boys of the same age in 
 any other country in the world. I do not believe that 
 there are half a dozen boys at Eton or Harrow who 
 could explain an obscure passage in Milton or Shak- 
 speare, or answer a series of historical questions, ex- 
 tending from the days of Alexander to the days of 
 Napoleon, with as much critical acuteness and accu- 
 racy of information, as the white-muslined students 
 who, with so much ease, master the difficult examina- 
 tion-papers which it has taxed all the learning and all 
 the ingenuity of highly-educated English gentlemen 
 of ripe experience to prepare, and who in any such trial 
 of skill would put om' young aristocrats to confusion. 
 All this is past dispute — ^the proficiency is admitted. 
 But there has seldom been much more than the pro- 
 ficiency of the clever boy. A very few exceptional cases, 
 just sufficient to prove the rule on the other side, might 
 be adduced to show that European education has 
 struck deep root in the native mii^d ; but the good seed 
 commonly fell by the way-side, and the birds of the 
 air devoured it. All the enervating and enfeebling en- 
 vironments of Indian life, at the critical period of 
 adolescence, closed around the native youth, to stupify 
 and to deaden both the intellectual faculties and the 
 moral sense. The Hookah and the Zenana did their 
 sure work. And in a year or two there was little left 
 of the bright-faced, quick-witted boy who could put 
 the Penseroso into good English prose, tell you who 
 were Pepin and Charles Martel, and explain the cha- 
 racter of the " self-denying ordinance" as accurately 
 as Hallam or Macaulay. 
 
SCHOLARSHIPS. GOl 
 
 The children of India were, perhaps, the most im- 
 pressionable — ^the most teachable children in the world. 
 But, left to itself, the impression was soon effaced ; the 
 teaching soon became profitless. The mere mechanical 
 power of reading and Amting remained. The native 
 students became expert penmen, and remained expert 
 penmen to the last. Much of the copying work in the 
 Government ojfices had long been done by them. But 
 it was impossible to read any number of documents so 
 copied without the conviction that the copyist had 
 brought the smallest possible amount of intelligence to 
 bear upon his work. The eye seemed to communicate 
 directly with the hand ; there was no intervention of 
 the brain. The process was merely that of the ma- 
 chine. The member was instructed — but the mind 
 was not cultivated. The intelligence of the well- 
 tutored boy was seldom carried into the practicalities 
 of actual life. 
 
 It was mainly to remedy this evil — to check the re- 
 trograde tendency of which I speak — that under the 
 administration of Lord Auckland, certain scholarships 
 were founded in the principal G overnment institutions. 
 It was obvious that any system which would have the 
 effect of riveting the knowledge, which we imparted, 
 on the minds of the students, and preserving their lite- 
 rary ardor from early extinction, would confer great 
 benefits on the people. Of infinite moment was it 
 that the native student should not glide away from 
 beneath the eye of his preceptor, just at that most im- 
 portant stage of life when the boy passes over the 
 bridge to manhood. The scholarship system was de- 
 signed to render the effects of all this good Government 
 teaching rather an abiding influence than a transitory 
 impression. And as far as its advantages have ex- 
 tended, I believe that there is a solid reality in them. 
 In all the Presidencies of India scholarships have been 
 
602 NATIVE EDUCATION. 
 
 founded, both in connexion with the English and 
 the Vernacular schools. And this alone is sufficient to 
 associate the administration of Lord Auckland honor- 
 ably with the cause of native education. 
 
 But the good effect of this encouragement was ne- 
 cessarily limited. Something more was required to 
 give a general impulse to native education, even among 
 the more influential classes of society. The Court of 
 Directors, it has been seen, had always associated na- 
 tive education with official employment, and the local 
 governments had, partially at least, given effect to the 
 wishes of the Court. But it seemed that a more autho- 
 ritative declaration of the views of Government should 
 now be put forth, with respect to this important 
 matter of public employment — ^that something, in- 
 deed, in the shape of a pledge, should be given to the 
 educated natives, that their claims would be duly re- 
 garded. Lord Hardinge, before he was compelled 
 to push aside the portfolio and take the sword into his 
 hand, had given his mind earnestly to the subject of 
 native education. Regarding it both in connexion 
 with its general effects upon the elevation of the na- 
 tional character, and upon the qualification of the 
 people for employment in the public service, he came 
 to the conclusion that conformably both with the de- 
 crees of the Legislature, and the expressed desire of 
 the Court of Directors, those objects would be best 
 attained by a more authoritative enunciation of the 
 views of Government — ^by a specific declaration that it 
 was their intention, thenceforth, to recognise a certain 
 educational test of qualification for the public service, 
 and by so doing, both to encourage the diffusion of 
 knowledge, and to raise the character of the native 
 agency employed in the service of the State. Whether 
 education were to be promoted that this agency might 
 be improved, or whether these inducements were to be 
 
LORD HARDINGE's MINUTE. 603 
 
 offered that education miglit be promoted, was in reality 
 of little consequence, so long as the reciprocal action 
 of the two was secured. Lord Hardinge believed that 
 both ends could be attained by an authoritative 
 enunciation of Ms views and intentions ; and he prepared 
 a minute, which has since become very famous in the 
 later history of native education, wherein, under date, 
 October 10, 184<4, he thus declares the intentions of 
 the Government : — 
 
 " The Governor-General, having taken into his con- 
 sideration the existing state of education in Bengal, 
 and being of opinion that it is highly desirable to afford 
 it every reasonable encouragement, by holding out to 
 those who have taken advantage of the opportunity of 
 instruction afforded to them, a fair prospect of employ- 
 ment in the public service ; and thereby not only to 
 reward indi\idual merit, but to enable the State to 
 profit as largely and as early as possible, by the result 
 of the measiu'es adopted of late years for the instruc- 
 tion of the people, as well by the Government as by 
 private individuals and societies, has resolved, that in 
 every possible case, a preference shall be given, in the 
 selection of candidates for public employment, to those 
 who have been educated in the institutions thus esta- 
 blished, and especially to those who have distinguished 
 themselves therein by a more than ordinary degree of 
 merit and attainment." 
 
 To the Council of Education, as the general educa- 
 tional executive, it was left to carry out the details of 
 a scheme at once hberal and wise ; but it often hap- 
 pens that the wise liberaUty of an original project, 
 passed through the filtre of mechanical detail, is purged 
 of all its heartiness and sincerity, and weakened and 
 reduced to something narrow and exclusive, and most 
 unlike the first design. Lord Hardinge's minute was 
 subjected to this process of filtration ; and all its ca- 
 
604 NATIVE EDUCATION. 
 
 tholicity was left behind in the machine. The Council 
 of Education prescribed a test, based entirely on the 
 educational system of the Government colleges,* so 
 that the pupils of those institutions which had been 
 established '' by private individuals and societies" were 
 practically excluded from the competition. 
 
 The Court of Directors entu-ely disapproved of this 
 decision. "It appears to us," they wrote, "that the 
 standard can only be attained by the students in the 
 Government colleges, and that therefore it virtually 
 gives to them a monopoly of public patronage." " We 
 are also of opinion," they added, '' that this high test, 
 instead of promoting, will in effect discourage the 
 general acquisition of the English language. Those 
 who cannot hope to pass this test will not think it 
 worth their while to bestow any time upon learning 
 the English language, at least with a view to employ- 
 ment in the public service." And they argued that 
 men might be well qualified by their general character 
 and attainments for public employment, although they 
 were but imperfectly acquainted with the writings of 
 Shakspeare and Ben Jonson, or, indeed, with the Eng- 
 lish language at all. " Where from local circum- 
 stances," they said, " the persons whom it would be 
 most desirable to employ are found deficient in that 
 knowledge, we would not, on that account, peremp- 
 torily exclude them from employment, though other 
 qualifications being equal, or nearly so, we would allow 
 a knowledge of the English language to give a claim 
 to preference." 
 
 Nothing could have been heartier than the wish of 
 the Court to have ever " at their disposal a body of 
 natives qualified by their habits and acquirements to 
 take a larger share, and occupy higher situations in 
 
 * The examination was to be similar senior scholarsliips at the Calcutta and 
 to that to which candidates for the Hooglily colleges were subjected. 
 
WANT OF EMPLOYMENT. 605 
 
 civil administrations than had hitherto heen the prac- 
 tice." But this liberal desire soon overleapt itself. 
 For the native students, encouraged by the knowTL 
 wishes of the Court, and the declarations of the local 
 Government, so strove to qualify themselves for office, 
 and so eagerly sought Government employ, that many 
 were necessarily disappointed. Employment could not 
 readily be found for them. And this discouraging, 
 though inevitable fact, was emphatically pointed out by 
 some of the heads of colleges to the superintending au- 
 thorities. Thus, in the report of the Delhi College for 
 1850, it is stated, that " several of the more advanced 
 students had, during the past year, been attending the 
 ci\dl courts, with the view of familiarising themselves 
 wdth the forms of official business. The officiating 
 principal, in noticing this, remarked, that from the 
 press of competition, it not unfrequently happened 
 that youths, whose qualifications were undoubted, re- 
 mained long after quitting the college without any 
 provision. He therefore proposed that any eleve of the 
 college who could procm-e a certificate of his fitness 
 for official employment from the officer whose court he 
 had been attending, should at. once be appointed a su- 
 pernumerary, on a small salary, tiU such time as a 
 vacancy might occur. " The principal of the Benares 
 College also observed, that much difficulty was expe- 
 rienced even by his best pupils in their search for em- 
 ployment after quitting the college. He therefore 
 proposed that the passing of an examination of some 
 fixed and high standard should entitle the successful 
 student to immediate employment under Government, 
 on a salary of 30 rupees (per mensem) or thereabouts : 
 should no vacancy exist at the moment, the passed 
 candidate might be directed to prosecute liis studies at 
 the college, and to employ himself under the direction 
 of the committee in the preparation of translations 
 
606 NATIVE EDUCATION. 
 
 and treatises in the vernacular." — " A class," it was 
 added, " like that of the fellows of our English colleges 
 would thus he formed, the members of which might be 
 drafted off as their services were required, into the 
 educational or other departments." 
 
 But these proposals did not altogether meet the ap- 
 probation of the authorities. It was declared that 
 there was no reluctance on the part of heads of depart- 
 ments to employ the passed students of the Govern- 
 ment colleges and schools — that on the other hand 
 every practicable effort would be made to afford them 
 the encouragement which they sought; but that it 
 was clearly impossible to find employment in the 
 Government service for all candidates urging the 
 claims of a collegiate education ; and that it was inex- 
 pedient that a general impression should obtain 
 among them that such education conferred upon 
 them any right to official employment. No Govern- 
 ment in the world could afford systematically to re- 
 cognise such claims. It is one thing to hold out an 
 inducement to exertion by showing that successful 
 efforts wiU strengthen the chances of obtaining official 
 employment ; another, to admit that such efforts con- 
 stitute a prescriptive right to office. All that Govern- 
 ment could possibly do was to hold out encouragements 
 of the former class. It was clearly impossible to pledge 
 themselves to the latter. 
 
 It would appear from these statements that con- 
 siderable difficulty has attended the efforts which have 
 been made to give practical effect to the wise and 
 benevolent intentions of the Court of Directors. The 
 design was one of a reciprocal beneficial action — ^the 
 hope of public employment giving an impulse to edu- 
 cation, and education mightily improving the chara<5ter 
 of the public service. But there was a defect in the 
 national character which did much to embarrass the 
 
PUBLIC AND PRIVATE EMPLOYMENT. 607 
 
 practical working of this admirable design. The na- 
 tives of India, when once their expectations are raised, 
 lean with cliild-like helplessness on the strong arm of 
 Government, and, instead of exerting themselves, be- 
 lieve that everytliing will be done for them. Instead 
 of something conditional, they thought that they saw 
 something absolute in the promises of Government, 
 and believed that they had only to conform to a certain 
 test to secure official employment. The tendency of 
 this was to give them narrow and exclusive views of 
 the advantages of education, and greatly to limit private 
 enterprise. 
 
 It was clearly mischievous that the natives should 
 look upon official employment as the one great aim 
 and end of education. Mr. Cameron, therefore, did 
 Tvisely when he cautioned the native students of Bengal 
 against this dangerous delusion. " Do not imagine," 
 he said, " that the sole or the main use of a liberal 
 education is to fit yourselves for the public service ; or 
 rather do not imagine that the public can only be 
 served by the performance of duties in the offices of 
 Government . . . Besides the public service and 
 the pursuits of literature and science, there are open to 
 you the learned professions, law, medicine, the highly 
 honorable profession of a teacher, and that which has 
 but lately become a profession, civil engineering."* 
 It was a great thing that the natives should be encou- 
 raged to cultivate their minds by the promise of the 
 high reward of official employment ; but it was a still 
 greater thing that they should learn to reiy on them- 
 selves — ^to look to education as the means of indepen- 
 dent advancement in life. So often is it that in the 
 very best of human designs, there is some germ of 
 failure at the bottom. 
 
 In the mean while a great experiment was going 
 
 * Address of the President (Mr. dence.— [Cameron'* Address to Parlia- 
 Cameron) of the Council of Education mentf (fc] 
 to the students under its superinten- 
 
608 NATIVE EDUCATION. 
 
 on in the North- West. In 1845 circular letters 
 were addressed to all the revenue-collectors, calling 
 their especial attention to the subject of education. 
 These letters are a model of sound practical sense 
 combined with the purest benevolence. They set 
 forth a general admission that " the standard of educa- 
 tion amongst the people is very low;" and then they 
 proceed to show that "causes are at work, which 
 tend rapidly to raise the standard and improve the 
 intellectual state of the whole population." These 
 causes were mainly to be found in the operation of the 
 new settlement. "The people of Hindostan," con- 
 tinues the secretary of the North-Western Government, 
 " are essentially an agricultural people. Anything 
 " which concerns their land immediately rivets their 
 " attention and excites their interest. Dm^ing the late 
 " settlement a measurement has been made, and a map 
 " drawn of every field in these provinces, and a record 
 "formed of every right attaching to the field. The 
 " ' Putwaree's' papers, based upon this settlement, con- 
 " stitute an annual registry of these rights, and are re- 
 " gularly filed in the collector's ofiice. They are com- 
 " piled on an uniform system, and are the acknowledged 
 " groundwork of all judicial orders regarding rights in 
 " land." The case thus stated, as between the Govern- 
 ment and the agriculturist, the former proceeded to 
 show the direct interest which every man had, under 
 such a system, in the education of himself and his 
 children. " It is important," they wrote, " for his own 
 " protection^ that every one possessing any interest in 
 " the land should be so far acquainted ^yiih. the prin- 
 " ciples on which these papers are compiled as to be 
 " able to satisfy himself that the entries affecting 
 "himself are correct. There is thus a direct and 
 "powerful inducement to the mind of almost every 
 " individual to acquire so much of reading, writing, 
 " arithmetic, and mensuration, as may suffice for the 
 
MOVEMENTS IN THE NORTH-WEST. 609 
 
 '* protection of his rights ; until this knowledge be 
 '' universal, it is vain to hope that any great degree 
 " of accuracy can be attained in the preparation of 
 ** the papers."* 
 
 Thus, for the fii*st tune, was it plainly manifested 
 to the people, that the maintenance of their individual 
 rights was dependent upon their o\^^l power of ascer- 
 taining them — that mthout the rudiments of education 
 they were liable to be ^^Tongfully dealt mth — that, in 
 short, the power of reading and ^vriting was essential 
 to the very life of an agricultural population. An 
 appeal was thus directly made to the self-interest of the 
 people. It was something that every one could under- 
 stand ; and was far more likely to be responded to by 
 the rude peasants of Upper India than any abstract 
 propositions regarding the value of learning and the 
 duty of improving the mind. But although this was 
 to be the beginning, it was not to be the end. It was 
 believed that if self-interest were to lead them a little 
 way along the paths of learniag, they would be in- 
 duced by higher motives to advance further in the 
 march of mind. '' When the mind of the whole 
 people," it was said, *' has thus been raised to a sense 
 of the importance of knoT^ ledge, it is natural to sup- 
 pose that many from the mass will advance further, 
 and cultivate Kterature for the higher rewards it 
 offers, or even for the pleasure which its acquisition 
 occasions, "t 
 
 * Three years afterwards it was de- struction. If the people at large con- 
 
 clared that the progress of time had tinue as ignorant as they now are, the 
 
 tended to confirm these views of the system cannot work out for them all 
 
 connexion between the revenue-system the advantages it is calculated to pro- 
 
 and the education of the country : — duce. These advantages are so palpable 
 
 " Subsequent experience has confirmed to their minds, that when rightly ap- 
 
 the lieutenant-governor in his opinion prehended they form the strongest in • 
 
 that those features of our present re- centive to any exertion which will 
 
 venue-system, which affect the registra- secure their attainment." — [Government 
 
 tion of all landed property, afford the of North- Western Provinces to Govem- 
 
 proper means by which the mass of the ment of India, April 19, 1848.] 
 
 people may be roused to a sense of the f '^*'^- 
 importance of sound elementary in- 
 
 2jk 
 
610 NATIVE EDUCATION. 
 
 For the fartherance of these ends the collectors were 
 exhorted, above all things, to endeavour to carry the 
 people with them — ^not to think of introducing novel 
 and barely intelligible systems among them — ^but to 
 accomanodate themselves, as far as possible, to existing 
 institutions. " Judicious encouragement," it was said, 
 "would promote the formation of village schools, and 
 enlist in the work of education the persons whom the 
 people themselves might select as their teachers and 
 support for that purpose." The preparation of a series 
 of village school-books was commenced for circulation 
 among the people. Detailed instructions were given 
 to the Tehsildars, or native revenue-officers, who were 
 to be employed as the immediate agency for the pro- 
 secution of this scheme; and the utmost endeavour 
 was made to collect, from all parts of the provinces, 
 detailed educational statistics wherefrom to construct 
 the groundwork of their operations. It was not the 
 design of the Government to establish schools of its 
 own, but to encourage the maintenance of old institu- 
 tions, and to stimulate the people to extend the bene- 
 fits of the existing system. 
 
 The statistical inquiries, thus directed, were pushed 
 forward with hearty good-will. To the majority of 
 those concerned in the new settlement it was a con- 
 genial task. A valuable series of reports was thus 
 prepared, and a vast mass of information was collected. 
 The aggregate result was a deplorable picture of the 
 state of education in Upper India. It was ascertained 
 that " on an average less than 5 per cent, of the youth 
 who are of an age to attend schools obtain any in- 
 struction, and that instruction which they do receive 
 is of a very imperfect kind."* 
 
 * Government qf the North -Western the Statistics of Indigenous Education 
 
 Provinces to Government qf India, No- within the North- Western Provinces of 
 
 vember 18, 1846. the Bengal Presidency," to which I am 
 
 In tho preface to the "Memoir on indebted for the information contained 
 
MR. thomason's proposal. 611 
 
 To supply this grievous want, Mr. Thomason now 
 proposed the endowment of a school in every con- 
 siderable village. The plan whicli he desired to carry 
 out he beKeved to be in accordance with the feelings 
 of the people and the character of their institutions. 
 He suggested that the endowment should be secured 
 by small grants of land — ^that jagheers of from five to 
 ten acres each, yielding a rental varying from twenty 
 to forty rupees per annum, should be granted to the 
 village communities for the purpose of maintaining 
 their schoolmasters. But this proposal* did not meet 
 the approbation of the Court of Directors. They 
 acknowledged, in the most unqualified manner, "the 
 necessity for gi^dng some powerful impulse to elemen- 
 tary education in the North- Western Provinces." They 
 declared themselves " prepared to sanction the adoption 
 of some more comprehensive plan of extending and im- 
 proving the means of popular instruction throughout 
 the country;" but they doubted the expediency of 
 sanctioning the proposed plan of landed endowments. 
 
 in this and some of the following pages, very apparent. " Assuming," said the 
 Mr. R. Thornton, the compiler, says: Agra Government, "boys from the 
 — " Out of a population, •which nimi- commencement of their fifth to the end 
 bered in 1848, 23,200,000 souls, and in of their fourteenth year to be of an age 
 which were consequently included more best adapted for receiving instruction, 
 than 1,900,000 males of a school-going it is calculated that, in the Lower Pro- 
 age, we can trace but 68,200 as in the vinces, the per centage of such boys 
 receipt of any education whatever. In now receiving instruction varies from 
 Prussia nine-tenths of this portion of 32 in Bengal to a little more than 5 in 
 the population is stated to be under Behar. In Bombay it appears to vary 
 instruction. In Russia, the most bar- from 7 to 13. In Agra, one of the 
 barous of the European monarchies, the most favored districts in these pro- 
 proportion is as one to nine. In India, vinces, it is only 5i." 
 even with a large allowance for those * The proposal was supported by an 
 receiving domestic and private educa- argument of a general kind, worthy of 
 tion, it is as one to twenty-five. Low, notice. "It is the standing reproach 
 however, as this proportion is, it is only of the British Government," wrote the 
 when considered in connexion with the Agra secretary, " that whilst it con- 
 degree of information imparted, that it tinually resumes the endowments of 
 conveys any idea of the extent of the former sovereigns, it abstains from 
 deficiency to be supplied." But it was making any, even for those purchases 
 not only that the per centage was very which it considers most laudable. The 
 low in comparison with that exhibited present measure will in some degree 
 by the educational statistics of Europe, remove this reproach, and that in a 
 but that as compared with the state of manner most acceptable to the feelings 
 the Lower Provinces of Bengal — the ofthe people at large." 
 darkness of the Upper seemed to be 
 
 2r2 
 
612 NATIVE EDUCATION. 
 
 *' It has, no doubt," they wrote, "the advantages 
 '' ascribed to it, and is apparently the most economical 
 " arrangement for effecting the object proposed. En- 
 "dowments of land are, however, open to obvious 
 " objection. They have an inherent tendency to assume 
 " the character of permanent and hereditary property, 
 " independent of any reference to the tenure by which 
 " they were originally held. An actual occupant, even 
 " should he prove inefficient, would think himself de- 
 '' prived of a right if he was removed, and a son would 
 " claim to succeed to his father whether he were com- 
 " potent or not. The evil would be aggravated by the 
 "extreme difficulty of exercising a vigilant control 
 " over such numerous establishments, and in one or 
 " two generations it might happen that the alienation 
 " of revenue would be of little avail in securing the 
 " education of the people."* 
 
 Moved by these considerations, the soundness of 
 which is not to be denied, the Court declared them- 
 selves in favor of the expediency of moneyed pay- 
 ments. They were ready, they said, to give theu' at- 
 tention to any plan inviting the payment of monthly 
 stipends to the village schoolmasters, or a direct expen- 
 diture of money in any other manner most likely to 
 secure the great end of the difPusion of knowledge 
 among the people. " Too thankful for the liberality 
 of these concessions to lay any stress on the rejection 
 of his particular scheme," Mr. Thomason now set 
 himself with earnestness to devise a plan which should 
 meet the wishes of the Court. He frequently dis- 
 cussed the best mode of accomplishing this object with 
 all the officers of Government mth whom he came 
 into communication in the course of his annual tour. 
 And the result of tliis discussion was a strong convic- 
 
 ♦ Despatch of Court qf Directors^ August 25, 1847. 
 
THE VISITATION SCHEME. 613 
 
 tion that the system of moneyed payments to village 
 schoolmasters was open to very grave objections. He 
 proposed, therefore, that the ordinary \dllage schools 
 should remain as before, self-supporting institutions ; 
 but that in every tehseldarree, or revenue-district, a 
 model school should be established at the general ex- 
 pense, " to provide a powerful agency for visiting all 
 the indigenous schools, for furnisliing the people and 
 the teachers with advice, assistance, and encourage- 
 ment, and for rewarding those schoolmasters who 
 may be found the most deserving."* To each dis- 
 trict was to be attached a Zillah visitor and three Per- 
 gunnah \isitors — the system being one of visitation 
 and superintendence — and these officers were to be 
 emphatically enjoined " to conduct themselves with the 
 greatest courtesy both to the people at large and to 
 the village teachers." They were carefully to avoid 
 anything that might offend the prejudices or be unne- 
 cessarily distasteful to the feeling of those with whom 
 they have communication. "Their duty," it was 
 added, "will be to persuade, encourage, assist, and 
 reward, and to that duty they will confine them- 
 selves." 
 
 It was calculated that this scheme, when carried out 
 in all its completeness, would necessitate an expenditure 
 of about 20,000/. per annum. A partial experiment 
 was proposed in the first instance ; and it was sug- 
 gested at the same time that a Visitor-general should 
 be selected from among the civil servants of the Com- 
 pany to communicate with the subordinate agency, to 
 direct and control their operations, and secure the 
 efficient working of the entire scheme. The Court of 
 Directors sanctioned the arrangement ; and a Resolu- 
 tion of the Government of the North- Western Pro- 
 
 * Government of the North- Western Provinces to Goverjiment of India, Apnl 19, 
 1848. 
 
614 NATIVE EDUCATION. 
 
 vinces, dated 9th of Tebruaiy, 1850, formally inau- 
 gurated the plan. 
 
 Turning now to the general statistics of Education^ 
 it would appear from the most recent statements 
 that there are in the Lower Provinces of the Bengal 
 Presidency 30 Government colleges and schools in 
 which English is taught — ^that these schools are con- 
 ducted by 283 masters, and that the number of pupils 
 receiving instruction in them is 5465 ; and that among 
 these 291 scholarships, of the annual value of 5000^. 
 in all, are held up for competition. In the same part 
 of the country there are 33 Government Vernacular 
 schools, with 104 pupils, and 4685 scholars. The entire 
 annual expenditure upon English and Vernacular 
 schools in Lower Bengal is about 38,000/.* 
 
 In the North- Western Provinces there are 7 colleges 
 and schools, supported by Government, in which Eng- 
 lish is taught. In these there are 112 masters, 1582 
 pupils, and 232 scholarships, of the value of about 
 2300Z. Besides these are 8 model schools, of the 
 origin and intent of wliich I have spoken. The total 
 expenditure in the North- Western Provinces amounts 
 to 13,350Z. 
 
 It appears from the same ofl&cial record that, under 
 the Madras Presidency, there is only one school in 
 which English is taught — the Madras University High 
 School — with 13 masters and 180 pupils. The number 
 of Vernacular schools seems to be uncertain. The gross 
 expenditure is 4350Z. Education is in a more depressed 
 condition in Madras than in any other part of the 
 Company's territories. 
 
 Erom Bombay the reports are more encouraging. It 
 
 ♦ In the last Report of Public In- the Vernacular schools, upwards ol 
 
 itruction in Lower Bengal (1853), pre- 11,000 pupils, of whom 103 were 
 
 pared since these statistics were made Christians, 791 Mahomedans, 189 Arri- 
 
 out, it is stated that, " during the past canese, Thugs, Bhaugulpore Hill boys, 
 
 year ^1852), there were in the Govern- and Coles — and the rest Hindoos." 
 ment institutions of Bengal, including 
 
PROGRESS OF EDUCATION. 615 
 
 appears that there are 14 Government colleges and 
 schools in wliich English is taught, with 62 masters 
 and 2066 scholars, amongst whom 84 scholarships of 
 the aggregate annual value of 588^. are di^dded. 
 Besides these there are 233 Vernacular schools, with 
 the same number of masters and 11,394 students. 
 The total expenditm*e, on account of education in this 
 Presidency, is 15,000/. 
 
 It would appear from these statements that the 
 annual expenditure on account of education in the 
 tlu'ee Presidencies is about 70,000/. The Madras returns 
 being imperfect, the actual number of pupils under in- 
 struction in the Government schools cannot be given. 
 Perhaps it may be estimated at about 30,000. 
 
 The number of scholars in the Government schools 
 has, with a few exceptions, steadily increased. Thus, 
 in the Hindoo College of Calcutta, in 1833, there were 
 318 pupils ; the last returns (1851) exhibit a total of 
 471. In the medical college of Calcutta the advance 
 has been rapid and striking. In 1835 there were 67 
 students on the books ; the last returns show that the 
 number had risen to 228. In the Dacca College the 
 number has risen from 144, in 1835, to 383 in 1851. 
 In the Midnapore School the number was 45 in 1836, 
 and 125 in 1851. In the Chitagong School there has 
 been an advance from 61 in 1837, to 125 in 1851. In 
 Sylhet, from 62, in 1843, to 114 in 1851. These cases 
 are all taken from the retm'ns of the Lower Provinces 
 of Bengal.* There are no comparative tables to the 
 same extent in the reports from other parts of the 
 country. The last Bombay reports give the returns of 
 Vernacular education for the last two years, from which 
 it would appear that in 1851 there were 10,965 pupils, 
 and in 1852, 11,088. I can only gather the progress 
 in the North- Western Provinces from scattered frag- 
 ments in the different detailed reports. Thus, from 
 
 * In the last Report of the Committee of Public Instruction. 
 
616 NATIVE EDUCATION. 
 
 Saugor, it is reported that " the applications for ad- 
 mittance to the Enghsh class had exceeded in number 
 those of any previous year, and the desire for Enghsh 
 knowledge was evidently on the increase, whilst the in- 
 stitution generally appeared to be appreciated by the 
 inhabitants of Saugor, and was resorted to by the chil- 
 dren of all classes." Erom Jubbulpore it is reported 
 that " the constituency of the school had increased 
 during the past year by 94 pupils, a result which the 
 head master attributed to the increased favor Tvith 
 which the institution was regarded by the inhabitants 
 of Saugor and its vicinity." Erom the Delhi College 
 it is reported, that in 1848 the number of pupils in 
 the Enghsh departments was 218 ; and in the follow- 
 ing year 234. Erom the last report of the Madras 
 University, it would appear that the number of pupils 
 had risen in the last year to 180 from 173, the number 
 in the preceding year. 
 
 It is clearly beyond the scope of a mere chapter on 
 Native Education to treat in detail of the different 
 institutions established and supported by the East 
 India Company. But there are two or three, of an 
 exceptional and so interesting a character, that I must 
 devote a few pages to them before the chapter is 
 brought to a close. I think that the foundation of 
 the Medical College of Calcutta is one of the greatest 
 facts in the recent history of Indian Administration. 
 Half a century ago, a project for the establishment of 
 an institution, intended to convey to the natives of 
 India instruction in European medical and surgical 
 science, would have been scouted as the chimera of a 
 madman. Even a quarter of a centmy ago, when Lord 
 William Bentinck first arrived in India, men of sound 
 judgment and long experience shook their heads and 
 said that the natives of India, to whom the touch of a 
 corpse is thT> deadliest contamination, could never be 
 brought to face the science of anatomy as European 
 
THE MEDICAL COLLEGE. 617 
 
 students face it in the dissecting-room. But tlie experi- 
 ment, under Ms auspices, was tried. It was tried and 
 it succeeded. The Medical College of Calcutta was 
 foimded ; and Hindoos of the highest caste learnt their 
 lessons in anatomy, not from models of wax or wood, 
 but from the human subject. The beginning was small ; 
 but the progressive advancement was striking. In 
 1837 — the first year, of which a record was kept — 
 sixty bodies were dissected before the students. In 
 the next year the mmiber was precisely doubled. In 
 18M it had risen to upwards of 500. The coUege was 
 highly popular. There was e\idently a strong desire 
 on the part of the native youths for medical and sur- 
 gical knowledge, and their prejudices gave way beneath 
 it. But a greater victory, even than that which was 
 to be seen in the dissecting-room, was now soon about 
 to be acliieved. In 1844, that liberal and enlightened 
 native gentleman, Dwarkanath Tagore, offered to take 
 to England and to educate at his o^vn expense two 
 students of the Medical College. 
 
 The proposal was communicated to Dr. Mouat, the 
 secretary of the coUege — a gentleman of a large and 
 liberal mind, to whose energy and intelligence the 
 cause of Native Education is greatly indebted. In the 
 assembled school he made the announcement, pointed 
 out the advantages the proposal offered, and asked 
 whether any were inclined to profit by the liberality 
 of their distinguished countryman. On tliis, tlu'ee 
 native students vokmteered imconditionally to cross 
 the black water. They were all, with a fourth fellow- 
 student, enabled to proceed to England,* and in our 
 English colleges, competing with the best scientific 
 scholarsliip of the "West, they earned great distinction 
 and carried off high rewards. 
 
 * Dr. Goodeve, one of the professors which enabled him to take a fourth, 
 
 of the college, offered to take a third " The four pupils who accompanied the 
 
 pupil at his own expense, and raised an professor, and started in the steamer 
 
 additional sum, by private subscription, Bentinck on the 8th of March, were 
 
618 NATIVE EDUCATION. 
 
 Of an equally practical, but of a different kind, is 
 the Engineering College of Roorkhee, in the Xorth- 
 Western Provinces. It was suggested by the progress 
 of the great public works in the Doab, of which I have 
 spoken in detail. Its object is to afford a good educa- 
 tion in practical science both to Europeans and natives 
 — ^to train up a new race of public servants, by whose 
 aid these great works may be successfully prosecuted 
 to their completion. Eor many years past there has 
 existed a large demand for skill in every branch of 
 practical engineering. Efforts were made for some 
 time to find the means of special scientific training in 
 existing institutions, but they were found to be inade- 
 quate to such a purpose ; and on the 25th of Novem- 
 ber, 1847, Mr. Thomason published a " Prospectus of a 
 College for Civil Engineering," which is now established 
 at Hoorkhee, and on the first day of the following 
 year the first pupils were formally enrolled. By the 
 middle of 1848 the establishment was completed, the 
 buildings erected, and the classes opened. 
 
 An institution of this kind is calculated to be of im- 
 mense advantage, both to the Government and the 
 people. It is estimated that the expenditure on public 
 works,* in the North- Western Provinces, including 
 those the cost of which is defrayed from the road 
 
 Bholonath Bose, a pupil of Lord Auck- artificers, and laborers must be em- 
 land's school at Barrackpore, who was ployed in the disbursement. Whatever 
 supported at the medical college by his will increase the science, skill, and cha- 
 lordship for five years, and was con- racter of these agents, 'vvill cause a 
 sidered by the late Mr. Griffith, the material saving in the expenditure, 
 most promising botanical pupil in the Whatever tends to multiply the num- 
 school— Gopaul Chunder Seal — Dwar- ber of well-qualified agents will facili- 
 kanath Bose, a native Christian, edu- tatc the operations and cheapen the 
 Gated in the General Assembly's Insti- supply. It cannot be an unthrifty 
 tution, and employed for some time as course which appropriates less than one 
 assistant in the Museum — together with and a half per cent, of the whole esti- 
 Surprice Comar Chuckerbutty, a Brah- mated minimum expenditure to train- 
 min, native of Comillah, a junior ing up an efficient agency, and sending 
 pupil, and a lad of much spirit and them forth with all the appliances 
 promise." — [^Report of the Medical Col- which may make them intelligent and 
 lege for 1844.] trustworthy servants of the State." — 
 * " The problem, then, for the Go- IReport on Roorkliee CoUege, printed by 
 vemment to solve is, how tliey can order of Government of North- Western 
 most economically manage this large Provinces in 1851.] 
 expenditure. Many civil engineers, 
 
THE ROORKHEE COLLEGE. 619 
 
 and feny funds, is not less than 580,000Z. It is of the 
 first importance to secure an efficient and economical 
 agency for the execution of these works. In no way 
 can this great end be so well secured as by raising a 
 class of engineers on the spot under the eyes of British 
 officers. A great impulse will thus be given to Native 
 Education. Few things are so much wanted as honor- 
 able professions attractive to the youth of the country ; 
 nor are the only advantages those which immediately 
 occm- to the employers and the employed. ''It is 
 evidently impossible," to use the words of the official 
 exposition of the scheme, " that an agency, such as it 
 is designed to connect ^ith Eoorkhee College, should 
 be brousrht into exercise in the midst of the dense 
 population of the Northern Doab, T\ithout materially 
 improving the social condition of the inhabitants. The 
 certain discoveries of modem science would be substi- 
 tuted for the crude and mistaken notions which now 
 prevail on all subjects connected with natural pliilo- 
 sophy. The people would have daily before their eyes 
 some of the greatest achievements of scientific skill, 
 and they would be taught the steps by which that skill 
 is acquired, and the means by which it is brought into 
 operation. A stimulus ^viU be given to the native 
 mind, which cannot fail to be highly beneficial. This 
 is in itself an object worthy of the aim of a great Go- 
 vernment. It is a purpose for which the State has 
 appropriated large sums of money in all parts of the 
 country."* 
 
 Of one other institution I must briefly speak. It is 
 one of peculiar interest. When Sleeman and his asso- 
 ciates had stricken down Thuggee, it seemed to them 
 that it would be a great thing, and, as it were, set the 
 crown upon their work, if a school were to be esta- 
 
 ♦ Report on Eoorkhee CoBege, printed by order of Government of North- Wettmm 
 Provinces in 1851. 
 
620 NATIVE EDUCATION. 
 
 blished, not only for the education of the children of these 
 convicted murderers, but also for the instruction of 
 such of the criminals themselves as had been induced 
 to become approvers. With this object, a school of 
 industry was established at Jubbulpore. I believe that 
 the idea first took shape in the mind of Lieutenant 
 Brown, and that he was the originator of the institu- 
 tion. It had, like other great works, a small begin- 
 ning ; but it has now become an important estabhsh- 
 ment, viewed with regard both to its material and 
 moral results. Within a factor}^, enclosing a space of 
 350 feet by 224, are to be seen continually at work, black- 
 smiths, dyers, spinners, tape-makers, chintz-printers, 
 carpenters, carpet -makers, tent -makers, and other 
 artisans. "None of them knew any trade but that of 
 robbery and murder when the school was established 
 in 1837."* " All now work with the greatest cheer- 
 fulness, and even rivalry ; manufactures of great variety 
 and excellent quality are produced in abundance. . . 
 The whole exhibits a scene of industrious activity 
 which is highly refreshing, and cannot but exercise 
 a most beneficial influence on its inhabitants." t During 
 a part of the day the children are instructed in read- 
 ing and writing, and instead of becoming habituated 
 to murder from their boyhood, there is every likeliliood 
 of their growing up to be not only peaceful and well- 
 conducted men, but skilled artisans, able to gain a 
 livelihood for themselves, far in advance of that which 
 is procured by the common labor of the country. { 
 
 I am wTiting of the administrative efforts of the 
 Company and their servants; and in tliis chapter it 
 only comes within my original design to give some 
 account of the educational system and institutions of 
 
 * Colonel Sleeman to Government, July % See for some further information 
 23, 1846. MS. Records. relative to these schools, Appendix G. 
 
 t Police Report of Mr. Macleod, MS. 
 
ALEXANDER DtJFF. 621 
 
 the Government. But I cannot refrain from turning 
 aside in this place to bestow a few words on the great and 
 successful exertions of private bodies to diffuse, princi- 
 pally through missionary agency, the light of know- 
 ledge among the people. It would be pleasant to write 
 in detail of what has been done by different religious 
 communities to disseminate European learning in the 
 large to^Tis, and to promote Vernacular Education in 
 outlying districts, but I cannot do more than illustrate 
 and exemplify the good that has been done by the 
 private efforts of these Christian men. It is not diffi- 
 cult to select an illustrative example from among the 
 many Protestant communities who are now earnestly 
 and diligently laboring in the great cause of Native Edu- 
 cation ; there is, perhaps, not one that would not cheer- 
 fully acknowledge that the foremost place amongst these 
 educational benefactors of India is due to Alexander 
 Duff and his associates — to that little party of Presby- 
 terian ministers who now for more than twenty years 
 have been toiling for the people of India with such 
 unwearying zeal, and mth such wonderful success. 
 
 It was in the month of May, 1830, that Alexander 
 Duff, a minister of the Church of Scotland, arrived at 
 Calcutta. He was then a verv vounsr man, but his 
 wisdom was far in advance of his years. Never was 
 purer zeal — never sturdier energy devoted to a high and 
 holy calling. He went out to India charged by the 
 General Assembly of the Church of Scotland with 
 the dutv of establishins: an educational institution for 
 the purpose of conferring on native youths all the ad- 
 vantages of sound and comprehensive European Edu- 
 cation — an education, indeed, of the highest order, 
 *• in inseparable conjunction with the principles of 
 the Christian faith." It was a great experiment — a 
 few years before it would have been a dangerous one. 
 But Duff never so regarded it. He began his work ; 
 
622 NATIVE EDUCATION. 
 
 and lie waited. He opened his scliool with seven 
 pupils ; and ere long he had 1200. There was never 
 any reservation on the part of Duff and his associates.* 
 It was openly and unequivocally avowed that the Holy 
 Scriptures were taught in the schools. But the native 
 children came freely to the Christian institution, and 
 regarded their Christian teachers with affection, t 
 There are missionary schools scattered over aU parts of 
 India, and freely the children come to he taught, hut 
 there is not one which, either for the magnitude or for 
 the success of the experiment, can he compared with 
 those presided over hy Duff and his associates. Bombay 
 and Madras share worthily in these honors ; and the 
 educational achievements of their Scotch divines de- 
 serve to be held in lasting remembrance. 
 
 There are some, perhaps, who, reading this, may 
 feel disposed to ask, why cannot the Government do 
 likewise — ^why, if the natives of India flock to the 
 Bible- schools, is the Bible so rigorously excluded from 
 the Government institutions ? My individual opinion 
 is, that the Bible might be safely and profitably ad- 
 mitted into the Government school-rooms, like any 
 other class-book. But there are very many able and 
 right-minded men who think differently on this most 
 important subject, and there are some who say that it 
 would be unworthy of our Government to submit to 
 such a compromise, and that the Gospel ought not to 
 be taught Uke algebra in the schools. I know that 
 there is a vast difference between the use of the Bible 
 in a private school and in one under the immediate 
 superiatendenqe of the servants of the Government, 
 and that what in one case would be regarded with in- 
 
 ♦ The Bev. W. S. Mackay, T. Smith, these institutions, and for many other 
 
 Ewart, and Macdonald — who died at his matters of the deepest interest, see Dr. 
 
 I>08t — all men of great piety and intel- Duff's interesting and eloquent work, 
 
 ligonce. " India and India Missions." 
 
 t For further information regarding 
 
ITS PRESENT STATE. 623 
 
 difference, in the other might create irritation and 
 alann in the native mind. I shall touch briefly on the 
 general subject of Government interference in the next 
 chapter. But it is not the object of this work to deal 
 with controversial matters, or to attempt to settle vexed 
 questions of so delicate a character as this. 
 
 It will have been gathered from this rapid sketch 
 of Native Education, especially as it has progressed 
 under the Bengal Presidency, that public instruction 
 is as yet only in its infancy. I cannot doubt, how- 
 ever, that very much has already been done by means 
 of this great regenerative agent to advance the pro- 
 gress of civilisation among the people. It is true 
 that when the entire number of pupils under educa- 
 tion in the Government schools is compared with 
 the population of the British provinces, it will be 
 seen that our educational schemes are making very 
 little direct impression upon the minds of the great 
 mass of the people. But this is very far from the view 
 which any reasonable man would take of this great 
 question. We can only hope to work upon the unin- 
 structed many through the agency of the instructed 
 few.* We must trust, as it were, to the contagion of 
 education. It is hard to say how many are indirectly 
 benefited by the blessings conferred directly upon one 
 pupil educated at the public expense. There is a re- 
 productiveness in knowledge — a diffusiveness in truth 
 — wliich renders it impossible for us to calculate the re- 
 sults of such instruction as is being conferred upon the 
 
 * Colonel Sykes, in a very valuable braced by the comprehensive term 
 
 paper on the "Statistics of Government "Miscellaneous," went out into the 
 
 Education," published in 1845, gives a world to teach : 83 became English 
 
 table showing " The employment of the teachers ; 33, Arabic teachers ; 133, 
 
 students who have left the Government Persian teachers ; 50, Sanscrit teachers; 
 
 schools and colleges (in Bengal) up to 20, Bengallee teachers; 4, Hindoo teach- 
 
 1839-40;" from which it appears that ers; and 5, Urdu teachers. 
 the largest number, except that em- 
 
624 
 
 NATIVE EDUCATION. 
 
 people of India by the Government and the Missionary 
 schools.* 
 
 * Since the publication of the first 
 edition of this work, it has been stated 
 in Parliament by Mr. Macaulay, that 
 during the time of his connexion with 
 the Indian Government, "every im- 
 portant measure which was adopted — 
 every measure of which History will 
 hereafter make mention, was taken 
 without any authority whatever from 
 home." " I believe," he added, " that 
 every one of those measures or acts was 
 regarded with disapprobation at home. 
 That was most eminently the case with 
 respect to that great reform, which was 
 made in 1835 by Lord William Ben- 
 tinck, on the subject of Native Educa- 
 tion." On such a question it need not 
 be said that Mr. Macaulay is a great 
 authority. But broad assertions of this 
 kind seldom convey the exact truth. 
 It is impossible to read such passages 
 as that given from the Court's letter of 
 Feb. 18, 1829, at page 594, ante, with- 
 out perceiving that the views of the 
 Home Government were substantially 
 identical with those of Lord William 
 Bentinck, and that the Company had 
 been long recommending the extension 
 of European Education. But the home 
 authorities thought that they perceived, 
 at the time to which Mr. Macaulay 
 refers, a tendency to run into extremes, 
 and were fearful lest the Bentinck-and- 
 Macaulay system should become too 
 exclusively English in its character. 
 The importance of Vernacular Educa- 
 tion at one time seemed likely to be 
 overlooked — and it may be doubted 
 
 whether even now it is sufficiently re- 
 cognised. 
 
 I should be glad to see a little more 
 attention given to Vernacular Educa- 
 tion, and the Normal School principle 
 well carried out. It appears, from an 
 admirable Minute on Native Education, 
 drawn up by Mr. Willoughby shortly 
 before leaving Bombay, that in the prin- 
 cipal institutions there the Vernacular 
 languages are held of less account even 
 than they are in the Bengal colleges. 
 The writer says : " But to revert to the 
 subject of Vernacular education, I would 
 now inquire why, when a boy is ad- 
 mitted into the English college or school, 
 should instruction in his mother tongue 
 cease? Why, in fact, should not the 
 study of English and Vernacular be 
 combined? — a system which, I under- 
 stand, has been successfully introduced 
 into the plan of education pursued in 
 the Hindoo College at Calcutta. By 
 compelling the student to give his un- 
 divided attention to the new language, 
 there must be a great risk of his losing 
 the knowledge, at the best but super- 
 ficial, he had previously acquired of his 
 own language. I see no reason for this, 
 but, on the contrary, think the study of 
 both languages, being proceeded with 
 pari passu, would in several respects be 
 exceedingly advantageous to the stu- 
 dent. Indeed, I am happy to observe 
 that the system of combined instruction 
 has recently been introduced here, 
 though not to the extent which appears 
 to me advisable." 
 
CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA. 625 
 
 CHAPTER 11. 
 
 The Past and the Present — The First Indian Chaplains— Rise and Progress of 
 the Church Establishment— Charles Grant — The Charter of 1813 — the First 
 Indian Bishop — Increase of the Church Establishment — Missionary Efforts — 
 Progress of Christianity. 
 
 Of all the great controversial questions, which have 
 arisen out of British connexion with the East, not one 
 has heen discussed with so much earnestness and so 
 much acrimony as that which relates to the intro- 
 duction of Christianity into India. Happily the con- 
 troversy is now at an end, and the acrimony has died 
 with it. It is well, always, that we should he tolerant 
 of exploded errors, and rememher that the demon- 
 strated of the present may not have heen the demon- 
 strahle of the past. There is no subject on which I 
 entertain a stronger opinion than this — none, perhaps, 
 on which I have thought and written so much. But 
 I do not know what I might have thought or written 
 if I had lived in India half a century ago. Many very 
 good and able men have advocated a system of non- 
 interference, under a rooted conviction that any at- 
 tempt to convert the natives of India to the Christian 
 faith would he attended with the most calamitous re- 
 sults. After-events have shown the groundlessness of 
 their alarms ; but candor admits that there may have 
 been reason, half a century ago, in what now appears 
 unreasonable and absurd. 
 
 In the reign of William and Mary the conversion of 
 
 2s 
 
626 CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA. 
 
 the Gentoos was decreed in Letters Patent from the 
 Crown. The Charter granted to the second East India 
 Company in 1698 contained a clause, enacting that 
 the said Company should constantly maintain "one 
 minister in every garrison and superior factory," that 
 they should in such " garrison or factories provide or 
 set apart a decent and convenient place for divine ser- 
 vice only ;" and furthermore, that " all such ministers 
 as shall be sent to reside in India shaU he obliged to 
 learn, mthin one year after their arrival, the Portu- 
 guese language, and shall apply themselves to learn the 
 native language of the country where they shall reside, 
 the better to enable them to instruct the Gentoos, that 
 shall be the servants or slaves of the said Company, 
 or of their agents, in the Protestant religion." 
 
 Though the Company antecedently to this period 
 may never have cherished the great idea of the con- 
 version of the Gentoos, by the agency of their own 
 chaplains, they had not from the very first been un- 
 mindful of the spiritual interests of their own people. 
 Some at least of their early ships took out chaplains, 
 and it had been the custom for all to receive a sort of 
 ecclesiastical benediction before braving the perils of 
 the deep. A farewell sermon was preached on board 
 by some learned divine, often in the presence of the 
 governor and committees of the Company.* The prin- 
 
 ♦ Mr. Anderson, in his very valuable needs set down," says the old divine, 
 "History of the Colonial Church," quotes "that as God hath greatly encreased 
 one of these farewell sermons, by John your store, so ye have not been back- 
 Wood, Doctor in Divinitie, which was ward to impart much and more than 
 published in 1618. The discourse was any societie (that ever I could heare of) 
 delivered on board the Royal James, to the supply of the wants of his poore 
 and is dedicated to Sir Thomas Smith, members ; your daily reliefe of poore 
 Governor of the Company, and his col- ministers of the Gospell; your charitio 
 leagues. It appears that Dr. Wood had to prisoners, to widowes, to orphans, 
 several times before preached to the and to all well-minded poore people 
 crews of vessels about to depart for that you finde to stand in neede of 
 India. A passage in the epistle dedi- your helpe, cannot but plead for you in 
 catory , quoted by Mr. Anderson, leaves the eyes of God and all good men. Goe 
 a very favorable impression on the on therefore (in God's name) in your 
 mind of the general character of the noble designs, and rest ye still upon his 
 managers of the Company. " I must blessing, who (I doubt not) hath many 
 
FIRST CALL FOR MINISTERS. 627 
 
 cipal part, indeed, of the Company's establishments 
 were on board the ships, and it would seem that the 
 factors ashore relied mainly on the vessels both for 
 spiritual and corporeal consolation. The surgeons and 
 chaplains were not, it would appear, attached to the 
 factories, but were part of the staff of the generals and 
 captains who came out in the Company's ships. But 
 there were godly men at that time among the factors 
 who longed for something more than this. Old Joseph 
 Salbank, whose letters I have quoted in the early part 
 of this work, wrote urgently to the Company for 
 zealous and able divines to teach the heathens, and 
 counteract the subtle influence of the Jesuits. " Pray 
 censure it not as a part of boldness in me," he said, 
 " to advertise you of one matter, which may seem to 
 be much fitter to be spoken of or written by another 
 man than myself, even of your preachers and ministers, 
 that you send hither to reside amongst us, and to 
 break unto us the blessed manna of the Heavenly 
 Gospel — ^very convenient it will be for you to provide 
 such as are not only sufficient and solid divines, that 
 may be able to encounter with the arch-enemies of our 
 religion, if occasion should so require, those main sup- 
 porters of the hierarchy of the Church of B/ome, I 
 mean the Jesuits, or rather (as I may truly term them) 
 Jebusites, whereof some are mingled here in several 
 places in the King's dominions amongst us — but also 
 godly, zealous, and devout persons, such as may, by 
 their piety and purity of life give good example to 
 those with whom they live, whereby they will no less 
 instruct and feed their little flock committed imto 
 
 more in store for you ; and so long as here in this life, and crowne you with 
 
 you conscionably seek to honour his etemaU glorie with himself in the life to 
 
 name among the heathen, and (under come." Mr. Copeland, who afterwards 
 
 him) to advance the state wherein ye did good service to the interests of 
 
 live, will (no doubt) affoord you many C^hristianity in the West Indies, sailed 
 
 comfortable assurances of his love and as chaplain in the EoycUJames. 
 favour, hoiti to your bodies and soules 
 
 2s2 
 
628 CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA. 
 
 them, no less by tlie sincerity of the doctrine they 
 teach them."* 
 
 The earliest mention of a -Company's chaplain that 
 I have been able to find is in a letter dated Ajmere, 
 April 27, 1616. It is written by Sir Thomas Roe to 
 " Mr. Lescke, chaplain at Surat." There was about this 
 same time at Surat a Mr. Copeland, chaplain on board 
 the Boyal Jcmies, whose name subsequently became 
 associated with the early history of the West Indian 
 Church. t A curious letter,- dated '' Swally, March 4, 
 1617," relating to the conversion of a Mogul Atheist, 
 is among the early records of the Company. On the 
 first establishment of our factory at Madras, it would 
 seem that in the absence of a Protestant ministry the 
 settlers were fain to avail themselves of the eccle- 
 siastical assistance of a Capuchin friar, who paid the 
 penalty of his toleration by enduring imprisonment for 
 five years in the dungeons of the Inquisition at Goa. % 
 In 1655, a Protestant chaplain was ministering in Port 
 St. George. § In 1667, Mr. Walter Hooke, and in 
 
 * Joseph Salbank to the Company, puchin friars, although one of them had 
 Agra^ November 22, 1617. India House suffered an imprisonment of five years 
 Records. — There is some obscurity in in the Inquisition at Goa, for accom- 
 this passage as there often is in the modating his ministry to the convent- 
 phraseology of these old factors. Whe- ence of the settlement, 
 ther the writer meant to say that the $ There may have been one before 
 matter whereof he advertised the Com- him, but this is the earliest mention of 
 pany was "even your preachers and a Madras chaplain that I have been 
 ministers that (whom) you send hither able to find. The passage in which it 
 (or are in the habit of sending hither) is contained is curious on other ac- 
 to reside amongst us" — or " even your counts. It is part of a report of a con- 
 preachers and ministers that you sultation held at Metchlapatam (Ma- 
 (should) send (some) hither to reside sulapatam) December 4, 1655. "Next 
 amongst us" — is not very apparent. He was had into consideration what pro- 
 may either have meant that the Com- portion of means was thought needful 
 pany should send ministers, as there to be allowed to such of the Company's 
 were none then among them ; or that servants as are to reside at Madras- 
 they should send better ones than those patam and Metchlapatam, and the 
 appointed before. subordinate factories, for their neces- 
 
 t Anderson's History of the Colonial sary expenses, charges, garrison, &c., 
 
 Church. excepted, it was agreed that 30 old 
 
 X See Orme's " Historical Frag- pagodas 'should be allowed to Mr. 
 
 ments." The historian states that in Edward Winter to uphold the Com- 
 
 1661 the Presidency of Surat blamed pany's houses at Metchlapatam, Ve- 
 
 the Madras agency for persisting in rasheeroon, PettepoUee, Daleepadee, 
 
 giving protection to two or three Ca- and 60 new pagodas for the president 
 
EARLY CHAPLAINS. 629 
 
 1668, Mr. William Thomson, were elected chaplaias 
 for that settlement.* But it was not until 1680 that 
 the first stone of the first English church in India was 
 laid at Madras by Streynsham Master, chief of the fac- 
 tory, who carried on the pious work at his own charge, 
 and never halted till he had brought it to an end. 
 
 At the beginning of the eighteenth century this 
 chm'ch was finished, furnished, and, to a certain extent, 
 endowed. Two ministers were attached to it, each on 
 a salary of 100^. a year. Prayers were read in it twice 
 a day. On Sundays, the whole settlement, headed by 
 the President, proceeded tliither in great state, through 
 a street of soldiers, and reverently joined in the 
 service, according to the forms of the Anglican 
 Church, t 
 
 In 1716, an English Protestant church was erected 
 in Calcutta, and two years later one was completed at 
 Bombay. Erom that time there was necessarily more 
 
 and two factors, the minister and his pile of arched building, adorned with 
 
 wife, and chirurgeon, at Fort St. curious carved work, a stately altar, 
 
 George." — \_India Bouse Records. MS."] organs, a white copper candlestick, 
 
 * From a list of " Chaplains in India very large windows, &c., which render 
 
 prior to the union of the two Com- it inferior to the churches of London 
 
 panics," given by Mr. Anderson in his in nothing but bells — there being one 
 
 "History of the Colonial Church," as only to mind sinners of devotion, tho' 
 
 obtained by him at the India House. I've heard a contribution for a set was 
 
 Mr. Hooke's is the first name on the formerly remitted the Company 
 
 list, but it is certain that there were Prayers are read twice a day ; but on 
 chaplains before him. I find mention Sundays religious worship is most 
 of a Mr. Thomson and his wife at strictly observed. Betwixt eight and 
 Madras in the year 1655. "It was nine, the bell tells us the hour of de- 
 propounded touching Mr. Thomson and votion draws near; a whole company 
 his wife, that if they cannot find this of above 200 soldiers is drawn out 
 year convenient passage for their own from the inner fort to the church-door, 
 country, and if they remain at Fort St. for a guard to the passing President. 
 George, they shall have diet at the Ladies throng to their pews, and gentle- 
 Company's table — but Mr. Thomson men take a serious walk in the yard, if 
 himself is to be referred to the Com- not too hot. On the Gk)vernor'8 ap- 
 pany's pleasure what salary he shall proach, the organs strike up and con- 
 have for his pains." I believe this to tinue a welcome till he is seated; when 
 be the same Mr. Thomson as is referred the minister discharges the duty of his 
 to in the text, and that he and Mrs. function, according to the forms ap- 
 Thomson are the "minister and his pointed by our prudent ancestors for 
 wife" alluded to in the preceding note, the Church of England." — [An Account 
 
 t See a curious account by Charles of the Trade in India^ (fc, ^c.,by Charles 
 
 Lcckyer, who visited Madras about Lockt/er, 1711.] 
 the year 1 703 : " The church is a large 
 
630 CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA. 
 
 outward recognition of the duties of reKgion, but, 
 save in such exceptional cases as it is to be hoped will 
 ever be presented by communities of Christian men, 
 however limited their numbers, there was little genuine 
 piety and little morality of life. Throughout the re- 
 mainder of the century, the Company's ecclesiastical 
 establishment, like their civil and military services, con- 
 tinued to grow in numerical strength; and even then 
 there were earnest-minded men at home, as Dean Pri- 
 deaux and others, who were eager to see that church- 
 establishment placed under episcopal superintendence, 
 and who would have sent out bishops and archdeacons, 
 even an archbishop, to take spiritual command of the 
 small bodies of Christians who were then located in the 
 settlements of India. Perhaps such superintendence 
 might have had an improving effect upon the lives of 
 the Company's chaplains. It would seem that, at the 
 close of the last century, they were a money-making 
 race of men. There is a curious entry in the Journal 
 of Mr. Kiemander, the old Danish missionary, running 
 in these words : " The Eev. Mr. Blanshard is preparing 
 to go to England upon an American ship in about a 
 fortnight, worth five lakhs (of rupees). Mr. Owen two 
 and a half lakhs. Mr. Johnson three and a half 
 lakhs."* This was at the commencement of 1797. 
 The first had been twenty-three years attached to the 
 Indian ministry ; the second, ten years ; and the third, 
 thirteen years. An average annual saving, if Kiemander 
 is to be trusted, of 2500Z. ! It is needless to say that 
 these fortunes could not have been realised out of the 
 Company's allowances, even with the addition of the 
 ministerial fees, which in India are liberally bestowed, t 
 These churchmen must have devoted themselves to 
 
 * See Kiernander's Journal, in the been no lack of burials — but Christian 
 Calcutta Review. marriages and baptisms were few. 
 
 t In those days Ihere may have 
 
DAWN OF BETTER THINGS. 631 
 
 something more lucrative than the cure of souls and 
 the burial of the dead. What it was may be readily 
 conjectured. 
 
 But mth the new century came a new race of men 
 to preside over the English Church in Bengal. In 
 the rooms of a Eellow of King's College, Cambridge, 
 a little group of young men might have been seen as- 
 sembled when the studies of the day were at an end. 
 They went thither to hear such truths as did not fall 
 very readily from the lips of their ordinary preceptors; 
 and what they then learnt was seldom forgotten. It 
 seemed to be the peculiar privilege of Charles Simeon 
 to prepare young men of large intellectual capacity 
 and strong religious convictions for the active work of 
 the Anglo-Indian ministry. It was, happily, too, in 
 his power to do more than teach. Held in the 
 highest esteem and veneration by such men as Henry 
 Thornton and Charles Grant, he had little difficulty in 
 furthering the views of his disciples, and Indian chap- 
 laincies were readily procurable from Directors of the 
 Company, who, not unmindful of the responsibilities 
 of ecclesiastical patronage, joyfully availed themselves 
 of every such occasion of turning their opportunities 
 to profitable account. What Halle and Eranke, years 
 before, had been to the Danish mission, Cambridge 
 and Simeon became to the EngKsh Protestant Church. 
 David Brown, Claudius Buchanan, Henry Martyn, 
 Daniel Corrie, and Thomas Thomason, were all of 
 them chaplains on the Company's establishment in 
 Bengal. They obeyed the orders of a Governor- 
 General, and received every month from the public 
 treasury a heavy bag of rupees. They were not mis- 
 sionaries, but the missionary spirit was strong within 
 them, and in one, at least, it glowed with as burning 
 and as chaste a zeal as in the breast of a Xa\der or a 
 Ziegenbalg. They were aU of them single-hearted, ' 
 
632 CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA. 
 
 pure-minded men ; men, too, of more than common 
 intellectual capacity, and of industry which shrunk 
 from no accumulation of labor in a cause so dear to 
 their hearts. Of this little baud of Christian athletes 
 David Brown was the father and the chief.- One after 
 one, as the younger men followed him to the scene of 
 his ministrations, he opened his doors to receive them, 
 and send them on their way with a message of encou- 
 ragement and advice. 
 
 And as they were speeding on their godly journey 
 other words of encouragement came to them from 
 high places far off across the seas. It was no small 
 thing for them to know that they had not gone abroad 
 to be forgotten — that good men and great men were 
 thinking of them, and praying for them at home, and 
 strenuously supporting their efforts. Charles Grant 
 had not been long in the Direction before his influence 
 became little less than that of the Company itself. It 
 is slight exaggeration to say that for many years he 
 was not a Director, but the Direction. He was a man 
 of a solid understanding, of large experience, and of 
 a resolute industry which took no account of mental 
 or bodily fatigue. The exhausting climate of Bengal 
 had not impaired his energies or unstrung his nerves. 
 He was always ready braced for work ; the claims of 
 the country in which he had bmlt up his fortune, of 
 the people among whom he had spent all the best 
 years of his life, pressed heavily upon his mind. He 
 had attained less of worldly distinction in India than 
 his friend and neighbour, John Shore, Lord Teign- 
 mouth, but he brought home to England a larger zeal, 
 a more active benevolence, and far greater strength to 
 measure himself with his cotemporaries at home and 
 take his proper place among them. It was no small 
 thing at such a time for a retired Governor-General of 
 • India to write pamphlets in behalf of Christian mis- 
 
CHARLES GRANT. 633 
 
 sions, and to preside over a society having for its object 
 the circulation of the Holy Scriptures throughout all 
 the dark places of the earth. But what Lord Teign- 
 mouth did for India, after his withdrawal from the 
 scene of his vice-regal labors, was in comparison with 
 the busy stirring practicalities of Charles Grant's new 
 career, very much the work of a recluse. The head- 
 piece of the Company in Leadenhall- street, the mouth- 
 piece of the Company in St. Stephen's, the oracle, on 
 all subjects of Indian import, of that little knot of 
 warm-hearted, earnest-minded men who discussed 
 great measures of humanity on Clapham-common, 
 Charles Grant, whether writing elaborate despatches 
 to the Governor- General, or addressing the House of 
 Commons, or imparting his ample stores of Indian ex- 
 perience to William "Wilberforce or Henry Thornton, 
 so tempered the earnestness of his spiritual zeal with 
 sound knowledge and strong practical sense, that 
 whatever he said carried a weighty significance with it. 
 Such a man was much needed at that time. He was ' 
 needed to exercise a double influence — an influence 
 alike over the minds of men of different classes in 
 India, and of his colleagues and compatriots at home. 
 So, whilst he was writing out elaborate despatches to 
 the Governor-General of India — such despatches as 
 had never before been received by an Indian viceroy — 
 and to more than one of the Company's chaplains in 
 India, letters of affectionate encouragement and pa- 
 rental advice, he was brushing away the cobwebs of . 
 error with which men's minds were fouled and clouded 
 at home, and uttering sound practical truths with the 
 stamp of authority upon them, such as no one ever 
 ventured to designate as the amiable enthusiasm of a 
 dreamer of dreams and seer of visions. 
 
 Conspicuous among his Indian correspondents was 
 Claudius Buchanan. This able and excellent man had 
 
634 CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA. 
 
 been one of the recipients of Henry Thornton's bounty, 
 and had by him, and I believe also by Isaac Milner, 
 been recommended for an Indian chaplaincy to Charles 
 Grant. The Director was not slow to recognise the 
 merits of the young Scotchman, and Buchanan was 
 sent to Bengal. He had less of the missionary spirit 
 than Henry Martyn. He was altogether less earnest, 
 less enthusiastic, less self-denying. The expansive 
 Christianity of the son of the Cornish miner wandered 
 out into illimitable space, far beyond the narrow sphere 
 of archdeaconries and episcopal sees. But Buchanan, 
 with a more worldy judgment and intellectual qualities 
 of a more serviceable kind, believed in his heart that 
 the regeneration of India was to be accomplished 
 mainly by a Church Establishment. And, full of this 
 idea, he drew up elaborate schemes of ecclesiastical ex- 
 tension, and wrote letter after letter to Charles Grant, 
 and to many of the highest dignitaries of the English 
 Church, setting forth the expediency of a large augmen- 
 tation of the number of Indian chaplains, and the sub- 
 jection of the whole body to the authority of a bishop, 
 or rather a group of bishops, with a primate at their 
 head. "An archbishop," he wrote, "is wanted for 
 India ; a sacred and exalted character, surrounded by 
 his bishops, of ample revenues and extensive sway ; a 
 venerable personage, whose name shaU be greater than 
 that of the transitory governors of the land ; and whose 
 fame for piety, and for the will and power to do good, 
 may pass throughout every region." His ideas upon 
 this subject, indeed, were somewhat exuberant; and 
 even now, after the lapse of nearly half a century, can 
 scarcely be read without a smile. " It is certain," he 
 said, " that nothing would more alarm the portentous 
 invader of nations (Napoleon) than our taking a reli- 
 gious possession of Hindostan. Eive hundred respect- 
 able clergy of the English Church, established in om' 
 
NAPOLEON AND THE BISHOPS. 635 
 
 Gentoo cities, would more perplex his views of conquest 
 than an army of fifty thousand British soldiers. The 
 army of fifty thousand would melt away in seven 
 years; but the influence of an upright clergyman 
 among the natives of the district, would be permanent. 
 He would be to them in time their mouth and mind, 
 and speak for them peace or war."* Buchanan did not 
 write this to Charles Grant, but to the Archbishop of 
 Canterbury. The sagacious, large-browed Director 
 would probably have smiled at the idea of the over- 
 throw of Napoleon's invading legions by an army of 
 five hundred Company's chaplains, with an archbishop 
 at their head. But this great political heresy was, after 
 all, not much more absurd than the orthodox belief 
 which was, at that time, accepted by a large proportion 
 of the most intelligent European gentlemen in the 
 East. The current faith was not that the Bible would 
 beat Napoleon's artillery, but that it would expedite 
 our overthrow more surely and more rapidly. How 
 curious and instructive is it to contrast such a passage 
 as that which I have just quoted from the correspond- 
 ence of Claudius Buchanan, with the following, taken 
 from a letter now before me, written in 1808, by one 
 of the most intelligent officers in the Company's service 
 — a Resident at a native Court — ^to a high civil func- 
 tionary in Calcutta. The reference, also, in this case 
 is to the rumoured invasion of Napoleon : 
 
 *' I most cordially assent to all the sentiments you express of 
 the impolicy, or rather madness, of attempting the conversion of 
 the natives of this country, or of giving them any more learning, 
 or any other description of learning, than they at present possess. 
 With respect to the Hindoos, they appear to me to have as good 
 a system of faith and of morals as most people; and with regard 
 to the Moossulmans, it is quit€ suflBcient if we endeavour to con- 
 
 * The writer adds : " Friendly, ad- people of Hindostan, and to make them 
 monitory, social intercourse is what is our people.** Nothing can be more true, 
 wanting to enchain the hearts of the 
 
636 CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA. 
 
 ciliate their confidence, and to mitigate their vindictive spirit. 
 Sir William Jones has in a very few words given us a correct out- 
 line of the only system of government adapted to this country — 
 * To give them (the Hindoos) protection for their persons and 
 places of abode; justice in their temporal concerns; indulgence 
 to the prejudices of their religion; and the benefit of those laws, 
 which they have been taught to believe sacred, and which alone 
 they can possibly comprehend' — 1 can assure you that I do not 
 feel so much anxiety and apprehension from the menaced designs 
 of Buonaparte, as from the plans which have become so fashion- 
 able amongst the Puritans of the India House. This alarm has 
 been chiefly excited by the perusal of some pamphlets, which have 
 been lately published in London, and have been issued from your 
 Bible Societies, your Christian Societies, and other corporations 
 of bigotry. You have a Mr. or Dr. Buchanan — an officer of 
 your College, who appears to me to have done a great deal of 
 harm. From the prizes, which he presumed to offer for certain 
 Exercises at the University of Cambridge, I am convinced that 
 he is a man of wretched and most unchristianlike vanity. I do 
 not even approve of your zeal in the translation of the Bible and 
 New Testament into I know not how many languages. The 
 Scriptures may appear very admirable to us, who are prepared to 
 venerate them as the instrument of revelation. But I do not 
 think they are calculated to excite respect and admiration in the 
 garb of translations, in the minds of men who are prepared to 
 deny their truth."* 
 
 It would be difficult to find a more remarkable 
 contrast than is displayed in these two passages, and 
 equally difficult to decide whether the one or the other 
 is more preposterous in its exaggerations. A battalion 
 of Company's chaplains was not less likely to defend 
 India against the encroachments of Napoleon, than the 
 " Puritans of the India House" were to facilitate his 
 aggressive designs. 
 
 It was about this time that the great controversy 
 was at its height. Never at any period was the one 
 
 * MS. Correspondence. 
 
MISSIONARY TERRORS. 637 
 
 party more strenuous in its efforts to demonstrate the 
 danger of making a show of Christianity in India, 
 and never was the other more zealous in its endeavours 
 to prove the fallacy of these tremendous expectations. 
 That well-known liistorical event — the massacre at 
 Vellore — came, at an inopportune moment, to stimu- 
 late and exasperate the controversy. There were not 
 wanting, either in England or in India, writers and 
 speakers to attribute this calamity to the alarm excited 
 in the breasts of the people by the movements of the 
 very few missionaries who were then suffered to pursue 
 their peaceful calling in the Company's territories. 
 The people of India, it was said, believing that their 
 ancestral faith was threatened by the European 
 usurpers, had risen up against their conquerors, and 
 murdered them in their beds. This was but a foretaste, 
 it was prophesied, of greater horrors to come. If the 
 Bible were not shelved, and the missionaries recalled, 
 the cantonments of the white men, from one end of 
 India to the other, would be deluged with Christian 
 blood. Reason and candor could not but pronounce 
 all this a monstrous fable. But to many prejudiced 
 minds, it was too acceptable not to be readily taken on 
 trust, and the fiction found favor in London, no less 
 than in Calcutta and Madras. 
 
 The currency which the fiction acquired for itself 
 disquieted the "Puritans of the India House." It 
 could not stand the touch of reason, it is true, but 
 fictions that cannot stand the touch of reason are often 
 very long-lived and robust, for there are thousands and 
 tens of thousands of people who never reason at all. 
 It was easy for such a man as Charles Grant to ex- 
 plode the error in a few argumentative sentences, but 
 he was too sagacious not clearly to perceive the mis- 
 chief of its dissemination: — 
 
638 CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA. 
 
 ** I most of all suffer," he wrote, '' from the absurd, malevolent^ 
 and wicked stories, which the weak, the prejudiced, the enemies 
 of Christianity, have poured forth on this occasion to discredit, 
 to bring into suspicion, to blacken as dangerous and mischievous, 
 the few poor and assuredly harmless efforts, which have been 
 made under the British Governments, to introduce the light of 
 the Gospel into India. Greater efforts were made by other 
 nations, centuries anterior to our ascendancy there. The natives 
 have seen converts made to Christianity, though in small num- 
 bers, from age to age. No influence to disturb the public peace 
 has ever followed. In our time, what perfect indifference have 
 the generality of the Europeans shown to the religion they call 
 theirs — what complacence in the superstitions of the country — 
 how utterly abhorrent of everything that looked like compulsion. 
 What have the few missionaries labouring there done but proposed 
 a message of peace in the language and temper of peace, reason, 
 and affection ? Was there a missionary, or a chaplain, or any 
 ostensible advocate for Christianity anywhere near Vellore ? But 
 I am hurrying into a subject which requires to be treated with 
 deliberation and seriousness. All the disaffected to the propaga- 
 tion of the Gospel, among our own people both in India and 
 here, take this opportunity to speak of the danger of allowing 
 missionaries to exercise their functions in India. Doubtless pru- 
 dence and discretion are always necessary in that work — they are 
 particularly so now ; but if from unworthy fears we should disa- 
 vow, our religion, or even be led to silence all attempts to com- 
 municate it to our subjects in a mild rational way, I should fear 
 that the Great Author of that religion would be provoked to 
 withdraw his protection there from us."* 
 
 And again he wrote, with how much sound sense, 
 and with what a clear perception of the real weakness 
 and the real strength of all human governments : 
 
 " They predict dreadful consequences from the preaching, 
 writing, and itinerating of a few missionaries. These men, as far 
 as I can judge, are remarkably peaceable, humble, pious, and affec- 
 tionate in their whole demeanour, and pretending to no influence 
 but what the truth, fairly exhibited, is calculated to produce. I 
 
 * MS. Correspondence. 
 
OPINIONS OF CHARLES GRANT. 639 
 
 know that the idea of converting the natives to Christianity has 
 always been oflfensive to many of our countrymen in India, but 
 chiefly to those who were no friends of Christianity in their own 
 persons. And from such men the cry now comes that the activity 
 of those missionaries will excite the jealousy and resentment of 
 the natives; although no one instance of any expression of such 
 suspicion or dissatisfaction on the part of the natives against the 
 Government is given, or I beheve can be given. I fear that these 
 reports, taken up and re-echoed here, will lead to some precipitate 
 measure, offensive to God, and all the more serious part of the 
 community of this country, as well as injurious to the real interests 
 of the Company abroad and at home. They have already various 
 enemies who will oppose the renewal of the Charter, and if they 
 act upon any principle which, however, disguised amounts m 
 effect to an exclusion of the Gospel from the natives of India, a 
 weight will be thrown into the opposing scale likely to bear them 
 down. 
 
 '* I have for many years considered the question of introducing 
 
 Christianity among our Indian subjects Caution and 
 
 prudence are at all times necessary in proposing the truths of 
 Christianity to heathens ; there may be particular conjunctures 
 when these, and perhaps a degree of forbearance are specially 
 required — but for a Christian nation to say deliberately that they 
 will prohibit the communication of that religion which comes 
 from God to fifty millions of men, sunk in idolatry, superstition, 
 and vice, is a proposition so monstrous and shocking, so contrary 
 to the most rational and probable cause to be assigned for the 
 conduct of Providence in committing so vast an empire to our 
 care, that I tremble at the thought of it and the consequences it 
 
 would be likely to produce Minor questions are 
 
 agitated about the irregular entrance of some missionaries into 
 India, and the imprudence of continuing their labors, after the 
 natives have shown so much alarm (in the reports chiefly I be- 
 lieve of Europeans), but the real question depending is whether 
 the door shall be shut to the entrance of missionaries into British 
 India ? It would require much time and space to advance all that is 
 to be said upon the question, but if ever it is deliberately settled 
 in the negative, I shall consider the warrant is signed for the 
 transition of our empire there, and I hold this opinion with men 
 of greater authority and name than mine."* 
 
 * MS. Correspondence. 
 
640 CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA. 
 
 As the period for wMch the old Charter of 1793 had 
 been granted wore to a close, men began to bestir them- 
 selves in England about this great matter of Chris- 
 tianity in India. The question which then agitated 
 the mind of the religious community was twofold. 
 There was a comparatively small, but most respectable, 
 party, who believed that the great end to be gained was 
 an extension of the Church establishment — ^who looked 
 up to the lawn sleeves of the bishop as the great agent of 
 evangelisation, and scarcely shrunk from the avowal of 
 an opinion that the stability of British rule in the East 
 much depended on the foundation of archdeaconries 
 and episcopal sees. There was another, and much 
 larger party, who took but little account of dignities 
 and dignitaries — who, remembering what had been 
 done by fishermen and tent-makers, sought only that 
 earnest-minded Christian men, no matter of what 
 worldly estate, should be suffered, on their own respon- 
 sibility, as men without any official stamp upon them, 
 to visit and teach the Gentiles. These questions, much 
 brooded over in private before, were now publicly dis- 
 cussed. Many and various were the opinions expressed — 
 many and various the exponents of those opinions and the 
 outward shape of the exposition. Some betook them- 
 selves to the printing-press, and a war of pamphlets com- 
 menced. Others embodied their views in public peti- 
 tions, and a heavy rain of memorials then began to de- 
 scend upon the Legislature. Others, again, declared 
 their sentiments before Parliamentary Committees, and 
 set forth the experiences of their lives in such a manner 
 as to make the uninitiated wonder how any two men 
 of similar antecedents should deduce from their con- 
 nexion with the past such dissimilar conclusions.* And 
 
 * Compare the evidence given by the latter in the present day. The 
 
 Warren Hastings and by Lord Teign- Committee seemed to know the kind of 
 
 mouth. It is instructive on more than man they had to deal with, and assailed 
 
 one account to read the examination of him at starting by putting an extreme 
 
THE PIOUS CLAUSES. 
 
 641 
 
 finally, members of Parliament, in both Houses, spoke 
 out with much antagonistic earnestness, and brought 
 both questions to an issue. 
 
 On the 22nd of March, 1813, the House of Commons 
 went into committee on the India Bill. Lord Castle- 
 
 case: " Would it be consistent with the 
 security of the Britisli empire in India, 
 that missionaries should preach pub- 
 licly, with a view to the conversion of 
 the native Indians, that Mahomet is an 
 impostor, or should speak in opprobri- 
 ous terms of the Brahmins, or their 
 religious rites?" To this, of course. 
 Lord Teignmouth replied, that there 
 might be danger in such indiscretion ; 
 but that no one contemplated the con- 
 version of the natives of India by such 
 means ; and when, soon afterwards, the 
 question was put, " Is your lordship 
 aware that an opinion prevails in India, 
 that it is the intention of the British 
 (Government to take means to convert 
 the natives of the country to the 
 Christian religion?" he answered, with- 
 out a moment's hesitation, " / never 
 heard it, or suspected it." One would 
 have thought that there was little need 
 after this to put the case hypotheti- 
 cally; but the witness was presently 
 asked whether, allowing such an opi- 
 nion to exist among the natives, the 
 appearance of a bishop on the stage 
 Arould not increase the danger. '' I 
 should think," said Lord Teignmouth, 
 '• it would be viewed with perfect in- 
 difference." Determined to work the 
 hypothesis a little more, the Committee 
 asked him whether, " were the Hindoos 
 possessed with an idea that we had an 
 intention of changing their religion 
 and converting them into Christians, it 
 would be attended with any bad conse- 
 sequences at all?" " I will expatiate a 
 little in my answer to that question," 
 said Lord Teignmouth; and he then 
 delivered himself of the following ex- 
 planation, the admirable good sense of 
 which is not to be surpassed by any- 
 thing to be found in the entire mass of 
 evidence, elicited throughout the in- 
 quiry, upon all points of the Company's 
 charter : 
 
 " Both the Hindoos and Mahome- 
 dans, subject to the British Govern- 
 ment in India, have had the experience 
 of some years, that, in all the public 
 acts of that Government, every atten- 
 tion has been paid to their prejudices, 
 civil and religious, and that the freest 
 toleration is allowed to them; that 
 
 2 
 
 there are many regulations of Govern- 
 ment which prove the disposition of 
 Government to leave them perfectly 
 free and unmolested in their religious 
 ordinances; and that any attempt at 
 an infringement upon their religion or 
 superstitions would be punished by the 
 Government of India. With that con- 
 viction, which arises from experience, 
 I do not apprehend that they would be 
 brought to believe that the Govern- 
 ment ever meant to impose upon them 
 the religion of this country." 
 
 But the Committee had not yet done 
 with their hypothesis, and were deter- 
 mined not to let the witness, whatever 
 might be his opinion of its absurdity, 
 escape without giving a direct answer; 
 so they assailed him again, by asking, 
 " Should the state of things be altered, and 
 we not observe the conduct we have hitherto 
 observed, but introduce new modes, and 
 enact new laws, for the carrying into 
 effect the conversion of the natives to 
 Christianity/, would not that be attended 
 with disagreeable consequences?" To 
 this, of course, but one answer could be 
 given; and Lord Teignmouth gave that 
 answer, leaving the Committee to make 
 what use of it they could. " If a law 
 were to be enacted," he said, " for con- 
 verting the natives of India to Chris- 
 tianity, in such a manner as to have 
 the appearance of a compulsory law 
 upon their consciences, I have no hesi- 
 tation in saying that, in that case, it 
 would be attended with very great 
 danger." Surely this is not the way to 
 elicit the truth. I cannot help think- 
 ing that the licence given to this kind 
 of wild questioning, which still obtains 
 in committee-rooms, is rather calculated 
 to embarrass and obscure the truth 
 than to develop it. Wilberforce, ^Tit- 
 ing to Lord Wellesley at the time of 
 these charter discussions, said, "Your 
 lordship can scarcely conceive, if I may 
 judge of the House of Lords from the 
 general condition of the members of 
 the House of Commons, how ignorant 
 in general their lordships are likely to 
 be regarding India, and therefore how 
 little they are qualified to ask questions 
 in committee." 
 
642 CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA. 
 
 reagh was then Poreign Secretary and Leader of the 
 House of Commons. It devolved on him to state the 
 intentions of Government, which had heen embodied in 
 a series of resolutions. When he came to what were 
 irreverently called the " pious clauses," he seemed to 
 think that it was necessary to speak apologetically of 
 the proposed measure, and expedient to hurry over the 
 ground with all possible despatch. 
 
 " Another resolution," he said, " which he should 
 " propose to the House, would he on the subject of Ee- 
 '^ ligion. He was aware that it was unwise to encroach 
 '' on the subject of religion generally, and that this, 
 *' under the ckcumstances of our Government in India, 
 "was a most delicate question. But there was one 
 " regulation on the subject necessary, even for the sake 
 " of decency. The Company entrusted with the supreme 
 " Government, in this as in other matters, had per- 
 " mitted the free exercise of religion at their settle- 
 " ments ; but there was no sort of religious control, and 
 " the members of the Church of England could not re- 
 " ceive the benefits of those parts of their religion, to 
 " which the Episcopalian functions were necessary, — ^for 
 " example, the ceremony of Confirmation. He hoped 
 " that the House did not think he was coming out with 
 " a great ecclesiastical establishment, for it would only 
 " amount to one bishop and three archdeacons, to su- 
 " perintend the chaplains of the different settlements. 
 '' The Company, he hoped, would not think it an en- 
 " croachment on their rights, that wliile British subjects 
 *' m India were governed by British laws, they should 
 " be permitted to exercise their national religion." 
 
 The Eesolutions, as I have said, were stated to the 
 House on the 22nd of March, but it was not until the 
 17th of June* that the twelfth clause, " That it is the 
 
 ♦ There had been some intermediate in favour of the " pious clauses." It 
 
 discussions, in which the two Charles must have been a fine thing to see the 
 
 Grants, father and son, had taken lead- two fighting side by side on the floor of 
 
 ing parts. Tlie younger, on the Slst the House of Commons. 
 of March, had made a brilliant speech 
 
WILLIAM WILBERFORCE. 643 
 
 *' opinion of this Committee, that it is expedient that 
 " the Chm^ch establisliment in the British territories 
 " should be placed under the superintendence of a 
 " bishop and three archdeacons, and that adequate 
 " provision should be made, from the territorial reve- 
 " nues of India, for their maintenance," came formally 
 under discussion. It passed without a division. The 
 Missionary clause came next. That was the field on 
 which the great battle Avas to be fought between the 
 Christian and the Philo-Hindoo parties. The resolution, 
 cautiously worded, so as to contain no direct mention 
 of missionaries and Christianity, was : " That it is the 
 " opinion of this Committee, that it is the duty of this 
 " country to promote the interest and happiness of the 
 " native inhabitants of the British dominions in India, 
 " and that such measures ought to be adopted as may 
 " tend to the introduction among them of useful know- 
 " ledge, and of religious and moral improvement. That 
 " in the furtherance of the above objects, sufficient 
 " facilities shaU be afforded by law, to persons desirous 
 " of going to, and remaining in, India, for the pm'- 
 " pose of accomplishing those benevolent designs." A 
 special day, the 22nd of June, was fixed for the discus- 
 sion. Wilberforce, who twenty years before had fought 
 the battle of Christianity almost single-handed, and 
 who now took intense interest in the great struggle, 
 had girded himself for the conflict, and gone down to 
 the House with quite an encyclopasdia of authorities in 
 support of liis favorite opinions. His whole heart was 
 in the encounter. He spoke long and well, tossing 
 about the testimonies of the learned with a prodigality 
 that was quite overwhelming. He quoted the opinions 
 of all the Governors-General, one after the other, to 
 show that the people of India were the most abandoned 
 people on the face of the earth. He quoted the his- 
 torians; he quoted the missionaries; he quoted the 
 
 2t2 
 
644 CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA. 
 
 civil servants of the Company. He quoted Orme, 
 Verelst, Scrafton, Bolts, Malcolm, Grant, Mackintosh, 
 Colebrooke, Kerr, Marshman, Carey, "Ward, and an 
 infinite number of official reports. He piled up au- 
 thority upon authority to demonstrate the claims of 
 this unhappy and most benighted people, upon the 
 Cliristian sympathies of the British nation. It was a 
 noble piece of special pleading, not exempt from exag- 
 geration — that exaggeration, which is perhaps seldom 
 absent from the addresses of a man very fuU of his 
 subject, very earnest and energetic, thoroughly con- 
 vinced in his own mind, and intensely eager to bring 
 conviction to the minds of others. The grandeur of its 
 aims, the high character and pure sincerity of the 
 speaker, imparted a dignity and a purity to the address 
 which it was impossible not to venerate. It made an 
 impression upon the House; it made an impression 
 out of the House ; it made an impression throughout 
 the country. Carefully corrected by the speaker, the 
 speech was published by Hatchard, and found its way 
 into extensive circulation. Its course was one of not 
 unobstructed success. The Besolution was carried that 
 night by a majority of 89 to 36 ; but, after a day or 
 two, the question was re-opened in another stage of the 
 business. On the 28th, the elder Grant made a long 
 and able speech in defence of the Company. Mr. 
 Lushington followed, with a reply to Mr. Wilberforce, 
 and a defence of the Hindoos, to be answered by stout 
 WiUiam Smith, who, with Mr. Stephen, in more than 
 one good battle on the side of Christianity, had fought 
 as the lieutenants of Mr. Wilberforce. On the 1st of 
 July, the discussion was again resumed, and a very 
 remarkable speech, on the wrong side of the question, 
 was delivered by Mr. Charles Marsh, a gentleman who 
 had formerly been a member of the legal profession at 
 Madras. It created a strong sensation in the House, 
 
MISSIONARY ESTABLISHMENTS. 645 
 
 but not an abiding one. His hearers admired the 
 eloquence of the speaker, but were not convinced by 
 his arguments. The address, which he delivered on 
 the 1st of July, 1813 — an elaborate protest against 
 Cliristian liberty in India — even now that a second 
 Charter has nearly expired since it was reported, can- 
 not be read without the strongest feelings of regret, 
 that such fine talents were turned to such bad ac- 
 count.* 
 
 This speech called forth a rejoinder from Wilber- 
 force, distinguished by no common ability. Southey 
 had ransacked his marvellous common-place book to 
 supply illustrations, drawn from Portuguese history, 
 of the little danger, that attends interference with the 
 customs of the people of India. And now the speaker, 
 thus fortified by the erudition of the newly-appointed 
 laureate, cited Albuquerque with good effect ; entered 
 into an elaborate explanation of the causes of the 
 massacre of Vellore (an event which Mr. Marsh had of 
 course emphatically dwelt upon, for it was the stock 
 in trade of his party) ; spoke of the suppression of 
 female infanticide by Jonathan Duncan and Colonel 
 Walker, and of the Saugor sacrifices by Lord WeUes- 
 ley ; rebuked Mr. Marsh for speaking of the Mission- 
 aries as Anabaptists and fanatics ; and compared the 
 present contest with the great struggle, in which he 
 and his friends had so long been engaged, for the sup- 
 pression of the slave-trade. He was followed by Mr. 
 
 * " There was little or nothing in this to the still mysterious affair of the 
 address that had not been said before; alleged attack upon the Duke of Cum- 
 but Mr. Marsh assuredly said it better beriand by his valet, Sellis — two in- 
 than it had been said before. He said, cidents which were then exciting the 
 indeed, everything that could be said public mind — told with something of 
 upon the subject ; and he said it ex- novel effect on the House, and must be 
 tremely well. A dexterous allusion to regarded as an original illustration of 
 the murder at Blackheath of Mr. and the superior virtue of the native ser- 
 Mrs. Bonar by their footman, Nichol- vants, who sleep at the doors of Anglo- 
 son, which was to the year 1813, what Indian residents."— [ilwfW in the Cai- 
 the Manning murder was to 1849; and cutta Iievicw.'\ 
 
646 CHRISTIAls^ITY IN INDIA. 
 
 Porbes, Mr. "William Smith, and other speakers, among 
 whom was Whitbread, who spoke out manfully in 
 favor of the Resolution. " I am charmed with Whit- 
 bread," wrote Buchanan to a friend, a few days after- 
 wards, " when he sounds the right note." The House 
 divided ; and there were fifty-four votes for the clause, 
 and thirty-two against it. A hundred members could 
 not be induced to sit out this important debate. Pive 
 hundred had divided a few weeks before on the Homan 
 Catholic_E>elief Bill. In the House of Lords the Eeso- 
 lution passed without a division. 
 
 And so the victory was gained. I must briefly speak 
 of its results. On the 28th of November, 1814, the first 
 Indian bishop ascended the steps of one of the ghats of 
 Calcutta. His landing, in his own words, " was without 
 any eclat, for fear of alarming the prejudices of the na- 
 tives." On Christmas-day he preached his first sermon, 
 before a congregation of 1300 persons, and administered 
 the sacrament to 160 communicants, including the judges 
 and the members of council. "The day," wrote Bishop 
 Middleton to his fi:iends in England, "will long be re- 
 membered in Calcutta." 
 
 And so commenced the episcopal period of Christianity 
 in India. There was no commotion — ^no excitement at 
 its dawn. Offended Hindooism did not start up in arms ; 
 nor indignant Mahomedanism raise a war-cry of death 
 to the infidel. Enghsh gentlemen asked each other, on 
 the course, or at the dinner-table, if they had seen the 
 bishop; and ofiicious native sircars pressed their services 
 upon the " Lord Padre Sahib." But the heart of Hindoo 
 society beat calmly as was its wont. Brahmanism stood 
 not aghast at the sight of the lawn sleeves of the bishop. 
 He preached in the Christian temple on the Christian's 
 hara dm; and that night the Europeans in Calcutta 
 slept securely in their beds — securely next morning they 
 
THE RESOLUTIONS PASSED. 647 
 
 went forth to their accustomed work. There was not a 
 massacre; there was not a rebellion. Chowringhee was 
 not in a blaze; the waters of the "Lall Diggy" did not 
 run crimson with Christian blood. The merchant took 
 his place at his desk; the public servant entered his 
 office; and the native underlings salaamed meekly and 
 reverentially as ever* In the Fort, the English captain 
 faced his native company; and the sepoy, whatever his 
 caste, responded to the well-known word of command, 
 with the ready discipline he had learned under the old 
 charter. Everything went on according to wonted custom, 
 in spite of the bishop, and his lawn sleeves, and his sermon 
 on Christmas-day. No one looked differently; no one 
 felt differently; and it really seemed probable, after all, 
 that British dominion in the East would survive the epis- 
 copal blow. 
 
 The truth is, that such of the natives — the better edu- 
 cated and more mtelligent few — as really thought any- 
 thing about the matter, thought the better of us for 
 evincing this outward respect for our religion, and have 
 thought the better of us and our faith ever since. All 
 that was written and spoken, of old, about alarming 
 the Hindoos, and weakening our hold of India; all the 
 ominous allusions to the Vellore massacre, and anticipa- 
 tions of new catastrophes of the same class, now appeared 
 in their true light, and were valued at their proper worth. 
 Mr. Buchanan's "sanguinary doctrines," as Mr. Twining 
 ludicrously called them, in one of his pamphlets, had 
 now been fully reduced to practice ; and yet not a drop 
 of blood had been shed — ^not a blow struck — not a 
 menace uttered — not a symptom of disquiet had evinced 
 itself Our empire in India was then "not worth a 
 year's purchase ;" and yet now for forty years has it sur- 
 vived that first awful episcopal sermon on Christmas-day.* 
 
 Bengal had become accustomed to the great episcopal 
 
 * Author in the Calcutta JReview. 
 
648 CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA. 
 
 danger when the bishop prepared to set out on a visitation 
 tour, and threw Madras into a paroxysm of alarm. The 
 Coast authorities had not forgotten the Vellore massacre. 
 Visions of blood were still floating before their eyes. 
 It seemed to them that the visit of the bishop to the 
 south would be the signal for another rising, more 
 grievous than the last, as Hindoos and Mahomedans 
 might for once be banded together. But the further 
 he proceeded the more apparent it became that the 
 natives regarded his approach without a feeling of alarm, 
 and his presence mthout a sentiment of aversion. 
 Native princes received the Christian bishop with re- 
 verence, and embraced him with affection. Native 
 priests came out from their temples to welcome him, 
 and implored his assistance in their behalf He visited 
 the great pagodas of Chillumbrum; where tlie Brah- 
 mins pressed forward to gaze at the chief-priest of the 
 Feringhees. They showed him all the noticeable things 
 of their temple, and, instead of anticipating that he had 
 come to demolish it, asked for a little money for its 
 repair. Elsewhere the same feeling prevailed. A de- 
 putation of Brahmans from the Tinnivelly Pagodas 
 visited the bishop at Palamcottah. They came respect- 
 fully to the Lord Padre to seek his sympathy and 
 assistance as a brother hierarch. They were, they said, 
 in a miserable state of depression. Their church-lands, 
 after paying the Government demands, yielded so little 
 that the priests were in danger of starving. Could not 
 the head of the Christian Church, they meekly suggested, 
 intercede in their behalf, and induce Government to 
 better their position ? 
 
 From that time it became apparent that any amount of 
 Church establishment that the British Legislature could 
 be induced to sanction would never alarm or irritate the 
 natives. The establishment in Middleton's time was 
 miserably small. " The total number of clergy, both 
 
THE DAWN OF THE EPISCOPATE. 649 
 
 civil and military," says Mr. Le Bas, in his life of Bishop 
 Middleton, '^ did not, there is reason to believe, in 1814, 
 exceed thirty- two in the proportion of fifteen for Bengal, 
 twelve for Madras, and five for Bombay. This number, 
 small as it was, was subject to continual reduction, by 
 illness, death, necessary absence, or return to England ; 
 such, for instance, was the amount of these casualties at 
 Bombay, on the arrival of Archdeacon Barnes, in 1814, 
 that he found at that Presidency only one efficient clergy- 
 man." A more recent writer on the state of the Angli- 
 can Church in India, Mr. Whitehead, says that this 
 computation is too high, and makes a corrected state- 
 ment on the authority of Mr. Abbott, the Ecclesiastical 
 Register: — "On the arrival of Bishop Middleton, in 
 1814, he found eiSective resident chaplains in Bengal, 
 eight; in Madras, five or six; and in Bombay, one. 
 Missionaries under episcopal jurisdiction, or licensed by 
 the bishop, there were none. India then possessed fifteen 
 parochial clergy." From that period, however, the 
 Anglican Church has progressively increased in extent 
 and importance. Under the Act of 1833, the bishop 
 and the three archdeacons, whom Lord Castlereagh had 
 apologetically introduced to the notice of the House, 
 grew into three bishops and three archdeacons. 
 
 Madras and Bombay w^ere raised to the dignity of 
 episcopal sees; and with this increase of ecclesiastical 
 supervision there was also an increase of ordinary eccle- 
 siastical agency. The establishment had gradually grown 
 under the Charter of 1813 ; but there has been greater 
 growth since its close. In 1832-33 there were on the 
 establishment of the Bengal Presidency thirty -seven 
 chaplains; in 1850-51 there were sixty-one. Under the 
 Madras Government there were, in 1832-33, twenty-three 
 chaplains ; in 1850-51 there were twenty -nine. Attached 
 to Bombay, in 1832-33, there were fifteen chaplains; 
 in 1850-51 there were twenty -three. The total cost 
 
650 CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA. 
 
 of these establishments was, in 1832-33, 96,000Z.; in 
 1850-51 it had risen to 112,000^. 
 
 But far more important than this extension of the 
 Church estabhshment, was the removal of the great 
 barrier which had hitherto restrained the tide of mis- 
 sionary labor from flowing freely into India — almost, it 
 may be said, from flowing there at all. It is curious in 
 these days, when Christian missionaries cover the country 
 by hundreds, to think of the dismay which the efforts of 
 missionary units excited in the minds of the members of 
 Lord Minto's Government, and the efforts which were 
 made to control these dangerous excesses. Materials 
 are not wanting for a vivid picture of the alarm which 
 the mild efforts of the Serampore missionaries excited in 
 the Council Chamber of Calcutta; but it hardly comes 
 within the scope of this work to enter into such details. 
 I would merely speak of the ascertained results of the 
 labors of Wilberforce, Charles Grant, and their Christian 
 comrades, which emancipated the Gospel throughout our 
 British possessions in the East. A vast impulse was 
 necessarily given to Christian missions by the "pious 
 clauses" of the Charter Act of 1813, and all through the 
 twenty years of its operation the magnitude of our mis- 
 sionary works steadily increased, and the results of mis- 
 sionary labor were more apparent. But in this, as in 
 every other great field of operation, it is since the passing 
 of the Act under which India is now governed that the 
 greatest strides forward have been made. In 1830 there 
 were 10 missionary societies at work in India; in 1850 
 there were 22. In 1830 there were 106 missionary 
 stations; in 1850 there were 260. In 1830 there were 
 147 missionaries in the field; in 1850 there were 403. 
 Such has been the progress made in the twenty years 
 between 1830 and 1850.* 
 
 * These missionary statistics arc dia," originally contributed by the Rev. 
 taken from an elaborate paper, entitled Mr. Mullins, in the Calcutta Review, 
 " Kesults of Missionary Labors in In- and subsequently published in a sepa- 
 
STATE OF THE CHUE-CH, 
 
 651 
 
 The effect of this increased agency may, in some mea- 
 sure, be gathered from the following statistical paper, 
 laid before the Missionary Conference in Calcutta a few 
 years ago. It showed, that in Lower Bengal, exclusive 
 of Kishnaghur, the accessions of native converts to the 
 Christian Church liad been made thus : 
 
 From 1793 to 1802 . 
 
 
 . 27 
 
 „ 1803 to 1812 . 
 
 
 . 161 
 
 „ 1813 to 1822 . 
 
 
 . 403 
 
 „ 1823 to 1832 . 
 
 
 . 675 
 
 „ 1833 to 1842 . 
 
 
 . 1045 
 
 „ 1843 and 1844 (two 
 
 years) 
 
 . 485* 
 
 I have no doubt that there are many readers who will 
 be glad to see, in one comprehensive view, the statistics 
 of Protestant missions in India, as existing at the present 
 time : 
 
 
 Mission- 
 aries. 
 
 Native 
 Preachers. 
 
 Churches. 
 
 Members. 
 
 Christians. 
 
 
 In Bengal, Orissa, and 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Assam 
 
 101 
 
 135 
 
 71 
 
 3,416 
 
 14,401 
 
 In the N. W. Provinces 
 
 58 
 
 39 
 
 21 
 
 608 
 
 1,828 
 
 In the Madras Presi- 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 dency 
 
 164 
 
 308 
 
 162 
 
 10,464 
 
 74,512 
 
 In the Bombay Presi- 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 dency 
 
 37 
 
 11 
 
 12 
 
 223 
 
 554 
 
 In Ceylon . 
 
 43 
 403 
 
 58 
 
 43 
 
 2,645 
 
 11,859 
 
 Total 
 
 551 
 
 309 
 
 17,356 
 
 103,154 
 
 It will be gathered from this statement, that under 
 the Presidency of Madras, which does not in respect of 
 secular affairs exhibit very encouraging signs of progress, 
 missionary labor has hitherto made the greatest impres- 
 sion.! But it is probable that the progressive results are 
 even more satisfactory in Bengal. 
 
 rate form. I am told that these statis- 
 tics have been most rigorously tested, 
 and that their accuracy has been abun- 
 dantly demonstrated. 
 
 * Mullins. 
 
 t The causes of this are well ex- 
 plained by Mr. Mullins in the paper 
 which I quoted above : " By far the 
 greatest progress has been made in 
 South India, in the provinces of Tin- 
 nevelley and Travancore, IVIissionary 
 work has long been carried on in these 
 districts, and the people are far more 
 
 open to the Gospel than other Hindoos. 
 In Travancore there is a native Go- 
 vernment, and the Brahmins are both 
 numerous and powerful. But the ma- 
 jority of the i)eople, both there and in 
 Tinnevelly, are not Hindoos like those 
 in Northern India. They are Shanars, 
 a large body devoted especially to the 
 cultivation of the palm-tree: and, whe- 
 ther immigrants, or a portion of the 
 aborigines of the land, who have been 
 enslaved by Brahmin conquerors, they 
 still retain their original customs. They 
 
652 
 
 CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA. 
 
 The number of missionaries, mission stations, churches, 
 and converts, entered under the Bombay head, is com- 
 paratively small — comparatively with the agency at work 
 under the other presidencies — but comparatively with 
 the past, how great. In 1847, on his departure from 
 Western India, Mr. Fyvie, an American missionary at 
 Surat, spoke thus of the changes which he had lived to 
 witness in Bombay: 
 
 *' Persons arriving at Bombay now visit it under different cir- 
 cumstances from what it was twenty-five or thirty years ago. 
 When I landed on your shores, there was only one church in Bom- 
 bay, and one service on the Lord's Day, very thinly attended in- 
 deed. There are now six places of public worship on this island for 
 divine service in English, and a seventh is now building. Thirty 
 or thirty-five years ago, evangelical preaching was, I fear, but 
 little known on this island ; but now the case is happily very 
 
 on 
 
 are all devil-worshippers, and worship 
 the objects of their fear with horrible 
 ceremonies and disgusting dances. 
 They continually add to the number 
 of their devils : and singularly enough 
 in one district, an Englishman was wor- 
 shipped as such, for many years. Tlie 
 offerings presented on his tomb, were 
 spirits and cigars! The Shanars are 
 said to be ' the least intellectual people 
 found in India.' Their long servitude 
 and oppression have debased them to a 
 very low level : and, though a few are 
 found to possess considerable ability, 
 the majority are marked by apathy, 
 indifference, ignorance, and vice, and 
 are unable to carry out a process of 
 thought for any length of time. Their 
 social bonds, such as those of parents 
 to children, are feeble ; and their social 
 amusements few. But withal they are 
 a docile and pliant people, and decidedly 
 willing to improve. The causes, which 
 led to such a rapid progress of 
 Christianity among tliem, are readily 
 discernible. Their religion sat very 
 lightly on them ; their caste is low ; the 
 religion of Europeans, was, of course, 
 looked upon with favor. In Travan- 
 core a special reason existed. Many 
 years ago. General Munro procured an 
 order from the liani, that Christians 
 should be exempted from work on their 
 sabbath, and from employment in the 
 Hindoo festivals. These circumstances 
 have contributed much towards the 
 
 easy passage of so many converts from 
 Heathenism to Christianity. The whole 
 number, now under instruction, we 
 reckon to be 52,000. It must not, how- 
 ever, be supposed that they are all 
 true Christians. None know this better, 
 or have spoken it more plainly, than the 
 missionaries, who instruct them. Yet 
 had they only given up their abominable 
 devil-worship, a great thing would have 
 been accomplished. But they have 
 done more. They have placed them- 
 selves under an evangelical ministry ; 
 they regularly attend public worship : 
 more than 17,000 children and young 
 people are daily instructed in Christian 
 schools, some of whom are being edu- 
 cated as teachers, and others as preach- 
 ers to their countrymen. Best of all, 
 a goodly number have exhibited in 
 their lives the fruits of conversion to 
 God. A great improvement has taken 
 place in this numerous body of Chris- 
 tian natives ; a great desire is evinced 
 for increased instruction ; family prayer 
 is not uncommon ; the public services 
 are well attended ; and a large sum in 
 the aggregate is annually contributed 
 for Christian books and for the poor. 
 The whole Shanar population, 120,000 
 in number, is open to missionaries; and, 
 if societies are faithful, and mission- 
 aries faithful, we may hope, in two or 
 three generations, to see the whole of 
 the southern provinces of India en- 
 tirely Christianised.*' 
 
PROGRESS IX BOMBAY. 653 
 
 different, and lias long been so. Less than tliirty-five years ago, 
 there were no Educational, Bible, Tract, or Missionary Societies 
 here. Is not the case now very different? Then one hardly 
 knew where to look for a decidedly pious person, for the worship of 
 God in families, and prayer-meetings in public. In how many 
 pious families, in this place and at other stations, is the voice of 
 prayer and praise presented to God, morning and evening, at the 
 family altar : while weekly prayer-meetings are also numerous. 
 In viewing all that has been done among our countrymen, have 
 we no cause to say, * What hath God wrought !' 
 
 " Thirty years ago, if any native had wished to become ac- 
 quainted with Christianity, there was then no Bible, Tract, or 
 Christian book in IMahrathi or Gujurati, to put into his hand. 
 During the last twenty-five years, however, the Bible has been 
 translated and printed in both these languages, so that the people 
 can now read in their own tongues the wonderful works of God. 
 Tracts, discourses, prayers, and catechisms, have been prepared 
 and widely circulated, and are read by thousands throughout the 
 length and breadth of the land. Some of the heathen at the 
 different missionary stations have believed the Gospel report ; 
 others, an increasing number, are convinced of the truth of 
 Christianity, but have not yet sufficient moral courage to put on 
 Christ, and to forsake all for his name : some of the converts 
 have become preachers of the Gospel. When I arrived in India, 
 the American brethren, Messrs. Hall and Newell, were laboring 
 amidst many discouragements to establish their first native school. 
 Now there are numerous schools at all the different missionary 
 stations ; and they might be greatly increased. When I arrived, 
 with the exception of the two American brethren mentioned, 
 there were no missionaries in the whole of Western India. Since 
 that time, the great Lord of the harvest has thrust forth many 
 laborers from Great Britain and Ireland, America, and the 
 Continent of Europe. Let us bless God for this : and pray that 
 they may be upheld, directed, comforted, and sanctified, and 
 their labors greatly blessed. No doubt, but in due time, they 
 or their successors shall reap largely, if they faint not." 
 
 In the whole history of Indian progress there is 
 nothing that cheers the heart more than the progress of 
 morality and religion among our own people. It was 
 said of old that we must begin there — that we must 
 
654 CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA. 
 
 first convert ourselves, and then think of converting the 
 people of India. It is certain that the English, in our 
 Eastern settlements, are not now open to the old re- 
 proach, "Christian-man — Devil-man." As to the con- 
 version of the heathen, it is equally certain that our 
 people have labored diligently for it — that they have 
 done much, and suffered much, in the good cause — and 
 that the results, as far as the human eye can discern 
 them, have well repaid all this toil. What the amount 
 of real conversion may be, humanity cannot determme ; 
 it can only speak of the palpable results. I have now 
 before me, from the pen of one who speaks of what he 
 has seen,* some account of the encouraging indications 
 of a change commg, or come : 
 
 " Temples are being allowed, to a great extent, to fall into decay, 
 while the number of new ones erected is by no means large. In 
 those parts where missions have been carried on most extensively, 
 a considerable falling off in the attendance at the great festivals 
 is distinctly observable. The swinging festival, for instance, in 
 Lower Bengal is very different from what it used to be. The 
 number of idols sold at festivals is greatly diminished, and the 
 offerings at the great temples are of far less value than they once 
 were. A great change has taken place in the views and in the 
 spirit of the people at large. Formerly they knew nothing of 
 what true religion really is; but they have been enlightened on 
 the nature of moral obligation, the duty of love to God, of love 
 to men, and the nature and evil of sin. Missions have gone far, 
 during the last fifty years, in developing a conscience amongst 
 the natives, in whom it was in a deadly sleep. Is not this alone 
 a great result ? The Hindoos, too, have begun to lay aside some 
 of their old notions. The Brahmins are no longer so highly 
 honored ; the clever Sudras thrust them aside from place and 
 power without scruple ; by far the greater increase of wealth and 
 wisdom has been diffused among the latter. Thousands now ap- 
 prove of female education; and, in the great cities, the ladies of 
 numerous families are being privately taught. Even the re- 
 marriage of widows is discussed by the native papers, and its 
 
 * Mr. Mullins. 
 
SIGNS OF PROGRESS. 655 
 
 advantages fully acknowledged. A numerous body is comino" 
 forward in society, possessing far more enlightened notions than 
 tlieir fathers did ; a body of men, who put little faith in the 
 Shastras, and look upon the old pandits and teachers as ignorant 
 bigots. The great contrast between these two parties shows how 
 great a step has been made in the process of public enlightenment. 
 The spirit, in which Bible truth is heard, has also greatly im- 
 proved. Formerly, when a missionary preached, he was com- 
 pelled to enter into disagreeable and apparently useless contro- 
 versies ; the same objections were brought forward again and 
 again ; and the discussion was frequently closed, with the prac- 
 tical application of broken pots, sand, dirt, and cries of ' Hari 
 bol !' But now, in all the older missionary stations and even 
 beyond them, discussions seldom occur. The people come to the 
 chapels, and often listen to the end: frequently acknowledging 
 aloud the truth of what is said. What is even more singular is, 
 that small companies have been found in various parts of the 
 country, who have gathered a little collection of Christian books, 
 and meet together to read and study them. These facts are full 
 of encouragement from the proofs they furnish, that the word of 
 God, though hidden, is not lost; but that, like good seed, it will 
 spring up and put forth, first the blade, then the ear, after that 
 the full corn in the ear. Only let this word, so extensively 
 known, be applied with power ' by the Holy Ghost sent down 
 from heaven,' and, at once, Uhe little one will become a thou- 
 sand, and the small one a great nation.' " 
 
 I tliink tliat tliese signs are most cheering. God only 
 knows wliat tliey indicate. But this I know, and may 
 say, that the missionaries have proved themselves worthy 
 of the confidence reposed in them, and that they have 
 seldom or never done anything to embarrass the Govern- 
 ment, mider which, without molestation fi:om the State, 
 and Avith much encouragement generally from the ser- 
 vants of the State, they have conducted their peaceful 
 operations. The improved relations, indeed, between 
 the missionaries and the Government are in themselves 
 no small evidence of the better temper of the latter. 
 
 I know that it may be said, as it often has been said, 
 that the Indian Government still countenances much that 
 
656 CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA. 
 
 it knows to be wrong — much error, mucli superstition, 
 mucli that every Christian man must desire to see rooted 
 out of the land. I am anxious to state the case with all fair- 
 ness. It is not to be denied that the question, when it pre- 
 sented itself for the solution of Christian administrators, 
 was a very difficult one. The question was not whether 
 Christianity was to be supported in India, and hea- 
 thenism discouraged ; but how far, consistently with out- 
 standing pledges and existing obligations, Christianity 
 could be supported and heathenism discouraged. Whe- 
 ther those pledges were wisely given — those obhgations 
 wisely contracted — might have been another question; 
 but it is of little use now to discuss it. There they were 
 in legible black and white, in substantive regulations, 
 and there was now no ignoring them. It remained only 
 for us to put upon them the right practical construction, 
 and it was only in respect of this construction that any 
 difference of opinion could have arisen among reasonable 
 and well-informed men. 
 
 The practical observation of a solemn pledge, dehbe- 
 rately given and distinctly enunciated to the natives of 
 India, was plainly and unmistakeably incumbent upon us, 
 and we should have erred if we had neglected it by going 
 in search of any more remote and speculative, perhaps un- 
 attainable, good. But it was our duty, at the same time, 
 to be cautious of going beyond the pledge — of giving 
 too Hteral a construction to the words of the obhgations 
 which we have taken upon ourselves. I thmk that 
 there was a tendency at one time to run mto this ex- 
 treme. At all events, the British- Indian Government, 
 from year's end to year's end, has been growing less and 
 less tenacious on the score of tlie over-strict observance 
 of these old pledges, and has been gradually loosening 
 its connexion with Idolatry, in the manner least cal- 
 culated to excite alarm, or to occasion offence. There 
 is a great difference between active participation in 
 
IDOL-PATRONAGE. 65? 
 
 evil, and simple toleration of it. The Regulations of 
 1793 had promised tlie natives of India "to preserve to 
 them the laws of the Shaster and the Koran," and to 
 " protect them in the free exercise of their religion." 
 But they had not pledged om' Government to interfere in 
 the internal management of their temples, the decoration 
 of their idols, and the ordering of their religious pro- 
 cessions. Little by little these errors were swept out of 
 our administrative system. From the time when, in 
 1809, Government decreed that "the superintendence 
 of the idol of Juggemauth and its interior economy" 
 should be thenceforth vested in the Rajah of Koordah, 
 the chains which have bound us to the externalities of the 
 false creeds of the country have gradually been loosened ; 
 and now there is little left of a system which, in these 
 days, few Christians are prepared to commend. It w^as 
 partly, in a spirit of tenderness and compassion for the 
 poor people whom we had trodden down wdth the iron 
 heel of conquest, partly from considerations of policy, 
 that, at the outset of our career, as rulers, we had been 
 more regardful of the honor of the Hindoo religion 
 than of our own. But the error, founded as it was on 
 what we then believed to be a sense of justice, has 
 given way to the increased regard which the inilers of 
 India entertain for the obligations of the religion tliey 
 profess ; and, whilst on the one side they have learned to 
 treat with courtesy and respect the bringers of glad 
 tidings, whom of old they cast out with reproach, they 
 have ceased to cherish the abominations against which 
 the good men whom they discarded were not suffered to 
 do battle by themselves. 
 
 It is fitting that a sketch of Indian Progress should be 
 closed with a brief mention of these things. Never at 
 any time has the Government of India evinced, by acts 
 of practical beneficence, so kindly an interest in the wel- 
 fare of the people, as within the last few years of its rule. 
 
 2 u 
 
658 CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA. 
 
 It lias betliouglit itself of better means of seeming the 
 allegiance of the people than by pampering thek priests 
 and decorating their idols. It has not only, in these 
 latter days, loosened the chains which bound the rulers 
 of the country to the idolatry, which from remote ages 
 has been the curse of the people, but has loosened the 
 chains which bound to it the Gentile worshipper liimself. 
 It has been well said that, " as soon as a little fellow 
 could be made to understand that the earth was 25,000 
 miles round there was an end of the Shastre." 
 
 My labors draw on to a close. In looking back at 
 what I have written, I find that I have left unsaid much 
 that I had comprehended in the origmal scheme of my 
 work. But I think I have written enough to show that 
 the East India Company and their servants have not 
 been unmindful of the great trust that has been reposed 
 in them, and that their administration has been one of 
 progressive unprovement — improvement which is now ad- 
 vancing with strides such as have never been made before. 
 Never were the rulers of India so mindful as now of the 
 duties and responsibilities which have devolved upon 
 them, as guardians of the happiness of that immense sec- 
 tion of the great human family, which Providence has 
 so mysteriously committed to their care. The last twenty 
 years have witnessed more gTcat changes tending to in- 
 crease the prosperity, the happiness, the civilisation of 
 the people of India, than the antecedent two centuries of 
 British connexion with the East. But the changes which 
 have been consummated, and of which we are now wit- 
 nessing the results, are small m proportion to those 
 which we have originated, and of which the next cycle 
 of twenty j^ears will witness the completion. If the great 
 administrative system, under which our Empire in India 
 has been built up, remains fundamentally unchanged, 
 those will be bright chapters of Indian progress which 
 will grow beneath tlio pen of the liistorian of 1873. I 
 
GOD IN HISTORY. 659 
 
 believe that under no other system would that Empire 
 have risen to its present height — under no other system 
 would it have survived the assaults of time and the 
 shocks of circumstance. If India had been grievously 
 misgoverned, we should not have been masters of it 
 now. 
 
 An acute author of the present day has observed: 
 " The historian knows the end of many of the transac- 
 tions he narrates. If he did not, how differently often 
 he would narrate them. It would be a most instructive 
 tiling to give a man the materials for the account of a 
 gi'eat transaction, stopping short at the end, and then see 
 how different would be his account from the ordinar}^ 
 ones."* I have often thought, when consulting the early 
 records of the Company, how different would be my 
 forecast of the issue of all these rude struggles of 
 om- English adventurers in the time of the Stuarts, if I 
 had addressed myself to the task of research in utter 
 ignorance of more recent events — if, indeed, I had groped 
 my way along paths of virgin inquir}^, making discove- 
 ries at every step, as in the pages of a new romance. 
 But I think that the essayist has stopped short at a point 
 where his reflection was susceptible of a much more im- 
 portant appHcation than that to which he has directed 
 it. It is from the difference between our own rough- 
 hewing and the shaping of our ends by a higher powerf 
 that the great lesson is to be learnt. The inequahty 
 of the means to the end — the seemingly irre- 
 concileable difference between the magnitude of the 
 effect and the pettiness of the cause — the utter unlike- 
 lihood, prospectively, of such a sequence of events as, 
 retrospectively, we know to have arisen — the entire con- 
 fusion, indeed, of all the calculations of human wisdom, 
 
 * Friends in Council. 
 
 t There's a Divinity that shapes our ends 
 Eough-hew them as we may. 
 
 2u2 
 
660 CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA. 
 
 Avliicli we so plainly discern when we look at sucli an 
 event as the establishment of our Indian Empire in its 
 inchoate fragmentary state, as with the eyes of a cotem- 
 porary of Bacon or Clarendon — are so many finger-prints 
 of the " hand of God in history," which he who would 
 read the annals of the Company aright, should dwell 
 upon with reverence and humility. 
 
 In the inscrutable manner in which, whilst the 
 nationalities of the East and the West, were breaking 
 lip around us. Providence preserved that little party of 
 London merchants to work out its great designs, is to 
 l)e found the key-note of Anglo- Indian history. It 
 was not for any petty ends that this great miracle was 
 wrought in our behalf. It was not for any petty ends 
 that principality after principality was surrendered into 
 our hands, and the will of the Company became law from 
 the banks of the Indus to the banks of the Irrawaddy. 
 It was that the great Christian nation, thus mysteriously 
 selected, should achieve great things in the East, and 
 finally work out the scheme of India's emancipation. 
 IIoAV we are now fulfilling our mission, I have in some 
 sort endeavoured to show. Physically* and morally 
 — materially and intellectually, we are impressing our- 
 selves abidingly on the country and on the people. I 
 hope that I have shown that the English in India 
 have not sat do^m idly under the weight of their 
 responsibilities and fallen asleep in the shade, whilst 
 they ought to have been bearing the burden and heat 
 of the day in strenuous efforts for the elevation of a 
 long-oppressed fallen race. 
 
 * I feel that I ought, as, indeed, I will, doubtless, do much to invigorate 
 intended, in this vork, to have said the people; but, perhaps, the sanatory 
 something of the efforts that have been measures, initiated by Mr. J. 1^ Mar- 
 made in India to improve the physique tin in the capital, and radiating thence 
 of the people, by means of great sana- into all parts of the country, will still 
 tory measures. It is hard to say to more extensively affect the character of 
 what extent the intellectual and moral the people. In the regeneration of the 
 character of the natives of India is p{>ople of India, this will not be one of 
 influenced by these causes. The diflu- the least effective agents. 
 sion of the medical science of the West 
 
VERDICT OF EUROPE. 661 
 
 I believe that our Indian Empire is the admiration 
 and the envy of the European world. There is not a 
 foreign state that does not wonder at the marvellous suc- 
 cess which has attended, not only the progress of our 
 arms, but the progress of our administration. France, 
 under the burden and the trouble of a new Empire in 
 Algeria, seeks counsel from the East India Company as 
 to the true mode of governing Mahomedan subjects.* 
 Austria looks on with respectful wonder, gravely con- 
 fessing a right understanding of all the elements of our 
 national grandeur, except our marvellous Empire in the 
 East.f Prussia sends forth her princes to see the great 
 marvel for themselves, and to tell on their return how 
 we conquer kingdoms and how we retain them. 
 Russia, with ill-disguised chagrin, tries to believe the 
 falsehoods of our enemies, and yet knows in her inmost 
 heart what is the wisdom and beneficence of our rule. J 
 The mar^^el and the mystery are more patent to stranger 
 eyes than to our own.§ We think too little of the 
 
 ♦ This, I believe, was in 1847. § Hear the evidence of another na- 
 f The Duke of Newcastle stated, in tion. Italy, through Sismondi, says : — 
 a speech delivered at Haileybury in the " Such as they are, however, the English 
 summer of 1852, that travelling, in the are still the best masters that India has 
 Austrian Tyrol, he fell in with a very ever had. Wherever in this vast conti- 
 intelligent Austrian general, who, in nent their dominion is direct, it is a 
 the course of a conversation on our real benefit. They have re-established 
 national resources, said that he could security and just .e; they have given 
 understand all the elements of our the people a feeliyg of duration, and of 
 greatness, except our Anglo-Indian something to look forward to ; and ex- 
 Empire, and tJiat he could not under- actly because they keep themselves 
 stand. The vast amount of administra- apart, because they do not wish to 
 tive wisdom, which the good govern- direct every thing, to change every thing, 
 ment of such an Empire demanded, they have permitted Indian civilisation 
 baffled his comprehension. under them to resume its natural pro- 
 X I am told that De Warren's L'/«(/e gress. Agriculture is flourishing; the 
 ^»^/(/ise is a text-book with the Russian arts are cultivated with case; popula- 
 officers on the Eastern frontier. What tion and riches begin to increase ; in- 
 are their real ideas of the duties of telligence makes some progress; and 
 Christian states may, perhaps, be European opinions engraft themselves 
 gathered from the fact that L*rince naturally and gently on the old id-cas of 
 Saltikoff told an English officer, who India; in short, the conquered poop.c 
 had been exerting himself to bring about have learnt to defend the foreign rule; 
 the suppression of Suttee in Rajpootana, the native army is formidable, and there 
 that he thought it a pity to suppress is little probability that if the road to 
 anything so romantic, for that in pro- India were opened to the Russians, tliey 
 portion as such customs as these were could sustain a struggle against the 
 abolished the people of India would English." 
 cease to be interesting. 
 
662 CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA. 
 
 mighty Providence which out of a petty mercantile ad- 
 venture has evolved the grandest fact recorded in the 
 History of the World. 
 
 We should never close our eyes against the great 
 truth of tliis mysterious interference. It should enter 
 largely into all our thoughts of the practicalities of In- 
 dian administration. The face of God has never yet 
 been turned away from us save when we have done 
 manifestly wrong. Often, in the weakness of our faith, 
 we have doubted and hesitated ; we have given our- 
 selves up to petty shifts and temporary expedients, only 
 to find that the very essence of political wisdom is to 
 dare to do right. When that large-minded director of 
 the Company, Charles Grant, declared that "if from 
 unworthy fears we should disavow our religion, he should 
 fear that the Great Author of that religion would be 
 provoked to withdraw his protection there from us,"* 
 he uttered sentiments which, forty years ago, were 
 declared to be those only of an amiable fanatic. But 
 what was once believed to be the wild mouthing of en- 
 thusiasm, is now looked upon as the language of calm 
 and authoritative reason. Since our Indian statesmen 
 and soldiers began to take more solemn views of their 
 duties as Christian men, and the Directors of the Com- 
 pany have recognised more clearly and more gratefully 
 the wonderful interposition of Providence in their behalf, 
 they have achieved an amount of practical success such as 
 never attended their efforts, when they suflfered manifold 
 idle fears and vain vaticinations to arrest the stream of 
 Indian Progress. 
 
 * Ant€j p. 638. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 (A) 
 THE SALT DUTIES. 
 
 IFrom the Statistical Papers relating to India, prepared at the India House."] 
 
 BENGAL. 
 
 The supply of salt in Bengal is provided partly by manufac- 
 ture, conducted on account of the Government,* partly by impor- 
 tation, and in one instancef by private manufacture, under 
 a system of excise. The dutyj on all imported salt is two and a 
 half rupees per maund of 82lbs., or about three farthings per lb. 
 The same rate of duty is levied as excise on salt manufactured by 
 private individuals; and the Government salt may be purchased at 
 all times in quantities of not less than 50 maunds, at a fixed price, 
 which is composed of the cost price, with the addition of two and 
 a half rupees per maund, or three farthings per lb. The average 
 cost price of production§ is about 80 rupees per 100 maunds, or a 
 trifle below one farthing per lb., thus making the Government 
 selling price under a penny per lb. The supply of salt is no 
 longer a monopoly; its manufacture and sale liave not been relin- 
 quished by Government, but individuals participate in its provi- 
 sion, both by importation and manufacture, under a combined 
 system of customs and excise. 
 
 The system oi Jixed prices and open warehouses commenced in 
 
 ♦ The manufacture is carried on, not f M^- Prinscp's salt-works at Nar- 
 
 by hired labour on the part of the Go- rainpore. 
 
 vernment, but by a system of pecuniary X The duty is levied at the time of 
 
 advances ; the parties receiving them the clearance of the salt from the 
 
 being bound to deliver, at a fixed price, bonded warehouses, 
 
 all the salt manufactured. Probably § The salt agencies are located along 
 
 100,000 laborers (called Molunghees) the head of the Bay of Bengal, viz. at 
 
 are engaged in the manufacture in the Hidgeleo, Tumlook, Chittagong, Ar- 
 
 Sunderbunds. racan, C'uttack, Balasore, Khoredab. 
 
666 APPENDIX. 
 
 1836-37, when the previous system o£jixed qualities and periodical 
 sales was abolished * 
 
 Maunds of 82 lbs. 
 During the seven years commencing with 1837-38 and ending 
 with 1843-44, the duty on salt was 3rs. 4a. per maund. The 
 annual averagef quantity of salt sold and imported during 
 that period was 4,627,030 
 
 In November, 1844, the duty was reduced to 3rs. per maund, and 
 
 the annual average sale increased to 4,966,917 
 
 In April, 1847, the duty was further reduced to 2rs. 12a. per 
 
 maund, and the annual sale increased to 5,452,909 
 
 In April, 1849, the duty was again subjected to reduction, when it 
 was fixed for five years at its present rate of 2rs. 8a. per maund. 
 
 It will thus be seen that in the five years above adverted to, the 
 reduction effected in the salt-tax amounted to nearly 25 per cent.; 
 but it would appear that no further reduction can, for the present, 
 be expected consistently with the maintenance of the revenue, the 
 last reduction in 1849 having led to no further increase of con- 
 sumption. 
 
 NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES. 
 
 The supply of salt to the North-Western Provinces is furnished 
 partly from the lower provinces of Bengal, and partly from the 
 Sambhur Salt Lake, J in Rajpootana, and other localities on the 
 western side of India. The salt of Bengal having paid the excise 
 or import duty of 2 rupees 8 a. per maund, passes free into the 
 North- Westen Provinces. The Sambhur and other salt, on cross- 
 ing the north-w^estern frontier customs line, is subjected to a duty 
 of 2 rupees per maund, and to a further duty of half a rupee§ per 
 maund on transmission to the eastward of Allahabad, thus coming 
 into competition with the salt of Bengal under an equal duty of 
 2 rupees 8 a. per maund. 
 
 MADRAS. 
 
 At Madras salt is manufactured on account of Government, and 
 
 * As recommended by the Select f These averages are exclusive of 
 
 Committee of the House of Commons the quantities disposed of by retail 
 
 -in 1836. All the recommendations of sales, which cannot be given with per- 
 
 that Committee have now been fully and feet accuracy, 
 
 fairly carried out, viz.— t The Sambhur Lake belongs to the 
 
 1st. Open warehouses and fixed native States of Joudpore and Jyepore. 
 
 prices. § The Allahabad special duty was 
 
 2nd. Imported salt to be subjected to fixed by Act M of 1843 at one rupee 
 
 the same rate of duty as native manu- per maund; but in 1847, and again in 
 
 facturcd salt. 1849, when reduction of duty on Bengal 
 
 3rd. The rate of duty to be fixed salt was efTectcd, corresponding re- 
 
 bclow the average of net profits for a ductions were made in the Allahabad 
 
 series of ten years (such average hav- duty, 
 ing been calculated at 3 rupees per 
 maund). 
 
APPENDIX. GG7 
 
 sold for internal consumption at one rupee per maund, or under 
 one farthing per lb * The duty on imported foreign salt was 
 3 rupees per maund, but it has been recommended by tlie 
 home authorities that the import duty should (as in Bengal) be 
 equal only to the difference between the selling price and the cost 
 of manuflicture; the difference between the cost price and the price 
 at which the salt is given out for consumption being the duty to 
 be realised. 
 
 BOMBAY. 
 
 In Bombay the manufacture of salt is carried on by individuals, 
 but subject to an excise duty of twelve annas (Is. 6(L) per maund,t 
 a similar duty being imposed on imported salt. Salt exported 
 from this presidency to Calcutta is subject to the above excise duty, 
 but credit for that amount is given at Calcutta in the adjustment 
 of the local duty. Facilities are also afforded for the export of salt 
 to Malabar, Travancore, Cochin, and other places. 
 
 PUNJAB. 
 
 The excise duty on salt at the Punjab salt mines has been fixed 
 at 2 rupees per maund. 
 
 English salt, it is said, may be laid down at Calcutta at 44s. 
 per ton, or about 80 rs. per 100 maunds.J 
 
 According to another authority5§ 65 rs. per 100 maunds is the 
 lowest possible rate at which the transaction could be effected. 
 But salt from the Persian Gulf and other Arab States is laid down 
 at Calcutta at 40 rs. per 100 maunds. It is therefore the high 
 cost of producing Bengal salt (80 rs. per 100 maunds) which 
 alone enables English salt to keep a footing in the Calcutta 
 market. 
 
 In Bengal salt is obtained by boiling the sea-water. 
 
 In Bombay and Madras the process is that of solar evaporation. 
 
 In tlie Punjab it is extracted in a pure state from the salt 
 mines. 
 
 The Sambhur Salt Lake, in Rajpootana, overflows during the 
 rains, and w^hen the waters subside, a deep incrustation of salt is 
 deposited on its shores for several miles round. 
 
 ♦ By Act 6 of 1844, sect 43, the sell- 1837, at half a rupee per maund. It 
 
 ing price of the Government salt was was subsequently increased to one rupee 
 
 fixed at one and a half rupees per per maund by Act 16 of 1844, and rc- 
 
 raaund. It has subsequently been re- duced to twelve annas, its present 
 
 duced to one rupee, by order of the price, by order of the Court in the 
 
 Court. same year. 
 
 t The duty on salt on delivery from t Aylwtfn on Salt Trade. 
 
 salt-works was fixed, by Act 27 of § Calcutta Rtviexo. 
 
668 APPENDIX. 
 
 Salt purchased at Calcutta at Id. per lb., the Government 
 price, is sold at Benares (400 miles from Calcutta, where it comes 
 into competition with the salt from Rajpootana) at 12 lbs. the 
 rupee, or 2d. per lb. ; and, moreover, it is stated to be then con- 
 siderably adulterated. The consumption of salt in India has been 
 usually estimated* at 12 lbs. per head per annum; and assuming 
 tlie wages of agricultural laborf at 3 rupees per mensem 
 (the rate now paid on the Calcutta and Bombay mail-road, and 
 also to village watchmen), it would, at Calcutta, absorb the income 
 of five days' labor to provide the quantity required for a year. 
 The salt duty thus operates as a tax of about 1^ per cent, upon 
 the laborer's wages, if he have none but himself to provide for. 
 If he have a wife or children, the per-centage will of course be 
 increased by the amount of their consumption. It is to be ob- 
 served, however, on the other side, that the wife and children 
 would generally contribute something to the common fund by the 
 earnings of their labor, and thus again reduce the per-centage. 
 
 At Benares the purchase of the same quantity of salt (12 lbs.) 
 would absorb ten days' earnings, thus constituting a charge of 3 
 per c€nt. on the laborer's income. But for this additional charge 
 the Government duty is in nowise accountable. The difference 
 in price is occasioned by the cost of conveyance, profits of trade, 
 wastage, &c., the ordinary charges of commerce.^ 
 
 The pressure of the salt- tax on the laborer cannot be regarded 
 as severe, inasmuch as it is the only way in which he contributes 
 to the pecuniary necessities of the State ; in all other respects he 
 is not necessarily subject to taxation. 
 
 The preceding remarks apply to the Upper and Lower Pro- 
 vinces of Bengal. In the territories of Madras and Bombay the 
 duty on salt is only about one-third of that which prevails in 
 Bengal; but from other causes the mass of the people are believed 
 to be in inferior circumstances to those of Bengal. In Madras they 
 are still subject to various taxes (moturpha tax, duty on tobacco, 
 &c.), which have been abolished elsewhere. 
 
 A comparison of the amount of salt produced with the numbers 
 of the population consuming it, will show that the estimate which 
 assigns 12 lbs. as the ordinary annual consum.ption of an indi- 
 vidual, is nearly in correspondence with fact. The quantity of 
 
 * Report of Board of Customs, Salt of carriages, but on the completion ot 
 
 and Opium: Calcutta, is\9. Also Ca/- the railway now in progress this will be 
 
 cutta iieview, 1847. greatly reduced in the districts which it 
 
 t In 1846, 2000 laborers were en- traverses. It is computed that the ex- 
 gaged for employment on the Calcutta pense of conveying a ton of merchandise 
 and Bombay mail-road, at 3 rupees per will not exceed 2|Jd. per mile; conse- 
 liead per mensem. — See also Regulation quently salt may be carried from Cal- 
 A'X//. o/"1816, sec/. 4. cutta to Benares for one halfpenny 
 
 X Of these the principal item is cost per lb. 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 669 
 
 salt sold wholesale and retail or imported was, in 18-16-47, as 
 under : 
 
 Maundsof 82lbs. 
 
 Benjial 6,166,258 
 
 North-Western Provinces 2,670,943 
 
 Madras 4,687,720 
 
 Bombay 2,573,625 
 
 15,998,546 
 82 
 
 31,997,092 
 127,988,368 
 
 l,311,880,772lb8. 
 
 If the entire population of British India be assumed at ninety- 
 nine millions, which from 'the latest official information may be 
 considered as about its actual extent, the above-mentioned quan- 
 tity of salt would afford to each individual about 13 lbs., the facts 
 collected by statistical research thus corroborating an estimate 
 founded on observation of tlie habits of the people. 
 
 The following table exhibits the quantity of salt imported into 
 Calcutta from all countries, and also from England, for the last 
 seven years :"* 
 
 Imported from all 
 Countries. 
 
 1844-45 
 
 1845-46 
 
 1846-47 
 
 1847-48 
 
 1S48-49 
 
 1849-50 
 
 1850-51 (the first six months of) 
 
 Maunds. 
 970,595 
 1,581,968 
 1,466,744 
 1,615,084 
 1,626,706 
 2,126,848 
 1,455,007 
 
 From England. 
 
 Maunds. 
 791 
 502,616 
 352,835 
 752,998 
 459,803 
 024.673 
 672,092 
 
 * Board of Cusioms, Salt and Opium 
 
670 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 Statement exhibiting the Net Revenue derived from Salt from 
 all sources — viz., Government Sales, Excise on Private Manu- 
 facture, and Customs Duty, from the year 1839-40. 
 
 Year. 
 
 Bengal. 
 
 N.-W. Prov. 
 
 Madras. 
 
 Bombay. 
 
 Total. 
 
 
 Rupees. 
 
 Rupees. 
 
 Rupees. 
 
 Rupees. 
 
 Rupees. 
 
 1839-40 ... 
 
 1,61,94,188 
 
 26,90,511 
 
 33,82,422 
 
 12,72,209 
 
 2,35,39,330 
 
 1840-41 ... 
 
 1,63,80,084 
 
 24,43,614 
 
 30,21,805 
 
 14,58,218 
 
 2,33,03,721 
 
 1841-42 ... 
 
 1,57,50,967 
 
 26,81,822 
 
 33,61,806 
 
 13,42,601 
 
 2,31,37,196 
 
 1842-43 ... 
 
 1,64,33,412 
 
 25,06,731 
 
 32,10,959 
 
 16,25,339 
 
 2,36,76,441 
 
 1843-44 ... 
 
 1,55,78,010 
 
 35,86,467 
 
 37,35,644 
 
 16,99,579 
 
 2,45,99,700 
 
 1844-45 ... 
 
 1,60,42,730 
 
 47,82,645 
 
 37,81,369 
 
 18,47,502 
 
 2,64,54,246 
 
 1845-46 ... 
 
 1,49,09,021 
 
 37,75,196 
 
 40,34,020 
 
 21,01,109 
 
 2,48,19,346 
 
 1846-47 ... 
 
 1,62,79,725 
 
 52,47,071 
 
 39,84,188 
 
 17,77,565 
 
 2,72,88,549 
 
 1847-48 ... 
 
 1,65,83,668 
 
 48,26,209 
 
 41,94,855 
 
 23,45,006 
 
 2,79,49,738 
 
 1848-49 ... 
 
 1,41,44,321 
 
 45,65,642 
 
 37,69,440 
 
 21,06,855 
 
 2,45,86,258 
 
 1849-50 "... 
 
 1,61,07,384 
 
 53,79,810 
 
 38,33,312 
 
 21,57,591 
 
 2,74,78,097* 
 
 [Having given above the Statistics of the Salt Duties, I append 
 some remarks, written by a friend in India, and published in the 
 Morning Chronicle, on the social and moral aspects of the question. 
 They appear to me to be as just as they are able.] 
 
 Of all the great sources of Indian revenue not one has been so 
 much assailed as the '^monopoly " of Salt. It is here that the philan- 
 thropist will find his most palpable object of censure, the partisan of 
 free-trade his most vulnerable point of attack, and the advocate of 
 the Company his least defensible position. Now it is conceded at 
 once, that salt is as necessary a daily condiment to the Indian cul- 
 tivator as it is to the English peasant : that in a country where 
 sudden and mysterious attacks of disease are common, it has been 
 thought essential to a healthy condition of the physical system : 
 that in some parts of Bengal it may be manufactured at a trifling 
 cost and with the slightest amount of labor by any one who will 
 scrape together a few handfuls of earth, and yet that in those very 
 localities, where it is most readily made, the transport of salt is 
 only permitted under the most rigid observance of certain forms, 
 and under the safeguard of authenticated passes, whilst the 
 adulteration, the import, the manufacture or even connivance at 
 
 ♦ Government Sales and Excise Duty 
 
 Customs Duty on importation by sea 
 
 On passing North-Wcst Frontier customs line 
 
 Rupees. 
 
 1,75,98,287 
 
 45,00,000 
 
 53,79,810 
 
 2,74,78,097 
 
APPENDIX. 671 
 
 the manufacture thereof, are punishable by severe fines and by 
 imprisonment. For a clear understanding of the subject I must 
 state first that the salt eaten by the inhabitants of the whole 
 of the Agra and the Bengal Presidencies including the Punjab, 
 is supplied from four difierent great sources. 1. The salt manu- 
 factured by the Bengal Government. 2. Sea-imported salt which 
 pays duty at Calcutta. 3. Salt imported into the Agra Pre- 
 sidency from native states. 4. Rock salt brought from the 
 salt range in the Punjab From all four sources the Government 
 derives some revenue, but as the idea of monopoly is generally 
 associated with the direct manufacture of the article by the 
 Government, I will proceed first to describe the state of things 
 in the salt producing localities of Lower Bengal, where the laws 
 against illegal transport, store or manufacture, are by means of a 
 preventive estabHshment maintained in all their severity. The 
 reader who may choose to consult the map of Bengal, w^ll see 
 along and above the tract known as the Sunderbunds, a number of 
 tidal creeks and rivers of all sizes, by which the waters of the 
 Gangetic Delta and of the whole of Bengal find their way to the 
 sea. From the hills which border the Eastern frontier to the 
 province of Cuttack in the West, and from the very shores of the 
 Bay northward as far as the spring tide reaches in the dry season, 
 the soil impregnated with saline particles is singularly well fitted 
 for the manufacture of salt. For a great part of this tract, which 
 may be four hundred miles in length and one hundred and twenty 
 in depth, there is a dense and increasing population who subsist 
 principally on rice and fish. Any landholder in these parts, 
 were it not for the Salt Laws, would have only to lay out a 
 moderate amount of capital in order to establish a successful and 
 lucrative salt manufactory. Any Ryot without capital, with the 
 help of a stew-pan, a few sticks and a few handsful of earth, 
 "svould extract day by day, or week by week, salt suflScient for the 
 consumption of himself and his family. But I will take a some- 
 what parallel case in England, though it does not ajparently equal 
 the present one in hardsliip. In a well-wooded, well-watered, and 
 rich country in England there is a large estate, of ten thousand 
 acres, the proprietor of which is a strict preserver of game. His 
 tenants, who pay a high rent, are not permitted to shoot one 
 single head of the hundreds of phcasanfs and scores of hares which 
 devastate their finest crops. Poaching is visited with unrelenting 
 severity by magistrates, who have a fellow-feeling with the game- 
 preserving landlord. The law creates oflfenccs, and punishes with 
 rigor the offences it creates. Still, in defence of this system it 
 may be said that winged and four-footed game, in such plenty, 13 
 not the spontaneous production of the climate and the soil ; on the 
 breeding, rearing, and multiplying of pheasants, much care, time, 
 and money have been expended by the proprietor. His love of 
 
672 APPENDIX. 
 
 field sports helps to bind him to the estate. It is not essential to 
 the health and prosperity of his tenants that they should dine off 
 pheasants and partrldf^es, or to the punctual payment of rents, 
 that they should despatch bags of game to the poulterers in town. 
 Harsh as the system may appear to a philanthropist, it has some 
 redeeming points, and it is associated with much that is attractive 
 in the character of an English gentleman, his delight in active 
 exercises, his healthful recreation, his love of a rural life. It is 
 looked on by farmers, the sportsman will sayj sometimes with 
 positive indifference, rarely with hatred. It does not on the whole 
 press heavily on the poor man who earns a few shillings a week. 
 but in the salt-producing localities of Bengal, a small proprietor 
 and a poor cultivator, placed within arms' length, as it were, of 
 this condiment, are, by a code of laws cunningly devised, carefully 
 guarded, and enforced to the letter, forbidden, except through the 
 intervention of Government, to procure one single handful thereof 
 for their simplest meal. 
 
 I believe that the most avowed opponent of the Company must 
 allow that the above are the most damaging accusations which 
 could, with any just foundation, be brought against the Salt-tax. 
 As to the statements relative to the bad quality and excessive 
 price of the Company's salt, I trust to show that they are without 
 good foundation. 1 return to the locality in which the salt of 
 Bengal is produced, for, as it is there that the salt code is rigo- 
 rously enforced, it is the inhabitants of those parts, and those only, 
 who have any right to cry out against it as a hardship. The rea- 
 soning which I ventured to adopt in the case of the opium mono- 
 poly, I may venture, mutatis mutandis^ to apply to this case also. 
 Tlie law is a dead letter where no temptation to break or evade it 
 exists, even though that law be in theory harsh, oppressive, and 
 unjust. It is no more a hardship to tell the inhabitant of Patna or 
 (xhazepore that he shall not manufacture salt, or the rice cater of 
 the Sunderbunds that he shall on no account cultivate the poppy, 
 than it is to tell an elderly gentleman that he must not rob an 
 orchard, or an Oxford undergraduate that he is not to play at 
 marbles in the High-street. I will, however, proceed to describe 
 briefly the mode followed by the Indian Government in making 
 salt. At and near the spots best suited to the purpose are situated 
 the salt agencies, which are six in number. The land most 
 capable of producing salt is retained in the hands of Government, 
 and the proprietors thereof are indemnified for the loss of revenue 
 otherwise attainable from its cultivation. The salt is manufac- 
 tured yearly, to the amount fixed by the Board of Revenue, by a 
 class of men who gain their livelihood in this manner, and who 
 receive every year advances in hard cash for the purposes of ma- 
 nufacture. These men, molunghces, as they are termed in Indian 
 parlance, agree to deliver the salt at so much a maund at the 
 
APPENDIX. 673 
 
 various store-houses of Government. A fi^reat portion of the salt 
 so manufactured and stored is transported to large store-houses at 
 the Presidency, where it is sold to the native dealers in this article, 
 wlio retail it all over the country. A certain duty added to the 
 cost of transport and to that of manufacture is what Government 
 pretends to levy. At the present time salt is manufactured at the 
 different agencies, at an average rather under one shiUing a 
 maund, and is sold at that price, plus a fixed duty of five shillfngs 
 for the same quantity. Add to this the cost of transport to the 
 Presidency, and you will have the sum total at which salt is pur- 
 chased by the native dealer from Government. In round num- 
 bers it is rather more than six shillings a maund, and a maund is 
 equal to eighty-two English pounds. 
 
 The salt stored in the repositories of Government is a sound, 
 pure, and healthy edible. Any doubt on the subject may be in- 
 stantaneously removed by an inspection of the great storehouses at 
 the Presidency, near the terminus of the railway, when it will at 
 once be acknowledged that the stories of the Indian Government 
 making, by means of an unjust monopoly, a dear and unwhole- 
 some article, are so many idle tales. If the salt of Government is 
 adulterated, it is adulterated by the retail dealer, and what system, 
 whether confined to Government or open to all speculators, could 
 guarantee the prevention of this evil? I repeat, too, that the Salt 
 Laws operate differently in other parts of the empire to what they 
 do in the salt-producing localities. In the tract mentioned as 
 stretching along the Bay of Bengal within the influence of the 
 tides, their operation is certainly severe and uniform. It is a mis- 
 demeanor, within this tract, for any private individual to manu- 
 facture salt, to store the article, or to transport it from one place 
 to another without passes specifying its destination, owner, date 
 of sale, and other minute particulars. Within this tract, too, pre- 
 ventive officers may stop and search any boats whatever, adapted 
 to sea navigation, on mere suspicion of their containing salt : and 
 they are permitted, in the presence of regular police-officers, to 
 make a forcible entry into any house or warehouse in which they 
 may have received information that salt, exceeding one maund in 
 quantity, is actually stored. The limits of the tides are the limits 
 of the preventive establishments, armed with these apparently 
 terrible powers — the limits, in short, within which the salt code is 
 vigorously upheld : but now comes the other side of the picture. 
 The practical result of the code in increasing the number of in- 
 mates of gaols and reducing poor men to beggary is nil ; the means 
 taken to mitigate its severity and to supply salt to the cultivator 
 are judicious. Men who have the welfare of the Indian popula- 
 tion at heart will be glad to learn that in this large tract of coun- 
 try the number of cases instituted against individuals for the illegal 
 manufacture of salt were in the year considerably within two 
 
 2x 
 
674i APPENDIX. 
 
 hundred, and the number of men imprisoned for offences against 
 the Salt Laws of all kinds did not at the close thereof exceed one 
 dozen. That is to say, in a tract of country comprising at least 
 three millions of inhabitants, who have every apparent temptation 
 to violate the law, a mere fraction of the population had been 
 found to engage in the illicit manufacture. Let this result be 
 compared with the results of the operation of the Game Laws in 
 any three counties in England ! The reason for the fewness of 
 convictions is neither a want of dihgence on the part of the pre- 
 ventive officer, nor a want of spirit on that of the desponding 
 cultivator. The reason is partly, that Government, anxious to 
 mitigate the harshness of the monopoly, has directed that, in the 
 salt-producing tract, where there is most temptation to manufac- 
 ture or smuggle, salt shall be retailed by its own officers, at its 
 own shops, at a price sufficiently low to take away from the 
 poorest cultivator the temptation of violating the law; and partly 
 because hundreds of Ryots, too lazy to go as far as the retail shops, 
 do occasionally scrape together a few handsful of earth within the 
 precincts of their huts, and manufacture each a pound or so of 
 salt without the cognisance of the preventive officer. Cases in 
 which individuals have been arraigned for transporting salt with- 
 out any protective documents, or with documents of an informal 
 character, or for transporting more salt than the quantity specified 
 in their passes, are naturally more numerous than those of mere 
 illicit manufacture. But the penalties enforced in these cases fall 
 on individuals of a very different class from the mere tiller of the 
 earth. They fall on habitual and determined smugglers, on mer- 
 chants who cannot be content with their reasonable gains, on men, 
 in short, who, under any Government or system in the world, 
 would be the first to speculate on the best mode of baffling autho- 
 rity or resisting the payment of any lawful dues. They fall, too, 
 in many cases, on the very men who derive a direct benefit from 
 the monopoly, as it centres the traffic of salt in their hands. It is 
 not in behalf of men like these that philanthropy should be anxious 
 or sympathy be awakened. 
 
 Still, some objector may say, that if the salt monopoly were 
 abandoned, and every man in the salt-producing localities were 
 permitted to turn salt -manufacturer, the condition of the peasantry 
 would be bettered, and the sources of wealth would be enlarged. 
 It is impossible to argue on a supposition like this except from 
 the known character of landlords, and tenants, and speculators, in 
 the East. There is little doubt but that an individual or company 
 might, with a little capital, manufacture salt for the Indian market 
 at a cheaper rate than it is now made b^ Government, and thus 
 consumers in the Bengal and Behar provmces might be benefited, 
 but whether the inhabitants of the salt tract would be the better 
 for it, is another question. Abandon the monopoly, and Bait 
 
L 
 
 APPENDIX. 675 
 
 would be manufactured by every native landholder who could 
 command money and energy enough for the purpose, or by every 
 foreign adventurer who could obtain a lease of land from the 
 apathetic or heedless Zemindar. It is not likely that such men 
 would quietly permit every tenant on their estates to boil salt in 
 his own salt pans, and enjoy a new luxury without interruption. 
 The localities in which the salt of Bengal is manufactured are 
 those in all India where rapacious landlords and their unscrupu- 
 lous agents are most adept in practising extortion on a peasantry 
 feeble by nature, enervated by climate, timorous by example, and 
 vilified by the domination of centuries. Every person conversant 
 with Lower Bengal will know the amount of dread which a 
 wealthy Zemindar can strike into his tenantry by his rank and 
 position, by his armed retainers, by the influence of superstition, 
 by a control more strict than could be ever exercised by any pre- 
 ventive force of Government, by the unlimited command of evi- 
 dence to suit every unforeseen occurrence in a long course of liti- 
 gation, and by working on that unconquerable feeling which still 
 pervades the masses in the East, and whispers to them that such 
 men are set above the law. The testimony of hundreds of wit- 
 nesses and the records of litigation for half a century present us 
 with one dreary picture of landlords enhancing rents, forcing cul- 
 tivators to purchase the necessaries of life only at their own mar- 
 kets; deciding disputes in the village on the principle that both 
 disputants are to pay something into the judge's privy purse, 
 levying every sort of illegal cess on the most frivolous pretences, 
 and making of Eastern society only two great divisions, those who 
 suffer, and those who inflict. It is idle to talk to a Bengali pea- 
 sant about defending his rights and acting with a manly spirit. It 
 is idle to say that there are courts open, European functionaries 
 accessible, and prompt justice at hand, which neither money can 
 purchase nor power defy. If, in our own England, it is well 
 known that tenants have been ruined and driven forth houseless, 
 because at some election they would not vote with the Lord of 
 the Manor, it may easily be conceived what sort of remedy would 
 be possessed in law by that Eastern tenant who should dare to 
 lessen, by one penny, the profits of his landlord, or cross the most 
 trivial of his cherished aims. 
 
 The abandonment of the salt monopoly in the rich alluvial and 
 saline districts of Bengal, would in all probability, have the effect 
 of enriching a few individuals, of supplying some of the up-country 
 markets with a somewhat cheaper article, of depriving the Govern- 
 ment of about a million of revenue, of preventing the free im- 
 port of Liverpool and Manchester salt by sea, and of leaving the 
 peasantry of the salt-producing localities m the condition in which 
 they have always been. 
 
 Before quitting this part of the subject it is impossible not to 
 
 2x2 
 
676 APPENDIX. 
 
 notice a singularly erroneous statement wHich has lately appeared 
 on the salt monopoly, and which has been read probably by some 
 thousands of readers in a periodical, captivating from its variety, 
 usually accurate in its statements, and just in its conclusions. In 
 the number of the " Household Words," for July, 1851, the fol- 
 lowing are gravely set down as " Facts about Salt." I enumerate 
 them in due succession, and as far as possible in the author's own 
 words. *' The salt manufactories are situated in dreary marshes. 
 The workers, following their occupation in pestiferous regions, 
 annually fall victims, by hundreds, to the plague or the floods. 
 The price of salt to the Indian consumer is about eightpence a 
 pound. In addition to the vast powers vested in the hands of the 
 preventive officers, fines may be inflicted on a person who erects 
 a distilling apparatus in his own house, without any proof of the 
 same, and at the discretion of the judge. The monopoly gives 
 the East India Company a revenue of three millions sterling, and 
 besides acting as an incubus on the energies, the mental resources, 
 and social advancement of the immense population of India, it 
 in a great measure engenders and facilitates the ravages of the 
 cholera." 
 
 I confess, sir, that I read the above " Facts about Salt," with 
 mingled amusement, regret, and surprise. In a periodical origi- 
 nating with genius and fostered by talent, appears an account so 
 entirely at variance with the truth, and yet so plausible in its ap- 
 pearance, as to be calculated to deceive many a " Household," 
 whose knowledge of the subject may be confined to " words" 
 so written for their instruction. Either from wilful malevolence 
 or astounding credulity, or " crassa ignorantia" some points are 
 mistaken, and others are introduced where they have no meaning 
 or connexion, in order that the Salt Monopoly of India may appear 
 in the eyes of grievance-mongers, real philanthropists, and the 
 English public in general, a monopoly of so " odious and oppres- 
 sive a nature as only to be worthy of the old Spanish Inquisi- 
 tion." I proceed, however, in due order emphatically to deny, and 
 to refute from personal observation, as well as from other sources, 
 every one of the assertions selected above. The " dreary marshes" 
 are not peculiar to the salt-producing localities. They exist 
 in eight or ten districts, out of reach of the tides. They are to bo 
 found, more or less, wherever the rice crop is sown and grown: 
 they are the result of the tremendous down-pourings of the 
 rainy season, which falling on a rich, tenacious, and alluvial soil, 
 convert the whole country for four, five, or six months in the year, 
 into one enormous marsh, not dreary, nor unproductive, nor 
 invariably inimical to life, but prolific in vegetation, teeming in 
 resources and tenanted by thousands, or even miUions of inlui- 
 bitants. That Bengal Proper is remarkable for a moist and humid 
 and not a dry climate : tliat tropical showers which the clayey 
 
APPENDIX. 677 
 
 soil refuses to drink up, and the brilliant sun can only exhale by 
 degrees, are favorable to the spread of vegetation : that vegeta- 
 tion unchecked is apt to produce miasma: that over miles of 
 country in districts, where not one ounce of salt is ever manu- 
 factured, or one clause of the Salt Laws enforced, the communica- 
 tion is carried on in boats from July to November as it has been 
 carried on for centuries : that an Indian cultivator may step from 
 his house into his light shallop and on his way to the bi-weekly 
 market pass over an extent of plain converted into a '* marsh," but 
 covered everywhere with a magnificent rice-crop growing, in water 
 five and six feet deep — are all facts which are undeniable. But 
 they only prove that those who choose or are compelled to live in 
 Bengal at all during the rainy season must often be content to live 
 on the borders of a " dreary marsh," whether their occupation be 
 to manufacture salt, or to cultivate indigo, or as a servant of 
 Government to do justice between one man and another. The 
 factories are not selected on account of the " dreary marshes," but 
 the marshes will persist in locating themselves in proximity to the 
 factories. Moreover, out of the six salt agencies where the mono- 
 poly is carried on, only two, that of Hidgellee and that of Tum- 
 look, are situated in localities at all remarkable for unhealthiness: 
 and as the manufacture of the article can only be carried on 
 during the dry season from December to May, when there are no 
 rains, no inundations, and in consequence no miasma, the assertion 
 that the workers of salt fall victims to the floods, is quite contrary 
 to fact. In making mention of the '^ plague" as the destroyer of 
 victims, it is difficult to believe that the writer in the " Household 
 Words" can have had any other wish- than to see how far he 
 could impose with impunity on the credulity of Englishmen. 
 The non-occurrence and non-existence of the plague in India is a 
 fact as well established in science as is the non-existence of tropical 
 vegetation on the summit of Mount Hecla, or of an eternal glacier 
 on the chalk hills of Kent. The next " fact" stated is, that the 
 price of salt to the consumer is about eightpence a pound, and that 
 thirty millions of public, whose average earnings are three shillings 
 a week, are compelled to expend one fourth of that pittance in the 
 purchase of salt. Now, in no part of the Bengal or Agra Pro- 
 vinces does salt cost the consumer more than one fourth of the 
 above price; and in many places it only costs him one eighth. In 
 the case of the higher price, the increase arises from the carriage 
 of the article, and to convey salt some four hundred miles from 
 the place of manufacture, not unnaturally raises the price thereof 
 on arrival at its destination. This must be the case wliether salt 
 still continue to be manufactured by the Indian Government, or 
 whether all the superfluous capital and indignant philanthropy of 
 Manchester be suddenly let loose to improve the tracts bordering 
 on the Sunderbunds. The Government takes no part in the 
 
678 APPENDIX. 
 
 transport of Bengal salt, nor is it bound to provide tliat the article 
 shall be sold in the districts of Behar for the same price as it is 
 sold at the retail shops within the tidal limits: and it must not be 
 forgotten, that beyond those limits and their preventive establish- 
 ments, the transport and the retail of salt is open equally to the 
 native dealer, the foreign adventurer, and the champion of suffer- 
 ing humanity. 
 
 The next startling " fact" is, that any person who erects a distil- 
 ling apparatus is liable to a ruinous fine, without proof, at the dis- 
 cretion of the judge. The writer has here applied to the case of 
 a supposed distiller, a penalty which may be incurred by land- 
 holders, who permit the illicit manufacture of salt on their estates. 
 It is part of the system of the Indian Government to make land- 
 holders, in consideration of their position and influence, to assist in 
 the administration of justice by giving early information of all 
 offences against the law, and such a provision as that adverted to 
 and misapplied by the writer in the " Household Words," does 
 exist in the salt code. But it is rarely put in force. In the space 
 of a year it is enforced perhaps on one occasion. The last " fact" 
 is, that the monopoly so described raises a revenue of three millions. 
 It raises a revenue of one million. The tax on imported salt and 
 that levied in the Punjab, which of course are exclusive of this, 
 have nothing to do with the manufactures as carried on by Govern- 
 ment. So much for the " Facts about Salt," which when circulated 
 in India were variously ridiculed and refuted by the local press, 
 never slow to comment severely on the policy and to arraign the 
 general administration of affairs in the East. 
 
 I have done with the* sphere in which salt is largely manu- 
 factured, and I turn now to other locahties out of reach of the tides 
 which comprise the remainder of the provinces under the Govern- 
 ments of Bengal and Agra. It is a misdemeanor to manufacture 
 salt in any part of the above localities, but as the facilities for 
 manufacture there are neither frequent nor enticing, as there is no 
 special preventive establishment for the prevention of smuggling 
 or illicit traffic, as salt merchants convey their cargoes of salt to 
 the various marts therein without let or hindrance, or inspection 
 by any person, as houses there are never searched, nor boats 
 detained, nor " poor Indians" punished, it is clear that over a very 
 large surface of the empire the monopoly does not press ^Yith 
 severity on mental resources or social advancement. 
 
 There is, however, one additional impost laid on the transport of 
 certain salt at the junction of the Bengal and Agra provinces, aiul 
 this brings us to another species of salt, supplied by native states, 
 and consumed in the North-West Provinces. This duty is levied 
 on salt which finds its way into those provinces from tlic inde- 
 pendent native states south of the river Jumna, from the Samblmr 
 Lake near Ajmere, and from the salt range in the Punjab. The 
 
APPENDIX. • G79 
 
 duty has at various times ranged from two to four ehillings a 
 maund. In the case of salt manufactured in independent states, 
 this duty is an extra duty, the first duty having been levied when 
 the salt crossed the line which separates the British from the 
 native states. In the case of rock salt from the Punjab, it is the 
 only duty levied in transit, a line of preventive stations on the 
 banks of the Sutlej and the frontiers of the Punjab, having lately 
 been abolished. The custom-houses then, extend in a line from 
 Allahabad to Juanpore, and guard the frontier of the respective 
 Governments of Bengal and Agra. But they are only intended to 
 levy duty on the salt which enters Bengal from Agra, and not on 
 that which enters Agra from Bengal. This latter salt, whether it 
 be that of the monopoly of manufacture, or that imported by sea, 
 once clear of Calcutta and the tidal limits, may travel in any 
 direction without paying a farthing. Salt descending into Bengal 
 from the Upper Provinces pays a moderate duty of one shilling 
 where it enters the Lower division of the presidency. The policy 
 is to protect Bengal from being invaded by salt from the Upper 
 Provinces, and to let Bengal and Manchester salt overrun those 
 provinces, if it can. But in any case the consumer, whether he 
 eats the salt of the Bengal Government, or that of native states, 
 or the rock-salt of the Punjab, or that of Liverpool, pays for his 
 condiment, where cheapest a penny a pound, where dearest two- 
 pence, and in some rare instances, twopence three farthings. The 
 practical result of the salt system may briefly be summed up as 
 follows: The monopoly or manufacture by the Bengal Govern- 
 ment gives a net revenue of about a million* — not three millions as 
 stated by the writer in the " Household Words" — and this salt 
 supplies the cultivators of Bengal Proper and of Behar, where it 
 meets the salt from native states and from the Punjab, and unable 
 to compete -with the cheaper article, retires from the field. The 
 salt of native independent states, which yearly pays to the ex- 
 chequer about five hundred thousand pounds in the shape of 
 frontier duty, supplies the country between the Ganges and the 
 Jumna, and generally the other districts of the Agra Government. 
 From the salt of the Punjab range is derived a revenue of one 
 hundred and fifty thousand pounds, and the condiment of the 
 stalwart Sikh, the agricultural Jat, and the other dwellers by the 
 five rivers. The salt imported by sea adds to the revenue about 
 four hundred and eighty thousand pounds, displaces a proportionate 
 quantity of Sunderbund or Government salt, and manfully com- 
 petes with the salt descending from the Upper Provinces even 
 beyond the junction of the two divisions of the Presidency. The 
 result is to place salt within reach of the poorest peasant in India, 
 
 ♦ It will be understood that the Estimating the amount of the Salt- 
 writer here only speaks of the produce Revenues, in the text, I have included 
 of what is called the " monopoly." the Cuatoms duty. — K. 
 
680 APPENDIX. 
 
 at a fair price, and to secure to tKe Government, in the least 
 vexatious manner, an addition to its revenue, which it positively 
 cannot spare. In any case the sale of all four kinds of salt is 
 naturally affected and regulated by distance and by the expenses 
 of transport. 
 
 To reiterate the most prominent and remarkable of the facts 
 concerning salt it may be said that in the whole of that part of the 
 Indian Empire which extends from Peshawar beyond the Indus 
 downwards to the tidal limits of the Bay of Bengal, the manufac- 
 ture of salt is not susceptible of the employment of a large amount 
 of capital : that the salt which supplies the greater part of Upper 
 India, is either the natural produce of the great salt range of the 
 Punjab, and as such is the property of the paramount power, or is 
 manufactured in independent or tributary states: that the duty 
 levied on this latter salt on its entrance on the frontier or during 
 its transit within the British territories is neither exorbitant, nor 
 in principle contrary to a sound administration, which must provide 
 money to support its armies, and maintain its establishments: 
 that besides the salt manufactured by Government under a code 
 of stringency in one corner of the empire, there is a further abun- 
 dant and increasing supply of this article imported by sea, on pay- 
 ment at Calcutta of a duty of five shillings a maund : that it is 
 certain that no extreme penalties are imposed by the salt tribunals 
 on men who break or evade the law, while reasonable precautions 
 are taken to deprive cultivators of inducement to iUicit traffic: 
 that it is an open question whether the abandonment of the 
 monopoly would ameliorate the condition of those agriculturists 
 who are said to suffer by it, while, to judge from experience, that 
 abandonment would cause increased litigation, and loss of revenue : 
 and that a net revenue of one million of our money is now raised 
 by the most willing of manufacturers, the native Molunghees, 
 amongst a population, to whose substantial social evils or moral 
 degradation that monopoly does not certainly contribute. 
 
APPENDIX. 681 
 
 (B) 
 THE OPIUM DUTIES. 
 
 IFromthe Statistics relating to India, prepared at the India House.'] 
 BENGAL. 
 
 In Bengal, the revenue from opium is realised by means of a 
 Government monopoly. No person within the Bengal territories 
 is allowed to grow the poppy except on account of the Govern- 
 ment.* Annual engagements are entered into by the cultivators, 
 under a system of pecuniary advances, to sow a certain quantity 
 of land with the poppy, and the whole produce in the form of 
 opium is delivered to the Government at a fixed rate.f Tlie 
 engagements! on the part of the cultivators are optional. 
 
 The ordinary consequences of monopoly, increase of price to 
 the consumer, and restriction on the employment of capital and 
 industry, are not wanting in the working of the opium revenue 
 system. The free cultivation of the poppy would doubtless lead 
 to the larger outlay of capital, and to greater economy in produc- 
 tion. But the poppy requires the richest description of land, and 
 its extended cultivation must therefore displace other products. 
 The price, too, is almost wholly paid by foreign consumers, viz., 
 Chinese, jMalays, &c.,§ and in obtaining the largest returns with 
 the smallest outlay, the best interests of India would appear to be 
 consulted. 
 
 ♦ The cultivation of the poppy was per beega (nearly two- thirds of an acre) 
 
 prohibited in Bengal by Regulation VI. granted by the Government. The 
 
 of 1799, sect. 3; and in the North- sowings commence in November, when 
 
 Western Provinces by Regulation XLI. another advance is made of 3 rupees 
 
 of 1803, sect. 2. per beega. Again, in January and 
 
 The importation ofopium into Bengal February, when the crop arrives at 
 
 is virtually prohibited, the duty being maturity, a third advance of about 3 
 
 fixed at 24 rupees per seer, of 2lbs., or rupees per beega takes place, to assist 
 
 about double the amount of its present the cultivator in gathering the produce, 
 
 sellingpriceat the Calcutta Government The crop is collected by the end of 
 
 sales. March. 
 
 f Three and a half rupees per seer, § Under the Convention of 1815, the 
 
 or about 3s. 6d. per lb. French Government of Pondicherry are 
 
 X In the month of Augiist contracts supplied with 300 chests of opium 
 
 are entered into with the Ryots, and an annually, at the average price obtained 
 
 advance without interest of 4 rupees at the Calcutta sales. 
 
682 APPENDIX. 
 
 BOMBAY. 
 
 Opium grown and manufactured within the territories of Bom- 
 bay is held to be subject to the duty of 12 rupees per Surat seer,* 
 imposed by Bombay Regulation XXI. of 1827, upon opium 
 " imported or brought into any harbour, or roads, or port, or 
 place, either by land or sea, within the Presidency of Bombay, or 
 territories subordinate thereto ;" and this duty must be paid 
 before its removal. The object of this heavy duty is to dis- 
 courage its production. The cultivation of the poppy is stated to 
 have ceased in the district of Ahmedabad in 1839, and nearly so 
 in those of Kaira and Candeish. In Scinde the production of 
 opium has been prohibited. The Government purchase all that 
 is produced in Bombay, and supply, through the licensed retailers, 
 the quantity required for home consumption. 
 
 CENTRAL INDIA. 
 
 A large revenue is derived from the transit of the opium of 
 Malwa through the British territories to Bombay for exportation 
 to China. Previous to the year 1831 the British Government 
 reserved to itself a monopolyf of the article, which was purchased 
 by the British resident at Indore, and sold by auction, either at 
 Bombay or at Calcutta. But in that year it was deemed advis- 
 able, chiefly on account of the large quantity of opium smuggled 
 to the Portuguese settlements of Demaun, &c., on the coast, to 
 relinquish the monopoly, to open the trade to the operations of 
 private enterprise, and to substitute, as a source of revenue, in 
 place of the abandoned system, the grant, at a specified rate, of 
 passes to cover the transit of opium through the Company's terri- 
 tories to Bombay. In determining the amount of transit duty, it 
 was proposed to be guided by a comparison of the cost of transit 
 direct to Bombay, with that of the transmission of the drug to 
 the coast by the cheapest of the more circuitous routes through 
 the territories of native states ; and on the basis of such a com- 
 parison it was fixed at 175 rupees per chest of 140 lbs. each. In 
 1835, the results of the preceding official year being unfavourable, 
 the shipments of opium from Bombay having largely declined, 
 while those from Demaun had greatly increased, the rate was 
 reduced to 125 rupees per chest. 
 
 The subjugation of Scinde afforded opportunity for the levy of 
 
 * The Surat seer consists only of 35 f By separate treaties with the na- 
 tolahg; the duty on opium is, therefore, tive princes of Central India, and wliicli 
 somewhat heavier than in Bengal. were subsequently cancelled. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 G83 
 
 a higher rate. Down to the period of that event, a large portion 
 of the opium of Malwa had been conveyed through Scinde to 
 Kurrachee, and thence onwards to the Portuguese ports of Diu 
 and Demaun. That route was now closed, and it was reasonably 
 expected that an advance might be made in the charge of passes, 
 without risk of loss to the revenue from a diminished demand 
 for them. The rate was accordingly increased, in October, 1843, 
 from 125 rupees to 200 rupees per chest. Upon the principle that 
 it was desirable to fix the price at the highest amount which could 
 be levied, without forcing the trade into other channels, a further 
 increase was made in 1845, when it was determined that the 
 charge should be 300 rupees per chest. Under the like views it 
 was, in 1847, raised to 400 per chest. 
 
 Poppy seed is sown in Malwa in November; the plants are in 
 flower in the early part of March, and from that time till the end 
 of April the extraction of the juice proceeds. During the hot 
 weather in May, the extracted juice is allowed to settle, and in 
 June, and early in July, the cakes are manufactured. 
 
 Statement showing the Receipts from the Opium Revenue, 
 from the Year 1834-35. 
 
 
 
 
 
 Total £ Sterling 
 
 Years. 
 
 Net Receipts 
 
 Net Receipts 
 
 Total Com- 
 
 at 2s. the Sicca 
 
 
 from Bengal. 
 
 from Bombay. 
 
 pany's Rupees. 
 
 Rupee. 
 
 1834-35 ... 
 
 63,26,894 
 
 14,41,711 
 
 77,68,605 
 
 728,517 
 
 1835-36 ... 
 
 1,32,01,613 
 
 17,18,455 
 
 1,49,20,068 
 
 1,399,009 
 
 1836-37 ... 
 
 1,33,40,968 
 
 20,08,710 
 
 1,53,49,678 
 
 1,439,031 
 
 1837-38 ... 
 
 1,43,67,238 
 
 14,97,202 
 
 1,58,64,440 
 
 1,487,291 
 
 1838-39 ... 
 
 69,87,990 
 
 25,43,318 
 
 95,31,308 
 
 893,560 
 
 1839-40 ... 
 
 32,60,761 
 
 1,17,014 
 
 33,77,775 
 
 S16j666 
 
 1840-41 ... 
 
 64,96,324 
 
 22,46,452 
 
 87,42,776 
 
 819,635 
 
 1841-42 ... 
 
 80,38,669 
 
 21,48,989 
 
 1,01,87,658 
 
 955,093 
 
 1842-43 ... 
 
 1,32,23,436 
 
 25,42,382 
 
 1,57,65,818 
 
 1,478,046 
 
 1843-44 ... 
 
 1,67,59,482 
 
 34,88,780 
 
 2,02,48,262 
 
 1,898,274 
 
 1844-45 ... 
 
 1,80,83,454 
 
 37,29,431 
 
 2,18,12,885 
 
 2,044,958 
 
 1845-46 ... 
 
 2,20,79,262 
 
 59,56,243 
 
 2,80,33,505 
 
 2,628,140 
 
 1846-47 ... 
 
 2,27,93,387 
 
 60,68,628 
 
 2,88,62,015 
 
 2,705,813 
 
 1847-48 ... 
 
 1,29,15,296 
 
 37,18,549 
 
 1,66,33,845 
 
 1,559,423 
 
 1848-49 ... 
 
 1,95,82,562 
 
 88,75,066 
 
 2,84,57,628 
 
 2,667,902 
 
 1849-50 ... 
 
 2,80,07,968 
 
 72,94,835 
 
 3,53,02,803 
 
 3,309,637 
 
 Note.— A chest of Bengal opium, containing 164 lbs., or 80 seers, would cost 
 the Government, at Srs. 8a. per seer, 280rs., and seU at Calcutta for upwards of 
 900rs., yielding a profit of about 78. 6d. per lb. ■ i f 
 
 A chest of Malwa opium, containing 140 lbs., upon which the transit duty ot 
 400rs. had been paid, would afford a revenue to Government of about 58. 8d. 
 per lb. 
 
684 * APPENDIX. 
 
 [The following observations on the opium monopoly are by 
 the friend, to whom I am indebted for the previous commentary 
 on the salt duties. They have been published in the Morning 
 Chronicle.~\ 
 
 The Opium Monopoly,which I shall now briefly discuss, is a sub- 
 ject which presents, comparatively, few salient points, and suggests 
 no very intricate questions. Its history embraces a consideration of 
 the precautions by which the cultivation of the poppy is reserved to 
 the State alone, of the locality where the poppy can be cultivated, 
 of its effects on agriculture, and of its financial results. First, 
 then, I will enumerate the precautions taken to prevent the un- 
 limited or the indiscriminate cultivation of the plant. It is an 
 offence against the law of the Bengal Code for individuals to culti- 
 vate the poppy, just as much as it is an offence in England to sell 
 beer without a licence, to sell spirits within certain hours on Sun- 
 days, to harness dogs to a little cart, to collect a mob in Regent- 
 street or the Strand. In both cases a simple act is created an 
 offence by the law, though it will naturally be said that the prin- 
 ciple of the Eastern Code is capricious and arbitrary, and does not 
 lead to the protection of morality. Not only are Indian cultivators 
 prohibited from cultivating the poppy, without a licence, and then 
 only for the good of the State, not only are they liable, for an in- 
 fringement of the law, to see their illicit crops attached and to incur 
 imprisonment or fine; but police officers, village watchmen, and 
 Government officials of every description, are required on pain of 
 fine, and liability to dismissal, to assist in the suppression of the 
 illegal cultivation, of the manufacture of the raw material, and of 
 the sale of the produce. Even landholders are not exempt from 
 liability, and as on the one hand they are liable to be fined if they 
 do not give the earliest information to the police of illicit cultiva- 
 tion, so, on the other, they are at liberty, in virtue of their position 
 as lords of the manor, at once and without any order or decree to 
 that effect, to attach a crop of the poppy not grown by the permis- 
 sion of Government. The whole aim and scope of the law is in 
 fact to reserve to the Government the right of determining where, 
 in what quantity, and by whom, the poppy shall be cultivated. 
 So much for the law. The second point for consideration is the 
 tract of country suited to this kind of produce. Now, the poppy 
 is cultivated with success only in the large central Gangetic tract 
 which extends from the borders of the kingdom of Oudc to Agra 
 on the west, and to the district of Dinagepore on the south. This 
 stretch of country is about five hundred miles in length and two 
 hundred in depth or breadth. It follows, consequently, that what- 
 ever harshness may be imputed to the opium laws, their effects 
 must be confined to the limits of the above tract. AVhere there is 
 no temptation to break the law, there can be no occasion to enforce 
 
APPENDIX. 685 
 
 its penalties. In a locality wliere the poppy will not grow, or will 
 not be productive, it is superfluous to tell the Kyot that he must 
 not there manufiicture opium. In the principal plains of Eastern 
 Bengal, on the banks of the Lower Ganges, in the whole province 
 of Orissa, in the northern part of the Agra division and in the 
 Punjab, the whole of the laws for the protection of the Opium Mo- 
 nopoly are a dead letter. It remains then to be considered with 
 what force the monopoly presses on the agricultural popuhition in 
 the great poppy districts, which brings us naturally to the third 
 point under review. Tlie opium manufacture from the plant 
 grown within the limits above described, is carried on at two 
 separate agencies, that of Benares, of which the head station is at 
 Ghazipore, and that of Behar, of which the head station is at 
 Patna, the ancient capital of that province. The system agri- 
 culturally is, then, as follows: It is no part of the plan to mark out 
 and reserve a portion of the best lands of a district for the poppy, 
 or to cultivate it on a Government or home farm, through the 
 agency of hired laborers. The system proceeds on far broader 
 principles — those of making advances to any Ryot who may choose 
 to enter into an agreement to cultivate the poppy for Government. 
 The Ryot takes the money, sows the field, watches over the 
 growth of the plant, presses the juice, and conveys it to the Govern- 
 ment factory. It is a fundamental principle to leave it entirely 
 optional with every one to enter into such an agreement or not. 
 Recruits are not inveigled by the distant prospect of remuneration, 
 fictitious statements are not cooked to entrap the unwary, the 
 weight of authority is never brought to influence the wavering, 
 the refractory, or tlie weak. If, however, a Ryot does become a 
 party to a contract, it becomes necessary to provide for its due 
 performance. There are, consequently, stipulations made, in 
 order that the number of acres, for which an agreement is signed, 
 shall be duly cultivated, that an amount of produce, calculated 
 from what may appear to be the probable out-turn of the field of 
 poppy when in full growth, shall be delivered to the officers of 
 Governm.ent, that the juice in its primitive state shall not be 
 adulterated, and that the advances made shall either be repaid by 
 an equivalent in produce, or be recovered by legal means. There is 
 then no compulsion, and no disclosure of unforeseen contingencies. 
 The cultivator, moreover, enjoys an advantage which no other 
 kind of cultivation could possibly bring him. He gets at the com- 
 mencement of every season, advances in hard cash equal to one- 
 half of the estimated out-turn, for which he is subjected to no 
 interest or commission, while he has the chance of making his 
 profit by bringing to the factory, produce exceeding the advances, 
 or remarkable for purity and weight. No outstanding balances 
 are suffered to remain at the close of one season, or held, in 
 terrorem, over the unhappy cultivator in the next. Accounts arc 
 
686 APPENDIX. 
 
 squared after the drug is manufactured, and the return is either 
 set off against the advances, or if any part of the advance remains 
 unrepaid, it is recovered by legal process, or it is written off to 
 profit and loss. In this way lacs of rupees are yearly advanced 
 and yearly repaid within a few rupees. That Government has 
 acquired the character of a fair and indulgent landlord is easily 
 seen by the readiness with which Ryots flock to take advances, 
 and is proved by the fact that it has occasionally been found 
 necessary to discourage the cultivation of the poppy and restrain 
 it within moderate bounds. In the year 1849-50, in the smallest 
 of the two agencies, the amount of land under poppy cultivation 
 was in round numbers, 35,000 acres. Over so many miles of 
 country there circulates yearly a constant and steady amount of 
 capital. But to prove the advantages which may result from a 
 monopoly wisely administered, there is nothing like a comparison 
 between a system as carried on by Government, and a system as 
 carried on by individuals. Such a comparison I find at hand 
 between the manufacture of opium by Government and that of 
 indigo by individuals. Both kinds of cultivation require com- 
 mand of money, constant supervision, favorable seasons, and 
 agricultural skill : both the articles manufactured form a large 
 and lucrative branch of trade. The one is manufactured solely 
 on account of Government, which in this retains some of the old 
 trading habits by which an empire was won. The other, not 
 restricted, not confined to any particular class, and rarely noticed 
 in the Indian code, is manufactured from a plant largely culti- 
 vated in the rich plains of Bengal, and the more sandy districts 
 of the Upper Provinces. Under both there is the same selection 
 of suitable localities, the same system of advances at the com- 
 mencement of the season repayable by the produce at its close : 
 the same healthy circulation of capital : some of the same benefits 
 exhibited in progressive intercourse and extended agriculture. 
 But here the parallel must cease. Under the Government mono- 
 poly, there is no intimidation, no violence or deceit : accounts 
 are opened and adjusted yearly : if the master is satisfied with 
 the produce, so is the man with his honest gains. In the cultiva- 
 tion of indigo carried on by European speculators of all nations, 
 Hindoo and Mahomedan landholders, and commercial firms, 
 there is on the part of the capitalist a free recourse to the 
 influence of position, to the awe produced by authority, and to 
 downright force, on the part of the Ryot there is unwillingness, 
 subterfuge, and discontent. In addition to this, the disputes 
 between cultivator and capitalist, or between two capitalists with 
 their respective tenantry, have been the cause, especially in former 
 years, of an endless amount of litigation, and a vast increase of 
 agrarian crime. It is fair to state that matters are now better 
 managed, and the cultivation of indigo is at present carried on 
 
APPENDIX. 687 
 
 without burdening the calender or filling the gaols. But the Rvot 
 is not more contented, nor richer than before. On the other hand, 
 by the retention of the poppy cultivation in the hands of the state, 
 benefits fall directly on the cultivator, and indirectly on the land- 
 lord to whom he may pay rent. Advantage results directly to 
 the tenant, because the agent of Government deals with him 
 alone. He signs the agreement: he receives the advances: he 
 looks after the standing crop: he weeds and manures: he pierces 
 the ripe capsules of the poppy : he conveys the drug in its first 
 elementary condition to the Government factory: the liability 
 and the benefits alike fall on him. The Zemindar, who is not 
 only forbidden to cultivate on his own account but is held respon- 
 sible for any illicit cultivation carried on by his tenants, derives 
 merely that advantage from the system which may be expected 
 from the presence of an active and willing peasantry, engaged in 
 a pursuit which fills their pockets with hard cash. But beyond 
 the advantages of a substantial peasantry, ready to pay their rents, 
 the landlord gains no advantage. He is distinctly forbidden to 
 enhance the rents of those lands on which tenants are raising a 
 crop for Government. No doubt if the opium monopoly were 
 abandoned to-morrow, many natives and Europeans would im- 
 mediately set up their factories, clear their vats, give out their 
 advances, and at the close of a successful season, freight a whole 
 fleet of country boats, or load one of the numerous steamers plying 
 up and down the Ganges, with chests of this valuable export, for 
 transmission to Calcutta. But under such a system it would be 
 unlikely that the drug fashioned in half a dozen different modes, 
 would retain the consistency and purity which gives it a high 
 value in the China market. At present the greatest care and 
 attention are lavished on the manufacture, the drying process, the 
 examination, the packing, and the transport of the drug. Some 
 of the chests on arrival at Calcutta are inspected by an examiner 
 appointed by Government, and exposed to view for the satisfac- 
 tion of members of the mercantile community. No doubt the 
 same precautions which are taken by Government to make pro- 
 duce saleable and to ensure a lucrative branch of the public 
 revenue against loss, would be taken by British capitalists wield- 
 ing the usual amount of energy, skill, and resources, and stimu- 
 lated by the prospect of a considerable return. But it is very 
 doubtful whether Ryots could derive more benefit from any con- 
 ceivable system, other than the present. The appearance oi' 
 whole districts as highly cultivated as Kent or Middlesex, the 
 spontaneous testimony of thousands of cultivators, the unfrequency 
 of recourse to legal process to adjust claims arising out of the 
 system, and the small number of persons ever punished for infringe- 
 ment of the law by which that system is preserved, tend to prove 
 this. A monopoly, which deprives rich individuals of some 
 
688 APPENDIX. 
 
 contingent advantages to secure positive blessings and solid fniits 
 to the tenant, ■which gives employment to a host of natives, and 
 places many situations of emolument within the reach of clever 
 and energetic Europeans, not members of any cf the covenanted 
 services, which is least felt where most strictly maintained, is 
 surely deprived of the objectionable features which in the minds 
 of most Englishmen are supposed to belong to that title. 
 
 The last point to be considered in the opium question is its 
 financial result. There are twelve sales of the drug during the 
 year. They are held at Calcutta, and the clear gain to Govern- 
 ment after deducting expenses of all kinds, advances, manufacture, 
 transport, salaries of large establishments and incidental or contin- 
 gent charges, is in round numbers, two miUions of our money. But 
 this addition to the revenue is obtained not from the Indian cul- 
 tivator or his landlord, nor from suffering provinces, but from 
 Chinese merchants, and from the consumers of the drug in the 
 Celestial Empire. The opium manufacture may, if men choose, be 
 termed a monopoly of the productive resources of a large tract of 
 country, but no inquiry will ever prove that, as a tax, it weighs on 
 a single individual in any one district : nor will it be easy to per- 
 suade any man who knows anything of the condition of the Ryot, 
 that an abandonment of the monopoly would be followed by an 
 increase of wealth or competence in the agricultural classes. The 
 morality of the traffic is an entirely different question: and on 
 that ground alone were it thought incumbent to prohibit the ma- 
 nufacture and the export of opium, the prohibition should equally 
 apply to the drug when manufactured by individuals. A trade 
 productive of nothing but demoralisation ought to be stopped while 
 it originated with a private house, or with a chartered company, 
 or with the rulers of a great empire. But the truth is that, men 
 who have been in China, while they describe in striking terms the 
 fearful effects of the drug on the confirmed and habitual opium- 
 eater, just as a man who had been in England might, from a few 
 instances of delirium tremens, descant on the fearful effects of in- 
 temperance, allow that a moderate use of this stimulant is attended 
 with beneficial effects. Moreover it has been ascertained from the 
 same trustworthy source that the poppy cultivation is gradually 
 increasing and is now countenanced by the authorities in the 
 Chinese Empire. The delicate question of monopolising a culti- 
 vation, which ends in the surreptitious introduction of a compound 
 into a large kingdom, may consequently find its own solution in 
 a very few years. 
 
APPENDIX. 689 
 
 (C) 
 COTTON CULTIVATION IN INDIA. 
 
 [The following comprehensive history of the efforts which have 
 been made for the development of the cotton resources of India, 
 is taken from the India House Statistics, already quoted.] 
 
 There are two principal descriptions of cotton-plant now culti- 
 vated in India, the indigenous and the American. 
 
 The indigenous plant of India is an annual, and succeeds best 
 in the rich black soil found in various parts of the country. The 
 American plant, though a perennial, is practically an annual in 
 India.* In some parts of India it is grown successfullyf on the 
 black soil, but it thrives better on the light red lands. Each of 
 these productions is possessed of some advantages not inherent in 
 the other. The Indian cotton is capable of being manufactured 
 into fabrics of extraordinary durability, and no less extraordinary 
 fineness; its color is superior, and on this account is it frequently 
 used in this country in combination with American cotton, to im- 
 prove the color of the latter; but its staple is short. In addition 
 to the greater length of staple, American cotton has further ad- 
 vantages over the indigenous production of India; the plant 
 produces more flowers, and each flower a larger pod; while the 
 quantity of seed contained in the pod is smaller and more readily 
 separated from the fibre. 
 
 For a period of upwards of sixty years, attempts have been 
 made by the East India Company to extend the cultivation of 
 cotton and to improve its staple, as well as the modes of cleaning 
 and packing. Seeds from diflerent cotton-growing countries have 
 been procured ; rewards offered to stimulate exertion ; and instru- 
 ments, both agricultural and mechanical, superior to those in native 
 use, have been extensively introduced. The distribution of seed 
 of superior quality commenced as early as 1788. In 1813 the 
 services of an American were obtained, -svith a view of furthering 
 the desired improvement in cultivation and cleaning, and American 
 gins were then imported. In 1818, and again in 1831, renewed 
 efforts were made. At the latter period, experimental farms were 
 
 * Neither American nor Indian cotton [ Evidence be/ore Cotton CommUteetn 1848, 
 
 is cultivated on the same ground in Question 2\\0, &c.'] 
 
 India more than once in three years, f Dr. Koyle, in evidence before 
 
 their properties being found to exhaust Commons Committee on growth of 
 
 the productive powers of the soil.— Cotton in India, 1848, Question 481. 
 
 2 Y 
 
690 APPENDIX. 
 
 established in the southern Mahratta country,* and in Guzerat ;t 
 but these, after a considerable expenditure, having failed, were, in 
 1836, abolished by the local Government. In the despatch in 
 "vyhich the approval and confirmation of this step were conveyed, 
 the Court expressed anxiety " that no means should be left untried 
 which might be likely to assist the desirable object of improvinor 
 and extending the cotton cultivation on the Bombay side of India." 
 And, in the same despatch, a qualified assent was given to a 
 proposal made in general terms by the local Government, for 
 authorising collectors to grant farms of land on favorable terms to 
 respectable persons desirous of cultivating cotton, and when neces- 
 sary to make to such persons pecuniary advances, on security. 
 But previously to the receipt of this permission, the Bombay 
 Government had determined upon giving a very large measure of 
 encouragement to this cultivation by exempting from land-revenue, 
 for five years, all lands sown with cotton in the Poona and Ahmed- 
 nuggur collectorates. This proceeding was greatly disapproved by 
 the Government of India, and on the discussion which ensued 
 coming before the Court, their decision was given in favor of the 
 supreme Government. The Government of India had desired 
 that the effect of the notice to grant the proposed exemption 
 should be limited as much as possible; but the Court directed its 
 immediate formal revocation, respect being had to the rights of 
 those who might previously have taken advantage of it. 
 
 In 1839 it was determined to seek information in the cotton- 
 producing districts of the United States, and, if practicable, to 
 engage there duly qualified persons to proceed to India for the 
 purpose of instructing the natives in improved modes of culture 
 and a better system of cleaning. The design was carried into 
 efiect. Ten Americans, experienced in the management of cotton 
 plantations, were engaged, despatched to India, and their services 
 distributed in the different presidencies. Government farms were 
 again established in Broach, Dharwar, and Candeish, as were also 
 experimental cotton gardens in llutnagherry. In the last-named 
 collectorate the cultivation of cotton was not generally practised, 
 and after a short unsuccessful trial the experiment terminated. In 
 Broach, the culture of the New Orleans cotton was stated to have 
 proved a complete failure, and, notwithstanding a large expendi- 
 ture, no good effects were produced on the staple of the country, 
 beyond tne limits of the farm. At a subsequent period the farms 
 in Dharwar were abolished, and the contract systemj of cotton 
 
 * The tract of country comprehend- the territory of the Guicowar, the four 
 
 ing the British districts of Dharwar British districts ofBroach, Sural, Kaira, 
 
 and Belgauni, and various native jag- and Ahmedabad. 
 
 hires in their vicinity, is thus de- J That is, wliere cotton of a certain 
 
 nominated. description is grown by the natives, 
 
 t Guzerat compri»e3 an addition to without any interference on the part of 
 
APPENDIX. 691 
 
 culture introduced both there and in Candeish, in -which collecto- 
 rate the soil and climate are said to be -well adapted to the culture 
 of Bourbon, Egyptian. New Orleans, and other foreign varieties 
 of cotton. 
 
 The results of American management in the Presidency of 
 Bombay up to the year 1844, are exhibited in the report* from 
 Mr. W. R. Mercer, one of the American cultivators, dated 
 Dharwar, 12th October of that year. The writer of this paper, 
 which is marked by great clearness, fairness, and intelligence, 
 affirms that Indian cotton has long been known to possess two 
 very remarkable qualities: it "mills" or swells in bleaching, 
 thereby yielding a more substantial fabric; it takes and retains 
 color better than American cotton; and it would command a 
 good market, provided it were sent in regular supply and of 
 uniform cleanness. Mr. Mercer further expresses his opinion, that 
 the capability of furnishing an article suited to the manufactures 
 of Great Britain, is not limited to Broach and Surat, but extends 
 to the whole of Candeish, the southern Mahratta country, and 
 other parts of Western India ; the capabilities of the North- 
 Western Provinces, and large portions of the eastern and southern 
 parts of the Madras territory being inferior. The difference of 
 price between the cotton of Broach and Surat, being sea-board 
 districts, and that of other more inland distncts, he attributes to 
 *' difference of handhng and the distance and badness of the 
 routes over which the latter travels. After discussing the com- 
 parative effects of soil, chmate, and culture (to the second of 
 which he attributes great importance), Mr. Mercer comes to the 
 conclusion that the natives of large tracts already employ a mode 
 of cultivating the cotton plant in principle nearly the same as the 
 American, but better suited in some respects to locality, &c. The 
 great inferiority of much of the Indian article, he says, is the 
 result of what befalls it subsequent to its production in the fields, 
 that is, in the way in which it is gathered and stored, and chiefly 
 the way in which it is separated from the seed and prepared for 
 market, as well as in its transmission to market. At the gather- 
 ing, in his opinion, the effort for improvement should commence. 
 
 Various improvements having been made in the cotton saw- 
 gin, with a view to render it more suitable to Indian use, the 
 Court, in 1846, desirous of arriving at a just conclusion in regard 
 to the results, as exemplified in Bombay saw-ginned cotton 
 directed consignments to be made annually of 6000 bales, to be 
 continued for a period of three years ; and in the following year, 
 with a view of testing the capabilities of the different districts, 
 directions were given that the annual consignment should consist 
 
 the Government beyond an engagement * East India Company's Manuscript 
 to receive the produce at a fixed price. Documents. 
 
 2 y2 
 
692 APPENDIX. 
 
 of equal quantities of New Orleans and indigenous cotton, and 
 should be drawn from the four collectorates in which measures for 
 the improvement of the article were in progress — viz., Dharwar, 
 Belgaum, Broach, and Candeish. It may here be mentioned, 
 that in forwarding to Bombay the account sales of this cotton, the 
 results w^ere stated to be highly satisfactory. Very favorable 
 opinions were pronounced on the article by spinners and other 
 competent judges, and the prices realised were good, for some 
 samples high. In fact, the question as to the capability of India 
 to produce cotton suitable for the use of British manufactures 
 might thenceforth be considered settled. 
 
 In 1848, in adverting to the promised supply from the four 
 collectorates, the Court intimated their desire that Government 
 should abstain from entering the market as large purchasers of 
 cotton from American seed, if it found a ready sale among local 
 dealers. The superiority of that cotton being generally recog- 
 nised in the south Mahratta country, they were of opinion that 
 Government might confine their operations to the supply of seed, 
 and the introduction of improved methods of cleaning by saw- 
 gins, &c. 
 
 In the Madras territories, cotton farms were established in the 
 districts of Coimbatore, Tinnevelly, and other localities. These 
 farms have been recently discontinued, the object for which they 
 were formed having been fully attained, by demonstrating that 
 soil and climate are capable of producing cotton suitable to the 
 British market. 
 
 It thus appears that within the two subordinate presidencies 
 there is a considerable extent of country, the soil and climate of 
 which are well adapted to the growth, not only of the indigenous 
 cotton plant, but also of the American plant. The experiments 
 have moreover brought to light a fact, which might have ad- 
 mitted of some doubt, viz., that for the most part the natives are 
 well acquainted with the proper modes of cultivation, and that 
 little or no advantage is likely to be gained from further inter- 
 ference with the ordinary course of agriculture and trade. An 
 ample provision of seed of the superior kinds of cotton for the use 
 of the cultivators (till such time as, by its general diffusion, all 
 interference, even in this way, on the part of the Government 
 shall become unnecessary) seems all, as far as cultivation is con- 
 cerned, that can now be beneficial. 
 
 The duty on the export of cotton, and the inland transit-duty 
 
 ♦ Tlie services of some of the Ame- the purpose of preparing machinery, 
 rican planters, Mr. Blount, Mr, Frost, superintending cotton experiments, &c. 
 and others, have been re-engaged for — ritfe Court's Correspondence, 18.')2. 
 
APPENDIX. 693 
 
 having been abolished, all the encouragement that can properly 
 be afforded by fiscal regulations has been extended to this produc- 
 tion. There remains another mode in which Government can 
 promote the extension of the growth of cotton and the improve- 
 ment of its quality, viz., by facilitating the construction of tram- 
 ways and railroads, where the anticipated amount of traffic would 
 justify the outlay. In some districts the expenses of cultivation 
 and assessment are not so heavy as the expense of carriage to 
 market. 
 
 In competition with America for the British trade, India will 
 always have to encounter the disadvantage of distance. But it is 
 not too much to hope that this may be greatly moderated, espe- 
 cially as the cotton manufactures of Great Britian appear to 
 require new and increased sources of supply. Indian cotton is 
 adapted to varieties of goods amounting in weight to about 75* 
 per cent, of the total cotton manufacture of Great Britain. The 
 cultivation has to contend with sundry disadvantages,t but these 
 are compensated by the cheapness^ of the cost of production ; 
 this, in many parts of India, being only Hd. per lb., while in 
 America it is from fifty to one hundred per cent. more,§ ranging 
 from 2id. to 3d. 
 
 The power of contributing to the required supply is, however, 
 limited by circumstances, some of which only would appear to be 
 under control. The cotton of the lower provinces of Bengal is 
 said to be unsuitable to the British market. In the north-west the 
 experimental culture was tried to a certain extent without success, 
 but discouraging incidents appear to have led^ in some degree at 
 least, to its somewhat premature abandonment. At Madras, im- 
 provement in quality has been simultaneous with extended culti- 
 vation ; but from the latest official information it would appear 
 that even if the whole of the lands in that presidency, adapted for 
 the production of cotton, were so appropriated, the supply, after 
 deducting the quantity required for local consumption and export 
 to China, would bear a very small proportion to the wants of the 
 British market. Looking to existing circumstances, it will be 
 seen that, if instead of a part only, the present entire export of 
 •cotton from Madras found its way to Great Britain, it would not 
 
 * Chapman on Cotton and Commerce Manchester have a table, by which they 
 
 of India, page 4. see at a glance the respective prices 
 
 t The interior productiveness of the at which American and Indian cotton 
 
 Indian soil and inferior yield of the are equivalent to each other, 
 
 cotton plant, the combined operation of Evidence before Cotton Committee, 
 
 the two causes, restrict the average out- 1848, Questions 632, 1206. 
 
 turn to 100 lbs. of clean cotton per acre, ^ Vide Bazley's Evidence, Question 
 
 while in America the same area gives 769 ; also Memo, from Mr. Turner, 
 
 at least double the quantity. Chairman of Manchester Commercial 
 
 X Evidence before Cotton Committee, Association, page 67, note. 
 1848. Manufactures of coarse goods in 
 
694 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 furnish 2 per cent, of the supply required by the British manu- 
 facturers. 
 
 For many years past the chief supply of Indian cotton, both to 
 Great Britain and the world at large, has been furnished from the 
 port of Bombay, the greater part being raised in Guzerat;* but a 
 just view of the extent and capabilities of the whole of the cotton 
 land lying along the Gulf of Cambay, would lead to the conclu- 
 sion, that the present growth of Guzerat cotton cannot be mate- 
 rially increased. 
 
 Taking the last four years of the tabular statement, at the end 
 of this paper, the export of cotton from India may be regarded as 
 having attained an amount of between 160,000,000 lbs. and 
 170,000,000 lbs. per annum ;t audit would not appear that in 
 the present condition of India this supply can be greatly exceeded; 
 for though the export of cotton from India to Great Britain 
 fluctuates from year to year (sometimes to the extent of 60 or 70 
 per cent.), J yet it will be seen, on reference to the tabular state- 
 ment, that the increased or diminished amount is invariably 
 attended by a corresponding diminution or increase in the supplies 
 
 * The total export of cotton from 94,226,779 lbs. was the growth ot 
 
 India in 1849-50 was 165,655,220 lbs. Guzerat. (Report on internal and ex- 
 
 The Bombay contributions to this total ternal Commerce.) 
 amounted to 150,754,963 lbs., of which 
 
 t EXPORTS TO ALL COUNTRIES. 
 
 lbs. 
 
 1846-47 169,080,831 
 
 1847-48 160,317,295 
 
 1848-49 168,631,466 
 
 1849-50 ..,.. 165,665,220 
 
 The Exports of 1849-50 are made up as follows: — 
 
 From Bengal ... 
 „ Madras ... 
 „ Bombay... 
 
 To England. 
 
 To all other Places. 
 
 Total. 
 
 lbs. 
 27,306 
 502,6,023 
 105,637,028 
 
 lbs. 
 
 1,817,971 
 
 8,038,957 
 
 45,117,935 
 
 lbs. 
 1,845,277 
 13,064,980 
 150,754,963 
 
 110,690,357 
 
 54,974,863 | 165,665,220 
 
 X EXPORTS OF COTTON. 
 
 1848-49 
 
 1849-50 
 
 To Great Britain. 
 
 China and other Ports. 
 
 Total. 
 
 lbs. 
 
 67,203,519 
 
 110,690,357 
 
 lbs. 
 
 101,427,947 
 
 54^74,863 
 
 lbs. 
 168,631,466 
 165,665,220 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 695 
 
 to other countries, and that the aggregate annual export from 
 India remains without variation. It may, therefore, be fairly in- 
 ferred, that the quantity of cotton which under current prices 
 India can export at a profit, does not greatly exceed 170,000,000 lbs. 
 per annum. 
 
 The average yield of clean cotton in India being not more than 
 100 lbs. per acre, and cotton being cultivated on the same ground 
 once only in three years, it follows, that to produce the quantity 
 now exported annually, an area equal to upwards of five miUions 
 of acres, or nearly eight thousand square miles, must be appro- 
 priated to the purpose. 
 
 But if by means of railroads the great cotton* field of Berar, 
 situate within the dominions of the Nizam or ruler of Hyde- 
 rabad, were placed nearly on an equality in point of facility of 
 transport \vith the maritime cotton districts, then a breadth of 
 land sufficient for the growth of a quantity equal to the full de- 
 mand of Great Britain might at once be made available. It is, 
 however, only by means of a railroad that the territory of Berar 
 can be placed in a position to become a cotton-exporting 
 country.f 
 
 * Evidence before Commons Com- 
 mittee on growth of Cotton in India, 
 Questions 1822 — 4850. 
 
 t That cotton cannot be conveyed at 
 a profit from Berar, except by rsolway, 
 may be proved by the analogous case 
 of salt. 
 
 Salt, having paid duty at 2^ rupees 
 per maund, is sold at Benares (400 
 miles from Calcutta), according to the 
 Government Gazette^ at 12 lbs. the 
 rupee, or 2d. per lb. 
 
 At Calcutta, the price of salt is Id. 
 per lb-, which is thus made up : 
 Duty at 2^ rupees per 
 
 maund 'of 82 lbs. . 0|d. 
 Cost of manufacture . O^d. 
 
 Id. per lb. 
 The cost of conveyance of salt for 
 400 miles, and other necessary charges, 
 therefore enhance the price Id. per lb., 
 exclusive of the gain made by adul- 
 teration, which, it is said, takes place 
 
 a The wastage on cotton in transit 19th September, 1848, the rate of loss 
 appears to be equal to ^at on salt In on cotton in transit to the place of 
 the revenue letter from Madras, dated export is stated at from 2 to 8i per cent. 
 
 extensively. The cost of conveying 
 cotton coiild not be less,a but by rail- 
 way it might be carried for 2|d. per 
 ton per mile. Cotton might, therefore, 
 be conveyed from Oomrawuttee, and 
 other cotton marts in Berar, to Bom- 
 bay (400 miles), for ^d. per lb.; and 
 thus brought to market at a price 
 from 15 to 20 per cent, cheaper than at 
 present, it would be enabled to com- 
 pete with cotton from America: 
 1 Ton =2240 lbs, 400 miles, 
 at 2|d. per mile = 
 llOOd. or . 
 Price of cotton, Berar 
 Conveyance to Bombay per 
 rail .... 
 Freight' to England at 3/. 
 per ton of 1375 mea- 
 surement 
 
 Oi per lb. 
 
 0* 
 2* 
 
696 APPENDIX. 
 
 (») 
 
 THE REVENUE-SURVEY SYSTEM. 
 
 [From the Calcutta Review. — Condensed from the " Manual of Surveying" by CaptaiTis 
 R. Smith and Thuillier, of the Artillery.'] 
 
 First of all the settlement-officer, or revenue-collector, is cliaro-ed 
 with the duty of marking out the boundaries of tlie Parganahs on 
 the ground, and furnishing to the surveyor a rough sketch called 
 a T/tak'bust, or demarcation map. With this sketch in his hand 
 a man goes round the boundary of the Parganah, fixing stations 
 at its various points, and clearing the ground for the measurement 
 of lines and the observation of angles from station to station. 
 Another man, or set of men, are set to perambulate the boun- 
 daries of each village within the Parganah. All this is preHmi- 
 nary to the survey, properly so called. The revenue-collector 
 ought to be a year in advance of the surveyors, and the *' line- 
 cutters" must at least keep well ahead of them, so that no delay 
 may occur. The surveyor's duty is then to run a line from sta- 
 tion to station, and to ascertain the length and direction of every 
 part of it. As this line cannot follow the windings of the boun- 
 dary exactly, it is carried as near to the boundary as possible 
 within or without ; and offsets are measured to the boundary 
 itself. Every measurement, whether of length or direction, is 
 CDtered in a field book. When the surveyor has gone quite 
 round the Parganah, and returned to the point whence he set out, 
 it is evident that on transferring all his lines to paper, in propor- 
 tionate lengths and in the right directions, the plan ought exactl}' 
 to " close," or the last line ought to end where the first began. 
 This it will never do exactly, but it must do so within certain 
 limits of error, and if these limits be exceeded, every effort must 
 be made to discover where the error has occurred; and, if these 
 efforts fail, the work must be done over again. If the amount of 
 error be within the limits, it must be apportioned amongst the 
 several lines and angles. 
 
 While the Parganah-boundary-surveyor has been going on with 
 this process, several parties of villagc-boundary-surveyors liave 
 been performing precisely the same process with respect to the 
 several villages within the circuit. It is evident that the work of 
 each one of these surveyors also must *' close" with itself; and not 
 
APPENDIX. 697 
 
 only so, but the aggrc<]rate of the villages must just fill up the 
 Parganah. 
 
 If the fields belonging to a village be tolerably large, and with 
 moderately straight and well-defined boundaries, it seems to be the 
 duty of the village surveyor to measure and define them, and to 
 fill up all the topographical information necessary to give a com- 
 plete view of the iace of the country, its trees, its buildings, and 
 its crops. This is done both by entry in the field book, and by 
 the construction of what are called " chudder maps," which pre- 
 sent a general idea of the character of the country. But if tlie 
 fields be very small, and their boundaries very irregular, the survey 
 of them is handed over to a native official, who conducts it in a 
 much ruder way than that adopted in the main survey. This is 
 csiWed the khusrah measurement; and, as it is always checked by 
 the general survey, since the whole ground measured must always 
 fill its boundary, it is sufficiently accurate for all practical 
 purposes. 
 
 Such is the whole of the work performed in the field. Sufficient 
 data are obtained for the construction of accurate maps of the dis- 
 trict surveyed; and the preparation of these maps is the duty of a 
 portion of the establishment during the period when field ope- 
 rations are suspended by the weather. The survey department is 
 required to furnish in duplicate a village map, on the scale of one 
 mile to an inch, and a Parganah map, on the scale of four miles to 
 an inch, for every village and Parganah surveyed. These arc 
 constructed from the chudder maps and field-books of the sur- 
 veyors and kfiuarnh measurers. These Parganah maps are again 
 built up into Zillah maps on the scale of sixteen miles to an inch. 
 It is also required of the department to construct for Government 
 all the maps that they may require for any purpose, civil or military, 
 such as the records stored up in the Surveyor-General's Office 
 enable them to construct. 
 
 All this seems very short and simple in the description; but it 
 is necessarily a tedious, and in many cases, a difficult process. The 
 village boundaries are so irregular, and the limits of error allowed 
 are so small, that the surveyor requires to have all his eyes about 
 him. As moreover a great part of the details of the work is done 
 by natives who do not understand English, it may be conceived 
 that the process of constructing a map from their field-books is not 
 a very attractive amusement. " With such an extent of native 
 agency (say Captains Smith and Thuillicr) as is employed on all 
 the surveys in India, it is a great object to plot all work in the 
 field. It saves an immensity of labor, and the chances of accu- 
 racy are greatly increased. By the aid of the drawing board much 
 can be sketched in, and the first impression of a locality is not 
 lost, but at once represented on the plan. Field-books kept by 
 natives ignorant of English may better be imagined than described. 
 
698 APPENDIX. 
 
 It is always difficult for any surveyor to understand fully a field- 
 book kept by another person; but where novices on 10 or 15 
 rupees per mensem attempt to keep such records, and hurry on at 
 the railroad pace of a revenue-survey in the present age, we do 
 not envy the person who has to protract from them. The native 
 surveyor, who brings in liis board well filled, displays at once what 
 amount of work he has done ; and a superintending officer is able 
 to see at a glance what confidence is to be placed on the 
 topography so defined." 
 
 We have omitted to mention that another thing is necessary 
 in order to make any of these maps complete, that is, the deter- 
 mination of the meridian line. For all that we have said hitherto, 
 a map might lie in any direction ; but whenever the direction of 
 any one line upon it is fixed, then the direction of the whole of 
 the lines, and the proper bearings of every point, are ascertained. 
 It is therefore necessary to ascertain the direction of the meridian 
 line at some place within the district surveyed, or rather at several 
 places, in order that one ascertainment may be a check upon the 
 others. This is done in each Parganah survey by astronomical 
 observations. For the village surveys, it is sufficient to ascertain 
 it by the compass, allowing for variation. 
 
 We should also have stated that it is the duty of the survey 
 department to calculate the area of each field, village, and Par- 
 ganah in the North-West Provinces, these computations are the 
 basis of the revenue-settlement. In the Lower Provinces, where 
 the permanent settlement obtains, this is not necessary ; but the 
 survey is not the less useful in these provinces, as in its absence 
 much of the land is apt to be lost sight of altogether, small estates 
 being swallowed up by large ones. Then when the Jumma or 
 revenue on these estates is not paid, and the estates are put up for 
 sale, it is found impossible to put the purchaser in possession. 
 
 To give an idea of the extent to which the revenue-survey in 
 this presidency has proceeded, we cannot do better than present 
 the following extract, which exhibits clearly both what has been 
 done, and what remains to be accomplished : 
 
 " From the year 1822, when the revenue surveys first com- 
 menced, up to the year 1830, the rate of progress at which the 
 operations proceeded was extremely limited. Only 3020 square 
 miles, a little more than half a square degree, had then been per- 
 formed in seven years, with ten officers employed in the department 
 — the annual rate of progress of each surveyor ranging from fifty 
 square miles to 338 as a maximum : and at this rate it was esti- 
 mated that, the area of Bengal and the North- Western Provinces 
 being 310,000 square miles or 77 square degrees, would require 
 481 years to accomplish. The officers employed in those days, 
 however, had little or no assistance ; and the duties performed 
 then by the revenue-surveyor himself, are now entrusted to com- 
 
APPENDIX. 699 
 
 petent asssistants and sub-assistants, with large native establish- 
 ments under them, whilst the surveyor acts as a superintendent 
 over the whole as described in a former chapter ; the result of 
 which has been, that during the last twenty years, or since 1830, 
 the whole of the North- Western Province Districts, all Behar and 
 Orissa, and a considerable portion of Bengal Proper, have been 
 completed. No less than 46 districts of unsettled estates, amount- 
 ing to 101,519 square iniles, and 13 districts of Bengal and Behar, 
 perpetually settled estates, yielding an area of 53,295 square 
 miles, have thus been surveyed in detail and mapped, leaving 
 twenty districts of Bengal, comprising 57,990 square miles, to be 
 taken up, five of which are now in hand. 
 
 "In addition to this, the newly acquired territory of the Punjab 
 and Cis and Trans Sutledge have come under the revenue opera- 
 tions, and afford a fine field of employment for the department. 
 
 '' The total area of the British possessions in India, including 
 Scinde, Punjab, JuUundhur Dooab and Tenasserim, has been 
 carefully estimated at 800,758 square miles, and the Native States 
 at 508,422 square miles, making a grand total of 1,309,200 square 
 miles as the area of British India. This vast superficial extent of 
 territory is confined within a length of 11,260 miles of external 
 boundary. The inland frontier from Tenasserim round by the 
 Himalayan range of mountains to Cape Monze in Scinde is 4680 
 miles, whilst the coast line from Singapore round the Bay of 
 Bengal, up the Malabar Coast to Kurrachee, is 6580 miles Of 
 the Native States about 200,000 square miles are already sur- 
 veyed, leaving about 308,442, almost all wild hilly jungle, and of 
 little value, to be taken up." 
 
 To this we shall only add that about fifteen and a half lakhs of 
 rupees have been already expended, and that the work still to be 
 done may be expected to cost about eleven and a half lakhs — a 
 very moderate sum, certainly, for the survey of such an immense 
 empire, and better expended than many of the sums that go into 
 the disbursement side in the financial accounts of many govern- 
 ments. 
 
700 APPENDIX. 
 
 (E) 
 
 MEMORANDUM OF THE BAREE DOAB CANAL. 
 
 Independently of survey, 2157 miles of levellinf^, with 
 traverse work, were executed for tlieBaree Doab Canal project up 
 to August, 1850. The trial levelling was commenced on the 8th 
 Mafch, 1850, and its project sent in complete on the 14th Decem- 
 ber of the same year. Said project consists of upwards of 200 pages 
 of closely-written foolscap, one-half being devoted to the report 
 (which is illustrated with sketches), and the other to calculations 
 and estimates, with 33 sheets (double elephant) of maps and plans; 
 a copy of all being, of course, retained in the Canal-office, and 
 and another (third) of the greater portion forwarded to the civil 
 engineer for his own use. The proposed canal takes out of a 
 branch of the river Ravee at Madhopoor, about 7 miles N.N. W. 
 from Pulhamkot. It is to be 466 miles long. The main line 
 being 247 miles, the Kussoor branch 84, the Sobraon branch 61, 
 and the Lahore branch 74. There are besides, 22 miles of escape, 
 making in all 488 miles of channel to be excavated. The capacity 
 of canal channel, from its head to the head of irrigation (at mile 
 30), is calculated for 3000 cubic feet of water per second — a 
 little above the minimum discharge of the river Ravee — that of the 
 main line at the head of the Kussoor branch for 2000; of the same 
 at the head of Lahore branch, 1200; of the Kussoor branch at its 
 head (mile 30 of main line), 1100; of the same at the head of 
 Sobraon branch, 500; of the Sobraon branch at its head (mile 7 
 of Kussoor branch), 500; and of the Lahore branch at its head 
 (mile 55 of main line), 600 cubic feet per second. These four 
 lines of canal irrigate almost the entire of the " Bangur" of the 
 Doab, which, above Kussoor, is divided into four minor Doabs, 
 as it wercj by three drainage lines — the Pussee and Kussoor 
 Nullas flowing to the Sutlej, and the Cadyara Nulla towards the 
 Ravee. A line of canal takes possession of each minor Doab. 
 The main line tails into the Ravee at Turrindka-kow, a small 
 village about 58 miles above Mooltan, to which place, however, it 
 will hereafter be extended, if possible. The Kussoor branch tails 
 into the Kussoor Nulla a little above Kussoor. The Sobraon 
 branch tails into the Putter Nulla below Putter, and near Sobraon ; 
 and the Lahore branch into the Ravee river at Manga, a large 
 
APPENDIX. 701 
 
 town about 26 miles below Lahore. Tlic slope of the canal bed 
 for the first ten miles of its course has been set down at G feet per 
 mile, being through boulders the whole way ; and even this slope 
 will probably be exceeded in actual execution. After the 10th 
 mile, the slope of main line, as the 100th mile, is 2 feet per 
 mile ; thence it is 1 .4 foot, the minimum slope anywhere given. 
 The Kussoor and Sobraon branches have a slope of 2 feet per 
 mile throughout. The Lahore branch has the same slope to mile 
 45, whence it is reduced to 1.5 foot. It is proposed that a still- 
 water canal of navigation shall connect the Sutlej at Ilurreekee, 
 the junction of the river Sutlej and Beas with the Kavee at Lahore, 
 crossing and being connected with each of the four lines of irriga- 
 tion canal, which is navigable througliout. A depot to be established 
 at Hurreekee. It w^as hoped that a further supply of water (the 
 Ravee being the smallest of the five rivers) might be obtained 
 from the Beas. On taking the requisite levels and surveys, the pos- 
 sibility of doing so was placed beyond a doubt; but the expense was 
 found to be so great, that the design has been abandoned, at least 
 for the present. The heavy works and difficulties on the canal 
 are — 1st. The head works, consisting of a masonry drain of 500 
 feet long across the branch of the Ravee from which the canal is 
 taken, with a regulation attached. The slope of the bed of branch 
 is 27 J feet per mile, and floods arise 4 feet above the cold w^eather 
 level. 2nd. The deep digging through the high bank of the 
 Ravee, the maximum depth being 60 feet, and the soil full of 
 boulders. The digging works out in two miles. 3rd. The pas- 
 sage of the Jennah torrent by a masonry dam of 300 feet, with 
 regulating bridge attached. This torrent has a slope of 22-| feet 
 per mile, and rises six feet in floods. 4th. The passage of the 
 Ravee branch of the Chakky torrent by a masonry drain 1200 feet 
 long, with regulating bridge attached. The torrent rises 4^ feet 
 in floods, and has a slope of 16 feet per mile. The Chakky is a 
 most extraordinary torrent, and very tickhsh to deal with. A 
 little above the point of crossing at Goolpoor, it separates into two 
 branches, one flowing to the Ravee, and the other to the Beas. 
 Extensive works are now being constructed, by which it is hoped 
 the main body of the torrent may, during the coming rains, be 
 diverted to the Beas branch, leaving the Ravee branch compara- 
 tively dry. These w^orks comprise about a mile of boulder binds 
 and spurs, strengthened by brush and crib work, with nearly an 
 equal length of excavated channel, and of cuts through bars, &c., 
 &c. If they succeed even partially, the immense masonry drain 
 estimated for will be saved, as an escape merely will then prove 
 sufficient. 5th. The rapids and falls required for the purpose of 
 overcoming the excessive slope of the country. On the main line 
 82 feet have to be overcome by artificial rapids of boulder work, 
 and an equal number by masonry falls ; on the Sobraon branch 
 
702 APPENDIX. 
 
 the same, and on the Lahore branch 19 feet in the same manner, 
 making a total of 239 feet to be overcome by artificial means. 
 The extent of water-power, however, thus placed at the disposal 
 of the inhabitants of difierent parts of the country may be 
 imagined. It will soon pay off the cost of the works required, par- 
 ticularly as the Punjabees seem to take to machinery much more 
 kindly than the inhabitants of the North- Western Provinces. 6th. 
 The carrying such a large body of water (120 feet wide and o-| 
 deep) for about 3 miles along the top of a narrow ridge, which is 
 tortuous, that curves of only a mile radius have to be given to the 
 line, and down the sides of which numerous drainages run, re- 
 quiring constant attention to prevent them cutting back into the 
 canal. 7th. The passage of the same body of water across an 
 extraordinary hollow about a mile wide and 15 feet deep: heavy 
 em,bankment is required here. The probable cost of the canal is 
 estimated as follows : 
 
 MAIN LINE. 
 
 Boulder and Shingle Bunds, Works for protection 
 
 of line experiments, &c., &c 81,760 
 
 Excavation of Channel 1,635,283 
 
 Ditto of Escapes 185,869 
 
 Masonry Works 997,682 
 
 Contingencies 145,029 
 
 3,045,623 
 
 KUSSOOR BRANCH. 
 
 Excavation of Channel 275,704 
 
 Masonry Works 158,388 
 
 Contingencies 21,704 
 
 455,796 
 
 SOBRAON BRANCH. 
 
 Excavation of Channel 198,267 
 
 Masonry Works 129,205 
 
 Contingencies 16,374 
 
 343,846 
 
 LAHORE BRANCH. 
 
 Excavation of Channel 296,424 
 
 Masonry Works 129,930 
 
 Contingencies 21,318 
 
 ■ 447,672 
 
 Total Cost of Works, Co.'sRs 4,292,937 
 
 Add Establishment for five years 744,000 
 
 Grand Total Cost of Baree Doab Canal 5,036,937 
 
 The probable returns are thus estimated. 
 
 It has been ascertained (from the canals already in existence) 
 that a constant supply of a cubic foot of water per second, is sufli- 
 cient to irrigate throughout the year 218 acres. 
 
APPENDIX. 703 
 
 The average annual water sent also is a rupee an acre. 
 Hence : — 
 
 In water sent we have 3000 x 218 = Co.'s Rs 654,000 
 
 Set down Mill sent at 50,000 
 
 Transit duties, &c., at 20,000 
 
 And Canal produce, Sundries, Sec, at 11,000 
 
 This gives a Total of 733,000 
 
 And suppose the amount annually in repairs, Establish- 
 ments, &c., to be 200,000 
 
 And we shall have a direct annual return of 535,000 
 
 Giving on the original outlay of 50 lakhs a return of 10.7 per 
 cent, per annum. 
 
 Now for the indirect return, solely due to the canal, by the 
 increase of the land revenue : — 
 
 In the Meerut district (the least irrigated in North- Western Pro- 
 vinces) the increase of revenue, due to the Eastern Jumna canal, 
 averages 8 annas per acre. And in the irrigated portion of that 
 district, one-third of the village are actually watered. Hence :— 
 
 We have 654,000 x 3 = 1,962,000 acres, at 8 annas ... 981,000 
 
 D.D. for increased expenses in the Civil Departments ... 42,425 
 And for Canal ground-rent at the very highest rate, 
 though one-third of it will occupy is now dense jungle 
 
 — 12,540 acres, at 188 rupees per 100 acres 23,575 
 
 66,000 
 
 And we shall have an Annual Return of 915,000 
 
 Giving on the original outlay a return of 18.3 per cent, per 
 annum. Hence the total return from the Baree Doab canal willbe 
 29 per cent, per annum. 
 
 The returns will probably be much more as the inirrigative 
 portion of the Meerut district pays on an average 138 rupees per 
 1 00 acres, while half the land through which the Baree Doab canal 
 will run, pays at present little or nothing. The Western Jumna 
 canal returns 36 per cent, per annum on the original outlay, and 
 the Eastern Jumna canal 24 per cent, per annum. In conclusion, 
 I may add that there are practical difficulties in the way of this 
 work, which do not exist in the construction of the Ganges canal, 
 or indeed of any work in the North- Western Provinces. 1st. Sal 
 timbers (or any hard wood, in sufficient quantity), is not to be had, 
 the only timber available being Dryar KoU, and Chul, all soft 
 woods, and these at very high prices. 2nd. The carpenters of the 
 Punjab are very indifferent workmen, yet they, as well as all other 
 laborers, Coolies not excepted, demand one-tliird more wages than 
 better workmen receive in the North- Western Provinces. There 
 
704 APPENDIX. 
 
 are no jungles at the head of the Doab (where all the heaviest 
 works are situated) as there are at the foot of the Sewalik hills 
 near Hurdwar. The villaojers also, and civil authorities do not seem 
 inclined to give Koorah (the dry rubbish of dungheaps, sweepings 
 of the village, &c.) gratis, as they do on the Ganges canal. 
 Hence, fuel for burning bricks and lime is most expensive. 4th. 
 The limestone procurable at the head ol^ the Doab, is not of good 
 quahty, nothing like the stone of the Dhoon. 5th. There is not 
 a single hackery in the upper part of the Doab, and if there was 
 there is but one, the main road on which it could travel. The 
 cross country roads are about 4 feet wide, and between high 
 fences, and are impracticable for any carriage but camels, bullocks, 
 and donkeys. 6th The people seem most unwilling to take 
 contracts for the supply of materials of any description, and are 
 utterly devoid of the spirit of speculation or competition. All 
 steadily combined to raise the price of articles, some of which 
 were a short time ago tolerably cheap. 7 th. There is no building 
 stone sufficiently hard and durable for waterworks, within a 
 moderate distance of the line. 8th. The Kunkur does not appear 
 to be of good quality for lime, until about half-way between 
 Bettala and Umritser. 9th. For the last 147 miles of the main 
 line, there are so few villages, that it will be difficult to procure 
 workmen in sufficient numbers, and for the same reason wells 
 must be dug all along the line before any building can be erected, 
 channel excavated, or bricks made. The water is 60 feet below 
 the surface of the country. These are all serious impediments to 
 cheap and expeditious work, and must have considerable efiect in 
 delaying the opening of the canal. — [3fS. .Records.'] 
 
 April, 1851. 
 
 (F) 
 PROPOSED SUTLEJ CANAL. 
 
 [ Jrow the Calcutta Beview.'] 
 
 The practicability of turning the waters of the Sutlej to use for 
 purposes of irrigation early attracted the attention of our Ma- 
 nomcdan predecessors, and several traces of ancient canals from 
 tliiit river still exist. Such historical records as are available at- 
 
APPENDIX. 705 
 
 tribute most of them to the period of Feroze so fruitful in works 
 of irrigation ; but it must be confessed, that the allusion to his 
 Sutlej canals are so indistinct, and in some cases so irreconcilable 
 with the topographical features of the country, that it is almost 
 impossible to make anything satisfactory out of them. We need 
 not, therefore, do more than allude to these old works; and we 
 now proceed to detail what has been done by the British Govern- 
 ment. 
 
 To Major W. E. Baker, of the Bengal Engineers, belongs the 
 merit of having first clearly and satisfactorily established the perfect 
 practicability of a canal of irrigation from the Sutlej, and of 
 having supplied such data as admit of a fair approximate estimate 
 of the probable expense and returns from such a work being 
 made. 
 
 Major Baker's project does not affect to be the best that could 
 be framed. The brief period allowed for his survey made it im- 
 possible for him to examine the country in that degree of detail, 
 which is a necessary preliminary to the actual execution of a great 
 canal. But he has proved in the clearest manner the following 
 most important facts; that an immense tract of British territory, 
 now a desert, is admirably suited, both by the nature of its soil, 
 and the profile of its surface, to take the fullest advantage of any 
 means of irrigation that may be placed within its reach ; that the 
 introduction mto this tract of a stream of water from the Sutlej is 
 physically practicable ; and that the probable benefit is so great, as 
 to warrant Government in undertaking the work, when means arc 
 available. 
 
 The tract of country, whose improvement is contemplated by 
 the Sutlej canal, consists of part of the district of Hissar, and 
 nearly the whole of Bhuttiana, called commonly the "Hard 
 Desert." It is a bleak, wretched, and (without water) most 
 sterile land. The wells are so deep that artificial irrigation is im- 
 possible: the water is so brackish and impure, that none, save 
 natives of the tract, can drink it with impunity; rains are scanty, 
 and precarious vegetation is represented by a few stunted thorn 
 bushes, or a temporary crop of grass over the great parched plains. 
 Under circumstances so ungenial, the population is necessarily 
 scanty and lawless, deriving their subsistence chiefly from herds of 
 cattle, and addicted to the marauding habits common to pastoral 
 tribes. 
 
 The question here is, therefore, not to improve agriculture, but 
 to create it; not to provide, as in the Doab, for the casual oc- 
 currence of an unfavorable season, but to supply by the re- 
 sources of science a substitute for that deficiency of rain, which 
 is the rule, and not the exception; and finally, to enable an ex- 
 tensive and capable province to become, by its increased resources, 
 and the progressive improvement of its inhabitants, a source of 
 
 2 z 
 
706 APPENDIX. 
 
 strength and revenue to the state, instead of being, as now, a 
 burden and weakness. 
 
 These are noble aims, worthy of an enlightened and Christian 
 Government, and we shall now briefly detail the measures by 
 which it is proposed to attain them. 
 
 The river Sutlej, after flowing for between 300 and 400 miles 
 within the Himalayan range, breaks through the low hills on the 
 southern face of these mountains at the town of Roopur. For 
 twelve or fourteen miles above this point, the stream flows through 
 a valley, varying from 1 to 4 miles in width, bounded by low 
 ranges of hills, consisting generally of unconsolidated strata of 
 clay and sand, intermixed with kunkur. The discharge is 
 estimated at 5400 cubic feet per second; the fall is about 4 feet 
 per mile ; and the bed is generally sandy, with occasional layers of 
 shingle. 
 
 On judicious and satisfactory grounds, the head of the proposed 
 canal is fixed at a place called Bunga, thirteen miles above 
 Roopur. 
 
 At this point traces of an ancient canal, said to have been ex- 
 cavated by Mirza Kundi, the Governor of Sirhind under Mahom- 
 med Shah (probably IV.), were found, and with occasional inter- 
 ruptions were observed as far to the southward as Sirhind. 
 
 To restore this old line, connecting it with the Sirhind Nala, 
 whereby the stream would be carried in one main channel to 
 Sungrur, a total distance from the head of nearly ninety miles, 
 appeared to Major Baker to be the most economical plan of 
 delivering the water at a point from which it might be favorably 
 distributed, by two branch canals, to northern Hissar, and the 
 Bhutti states.* The Hissar branch would be forty miles, the 
 Bhuttiana branch 100 miles in length. 
 
 The chief, indeed the only, difficulties occur in the first forty 
 miles from the head. These are three in number. The first is 
 the want of permanence in the bed of the Sutlej, giving cause to 
 anticipate some difficulty in maintaining the canal supply. This 
 it is proposed to remedy by building a masonry dam across the 
 bed of the stream, whereby considerable security against alteration 
 would be obtained. The second, is the deficiency of flill in the 
 country from Bunga to Sirhind. This fall is only 40 feet in 
 forty-one miles ; and, as the depth of digging at the canal licad is 
 
 ♦ Thai the plan proposed by Major be true economy to avoid them. The 
 
 Baker would be the cheapest available levels are almost imiversally low, and 
 
 may be true, but that it would be the the channels tortuous, both objections 
 
 best is, we think, open to question, of serious importance in canals of irri- 
 
 Hothing is more certain than that the gation ; and we therefore trust the 
 
 occupation of old lines, and the emi)loy- Sutlej canal, if ever undertakon, will 
 
 ment of existing river beds, have proved be constructed independently of former 
 
 fruitftU sources of evil on canals now in lines, or nalas, even although this 
 
 operation, and we believe that it would should entail some additional expense. 
 
APPENDIX. 707 
 
 6 feet, the effective fall available for the canal channel is only 34 
 feet in forty-one miles, or 9.9 inches, say 10 inches, per mile. 
 This is a small slope certainly for an Indian canal; but it might 
 be increased to 12 inches, by adopting planks, or gates, to the 
 piers of the masonry dam, so as to obtain during the season of 
 irrigation 5 or 6 feet of additional head water. With even the 
 lower regimen of slope, however, we believe the canal would be 
 found efficient; and we hold the difficulty to be of no great im- 
 portance. The third, is the very deep excavation, ranging in the 
 first fifteen miles south of the Sissuwala Nala from 32 to 20 feet. 
 It is considered probable that farther examination mi»ht lead to a 
 better line being found, south of Roopur — a very likely result; 
 but, even if unattained, tlie deep digging is not without its advan- 
 tages, inasmuch as it admits of the hill drainage being all passed 
 over the canal instead of through it, as is tlie case on the Jumna 
 canals, where it is the source of so much evil and expense. On 
 the whole, therefore, the difficulties of the project are not of serious 
 consequence at their worst; and we doubt not but that the re- 
 sources of the officers who may be employed on the works will 
 prove adequate to vanquish them all. 
 
 The estimated expense of the Sutlej canal, with works on such 
 a scale as to make it competent to a discharge of 2500 cubic feet 
 per second, is 25,00,000 rupees, or 250,000/. This estimate is a 
 liberal and sufficient one, and would probably be found to exceed 
 considerably the actual cost. 
 
 The probable returns, so far as the Government is concerned, 
 will consist of water rent, and such increase of land rent as irri- 
 gated tracts under similar circumstances have been found to yield. 
 As regards the first item, it is calculated that 2000 cubic feet of 
 water will reach the irrigating districts; and, assuming the low 
 average rate of the Western Jumna canals as the standard, this 
 discharge is competent to the irrigation of 312,000 acres. The 
 average water rent, west of the Jumna, is exactly one rupee per 
 acre; consequently the return to Government from this source 
 would amount to 3,12,000 rupees per annum. 
 
 To form an approximate estimate of the increase of land- 
 revenue which Government may anticipate, we avail ourselves of 
 the statistical table of the Western Jumna canals formerly given ; 
 and we assume that the influence of these canals on the district of 
 Hissar may be taken as a guide in forming an opinion as to the 
 influence of the Sutlej canal on the same district, and the adjoin- 
 ing one of Bhuttiana. 
 
 From the table we accordingly find that, while the rate of 
 land-revenue per square mile of unirrigated locaHties in the dis- 
 trict of Hissar is 156 rupees, that for irrigated tracts is 485 rupees, 
 giving a difierence in favor of the latter of 329 rupees per square 
 mile. Again, we find that the area on which the increased land 
 
708 APPENDIX. 
 
 rent is calculated, bears to the area actually watered the propor- 
 tion of 2 to 1 ; hence, as the Sutlej canal actually waters 312,000 
 acres, the increased land-revenue must be calculated on twice this 
 area, or 624,000 acres, being 737 square miles. The increase of 
 land-revenue may therefore at once be shown as below : 737 
 square miles of irrigated land at 329 rupees per square mile = 
 2,42,473 rupees. 
 
 The total direct pecuniary return to Government from both 
 the preceding sources would accordingly be 5,54,473 rupees per 
 annum, on an invested capital of 25,00,000 rupees, or nearly 
 22 per cent. 
 
 We must not, however, restrict our views to the benefits Govern- 
 ment will derive from the project. We must consider also the 
 gain to the community, by bringing so large a surface of country, 
 now a desert, under cultivation to the same extent as we find it 
 on the Western Jumna canals. The benefit to the community 
 will be represented by the gross value of the agricultural produce, 
 which the Sutlej canal will admit of being obtained from land 
 which now yields none. Taking the results on the Western 
 Jumna canals again as our guides, we estimate the value of the 
 produce alluded to as below : 
 
 KHURIF CROPS. 
 
 Rupees. 
 13,000 Acres of Sugar Cane, at Rs. 80 == 10,40,000 
 
 52,000 „ of Cotton at „ 48 = 24,96,000 
 
 52,000 „ of Rice, Jowar, &c., at „ 38-4= 19,89,000 
 
 RUBI CROPS. 
 195,000 „ of Wheat, Barley, &c., at Rs. 48 = 93,60,000 
 
 Total Gross ralue of Crops on Sutlej Canal 1,48,85,000 
 
 Time will, of course, be required to create this property of the 
 value of nearly one and a half millions sterling per annum; but it 
 is only necessary to compare the state of the Hissar district, before 
 the Western Jumna canals were restored, with its condition in its 
 irrigating villages for the last ten years, to be satisfied that, with 
 the supply of water, the first necessity of agriculture in North 
 Western India, there will come a population able and willing 
 to use it. 
 
 The benefits of the proposed canal now mentioned are such as 
 admit of being approximately estimated in money; but there are 
 others which are measurable by no such standard. Among these 
 are the moral benefits to be derived from introducing agricultural 
 habits among a lawless and semi-barbarous people, converting 
 them from wandering shepherds into settled, contented, and pros- 
 
APPENDIX. 709 
 
 peroiis cultivators; and the physical benefits to be anticipated from 
 restoring fertility to a large tract of country, the increased moisture 
 of which may probably so re-act, as to secure more constant and 
 more abundant supplies of rain over the adjoining districts, and 
 thus improve the condition of those who cannot directly benefit 
 by the canal. The numerous traces of former rivers unconnected 
 with any mountain ranges and the ruins of towns along their 
 banks, show that these desert regions once enjoyed a fur more 
 generous supply of rain than they now do. We may hope again 
 to re-establish this happier state of things, and thus to check that 
 deluge of sand, which threatens to submerge so large a portion of 
 their surface. 
 
 The secretary to Government (North- Western Provinces), in 
 the correspondence before us, justly characterises the Sutlej canal 
 as " a splendid undertaking.'* When the time arrives at which 
 Government can carry the project into effect, we trust it will be 
 made even more " splendid," by such an extension of its dimen- 
 sions, as will admit of its bringing into use the entire supply of the 
 Sutlej at Roopur. The sole objection to this is, that for three or 
 four months of the year, the navigation between Ferozepur and 
 Ludiana would be impeded; but the extent of this navigation 
 must be trifling indeed, in comparison with the advantage to the 
 state and the community from doubling the effective discharge 
 of the canal. Major Baker's estimate for the original project is 
 so liberal, that we believe the proposed extension would be effected 
 for about one half more than the sum he mentions, while all 
 returns would be doubled. We are, therefore, disposed to hope, 
 that as the Grand Ganges canal will render memorable in these 
 provinces the civil administration of Lord Auckland, so the 
 Grand Sutlej canal may illustrate that of Lord Dalliousie. 
 
 (G-H) 
 THE JUBBULPORE SCHOOLS OF INDUSTRY. 
 
 IFrom Colonel SlemarCs Report July 23, 1846.] 
 
 ** The factory is inclosed in a space of 350 feet by 224 feet, 
 forming a parallelogram, with a high Kutcha brick wall all round, 
 with a gateway at each end. There are two centre work slopes 
 each 136 feet long, by 68 feet broad, and all round inside the 
 walls are sheds, 12 feet deep, supported on brick pillars. The 
 
710 APPENDIX. 
 
 sheds are occupied by blacksmitlis, dyers, spinners, tape-makers, 
 chintz-printers, and carpenters, while the large buildings accom- 
 modate the carpet, cloth, and tent-makers ; the outer walls of 
 the workshop are all of picked bricks. The roofs are all tiled. 
 Tb.e cost of these buildings, over and above the labor of the 
 prisoners, was 4000 rupees, which has been defrayed out of the 
 funds. 
 
 " In this factory 324 Thug and Dakoit approvers and 150 pri- 
 soners, of both classes, work daily from six A.M. to five P.M., 
 having one hour allowed at noon for rest and food. The ap- 
 provers are all paid by piece-work to encourage them, and the 
 best of them receive from the factory about two rupees a month 
 over and above their diet, at the rate of about one rupee four 
 annas, which they get from Government. There are about 100 
 boys, the sons of Thugs, at work in the factory, earning from one 
 rupee eight annas to two rupees eight annas a month by piece- 
 work. The wages of the paid agency employed in the factory to 
 teach trades, blacksmiths, carpenters, tent-makers, carpet and paper- 
 makers, &c., at first amounted to 180 rupees a month. It has 
 been gradually reduced to one-half, and will soon be dispensed 
 with altogether, as the approvers are becoming masters of the 
 trades which they were employed to teach. None of them knew 
 any trade but that of robbery and murder when the factory was 
 first established in 1837. 
 
 "The ranges of buildings for the accommodation of the ap- 
 provers' families form a village near the factory, surrounded by a 
 high mud wall. Each approver has a separate house in these 
 ranges for his family ; and those who have done good service, and 
 have proved themselves deserving of confidence and indulgence 
 by a long course of steady conduct, are permitted to reside in 
 this village with their families, subject to surveillance, being 
 regularly called over when the gates are closed of an evening, 
 and again when opened in the morning. Those who have no 
 family ties at Jubbulpore, or whose conduct gives them no par- 
 ticular claim to confidence or indulgence, are confined at night 
 in the lock-ups. None of the approvers are ironed, excepting as 
 a punishment for misconduct or breach of discipline, and tliis, 
 with temporary exclusion from the village and fine, are the only 
 punishments had recourse to, and for tnese the necessity is now 
 very rare." — \_MS. Records.l 
 
 [To this I may add the following passage from a Police Report, 
 by an able member of the Civil Service, Mr. Macleod.] 
 
 " I would avail myself, however, of this opportunity of brin^n^ 
 to notice the remarkable success which has attended the * School 
 of Industry ' established at Jubbulpore by Major Sleeman, Ge- 
 neral Superintendent for the suppression of Thuggee and Da- 
 koitec, and superintended by his assistant, Captain Brown. As it 
 
APPENDIX. 711 
 
 is impossible for one connected with the suppression of crime and 
 the employment of condemned persons to regard an institution of 
 this kind otherwise than with feelings of great interest, an increas- 
 ing class of persons, who, as * king's evidence,' considered them- 
 selves pardoned, and at firet evinced a strong disinclination to 
 work, have had their scruples entirely overcome by mild and 
 judicious treatment. All now work -with the greatest cheerful- 
 ness, and even rivalry; manufactures of great variety and of ex- 
 cellent quality are produced in abundance, and I believe with 
 very fair profit. Even novel productions have been turned out 
 by the ingenuity of Captain Brown, aided by the gentry of the 
 station, who almost all evince a lively interest in the establish- 
 ment, and by the great diUgence and good sense of Mr. Williams, 
 the superintendent. The whole exhibits a scene of industrious 
 activity which is highly refreshing, and cannot but exercise a 
 most beneficial influence upon its inmates. So great a contrast 
 does it afibrd to the wrangling idleness of a convict gang working 
 on the roads, that I have been forcibly impressed with the de- 
 sirableness of entrusting the greater part, at all events, of the 
 prisoners of this and perhaps of all the districts to the same ma- 
 nagement. 
 
 *' From the profitable character of the institution, it has been 
 found practicable, without loss, to furnish employment to the 
 children of the inmates, and a school has recently been opened 
 within it by Captain Brown for their instruction, during a part of 
 the day, in reading and writing. This is, perhaps, the most ad- 
 mirable and important feature in the whole institution; for it is 
 well known that in this as in every other country, the mass of 
 crime is by no means the result of chance, or the spontaneous 
 influence of the passions, but is brought about by systematic, and 
 for the most part hereditary, education. Hence, it is manifest 
 that if the children of old oiFenders can be withdrawn from the 
 practice and the necessity for such a course, the labors of the 
 police will be immensely contracted. It may, no doubt, be argued 
 that this advantage cannot be generally calculated on, as it is only 
 the peculiarity of the system followed for the suppression of 
 Thuggee which has brought their families within our control. 
 But if the question be examined to the bottom, I believe it will 
 be found that the same control may with every facility, and the 
 greatest advantage, be extended to every class of persons matured 
 in crime. The same question, under another form, has been re- 
 cently canvassed in England. Here it has been practically carried 
 into effect with a particular section, in a manner unlooked for and 
 without pretension. 
 
 *' Further, the institution promises to be productive of benefit in 
 another important point of view. In America, where the system 
 of producing manufactures in the jail has been extensively carried 
 
712 APPENDIX. 
 
 into effect, it is complained that injury results to the honest 
 tradesman. But here, in consequence of the arts being in their 
 infancy, an estabhshment of this kind, conducted, as it certainly 
 is by Captain Brown in an eminent degree, with combined skill 
 and prudent moderation, is calculated, by the introduction of 
 improved methods and new manufactures, to give them an im- 
 mense stimulus. Already has this been the case in a very per- 
 ceptible degree; and I have not the least doubt that if carried on 
 with its present spirit, and not deprived of the services of Captain 
 Browm, It will beget results in this respect which will extend their 
 influence far beyond the confines of the commissionership. It pro- 
 mises literally to become a ^ school of arts and manufactures,' not 
 only to its inmates, but the country around it." — [MS. Records^ 
 
 (I) 
 
 PUBLIC WORKS IN SCINDE. 
 
 [From the Scindian, March 12, 1853.] 
 
 Captain Hill within and Captain Chapman without Kurra 
 chee are accomplishing great purposes. We are having the can- 
 tonments and town intersected with a series of fine roads. Inde- 
 pendent of the Napier road, which runs a little from beyond Kumari 
 to the camp as the crow flies, we have it bisected by another road 
 running from a little below the Government garden all the way 
 to Clifton. Then there are streets in the town running in all 
 directions, and we shall have better things to come before long, so 
 as to waive all the little annoyances that we have experienced in 
 the way of stones on and by roads, especially the great highway. 
 We hope that Captain Hill will have the space just above Captain 
 Preedy's open as the point of bifurcation, to use railway language, 
 for roads leading into camp. 
 
 Of up-country doings, we have positively marvellous things to 
 tell. Lieutenant Fife, of the engineers, has prepared plans for the 
 magnificent work of restoring water to the bed of the Eastern 
 Narra, at a cost of some four lacs and seventy-five thousand rupees. 
 Major Turner, the superintending engineer, one of the few active 
 men in the province, had assisted Mr. Fife in getting up the plans. 
 We hope that this work will be sanctioned by the Court of 
 Directors. The Government of India have granted something like 
 50,000 rupees for a commencement; we are sanguine, however, 
 that this grand work will be fully carried out. 
 
 Next to the engineers, we have Major John Jacob, of the artil- 
 
APPENDIX. 713 
 
 lery, better known as of the Scinde Horse, exercising the influence 
 of Aladdin's lamp. Independent of perfect protection of life and 
 property, he has been taking to opening roads — going as straight 
 as they can go — forty feet wide, and making canals. He has 
 bridged, passable for wheel carriages — 
 
 1. From Kuncher to Kusmor, round all the frontier posts. 
 
 2. Jacobabad to Larkhana. 
 
 3. „ Shikarpore. 
 
 4. „ Meerpore, Kundkote, and Badanee. 
 
 5. Shikarpore via Meerpore (and unbridged) to Jungwanee. 
 
 6. Shikarpore via Gorouspore and Badanee to Kusmor, through 
 low land — not bridged. 
 
 We hear that the Court of Directors have allowed Major Jacob 
 a lac and thirty thousand rupees to expend on the Bigari canal, 
 which is being improved wonderfully, and promises to add largely 
 to the revenue of the Shikarpore districts. 
 
 ADDENDA. 
 INDIAN BRIDGES. 
 
 [The following, taken from the Benares Recorder, is the paper to which refer- 
 ence is made at page 317 — note. It relates to the bridges built, partly by pro- 
 fessional, and partly by unprofessional engineers, in the Benares division, and 
 affords a curious illustration of the varied duties and pursuits of the Indian civil 
 
 servants.] 
 
 The most notable works of this description, constructed by pro- 
 fessional engineers, both military and civil, are the Burna bridge, 
 by Garstin, the Kurumnassa bridge, by James Prinsep, Major 
 Drummond's causeway at the Beylun, and Major Kittoe's bridge 
 over the Oojhla Nuddee in the Mirzapore district. The majority 
 of bridges of inferior note are on the grand trunk road, in that and 
 the Benares district, for there is no such work of a professional 
 engineer either in the districts of Goruckpoor or Juanpoor; and in 
 those of Azimgurh and Ghazeepoor there is at present but one for 
 each, at Ladghat, over the lesser Surjoo, and at Deokullee, over 
 the Ganghee Nuddee. 
 
 Mr. R. M. Bird, we believe, was one of the first who ventured 
 on these undertakings. He not only designed and completed 
 several excellent bridges, but he brought also convict labour to aid 
 with remarkable effect. Those whom he taught also taught their 
 successors, and in no district of the division have so many bridges 
 been built solely by convicts, under the superintendence of an over- 
 seer, as in Goruckpoor. Mr. Bird's pnncipal works are at the 
 Amee, near Chityee, the Sowa Bowa, near Khanepoor, and the 
 
 3 A- 
 
714 APPENDIX. 
 
 great Mukuneya, in the town of Goruckpoor. It is rather ludi- 
 crous that these were condemned as of little use, and not likely to 
 last, in 1823, by Lieutenant Grant, but they stand still, and will 
 survive the founder and the critic. Mr. Bird also designed the 
 bridge of the Azimgurh district over the Tonse at that station, 
 though the work was completed by Messrs. Morrieson and Stain- 
 forth. 
 
 Mr. R. N. C. Hamilton was also a zealous and successful builder, 
 but he had the inestimable advantage of the counsel of James 
 Prinsep, whose own labours in the district and city of Benares can 
 never be forgotten while its minarets last, and the Kurumnassa 
 toils in vain against the bridge which he and Putneemul have 
 imposed on it. 
 
 Mr. Ommanney has been similarly successful both in the Benares 
 and Juanpoor districts. His bridge over the Nand Nuddee in the 
 former, the works at the Pachetya nulla, and renovation of the 
 Burgoozur remain, with other works in the latter district of almost 
 equal importance, proofs of the success with which great under- 
 takings can be accomplished by practical men, though unprofes- 
 sional, availing themselves of the counsel of competent advisers, 
 and such he has found, in some of his works, in Major Kittoe. 
 
 Mr. H. C. Tucker, however, stands facile princeps amongst the 
 non-professional pontificators, Azimgurh being indebted to him 
 for sixteen, and Goruckpoor for twenty-eight bridges. Profes- 
 sionally, we believe, he owes nothing, save to Addiscombe, yet 
 several of his works are on a large scale. His bridges over the 
 Amee at Nughur, the Kwana at tjmhut ghat, and over the Mun- 
 wurama, on the road from Goruckpoor to Lucknow, are first-rate 
 performances; but these bear no comparison to his greatest work, 
 commonly called the Cowree Rum Bund, which crosses the valley 
 of the Amee, a distance of two miles and a half, at an average 
 height of eighteen, and with a base of eighty feet. In this line 
 alone there are six bridges of three, five, eleven, and one of fifteen 
 arches. Each arch of this bridge is twenty-four feet span, thus 
 giving a water-way of 1 20 yards ; and the whole work is probably 
 the most extensive in India undertaken and completed without 
 professional assistance. 
 
 The evidence that not only bridges can be built, but mountain 
 passes constructed without such assistance, also exists. Those who 
 desire to satisfy themselves on this point should ascend Mr. 
 Money's pass at Burkutcha, near Mirzapoor, and descend by Mr. 
 Roberts' pass of Kawai, in the Kymore, into the valley of the 
 Soane. They will observe that both these works indicate great 
 engineering difficulties, overcome by judgment and perseverance 
 without professional aid, for we believe the nearest approach to it 
 in both cases consists in the native overseer having learned his 
 work under Major Druramond. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 715 
 
 Schedule. — Professional. 
 
 District. 
 
 Name. 
 
 Number. 
 
 Value. 
 
 Value. 
 
 Benares 
 
 Prinsep 
 
 4 
 
 35 
 
 6 
 2 
 
 8 
 28 
 1 
 4 
 1 
 2 
 2 
 16 
 3 
 4 
 10 
 3 
 5 
 6 
 2 
 4 
 
 6 
 
 25 
 
 2 
 
 4 
 3 
 4 
 
 Rupees. 
 1,85,800 
 1,50,000 
 
 25,000 
 6,000 
 6,800 
 
 37,000 
 
 55,075 
 8,000 
 
 10,000 
 
 22,300 
 3,900 
 
 12,560 
 
 1,61,200 
 
 1,200 
 
 3,245 
 
 18,200 
 9,298 
 1,850 
 
 15,209 
 6,500 
 5,250 
 
 17,353 
 2,500 
 3,350 
 4,200 
 4,000 
 5,100 
 
 12,000 
 
 46,900 
 
 37,400 
 1,983 
 6,500 
 5,722 
 7,433 
 1,22,351 
 
 Rupees. 
 
 
 Garstin 
 
 
 Mirzapoor 
 
 Dnimmond 
 
 
 
 Nicholson 
 
 
 
 Thomson 
 
 
 
 Kittoe 
 
 
 G. T. Road 
 
 Azimgurh 
 
 Major Bullock and others 
 
 Gilmore 
 
 
 Ghazeepoor 
 
 Thomson 
 
 
 Goruckpoor 
 
 Non-Peofessional. 
 Bird 
 
 
 
 Currie 
 
 
 
 Heade 
 
 
 
 Tucker 
 
 
 
 Armstrong 
 
 2,01,160 
 
 Azimgurh 
 
 Robertson 
 
 »> 
 
 Morrieson and Stainforth 
 
 Neave 
 
 
 " 
 
 Muir 
 
 
 
 Tucker 
 
 
 
 Others 
 
 54,302 
 
 Juanpoor 
 
 TuUoh 
 
 Ommanney 
 
 22,603 
 
 Mirzapoor 
 
 Colebrooke 
 
 
 Paton 
 
 
 
 Tayler 
 
 
 " 
 
 Stewart 
 
 
 
 Money 
 
 
 
 Roberts 
 
 
 
 Others and Natives 
 
 78,050 
 
 Benares 
 
 Hamilton 
 
 
 Macleod 
 
 
 ' 
 
 Ommanney 
 
 45,883 
 
 Ghazeepoor 
 
 Wilmot 
 
 Ross 
 
 
 
 
 1,35,506 
 
 
 Total 1 
 
 
 153 
 
 5,37,504 
 
 TAXATION IN INDIA AND IN ENGLAND. 
 
 iFrom a Letter by Colonel W. H. Sykes, published in the Morning Chronicle.] 
 
 The pressure of taxation is under 5s. per head in India, and 
 2/. Is. 9|d. in England; and this taxation in relation to wages is 
 under 7 per cent, in India, and above 8 per cent, in England. 
 But these results only throw a partial and inferential light upon 
 the real condition of the people, for 5s. may be a crushing tax in 
 India, and 21. Is. 9Jd. light in England; and it is necessary to 
 know how far the labouring classes in the respective countries can 
 command the necessaries and comforts of life. John Bull's idea 
 of necessaries and comforts is a good deal based upon the quantity 
 of beef and beer a labouring man can command, and it might 
 shock his beau-ideal of comfort to put the wat^r-drinking, cereal- 
 
716 APPENDIX. 
 
 consuming, and scantily clothed Indian into the same category of 
 ♦comfort with himself. Nevertheless, as the climate neither invites 
 the consumption of stimulating food, nor drink, nor permits of 
 heavy clothing, I may venture to say that the Indian labourer, 
 with his cereal food, in many parts of the country costing even 
 less than a penny per diem (as I showed in a paper on prices, 
 published in the Journal of the Statistical Society on the 29th of 
 June, 1847), and his fractional cost for house-rent, with his 72s. 
 per annum, has his physical wants as readily available, and is 
 comparatively as contented and comfortable, as the English 
 labourer with his 26/. per annum. Poverty and wretchedness 
 exist in all countries; but this much I can say, that in similar 
 limited areas I never witnessed in India such an amount of 
 squalid misery as it has been my misfortune to witness in my per- 
 sonal inquiries, in London and elsewhere, into the condition of the 
 labouring classes. 
 
 The salt tax is a subject for invective, and a few words must be 
 said on it. The table shows that its average pressure for India is 
 5^d. per head per annum, or 164th part of an agricultural la- 
 bourer's wages; but I have proved, in the paper upon prices 
 before quoted, that two shillings' worth of salt, of even the best 
 kind, which the people do not consume, would last a labourer 
 13 J months, and cost about the fourth of a farthing per diem; 
 and where it was cheap, as at Kheir, in the Deccan, it would last 
 35 months, and cost 0.025 of a penny per diem ; the outcry about 
 the cruelty of the salt tax, therefore, is simply ridiculous. The 
 earth which is said to be clawed up, is commonly carbonate of 
 soda, used by washermen instead of soap. 
 
 Finally, it would be irrational to infer that industry has 
 diminished, cultivation has been curtailed, and the condition of 
 the people deteriorated since the last India Act, in the face of the 
 gratifying fact that the exports from India have increased from 
 8,188,161/. in 1834—35 to 18,283,543/. in 1849—50, and the 
 means of the people to purchase by imports have risen from 
 6,154,129/. in 1834—35 to 13,696,696/. in 1849—50. To this 
 also must be added the extraordinary fact that India has been ab- 
 sorbing annually since 1800 about 1| millions sterling of bullion, 
 which has never gone out of the country again ; and in the 
 sixteen years from 1834 — 35 to 1849 — 50, both inclusive, the 
 importation of bullion amounted to 44,300,553/., and the ex- 
 portation to 11,043,066/.; leaving a balance of 33,257,487/. in 
 the country — thus in modern times confirming the testimony of 
 Arrian, that India was the quicksand of the precious metals. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 C. WUITIKG, BEAUFOBT HOUSE, BTUAMD. 
 
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