IMPROVEMENT OF INDIA.
'REPORT OF THE COMMONS' COMMITTEE ON THE GROWTH OF COTTON IN INDIA—SESSION 1848.
THE public has had to wait for the appearance of this report; but it must be acknowledged that it is worth waiting for. Why it should not in the regular course of business have been laid, as directed, on the table of the House while Parliament was sitting, does not appear ; seeing that the sittings of the Committee closed on the 28th June, and the report was adopted on the 15th July. When complaints reach us from the far East, we ought never to forget the peculiar claims which our fellow subjects in Asia have upon our consideration. We appear among them as a conquering race ; though not unwilling to confer on them a mea- sure of prosperity if it be clearly proved that our own advantage is fully considered where they gain. Unhappily, where our profit and the native's weal appear to clash, the evidence in this report abun- dantly shows which party is doomed to be the victim of such shortsighted political views. But we trust :that this very report will in India prove that the bulk of the British nation has been kept in ignorance of the real state of things in India, and that
the disposition to do the Natives justice will manifest itself In in- creasing strength, in proportion as the means of judging accu- rately of the condition of that magnificent possession ars afforded, and circulated for inquiry and discussion.
The matter of the report may be conveniently summed up under two heads,—as comprising the points on which there is no longer any disagreement of opinion, and-such as are still matter of fierce contention. Among the former, we are glad to note such import- ant items as the disposition of the Natives in general to be in- dustrious, sober, well-conducted citizens, where the laws and their administrators treat them with any consideration—short, indeed, of flaying and starving. That their agriculture has been in many parts forced out of its natural course—that improvement has been as impracticable as any accumulation of capital—is declared on the authority of the Company's own officers to be mainly owing to the pressure of the assessed tax on land in the greater part of the peninsula. We have the same authority to show, that where, from accident or design, the assessment has been moderate and the rate permanent, and where navigable rivers have allowed any- thing like trade, there the mode of cultivation is very superior ; stock and improvements abound; surplus produce. is raised for exportation; and the revenue flourishes, while the country thrives. On another essential point there is equal unanimity,—that no country in the world, pretending to enjoy a civilized government, is in such a wretched condition with regard to its internal com- munications.. It was stated, . that until recently the only road, if it deserves the name—that running from Calcutta to Benares- was without bridges dyer the numerous rivers and rivulets which intersect it; that the only road practicable for a carriage was in a Native tributary state, (1,632) ; in short, that goods are trans- ported on sumpter-bullocks, and men must travel on. the shoulders of their fellow men. An instance which would be amusing if it tlid not -reveal springs of military 'and political weakness that are ,anything rather than agreeable, is related of the inconvenience--of travelling dank, at as late a date as Lord Hardinge's campaign. One hundred officers, it seems, were despatched from Calcutta; but as there was-no way to get up the country except by bearers, only thirty reached their corps before the end of the canapajgn, and to convey those thirty 'required the labour of 7,200 men. It has been stated by a recent writer that 'British 'India is the only country in the world in which it is the custom to travel on men's shoulders. Since.. the Dutch resumed posses- sion of Java, that island has been covered with splendid roads, and its Governor never travels otherwise than in his carriage and four. The East India Company was shown by a paper handed in, to have expended on roads and public works, between 1831 and 1846, the sum of 1,446,4001., out of a revenlie, drawn within the same period, of 170,000,0001., and loans to the amount Of 16,000,000/. The effect of this want of roads on the exportable produce of the country may readily be imagined ; and all the natural conse- quences of transporting cotton on bullocks' backs 'three or four hundred miles-are described with sufficient unction by many-wit- nesses. The lamentable result is, that owing to this difficulty of communication, to the (recently-abolished) transit and export duties, and to the taxes levied on agricultural implements super- added to the land-tax,* it is convincingly shown, that cotton, which would have immensely increased our commercial navy, our manufacturing activity, and the comforts of the Indians, has either net been cultivated or could not be rought down to the coast. 'Since no difference of opinion prevbiled amongst --the numerous witnesses on the score of the existence of these evils, or the responsibility entailed on the Government by their recognition, and on the great national loss incurred through such perverse mismanagement, a strong case is un- cloubtedly made out for the speedy interference of the Mother- country. The disputed points discussed lend a peculiar tone of vivacity to the evidence, which is not often met with in blue books. The warmth of the interest which some of the questioners take in their subject is not disguised ; while the manner in which the efforts of the more zealous of the Company's servants, to gloss over gross defects and to palliate damaging truths, are foiled by the plain soldierlike answers of General Briggs, by the local know. ledge of Mr. Savile Marriott, the mercantile experience of Mr. Robert Crawfurd, and the polished but cutting repartees of Mr. F. C. Brown, is moat edifying. The report occasionally becomes quite dramatic ; and we half forget the dry ground of contention between Great Britain and the East India Company, in the lively dialectics of the two champions of those conflicting interests, Mr. F. C. Brown and Sir J. W. Hogg. During the whole inquiry, the land assessment, the oppres- sive nature of which is on all hands admitted, is assumed by the Company's servants to be rent, rightfully taken by the Com-• pany as proprietor of the soil. On the other hand, this drain on the agriculturist is denied to possess any of the characteristics of rent, inasmuch as it is not matter of bargain in the open market, but is arbitrarily imposed by an armed irresponsible power. Not to submit, deprives the dense population of those realms of the means of existence. They must cultivate the soil, and afterwards they strive to fight or petition the collectors out of as much of the demand as can be accomplished. It is true that the in- structions of the collectors enjoin it as a duty, to ascertain the • * The churka, or instrument used for the purpose of cleaning cotton, paid un til lately an annual tax of 1 rupee, or 2 shillings—i. e. nearly the intrinsic value of the tool. amount of the surplus which remains after the ryot's subsistence is covered, and never to go beyond that limit. In the parts where the ryot pays direct to the Government, the plan followed seems to be, to assess a sum more than equivalent to the whole surplus, and then on annual inspection to remit as little as can be helped. Where the share of produce has been converted into a money- rent, it is declared frequently to exceed the gross produce of the land, and must of course therefore be paid out of other earnings by the ryot.
In Bengal, where the permanent settlement has been adopted and a fixed acreable tax is levied, such lands as are well situated for trade acquired a kind of value which seems unknown in other parts. Large tracts were, however, in the first instance alienated from their original proprietors by sales under distraint, and others are left untitled. It is evident that the Honourable Chairman's mind was made up to hear an avowal of any conceivable excess, when he started on Sir J. W. Hogg's asking Mr. Ross D. Mangles, (3,330) " What proportion of the rent does the Government take in the pro- vinces nor permanently settled r —Ans. "They take from 65 to 75 per cent of the rent."
(3,332) Chairman. " OF what ?"—Ans. "Of the rental."
Since the Government agent is sole judge of what is rental and what not, it cannot create surprise that something more than the lion's share should occasionally stick to the prey, to the ruin of the cultivator and the disgrace as as well as loss of a Government whose policy is so shortsighted.
It cannot fail to be the conviction left on the minds of every one conversant with India, on reading the evidence appended to this report, that the examination of the witnesses was not con- ducted in a spirit or manner likely to expose satisfactorily the causes of the evils complained of. Reports on the state of the provinces had been made to the Government of Calcutta ; and the portion of the reports which had transpired through the In- dian press excited intense interest with the thinking public. One of those reports—that of Messrs. Allen and Muir on the cotton- growing province of Bundelcund—was mentioned by some of the witnesses, who cited some of the allegations which the report is said to contain. A portion of the evidence bears an unmistake- able reference to those allegations, which seem to be thus re- butted indirectly. But this report, which has never been officially published, has not been inserted in the Appendix, as might have reasonably been expected ; nor were official persons then in Eng- land, who were alone capable of refuting or confirming its state- ments directly, summoned for examination by the Company's advocates. It will suffice to name one—Mr. Walter Campbell, who was collector of the province in question, having succeeded BirL,Valpy. Mr. Bird, who is mentioned eulogistically, was also inland ; and the testimony of those gentlemen would as- suredliy,have had greater weight than that of Mr. Mangles, who could only speak of Bundelcund from a superficial acquaintance with it. On a point involving so many interests, that of the Na- tive producer (2,895), of the merchants of India (1,007), and of Great Britain (6,047), of the manufacturer (2,930), and finally of the consuming population here (2,291) and in India (2,350), the public has a right to demand the most searching inquiry and exhaustive evidence—such, we must repeat, as this blue book does not afford. We further miss all trace of a highly important in- quiry into the Post-office, and inland and transit duties, in- stituted at Calcutta in 1836.
The Committee have adopted a report which admits a lament- ably excessive land-tax, and ascribes to its operation a great por- tion of the distress now prevalent in India. While making this admission, the principle of levying a land-tax is still defended; and the same body which has on this showing for years neg- lected the duty of inquiry, or abused the power intrusted to its hand, to the manifest prejudice of its Native subjects and the detriment of the Mother-country, is recognized as the sole arbiter of the destinies of so large a portion of the inhabited globe as India forms, and as privileged to decree what share the Mother- country shall reap from the productive powers of the soil of that magnificent dependency. We much mistake the tone of British feeling, as well as of the interest with which our manufacturers have of late regarded the question, if the coming session be suf- fered to pass without recording a protest against this conclusion, in the shape of a renewed inquiry. We think they will insist on the ryot's being allowed to become at once a useful producer of cottonitnd a regular consumer of what we make out of it.
The problem of growing cotton in India with success involves the soliition of another highly important problem—the relative value of free and slave labour. Under its present fearful disad- vantages, India to some extent competes with the United States. Why should it be prevented from putting out its powers to their full extent ; and what especially prevents those powers from being exerted! An attempt has been made to show that cotton expor- tations diminished in India in proportion to the fall in the value of cotton in'Europe. But this argument seems more than any other to throw the blame of impeding on the land-tax. If cotton became cheap, it would be natural to expect that a larger surface brought under cultivation would keep up the gains of the grower. Such an extension of culture, however, is stopped by the land- tax,—a tax that is levied at the same rate on lands yielding the same crop, and so takes away, in a country not one half of which is tilled, the inducement to labour with which Heaven has pro- vided its inhabitants. On this subject, more special information may be derived from the report of the Bombay Committee of in- quiry, laid on the table of the House of Commons in 1846, than from the report now before us, interesting as much of the con-
tents of this latter, with all its blanks and omissions, unquestion- ably proves.
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