The East India Question. 1833.] mestic wars, it will gradually lose both the desire of possessing and the means of purchasing the manufactures of this country; and a vent for its fabrics, which might, under a sage rule, in time have equalled that of all the world besides, will be for ever lost to the British Empire. There is not the slightest ground for hope, that the magnitude and ruinous consequences of the losses which will be inflicted on our own industry and prosperity by this terrible calamity, will have the smallest effect in deterring the people from forcing on the measures which are to produce it. Democracy ever was, and ever will be, blind; it is the nature of such a power to be so; it is its blindness which ensures, after a certain portion of disaster, its fall. Look at the clamour now so generally raised in all the cities of the empire for the immediate abolition of slavery. No proposition in Euclid is more susceptible of demonstration to any thinking mind, acquainted with historical facts, than that such measures will prove utterly destructive to those flourishing settlements; that they will consign the plantations to the flames, and the planters to the tomahawk; the negroes to savage anarchy, or a “rural code" far worse than their present servitude; that they will cut off L.7,000,000 a-year of British exports, and 250,000 tons from British shipping; that they will deprive Canada of its chief commerce, and endanger the whole trade with our North American colonies, employing more than a sixth of our shipping, and the All chief nursery for our seamen. these facts are notorious; the minds of all rational and well-informed men, if not fanatics in religion or revolutionists in politics, have long been made up on the subject; but, nevertheless, a vast preponderance of the electors are clear for instant emancipation; and, right or wrong, it will soon be forced upon these unhappy colonies. This great example should always be present to the minds of those who contemplate the extinction of India as a separate power, and the subjection of its inhabitants to the direct and unmitigated dominion of the British Parlia ment. could not prevent three millions and a half in America from becoming so discontented as to sever the connexion with the mother country; which can hardly retain its rule over seven millions of Irishmen, almost within sight of the British shores; which has brought the West Indies to the verge of destruction, and spread through their impassioned people an undisguised desire to revolt, will be able to preserve its ascendency over an empire having 250,000 armed men in its bosom, twenty millions a-year at its disposal, and situated 8000 miles from the parent state? The thing is out of the question. The interests and prejudices of the twelve hundred thousand legislators who now give law to the British Empire, will soon dissolve the splendid but The Ten-pounders flimsy fabric. will make short work with India, and all its millions. Knowing nothing of that vast Continent but what is communicated by the false and exaggerated channels of the Radical press; hardly able to point out its position in the map; totally igno rant of its habits, history, arts, or inhabitants; they will, nevertheless, take upon themselves to legislate and exact pledges at once from their representatives, for that vast Continent, as they would do for their own parish or borough concerns. Experience warrants the assertion, that these pledges will for the most part be dictated by selfish feeling, the passion for change, or the fervour of fanaticism. To secure a free entrance into Hindostan for every species of British manufacture, and exclude all those from which a competition is to be dreaded; to extend to them British institutions of every kind, how unsuitable soever to their habits, character, or prejudices; to throw upon them as large a share as possible of British burdens, to the relief of the people in the dominant Island; to force instantly upon them the tenets of the Christian faith, and put an end at once to the idolatry which has so long disfigured the land, will be the objects of new and precipitate legislation. This is just what the democracy in all other countries, possessing colonies, in former ages of the world have done; it is just what the democracy in this age and this country are now doing. We shall lose the greatest and most splendid Is it to be supposed that a legislature which, even in its best days, Colonial Empire that ever existed, from the same cause by which all previous democratic states have lost theirs. Even if the precipitance and ignorance of the democratic rulers of the state, in their "Primary Assemblies," as the French termed them, should not prove fatal to the Government of Hindostan, it would speedily be precipitated into the abyss, from the class of officers, civil and military, who, under the immediate rule of Parliament, would be sent out to direct its councils, administer its justice, or head its battalions. Patronage must, in a representative Government, centre where political influence exists; the middling and manufacturing classes will speedily obtain from any administration having the direct Government of India, a large share of the 4000 military, and 1200 civil situations, which are now filled by the servants of the Company in our Indian dominions. These persons, how able or estimable soever many of them may be, will be incapable of ruling, or even understanding the concerns of that vast Continent, so dissimilar in every particular from our own. They will, and must be embued with British ideas, prejudices, and interests; and as such will be as unfit to govern the Hindoos, as the Brahmans would be to rule the industrious people of Great Britain, or heal the discord of the empassioned inhabitants of Ireland. Nothing has enabled the English so long to do this, but the separate Government of India, under the East India Company, and the formation of a race of officers in its service, like the Janissaries of Turkey, whose interests, feelings, and knowledge, were wound up in the country of their adoption. approaching deliberations. All the weight of Government, and of the Grant family, united, could not prevail upon the Ten-pounders of Peterhead and the adjoining boroughs to elect Mr Holt Mackenzie; and the far-famed celebrity of Sir John Malcolm and his brothers of European and Asiatic reputation, proved insufficient to induce those of his native borough in Dumfries-shire to choose him as their representative. At the very moment when a concentration of Indian talent and information was to an unprecedented degree required in the Legislature, the ablest men of India have been overlooked or rejected by the British electors; and at the renewal of the Charter of their government, and the opening of the Reformed Parliament, the hundred millions of Hindoo subjects of Great Britain are, literally speaking, unrepresented. Such is the prospect of a fair, unempassioned, and well-informed discussion of Indian affairs which the Reformed Parliament affords. It is as clear as demonstration, that unless a sovereign power, whose interests are identified with those of Hindostan, is interposed between the British electors and the government of India, it will speedily throw off the yoke from finding its interests neglected by the government at home, or become the victim of rash and ignorant legislation; and that now is the time when the discussions on the renewal of the Charter are approaching, when the question will be virtually determined, whether the East Indies are to remain part of the British Empire. The slightest observation of the political world around us must be sufficient to shew that these apprehensions are too well founded. England possesses at this time three Indian Statesmen of matchless talent, information, and celebrity; their services were more than ever required from the approaching expiry of the Charter; but not one of them is in Parliament. Mr Elphinston, a statesman of unequalled ability, has been chosen by no borough to give the weight of his counsel in the The project of Government, as developed in the Notes by Mr Grant, is obviously at variance with this fundamental position, and threatens to subject the Indian Peninsula to such a system of administration as cannot fail, in a short time, to sever it from the British dominions. The material proposals of Government are: 1. The China monopoly to cease. 2. The East India Company to retain their political functions. 3. The Company's assets, commercial and territorial, with all their possessions and rights, to be assigned to the Crown, on behalf of the territorial government of India. 4. An annuity of L.630,000 to be The East India Question. 1833.] granted to the proprietors, chargeable on the territorial revenues of India exclusively, and payable in England. 5. The new annuitants to retain the character of a Joint Stock Com East India Company. This is mat- pany. 6. Every British subject to have the right of going to the Presidencies without license; into the interior, only subject to the regulations imposed by the local government. 7. The Court, on the Board of Control's final and conclusive order, to send the despatch by the first ship that sails after such order; the Board to have a veto on the recall of Governors and Commanders of forces; the Home expedition and establishment to be under the control of the Board; and the Board to have the same power over salaries below L.200 a-year, that they now have above that sum. We do not hesitate to affirm, that under the veil of continuing the political direction and government of the East India Company, these regulations, if adopted by Parliament, will have the effect of finally destroying it; that India will substantially be subjected to the direct control of the British democracy, and conse. quently, that its early separation from the empire may be anticipated. Setting aside at present the extinction of the China monopoly, which we shall immediately shew is indispensable, in a financial point of view, to the existence of the British Government in India, it is evident that the mere operation of these changes in extinguishing the separate and independent Government of India, by the Court of Directors, must speedily prove fatal to the existence of the British ascendency in that country. Every person who has studied or thought of the British Constitution, has concurred in the opinion, that if the government of India is either directly or indirectly, mediately or immediately, vested in Government, it must prove fatal to the balance of the Constitution. No one is, or at least was, more aware of this than Mr Charles Grant, for he declared in the House of Commons, in the debate on the renewal of the Charter, in 1813," that the patronage of India would be fatal to the Constitution, if placed, mediately or immediately, in the hands of Government." + Since Mr Pitt's Bill in 1784, which established the Board of Control, the government of India has, to all practical purposes, been vested in the The Board, Court of Directors. indeed, possessed a negative on certain appointments; a right to interfere, in a limited degree, in the government, and a certain share of patronage; but the substantial powers of government remained with the This danger is increased, rather than diminished, by the late changes in the Constitution which the Reform Bill has occasioned. It is true, there is no peril now to be apprehended from the Crown to public freedom, even if the whole patronage of India were directly placed at the disposal of the Treasury; but can the same be affirmed, if it is placed at the disposal of the democracy, as it will be, if it is now vested in the Government? As the support of the House of Commons is indispensable to the existence of every Administration; as they have the exclusive control of the supplies; and as 344 seats in England alone are in the * Robert Grant, on Indian Government, p. 375. + Hansard, Parl. Deb. xxvi. 438. disposal of the electors of boroughs, it is plain that their support must be purchased by the lavish disposal of Indian patronage; in other words, the government of India will, to all practical purposes, be vested in the democratic party, who now return nine-tenths, and will always return three-fourths, of these members. The danger, therefore, to the Constitution, from the addition of Indian patronage, either directly or indirectly, to the Crown, is now incomparably greater than it was at the time of the great contest in 1784, when Mr Fox's India Bill was thrown out; because the body to be rendered paramount by such a measure, is not, as then, a Whig aristocracy, whose interests must, in the end, have become Conservative; but an urban democracy, already possessed of a vast and overwhelming influence in the Legislature, and whose passions generally lead them to desperate or dangerous measures. The little which yet remains of the balance will infallibly be subverted by such a change; but it will be subverted in a far more dangerous way than in 1784, because, what will kick the beam will not be a firm and stable aristocracy, but a fickle and intemperate populace. as a trading body, and as a territorial sovereignty, and be converted into a mere body of annuitants, like the holders of the three per cents, having a certain claim on the territorial revenues of India for their payment. This body is to have no share at all in the Home establishment, which is to be exclusively under the Board of Control; and their proceedings, in regard even to foreign expenditure, are to be subjected to control, in all salaries and gratuities, how small soever their amount. But, with this great and obvious danger staring them in the face, what does the plan of Ministers propose to do? It proposes nothing less than a total annihilation of the Company as an independent body or Government, and its reconstruction, with crippled powers, as a mere Board under the great democratic Legislature. The China monopoly is to cease; the whole property of the Company, commercial and territorial, is to be assigned to Government; and the dividend on the Company's capital of L.6,000,000 is to be obtained by L.630,000 being declared a burden on the Indian revenue. In this way the Company will at once be extinguished, both In these circumstances it is of no sort of consequence what powers in the administration of India are nominally reserved to the Court of Directors. Their importance, their weight, their consequence, will immediately cease. Government influence will instantly be exerted to procure the command of the voters who return the Directors, and the patronage of India will furnish ample means to accomplish the object. When so great a concern is at stake as the disposal of a revenue of L.22,000,000, ample means will soon be found to sway the votes into which the L.630,000 a-year is to be divided. Parliament also is to have the option of redeeming every L.5, 5s. of annuity with L.100, a faculty which at once puts it in the power of any ambitious leader of the Democracy to reduce the stock to a manageable amount, if its holders should not prove so tractable as is desirable. What at present preserves the East India Company from prostration before the power of Parliament is the astonishing extent and magnitude of their possessions and transactions which render them a fourth estate in the realm, possessed of perhaps greater wealth and consequence than any of the other three taken singly. The almost incredible amount of their transactions, as given in the table below,* shews how im *PECUNIARY CONCERNS OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY SINCE THE LAST RENEWAL OF THEIR CHARTER.* East India Company's gross receipts and disbursements since 1814, L.478,103,911 !!! Up to the latest period at which the several accounts can be made up. possible it was that a body of such magnitude could, under the former system, be seriously swayed even by the British Government. But when their enormous cash transactions of four hundred and seventy-eight millions in eighteen years are reduced to the mere receipt of L.630,000 per annum; when, instead of paying nearly four millions of duties into the Treasury yearly, at the charge of L.10,000 ayear, they merely receive their halfyearly dividend of L.315,000; when, instead of selling teas to the amount of eighty three millions in eighteen years, they sell nothing; when, instead of conducting a trade in opium of fifty millious in that time, they do not freight a single ship; it is evident that their political independence is utterly destroyed, and that they must become a mere Treasury Board for the administration of the Indian provinces of the Empire. But, in addition to this instant cessation of all its money transac tions, which of itself is amply sufficient utterly to prostrate and annihilate the independence and utility of the Court of Directors, even as a Government Board, for the management of India, the new and important restraints under which they are to be placed are of themselves sufficient to take from it even the shadow of independence. The Court are to be compelled "to send the despatch which the Board of Control have fixed on by the first ship that goes after such determination; and in the event of the Court refusing to prepare a despatch or send a despatch as altered by the Board, the Board are to have the power of sending it themselves." The Home expenditure and establishment is to be under the Board of Control; and they are to control all salaries and gratuities, even of the smallest amount in India. With such contracted powers, and such a total termination to all their vast concerns, it Opium and private trade between India and China, L. 117,606,336 137,253,467 L.280,273,725 sterling. L.12.920,937 11,417,113 L.24,338,050 L.63,745 324!* 27,109,120 56,140,981 L.83,240, 101 † L.51,000,000 sterling. L.18,000,000 sterling. If to these vast considerations be added the fact of 1,180,000 square miles of territory, and one hundred and twenty million of souls, directly or indirectly dependent on, or subject to, the sway of the East India Company, an idea may be formed of the immense interests involved in the Company's Charter. At the small annual charge of ten thousand pounds a-year! |