by Edmund Burke
In the progress of these ruinous measures through all their details, innumerable grievances were suffered by the native inhabitants, which were represented in the strongest, that is, their true colors, in England. Whilst the far greater part of the British in India were in eager pursuit of the forced and exorbitant gains of a trade carried on by power, contests naturally arose among the competitors: those who were overpowered by their rivals became loud in their complaints to the Court of Directors, and were very capable, from experience, of pointing out every mode of abuse.
The Court of Directors, on their part, began, though very slowly, to perceive that the country which was ravaged by this sort of commerce was their own. These complaints obliged the Directors to a strict examination into the real sources of the mismanagement of their concerns in India, and to lay the foundations of a system of restraint on the exorbitancies of their servants. Accordingly, so early as the year 1765, they confine them to a trade only in articles of export and import, and strictly prohibit them from all dealing in objects of internal consumption. About the same time the Presidency of Calcutta found it necessary to put a restraint upon themselves, or at least to make show of a disposition (with which the Directors appear much satisfied) to keep their own enormous power within bounds.
But whatever might have been the intentions either of the Directors or the Presidency, both found themselves unequal to the execution of a plan which went to defeat the projects of almost all the English in India, — possibly comprehending some who were makers of the regulations. For, as the complaint of the country or as their own interest predominated with the Presidency, they were always shifting from one course to the other; so that it became as impossible for the natives to know upon what principle to ground any commercial speculation, from the uncertainty of the law under which they acted, as it was when they were oppressed by power without any color of law at all: for the Directors, in a few months after they had given these tokens of approbation to the above regulations in favor of the country trade, tell the Presidency, “It is with concern we see in every page of your Consultations restrictions, limitations, prohibitions, affecting various articles of trade.” On their side, the Presidency freely confess that these monopolies of inland trade “were the foundation of all the bloodsheds, massacres, and confusions which have happened of late in Bengal.”
Pressed in this urgent manner, the Directors came more specifically to the grievance, and at once annul all the passports with which their servants traded without duties, holding out means of compensation, of which it does not appear that any advantage was taken. In order that the duties which existed should no longer continue to burden the trade either of the servants or natives, they ordered that a number of oppressive toll-bars should be taken away, and the whole number reduced to nine of the most considerable.
When Lord Clive was sent to Bengal to effect a reformation of the many abuses which prevailed there, he considered monopoly to be so inveterate and deeply rooted, and the just rewards of the Company’s servants to be so complicated with that injustice to the country, that the latter could not easily be removed without taking away the former. He adopted, therefore, a plan for dealing in certain articles, which, as he conceived, rather ought to be called “a regulated and restricted trade” than a formal monopoly. By this plan he intended that the profits should be distributed in an orderly and proportioned manner for the reward of services, and not seized by each individual according to the measure of his boldness, dexterity, or influence.
But this scheme of monopoly did not subsist long, at least in that mode and for those purposes. Three of the grand monopolies, those of opium, salt, and saltpetre, were successively by the Company taken into their own hands. The produce of the sale of the two former articles was applied to the purchase of goods for their investment; the latter was exported in kind for their sales in Europe. The senior servants had a certain share of emolument allotted to them from a commission on the revenues. The junior servants were rigorously confined to salaries, on which they were unable to subsist according to their rank. They were strictly ordered to abstain from all dealing in objects of internal commerce. Those of export and import were left open to young men without mercantile experience, and wholly unprovided with mercantile capitals, but abundantly furnished with large trusts of the public money, and with all the powers of an absolute government. In this situation, a religious abstinence from all illicit game was prescribed to men at nine thousand miles’ distance from the seat of the supreme authority.
Your Committee is far from meaning to justify, or even to excuse, the oppressions and cruelties used by many in supplying the deficiencies of their regular allowances by all manner of extortion; but many smaller irregularities may admit some alleviation from thence. Nor does your Committee mean to express any desire of reverting to the mode (contrived in India, but condemned by the Directors) of rewarding the servants of an higher class by a regulated monopoly. Their object is to point out the deficiencies in the system, by which restrictions were laid that could have little or no effect whilst want and power were suffered to be united.
But the proceedings of the Directors at that time, though not altogether judicious, were in many respects honorable to them, and favorable, in the intention at least, to the country they governed. For, finding their trading capital employed against themselves and against the natives, and struggling in vain against abuses which were inseparably connected with the system of their own preference in trade, in the year 1773 they came to the manly resolution of setting an example to their servants, and gave up all use of power and influence in the two grand articles of their investment, silk and piece-goods. They directed that the articles should be bought at an equal and public market from the native merchants; and this order they directed to be published in all the principal marts of Bengal.
Your Committee are clearly of opinion that no better method of purchase could be adopted. But it soon appeared that in deep-rooted and inveterate abuses the wisest principles of reform may be made to operate so destructively as wholly to discredit the design, and to dishearten all persons from the prosecution of it. The Presidency, who seemed to yield with the utmost reluctance to the execution of these orders, soon made the Directors feel their evil influence upon their own investment; for they found the silk and cotton cloths rose twenty-five per cent above their former price, and a further rise of forty per cent was announced to them.
SILK.
What happened with regard to raw silk is still more remarkable, and tends still more clearly to illustrate the effects of commercial servitude during its unchecked existence, and the consequences which may be made to arise from its sudden reformation. On laying open the trade, the article of raw silk was instantly enhanced to the Company full eighty per cent. The contract made for that commodity, wound off in the Bengal method, which used to sell for less than six rupees, or thirteen shillings, for two pounds’ weight, arose to nine rupees, or near twenty shillings, and the filature silk was very soon after contracted for at fourteen.
The Presidency accounted for this rise by observing that the price had before been arbitrary, and that the persons who purveyed for the Company paid no more than “what was judged sufficient for the maintenance of the first providers.” This fact explains more fully than the most labored description can do the dreadful effects of the monopoly on the cultivators. They had the sufficiency of their maintenance measured out by the judgment of those who were to profit by their labor; and this measure was not a great deal more, by their own account, than about two thirds of the value of that labor. In all probability it was much less, as these dealings rarely passed through intermediate hands without leaving a considerable profit. These oppressions, it will be observed, were not confined to the Company’s share, which, however, covered a great part of the trade; but as this was an article permitted to the servants, the same power of arbitrary valuation must have been extended over the whole, as the market must be equalized, if any authority at all is ext
ended over it by those who have an interest in the restraint. The price was not only raised, but in the manufactures the quality was debased nearly in an equal proportion. The Directors conceived, with great reason, that this rise of price and debasement of quality arose, not from the effect of a free market, but from the servants having taken that opportunity of throwing upon the market of their masters the refuse goods of their own private trade at such exorbitant prices as by mutual connivance they were pleased to settle. The mischief was greatly aggravated by its happening at a time when the Company were obliged to pay for their goods with bonds bearing an high interest.
The perplexed system of the Company’s concerns, composed of so many opposite movements and contradictory principles, appears nowhere in a more clear light. If trade continued under restraint, their territorial revenues must suffer by checking the general prosperity of the country: if they set it free, means were taken to raise the price and debase the quality of the goods; and this again fell upon the revenues, out of which the payment for the goods was to arise. The observations of the Company on that occasion are just and sagacious; and they will not permit the least doubt concerning the policy of these unnatural trades. “The amount of our Bengal cargoes, from 1769 to 1773, is 2,901,194l. sterling; and if the average increase of price be estimated at twenty-five per cent only, the amount of such increase is 725,298l. sterling. The above circumstances are exceedingly alarming to us; but what must be our concern, to find by the advices of our President and Council of 1773, that a further advance of forty per cent on Bengal goods was expected, and allowed to be the consequence of advertisements then published, authorizing a free trade in the service? We find the Duanné revenues are in general farmed for five years, and the aggregate increase estimated at only 183,170l. sterling (on a supposition that such increase will be realized); yet if the annual investment be sixty lacs, and the advance of price thirty per cent only, such advance will exceed the increase of the revenue by no less than 829,330l. sterling.”
The indignation which the Directors felt at being reduced to this distressing situation was expressed to their servants in very strong terms. They attributed the whole to their practices, and say, “We are far from being convinced that the competition which tends to raise the price of goods in Bengal is wholly between public European companies, or between merchants in general who export to foreign markets: we are rather of opinion that the sources of this grand evil have been the extraordinary privileges granted to individuals in our service or under our license to trade without restriction throughout the provinces of Bengal, and the encouragement they have had to extend their trade to the uttermost, even in such goods as were proper for our investment, by observing the success of those persons who have from time to time found means to dispose of their merchandise to our Governor and Council, though of so bad a quality as to be sold here with great difficulty, after having been frequently refused, and put up at the next sale without price, to the very great discredit and disadvantage of the Company.” In all probability the Directors were not mistaken; for, upon an inquiry instituted soon after, it was found that Cantû Babû, the banian or native steward and manager to Mr. Hastings, (late President,) held two of these contracts in his own name and that of his son for considerably more than 150,000l. This discovery brought on a prohibition from the Court of Directors of that suspicious and dangerous dealing in the stewards of persons in high office. The same man held likewise farms to the amount of 140,000l. a year of the landed revenue, with the same suspicious appearance, contrary to the regulations made under Mr. Hastings’s own administration.
In the mortifying dilemma to which the Directors found themselves reduced, whereby the ruin of the revenues either by the freedom or the restraint of trade was evident, they considered the first as most rapid and urgent, and therefore once more revert to the system of their ancient preëmption, and destroy that freedom which they had so lately and with so much solemnity proclaimed, and that before it could be abused or even enjoyed. They declare, that, “unwilling as we are to return to the former coercive system of providing an investment, or to abridge that freedom of commerce which has been so lately established in Bengal, yet at the same time finding it our indispensable duty to strike at the root of an evil which has been so severely felt by the Company, and which can no longer be supported, we hereby direct that all persons whatever in the Company’s service, or under our protection, be absolutely prohibited, by public advertisement, from trading in any of those articles which compose our investment, directly or indirectly, except on account of and for the East India Company, until their investment is completed.”
As soon as this order was received in Bengal, it was construed, as indeed the words seemed directly to warrant, to exclude all natives as well as servants from the trade, until the Company was supplied. The Company’s preëmption was now authoritatively reëstablished, and some feeble and ostensible regulations were made to relieve the weavers who might suffer by it. The Directors imagined that the reëstablishment of their coercive system would remove the evil which fraud and artifice had grafted upon one more rational and liberal. But they were mistaken; for it only varied, if it did so much as vary, the abuse. The servants might as essentially injure their interest by a direct exercise of their power as by pretexts drawn from the freedom of the natives, — but with this fatal difference, that the frauds upon the Company must be of shorter duration under a scheme of freedom. That state admitted, and indeed led to, means of discovery and correction; whereas the system of coercion was likely to be permanent. It carried force further than served the purposes of those who authorized it: it tended to cover all frauds with obscurity, and to bury all complaint in despair. The next year, therefore, that is, in the year 1776, the Company, who complained that their orders had been extended beyond their intentions, made a third revolution in the trade of Bengal. It was set free again, — so far, at least, as regarded the native merchants, — but in so imperfect a manner as evidently to leave the roots of old abuses in the ground. The Supreme Court of Judicature about this time (1776) also fulminated a charge against monopolies, without any exception of those authorized by the Company: but it does not appear that anything very material was done in consequence of it.
The trade became nominally free; but the course of business established in consequence of coercive monopoly was not easily altered. In order to render more distinct the principles which led to the establishment of a course and habit of business so very difficult to change as long as those principles exist, your Committee think it will not be useless here to enter into the history of the regulations made in the first and favorite matter of the Company’s investment, the trade in raw silk, from the commencement of these regulations to the Company’s perhaps finally abandoning all share in the trade which was their object.
RAW SILK
The trade in raw silk was at all times more popular in England than really advantageous to the Company. In addition to the old jealousy which prevailed between the Company and the manufactory interest of England, they came to labor under no small odium on account of the distresses of India. The public in England perceived, and felt with a proper sympathy, the sufferings of the Eastern provinces in all cases in which they might be attributed to the abuses of power exercised under the Company’s authority. But they were not equally sensible to the evils which arose from a system of sacrificing the being of that country to the advantage of this. They entered very readily into the former, but with regard to the latter were slow and incredulous. It is not, therefore, extraordinary that the Company should endeavor to ingratiate themselves with the public by falling in with its prejudices. Thus they were led to increase the grievance in order to allay the clamor. They continued still, upon a larger scale, and still more systematically, that plan of conduct which was the principal, though not the most blamed, cause of the decay and depopulation of the country committed to their care.
With that view, and to furnish a cheap supply of materials to the manufact
ures of England, they formed a scheme which tended to destroy, or at least essentially to impair, the whole manufacturing interest of Bengal. A policy of that sort could not fail of being highly popular, when the Company submitted itself as an instrument for the improvement of British manufactures, instead of being their most dangerous rival, as heretofore they had been always represented.
They accordingly notified to their Presidency in Bengal, in their letter of the 17th of March, 1769, that “there was no branch of their trade they more ardently wish to extend than that of raw silk.” They disclaim, however, all desire of employing compulsory measures for that purpose, but recommended every mode of encouragement, and particularly by augmented wages, “in order to induce manufacturers of wrought silk to quit that branch and take to the winding of raw silk.”
Having thus found means to draw hands from the manufacture, and confiding in the strength of a capital drawn from the public revenues, they pursue their ideas from the purchase of their manufacture to the purchase of the material in its crudest state. “We recommend you to give an increased price, if necessary, so as to take that trade out of the hands of other merchants and rival nations.” A double bounty was thus given against the manufactures, both in the labor and in the materials.
It is very remarkable in what manner their vehement pursuit of this object led the Directors to a speedy oblivion of those equitable correctives before interposed by them, in order to prevent the mischiefs which were apparent in the scheme, if left to itself. They could venture so little to trust to the bounties given from the revenues a trade which had a tendency to dry up their source, that, by the time they had proceeded to the thirty-third paragraph of their letter, they revert to those very compulsory means which they had disclaimed but three paragraphs before. To prevent silk-winders from working in their private houses, where they might work for private traders, and to confine them to the Company’s factories, where they could only be employed for the Company’s benefit, they desire that the newly acquired power of government should be effectually employed. “Should,” say they, “this practice, through inattention, have been suffered to take place again, it will be proper to put a stop to it, which may now be more effectually done by an absolute prohibition, under severe penalties, by the authority of government.”