To attempt describing the particular methods which this government hath practised to promote its own interest at the expence of the people, in its double capacity, of an absolute sovereign and a despotic merchant, would be a tedious, invidious, and even an unprofitable undertaking; for it is almost impossible to properly delineate the conduct of a tyranny so various and irregular in its operations; and, to those who are unacquainted with the modes, customs, and interests of the country in question, the recital of a few particular instances would only serve to mislead their judgment, and darken or diminish the truth. By attending to the general description given of the nature views and interests of this government, we shall form a more complete and just notion of its conduct and deportment, than can be acquired from any disjointed account of particulars. Let us suppose a few foreigners sent into a rich commercial country, with absolute and unlimited power over the lives and property of the inhabitants; actuated by no other principle than that of acquiring riches, and stimulated thereto not only by avarice but ambition, or the desire of excelling; unrestrained by any species of present awe or future apprehension; but on the contrary, encouraged by precedent to expect in their own country, titles, dignity, respect, and consequence, each in proportion to the sum he imports; and whatever methods we can suppose would be practised by such foreigners, to accomplish their purpose, within a short limited term, we may suppose to have been actually employed by this Bengal government. The enormous amount of numerous fortunes, imported by the persons employed in this government, together with the rapidity of acquisition, are circumstances seen and known in this country; and these will thoroughly warrant our supposing, that the acquirers have availed themselves to the utmost of their powers, as well as their opportunities. However, we shall err greatly in our estimate of the damage caused to those countries, by their government’s prosecuting its own distinct interest, if we shall confine the reckoning to only the loss of so much specie, as hath been extorted and exported by these foreigners: for this, though in itself a ruinous grievance, is merely trivial, when compared with the havoc and waste committed on the manufacture, the commerce, agriculture, and population, by the methods employed to acquire these sums. A herd of hogs, broke into a well dressed vineyard, will gorge their voracious maws; but that which they eat and devour doth not destroy the vineyard; it is their manner of eating, their rutting up, their tearing down, and trampling under foot.
Hitherto we have regarded this government in only one point of view: we have seen it acting for itself; but we have not seen the part it acts for the people, in its capacity of a sovereign ruler, administring the government of a mighty state in all its different offices or departments; and entrusted with the care of the whole and entire interests of a numerous commercial nation. But, in the discharge of this sovereign trust, we shall find the government of Bengal a mere Vis inertiæ, void of the two efficient principles of action, ability or power of acting, and will or inclination. For how can we expect to find the ability, of governing well, in the men employed by the Company to execute the government of those countries? to attain the knowledge of any one science or mystery, demands an effort of the mind; but it is impossible for the brightest natural genius to arrive at even a moderate degree of skill in the art of governing, which, as it is the most elevated, so is it the most difficult, abstruse, various and complicated of all human sciences, without long and intense application, study, and reflection; and, we may add, a series of practice; and all these gradations to skill, in governing, are wanting to our Bengal governors. Their scholastic education extends no farther than to qualify them for merchants clerks; and, immediately on being taken from school, they are dispatched to India; where the manner of life is consonant to the climate, voluptuous to a degree of dissoluteness, vain, idle, dissipated, and an enemy to study or reflection: the juvenile part of their life being spent in this manner, they arrive at the charge of government with minds perfectly uninformed, and so very averse to application, that they commit and implicitly confide the charge of their own private concerns to servants. If such men should possess the skill or address of governing well, it must certainly be acquired instantaneously and supernaturally; infused into them by miracle, like the gift of speech into the ass of Balaam.
But the want of will or inclination is an obstacle to their governing well, still more prevalent than is the want of ability. Labour, fatigue, and difficulty are evils, to which the human mind is so naturally averse, that, unless it is urged by some strong impulse of passion, such as the fear of some superior evil, or the hope and desire of some mighty good, it will decline and evade them: what stimulum then can be sufficiently powerful to urge the habitually indolent minds of our Bengal governors to encounter the difficulties, the labour, and fatigue attending a due discharge of the duties of government; which, of all human undertakings, is the most replete with these mental evils? Yet this government, which demands a stronger stimulum than any other government that ever yet existed, is in effect urged by no one motive or consideration to discharge the duties of its office; for, as it holds no interest in the lasting welfare of the people governed, neither its hopes nor its fears are at all interested in the good or evil consequences that may be caused by its own vigilance or neglect: being altogether superior to the resentment of the subject, and independent of the sovereign’s authority, it is not impelled, by the fear of immediate danger, nor the apprehension of future punishment: and as to the prospect of glory, applause, or respect, which push the generous and ambitious mind to action, our governors aim to attain them, not by governing well, but by acquiring and bringing home a mighty fortune to their own country.
Men thus actuated, or rather unactuated, must, in the discharge of their sovereign office, be perfectly torpid and listless; the machine of political government stops in their hands, and stands stock still: their minds being incapable of application, they withdraw themselves as much as possible from attention, and leave the trouble of governing to others, still less qualified than themselves; these inferior agents being chosen, not for their abilities or virtue, but for their fitness to serve the private purpose of the governors, otherwise by chance; but they give themselves no trouble to inspect the conduct of these agents, who in general are unprincipled miscreants; on the contrary, they promiscuously approve and support every action; so that, wherever the power of this government acts, it is only to oppress; and all beside is left to chance. However, the power of governing, or rather of oppressing, is not confined to the persons vested with the charge of government: the numerous servants whom this Company disperses over the face of the country, for the purpose of carrying on her trade, do each of them, in his own district, assume the authority of a despot; and communicates a like authority to all his servants and dependants, who, it must be allowed, are far more unrelenting than their masters; and thus tyranny is extended into every corner; oppression becomes general; and the oppressed are excluded from the very prospect of redress; for, on appeal to the superior, the plaintiff is ever remanded to the very oppressor, who punishes him for having dared to complain. And thus justice and protection are no where to be found; vice goes unpunished, and innocence unsupported; therefore every man becomes a villain in his own defence; and faith, confidence, truth, and honesty are banished the land. In short, it may with strict propriety be said by these wretched people, Terras astræa reliquit; and tyranny and anarchy have here set up their throne.
And to this inaction or non-exertion of the powers of government we are to impute the ruin of those countries, rather than to the avarice or rapine of the persons deputed by the Company to execute that government. For the power of governing being vested in only a few, the extortion of these few might have been long supported by a rich commercial country, provided they had exerted themselves to restrain and prevent all others from plundering and oppressing. The avarice, profusion and bloody tyranny of even Nero, and Domitian, was felt by only a few of their subjects at Rome; every where else the empire flourished; because these imperial monopolizers of vice would suffer none in power to be wicked but themselves; they narrowly inspected the conduct of their governors and officers, and severely punished their injustice or oppression. But where the government doth not only plunder itself, but suffers every one under it to plunder, that country must in time be completely ruined.
Now Bengal hath been subjected to a government of this nature for these fifteen years past; for though we commonly date the commencement of the Company’s sovereignty from the assumption of the Dewanny, (as it is termed,) yet hath this Company (at least her deputies) possessed a really absolute authority in those countries ever since the battle of Plassey in 1757. That action rendered them masters of Bengal; and it was equally within their power to assume the sovereign government at that time, as afterwards in 1765; their own will was the only obstacle: but notwithstanding they bestowed it on a native Nabob, yet did they retain an absolute superiority over him, and he governed in a state of perfect subordination to their authority; for he well knew and experienced, that the duration of his office, and even of his existence, depended upon their will; consequently this dependent native government could but little restrain the conduct of the Company’s deputies, or protect the subject from their rapacity; and when they, in 1765, set aside this native government, they only removed a screen which they themselves had set up, and till then preserved for their own purpose.
How far these countries may have advanced towards the period of final ruin, under the fifteen or sixteen years domination of such a government, we shall not pretend to determine, because the term ruin is variously understood. This much is certain, that the unbounded remittance of specie made, for some years, by the English Company, for sundry purposes as sovereign; and for a much greater number of years, and in much larger sums by the other European Companies, who received it from the servants of the English Company for bills on Europe, at a very low exchange, and employed it for every purpose in the other parts of India and China, hath compleatly drained Bengal of its wealth, and reduced it to a state of the most abject poverty. And the grievous oppression and rapine exercised by the Company’s servants, and their numerous dependants; together with the most cruel monopolies usurped by them over every species of merchandize, and even the necessaries of life, hath in a great measure suppressed commerce, and abolished trade. Whilst the insatiable avarice and unrestrained extortion of those employed in the collection of taxes and revenue having ruined the farmer, the lands lay uncultivated and waste; insomuch that, not to mention the immense decrease of revenue, that naturally most fertile of all countries, Bengal, hath suffered a more severe famine than perhaps was ever heard of; it being reckoned that a fifth part of the inhabitants have died of want, and numbers have fled from starving and oppression.
But it is not difficult to determine how near the interest of Britain in those countries hath approached to ruin: for Britain is to consider them as ruined to her purpose, so soon as they shall become incapable of supporting a commerce beneficial to her; and at same time of yielding her a consideration, in the nature of tribute, equivalent to the expence of subjects which she sends out annually to maintain her dominion there. And that they are nearly, if not totally, ruined to her, in both these respects, we begin already to feel, in spite of all the art or influence used to conceal the truth.
For, in the article of tribute, we find that, instead of receiving such a surplus of revenue as sufficed, at the commencement of the Dewanny, to not only pay for the specie part of the Company’s investment in Bengal itself, but to purchase her cargoes, and defray all her charges in the other parts of India, and in China, the government of Bengal was, two years ago, reduced to the necessity of borrowing near a million sterling on bills, which have been transmitted and accepted by the Company: in like manner hath this government been obliged to borrow last year; though the bills have been prevented, by an arbitrary stroke of deceit, from appearing against them in Europe. These borrowed sums have all been expended in Bengal itself: and if we allow that the whole hath been employed to pay for the Company’s investment, (though by the by the specie part of the Company’s investment cannot, at least it ought not, if she exports the proper quantity of European commodities, exceed half a million,) it must even then be admitted, that the revenue of Bengal hath barely sufficed to defray the ordinary expence of government. And, if so, from whence is the tribute of Bengal, (whether we term it dedomagement, drawback, or encreased dividend) to arise? not from the mighty cargoes imported; for they are purchased, not with surplus revenue, but with borrowed money, which must be repaid either in India or in Europe: and as to the profits on these cargoes, they will be more than eat up by the charges of freight, and a long reckoning of India interest at eight per cent. I am sensible, that this account is strangely perplexed and embarrassed by intricate calculations of stock in hand, annual importations, and future sales, &c. but when divested of all these studied intricacies it will stand simply thus—As is the clear surplus of revenue received in Bengal, so will be the amount of tribute received in Britain; the former will ever exactly balance the latter. But this surplus we find to have been, for the two past years, equal to nothing; and the amount of tribute received in Britain must amount to exactly as much; consequently the dedomagement, drawback, and increased dividend for the two last years is still in Nubibus; where the national part, consisting of the two first articles, is like to remain; unless it shall be paid out of the Company’s capital stock, as the encreased dividend hath been. But this revenue, which for the two years past hath barely sufficed to defray the expence of government, hath not been kept up even to that extent without the aid of violence: but violence itself must yield to necessity, and cannot extort that which doth not exist; moreover the Company had, in these two years, decreased her military expence, by disbanding some thousand sipahis, and otherwise diminishing the charge of her remaining force; and the attack made by Shaw Allum in conjunction with the Mharrattors will, this year, compel her to re-augment her military expence in every respect; whilst the predatory incursions of these Mharrhattors will prevent the collection of revenue; how then will she support the augmented charge of this year, with a revenue decreased by a variety of causes so much below the degree of last year? Another loan upon the strength of the capital is the only resource; but possibly borrowing may, for several reasons, have become impracticable by this time; and it is certain that troops will not, nay cannot, serve without pay—Here is a blessed prospect indeed.
But, leaving this to the proof of time, we perceive that, at any rate, we have lost the prospect of future tribute from Bengal, through the channel of the Company; we have not so much as the promise of dedomagement, drawback, or encreased dividend for this current year; and if we can trust to our own reason, preferably to bankrupt promises, we may give it up for good and all. Nay, there is mighty reason to apprehend, that even the private fortunes will soon cease to exist; and then Britain will cease to receive the sum of 1,400,000 l. sterling, which for a number of years past hath been annually flowing in to her from India, in consequence of dominion. And if she could barely support her burden, when aided by this influx, how will she, when deprived of it, answer the annual drain of specie made by her foreign creditors?