“Your Petitioners most humbly implore your Lordships’ consideration of these circumstances, and they feel confident that no disposition exists in England to shut the door against the industry of any part of the inhabitants of this great empire.
“They therefore pray to be admitted to the privilege of British subjects, and humbly entreat your Lordships to allow the cotton and silk fabrics of Bengal to be used in Great Britain free of duty, or at the same rate which may be charged on British fabrics consumed in Bengal[463].
“Your Lordships must be aware of the immense advantages the British manufacturers derive from their skill in constructing and using machinery, which enables them to undersell the unscientific manufacturers of Bengal in their own country: and, although your Petitioners are not sanguine in expecting to derive any great advantage from having their prayer granted, their minds would feel gratified by such a manifestation of your Lordships’ good will towards them; and such an instance of justice to the natives of India would not fail to endear the British government to them.
“They therefore confidently trust, that your Lordships’ righteous consideration will be extended to them as British subjects, without exception of sect, country, or color.
“And your Petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray.”
[Signed by 117 natives of high respectability.]
[463] This reasonable request was not complied with, the duty on India cotton being still 10 per cent. The extra duty of 3½d. per yard on printed cottons was taken off when the excise duty on English prints was repealed, in 1831. English cottons imported into India only pay a duty of 2½ per cent.
Dacca, notwithstanding its present insignificance as compared with its former grandeur, may nevertheless still be classed among second rate cities. It has a population of 150,000 inhabitants, which is nearly a third more than the city of Baltimore contains. Some new brick dwellings have silently sprung up here and there, it may also be observed, within the last few years; and this city can now boast an Oil Mill driven by steam, and an Iron Suspension Bridge. Three more steam engines are in the course of erection[464]. On the whole, an increase may be looked for, rather than the contrary, in the wealth, population, and importance of the city of Dacca.
[464] Asiatic Researches, vol. xvii.
It would be curious to compare the gradual decrease of the population, with the falling off of the manufacture of those beautiful cotton fabrics, for which this city was once without a rival in the world[465]. The first falling off in the Dacca trade, took place so far back as 1801, previous to which the yearly advances made by the East India Company, and private traders, for Dacca muslins, were estimated at upwards of twenty-five lacs of rupees[466]. In 1807, the Company s investment had fallen to 595,900, and the private trade to about 560,200. In 1813, the private trade did not exceed 205,950, and that of the Company was scarcely more considerable. And in 1817, the English commercial residency was altogether discontinued. The French and Dutch factories had been abandoned many years before. The division of labor was carried to a great extent in the manufacture of fine muslins. In spinning the very fine thread, more especially, a great degree of skill was attained. It was spun with the fingers on a “Takwa,” or fine steel spindle, by young women, who could only work during the early part of the morning, while the dew was on the ground; for such was the extreme tenuity of the fibre, that it would not bear manipulation after the sun had risen. One retti of cotton could thus be spun into a thread eighty cubits long; which was sold by the spinners at one rupee, eight annas, per sicca weight. The “Raffugars,” or Darners, were also particularly skilful. They could remove an entire thread from a piece of muslin, and replace it by one of a finer texture. The cotton used for the finest thread, was grown in the immediate neighborhood of Dacca, more especially about Sunergong. Its fibre is too short, however, to admit of its being worked up by any except that most wonderful of all machines—the human hand. The art of making the very fine muslin fabrics is now lost—and a pity it is that it should be so.