The Letters of Gracchus on the East India Question

by William Augustus Miles

Wednesday, February 17, 1813.

It is very observable, that the objections which have been made by the East India Company to the admission of ships, returning from India, to import and dispose of their cargoes at any other place than the Port of London, are not founded so much upon any statement of the injury which the trade of the Company would sustain by admitting them, as upon a provident regard for the adventurers themselves, and a caution held out to them not to entertain an expectation of benefiting by any commercial speculation in India; since the long experience of the Company has enabled them to show, that it must be ultimately ruinous to the speculator. The sum of the experience, alleged by those who have come forward to defend this point, is, "That it is not practicable to extend the consumption of European manufactures generally in India;" and the facts which they have asserted in support of this experimental argument, and upon which they rest its strength, are these four following:

1. That the natives of India entertain a strong characteristic aversion, to engage in commercial transactions with foreigners.

2. That their religious prejudices, customs, habits, and tastes, render it impossible that they should ever become consumers of our manufactures, to any extent.

3. That their poverty opposes an insuperable bar to such consumption.

4. That these facts and their consequences are demonstrated in the examples of the Portuguese and the Dutch, who were not able to carry their export commerce with India to any considerable extent.

Let us take these several propositions in their order; and examine, how far they possess that force of truth, which the Company has supposed to belong to them.

1. In the infancy of the European intercourse with India, the sole object of those who engaged in its commerce was, to procure the produce and commodities of the East. In this pursuit, so far were the natives from opposing any obstacles to their endeavours, that they were found disposed to afford every facility to a traffic, which brought them specie in exchange for their manufactures, and for the productions of their soil. This fact, which is established by every writer who treated upon the subject of the India commerce during that period, would of itself constitute a complete answer to those who advance the proposition, that the natives of India are averse, through an established prejudice, to engage in commercial transactions with foreigners.

When the ingenuity of the French and German artists enabled the speculators in this traffic to introduce works of fancy, we learn from Tavernier, who made six several journeys, between the years 1645 and 1670, from France to India, by various routes, that the Rajahs of Hindostan and of the Deccan, as well as the Mahomedan princes of those countries, admitted him into their states; that the articles of manufacture which he introduced were received and purchased with an avidity which encouraged him to continue, for so many years, the pursuit of that commerce; that he found the natives of India, spread over the whole range of country from the Indus to the Caspian Sea, engaged in the active prosecution of foreign traffic; and that the number of Banyans (the chief commercial cast of Hindoos) at that time established at Ispahan, were not less than ten thousand. Forster, who, in a more recent period, followed Tavernier in one of the routes which he had traversed, informs us, that, in the year 1783, he found Banyans established at Astrachan, within the Russian empire. And we further learn from Bruce, that the principal agents of commerce at Mocha and Jedda, in the Red Sea, were Banyans; and that they had even extended themselves into Abyssinia. No stronger evidence, therefore, can be required to make it manifest, that foreign as well as internal trade has been in all ages, and still continues to be at the present day, a common practice, and a favourite pursuit of the Hindoos.