The Letters of Gracchus on the East India Question

by William Augustus Miles

Having thus seen, that the natives of India are in no respect averse to engage in commercial dealings with strangers, and that no prejudices exist among them of a nature to prevent them from using our manufactures; we cannot but be forcibly struck with the reflection, that no systematic plan has ever been adopted by the East India Company, to attract the attention of the Hindoos to the various articles of our home manufacture, or to stimulate their speculation in the traffic of them. Whereas, in Europe, the Company have always found it necessary, for the disposal of their Indian Imports, to take active measures for drawing the attention of the nations of the European Continent to their sales in London.

The Directors, in their letter to Lord Buckinghamshire, under date of the 15th of April, 1812, (adverting to their sales in Europe,) observe, "That the Foreign Buyers repose confidence in the regularity and publicity with which the Company's sales are conducted; that the particulars of their cargoes are published immediately on the arrival of the ships, and distributed all over the Continent. That notices of the quantities to be sold, and periods of sale, are also published for general distribution; and that the sales of each description of goods are made at stated periods, twice in the year."

No measure of this nature has ever been projected for India; and yet, the predilection of the natives of India, both Hindoo and Mahomedan, for public shows, scenes of general resort, and exhibitions of every kind, is so well known, that we may confidently affirm, that nothing could have a surer tendency to draw them together, than a display, at periodical fairs, of our various manufactures. Fairs of this kind, for the sale of their home manufactures, have been held from time immemorial, in every part of India. The Company, therefore, needed only to engraft, upon an established usage of the Hindoos, a regular plan of periodical fairs; and, by thus adopting in India a course analogous to that which they have found it necessary to employ in Europe, they might generally have arrived at giving to Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay, attractions of curiosity and mercantile interest, which would most probably have drawn to those settlements the wealthy natives from every part of the East; and have rendered the capital cities of British India, what Amsterdam, Frankfort, and Leipsic have long been in Europe, the resorts of all descriptions of people, and the repositories of every European article of use and luxury. From these different centres of commerce, the markets of the interior of India, and especially those held at the scenes of religious assembly, might be furnished with supplies; and, under the fostering encouragement of a wise and provident Government, the intelligence and enterprise of the natives of India might be called into action, and be stimulated, by a powerful motive, to exert in their own country those commercial talents that have obtained for them the encouragements, which, upon the unimpeachable testimony of Mr. Forster, they have long received in Persia, and in parts of Russia.

The advantage of collecting together, at stated periods and in established points, the productions of human industry and ingenuity, has been so universally felt by all nations; that there is scarcely a country, advanced to any degree of civilization, in which the practice has not prevailed. To effect this object, with a view to the extension of our export trade in India, active encouragement is alone requisite; but, in order to give it stability, native agency must be called forth into action. The supplies which (as was mentioned on a former occasion) were found at Poonah, were obtained from that source alone. The Parsee merchants at Bombay, are the principal agents of the Commanders and Officers of the Company's ships; such parts of their investments as are not disposed of among the European population, are purchased, and circulated in the interior, by the Parsees. The small supplies of European manufactures which find their way into the principal cities of the Deccan, proceed from this source: but there is reason to believe, that the articles which arrive at those places are too frequently of an inferior sort, or such as have sustained damage in the transit from Europe.

To give perfection to the great object here sketched out, it will be indispensably necessary that the local authorities in India should direct their most serious attention to this subject. As our Indian empire is our only security for our Indian trade, so our Indian trade must be rendered an object of vigilant concern to those who administer the Government of that empire. From the multiplicity and importance of their other avocations, that trade has not hitherto received all the consideration to which its high value is entitled; but, whenever an adequate regard shall be paid to it, it will become a duty of the Governments to take active and effectual steps, for drawing the attention of the natives to our exported commodities, and for promoting the dispersion of those commodities, within the sphere of their influence or power.

We now discern one operative cause of the comparatively small demand for, and consumption of, our European articles, in the Indian empire; a cause, however, which it is within our capacity to control, or to remove. And, after what has been summarily exposed, in this and in the preceding communication, it can be no difficult point to determine, whether this cause, or the alleged prejudices of the Hindoos, have most contributed to limit the extent of our Export Trade to India.

GRACCHUS.

FOOTNOTES:

[5] Forster's Travels, p. 135-6.