These are pretty sums to have fallen into the pockets of the English, chiefly douceurs, in ten years. Let the account be carried on for all India at a similar rate for a century, and what a sum! Lord Clive’s jaghire alone was worth 30,000l. per annum. And, besides this, it appears from the above documents that he also pocketed in these transactions 292,333l. No wonder at the enormous fortunes rapidly made; at the enormous debts piled on the wretched nabobs, and the dreadful exactions on the still more wretched people. No man could more experimentally than Clive thus address the Directors at home, as he did in 1765: “Upon my arrival, I am sorry to say, I found your affairs in a condition so nearly desperate as would have alarmed any set of men whose sense of honour and duty to their employers had not been estranged by the too eager pursuit of their own immediate advantages. The sudden, and among many, the unwarrantable acquisition of riches (who was so entitled to say this?) had introduced luxury in every shape, and in its most pernicious excess. These two enormous evils went hand in hand together through the whole presidency, infecting almost every member of every department. Every inferior seemed to have grasped at wealth, that he might be enabled to assume that spirit of profusion which was now the only distinction between him and his superiors. Thus all distinction ceased, and every rank became, in a manner, upon an equality. Nor was this the end of the mischief; for a contest of such a nature amongst our servants necessarily destroyed all proportion between their wants and the honest means of satisfying them. In a country where money is plenty, where fear is the principle of government, and where your arms are ever victorious, it is no wonder that the lust of riches should readily embrace the proffered means of its gratification, or that the instruments of your power should avail themselves of their authority, and proceed even to extortion in those cases where simple corruption could not keep pace with their rapacity. Examples of this sort, set by superiors, could not fail being followed, in a proportionate degree, by inferiors. The evil was contagious, and spread among the civil and military, down to the writer, the ensign, and the free merchant.”—Clive’s Letter to the Directors, Third Report of Parliamentary Committee, 1772.
The Directors replied to this very letter, lamenting their conviction of its literal truth.—“We have the strongest sense of the deplorable state to which our affairs were on the point of being reduced, from the corruption and rapacity of our servants, and the universal depravity of manners throughout the settlement. The general relaxation of all discipline and obedience, both military and civil, was hastily tending to a dissolution of all government. Our letter to the Select Committee expresses our sentiments of what has been obtained by way of donations; and to that we must add, that we think the vast fortunes acquired in the inland trade have been obtained by a scene of the most tyrannic and oppressive conduct that was ever known in any age or country!”
But however the Directors at home might lament, they were too far off to put an end to this “scene of the most tyrannic and oppressive conduct that was ever known in any age or country.” This very same grave and eloquent preacher on this oppression and corruption, Clive, was the first to set the example of contempt of the Directors’ orders, and commission of those evil practices. The Directors had sent out fresh covenants to be entered into by all their servants, both civil and military, binding them not to receive presents, nor to engage in inland trade; but it was found that the governor had not so much as brought the new covenants under the consideration of the council. The receipt of presents, and the inland trade by the Company’s servants went on with increased activity. When at length these covenants were forwarded to the different factories and garrisons, General Carnac, and everybody else signed them. General Carnac however delayed his signing of them till he had time to obtain a present of two lacs of rupees (upwards of 20,000l.) from the reduced and impoverished Emperor. Clive appointed a committee to inquire into these matters, which brought to light strange scenes of rapacity, and of “threats to extort gifts.” But what did Clive? He himself entered largely into private trade and into a vast monopoly of salt, an article of the most urgent necessity to the people; and this on the avowed ground of wishing some gentlemen whom he had brought out to make a fortune. His committee sanctioned the private trade in salt, betel-nut, and tobacco, out of which nearly all the abuses and miseries he complained of had grown, only confining it to the superior servants of the Company: and he himself, when the orders of the Directors were laid before him in council, carelessly turned them aside, saying, the Directors, when they wrote them, could not know what changes had taken place in India. No! they did not know that he and his council were now partners in the salt trade, and realizing a profit, including interest, of upwards of fifty per cent.! Perhaps Clive thought he had done a great service when he had attempted to lessen the number of harpies by cutting off the trading of the juniors, and thus turning the tide of gain more completely into his own pockets, and those of his fellows of the council. It must have been a very provoking sight to one with a development of acquisitiveness so ample as his own, to witness what Verelst, in his “View of Bengal,” describes as then existing. “At this time many black merchants found it expedient to purchase the name of any young writer in the Company’s service by loans of money, and under this sanction harassed and oppressed the natives. So plentiful a supply was derived from this source, that many young writers were enabled to spend 1500l. and 2000l. per annum, were clothed in fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day.” What were the miseries and insolent oppressions under which the millions of Bengal were made to groan by such practices, and by the lawless violence with which the revenues were collected about that period by the English, may be sufficiently indicated by the following passages. Mr. Hastings, in a letter to the President Vansittart, dated Bauglepore, April 25th, 1762, says—“I beg to lay before you a grievance which loudly calls for redress, and will, unless duly attended to, render ineffectual any endeavour to create a firm and lasting harmony between the Nabobs and the Company: I mean the oppressions committed under the sanction of the English name, and through the want of spirit to oppose them. The evil, I am well assured, is not confined to our dependents alone, but is practised all over the country, by people falsely assuming the habit of our sepoys, or calling themselves our gomastahs. On such occasions, the great power of the English intimidates the people from making any resistance; so, on the other hand, the indolence of the Bengalees, or the difficulty of gaining access to those who might do them justice, prevents our having knowledge of the oppressions. I have been surprised to meet with several English flags flying in places which I have passed; and on the river I do not believe I passed a boat without one. By whatever title they have been assumed, I am sure their frequency can boast no good to the Nabob’s revenues, the quiet of the country, or the honour of our nation. A party of sepoys, who were on the march before us, afforded sufficient proofs of the rapacious and insolent spirit of these people when they are left to their own discretion. Many complaints against them were made to us on the road; and most of the petty towns and serais were deserted at our approach, and the shops shut up, from the apprehension of the same treatment from us.”
Mr. Vansittart endeavoured zealously to put a stop to such abominable practices; but what could he do? The very members of the council were deriving vast emoluments from this state of things, and audaciously denied its existence. Under such sanction, every inferior plunderer set at defiance the orders of the president and the authority of the officers appointed to prevent the commission of such oppressions on the natives. The native collectors of the revenue, when they attempted to levy, under the express sanction of the governor, the usual duties on the English, were not only repelled by them, but seized and punished as enemies of the Company and violaters of its privileges. The native judges and magistrates were resisted in the discharge of their duties; and even their functions usurped. Everything was in confusion, and many of the zemindars and other collectors refused to be answerable for the revenues. Even the nabob’s own officers were refused the liberty to make purchases on his account. One of them, of high connexions and influence, was seized for having purchased from the nabob some saltpetre; the trade in which they claimed as belonging exclusively to them. He was put in irons and sent to Calcutta, where some of the council voted for having him publicly whipped, others desired that his ears might be cut off, and it was all that the president could effect to get him sent back to his own master to be punished. In Mr. Vansittart’s own narrative, is given a letter from one officer to the nabob, complaining that though he was furnished with instructions to send away Europeans who were found committing disorders to Calcutta, notwithstanding any pretence they shall make for so doing; he had used persuasions, and conciliated, and found them of no avail. That he had then striven by gentle means to stop their violences; upon which he was threatened that if he interfered with them or their servants, they would treat him in such a manner as should cause him to repent. That all their servants had boasted publicly, that this was what would be done to him did he presume to meddle. He adds, “Now sir, I am to inform you what I have obstructed them in. This place (Backergunge) was of great trade formerly, but now brought to nothing by the following practices. A gentleman sends a gomastah here to buy or sell. He immediately looks upon himself as sufficient to force every inhabitant either to buy his goods, or to force them to sell him theirs; and on refusal, or non-capacity, a flogging or confinement immediately ensues. This is not sufficient even when willing; but a second force is made use of, which is, to engross the different branches of trade to themselves, and not to suffer any persons to buy or sell the articles they trade in. They compel the people to buy or sell at just what rate they please, and my interfering occasions an immediate complaint. These, and many other oppressions which are daily practised, are the reasons that this place is growing destitute of inhabitants.... Before, justice was given in the public cutcheree, but now every gomastah is become a judge; they even pass sentence on the zemindars themselves; and draw money from them for pretended injuries.”
Such was the state of the country in 1762, as witnessed by Mr. Hastings, and such it continued till Clive’s government,—Clive, who so forcibly described it to the Directors; and what did Clive do? He aggravated it, enriched himself enormously by the very system, and so left it. Such it continued till Mr. Hastings,—this Mr. Hastings, who so feelingly had written his views and abhorrence of it to the President Vansittart, came into supreme power, and what did the wise and benevolent Mr. Hastings? He became the Aaron’s-rod of gift-takers; the prince of exactors, and the most unrelenting oppressor of the natives that ever visited India, or perhaps any other country. In the mean time this system of rapacity and extortion had reduced the people to the most deplorable condition of poverty and wretchedness imaginable. The monopoly of trade, and the violent abduction of all their produce in the shape of taxes, dispirited them to the most extreme degree, and brought on the country those famines and diseases for which that period is so celebrated. In 1770 occurred that dreadful famine, which has throughout Europe excited so much horror of the English. They have been accused of having directly created it, by buying up all the rice, and refusing to sell any of it except at the most exorbitant price. The author of the “Short History of the English Transactions in the East Indies,” thus boldly states the fact. Speaking of the monopoly just alluded to, of salt, betel-nut, and tobacco, he says, “Money in this current came but by drops. It could not quench the thirst of those who waited in India to receive it. An expedient, such as it was, remained to quicken it. The natives could live with little salt, but could not want food. Some of the agents saw themselves well situated for collecting the rice into stores; they did so. They knew that the Gentoos would rather die than violate the principles of their religion by eating flesh. The alternative would therefore be between giving what they had, or dying! The inhabitants sunk. They that cultivated the land, and saw the harvest at the disposal of others, planted in doubt; scarcity ensued. Then the monopoly was easier managed,—sickness ensued. In some districts, the languid living left the bodies of their numerous dead unburied.”—p. 145.
Many and ingenious have been the attempts to remove this awful opprobrium from our national character. It has been contended that famines are, or were of frequent occurrence in India;—that the natives had no providence; and that to charge the English with the miserable consequences of this famine is unreasonable, because it was what they could neither foresee nor prevent. Of the drought in the previous autumn there is no doubt; but there is unhappily as little, that the regular rapacity of the English had reduced the natives to that condition of poverty, apathy, and despair, in which the slightest derangement of season must superinduce famine;—that they were grown callous to the sufferings of their victims, and were as alive to their gain by the rising price through the scarcity, as they were in all other cases. Their object was sudden wealth, and they cared not, in fact, whether the natives lived or died, so that that object was effected. This is the relation of the Abbé Raynal, a foreign historian, and the light in which this event was beheld by foreign nations.
“It was by a drought in 1769, at the season when the rains are expected, that there was a failure of the great harvest of 1769, and the less harvest of 1770. It is true that the rice on the higher grounds did not suffer greatly by this disturbance of the seasons, but there was far from a sufficient quantity for the nourishment of all the inhabitants of the country; add to which the English, who were engaged beforehand to take proper care of their subsistence, as well as of the Sepoys belonging to them, did not fail to keep locked up in their magazines a part of the grain, though the harvest was insufficient.... This scourge did not fail to make itself felt throughout Bengal. Rice, which is commonly sold for one sol (1/2d.) for three pounds, was gradually raised so high as four or even six sols (3d.) for one pound; neither, indeed, was there any to be found, except in such places where the Europeans had taken care to collect it for their own use.
“The unhappy Indians were perishing every day by thousands under this want of sustenance, without any means of help and without any revenue. They were to be seen in their villages; along the public ways; in the midst of our European colonies,—pale, meagre, emaciated, fainting, consumed by famine—some stretched on the ground in expectation of dying; others scarce able to drag themselves on to seek any nourishment, and throwing themselves at the feet of the Europeans, entreating them to take them in as their slaves.