Chapter XII: How Slavery Grows in India (2)

"Always oppressed, ever in poverty, the ryot is compelled to seek the aid of the mahajun, or native money-lender. This will frequently be the talukdhar, or sub-renter, who exacts from the needy borrower whatever interest he thinks the unfortunate may be able to pay him, often at the rate of one per cent. per week. The accounts of these loans are kept by the mahajuns, who, aware of the deep ignorance of their clients, falsify their books, without fear of detection. In this way, no matter how favourable the season, how large the crop, the grasping mahajun is sure to make it appear that the _whole_ is due to him; for he takes it at his own value. So far from Mr. Burke having overstated the case of the oppression of the ryots, on the trial of Warren Hastings, when he said that the tax-gatherer took from them eighteen shillings in every pound, he was really within the mark. At the conclusion of each crop-time, the grower of rice or cotton is made to appear a debtor to his superior, who thereupon provided the ryot appears able to toil on for another season--advances more seed for sowing, and a little more rice to keep the labourer and his family from absolute starvation. But should there be any doubt as to the health and strength of the tenant-labourer, he is mercilessly turned from his land and his mud hut, and left to die on the highway."

This is slavery, and under such a system how could the wretched people be other than slaves? The men have no market for their labour, and the women and children must remain idle or work in the field, as did, and do, the women of Jamaica; and all because they are compelled everywhere to exhaust the soil in raising crops to be sent to a distance to be consumed, and finally to abandon the land, even where they do not perish of famine. Mr. Chapman informs us that--

"Even in the valley of the Ganges, where the population is in some districts from 600 to 800 to the square mile, one-third of the cultivable lands are not cultivated; and in the Deecan, from which we must chiefly look for increased supplies of cotton, the population, amounting to about 100 to the square mile, is maintained by light crops, grown on little more than half the cultivable land."[96]

Elsewhere he tells us that of _the cultivable surface of all India one-half is waste_.[97] Bishop Heber informs us of the "impenetrable jungle" that now surrounds the once great manufacturing city of Dacca; and the Bombay Times reminds its English readers of the hundreds of thousands of acres of rich land that are lying waste, and that might be made to produce cotton.

When population and wealth diminish it is always the rich soils that are first abandoned, as is shown in the Campagna of Rome, in the valley of Mexico, and in the deltas of the Ganges and the Nile. Without association they could never have been brought into cultivation, and with the disappearance of the power to associate they are of necessity allowed to relapse into their original condition. Driven back to the poor soils and forced to send abroad the product, their wretched cultivator becomes poorer from day to day, and the less he obtains the more he becomes a slave to the caprices of his landlord, and the more is he thrown upon the mercy of the money-lender, who lends _on good security_ at three per cent. per month, but _from him_ must have fifty or a hundred per cent. for a loan until harvest. That under such circumstances the wages of labour should be very low, even where the wretched people are employed, must be a matter of course. In some places the labourer has two and in others three rupees, or less than a dollar and a half, per month. The officers employed on the great zemindary estates have from three to four rupees, and that this is a high salary, is proved by the fact that the police receive but 48 rupees ($23) per annum, out of which they feed and clothe themselves! Such are the rewards of labour in a country possessing every conceivable means of amassing wealth, and they become less from year to year. "It could not be too universally known," said Mr. Bright in the House of Commons, two years since,

"That the cultivators of the soil were in a very unsatisfactory condition; that they were, in truth, in a condition of extreme and almost universal poverty. All testimony concurred upon that point. He would call the attention of the house to the statement of a celebrated native of India, the Rajah Rammohun Roy, who about twenty years ago published a pamphlet in London, in which he pointed out the ruinous effects of the zemindary system, and the oppression experienced by the ryots in the presidencies both of Bombay and Madras. After describing the state of matters generally, he added, 'Such was the melancholy condition of the agricultural labourers, that it always gave him the greatest pain to allude to it.' Three years afterward, Mr. Shore, who was a judge in India, published a work which was considered as a standard work till now, and he stated that 'the British Government was not regarded in a favourable light by the native population of India,'--that a system of taxation and extortion was carried on 'unparalleled in the annals of any country. Then they had the authority of an American planter, Mr. Finnie, who was in India in 1840, and who spoke of the deplorable condition of the cultivators of the soil, and stated that if the Americans were similarly treated, they would become as little progressive as the native Indians. He might next quote the accounts given by Mr. Marriott in 1838, a gentleman who was for thirty years engaged in the collection of the revenue in India, and who stated that 'the condition of the cultivators was greatly depressed, and that he believed it was still declining.' There was the evidence of a native of India to which he might refer on this subject. It was that of a gentleman, a native of Delhi, who was in England in the year 1849, and he could appeal to the right hon. baronet the member for Tamworth in favour of the credibility of that gentleman. He never met with a man of a more dignified character, or one apparently of greater intelligence, and there were few who spoke the English language with greater purity and perfection. That gentleman had written a pamphlet, in which he stated that throughout his whole line of march from Bombay he found the Nizam's territories better cultivated, and the ryots in a better state of circumstances, than were the Company's territories, of the people residing within them, who were plunged in a state of the greatest poverty; and he concluded his short, but comparatively full, notice of the present deplorable state of India, by observing that he feared this was but the prelude of many more such descriptions of the different portions of the Company's dominions which would be put forth before the subject would attract the notice of those whose duty it was to remove the evils that existed."

We have here confirmation of the correctness of the views of Colonel Sleeman, that the condition of the people under the local governments is better than under the great central government. Heavily as they are taxed, a small part only of the proceeds of taxes goes, in these cases, to Calcutta on its way to England, whereas, of the enormous salaries paid to English governors and judges, nearly the whole must go abroad, as no one consents to serve for a few years in India, except on such terms as will enable him to accumulate a fortune and return home to spend it. In further confirmation of this we have the facts so fully given in Mr. Campbell's recent work, (Modern India, chap, xi.,) and proving that security of person and property increases as we pass _from_ the old possessions of the Company, and toward the newly acquired ones. Crime of every kind, gang robbery, perjury, and forgery, abound in Bengal and Madras, and the poverty of the cultivator is so great that the revenue is there the least, and is collected with the greatest difficulty--and there, too, it is that the power of association has been most effectually destroyed. Passing thence to the Northwestern provinces more recently acquired, person and property become more secure and the revenue increases; but when we reach the Punjab, which until now has been subject to the rule of Runjeet Singh and his successors, we find that, tyrants as he and they have been represented, the people have there been left in the exercise of self-government. The village communities and the beautiful system of association, destroyed in Bengal, there remain untouched. Officers of all kinds are there more responsible for the performance of their duties than are their fellows in the older provinces, and property and person are more secure than elsewhere in India. Gang robbery is rare, perjury is unfrequent, and Mr. Campbell informs us that a solemn oath is "astonishingly binding." "The longer we possess a province," he continues, "the more common and general does perjury become;" and we need no better evidence than is thus furnished of the slavish tendency of the system. The hill tribes, on the contrary, are remarkable for their "strict veracity," and Colonel Sleeman expresses the belief that "there is as little falsehood spoken in the village communities," as in any part of the world with an equal area and population.[98] In the new provinces the people read and write with facility, and they are men of physical and moral energy, good cultivators, and understand well both their rights and their duties; whereas from the older ones education has disappeared, and with it all power to associate together for any good purpose. In the new provinces, commerce is large, as is shown by the following facts representing the population and post-office revenue of Bengal, the N. W. Provinces, and the Punjab, placed in the order of their acquisition by the Company:--

Population. Post-office Revenue.
----------- --------------------
Bengal................ 41,000,000 480,500 rupees.
N. W. Provinces....... 24,000,000 978,000 "
Punjab................ 8,000,000 178,000 "

We have here exhibited the remarkable fact that in the country of the Sikhs, so long represented as a scene of grasping tyranny, eight millions of people pay as much postage as is paid by fifteen millions in Bengal, although in the latter is Calcutta, the seat of all the operations of a great centralized government. That such should be the case is not extraordinary, for the power advantageously to employ labour diminishes with the approach to the centre of British power, and increases as we recede from it. Idleness and drunkenness go hand in hand with each other, and therefore it is that Mr. Campbell finds himself obliged to state that "intemperance increases where our rule and system have been long established."[99] We see thus that the observations of both Mr. Campbell and Colonel Sleeman, authors of the most recent works on India, confirm to the letter the earlier statements of Captain Westmacott, an extract from which is here given:--

"It is greatly to be deplored, that in places the longest under our rule, there is the largest amount of depravity and crime. My travels in India have fallen little short of 8000 miles, and extended to nearly all the cities of importance in Northern, Western, and Central India. I have no hesitation in affirming, that in the Hindoo and Mussulman cities, removed from European intercourse, there is much less depravity than either in Calcutta, Madras, or Bombay, where Europeans chiefly congregate."

Calcutta grows, the city of palaces, but poverty and wretchedness grow as the people of India find themselves more and more compelled to resort to that city to make their exchanges. Under the native rule, the people of each little district could exchange with each other food for cotton or cotton cloth, paying nobody for the privilege. Now, every man must send his cotton to Calcutta, thence to go to England with the rice and the indigo of his neighbours, before he and they can exchange food for cloth or cotton--and the larger the quantity they send the greater is the tendency to decline in price. With every extension of the system there is increasing inability to pay the taxes, and increasing necessity for seeking new markets in which to sell cloth and collect what are called rents--and the more wide the extension of the system the greater is the difficulty of collecting revenue sufficient for keeping the machine of government in motion. This difficulty it was that drove the representatives of British power and civilization into becoming traders in that pernicious drug, opium.

"The very best parts of India," as we are told,[100] were selected for the cultivation of the poppy. The people were told that they must either cultivate this plant, mate opium, or give up their land. If they refused, they were peremptorily told they must yield or quit. The same Company that forced them to grow opium said, You must sell the opium to us; and to them it was sold, and they gave the price they pleased to put upon the opium thus manufactured; and they then sold it to trading speculators at Calcutta, who caused it to be smuggled up the Canton River to an island called Lintin, and tea was received in exchange. At last, however, the emperor of China, after repeated threats, proceeded to execute summary justice; he seized every particle of opium; put under bond every European engaged in the merchandise of it; and the papers of to-day (1839) inform us that he has cut off the China trade, "root and branch."

Unhappily, however, the British nation deemed it expedient to make war upon the poor Chinese, and compel them to pay for the opium that had been destroyed; and now the profits of the Indian government from poisoning a whole people have risen from £1,500,000, at the date of the above extract, to the enormous sum of £3,500,000, or $16,800,000, and the market is, as we are informed, still extending itself.[101]

That the reader may see, and understand how directly the government is concerned in this effort at demoralizing and enslaving the Chinese, the following extract is given:--

"For the supply and manufacture of government opium there is a separate establishment. There are two great opium agencies at Ghazeepore and Patna, for the Benares and Bahar provinces. Each opium agent has several deputies in different districts, and a native establishment. They enter into contracts with the cultivators for the supply of opium at a rate fixed to meet the market. The land revenue authorities do not interfere, except to prevent cultivation without permission. Government merely bargains with the cultivators as cultivators, in the same way as a private merchant would, _and makes advances to them for the cultivation_. The only difficulty found is to prevent, their cultivating too much, as the rates are favourable, government a sure purchaser, and the cultivation liked. The land cultivated is measured, and precaution is taken that the produce is all sold to government. The raw opium thus received is sent to the head agency, where it is manufactured, packed in chests, and sealed with the Company's seal."[102]

It would seem to the author of this paragraph almost a matter of rejoicing that the Chinese are bound to continue large consumers of the drug. "The failure of one attempt to exclude it has shown," as he thinks--

"That they are not likely to effect that object; and if we do not supply them, some one else will; but the worst of it is, according to some people, that if the Chinese only legalized the cultivation in their own country, they could produce it much cheaper, and our market would be ruined. Both for their sakes and ours we must hope that it is not so, or that they will not find it out."[103]

Need we wonder, when gentlemen find pleasure in the idea of an increasing revenue from _forcing this trade in despite of all the efforts of the more civilized Chinese government_, that "intemperance increases" where the British "rule and system has been long established?" Assuredly not. Poor governments are, as we everywhere see, driven to encourage gambling, drunkenness, and other immoralities, as a means of extracting revenue from their unfortunate taxpayers; and the greater the revenue thus obtained, the poorer become the people and the weaker the government. Need we be surprised that that of India should be reduced to become manufacturer and smuggler of opium, when the people are forced to exhaust the land by sending away its raw products, and when the restraints upon the _mere collection_ of domestic salt are so great that English salt now finds a market in India? The following passage on this subject is worthy of the perusal of those who desire fully to understand how it is that the people of that country are restrained in the application of their labour, and why it is that labour is so badly paid:--

"But those who cry out in England against the monopoly, and their unjust exclusion from the salt trade, are egregiously mistaken. As concerns them there is positively no monopoly, but the most absolute free trade. And, more than this, the only effect of the present mode of manufacture in Bengal is to give them a market which they would never otherwise have. A government manufacture of salt is doubtless more expensive than a private manufacture; but the result of this, and of the equality of duty on bad and good salt, is, that fine English salt now more or less finds a market in India; whereas, were the salt duty and all government interference discontinued to-morrow, the cheap Bengal salt would be sold at such a rate that not a pound of English or any other foreign salt could be brought into the market."[104]

Nevertheless, the system is regarded as one of perfect free trade!

Notwithstanding all these efforts at maintaining the revenue, the debt has increased the last twelve years no less than £15,000,000, or seventy-two millions of dollars; and yet the government is absolute proprietor of all the land of India, and enjoys so large a portion of the beneficial interest in it, that private property therein is reduced to a sum absolutely insignificant, as will now be shown.

The gross land revenue obtained from a country with an area of 491,448 square miles, or above three hundred millions of acres, is 151,786,743 rupees, equal to fifteen millions of pounds sterling, or seventy-two millions of dollars.[105] What is the value of private rights of property, subject to the payment of this tax, or rent, may be judged from the following facts:--In 1848-9 there were sold for taxes, in that portion of the country subject to the permanent settlement, 1169 estates, at something less than four years' purchase of the tax. Further south, in the Madras government, where the ryotwar settlement is in full operation, the land "would be sold" for balances of rent, but "generally it is not," as we are told, "and for a very good reason, viz. that nobody will buy it." Private rights in land being there of no value whatsoever, "the collector of Salem," as Mr. Campbell informs us--

"Naïvely mentions 'various unauthorized modes of stimulating the tardy,' rarely resorted to by heads of villages; such as 'placing him in the sun, obliging him to stand on one leg, or to sit with his head confined between his knees.'"[106]

In the north-west provinces, "the settlement," as our author states, "has certainly been successful in giving a good market value to landed property;" that is, it sells at about "four years' purchase on the revenue."[107] Still further north, in the newly acquired provinces, we find great industry, "every thing turned to account," the assessment, to which the Company succeeded on the deposition of the successors of Runjeet Singh, more easy, and land more valuable.[108] The value of land, like that of labour, therefore increases as we pass _from_ the old to the new settlements, being precisely the reverse of what would be the case if the system tended to the enfranchisement and elevation of the people, and precisely what should be looked for in a country whose inhabitants were passing from freedom toward slavery.

With the data thus obtained we may now ascertain, with perhaps some approach to accuracy, the value of all the private rights in the land of India. In no case does that subject to tax appear to be worth more than four years' purchase, while in a very large portion of the country it would seem to be worth absolutely nothing. There are, however, some tax-free lands that may be set off against those held under the ryotwar settlement; and it is therefore possible that the whole are worth four years' purchase, which would give 288 millions of dollars, or 60 millions of pounds sterling, as the value of all the rights in land acquired by the people of India by all the labour of their predecessors and themselves in the many thousands of years it has been cultivated. The few people that have occupied the little and sandy State of New Jersey, with its area of 6900 square miles, have acquired rights in and on the land that are valued, subject to the claims of government, at 150 millions of dollars; and the few that have occupied the little island on which stands the city of New York have acquired rights that would sell in the market for at least one-half more than could be obtained for all the proprietary rights to land in India, with 300 millions of acres and 96 millions of inhabitants!

"Under the native princes," says Mr. Campbell, "India was a paying country." Under British rule, it has ceased to be so, because under that rule all power of combined action has been annihilated, or is in train to be, and will be so, by aid of the system that looks to compelling the whole people, men, women, and children, to work in the field, producing commodities to be exported in their raw state. Every act of association is an act of trade, and whatever tends to destroy association must destroy trade. The internal commerce of India declines steadily, and the external amounts to but about half a dollar per head, and no effort can make it grow to any extent. The returns of last year, of English trade, show a diminution as compared with those of the previous one, whereas with almost all other countries there is a large increase. Cuba exports to the large amount of twenty-five dollars per head, or almost fifty times as much as India; and she takes of cotton goods from England four times as much per head; and this she does because it is a part of the policy of Spain to bring about combination of action, and to enable the planter and the artisan to work together, whereas the policy of England is to destroy everywhere the power of association, and thus to destroy the domestic trade, upon which the foreign one must be built. Centralization is adverse to trade, and to the freedom of man. Spain does not seek to establish centralization. Provided she receives a given amount of revenue, she is content to permit her subjects to employ themselves at raising sugar or making cloth, as they please, and thus to advance in civilization; and by this very course it is that she is enabled to obtain revenue. How centralization operates on the people and the revenue, and how far it tends to promote the civilization or the freedom of man, may be seen, on a perusal of the following extract from a recent speech of Mr. Anstey, in the British House of Commons:--

"Such was the financial condition of India, which the right honourable gentleman believed to be so excellent. The intelligent natives of India, however, who visited this country, were not of that opinion. They told us that the complaints sent from India to this country were disregarded here, and that they always would be disregarded as long as inquiry into them was imperial, not local. They stated that their condition was one of hopeless misery, and that it had been so ever since they came under our rule. The result was, that cholera had become the normal order of things in that country, and in India it never died out. It appeared from the reports of medical officers in the army that it did not attack the rich and well-fed so frequently as it attacked the poor, and that among them it had made the most fearful ravages. The first authentic account they had of the appearance of the cholera in India was coincident with the imposition of the salt monopoly by Warren Hastings; and by a just retribution it had visited their own shores, showing them with what a scourge they had so long afflicted the natives of India. It might be said of the other taxes that, in one form or another, they affected every branch of industry and every necessary of life. They affected even the tools of trade, and were sometimes equal in amount to the sum for which the tool itself could be purchased in the market.

"When on a former occasion he had mentioned those facts before a member of the court of directors, he was told that if he had seen the papers in the archives, he would perceive that an alteration had taken place; but he found, on an inspection of the papers, that the result to the purchaser of salt is almost equal to what it had been. It was a well known fact that the natives dare not complain. When they asked for protection from the laws, they were treated as Juttee Persaud had been treated last year--cases were fabricated against them, and they were prosecuted for their lives. With the examples before them of Nuncomar and Juttee Persaud, it was not surprising that the natives were so backward in bringing to justice the persons whose oppressions had been so great."

It was in the face of facts like those here presented, and other similar ones presented to us in the history of Jamaica, that in a recent despatch Lord Palmerston thus instructed his minister at Madrid:--

"I have to instruct your lordship to observe to M. de Miraflores that the slaves of Cuba form a large portion, and by no means an unimportant one, of the population of Cuba; and that any steps taken to provide for their emancipation would, therefore, as far as the black population is concerned, be quite in unison with the recommendation made by her Majesty's government, that measures should be adopted for contenting the people of Cuba, with a view to secure the connection between that island and the Spanish crown; and it must be evident that if the negro population of Cuba were rendered free, that fact would create a most powerful element of resistance to any scheme for annexing Cuba to the United States, where slavery still exists.

"With regard to the bearing which negro emancipation would have on the interests of the white proprietors, it may safely be affirmed that free labour costs less than slave labour, and it is indisputable that a free and contented peasantry are safer neighbours for the wealthy classes above them than ill-treated and resentful slaves; and that slaves must, from the nature of things, be more or less ill-treated, is a truth which belongs to the inherent principles of human nature, and is quite as inevitable as the resentment, however suppressed it may be, which is the consequence of ill-treatment."

The negroes of Jamaica have never been permitted to apply their spare labour even to the refining of their own sugar, _nor are they so at this day_. They must export it raw, and the more they send the lower is the price and the larger the proportion taken by the government--but the poor negro is ruined. Spain, on the contrary, permits the Cubans to engage in any pursuits they may deem most likely to afford them a return to labour and capital; and, as a necessary consequence of this, towns and cities grow up, capital is attracted to the land, which becomes from day to day more valuable, labour is in demand, and there is a gradual, though slow, improvement of condition. The power to resort to other modes of employment diminishes the necessity for exporting sugar, and when exported to Spain, the producer is enabled to take for himself nearly the whole price paid by the consumer, the government claiming only a duty of fifteen per cent.

The Hindoo, like the negro, is shut out from the workshop. If he attempts to convert his cotton into yarn, his spindle is taxed in nearly all of the profit it can yield him. If he attempts to make cloth, his loom is subjected to a heavy tax, from which that of his wealthy English competitor is exempt. His iron ore and his coal must remain in the ground, and if he dares to apply his labour even to the collection of the salt which crystallizes before his door, he is punished by fine and imprisonment. He must raise sugar to be transported to England, there to be exchanged, perhaps, for English salt. For the sugar, arrived in that country, the workman pays at the rate perhaps of forty shillings a hundred, of which the government claims one-third, the ship owner, the merchant, and others, another third, and the remaining third is to be fought for by the agents of the Company, anxious for revenue, and the poor ryot, anxious to obtain a little salt to eat with his rice, and as much of his neighbour's cotton, in the form of English cloth, as will suffice to cover his loins.

Under the Spanish system capital increases, and labour is so valuable that slaves still continue to be imported. Under the English one, labour is valueless, and men sell themselves for long years of slavery at the sugar culture in the Mauritius, in Jamaica, and in Guiana. In all countries _to which_ men are attracted, civilization tends upward; but in all those _from which_ men fly, it tends downward.

At the moment this despatch was being written by Lord Palmerston, Mr. Campbell was writing his book, in which it is everywhere shown that the tendency of India toward centralization and absenteeism, and therefore toward exhaustion and slavery, is rapidly on the increase. "The communication with India," as he says--

"Is every day so much increased and facilitated that we become more and more entirely free from native influence, and the disposition to Hindooize, which at first certainly showed itself, has altogether disappeared. The English in India have now become as English as in England.

"While this state of things has great advantages, it has also some disadvantage in the want of local knowledge, and of permanency in the tenure of appointments which results. As there has been a constant succession of total strangers in every appointment, it follows that the government must be entirely carried on upon general principles, with little aid from local knowledge and experience."--P. 202.

The tendency toward the transfer of English capital to India, as he informs us, retrogrades instead of advancing, and this is precisely what we might expect to find to be the case. _Capital never seeks a country from which men are flying as they now fly from India._ The English houses bring none, but being in general mere speculators, they borrow largely and enter into large operations, and when the bubble bursts, the poor Hindoo suffers in the prostration of trade and decline in the prices of cotton and sugar. "The consequence is," as Mr. Campbell says--

"That European speculation has retrograded. Far up the country, where the agents of the old houses were formerly numerous and well supplied with money, the planters are now few and needy, and generally earn but a precarious subsistence as in fact the servants of native capitalists."--P. 204.

Iron, by aid of which the people might improve their processes of cultivation and manufacture, has little tendency toward India. The average export of it to that country in 1845 and '46 was but 13,000 tons, value £160,000, or about two-pence worth for every five of the population. Efforts are now being made for the construction of railroads, but their object is that of carrying out the system of centralization, and thus still further destroying the power of association, because they look to the annihilation of what still remains of domestic manufacture, and thus _cheapening cotton_. With all the improvements in the transportation of that commodity, its poor cultivator obtains less for it than he did thirty years since, and the effect of further improvement can be none other than that of producing a still further reduction, and still further deterioration of the condition of the men who raise food and cotton. As yet the power of association continues in the Punjab, but it is proposed now to hold there great fairs for the sale of English manufactures, and the day cannot be far distant when the condition of the people of the new provinces will be similar to that of those of the old ones, as no effort will be spared to carry out the system which looks to driving the whole people to agriculture, and thus compelling them to exhaust their land. It is needed, says Mr. Chapman, the great advocate of railways in India, that the connection between "the Indian grower and English spinner" become more intimate, and "_the more the English is made to outweigh the native home demand, the more strongly will the native agriculturist feel that his personal success depends on securing and improving his British connection_"[109]6750--that is, the more the natives can be prevented from combining, their labours, the greater, as Mr. Chapman thinks, will be the prosperity of India. Centralization has impoverished, and to a considerable extent depopulated, that country, but its work is not yet done. It remains yet to reduce the people of the Punjab, of Affghanistan and Burmah, to the condition of the Bengalese.

The Burmese war is, as we are informed, "connected with at least certain hopes of getting across to China through the Burmese territories,"[110] and, of course of extending the trade in opium throughout the whole of interior China; and the revenue from that source will pay the cost of annexation. It is by aid of this powerful narcotic, probably, that "civilization" is about, as we are told, to "plant her standard on the ruins of kingdoms which for thousands of years have been smouldering into dust."[111]

We are often told of "the dim moral perceptions" of the people of India, and as many of those who will read this volume may be disposed to think that the cause of poverty lies in some deficiencies in the character of the Hindoo, it may not be improper, with a view to the correction of that opinion, to offer a few passages from the very interesting work of Colonel Sleeman, who furnishes more information on that head than any other recent traveller or resident; and his remarks are the more valuable because of being the fruit of many years of observation:--

"Sir Thomas Munro has justly observed, 'I do not exactly know what is meant by civilizing the people of India. In the theory and practice of good government they may be deficient; but if a good system of agriculture--if unrivalled manufactures--if a capacity to produce what convenience or luxury demands--if the establishment of schools for reading and writing--if the general practice of kindness and hospitality--and above all, if a scrupulous respect and delicacy toward the female sex are amongst the points that denote a civilized people; then the Hindoos are not inferior in civilization to the people of Europe.--_Rambles_, vol. i. 4.

"Our tents were pitched upon a green sward on one bank of a small stream running into the Nerbudda close by, while the multitude occupied the other bank. At night all the tents and booths are illuminated, and the scene is hardly less animating by night than by day; but what strikes an European most is the entire absence of all tumult and disorder at such places. He not only sees no disturbance, but feels assured that there will be none; and leaves his wife and children in the midst of a crowd of a hundred thousand persons all strangers to them, and all speaking a language and following a religion different from theirs, while he goes off the whole day, hunting and shooting in the distant jungles, without the slightest feeling of apprehension for their safety or comfort."--_Ibid_. 2.

"I am much attached to the agricultural classes of India generally, and I have found among them some of the best men I have ever known. The peasantry in India have generally very good manners, and are exceedingly intelligent, from having so much more leisure, and unreserved and easy intercourse with those above them."--_Ibid_. 76.

"I must say, that I have never either seen or read of a nobler spirit than seems to animate all classes of these communities in India on such distressing occasions."--_Ibid_. 197.

"There is no part of the world, I believe, where parents are so much reverenced by their sons as they are in India in all classes of society."--_Ibid_. 330.

"An instance of deliberate fraud or falsehood among native merchants of respectable stations in society, is extremely rare. Among the many hundreds of bills I have had to take from them for private remittances, I have never had one dishonoured, or the payment upon one delayed beyond the day specified; nor do I recollect ever hearing of one who had. They are so careful not to speculate beyond their means, that an instance of failure is extremely rare among them. No one ever in India hears of families reduced to ruin or distress by the failure of merchants and bankers; though here, as in all other countries advanced in the arts, a vast number of families subsist upon the interest of money employed by them.

"There is no class of men more interested in the stability of our rule in India than this of the respectable merchants; nor is there any upon whom the welfare of our government, and that of the people, more depend. Frugal, first, upon principle, that they may not in their expenditure encroach upon their capitals, they become so by habit; and when they advance in life they lay out their accumulated wealth in the formation of those works which shall secure for them, from generation to generation, the blessings of the people of the towns in which they have resided, and those of the country around. It would not be too much to say, that one-half the great works which embellish and enrich the face of India, in tanks, groves, wells, temples, &c., have been formed by this class of the people solely with the view of securing the blessings of mankind by contributing to their happiness in solid and permanent works."--_Ibid_. vol. ii. 142.

"In the year 1829, while I held the civil charge of the district of Jubbulpore, in this valley of the Nerbudda, I caused an estimate to be made of the public works of ornament and utility it contained. The population of the district at that time amounted to five hundred thousand souls, distributed among four thousand and fifty-three occupied towns, villages, and hamlets. There were one thousand villages more which had formerly been occupied, but were then deserted. There were two thousand two hundred and eighty-eight tanks, two hundred and nine bowlies, or large wells, with flights of steps extending from the top down to the water when in its lowest stage; fifteen hundred and sixty wells lined with brick and stone, cemented with lime, but without stairs; three hundred and sixty Hindoo temples, and twenty-two Mohammedan mosques. The estimated cost of these works in grain at the present price, that is the quantity that would have been consumed, had the labour been paid in kind at the present ordinary rate, was eighty-six lacks, sixty-six thousand and forty-three rupees (86,66,043,) £866,604 sterling.

"The labourer was estimated to be paid at the rate of about two-thirds the quantity of corn he would get in England if paid in kind, and corn sells here at about one-third the price it fetches in average seasons in England. In Europe, therefore, these works, supposing the labour equally efficient, would have cost at least four times the sum here estimated; and such works formed by private individuals for the public good, without any view whatever to return in profits, indicates a very high degree of _public spirit_.

"The whole annual rent of the lands of this district amounts to about six hundred and fifty thousand rupees a year, (£65,000 sterling,) that is, five hundred thousand demandable by the government, and one hundred and fifty thousand by those who hold the lands at lease immediately under government, over and above what may be considered as the profits of their stock as farmers. These works must, therefore, have cost about thirteen times the amount of the annual rent of the whole of the lands of the districts--or the whole annual rent for above thirteen years!"--_Ibid_, vol. ii. 194.

We have here private rights in land amounting to 150,000 rupees, in a country abounding in coal and iron ore,[112] and with a population of half a million of people. Estimating the private interest at ten years' purchase, it is exactly three years' purchase of the land-tax; and it follows of course, that _the government takes every year one-fourth of the whole value of the property_,--at which rate the little State of New Jersey, with its half-million of inhabitants, would pay annually above thirty millions of dollars for the support of those who were charged with the administration of its affairs! Need we wonder at the poverty of India when thus taxed, while deprived of all power even to manure its land?

"Three-fourths of the recruits for our Bengal native infantry are drawn from the Rajpoot peasantry of the kingdom of Oude, on the left bank of the Ganges, where their affections have been linked to the soil for a long series of generations. The good feelings of the families from which they are drawn, continue, through the whole period of their service, to exercise a salutary influence over their conduct as men and as soldiers. Though they never take their families with them, they visit them on furlough every two or three years, and always return to them when the surgeon considers a change of air necessary to their recovery from sickness. Their family circles are always present to their imaginations; and the recollections of their last visit, the hopes of the next, and the assurance that their conduct as men and as soldiers in the interval will be reported to those circles by their many comrades, who are annually returning on furlough to the same parts of the country, tend to produce a general and uniform propriety of conduct, that is hardly to be found among the soldiers of any other army in the world, and which seems incomprehensible to those who are unacquainted with its source,--veneration for parents cherished through life and a never impaired love of home, and of all the dear objects by which it is constituted."--Ibid. vol. ii. 415.

Such are the people that we see now forced to abandon a land of which not more than half the cultivable part is in cultivation--a land that abounds in every description of mineral wealth--and to sell themselves for long years of service, apart from wives, children, and friends, to be employed in the most unhealthful of all pursuits, the cultivation of sugar in the Mauritius, and the Sandwich Islands, and among the swamps of British Guiana, and Jamaica, and for a reward of four or five rupees ($2 to $2.50) per month. What was their condition in the Mauritius is thus shown by an intelligent and honest visitor of the island in 1838:--

"After the passage of the act abolishing slavery, an arrangement was sanctioned by the Colonial Government, for the introduction of a great number of Indian labourers into the colony. They were engaged at five rupees, equal to ten shillings, a month, for five years, with also one pound of rice, a quarter of a pound of dhall, or grain, a kind of pulse, and one ounce of butter, of ghee, daily. But for every day they were absent from their work they were to return two days to their masters, who retained one rupee per month, to pay an advance made of six months' wages, and to defray the expense of their passage. If these men came into Port Louis to complain of their masters, they were lodged in the Bagne prison, till their masters were summoned. The masters had a great advantage before the magistrates over their servants: the latter being foreigners, but few of them could speak French, and they had no one to assist them in pleading their cause. They universally represented themselves as having been deceived with respect to the kind of labour to be exacted from them. But perhaps the greatest evil attendant on their introduction into the Mauritius was the small proportion of females imported with them, only about two hundred being brought with upward of ten thousand men. It was evident that unless the system of employing them were closely watched, there was a danger that it might ultimately grow into another species of slavery."[113]

We see thus that while the females of India are deprived of all power to employ themselves in the lighter labour of manufacture, the men are forced to emigrate, leaving behind their wives and daughters, to support themselves as best they may. The same author furnishes an account of the Indian convicts that had been transported to the island, as follows:--

"Among the Indian convicts working on the road, we noticed one wearing chains; several had a slight single ring round the ankle. They are lodged in huts with flat roofs, or in other inferior dwellings, near the road. There are about seven hundred of them in the island. What renders them peculiarly objects of sympathy is, that they were sent here for life, and no hope of any remission of sentence is held out to them for good conduct. Their's is a hopeless bondage; and though it is said by some that they are not hard worked, yet they are generally, perhaps constantly, breaking stones and mending the road, and in a tropical sun. There are among them persons who were so young when transported that, in their offences, they could only be looked on as the dupes of those that were older; and many of them bear good characters."[114]

At the date to which these passages refer there was a dreadful famine in India; but, "during the prevalence of this famine," as we are told,--

"Rice was going every hour out of the country. 230,371 bags of 164 pounds each--making 37,780,844 lbs.--were exported from Calcutta. Where? To the Mauritius, to feed the kidnapped Coolies. Yes: to feed the men who had been stolen from the banks of the Ganges and the hills adjacent, and dragged from their native shore, under pretence of going to one of the Company's villages, to grow in the island of Mauritius what they might have grown in abundance upon their own fertile, but over-taxed land. The total amount of rice exported from Calcutta, during the famine in 1838, was 151,923,696 lbs., besides 13,722,408 lbs. of other edible grains, which would have fed and kept alive all those who perished that year. Wives might have been saved to their husbands, babes to their mothers, friends to their friends; villages might still have been peopled; a sterile land might have been restored to verdure. Freshness and joy and the voices of gladness, might have been there. Now, all is stillness, and desolation, and death. Yet we are told we have nothing to do with India."[115]

The nation that exports raw produce _must_ exhaust its land, and then it _must_ export its men, who fly from famine, leaving the women and children to perish behind them.

By aid of continued Coolie immigration the export of sugar from the Mauritius has been doubled in the last sixteen years, having risen from 70 to 140 millions of pounds. Sugar is therefore very cheap, and the foreign competition is thereby driven from the British market. "Such conquests," however, says, very truly, the London _Spectator_--

"Don't always bring profit to the conqueror; nor does production itself prove prosperity. Competition for the possession of a field may be carried so far as to reduce prices below prime cost; and it is clear from the notorious facts of the West Indies--from the change of property, from the total unproductiveness of much property still--that the West India production of sugar has been carried on, not only without replacing capital, but with a constant sinking of capital."

The "free" Coolie and the "free negro" of Jamaica, have been urged to competition for the sale of sugar, and they seem likely to perish together; but compensation for this is found in the fact that--

"Free-trade has, in reducing the prices of commodities for home consumption, enabled the labourer to devote a greater share of his income toward purchasing clothing and luxuries, and has increased the home trade to an enormous extent."[116]

What effect this reduction of "the prices of commodities for home consumption" has had upon the poor Coolie, may be judged from the following passage:--

"I here beheld, for the first time, a class of beings of whom we have heard much, and for whom I have felt considerable interest. I refer to the Coolies imported by the British government to take the place of the _faineant_ negroes, when the apprenticeship system was abolished. Those that I saw were wandering about the streets, dressed rather tastefully, but always meanly, and usually carrying over their shoulder a sort of _chiffonier's_ sack, in which they threw whatever refuse stuff they found in the streets or received as charity. Their figures are generally superb; and their Eastern costume, to which they adhere as far as their poverty will permit of any clothing, sets off their lithe and graceful forms to great advantage. Their faces are almost uniformly of the finest classic mould, and illuminated by pairs of those dark swimming and propitiatory eyes, which exhaust the language of tenderness and passion at a glance.

"But they are the most inveterate mendicants on the island. It is said that those brought from the interior of India are faithful and efficient workmen, while those from Calcutta and its vicinity are good for nothing. Those that were prowling about the streets of Spanish-town and Kingston, I presume, were of the latter class, for there is not a planter on the island, it is said, from whom it would be more difficult to get any work than from one of these. They subsist by begging altogether: they are not vicious, nor intemperate, nor troublesome particularly, except as beggars. In that calling they have a pertinacity before which a Northern mendicant would grow pale. They will not be denied. They will stand perfectly still and look through a window from the street for a quarter of an hour, if not driven away, with their imploring eyes fixed upon you, like a stricken deer, without saying a word or moving a muscle. They act as if it were no disgrace for them to beg, as if the least indemnification which they are entitled to expect, for the outrage perpetrated upon them in bringing them from their distant homes to this strange island, is a daily supply of their few and cheap necessities, as they call for them.

"I confess that their begging did not leave upon my mind the impression produced by ordinary mendicancy. They do not look as if they ought to work. I never saw one smile, and though they showed no positive suffering, I never saw one look happy. Each face seemed to be constantly telling the unhappy story of their woes, and like fragments of a broken mirror, each reflecting in all its hateful proportions the national outrage of which they are the victims."[117]