Chapter XI: Slavery in British India (2)

The imperial government of China, seeing that the traffic in opium was sowing misery and death among its subjects, prohibited the introduction of the drug within the empire in 1839. But the British had a vast amount of capital at stake, and the profits of the trade were too great to be relinquished for any considerations of humanity. War was declared; thousands of Chinese were slaughtered, and the imperial government forced to permit the destructive traffic on a more extensive scale than ever, and to pay $2,000,000 besides for daring to protest against it!

The annual revenue now realized from the opium traffic amounts to £3,500,000. It is estimated that about 400,000 Chinese perish every year in consequence of using the destructive drug, while the amount of individual and social misery proceeding from the same cause is appalling to every humane heart. Among the people of India who have been forced into the cultivation and manufacture of opium, the use of it has greatly increased under the fostering care of the government. The Company seems to be aware that a people enervated by excessive indulgence will make little effort to throw off the chains of slavery. Keep the Hindoo drunk with opium and he will not rebel.

The effects of this drug upon the consumer are thus described by a distinguished Chinese scholar:—"It exhausts the animal spirits, impedes the regular performance of business, wastes the flesh and blood, dissipates every kind of property, renders the person ill-favoured, promotes obscenity, discloses secrets, violates the laws, attacks the vitals, and destroys life." This statement is confirmed by other natives, and also by foreign residents; and it is asserted that, as a general rule, a person does not live more than ten years after becoming addicted to the use of this drug.

The recent Burmese war had for one of its objects the opening of a road to the interior of China, for the purpose of extending the opium trade. And for such an object thousands of brave Burmese were slaughtered, fertile and beautiful regions desolated, and others subjected to the peculiar slave-system of the East India Company. The extension of British dominion and the accumulation of wealth in British hands, instead of the spread of Christianity and the development of civilization, mark all the measures of the Company.

William Howitt, one of the ablest as well as the most democratic writers of England, thus confirms the statements made above:—

"The East India Company exists by monopolies of the land, of
opium, and of salt. By their narrow, greedy, and purblind
management of these resources, they have contrived to reduce
that once affluent country to the uttermost depths of poverty
and pauperism. The people starve and perish in famine every
now and then by half a million at a time. One-third of that
superb peninsula is reduced to waste and jungle. While other
colonies pay from twenty to thirty shillings per head of revenue,
India yields only four shillings per head. The income of the
government at the last renewal of the charter was _twenty
millions_; it is now reduced to about _seventeen millions_; and
even to raise this, they have been obliged to double the tax
on salt. The debt was _forty millions_; it is now said to be
augmented by constant war, and the payment of the dividends,
which, whatever the real proceeds, are always kept up to
the usual height, to _seventy millions_. This is a state of
things which cannot last. It is a grand march toward financial
inanition. It threatens, if not arrested by the voice of the
British people, the certain and no very distant loss of India.

"We have some glimpses of the treatment of the people in the
collection of the land-tax, as it is called, but really the rent.
The government claims not the mere right of governing, but, as
conquerors, the fee-simple of the land. Over the greater part of
India there are no real freeholders. The land is the Company's,
and they collect, not a tax, but a rent. They have their
collectors all over India, who go and say as the crops stand, 'We
shall take so much of this.' It is seldom less than one-half—it
is more commonly sixty, seventy, and eighty per cent! This is
killing the goose to come at the golden egg. It drives the people
to despair; they run away and leave the land to become jungle;
they perish by famine in thousands and tens of thousands.

"This is why no capitalists dare to settle and grow for us
cotton, or manufacture for us sugar. There is no security—no
fixity of taxation. It is one wholesale system of arbitrary
plunder, such as none but a conquered country in the first
violence of victorious license ever was subjected to. But this
system has here continued more than a generation; the country is
reduced by it to a fatal condition—the only wonder is that we
yet retain it at all.

"The same system is pursued in the opium monopoly. The finest
lands are taken for the cultivation of the poppy; the government
give the natives what they please for the opium, often about as
many shillings as they get paid for it guineas per pound, and
ship it off to curse China with it. 'In India,' says a writer
in the Chinese Repository, 'the extent of territory occupied
with the poppy, and the amount of population engaged in its
cultivation and the preparation of opium, are far greater than
in any other part of the world.'

"Turkey is said to produce only 2000 chests of opium annually;
India produces 40,000 of 134 lbs. each, and yielding a revenue of
about £4,000,000 sterling.

"But perhaps worse than all is the salt monopoly. It is well
known that the people of India are a vegetable diet people.
Boiled rice is their chief food, and salt is an absolute
necessary of life. With a vegetable diet in that hot climate,
without plenty of salt, putrid diseases and rapid mortality are
inevitable. Nature, or Providence, has therefore given salt
in abundance. The sea throws it up already crystallized in
many places; in others it is prepared by evaporation; but the
Company steps in and imposes _two hundred per cent._ on this
indispensable article, and guards it by such penalties that the
native dare not stoop to gather it when it lies at his feet. The
consequence is that mortality prevails, to a terrific extent
often, among the population. Officers of government are employed
to destroy the salt naturally formed; and government determines
how much salt shall be annually consumed.

"Now, let the people of England mark one thing. _The cholera
originates in the East._ It has visited us once, and is on its
march once more toward us. We have heard through the newspapers
of its arrival in Syria, in Turkey, in Russia, at Vienna. In a
few months it will probably be again among us.

"_Has any one yet imagined that this scourge may possibly be the
instrument of Divine retribution for our crimes and cruelties?_
Has any one imagined that we have any thing to do with the
creation of this terrible pestilence? Yet there is little, there
is scarcely the least doubt, that this awful instrument of death
is occasioned by this very monopoly of salt—that it is the
direct work of the four-and-twenty men in Leadenhall-street.
The cholera is found to arise in the very centre of India.
It commences in the midst of this swarming population, which
subsists on vegetables, and which is deprived by the British
government of the necessary salt! In that hot climate it acquires
a deadly strength—thousands perish by it as by the stroke of
lightning, and it hence radiates over the globe, travelling at
the speed of a horse in full gallop. Thus it is that God visits
our deeds upon our heads.

"Such is a brief glance at the mal-administration, the abuse,
and the murderous treatment of India, permitted by great and
Christian England to a knot of mere money-making traders. We
commit the lives and happiness of one hundred and fifty millions
of souls—the well-being, and probably the chance of retention,
of one of the finest countries in the world, and the comfort and
prosperity of every human creature in Great Britain, to the hands
of those who are only, from day to day, grasping at the vitals
of this glorious Eastern region to increase their dividends.
This is bad enough, but this is not all. As if we had given them
a charter in the most effectual manner to damage our dominions
and blast all our prospects of trade, we have allowed these
four-and-twenty men of Leadenhall-street not only to cripple
India, but to exasperate and, as far as possible, close China
against us. Two millions of people in India and three millions of
people in China—all waiting for our manufactures, all capable
of sending us the comforts and necessaries that we need—it
would seem that to us, a nation especially devoted to trade, as
if Providence had opened all the gorgeous and populous East to
employ and to enrich us. One would have thought that every care
and anxiety would have been aroused to put ourselves on the best
footing with this swarming region. It has been the last thing
thought of.

"The men of Leadenhall-street have been permitted, after having
paralyzed India, to send to China not the articles that the
Chinese wanted, but the very thing of all others that its
authorities abhorred—that is, opium.

"It is well known with what assiduity these traders for years
thrust this deadly drug into the ports of China; or it may be
known from 'Medhurst's China,' from 'Thelwall's Iniquities of
the Opium Trade,' from 'Montgomery Martin's Opium in China,'
and various other works. It is well known what horrors, crimes,
ruin of families, and destruction of individuals the rage of
opium-smoking introduced among the millions of the Celestial
Empire. Every horror, every species of reckless desperation,
social depravity, and sensual crime, spread from the practice
and overran China as a plague. The rulers attempted to stop the
evil by every means in their power. They enacted the severest
punishments for the sale of it. These did not avail. They
augmented the punishment to death. Without a stop to it the whole
framework of society threatened to go to pieces. 'Opium,' says
the Imperial edict itself, 'coming from the distant regions of
barbarians, has pervaded the country with its baneful influence.'
The opium-smoker would steal, sell his property, his children,
the mother of his children, and finally commit murder for it. The
most ghastly spectacles were everywhere seen; instead of healthy
and happy men, the most repulsive scenes. 'I visited one of the
opium-houses,' said an individual quoted by Sir Robert Inglis,
in the House of Commons, in 1843, 'and shall I tell you what I
saw in this antechamber of hell? I thought it impossible to find
anything worse than the results of drinking ardent spirits; but
I have succeeded in finding something far worse. I saw Malays,
Chinese, men and women, old and young, in one mass, in one common
herd, wallowing in their filth, beastly, sensual, devilish, and
this under the eyes of a Christian government.'

"They were these abominations and horrors that the Emperor of
China determined to arrest. They were these which our East India
Company determined to perpetuate for this base gain. When the
emperor was asked to license the sale of opium, as he could not
effect its exclusion, and thus make a profit of it, what was his
reply? '_It is true I cannot prevent the introduction of the
flowing poison. Gain-seeking and corrupt men will, for profit
and sensuality, defeat my wishes, but nothing will induce me to
derive a benefit from the vice and misery of my people._'

"These were the sentiments of the Chinese monarch; what was the
conduct of the so-called Christian Englishmen? They determined to
go on poisoning and demoralizing China, till they provoked the
government to war, and then massacred the people to compel the
continuance of the sale of opium."

Howitt evidently has as ardent a sympathy for those who have suffered from the tyranny of British rule as Edmund Burke himself. The wholesale degradation of the Hindoos, which has resulted from the measures of the East India Company, calls loudly indeed for the denunciations of indignant humanity. The crime must have its punishment. The ill-gotten gains of the Company should be seized to carry out an ameliorating policy, and all concerned in enforcing the system of oppression should be taught that justice is not to be wounded with impunity.

The burdens imposed upon the Hindoos are precisely of the character and extent of those that have reduced Ireland to poverty and her people to slavery. Besides the enormous rents, which are sufficient of themselves to dishearten the tillers of the soil, the British authorities seem to have exhausted invention in devising taxes. So dear a price to live was never paid by any people except the Irish. What remains to the cultivator when the rent of the land and almost forty different taxes are paid?

Those Hindoos who wish to employ capital or labour in any other way than in cultivation of land are deterred by the formidable array of taxation. The chief taxes are styled the Veesabuddy, or tax on merchants, traders, and shopkeepers; the Mohturfa, or tax on weavers, carpenters, stonecutters, and other mechanical trades; and the Bazeebab, consisting of smaller taxes annually rented out to the highest bidder. The proprietor of the Bazeebab is thus constituted a petty chieftain, with power to exact fees at marriages and religious ceremonies; to inquire into and fine the misconduct of females in families, and other misdemeanours—in fact, petty tyrants, who can at all times allege engagements to the government to justify extortion.[113] These proprietors are the worst kind of slaveholders.

The mode of settling the Mohturfa on looms is remarkable for the precision of its exaction. Every circumstance of the weaver's family is considered; the number of days which he devotes to his loom, the number of his children, the assistance which he receives from them, and the number and quality of the pieces which he can produce in a year; so that, let him exert himself as he will, his industry will always be taxed to the highest degree.[114] This method is so detailed that the servants of the government cannot enter into it, and the assessment of the tax is therefore left to the heads of the villages. It is impossible for a weaver to know what he is to pay to the government for being allowed to carry on his business till the yearly demand is made. If he has worked hard, and turned out one or two pieces of cloth more than he did the year before, his tax is increased. The more industrious he is the more he is forced to pay.

The tax-gatherers are thorough inquisitors. According to Rikards, upward of seventy different kinds of buildings—the houses, shops, or warehouses of different castes and professions—were ordered to be entered into the survey accounts; besides the following implements of professions, which were usually assessed to the public revenue, viz.: "Oil-mills, iron manufactory, toddy-drawer's stills, potter's kiln, washerman's stone, goldsmith's tools, sawyer's saw, toddy-drawer's knives, fishing-nets, barber's hones, blacksmith's anvils, pack-bullocks, cocoa-nut safe, small fishing-boats, cotton-beater's bow, carpenter's tools, large fishing-boats, looms, salt-storehouses. If a landlord objects to the assessment on trees, as old and past bearing, they are, one and all, ordered to be cut down—a measure as ridiculous as unjust—as it not only inflicts injury upon the landlord, but takes away the chance of future profit for the government. Mr. Rikards bears witness, as a collector of Malabar, that lands and produce were sometimes inserted in the survey account which absolutely did not exist, while other lands were assessed to the revenue at more than their actual produce. From all this, it is obvious that the Hindoo labourer or artisan is the slave of the tax-collector, who, moreover, has no interest in the life of his victim.

Labour being almost "dirt cheap" in India, whenever speculating companies of Englishmen wish to carry out any particular scheme for which labourers are required, they hire a number of Hindoo Coolies, induce them to visit any port of the country, and treat them abominably, knowing that the poor wretches have no protection. The operations of the Assam Tea Company illustrate this practice:—

"An inconsiderate expenditure of capital placed the Assam Tea
Company in great jeopardy, and at one time it was feared the
scheme would be abandoned. The number of managers and assistants
appointed by the Assam Company to carry on their affairs and
superintend their tea gardens, on large salaries, was quite
unnecessary; one or two experienced European superintendents
to direct the native establishment would have answered every
purpose. A vast number of Coolies (or labourers) were induced
to proceed to Upper Assam to cultivate the gardens; but bad
arrangements having been made to supply them with proper,
wholesome food, many were seized with sickness. On their
arrival at the tea-plantations, in the midst of high and dense
tree jungle, numbers absconded, and others met an untimely
end. The rice served out to the Coolies from the Assam Tea
Company's store-rooms, was so bad as not to be fit to be given
to elephants, much less to human beings. The loss of these
labourers, who had been conveyed to Upper Assam at a great
expense, deprived the company of the means of cultivating so
great an extent of country as would otherwise have been insured;
for the scanty population of Upper Assam offered no means of
replacing the deficiency of hands. Nor was the improvidence of
the company in respect to labourers the only instance of their
mismanagement. Although the company must have known that they
had no real use or necessity for a steamer, a huge vessel was
nevertheless purchased, and frequently sent up and down the
Burrampooter river from Calcutta; carrying little else than a few
thousand rupees for the payment of their establishment in Upper
Assam, which might have been transmitted through native bankers,
and have saved the company a most lavish and unprofitable
expenditure of capital."[115]

Ay, and the expense is all that is thought worthy of consideration. The miserable victims to the measures of the company might perish like brutes without being even pitied.

On the verge of starvation, as so many of the Hindoo labourers generally are, it does not excite surprise that they are very ready to listen to the offers of those who are engaged in the "Cooley slave-trade." In addition to the astounding facts given by us in the previous chapter, in regard to this traffic in men, we quote the following from the London Spectator of October, 1838:—

"Under Lord Glenelg's patronage, the Eastern slave-trade prospers
exceedingly. The traffic in Hill Coolies promises to become one
of the most extensive under the British flag. A cargo arrived
in Berbice about the beginning of May, in prime condition: and
the Berbice Advertiser, one of the most respectable of the West
India journals, states, that out of 289, conveyed in the Whitby,
only eight died on the passage, and very few were ill. Only one
circumstance was wanting to make them the happiest of human(?)
beings—only eight women were sent as companions for the 280
men; and the deficiency of females was the more to be regretted
because it was 'probable they would be shunned by the negroes
from jealousy and speaking a different language.'

"The same newspaper contains a very curious document respecting
the Hill Cooley traffic. It is a circular letter, dated the 8th
January, 1838, from Henley, Dowson, and Bethel, of Calcutta, the
agents most extensively engaged in the shipment of labourers from
India to the Mauritius and British Guiana. These gentlemen thus
state their claims to preference over other houses in the same
business:—

"'We have within the last two years procured and shipped
upward of 5000 free agricultural labourers for our friends at
Mauritius; and, from the circumstance of nearly 500 of the
number being employed on estates in which we possess a direct
interest, we can assure you that a happier and more contented
labouring population is seldom to be met with in any part of the
world, than the Dhargas or mountain tribes sent from this vast
country.'

"Five thousand within two years to the Mauritius alone! This
is pretty well, considering that the trade is in its infancy.
As to the statement of the happiness and contentment of the
labourers, rather more impartial evidence than the good word of
the exporters of the commodity advertised would be desirable.
If Englishmen could fancy themselves Hill Coolies for an
instant—landed in Berbice, in the proportion of 280 men to 8 of
the gentler sex, 'speaking a different language,' and shunned by
the very negroes—we are inclined to think they would not, even
in that imaginary and momentary view, conceit themselves to be
among the happiest of mankind.

"We proceed with the Calcutta circular:—

"'The labourers hitherto procured by us have cost their
employers, _landed at the Mauritius_, about one hundred rupees
(or 10_l._ sterling) per man; which sum comprises six months'
advance of wages, provisions and water for the voyage, clothing,
commission, passage, insurance, and all incidental charges.'

"'The expense attending the shipment of Indian labourers to the
West India Colonies would be necessarily augmented—firstly, by
the higher rate of passage-money, and the increased quantity of
provisions and water; and, secondly, from the necessity of making
arrangements, indispensable to the health and comfort of native
passengers, on a voyage of so long a duration, in the course of
which they would be exposed to great vicissitude of climate.

"'On making ample allowance for these charges, we do not
apprehend that a labourer, sent direct from this country to
Demerara, and engaged to work on your estates for a period of
five consecutive years, would cost, landed there, above two
hundred and ten rupees, or 21_l._ sterling.'

"This sum of 210 rupees includes _six months' wages_—at what
rate does the reader suppose? Why, five rupees, or ten shillings
sterling a month—half-a-crown a week—in Demerara! The passage
is 10_l._, and the insurance 12_s._; for they are insured at so
much a head, like pigs or sheep.

"It is manifest that after their arrival in Demerara, the Indians
will not, unless on compulsion, work for five years at the
rate of 10_s._ a month, while the negroes receive much higher
wages. They are therefore placed under strict control, and are
just as much slaves as the Redemptioners, whom the virtuous
Quakers inveigled into Pennsylvania a century or more ago. The
Indians bind themselves to work in town or country, wherever
their consignee or master may choose to employ them. One of the
articles of their agreement is this:—

"'In order that the undersigned natives of India may be fully
aware of the engagement they undertake, it is hereby notified,
that they will be required to do _all such work as the object
for which they are engaged necessitates_; and that, as labourers
attached to an estate, they will be required to clear forest and
extract timber, carry manure, dig and prepare land for planting,
also to take charge of horses, mules, and cattle of every
description; _in short, to do all such work as an estate for the
cultivation of sugar-cane and the manufacture of sugar demands_,
or any branch of agriculture to which they may be destined.'

"In case of disobedience or misconduct—that is, at the caprice
of the master—they may be 'degraded,' and sent back at their own
charge to Calcutta. They are to receive no wages during illness;
and a rupee a month is to be deducted from their wages—thereby
reducing them to 2_s._ a week—as an indemnity-fund for the
cost of sending them back. What security there is for the kind
treatment of the labourers does not appear: there is nothing in
the contract but a promise to act equitably.

"Now, in what respect do these men differ in condition from
negro slaves, except very much for the worse? They must be more
helpless than the negroes—if for no other reason, because of
their ignorance of the language their masters use. They will not,
for a long period certainly, be formidable from their numbers.
How easily may even the miserable terms of the contract with
their employers be evaded! Suppose the Indian works steadily for
four years, it may suit his master to describe him as refractory
and idle during the fifth, and then he will be sent back at his
own cost; and the whole of his earnings may be expended in paying
for his passage to Calcutta, where, after all, he is a long way
from home.

"It is impossible to contemplate without pain the inevitable lot
of these helpless beings; but the conduct of the government,
which could sanction the infamous commerce of which the Hill
Cooley will be the victims, while professing all the while
such a holy horror of dealing in negroes, should rouse general
indignation.

Is it only a certain shade of black, and a peculiar physical
conformation, which excites the compassion of the Anti-Slavery
people? If it is cruelty, oppression, and fraud which they abhor
and desire to prevent, then let them renew their agitation in
behalf of the kidnapped natives of India, now suffering, probably
more acutely, all that made the lot of the negro a theme for
eloquence and a field for Christian philanthropy."

This is written in the right spirit. The trade described has increased to an extent which calls for the interference of some humane power. Should the British government continue to sanction the traffic, it must stand responsible for a national crime.

Oppressive and violent as the British dominion in India undoubtedly is, the means devised to extend it are even more worthy of strong condemnation. The government fixes its eyes upon a certain province, where the people are enjoying peace and plenty, and determines to get possession of it. The Romans themselves were not more fertile in pretences for forcible seizure of territory than these British plunderers. They quickly hunt up a pretender to the throne, support his claims with a powerful army, make him their complete tool, dethrone the lawful sovereign, and extend their authority over the country. The course pursued toward Afghanistan in 1838 illustrates this outrageous violation of national rights.

The following account of the origin and progress of the Afghanistan war is given by an English writer in the Penny Magazine:—

"In 1747, Ahmeed Shah, an officer of an Afghan troop in the
service of Persia, refounded the Afghan monarchy, which was
maintained until the death of his successor in 1793. Ahmeed
was of the Douranee tribe, and the limits over which his sway
extended is spoken of as the Douranee empire. Four of the sons of
Ahmeed's successor disputed, and in turn possessed, the throne;
and during this civil war several of the principal chiefs threw
off their allegiance, and the Douranee empire ceased to exist,
but was split up into the chiefships of Candahar, Herat, Caboul,
and Peshawur. Herat afterward became a dependency of Persia, and
Shah Shooja ool Moolook, the chief of Peshawur, lost his power
after having enjoyed it for about six years. Dost Mohammed Kahn,
the chief of Caboul, according to the testimony of the late
Sir Alexander Burnes, writing in 1832, governed his territory
with great judgment, improved its internal administration and
resources, and became the most powerful chief in Afghanistan.
Shah Shooja was for many years a fugitive and a pensioner of the
British government. He made one unsuccessful attempt to regain
his territory, but Peshawur eventually became a tributary to the
ruler of the Punjab. Such was the state of Afghanistan in 1836.

"In the above year the Anglo-Indian government complained that
Dost Mohammed Khan, chief of Caboul, had engaged in schemes of
aggrandizement which threatened the stability of the British
frontier in India; and Sir Alexander Burnes, who was sent with
authority to represent to him the light in which his proceedings
were viewed, was compelled to leave Caboul without having
effected any change in his conduct. The siege of Herat, and the
support which both Dost Mohammed and his brother, the chief of
Candahar, gave to the designs of Persia in Afghanistan, the
latter chief especially openly assisting the operations against
Herat, created fresh alarm in the Anglo-Indian government as to
the security of our frontier. Several minor chiefs also avowed
their attachment to the Persians. As our policy, instead of
hostility, required an ally capable of resisting aggression on
the western frontier of India, the Governor-general, from whose
official papers we take these statements, 'was satisfied,' after
serious and mature deliberation, 'that a pressing necessity, as
well as every consideration of policy and justice, warranted
us in espousing the cause of Shah Shooja ool Moolk;' and it
was determined to place him on the throne. According to the
Governor-general, speaking from the best authority, the testimony
as to Shah Shooja's popularity was unanimous. In June, 1838,
the late Sir William Macnaghten formed a tripartite treaty with
the ruler of the Punjab and Shah Shooja; the object of which
was to restore the latter to the throne of his ancestors. This
policy it was conceived would conduce to the general freedom and
security of commerce, the restoration of tranquillity upon the
most important frontier of India, and the erection of a lasting
barrier against hostile intrigue and encroachment; and, while
British influence would thus gain its proper footing among the
nations of Central Asia, the prosperity of the Afghan people
would be promoted.

"Troops were despatched from the Presidencies of Bengal and
Bombay to co-operate with the contingents raised by the Shah and
our other ally, the united force being intended to act together
under the name of the 'Army of the Indus.' After a march of
extraordinary length, through countries which had never before
been traversed by British troops, and defiles which are the
most difficult passes in the world, where no wheeled carriage
had ever been, and where it was necessary for the engineers in
many places to construct roads before the baggage could proceed,
the combined forces from Bengal and Bombay reached Candahar in
May, 1839. According to the official accounts, the population
were enthusiastic in welcoming the return of Shah Shooja. The
next step was to advance toward Ghiznee and Caboul. On the 23d
July, the strong and important fortress and citadel of Ghiznee,
regarded throughout Asia as impregnable, was taken in two hours
by blowing up the Caboul gate. The army had only been forty-eight
hours before the place. An 'explosion party' carried three
hundred pounds of gunpowder in twelve sand-bags, with a hose
seventy-two feet long, the train was laid and fired, the party
having just time to reach a tolerable shelter from the effects
of the concussion, though one of the officers was injured by
its force. On the 7th of August the army entered Caboul. Dost
Mohammed had recalled his son Mohammed Akhbar from Jellalabad
with the troops guarding the Khyber Pass, and their united forces
amounted to thirteen thousand men; but these troops refused to
advance, and Dost Mohammed was obliged to take precipitate fight,
accompanied only by a small number of horsemen. Shah Shooja made
a triumphant entry into Caboul, and the troops of Dost Mohammed
tendered their allegiance to him. The official accounts state
that in his progress toward Caboul he was joined by every person
of rank and influence in the country. As the tribes in the Bolan
Pass committed many outrages and murders on the followers of the
army of the Indus, at the instigation of their chief, the Khan
of Khelat, his principal town (Khelat) was taken on the 13th
of November, 1839. The political objects of the expedition had
now apparently been obtained. The hostile chiefs of Caboul and
Candahar were replaced by a friendly monarch. On the side of
Scinde and Herat, British alliance and protection were courted.
All this had been accomplished in a few months, but at an expense
said to exceed three millions sterling."

The _expense_ of national outrage is only of importance to the sordid and unprincipled men who conceived and superintended the Afghanistan expedition. In the first part of the above extract, the writer places the British government in the position of one who strikes in self-defence. It was informed that Dost Mohammed entertained schemes of invasion dangerous to the British supremacy—informed by the exiled enemy of the chief of Caboul. The information was seasonable and exceedingly useful. Straightway a treaty was formed, by which the British agreed to place their tool for the enslavement of the Afghans upon the throne from which he had been driven. Further on, it is said, that when Shah Sooja appeared in Afghanistan he was joined by every person of rank and influence in the country. Just so; and the followers and supporters of Dost Mohammed nearly all submitted to the superior army of the British general. But two years afterward, the strength of the patriotic party was seen, when Caboul rose against Shah Sooja, drove him again from the throne, and defeated and massacred a considerable British garrison. Shah Sooja was murdered soon afterward. But the British continued the war against the Afghans, with the object of reducing them to the same slavery under which the remainder of Hindostan was groaning. The violation of national rights, the massacre of thousands, and the enslavement of millions were the glorious aims of British policy in the Afghan expedition. The policy then carried out has been more fully illustrated since that period. Whenever a territory was thought desirable by the government, neither national rights, the principles of justice and humanity, nor even the common right of property in individuals has been respected. Wealth has been an object for the attainment of which plunder and massacre were not considered unworthy means.

Said Mr. John Bright, the radical reformer of Manchester, in a speech delivered in the House of Commons:—"It cannot be too universally known that the cultivators of the soil (in India) are in a very unsatisfactory condition; that they are, in truth, in a condition of almost extreme and 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 Zemindaree system, and the oppressions experienced by the ryots in the Presidencies of Bombay and Madras. After describing the state of affairs 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.'"

From all quarters we receive unimpeachable evidence that the locust system has performed its devouring work on the broadest scale in India; and that the Hindoos are the victims of conquerors, slower, indeed, in their movements, than Tamerlane or Genghis Khan, but more destructive and more criminal than either of those great barbarian invaders.