The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 08 (of 12)

As soon as it was discovered that the Council entertained a design of opening a trade on those principles, it immediately engaged the attention of such as had an interest in speculations of freight.

A memorial seems to have been drawn early, as it is dated on the 29th of March, though it was not the first publicly presented to the board. This memorial was presented on the 17th of September, 1781, by Mr. Wheler, conformably (as he says) to the desire of the Governor-General; and it contained a long and elaborate dissertation on the trade to China, tending to prove the advantage of extending the sale of English manufactures and other goods to the North of that country, beyond the usual emporium of European nations. This ample and not ill-reasoned theoretical performance (though not altogether new either in speculation or attempt) ended by a practical proposition, very short, indeed, of the ideas opened in the preliminary discourse, but better adapted to the immediate effect. It was, that the Company should undertake the sale of its own opium in China, and commit the management of the business to the memorialist, who offered to furnish them with a strong armed ship for that purpose. The offer was accepted, and the agreement made with him for the transport of two thousand chests.

A proposal by another person was made the July following the date of this project: it appears to have been early in the formal delivery at the board: this was for the export of one thousand four hundred and eighty chests. This, too, was accepted, but with new conditions and restrictions: for in so vast and so new an undertaking great difficulties occurred. In the first place, all importation of that commodity is rigorously forbidden by the laws of China. The impropriety of a political trader, who is lord over a great empire, being concerned in a contraband trade upon his own account, did not seem in the least to affect them; but they were struck with the obvious danger of subjecting their goods to seizure by the vastness of the prohibited import. To secure the larger adventure, they require of the China factory that Colonel Watson's ship should enter the port of Canton as an armed ship, (they would not say a ship of war, though that must be meant,) that her cargo should not be reported; they also ordered that other measures should be adopted to secure this prohibited article from seizure. If the cargo should get in safe, another danger was in view,—the overloading the Chinese market by a supply beyond the demand; for it is obvious that contraband trade must exist by small quantities of goods poured in by intervals, and not by great importations at one time. To guard against this inconvenience, they divide their second, though the smaller adventure, into two parts; one of which was to go to the markets of the barbarous natives which inhabit the coast of Malacca, where the chances of its being disposed of by robbery or sale were at least equal. If the opium should be disposed of there, the produce was to be invested in merchandise salable in China, or in dollars, if to be had. The other part (about one half) was to go in kind directly to the port of Canton.

The dealing at this time seemed closed; but the gentlemen who chartered the ships, always recollecting something, applied anew to the board to be furnished with cannon from the Company's ordnance. Some was delivered to them; but the Office of Ordnance (so heavily expensive to the Company) was not sufficient to spare a few iron guns for a merchant ship. Orders were given to cast a few cannon, and an application made to Madras, at a thousand miles' distance, for the rest. Madras answers, that they cannot exactly comply with the requisition; but still the board at Bengal hopes better things from them than they promise, and flatter themselves that with their assistance they shall properly arm a ship of thirty-two guns.

Whilst these dispositions were making, the first proposer, perceiving advantages from the circuitous voyage of the second which had escaped his observation, to make amends for his first omission, improved both on his own proposal and on that of the person who had improved on him. He therefore applied for leave to take two hundred and fifty chests on his own account, which he said could "be readily disposed of at the several places where it was necessary for the ship to touch for wood and water, or intelligence, during her intended voyage through the Eastern Islands." As a corrective to this extraordinary request, he assured the board, that, if he should meet with any unexpected delay at these markets, he would send their cargo to its destination, having secured a swift-sailing sloop for the protection of his ship; and this sloop he proposed, in such a case, to leave behind. Such an extraordinary eagerness to deal in opium lets in another view of the merits of the alleged dulness of the market, on which this trade was undertaken for the Company's account.

The Council, who had with great condescension and official facility consented to every demand hitherto made, were not reluctant with regard to this last. The quantity of opium required by the freighters, and the permission of a trading voyage, were granted without hesitation. The cargo having become far more valuable by this small infusion of private interest, the armament which was deemed sufficient to defend the Company's large share of the adventure was now discovered to be unequal to the protection of the whole. For the convoy of these two ships the Council hire and arm another. How they were armed, or whether in fact they were properly armed at all, does not appear. It is true that the Supreme Council proposed that these ships should also convey supplies to Madras; but this was a secondary consideration: their primary object was the adventure of opium. To this they were permanently attached, and were obliged to attend to its final destination.

The difficulty of disposing of the opium according to this project being thus got over, a material preliminary difficulty still stood in the way of the whole scheme. The contractor, or his assignees, were to be paid. The Company's treasure was wholly exhausted, and even its credit was exceedingly strained. The latter, however, was the better resource, and to this they resolved to apply. They therefore, at different times, opened two loans of one hundred thousand pounds each. The first was reserved for the Company's servants, civil and military, to be distributed in shares according to their rank; the other was more general. The terms of both loans were, that the risk of the voyage was to be on account of the Company. The payment was to be in bills (at a rate of exchange settled from the supercargoes at Canton) upon the same Company. In whatever proportion the adventure should fail, either in the ships not safely arriving in China or otherwise, in that proportion the subscribers were to content themselves with the Company's bonds for their money, bearing eight per cent interest. A share in this subscription was thought exceeding desirable; for Mr. Hastings writes from Benares, where he was employed in the manner already reported and hereafter to be observed upon, requesting that the subscription should be left open to his officers who were employed in the military operations against Cheyt Sing; and accordingly three majors, seven captains, twenty-three lieutenants, the surgeon belonging to the detachment, and two civil servants of high rank who attended him, were admitted to subscribe.

Bills upon Europe without interest are always preferred to the Company's bonds, even at the high interest allowed in India. They are, indeed, so greedily sought there, and (because they tend to bring an immediate and visible distress in Leadenhall Street) so much dreaded here, that by an act of Parliament the Company's servants are restricted from drawing bills beyond a certain amount upon the Company in England. In Bengal they have been restrained to about one hundred and eighty thousand pounds annually. The legislature, influenced more strongly with the same apprehensions, has restrained the Directors, as the Directors have restrained their servants, and have gone so far as to call in the power of the Lords of the Treasury to authorize the acceptance of any bills beyond an amount prescribed in the act.

The false principles of this unmercantile transaction (to speak of it in the mildest terms) were too gross not to be visible to those who contrived it. That the Company should be made to borrow such a sum as two hundred thousand pounds[7 - The whole sum has not been actually raised; but the deficiency is not very considerable.] at eight per cent, (or terms deemed by the Company to be worse,) in order first to buy a commodity represented by themselves as depreciated in its ordinary market, in order afterwards to carry one half of it through a circuitous trading voyage, depending for its ultimate success on the prudent and fortunate management of two or three sales, and purchases and re-sales of goods, and the chance of two or three markets, with all the risks of sea and enemy, was plainly no undertaking for such a body. The activity, private interest, and the sharp eye of personal superintendency may now and then succeed in such projects; but the remote inspection and unwieldy movements of great public bodies can find nothing but loss in them. Their gains, comparatively small, ought to be upon sure grounds; but here (as the Council states the matter) the private trader actually declines to deal, which is a proof more than necessary to demonstrate the extreme imprudence of such an undertaking on the Company's account. Still stronger and equally obvious objections lay to that member of the project which regards the introduction of a contraband commodity into China, sent at such a risk of seizure not only of the immediate object to be smuggled in, but of all the Company's property in Canton, and possibly at a hazard to the existence of the British factory at that port.

It is stated, indeed, that a monopolizing company in Canton, called the Cohong, had reduced commerce there to a deplorable state, and had rendered the gains of private merchants, either in opium or anything else, so small and so precarious that they were no longer able by purchasing that article to furnish the Company with money for a China investment. For this purpose the person whose proposal is accepted declares his project to be to set up a monopoly on the part of the Company against the monopoly of the Chinese merchants: but as the Chinese monopoly is at home, and supported (as the minute referred to asserts) by the country magistrates, it is plain it is the Chinese company, not the English, which must prescribe the terms,—particularly in a commodity which, if withheld from them at their market price, they can, whenever they please, be certain of purchasing as a condemned contraband.

There are two further circumstances in this transaction which strongly mark its character. The first is, that this adventure to China was not recommended to them by the factory of Canton; it was dangerous to attempt it without their previous advice, and an assurance, grounded on the state of the market and the dispositions of the government, that the measure, in a commercial light, would be profitable, or at least safe. Neither was that factory applied to on the state of the bills which, upon their own account, they might be obliged to draw upon Europe, at a time when the Council of Bengal direct them to draw bills to so enormous an amount.

The second remarkable circumstance is, that the Board of Trade in Calcutta (the proper administrator of all that relates to the Company's investment) does not seem to have given its approbation to the project, or to have been at all consulted upon it. The sale of opium had been adjudged to the Board of Trade for the express purpose of selling it in Bengal, not in China,—and of employing the produce of such sale in the manufactures of the country in which the original commodity was produced. On the whole, it appears a mere trading speculation of the Council, invading the department of others, without lights of its own, without authority or information from any other quarter. In a commercial view, it straitened the Company's investment to which it was destined; as a measure of finance, it is a contrivance by which a monopoly formed for the increase of revenue, instead of becoming one of its resources, involves the treasury, in the first instance, in a debt of two hundred thousand pounds.

If Mr. Hastings, on the expiration of Mr. Mackenzie's contract, the advantages of which to the Company had been long doubtful, had put himself in a situation to do his duty, some immediate loss to the revenue would have been the worst consequence of the alleged depreciation; probably it would not have been considerable. Mr. Mackenzie's contract, which at first was for three years, had been only renewed for a year. Had the same course been pursued with Mr. Sulivan, they would have had it in their power to adopt some plan which might have secured them from any loss at all. But they pursued another plan: they carefully put all remedy still longer out of their reach by giving their contract for four years. To cover all these irregularities, they interest the settlement in their favor by holding out to them the most tempting of all baits in a chance of bills upon Europe.

In this manner the servants abroad have conducted themselves with regard to Mr. Sulivan's contract for opium, and the disposal of the commodity. In England the Court of Directors took it into consideration. First, as to the contract, in a letter dated 12th July, 1782, they say, that, "having condemned the contract entered into with Mr. Mackenzie for the provision of opium, they cannot but be surprised at your having concluded a new contract for four years relative to that article with Mr. Stephen Sulivan, without leaving the decision of it to the Court of Directors."

The sentiments of the Directors are proper, and worthy of persons in public trust. Their surprise, indeed, at the disobedience to their orders is not perfectly natural in those who for many years have scarcely been obeyed in a single instance. They probably asserted their authority at this time with as much vigor as their condition admitted.

They proceed: "We do not mean," say they, "to convey any censure on Mr. Sulivan respecting the transaction; but we cannot withhold our displeasure from the Governor-General and Council at such an instance of contempt of our authority." They then proceed justly to censure the removal of the inspection, and some other particulars of this gross proceeding. As to the criminality of the parties, it is undoubtedly true that a breach of duty in servants is highly aggravated by the rank, station, and trust of the offending party; but no party, in such conspiracy to break orders, appear to us wholly free from fault.

The Directors did their duty in reprobating this contract; but it is the opinion of your Committee that further steps ought to be taken to inquire into the legal validity of a transaction which manifestly attempts to prevent the Court of Directors from applying any remedy to a grievance which has been for years the constant subject of complaints.

Both Mr. Sulivan and Mr. Hastings are the Company's servants, bound by their covenants and their oaths to promote the interest of their masters, and both equally bound to be obedient to their orders. If the Governor-General had contracted with a stranger, not apprised of the Company's orders, and not bound by any previous engagement, the contract might have been good; but whether a contract made between two servants, contrary to the orders of their common master, and to the prejudice of his known interest, be a breach of trust on both sides, and whether the contract can in equity have force to bind the Company, whenever they shall be inclined to free themselves and the country they govern from this mischievous monopoly, your Committee think a subject worthy of further inquiry.

With regard to the disposal of the opium, the Directors very properly condemn the direct contraband, but they approve the trading voyage. The Directors have observed nothing concerning the loans: they probably reserved that matter for future consideration.

In no affair has the connection between servants abroad and persons in power among the proprietors of the India Company been more discernible than in this. But if such confederacies, cemented by such means, are suffered to pass without due animadversion, the authority of Parliament must become as inefficacious as all other authorities have proved to restrain the growth of disorders either in India or in Europe.

SALT

The reports made by the two committees of the House which sat in the years 1772 and 1773 of the state and conduct of the inland trade of Bengal up to that period have assisted the inquiries of your Committee with respect to the third and last article of monopoly, viz., that of salt, and made it unnecessary for them to enter into so minute a detail on that subject as they have done on some others.

Your Committee find that the late Lord Clive constantly asserted that the salt trade in Bengal had been a monopoly time immemorial,—that it ever was and ever must be a monopoly,—and that Coja Wazid, and other merchants long before him, had given to the Nabob and his ministers two hundred thousand pounds per annum for the exclusive privilege. The Directors, in their letter of the 24th December, 1776, paragraph 76, say, "that it has ever been in a great measure an exclusive trade."

The Secret Committee report,[8 - Fourth Report, page 106.] that under the government of the Nabobs the duty on salt made in Bengal was two and an half per cent paid by Mussulmen, and five per cent paid by Gentoos. On the accession of Mir Cassim, in 1760, the claim of the Company's servants to trade in salt duty-free was first avowed. Mr. Vansittart made an agreement with him by which the duties should be fixed at nine per cent. The Council annulled the agreement, and reduced the duty to two and an half per cent. On this Mir Cassim ordered that no customs or duties whatsoever should be collected for the future. But a majority of the Council (22nd March, 1763) resolved, that the making the exemption general was a breach of the Company's privileges, and that the Nabob should be positively required to recall it, and collect duties as before from the country merchants, and all other persons who had not the protection of the Company's dustuck. The Directors, as the evident reason of the thing and as their duty required, disapproved highly of these transactions, and ordered (8th February, 1764) a final and effectual stop to be put to the inland trade in salt, and several other articles of commerce. But other politics and other interests prevailed, so that in the May following a General Court resolved, that it should be recommended to the Court of Directors to reconsider the preceding orders; in consequence of which the Directors ordered the Governor and Council to form a plan, in concert with the Nabob, for regulating the inland trade.

On these last orders Lord Clive's plan was formed, in 1765, for engrossing the sole purchase of salt, and dividing the profits among the Company's senior servants. The Directors, who had hitherto reluctantly given way to a monopoly under any ideas or for any purposes, disapproved of this plan, and on the 17th May, 1766, ordered it to be abolished; but they substituted no other in its room.[9 - Par. 36. Vide Fourth Report from Com. of Secrecy in 1773, Appendix, No. 45.] In this manner things continued until November, 1767, when the Directors repeated their orders for excluding all persons whatever, excepting the natives only, from being concerned in the inland trade in salt; and they declared that (vide par. 90) "such trade is hereby abolished and put a final end to." In the same letter (par. 92) they ordered that the salt trade should be laid open to the natives in general, subject to such a duty as might produce one hundred and twenty thousand pounds a year. This policy was adopted by the legislature. In the act of 1773 it was expressly provided, that it should not be lawful for any of his Majesty's subjects to engage, intermeddle, or be any way concerned, directly or indirectly, in the inland trade in salt, except on the India Company's account.

Under the positive orders of the Company, the salt trade appears to have continued open from 1768 to 1772. The act, indeed, contained an exception in favor of the Company, and left them a liberty of dealing in salt upon their own account. But still this policy remained unchanged, and their orders unrevoked. But in the year 1772, without any instruction from the Court of Directors indicating a change of opinion or system, the whole produce was again monopolized, professedly for the use of the Company, by Mr. Hastings. Speaking of this plan, he says (letter to the Directors, 22d February, 1775): "No new hardship has been imposed upon the salt manufacturers by taking the management of that article into the hands of government; the only difference is, that the profit which was before reaped by English gentlemen and by banians is now acquired by the Company." In May, 1766, the Directors had condemned the monopoly on any conditions whatsoever. "At that time they thought it neither consistent with their honor nor their dignity to promote such an exclusive trade."[10 - Vide Sel. Letter to Bengal, 17 May, 1766, Par. 36, in Fourth Report from Com. of Secrecy, in 1773, Appendix, No. 45.] "They considered it, too, as disgraceful, and below the dignity of their present situation, to allow of such a monopoly, and that, were they to allow it under any restrictions, they should consider themselves as assenting and subscribing to all the mischiefs which Bengal had presented to them for four years past."[11 - Ibid. Par. 37.]

Notwithstanding this solemn declaration, in their letter of 24th December, 1776, they approve the plan of Mr. Hastings, and say, "that the monopoly, on its present footing, can be no considerable grievance to the country," &c.

This, however, was a rigorous monopoly. The account given of it by General Clavering, Colonel Monson, and Mr. Francis, in their minute of 11th January, 1775, in which the situation of the molungees, or persons employed in the salt manufacture, is particularly described, is stated at length in the Appendix. Mr. Hastings himself says, "The power of obliging molungees to work has been customary from time immemorial."

Nothing but great and clear advantage to government could account for, and nothing at all perhaps could justify, the revival of a monopoly thus circumstanced. The advantage proposed by its revival was the transferring the profit, which was before reaped by English gentlemen and banians, to the Company. The profits of the former were not problematical. It was to be seen what the effect would be of a scheme to transfer them to the latter, even under the management of the projector himself. In the Revenue Consultations of September, 1776, Mr. Hastings said, "Many causes have since combined to reduce this article of revenue almost to nothing. The plan which I am now inclined to recommend for the future management of the salt revenue differs widely from that which I adopted under different circumstances."

It appears that the ill success of his former scheme did not deter him from recommending another. Accordingly, in July, 1777, Mr. Hastings proposed, and it was resolved, that the salt mahls should be let, with the lands, to the farmers and zemindars for a ready-money rent, including duties,—the salt to be left to their disposal. After some trial of this method, Mr. Hastings thought fit to abandon it. In September, 1780, he changed his plan a third time, and proposed the institution of a salt office; the salt was to be again engrossed for the benefit of the Company, and the management conducted by a number of salt agents.

From the preceding facts it appears that in this branch of the Company's government little regard has been paid to the ease and welfare of the natives, and that the Directors have nowhere shown greater inconsistency than in their orders on this subject. Yet salt, considering it as a necessary of life, was by no means a safe and proper subject for so many experiments and innovations. For ten years together the Directors reprobated the idea of suffering this necessary of life to be engrossed on any condition whatsoever, and strictly prohibited all Europeans from trading in it. Yet, as soon as they were made to expect from Mr. Hastings that the profits of the monopoly should be converted to their own use, they immediately declared that it "could be no considerable grievance to the country," and authorized its continuance, until he himself, finding it produced little or nothing, renounced it of his own accord. Your Committee are apprehensive that this will at all times, whatever flattering appearance it may wear for a time, be the fate of any attempt to monopolize the salt for the profit of government. In the first instance it will raise the price on the consumer beyond its just level; but that evil will soon be corrected by means ruinous to the Company as monopolists, viz., by the embezzlement of their own salt, and by the importation of foreign salt, neither of which the government of Bengal may have power for any long time to prevent. In the end government will probably be undersold and beaten down to a losing price. Or, if they should attempt to force all the advantages from this article of which by every exertion it may be made capable, it may distress some other part of their possessions in India, and destroy, or at least impair, the natural intercourse between them. Ultimately it may hurt Bengal itself, and the produce of its landed revenue, by destroying the vent of that grain which it would otherwise barter for salt.

Your Committee think it hardly necessary to observe, that the many changes of plan which have taken place in the management of the salt trade are far from honorable to the Company's government,—and that, even if the monopoly of this article were a profitable concern, it should not be permitted. Exclusive of the general effect of this and of all monopolies, the oppressions which the manufacturers of salt, called molungees, still suffer under it, though perhaps alleviated in some particulars, deserve particular attention. There is evidence enough on the Company's records to satisfy your Committee that these people have been treated with great rigor, and not only defrauded of the due payment of their labor, but delivered over, like cattle, in succession, to different masters, who, under pretence of buying up the balances due to their preceding employers, find means of keeping them in perpetual slavery. For evils of this nature there can be no perfect remedy as long as the monopoly continues. They are in the nature of the thing, and cannot be cured, or effectually counteracted, even by a just and vigilant administration on the spot. Many objections occur to the farming of any branch of the public revenue in Bengal, particularly against farming the salt lands. But the dilemma to which government by this system is constantly reduced, of authorizing great injustice or suffering great loss, is alone sufficient to condemn it. Either government is expected to support the farmer or contractor in all his pretensions by an exertion of power, which tends of necessity to the ruin of the parties subjected to the farmer's contract, and to the suppression of free trade,—or, if such assistance be refused him, he complains that he is not supported, that private persons interfere with his contract, that the manufacturers desert their labor, and that proportionate deductions must be allowed him.

After the result of their examination into the general nature and effect of this monopoly, it remains only for your Committee to inquire whether there was any valid foundation for that declaration of Mr. Hastings which we conclude must have principally recommended the monopoly of salt to the favor of the Court of Directors, viz., "that the profit, which was before reaped by English gentlemen, and by banians, was now acquired by the Company." On the contrary, it was proved and acknowledged before the Governor-General and Council, when they inquired into this matter, in March, 1775, that the Chiefs and Councils of those districts in which there were salt mahls reserved particular salt farms for their own use, and divided the profits, in certain stated proportions, among themselves and their assistants. But, unless a detail of these transactions, and of the persons concerned in them, should be called for by the House, it is our wish to avoid entering into it. On one example only your Committee think it just and proper to insist, stating first to the House on what principles they have made this selection.

In pursuing their inquiries, your Committee have endeavored chiefly to keep in view the conduct of persons in the highest station, particularly of those in whom the legislature, as well as the Company, have placed a special confidence,—judging that the conduct of such persons is not only most important in itself, but most likely to influence the subordinate ranks of the service. Your Committee have also examined the proceedings of the Court of Directors on all those instances of the behavior of their servants that seemed to deserve, and did sometimes attract, their immediate attention. They constantly find that the negligence of the Court of Directors has kept pace with, and must naturally have quickened, the growth of the practices which they have condemned. Breach of duty abroad will always go hand in hand with neglect of it at home. In general, the Court of Directors, though sufficiently severe in censuring offences, and sometimes in punishing those whom they have regarded as offenders of a lower rank, appear to have suffered the most conspicuous and therefore the most dangerous examples of disobedience and misconduct in the first department of their service to pass with a feeble and ineffectual condemnation. In those cases which they have deemed too apparent and too strong to be disregarded even with safety to themselves, and against which their heaviest displeasure has been declared, it appears to your Committee that their interference, such as it was, had a mischievous rather than a useful tendency. A total neglect of duty in this respect, however culpable, is not to be compared, either in its nature or in its consequences, with the destructive principles on which they have acted. It has been their practice, if not system, to inquire, to censure, and not to punish. As long as the misconduct of persons in power in Bengal was encouraged by nothing but the hopes of concealment, it may be presumed that they felt some restraint upon their actions, and that they stood in some awe of the power placed over them; whereas it is to be apprehended that the late conduct of the Court of Directors tells them, in effect, that they have nothing to fear from the certainty of a discovery.

On the same principle on which your Committee have generally limited their researches to the persons placed by Parliament or raised or put in nomination by the Court of Directors to the highest station in Bengal, it was also their original wish to limit those inquiries to the period at which Parliament interposed its authority between the Company and their servants, and gave a new constitution to the Presidency of Fort William. If the Company's servants had taken a new date from that period, and if from thenceforward their conduct had corresponded with the views of the legislature, it is probable that a review of the transactions of remoter periods would not have been deemed necessary, and that the remembrance of them would have been gradually effaced and finally buried in oblivion. But the reports which your Committee have already made have shown the House that from the year 1772, when those proceedings commenced in Parliament on which the act of the following year was founded, abuses of every kind have prevailed and multiplied in Bengal to a degree unknown in former times, and are perfectly sufficient to account for the present distress of the Company's affairs both at home and abroad. The affair which your Committee now lays before the House occupies too large a space in the Company's records, and is of too much importance in every point of view, to be passed over.

Your Committee find that in March, 1775, a petition was presented to the Governor-General and Council by a person called Coja Kaworke, an Armenian merchant, resident at Dacca, (of which division Mr. Richard Barwell had lately been Chief,) setting forth in substance, that in November, 1772, the petitioner had farmed a certain salt district, called Savagepoor, and had entered into a contract with the Committee of Circuit for providing and delivering to the India Company the salt produced in that district; that in 1773 he farmed another, called Selimabad, on similar conditions. He alleges, that in February, 1774, when Mr. Barwell arrived at Dacca, he charged the petitioner with 1,25,500 rupees, (equal to 13,000l.,) as a contribution, and, in order to levy it, did the same year deduct 20,799 rupees from the amount of the advance money which was ordered to be paid to the petitioner, on account of the India Company, for the provision of salt in the two farms, and, after doing so, compelled the petitioner to execute and give him four different bonds for 77,627 rupees, in the name of one Porran Paul, for the remainder of such contribution, or unjust profit.

Such were the allegations of the petition relative to the unjust exaction. The harsh means of compelling the payment make another and very material part; for the petitioner asserts, that, in order to recover the amount of these bonds, guards were placed over him, and that Mr. Barwell by ill usage and oppressions recovered from him at different times 48,656 Arcot rupees, besides 283 rupees extorted by the guard,—that, after this payment, two of the bonds, containing 36,313 rupees, were restored to him, and he was again committed to the charge of four peons, or guards, to pay the amount of the remaining two bonds. The petition further charges, that the said gentleman and his people had also extorted from the petitioner other sums of money, which, taken together, amounted to 25,000 rupees.

But the heaviest grievance alleged by him is, that, after the sums of money had been extorted on account of the farms, the faith usual in such transactions is allowed not to have been kept; but, after the petitioner had been obliged to buy or compound for the farms, that they were taken from him,—"that the said Richard Barwell, Esquire, about his departure from Dacca, in October, 1774, for self-interest wrested from the petitioner the aforesaid two mahls, (or districts,) and farmed them to another person, notwithstanding he had extorted from the petitioner a considerable sum of money on account of those purgunnahs."

To this petition your Committee find two accounts annexed, in which the sums said to be paid to or taken by Mr. Barwell, and the respective dates of the several payments, are specified; and they find that the account of particulars agrees with and makes up the gross sum charged in the petition.

Mr. Barwell's immediate answer to the preceding charge is contained in two letters to the board, dated 23rd and 24th of March, 1775. The answer is remarkable. He asserts, that "the whole of Kaworke's relation is a gross misrepresentation of facts;—that the simple fact was, that in January, 1774, the salt mahls of Savagepoor and Selimabad became his, and were re-let by him to this man, in the names of Bussunt Roy and Kissen Deb, on condition that he should account with him [Mr. Barwell] for profits to a certain sum, and that he [Mr. Barwell] engaged for Savagepoor in the persuasion of its being a very profitable farm"; and he concludes with saying, "If I am mistaken in my reasoning, and the wish to add to my fortune has warped my judgment, in a transaction that may appear to the board in a light different to what I view it in, it is past,—I cannot recall it,—and I rather choose to admit an error than deny a fact." In his second letter he says, "To the Honorable Court of Directors I will submit all my rights in the salt contracts I engaged in; and if in their opinion those rights vest in the Company, I will account to them for the last shilling I have received from such contracts, my intentions being upright; and as I never did wish to profit myself to the prejudice of my employers, by their judgment I will be implicitly directed."

The majority of the board desired that Kaworke's petition should be transmitted to England by the ship then under dispatch; and it was accordingly sent with Mr. Barwell's replies. Mr. Barwell moved that a committee should be appointed to take into consideration what he had to offer on the subject of Kaworke's petition; and a committee was accordingly appointed, consisting of all the members of the Council except the Governor-General.

The committee opened their proceedings with reading a second petition from Kaworke, containing corrected accounts of cash said to be forcibly taken, and of the extraordinary and unwarrantable profits taken or received from him by Richard Barwell, Esquire; all which are inserted at large in the Appendix. By these accounts Mr. Barwell is charged with a balance or debt of 22,421 rupees to Kaworke. The principal difference between him and Mr. Barwell arises from a different mode of stating the accounts acknowledged to exist between them. In the account current signed by Mr. Barwell, he gives Kaworke credit for the receipt of 98,426 rupees, and charges him with a balance of 27,073 rupees.

The facts stated or admitted by Mr. Barwell are as follow: that the salt farms of Selimabad and Savagepoor were his, and re-let by him to the two Armenian merchants, Michael and Kaworke, on condition of their paying him 1,25,000 rupees, exclusive of their engagements to the Company; that the engagement was written in the name of Bussunt Roy and Kissen Deb Sing; and Mr. Barwell says, that the reason of its being "in these people's names was because it was not thought consistent with the public regulations that the names of any Europeans should appear."

It is remarkable that this policy was carried to still greater length. Means were used to remove such an obnoxious proceeding, as far as possible, from the public eye; and they were such as will strongly impress the House with the facility of abuse and the extreme difficulty of detection in everything which relates to the Indian administration. For these substituted persons were again represented by the further substitution of another name, viz., Rada Churn Dey, whom Mr. Barwell asserts to be a real person living at Dacca, and who stood for the factory of Dacca; whereas the Armenian affirms that there was no such person as Rada Churn, and that it was a fictitious name.

Mr. Barwell, in his justification, proceeds to affirm, that Coja Kaworke never had the management of the salt mahls, "but on condition of accounting to the former Chief, and to Mr. Barwell, for a specified advantage arising from them,—that Mr. Barwell determined, without he could reconcile the interests of the public with his own private emoluments, that he would not engage in this concern,—and that, when he took an interest in it, it was for specified benefit in money, and every condition in the public engagement to be answered."

Your Committee have stated the preceding facts in the same terms in which they are stated by Mr. Barwell. The House is to judge how far they amount to a defence against the charges contained in Kaworke's petition, or to an admission of the truth of the principal part of it. Mr. Barwell does not allow that compulsion was used to extort the money which he received from the petitioner, or that the latter was dispossessed of the farms in consequence of an offer made to Mr. Barwell by another person (Ramsunder Paulet) to pay him a lac of rupees more for them. The truth of these charges has not been ascertained. They were declared by Mr. Barwell to be false, but no attempt was made by him to invalidate or confute them, though it concerned his reputation, and it was his duty, in the station wherein he was placed, that charges of such a nature should have been disproved,—at least, the accuser should have been pushed to the proof of them. Nothing of this kind appears to have been done, or even attempted.

The transaction itself, as it stands, is clearly collusive; the form in which it is conducted is clandestine and mysterious in an extraordinary degree; and the acknowledged object of it a great illicit profit, to be gained by an agent and trustee of the Company at the expense of his employers, and of which he confesses he has received a considerable part.

The committee of the Governor-General and Council appear to have closed their proceedings with several resolutions, which, with the answers given by Mr. Barwell as a defence, are inserted in the Appendix. The whole are referred thither together, on account of the ample extent of the answer. These papers will be found to throw considerable light not only on the points in question, but on the general administration of the Company's revenues in Bengal. On some passages in Mr. Barwell's defence, or account of his conduct, your Committee offer the following remarks to the judgment of the House.

In his letter of the 23rd March, 1775, he says, that he engaged for Savagepoor in the persuasion of its being a very profitable farm. In this place your Committee think it proper to state the 17th article of the regulations of the Committee of Circuit, formed in May, 1772, by the President and Council, of which Mr. Barwell was a member, together with their own observations thereupon.

17th. "That no peshcar, banian, or other servant, of whatever denomination, of the collector, or relation or dependant of any such servant, be allowed to farm lands, nor directly or indirectly to hold a concern in any farm, nor to be security for any farmer; that the collector be strictly enjoined to prevent such practices; and that, if it shall be discovered that any one, under a false name, or any kind of collusion, hath found means to evade this order, he shall be subject to an heavy fine, proportionate to the amount of the farm, and the farm shall be re-let, or made khas: and if it shall appear that the collector shall have countenanced, approved, or connived at a breach of this regulation, he shall stand ipso facto dismissed from his collectorship. Neither shall any European, directly or indirectly, be permitted to rent lands in any part of the country."