CHAPTER VIII. WHAT FOREIGN IMPOSTURE IN COMMERCE HAS DONE FOR INDIA.

Before the conquest of India, by the British, the people of that country were comparatively free and happy. This we learn from the testimony of British writers. “The natives of Hindostan,” says Mr. Greig, “seem to have lived from the earliest, down, comparatively speaking, to late times — if not free from the troubles and annoyances to which men in all condition of society are more or less subject, still in the full enjoyment, each individual, of , his own property, and of a very considerable share of personal liberty.”

The Mahommedan conqueror respected the local institutions of the country, and permitted the people to accumulate property without interfering with the pursuits of industry. They thus protected the manufacturers of the country effectually from the pernicious system called free trade, which has since reduced them to beggary and slavery. Manufactures were widely spread, and thus made a demand for the labor not required in agriculture. ” On the coast of Coromandel” says Orme, “and in the province of Bengal, it is difficult to find a village in which every man, woman, and child, is not employed in making a piece of cloth. At present,” he continues, ” much the greatest part of the whole provinces are employed in this single manufacture. Its progress,” as he says, “includes no less than a description of the lives of half the inhabitants of Hindostan.” “While employment,” says Carey, “was thus locally subdivided, tending to enable neighbor to exchange with neighbor, the exchanges between the producers of food, or of salt, in one part of the country; and the producers of cotton and manufacturers of cloth in another, tending to the production of commerce with more distant men, and this tendency was much increased by the subdivision of the cotton manufacture itself. Bengal was celebrated for the finest muslins, the consumption of which at Delhi, and in Northern India generally was large, while the Coromandel coast was equally celebrated for the best chintzes and calicoes, leaving to Western India the manufacture of strong and inferior goods of every kind. Under these circumstances, it is no matter of surprise that the country was rich, and that its people, although often over-taxed, and sometimes plundered by invading armies, were prosperous in a high degree.”

“Nearly a century has now elapsed,” says Mr. Carey, “since, by the battle of Plassy, British power was established in India, and from that day local action has tended to disappear, and centralization to take its place. From its date to the close of the century, there was a rapidly increasing tendency towards having all the affairs of the princes and the people settled by the representatives of the company established in Calcutta, and as usual in such cases, the country was filled with adventurers, very many of whom were wholly without principles, men whose sole object was that of the accumulation of fortune by any means, however foul, as is well known by all who are familiar with the indignant denunciations of Burke. England was thus enriched as India was impoverished, and as centralization was more and more established.”

We might give the details of the oppressive system of taxation and exaction by which the British have brought the people of India into a state of complete and literal slavery. Their system of taxation has reached a point unparalleled in history. One half of the gross produce of the land is the average annual rent, although in many cases it greatly exceeds that amount. The Madras Revenue Board, May 17, 1817, stated that the conversion of the government share of of the produce of lands is in some districts as high as sixty or seventy per cent, of the whole. , This statement sufficiently illustrates the effects of the British domination in India, as applied to that part of the population of India which is engaged in agricultural pursuits; but our present object is to show the operation of British free trade in destroying the manufactures of that country.

By a quotation above, cited from Orme, we have shown the former existence of a flourishing manufacture of cotton cloth. Much of this cloth was exported, and it will be in the recollection of many of our readers, that previous to the war of 1812, an article of muslin, commonly called India cotton, was extensively used in this country. The following extract from Mr. Carey’s work, will show how this branch of manufacture has been destroyed by British free trade.

“India is abundantly supplied with fuel and iron ore, and if she has not good machinery, the deficiency is not chargeable to nature. At the close of the last century, cotton abounded, and to so great an extent was the labor of men, women, and children applied to its conversion into cloth, that, even with their imperfect machinery, they not only supplied the home demand for the beautiful tissues of Dacca and the coarse products of “Western India; but they exported to other parts of the world no less than two hundred millions of pieces per annum.* Exchanges with every part of the world were so greatly in their favor, that a rupee which would now sell for but one shilling and sixpence, or forty-four cents, was then worth two smillings and eightpence, or sixty-four cents.

* Speech of Mr. G. Thompson, in the House of Commons.

The Company had a monopoly of collecting taxes in India, but in return it preserved the control of their domestic market, by aid of which they were enabled to convert their rice, their salt, and their cotton, into cloth that could be cheaply carried to the most remote parts of the world. Such protection was needed, because while England prohibited the export of even a single collier who might instruct the people of India in the mode of mining coal — of a steam engine to pump water, or raise coal, or a mechanic who could make one — of a worker in iron who might smelt the ore — of a spinning-jenny or a power-loom, or of an artisan who could give instruction in the use of such machines — and thus systematically prevented them from keeping pace with improvements in the rest of the world, — she at the same time imposed very heavy duties on the produce of Indian looms received in England. The day was at hand, however, when that protection was to disappear. The Company did not, it was said, export sufficiently largely of the produce of British industry, and in 1813, the trade to India was thrown open — but the restriction on the export of machinery and artisans was maintained in full force; and thus were the poor and ignorant people of that country exposed to ‘unlimited competition’ with a people possessed of machinery ten times more effective than their own, while not only by law deprived of the power to purchase machinery, but also of the power of competing in the British market with the product of British looms. Further than this, every loom in India, and every machine calculated to aid the laborer, was subject to a tax that increased with every increase in the industry of its owner, and in many cases absorbed the whole profit derived from its use.* Such were the circumstances under which the poor Hindoo was called to encounter unprotected, the ‘ unlimited competition’ of , foreigners in his own market. It was freedom of trade all on one side. Four years after, the export of cottons from Bengal skill amounted to one million six hundred and fifty- nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-four pounds sterling; but ten years later it had declined to two hundred and eighty-five thousand one hundred and twenty-one pounds sterling and at the end of twenty years, we find a whole year pass by without the export of a single piece of cotton cloth from Calcutta, the whole of the immense trade that existed, but half a century since, having disappeared. What were the measures used for the accomplishment of the work of destroying a manufacture that gave employment and food to so many millions of the poor people of the country, will be seen on a perusal of the following memorial, which shows that while India was denied machinery, and also denied access to the British market, she was forced to receive British cottons free of all duty.

*” The Slave-Trade: Foreign and Domestic.” By H.C.Carey, p. 113.
Chapman’s Commerce and Cotton of India, p. 74.

PETITION OF THE NATIVES OF BENGAL, RELATIVE TO THE DUTIES ON COTTON AND SILK.

Calcutta, Sept. 1, 1831.
To the Right Honorable the Lords of His Majesty’s Privy Council for Trade, etc., The humble petition of the undersigned, Manufacturers and Dealers in Cotton and Silk Piece Goods, the fabrics of Bengal:

“Showeth — That of late years your Petitioners have found their business nearly superseded by the introduction of the fabrics of Great Britain into Bengal, the importation of which augments every year, to the great prejudice of the native manufacturers.

“That the fabrics of Great Britain are consumed m Bengal, without any duties being levied thereon to protect the native fabrics.

“That the fabrics of Bengal are charged with the following duties when they are used in Great Britain.

“On manufactured cottons, ten per cent.

” On manufactured silks, twenty-four per cent.

“Your Petitioners most humbly implore your Lordships’ consideration of these circumstances, and they feel confident that no disposition exists in England to shut the door against the industry of any part of the inhabitants of this great empire.

“They therefore pray to be admitted to the privilege of British subjects, and humbly entreat your Lordships to allow the cotton and silk fabrics of Bengal to be used in Great Britain ‘ free of duty,’ or at the same rate which may be charged on British fabrics consumed in Bengal.

“Your Lordships must be aware of the immense advantages the British manufacturers derive from their skill in constructing and using machinery, which enables them to undersell the unscientific manufacturers of Bengal in their own country; and, although your Petitioners are not sanguine in expecting to derive any great advantage in having their prayers granted, their minds would feel gratified by such a manifestation of your Lordships’ good will towards them; and such an instance of justice to the natives of India will not fail to endear the British government to them.

“They therefore confidently trust that your Lordships’ righteous consideration will be extended to them as British subjects, without exception of sect, color, or country.

“And your Petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray.”

(Signed by one hundred and seventeen natives of great respectability.)

“The object sought to be accomplished would not have, however, been attained by granting the prayer of this most reasonable and humble petition. When the export of cotton, woolen, and steam machinery was prohibited, it was done with a view of compelling all the wool of the world to come to England to be spun and woven, thence to be returned to be worn by those who raised it — thus depriving the people of the world of all power to apply their labor otherwise than in taking from the earth, cotton, sugar, indigo, and other commodities for the supply of the great ‘ workshop of the world.’ How effectually that object has been accomplished in India, will be seen from the following facts. From the date of the opening of the trade in 1813, the domestic manufacture and the export of cloth have gradually declined until the latter has finally ceased, and the export of raw cotton to England has gradually risen until it has attained a height of about sixty millions of pounds,* while the import of twist from England has risen to twenty-five millions of pounds, and of cloth, to two hundred and sixty millions of yards, weighing probably fifty millions of pounds, which, added to the twist, make seventy-five millions, requiring for their production something more than eighty millions of raw cotton. We see thus that every pound of raw material sent to England is returned. The cultivator receives for it one penny, and when it returns to him in the form of cloth, he pays for it from one to two shillings, the whole difference being absorbed in the payment of the numerous brokers, transporters, manufacturers, and operatives, men, women, and children, that have thus been interposed between the producer and the consumer. The necessary consequence of this has been that every where manufactures have disappeared. Dacca, one of the principal seats of the cotton manufacture, contained ninety thousand houses, but its trade had already greatly fallen off, even at the date of the memorial above given, and its splendid buildings, factories, and churches are now a mass of ruins and overgrown with jungle. The cotton of the district found itself compelled to go to England that it might be twisted and sent back again, thus performing a voyage of twenty thousand miles in search of the little spindles, because it was a part of the British policy not to permit the spindle any where to take its place by the side of the cultivator of cotton.

* Chapman’s Commerce and Cotton of India, p. 28.

“The change thus effected has been stated in a recent official report to have been attended with ruin and distress, to which ‘ no parallel can be found in the annals of commerce.’ What were the means by which it was effected is shown in the fact that, at this period Sir. Robert Peel stated that in Lancashire, children were employed fifteen and seventeen hours per day, during the week, and on Sunday morning, from six until twelve, cleaning the machinery. In Coventry, ninety-six hours in the week, was the time usually required; and of those employed many received but two shillings and nine pence or sixty-six cents for a week’s wages. The object to be accomplished was that of under-working the poor Hindoo, and driving him from the market of the world, after which he was to be driven from his own. The mode of accomplishment was that of cheapening labor and enslaving the laborer at home and abroad.

” With the decline of manufacturers there has ceased to be a demand for the services of woman or children in the work of conversion, and they are forced either to remain idle, or seek employment in the field; and here we have one of the distinguishing marks of a state of slavery. The men, too, who were accustomed to fill up the intervals of other employments in pursuits connected with the cotton manufacture, were also driven to the field, and all demand for labor, physical or intellectual, was at an end, except so far as was needed for raising rice, indigo, sugar, or cotton. The rice itself they were not permitted to clean, being debarred therefrom, by a duty double that which was paid on paddy, or rough rice, on its import into England. The poor grower of cotton often paying to the government seventy-eight per cent, of the produce of his labor, found himself deprived of the power to trade directly with the man of the loom, and forced into ‘ unlimited competition’ with the better machinery, and almost untaxed labor of our Southern States; and thereby subjected to ‘ the mysterious variations of foreign markets’ in which the fever of speculation was followed by the chill of revulsion with a rapidity and frequency that set at naught all calculation. If our crops were small, his English customers would take his cotton; but when he sent over more next year, there had, perhaps, been a good season here, and the Indian article became an absolute drug in the market. It was stated some time since, in the House of Commons, that one gentleman, Mr. Turner, had thrown seven thousand pounds sterling worth of Indian cotton upon a dunghill, because he could find no market for it.

“It will now readily be seen that the direct effect of thus compelling the export of cotton from India was to increase the quantity pressing on the market of England, and thus to lower the price of all the cotton in the world, including that required for domestic consumption. The price of the whole Indian crop being thus rendered dependent on that which could be realized for a small surplus that would have no existence but for the fact that the domestic manufacture had been destroyed, it will readily be seen how enormous has been the extent of injury inflicted upon the poor cultivator by the forcible separation of the plough and loom, and the destruction of the power of association.

Again, while the price of cotton is fixed in England, there, too, is fixed the price of cloth, and such is the case with sugar and indigo, to the production of which these poor people are forced to devote themselves; and thus are they rendered the mere slaves of distant men, who determine what they shall receive for all they have to sell, and what they shall pay for all they require to purchase. Centralization and slavery go thus hand and hand with each other.”

One more extract, from Mr. Carey’s work, we introduce to show an incidental effect of British free trade in India, on the moral condition and happiness of another country — an effect at which humanity shudders:

“Calcutta grows, the city of palaces, but poverty and wretchedness grows 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 indigo of his neighbors, before he and they can exchange food for cloth or cotton, 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,* “were selected for the cultivation of the poppy. The people were told they must either, cultivate this plant, make 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 leading speculators at Calcutta, who caused it to be smuggled up the Canton river, to an island called Sintin, and tea was received in exchange.

*”Thompson, Lecture on India, p. 25.

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 today (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 one million five hundred thousand pounds, sterling at the date of the above extract, to the enormous sum of three millions five hundred thousand pounds, or sixteen million eight hundred thousand dollars, and $§ market is, as we are informed, still extending itself that the reader may see and understand how directly the government is concerned in this effort at demoralizing and enslaving the Chinese, the following will show.

“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 Bakar 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 suit 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 favorable, 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.”*

* Campbell, p. 300.

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 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. But for their sakes and ours we must hope that it is not so, or that they will not find ‘it out.”*

“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 revenues from their unfortunate tax-payers; 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 mere collection of domestic salt are so great that English salt finds a market in India? The following passage on this subject is worthy of the perusal of of those who desire fully to understand how it is that the people of that country are restrained in the appli- cation of their labor, and why it is that labor is so badly paid: —

* Ibid, p. 393.

“‘But those who cry out in England against the monopoly, and their unjust exclusion from the salt trade, are egregriously mistaken. As concerns them, there is positively no monopoly, hut 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 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 the 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.* 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 fifteen millions of pounds sterling or seventy-two million of dollars; and yet the government is absolute proprietor of all 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.

* Campbell, p. 384.

“The gross land revenue obtained from a country with an area of four hundred and ninety-one thousand four hundred and forty-eight square miles, or above three hundred millions of acres, is one hundred and fifty-one millions seven hundred and eighty- six thousand seven hundred and forty-three rupees, equal to fifteen millions of pounds sterling, or seventy- two millions of dollars.* What is the value of private rights of property, subject to the payment of this tax, or rent, may be judged from the following factB: In 1848-49, there were sold for taxes, in that portion of the country subject to the permanent settlement, eleven hundred and sixty-nine estates, at something less than four years’ purchase of the tax. Further south, in the Madras government, where the ryot-war 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 right in land being there of no value whatsoever — ‘the collector of Salem’ as Mr. Campbell informs us —

* Campbell, p. 377.

Naively 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 sit with his head confined between his knees.*

In the north-west provinces, the settlement, as our author states, has certainly been successful in giving a good market value to good landed property;’ that is, it sells at about ‘ four years’ purchase on the revenue. 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. The value of land, like that of labor, 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 towards slavery.”

* Campbell, p. 350. Ibid, p. 332. Ibid, p. 345.

With this extract we conclude the notices of the effects of British free trade in foreign countries. We might show its application to Ireland, whose manufactures were deliberately and systematically destroyed by the application of the system of British free trade to that country. The effects which followed are familiar to all intelligent people. The Irish people were ruined by it, and the country depopulated to such an extent that Great Britain can no longer obtain recruits for her armies in the “sister island;” but has recourse to German mercenaries.

We now proceed to consider the ruinous effects of British free trade on our own country.

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