§ MR. KINNAIRDsaid, he would beg to ask the Secretary of State for India, Whether, as lately stated in the public prints, a Bill had been brought into the Legislative Council of India, making the non-fulfilment of a contract to grow Indigo on the part of a Ryot a criminal offence; whether he had any objection to lay a Copy of such Bill upon the Table of the House, and further to inform the House if such Bill had been introduced as the result of any authorized inquiry; and, if not, on what other grounds the Legislative Council proposed to make the breach of a merely civil contract a criminal offence; and, if he would not require that a Commission should be at once appointed to proceed into the interior of Bengal to inquire and ascertain the circumstances which had led to the complaints of the Bengal Cultivators? During the last three years there had been three mutinies in India—that of the Bengal army, which it was clearly shown by the papers before the House might have been averted by ordinary precautions; the mutiny which took place on the transfer of the Company's troops to the Crown, which had resulted in an enormous expense to the country, and betrayed a degree of mismanagement in simple matter little creditable to the Indian Government; and, lastly, the rising of the ryots in the Indigo districts of Lower Bengal. The House had been told that when the East India Company was abolished they would receive information more direct and more quickly, and he had, therefore, been surprised to find that no official reports were to be obtained respecting a Bill of such importance. The serious nature of the disturbances in the Indigo districts would be best appreciated by the measures adopted to repress them. He was told that large bodies of the new police were pouring into the district, and that the Legislative Council with the utmost precipitancy were called upon to pass a Bill which would treat the simple breach of a civil contract as a criminal offence. Perhaps the House was not aware of the oppressive system by which the ryots were compelled to cultivate indigo. They received advances of money with a view to this cultivation, and, though it 696 would pay them much better to grow rice, they were compelled to grow indigo. This had long been a grievance to the ryots, who had remonstrated, but in vain; and now, on attempting to resist the oppression, they were met by the Act which he had described. It was as if an English landlord were invested with the power of punishing a tenant for default of rent as a criminal offender. If such a thing were attempted by the Emperor Napoleon in Algiers, or by the Czar, the whole press would cry him down for his tyranny and oppression. In 1857 he had brought the case of the ryots before the House, and had urged the necessity of inquiry. On that occasion he was told by Mr. Mangles, who was then Chairman of the Company and held a seat in this House, that there really was no such oppression, though he promised to adopt remedial measures, and to make inquiries. He (Mr. Kinnaird) complained, however, that no inquiry, though promised, had been made. Surely a measure so oppressive and so unusual ought to be preceded by inquiry. At all events, he wished in bringing forward this question, to obtain from the Secretary of State for India an assurance that the condition of the ryots should now be properly investigated by the Government. The fact was, that the administration of justice in those parts was so incomplete and so complicated, that in the present emergency the system had broken down; but the substitute about to be applied would be most arbitrary and oppressive in its operation. In the Queen's Proclamation the following passage occurred:—
When, by the blessing of Providence, internal tranquillity shall be restored, it is our earnest desire to stimulate the peaceful industry of India, to promote works of public utility and improvement, and to administer its Government for the benefit of our subjects resident therein. In their prosperity will be our strength, in their contentment our security, and in their gratitude our best reward.He was puzzled to understand how an Act so oppressive carried out the spirit of this promise to the people. The Queen's Proclamation had penetrated far and wide, and it accorded little with the tenour of such assurance to pass an ex post facto law, rendering that a criminal offence which was before purely a matter of civil contract. He hoped the Secretary of State for India would cause inquiry to be made without delay, and that at the earliest possible period the people of Lower Bengal would be relieved from the pressure of this most severe law.
§ MR. VANSITTARTsaid, it appeared to him that the conduct of the magistrate of Baraset, Mr. Eden, had been very unjustly assailed, and that he had been made to atone for the blunders committed by Mr. Grant the Lieutenant Governor of Bengal. There had been great discontent for a very considerable period on the part of the ryots against the indigo planters of Lower Bengal. They accused the planters of great tyranny and oppression, and that charge had been fully proved by the evidence taken before the Colonization Committee, of which he (Mr. Vansittart) was a Member. That evidence proved that the indigo planters of Lower Bengal were a very different class of gentlemen from those residing in Tirhoot and the Upper Provinces, and that they had been in the habit of keeping in their pay Latteeals, or bludgeon-men, in order to coerce the ryots. The ryots also complained of the very arbitrary clauses which the planters were in the habit of inserting in the Cabooleeut, or contract-deed, on making advances of money for the cultivation of indigo, by which clauses they reserved to themselves the power of sending to the fields their own people to weed, reap, and cart the indigo. The consequence was that it mattered not how favourable (he season might be and how abundant the crop, the ryots could not fulfil their engagements, because on their bringing to the planter the specified number of bundles of indigo the planter produced a counter statement of the expenses incurred in weeding, reaping, and carting, and thus he kept the ryot on his books as a defaulter. When he (Mr. Vansittart) was in India a ryot told him that, do what he would, he could not liquidate the debt incurred by his father twenty-three years previously, and it was a remarkable fact that, the more industrious the ryot was and the better he cultivated, the greater were the exertions made by the indigo planter to keep him on his books as a defaulter. It appeared that Mr. J. P. Grant, the Lieutenant Governor, had some lengthy correspondence with Mr. Grote, the Commissioner of Nuddea, on the subject, in which he made use of some hasty and ill-judged expressions, which the ryots construed as being favourable to their cause and interests. The police of Baraset were called upon by a planter to assist him in compelling some ryots to fulfil their engagements. The police referred the matter to their magistrate, Mr. Eden, who very properly and promptly instructed them not to interfere except in case of a breach of the 698 peace, and to refer the indigo planter to the civil court for redress, it being altogether a civil suit. But, unfortunately, that was not all. It was said that Mr.Wilson had prevailed upon the Legislative Assembly of Calcutta to pass a law, after a sitting of a few hours, making the non-fulfilment of an indigo contract a criminal offence, punishable summarily by the Mofussil magistrates. Meanwhile, to such an extent had these disturbances spread that large bodies of military police had been moved down into the disturbed districts, and, therefore, by the violent proceedings of the planters on the one hand and the summary decisions of the magistrates, backed up by the military police, on the other hand, the gaols would probably be found to be inadequate to hold those miserable ryots who will be ground down to a state of the most abject misery and pitiable distress. It was much to be regretted that Earl Canning had not returned to Calcutta from his long itinerant tour in the North, because Mr. Wilson, by a most extraordinary coup ဟétat — very similar to what happened in that House in the early part of the Session—had succeeded in so completely fascinating and bewildering, for the moment only, it was to be hoped, the Members of the Legislative Council by his rash, ill-considered, and unworkable financial Budget, that he wielded despotic power in that irresponsible Assembly. In order to justify the question of which he had given notice, and that the right hon. Baronet the Secretary of State for India might not suppose he had done so on insufficient grounds, he would read a very brief extract from an Indian paper recently received:—
Furthermore the Executive of Bengal, yielding, it is said, to Mr. Wilson's influence, has resolved to obtain an Act compelling the fulfilment of Contracts for the cultivation of indigo by a summary and peremptory process. The Bill was to be introduced into the Legislative Council on the 24th of March, when the standing orders would, of course, be suspended in order to expedite its enactment, and the provisions of the Act were to take effect from the date of its notification.He would conclude by asking the Secretary of State for India whether he can state that the agrarian disturbances are confined to the districts of Baraset, Nuddea, and Moorshedabad, or whether they have extended to the adjoining districts of Lower Bengal; whether it is true that the Legislative Council of Calcutta, at the recommendation of Mr. Wilson, have passed a law, after a sitting of a few hours, making the non-fulfilment of an indigo contract a 699 criminal offence; and whether, in consequence of that proceeding, a feeling of deep exasperation has been excited among the peasantry, which has rendered it necessary for the indigo planters to secure, for their protection, the services of discharged soldiers and sailors lounging about Calcutta?