HC Deb 23 May 1862 vol 166 cc2136-48
MR. SMOLLETT

said, he rose to call the attention of the House to the following Motion which he had placed on the Notice Paper:— To move an Address for Copy of the Resolutions of the Governor General of India in Council, promulgated in October, 1861, and of the Papers and Minutes on which these Resolutions were framed, the first authorizing the sale of waste Lands in perpetuity, and the second permit ting the redemption of Land Revenues in certain cases; and to call the attention of the House to the presumed importance of these measures on the Colonization, and to their bearing on the development of the Resources, of our Indian Empire.

MR. SPEAKER

explained, that by the division the House had decided that the words "that the Speaker do now leave the chair "form part of the Question, and that it was not competent for any hon. Member to move an Amendment, although he might make any statement which he pleased.

MR. SMOLLETT

said, that in that case he would, without making any Motion, call the attention of the House and of the Government to the Resolutions which had been promulgated by the Governor General of India in Council in the month of October last. And he hoped the House would grant its attention, because the question was of some importance, although its importance had been considerably exaggerated. He wished it had rested with some more prominent Member to initiate the discussion, although he was perfectly familiar with the subject. The Resolutions, when first published, were received in this country with favour, and almost with enthusiasm. The Times, which might be supposed to express the ideas of Gentle men in authority, said, that by this unpretending proclamation of Lord Canning a great social revolution was effected; that land could be had in India with greater facility, and at cheaper rates, than in Auckland; that India was unreservedly thrown open to British capital and enterprise; and that Lord Canning had successfully grappled with the only difficulty, by fixing the grants at 3,000 acres, and thus excluding land jobbers from realizing colossal for tunes by retailing small plots at fabulous prices to intending emigrants. Prospectuses were issued by influential Societies in Manchester, describing this as the most important document which had ever emanated from the Indian Government, and pointing out that facilities which could not be surpassed were offered for the acquisition and uncontrolled possession of land, capable of growing cotton and every other valuable product. The contrast between the first enthusiasm and the subsequent apathy was extremly striking. The subject had never been mentioned by any official of the Government in that House, and he wanted to extract from the Minister for India his opinion with regard to it. For his own part, he had no sympathy with gentlemen who thought it was inex- pedient to introduce colonization and British capital into India. He had always advocated measures having that tendency, and he believed the time would come when they would be surprised that such a policy had been so long and pertinaciously resisted. But he believed at the same time that the measure recently adopted was in itself but a small and a fragmentary measure, and that it was a great mistake to suppose that the sale of waste lands under the proclamation would put a stop to discussions that were going on relative to the land tenure in India. In considering the subject, it was necessary, in the first place, to define what was meant by waste lands. He believed they might be defined to be, first of all, the great jungles in the plains, and secondly, the hills and forest ranges in the mountains. It was quite true, that in most Indian villages—which were not mere streets and houses, as in England, but farms—there were waste lands. These wastes were not saleable; they were part and parcel of the farms, and were needed by the tenantry for agricultural and general purposes. Ha would inform the House that frequently a good deal of land was left waste because the survey valuation was too heavy and the rents were too high. Well, how did the Governor General intend to deal with these waste lands? Why, he had decreed, that assessed lands which had not been cultivated for five years or upwards should be at the disposal of the Government, and might be sold on the same conditions as unassessed waste lands, except that they should not be sold for less than twenty years' purchase of the rent officially put upon them, which was itself in many cases a rack rent. He (Mr. Smollett) had never heard so extraordinary a proposition. He was sure that the Government could not sell those lands. In point of fact, they formed portions of the different farms, and any attempt to take them from their present proprietors would be resisted, and would probably lead to agrarian insurrection. The jungles, or the waste lands properly so called, in the plains, were in a great degree worthless; but a large portion of the waste lands in the hills were capable of growing coffee, pepper, tea, and other articles of Indian produce. They had in some cases been used for that purpose during the last thirty or forty years; but they had only been hold on a leasehold tenure; and it might be found a boon to many colonists to have that tenure altered. But beyond that, he believed that the Resolutions of the Governor General in Council would be productive of no advantage whatever. It was no social revolution; and if any one believed that a large revenue would accrue from the stile of waste lands, or that a great influx of colonization would take place in consequence, or that a consider able impetus would be given thereby to the agricultural resources of India, he would be under an entire misapprehension. To a great extent, the scheme would be in operative so long as India remained in its present position—so long as Government held in their possession the cultivated area of the country, and were permitted to mismanage it through annual settlements, conducted by their own officers, on an impoverished tenantry. If they really wanted to introduce European capital or colonization, a very different measure would be necessary—a permanent settlement of the cultivated lands; a middle class must be called into existence, a proprietary class must be erected to stand between the Government and the people. The second measure proposed by Earl Canning was the redemption of the land revenues; but he did not think it could be carried into practice. The basis of that scheme was, that the revenue amounted to £20,000,000 annually, and that if the land were sold for twenty years' purchase, a fund of £400,000,000 would be created, which, if invested in Stock at 5 per cent interest, would give back the £20,000,000 a year. But the people of India would not give twenty years' purchase for the land, and for this reason, that they could have no guarantee that the Government would not afterwards levy from them the same amount of revenue under some other form of direct or indirect taxation. Besides, in the Government districts, which constituted three-fourths of India, it would not be possible for the tenantry, in the present state of society, to redeem their holdings; and even if it were a feasible measure, it would, in his opinion, be most mischievous. It would be a great calamity to allow the serfs to emancipate themselves piecemeal as apparently they might do under that Resolution. He believed it would be mischievous to allow 20,000 or 25,000 serfs to emancipate themselves out of a population of 500,000 individuals, who had in the Madras Presidency been permitted to squat on small holdings, and who absolutely paid not more than ten or fifteen shillings each for the spots of land which they occupied. Before any scheme of land redemption could succeed, it was absolutely necessary that they should have a permanent settlement of the soil such as that which had been introduced into Bengal proper in the year 1793, by Lord Cornwallis, who was a great statesman. Under that settlement the Government denuded themselves of the right of proprietary tenure of land in Lower Bengal, and called into existences new class of proprietors, many of whom now held large estates on titles as secure and less complex than those in this country. Under the provisions of that settlement Bengal became the garden of India, and its agricultural resources had increased three or fourfold since 1793, while Bombay and Madras Presidencies had remained stationary, and, in many instances, had retrograded. Earl Canning's small fragmentary measure was a stop in the right direction, but it must be nugatory, and might be mischievous, so long as the Government were permitted to hold all the cultivable land. It seemed to be imagined that these Resolutions of the Governor General in Council had been carried out, but that was not the case. At the end of the proclamation it was stated that the local Governments were to prepare drafts of acts which were to give effect to those measures; but those acts had not yet, he believed, been made public. That led him to say a few words on the subject of legislation for India. He often heard it said in that House, and out of it, that India was a very difficult country to rule. But he believed that that was a great delusion. He would venture to say, on the contrary, that India was a land that might be governed with very great facility, and that a little sense went a long way in that country. In point of fact, they seldom sent out as Governors to the Indian presidencies men of first rate capacity; and when he pointed to the circumstance, that a succession of six or eight noble Lords or right hon. Gentlemen of ordinary ability governed those districts without any great detriment to the public service, he thought he had established his position that India was not a very difficult country to rule. He was convinced it was also a country that required but a very small amount of legislation, and the smaller the better. Nineteen out of every twenty gentlemen connected by property with India were persuaded that one of the greatest evils which had befallen that country was the flood of legislation let in upon it on the most trifling occasions. He could not help thinking, that if two-thirds of all the legislative measures which had been passed for India during the last ton or fifteen years were erased from the statute-book, not only would no inconvenience be created, but the greatest advantage would accrue both to the governing and the governed classes. He looked upon it as one of the worst signs of the times that in the mock parliament which had lately been constituted at Calcutta sixteen or eighteen measures were passed through a stage at its very first meeting, and that at every subsequent sitting five or six measures were introduced. If Legislation proceeded at such railway speed, that assembly would very shortly be found to be an unmitigated nuisance. He recollected that the right hon. Baronet at the head of the India Department had told them last year that it was a very difficult thing to legislate for India, and that that difficulty was greatly increased by the fact that European residents had hardly any means of making themselves acquainted with the feelings of the native population. He referred in proof to the statement of Sir Mark Cubbon, that after a very long residence in India he had not been able to fathom the feelings of the natives towards Europeans. As far as his (Mr. Smollett's) own experience went, he did not think there was any great mystery about the matter. He should say that the Indian community was one of a highly civilized character. They knew that they were a conquered race, but they expected civility from their conquerors, though they did not always obtain it. They held in veneration the religion of their ancestors, and they expected that it would not only be tolerated, but that its possessions would be protected by the law. That protection, however, had been insidiously withheld for many years previously to the late insurrection. They looked up with regard to their native gentry, and they saw with disgust and dismay the pretexts that were frequently employed to uproot them. The middle classes in India were singularly unwarlike; the agricultural classes—he spoke of them from an experience of thirty years—were as a body, when properly treated the most docile and the most industrious of mankind, and whenever an insurrection arose in that country it was due to the oppressive use of the authority of the Government, or to the bad management of some indigo planter. In their mode of conducting their dealings with one another the people of India would bear a compari- son with the most favoured race in Europe. It was legislation like that of Mr. Laing, who sought to bring under penal enactment every civil contract, which made India hard to govern, and the British name cease to be respected. In point of fact, India wanted no legislation, but she did require the presence of a strong, vigorous, and honest Executive, which he hoped she would have under the Earl of Elgin. Nine-tenths of the weal and woe of the people depended upon the executive Government, and not upon legislation. The work of conciliation was not to be accomplished by introducing two or three blacks into a Legislative Council without their having any duties to perform, or any responsibility or emoluments; but by opening up the departments of the State more fairly to native talent and respectability. The Government ought to devote their energies to the formation of roads and communications, which were the great social want of the country, and to leave the improvement of the land to the agriculturists. If India were really governed on the principles of the Queen's Proclamation, 50,000 European troops would be quite sufficient. These were some of the leading reforms which were required, but they would never be achieved as long as Parliament continued to treat the affairs of India with apathy, and as long as mere fragmentary Legislation was the order of the day.

MR. VANSITTART

said, he thought that his hon. Friend the Member for Dumbartonshire deserved great credit, not only for the manner in which he had brought forward a question relating to, perhaps, the most important measures which had been passed during the administration of Earl Canning, but for having raised the; first Indian debate which had taken place during that uneventful Session. He did not, however, agree with his hon. Friend that these measures should be regarded merely as a fragmentary instalment of what should be done in the matter. On the contrary, he very much questioned whether they did not go quite far enough, although the results to be derived from their adoption might disappoint the expectations of those who had been so clamorous for their introduction, in order to suit their own views, without duly considering the hardships and injustice which was likely to be inflicted upon our native fellow-subjects in India. He wished also to be informed whether, in dealing with the ques- tions, the Governor General had acted with the sanction of Her Majesty's Government. To the first of these measures—the redemption of the land-tax at twenty years' purchase—he saw no particular objection, because he believed it would prove to be purely chimerical, for few, if any, of the zemindars would be found disposed to avail themselves of the privilege. In corroboration he might refer to the evidence of witnesses given before the Colonization Committee, who were of opinion that it was unlikely a zemindar would be satisfied with 5 per cent for his money when he had no difficulty in procuring 10 or even 12 per cent. In a recent conversation, moreover, with a collector of the North Western Provinces, he found that the only instances of its having occurred within his knowledge were those of two natives, who had been rewarded by the Indian Government with estates assessed at half the Government rent for fidelity during the mutiny. With regard to the sale of waste lands, referring to his experience as a settlement officer in Orissa and Cuttack, he thought that great care and delicacy should be exercised so as not to interfere with the vested rights of the zemindars. On making a settlement of an estate it would gene rally be found that not more than two-thirds of the land were actually under cultivation, the remaining third being de scribed as" cultivable but not cultivated." That being the case, the settlement officer imposed an equitable assessment on the two-thirds, but he inserted a distinct provision in the deed of settlement, that in the event of the land described as "culturable but not cultivated" being brought under cultivation at any future period, the zemindar engaged to pay an enhanced rent to Government. It would therefore be the very height of injustice were that portion of his estate to be liable to be sold at any moment to any one who took a fancy to it; and yet by the 35th paragraph of the Government Resolution referred to by his hon. Friend, such was declared to be the case in the event of the zemindar failing to bring it into cultivation within five years after the settlement. In saying that he did not mean to object to the clearance of jungle and forests, but he hoped Government would not sell them below their value, for he believed the time was rapidly approaching when they would become valuable property. He understood that already some of the railway companies complained of the difficulty of procur- ing timber for sleepers for the railways. He next came to the last, and, in his opinion, the best of the measures, and that to which the question which he had placed on the paper referred—the extension of Lord Cornwallis's perpetual settlement to the North Western Provinces. Although it was notorious that the perpetual settlement of 1793 was made up hurriedly and on imperfect data, and had occasioned great loss of revenue to the Government, yet there was no doubt that the political advantages which had resulted from it had been considerable. The case, however, as regarded the North Western Provinces was very different. The Indian Government was in possession of the actual value and capabilities of every estate in the North West, which had been ascertained from the investigations, measurements, and assessments of their able and zealous covenanted civil servants. The correctness of their proceedings had been furthermore tested by a settlement of thirty years' duration, which was now falling in. A better opportunity, therefore, there could not be found for extending the perpetual settlement of Lower Bengal to the North Western provinces. While on that question he could not help expressing his regret that the field survey of Lower Bengal, which had been commenced, was stopped on the recommendation of Mr. Ricketts, when he was appointed to the Revenue Board. He believed that if, instead of deputing those expensive and useless commissions and special commissions to inquire into the unhappy indigo disputes in the districts of Jessore and Nuddeea, which had terminated in the ruin of a most enterprising section of our countrymen, a field-by-field survey, similar to that in the North West, Madras, and Bombay had been made, these disputes would have been settled long ago to the satisfaction of all parties. What had happened? A ryot took advances from a planter to cultivate 100 acres with indigo, whereas he knew that his holding or field consisted in reality but of 50 acres. The ryot could not fulfil his engagement, and, in the absence of a survey or other authenticated record, a dispute arose, and the planter was deprived of the necessary proof in order to expose the deceit practised by the ryot. As illustrative of that state of things, he would, with the permission of the House, read a very brief extract from the 21st paragraph of Mr. James Hills's letter, dated the 27th of July, 1861, to the Secretary to the Government of India. Mr. Hills says— I do not believe any English gentleman can descend so low as to fathom the cunning, the deceit, and depravity of the Bengalee ryot's character unless he has had monetary transactions with him. Without being tempted to avail himself of that opportunity to touch upon any of the financial and other measures which were being carried out in India, he would merely express a hope that in sanctioning the several measures under consideration the right hon. Baronet and his Council would not fail to bear in mind, that while affording every facility to the European to settle in India, they were nevertheless bound to protect the interests, regard the susceptibilities, and take care no violence was done to the long-existing rights of the native landlords, to whom they were indebted for two-thirds of the whole of the revenues of their Indian territories.

SIR CHARLES WOOD

Sir, it is not my intention to trouble the House with many observations, because my duty on the present occasion is to play the part of a listener rather than that of a speaker. I feel grateful to the hon. Gentleman who introduced this subject, not only for bringing it forward, but also for the able and temperate manner in which he has treated it. The hon. Gentleman is one of those Indian servants whose presence in this House I gladly hail, because, from their long experience of India, their knowledge, and their judgment, they are entitled to speak with authority in discussions of this kind. I believe the forms of the House will not permit the hon. Gentleman to make the Motion of which he has given notice. However, he has had an opportunity of stating his views to the House; and, as far as the papers go which he wishes to have, I can only say, that if he will give notice either to-night or on some future occasion, he will have them as an unopposed return. The hon. Gentleman thinks that the importance of the measures to which he has referred has been a good deal overrated in this country. I agree with him upon that point; but, on the other hand, I think he himself has rather underrated the importance of the measures in question. It is true that they do not go to the extent which the hon. Gentleman has shadowed out, but at the same time I cannot say that they are of slight importance. With respect, for example, to the sale of waste lands, I do not see how they could go further, because they announce that all the lands in India properly called waste shall be saleable. I agree, however, with the hon. Gentleman that there is a great delusion in this country as to the extent to which waste lands exist in India, and that a good deal of land which appears to be waste cannot in any true sense of that term be so called. There are many acres of land in the neighbourhood of villages which have all the appearance of being waste, but which in reality are no more waste than the common pastures in this country. The native agriculturists are obliged to keep cattle for the purpose of cultivating their arable lands; those cattle must have pasture, and very often the pastures, from which these cattle derive their subsistence, as they look like waste lands, are so called. If they were to be sold, the countrymen would be deprived of the means of maintaining their cattle. It is obvious that the pasture lands are indispensable to the cultivation of the arable land, and it is impossible that these lands could be sold without doing great injustice to those persons who hold them. Of course, therefore, they cannot be sold, and upon that point the hon. Member for Windsor is labouring under a misapprehension.

MR. VANSITTART

What I stated was, that by the 55th paragraph of the Government Resolutions those very lands to which the right hon. Baronet is now referring, if not brought into a state of cultivation within five years after the settlement, are liable to be sold.

SIR CHARLES WOOD

I think there is a difference between the lands to which the hon. Gentleman alludes and the pasture lands of India. However, it is not worth while going into the question now, but I maintain the utter impossibility of selling these lands. I even go further, and say that the rights of the natives of India to these lands should be scrupulously observed and carefully guarded. My own opinion is, that the Resolutions do not take sufficient care to guard some of those rights; and therefore in expressing my general approval of the Resolutions, as far as the sale of really waste lands is concerned, I must add, that I think care should be taken, on the one hand, to preserve the rights of those persons to whom a limited occupation of the lands belongs, and, on the other, to protect the State against loss. The hon. Gentleman who introduced the subject said, that in his opinion the Resolutions would prove to be useless. Let me remind him that most of the coffee plantations in Madras have been established upon land which was formerly waste, and sold as such, and that the same observation may be applied to many of the tea districts. It seems to me, upon the whole, that the sale of the waste lands under the Government Resolutions will intro duce English capital where it is much needed, and will be otherwise beneficial to IV great extent, though I agree with the hon. Gentleman that the extent to which waste lands are to be found all over India has been rather overrated in this country. The hon. Gentleman has referred to the redemption of the land revenues. I agree with the hon. Member who spoke last, and who possesses an amount of knowledge upon these subjects which cannot fail to be of great advantage in discussions like the present, that in all probability the redemption will not be carried out to any very great extent. Indeed, I do not think it desirable that it should be carried out to any great extent, because I do not want to see the State anticipating its revenue and converting its future annual income into capital. I confess, however, that I do not understand what the hon. Gentleman meant by saying that this was the converse of the plan of settlement inaugurated by Lord Cornwallis, because obviously, so far as either the sale of the waste lands or the redemption of the land tax goes, it is a permanent settlement. The fault of the settlement made by Lord Cornwallis was that it erected into landowners those who were not landowners. Government officers employed to collect the revenue were transmuted into landowners, and Lord Cornwallis did not do that which has been done in recent settlements—he did not take any steps to ascertain the rights of the people who were the real occupiers and owners of the land. I agree with the hon. Member for Windsor (Mr. Vansittart), that if the rights of the ryots had been ascertained in Bengal, as they have been subsequently ascertained in the settlement of the North West districts, half of the disputes, which now are certainly very serious, would never have arisen. If it should be thought right to extend the permanent settlement to other parts of India, it is indispensable that, as in the North West Provinces, the rights of each individual occupier should be carefully ascertained and recorded, and all chance of disputes will thus be avoided. The question is one of the most important that can be raised in reference to that country; it is one on which unanimity of opinion by no means exists, for it has been discussed for years by many of the ablest men, holding contrary opinions. But it will be necessary before long to come to a decision on the subject; the matter, in fact, is at present under consideration by myself and the Council of India, many of whom are intimately acquainted with these matters; and it would not be my duty either to the Council or to the Government to express any opinion upon it at this moment. When the proper time comes, it will be my duty to lay all the information bearing upon the subject on the table of the House, and I hope the House will feel that it would not be right for me at present to add anything further.