INDIA —PETITION. (Hansard, 1 July 1853)

§ The EARL of ALBEMARLE,

in rising topresent a petition from the Mayor, Town Councillors, Merchants, and other Inhabitants of the Borough of Birmingham, praying that the House, in any measures for the future government of India, would abolish the existing system of a double government, and establish a home administration appointed by the Crown, and directly responsible to the Imperial Parliament, said, he would trouble their Lordships for a very few moments. They had all of them duties of a different nature that evening, which would necessarily render their proceedings in that House as short as possible, and therefore he should confine his observations to one point of the statement contained in the petition, and that was, the condition of the Indian population subject to the rule of the Company. The petition declared that the condition of the people was one of poverty and depression, and he thought it necessary to make these few remarks on the subject, in order that he might neutralise the rosy tints which had been introduced into the sketches of Indian life by certain colourists of Leadenhall-street and Cannon-row. In the other House of Parliament an hon. Baronet had the other evening read an extract from an article in theCalcutta Review, which appeared evi- 1080 dently intended to meet the statements contained in an extract which he (the Earl of Albemarle) had on a former occasion quoted to a Committee of their Lordships, respecting the condition of the Bengal peasantry. The extract stated— What strikes the eye most in any village or set of villages in a Bengal district is the exuberant fertility of the soil, the sluggish plenty surrounding the cultivator's abode, the rich foliage, the fruit and timber trees, and the palpable evidence against anything like penury. Did any man ever go through a Bengalee village and find himself assailed by the cry of want or famine? Was he ever told that the ryot and his family did not know where to turn for a meal? Now, that bore the appearance to him of having been used to meet the quotation he (the Earl of Albemarle) had made from the same periodical, in which the Bengal peasant was described as being plunged in a condition of squalid misery—in which his wretchedness was pointed out—in which it was stated that he toiled from morn to night—that, despite of this, he was a haggard, poverty-stricken, wretched creature— and that he might be seen fasting for days and nights from want of food. It was clear, therefore, that one of these two statements could not be true. He thought, however, he could show their Lordships that the quotation he (the Earl of Albemarle) made was correct. He fancied he had some reason for thinking that the article quoted by the hon. Baronet in another place had been written by a young man, a covenanted servant of the Company, after a very short residence in India, and with an imperfect knowledge of the people and of the country; whereas it appeared in evidence before the Committee of their Lordships' House that the writer of the article which he (the Earl of Albemarle) had quoted was a Hindoo of the name of Peary Chund Mittra, who, on the unimpeachable evidence of Dr. Duff, was stated to be a very intelligent young man of excellent character. In a letter to himself from Dr. Duff, which he was at liberty to read, there was this passage:— I beg to state that the name of the writer of the article on the 'Zemindar and the Ryot, is Peary Chund Mittra, a young man of good caste, of a Zemindar family himself, and for some years past librarian of the Calcutta Public Library, He was a particular friend of my own-—sober, sedate, and thoughtful, and free from the peculiar excesses and extravagances which have unhappily characterised a certain class of natives, usually designated 'Young Bengal.' Dr. Duff stated, indeed, that the soil of Bengal was so extremely fertile, that if a 1081 mere stranger, and especially a British functionary, unconversant with the inner workings and framework of Native society, were to enter a village with its beautiful trees, and see their rich products and gorgeous foliage, his judgment would be a flattering but mistaken one; and he added that from "the outward and apparent signs of plenty and abundance, it took him (Dr. Duff) some time to enable him to realise, with reference to the social state of the people, the fallaciousness of any estimate founded upon them;"—a remark which applied to the quotation he had referred to —and then he went on to say, that his own later and more enlarged experience led him to confirm the substantial correctness of the picture drawn by this Young Bengalee of the ryots. A discussion had taken place a few nights ago with reference to the evils which arose out of the salt system, and he regretted very much that he was not present on the occasion. On this subject he would beg to quote very briefly from a letter which he held in his hand from Mr. Worthington, the chairman of the Salt Commercial Company at North-wich. That gentleman stated that the price of one ton of best British table salt, stove dried, free on board the ship at Liverpool, was 15s.; freight to Calcutta, at from 20s. to 45s., average1l. 12s. 6d; weighing, delivery at Calcutta, commission, &c, 6s. 6d.; total,2l. 14s. This was for a ton of salt of a quality so superior to that of the East India Company as to have sold in March last at 80 rupees per 100 maunds, while the East India Company's salt sold at 50 rupees per 100 maunds. The Company's boiled salt cost I rupee per maund, or 2s. for every 82lb., making the price 54s. 6d. per ton. The salt duty amounted to 2½ rupees, or 5s., so that the price per ton became 191s. 2d. —that was to say, that the people of India, where the price of labour was at the most 72s. per year, paid from 12 to 13 times as much as the English people, where labour was six or seven times dearer. The price of salt which he had mentioned, however, was the prime cost of the article at the manufactory. What the addition to the price was, and what the other evils of this system were, he might be permitted to illustrate by the following quotation from theCalcutta Review. That periodical said— Now commences the iniquity of the system. A great proportion of the salt for inland consumption throughout the country is purchased by large wholesale merchants at less than 4 rupees the 1082 maund. These mix a fixed proportion of sand, chiefly got a few miles to the south-east of Dacca, and sell the mixture to a second, or (counting the Government) to a third monopolist, at about 5 or 6 rupees. This dealer adds more earth or ashes, and, thus passing through more hands from the larger towns to villages, the price is still further raised from 8 to 10 rupees, and the proportion of adulteration from 28 to 40 per cent—the imposition being most severe in the most distant places, to which there is no water-carriage. Suppose, however, any licensed dealer were, for the benefit of his business, to sell a purer salt than others, a combination is formed against him, and a false case is got up before the superintendent of salt chowkies, which ruins him. It appeared, then, that the people of India paid from 21l. 17s. 2d. to 27l. 6s. 2d. a ton for their salt, or, in other words, they paid from 30 to 36 times as much as the wealthy people of Great Britain. With these facts before him, he must confess that he had been considerably surprised at the almost fulsome eulogy which the right hon. Gentleman (Sir C. Wood) had pronounced on this tax. His right hon. Friend was an advocate of free trade, and was the Financial Minister in the former Free-trade Cabinet, and it did, therefore, surprise him to find the right hon. Gentleman speaking in such terms of a tax which presented protection in its most execrable shape. It was not merely that his right hon. Friend had stated that the price was only9d. a head—that alone in a family was as much as 2s. 9d. a year, or equal in amount to the income tax; but he had entirely omitted the expense of transport to different places, and the adulteration which amounted from 20 to 25 per cent. He would not trouble their Lordships any further on the present occasion; but, perhaps, however informal it was, he might be permitted to lay upon the table a petition from the Directors of the Manchester Commercial Association, praying the House not to sanction any measure for the future administration of the affairs of India which did not make provision for substantial improvements in the land tenures, public works, and commercial policy of that country. He would beg to move, that both petitions be referred to the Select Committee now sitting on Indian affairs.