The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 08 (of 12). Edmund Burke
measure [treasure?] or of goods; but much care ought to be taken that the influx of wealth shall be greater in quantity and prior in time to the waste.
On abandoning the trade in silk to private hands, the Directors issued some prohibitions to prevent monopoly, and they gave some directions about the improvement of the trade. The prohibitions were proper, and the directions prudent; but it is much to be feared, that, whilst all the means, instruments, and powers remain, by which monopolies were made, and through which abuses formerly prevailed, all verbal orders will be fruitless.
This branch of trade, being so long principally managed by the Company's servants for the Company and under its authority, cannot be easily taken out of their hands and pass to the natives, especially when it is to be carried on without the control naturally inherent in all participation. It is not difficult to conceive how this forced preference of traffic in a raw commodity must have injured the manufactures, while it was the policy of the Company to continue the trade on their own account. The servants, so far from deviating from their course, since they have taken the trade into their own management, have gone much further into it. The proportion of raw silk in the investment is to be augmented. The proportion of the whole cargoes for the year 1783, divided into sixteen parts, is ten of raw silk, and six only of manufactured goods. Such is the proportion of this losing article in the scheme for the investment of private fortunes.
In the reformed scheme of sending the investment on account of the Company, to be paid in bills upon Europe, no mention is made of any change of these proportions. Indeed, some limits are attempted on the article of silk, with regard to its price; and it is not improbable that the price to the master and the servant will be very different: but they cannot make profitable purchases of this article without strongly condemning all the former purchases of the Board of Trade.
CLOTHS, OR PIECE-GOODS
The general system above stated, relative to the silk trade, must materially have affected the manufactures of Bengal, merely as it was a system of preference. It does by no means satisfactorily appear to your Committee that the freedom held out by the Company's various orders has been ever fully enjoyed, or that the grievances of the native merchants and manufacturers have been redressed; for we find, on good authority, that, at that very period at which it might be supposed that these orders had their operation, the oppressions were in full vigor. They appear to have fallen heaviest on the city of Dacca, formerly the great staple for the finest goods in India,—a place once full of opulent merchants and dealers of all descriptions.
The city and district of Dacca, before the prevalence of the East India Company's influence and authority, manufactured annually to about three hundred thousand pounds' value in cloths. In the year 1776 it had fallen to about two hundred thousand, or two thirds of its former produce. Of this the Company's demand amounted only to a fourth part, that is, about fifty thousand pounds yearly. This was at that time provided by agents for the Company, under the inspection of their commercial servants. On pretence of securing an advantage for this fourth part for their masters, they exerted a most violent and arbitrary power over the whole. It was asserted, that they fixed the Company's mark to such goods as they thought fit, (to all goods, as stated in one complaint,) and disposed of them as they thought proper, excluding not only all the native dealers, but the Dutch Company, and private English merchants,—that they made advances to the weavers often beyond their known ability to repay in goods within the year, and by this means, having got them in debt, held them in perpetual servitude. Their inability to keep accounts left them at the discretion of the agents of the supreme power to make their balances what they pleased, and they recovered them, not by legal process, but by seizure of their goods and arbitrary imprisonment of their persons. One and the same dealer made the advance, valued the return, stated the account, passed the judgment, and executed the process.
Mr. Rouse, Chief of the Dacca Province, who struggled against those evils, says, that in the year 1773 there were no balances due, as the trade was then carried on by the native brokers. In less than three years these balances amounted to an immense sum,—a sum lost to the Company, but existing in full force for every purpose of oppression. In the amount of these balances almost every weaver in the country bore a part, and consequently they were almost all caught in this snare. "They are in general," says Mr. Rouse, in a letter to General Clavering, delivered to your Committee, "a timid, helpless people; many of them poor to the utmost degree of wretchedness; incapable of keeping accounts; industrious as it were by instinct; unable to defend themselves, if oppressed; and satisfied, if with continual labor they derive from the fair dealing and humanity of their employer a moderate subsistence for their families."
Such were the people who stood accused by the Company's agents as pretending grievances, in order to be excused the payment of their balances. As to the commercial state of the province in general, Mr. Rouse represents it "to be for those two years a perpetual scene of complaint and disputation;—the Company's agents professing to pay higher rates to weavers, whilst the Leadenhall sales showed an heavy loss to the Company; the weavers have even travelled in multitudes to prefer their complaints at the Presidency; the amount of the investment comparatively small, with balances comparatively large, and, as I understand, generally contested by the weavers; the native merchants, called delâls, removed from their influence, as prejudicial to the Company's concerns; and European merchants complaining against undue influence of the Company's commercial agents, in preventing the free purchase even of those goods which the Company never takes."
The spirit of those agents will be fully comprehended from a state of the proceedings before Mr. Rouse and Council, on the complaint of a Mr. Cree, an English free merchant at Dacca, who had been twice treated in the same injurious manner by the agents of Mr. Hurst, the Commercial Chief at that place. On his complaint to the board of the seizure of the goods, and imprisonment of his agents, Mr. Hurst was called upon for an explanation. In return he informed them that he had sent to one of the villages to inquire concerning the matter of fact alleged. The impartial person sent to make this inquiry was the very man accused of the oppressions into which he was sent to examine. The answer of Mr. Hurst is in an high and determined tone. He does not deny that there are some instances of abuse of power. "But I ask," says he, "what authority can guard against the conduct of individuals? but that a single instance cannot be brought of a general depravity." Your Committee have reason to believe these coercive measures to have been very general, though employed according to the degree of resistance opposed to the monopoly; for we find at one time the whole trade of the Dutch involved in the general servitude. But it appears very extraordinary that nothing but the actual proof of a general abuse could affect a practice the very principle of which tends to make the coercion as general as the trade. Mr. Hurst's reflection concerning the abuse of authority is just, but in this case it is altogether inapplicable; because the complaint was not of the abuse, but of the use of authority in matters of trade, which ought to have been free. He throws out a variety of invidious reflections against the Council, as if they wanted zeal for the Company's service; his justification of his practices, and his declaration of his resolution to persevere in them, are firm and determined,—asserting the right and policy of such restraints, and laying down a rule for his conduct at the factory, which, he says, will give no cause of just complaint to private traders. He adds, "I have no doubt but that they have hitherto provided investments, and it cannot turn to my interest to preclude them now, though I must ever think it my duty to combat the private views of individuals who set themselves up as competitors under that very body under whose license and indulgence only they can derive their privilege of trade: all I contend for is the same influence my employers have ever had." He ends by declining any reply to any of their future references of this nature.
The whole of this extraordinary letter is inserted in the Appendix, No. 51,—and Mr. Rouse's minute of observations upon it in Appendix, No. 52, fully refuting the few pretexts alleged in that extraordinary performance in support of the trade by influence and authority. Mr. Hollond, one of the Council, joined Mr. Rouse in opinion that a letter to the purport of that minute should be written; but they were overruled by Messrs. Purling, Hogarth, and Shakespeare, who passed a resolution to defer sending any reply to Mr. Hurst: and none was ever sent. Thus they gave countenance to the doctrine contained in that letter, as well as to the mischievous practices which must inevitably arise from the exercise of such power. Some temporary and partial