The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 08 (of 12). Edmund Burke

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СКАЧАТЬ Committee then turned to the trade of the other factories and Presidencies, and they constantly found, that, as the power and dominion of the Company was less, their profit on the goods was greater. The investments of Madras, Bombay, and Bencoolen have, in the foregoing four years, upon a capital of 1,151,176l., had a gain upon the whole of 329,622l. The greatest of all is that of Bencoolen, which, on a capital of 76,571l., produced a profit of 107,760l. This, however, is but a small branch of the Company's trade. The trade to China, on a capital of 1,717,463l., produced an excess of gain amounting to 874,096l., which is about fifty per cent. But such was the evil influence of the Bengal investment, that not only the profits of the Chinese trade, but of all the lucrative branches taken together, were so sunk and ingulfed in it, that the whole profit on a capital of 7,045,164l. reached to no more than 684,489l., that is, to 189,607l. less than the profit on the Chinese trade alone,—less than the total profits on the gainful trades taken together, 520,727l.

      It is very remarkable, that in the year 1778, when the Bengal investment stood at the highest, that is, so high as 1,223,316l., though the Chinese trade produced an excess of gain in that year of 209,243l., and that no loss of moment could be added to that of Bengal, (except about 45,000l. on the Bombay trade,) the whole profit of a capital of 2,040,787l. amounted only to the sum of 9,480l.

      The detail of the articles in which loss was incurred or gain made will be found in the Appendix, No. 24. The circumstances of the time have rendered it necessary to call up a vigorous attention to this state of the trade of the Company between Europe and India.

      INTERNAL TRADE OF BENGAL

      The internal trade of Bengal has next attracted the inquiries of your Committee.

      The great and valuable articles of the Company's investment, drawn from the articles of internal trade, are raw silk, and various descriptions of piece-goods made of silk and cotton. These articles are not under any formal monopoly; nor does the Company at present exercise a declared right of preëmption with regard to them. But it does not appear that the trade in these particulars is or can be perfectly free,—not so much on account of any direct measures taken to prevent it as from the circumstances of the country, and the manner of carrying on business there: for the present trade, even in these articles, is built from the ruins of old monopolies and preëmptions, and necessarily partakes of the nature of its materials.

      In order to show in what manner manufactures and trade so constituted contribute to the prosperity of the natives, your Committee conceives it proper to take, in this place, a short general view of the progress of the English policy with relation to the commerce of Bengal, and the several stages and gradations by which it has been brought into its actual state. The modes of abuse, and the means by which commerce has suffered, will be considered in greater detail under the distinct heads of those objects which have chiefly suffered by them.

      During the time of the Mogul government, the princes of that race, who omitted nothing for the encouragement of commerce in their dominions, bestowed very large privileges and immunities on the English East India Company, exempting them from several duties to which their natural-born subjects were liable. The Company's dustuck, or passport, secured to them this exemption at all the custom-houses and toll-bars of the country. The Company, not being able or not choosing to make use of their privilege to the full extent to which it might be carried, indulged their servants with a qualified use of their passport, under which, and in the name of the Company, they carried on a private trade, either by themselves or in society with natives, and thus found a compensation for the scanty allowances made to them by their masters in England. As the country government was at that time in the fulness of its strength, and that this immunity existed by a double connivance, it was naturally kept within tolerable limits.

      But by the revolution in 1757 the Company's servants obtained a mighty ascendant over the native princes of Bengal, who owed their elevation to the British arms. The Company, which was new to that kind of power, and not yet thoroughly apprised of its real character and situation, considered itself still as a trader in the territories of a foreign potentate, in the prosperity of whose country it had neither interest nor duty. The servants, with the same ideas, followed their fortune in the channels in which it had hitherto ran, only enlarging them with the enlargement of their power. For their first ideas of profit were not official; nor were their oppressions those of ordinary despotism. The first instruments of their power were formed out of evasions of their ancient subjection. The passport of the Company in the hands of its servants was no longer under any restraint; and in a very short time their immunity began to cover all the merchandise of the country. Cossim Ali Khân, the second of the Nabobs whom they had set up, was but ill disposed to the instruments of his greatness. He bore the yoke of this imperious commerce with the utmost impatience: he saw his subjects excluded as aliens from their own trade, and the revenues of the prince overwhelmed in the ruin of the commerce of his dominions. Finding his reiterated remonstrances on the extent and abuse of the passport ineffectual, he had recourse to an unexpected expedient, which was, to declare his resolution at once to annul all the duties on trade, setting it equally free to subjects and to foreigners.

      Never was a method of defeating the oppressions of monopoly more forcible, more simple, or more equitable: no sort of plausible objection could be made; and it was in vain to think of evading it. It was therefore met with the confidence of avowed and determined injustice. The Presidency of Calcutta openly denied to the prince the power of protecting the trade of his subjects by the remission of his own duties. It was evident that his authority drew to its period: many reasons and motives concurred, and his fall was hastened by the odium of the oppressions which he exercised voluntarily, as well as of those to which he was obliged to submit.

      When this example was made, Jaffier Ali Khân, who had been deposed to make room for the last actor, was brought from penury and exile to a station the terms of which he could not misunderstand. During his life, and in the time of his children who succeeded to him, parts of the territorial revenue were assigned to the Company; and the whole, under the name of residency at the Nabob's court, was brought, directly or indirectly, under the control of British subjects. The Company's servants, armed with authorities delegated from the nominal government, or attended with what was a stronger guard, the fame of their own power, appeared as magistrates in the markets in which they dealt as traders. It was impossible for the natives in general to distinguish, in the proceedings of the same persons, what was transacted on the Company's account from what was done on their own; and it will ever be so difficult to draw this line of distinction, that as long as the Company does, directly or indirectly, aim at any advantage to itself in the purchase of any commodity whatever, so long will it be impracticable to prevent the servants availing themselves of the same privilege.

      The servants, therefore, for themselves or for their employers, monopolized every article of trade, foreign and domestic: not only the raw merchantable commodities, but the manufactures; and not only these, but the necessaries of life, or what in these countries habit has confounded with them,—not only silk, cotton, piece-goods, opium, saltpetre, but not unfrequently salt, tobacco, betel-nut, and the grain of most ordinary consumption. In the name of the country government they laid on or took off, and at their pleasure heightened or lowered, all duties upon goods: the whole trade of the country was either destroyed or in shackles. The acquisition of the Duanné, in 1765, bringing the English into the immediate government of the country in its most essential branches, extended and confirmed all the former means of monopoly.

      In the progress of these ruinous measures through all their details, innumerable grievances were suffered by the native inhabitants, which were represented in the strongest, that is, their true colors, in England. Whilst the far greater part of the British in India were in eager pursuit of the forced and exorbitant gains of a trade carried on by power, contests naturally arose among the competitors: those who were overpowered by their rivals became loud in their complaints to the Court of Directors, and were very capable, from experience, of pointing out every mode of abuse.

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