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

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СКАЧАТЬ computed, but by none at less than three millions sterling. A country so exhausted of its coin, and harassed by three revolutions rapidly succeeding each other, was rather an object that stood in need of every kind of refreshment and recruit than one which could subsist under new evacuations. The next, and equally obvious inconvenience, was to the Company itself. To send silver into Europe would be to send it from the best to the worst market. When arrived, the most profitable use which could be made of it would be to send it back to Bengal for the purchase of Indian merchandise. It was necessary, therefore, to turn the Company's revenue into its commerce. The first investment was about five hundred thousand pounds, and care was taken afterwards to enlarge it. In the years 1767 and 1768 it arose to seven hundred thousand.

      Consequences of them. This new system of trade, carried on through the medium of power and public revenue, very soon produced its natural effects. The loudest complaints arose among the natives, and among all the foreigners who traded to Bengal. It must unquestionably have thrown the whole mercantile system of the country into the greatest confusion. With regard to the natives, no expedient was proposed for their relief. The case was serious with respect to European powers. The Presidency plainly represented to the Directors, that some agreement should be made with foreign nations for providing their investment to a certain amount, or that the deficiencies then subsisting must terminate in an open rupture with France. The Directors, pressed by the large payments in England, were not free to abandon their system; and all possible means of diverting the manufactures into the Company's investment were still anxiously sought and pursued, until the difficulties of the foreign companies were at length removed by the natural flow of the fortunes of the Company's servants into Europe, in the manner which will be stated hereafter.

      But, with all these endeavors of the Presidency, the investment sunk in 1769, and they were even obliged to pay for a part of the goods to private merchants in the Company's bonds, bearing interest. It was plain that this course of business could not hold. The manufacturers of Bengal, far from being generally in a condition to give credit, have always required advances to be made to them; so have the merchants very generally,—at least, since the prevalence of the English power in India. It was necessary, therefore, and so the Presidency of Calcutta represented the matter, to provide beforehand a year's advance. This required great efforts; and they were made. Notwithstanding the famine in 1770, which wasted Bengal in a manner dreadful beyond all example, the investment, by a variety of successive expedients, many of them of the most dangerous nature and tendency, was forcibly kept up; and even in that forced and unnatural state it gathered strength almost every year. The debts contracted in the infancy of the system were gradually reduced, and the advances to contractors and manufacturers were regularly made; so that the goods from Bengal, purchased from the territorial revenues, from the sale of European goods, and from the produce of the monopolies, for the four years which ended with 1780, when the investment from the surplus revenues finally closed, were never less than a million sterling, and commonly nearer twelve hundred thousand pounds. This million is the lowest value of the goods sent to Europe for which no satisfaction is made.4

      Remittances from Bengal to China and the Presidencies. About an hundred thousand pounds a year is also remitted from Bengal, on the Company's account, to China; and the whole of the product of that money flows into the direct trade from China to Europe. Besides this, Bengal sends a regular supply in time of peace to those Presidencies which are unequal to their own establishment. To Bombay the remittance in money, bills, or goods, for none of which there is a return, amounts to one hundred and sixty thousand pounds a year at a medium.

      Exports from England to India. The goods which are exported from Europe to India consist chiefly of military and naval stores, of clothing for troops, and of other objects for the consumption of the Europeans residing there; and, excepting some lead, copper utensils and sheet copper, woollen cloth, and other commodities of little comparative value, no sort of merchandise is sent from England that is in demand for the wants or desires of the native inhabitants.

      Bad effects of investment. When an account is taken of the intercourse (for it is not commerce) which is carried on between Bengal and England, the pernicious effects of the system of investment from revenue will appear in the strongest point of view. In that view, the whole exported produce of the country, so far as the Company is concerned, is not exchanged in the course of barter, but is taken away without any return or payment whatsoever. In a commercial light, therefore, England becomes annually bankrupt to Bengal to the amount nearly of its whole dealing; or rather, the country has suffered what is tantamount to an annual plunder of its manufactures and its produce to the value of twelve hundred thousand pounds.

      Foreign companies. In time of peace, three foreign companies appear at first sight to bring their contribution of trade to the supply of this continual drain. These are the companies of France, Holland, and Denmark. Consequences of their trade. But when the object is considered more nearly, instead of relief, these companies, who from their want of authority in the country might seem to trade upon a principle merely commercial, will be found to add their full proportion to the calamity brought upon Bengal by the destructive system of the ruling power; because the greater part of the capital of all these companies, and perhaps the whole capital of some of them, is furnished exactly as the British is, out of the revenues of the country. The civil and military servants of the English East India Company being restricted in drawing bills upon Europe, and none of them ever making or proposing an establishment in India, a very great part of their fortunes, well or ill gotten, is in all probability thrown, as fast as required, into the cash of these companies.

      In all other countries, the revenue, following the natural course and order of things, arises out of their commerce. Here, by a mischievous inversion of that order, the whole foreign maritime trade, whether English, French, Dutch, or Danish, arises from the revenues; and these are carried out of the country without producing anything to compensate so heavy a loss.

      Foreign companies' investments. Your Committee have not been able to discover the entire value of the investment made by foreign companies. But, as the investment which the English East India Company derived from its revenues, and even from its public credit, is for the year 1783 to be wholly stopped, it has been proposed to private persons to make a subscription for an investment on their own account. This investment is to be equal to the sum of 800,000l. Another loan has been also made for an investment on the Company's account to China of 200,000l. This makes a million; and there is no question that much more could be readily had for bills upon Europe. Now, as there is no doubt that the whole of the money remitted is the property of British subjects, (none else having any interest in remitting to Europe,) it is not unfair to suppose that a very great part, if not the whole, of what may find its way into this new channel is not newly created, but only diverted from those channels in which it formerly ran, that is, the cash of the foreign trading companies.

      Of the silver sent to China. Besides the investment made in goods by foreign companies from the funds of British subjects, these subjects have been for some time in the practice of sending very great sums in gold and silver directly to China on their own account. In a memorial presented to the Governor-General and Council, in March, 1782, it appears that the principal money lent by British subjects to one company of merchants in China then amounted to seven millions of dollars, about one million seven hundred thousand pounds sterling; and not the smallest particle of silver sent to China ever returns to India. It is not easy to determine in what proportions this enormous sum of money has been sent from Madras or from Bengal; but it equally exhausts a country belonging to this kingdom, whether it comes from the one or from the other.

      Revenue above the investment, how applied. But that the greatness of all these drains, and their effects, may be rendered more visible, your Committee have turned their consideration to the employment of those parts of the Bengal revenue which are not employed in the Company's own investments for China and for Europe. What is taken over and above the investment (when any investment can be made) from the gross revenue, either for the charge of collection or for civil and military establishments, is in time of peace two millions at the least. From the portion of that sum which goes to the support of civil government СКАЧАТЬ