SLAVERY IN BRITISH INDIA.

The extensive, populous, and wealthy peninsula of Hindostan has suffered greatly from the crushing effects of the British slave system. From the foundation of the empire in India by Clive, conquest and extortion seem to have been the grand objects of the aristocratic government. There unscrupulous soldiers have fought, slaughtered, enslaved, and plundered. There younger sons, with rank, but without fortune, have filled their purses. There vast and magnificent tracts of country have been wasted with fire and sword, in punishment for the refusal of native princes to become slaves. There the fat of the land has been garnered up for the luxury of the conquerors, while famine has destroyed the people by thousands. There, indeed, has the British aristocracy displayed its most malignant propensities—rioting in robbery and bloodshed—setting all religion at defiance, while upholding the Christian standard—and earning to the full the continued execration of mankind.
 
In a powerful work, called "The Aristocracy of England: a History for the People, by John Hampden, Jun.," a book we commend to the people of England, we have the following passage:—

"From the hour that Clive and his coadjutors came into the discovery of the vast treasures of the native princes, whence he himself obtained, besides his jaghire of ￡30,000 per annum, about ￡300,000; and he and his fellows altogether, between 1759 and 1763, no less than ￡5,940,498, exclusive of this said jaghire, the cupidity of the aristocracy became excited to the highest degree; and from that period to the present, India has been one scene of flights of aristocratic locusts, of fighting, plundering, oppression, and extortion of the natives. We will not go into these things; they are fully and faithfully written in Mills\'s \'History of British India;\' in Howitt\'s \'Colonization and Christianity;\' and, above all, in the letters of the Honourable Frederick Shore, brother of Lord Teignmouth, a man who passed through all offices—from a clerk to that of a judge—and saw much of the system and working of things in many parts of India. He published his letters originally in the India papers, that any one on the spot might challenge their truth; and, since his death, they have been reprinted in England. The scene which that work opens up is the most extraordinary, and demands the attention of every lover of his country and his species. It fully accounts for the strange facts, that India is now drained of its wealth; that its public works, especially the tanks, which contributed by their waters to maintain its fertility, are fallen to decay; that one-third of the country is a jungle inhabited by tigers, who pay no taxes; that its people are reduced to the utmost wretchedness, and are often, when a crop fails, swept away by half a million at once by famine and its pendant, pestilence, as in 1770, and again in 1838-9. To such a degree is this reduction of the wealth and cultivation of India carried, that while others of our colonies pay taxes to the amount of a pound or thirty shillings per head, India pays only four shillings.

[Pg 443]

"At the renewal of its charter in 1834, its income was about twenty millions, its debt about forty millions. Since then its income has gradually fallen to about seventeen millions, and its debt we hear now whispered to be about seventy millions. Such have been the effects of exhausted fields and physical energies on the one hand, and of wars, especially that of Afghanistan, on the other. It requires no conjurer, much less a very profound arithmetician, to perceive that at this rate we need be under no apprehension of Russia, for a very few years will take India out of our hands by mere financial force.

"Our aristocratic government, through the Board of Control, keep up and exert a vast patronage in India. The patronage of the president of this board alone, independent of his salary of ￡5000 a year, is about twenty-one thousand pounds. But the whole aristocracy have an interest in keeping up wars in India, that their sons as officers, especially in these times of European peace, may find here both employment and promotion. This, then, the Company has to contend against; and few are they who are aware of the formidable nature of this power as it is exerted in this direction, and of the strange and unconstitutional legislative authority with which they have armed themselves for this purpose. How few are they who are aware that, while the East India Company has been blamed as the planners, authors, and movers of the fatal and atrocious invasion of Caboul, that the Directors of the Company only first, and to their great amazement, learned the outbreak of that war from the public Indian papers. So far from that war being one of their originating, it was most opposed to their present policy, and disastrous to their affairs. How then came this monstrous war about, and who then did originate it? To explain this requires us to lay open a monstrous stretch of unconstitutional power on the part of our government—a monstrous stratagem for the maintenance of their aristocratic views in India, which it is wonderful could have escaped the notice and reprehension of the public. Let the reader mark well what follows.

"In the last charter, granted in 1834, a clause was introduced, binding a secret committee of the East India Company, consisting [Pg 444] of three persons only, the chairman, deputy chairman, and senior director, who are solemnly sworn to this work, to receive private despatches from the Board of Control, and without communicating them to a single individual besides themselves, to forward them to India, where the receivers are bound, without question or appeal, to enforce their immediate execution. By this inquisitorial system, this worse than Spanish or Venetian system of secret decrees, government has reserved to itself a direction of the affairs of India, freed from all constitutional or representative check, and reduced the India Company to a mere cat\'s-paw. By the sworn secrecy and implicit obedience of this mysterious triumvirate, the Company is made the unconscious instrument of measures most hostile to its own views, and most fatal to its best interests. It may at any hour become the medium of a secret order which may threaten the very destruction of its empire. Such was the case with the war of Caboul. The aristocratic government at home planned and ordered it; and the unconscious Company was made at once to carry out a scheme so atrocious, so wicked and unprincipled, as well as destructive to its plans of civil economy, and to bear also the infamy of it. Awaking, therefore, to the tremendous nature of the secret powers thus introduced into their machinery by government, the Company determined to exercise also a power happily intrusted to them. Hence the recall of Lord Ellenborough, who, in obedience to aristocratic views at home, was not only running headlong over all their plans of pacific policy, but with his armies and elephants was treading under foot their cotton and sugar plantations. Hence, on the other hand, the favour and support which this warlike lord finds with the great martial duke, and the home government."

The policy of the European conquerors of India was fully illustrated during the gubernatorial term of Warren Hastings. Of his extortion the eloquent Macaulay says—

[Pg 445]

"The principle which directed all his dealings with his neighbours is fully expressed by the old motto of one of the great predatory families of Teviotdale—\'Thou shalt want ere I want,\' He seems to have laid it down, as a fundamental proposition which could not be disputed, that when he had not as many lacs of rupees as the public service required, he was to take them from anybody who had. One thing, indeed, is to be said in excuse for him. The pressure applied to him by his employers at home was such as only the highest virtue could have withstood—such as left him no choice except to commit great wrongs, or to resign his high post, and with that post all his hopes of fortune and distinction. It is perfectly true, that the directors never enjoined or applauded any crime. Far from it. Whoever examines their letters at that time will find there many just and humane sentiments, many excellent precepts; in short, an admirable circle of political ethics. But every exhortation is modified or annulled by a demand for money. \'Govern leniently, and send more money; practise strict justice and moderation toward neighbouring powers, and send more money;\' this is, in truth, the sum of almost all the instructions that Hastings ever received from home. Now these instructions, being interpreted, mean simply, \'Be the father and the oppressor of the people; be just and unjust, moderate and rapacious.\' The directors dealt with India as the church, in the good old times, dealt with a heretic. They delivered the victim over to the executioners, with an earnest request that all possible tenderness might be shown. We by no means accuse or suspect those who framed these despatches of hypocrisy. It is probable that, writing fifteen thousand miles from the place where their orders were to be carried into effect, they never perceived the gross inconsistency of which they were guilty. But the inconsistency was at once manifest to their lieutenant at Calcutta, who, with an empty treasury, with an unpaid army, with his own salary often in arrear, with deficient crops, with government tenants daily running away, was called upon to remit home another half million without fail. Hastings saw that it was absolutely necessary for him to disregard either the moral discourses or the pecuniary requisitions of his employers. [Pg 446] Being forced to disobey them in something, he had to consider what kind of disobedience they would most readily pardon; and he correctly judged that the safest course would be to neglect the sermons and to find the rupees."

How were the rupees found? By selling provinces that had never belonged to the British dominions; by the destruction of the brave Rohillas of Rohilcund, in the support of the cruel tyrant, Surajah Dowlah, sovereign of Oude, of which terrible act Macaulay says—

"Then the horrors of Indian war were let loose on the fair valleys and cities of Rohilcund; the whole country was in a blaze. More than a hundred thousand people fled from their homes to pestilential jungles, preferring famine and fever and the haunts of tigers to the tyranny of him to whom an English and a Christian government had, for shameful lucre, sold their substance and their blood, and the honour of their wives and daughters. Colonel Champion remonstrated with the Nabob Vizier, and sent strong representations to Fort William; but the governor had made no conditions as to the mode in which the war was to be carried on. He had troubled himself about nothing but his forty lacs; and, though he might disapprove of Surajah Dowlah\'s wanton barbarity, he did not think himself entitled to interfere, except by offering advice. This delicacy excites the admiration of the reverend biographer. \'Mr. Hastings,\' he says, \'could not himself dictate to the Nabob, nor permit the commander of the Company\'s troops to dictate how the war was to be carried on.\' No, to be sure. Mr. Hastings had only to put down by main force the brave struggles of innocent men fighting for their liberty. Their military resistance crushed, his duties ended; and he had then only to fold his arms and look on while their villages were burned, their children butchered, and their women violated."

By such a course of action, Warren Hastings made the British empire in India pay. By such means did [Pg 447] the aristocrats, of whom the governor was the tool, obtain the money which would enable them to live in luxury.

"The servants of the Company obtained—not for their employers, but for themselves—a monopoly of almost the whole internal trade; they forced the natives to buy dear and sell cheap; they insulted with perfect impunity the tribunals, the police, and the fiscal authorities of the country; they covered with their protection a set of native dependants, who ranged through the provinces spreading desolation and terror wherever they appeared. Every servant of a British factor was armed with all the power of his master, and his master was armed with all the power of the Company. Enormous fortunes were thus rapidly accumulated at Calcutta, while thirty millions of human beings were reduced to the last extremity of wretchedness. They had been accustomed to live under tyranny, but never under tyranny like this; they found the little finger of the Company thicker than the loins of Surajah Dowlah. Under their old masters they had at least one resource; when the evil became insupportable, they rose and pulled down the government. But the English government was not to be so shaken off. That government, oppressive as the most oppressive form of barbarian despotism, was strong with all the strength of civilization; it resembled the government of evil genii rather than the government of human tyrants." * * *

"The foreign lords of Bengal were naturally objects of hatred to all the neighbouring powers, and to all the haughty race presented a dauntless front; their armies, everywhere outnumbered, were everywhere victorious. A succession of commanders, formed in the school of Clive, still maintained the fame of their country. \'It must be acknowledged,\' says the Mussulman historian of those times, \'that this nation\'s presence of mind, firmness of temper, and undaunted bravery are past all question. They join the most resolute courage to the most cautious prudence; nor have they their equal in the art of ranging themselves in battle array and fighting in order. If to so many military qualifications they knew how to join the arts of government—if they exerted as much [Pg 448] ingenuity and solicitude in relieving the people of God as they do in whatever concerns their military affairs, no nation in the world would be preferable to them or worthier of command; but the people under their dominion groan everywhere, and are reduced to poverty and distress. O God! come to the assistance of thine afflicted servants, and deliver them from the oppressions they suffer.\'"

From the earliest times the "village system," with its almost patriarchal regulations, seems to have prevailed in Hindostan. Each village had its distinct organization, and over a certain number of villages, or a district, was an hereditary chief and an accountant, both possessing great local influence and authority, and certain estates. [106] The Hindoos were strongly attached to their native villages, and could only be forced to abandon them by the most constant oppressions. Dynasties might change and revolutions occur, but so long as each little community remained undisturbed, the Hindoos were contented. Mohammedan conquerors left this beautiful system, which had much more of genuine freedom than the British institutions at the present day, untouched. The English conquerors were not so merciful, although they were acquainted with Christianity. The destruction of local organizations and the centralization of authority, which is always attended with the increase of slavery, [107] have been the aims of English efforts. The principle that the government is the sole [Pg 449] proprietor of the land, and therefore entitled to a large share of the produce, has been established, and slavery, to escape famine and misery, has become necessary to the Hindoos.

Exhaustion was the result of the excessive taxation laid upon the Hindoos by the East India Company. As the government became stinted for revenue, Lord Cornwallis was instructed to make a permanent settlement, by means of which all the rights of village proprietors over a large portion of Bengal were sacrificed in favour of the Zemindars, or head men, who were thus at once constituted great landed proprietors—masters of a large number of poor tenants, with power to punish at discretion those who were not able to pay whatever rent was demanded. [108] From free communities, the villages were reduced to the condition of British tenants-at-will. The Zemindaree system was first applied to Bengal. In Madras another system, called the Ryotwar, was introduced. This struck a fatal blow at the local organizations, which were the sources of freedom and happiness among the Hindoos. Government assumed all the functions of an immediate landholder, and dealt with the individual cultivators as its own tenants, getting as much out of them as possible.

The Zemindars are an unthrifty, rack-renting class, and take the uttermost farthing from the under-tenants. [Pg 450] Oppressions and evictions are their constant employments; and since they have been constituted a landed aristocracy, they have fully acted out the character in the genuine British fashion.

Another tenure, called the Patnee, has been established of late years, by some of the great Zemindars, with the aid of government enactments, and it is very common in Bengal. The great Zemindar, for a consideration, makes over a portion of his estate in fee to another, subject to a perpetual rent, payable through the collector, who receives it on behalf of the zemindar; and if it is not paid, the interests of the patneedar are sold by the collector. These, again, have sub-patneedars, and the system has become very much in vogue in certain districts. The parties are like the Irish middlemen, and the last screws the tenant to the uttermost. [109]

During the British government of Bengal, wealth has been accumulated by a certain superior class, and population, cultivation, and the receipts from rent of land, have largely increased; but, as in England, the mass of the people are poor and degraded. In the rich provinces of Upper India, where the miserable landed system of the conquerors has been introduced, the results have been even more deplorable. Communities, once free, happy, and possessed of plenty, are now broken up, or subjected to such excessive taxation that their members are kept in poverty and slavery.

[Pg 451]

Colonel Sleeman, in his "Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official," records a conversation which he held with the head landholder of a village, organized under the Zemindar system. During the dialogue, some statements were made which are important for our purpose.

The colonel congratulated himself that he had given satisfactory replies to the arguments of the Zemindar, and accounted naturally for the evils suffered by the villagers. The reader will, doubtless, form a different opinion:—

"In the early part of November, after a heavy fall of rain, I was driving alone in my buggy from Garmuktesin on the Ganges, to Meerut. The roads were very bad, the stage a double one, and my horse became tired and unable to go on. I got out at a small village to give him a little rest and food; and sat down under the shade of one old tree upon the trunk of another that the storm had blown down, while my groom, the only servant I had with me, rubbed down and baited my horse. I called for some parched grain from the same shop which supplied my horse, and got a draught of good water, drawn from the well by an old woman, in a brass jug lent to me for the purpose by the shopkeeper.

"While I sat contentedly and happily stripping my parched grain from its shell, and eating it grain by grain, the farmer, or head landholder of the village, a sturdy old Rajpoot, came up and sat himself, without any ceremony, down by my side, to have a little conversation. [To one of the dignitaries of the land, in whose presence the aristocracy are alone considered entitled to chairs, this easy familiarity seems at first strange and unaccountable; he is afraid that the man intends to offer him some indignity, or what is still worse, mistakes him for something less than a dignitary! The following dialogue took place:—]

"\'You are a Rajpoot, and a Zemindar?\' (landholder.)

"\'Yes; I am the head landholder of this village.\'

[Pg 452]

"\'Can you tell me how that village in the distance is elevated above the ground; is it from the debris of old villages, or from a rock underneath?\'

"\'It is from the debris of old villages. That is the original seat of all the Rajpoots around; we all trace our descent from the founders of that village, who built and peopled it many centuries ago.\'

"\'And you have gone on subdividing your inheritances here as elsewhere, no doubt, till you have hardly any of you any thing to eat?\'

"\'True, we have hardly any of us enough to eat; but that is the fault of the government, that does not leave us enough—that takes from us as much when the season is bad as when it is good!\'

"\'But your assessment has not been increased, has it?\'

"\'No; we have concluded a settlement for twenty years upon the same footing as formerly.\'

"\'And if the sky were to shower down upon you pearls and diamonds, instead of water, the government would never demand more from you than the rate fixed upon?\'

\'No.\'

"\'Then why should you expect remissions in bad seasons?\'

"\'It cannot be disputed that the burkut (blessing from above) is less under you than it used to be formerly, and that the lands yield less from our labour.\'

"\'True, my old friend, but do you know the reason why?\'

"\'No.\'

"\'Then I will tell you. Forty or fifty years ago, in what you call the times of the burkut, (blessing from above,) the cavalry of Seikh, free-booters from the Punjab, used to sweep over this fine plain, in which stands the said village from which you are all descended; and to massacre the whole population of some villages; and a certain portion of that of every other village; and the lands of those killed used to lie waste for want of cultivators. Is not this all true?\'

"\'Yes, quite true.\'

"\'And the fine groves which had been planted over this plain [Pg 453] by your ancestors, as they separated from the great parent stock, and formed independent villages and hamlets for themselves, were all swept away and destroyed by the same hordes of free-booters, from whom your poor imbecile emperors, cooped up in yonder large city of Delhi, were utterly unable to defend you?\'

"\'Quite true,\' said the old man with a sigh. \'I remember when all this fine plain was as thickly studded with fine groves of mango-trees as Rohilcund, or any other part of India.\'

"\'You know that the land requires rest from labour, as well as men and bullocks; and that if you go on sowing wheat, and other exhausting crops, it will go on yielding less and less returns, and at last not be worth the tilling?\'

"\'Quite well.\'

"\'Then why do you not give the land rest by leaving it longer fallow, or by a more frequent alternation of crops relieve it?\'

"\'Because we have now increased so much, that we should not get enough to eat were we to leave it to fallow; and unless we tilled it with exhausting crops we should not get the means of paying our rents to government.\'

"\'The Seikh hordes in former days prevented this; they killed off a certain portion of your families, and gave the land the rest which you now refuse it. When you had exhausted one part, you found another recovered by a long fallow, so that you had better returns; but now that we neither kill you, nor suffer you to be killed by others, you have brought all the cultivable lands into tillage; and under the old system of cropping to exhaustion, it is not surprising that they yield you less returns.\'

"By this time we had a crowd of people seated around us upon the ground, as I went on munching my parched grain and talking to the old patriarch. They all laughed at the old man at the conclusion of my last speech, and he confessed I was right.

"\'This is all true, sir, but still your government is not considerate; it goes on taking kingdom after kingdom and adding to its dominions, without diminishing the burden upon us its old subjects. Here you have had armies away taking Afghanistan, but we shall not have one rupee the less to pay.\'

"\'True, my friend, nor would you demand a rupee less from [Pg 454] those honest cultivators around us, if we were to leave you all your lands untaxed. You complain of the government—they complain of you. [Here the circle around us laughed at the old man again.] Nor would you subdivide the lands the less for having it rent free; on the contrary, it would be every generation subdivided the more, inasmuch as there would be more of local ties, and a greater disinclination on the part of the members of families to separate and seek service abroad.\'

"\'True, sir, very true; that is, no doubt, a very great evil.\'

"\'And you know it is not an evil produced by us, but one arising out of your own laws of inheritance. You have heard, no doubt, that with us the eldest son gets the whole of the land, and the younger sons all go out in search of service, with such share as they can get of the other property of their father?\'

"\'Yes, sir; but where shall we get service—you have none to give us. I would serve to-morrow, if you would take me as a soldier,\' said he, stroking his white whiskers.

"The crowd laughed heartily, and some wag observed, \'that perhaps I should think him too old.\'

"\'Well,\' said the old man, smiling, \'the gentleman himself is not very young, and yet I dare say he is a good servant of his government.\'

"This was paying me off for making the people laugh at his expense. \'True, my old friend,\' said I, \'but I began to serve when I was young, and have been long learning.\'

"\'Very well,\' said the old man; \'but I should be glad to serve the rest of my life upon a less salary than you got when you began to learn.\'

"\'Well, my friend, you complain of our government; but you must acknowledge that we do all we can to protect you, though it is true that we are often acting in the dark.\'

"\'Often, sir? you are always acting in the dark; you hardly any of you know any thing of what your revenue and police officers are doing; there is no justice or redress to be got without paying for it; and it is not often that those who pay can get it.\'

"\'True, my old friend, that is bad all over the world. You cannot presume to ask any thing even from the Deity himself, [Pg 455] without paying the priest who officiates in his temples; and if you should, you would none of you hope to get from your deity what you asked for.\'

"Here the crowd laughed again, and one of them said \'that there was certainly this to be said for our government, that the European gentlemen themselves never took bribes, whatever those under them might do.\'

"\'You must not be too sure of that neither. Did not the Lal Beebee (red lady) get a bribe for soliciting the judge, her husband, to let go Ameer Sing, who had been confined in jail?\'

"\'How did this take place?\'

"\'About three years ago Ameer Sing was sentenced to imprisonment, and his friends spent a great deal of money in bribes to the native officers of the court, but all in vain. At last they were recommended to give a handsome present to the red lady. They did so, and Ameer Sing was released.\'

"\'But did they give the present into the lady\'s own hand?\'

"\'No, they gave it to one of her women.\'

"\'And how do you know that she ever gave it to her mistress, or that her mistress ever heard of the transaction?\'

"\'She might certainly have been acting without her mistress\'s knowledge; but the popular belief is, that Lal Beebee got the present.\'

"I then told them the story of the affair at Jubbulpore, when Mrs. Smith\'s name had been used for a similar purpose, and the people around us were highly amused; and the old man\'s opinion of the transaction evidently underwent a change.[110]

[Pg 456]

"We became good friends, and the old man begged me to have my tents, which he supposed were coming up, pitched among them, that he might have an opportunity of showing that he was not a bad subject, though he grumbled against the government.

"The next day, at Meerut, I got a visit from the chief native judge, whose son, a talented youth, is in my office. Among other things, I asked him whether it might not be possible to improve the character of the police by increasing the salaries of the officers, and mentioned my conversation with the landholder.

"\'Never, sir,\' said the old gentleman; \'the man that now gets twenty-five rupees a month, is contented with making perhaps fifty or seventy-five more; and the people subject to his authority pay him accordingly. Give him a hundred, sir, and he will put a shawl over his shoulders, and the poor people will be obliged to pay him at a rate which will make up his income to four hundred. You will only alter his style of living, and make him a greater burden to the people; he will always take as long as he thinks he can with impunity.\'

"\'But do you not think that when people see a man adequately paid by government, they will the more readily complain at any attempt at unauthorized exactions?\'

"\'Not a bit, sir, as long as they see the same difficulties in the way of prosecuting them to conviction. In the administration of civil justice (the old gentleman is a civil judge) you may occasionally see your way, and understand what is doing; but in revenue and police you have never seen it in India, and never will, I think. The officers you employ will all add to their incomes by unauthorized means; and the lower their incomes, the less their pretensions, and the less the populace have to pay.\'"

In the "History of the Possessions of the Honourable East India Company," by R. Montgomery Martin, F. S. S., the following statements occur: [Pg 457]—

"The following estimate has been made of the population of the allied and independent states:—Hydrabad, 10,000,000; Oude, 6,000,000; Nagpoor, 3,000,000; Mysore, 3,000,000; Sattara, 1,500,000; Gurckwar, 2,000,000; Travancore and Cochin, 1,000,000; Rajpootana, and various minor principalities, 16,500,000; Sciudias territories, 4,000,000; the Seiks, 3,000,000; Nepál, 2,000,000; Cashmere, etc., 1,000,000; Scinde, 1,000,000; total, 51,000,000. This, of course, is but a rough estimate by Hamilton, (Slavery in British India.) For the last forty years the East India Company\'s government have been gradually, but safely, abolishing slavery throughout their dominions; they began in 1789 with putting down the maritime traffic, by prosecuting any person caught in exporting or importing slaves by sea, long before the British government abolished that infernal commerce in the Western world, and they have ever since sedulously sought the final extinction of that domestic servitude which had long existed throughout the East, as recognised by the Hindoo and Mohammedan law. In their despatches of 1798, it was termed \'an inhuman commerce and cruel traffic.\' French, Dutch, or Danish subjects captured within the limit of their dominions in the act of purchasing or conveying slaves were imprisoned and heavily fined, and every encouragement was given to their civil and military servants to aid in protecting the first rights of humanity.

"Mr. Robertson, [111] in reference to Cawnpore, observes:—\'Domestic slavery exists; but of an agricultural slave I do not recollect a single instance. When I speak of domestic slavery, I mean that status which I must call slavery for want of any more accurate designation. It does not, however, resemble that which is understood in Europe to be slavery; it is the mildest species of servitude. The domestic slaves are certain persons purchased in times of scarcity; children purchased from their parents; they grow up in the family, and are almost entirely employed in domestic offices in the house; not liable to be resold.

"\'There is a certain species of slavery in South Bahar, where [Pg 458] a man mortgages his labour for a certain sum of money; and this species of slavery exists also in Arracan and Ava. It is for his life, or until he shall pay the sum, that he is obliged to labour for the person who lends him the money; and if he can repay the sum, he emancipates himself.

"\'Masters have no power of punishment recognised by our laws. Whatever may be the provision of the Mohammedan or Hindoo codes to that effect, it is a dead letter, for we would not recognise it. The master doubtless may sometimes inflict domestic punishment; but if he does, the slave rarely thinks of complaining of it. Were he to do so his complaint would be received.\' This, in fact, is the palladium of liberty in England.

"In Malabar, according to the evidence of Mr. Baber, slavery, as mentioned by Mr. Robertson, also exists, and perhaps the same is the case in Guzerat and to the north; but the wonder is, not that such is the case, but that it is so partial in extent, and fortunately so bad in character, approximating indeed so much toward the feudal state as to be almost beyond the reach as well as the necessity of laws which at present would be practically inoperative. The fact, that of 100,000,000 British inhabitants, [or allowing five to a family, 20,000,000 families,] upward of 16,000,000 are landed proprietors, shows to what a confined extent even domestic slavery exists. A commission has been appointed by the new charter to inquire into this important but delicate subject.\'"

We have quoted this passage from a writer who is a determined advocate of every thing British, whether it be good or had, in order to show by his own admission that chattel slavery, that is the precise form of slavery of which the British express such a holy horror, exists in British India under the sanction of British laws. Nor does it exist to a small extent only, as he would have us believe. It has always existed there, and must necessarily be on the increase, from the very cause [Pg 459] which he points out, viz. famine. No country in the world, thanks to British oppression, is so frequently and so extensively visited by famine as India; and as the natives can escape in many instances from starving to death by selling themselves, and can save their children by selling them into slavery, we can readily form an estimate of the great extent to which this takes place in cases of famine, where the people are perishing by thousands and tens of thousands. As to the statement that the government of the East India Company have been endeavouring to abolish this species of slavery, it proves any thing rather than a desire to benefit the natives of India. Chattel slaves are not desired by British subjects because the ownership of them involves the necessity of supporting them in sickness and old age. The kind of slavery which the British have imposed on the great mass of their East Indian subjects is infinitely more oppressive and inhuman than chattel slavery. Indeed it would not at all suit the views of the British aristocracy to have chattel slavery become so fashionable in India as to interfere with their own cherished system of political slavery, which is so extensively and successfully practised in England, Scotland, Ireland, and the West and East Indies. The money required for the support of chattel slaves could not be spared by the aristocratic governments in the colonies. The object is to take the fruits of the labourer\'s toil without providing for him at all. [Pg 460] When labourers are part of a master\'s capital, the better he provides for them the more they are worth. When they are not property, the character of their subsistence is of no importance; but they must yield the greater part of the results of their toil.

The "salt laws" of India are outrageously oppressive. An account of their operation will give the reader a taste of the character of the legislation to which the British have subjected conquered Hindoos. Such an account we find in a recent number of "Household Words," which Lord Shaftesbury and his associates in luxury and philanthropy should read more frequently than we can suppose they do:—

"Salt, in India, is a government monopoly. It is partially imported, and partially manufactured in government factories. These factories are situated in dreary marshes—the workers obtaining certain equivocal privileges, on condition of following their occupation in these pestiferous regions, where hundreds of these wretched people fall, annually, victims to the plague or the floods.

"The salt consumed in India must be purchased through the government, at a duty of upward of two pounds per ton, making the price to the consumer about eight pence per pound. In England, salt may be purchased by retail, three pounds, or wholesale, five pounds for one penny; while in India, upward of thirty millions of persons, whose average incomes do not amount to above three shillings per week, are compelled to expend one-fourth of that pittance in salt for themselves and families.

"It may naturally be inferred, that, with such a heavy duty upon this important necessary of life, that underhand measures are adopted by the poor natives for supplying themselves. We shall see, however, by the following severe regulations, that the [Pg 461] experiment is too hazardous to be often attempted. Throughout the whole country there are numerous \'salt chokies,\' or police stations, the superintendents of which are invested with powers of startling and extraordinary magnitude.

"When information is lodged with such superintendent that salt is stored in any place without a \'ruwana,\' or permit, he proceeds to collect particulars of the description of the article, the quantity stated to be stored, and the name of the owner of the store. If the quantity stated to be stored exceeds seventy pounds, he proceeds with a body of police to make the seizure. If the door is not opened to him at once, he is invested with full power to break it open; and if the police-officers exhibit the least backwardness in assisting, or show any sympathy with the unfortunate owner, they are liable to be heavily fined. The owner of the salt, with all persons found upon the premises, are immediately apprehended, and are liable to six months\' imprisonment for the first offence, twelve for the second, and eighteen months for the third; so that if a poor Indian was to see a shower of salt in his garden, (there are showers of salt sometimes,) and to attempt to take advantage of it without paying duty, he would become liable to this heavy punishment. The superintendent of police is also empowered to detain and search trading vessels, and if salt be found on board without a permit, the whole of the crew may be apprehended and tried for the offence. Any person erecting a distilling apparatus in his own house, merely to distil enough sea-water for the use of his household, is liable to such a fine as may ruin him. In this case, direct proof is not required, but inferred from circumstances at the discretion of the judge.

"If a person wishes to erect a factory upon his own estate, he must first give notice to the collector of revenue of all the particulars relative thereto, failing which, the collector may order all the works to be destroyed. Having given notice, officers are immediately quartered upon the premises, who have access to all parts thereof, for fear the company should be defrauded of the smallest amount of duty. When duty is paid upon any portion, the collector, upon giving a receipt, specifies the name and residence of the person to whom it is to be delivered, to whom it [Pg 462] must be delivered within a stated period, or become liable to fresh duty. To wind up, and make assurance doubly sure, the police may seize and detain any load or package which may pass the stations, till they are satisfied such load or package does not contain contraband salt.

"Such are the salt laws of India; such the monopoly by which a revenue of three millions sterling is raised; and such the system which, in these days of progress and improvement, acts as an incubus upon the energies, the mental resources, and social advancement of the immense population of India.

"Political economists of all shades of opinion—men who have well studied the subject—deliberately assert that nothing would tend so much toward the improvement of that country, and to a more complete development of its vast natural resources, than the abolition of these laws; and we can only hope, without blaming any one, that at no distant day a more enlightened policy will pervade the councils of the East India Company, and that the poor Hindoo will be emancipated from the thraldom of these odious enactments.

"But apart from every other consideration, there is one, in connection with the Indian salt-tax, which touches the domestic happiness and vital interest of every inhabitant in Great Britain. It is decided, by incontrovertible medical testimony, that cholera (whose ravages every individual among us knows something, alas! too well about) is in a great measure engendered, and its progress facilitated, by the prohibitory duties on salt in India, the very cradle of the pestilence. Our precautionary measures to turn aside the plague from our doors, appear to be somewhat ridiculous, while the plague itself is suffered to exist, when it might be destroyed—its existence being tolerated only to administer to the pecuniary advantage of a certain small class of the community. Let the medical men of this country look to it. Let the people of this country generally look to it; for there is matter for grave and solemn consideration, both nationally and individually, in the Indian salt-tax."

Yes, the salt-tax is very oppressive; but it pays [Pg 463] those who authorized its assessment, and that is sufficient for them. When they discover some means of obtaining its equivalent—some oppression quite as cruel but not so obvious—we may expect to hear of the abolition of the odious salt monopoly.

Famines (always frightfully destructive in India) have become more numerous than ever, under the blighting rule of the British aristocrats. Vast tracts of country, once the support of busy thousands, have been depopulated by these dreadful visitations.

"The soil seems to lie under a curse. Instead of yielding abundance for the wants of its own population and the inhabitants of other regions, it does not keep in existence its own children. It becomes the burying-place of millions who die upon its bosom crying for bread. In proof of this, turn your eyes backward upon the scenes of the past year. Go with me into the North-west provinces of the Bengal presidency, and I will show you the bleaching skeletons of five hundred thousand human beings, who perished of hunger in the space of a few short months. Yes, died of hunger, in what has been justly called the granary of the world. Bear with me, if I speak of the scenes which were exhibited during the prevalence of this famine. The air for miles was poisoned by the effluvia emitted from the putrefying bodies of the dead. The rivers were choked with the corpses thrown into their channels. Mothers cast their little ones beneath the rolling waves, because they would not see them draw their last gasp and feel them stiffen in their arms. The English in the cities were prevented from taking their customary evening drives. Jackals and vultures approached, and fastened upon the bodies of men, women, and children before life was extinct. Madness, disease, despair stalked abroad, and no human power present to arrest their progress. It was the carnival of death. And this occurred in British India—in the reign of Victoria the [Pg 464] First. Nor was the event extraordinary and unforeseen. Far from it: 1835-36 witnessed a famine in the Northern provinces; 1833 beheld one to the eastward; 1822-23 saw one in the Deccan."

The above extract from one of George Thompson\'s "Lectures on India," conveys an idea of the horrors of a famine in that country. What then must be the guilt of that government that adopts such measures as tend to increase the frequency and swell the horror of these scenes! By draining the resources of the people, and dooming them to the most pinching poverty, the British conquerors have greatly increased the dange............