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1732.

BOOK IV. and in all the intermediate years were less. The quantity of goods and stores paid for in the year 1732 amounted to 105,230.; the quantity paid for in 1744, to 231,3187. The quantity of bullion exported in 1732 was 393,3771.; the quantity exported in 1744 was 458,5447. The quantity then of goods exported was increased, and in some degree, also, that of bullion, while the quantity of goods imported remained nearly the same. It follows, that the additional exportation, not having been employed in the additional purchase of goods, must have been not merchandize, but stores. It is to be observed, also, that in the amount of sales, as exhibited in the Company's accounts, were included at this time the duties paid to government, stated at thirty per cent.; a deduction which brings the amount of the sales to nearly the official valuation of the imports at the custom-house.*

State of the dividends.

In 1732, the Company were obliged to reduce their dividends from eight to seven per cent. per annum; and at this rate they continued till 1744, in which year they returned to eight per cent. † The Dutch East India Company, from 1730 to 1736, divided twenty-five per cent. per annum upon the capital stock; in 1736, twenty per cent.; for the next three years, fifteen per cent. per annum; for the next four, twelve and a half per annum; and in 1744, as much as fifteen per cent. The grand advantage of the English East India Company, in the peculiar privilege of having their trade exempted from duties in Bengal and the other concessions obtained by their embassy to the court of the Mogul, had thus produced no improvement in the final result, the ultimate profits of the trade.

Company at- The Company seem to have been extremely anxious to avoid a renewal of the tempt and ac- discussion on the utility or fitness of the monopoly, and for that purpose to forecomplish a prolongation stal the excitement of the public attention by the approach to the conclusion of sive privilege. the privileged term. At a moment accordingly when no one was prepared to

of the exclu

oppose them; and in the middle of an expensive war, when the offer of any pecuniary facilities was a powerful bribe to the government, they made a proposal to lend it the sum of one million, at an interest of three per cent., provided the period of their exclusive privileges should be prolonged to three years' notice

*Third Report of the Committee of Secrecy, on the State of the East India Company, (House of Commons, 1773) p. 75.

+ Ibid. p. 73.

Histoire Philosoph. et Polit. des Etablissemens, &c. dans les Deux Indes, par Guillaume Thomas Raynal, liv. ii. sect. 21. Table at the end of the vol.

after Lady-day 1780. On these conditions, a new act was passed in 1744; and CHAP. I. to enable the Company to make good their loan to government, they were authorized to borrow to the extent of a million on their bonds.*

1740.

On the death of the Emperor Charles VI. in the year 1740, a violent war, kindled by competition for the imperial throne, and for a share in the spoils of the house of Austria, had begun in Germany. In this contest, France and England, the latter involved by her Hanoverian interests, had both engaged as auxiliaries; and in the end had become nearly, or rather altogether, principals. From 1739, England had been at war with Spain, a war intended to annul the right claimed and exercised by the Spaniards of searching her ships on the coast of America for contraband goods. England and France, though contending against one another, with no ordinary efforts, in a cause ostensibly not their own, abstained from hostilities directly on their own account, till 1744; War between when the two governments came to mutual declarations of war. And it was England in not long before the most distant settlements of the two nations felt the effects 1744. of their destructive contentions.

France and

tacked by a

On the 14th of September, 1746, a French fleet anchored four leagues to Madras atthe south of Madras; and landed five or six hundred men. On the 15th the French fleet. fleet moved along the coast, while the troops marched by land; and about noon it arrived within cannon-shot of the town. Labourdonnais, who commanded the expedition, then landed, with the rest of the troops. The whole force destined for the siege, consisted of 1000 or 1100 Europeans, 400 Sepoys, and 400 Caffres, or blacks of Madagascar, brought from the island of Mauritius; and 1700 or 1800 men, all sorts included, remained in the ships.‡

dras.

Madras had, during the space of 100 years, been the principal settlement of State of Mathe English on the Coromandel coast. The territory belonging to the Company extended five miles along the shore, and was about one mile in breadth. The town consisted of three divisions. The first, denominated the white town, in which resided none but the English or other Europeans, under their pretection, consisted of about fifty houses, together with the warehouses and other buildings of the Company, and two churches, one an English, the other a Roman Catholic church. This division was surrounded with a slender wall, defended with four bastions, and four batteries, but weak and badly constructed: And

* Anderson's Hist. of Commerce, ad an. 1744; Collection of Statutes, p. 84, 17 Geo. II. c. 17. + Memoire pour Labourdonnais, i. 124. Mr. Orme, i. 67, says the third, the difference being that of the stiles: The old stile, it appears, was used by the English historian.

Memoire, ut supra, p. 125. Orme, p. 67.

1746.

Book IV. this was decorated with the title of Fort St. George. Contiguous to it, on the north side, was the division in which resided the Armenian, and the richest of the Indian merchants, larger, and still worse fortified than the former. And on the northern side of this division was a space, covered by the hovels of the country, in which the mass of the natives resided. These two divisions constituted what was called the black town. The English in this colony exceeded not 300 men, of whom 200 were the soldiers of the garrison. The Indian Christians, converts or descendants of the Portuguese, amounted to three or four thousand; the rest were Armenians, Mahomedans, or Hindus, the last in by far the largest proportion; and the whole population of the Company's territory amounted to about 250,000. With the exception of Goa and Batavia, Madras was, in point both of magnitude and riches, the most important of the European establishments in India.

Capitulation of Madras.

State of the
French in

India.

The town sustained the bombardment for five days, when the inhabitants, expecting an assault, capitulated. They had endeavoured to save the place, by the offer of a ransom; but Labourdonnais coveted the glory of displaying French colours on the fort of Madras. He engaged however his honour to restore the settlement, and content himself with a moderate ransom; and on these terms he was received into the town. He had not lost so much as one man in the enterprise. Among the English four or five were killed by the explosion of the bombs, and two or three houses were destroyed. Labourdonnais protected the inhabitants, with the care of a man of virtue; but the magazines and warehouses of the Company, as public property, were taken possession of by the commissaries of the French.*

Labourdonnais, with the force under his command, had arrived in India in the month of June, 1746. At that time the settlements of France in the Indian seas were under two separate governments, analogous to the English Presidencies, one established at the Isle of France, the other at Pondicherry. Under the former of these governments were placed the two islands: the one called the isle of France, about sixty leagues in circumference; the other that of Bourbon, of nearly the same dimensions. These islands, lying on the eastern side of Madagascar, between, the nineteenth and twentieth degrees of latitude, were discovered by the Portuguese, and by them called Cerne, and Mascarhenas. In 1660 seven or eight Frenchmen settled on the island of Mascarhenas; five years afterwards they were joined by twenty-two of their countrymen; the re

* Memoire pour Labourdonnais, i. 126-142. Orme, i. 64–69.

1746.

mains of the French colony which was destroyed in Madagascar sought refuge CHAp. I, in this island; and when it became an object of some importance, the French changed its name to the island of Bourbon. The island of Cerne was, at an early date, taken possession of by the Dutch, and by them denominated the island of Mauritius, in honour of their leader Maurice, Prince of Orange; but, after the formation of their establishment at the Cape of Good Hope, was abandoned as useless. The French, who were subject to great inconvenience by want of a good harbour on the island of Bourbon, took possession of it in 1720, and changed its name from the isle of Mauritius, to the isle of France. Both islands are fruitful, and produce the corns of Europe, along with most of the tropical productions. Some plants of coffee, accidentally introduced from Arabia, throve so well on the island of Bourbon, as to render that commodity the staple of the island.*

Pondicherry was the seat of the other Indian government of the French. It had under its jurisdiction the town and territory of Pondicherry; and three factories, or comptoirs, one at Mahé, not far south from Tellicherry on the Malabar coast, one at Karical on one of the branches of the Coleroon on the Coromandel coast, and one at Chandernagor on the river Hoogley in Bengal. †

The form of the government at both places was the same. It consisted, like the English form, which was borrowed from the Dutch, of a Governor, and a Council; the Governor being President of the Council, and allowed, according to the genius of the government in the mother country, to engross from the Council a greater share of power than in the colonies of the English and the Dutch. The peculiar business of the Governor and Council was, to direct, in conformity with instructions from home, all persons in the employment of the Company; to regulate the expenditure, and take care of the receipts; to administer justice, and in general to watch over the whole economy of the establishment. Each of the islands had a Council of its own; but one Governor sufficed for both. +

Labourdon

In 1745 Labourdonnais was appointed Governor of the islands. This was a History of remarkable man. He was born at St. Malo, in 1699; and was entered on board nais. a ship bound for the South Sea, at the age of ten. In 1713 he made a voyage to the East Indies, and the Philippine islands; and availed himself of the presence of a Jesuit, who was a passenger in the ship, to acquire a knowledge of

VOL. II.

* Raynal, ii. 271. Memoire pour Labourdonnais, i. 88, 95. Orme, i. 92.

+ Memoire, ut supra, p. 94. Raynal, ut supra, p. 217.

Memoire pour Labourdonnais, i. 95. Memoire contre Dupleix, p. 8.

F

1746.

Book IV. the mathematics. After performing several voyages to other parts of the world, he entered for the first time, in 1719, into the service of the East India Company, as second lieutenant of a vessel bound to Surat. He sailed again to India, as first lieutenant in 1723; and a third time, as second captain in 1724. In every voyage he found opportunity to distinguish himself by some remarkable action; and during the last he acquired, from another passenger, an officer of engineers, a knowledge of the principles of fortification and tactics. He now resolved to remain in India, and to navigate a vessel on his own account. He is said to have been the first Frenchman who embarked in what is called the country trade; in which he conducted himself with so much skill, as to realize in a few years a considerable fortune. The force of his mind procured him an ascendancy wherever its influence was exerted: A violent quarrel was excited between some Arabian and Portuguese ships in the harbour of Mocca, and blood was about to be shed, when Labourdonnais interposed, and terminated the dispute to the satisfaction of the parties. So far did his services on this occasion recommend him to the Viceroy of Goa, that he invited him into the service of the King of Portugal, gave him the command of a King's ship, the order of Christ, the rank of Fidalgo, and the title of agent of his Portuguese Majesty on the coast of Coromandel. In this situation he remained for two years, and perfected his knowledge of the traffic and navigation of India; after which, in 1733, he returned to France. Apprized of his knowledge and capacity, the French government turned its eyes upon him, as a man well qualified to aid in raising the colonies in the eastern seas from that state of depression in which they remained. In 1734 he was nominated Governor General of the isles of France and Bourbon; where he arrived in June 1735. So little had been done for the improvement of these islands, that the people, few in number, were living almost in the state of nature. They were poor, without industry, and without the knowledge of almost any of the useful arts. They had neither magazine, nor hospital, neither fortification, nor defensive force, military or naval. They had no roads; they had no beasts of burden, and no vehicles. Every thing remained to be done by Labourdonnais; and he was capable of every thing. With the hand to execute, as well as the head to contrive, he could construct a ship from the keel: He performed the functions of engineer, of architect, of agriculturist: He broke bulls to the yoke, constructed vehicles, and made roads: He apprenticed blacks to the few handicrafts whom he carried out with him: He prevailed upon the inhabitants to cultivate the ground; and introduced the culture of the sugar-cane and indigo: He made industry

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