Book IV. dreams of the Proprietors prevailed, in the General Court; and supervisors, with extraordinary powers, it was resolved, were the very remedy which the maladies of the Indian government required. 1769. to send out missioner to King's com India. a Legality of But the pretensions of the ministry again interfered. Not only was the the commission disputed. legality disputed of the commission by which the supervisors were appointed; but a share was claimed in the government of India, which the Directors re-, garded with alarm and abhorrence. As an accession to their power and influence in India, which they imagined would be of the utmost importance, they had applied to government for two ships of the line, and some frigates. No aversion to this proposition was betrayed by the ministry; but when the Company were elated with the hopes which a compliance was calculated to inspire, The Company they were suddenly informed that the naval officer whom the Crown should allowed by the Ministers appoint to command in India, must be vested with full powers to adjust all maritime affairs; to transact with the native princes; and, in short, to act the principal part in the offensive and defensive policy of the country. The Directors represented this proposal as affecting the honour, and the very existence of the Company. The General Court was adjourned from time to time to afford sufficient space for the consideration of so important a subject; and the Proprietors were entreated to consider the present moment as the very crisis of their fate; and to devote to the question a proportional share of their attention. To vest the officers of the Crown in India with powers independent of the Company, was in reality, they said, to extrude the Company from the government; to lay the foundation of endless contests between the servants of the King and those of the Company; and to prepare the ruin of the national interests in that part of the world: If the Company were incapable of maintaining their territorial acquisitions, to surrender them to the powers of the country, upon terms advantageous to their commerce, was better, it was averred, than to lie at the mercy of a minister: And the fatal effects of the interference of the servants of the Crown in the affairs of a company, formed for upholding a beneficial intercourse with India, were illustrated by contrasting the ruin of the French East India Company, the affairs of which the ministers of the French King had so officiously controled, with the prosperity of the Dutch East India Company, the affairs of which had been left entirely to themselves. The grand argument on the other side was furnished by Clive and the Directors themselves; who had used so many and such emphatical terms to impress a belief that the unprosperous state of their government was wholly produced by the rapacity and misconduct of 1770 those who conducted it in India. In the first place the authority of a King's CHAP. IX. officer was held up as an indispensable security against the vices of the Company's servants; and in the next place the dignity of the master whom he served was represented as necessary to give majesty to the negotiations which a company of merchants might be required to conduct with the potentates of India.* After long and acrimonious debates, the powers demanded for an officer of the Crown were condemned in a Court of Proprietors; and the ministers were not disposed to enforce, by any violent procedure, the acceptance of their terms. The Company would agree to sanction the interference of the officer commanding the ships of the King only within the Gulf of Persia, where they were embroiled with some of the neighbouring chiefs; the demand of two ships of the line for the Bay of Bengal was suspended; and the legal objection to the commission of the supervisors was withdrawn. In this manner, at the present conjuncture, was the dispute between the Government and the Company compromised. Two frigates, beside the squadron for the Gulf of Persia, were ordered upon Indian service. In one of them the supervisors took their passage. Their fate was remarkable. The vessel which carried them never reached her port; nor was any intelligence of her or her passengers ever received. Mr. Cartier assumed the government of Bengal at the beginning of the year 1770. The first year of his administration was distinguished by one of those dreadful famines which so often afflict the provinces of India; a calamity by which These debates are reported in various periodical publications of the time. A good abstract of them is presented in the Annual Register for 1769. A variety of pamphlets was produced by the dispute; of those which have come under the author's inspection, the following are the titles of the more remarkable: "An Address to the Proprietors of India Stock, showing, from the Political State of Indostan, the Necessity of sending Commissioners to regulate and direct their Affairs abroad; and likewise the Expediency of joining a Servant of Government in the Commission. Printed for S. Bladon in Paternoster Row, 1769;" "A Letter to the Proprietors of East India Stock, containing a brief Relation of the Negotiations with Government, from the Year 1767 to the present Time, respecting the Company's Acquisitions in India, together with some Considerations on the principal Plans for adjusting the Matters in dispute, which have been discussed in the General Court of Proprietors. Printed for B. White, at Horace's Head, in Fleet Street, 1769;" "A Letter to the Proprietors of India Stock, containing a Reply to some Insinuations in AN OLD PROPRIETOR'S LETTER to the ProprieTORS on the 13th Inst. relative to the Ballot of that Day. Printed for W. Nicholl, No. 51, St. Paul's Church Yard, 1769;” “ A Letter to the Proprietors of E. I. Stock, by Governor Johnstone. Printed for W. Nicholl, 1769;" "A Letter to the Proprietors of East India Stock, relative to some Propositions intended to be moved at the next General Court, on Wednesday the 12th of July." Printed as above, 1769. 2 P VOL. II. Book IV. more than a third of the inhabitants of Bengal were computed to have been destroyed.* his brother. 1771. Bengal Nabob On the 10th of March, 1770, the Nabob Syef al Dowla died of the smalldies, and is succeeded by pox; and his brother Mubarek al Dowla, a minor, was appointed to occupy his station. The President and Council made with him the same arrangements, and afforded the same allowance for the support of his family and dignity, as had been established in the time of his predecessor. But this agreement was condemned in very unceremonious terms by the Directors. "When we advert," say they," to the encomiums you have passed on your own abilities and prudence, and on your attention to the Company's interest (in the expostulations you have thought proper to make on our appointment of commissioners to superintend our general affairs in India), we cannot but observe with astonishment, that an event of so much importance as the death of the Nabob Syef al Dowla, and the establishment of a successor in so great a degree of non-age, should not have been attended with those advantages for the Company, which such a circumstance offered to your view.-Convinced, as we are, that an allowance of sixteen lacks per annum will be sufficient for the support of the Nabob's state and rank, while a minor, we must consider every addition thereto as so much to be wasted on a herd of parasites and sycophants, who will continually surround him; or at least be hoarded up, a consequence still more pernicious to the Company. You are therefore, during the non-age of the Nabob, to reduce his annual stipend to sixteen lacks of rupees." + Increase of pecuniary difficulties. By the last regulations of the Directors, the inland trade in salt, beetel-nut, and tobacco, was reserved to the natives, and Europeans were excluded from it. By a letter of theirs, however, dated the 23d of March, 1770, it was commanded to be laid open to all persons, Europeans as well as natives, but without any privileges to their countrymen or servants beyond what were enjoyed by natives and other subjects. These regulations were promulgated on the 12th of December. In the mean time financial difficulties were every day becoming more heavy and oppressive. On the 1st of January, 1771, when the President and Council at Fort William had received into their treasury 95,43,855 current rupees, for which they had granted bills on the Court of Directors, the cash remaining in it was only 35,42,761 rupees. At the same period the amount of bond debts * Letter from the Governor and Council to the Directors, 3d Nov. 1772. + General Letter to Bengal, 10th April, 1771. in Bengal was 612,6281. And at the beginning of the following year it had CHAP. IX. swelled to 1,039,478/. 1772. raised. Notwithstanding the intelligence which the Directors had received of the Dividend inadequacy of their revenues, and the accumulation of their debts in all parts of India; and notwithstanding their knowledge of the great amount of bills drawn upon them, for which they were altogether unable to provide, they signalized their rapacity on the 26th of September, 1770, by coming to a resolution for recommending it to the General Court, to avail themselves of the permission accorded in the late act, and make a dividend at the rate of twelve per cent. per annum. The approbation of the General Court was unanimous. On the 14th of March and 25th of September, 1771, it was resolved, by the Court of Directors, to recommend to the General Court an augmentation of the dividend to six and a quarter per cent. for the six months respectively ensuing approved in the General Court, by ninety-four voices against five in the first instance, and 374 against thirty in the second. On the 17th of March, 1772, the Directors again resolved to recommend a dividend of six and a quarter per cent. for the current half year, which the Court of Proprietors in a similar manner confirmed. These desperate proceedings hurried the affairs of the Company to a crisis. The Company On the 8th of July, on an estimate of cash for the next three months, that is, the demands upon them. of the payments falling due, and the cash and receipts which were applicable to meet them, there appeared a deficiency of no less than 1,293,000. On the 15th of July the Directors were reduced to the necessity of applying to the Bank for a loan of 400,000l. On the 29th of July they applied to it for an additional loan of 300,000l., of which the Bank was prevailed upon to advance only 200,000. And on the 10th of August the Chairman and Deputy waited upon the Minister to represent to him the deplorable state of the Company, and the necessity of being supported by a loan of at least one million from the public.* unable to meet misconduct on The glorious promises which had been so confidently made of unbounded The nation riches from India, their total failure, the violent imputations of corrupt and belief of great impressed with erroneous conduct which the Directors and the agents of their government mu- the part of the tually cast upon one another, had, previous to this disclosure, raised a great fer- Company and ment in the nation, the most violent suspicions of extreme misconduct on the part of the Company and their servants, and a desire for some effectual inter *For the details and documents relative to this curious part of the history of the Company, see the Eighth Report of the Committee of Secrecy, 1773. their servants. 1772. A motion in the House of in a bill for the tion of the Company's affairs. BOOK IV. ference on the part of the legislature. In the King's speech, on the 21st of January, at the opening of the preceding session, it had been intimated that one branch of the national concerns which," as well from remoteness of place, as from other circumstances, was peculiarly liable to abuses, and exposed to danger, might stand in need of the interposition of the legislature, and require new laws either for supplying defects or remedying disorders." On the 30th of Commons for March a motion was made by the Deputy Chairman for leave to bring in a bill leave to bring for the better regulation of the Company's servants, and for improving the better regula- administration of justice in India. The grand evil of which the Directors complained was the want of powers to inflict upon their servants adequate punishment either for disobedience of orders, or any other species of misconduct. The Charter of Justice, granted in 1753, empowered the Mayor's Court of Calcutta, which it converted into a Court of Record, to try all civil suits arising between Europeans, within the town or factory of Calcutta, or the factories dependent upon it: it also constituted the President and Council a Court of Record to receive and determine appeals from the Mayors; it further erected them into Justices of the Peace, with power to hold quarter sessions; and into Commissioners of oyer and terminer, and general gaol-delivery, for the trying and punishing of all offences, high treason excepted, committed within the limits of Calcutta and its dependent factories. This extent of jurisdiction, measured according to the sphere of the Company's possessions, at the time when it was assigned, deprived them of all powers of juridical coercion with regard to Europeans over the wide extent of territory of which they now acted as the sovereigns. They possessed, indeed, the power of suing or prosecuting Englishmen in the Courts at Westminster; but under the necessity of bringing evidence from India, this was a privilege more nominal than real. One object, therefore, of the present bill was to obtain authority for sending a chief justice with some puisne judges, and an attorney-general, according to the model of the Courts of England, for the administration of justice throughout the territory of the Company. The next object was, the regulation of the trade. The author of the motion, the Deputy Chairman of the Company, represented it as a solecism in politics, and monstrous in reason," that the governors of any country should be merchants; and thus have a great temptation to become the only merchants, especially in those articles which were of most extensive and necessary consumption, and on which, with the powers of government, unlimited profits might be made.” It was, therefore, proposed that the Governors and Councils, and the rest of |
