The Press. — London, England, 1853-08-06 00:00:00

318 Sir J. PAKINOT►IN expressed a general approval of the Government plan, blaming the Ministers, at the same time, for allowing the disastrous results of the policy inaugurated in 11343 to remain so long un remedied. The late Government had intended to issue a commission to inquire into the circumstances of the colony, which he still thought would have been the better course, but was willing to try the present scheme, under the administration of so able a go• 'rernor as Sir Henry Darkly. Other members also intimated their approbation of the Ministerial plan; and the discussion then diverged into the subject of ocean penny postage. THE PARSEE MERCHANTS. Mr. J. Putt.i.twonr. moved on Tuesday an address to her Majesty, praying that the case and memorials of two Parsee merchants, Jevanjee Merjee and l'es tonjee Merjee, should he referred to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. He described the case of these merchants, who were native subjects of the British Government, and had had the manage ment of certain cotton districts in I3erar, in the territories of the Nizam, as the most cruel, short of injury to life or limb, that had ever come before Par liament. They complained, he said, that, in spite of solemn declarations and instruments deliberately signed, they had been grossly wronged by the Nizam, and the East India Company had not only not inter fered for their protection, but were at this moment in possession of the very lands upon the mortgage of which they had advanced money to the Nizam, and that money had been expended almost exclusively for the support of the contingent, composed of troops of the Company themselves. In support of his motion Mr. l'hillimore entered at much length, and with great minuteness, into the particulars of the pecuniary transactions between the merchants and the Nizam, and their correspondence with his minister, Chundoo Lall, and the British resident at Hyderabad, and stated that the balance due to the merchants was 211‘1,1X11/. In considering the law of the case, he argued that, by every code, hypothecation carried its burden with it ; that even had these persons been subjects of the Nizam, instead of being British subjects, the East India Company, having come into possession of the districts in question subject to all the Nizam's obligations, were legally liable to this undisputed debt. Mr. J. A. SMITH, in seconding the motion, declared that a personal investigation of the alleged facts had convinced him of their truth. He recapitulated some of the details, and adduced some further cor roborative evidence as to the justice of the appeal now made to the British Crown. Sir C. Woon, disclaiming any intention to depre ciate the characters of the two Parsee merchants, or to deny the assertion that they had suffered wrong, resisted the motion on the ground that the British Government could not be called upon to make repa ration. No guarantee had been given by the British resident to the petitioners for the money they ad vanced to the Nizam , and, indeed, it was a violation of the Company's laws for a British subject to loan money to the native princes. The appeal now made was urged rather upon the feelings of the house than their judgment ; and to yield to it would imperil the independence of all the native states : " He conjured the home to resist it, and to maintain a policy which had been the salvation of our Indian empire.. The penton by whom these merchants had been wronged was the Nizam, and the sole question was, whether the British Oovernment were bound to compel that Prince to pay this debt, the British tiovennuent owing these parties no money, and having dime theni no wrong. The Nizam titmice! their claim; but, conceding that he did owe the money, the claim was upon him. He had assignee! not only lands as security for the advances, but moneys due by certain zemindars; and the Company would not have been justified in interfering on behalf cif these parties. Remaly an arrangement had been entered into with the Nisam, who had been long in anear of his payments for the con tingent, by which certain districts had been, not ceded, but put in the possession of the British liovernment, as a means of providing for these payments in future, and among those districts was a portion of the lands formerly assigned to these parties. The assignment of land by a native prince to any British subject was contrary to our municipal law, which these parties had violated by lending money to the Nisam If we were called upon to interfere on behalf of such claims, the independence of all native states would disappear. anti we should have no alternative but to annex their territories; but it had always been the folicy of our Indian tiovernment, in all cases, to refrain rom enforcing any debt due from native princes to British subjects." Mr. H. G. LIDDELL supported the motion, con tending that the acts of the British resident had fixed an equitable responsibility upon the Company's Government. Mr. Pinny SEYMOUR also advocated inquiry into the case, there being no other tribunal to which these parties could appeal ; and he thought Sir C. Wood. instead of devising ingenious objections, would have acted more consistently if he had ad mitted that the question was fairly open to investi gation. The Indian Government, he added, were THE PRESS. now in possession of the very lands upon which the debts (4 these Parsee merchants had been secured. Sir J. W. HOOO declared that the ease, stripped of all disguise, was this, the Nizam borrowed money from every one that would lend it, and afterwards paid nobody. If repayment was insisted on, he made over certain lands by way of security, leaving his creditors in possession for such time as he thought sufficient for them to have paid themselves, and then turning them out. This was the case with the pre sent petitioners, who were warned as to what would happen to them. They were turned out like other,. Doubtless► they were great losers; they were most respectable natives, and their case was a very hard one. They had borrowed moneys to make these loans, and ruin in a great measure was the con sequence to them and other houses embarked with them. They were deserving of all sympathy; but, however the►r case might be commiserated, it gave them no claim on the Government of India, or on the British Parliament. Mr. BRIGHT urged that a priced facie case had been made out for investigation, which was all that the petitioners required in the first instance. If the house felt unequal to decide upon certain points of law, the case might be referred to some judicial tribunal. The material facts were hardly disputed ; the wrongs of these Parsees were admitted, and the Company were in possession of the lands which had been assigned by the Nizam as security for the debt. Considering the relations of the Company with that puppet monarch, there could be no doubt that the Indian Government had it in its power, without a violation of its policy, to insist upon the Nizam con tinuing the security till the debt was paid. Mr. Ititonfrat warned the house that the Judicial Committee was a tribunal not constituted efficiently to take cognisance of a complicated case of disputed accounts. if they were satisfied that there existed a just demand against the Indian Government, it would be better to follow precedents, and interfere by bill. His opinion, however, was, that no foundation had been shown for such a demand, or for the inter ference of the house. Sir It. IL Isom also apprehended that that case could not be satisfactorily dealt with by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. Mr. INOHAX, on the other hand, considered the Judicial Committee quite competent to deal with this question, and upon its merits argued in favour of the claim. Mr. Hum: said he should vote for the motion, because a wrong was admitted, and a remedy re fused. Mr. MANor.Es observed, that it was not alleged by the petitioners that they had any claim upon the Company, and whatever decree the Judicial Committee might make would not bind the Nizam. Mr. E. l3r►ra. likewise supported the motion. On a division the motion was negatived by 111 votes against 69. CHICORY. The enormous frauds committed by the retail dealers in coffee, by selling (under a Treasury sane. Lion) an adulterated article of which chicory formed the principal ingredient, were once more brought under the consideration of the Legislature, on Tues- day, when Lord TORRINOTON presented anti enforced a petition from the merchants and planters of Cey lon, complaining of those frauds as a result, and of the last " Treasury minute" on the subject as the cause, whereby the growers of coffee sustained serious loss, and the consumers suffered under an outrageous deception. The late Government had effectually stopped the evil by prohibiting every sale of a mixed article, ordering, under penalties, the dealers to keep and sell coffee and chicory in separate packets, so that customers might know what they were buying. By the present Ministry a new order had been sub stituted, permitting grocers to sell a mixed article, if only marked as such. This at once opened the door to fraud. The label was easily concealed, and the term " mixture " was so vague that, as it was proved by analysis, in many specimens of " mixed " coffee the chicory largely predominated, sometimes to the extent of nine tenths or even more of the whole quantity. This facility for evasion the noble lord traced into various lamentable consequences with regard to the public health, the purses of the com smilers, the prosperity of coffee-growing colonists, and the general morality of the commercial public. The Earl of ABERDEEN pleaded intense weariness of the subject, which he said had monopolised far too much of the legislative time. He felt exceed ingly indisposed to reopen the question, or alter the last "minute," which had been issued solely on the ground of public and trading convenience:— " The alteration that had been made was rendered ne• cessary by the inconvenience, hardship, and difficulty which the common people of this country experienced in using coffee as directed by the minutes of the late Govern vernment. This was the first time he had ever heard the assertion that chicory was an injurious substance. Why, half the coffee in Europe was chicory—(laughter)—and especially in the south of Europe. The great mass of the consumers of this beverage preferred the mixture. The question then was, how they were to be enabled to mix it. SATURDAY, Not, he conceived, as attempted by the minister of a late Government, which made separate packets necessary, for coffee when ground remained a powder, whereas chicory became a sort of cake which it was impossible fur the pm , chaser himself to mix. It consequently became necessary to grind them together in order that the mixture should exist. Another reason was the expense involved in making up the articles in separate papers. Suppose a poor man entered a shop for an ounce of coffee and an ounce of chi cory. The making a separate packet of each added greatly to the expense and trouble of getting his wants ►upplied. The great mass of the common people infinitely preferred, therefore, that the two ingredients should be mixed by the dealer for them. The noble lord had intimated that highly. respectable officers had neglected their duty, and were guilty of a sort of complicity in fraud. This was a most incorrect assertion. The return of prosecutions stated that " ' there were upwards of 130,000 persons licensed to deal in coffee in this country, and that each of them had been served with a copy of the enclosed general order. The officers of the board had made 2,527 official visits for examination, buying sam ples which had been analysed at the laboratory, and for which 470 prosecutions had been instituted. And there bad not been a single prosecution without a conviction.' It at least showed there had been activity and honesty in carrying out the provisions of the present minute, and the insinuation against the conduct of the officers was utterly destitute of foundation. The noble lord had also stated that the amount of consumption of coffee had diminished under the operation of the present minute. Now, he held in his hand a return of the quantities of coffee taken out for home consumption in the three months ending July 0, 185:1, as compared with the quantities taken out for home consumption in the corresponding three months of the preceding year, 1852. The quantity in 1852 amounted to r 4,000,11410 and odd pounds; but in 1853 it reached 8,977,000 pounds, or an increase of nearly 1,000,00- i pounds. At least, therefore, there was no ground for saying there had been a diminution. (Hear, hear,) The fact was that chicory was a substance which up to last year, up to the issue of the minute of the late Government, he believed had been used without any restriction whatever. From the year 1840 up to the year before last it was left to the dealers and the public to please themitelver in the use of the mixture ; and it had not been regarded in the light of adulteration, because the matter which had been mixed with coffee was not an injurious substance, but rather salu tary in its properties. Be that, however, us it might, it was left open to the public and the dealers to do as they thought proper. And it had been found impossible, or at all events inconvenient, to execute the minute of last year, on account of its increasing the expense and trouble, and preventing the possibility of the mixture taking place and its being ground and packed in the proper manner. Before issuing the existing minute the Chancellor of the Exche quer instituted the most deliberate and careful inquiries and he (the Earl of Aberdeen) was , convinced that the : great body of the consumers of this country—and the lower orders especially—had every reason to be satisfied with that minute in its present shape." The Earl of MAIiiESBURY denied that any suffi cient reason had been shown why the minute of the late Government should have been superseded. He confessed he was lather astonished at the cause of the change which the noble earl had explained to their lordships. For, if he rightly understood the noble earl, he said that unless the two substances, coffee and chicory, were mixed, the chicory would not last long. The i.arl of AiwanEEN: Chicory became caked if it were packed in a separate paper. The Earl of MALMESIIIIRY could only see in that fact an illustration of the partiality for coalition and fusion which was so characteristic of the Government of the noble earl. ("Hear," and a laugh.) if the noble earl would con sult some of the best chemists in London, they would tell him that the extent to which adulteration was carried on in every substance that was sold in the market, of which we ate and drank, was positively frightful ; mid that the only comfort we had was the reflection, that in nine cases out of ten the adulterations were not actually deleterious. But as to getting any simple substance in its naturally pure state, that was altogether out of the question. He thought the noble earl had been rather hard upon the minute of the late Government; but he begged to say that that minute was greatly preferred by the public and con sumers to that of the noble earl. Lord WHARNCLIFFE remarked that the "minute" of the late Government had been reicinded before it was fairly tried. Lord BEAUMONT, believing that a strong case had been made out for the petitioners, and but a weak defence offered by the Government, suggested the appointment of a select committee next year to in vestigate the question. The Duke of ARGYLL defended the ministers, and gave some explanations touching the chemical hypotheses involved in the case. The Earl of Wiexi.ow apprehended that the minute under which trade then existed occasioned u loss to the revenue, and sanctioned fraud upon the pur chasers Lord MoNTEAGLE contended that the allegation of fraud was improperly introduced, because chicory was so perfectly harmless, and wished to leave things as they were, since the condition of the working classes was better and higher now than at any ante. cedent period. Lord REDESDALE noticed that the chicory-growers were treated with more favour than anybody else, and apprehended that the impression would spread through the country that "the producers of the article possessed undue influence with certain