The Press. — London, England, 1853-06-04 00:00:00

revenue of about 244 millions. The total ex penditure exceeds this amount by about half a million on the last estimates. But the result, as announced in December, 1852, is somewhat more favourable, leaving a slight surplus. It is worth notice that the proportion of military charges to the total outlay, notwithstanding the enormous regular army kept up, is less than in England. It slightly exceeds 104 millions on an average, taking years of war and peace together. We agree with Mr. Kaye in his conclusion, that, if peace could only be secured for a few years to come, an overflowing treasury and a diminished debt would afford ample resources both for material and educa tional improvements. But is this consumma tion probable?. We fear not. No change in the depositaries of power, however advisable on other grounds, can remedy one fatal fault inherent in the despotic government, from home, of a distant and alien dependency. Those who vote for Indian war cannot be made, either personally or through their constituents, to feel the cost of such war. Would the Afghan folly ever have been perpetrated if the price of its accomplishment had been paid out of the pockets of English electors? It is true S ir R. Peel warned the House of Commons that ultimately the revenues of England must be responsible for those of India. But this responsibility is distant—it is little under stood, perhaps little believed in—it appeals to no man's immediate interest—it touches no man's purse. In this matter especially, as in many others, the want of an Anglo-Indian public is felt. India may be less badly go verned than hitherto : but well governed it is scarcely in the nature of things that she should be, until she has some public opinion of her own, and can make her wants known. The local press, us at present constituted, re presents not India, but merely the English colony there established. With one or two exceptions, it is devoted to European interests and topics ; nor is it likely to be otherwise, until it knowledge of our language becomes so generally diffused as to make it worth the while of journalists to consider their native as .well as their English subscribers. When those on whom the burden of supporting 300,000 armed men have the tneaus and will to make their complaints listened we shall perhaps hear less about the necessity of annexation, and the manifest destiny and duty of subju gating all Asia. Mr. Kaye does not, of course, admit that any one of the Anglo-Asiatic wars could 'WM* been avoided. But he acknow ledges that they have been the cause of the internal mahtdministnit ion of India The finances of India have continually been in no em barrassed condit • , because the Company have continually been, in spite of themselves, engaged in great. and engitiph lug wars. Tlw policy which they have avowed and 1 stly endeavonred to maintain has been pacific to the very core. Hut they have seldom been permitted to see the disturbance of their Fotcheipwr more than readjusted before they have been again called upon to MO honey to proseente a new war. Under these repeated pressures they have been com pelled from time to time to borrow money at a high rate of interest., and by so doing have created a permanent embar rassment which has kept them, and stillieeps them, poor. So circumstanced, so impoverished, they cannot be gene nuts—they can brely aivl to be just. They tire com- pelled to take a fin a ancial fl vew n of almost every question that is presented to them. They art compelled to repress hu mane instincts and kindly impulses—to narrow enlarged schemes of policy.and to give themselves up to petty shifts find temporary expedients. They our condemned on the one hand for exacting so notch from the revenue-payers, though they exact harely enough to keep themselves from bank ruptcy. And they are eittlaellttlell, till the other, for not spending more of the revenge which it is said to be shame ful to collect. indeed, as far as I understood it. the whole thrift of the popular clamour which in 50111 e quarters is raised against the existing Government of India is that they ought. to have less money, and ought to spend mom. The next division of Mr. Kaye's work treats of the land revenue, and the respective merit of the ryotwar. zemindary, and what we may call the north-western systems. Into these disquisitions, full of interest, but not easily to be condensed within our narrow limits, we shall not attempt to follow far. Most readers know at least the leading features of the three systems in question. Few, even among Indian residents, know much more than their leading features. In truth, the intimacy of the sub ject, the discrepancies of the native tenures in different parts of the country, the uncertainty of • the -law itself. and the extent to which general rules have been superseded by local custom, render minute investigation a most THE PRESS. laborious and repulsive task. And Mr. Kaye has done good service in extracting from voluminous despatches, full of unintelligible Anglo-Indianisms, just so much information, and no more, us to the majority of English readers is likely to prove interesting. The first great experiment tried by the Company,• in its double capacity of landlord and sovereign, was the " permanent settle ment" of Bengal under Lord Cornwallis. This nobleman, more remarkable for his career than his character, more distinguished for industry and public virtue t han for eminent talent or success, had commanded armies beyond the Atlantic and served in English Parliaments, but at the time of his acceptance of the vice-regal office knew nothing of Indian administration. He was the first of our untrained Governors-General ; and it must be admitted that, if the system had always given us equally good men, little fault could be found with it. Strange and manifold were the vicissitudes of his long political life. In America a defeated general ; in Bengal an applauded financier; Viceroy of Ireland during the most turbulent period of her annals ; a second time invested with the Asiatic proconsulate, which he accepted only to die, he has given his name to a trans atlantic festival, and, dying in old age, but amidst labours which to the last moment en gaged him, now sleeps among the people whom he ruled, at Ghazeepore, on the banks of the Ganges. He was not, as we have said, a man of genius ; but he had those qualities which go far to compensate for the want of genius, and which in England are sometimes preferred to it—patience, caution, love of labour, de votedness to public duty, and a conscientious sense of responsibility. His financial arrange ments occupied for their completion the six years between 1789 and —92. Their principle may be described in few words. In the confusion consequent on the break ing up of native government in Bengal, and the substitution of that of the Company, one set of men, and one only, had profited. It had been the policy of our predecessors to collect their revenues through the agency of a particular class, whose position might be defined as that of tax-farmers, privileged to raise what rent they could from the peasantry, and bound in return to pay a certain fixed amount into the hands of their employers. Practically, they were used as sponges—first allowed to suck in all they could, and then squeezed without mercy. They began by plundering the ryot, and the ryot had, if not compensation, yet revenge, in seeing them plundered in their turn. Custom, and the balance of power thus created, did something to mitigate the hardship of this abominable system. The ryot learnt the art of conceal ment ; and the zemindar, or tax-farmer, knew well the danger of seeming too rich. But with the downfal of the native dynasty came a change. Both our ignorance and our scruples operated against us. We had no means of checking the extortions practised by the zemindar against the ryot ; and we did not profit by it. The peasant was robbed, Go vernment impoverished ; the middleman only enriched. His status became at once more secure and more honourable ; and thus it chanced that, when Lord Cornwallis seriously set to work on the investigation of the land question, not he alone, but all his advisers, and the Company at home, concurred in the propriety of adopting and recognising this class as bowl fide landlords, proprietors of the soil, subject only to a fixed payment or tribute to tiovernment, and to certain regulations. limiting in sonic measure their power over the ryots. The working of this remarkable law is very variously described. Perhaps the best evidence in its favour is that both the classes affected object to it as hostile to theirinterests. By the old landed proprietary it was com plained of as tending to despoil them of es tates which had been for centuries in their possession. By others it was said that it had given an artificial strength and stability to a class whose claim rested solely on successful usurpation. Both these charges cannot be true ; we incline to attach most weight to the latter. But, if the Cornwallis settlement be not faultless, its results have .on the whole been such us to give less cause for complaint SATURDAY, than exists in Madras and Southern India. True, the ryot is poor ; true, he is dependent to a great extent on the will of his landlord, though not more so, after all, than .the Irish oottar ; and though, unlike the latter, he is not exposed to eviction. True. also, that of the zemindars many have been tined and dis possessed fur non-payment, and some indi vidual suffering created ; but how are the people at large affected? — When, in Psltt, Malcolm wrote that the visible result., of the settlement were of the most satisfactory description, he only wrote what now, fifty years afterwards. every traveller through Bengal would cheerfully endorse. The aspect of the country, under the operation of the perpetual settlement, seems to give the lie to the assertion that the people are ground down and depressed. There is hardly a rood of laud not under cultivation. The jungle has entirely disappeared. A nun," says a recent writer, may go for miles in any direction, east and north of the metropolis, and see plains succeeding to plains, where there is not one bigak of unproductive soil, and where many thousands of biguh.s give their return of two crops in the year, without irrigation, and without that careful labour which seems indispensable, in the upper provinces, to successful agriculture. More new bazaars will Le found to have been established within the last thirty years than old bazaars to have decayed. The circulation of money in the interior of such districts is very considerable. The number of men who derive competence and consequence from the soil is large. Is it fair to say that all these results are inde pendent of the perpetual settlement? It would seem, then, that, if the old aristocracy have been ruined, the country has not been ruined with them. The provinces under the perpetual settlement are the most thriving provinces in India. It is u great thing 1 know that they have enjoyed, under British rule, nearly a century of unbroken peace. Nature, doubtless, too, has done much for them. Their natural fertility is great. They are independent of aitificial irrigation. But it is only since the permament settlement was introduced that the country has been exempted from the curse of periodical famine ; and some of the ablest men who have ever given themselves to the study of Indian affairs, foremost amang whom were Edmonstone and Tucker.+ have declared their opinion that it mainly is to the settlement that this ex emption (under Providence) is to be attributed. This in itself is no small thing. It is no small thing to know that the peasantry of Bengal are never starving. As to the poverty and misery of the actual ryot," says the writer I have quoted above —one of the ablest men now in India— " so much insisted on by several writers at the present day, we deny that matters are as bad as represented. What strikes the eye most in any village, or set of villages, in a Bengal district, is the exuberant fertility of the soil, the sluttish plenty surrounding the grihasta's (cultivator's) abode, the rich foliage, the fruit and timber trees, and the palpable evidence against anything like penury. Did any man ever go through a Beugallee village and find himself assailed by the cry of want or famine? Was be ever told that the ryot and his family did not know where to turn for a meal ; that they had no shade to shelter them, no tank to Lathe in, no employment for their active limbs? That villages are not neatly laid out like a model village in an English county. that things seem to go on, year by year, in the same slovenly fashion, that there awe no local im provements, and no advances in civilisation, is all very true. But considering the wretched condition of some of the Irish peasantry, or even the Scotch, and the misery ex perienced by hundreds in the purlieus of our great cities at home, compared with the condition of the ryots, who know neither cohl nor hunger, it is high time that the outcry about the extreme unhappiness of the Bengal ryot should cease." There is some truth here ; hut Mr. Kaye, ignoring America and Switzerland, goes on to argue that the peasantry in every country are poor, and, on the principle of justifying one evil by another, draws comparisons between the Bengali villager and the occupants of crowded • Caketta Review. 4. Sir Henry Huasell says in his published letters: — "In one of my last conversations ou the subject with Air. Eduionstone, to whose guidance and in 1 owe anything that I may have learned in India. and whom I have looked up to all my life with reverence and affection. he ascribed the present h it e xemption of Bengal from those periodical famines, to whic was formerly subject, and by which other tracts are occasionally visited, to the influence of the permanent system. In this I cannot concur, without depreciating the value of good govern. meat, uniform protection, and shelter behind a wide and secure boundary. Unquestionably many able men, besides Mr. Eamon. stone. have been from the first, and still are, the advocates of the zentioularry !system. The fact is. that we all of us lean to the doctrine of the school we have been brought up in. Ins dependently of the force of habit, we cannot easily bring ourselves' to think that that which we have spent our lives in learning is of no substance or effect. The advocates of this system have all been brought up in Bengal, where they have seen no other iu action. Among the eminent authorities ou this subject, Mr. Hodgson is the only one I remember, who, having made himself conversant with both systems, gives the preference to that of Bengal. With this single exception, as far as I am aware, the whole of those who have witnessed the working of the two are in favour of the native machinery of the nintwor system." The testimony of Mr. Tucker may be added :---- 1 never:* he wrote to a brother director , "can be persuaded that the Ilegtda- Sons of 17. t i were not framed ou sound and just principles—but no person will contend that the permanent settlement was not concluded with undue haste, and upon defective materials ; but. if the measure had not been prosecuted at the time, it would pro 'misty neverhave been undertaken,anti the country and the people would have remained in the wretched condition to which they bad been reduced under short and corrupt settlements. If this great measure had no other merit, I would say that (under Providence) the absence of that frightful scourge, famine. with which the eounu - y had been periodically visited, is mainly to be attributed to it."—)lB. Corropoadeere.