The Sun.
London, England, 1854-07-12 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, WEDNESDAY EVENING, JULY 12, 1854;

grievances, that only a commission of inquiry could remove
them. Now, he maintained that his hon. and learned
friend had shown none of these three things, and having
failed in that he could hardly require any further answer
to his motion. But supposing the commission were ap-
pointed, what result did his hcn. and learned friend pro
i -
pose or suggest should spring from t ? It might perhaps end
its labours by recommending that the ryotwar system
should be abolished; but granting that it did that, of
what use would that recommendation be unless they were
prepared with some alternative or substitute for the aban-
doned system ? True it might be advisable to remove
some of the evils that now attended the working of the
soil, or to enable the cultivator to relieve himself in some
way from payment of the land tax ; but in order to ascer-
tain that was it necessary to send out a commission ? Then
if they abolished the ryotwar system, they were to substi-
tute the zemindar system for it, or a system of petty land-
lordism, which would inflict more , misery and suffering
upon the people than they already suffered ? He certainly
thought that it would be much better to let things remain
as they were, than that a change should be made so disad-
vantageous to the interests of the people. Yet these
were the only two alternatives open to them, if they con-
sented to part with the ryotwar system ; and therefore he
contended that his hon. friend had made out no sufficient
case either for the inquiry into the tenure of laud, or the
mode of collecting the revenue in Madras. He was pre,
pared to prove, if would admit, that we had no alter-
native but to continue the ryotwar system, though while he
said that, he was equally ready to admit that the system
was attended with a good many evils which ought to be
remedied ; but the application of the remedy should be
left to the local government, and not accomplished through
the instrumentality of a commission, which might emllar-
rass the Government without doing any good, either to the
country or the people of India.
Mr. DA.IsTIY SEYMOUR told the house that the evils
complained of in Madras had been acknowledged many
years ago. Fourteen or fifteen years ago the East India
Company distinctly admitted the existence of these evils
in Madras, and promised that something should be imme-
diately done to remove them, but from 1840 down to 1854
nothing in the world had been done to fulfil that promise.
(Hear, hear.) The hon. and learned gentleman who had
just addressed them said the effect of this commission
would be to weaken the power of the Government in India;
but he did not at all agree with him on that point. He did
not believe the people of India were the fools they were
taken to be as to suppose that there was no other power
over them than the local government ; they knew well that
there was an influence in this country that controlled the
local government, and the same feeling which actuated
Hyder Ali a hundred years ago still animated the people
of India. Ryder Ali, the house was aware, when solicited
by some of his subjects to go to war with the English, re-
plied, "No I will not ; it is not the English, though here
in India, that I fear, but it is the English at home, whom
I can't see, and who possess great power, that frightens
me." Now that was precisely the feeling which actuated
the people of India at this moment ; they knew that there
was a stronger power at home than the local government,
and no commission of this sort could have the effect of
weakening British influence in India. Well, then, why
should they object to inquire in this way into a state
of things that was a disgrace to any English Govern-
ment. The sufferings of society in Madras were
worse than the disease known by the name of Plies
Potonica, and it was high time the executive at home did
something to alleviate them. The state of things that
prevailed in this presidency was without an example in
any other country in the world, and yet since Lord W.
Bentinck, not a single Governor-General had visited it
with the view of devising some remedy for the grievances
of the people. The present Governor-General could find
time to visit the newly acquired territory of Burmah,
which was likely to cost far more than it would ever be
worth, and his favourite retreat in the Punjaub ; but
although the head of a federal Government, he could
spare a moment to the wants of this unfortunate section
of the Indian empire. It was the duty of the House of
Commons, then, to ascertain how it was that the local
government had so far neglected its duty as to allow this
disgraceful state of things to continue in Madras, and for
that purpose he hoped they would assent to his motion.
He thought that knowing the past reputation of their own
servants they ought to be chary of the natives. Take the
history of the last ten years of India, and among the ex-
tremely well paid servants of the company were there no
I black sheep? In the presidency of Madras it was not only
the land tenure that was vicious, but the way in which they
collected the revenue was most disgraceful. No one could
say to whom the land belonged. One third, or more, of
the land was lying waste, and the people ware obliged to
emigrate. Some went to Ceylon, and as soon as they
got out of the territories of the company they became
prosperous. In Ceylon they were so industrious that they
were driving the Cingalese out. Then he found that
slavery existed in the south of India. He did not say that
the selling of men, women, and children was recognised
in the courts, but it went on nevertheless, and the people
were so degraded that they did not seem to value free-
dom, and they were not aware of the existence of the
courts. There was no registry of births, marriages, and
deaths, and he believed there was not a farmer in England
who did not care more for his cattle than the East India
Company, cared for the people committed to their charge.
The Government had framed rules as to the tenure of land,
but they had a strange objection to making them public.
No one could get a copy. He had got one certainly, but
he got it surreptitiously. (Laughter.) One of these rules
forbid a ryot from giving up bad land, unless he gave up
a proportionate quantity of good land. Now, why should
not a man be allowed to cultivate what land he pleased ?
But the great aim of the Madras government was to get
ten rupees annually out of a man who had only got eight.
Torture, he believed, was resorted to to obtain the revenue,
the same kind of torture that was described by the Jesuits
at the beginning of the last century. Everything stated in
Mr. Norton's book might be proved to the house if the
East India Company would allow it. The servants of the
company had resorted on them ad nauseam, and in reply
they were told to mind their own business, and to get in
the revenue. He knew an instance in winch a servant of
the company began a despatch by saying that he wanted a
re,luction of the revenue because the people were wretchedly
poor, and that he was only repeating what every one of
his predecessors had been saying for the last fifty years.
India was a sealed book. The company would give them
no documents, or so many that they did not know what to
do with them, for they took care to give them no index.
The presidency of Madras contained 700,000 inhabitants,
and a man with 10,0001. was esteemed a rich man. There
was a time when there were many Armenian bankers
and merchants there, but they had all gone, and the
whole commerce was now in the hands of one or. two
English houses who were connected with the civil ser-
vice. A case had come to his knowledge, in which a
now kind of oil was brought into the market. It sold
well, but no one knew where it came from. A Calcutta
house sent an agent into the Madras Presidency, and
he discovered how the oil was obtained. The Calcutta
house determined on entering into the trade, and
the agent began to buy. The price of the oil was
immediately doubled to the great advantage of the ryots.
The agent went into the district to buy, and the ryots
showed every disposition to sell, but the next morning
none of them came to him, and on inquiry he found that
the collector had given them a hint that they were to con-
fine their sales to the houses already established. The agent
persevered for some time in his endeavours to establish a
trade, but such were the difficulties thrown in his way that
the Calcutta houso determined on withdrawing, and did
so. There were many other cases in which the officials
had interfered in this manner. In many of the southern
districts of India, in South Arcot, for instance, a cotton
district, the inhabitants said not one-fortieth' of the land
was cultivated. They might go through 30 or 40 miles of
a desert country. The people were naked, not from choice,
for they needed cottons and flannels, but they could not
get them, and they were so abject that when the official
passed ?by they prostrated themselves in a manner that
was distressing to behold. The engineers of the Madras
Railway said the country was not cultivated, and they
could scarcely go a mile in any direction without meeting
with the remains of old irrigating tanks, which were now
gone to ruins. He knew it might be said that a great
deal of this had been remedied, and that the Government
had sent orders for improvements ; hut why were those
orders kept a secret? One of the great evils of India was
that the law was not attended to. The officials knew that
the one law that must be obeyed was that the revenue
must be kept up. When he was at Coimbatore he saw
new wells which had been dug by the side of the old ones.
The Government had sent out orders that taxes on the old
wells should be continued, but that there should be no tax
on new ones. These wells were very deep, and to dig
them great labour and expense had been incurred,
but the people had gone to this labour and expense
rather than pay the tax. He went on to the
Neilgherry Hills, and at each side of the road the
cultivation was beautiful to behold, but on inquiry
he found that this only extended to 100 yards on each side
of the road, the collector having been successful in an ap-
plication to reduce the rent to 103. an acre, but beyond
that limit the rent was 20s. an acre, and as the people
could not make a profit out of it at that rent it was uncul-
tivated and was a waste. The fact was the East India
Company had no interest in the good government of the
country. It produced a revenue of twenty-seven millions,
and all they had to pay to the proprietors of the East
India stock was some 700,000/. a year, being 10A per cent.
upon their capital, and they knew that, however badly the
country was governed, it would produce that: He did not
see why, the company should be kept up. It they went
onwards to the west coast they found an opulent and a
prosperous people. They had people on the Malabar coast
with whom it would not do to play tricks. They were not
broken-hearted, like the people in the Carnatic, but were a
bold and enterprising people. Why should they not take
a track round Madras, and try the experiment of giving a.
better tenure? Mr. Norton,f while showing him a house he
had built, told him he had not the slightest idea what he
should have to pay the Government forit ; and was it likely
that British capitalists would ever make the Presidency,
the scene of their investments so long as such a system re-
mained? Or, take another case. The Rev. Mr. Blenkin-
sop, one of the company's own chaplains, had established
a youthful Blenkinsop as a planter on the hills, where he
had taken 59 acres on a lease of 21 years. Mr. Blenkinsop,
sen., in a letter to the authorities of the company, stated
that he had had three translations made of his son's futtah
or lease, which was in the Tamul language, and its purport
appeared to be that at the expiration of the 21 years his
son was to agree to whatever alterations the company might
then chose to make. Mr. Blenkinsop wished, before sink-
ing his money on the land, to know what was the meaning
of this stipulation ; because it was obvious that the
only manner in which his son could deal with the plan-
tation, if he spent any money on it all, would be to
leave off cultivating it at the sixteenth or seventeenth year,
and so to exhaust both the trees and the soil. A long cor-
respondence appeared to have ensued, but the purport of
the company's reply was that Mr. Blenkinsop was to be
charged 2s. per acre for 21 years, in conformity with the
terms of his lease, and that then the rent would be raised,
though not to a higher amount than the government was
charging for the land around it. But that was not a very
satisfactory tenure ; for who would not much rather go
into Ceylon, where ho could buy land for a pound an acre
out and oat ? The consequence was, that Ceylon was be-
coming a flourishing colony, while Madras would remain
in its present neglected and disgraceful state. (Hear, hear.)
The company's servants would not make the inquiries
which his hon. friend sought to institute. The complaint
already was that they were overworked ; and the govern-
ment must, therefore, sand out a special commission to in-
vestigate the real state of the case. Madras, in the slang
phrase of India, was said to be the "country of the be-
nighted ;" and they were told that amendment was hope-
less. But was that a state in which twenty-two million
persons ought to be left? (Hear, hear.) This was a ques-
tion of solemn import. It was no use taking a governor
from the West Indies and sending him to the East. He
only fell into the hands of interested persons, and, with
the best intentions, would fail in arriving at the real facts
state
of
thinAgstdaellmervents, he would be years in
of the c
business,his "e.learning
even if in the end he should have sagacity
enough to devise a remedy for the evils around him. The
should
in-
stantly done ; and. he thou ht that the best men in the
country, who had been g
ended that something be
connected with )Madras, shourtl at
once be asked to return to India on a mission, which they