The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1896-05-08
CHARTERED COMPANIES

slow to learn from the sad experience
of the past the necessity either of
abolishing such companies altogether,
or sc restricting their privileges and
cfrcumscribing their powers as to
render them less potent for mis-
chief
Perhaps the deepest stain on Eng
lands glory today is that fastened
upon her long ago by the East
India chartered company, which for
two hundred and fifty years-from the
days of Queen Elizabeth to Queen
Victoria = misgoverned India and
robbed and enslaved her people.
That chartered company had its Or
igin in a controversy with the Dutch
too, who in the closing decade of the
sixteenth century had SO far secured
monopoly of East India trade that
they raised the price of pepper to the
English from three shillings per pound
to six shalings and eight pence.
Whereupon company of London
merchants combined and secured
charter for a company to trade in the
East Indies; and this company, from
time to time charging its trade,
amending its charter, generally on the
nnes of increasing its power and by
absorbing other companies, at last be-
came the instrument through which
England virtually made a conquest of
and acquired India. For when the
natives, after more than two centuries
Of cruelty and oppression, arose in re-
belllon against the mercenaries of this
company, and perpetrated what was
known as the Cawnpur massacre, the
British government with her troops
Subdued the natives, and India was
transferred from England's chartered
company to England's crown, and is,
perhaps. part of Englaud's glory
certainly she is part, and a noble part,
of England's empire-but she is also
Engiand's shame. For the world has
not forgotten, and never will forget,
the cruelties, the robberies, the muir
ders for pelf, which England permit
ted her chartered company to perpe-
trate under pretense of holding in sub
lection the natives Of that land, and
when at last, out of sheer desperation,
the Indians rebelled against that OPP
preston, how England, ever strong in
war, made that rebellion pretext for
seizing the country.
The world still remembers the vivid
picture drawn by Edmund Burke in
the British house of commons when he
arrayed Debi Sing, one of Warren
Hastings Official servants, for his
methods of robhing the people. Here
it is:
'Oebi Sing and his instruments sus-
pected, and in a few cases they sus-
peoted justly that the country people /
had purloined from their own estates, |
and had hidden in secret places in the |
clrcumJacent deserts, some small re- |
serve OF their own grain to maintain !
themselves during the unproductive |
months of the year, and to leave some |
nope for a future season. But the I'M |
der tyrants knew that the demands |
Of Mr.. Hastings would admit of no |
plea for delay, much less for subtrac-
ton of his bride, and that he would |
not abate shilling of it to the wants |
OF the whole human race. These
boards, real or supposed, not being |
discovered by menaces and, imprison
ment, they fell upon the last resource. |
here, my lords began such a scene of |
cruelties and tortures, as 1 believe no |
history has ever presented to the in |
dignation of the world; such as | am !
sure, in the most barbaric ages, no |
polite tyranny, no fanatic persecu !
ton, has ever yet exceeded. Mr.. Pat
terson, the commissioner appointed to
inquire into the state of the country, /
makes his own apology and mine for
opening this scene of horrors to you
in the following words: That the |
puniShments inflicted upon the ryots /
both of Rungpore and Dinagepore for
non-payment were in many instances
of such a nature, that l would rather
wish to draw a veil over them than
Shock your feelings by the detail. But
that, however disagreed BILE the task
may be to myself, it is absolutely nee
essary for the sake of justice, human
ity and the honor of government that
they should be exposed, to be prevent
ed in future.
My lords, they began by winding
cords round the fingers of the unhappy
freeholders of those provinces, until
they chung to and were almost in
corporated with one another; and
then they hammered wedges of iron
between them, until, regardless of the
cries of the sufferers, they had bruised
to pieces, and forever crippled those
poor, honest, innocent laborious
hands, which had never been raised
to their mouths but with penurious
and scanty proportion of the fruits of /
their own soil; but those fruits denied
to the wants of their own children
have for more than fifteen years past
furnished the investment for our trade
with China, ard been sent annually
out, and without recompence, to pur-
chase for US that delicate meal, with
which your lordships, and all this au-
ditory, and all this country have be-
gun every day for these fifteen years
at their expense. To those beneficient
hands that labor for our benefit, the h
return of the British government has
been cords and wedges. But there is
q place where these crippled and dis
abled hands will act with resistless
power. What is it that they will not
publ down, when they are lifted to
Heaven against their oppressors? Then
what can Withstand such hands? Can
the power that crushed and destroyed
them? Powerful in prayer, let us at
least deprecate, and thus endeavor to
secure ourselves from the vengeance
which these mashed and disabled
hands may pull down upon us. My
iords, it is an awful consideration. Let
Us think of it,
Was it the ambition of Cecil Rhodes
to make o. the South African char
.ered company to Africa what the
East India company was to India
he instrument Of its conquest-the i
means of its subjugation to England?
And if so, will Europe permit the
scheme to be carried out?
INDIANA DECLARES FOR M'KINLEY.