natural monopoly requires no justification; one judiciously selected and regulated for the sake of the public revenue, like those of salt and opium, may be useful and unobjectionable; but one imposed for the benefit of individuals, be they few or many, cannot but be a nuisance and a grievance ;" p. 17.

In the event of the Company abandoning the present system, the native zemindars, who are proprietors of the salt lands, would inevitably do that which the author of the "Further Enquiry" deprecates, viz. create a private monopoly; this they would be enabled to do, by reason that many millions of their countrymen will only eat the Pungah salt, which is to be manufactured in particular spots; this fact is thus alluded to by the salt Darogah in one of his letters to me:

"Sir: In continuing my communications on the subject of the salt monopoly, I must pray of those who pay any attention to them always to keep in mind the following fact, namely, that the salt manufacture must have remained a species of monopoly, whether it continued in the hands of the zemindars, who alone possessed land favourably situated, or whether the right of using those lands for the same purpose was purchased from the original proprietors by Government. This can readily be understood by those who will hold in recollection two circumstances; first, that the Pungah salt is only to be manufactured in particular spots, and cannot be produced any where else; second, that the mass of the people will only eat that description of salt which is manufactured at those places, or, in other words, which includes some portion of the sacred Ganges in its composition: thus, therefore, the proprietors of the tracts alluded to can, with very little contrivance, maintain a monopoly which no importation could interfere with; because, as I have explained, the majority of the consumers will not, from a religious prejudice, eat imported salt.

"An attempt was lately made to establish a sub-monopoly by a rich fundholder purchasing the entire amount of salt put up for sale. Such an endeavour, in the present state of the salt system, can only involve the experimentalist in ruin; but had it been in the power of any individual or company to employ a similar capital in the purchase or hire of the lands on which salt is produced, and, owing to the

improvidence of the zemindars, such an arrangement would be far from difficult to great capitalists, a true monopoly would have been established, unsoftened and unredeemed by one atom of that anxiety which a government must naturally feel to combine as far as possible, and for its own sake, the comfort of the subject with the realization of the public revenue.

"It may be said that the holders of the salt lands would produce as much of the article as possible, for their own profits' sake; but this supposition involves another, viz. that my countrymen would be influenced by the reasons which actuate Mr. Huskisson or Mr. Mill. So far from increasing the produce and adding to the comforts of the people by raising the utmost revenue upon the largest possible quantity of salt, the zemindars, it may be fairly assumed, with reference to the notions and habits of that class generally, would have endeavoured to raise the same revenue upon the smallest possible quantity of salt, both from indifference to the general comfort, and because their outlay, their trouble, and their risk would be in every respect less.

"It is a bold thing to assert, but I, as a native, will venture to say, that all the principles of political economy, though seemingly based on those of nature, are not applicable in this country, as society now exists in it. I will offer a case in point, and then proceed with my disquisition on the salt revenue. An eminent shipbuilder in this city, imagining that he should expedite the operations of his workmen at a period when business was pressing, by paying them by the job or piece, instead of by the day, introduced that mode of remuneration, on a liberal scale, in his dock-yard. What was his astonishment at the end of a week, to discover that less work had been done by men who could remunerate themselves according to their own pleasure, and at the expense of a little extra attention to it, than by the same individuals when paid at a fixed weekly salary. Such a circumstance would scarcely be credited in England, where the principal objection to paying labourers by the job or piece has been, that they would overwork themselves, to the immediate injury of their health, and the destruction of their future prospects. This fact may not appear altogether applicable to the subject I am discussing; but I advert to it to shew that opinions which have become infallibly axioms in Europe, are not to be relied on in India." SALT DAROGAH.

The assertion thus made by the salt darogah is corroborated by the Hon. Andrew Ramsay; in his evidence before the Lords, 29th April 1830, he says, "the salt lands are possessed by the zemindars generally, as their property,

so that if the Company were to give up the monopoly, the land would fall into the possession of men who would have the sole power of making salt ;* in the district where I was the lands were generally possessed by two people, the Rajah of Tumlook and the Rajah of Mysadul; I paid a sum every month to these people of about five or six thousand rupees, as a remuneration for the lands that were appropriated to the salt manufacture." "The natives do not complain of the monopoly; I conceive it would be a very dangerous experiment to try its abolition, the monopoly would fall into the hands of some persons."

With respect to the Pungah or sacred salt, which is so eagerly sought at the Calcutta sales, but which Mr. Crawfurd looks to supplanting by means of Liverpool salt, Mr. Ramsay observes, "many natives of high caste would rather starve than eat the salt from this country; no Hindoo of good caste would eat any thing from on board ship. Mr. Crawfurd, with a despotism which is highly characteristic of liberalism in the present age, would prevent the natives of Bengal using that which is " produced by boiling the dirty and slimy brine of the pestiferous marshes at the estuary of the Ganges;" but it is correctly observed by the Honourable Mr. Ramsay, when asked by the Lords Committee if the salt made at the estuaries of the Ganges is "to be compared with the salt eaten in this country ?" "I think," said Mr. Ramsay, "it is very far superior,"

* The general tenor of the testimony before Parliament is, that it would be impossible to substitute an excise for the existing system, at least for the present. The immense establishment which would be required for the prevention of smuggling would cost more than the revenue from salt would yield. Mr. Crawfurd, to be sure, says, in one part of his pamphlet, that the Bengallies are too timid (p. 50) a race to become smugglers; but in another place he asserts that smuggling in salt is now carried on to a frightful extent (p. 30), and he desires a return of the persons prosecuted for this offence, and condemned to hard labour or banishment.

+ Monopolies of the East-India Company, p. 9.

66

(3448). "In what respects ?" "It is not so bitter as the English salt" (3449). "Is it better than our refined salt?” "I should think better than any European salt." From chemical analysis I am enabled to substantiate this evidence; the salt of Bengal containing much less, indeed scarcely any of the sulphurate of soda, or bitter principle, which is so largely mixed up in the English, and even in the bay salt of the Coromandel or Malabar coast; this Mr. Crawfurd admits in a certain degree, though he errs in assigning the just reason; he says, "the natives of Bengal, for the most part, have a prejudice against the bay salt of Coromandel, on account, in some degree, of its want of pungency and strength, but probably still more from its want of whiteness, and from the largeness of its crystals, and consequent unfitness for culinary purposes."* The just preference of the Bengallees for a pure salt, Mr. Crawfurd, with his usual ingeniousness, turns into a prejudice; and with his general inconsistency he alleges, that "the Indians of Bengal, from time immemorial, have never had any thing but dear and bad salt, and to say, therefore, that they have no taste for what is good, and what is cheap, is sheer absurdity;"+ immediately after he declares, that "a bushel of Coromandel bay salt is worth, at the monopoly sales in Calcutta, 4s. 11d.; a bushel of Bengal salt is worth 58. 8d. ; of Cuttack salt, which is whiter than ordinary Bengal salt, and in a good measure also obtained by boiling, 6s.; and of Arracan salt, which is the whitest of all, and entirely procured by boiling, 68. 14d. ;" and yet in another page he asserts that the salt sold by the Company is "an ugly compound which a respectable farmer in this country would not give to his hogs." But from Mr. Crawfurd's own shewing it appears, that the natives have a prejudice in favour of the Company's salt, and that they will even give

*

Page 40.

+ Page 35.

+ Page 14.

a higher price for it than for the large crystallized bay salt of Coromandel !* If Mr. Crawfurd had his will he would take care that the Hindoos should use no salt but that made by his friends at Liverpool; but of this anon. Lest this worthy advocate of the natives of India, who would throw one million of Bengallees out of employment for the sake of his European compeers, should fail in one point of attack, he has, like a good general, other reserves in store; the first I shall notice is, the "abominable oppression of the Molunghees (salt manufacturers) in Bengal, by the dewans or native agents," who, it is said, "exercise oppressions, horrible beyond any thing;"+ the horrible oppressions are thus detailed :

"Whenever a ryot (cultivator) in the salt districts [what! Mr. Crawfurd, will ryots voluntarily live in the swampy, slimy, pestiferous salt marshes to be eaten up by tigers ?] becomes so much embarrassed as to be able to go on no longer without extraordinary aid, he is tempted by the salt agent's dewan to take the Company's advances for salt. Woe be to him, for from that moment he is a bondsman for life, without the possibility of extrication! By cheating him in the weight of the salt delivered, and squeezing him in various ways, he is made invariably to fall short of his deliveries by his contract; further extortions are made for the pretended concealment of this, and usurious interest charged till the following season, when, from the advances of the latter, the debts of the former are deducted. It is easy to see to what a state of dependence and abject slavery the dewan soon reduces the unfortunate wretch whose necessities induced him to

* Mr. Holt Mackenzie says, in his evidence during the present year, "In the salt or opium department, I confess I greatly doubt the expediency of any considerable change of system." I will say nothing in the present work on the opium monopoly as it is called; it is in fact a tax levied on the Chinese consumer of the drug, and is at present in a precarious state; the system of levying a duty at Bombay on the exportation of the article, has failed in a revenue point of view; whether it will be possible to keep up the Bengal system while Bombay is so differently situated, is another question. I had intended to examine the financial state of the East-India Company, but was necessitated to defer entering on so elaborate a subject at the conclusion of a work thus unavoidably complex and long.

+ Page 10.