take the first fatal advance. He indeed makes him believe that his children's children are bound for his debt to the government; and his victim, ground by oppression to the last extremity, is forced to get his morsel of rice by selling the salt, which he had agreed to deliver to the agent, to smugglers. In some of the districts the evils of the system being well known to the European agent, he is obliged, in mercy, indirectly to encourage the sale of salt, by the Molungees, to smugglers, beyond the quantity they engage to deliver to him, as the only means of enabling the people to live, or to deliver to him what they had agreed to do. A great source of loss to government is the tendency of the Molungees to escape, in spite of the vigilance of the dewan; and as he is responsible for the advances made, in order to save himself, he reports a certain number carried away by tigers every year. It is well known that the tigers do carry off a few every year, but it is equally well known that nine-tenths of those reported to have been carried off by tigers have made their escape."

This is a terrible attack on the native agents, and I can offer no better reply to it than by quoting one of the salt darogahs inimitable letters, in which he thus removes the foul aspersion cast on his countrymen :

"SIR,-In my last I promised to endeavour to remove some of the odium which has been cast with so liberal a hand upon the native officers of the salt department. It is easily accounted for. The name of a monopoly is unpopular, with about as much reason in the present instance, as the name of witchcraft was sure to rouse wrath and red flames in your country about a century and a half ago. It was quite enough then to call an old woman a witch, and have her ducked in a standing pool. It is quite enough now to call a man a salt officer, consequently an agent in the salt monopoly; and if he is not immediately bespattered with all manner of dirty abuse by you liberal English, it is because the Europeans, generally, are imperfectly acquainted with the language of the country.

"Do not suppose, however, that I am going to challenge all mankind in defence of the impeccability of native officers of any description. It would truly be fighting for less than a shadow, for a shadow does exist, and we Bengallys are not a race who pride ourselves upon fighting for fighting's sake.

"I will, therefore, at once concede that native officers, as a body, are almost as bad as the Europeans were some sixty years ago, before

Crawfurd's Monopolies of the East-India Company, page 10.

their allowances were fixed on a liberal scale by the wise Earl Cornwallis. I say almost' advisedly, for few thannadars, aumeens, or salt darogahs can retire from the service with three or four crores of rupees, proceed to the Rajpoot states, build a palace or two, and take their seat in the national assembly of thakoors. Yet parallel cases were by no means rare amongst the Europeans of old, at a period when a member of council got two hundred pounds per annum, and another hundred, personal allowance, if he happened to write a good hand, or understand the mystery of book-keeping by single and double entry.

"Many of my countrymen used to abuse your ancestors sadly, on account of the little obliquities in their cash proceedings. And some of the young natives, being fiery and just from school, would have designated the female relations of the English by opprobrious names, and, moreover, expressed their detestation of their pecuniary errors by the application of shoe-soles and bamboos; but the elders and the more considerate part of the community said, 'Let them alone, poor fellows, they have no knowledge of Vishnoo; and besides they are very badly paid, which, in situations of great temptation, is a circumstance not favourable to honesty. Let them alone, and don't abuse their sisters; if ever they should be sufficiently remunerated, to place them beyond the necessity of being rogues for a livelihood, they will do very well.'

"Time has rolled on, and the prognostics of our ancestors have been fulfilled.

"In the circumference of the globe you will not, in all probability, find a body of men possessing so much power, exposed to so many temptations, yet so full of honourable feelings, so free from selfish considerations, so upright, and so truly conscientious in the discharge of their duties as the Indian civil service. The juniors, to be sure, do occasionally exhibit out-breaking of a noble impetuosity, and the seniors are apt (Bishop Heber says) to refuse chairs to the magnates of the land, and to treat with dignified disdain the rajahs and nawaubs whose country they have condescended to occupy; but great allowance must be made for national ferocity, and that granted, there can be no doubt but that the English civil servants in India are, to those beneath them, and in all their dealings, the most noble-minded, highspirited, upright, disinterested, and disagreeable beings in creation. Notwithstanding, however, my exalted opinion of the civil service, of its scrupulous honour and spotless integrity as a body, I fear I could scarcely hope to see it retain that high character if the salaries of its members were suddenly reduced to an equality with those granted to nazeirs of magistrates, cutcherries, sudder aumeems, ghaut officers, salt darogahs, and sherishtadars of all kinds. I do not speak confi

dently on this subject, as it is possible that the majority of the reduced would rather eat dried peas and wear doo-sootee breeches, than follow the example of their predecessors of old, but I confess I should not like to see the experiment tried.

"On the other hand, it would be but fair play to abstain from vituperating native officers generally, until they are placed above the reach of temptation; rather say, as our ancestors did of old, concerning your's, Poor fellows! their lights are not quite so bright as our's; their temptations are many, and their emoluments are small.' If any one thinks that such sentiments would be undignified in a Christian, I am a poor native, and will be glad to receive instruction on the subject. "In what I have written I have, I trust, made no reprehensible effort to whitewash native officers generally; my endeavour has been to shew why they are not so upright as others, whose meat and drink it is to abuse them.

"Distich.

"Oh, peacock! abuse not the crow. Were thy feathers on his back, he would be as handsome a bird as thou art; were his feathers on thy back, thou wouldst be as ill-favoured a bird as he is. The pot called the kettle blackguard; but he knew not how bright she would shine in the hands of the scourer.

"I admit that the native officers of government are not altogether unimpeachable on the score of integrity, though there are many, many noble exceptions to the rule; but I will not admit that the erroneous impressions which have led to a belief that the salt officers are worse than the others are at all founded in truth, for this one reason, if no other existed: they cannot be screened by their superiors, nor can they profit by keeping those superiors in the dark, because the investigation of their conduct is especially reserved for other tribunals.

"A gentleman in the civil service of the Honourable Company, upon the strength of living a few days in the Sunderbunds, and probably from not meeting with all the subserviency he expects from the salt officers, when he endeavours to carry his own official views into effect, to the detriment of that department whose interests they are appointed to watch over; this gentleman, I say, brings a sweeping accusation against all salt officers, asserting, amongst other things, that the dewan of the smallest salt agency appropriates to himself, at least, one lac of rupees annually; of course, the dewan of other larger agencies enjoy a proportionately enhanced rate of peculation.

"Now, although there are many modes of combating these vague opinions, I shall in refuting them confine myself to the very premises which the acute discoverer of abuses advances :

"If a dewan in the lowest agency receives one lac of rupees annually, the other native officers attached to the agency (of whom there

are no less than three hundred in a small one) must proportionably obtain two lacs to be divided among them. In an agency of the extent above named, the expense of government is about five lacs of rupees, including the price of the salt establishment, agent's commission, kalary rents, &c. &c. If, therefore, such a large sum as three lacs be abstracted, where would be the means of paying the Molungees for the manufacture of the salt? Will they supply it to government gratis? Unlike other government departments, there are no outstanding balances against the Molungees (with the exception of one aurung), as we see in the commercial department, where there are lacs upon lacs of outstanding balances, the realization of which will probably never take place; nevertheless, we hear nothing of the other departments, while abuse is not unsparingly bestowed on the native salt officers, who are looked on with a malignity only equalled by the fallacious views that dictated it. I only regret that the civil servant, already alluded to, should have left this country for England, before I have been enabled to convince him on what insufficient grounds his opinions were formed.

"Some more moderate gentlemen kindly state that only twentyfive per cent. is abstracted from the Molungees, for which extremely liberal opinion they are deserving of gratitude

"I shall, however, proceed to examine the basis of this allegement, which may be demonstrated to be incorrect on its own statement.

"Can it be supposed for an instant, that any class of people, however low in the scale of civilization, would, to the number of one million, submit, from year to year, for a long period, to such an imposition as the abstraction of twenty-five per cent. from their wages, without having brought it to the notice of the higher authorities?

"The advances to the Molungees are made in the presence of the salt agents, and the accounts settled also before them, and whatever balance is due to the manufacturers is paid to them at the same time; now it must be believed that any extortion occurring would be secret. I ask, then, is it to be credited, that these people would not come forward and present a petition to the agents? And if I may carry my supposition, for argument's sake, so far as to believe that the agents have connived at the Omlahs, will the Molungees not appeal to the higher authority of the Board of Customs of salt and opium? to the Governor General in Council, whose ears cannot be closed against such details? Government, also, with a view to provide against the extortion of the officers, have enacted a special regulation, LXIII. Section VI. Regulation X. of 1819,wherein it empowers the magistrate to refund to the Molungees any money that may have been extorted, and authorizes the infliction of the punishment of imprisonment for

six months of the extortioner, with a penalty to be levied, not exceeding five hundred rupees, and a dismissal from office.

"By a reference to the magisterial records, there will hardly a case be found where this sentence has been put in execution. Most of my European readers are conversant sufficiently with the habits of my countrymen to know that the lower orders of Hindoos are eager enough for the acquisition of one pice, and it is not at all likely that they would endure for a moment such an injustice with impunity. Observe how the ryots, for much less cause, are at variance with the indigo planters; and even in some districts magistrates, with all their power, are unable to prevent disputes, which arise principally from money transactions, of a less amount than that which the Molungees are said to be deprived of. I do not deny that there is a dustoree given to the native officers by the Molungees, but then it is of their own free will, and when they have manufactured a large quantity of salt; but this is a habit that exists in every other department, even in the service of the merchants; or if a private individual send a sircar to the bazar to purchase a piece of cloth or a ream of paper. This practice, however injurious it may be considered, has been so long established, that its prevention, I fear, would prove very difficult.

"In short, let any dispassionate and unprejudiced person consider the following facts, and he will probably arrive at a conclusion, that if the salt officers are not better, they are certainly not worse than other native officers, as it has been asserted and believed; believed, because as I have observed before, it is easier to credit an illnatured report than to inquire into its truth or falsehood.

"1st. The salt officers, when accused of extortion, have no opportunity to blind or take advantage of the favour of their immediate superior to stifle inquiry, for the case is not to be investigated by him but by a separate authority, armed with the highest judicial

power.

"2d. That authority not only punishes the offender, if found guilty, but is empowered to restore at once the money extorted from the injured party. Let any one consider this circumstance for a moment, and recollect that in all other departments, though the offender, being a public officer found guilty of extortion, is punished, yet the complainant must institute a separate suit for the recovery of the amount extorted.

"3d. The Molungees cannot be compelled to take advances in a manufacture. If the salt officers were extortionate, therefore, in the year 1233, there would be no manufacture in the year 1234; for it is mere folly to suppose that men would give up quietly, and for year after year, three-fifths of the price authorized to be paid to them for their salt, or even twenty-five per cent. on that sum.