A parliamentary paper, drawn up by the sub-committee of Parliament in 1832, on the revenues of India, gives "the annual contribution of each individual in Bengal, Bahar, and Orissa, to the salt revenue, at tenpence, "* that is, less than one penny per month! But even this trifling amount is evidently too high, for the calculation of the Parliamentary sub-committee is partly founded on the annual wages of a labourer being only forty-five shillings, whereas, if the evidence of Rammohun Roy had been referred to, it would have been seen that it is at the very least three rupees per month, or seventy-two shillings per annum. By calculations which I made in India, but which I have left in that country, it was proved, that the tax per head in Bengal is not more than three farthings monthly. Mr. Crawfurd admits that the duty per head from the monopoly' in Madras and Bengal is but sixpence per annum ! It is evident, therefore, that the motive of this writer, in his virulent pamphlet on the Company's salt revenue, was not from any good feeling towards the Hindoos, of whom he says, that "to have eaten another's salt,' is in the Eastern languages the only expression by which allegiance and gratitude are acknowledged; for neither the genius of the Oriental languages, nor the genius of the Oriental people, is remarkable for exuberance in this particular;"+ but from a desire to supplant the domestic manufacture of Bengal and Madras, by importations of salt from Liverpool! "In America," says this partizan politician, "the manufacture of domestic salt is encouraged by imposing a protecting duty on the imported article, a case too

6

• Vide Revenue Paper for 1832, No. 2.

+ Monopolies of the East-India Company, p. 22. Methinks a little "gratitude" on Mr. Crawfurd's part for the handsome salary which he is still enjoying, a considerable part of which has been contributed by "Oriental people," (of whom Dwarkanaut Tagore is one), would not have been amiss. Mr. Crawfurd cares as little for the Hindoos, as he does for the kangaroos of New Holland.

6

absurd to be supposed in legislating for Bengal ;"* but according to Mr. Crawfurd's own evidence, what has been the result of this absurd' legislation in America? Why, that Jonathan is nearly independent of Liverpool salt, which he formerly imported to a great extent, and is now exporting his domestic salt' to many places;+ but says Mr. Crawfurd, the "offensive contrast between the conduct of the United States of America and the British commercial administration deserves to be noticed;" he would have, in fact, he plainly says, "a free trade in salt" between England and India. Not content with throwing several million of weavers out of employment by the produce of the steam cotton looms of Lancashire, Mr. Crawfurd would now deprive a million of Bengal salt manufacturers of their livelihood; and all this while England imposes a duty of ninepence per lb. on the coffee grown by the Hindoos, and places a virtual prohibition on the importation of their sugar into England; if this be not "free trade" with a vengeance, it would be impossible to say what is!

Pray, sir, what do you take the Hindoos for? Are they not men, with human feelings, human passions, and human wants? is not their blood red? if you tickle them will they not laugh? if you oppress them will they not resent it ? Your Government has imposed on their produce prohibitory duties, while it has, I grieve to say, made use of its power to supplant every branch of exports manufactured

* Mr. McCulloch says, that previous to the duty on salt in England, the tax was "forty times the cost of the salt!" He thinks £1,000,000 sterling might be beneficially derived from a salt-tax in England.— Dict. p. 924.

This has been the case with every article on which America has laid a protecting duty; even glass is now being exported from the States to England. I need scarcely refer to the article of cotton goods, with which America used formerly to be entirely supplied from England, being at present an extensive article of export from America!

ago,

per cent. on

except one article, which it could not get so good nor so cheap elsewhere, indigo; their very raw cotton would have had a halfpenny per pound imposed on it, a few months but for the fear that America might ere long be at war with England,* and thus give a powerful check to the cotton manufactures of Great Britain. You desire to export your Liverpool salt duty free to India; will you admit the sugar of Bengal duty-free into England? You complain of the Indian government imposing a duty of three or four hundred per cent. on the prime cost of English machine-made salt; but, sir, the Hindoos exclaim and protest against your imposing so enormous a duty as 150 per cent. on their sugar, and 1,100 per cent. on their rum; 500 their rhubarb; 600 per cent. on assafoetida; nearly 400 per cent. on their coffee; 400 per cent. on their pepper; 3,000 per cent. on an essential oil; 1,400 per cent. on coculus indicus;-I need not refer to other articles; look at p. 130 of this work, and observe the manner in which the Hindoos are treated as compared with the West-Indians. Since 1814, your free-trader has not only supplanted the Indian weaver in the sale of £2,000,000 worth of cotton goods in England, but it has deprived him of treble that sum in the supply of his own and other countries; but while thus beggaring millions, you have prevented them earning a subsistence in preparing the produce of their soil for the English markets; and in addition to this, you would now throw a million of salt manufacturers out of employment, without caring where they were to find bread! Is this what you call "free-trade ?" Is this what your Glasgow weavers and Liverpool salt-owners aim at, when they proclaim "down with the East-India Company's monopoly !"

Englishmen have long been told that they are as

She has rejected the award of the Dutch Monarch respecting the boundary question!

generous, disinterested, and high-minded people as any in the world; he is not their real friend who silently acquiesces in this eulogy, if they persist in their present measures towards India. In looking back through the long vista of commercial history, who can discern any thing by which Great Britain deserves being ranked as a nation totally uninfluenced by selfish considerations. She followed the protecting policy of Colbert and of the Dutch, until she saw the tables were being turned on her throughout Europe; and then under Mr. Huskisson made a merit of necessity, and became the advocate of a free-trade policy; thus what she did to save herself, she has been praised for as if it were solely with liberal feelings. In the blindness of commercial or national jealousy she warred with France,* and spent her best blood and treasure in curbing the liberties and rivetting the chains of nations. She put down every species of manufacture in America, even to the making of a hat or nail, until persecution drove those provinces into rebellion, and England became the instrument, through that Divine Providence which causes good to arise from evil, of creating a magnificent republic: let this be a warning to her respecting India! I admit that a dawn is bursting on a new, and a happier, and a holier prospect; that, in a greater proportion than in other parts of Europe, it is illumining the understandings of Englishmen; it has given pulsation to cold and sinking human nature; it acts upon men's hearts, and they grow warm and expand; it suffuses the light of a new existence over their

* England may well curse the perverted talents of Burke, and deplore the prejudices of his sovereign.

† What a difference between the people of this country at the beginning of the present century and at the present moment! Foreigners who may wish to ascertain the existing feelings of Britons, may find them represented in the speeches at the Abingdon dinner (Times, Aug. 17, 1832); or they could not find a more concentrated typification of the same, than in the manly, judicious, and eloquent language which characterizes the leading journal of the empire.

souls,—Liberty, political, religious, or commercial,* is the spirit it has awakened,—already her voice resounds along the hills and through the vallies of Albion, and, with her flag, is swept over the ocean to the uttermost bounds of the earth. Conscious as I am that this mighty and universal spirit is now stirring, and agitating, and breaking the manacles of nations, I am compelled to feel the more keenly for the Hindoos, and to deprecate, perhaps with too much warmth, the mercantile policy heretofore pursued, and which in the article of salt is still urged for adoption. If India were placed on the footing of Ireland, and a free interchange of commodities were allowed between both countries, as if no wave rolled between them, then indeed might the less orthodox Hindoos be disposed to receive English salt for Indian sugar; but as matters now stand, it would be adding insult to injury to expect them quietly, or at least unmurmuringly, to submit to the annihilation of the last remaining branch of their domestic manufactures.

By the first, I do not mean that species of political freedom which is wrung from a government by necessity in order to avoid revolution; nor can the second be considered toleration when it is withheld until civil war is on the wing; and least of all can the third deserve the lofty appellation of "free-trade," when the freedom is all on one side, when the strongest wields a despotic power in efforts for selfaggrandizement at the expense of the weaker nation.