were the people who stood accused by the Company's agents as pretending grievances, in order to be excused the payment of their balances. As to the commercial state of the province in general, Mr. Rouse represents it "to be for those two years a perpetual scene of complaint and disputation;—the Company's agents professing to pay higher rates to weavers, whilst the Leadenhall sales showed an heavy loss to the Company; the weavers have even travelled in multitudes to prefer their complaints at the Presidency; the amount of the investment comparatively small, with balances comparatively large, and, as I understand, generally contested by the weavers; the native merchants, called delâls, removed from their influence, as prejudicial to the Company's concerns; and European merchants complaining against undue influence of the Company's commercial agents, in preventing the free purchase even of those goods which the Company never takes."
The spirit of those agents will be fully comprehended from a state of the proceedings before Mr. Rouse and Council, on the complaint of a Mr. Cree, an English free merchant at Dacca, who had been twice treated in the same injurious manner by the agents of Mr. Hurst, the Commercial Chief at that place. On his complaint to the board of the seizure of the goods, and imprisonment of his agents, Mr. Hurst was called upon for an explanation. In return he informed them that he had sent to one of the villages to inquire concerning the matter of fact alleged. The impartial person sent to make this inquiry was the very man accused of the oppressions into which he was sent to examine. The answer of Mr. Hurst is in an high and determined tone. He does not deny that there are some instances of abuse of power. "But I ask," says he, "what authority can guard against the conduct of individuals? but that a single instance cannot be brought of a general depravity." Your Committee have reason to believe these coercive measures to have been very general, though employed according to the degree of resistance opposed to the monopoly; for we find at one time the whole trade of the Dutch involved in the general servitude. But it appears very extraordinary that nothing but the actual proof of a general abuse could affect a practice the very principle of which tends to make the coercion as general as the trade. Mr. Hurst's reflection concerning the abuse of authority is just, but in this case it is altogether inapplicable; because the complaint was not of the abuse, but of the use of authority in matters of trade, which ought to have been free. He throws out a variety of invidious reflections against the Council, as if they wanted zeal for the Company's service; his justification of his practices, and his declaration of his resolution to persevere in them, are firm and determined,—asserting the right and policy of such restraints, and laying down a rule for his conduct at the factory, which, he says, will give no cause of just complaint to private traders. He adds, "I have no doubt but that they have hitherto provided investments, and it cannot turn to my interest to preclude them now, though I must ever think it my duty to combat the private views of individuals who set themselves up as competitors under that very body under whose license and indulgence only they can derive their privilege of trade: all I contend for is the same influence my employers have ever had." He ends by declining any reply to any of their future references of this nature.
The whole of this extraordinary letter is inserted in the Appendix, No. 51,—and Mr. Rouse's minute of observations upon it in Appendix, No. 52, fully refuting the few pretexts alleged in that extraordinary performance in support of the trade by influence and authority. Mr. Hollond, one of the Council, joined Mr. Rouse in opinion that a letter to the purport of that minute should be written; but they were overruled by Messrs. Purling, Hogarth, and Shakespeare, who passed a resolution to defer sending any reply to Mr. Hurst: and none was ever sent. Thus they gave countenance to the doctrine contained in that letter, as well as to the mischievous practices which must inevitably arise from the exercise of such power. Some temporary and partial relief was given by the vigorous exertions of Mr. Rouse; but he shortly after removing from that government, all complaints were dropped.
It is remarkable, that, during the long and warm contest between the Company's agents and the dealers of Dacca, the Board of Trade seem to have taken a decided part against the latter. They allow some sort of justice in the complaints of the manufacturers with regard to low valuation, and other particulars; but they say, that, "although" (during the time of preëmption) "it appears that the weavers were not allowed the same liberty of selling to individuals they before enjoyed, our opinion on the whole is, that these complaints have originated upon the premeditated designs of the delâls [factors or brokers] to thwart the new mode of carrying on the Company's business, and to render themselves necessary." They say, in another place, that there is no ground for the dissatisfactions and difficulties of the weavers: "that they are owing to the delâls, whose aim it is to be employed."
This desire of being employed, and of rendering themselves necessary, in men whose only business it is to be employed in trade, is considered by the gentlemen of the board as no trivial offence; and accordingly they declare, "they have established it as an invariable rule, that, whatever deficiency there might be in the Dacca investment, no purchase of the manufactures of that quarter shall be made for account of the Company from private merchants. We have passed this resolution, which we deem of importance, from a persuasion that private merchants are often induced to make advances for Dacca goods, not by the ordinary chance of sale, but merely from an expectation of disposing of them at an enhanced price to the Company, against whom a rivalship is by this manner encouraged"; and they say, "that they intend to observe the same rule with respect to the investment of other of the factories from whence similar complaints may come."
This positive rule is opposed to the positive directions of the Company to employ those obnoxious persons by preference. How far this violent use of authority for the purpose of destroying rivalship has succeeded in reducing the price of goods to the Company has been made manifest by the facts before stated in their place.
The recriminatory charges of the Company's agents on the native merchants have made very little impression on your Committee. We have nothing in favor of them, but the assertion of a party powerful and interested. In such cases of mutual assertion and denial, your Committee are led irresistibly to attach abuse to power, and to presume that suffering and hardship are more likely to attend on weakness than that any combination of unprotected individuals is of force to prevail over influence, power, wealth, and authority. The complaints of the native merchants ought not to have been treated in any of those modes in which they were then treated. And when men are in the situation of complainants against unbounded power, their abandoning their suit is far from a full and clear proof of their complaints being groundless. It is not because redress has been rendered impracticable that oppression does not exist; nor is the despair of sufferers any alleviation of their afflictions. A review of some of the most remarkable of the complaints made by the native merchants in that province is so essential for laying open the true spirit of the commercial administration, and the real condition of those concerned in trade there, that your Committee observing the records on this subject and at this period full of them, they could not think themselves justifiable in not stating them to the House.
Your Committee have found many heavy charges of oppression against Mr. Barwell, whilst Factory Chief at Dacca; which oppressions are stated to have continued, and even to have been aggravated, on complaint at Calcutta. These complaints appear in several memorials presented to the Supreme Council of Calcutta, of which Mr. Barwell was a member. They appeared yet more fully and more strongly in a bill in Chancery filed in the Supreme Court, which was afterwards recorded before the Governor-General and Council, and transmitted to the Court of Directors.
Your Committee, struck with the magnitude and importance of these charges, and finding that with regard to those before the Council no regular investigation has ever taken place, and finding also that Mr. Barwell had asserted in a Minute of Council that he had given a full answer to the allegations in that bill, ordered a copy of the answer to be laid before your Committee, that they might be enabled to state to the House how far it appeared to them to be full, how far the charges were denied as to the fact, or, where the facts might be admitted, what justification was set up. It appeared necessary, in order to determine on the true situation of the trade and the merchants of that great city and district.
The
