THE EAST INDIA EXCRESCENCE. 



THE exposition of the ministerial plan for the future government 

 of our dominions in the eastern world., has been received with a satis- 

 faction, which only can arise from the still very imperfect knowledge 

 in this country of the political,, moral, commercial, and domestic con- 

 dition of the millions subjected to the Company's power. Believing, 

 as we do, that the government of our Leadenhall-street legislators has 

 been one of pure despotism towards the people of India, and that a 

 renewal of irresponsible arbitrary power over half the world ought 

 no longer to be entrusted to them, we purpose, in the following 

 remarks, to show our readers that such a system of tyranny, rapacity, 

 cruelty, extortion, extravagance, and waste, ought in these enlightened 

 days of reform, to be swept at once from the earth. 



We propose first to offer a few observations upon the revenues of 

 the East India Company. Our readers are doubtless aware that the 

 grand source of this revenue consists of the land tribute, which is 

 levied by virtue of the right of sovereignty, derived from the ancient 

 princes of India. It amounts to about sixty-two per cent, upon the 

 entire productions of the soil, and forms an annual income of sixteen 

 millions sterling. This immense land-tax is farmed out to certain 

 contractors, called Zemindars, who, in consideration of a stipulated 

 sum to be annually paid to the East India Company, are allowed to 

 assess at discretion, the ryots, or small cultivators, and peasantry of 

 the country. The presidency of Bengal alone possesses a system 

 of fixed and permanent taxation a blessing which originated with the 

 government of Lord Cornwallis, who, perceiving the destructive con- 

 sequences to all industry and prosperity of a tax, which, limited by 

 no law, left no security for property, prevented the accumulation of 

 agricultural capital, and laid waste whole districts of the most fertile 

 country in the world, procured, in 1793, under the sanction of an act 

 of parliament, the settlement of a permanent land revenue in Bengal. 

 In Madras, Bombay, and the Ceded Provinces, the arbitrary system 

 of assessment still prevails; and we consequently find that these por- 

 tions of the territory, containing a population of forty-five millions of 

 Subjects, present but one vast scene of misery, poverty, hunger, 

 neglected fields, gang robbery, insurrection, and all the crimes and 

 sufferings engendered by the hydra of despotic power. So degraded, 

 pauperized and wretched is the population in the districts subjected 

 to the fluctuating land-tax, and of so little value is property in a coun- 

 try where the utmost exertions of human labour are devoured by the 

 government, that a well-informed writer (Colonel Galloway) informs 

 us that the land bears no tangible price, agricultural capital there is 

 none, the dwelling of a ryot or peasant is not of the value in money 

 of a single rupee, or less than two shillings and sixpence sterling, and 

 the wages of the labourers, in the rice-fields and cotton-grounds, are 

 not quite equal to threepence per day. The collection of the fluctu- 

 ating land-tax we also find to amount to an enormous per centage 

 upon the gross revenue, and, in the presidency of Madras alone the 



