THE EAST INDIA COMPANY.

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way of uttering itself. It was the most conclusive proof that could be given of the doctrine that the true aristocracy of England had been choked by boroughmongering; for it was by boroughmongering that the West India interest had held its position. Mr. Burke in his best years had shrunk from a contest with the supporters of slavery; they were too strong in Parliament to be dealt with by the Rockingham Whigs. Mr. Pitt, in the fulness of his sovereignty, dared not set the fortunes of his Ministry on the issue of a battle with that magnificent league of planters and merchants. As soon as the venal boroughs were destroyed, Mr. Stanley took pebbles from the brook and overthrew the giant.

XLIV.

BESIDES the Irish clergy and the West Indian planters, there was a third body of proprietors for which the Grey Cabinet had to make a new scheme. This body was a real corporation, a joint-stock company, whose existence was indisputable, whose rights were embodied in public and intelligible documents.

The East India Company was not a society once for all formed by a deed or charter, professing to be immortal, fixed in structure, incapable of organic change; such might have been its character had it stuck to trade. In trading with the inhabitants of India the Company had been for a hundred and

338

METHOD OF FURTHERING TRADE.

twenty years compelled to turn factories into forts, and servants into garrisons; so far it resembled the Hudson's Bay Company, which employed armed men to guard its peltry in North America; each society was obliged, in default of a protecting sovereign, to defend itself. But India, unlike North America, was during the eighteenth century a land in which there was much regular industry, and therefore much competition for the privilege of ruling, that is to say, of plundering under the semblance of reigning. So it came to pass that the English traders were not content with guarding their warehouses; they were drawn into the game of bargaining for privilege. one time they bought a piece of land so as to keep native chieftains a little further from their ships; at another time they lent their mercenary soldiers to a ruffian who wished to drive off some other ruffian, and they were requited with territory or with the concession of a right to gather taxes over a district in the name of a remote sovereign.

At

All these operations were carried on in the furtherance of trade. Every step they took helped them to push their imported wares in the markets. A man who collected the revenue of a monarch had a better chance than others of buying the country's produce when he wanted it, and at a price convenient to himself; he could easily show his London employers that he was getting them customers, and he could meanwhile enrich himself by lending money at Oriental rates. Every step taken into the heart of the country was an extension not merely of the Company's trade, and

MODIFICATION OF CHARTER.

339

the agent's usury, but also of patronage; for there were more clerks wanted at every step. The patronage became so comfortable as to attract politicians in London and in Edinburgh. The transactions were so vast that the Company was assumed to be making great profits, although the wealth that flowed from India was really the wealth of individuals got by adventures of all sorts, rather than the surplus on the Company's balance-sheet.

For the sake of the Madras establishment the State had waged war with France; and part of the national debt was fairly imputed to these wars. Therefore the State, when beset with foes and creditors, turned to the Company for money. Hence the necessity for modifying the company's charter in 1784. The rival politicians, Mr. Fox and Mr. Pitt, agreed in wishing to give the State a share of the profits and of the patronage, to strengthen the Exchequer by drawing a contribution, to strengthen the Crown and the Government offices by taking, for patronage, some of the salaries which the Directors of the Company paid to Britons. But they did not attempt to discriminate between the two functions of the Company-its trade, and its jurisdiction. In 1784 it was more like a ruler than a merchant; but no one could say where the merchant ended and the ruler began.

Twenty years later, when the lease had to be renewed by Parliament, it had been at least ascertained that the Company had no money to spare; all it received went to pay dividends on its capital, after paying its military and civil servants; and it had

340

MAGNITUDE OF RESOURCES.

increased the capital-that is. had borrowed money, admitting more shareholders, or, in other words, fastening on its Indian revenues more British encumbrancers. It had strengthened the Government at home by furnishing the Presidents of the Board of Control, its dignified and amiable guides, with enough writerships and cadetships to buy many Scottish, perhaps some English, votes in Parliament; its durable conquests had kept up the spirits of the nation which elsewhere lavished stores and lives on mere expeditions. If it had traded briskly, its imports would have handsomely swelled the British Custom-houses, and the duties levied thereon would have supported the Treasury with more cash than could have been asked for by way of direct tribute. But it had not traded briskly. It had ships enough to furnish employment for Surcouf the corsair, and for the English captains who recaptured from Surcouf. It had some ships so big and so well equipped as to form line of battle and daunt a French admiral. Its docks were part of the glory of London. It had warehouses for many chests of tea which were fetched through stormy waters not yet patrolled by royal cruisers; there were sometimes empty tea chests belonging to the Company's servants, who filled them with things yet more costly than tea, and took advantage of their position to do some lucrative smuggling.

But the Company made nothing, or at least could not prove that it made anything, by any other branch of trade than the China trade; and through twenty years of manufacturing and distributing enterprise

OPENING OF TRAFFIC WITH INDIA.

341

the monopoly still retained by the Company kept down the exportation of British goods to India within a yearly million's worth.

In these days, although by law three thousand tons of shipping were set aside for the use of private traders, this space was not always filled by the goods of private traders. For such adventurers, even if under licences granted, or by settling in Calcutta on false pretences, they got a footing in the Company's dominions, were, or thought they were, hampered by regulations, by caprice, and by the favoured competition of the functionaries.1

The modern division of labour between the carrier of goods by sea, the merchant who pays for freight without owning ships, and the underwriters who insure goods, or ships, or both, was in contrast with the ancient method of the Company which owned and armed the ships in which it bore its own commodities. To the cry of the modern adventurers, on the eve of the great peace when the world's rivalry was to break in upon them, the Liverpool Ministers granted, with some drawbacks, the opening of traffic with India; and in six years the value of exports from Britain to India increased threefold; the Directors held tightly to their monopoly in Canton,

1 For instance, a lawyer practising in Calcutta sent for a young cousin offering to start him in business; the lad's friends had to curry favour with a lady of fashion, and she with a high official, to beg of a Director a cadetship or commission in the Company's army. As a cadet he could get a passage for 100l. in a Company's ship (the profits going to the skipper), and on getting to Calcutta he did not apply for military employment, but went into a cotton factory, by connivance. If such a smuggled settler took to growing crops he had to get the land in the name of a native.