Book I, Chapter 8: Coffee, Sugar, and Cotton

CHAPTER VIII

COFFEE, SUGAR, AND COTTON

THE year 1848 was a year of political revolutions among the nations of Europe. France expelled her king and established her Second Republic. Germany showed her impatience of the despotism of petty princes by insurrectionary movements, and secured important constitutions. Italy declared a premature war against Austria, established a republic at Rome in pursuance of the ideas of Mazzini, and made her first great but unsuccessful effort to secure national independence. Austria witnessed an insurrection at Vienna, and Hungary rose under the valiant and patriotic Kossuth. In Ireland the continuous agitation for the repeal of the Union led to a rebellion. Everywhere there were indications of the passing away of the old order of things, and the rise of popular institutions and popular power.

Side by side with these political movements there was much commercial and agricultural distress in Europe. In England the contest between the landed classes who wished to keep up the price of corn, and the manufacturing and working classes who wanted cheap bread, was decided by the repeal of the corn laws in 1846. A great impetus was thus given to British manufactures; and the vague dream of a self-contained empire dawned on the minds of the people. Was it possible to make England independent of foreign nations? Was it possible to obtain her supplies from her own dependencies? Indian tea was slowly replacing China tea; was it possible for India to produce the necessary supply of coffee? Sugar plantations in the West Indies had declined after the emancipation of slaves; was it possible for India to supply sugar for the consumption of Great Britain? American cotton fed the looms of Lancashire; was it possible for India to supply that raw material to the extent required? Parliamentary inquiries were made.

SUGAR AND COFFEE COMMITTEE.

A Select Committee of the House of Commons was appointed in 1848, with Lord George Bentinck as the Chairman, to inquire into the condition and prospects of “Sugar and Coffee Planting in Her Majesty’s East and West Indian Possessions and the Mauritius.” The Committee examined many witnesses, and submitted their evidence with eight reports, covering over two thousand printed folio pages. Lord Palmerston was the first witness examined, but had little to say directly about the trade of India. John Bagshaw, a Member of Parliament, was examined on the same day, and dwelt at length on the many disadvantages under which India suffered in competing with other British Possessions.

“First: Three millions sterling and upward annually taken from the revenue of India towards the payment of the Home Charges of the East India Company, without any return whatever;

“Second: Fortunes accumulated in India by the Civil and Military Services, seldom if any remaining in that country annually increase the capital of Great Britain from the resources of India;

“Third: The well-known fact that of the revenue raised in British India, the largest portion of it is from the land, by which its produce is necessarily burdened; this amounts to nearly thirteen and a half millions sterling;

“Fourth: The difficulties which importers are subject to from the way in which duties are levied at the Custom Houses of England.”¹

John Bagshaw deplored the extinction of the cotton manufactures of India within the preceding thirty years. In 1816–17 “India not only clothed the whole of that vast population, but exported £1,659,438 worth of goods.” Thirty years later the whole of this export had disappeared, and India imported four millions sterling of cotton goods. “The people of India might buy British manufactures which were imported into India at a duty of 2½ per cent., but the manufacturers of India were entirely precluded from getting their goods into consumption here by the prohibitory duty which was exacted.”

Sugar was not produced in England, and some healthy change in the tariffs with regard to this article had therefore been permitted. The result was marked and instantaneous. “There has been no instance of such growth,” said Bagshaw, quoting from an Indian newspaper, “in any article of commerce at any preceding period. There has been no development of the resources of India to be compared with this sudden increase. Last year we [India] supplied England with one-fourth the sugar she consumed; and there can be no doubt that India would in time be able to supply the whole of the home demand.” It is needless to add that this hope was never realised; and sugar manufacture declined during the last half of the nineteenth century with almost every other manufacture.

Colonel Sykes, a distinguished Director of the East India Company, had carefully studied Indian facts and figures. He spoke of the Economic Drain from India of £3,300,000 to £3,700,000 a year, and remarked truly: “It is only by the excess of exports over imports that India can bear this tribute.” Henry St. John Tucker, then Chairman of the East India Company, said that this Economic Drain was an increasing quantity, “because our Home Charge is perpetually increasing.”² The expression of regret from the Chairman of the Company was no doubt genuine, but brought no redress. A cynic might remark that, as the flow of wealth from India to England increased in volume, England paid back the debt by copious streams of sympathy and regrets.

Nathaniel Alexander, an East Indian merchant, dwelt on the great increase in the consumption of Indian sugar in England, but spoke guardedly on its future prospects. The Indian sugar trade had been profitable before 1846, but had not been so latterly; and if that trade declined it was difficult to conceive how the country would draw its annual tribute from India. “I may say generally,” said the witness, “that up to 1847 the imports [of India] were about £6,000,000, and the exports about £9,500,000. The difference is the tribute which the Company received from the country, which amounts to about £4,000,000.”³

Both Alexander and Sir George Larpent, of whom we have spoken in the last chapter, pointed out to the Committee that, while the West Indies and the Mauritius were mainly sugar-producing countries, India was mainly a sugar-consuming country, and exported only a small portion of her annual produce of sugar. India, therefore, could never compete with other countries in exporting sugar for any length of time. “The equalisation of duties in 1836,” Larpent said, “became profitable solely because the quantity from the West Indies had, during that period, greatly declined, from 200,000 tons, I think, in the year 1831, to 110,000 tons in 1840 and 1841. It was that which gave an impulse to India and a profit to India; it is nothing but the high prices of sugar here that can lead to a profitable exportation from India.”⁴

More than one witness deposed that the system of assessing land, according to their estimated value, had the effect of discouraging the cultivation of valuable products like sugar. The Chairman of the East India Company, Henry St. George Tucker, said: “Sir Thomas Munro’s plan was to obtain as much revenue from the country as possible; and he assessed different articles of produce according to his idea of their probable value. He raised the assessment upon articles which were expected to be very productive. Whether he succeeded or failed in that I will not undertake to say, because a reduction of the produce may have taken place from other causes; but certainly in consequence of this assessment upon sugar, I think a very great check and discouragement was given to the cultivation of the article in the Madras territory.”⁵

Robert Christian, a coffee planter of Ceylon, gave an interesting account of the commencement of coffee plantation in that island.

“It was about 1837 when we first embarked; the inducements were in a great measure the falling off of the production of coffee in the West India Islands, and the large protecting duty which British plantation coffee then enjoyed; and the high prices, of course consequent upon those circumstances.” Previous to this the people of Ceylon grew coffee, and exported the article without the help of European capital or agency. In 1838 Ceylon exported to England 2500 tons of coffee, grown entirely by the people of the island. Nine years later, the crop of 1847 was 12,482 tons, of which 7173 tons were grown by the Cingalese and 5309 tons by European planters.⁶

In their concluding report, the Select Committee dwelt on the great distress and loss caused to sugar plantations by the emancipation of slaves, and the difficulty of obtaining free labour; and they recommended a differential duty of 10s. in favour of sugar, the produce of British possessions.

COTTON COMMITTEE.

A more important Select Committee was appointed in the same year to inquire into the growth of cotton in India. India was known from ancient times for her cotton fabrics with which she had supplied the markets of Asia and of Europe. And when England, with the help of her power looms and her protective tariffs, had suppressed that industry, the hope was still entertained that India would continue to grow the raw material required for the factories of Lancashire. Endeavours were therefore made to extend and improve the growth of cotton in India, with the idea that Great Britain would thereby have both the raw material and the manufacture in her own hands, and be thus independent of America and other foreign countries. The Select Committee, which was appointed in 1848, was therefore entrusted with a task of the very highest importance; and one of the most illustrious men of England was the chairman of the Committee. John Bright, who had already won distinction as the colleague of Cobden in the agitation which led to the repeal of the Corn Laws, was in the chair; and it was in the course of this inquiry that he obtained that intimate knowledge of Indian affairs, which marked his public utterances during the rest of his life. It may be said without exaggeration that John Bright filled the same place in the House of Commons in the middle of the nineteenth century that Edmund Burke had done in the last decades of the eighteenth. Their endeavours to render justice to a vast Eastern Dependency will live in the memory of mankind, when England’s Empire shall have passed away. And their published utterances will be read as among the finest specimens of English prose, possibly when the present English language shall have ceased to be a spoken tongue.

Before the Select Committee had gone very far in recording evidence on the subject of the cultivation of cotton, the connected question of the assessment of the soil in India forced itself to their notice.

Francis William Prideaux, then Assistant-Examiner of India Correspondence, read from the petition of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce on the subject of land assessments: “Amongst the obstacles to the better cultivation of cotton, none are more obvious than the Land Tax, the tenure under which land is held, and the want of roads and the means of conveyance. Your Memorialists believe that your honourable Court is itself impressed with the conviction that the Land Tax in the present cotton-growing districts is imperfect, and has more than once begun reforms which have been abandoned almost as soon as begun; but until the injustice of levying a heavier assessment upon cotton than upon other crops be abandoned, and the tenure of land be placed upon a wise and equitable basis, all hope of so improving the quality of cotton as to procure for it prices which will stimulate further culture will be futile.”⁷

The influence of British manufacturers had so far prevailed that all duties on cotton exported into England from Bengal had been abolished in 1836, those on Bombay cotton in 1838, and those on Madras cotton in 1844. But the Court of Directors declined to reduce the land assessment in order to stimulate the cultivation of cotton.

The next witness was Dr. John Forbes Royle, who had been for nine years in charge of the Botanical Gardens at Saharanpur, and in 1837 had published a valuable essay on the Antiquity of Hindu Medicine, explaining the nature and extent of the chemical and surgical knowledge possessed by the ancient Hindus. He deposed that Surat cotton was 30 per cent. lower in price at Liverpool than American cotton, and that Indian cotton was generally shipped in a dirty state. American cotton grew better on the red soil, and Indian cotton on the black soil, in India. In the American States of Alabama and Louisiana, they got 400 lbs. of clean cotton per acre, while in India not more than 100 or 150 lbs. The cultivation of cotton had much increased in Northern India since the new settlement of 1833, which gave long leases to cultivators. It was desirable to introduce the saw-gin into India, but Manchester spinners would not use the Indian cotton if the American cotton was cheap. Indian cotton was used in two ways in England; it was either manufactured into cloths, or used as wadding, i.e. people wore coats padded with cotton in the cold weather. The importation of English cotton goods into India was increasing, and was superseding the manufactures of India more and more every year.

Thomas Bazley, President of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce, furnished a table showing the proportion of Indian cotton to American cotton imported into England—the proportion of the Indian supply to the total British import varying between 8 and 15 per cent. The figures for ten years from the date of Queen Victoria’s accession are given on the next page.

The same witness deposed that while the spinner obtained from 1 lb. of Surat cotton only 12 ounces of yarn, he obtained from 1 lb. of American cotton 13½ ounces of yarn. The price of the latter was therefore between 3½d. and 6d. the lb. when Indian cotton was between 3d. and 5d.

Towards the conclusion of his evidence, Thomas Bazley explained in a few words an Englishman’s idea of the trade between England and India. “In India,” he said, “there is an immense extent of territory, and the population of it would consume British manufactures to a most enormous extent. The whole question with respect to our Indian trade is whether they can pay us, by the products of their soil, for what we are prepared to send out as manufactures.”⁸

Robert Crawford, a merchant who had been resident in Bombay, gave figures showing the extent of cotton cultivation in some Bombay districts during twelve years, from 1834 to 1845. In Broach cotton cultivation was 43 per cent.; in Surat it was 22 per cent.; in Kandeish it was 10 per cent.; and in Sholapur it was 3 per cent. of the total cultivation on assessed lands. Asked as to the nature of land-assessment in Gujrat, witness said: “As the Government and their officers may justly claim the credit of getting all the revenue they can possibly get, it follows that the land is let at a rack-rent.” And the witness, quoting from the report of Mr. Davies, collector of Broach, said: “As the present state of the market does not unfortunately give him [the cultivator] that reimbursement to enable him to keep up his stock, it far less enables him to reckon upon any profits; the inference is too obvious that he mainly depends upon remissions and balances for his escape from ruin.”⁹

The same witness also deposed to the evil effects of the Navigation Laws, requiring ships to be manned by English seamen. “I have known times,” said the witness, “when it would very well have suited for a ship belonging to the port of Bombay manned by lascars to come to this country if she could have sailed upon the same terms as an English ship does.”¹⁰

A more important witness was Major-General Briggs. He had entered the service of the Company in 1801, and had worked thirty-two years in India. He had served under men like Sir John Malcolm and Mountstuart Elphinstone, and had been Commissioner of Mysore and Resident of Nagpur. He had written the most valuable and exhaustive work on the Land Tax of India, and had advised Lord William Bentinck in regard to the Settlement of Northern India. And he had studied Indian history from the original sources, and produced a scholarlike translation of Ferishta’s “History of India” which is still a standard work.

Major-General Briggs spoke of the enormous consumption of cotton in India, and of the capacity of that country to “produce sufficient cotton for the consumption of the whole world.” And he considered that the two great obstacles which prevented a larger export of Indian cotton to England were the Land Tax, and the want of road for conveyance.¹¹ Questioned on the first subject, he said: “The Land Tax of India, as well as all direct taxes, have been founded upon the principle of an Income Tax; a portion of the income, whether in grain or in money, has usually been considered the right of the sovereign;” and under the Hindu rule the portion was originally fixed at a tenth of the produce.¹²

The Settlement of Northern India begun by Lord William Bentinck in 1833 “preserves the institutions of the people, and is most advantageous both to the Government and to the cultivator if it were made permanent.” On the other hand, the land assessment in Madras was excessive, even after Sir Thomas Munro’s reductions made in 1827; the Government demand was not, and could not be paid in full; it was left to the discretion of the Collector as to how much he could collect. And “when it is left to the discretion of the Collector, it is practically left to the discretion of a host of subordinate officers scattered throughout the country.” The fixed assessment was never paid; remissions were annually made; the peasants were “in a very impoverished state.”¹³

General Briggs strongly recommended a corn-rent, i.e. an assessment based on the produce of each year; and he held that the Ryotwari System might be workable under such a rule. Fifty per cent. of the produce was not more than the surplus produce or nett produce if taken in corn; “but as the tax is a money tax, it must of course very frequently represent the whole of the produce.”¹⁴

Thomas Williamson, who had been Revenue Commissioner of Bombay, brought the strongest charge against the British system of land assessment when he said that the prosperity of the entire people depended upon the will and the inclination of one man, the Collector and Assessing Officer. “The prosperity of a whole district,” he said, “mainly depended upon the personal qualifications of the officer managing it.” But District Collectors were not always efficient or considerate; Gujrat had been very severely assessed till within recent years; and all land improvements had been checked. In Broach heavy arrears accumulated; remissions were made by favouritism; and corruption in various ways had its influence over the amount. The people were generally exceedingly poor and depressed; their agricultural stock had diminished; and the produce of cotton diminished. “These are the general consequences and indications of over-assessment.”¹⁵

George Gibberne had been Collector of Gujrat, and left the country in 1826, and had revisited it in 1840 as Judicial Commissioner. He saw very little improvement in the condition of the people after the lapse of fourteen years; and altogether it appeared to him “that the wealthy inhabitants had fallen off.” The assessment had been generally speaking too high: “In all the different districts that I have been in as a Collector, I think there is scarcely enough, certainly not sufficient left to enable the Ryot to lay by anything for himself, or to become a capitalist.”

“Have you known any districts,” witness was asked, “in which the cultivation has evidently been very much diminished in consequence of the weight of the assessment?” “I cannot say,” he replied, “that I have known any; they seem stationary instead of improving; the Ryots have nothing else to do but to cultivate even if they get no profit; they must cultivate their field for food for themselves and families; they are so wedded to the country or to the village to which they belong that they would pay the rent if they could without gaining a farthing for themselves. There are no great signs of improvement.”¹⁶

Francis Carnac Brown had been born of English parents in India, and, like his father, had considerable experience of the cotton industry in India. He produced an Indian Charka, or spinning wheel, before the Select Committee, and explained that there was an oppressive Moturfa Tax which was levied on every Charka, on every house, and upon every implement used by artisans. The tax prevented the introduction of saw-gins in India.

Francis Brown held a high opinion of the Indian system of growing cotton, and said that he would as soon send for American planters to teach Indians in this art as he would send for Belgian farmers to teach British farmers in the art of growing wheat. He substantiated his opinion by the testimony of an American planter, Mr. Mercer, who had been sent to India to improve its cotton cultivation. In 1845–46, Mr. Mercer had represented, (to quote from the Bombay Government Circular of January 28, 1847), “That the experimental farms were only a useless expense to Government; that the American system was not adapted to India; that the natives of India were, from their knowledge of the climate and capabilities of the soil, able to cultivate better and much more economically than any European.”¹⁷

On the question of the assessment of land, the evidence of Francis Brown was emphatic. The Madras cultivator “obtains no profit whatever beyond his food, after paying his assessment.” There were millions of human beings who were cultivators in Madras, and they realised nothing beyond a mere existence or the means of existence. The pressing wants of nature, the necessity of getting food, drove them to cultivation, and wherever they planted their feet they came under the Government assessment. And the assessment was so high that it could never be realised in full. “The estimation,” said the witness, “in which a native has always appeared to me to be held, is, that he is a creature born to pay to the East India Company.”¹⁸

Charged with stating opinions so unfavourable to the Government of India, Francis Brown said: “I do not wish to detract from the credit of the East India Company—but there is the country; and I ask let it be looked at with the eyes, the understanding, and the honesty of Englishmen, and let the Government of the East India Company be judged by that examination. . . . I solemnly declare that I have seen the people of Malabar perish, and become pauperised as a country under the operation of the Government. . . . The Government of the country has generally tended to the impoverishment and abasement of the people.”¹⁹

Contrasting the land system of America where cotton cultivation was extending, with that of India where cotton for the purpose of export was dwindling, witness said : “Land in America is put up to sale at a dollar an acre, a man purchases the fee-simple of it outright, and there is an end of all charge. But the state of things in India is diametrically opposite to this ; there is no proprietary right ; and consequently a man is not induced to lay out that money, or to make those exertions for his own benefit, which have been the natural stimulus applied to the production of cotton in America.”²⁰

It is to the credit of Francis Brown that he was one of the first to sound the note of alarm at the destruction of forests in India and consequent decrease in rainfall. It was a subject which was little understood then, and witness read the following passage from Baron Humbolt’s Personal Narrative : “By felling the trees that cover the tops and the sides of mountains, men in every climate prepare at once two calamities for future generations, the want of fuel and scarcity of water.”²¹

With regard to the ancient irrigation works of India, Francis Brown said : “There are throughout the whole of Southern India from Ganjam to Cape Comorin, the most extraordinary remains of tanks that it is possible to imagine.” The East India Company’s Government had allowed all these valuable works to go out of repair, except Tanjore, where irrigation had been attended with the most favourable results. Major Arthur Cotton had vainly pressed the importance of irrigation works on the Company’s Government ; and Francis Brown believed that much of India could be made by means of irrigation what the valley of the Nile had long been.”²²

The Directors of the East India Company, no doubt, considered Francis Brown as an enthusiast, if not a firebrand. But reading his evidence after the lapse of over half a century, it is impossible to deny that this clear-sighted Englishman, born and bred in India, perceived some of those great evils which the administrators of India could not or would not see. Nor was it likely that Indian officials should allow the evidence of such men as Francis Brown to go unchallenged. Three days after Mr. Brown’s examination, Ross Mangles, who had been Revenue Secretary to the Indian Government, and was now a Member of Parliament and a Director of the East India Company, offered himself for examination. There was probably no man then in England who could have defended the Company’s revenue administration more stoutly; and it is impossible to read his evidence without noting the vehemence of his conviction and the lucidity of his thought. But, nevertheless, Ross Mangles defended only the theory of the Indian Land Tax; of its abuse in practice none knew more than he.

In the Permanently Settled Province of Bengal, he said, the Government revenue paid by Zemindars was, on an average, about one-half of the rental of their estates. The Government demand in tracts not permanently settled was often 75 per cent. of the rental. In Madras the Ryot was the proprietor, and paid the land revenue direct to the Government, but the great evil of the Ryotwari System was the eternal meddling and yearly fixing of rates. “It must open the door to a vast quantity of bribery, extortion, and oppression.”²³

On the second day of his examination Ross Mangles had some discussion with John Bright, the Chairman of the Select Committee, and with George Thompson, one of the members of the Committee, which it is interesting to follow.

George Thompson.—Are you prepared to justify on moral grounds the assumption on the part of the Government, whether British or any other, of a proprietary right on the soil of all India, supposing they rule over all India ?

Ross Mangles.—I do not think that that is a question connected with the revenue; I never have assumed or alleged that the Government was the proprietor of the soil of India, and I do not believe that it is the proprietor of the soil in India.

George Thompson.—Is it not virtually so when it takes upon itself to demand 75 per cent. of the natural rent of the land over all the country ?

Ross Mangles.—A portion of the rent from time immemorial has been the right of the State for public purposes.

John Bright.—Speaking of the mode of collecting the rent through Collectors, can you say at all, supposing the produce of a certain quantity of land to be 100, whether there be any fixed proportion which the Collector is understood to be authorised to fix as the amount of the assessment to the Government ?

Ross Mangles.—I have explained to the Committee that of late years it has been found extremely dangerous to make the produce the basis of the settlement, and the Collectors have been enjoined on every occasion to endeavour to find what the rent is, and to make that the basis.

John Bright.—If the assessment was an annual assessment, as it is throughout a large portion of the Company’s Government in India, would such an increase of the assessment in such a case [i.e. in case of improvements effected by cultivators] be calculated to improve the cultivation still further, or to discourage the cultivator from making improvements ?

Ross Mangles.—The natural effect would be discouragement. I am as much opposed to annual settlements as the honourable Chairman can be.

These passages are important, as they throw light on some great principles recognised as long ago as 1848.

(1) The Government did not claim to be the proprietor of the soil; Zemindars and Ryots were recognised as proprietors.

(2) The Government claimed a portion of the economic rent as the Land Revenue.

(3) The portion was not fixed. It amounted to about 50 per cent. in permanently settled estates, and approached 75 per cent. where there was no permanent settlement.²⁴

For the rest Ross Mangles held with John Stuart Mill that the Land Revenue of India, being a portion of the rent, did not enter into the cost of production of articles grown on the soil, and could not therefore have any deterrent effect on the cultivation of cotton.

John Sullivan, who had been Member of the Government of Madras, and President of the Board of Revenue, also defended the Indian Land Revenue system, but complained against the annual Economic Drain from India. “As to the complaints which the people of India have to make of the present fiscal system, I do not conceive that it is the amount altogether that they have to complain of. I think they have rather to complain of the application of that amount. Under their own dynasties, all the revenue that was collected in the country was spent in the country; but under our rule, a large proportion of the revenue is annually drained away, and without any return being made for it; this drain has been going on now for sixty or seventy years, and it is rather increasing than the reverse. . . . Our system acts very much like a sponge, drawing up all the good things from the banks of the Ganges, and squeezing them down on the banks of the Thames. . . . They [the people of India] have no voice whatever in imposing the taxes which they are called upon to pay, no voice in framing the laws which they are bound to obey, no real share in the administration of their own country; and they are denied those rights from the insolent and insulting pretext that they are wanting in mental and moral qualifications for the discharge of such duties.”²⁵

Some other less important witnesses are examined, but it is unnecessary to prolong this analysis. Enough has been said to indicate the nature of the evidence placed before the Select Committee; and on this evidence John Bright and his colleagues submitted their report on July 17, 1848.

They reported that for sixty years, i.e. since 1788, the Court of Directors had made experiments in India for extending the cultivation and export of cotton, and had introduced American gins, sent out American cotton growers, and had established experimental farms for this purpose. The Directors still believed that the obstacles which retarded cotton cultivation in India could be overcome.

The result of the experiments satisfied the Select Committee that India had the capacity to supply cotton of an improved quality to an indefinite extent, but the Committee did not expect that this effect would be achieved by the means adopted. American cotton, long-stapled, was not so well suited to the Indian manufacturer as the Indian cotton, and the fluctuating demands for exportation were not a sufficient inducement for the introduction of a variety adapted to a foreign and distant market.²⁶

The miserable condition of the cultivators of India received the attention of the Select Committee. The great mass of cultivators in Madras and Bombay were “almost wholly without capital, or any of those means which capital alone can furnish, by which industry may be improved and extended. They are in reality a class of cultivators in the most abject condition.”

There was difference of opinion on the question as to how far this depressed condition of the cultivators was due to the Government Land Revenue demand. On the one hand the principle was urged that so long as the Government demand was limited to a part of the economic rent, no depressing result on the cultivation of soil could ensue. On the other hand, evidence had been given that districts with large populations under the control of single officers were in practice badly administered; that imprudent zeal, inefficiency, or grave errors had affected the prosperity of entire districts, and that “the whole system is depressing, if not destructive to any spirit of improvement on the part of the agricultural population.”

The two principles “of moderation in the Government demand, and certainty as to the amount and tenure” were recommended as the basis of land settlements in India.

Lastly the Select Committee commented on the lamentable want of roads in India, and they referred to the evidence of Ross Mangles himself, a Director of the East India Company, showing how little had been done to improve internal communications. The witnesses examined had also recommended the construction of railways in India from the centres of export and import to the interior.

Footnotes