CHAPTER X
LORD WELLESLEY AND CONQUESTS IN NORTHERN INDIA (1795-1815)
THE Province of India now called the North-Western Provinces and Oudh, came under British rule at different dates. Benares and some adjoining districts were annexed by Warren Hastings on the death of the Nawab of Oudh in 1775 by a treaty with his successor. Allahabad and some other districts were ceded by the Nawab of Oudh to the British, under pressure from Lord Wellesley, in 1801. Agra and the basin of the Ganges and the Jumna were conquered by Lord Lake in the Mahratta war of 1803. And the remaining portion of Oudh was annexed by Lord Dalhousie in 1856.
Cornwallis and Shore were anxious to extend to Benares the same Permanent Zemindari Settlement which had been concluded in Bengal in 1793. Negotiations were conducted with the Raja of Benares from 1787 to 1794, and an agreement was concluded on the 27th October 1794. The Raja of Benares relinquished to the British the rights which he had hitherto exercised over the whole of his State, retaining his Zemindari rights over a small tract which had formed the patrimony of his family. On the conclusion of this agreement, Sir John Shore, then Governor-General of India, made land revenue settlements with village Zemindars in the relinquished tracts, and also restored many estates to old Zemindars who had lost them under the Raja’s administration. The division of the crop between the Government and the cultivator, in proportions which varied slightly in different parts of the country, furnished the rule for fixing the land revenue; and a Permanent Settlement of the revenue was made in 1795 over the whole of the Benares country. The Code of Regulations for Bengal, Behar, and Orissa were extended to Benares with little alteration, and the civil and criminal laws administered were the same.
Six years after this, the Nawab of Oudh ceded to the East India Company the district of Allahabad and other districts called by the general name of the “Ceded Districts.” The long negotiations between the Nawab and Lord Wellesley relating to this event, the threats under which the cession was ultimately made in commutation of the subsidy, and the charge of high crimes and misdemeanours which was subsequently framed against Lord Wellesley for these transactions, are matters of political history which do not come within the scope of the present work.
On the same day on which Lord Wellesley ratified the treaty by which the Company obtained the “Ceded Districts,” he formed a Commission for the administration and settlement of those districts. Three civil servants were appointed to form a Board of Commissioners, and the Governor-General’s brother, Henry Wellesley, was nominated Lieutenant-Governor of the new territory and President of the Board. Henry Wellesley made a settlement of the land revenue for three years with the Zemindars and farmers, and his first settlement report, dated 10th February 1803, discloses the same over-assessment which the Company’s servants made in every newly acquired territory in India.
" 3. The settlement of the provinces had, however, been formed by the Collectors previously to my arrival at Bareilly, at a Jumma [assessment] fully equal to that at which it had been ceded by his Excellency the Nawab Vizir; and although I was still apprehensive that this settlement had been made upon an erroneous calculation of the existing assets of the country, and that the amount would be with difficulty realised, I determined not to annul the engagements which had been recently concluded by the Collectors, from an apprehension that any immediate interference on my part might tend to weaken their authority, which at that critical period, it appeared to me so necessary to support. . . .
" 18. From the documents which I have been enabled to collect relative to the annual revenue of these provinces during the Moghal Government, it would appear that it amounted to nearly two and a half crores of rupees [two and a half millions sterling]. . . . Under the mild and equitable system of the British Government I have no hesitation in stating my expectation that the land revenue of these provinces, when fully cultivated, will amount to two crores and fifty lakhs of rupees [two and a half million sterling]. . . .
“ 24. Under the regulations recently introduced, the revenue arising from the Abkaree, or duty on the sale of spirituous liquors, will at least equal the amount for which credit is taken in the statement. . . .
“ 30. I now proceed to lay before your Lordship the arrangements which I have adopted for the purpose of placing the exclusive privilege of the purchase and sale of salt in the hands of the Company.”¹
In the statement appended to this report the following figures are given:
It will appear from these figures that the blunder which had been committed in Bengal and in Madras on the first acquisition of those provinces was repeated in Northern India. Large tracts of country, harassed by frequent wars and impoverished by severe exactions, had passed under the rule of a great and civilised power. It was a suitable occasion for giving the peaceful and industrious population some relief; it was an opportunity of lightening their burdens and improving their resources. But in the very first year of Henry Wellesley’s administration, the Company’s demand from the Ceded Districts was raised beyond the Nawab’s demand by two million Rupees, or two hundred thousand pounds; and another million Rupees was added before the third year was out. And while the Nawab’s demand was only nominal—collections being made according to the state of the crops—the Company’s demand was realised with a rigidity which the people of India had never known before. One Collector, Mr. Dumbleton, complained that the settlement of 1802 “pressed beyond a reasonable demand,” and that the British Government continued the heavy rates of the Nawab’s Government “without the same elasticity in realising.”
In other respects, every endeavour was made to bring the newly acquired territory under organised government. The Bengal Regulations were extended to it on the 24th May 1803, and the country was divided into seven districts. A civil servant, exercising the functions of Judge and Magistrate, was appointed to each district, and another civil servant performed the duties of Collector. A Court of Appeal and Circuit was established at Bareilly, and Tehsildars and landholders were empowered, as at Benares, to apprehend robbers and to preserve the peace within their jurisdiction.
An important Regulation was also enacted, recognising the triennial settlement of the land revenue already made, and notifying that, at the expiration of that term, another settlement would be made for three years, to be followed by a settlement for four years, at the expiration of which a Permanent Settlement would be concluded.
“In these terms,” says the Select Committee of the House of Commons, “the Supreme Government pledged itself to the landholders for the introduction of a Permanent Settlement” at the expiration of an aggregate period of ten years from the first settlement of Henry Wellesley.
In 1803 General Wellesley (another brother of the Governor-General, and afterwards Duke of Wellington) broke the Mahratta power in the south in the famous battle of Assaye; and Lord Lake crushed the same power in the north in the battle of Laswaree. The country between the Jumna and the Ganges was annexed, and this country was called the Conquered Provinces, as distinguished from the Ceded Districts obtained from the Nawab of Oudh two years before. Bandelkhand and Cuttack were also annexed in 1803.
The Conquered Provinces were first placed under the administration of Lord Lake; but in 1805 they were formed into five districts, under the administration of judicial and revenue officers, and placed under the control of the supreme authorities at Calcutta like the Ceded Districts. The Regulations recently introduced in the Ceded Districts were introduced in the Conquered Provinces, and the same pledge which had been given to the landholders of the former country was given in the latter; settlements of one, three, and four years were to be made in succession, and the last settlement was to be permanent, if agreed to by the landholders.¹ Two years after the pledge was repeated, but with the proviso that the conclusion of the Permanent Settlement would depend on the confirmation of the Court of Directors.²
Northern India had been ravaged by the Mahratta war of 1803, and the severe land assessments made by the servants of the Company gave the people no chance of improving their condition. The result was the widespread famine of 1804. The Government was then compelled to make large remissions of the land revenue; loans and advances were made to the landowners; and a bounty was offered on grain exported into Benares, Allahabad, Cawnpore, and Fatehgarh. A Special Commission was appointed in 1807 to superintend the settlement for four years, which was to become permanent according to the regulations already enacted.
We now enter upon the famous discussion which took place on the question of a Permanent Settlement in Northern India.
The Special Commissioners, R. W. Cox and Henry St. George Tucker, submitted their report admitting the benefits of a Permanent Settlement, but declaring themselves adverse to the immediate conclusion of such a settlement in the Ceded and Conquered Provinces.
“230. We are ourselves fully sensible of the many advantages which may be expected to result from a limitation of the public demand upon the land. We are aware that temporary settlements are harassing to the people, and that they afford opportunities for frauds and abuses. It has been questioned, indeed, whether a country can make any considerable advances in improvement while the public taxes are progressively increased, and the individual is not permitted to enjoy any benefit from the execution of greater industry; but with every previous disposition in favour of the principle of a Permanent Settlement, we submit to your Lordship in Council our deliberate and unqualified opinion that the measure, considered with relation to the Ceded and Conquered Provinces generally, is at this moment unseasonable, and that any premature attempt to introduce it must necessarily be attended with a material sacrifice of the public resources, and may, in particular cases, prove injurious to the parties themselves, whose prosperity it is the chief object of the measure to secure upon a durable foundation.“¹
This was the first note of alarm raised in Northern India against a Permanent Settlement, and the fear of a “material sacrifice of the public revenues” inspired this alarm. The arguments of the Special Commissioners, however, received a conclusive reply from H. Colebrooke.
“3. Government is pledged, by the proclamation of the 4th July 1802 and 11th July 1805, to conclude a Permanent Settlement with the landholders, at the expiration of the periods there specified, for such lands as may be in a sufficiently improved state of cultivation to warrant the measure, on fair and equitable terms. It was judged expedient, on full consideration of the subject, and with ample knowledge of the circumstances now alleged, to anticipate these periods; and accordingly, in June 1807, the Governor-General in Council notified to the Zemindars and other proprietors, by Regulation x., 1807, that the Jumma assessed for the last year of the ensuing settlement shall remain fixed for ever, if they be willing to engage, and the arrangement shall receive the sanction of the Court of Directors.
“4. The pledge which has thus been solemnly contracted cannot be forfeited without such a glaring violation of promise as would lose us deservedly the confidence of the people…
“9. The argument on which, if I mistake not, the late Commissioners chiefly rely, is that the right of participating in future improvement ought not to be relinquished, because Government is in a manner the landholder and proprietor of a vast estate…
“26. Upon the important occasions of the Permanent Settlement of Bengal and Behar, and of the territories on the coast of Coromandel, and after mature deliberation, a claim of participation in the future improvement of the waste lands was relinquished to a greater extent than the proportion at which they are computed by the late Board of Commissioners in the Ceded and Conquered Provinces.
“27. The happy result of the measure is now witnessed in Bengal. The reviving prosperity of the country, its increased wealth and rapid improvement, are unquestionably due to the Permanent Settlement, the principle of which was so wise that even the serious errors that were committed in filling up the outline of the plan could not ultimately disappoint its views….
“32. I appeal to this experience in preference to any speculative argument…. It was expected that the improvement of estates by the culture of waste lands would enrich the landholder by the increase of his usual income, and enable him to meet the variations of seasons and temporary calamities of drought and inundation without needing remissions of revenue.
“33. These expectations have been realised….
“38. It appears to be a very prevalent opinion that the British system of administration is not generally palatable to our Indian subjects. Admitting this opinion to be not unfounded, it follows that while they taste none but the unpalatable parts of the system, and while the only boon which would be acceptable to them is withheld, the landed proprietors, and with them the body of the people, must be more and more estranged from the Government, in proportion to the expectations which they formed, and the disappointment which they will have experienced….
“63. I shall conclude by declaring my concurrence in the Commissioners’ recommendation, that steadiness, moderation, and justice should be the features borne by the administration of Government. But it is not by abandoning a measure deliberately resolved on, and beneficial to our subjects, that we shall prove our steadiness. It is not by grasping at the highest revenue, and wringing from our peasants the utmost rent, that we shall evince our moderation; nor is it by depriving the sons of our petty landholders of their birthright that we shall demonstrate our sense of justice.” ¹
This Minute, together with a similar Minute from Lumsden, another member of Council, was forwarded by Lord Minto, then Governor-General, to the Court of Directors. And Lord Minto himself was equally explicit in his opinion.
“That on a mature consideration of all the documents connected with the establishment of a Permanent Settlement in the provinces of Bengal, Behar, Orissa, and Benares, and in the territories dependent on the Presidency of Fort St. George, and of all the reports and minutes respecting the proposed Permanent Settlement in the Ceded and Conquered Provinces, he was entirely satisfied of the sound policy, or rather of the urgent necessity, of the measure.“¹
But the Directors had made up their minds. They had been once influenced by circumstances to sacrifice a prospective increase in their profits for the good of a nation. Lord Cornwallis was now dead, and the Directors were never guilty of such generosity again. “Grasping at the highest revenue and wringing from our peasants the utmost rent” was now their policy.
“No settlement,” they replied, “shall be declared permanent in Cuttack or in any other of our Provinces till the whole proceedings preparatory to it have been submitted to us, and till your resolutions upon these proceedings have received our sanction and concurrence.” Nine months after they again wrote that “the object of the present despatch is to caution you in the most pointed manner against pledging us to the extension of the Bengal fixed assessment to our newly acquired territories.“²
The Governor-General was taken aback by these despatches. They directed not only the abandonment of a measure absolutely necessary for the good of the people of India, but also the violation of a solemn pledge twice made unconditionally to the people, and incorporated in the Regulations of 1803 and 1805. The Proclamation which formed a part of Section 29 of Regulation XXV. of 1803 (for the Ceded Provinces) contained this clause:
“At the end of these ten years, a Permanent Settlement will be concluded with the same persons (if willing to engage, and if no others who have a better claim shall come forward) for such lands as may be in a sufficiently improved state of cultivation to warrant the measure, on such terms as Government shall deem fair and equitable.”
And the Proclamation embodied in Regulation IX. of 1805 (for the Conquered Provinces) repeated the pledge in these terms:
“At the end of ten years, expiring with the year 1222 Fusly, a Permanent Settlement will be concluded with the same persons (if willing to engage, and if no other persons having a better claim shall come forward) for such lands as may be in a sufficiently improved state of cultivation to warrant the measure, on such terms as Government shall deem fair and equitable.”
These pledges were given unconditionally to the people of India by the responsible servants and agents of the Company, and were therefore binding on the Company. In 1807 the pledge was repeated a third time in Regulation X. of 1807 (for the Ceded and Conquered Provinces), and the condition was then inserted for the first time that the Permanent Settlement shall be made if “the arrangement shall receive the sanction of the Honourable the Court of Directors.”
How could these pledges be violated by the mandate of the Directors issued in 1811? “Had the Honourable Court’s dissent,” wrote the Indian Government in 1812, “to the arrangements established by the Regulations of 1803 and 1805 been signified at an early period after the enaction of those Regulations, the inherent powers of control possessed by the Court might have been urged in support of such dissent, although those Regulations contained no reserve of the Court’s approval; but now that the whole term of the contract has expired in the Ceded Provinces, and two-thirds of it in the Conquered Countries, the annulment of it, at this distant period, could not, we apprehend, as already intimated, be reconciled to the dictates either of policy or justice.“¹
And Lord Minto, in a Minute recorded by himself, endeavoured to construe the Directors’ recent orders in a restricted sense, as he could not reconcile a literal construction of those orders “with the maintenance of the faith of Government so publicly and so solemnly pledged to the landlords.“²
One more protest was submitted by Lord Minto against the Directors’ orders before he left India in 1813. He pointed out that a Permanent Settlement involved no sacrifice of revenues; that a variable land-tax had been condemned even by Adam Smith, in his Wealth of Nations, as a discouragement to improvements in land; that a Permanent Settlement could be effected for the estates actually held by the landlords in Northern India without including the waste lands; and finally, if the object of good government was “to ameliorate generally the conditions of the natives, it is our firm conviction that no arrangement or measure will lend so speedily and effectually to the accomplishment of those important objects as the establishment of a Permanent Settlement.“³
But the Directors of the Company were obdurate. Their professed desire for the good of the people of India would not move them to surrender their own profits. They had indeed fixed upon a plan of getting out of the pledges given in 1803 and 1805. They suggested an evasion which would not be held valid by any Court of Justice, and which was unworthy of honest merchants, not to speak of the rulers of an empire.
" Continued possession and a punctual discharge of the dues of Government during the triennial leases formed only one part of the condition on which Government pledged itself to a Permanent Settlement with the landholders. There was another and still more important clause in the condition, viz. that the land should, in the interval, be brought to a sufficiently advanced stage of cultivation to warrant us in fixing perpetual limits to our demand upon it. The precise point of improvement at which such a measure might become expedient, or even justifiable, was not determined by the Regulation of 1803 and 1805, and would not, indeed, be determined by any prospective Regulation. The question was left completely open for the future exercise of the judgment of Government; nor is there anything in these Regulations by which its decision can, or ought to be, in the smallest degree fettered.” ¹
If this argument had been used in good faith and honesty, it would have led to Permanent Settlements in some advanced estates at once, and delayed them in others. But it was used artfully to evade a pledge, and the pledge was evaded. No Permanent Settlements were made in any estates in 1813, or have been made since.
Lord Moira, afterwards Marquis of Hastings, succeeded Lord Minto as Governor-General of India. His administration is famous in history for the Nepal war, the Pindaree war, and the last Mahratta war, which led to the annexation of the Province of Bombay in 1817. In the midst of these distractions, Lord Hastings was unable for a time to devote his attention to the settlement of Northern India.
Footnotes
“If, on the other hand, this measure should, unfortunately, not obtain his consent, he was desired to consider the territorial cession as a measure which force, if necessary, would be employed to accomplish."—Mill’s British India, Book VI. chap. ix.
See also State Papers relating to Lord Wellesley’s administration. By a singular good fortune I have in my possession the identical copy of the State Papers in four volumes, which belonged to Lord Wellesley himself, and which was sold with the rest of his books after his death. These volumes contain interlineations and occasional short notes in the Marquis’s own handwriting. Very amusing are his remarks on the policy of his peaceful successors, Cornwallis and Barlow, who reversed some of his acts. “Most infamous,” “an abrogation in itself iniquitous,” are some of the notes made by the irate Marquis in reference to his successors’ policy.
¹ Regulation iv. of 1805.
² Regulation x. of 1807.
¹ Report dated 13th April 1808.
¹ Letter dated 15th September 1808.
² Despatches of 1st February 1811 and 27th November 1811.
¹ Letter dated 9th October 1812.
² Minute dated 11th July 1812.
³ Letter dated 17th July 1813.
¹ Letter dated 16th March 1813.