Government and Patronage of India.

The present frame of India government was established under the act of 1784, and modified, by subsequent acts for the renewal of the charter, in 1793 and 1813. Under the authority of these acts, by the institution of the Board of Control, such superintendence of the affairs of India is vested in the ministers of the Crown as precludes misgovernment without their concurrence. The Board is appointed by the King, and consists of twelve commissioners, of whom the two Secretaries of State and the Chancellor of the Exchequer are ex officio members; the president of the Board is the responsible officer, but the assistance of two other members is necessary to render its proceedings valid. The Board is invested with a control in all matters relating to the government of India, whether civil, military, or financial. It has access to all records, and may require abstracts and statements respecting all affairs not strictly commercial. No despatches relating to government or revenue can be forwarded to India without its approval. It may even originate instructions, and the Court of Directors, though they may remonstrate, cannot alter them. All despatches received from India must be immediately submitted to the Board; nor can any public disclosure of their contents take place, except under its authority. No war can be undertaken in India without its sanction. It may grant licenses to individuals to reside in India, and to ships to trade, when such licenses have been refused by the Directors. So extensive, indeed, have been the powers committed to it, that, whatever may have been the complexion of the Company’s measures in India, their responsibility is shared by the Board of Control, and, through it, by the king’s ministers at home.

Subordinate to the Board of Control are the administrative bodies emanating from the Company. The first in responsibility and power is the Court of Directors, consisting of twenty-four members. They are elected by the General Court of Proprietors, who meet four times a-year, and to whom it belongs to declare the dividend, to appoint a committee to frame by-laws, to control all grants above a certain amount, and to receive reports from the Directors respecting the general state of the Company’s concerns. No proprietor is entitled to a vote unless he be possessed of £1000 East-India stock; and the qualification of a Director is £2000 stock. Six Directors go out annually in rotation, so that four years is the period of service for each Director; no Director can be re-elected until he has been out of the direction for at least one year; thirteen Directors form a Court, and the presence of that number is necessary to give effect to all orders and instructions which do not emanate from the secret committee. The business of the Company is chiefly conducted by committees and sub-committees, to which are permanently allotted certain defined duties, and which are composed of Directors appointed in the order of their seniority.

In India, the administration of each of the three presidencies of Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay is vested in a Governor and Council, consisting of three members. The Commander-in-Chief may be a member of Council, without regard to the term of his residence; but no civil servant of the Company can become member of Council until he has served ten years in India. The Government of Calcutta is supreme over the other governments in matters relating to peace, war, and revenue. All the proceedings of the governments in India must be recorded by minutes, with a statement of the reasons upon which they have been founded, for the purpose of checking maladministration. The governments are entrusted with the entire control over the army, and with the imposition of taxes, in all the dominions of the Company, except the towns of Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay; and their regulations have the authority of law, until reversed by instructions from home. The Governor-General is empowered to apprehend all suspected persons, and either to send them home to be tried in England, or, having forwarded copies of all depositions in their case, to retain them for judgment in India. Except in case of invasion, or of the most urgent necessity, the Governor-General is restrained from declaring war until the sanction of the Directors and of the Board of Control has been received. The commercial and financial concerns of the Company in India are superintended by a Board of Trade and a Board of Revenue. The collection of the revenue is conducted by British collectors, aided by British assistants; but all the inferior business of this department is transacted by natives.

There are three different classes of courts of justice in India. In the first are the King’s Courts, or Supreme Courts of Judicature, whose jurisdiction extends to all British-born subjects residing in the provinces, but, in suits between natives, is limited to the immediate vicinity of the presidencies. The courts which administer justice in those cases in which the natives are concerned are of two kinds, civil and criminal. Each kind consists of a supreme court, with courts of circuit and subordinate tribunals, down to institutions analogous to our Courts of Request and petty sessions. In all the courts Europeans preside, except those of the lowest description, in which there are native judges. Justice is administered according to the Mahummudan law, modified by a regard to Hindoo usages and by the regulations of the British Government. The natives have lately been rendered capable of sitting on juries, and it may be hoped that the introduction of this institution will tend to exalt the character of the people, to curb that disposition to pervert justice which is the great political vice of the East, and to supply the deficiencies under which an European judge must always labour, in weighing the evidence of a people with whose habits and ideas he can be only partially acquainted.

Such is a brief outline of the system under which the Indian empire is administered. Like most constitutions, it sounds well on paper, and does not appear liable to serious objections; but the general government at home is a striking instance how widely the principles of a constitution may differ from its practical administration. It is only an intelligent Hindoo, or some one actually cognizant of our India policy, who could give adequate testimony to the good or evil it confers on the native population. Unfortunately the authorities at Calcutta do not tolerate the publication of an Extraordinary Black Book there, nor hardly a Times newspaper, otherwise one might become acquainted with the working of the Leadenhall administration.

One of the best criterions of good government is the excellence of the judicial system. That of India has always been represented corrupt and oppressive. The administration of justice is the most lucrative profession in the east as well as in England. According to a statement of Mr. Hume, in the House of Commons, suitors in India are obliged to pay to government on the sum sued for from 50 to 7 and 6 per cent. and a fine is levied on all debts sued for, decreasing as the amount increases! Every document requisite to the progress of a suit, the citations, examinations, and depositions of witnesses, are all to be written on stamped paper; thereby increasing the expenses to an enormous total. These expenses amount to a virtual denial of justice, and, in the course of a long life, a man could scarcely expect to see any termination of suits; in a word, it is the English chancery system—that admirable contrivance for spunging clients—operating in India. The police is established on the Sidmouth or Villele system. A corps of spies is attached to every preventive establishment, and there is no Habeas Corpus Act to expedite judicial sentences. Persons are frequently taken up, and months elapse before any information is exhibited against them. In the interval they are confined in crowded and unhealthy prisons, where death not unfrequently overtakes them; or, after enduring the aggravated misery of imprisonment, nothing whatever appears against them, and they are liberated. For these blessings the Hindoos pay annually about £1,785,000, which is a greater expense than all the law-officers in Europe.

Leaving for the present any further strictures on the general government of India, let us advert to the important subject of India influence and patronage.

The whole patronage of India, civil and military, is vested in the Court of Directors, with the exception of the appointments of bishops, and of the judges of the Supreme Courts of Judicature. The Governors in India and the Commander-in-Chief are named by the Company, but their appointment must be sanctioned by the king. The king also possesses the power of removing any civil servant from his office in India. With these exceptions, the entire civil, naval, and military patronage of India vests in the Company, and exceeds in amount the patronage of the Crown before the French revolutionary war. Of the extent of this patronage we may form some idea from the number of persons in the Company’s service. We have no means of stating exactly the number of persons employed by the Company, but the following is an estimate when the revenues and possessions of the east were much less than at present.

All the salaries in India are on a much more extravagant scale than in England. Of the above 201,477 persons in the service of the Company, at least 6000 in the civil and military departments at home and abroad, enjoy emoluments from £200 to £10,000 a year, exclusive of the Governor-General. The salary of the Governor-General of Bengal is £25,000 a year, and three counsellors with a salary of £10,000 a year each. The salary of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Judicature at Calcutta is £8000 a year, with three other judges at £6000 a year each. By the act of 1813, the salary of a bishop in India is £5000 a year, and of three archdeacons £2000 a year each. The expense of outfit, &c. of different officers was fixed by the same act, as follows:—

The allowance for the outfit, &c. of those officers is about one-fourth the amount of their salaries, exclusive of other emoluments. According to a statement in the East-India Register, the allowances per month to general and regimental officers when in the field, were on the Bengal establishment, as follows:—

The allowance to officers on the Fort St. George and Bombay Establishments, was nearly the same as the above. The sums granted by way of superannuation allowance to officers and servants of the Company are very considerable. They are fixed according to the following scale, by the 53d George III. c. 155.

From the preceding details, some idea may be formed of the immense value of India patronage, and the wide field it opens for providing for children, relatives, and dependents. The trade of the Company has never been an object of so much importance as the military appointments to an army of 150,000 men, the filling up of vacancies in the judicial and police departments, and the numerous situations in the collection and expenditure of a revenue of 24 millions per annum. It is the annual value of these different situations which constitute the real profit of the Company.

It is evident that the excellence of our administration in India will depend upon the employment of individuals recommended by integrity and talent. In theory this principle appears to have been admitted by the Directors in 1793, when, by one of their by-laws, it was enacted that each Director, ten days after his election, should take oath to receive no emolument, perquisite, or pecuniary gratification, for any appointment in India. Little regard was paid to this obligation, and so early as 1798 it was notorious that a very extensive and systematic traffic was carried on for places in India. Several attempts were made, real or pretended, by Committees of the House of Commons, also by committees appointed by the Court of Directors, to discover the individuals implicated in these practices. On one occasion it was proposed that each Director should take oath he had not received any reward for any appointment he had made; but this was rejected by a large majority, and the sale in offices continued by public advertisement and otherwise, till at last an office was openly established for the sale and purchase of India patronage.

The practice was shameless and notorious; but it does not appear to have been completely laid bare, till the memorable disclosures in 1809, relative to Mrs. Clarke and the Duke of York. In that year it was discovered that the improper disposal of India patronage had not been confined to the honourable Directors, but extended even to the right honourable President of the Board of Control. The then president was Lord Castlereagh. This minister, by the agency of a common place-broker, attempted to purchase, for a writership in India, a seat in parliament for his friend Lord Clancarty. Here was corruption three deep. It was a dereliction of his duty as a minister of the Crown; a shameless abuse of his trust as President of the Board of Control; and a daring attack on the purity (bah!) of the Commons’ House of Parliament. Such was the description of this transaction given by the late Lord A. Hamilton. Lord Castlereagh, however, was defended on the ground of the notoriety of the practice. Some of the members said that selling seats in the House of Commons was as notorious as the sun at noon-day: this could not be denied, for it was well known that the Secretary of the Treasury was in the constant practice of buying seats for the adherents of ministers. This being the case, there appeared injustice in making an example of the President of the Board of Control; and the motion was got rid of by moving the order of the day.

The fact of Lord Castlereagh having a writership at his disposal to purchase a seat in the House of Commons, shows how ministers may avail themselves of even subordinate appointments in India. The Directors have the patronage of the East at their disposal; but, indirectly, ministers participate in its advantages. The latter we have seen have a negative on the appointments of the principal servants of the Company, besides which the general superintendence they exercise over India affairs, through the medium of the Board of Control, renders it highly improbable the Directors should neglect to provide for any individual backed by a ministerial recommendation; more especially as the favour might be so easily returned.

We may conclude this part of our subject with remarking that the whole patronage and influence of India is so much added to that of the general government of the empire. The India-House is little more than a branch of the general administration, where a part of the business of the Government is transacted, and with which it is almost as much connected as with the Home-office or Treasury department. The case of the notorious Paul Benfield strikingly illustrates the reciprocal workings of the two systems. This man, whose “offal,” Burke said, “ought to have fed the region kites,” had at one time no fewer than eight members in parliament, and he attempted to bring in one of his agents for the City of London. These members were returned at Benfield’s expense to support the Pitt Ministry; and in return for this support Mr. Pitt allowed Benfield to set up some imaginary and exaggerated pecuniary claims against the Nabob of Arcot.

The great mass of influence arises from appointments in India, but the political influence of the Company is very considerable from the vast number of individuals employed in their different warehouses and establishments in London. All the influence they possess is employed in support of their parliamentary interest. Whenever a labourer comes into the service of the Company he is required to state for what place he has a vote for a member of parliament: his name is then registered with this specification; and on an election he is told that he will be spared from his situation to give his suffrage, if he will vote according to orders; disobedience being supposed to be punished by dismissal from his office. The number of individuals thus kept in political subjection to the Company is about four thousand.

This practice needs no comment. It sufficiently identifies the East-India Company with Government, and we may consider the revenue of Hindustan, as well as the revenue of England, as forming a part of that immense expenditure by which the Borough System has been supported.