INDIA ON THE EVE OF CROWN GOVERNMENT 57
says, “When a person, travelling through a strange country, finds it well cultivated, populous with industrious inhabitants, cities newly founded, commerce extending, towns increasing, and everything flourishing, so as to indicate happiness, he will naturally conclude it to be under a form of Government congenial to the minds of the people. This is a picture of Tipoo’s country, and this is our conclusion respecting its Government.” “His country was found everywhere full of inhabitants and apparently cultivated to the utmost extent of which the soil was capable” …. His Government though strict and arbitrary, was the despotism of a strict and able sovereign, who nourishes, not oppresses, the subjects who are to be the means of his future aggrandisement, and his cruelties were, in general, inflicted on those who he considered as his enemies.
Clive described Bengal as a country of “inexhaustible riches”. Mecaulay said, “In spite of the Mussalman despot and of the Maratha freebooter, Bengal was known through the East as the Garden of Eden—as the rich kingdom. Its population multiplied exceedingly; distant provinces were nourished from the overflowing of its granaries: and the noble ladies of London and Paris were clothed in the delicate produce of its looms.”
But with the advent of the English things began to change. Prosperity bade fair to India and perched itself on the Union Jack.
The evil forces were set forth both on the side of the Parliament and the East India Company.
The Rule of the Company was anything but wise, it was rigourous, it gave security but destroyed property. The scheme of administration was far from perfect. Adam Smith characterizes the “Company of Merchants” as “incapable of considering themselves as sovereigns, even after they have become such” and says, “Trade or buying in order to sell again, they will consider as their principal business, and by a strange absurdity, regard the character of the sovereign as but an appendix to that of the merchants,.... as sovereigns, their interest is exactly the same with that of the country which they govern. As merchants, their interest is directly opposite to that interest.” [1] Adam Smiths
- ‘ Wealth of Nations’ (Canner’s Ed.) Vol. II, p 136-7.