INDIA ON THE EVE OF CROWN GOVERNMENT 59
The internal administration was so devised that the Governors and the official staff in their capacity as advisers did or were compelled to do all the thinking for the inhabitants of the country. They enacted, true to a word, the part of Sir John Bowley or the “Poor man’s friend” so ably drawn by Charles Dickens : “Your only business, my good fellow, is with me. You need not trouble yourself to think about anything. I will think for you; I know what is good for you; I am your perpetual parent. Such is the dispensation of all all-wise Providence ... what man can do, I do. I do my duty as the Poor man’s Friend and Father, and I endeavour to educate his mind, by inculcating on all occasions the one great lesson which that class requires, that is entire dependence on myself. They have no business whatever with themselves.”
These Bowleys no doubt did the thinking as a Divine mandate but unfortunately, none the less naturally, their thinking and enacting proved decidedly favourable to England and fatal to India.
How England prospered while India declined may be well impressed on our minds if we recall the economic condition of England immediately before and after 1600 and also the nature of India’s tribute to England.
Sir Josiah Child gives very interesting comparative description of the rising prosperity of England after 1545.
According to him, in 1545 “the trade of England then was inconsiderable and the merchants very mean and few”….. “but now”, he says “there are more men to be found upon the exchange with ten thousand pounds estates, than were then of one thousand pounds. And if this be doubted let us ask the aged, whether five hundred pounds portion with a daughter sixty years ago, were not esteemed a larger portion than two thousand pounds is now ; and whether gentle women in those days would not esteem themselves well clothed in a serge gown, which a chambermaid now will be ashamed to be seen in... We have now almost one hundred coaches for one we had formerly. We with ease can pay a greater tax now in one year than our forefathers could in twenty. Our customs are very much improved, I believe above the proportion aforesaid, of six to one ;