INDIA ON THE EVE OF CROWN GOVERNMENT 69
Governor. Bishop Heber, travelling in India about 1830 wrote,” Neither native nor European agriculturist, I think can thrive at the present rate of taxation. Half the gross produce of the soil is demanded by Government, and this, which is nearly the average rate wherever there is not a Permanent Settlement, is sadly too much to leave an adequate provision for the present, even with the usual frugal habits of the Indians, and the very inartificial and cheap manner in which they cultivate the land. Still more if it (is)* an effective bar to anything like improvement; it keeps the people, even in favourable years, in a state of abject penury; and when the crop fails in even a slight degree, it involves a necessity on the part of the Government of enormous outlays in the way of remission and distribution, which, after all, do not prevent men, women and children dying in the streets in droves, and the roads being strewed with carcasses. In Bengal, where, independent of its exuberant fertility, there is a Permanent Assessment, famine is unknown. In Hindustan, (Northern India) on the other hand, I found a general feeling among the King’s officers and I myself was led from some circumstances to agree with them, that the peasantry in the Company’s Provinces are, on the whole, worse off, poorer, and more dispirited, than the subjects of the Native Princes; and here in Madras, where the soil is, generally speaking, poor, the difference is said to be still more marked. The fact is, no Native Prince demands the rent which we do, and making every allowance for the superior regularity of our system, etc., I met with very few men who will not, in confidence, own their belief that the people are over-taxed, and that the country is in a gradual state of impoverishment. The Collectors do not like to make this avowal officially. Indeed, now and men, a very able Collector succeeds in lowering the rate to the people, while by deligence he increases it to the State.
But, in general, all gloomy pictures are avoided by them as reflecting on themselves, and drawing on them censure from the Secretaries at Madras or Calcutta, while these, in their turn, plead the earnestness with which the Directors at home press for more money. “Speaking of trade and industries he says,” the trade of Surat is now of very trifling consequence, consisting of little but raw cotton, which is shipped in boats for Bombay. All
***** Inserted—ed.