Siyar al-mutaʾakhkhirin 42.30
A Translation of the Seir Mutaqherin (Haji Mustafa) 42.30
- Language
- English
42.30.1
You say that a Governor-General has nothing to do with my quarrel with Mahmed-reza-qhan. This being so bold an assertion, I shall oppose it by one full as bold: He has. A Governor-General is not only the Company's tax-gatherer, and its man-killer, he is also its Supreme Magistrate, the man that sees that justice is rendered to every one. At this rate, Sir, the King of England, who is the tax-gatherer born of the nation, and its General-in-Chief, as well as its high Admiral, should have nothing to do with the little quarrels about meums and tuums, that are rising daily amongst the meanest subjects; and yet, he presides virtually there in civil matters, for instance, at the Court of Common Pleas, as he does at the King's Bench, in criminal ones. Nor is the Chancellor in his Court of Equity any thing else but the King's representative and substitute. A Governor-General is then by station obliged to attend to the redress of the meanest subject. But what if this injury, glaring and ruinous as it may be to the latter, involves in his case all subjects whatever? And what, if the very narrative of that case supposes, that there is not much personal exception, alias injustice, in that man's case; as that case of his, shocking as it looks, is no more than that of all those refractory men, who absolutely intend and pretend to carry a cause, not by paying down a consideration of fifty, or sixty per cent., but by dint of right, and by dint of argument?
42.30.2
What if the Civil Court of Justice at Môrshôd-abad proves to be exactly under the same predicament? And at a time when every month brings forth some new regulation for the army, (an army flushed by twenty years' victories, and fashioned by twenty years' discipline; an army that will fight very well, whether some little regulation should take place or not) will no Governor-General think his duty deeply concerned in proposing some alterations in the mode of distributing justice to the subject? Will he not attend to such a daily perversion of justice? Then no taxes are due to him; no obedience is due to his commands. Who says so? And who is there preaching sedition and anarchy? It is, Sir, the author of the Seir-el-Mutaqherin, who tells you in his second Volume, that submission in the subject, and an intense religious regard to distributive justice in the Ruler, are terms correlative; and that the one cannot exists where the other ceases to be. You are surprised at such a language in an Asiatic; but here is a great deal more. The same author tells you (and his words have been printed in Italics, to render them more prominent) "that the apathy of the English (has the Persian such a "word? It has. Look at the original); that the apathy of the "English in whatever concerns the natives, and their innate "indifference for whatever is not war or politics, that is, themselves, is the most discouraging (id est, the most revolting) "circumstance in the world.
42.30.3
He ——." But there would be no end to citations of the kind. Look at the second Volume, and attend, not only to what it says openly, but to what it insinuates, and to what conclusions it points out silently with the finger. Observe, Sir, that all these complaints about the bad justice to be had in Bengal, and the apathy and carelessness of the English Government on that head, are no novel subject. The author wrote so early as fourteen years ago. To these hints which he gives you about the state of the civil and criminal justices in Bengal twelve or fourteen years ago, join the many shocking cases mentioned, and authenticated beyond doubt in Bolts, his India tracts (cases on which the most eminent Lawyers in England have given their opinions in vain; for they have remained unredressed). Add to all that, the case of two Armenians who travelled to England, to obtain redress against Verelst, and who, after obtaining forty-two thousand Rupees principal, eight thousand Rupees costs, and four thousand Rupees damages, were, nevertheless, completely ruined by a voyage and sojourn, that took up eleven years. Attend to this, that the same complaints, ushered by Bolts, and by so many Englishmen in 1766, and continued by our author throughout the period of fourteen years, are repeated to-day by a man who prints himself, and appeals to records.
42.30.4
Take into your account that so many glaring injustices have been heaped, not only with a great deal of ease, but also with much sneering and much contumely upon a man, who could speak and write for himself, and who always thought that the English Government seldom failed to afford redress, when applied to. Attend to all that put together, and then say with me, what then must be, must have been all this while, and must infallibly be henceforward, the case of those millions of mouthless wretches, who, through ignorance and prejudice, having imbibed the most unworthy notions of the English, both as a nation and as individuals, really think that their whole Government amounts to, nothing better than a perpetual scene of sack and plunder, the links whereof ascend regularly from the lowest individual to the highest station ? Put all these considerations together, attend to the constant succession of the same wrongs, and the same complaints for a series of no less than six and twenty years, and conclude then, that the English Government in this country labours under a radical defect, which nothing will extirpate, but a new modelling of the Courts of Justice, and a severe punishment of delinquency. You will, I see that plainly, oppose to such a picture, the flourishing cultivation of the country, and the flourishing state of the Revenue, I admit both in a great degree.
42.30.5
But you must admit on your side, that the country was at all times as much cultivated as to-day, if not a great deal more; that about a Coror a year arises from branches of Revenue, either unknown to the former Government, or kept on the lowest footing (for instance, Saltpetre, Opium, and Salt; and I have seen Salt in 1756 at 34, and it was in 1780 at 105 in Calcutta; whereas it has been of late at 250 and 380). You must admit that the Revenues are now collected with a vigor and precision unknown to the Hindostany Government. You must admit that notwithstanding that inattention and that laxity imputed to that Government, and notwithstanding that the country was almost annually ravaged by some army or other, and that one full third of it, and that two the very best, was constantly under contribution to an enemy, yet that this Government realised a great deal more than the English Government; and what proves irrefragably that the country was incomparably more flourishing, the very individuals, as collectors of Revenue, or indeed as merchants, accumulated amazing fortunes. Has now a Collector or Fodjdar of Baghalpoor opportunities of making up a fortune of a Coror in fourteen years, as has done Ata-ollah-qhan in the Seir-el-Mutaqherin? Has one private man, with no other income than the Sayrat of Moorshood-abad, that is, the duties other than the land-tax; has he any means of making one Coror in twelve years? This man is Hadji-ahmed.
42.30.6
Will a Jagatseat now, after having been plundered by the Marhattas of full two Corors in Arcot rupees only, give to Government the next sixth months' bills of exchange for fifty, sixty, and a hundred lacs, payable at sight? Look for all that, and for a great deal more, in the Seir-el-Mutaqherin. So far from that, Jagatseat has not been able to pay, but by instalments, a bill of one hundred and forty thousand rupees in 1787. Do you see a single house raised now throughout all Dacca, Patna, and Moorshood-abad, but by the dependants of the English, or by those of the two Navvabs, or by Djessaret-qhan's family, or Shitab-ray's family? (And all these are dependants of the English). And of what are made these new houses? Of bricks taken from tenements going to ruins. Do you see throughout these cities, and likewise throughout Malda, Puraniah and Hugly, anything but houses mouldering away, cottages of mud and straw raised in the halls of former houses, and a picture of wretchedness and desolation stalking forth everywhere? Do those cities contain one single merchant, not a European or an Armenian, worth fifty thousand rupees? Not one. I know them all. No; nor one Banker capable to afford a draught of fifty thousand rupees. Do you hear to-day of any single individual venturing upon making those expensive wharfs and quays, which we admire to-day throughout those cities?
42.30.7
Let then the English look to themselves. With masters the most enlightened in the world, with an administration equitable and full of lenity after all, and with a Government vigorous and attentive, that has kept public enemies and ravagers out of these countries these twenty-six years past, how does it happen that their cities bear such marks of desolation, and increasing wretchedness?