Civil Disobedience in Indian Tradition, with Some Early Nineteenth Century Documents c6.s3.39

c6.s3.39

8. But on reference to the records of 1789, we find on the contrary that a great dissatisfaction existed among the native inhabitants of Calcutta on account of this tax and that they petitioned Government on the subject. This petition not being entered on the records, as it ought to have been, we do not know the allegations it contained. But we perceive by a letter from the clerk of the Commissioners to the Government that a number of the native inhabitants of Calcutta having assembled at the Commissioners house several of them were called in on which occasion they observed that they object to ‘paying any tax whatever’. (Dated 22.4.1789 General Consultations 24.4.1789) The enforcement of the tax we understand, left a considerable degree of discontent among the natives and that many of them in consequence fixed their habitations without the limits of the town in those places you call the suburbs of Calcutta which you have subjected to the new tax of 1810.