Politics of Cambay. 233 boats was again adopted by Sewell, the next Resident, in 1743, and with similar results.* Cambay was much more mixed up with the politics of Guzerat than Surat, and it is therefore necessary to glance at these, although they are a tangled web which, so far as we can perceive, no histotorian-not even the diligent and accurate Grant Duff-has been able to unravel. Momeen Khan, otherwise styled Meerza Jaffir Nuzeem-ud-Dowlah, the Nawab of Cambay, had made an attempt to become Nawab of the whole Province, and with the assistance of Rungojee, the Gaekwar's general, succeeded in taking Ahmedabad, from the inhabitants of which he extorted vast sums of money,. that he might have sufficient to bribe the leading men at Court and obtain an imperial firman. Pressed by the Marathas for the price of their alliance, he then resorted to his old city of Cambay, and extracted from it a lakh and a half of rupees; but after plying in vain Mr. Hodges, the English Resident, with threats and promises, he was fain to be content with a present from him of a. fowling-piece. He wanted, he then said, to purchase from the Company silk, iron, and sugar, to the value of thirty or forty thousand rupees; but this device succeeded no better than the others, and the unrelenting Resident doggedly told him that his Masters' terms were-Cash. Muftukhur Khan, successor of Momeen Khan, being forced by a Mussulman competitor to retire from Ahmedabad, took up his abode at Cambay, where he was followed by the Marathas, demanding payment of the bill which they had in vain presented to his predecessor. As a lakh of rupees was not forthcoming, these obdurate creditors appeared in the neighbourhood of the city with an army. The Nawab insisted that one of the bastions must be defended by the English Resident, who mustered a native officer and five peons for the purpose; but the courage of his little party was not tried. The invaders, unprepared to batter down stone walls, satisfied the revenge which the temporary triumph of some Moghul troops had excited, by cutting off the ears and noses of all Mussulmans on whom they could lay hands in the districts. A few months afterwards, when Nizam Khan was in the Government, Rungojee himself approached, and sat down before Cambay with twenty thousand Marathas. The native merchants, giving up what they knew to be a failing cause, immediately * Diary of the Surat Factory, 17th November 1741; 11th January, 25th February, 8th March, 6th November 1742; 21st January, 10th February, and 12th March 1743. repaired to his camp, and tried to frighten the English Resident into doing so by telling him that unless he joined them they would have no further transactions with him. Mr. Hodges quietly replied that he knew them well enough: whatever might be his political conduct they would always transact business with him when it suited their convenience, and no longer. So the Resident remained at home; and three wealthy persons having become security that the runaway merchants should be well treated by Nizam Khan, all of them returned. But the Marathas dictated their own terms. From this time they claimed half the revenues of the city as their "chouth" or tribute, although they were usually obliged to take less. Not content even with this, they completely humbled the Mussulman Nawab by making him throw contempt on his own religion in this wise. In the neighbourhood of Cambay was a well, venerated by the Hindus as sacred, and supposed by them to be five thousand years old. About forty years before the period of which we write, the fanatical Emperor Aurungzebe had caused this to be filled up, apparently with no other object than to wound the feelings of those who valued it, and Rungojee was now determined to celebrate the restored ascendancy of Brahmanism by re-opening it. To have merely given orders, however, that a number of labourers should commence the work forthwith, would have by no means answered his purpose. He was resolved that the followers of the Prophet, who had originally committed the injury, should repair it with their own hands, and insisted that the Mussulman servants of Nizam Khan should engage in excavating the well. The English Resident, who inherited from his predecessors a grudge against all Nawabs, chuckled with delight over the perplexity of Nizam Khan. "It is making the Mahometans encouragers of idolatry," he wrote, "a thing expressly against the fundamental position of Mahomet's doctrine." But the Chief and Council of Surat did not anticipate much fun, rightly surmising that the Nawab would swallow his pill and soon have the business "As to the contrariety of it to Nizam Khan's religion," they reply, we fancied he'd prefer his own quiet to the satisfying any small scruple of conscience," and they confidently assert that his Excellency will open what they call" the antediluvian well." over. After this Nizam Khan had disputes with the Resident and Chief and Council of Surat; but they are not worthy of being recorded. His words were stout, but his actions mean, and he always stopped short of actual collision. In 1747 he was visited f Politics of Cambay. 235 during an illness by his brother-in-law, who bribed his physician to cure his disease with an infusion of poison in his medicine. Nizam died, and his murderer's reward was the Nawabship of Cambay.* ART. II. THE NATIVE POOR OF BOMBAY. 1. Reports of the Committee of the District Benevolent Society, for the years 1854 and 1855. Bombay; 1855 and 1856. 2. Annual Exhibition of the Sir Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy Parsee Benevolent Institution. Bombay; 1855. WHEN people speak or write of the poor they use the expression in such different senses that it is necessary to explain what we mean by it. The inhabitants of a country are sometimes spoken of as divided into two classes, the rich and the poor, which have respectively their peculiar rights, and are supposed by demagogues to be in a continual state of conflict with each other. In Great Britain we have the aristocratic, middle, and poor classes; but when poor-laws are discussed it is not implied that such are designed for the last-mentioned class, or even a large portion of them. By way of escaping the difficulty of the equivoque, the Latin word pauper is now ordinarily used in a restricted sense, and an epithet which in Rome's heroic age the great Fabricius applied with honest pride to himself, is now only applied to such as are dependent upon charity. In this last sense we now take the word poor, and signify by it only such as stand in need of, or réceive, pecuniary relief. It is much to the credit of this age that attempts to ascertain the real condition of the English poor have been more vigorously, perseveringly, and systematically made than at any previous period. *Surat Diary, 22nd and 24th of May, 12th June, 16th September, 22nd October 1743; 19th February, 8th March 1744; and 10th November 1746. Grant Duff, vol. ii. chap. 2. Selections from the Records of Government, No. XXVI. New Series; Lieutenant Robertson's Narrative. Rungojee is styled Rancoo in English Records. But even in England, where means of gaining information are abundant, and the principles on which inquiries must be organised are thoroughly understood, the work is beset with many difficulties. Alms-houses, Work-houses, Homes, Refuges, Boards of Guardians, an admirable system of Police, City Missions, Newspaper Commissioners, Popular Writers, all are media through which the comfortable classes gain glimpses of the indigent; yet the political economist and philanthropist are ever asking for more light, and every now and then the public are startled by new revelations of facts which had eluded the vigilance of all previous inquirers. If the difficulty is great in England, it must be insuperable in Bombay, where a provision for the poor has never been the subject of any law, where no census with any pretension to accuracy has ever been made, no trustworthy statistics are on record; where the community is broken up into numerous tribes speaking various languages, and those tribes are again subdivided into numerous castes, which have little or no association one with another; where endowed Alms-houses are few, and those ofrecent origin; where there are no Work-houses, no Poor-rates; where in fact mendicancy is almost the sole resource of the destitute, and not only of them, but also of those whom superstition keeps from honest labour,-of religious fanatics, ascetics, and idle impostors. Who can tell what is the amount of imposture and what of genuine misery in Bombay? If saddening tales are told of London, where the squalid poverty of Poor-Tom's-a-cold is a favourite subject for the artist, the novelist, and fashionable reader,—where Earls examine Ragged Schools, Aldermen form associations of shoe-blacks, and titled ladies may be seen trudging down narrow alleys with tracts and doctors'-stuff for the dirty inmates,-what untold tales of sorrow must there be in an Indian city, where the dominant race is alien, Brahmans, Mussulmans, and Zoroastrians know little and care less about each other, abject servitude has been pronounced to be the lot of thousands, and a Brahman is told by his great lawgiver that if he holds intercourse with degraded men he will be changed after death into a foul spirit !* How many must there be whose existence is a living death, and who, when their hour has come, doubly die in poverty and pain! "Should I reveal the source of every grief, If soft humanity e'er touched your breast, * Manu, xii. 60. History of charitable institutions. 237 We do not mention these circumstances in order that we may appeal to compassion, much less that we may censure the Natives of this country on account of institutions which have been established for centuries upon centuries, and which can only be amended by the influences of a purer Faith and higher civilisation. We rather wish to point out the appalling difficulties in the way of those who would endeavour to gain information regarding the poor of Bombay, and to urge a valid excuse for the want of precision and fulness in the details which we shall now submit to our readers. They have been collected, as occasion permitted, and after frequent intervals, from a variety of sources, but chiefly from respectable and well-informed Natives. It was only by ascertaining and collating the facts, -opinions, and remarks, which a large number of persons offered, that we could even conjecture the numbers of poor, especially of street beggars, and the amount bestowed in alms by charitable inhabitants. The first attempt at any systematic relief of the poor in Bombay was made by Europeans in 1830, when an institution was formed by benevolent gentlemen, and called "The Asylum for the support of destitute Natives." Towards the end of this year, or at the commencement of 1831, Bishop Turner of Calcutta visited Bombay, and in accordance with his recommendation a Society was formed, called "The Bombay District Visiting Society." Subsequently, these two Institutions appear to have been merged into one, which has for some years borne the designation of the "District Benevolent Society." The primary object of this Society is to prevent mendicity and vagrancy, by providing an asylum for the necessitous of all classes, without reference to country or caste, furnishing them with food and clothing in a manner suitable to their circumstances, and adopting other measures for the alleviation of their sufferings. It is also an object of the Society to administer out-door relief to distressed paupers and their families; furnishing some with the means of proceeding to their distant homes, and affording others such temporary or permanent assistance as may be deemed necessary. It may be doubted whether the suppression of street begging can ever be accomplished, without the co-operation of Government. In this country mendicancy is a profession, handed down from father to son, and supported by the peculiar views and feelings which the mass of the native community entertain in reference to the virtue of alms-giving, or "dhurm.' These lead |