" or where are the Ryots to look for relief against

oppressions?"

The reasons assigned for the preceding regulation seem to Your Committee to be perfectly just; but they can by no means be reconciled to those, which induced Mr. Barwell to engage in the Salt farms of Selimabad and Savage-poor. In the first place, his doing so is at length a direct and avowed, though at first a covert, violation of the publick regulation, to which he was himself a party, as a member of the Government, as well as an act of disobedience to the Company's positive orders on this subject. In their general letter of the 17th May 1766, the Court of Directors 66 say, "tively order, that no Dovenanted servant, or we posiEnglishman, residing under our protection, shall "be suffered to hold any land for his own ac-{1

مجھے

count, directly or indirectly, in his own name or "that of others, or to be concerned in

revenues whatsoever."

any

farms or

Secondly. If, instead of letting the Company's lands or farms to indifferent persons, their agent or

trustee be at liberty to hold them himself, he will always (on principles stated and adhered to in the defence) have a sufficient reason for farming them on his own account, since he can at all times make them as profitable as he pleases; or, if he leases them to a third person, yet reserves an intermediate.. profit for himself, that profit may be as great as he

thinks fit, and must be necessarily made at the Company's expense. If at the same time he be collector of the revenues, it will be his interest to recommend remissions in favour of the nominal farmer, and he will have it in his power to sink the amount of his collections.

These principles, and the correspondent practices, leave the India Company without any security, that all the leases of the lands of Bengal may not have been disposed of under that Administration, which made the five years settlement in 1772, in the same manner, and for the same purpose.

To enable the House to judge how far this apprehension may be founded, it will be proper to state, that Mr. Nicholas Grueber, who preceded Mr. Barwell in the chiefship of Dacca, in a letter dated 29th of April 1775, declares that he paid to the Committee of Circuit 12,000 rupees as their profit on a single Salt-Farm; which sum, he says,

I paid the Committee at their request, before "their departure from Dacca, and reimbursed my"self out of the advances directed to be issued for "the provision of the Salt. Thus one illicit and "mischievous transaction always leads to another; "and the irregular farming of revenue brings on "the misapplication of the commercial advances."

Mr. Barwell professes himself to be sensible, "that a wish to add to his fortune may possibly "have warped his judgment; and that, he rather " chooses

VOL. XI.

"chooses to admit an errour than deny a fact." But Your Committee are of opinion, that the extraordinary caution, and the intricate contrivances, with which his share in this transaction is wrapped up, form a sufficient proof that he was not altogether mis-led in his judgment; and though there might be some merit in acknowledging an errour before it was discovered, there could be very little in a confession produced by previous detection.

4

The reasons, assigned by Mr. Barwell in defence of the clandestine part of this transaction, seem to Your Committee to be insufficient in themselves, and not very fit to be urged by a man in his station. In one place he says, that "it was not thought con-"sistent with the publick regulations that the names "of any European should appear." In another, he says, "I am aware of the objection, that has "been made to the English taking farms under the names of natives, as prohibited by the Company's "orders; and I must deviate a little upon this. It "has been generally understood, that the Scope and tendency of the Honourable Company's prohibi"tion of farms to Europeans was meant only to "exclude such as could not possibly, in their own

сс

66

persons, come under the jurisdiction of the De

wanny Courts of Adawlet, because, upon any "failure of engagements, upon any complaint of "unjust oppression, or other cause of discontent "whatever, it was supposed an European might

Y

σ

screen himself from the process of the Country Judicature. But it was never supposed, that an European of credit and responsibility was absolutely incapable from holding certain tenures "under the sanction and authority of the country "laws, or from becoming security for such native farmers, contractors, &c. &c. as he might pro"tect and employ."

Your Committee have opposed this construction of Mr. Barwell's to the positive order, which the conduct it is meant to colour has violated. "Eu"ropeans of credit and responsibility," that is, Europeans armed with wealth and power, and exercising offices of authority and trust, instead of being excepted from the spirit of the restriction, must be supposed the persons, who are chiefly meant to be comprehended in it; for, abstract the idea of an European from the ideas of power and influence, and the restriction is no longer rational.

Your Committee are therefore of opinion, that the nature of the evil, which was meant to be prevented by the above orders and regulations, was not altered, or the evil itself diminished, by the collusive methods made use of to evade them; and that if the regulations were proper (as they unquestionably were), they ought to have been punctually complied with; particularly by the members of the Government, who formed the plan, and who, as trustees of the Company, were especially answerable O 2

for

for their being duly carried into execution. Your Committee have no reason to believe that it could ever have been generally understood, "that the "Company's prohibition of farms to Europeans

66

was meant only to exclude such as could not "possibly, in their own persons, come under the jurisdiction of the Dewanny Courts ;"-no such restriction is so much as hinted at. And, if it had been so understood, Mr. Barwell was one of the persons, who, from their rank, station, and influ ence, must have been the principal objects of the prohibition. Since the establishment of the Company's influence in Bengal, no Europeans, of any rank whatever, have been subject to the process of the Country Judicature; and whether they act avowedly for themselves, and take farms in their own name, or substitute native Indians to act for them, the difference is not material. The same influence, that skreened an European from the jurisdiction of the Country Courts, would have equally protected his native agent and representative. For many years past the Company's servants, have presided in those Courts, and in comparison with their authority the native authority is nothing.

The earliest instructions, that appear to have been given by the Court of Directors in consequence of these transactions in Bengal, are dated the 5th of February 1777. In their letter of that date they

applaud