BOOK V. SLAVERY. CHAP. I. Introductory Remarks-Origin, Nature, and Evils of Slavery in India. A late highly respected writer on India states, respecting slavery in the East, "Though no slavery legally exists in the British territories at this moment, yet the terms and gestures used by servants to their superiors all imply that such a distinction was at no distant date very common. I am thy slave,' Thy slave hath no knowledge,' are continually used as expressions of submission and of ignorance." From this extract, and others of a similar kind which might be made, it is evident that the nature and extent of slavery in India are but imperfectly understood. A very voluminous collection of Papers on this subject, containing nearly 1000 folio pages, were "ordered by the Hon. House of Commons to be printed, March 12th, 1828," and it is important that their contents should be generally known. Of these papers it has been said, "An attempt to digest such a mass of documents into a narrative, or to reduce them into any symmetrical shape, is hopeless;" the author has not been thus discouraged in his investigation of them; but, being convinced that slavery in India is a subject of considerable interest, he has devoted much time to the perusal of these Papers, and hopes his labours may be beneficial to the interests of humanity in India. While so many works are published on West India Slavery, the author is acquainted with but one on Slavery in India,* and this a small pamphlet recently published. Whatever brings the real state of India before the British public must be productive of good; and, under this conviction, the author submits his feeble labour to the candid attention of his readers. J. Richardson, Esq., judge and magistrate of Zillah Bundlecund, in his very valuable communication to the British Government in India, on the subject of slavery, in March, 1808, very justly remarks" The humane abolition of the slave trade in England has added lustre to the enlightened wisdom of the British senate, and enrolled, to the latest posterity, the name of Wilberforce amongst the benefactors of mankind. That slavery should ever have been authorised, in any civilised community, is as astonishing to the mind, as disgraceful to human nature. The great Author of Creation made all men equally free. By what act then can that freedom be forfeited or given up? surely liberty can be forfeited by no act that does not militate against the general security and well-being of society, from which mankind acquire their happiness and protection. Nor has man more right to sell or give up the natural freedom of his person than he has to lay down his natural life at pleasure; much less can he have any title to dispose of the liberty of another, even of his child. That every human being should contribute by his labour, whether mental or corporeal, to supply the wants of his brethren in society, on principles of reciprocity and mutual advantage, is as natural as requisite; but that God should authorise the assumption of property and the absolute control of one human being over another, nothing inferior in form or organization, is surely an impious supposition, arraigning the justice of Omnipotence, and directly contrary to every benign attribute of the Deity, as delineated by reason and religion, and impressed upon our minds by the laws of nature and the use of our rational faculties. "That slavery is an infringement of the law of nature cannot be disputed. The most respectable authority proves that, therefore, it is in its own nature and essence invalid. Blackstone, speaking of the law of nature, says, 'this law of nature, coeval with mankind, and dictated by * East India Slavery by Saintsbury, 1829. See also East and West India Sugar, 1823. Hatchard. God himself, is of course superior in obligation to any other. It is binding all over the globe, in all countries, and at all times; no human laws are of any validity if contrary to this; and such of them as are valid derive all their force and all their authority mediately or immediately from this original.' The most strenuous defenders of this horrid imposition of the powerful on the weaker part of mankind pretend not to maintain its propriety but on ideas of political utility. Impartial and minute inquiry into its effects would at once remove this specious veil, by which the diabolical principle is sometimes hidden; and the system, decorated in the eye of sensible and virtuous men under mistaken notions of human expedience, proves the uniform tendency of slavery to be depressive of every emanation of the mind, and highly destructive to our species."* The origin of slavery in India, as it exists among the. Hindoos at the present period, is involved in considerable obscurity. Its rise among the Mahomedans is evidently to be traced to the triumph of their arms. The following extract from the Papers on Slavery in India affords some information upon a subject painfully interesting to every human mind. The Parliamentary Papers on Slavery in India commence with the following singular method of punishing decoits or robbers, and show one source of slavery in the East:—"That whereas the peace of this country hath for some years past been greatly disturbed by bands of Decoits, who not only infest the high roads, but often plunder whole villages, burning the houses and murdering the inhabitants: And whereas these abandoned outlaws have hitherto found means to elude every attempt which the vigilance of government hath put in force, for detecting and bringing such atrocious criminals to justice, by the secrecy of their haunts, and the wild state of the districts which are most subject to their incursions, it becomes the indispensable duty of government to try the most rigorous means, since experience has proved every lenient and ordinary remedy to be ineffectual that it be therefore resolved, That every such criminal, on conviction, shall be carried to the village to which he belongs, and be there executed for a terror and example to others; and, for the further prevention of such abominable practices, that the village of which he is an in * Par. Papers on Slavery in India, 1828, p. 299. habitant shall be fined according to the enormity of the crime, and each inhabitant according to his substance; and that the family of the criminal shall become the slaves of the state, and be disposed of for the general benefit and convenience of the people, according to the discretion of the government."* On this subject it is stated:—"The decoits of Bengal are not like the robbers in England—individuals driven to such desperate courses by sudden want; they are robbers by profession, and even by birth; they are formed into regular communities, and their families subsist by the spoils which they bring home to them; they are all therefore alike criminal; wretches who have placed themselves in a state of declared war with government, and are therefore wholly excluded from every benefit of its laws. We have many instances of their meeting death with the greatest insensibility; it loses, therefore, its effect as an example; but when executed in all the forms and terrors of law, in the midst of the neighbours and relations of the criminal, when these are treated as accessaries to his guilt, and his family deprived of their liberty, and separated for ever from each other—every passion, which before served as an incentive to guilt, now becomes subservient to the purposes of society, by turning them from a vocation in which all they hold dear, besides life, becomes forfeited by their conviction; at the same time, their families, instead of being lost to the community, are made useful members of it, by being adopted into those of the more civilized inhabitants. The ideas of slavery, borrowed from our American colonies, will make every modification of it appear, in the eyes of our own countrymen in England, a horrible evil; but it is far otherwise in this country; here slaves are treated as the children of the families to which they belong, and often acquire a much happier state by their slavery than they could have hoped for by the enjoyment of liberty; so that, in effect, the apparent rigour thus exercised on the children of convicted robbers will be no more than a change of condition, by which they will be no sufferers, though it will operate as a warning on others, and is the only means which we can imagine capable of dissipating these des *Par. Papers on Slavery in India, p. 2, Plan for the administration of justice, Aug. 1772. perate and abandoned societies, which subsist on the distress of the general community."* "If we may judge (says the Editor of the Asiatic Journal, in a review of the contents of the Papers on Slavery in India) from a subsequent minute and regulation of the Bengal Government (1774), this proposal was not listened to; for therein, not only is the stealing of children or selling any Hindoo as a slave (without a regular deed) forbidden, but it is proposed to abolish slavery altogether, after the first generation then living, owing to the great increase of late years of this savage commerce, and in order to prevent hasty strides towards depopulation.' Further inquiry however seems to have convinced the Bengal Government that there were districts where slavery was in general usage, and the abolition of which might impede cultivation. The Government observes that the opinions of the most creditable Mussulman and Hindoo inhabitants condemn the usage of selling slaves as repugnant to the particular precepts both of the Koran and the Shaster."✝ The Provincial Council of Patna, in Aug. 1774, address the Governor, Warren Hastings, Esq., on this subject as follows:—" We find that there are two kinds of slaves in this province, Mussulman and Hindoo; the former are properly called Mualazadeh, and the latter Kahaar. Slaves of either denomination are considered in the same light as any other property, and are transferrable by the owner, or descend at his demise to his heirs. They date the rise of the custom of Kahaar slavery from the first incursions of the Mahomedans, when the captives were distributed by the general among the officers of his army, to whose pos terity they remained. All other slaves have become so by occasional purchase, as in cases of famine, &c. The Kaboleh must be signed by the mother or grandmother, and not by the father. Children also born of slaves are the property of the owner of the woman, though married to a slave of a different family."‡ The Collector at Trichinopoly, in the Madras Presidency, in reply to the inquiries of the Government addressed to a number of Collectors on the subject of Slavery in their respective districts, describes the origin of pullers or agricultural slavery as follows:—" It is, I apprehend, indisputable, * Par. Papers on Slavery in India, p. 1, 2. † Asi. Jour. Nov. 1828, Par. Papers on Slavery in India, p. 5. p. 559. |