Eric Stokes

The English Utilitarians and India / Eric Stokes; New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1989 (1-46 p.
THE DOCTRINE AND ITS SETTING
I. The Battle of the Two Philosophies

H s setting of British administrative policy was laid at
T the foundations of the British dominion in India. In

the early period after Plassey expediency predominated.
The immediate problem at that time was the manner in
which the British should exercise their controlling power in
the Bengal territories. At first they felt too inexperienced and
unready to contemplate taking the government of the coun-
try into their own hands, and had resort to the expedient of a
puppet Indian government. Even when this system broke
down, and CKve obtained from the titular Mughal authority
the grant of the formal right to collect the land revenue and
administer civil justice (the grant of the Diwani in 1765)* he
was determined that the native administration and its officers
should be continued, and the Company's power still held
in the background. The result was dive's famous 'double
government'.. The first point in his politics, as he told the
Bengal Council on his departure in 1765, was that the
Company's sovereignty should be masked.1 In this way as
little interference as possible was to be made with the in-
digenous political system. The attitude persisted when the
considerations of expediency which had prompted it were no
longer so strong. As the indigenous system withered, the
British were compelled increasingly to intervene inJ the
revenue and judicial spheres, and to fashion administrative
machinery of their own. But they continued to regard them-
selves as inheritors rather than innovators, as the revivers of
a decayed system and not the vanguard of a new. Social con-
ditions favoured this attitude. A handful of eighteenth-
century Englishmen, scattered throughout the Bengal
1
Clivt to Vereht and Select Committee, 16 Jan. 1767: Second X*£>rt °*
India Company, 177*1 abo Clive to Court of Directors, 30 Sept. 1765, Third Rtfort
on East India Comfany, 1773.
6»0l B
2 THE DOCTRINE AND ITS SETTING
THE DOCTRINE AND ITS SETTING 3
territories, without English wives, or prospects of furlough, its authority over the larger part of the civil justice adminis-
and with no rigid moral or religious code, soon adapted
tered in the Bengal territories. The threat that English few
themselves to Indian ways of living. Set on making their
would displace the indigenous Hindu and Muslim system,
fortune before the climate or disease carried them off, they
were zealots for no cause or political principle, and were aroused in Hastings the first conscious reaction in favour
content to conduct the public business according to its of preserving Indian society and its institutions against the
traditional Indian forms and in the traditional hybrid anglicizing danger. For the first time such an attitude did not
Persian. Yet their very presence betokened a change in the rest upon reasons of expediency but was grounded on an
character of government, however long its effects might be emotional prejudice. As he protested, 'the people of this
delayed. The breach had been made, and the pressure of the country do not require our aid to furnish them with a rule
Directors for patronage steadily widened it until the English for their conduct, or a standard for their property'. Hastings's
element in the government of Bengal predominated. Al- encouragement of oriental scholarship and, in particular,
though a product of circumstance rather than design, the of Halhed's translation of Hindu laws was p a r / of this
principle of anglicization had taken root. Warren Hastings attitude. When he interfered to reorganize the whole
attempted to resist its implications. He was the first to judicial system, he claimed that 'no essential change was
recognize the necessity of abandoning the sham of Clive's made in the ancient constitution of the province. It was only
'double government' and openly to assert British sovereignty brought back to its original principles.'1 Thus while Clive's
and responsibility. Yet he feared not only the immediate 'double government' was abandoned and all effective ad-
effects of releasing a horde of plundering English officials into ministrative authority taken into English hands, the dual
the interior, but also the more lasting consequences df loos- principle remained. Hastings refused to recognize the legal
ing English ideas and methods on the weakened fabric of fiction of the grant of the Diwani as giving the Company any
Indian society. He tried, unsuccessfully as it proved, to power or right it did not already possess; but undoubtedly
confine the British element in the administration to the the conception of the dual origin of the Company's authority,
Supreme Government at Calcutta, and to leave the ordinary the grant from the Crown and the grant from the Mughal
provincial administration in the hands of the old Indian empercr, continued to colour English thinking. As the
official class. legatee of Mughal rule the Company was regarded as
bound to respect the religion and habits of the people and
The first conscious movement to introduce English to preserve to them their special laws.
principles into the British possessions arose out of the
attempt of Parliament to control the excesses of the Com- The second wave in the gathering tide of anglicization
pany's servants in India. Lord North's Regulating Act of came with Cornwallis, the Governor-General from 1786 to
1773 instituted the Calcutta Supreme Court, 'the chief 1793. But it still came in what might be called a defensive
purpose of which', in Burke's words, 'was to form a strong form. The institution of the Supreme Court, exercising the
and solid security for the natives against the wrongs and .jurisdiction of English law over the acts of the Company's
oppressions of British subjects resident in Bengal'.1 The servants in their individual capacity, had failed to extinguish
Supreme Court was made independent of the Governor- open abuse and corruption. Cornwallis's outlook still moved
General and Council, and administered English law. With in accordance with the motives which had inspired its
its powers of jurisdiction defined in only the vaguest manner establishment. He inherited the belief that the Company's
it was possible for the Court by legal construction to extend financial difficulties and the troubles and miseries besetting
1
the Company's territories sprang from the failure to control
Ninth Report of Select Committee on the Affairs of India, Z783; Burke, Works,
185a edn., vol. vi, p. 384. 1
Hastings to Lord Mansfield, 25 Aug. 1774: G. R. Gleig, Life of Warren
Hastings, vol. i, p. 401.
4 THE DOCTRINE AND ITS SETTING THE DOCTRINE AND ITS SETTING S
its own European servants; and he proposed to subject them The Permanent Settlement of Bengal (1793) was a frank
not merely as individuals but as a system of government to attempt to apply the English Whig philosophy of govern-
the rule of English constitutional principles. Despite Francis's ment. It had as its central belief the Whig conviction that
urging, there was now no question, even if Cornwallis had political power is essentially corrupting and inevitably
wished, of a return to the indigenous system under Indian abused; that power, to be exercised with safety, must be
officials; but in any case it was oriental principles of reduced to a minimum, and even then kept divided and
government which in Cornwallis's eyes were fundamentally counterbalanced. Cornwallis sought to reduce the function
at fault. He saw in the Company's adoption of Asian despo- of government to the bare task of ensuring the security of
tism the source of every ill. To him the essence of the problem person and property. He believed this could be achieved by
was to limit governmental power and so prevent its abuse. permanently limiting the State revenue demand on the land;
Thus while he confirmed and extended the English ad- for he was convinced that the executive arm of the Govern-
ministration, taking over criminal justice from the control of ment would always abuse its power so long as the State
the Nawab and firmly establishing the system of district demand was variable from year to year.1 Once the settlement
administration, he was all the time concerned to limit its was fixed in perpetuity, the Boards of Revenue and the
power. He consciously broke with the personal, authori- collectors could be deprived of all judicial powers, and their
tarian tradition of Indian government, and based his work functions confined 'to the mere collection of the public dues'.*
explicitly on the principles of the English political tradition. The executive would thus be divested of all discretionary
The authors of the Fifth Re-port of 1812 saw this point quite authority, and would be subject to the rule of law as framed
clearly. According to them Cornwallis had the choice of into formal legislative enactments by the Supreme Govern-
consolidating British rule on the basis of the Mughal system ment and enforced by a judiciary entirely independent of the
or of adopting an entirely new and foreign foundation. A ordinary executive authorities. The permanent limitation of
case for attempting to preserve the Mughal institutions the revenue demand, and the curbing of executive power
could be argued; it was, that which it made possible, were not, however, the most decisive
feature of the Permanent Settlement. This was rather the
when brought back to their original state of utility, and improved by determination to introduce private property rights in land
such regulations as might be superadded by the British government, and uphold them through a Western type of law system.
[they] would, under a just and vigilant administration, unite the Cornwailis believed that everything hinged upon the recogni-
liberal policy of an European state with the strength and energy of an tion of the proprietary rights or the zemindars, the great
Asiatic monarchy, and altogether be better suited to the genius,
experience, and understanding of the natives, than institutions founded landholders; and indeed landed property is the kernel of the
on principles, *o them wholly new, derived from a state of society Whig conception of political society. To the Whig mind
with which they were unacquainted.... landed property appeared as the agency which affected the
reconciliation of freedom with order. Itself almost a part of
Cornwallis's decision was, however, for the law of nature, there flowed from a system of landed
property a natural ordering of society into ranks and classes,
the introduction of a new order of things, which should have for its 'nowhere more necessary than in this country', maintained
foundation, the security of individual property, and the administration Cornwallis, 'for preserving order in civil society'.3 In the
of justice, criminal and civil, by rules which were to disregard all
1
conditions of persons, and in their operation, be free of influence or Minute of Cornwallis, 10 Feb. 1790: G. W. Forrest, Selections from the State
control from the government itself.1 Papers of the Governors-General
1
of India; Lord Cornwallis, vol. ii, p. I I J .
Despatch to Court of Director*, 6 March 1793: Forrest, Cormuallis, vol. ii, p. 124.
J
» The Fifth HUport from the Select Committee on the Affairs of the East India Despatch to Court of Directors, 1 Aug. 1789: Correspondence of Marquis Com-
Company. Ordered by the House of Commons to bt printed, 18 July, JSU, p. 18. viallis, ed. Charles Ross, vol. i, p. 554.
6 THE DOCTRINE AND ITS SETTING THE DOCTRINE AND ITS SETTING 7
Whig outlook society was thus naturally self-ordered with- Bengal landholders their last quasi-political power, the right
out the direct interference of government. So far from mean- to keep armed retainers and to police their districts. He,
ing the exercise of arbitrary or discretionary authority, the sought by his reforms to erect an impersonal government >
true function of government was simply the administration of law, 'a system upheld by its inherent principles, and not
of justice. Its task was no more than the impartial administra- by the men who are to have the occasional conduct of it'; and
tion of fixed and equal laws for the maintenance of private he resorted to the classic Whig division of the powers, with
property rights. Once these latter were secured, all else its separation of the judiciary and executive. In each district
followed. Political authority, in the form of the subjection of the Bengal territory a Collector was established, who
of one man to the will of another, was reduced to its lowest was designed to be merely what his name implied, not an
point; and the happy marriage of liberty and security pro- all-powerful discretionary official, but a mere collector of
vided the most favourable conditions for the production of fixed public dues. He was given no political or magisterial
wealth. Throughout Cornwallis's Minutes there resound authority, and was not even entrusted with the control of the
unconscious echoes of Locke's classic statement of the Whig district police. The great figure in the district, the true
theory. He sought to give concrete form to the rule of law representative of the British system, was meant to be the
in the Bengal Code of Regulations of 1793, and the pre- District Judge and Magistrate; it was he who was empowered
amble to Regulation II stated the general principle: to administer the impersonal law system of the Cornwallis
Code of Regulations, even, if need be, against the collector
Government must divest itself of the power of infringing, in its himself in his official capacity. The district judge was given
executive capacity, the rights and privileges, which, as exercising the the control of the police, and a status and salary superior to
legislative authority, it has conferred on the landholders. The revenue that of the collector.
officers must be deprived of their judicial powers. All financial claims
of the public when disputed under the regulations, must be subjected Wellesley, the next important figure among the Governor-
to the cognisance of the courts of judicature, superintended by judges, Generals (1798-1805), saw and admired these English
who from their official situations, and the nature of their trusts, shall principles. He asserted that the British constitution had
not only be wholly uninterested in the results of their decisions, but supplied the model of Cornwallis's work, and. believed he
bound to decide impartially between the public and the proprietors of was carrying this work to its proper completion by divesting ,
land, and also between the latter and their tenants. The collectors of the Governor-General's Council of its function as the high
the revenue must not only be divested of the power of deciding upon court of the Company's judicial system, and instituting
their own acts, but rendered amenable for them to the courts of judica- instead a separate Court oiSadrDiwani and Nizamat Adl
ture; and collect the public dues, subject to a personal prosecution for
every exaction exceeding the amount which they are authorized to The early administration of the Company succeeded to the despotic
demand on behalf of the public, and for every deviation from the regula- power of the native princes. Those princes, as in other despotic govern-
tions prescribed for the collection of it. No power will then exist in the ments, united in their own persons, the whole legislative, executive,
country by which the rights vested in the landholders by the regulations and judicial powers of the State, and exercised them according to the
can be infringed or the value of landed property affected. Land must dictates of their own discretion. No form of Government could be so
in consequence become the most desirable of all property, and the ill-adapted to these countries when they became dependent possessions
industry of the people will be directed to these improvements in of the British Empire, subject to be governed by persons occasionally
agriculture which are as essential to their own welfare as to the deputed from the Mother Country. Experience of the evils attendant on
prosperity of the state. this form of Government conducted by a delegated British administra-
In this spirit Cornwallis carried through a sweeping tion, led to the modelling of the Government of Bengal, on principles
drawn from the British constitution. A distribution of the legislative,
anglicization of the British power, removing Indians from
executive, and judicial powers of the state, analogous to that which
all but the petty offices, and taking away from the great
8 T H E DOCTRINE AND ITS SETTING THE DOCTRINE AND ITS SETTING 9
forms the basis of the British constitution was made the foundation what surprisingly from the brilliant group of subordinates
of the new constitution of the Government of Bengal. which served Wellesley: from Munro, Malcolm, Elphin-
In his enthusiasm for these constitutional principles and his stone, and Metcalfe.1 Out of their thought and work
anxiety to see them adopted in the Madras territories, emerged a new and conscious alternative to an anglicized '
Wellesley maintained that the question of a permanent form of administration. They deserve a close study because
settlement of the land revenue was altogether separate, and they were the dominant school in the formation of Indian
formed no necessary part of the 'fundamental principle of policy when liberalism first began to exercise an influence on
the new constitution'. Even at this time, when a marked internal administration after 18 18. Despite a disparity of
improvement in the quality and probity of the British age and temperament, there is a unity of thought in this
official was noticeable, Wellesley still defended the abandon- knot of men which makes it possible to speak of them as the
ment of the native tradition and the separation of the judicial founders of a political tradition. Their great work was in
from the executive authorities by the Whig argument that all various forms to counter the spirit of the Cornwallis system.
power was inherently liable to abuse. 1 Although most of them spent the main part of their careers
Although based on frankly English principles and on a in military and diplomatic activities, their concrete and
conscious abandonment of what was held to be native visible achievement was the ryot-war system of land settlement
tradition, the movement of anglicization was still defensive and general administration, first developed by Munro, and
in outlook. It was not designed to effect a wholesale revolu- extended by him throughout the Madras Presidency in the
tion of Indian society; its purpose was rather to limit the period of his governorship from 1819 until 1827. Mount-
interference of government. Wellesley still mirrors this stuart Elphinstone, who was rewarded in 1819 for his
outlook, claiming as he did, that the indigenous form and diplomatic achievements against the Mahrattas with the
institutions of government were no essential part of Indian governorship of the Bombay Presidency, adopted the ryotwar
society. In fact, he declared, the British system of public system for the large area of western India that was annexed to
law, administered by an independent judiciary, was the the Bombay Presidency as a result of the Mahratta defeat;
best guarantee of toleration and protection for those interests and his work was maintained by his successor, John Mal-
to which the great mass of the people were truly attached. colm, Governor from 1827 until 1830. In the north, Met-
For these interests embraced no system of political principles calfe, the youngest and the last to leave India, threw all the
or form of government, but consisted of the religion of the weight of his influence (as Resident of the Delhi Territory
people, their ancient customs, and the pursuit of their and later as member of the Governor-General's Council)
domestic concerns. The 'new constitution' pivoted, however, against the extension of the Cornwallis system to the Ceded
on the definition and enforcement of private property rights and Conquered (afterwards North-Western) Provinces. He
in the Western sense; and whatever the original intention, lived to see the 'village communities' there made the basis of
this was to prove an innovation that ultimately was to play the revenue settlement, and the executive and magisterial
the most decisive role in the overthrow and transformation functions permanently reunited in the person of the collector.
of the old society. Except for Munro, these men owed their early advance-
ment to Wellesley, to whom they had also been attracted
imaginatively by the scale of his imperial vision. Wellesley
The resistance to this policy of applying British constitu- had brought to India a mind and ambition inflamed with
tional principles to the Indian administration came
car some- the world-struggle for empire against Napoleonic France.
1
Letter of Governor-General in Council to Madras, 19 July 1804, para. 25. He deliberately set out, as none of his predecessors had
Wellesley was sufficiently proud of this despatch to have it published in London in
1812 (see India Office Library Tracts, vol. 465). 1
See Biographical Notes, pp. 331-*,
IO THE DOCTRINE AND ITS SETTING THE DOCTRINE AND ITS SETTING . 11
deemed practicable or desirable, to reduce the whole Indian of vision which these men exhibit, and the heroic manner in
peninsula to subjection to the British power, and he poured which they regarded political activity, is a reflection of the
open scorn on the narrow counting-house mentality of the great Napoleonic struggle in Europe, and of that conscious
Court of Directors and their anxiety over the financial un- sense of fashioning history which prevailed in the Romantic
profitability of such a dominion. His grandc maniere, his age.
majestic conception of Indian affairs, fired the enthusiasm
Malcolm had little of a brooding, melancholic nature, but
of his subordinates, to whom he was always the 'glorious
his aim at self-completeness is characteristic of his world.
little man1. All of them were kindled with his imperialist
That impulse for completion, which made every great
ambition—to raise up, as Malcolm said, 'a monument of
Romantic poet a politician, worked in him to transform the
glory' in the form of a great eastern empire. Their constant
roughly educated soldier into a finished statesman and
awareness of the historical significance of their work gives to
writer. For a busy man of affairs his literary achievement was
all their writing a largeness of outlook and a certain majesty
remarkable; it included his History of Persia (still regsdrded as
of statement, never again to be recaptured in British Indian
a standard work), The Political History of India, Central
annals. From the glimpses which the records of their
India, The Government of India, the Life of Clive (upon
private thoughts permit, they possessed what might be
which Macaulay wrote his famous Edinburgh Review article),
termed the Romantic temperament; combining a strong
as well as various occasional verse. With Munro there was
introspective bent, a sensibility for natural beauty and for
the same intellectual eagerness, continuing far into life and
historical associations, with an imaginative urge for release
prompting him at the age of sixty to go painstakingly through
in action and adventure. Charles Metcalfe, even as a youth,
Ricardo.1 Of this group Mountstuart Elphinstone was the
was the morose and solitary being he was to remain through-
scholar-statesman par excellence. Taking a text from Cym-
out his life. His early journal records a fervent belief in the
beline as his motto:
heroic nature of politics, 'the most noble of professions',
and his faith in the superiority of 'active talents' over expert What pleasure, sir, find we in life, to lock
scientific knowledge contrasts strongly with the cult of it from action and adventure?
expertise and administrative technique which tended to set he wedded the life of court, camp, and chase, with a passion
in after 18 18.1 This superior comprehensiveness of outlook, for intellectual pursuits—for the Latin, Greek, and Persian
which Metcalfe as a young man was seeking, is evident in the classics, and for history, philosophy, and jurisprudence. The
other figures. It is true that Munro was able to combine such laconic entry in his diary after the storming of Gawllgarh
an outlook with an expert and detailed knowledge of revenue during the Assaye campaign indicates his ideal: 'I break-
affairs, and that Malcolm insisted upon a thorough know- fasted with Kennedy and talked about Hafiz, Saadi, Horace,
ledge of details as the only basis for a true grasp of the art of and Anacreon. At nine I left him and went to the trenches.'
Indian administration. But in his final advice to his assistants But the Byronic melancholia, to which his acute sensibility
in central India, it was this catholicity of attitude to which Vas subject, and the introspectiveness, so unusual in a man
Malcolm returned. Nothing could keep them right in detailed of action, link him clearly with the Romantic temperament.
questions of policy, he said, but accustoming their minds Elphinstone would have scorned such a thought as affecta-
to dwell upon the character of British power in India, and tion, and on this ground he reserved his judgement on the
that of the empire over which it was established.2 The width Lake poets, though reading Byron avidly. He had, however,
all the Romantics' worship of nature; there is no mistaking
' J. W. Kaye, Life of Metcalfe, vol. i, p. 88.
* Sir John Malcolm, The Political History of India, 2nd edn., 1826, vol. ii, 1
For an account of Munro's intellectual pursuits, cf. Gleig, Munro, vol. i, p. 9.
p. 159. Id., Memoir of Central India, vol. ii, p. 474.
Cf. vol. ii, pp. 282-305, for his notes on Ricardo's Political Economy.
12 THE DOCTRINE AND ITS SETTING THE DOCTRINE AND ITS SETTING l3
its note in his description of the falls of Gokauk by moon- of sentiment with which Wordsworth and the Romantics
light, when he 'felt as in the presence of a superior being and invested the noble peasant was fully shared by Munro; and
was filled with a reverential and almost superstitious awe'.1 it is not idle to see in this the emotional and mental back-
Metcalfe also shared this feeling for Nature, 2 and it was ground to the ryotwar system of land settlement, which is
also to be found in the more rough-hewn and simpler Munro's particular title to greatness.1 To take the peasant
character of Munro, who had few of the trappings of the in all his simplicity, to secure him in the possession of
eighteenth-century cultivated gentleman. Elphinstone was his land, to rule him with a paternal and simple govern-
himself surprised at the poetic sensibility which Munro hid ment, and so to avoid all the artificialities of a sophisticated
beneath his bluff soldier's exterior.3 Indeed, in Munro we European form of rule—these political aims surely spring
come nearer to the elemental emotion which Wordsworth directly from that current of contemporary thought in
experienced in the face of Nature. In a letter to his sister, he Europe which literary historians have called the Romantic
wrote: movement.
I spend many of my leisure hours on the highest summit of the It was ironic that this group of men should attain to the
rock on which the '. t stands, under the shady bastion, built by Hyder. fullness of power at the moment when the world of diplomatic
The spot has for me a certain charm, which I always strongly feel, but and military action, in which their ideas were nurtured, had
cannot easily describe While seated on the rock, I am, or fancy come to its end.2 With the termination of the final Mahratta
that I am more thoughtful than when below. The extent and gran- war in 1818, and the crushing of the last independent power
deur of the scene raises my mind, and the solitude and silence make which could oppose the British, the political problem in
me think that 'I am conversing with Nature here'. To the east, I see India was transformed. 'The task of conquest was slight',
a romantic, well-cultivated valley, leading to the wide plains of the reflected Malcolm, 'in comparison with that which awaits us,
Carnatic. To the south, a continuation of the-same valley, running as the preservation of the empire acquired.'3
far as the eye can reach, into Mysore. All the rest, on every side, is a
vast assemblage of hills and naked rocks, wildly heaped one above the The age of chivalry had gone; that of sophisters, economists,
other.4 and calculators was to succeed. The sword was to be exchanged
for the pen, and the soldier-diplomat to give way before the
It was these wild and desolate scenes of Nature which he administrator and judge. The change in itself meant a new
believed to be 'sublimer subjects of poetry than all the fic- temper. The large discretion permitted to individuals, in the
tions of Greece and Rome*. There is the same insistence, as early days of conquering and settling a country, was bound
with Wordsworth, on natural simplicity, the same contempt to be replaced by a more regular and centralized form of
for the artifices of civilized society, and for mere book- administration. In writing to Metcalfe in 1821, Malcolm
learning arid abstract philosophy, and the same reverence was referring to a fast-fading past when he said that neither
for the accumulated wisdom of the past.5 Above all, the aura of them were 'exactly at the disposal of what Captain
Clutterbuck calls a clattering piece of parchment, and can
halt or move as the clouds indicate'.4 In practice, he knew
1
For Elphinstone'$ character, cf. T. E. Colebrooke, Life of Mountstuart Elphin-
stone, vol. i, pp. 166, 351-3, vol. ii, pp. 145-8.
2
Cf. a passage from one of Metcalfe's letters in 1827, cited Percival Spear, that even men in the highest position were being placed
Twilight of tie Mughuls, pp. 167-8. 'as much under minute check and control as a collector of a
1 Journal, 28 May 1820: Colebrooke, Elphinstone, vol. ii, p. n o .
1
• Munro to his sister, Ambore, 1 March 1795: Gleig, Munro, vol. i, pp. 86-87. Munro to Col. Read, 16 June 1801: Gleig, Munro, vol. iii, p. 162.
* Munro to his sister, 15 Sept. 1795: ibid., p. 170: 'It is distressing that we should * In 1819 Munro became Governor of Madras, and Elphinstone Governor of
persevere in the absurd practice of stifling the young ideas of boys of fourteen or Bombay. In 1827 Metcalfe became a member of the Supreme Council, and Malcolm
fifteen,with logic. A few pages of history give more insight into the human mind, succeeded Elphinstone as Governor of Bombay.
in a more agreeable manner, than all the metaphysical volumes that ever were pub- ' Malcolm, Political History, vol. ii, p. 64.
lished.* Cf. Wordsworth, The Prelude, Book XIII. * Malcolm to Metcalfe, April 1821: Kaye, Malcolm, vol. ii, p. 337.
14 THE DOCTRINE AND ITS SETTING THE DOCTRINE AND ITS SETTING. 15
small district'; and he feared that this, and the absence of and it was, indeed, against the Cornwallis system that these
stirring political events, would result in a deterioration of the men spent their lives contending. '
Company's civil servants.1 Although he and his companions It is true that by 18 10 the Bengal system had established
in ideas recognized such a change, from the excitement of itself as the orthodox pattern of British rule, and was already
military and diplomatic activity to the humdrum of day-to- loaded with the dead weight of a tradition. The efforts of
day administration, as a natural process in the growth of Munro and his contemporaries to upset this system were
British rule, they accepted its implications with foreboding. therefore often regarded as innovation, when in fact, as
They were aware that the new age of peace, retrenchment, Malcolm insisted, it was theirs that was the true conserva-
and reform, would bring forth a generation of administrators, tive attitude.1 The outlook of Munro, Malcolm, Metcalfe,
purposeful and earnest, but with ideas alien to their own. and Elphinstone towards the Cornwallis school is of par-
None of them, not even Munro, the oldest of them, was ticular importance, because it blends almost imperceptibly
hostile to reform; indeed they all prided themselves on their into their attitude to the movement of reform, wiiich gathered
liberal opinion. But their political instincts were traditional pace in the eighteen-twenties.
and sentimental. They distrusted the chilly dogmatics of the As the 'Romantic' generation in British-Indian history,
reforming spirit, which was to eradicate in the name of they revolted against what they considered to be the cold,
utility all the historical associations connected with the rise lifeless, mechanical principles informing the Cornwallis
of British power; and in the cause of efficiency, simplicity, system,2 its a priori, unhistorical attitude, which would im-
and economy, sought to reduce the historical modes of pose English ideas and institutions on Indian society, and
government to one centralized, uniform practice. Against its facile optimism in the virtue of human nature when left
the tendency that would transform British rule from a untrammelled by government. They could not renounce the
personal, paternal government, to an impersonal, mechanical entire philosophy of the Cornwallis system, because in the
administration, they took their stand. end it represented the permanent English political instinct;
In the history of British India they are the true conserva- but they sought to modify that philosophy in the manner in
tive element; but the term needs definition. It is not to be which Burke had redeemed whiggism from its superficiality
confused with a desire to return, to the pre-Cornwallis era, and crudeness. They brought to the Indian problem Burke's
to the ambiguities and deceits of 'dual rule', and the tradi- notion of history, that conception which regards human
tion of the nabobs. The men whom we are discussing were society as a continuous community of the past, present, and
far removed in outlook from that world whose traces had future. The Bengal system they saw as the denial of this,
until recently survived at the Residencies in the native states, touchstone of history and experience; it was the ignorant
where a Kirkpatrick at Hyderabad, a 'King' Collins at application of a -priori political ideas without regard to the
Ujjain, or an Ochterlony at Delhi, had lately reigned with history and circumstances of Indian society. It rested on the
their harems and fabulous retinues of elephants and guns. fallacy that a political society could be constructed anew, on
That reform of morals by which Burke sought to sanctify the basis of abstract principles wrung from an alien tradition.
public life, and the Evangelicals to purify private and social They did not deny the theoretic virtue of the rule of law
life, had left its mark in the austerity of their lives and their and division of the powers, but they denied that these could
commanding sense of public duty. Nor is their tradition to be introduced unmodified into India.
be confused with that of Cornwallis, the inherent passivity 1
Malcolm to Wynne (President of Board of Control), 19 April 1828: Bentinck
of which had grown with its ageing. Mere vis inertiae, mere M S S . : " . . . to hear them speak of changes ive have introducedwithin the last ten years
you would suppose that an effort to revert to usages sanctioned by as many cen-
partiality for the existing order, is not properly conservatism; turies evinced a spirit of innovation I I I'
1
Malcolm, Political History, vol. ii, p. 82. * Cf. Sir John Malcolm, Government of India, Appendix, p. 21.
i6 THE DOCTRINE AND ITS SETTING
thus acquired would make provision for an invincible armed
There was a deeper emotional objection, going beyond force, instead of being dissipated by faineant Indian rulers,
mere considerations of political expedience. They shared whose loyalty must always be doubtful.1 He had no sym-
neither the Whig enthusiasm for the original virtue of man pathy with Malcolm's fear that, once the British had absorbed
in a state of nature, nor its pessimism as to the exercise of the whole of India under their direct rule, turbulence would
political power. They had no hopes of sudden and miraculous be denied its natural outlets, and all discontent would gather
changes in the progress of human society, and there lingered
in their thinking, particularly in Munro's, something of that to a single head against the British power.
older tradition, which saw the division of society into rulers Malcolm's compassion for fallen greatness is immediately
and ruled as a natural ordering, and which envisaged sub- reminiscent of, if not inspired by, Burke. Metcalfe had
mission to authority as necessary to the anarchic nature of spurned as a contemptible sham the perpetuation of the
man. Power to them was not a delegation of natural rights Mughal emperor's suzerainty; for he believed that power
from the people, but rather a trust imposed by an inscrutable could not be shirked, and must be made to stand forth
Providence. openly and unequivocally. Malcolm, however, thought that
the arrangement:
There were, of course, important differences of opinion
among this group, but in broad terms these general features . . . had its root in a wise conformance to usage, in a generous con-
marked the attitude of them all. The sharpest difference was sideration of the feelings of fallen greatness. It was the veneration of a
between Malcolm and Metcalfe over the policy towards the great power that had passed away; and the superstition that continued
Indian states and the old aristocracy. Malcolm, with the to give homage to the shrine which we had addressed to propitiate our
others, had no illusion that British rule could ever rest on rise, was sanctioned by the example of the wisest among nations. There
the affection of the people; its security depended on the was little except goodness in it.
impression of its invincibility.1 But he believed that it was And then he passes to the heart of Burke's teaching, that
politic and right to try to conciliate the displaced aristocracy illusion is necessary to life, that the pomp and circumstance
by generous treatment; to cushion the impact of a foreign with which men clothe political power is a vital succedaneum,
dominion by an attempt to preserve something of the 'necessary1, as Burke says, 'to cover the defects of our naked
methods and institutions of Indian society; and to palliate shivering nature'.
the undesirable effects of direct rule at the hands of a foreign Bacon has told us what shrunken things the minds of most men
race by encouraging the survival of the Indian states.2 would be if stripped of their vanities and pretensions; but where would
Metcalfe, on the contrary, was pessimistic about the feasi- you leave states, if you were to knock away the thousand props, seen
bility of conciliating the old ruling classes. He believed that, and unseen, by which they were supported ?—many and some of the
within certain rigidly defined external frontiers, the soundest strongest of which, have their foundation in what one of your mtrt
policy was to use every just occasion to annex native states, general politicians or authors would pronounce, justly enough, folly,
and to resume pensions and revenue alienations made to prejudice, ignorance or absurdity.1
privileged classes before the British conquest. The revenue Despite this difference in their attitude towards the con-
quered ruling classes, it implies no sundering of the funda-
1
Malcolm, Government of India, Appendix, p. 157. mental unity of their thought. This domestic difference was
* Cf. Malcolm to Wynne, (Copy) 19 April 1828: Bentinck MSS.: 'With respect
to raiting natives both in the fiscal and judicial line, I am of the same sentiments as
to be repeated later in the Punjab, between John and Henry
Sir Thomas Munro. I desire not only to maintain. Princes and Chiefs, whom we Lawrence, but it was merely a tension withirfthe same world
find existing over the lands ruled by their forefathers and to encourage cultivators
1
to become proprietprs, but I desire to share the Aristocracy of Office with the natives Paper, dated 7 Sept. 1820: Kaye, Papers of Metcalfe, pp. I J I - I .
1
of India. There may, be some hazard in their admission but there is much mure in Malcolm to Gerald Wellesley: Kaye, Malcolm, vol. ii, p. 378.
their exclusion. . . .'
of ideas. Indeed Metcalfe, while favouring direct rule and an right.1 Malcolm and Elphinstone disliked' the notion of
unsentimental policy towards the Indian aristocracy, and sacrificing the aristocracy in the interests of jhe peasantry,
priding himself on his political liberalism, was at heart the and wanted to preserve Indian society in all its'rich variety.
most conservative of his group. His liberalism consisted, in Apart from this difference of emphasis, the group was drawn
fact, of a few superficial measures, such as freedom of the together by the feeling of having to wage a common struggle
press and the unrestricted immigration of Europeans. When against alien forces which were bent on sweeping away the
asked in 1829, in connexion with the renewal of the Com- old India they loved.
pany's Charter, for his views on future policy, he penned a The spirit which they fought they termed 'regulation' or
minute filled with the deepest pessimism. At a time when 'innovation'; and they made little attempt to analyse its
Bentham was feeling 'as if the golden age of British India manifestations. They knew it most clearly in the form of the
were lying before me', when Charles Trevelyan thought that Cornwallis settlement, and in the eighteen-twenties they
it could not 'be concealed that India is on the eve of a great recognized its presence in a new aggressive.shape. All spoke
moral change', 1 Metcalfe was meditating on the mortality of against it.
empire. 'Empires grow old, decay, and perish. Ours in The ruling vice of our government is innovation . . . it is time that
India can hardly be called old, but seems destined to be we should learn that neither the face of the country, its property, nor
short-lived. We appear to have passed the brilliancy and its society, are things that can be suddenly improved by any contrivance
vigor of our youth, and it may be that we have reached a of ours, though they may be greatly injured by what we mean for their
premature old age.' 2 In the age of reform after Bentinck's good; that we should take every country as we find it, and not rashly
arrival, when Metcalfe was a member of the Supreme attempt to regulate its landed property either in accumulation or
Council at Calcutta, he found himself in an alien world. division.2
Although personally on good terms with his colleagues, he This was the first lesson according to Munro, and it followed
confessed that in his official views he stood quite alone for him that the task of government was paternal protection
among them, and every day tended to widen the separation.3 and little more.
The common aim of the paternalist school was to conserve
It is too much regulation that ruins everything. Englishmen are as
the original institutions of Indian society rather than to con-
great fanatics in politics as Mahomedans in religion. They suppose that
struct that society anew. Metcalfe had been schooled in no country can be saved without English institutions. The natives of
Wellesley's haughtiness towards the Indian aristocracy, and this country have enough of their own to answer every useful object
scorned sharing with it 'the aristocracy of office'. But his of internal administration, and if we maintain and protect them, the
vision was of a benevolent paternalism founded on the country will in a very few months settle itself.3
unchanging 'village republics', and he never contemplated
a system of direct rule that would remould India in the To Munro politics were essentially experimental and prag-
image of the West. H e never ceased to acknowledge Munro matic. The brief period the British had spent on problems of
as master, and to pursue Munro's ideal of a prosperous government in India was far too short for any permanent
society of yeoman farmers enjoying a freehold property solution to be found.4 The result of precipitancy and 'the
zeal for permanency' had been the social upheaval in Bengal,
1 1
Draft letter, Bentham to Bentinck, 19 Nov. 18:9 (original not in Bentinck Metcalfe's Minute on Revenue Administration of Delhi Territory, 1815: Kaye,
MSS.): Bentham MSS., Box X, f. 179. C. E. Trevelyan to Bentinck, 9 April 1834: Papers of Metcalfe, pp. 43-44. Cf. also Percival Spear, Twilight of the Mughuls,
Bentinck MSS. chap. v.
» Minute on future government of India, it Oct. 1829. Kaye gives extracts, 1
Minute of Munro 'On the state of the country', 31 Dec. 1824: Gleig, Munro,
Papers of Metcalfe, pp. 161-77. The original is in the Bentinck MSS., dated vol. iii, p. 381.
11 Oct. 1819, and with Bentinck's. comments given marginally.
' Munro to Elpliinstone (on future administration of conquered Mahratta
J A private letter, dated 8 March 1828: Kaye, Papers of Metcalfe, p. 170. 4
country), 12 May 1818: ibid., p. 252. Ibid., pp. 319-20.
20 THE DOCTRINE AND ITS SETTING tions of Metcalfe, they saw in the preservation of the Indian'
consequent on Cornwallis's misreading of the problem. By states one method of pursuing their aim, and, at the same
recognizing a proprietary right in the great zemindars, a time, of providing a possible haven for the culture and
revolution had been effected in Bengal which had grievously higher graces of Indian life. While aware of the irregularity ,
weakened the whole structure, and made the task of ad- and frequent oppressiveness of princely governments, they
ministration infinitely more difficult. recognized that ultimately these were closer to their own
Against the Cornwallis system the four men spoke with ideal. Devoid of the artificial legalism of the Presidencies,
one voice.1 They saw it as a system of abstract principles where the race went to the quick-witted, the Indian states
inapplicable to India, as an impersonal bureaucracy instead maintained a rough, natural simplicity and personal character.
of a personal, human, and tangible form of government. They provided a focus for the ordinary instincts of loyalty
Government conducted from the office, rather than from the and racial sentiment, and satisfied, as British rule never
tent and the saddle, necessarily proceeded by forms and could, the need of a peasant society for paternal direction and
precedents; and when its functions were kept confined to the an easily intelligible form of law and government^ This
operation of courts of justice and to the mere realization of tradition Munro and his contemporaries wished to adapt
for the territories under direct British rule. To the ryot,
the revenue, its criterion of success was similarly limited to
government must be represented simply; not by a multi-
superficialities—to the speed with which judicial business
plicity of officers and a multiplicity of written forms, but by
was dispatched, and the volume and promptitude of revenue
a single officer, who had powers to inquire, to judge, and to
payments. Malcolm said he dreaded no punish, without the delay and intricacies of the Western
human being (certainly no Nabob or Maharajah)... half so much as an legal process.1 This officer was not to be a distant and awful
able Calcutta civilian, whose travels arc limited to two or three hundred figure, presiding in his cutcherry like a deity in his temple,
miles, with a hookah in his mouth, some good but abstract maxims in but a familiar lord, visiting and speaking with them of their
his head, the Regulations in his right hand, the Company's Charter in
his left, and a quire of wire-woven foolscap before him.1
quarrels and their crops, and looked up to as ma-bap, father '
and mother. In practical terms this meant a union of powers,
And Munro, as Governor of Madras, wrote to Canning in at least at the district level. None but Metcalfe had the logi-
1823, that he had not credited that the records of govern- cal temerity to propose their absolute union and the abolition
ment 'contained such useless trash'. of a separate judiciary; but they all agreed that the collector
Every man writes as much as he can, and quotes Montesquieu, and should be accorded magisterial powers, which would give
Hume, and Adam Smith, and speaks as if he were living in a country him control of the district police and a power of summary
where people were free and governed themselves. Most of their papers punishment. The collector's office was to be the great execu-
might have been written by men who were never out of England, and tive office of local government, controlling in firm sub-
their projects are nearly as applicable to that country as to India.1 ordination the whole inferior executive arm.
In contrast to the abstractions of the rule of law, and the The extent of his command was greatly magnified in all
blind, automatic operation of an impersonal bureaucracy, territories, other than Bengal, by the form of land revenue
Munro's school looked to a continuation of the Indian settlement. By circumstance and deliberate qhoice, Munro's
tradition of personal government. Apart from the reserva- ryotwar system eschewed all intermediaries and settled
1 directly with each peasant for his individual holding. This
Cf. Malcolm to Malony, 'Correspondence 1817-21': Kaye, Malcolm, vol. ii,
p. 391. Metcalfe's paper of 29 June 1820: Kaye, Papers of Met'alft, pp. 150-1. fact, and the detailed work which an annual settlement
Elphinstone to Strachey, 3 Sept. 1820, and 21 April 1821: Colebrooke, Blphinstont, 1
vol. ii, pp. 115 et seq., 124 et seq. Cf. Munro, Minute 'On the state of the country', 31 Dec. 1824: Gleig, Munro,
2
Malcolm to Malony, 8 April 1821: Kaye, Malcolm, vol. ii, pp. 335—6. vol. iii, p. 379.
J Munro to Canning, 1 May 1823: Gleig, Munro, vol. ii, p. 66.
imposed, necessitated a much larger staff of subordinates and Cornwallis. Yet, on the other hand, they were largely in
a much more active type of government. The State con- agreement with certain aspects of the Utilitarian* yiewpoint.
sciously assumed an administrative responsibility for the The union of judicial and executive powers in the collector;
mass of the people which it had just as consciously abdicated the simplification of the chaotic jungle of the law to a com-
in Bengal. In the new Bombay territories Munro's system pact intelligible code which respected Indian custom; the
was adopted, and also in a modified form in the Ceded and prejudice for a ryotwar form of land settlement; and an
Conquered Provinces after 1819. accurate survey and record of landed rights—in ail these
Such a policy was founded on the contrary assumption to reforms they were in agreement with the radical authori-
that of Cornwallis; the end was the protection of the com- tarian strain in Utilitarian thought. But to the spirit of
munity by government and not against it. The whole utilitarianism they were as uncompromisingly hostile as
apparatus for checking and counterbalancing political power, Burke. Against the abstract goodness of proposed measures
by which Cornwallis sought to prevent its abuse, was re- they had no argument; but with the faith of Burke, they
jected. Metcalfe had stated the plea for a new unity of countered the new spirit by an appeal to history and ex-
government in its extreme form: perience, and by a counsel of moderation and patience.
Revenue, and judicial, and when practicable, military powers also, Politics to them were experiential in nature, necessarily
should be exercised by the same person; union, not division, should be near-sighted, and essentially limited in their achievement.
the order of our rule. Confidence [in the Company's civil servants], Hence they were not to be pursued dogmatically along a
not distrust, should be the engine to work with.1 path of violent change:
This plea for unity is to be carefully distinguished, however, The most important of the lessons we can derive from past ex-
from that for uniformity, with which it was to be confounded perience is to be slow and cautious in every procedure which has a
in a reforming age. Malcolm was the foremost to recognize tendency to collision with the habits and prejudices of our native
the need for a more unified system of government, once the subjects. We may be compelled by the character of our government
peninsula was bestridden. He was alive to the requirements to frame some institutions, different from those we found established,
but we should adopt all we can of the latter into our system. .. . our
of economy, efficiency, and a greater consistency of principle. internal government . . . should be administered on a principle of
But he believed these objects should be attained by the humility not pride. We must divest our minds of all arrogant preten-
delegation of full powers to trusted individuals, and not sions arising from the presumed superiority of our own knowledge,
through a deadening centralized administration.2 To reform, and seek the accomplishment of the great ends we have in view by the
as such, none of Munro's school was hostile. With varying means which are best suited to the peculiar nature of the objects. . . .
degrees of enthusiasm they favoured liberal measures, That time may gradually effect a change, there is no doubt; but the
whether it was the admission of Indians to higher posts in the period is as yet distant when that can be expected; and come when it
civil service, or a broad-based educational scheme. But they will, to be safe or beneficial, it must be . . . the work of society itself.
had no sympathy with the intellectual foundation of the new All that Government can do is, by maintaining the internal peace of
reforming creeds and the attitude these engendered. It was the country, and by adapting its principles to the various feelings,
not easy for them to distinguish readily the forces of the age. habits, and character of its inhabitants, to give time for the slow and
silent operation of the desired improvement, with a constant impression
The passion for uniformity, for mechanistic administration that every attempt to accelerate this end will be attended with the
and legislative regulation, which possessed the Utilitarians, danger of its defeat.1
was easily confused with their life-long enemy, the system of
There was no sympathy with the belief in sudden improve-
1
Paper of 29 June 1820: Kaye, Papers of Metcalfe, p. 150. ment or sudden illumination, which gave to the Utilitarians
2
Malcolm, Political History, vol. ii, p. 142. 1
Ibid., p. 183.
24 T H E DOCTRINE AND ITS SETTING T H E DOCTRINE AND ITS SETTING 25
and Evangelicals the gift of an untroubled assurance. Human 1
the Charter Act of 1833. The dread of a colourless uni-
nature could never be for them, as with James Mill, 'as formity is, indeed, a facet of the Romantic outlook. Munro
plain as the road from Charing Cross to St. Paul's'. 1 in a half-humorous letter on the political economists and
I have no faith in the modern doctrine of the rapid improvement of speculative philosophers bursts into sincere eloquence
the Hindoos, or of any other people. The character of the Hindoos is against the condition of uniformity to which they would
probably much the same as when Vasco da Gama first visited India, bring the world:
and it is not likely that it will be much better a century hence.
When I read as I sometimes do, of a measure by which a large to such a state of dull uniform repose, give me a thousand times in
province has been suddenly improved, or a race of semi-barbarians preference the world as it now stands, with all its beautiful variety of
civilized almost to quakerism, I throw away the book.1 knowledge and ignorance—of language—of manners, customs—
religions and superstitions—of cultivated fields and wide-extended
Except for Elphinstone, they had little but contempt for the deserts—of war and peace.2
doctrines of the 'philosophes' and rejected that theory which
attributed to government a preponderant influence in the 2. Liberalism and the Policy of Assimilation
shaping of society.3 It followed from their notion of the So far the administrative history of India before 1818 has
relative ineffectualness of political authority that the function been discussed in terms of the ideas or attitudes governing
of government was simply one of paternal protection. The the two great rival systems of administration established in
passion for legislation which possessed the Utilitarians found > Bengal and Madras. These systems, despite later modifica-
no favour with them, 4 for they were convinced that all the tion, v/ere to be permanent. Other notions and attitudes were
great changes in human society came from sources much to arise, but they were accommodated within the framework
deeper than the superficial activities of politicians. 'Great of the original structures.
and beneficial alterations in society, to be complete, must be The practical problem of Cornwallis's time had been the
produced within the society itself; they cannot be the mere creation of an efficient administrative machinery, which
fabrication of its superiors, or of a few who deem themselves would provide peace and dispense justice, repair the Com-
enlightened.'* pany's finances ruined by corruption and misgovernment,
In accordance with their view of politics as an experi- and achieve the ultimate aim of realizing a regular sur-
mental art, they all believed in the need to retain a principle plus of revenue "sufficient to purchase the Company's
of diversity in Indian government. A centrally imposed annual investment of Indian piece-goods and China tea.
uniformity, such as the Utilitarians seemed to contemplate, The solution of the problem had entailed sweeping away
was anathema to them. Even Elphinstone, who looked with the decaying system of indirect rule, initiated by Clive and
least aversion on the new political Kghts, rejected the notion continued in another form by Hastings, by which the
of a single 'omni-competent' central government to replace Company had attempted to limit its interference and work
the multiple structure of the three semi-independent Presi- largely through the native system of administration. Resort
dencies, a plan which the Utilitarians wished to embody in was now had to the systematic use of English officers in an
1
Cited E. HaleVy, The Growth of Philosophic Radicalism, p. 451. English administrative system. The Cornwallis settlement
1
Munro to Canning, 30 June 1821: Gleig, Munro, vol. ii, p. 57. Letter of 1
Munro, 19 July 1824: ibid., pp. 68-69. Elphinstone, in his letter to the Select Committee on Indian Affairs in 1832,
* Cf. Munro to his sister, .5 March 1795: Munro, vol. i, p. 163. Also Metcalfe, stressed the need to retain the legislative independence of the three Presidencies:
Common Place Book, 5 May 1803: Kaytf, Metcalfe, vol. i, pp. 109-10. Colebrooke, Elphinstone, vol. ii, p. 317: 'Our government should still be considered
4
Cf. Munro's policy as Governor of, Madras. Minute of 31 Dec. 1824: Gleig, as in a great measure experimental; and it is an advantage to have three experiments,
Munro, vol. iii, p. 380: 'For some years pa&t it has been the object of Government to and to compare them in their progress with each other. Munro expressed the tame
5 opinion: Gleig, Munro, vol. ii, p. 264.
legislate as little at possible.' Malcolm, Central India, vol. ii, p. 181. 2
Munro to his sister, 5 March 1795: ibid., vol. i, pp. 165-6.
of Bengal was a deliberate movement of anglicization, and ment was, however, to be carried forward in the opening "
Munro's work in Madras, although attempting to keep the years of the nineteenth century in a much more violent and
interference with the existing society to a minimum, carried extreme form. Hitherto it had been confined in its operation
to the form and methods of government. With the impetus .
the same imprint. Both Cornwallis's zemindari and Munro's
it was given by the twin force of evangelicalism and free
ryotwari structures involved the active assumption of the
trade, it was now to be consciously directed upon Indian
work of government by English officers; both rested on
society itself and to become an explicit movement for revolu-
the institution of private property rights in land, secured and tionary change.
maintained by a Western law system. Both might therefore
become instruments to inaugurate a fundamental change in Cornwallis's reforms had undoubtedly owed part of their '
the customary modes of land tenure, the heart of Indian character to the outlook of his chief advisers, John Shore
society. Yet their spirit was far from revolutionary. Munro (later Lord Teignmouth) and Charles Grant, who on retire-
had certainly no notion that he was facilitating the com- ment both became prominent member^ of the Clapham
mercialization of the iand and the break-up of customary Sect and were numbered among the Evangelical Fathers, j
Cornwallis's distrust and consequent disuse of Indian offi-
society, when he sought to give the Madras peasant a
cials, and his determination to find a solution in an English-
private-property right in his holding. It has been seen how
officered, English type of administration, certainly reflects the
his intention was simply to strengthen the position of the
growing contempt in which Indian institutions and methods
ryot and his way of life, by giving him the certainty of a were held under the influence of this movement of religious
fixed revenue demand and an established tenurial right. With revival. To some extent the change in attitude was an
Cornwallis, although the leaning towards change was much inevitable one. The transformation of the English in India '
more conscious, the temper was still conservative. Corn- from suppliant merchants to a ruling caste, consciously
wallis's intention was to bring order and stability to a society isolated and imbued with a sense of racial superiority, was a
fast dissolving, and not to bring about a social revolution natural consequence of their career of conquest. The growth
which would effect its complete transformation. His solu- of a considerable European population, in particular of the
tion was Whig: government reduced to the minimal func- number of English women, also made for a more regular and
tions of justice and protection from violence, in a society settled mode of life, and diminished contact between the
stabilized by the influence naturally emanating from a great races.1 Yet the change that was everywhere noted as taking
landed aristocracy. His aims were still consistent with the shape after Cornwallis came out to Bengal in 1786 was much
old mercantilist conception of the British position in India, more than a response to changed political circumstances.
with the notion of reaping a surplus tribute and continuing The improvement in moral tone was not a merely local
the monopoly of the East India Company. They were also phenomenon. It was a change being wrought in the character
consistent with the idea of insulating India from the shock of the Englishman at his centre; the product of advancing ''
of collision with the West by restricting the settlement of industrialism, of the ascendancy of the new middle classes, '
Europeans. 1 Whatever his successors may have done with and of the emergence of a new ethic for a new society.
his work, Cornwallis was no apostle of the doctrine of' Originating with Wesley and Whitfield in the form of
assimilation. methodism, the new outlook assumed importance when it
The movement of anglicization in Cornwallis's adminis- began to find adherents among the upper middle classes
trative settlement was thus definite but limited. The move- under the name of the Evangelical revival in the last decades
1
of the eighteenth century. Its influence in English history is
For Cornwallis's views on the value of the Bengal territories to Britain, and his
1
ideas on the Company's monopoly, see his Minute of 10 Feb. 1790, and his letter Cf. Percival Spear, The Nabobs, chap. viii.
to Dundas of 4 April 1790: Forrest, CormuaJiis, vol. ii, pp. 114, 185 et seq.
too pervasive to be measured by any conventional yard- securing the legal protection of Christian converts, the
stick. Halevy believed it to be the cement which preserved suppression of inhuman rites such as 'suttee' and infanticide,
English society from violent dissolution in the Revolutionary and the disconnexion of the British power from the support
era; all historians recognize its importance as the moral of temples and Hindu and Muslim religious festivals. Yet
agency responsible for Victorian 'respectability', the power if the orbit of its activity had been circumscribed in this
which tamed and disciplined the anarchic individualism of manner, the Evangelical movement would have had com-
the Industrial Revolution. Its connexion with India is par- paratively little political importance. The fact that it stood
ticularly intimate, because of Shore and Grant who on their for an ultimate transformation of Indian society brought it,
return to England went to live as neighbours to Wil- however, into alliance with other powerful political currents.
berforce at Clapham, and, together with Zachary Macaulay, The terms and nature of the alliance were first fore-
Henry Thornton, and John Venn, formed the Clapham shadowed in the treatise which Charles Grant wrote on his
Sect.1 The influence of this group sprang from its leadership return from India, and which he had privately printed and
of Evangelical and Methodist opinion on political issues. laid before the Court of Directors in 1797, under the title,
Wilberforce, as a personal friend of Pitt, and Grant, as a Observations on the State of Society among the Asiatic Subjects
director and for many years chairman of the East India Com- of Great Britain, particularly with respect to Morals; and on the
pany, were able to command a powerful minority in the Means of Improving it. This was published as a Parliamen-
. Commons. The two great objects which the Clapham Sect tary Paper in 1813 and again in 1832.1 Naturally it was cast
set themselves were the abolition of the Slave Trade and the in a moderate and restrained tone, but it gives a fair exhibi-
opening of India to missionary enterprise. The measure of tion of the Evangelical mentality. It would be well to recall
their success in the latter object—'that greatest of all the general features of this mentality before dealing with the
causes, for I really place it before Abolition', as Wilberforce details of Grant's treatise. The 'notes' of the Evangelical
said—has often been recounted.2 With Grant providing funds, mind were a consuming earnestness and conviction, born of
knowledge, and influence, and Charles Simeon at Cam- a transfiguring religious experience. The working of this
bridge the spiritual leadership, a small number of Evan- inner experience was the essential gift of the Evangelical
gelical missionaries were sent out to India, the foremost of faith, the experience of conversion, of being 'born again'.
whom were David Brown, Claudius Buchanan, Henry And by the terms it used to describe itself, 'vital religion',
Martyn, and Thomas Thomason. After years of public 'practical Christianity', it meant an experience actually felt
controversy, a large measure of freedom was won for physically and mentally in the anguish and terror of sin and
missionary enterprise in the Charter Act of 1813, and an the ecstatic joy of rebirth. Resulting in a complete trans-
Indian Church with a bishop and three archdeacons was formation of the personality, the process of conversion, of
established. It is more difficult to estimate the Evangelical 'justification and sanctification', consisted in the soul turning
influence on the moral tone of European society in India, in upon itself, and stripping itself bare of the clothing of
and probably this was more affected by the wider action of habit smothering its awareness. For a man to become alive it
the Evangelical movement on society in England than by was necessary for him to become aware of his thraldom, to
any local success. After winning a secure foothold in India, know that he did not govern himself, but was a dead thing
the missionaries directed what political interest they had to borne along helplessly by his own appetites and the fashions
1
Charles Grant went to live at Clapham in 1794: Henry Morris, Life ofCharlts and opinions of the world. This was the weight of sin which
Grant, p. i<58.
2
hung upon everyone and could only be thrown off by each
Cf. J. W. Kaye, Christianity in India, ami Morris, Grant. Wilberforce"s descrip- man individually coming to terms with his God; it could not
tion of Indian missions as 'the greatest of all causes': R. and S. Wilberforce, Life of
Wilberforce, vol. v, p. 12&
• P.P., 1813, vol. x, p. 31 and P.P., 1831-2, vol. viii, Appendix.
3o THE DOCTRINE AND ITS SETTING
India by a handful of English. Power carried with it an
be shifted or palliated by other human agency, by the
awful responsibility and duty, the evangelizatipn of India's
mediation of priest or the performance of outward religious
heathen millions. The plight of these millions was desperate,
rites. The experience of being saved was one of a sudden
for they were not men with a feeble knowledge, of God, but
illumination coming after the consciousness and repentance
actual worshippers of false gods and graven images. And to
of sin, and its fruit was the gift of true self-government, the
the Evangelical their error was not simply false doctrine; it
power of resting on one's own centre and consciously choos-
smelt as an unclean thing. The Hindu divinities for Wilber-
ing the course of life instead of remaining a slave to outward
force were 'absolute monsters of lust, injustice, wickedness
circumstance and custom. It made the path of duty plain.
and cruelty. In short, their religious system is one grand
That path lay, firstly, in the preservation of the soul in its
abomination.'1
state of grace through prayer and work, and secondly, in the
mission to evangelize. Hence the Evangelical gospel, al- Grant's treatise was a plea for carrying forward the work
though originating in an intense interior experience, was one of evangelizing India as the great duty qnd, interest of the
of action and mission in the external world. Work, requiring British power. The major part of his work was devoted to
industry, frugality, and perseverance, was an end in its own proving the immeasurable degradation into which Indian
right, the outward daily discipline of the soul against sloth; society was sunk. With a wealth of quotation from Hindu
but it also afforded the material means for furthering the writings and from the observations of European travellers,
Kingdom on earth. The communication of the saving know- Grant drew a picture of an India immersed in the most
ledge to the millions that dwelt in darkness could only be appalling depths of bestial superstition and social corruption,
accomplished by preaching the word among them in a a veritable Sodom and Gomorrah on earth. His indictment
direct assault on their mind. It was not, of course, primarily is drawn in solemn measured terms:
an intellectual task, for the inward experience could not be Upon the whole then, we cannot avoid recognizing in the people of
reduced to rational terms. All refined worldly learning was Hindostan, a race of men lamentably degenerate and base; retaining
a snare for the soul, but certain elementary mental accom- but a feeble.sense of moral obligation; yet obstinate in their disregard of
plishments were necessary. If salvation was only attainable what they know to be right, governed by malevolent and licentious
through the direct encounter of the individual personality passions, strongly exemplifying the effects produced on society by a .
with God, it was equally true that knowledge of God was great and general corruption of manners, and sunk in misery by their
vices, in a country peculiarly calculated by its natural advantages, to
possible only through knowledge of His revealed word. promote the prosperity of its inhabitants.2
Both Methodists and Evangelicals concentrated, therefore,
on securing a minimum standard of education as a pre- In this dread judgement Grant not merely condemned the
requisite for conversion, at least sufficient for a person to religions of India but everything which might claim a
read and understand the Bible. civilized, status for its peoples—their Jaws, arts, agriculture
and handicrafts, and their personal manners and habits. In
The three most important features of the Evangelical
defining the causes of this degraded state of society Grant
mind for the present purpose were its intense individualism
argued typically of his century. Character was a product of
and exaltation of individual conscience, its belief that human -
environment, but of moral rather than physical environment.
character could be suddenly and totally transformed by a
The great moral force in India was the Hindu form of
direct assault on the mind, and finally, its conviction that this 1
required an educative process. These convictions were con- Speech of William Wilberforce, 22 June 1813: Hansard, 1st series, vol. xxvi,
p. 164.
tained in a cast of mind which was almost Hebraic. To the 2
Charles Grant, Observations on the State of Society among the Asiatic Subjects of
Evangelicals the hand of God was visible in history, and Great Britain, particularly -with respect to Morals and on the Means of Improving it.
nowhere more surely than in the miraculous subjugation of Written chiefly in Tear 1792 (privately printed, 1797), p. 71.
32 T H E DOCTRINE AND ITS S E T T I N G THE DOCTRINE AND ITS SETTING 33
government and law, and above all, the Hindu religion. the violent objections raised against direct methods, of
Their common character was their despotic nature; and here evangelizing, but it had an intrinsic importance as an integral
.-"was the source of Indian ills.1 Despotism destroyed the part of the process of conversion. Grant did not hold that
autonomy of the individual soul and so extinguished the Christianity could be implanted by an attack launched $ole\y
source of virtue, since the man 'who isdependent on the will at the strongpoints of religious belief. He thought it could
of another , . . thinks and acts as a degraded being' and 'fear only be victorious if the attack were made on a much
necessarily becomes his grand principle of action'.2 Ad- broader front, so that the Indian character could be subjected
mittedly the unrestrained despotism of the Hindu political to the play of reformative influences from every angle.1 The
i system had been abolished in the British territories, but the whole of the Western mind had to be introduced into India.
! tyranny of the Hindu law and the Hindu religion continued For the benefits of Christianity were not only religious but
I almost unabated. The dominion of the Brahmin class re- also material, and Grant was advancing no less 'than a
mained unshaken, the 'crafty and imperious priesthood, who proposal for the further civilization of a people, who had
feigned a divine revelation and appointment, to invest their very early made a considerable progress in improvement,
own order in perpetuity with the most absolute empire over but who, by deliberate and successful plans or fraud and
the civil state of the Hindoos, as well as over their minds'. 3 imposition, were rendered first stationary, then retrograde*.
The root of all evil was this tyranny over the mind, a tyranny The progress of Europe in comfort and wealth was a direct
which could not be dispelled by a mere reformation in the outcome of the liberation of the individual achieved by the
law. The Hindu law had been and could be further modified, Reformation ;* and Wilberforce echoed Grant, in his speech
but it was a vital Evangelical doctrine that legislation was during the Charter debates of 1813, when he claimed that
powerless to change human character.* Everything ulti-
mately rested upon the inward workings of the individual Christianity, independently of its effects on a future state of exis-
tence, has been acknowledged even by avowed sceptics, to be, beyond
soul. Grant's panacea for India envisaged an Indian counter-
all other institutions that ever existed, favourable to the temporal
part of the European Reformation, capable of liberating the interests and happiness of man: and never was there a country where •'
individual conscience from the tyranny of the priest. That there is a greater need than in India for the diffusion of its genial
tyranny was maintained because of the ignorance of the influence.3
people and the hold which the vast fabric of superstition
i exercised over their lives^ To free the mind education was the The Evangelical had an almost Hebraic conviction that
first requirement. To prepare it for the knowledge of Chris- worldly success and power, although not to be striven for on
tian truth, it had first to be cleared of error and superstition, their own account, attended the faithful pursuit of duty, and
/• and education recommended itself for reasons of prudence. were instrumental in forwarding God's purposes in the
It was the least obtrusive method of evangelizing, the least world.4 And here was the whole strength of their case. Duty
likely to create any social or political disturbance. It would 1
Wilberforce held the same view. Wilberforce to Lord Wellesley, 6 April i t 13:
'silently undermine . . . the fabric of error', and by restoring R. and S. Wilberforce, Wilberforce, vol. v, p. m .
1
to the inhabitants of India the use of their reason would in Grant, Observations, p. 19* n.: 'That grand event introduced new light: and
it was diffused among the lower orders, whose instruction became henceforth an
itself work a great moral revolution. object of particular care. The consequences were greater internal order, peace, and
stability; thence sprung enlarged industry, adventurous enterprises and ail the long
There is no need to question Grant's sincerity in placing succession of prosperity which this country has enjoyed.'
such emphasis on education. Admittedly, it was free from ' Speech of Wilberforce, 21 June 1813: Hansard, First Series, vol. xxvi, p. I,
cited £ . H. Howse, Saints in Politics, pp. 89-90.
1 • Cf. Wilberforce, A Practical Vievi of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed
Grant, Observations, p. 74. * Ibid., p. 73. 1 Ibid., p. 83.
• Ibid., p. 173. Cf. one of the chief Evangelical authorities, Henry Venn, The Christians, Griffith, Farran, Otceden ic Welsh, London, n.d. [1888?], pp. 113-
14, 191 et seq. Also Henry Venn, Complete Duty of Man, pp. 277-8.
Complete Duty of Man, 5th edn., 1798, pp. 56-57.
5901 D
T H E DOCTRINE AND ITS S E T T I N G 35
and self-interest were one. To educate and to evangelize was
also to make the earth pour forth her abundance. Released to put Grant's ideas into practice. They were victorious
from the chains of immemorial habit, his mind set free from t in securing an Indian Church establishment, freedom for
ignorance and superstition, the individual in India would missionary work, and the appropriation of an annual sum
have both the disposition and the knowledge to improve his for education..The parliamentary struggle was leH by Wil-
earthly condition. Grant had reached the crux of his argu- berforce and he drew frankly on Grant's treatise for his
ment. The promotion of civilization and material prosperity arguments. But in the flight of his eloquence, the qualifica-
tions which Grant's sense of prudence had imposed were
in India would immensely further the original and continu-
forgotten. Wilberforce voiced the full-blooded doctrine of
ing purpose of the British in the East: the great beneficiary
assimilation:
would be British commerce.
. . . let us endeavour to strike our roots into the soil by the gradual
In considering the affairs of the world as under the control of the
introduction and establishment of our own princinjes and opinions;
Supreme Disposer, and those distant territories . . . providentially put
of our laws, institutions, and manners; above all, as the source of every
into our hands . . . is it not necessary to conclude that they were given
other improvement, of our religion, and consequently of our morals.
to us, not merely that we might draw an annual profit from them, but
. . . Are we so little aware of the vast superiority even of European
that we might diffuse among their inhabitants, long sunk in darkness,
laws and institutions, and far more of British institutions, over those
vice and misery, the light and benign influence of the truth, the blessings
of Asia, as not to be prepared to predict with confidence, that the
of well-regulated society, the improvements and comforts of active
Indian community which should have exchanged its dark and bloody
industry?... In every progressive step of this work, we shall also serve
superstitions for the genial influence of Christian light and truth,
the original design with which we visited India, that design still so
would have experienced such an increase of civil order and security,
important to this country—the extension of our commerce.1
of social pleasures and domestic comforts, as to be desirous of preserving
Hitherto' British manufacturers had found only a limited the blessings it should have acquired; and can we doubt that it would
market in India because of the poverty of the people and be bound even by the ties of gratitude to those who have been the
theirAinformed taste] Education and Christianity would now honoured instruments of communicating them?1
remove these obstacles. In this way 'the noblest species of The Evangelical view stood in complete contrast to the
conquest', the spread of true religion and knowledge, would East India Company's traditional attitude. From motives of
not forfeit its earthly reward; for 'wherever our principles and expediency the Company had always manifested the most
our language are introduced, our commerce will follow'. scrupulous regard for Indian religions, laws, institutions,
In demonstrating the natural alliance between his views and customs. Clive had taught the theory of 'double govern-
and the interests of British commerce, Grant argued that ment', and only with great reluctance had the Company
the "key principle of British policy must be 'plainly the been forced into the open and taken upon itself the direct
principle of assimilation'. At present the British were in every task of administration. Even after 1772 when it had stood
way different from their Indian subjects, in language, forth 'in the character of Dewan', the Company under
manners, customs, sentiments, religion. There must be •Hastings's guidance had been anxious to keep as far as
consequently among the latter a feeling that their interests possible to the traditional Indian methods and forms of
were opposed. The healing principle which should close the government. 'We have endeavoured', wrote Hastings of his
dangerous gulf was that of assimilation. If India were administrative reforms, 'to adapt our Regulations to the
anglicized, a community of interest would be established.2 In Manners and Understanding of the People, and Exigencies
1813, on the occasion of the renewal of the Company's Char- 1
Substance of the Speeches of William Wilberforce Esq., on the Clause in the East-
ter, the Evangelicals launched a great public campaign India Bill for Promoting the Religious Instruction and Moral Improvement of the
1 Natives of the British Dominions in India, on the 22nd June and the ist & 12th of
* Grant, Observations, p. 220. Ibid., p. 204.
July 1813, 1813, pp. 92-93.
of the Country, adhering, as closely as we are able, to their f They were intimately connected with the Company and
Ancient Usages and Institutions.' 1 Cornwallis had frankly publicly defended its commercial monopoly, Grant himself
broken with Hastings's policy in the forms and methods of and his sons leading the fight in 1812 for the defence of the
government, and Teignmouth made a great point of this in _ Company's privileges. Yet the policy of assimilation and its
defending the Evangelical case against the attacks of Scott identification with the interests of British commerce could
Waring and others, who argued that until the mutiny at rest on no other grounds than the closest and freest inter-
Vellore the British had always striven to preserve the course with India, and the end of all barriers which opposed
indigenous system.2 But Cornwallis's attitude was essentially the ingress of the West. However staunchly they, opposed
one of non-interference in Indian society, once the frame- it, the logical corollary of their policy was free trade, free
work of what he considered a sound system of justice and European settlement, and the complete abolition of the
revenue had been established. He had no sympathy with Company as a commercial organ.
Evangelical hopes for the conversion of the people, con- The full implications of the principle of'assimilation' were
sidering such hopes utterly visionary.3 So far as the interests grasped by the free-trade merchants, who ranged themselves
of the Company's subjects were concerned, his aims were against the Company when the renewal of the Charter was
enshrined in his Code of Regulations, 'to preserve to them debated in 1813. Their adherence to the principle stemmed
the laws of the Shastre and the Koran in matters to which from their reading of the trading position. It was certainly true
they have been invariably applied, to protect them in the that the economic purpose behind British rule required to be
free exercise of their religion, and to afford security to their revalued. The Company still continued to look upon it in
persons and property'.* Not merely did the Evangelicals now vaguely mercantilist terms. The Indian trade in itself had
! challenge the traditional policy of the Company, they came ceased to be of first importance after the Company won the
forward with its direct opposite—the policy of assimilation. command of the revenues of the Bengal territories in 1757.
And they sought to carry their aims by harnessing their Henceforward the annual 'investment' of Indian piece-goods
cause to the most powerful political force of their time, the was considered mainly as a means of transmitting the surplus
^ interests of British commerce. revenues of Bengal to provide for the dividends of the Com-
The first generation of the Clapham Sect were, however, pany in London; but towards the end of the eighteenth cen-
unfitted to cement this alliance between the 'civilizing tury it had been found more profitable to provide for the
mission' and commerce. They were not cast for the role of Company's dividends by shipping home China tea, purchased
revolutionaries, since it was in effect a revolution in the out of the proceeds 01 the Company's opium monopoly v
relationship between England and India for which they Even Adam Smith, despite his violent attack on the Company,
were calling. An English politics they were decidedly con- saw nothing wrong with the notion of reaping a tribute from
servative, even numbering themselves among the stern, the surplus revenue of the British territories in India; 1 and
unbending Tories of the Sidmouth period. With respect to this mercantilist notion, that political dominion existed for
India they had a deep vested interest in the existing order. the sake of drawing off a tribute, still lingered into the nine-
1
Hastings to Court of Directors, 3 Nov. 1772: cited G. W. Forrest, Selectionsfrom teenth century. In practice, however, Wellesley's conquests
the State Papers of the Governors-General of India: Warren Hastings, vol. ii, had piled up a debt burden which made, it impossible to
Appendix A, p. 277.
1
realize. By 1813 the Company had no case for maintaining
Considerations on the Practicability, Policy, and Obligation of Communicating to
the Natives of India the Knowledge of Christianity. By a Late Resident of Bengal,
its monopoly of trade between India and Europe. The sale of
1808 [ascribed to Lord Teignmouth in India Office Library Tracts, vol. 96], pp. 13 Indian piece-goods in Europe had fallen away almost com-
et seq. For this controversy see Kaye, Christianity in India.
1
pletely; and the British territories no longer afforded a
David Rrown to Charles Simeon, Feb. 1789: Kayer Christianity in India, p. 371.
1
• Preamble to Regulation III, 1793: ibid., pp. 374-j. Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, ed. E. Cannan, 5th edn., 1930, voJ. ii, p. 431.
38 T H E DOCTRINE AND ITS S E T T I N G T H E DOCTRINE AND ITS S E T T I N G 39
surplus of revenue after the Company's administrative and that could protect the property, laws, lives and liberties of the subjects,
what a sudden change we might not anticipate ? We should not only see
debt charges had been met. The Company in India had the palaces of the Rajah, and the houses of the Vakeels, Aumils,
become a purely military and administrative power, and in Shrofs, and Zemindars, furnished and decorated with the' produce of
fact was only able to pay its way with the profits of its opium English arts and manufactures, but the Ryots, who form so large a
monopoly, which it used to finance the China tea trade. part of the Indian population, may, like the British farmers, have a
" T h e fact that territorial dominion had proved itself to be taste for foreign produce, as soon as they can acquire property enough
without profit for the Company and Great Britain was quickly to procure it; and this is only to be acquired to that extent under a
seized upon by the free traders. Not only was the Company's free and liberal government, where property is held sacred. Under these
rule without benefit to itself, but it was, they argued, circumstances a trade might suddenly grow up beyond the Cape of Good
positively ruinous to India. The notion of tribute meant Hope, to take off ail the surplus manufactures that Britain can produce.1
draining the country of wealth and impairing its power to The Company did not merely deny to India the benefits
purchase British goods. The Company was uninterested in of free commerce but its whole policy was designed to
finding a market for British goods in India, and, in any case, prevent Indian 'improvement*. Indeed, its chief argument
had neither the capital, skill, nor incentive, to develop its against opening the Indian trade was that the country was
vast monopoly trading area, which stretched in the grandiose incapable of any rapid improvement, its peoples being too
terms of its Charter 'between the Cape of Good Hope and rooted in poverty and inveterate habits and tastes ever to
the Straits of Magellan'. In the eyes of the free merchants have the means or desire to purchase British manufactures on
the ultimate advantage of political dominion was an indirect any considerable scale. The Company summoned an im-
one. The proper object of imperial rule was limited, as for pressive array of witnesses before the Parliamentary Com-
government in general, to the efficient provision of law and mittee in proof of this point, including Warren Hastings,
order. Having established these primary conditions, the Teignmouth, and Munro.2 The free traders naturally
question of the profitability of the Indian connexion could countered by urging that a rapid change in the Indian
be safely allowed to look after itself. For under a free trade character was certainly possible, and that, once the establish-
India would rise rapidly into prosperity as a market for British ment of law and order and light taxation had assured the
manufactures and a source of raw materials. The Company Indian of the enjoyment of the fruits of his labour, he would
should therefore cease to combine the contrary functions not be backward in acquiring the requisite means and taste
of ruler and trader and renounce all connexion with com- for British manufactures. The argument rested on the belief,
merce. Superfluous posts and unnecessary pomp, created by common to the whole radical school of thought, that human
the thirst of the Company's servants for private fortune and nature was intrinsically the same in all races. As~"a~later
of the directors for patronage, should be swept away. The spokesman expressed it: 'We may be assured that in buying
financial burden of the Company's administration should be and selling, human nature is the same in Cawnpore as in
kept as light as possible, so that the wealth of the people Cheapside.'3 Such a belief assumed that acquired charac-
could fructify in their pockets and promote trade. All teristics were not innate and were readily alterable—an
obstacles hindering the free flow of settlers, capital, and assumption held by the Evangelicals, and providing the
goods should be destroyed.1 Given these circumstances, the 1
prospects were limitless: W. Lester, The Happy Era of One Hundred Millions of the Human Race, or the
Merchant, Manufacturer, and Englishman's Recognised Right to an Unlimited Trade
•with India, 1813, pp. 39-40.
T h e vast peninsula of India has for centuries been harassed by wars * Evidence of Warren Hastings, 30 March itif.P.P., 1812-13, vol. vii, pp. ' K-i
and devastation, rendering property very insecure; but if it becomes Teignmouth, pp. 9 ff.; Malcolm, pp. 53 fT.} Munro, pp. 121 ff.
1
open to a free trade, under one mild, liberal, and effective government, Written evidence of Thomas Bracken (a partner in the leading Calcutta house
1 cf agency, Alexander & Co.): P.P., 1831-2, vol. x, Appendix, p. 587.
See note A, p. 323.
natural basis for the alliance, of attitude between the mis- for British goods would be restricted unless new return
sionary and the merchant. Already by 1813, the free mer- products could be found. Measures had to be taken for
chants were extending their attack to the whole of the raising the purchasing power of the Indian population.
Company's system of government and to its informing prin- Thomas Bracken of Alexander & Co. put this quite clearly
ciple of leaving Indian customs and institutions undisturbed.1 in his evidence before the Parliamentary Committee of
Commercial and missionary opinion were agreed upon Inquiry in 1832.1 The actual demands of the merchant
the fundamentals of the Indian problem and its solution. community were still largely concerned with their own im-
" Together they generated the colonial policy of nineteenth-, mediate interests. They had still to acquire the legal right to
; century liberalism. This was the policy of assimilation of the own land, and to enter the Company's territories without
I anglicizing movement. Because of the close connexion of licence. 'The unlimited and unshackled application of
Grant and Teignmouth with the Company, the alliance of British capital and intelligence'1 was still not fully realized.
missionary and commercial opinion did-not occur in 1813, There were still vexatious customs and internal transit dues
but by the early eighteen-twenties these groups were rapidly to be abolished or reduced. But they instinctively assumed
fusing. This was part of a wider process by which Evangelical that the path of advance, for themselves and for India, lay
and non-conformist opinion abandoned its toryism of the in the progressive adoption of English institutions. The
Napoleonic War era and went over to the side of reform. It great example, constantly before their eyes, was the rise
can be best seen in the second generation of the Clapham of Calcutta under European control, from a village on a
_ group. The younger Charles Grant, who in 1813 had de- mud-flat to the 'City of Palaces' teeming with a prosperous
livered one of the finest speeches of his day in defence of the Indian commercial community. They openly advocated that
Company, and who continued to defend it in Parliament as English law and procedure, with certain modifications,
late as 1823, passed over to the Whig side, and was the should be gradually extended over the rest of the British
minister for framing the Bill which finally brought- the territories;3 and in 1829 the judges of the Supreme Court
commercial functions of the Company to an end in 1833., put forward a scheme which proposed to bring the whole
His principal assistant on that occasion was the celebrated Ganges delta under the Calcutta Supreme Court's jurisdiction
son of Zachary Macaulay, who to his father's alarm had first as an experimental measure. One of the chief objects of the
imbibed Radical doctrine at Cambridge. In the twenties the scheme was to reduce the complexities of Indian land tenures
British merchants—having won freedom of trade with India to the simple relations of landlord and tenant, so that Euro-
in 1813—witnessed with delighted astonishment the cloth peans could purchase land in freehold, and individual energy
and twist of Lancashire displacing even the famed muslin of and capital might be applied to Indian agriculture by Indians
Dacca in the Indian market.2 So unexpected a development themselves.4 The other demand of the mercantile community
confirmed their dearest prejudices, and intensified their
interest in the measures or government. For the reversal in 1
Evidence of Thomas Bracken, 14 March 1832: P.P., 1831-2, vol. x, p. 150
the balance of trade, brought about by the triumph of im- (Qu. 1797).
» A View of the Present State and Future Prospects of the Free Trade and Coloniza-
ported cottons and the destruction of the Indian export tion of India, 2nd edn., 182 9, p. 16. The author of the pamphlet was John Crawfurd,
trade in textiles, raised the threat that the potential market »ho was the representative of the Calcutta mercantile community in the Commons
[see p. 62, n. 4). It is ascribed to Crawfurd in the India Office Library Tracts, and in
1
David Laurie, Hints Regarding the East India Monopoly—Respectfully Submitted Row Donelly Mangles, Brief Vindication of the Hon. East India Company's Govern-
to the British Legislature, Glasgow, 1813, pp. 50-51. ment of Bengalfrom the Attacks of Mtssrs. Richards and Crawfurd, 1830.
1
Cf. John Priniep, Suggestions on Freedom of Commerce and Navigation—More » Cf. Evidence of Thomas Bracken: P.P., 1831-2,-vol. it, Appendix, p. 517.
Especially in Reference to the East-India Trade, 1823, pp. 15-18. None of the free Bengal Hurkaru, 11 Sept. 1829 (editorial). Crawfurd, View of Present State, p. t j .
4
traders had predicted the astonishing rise in the export of British manufactured Letter from Judges of the Calcutta Supreme Court, 13 Sept. 1830, with
cottons to India. Technical improvements lowering prices were the main cause. enclosures: P.P., 1831, vol. vi, pp. 575 et seg.
4i THE DOCTRINE AND ITS SETTING THE DOCTRINE AND ITS SETTING, 43
was for a revenue system which would impose no more than 1
ment. Above all, the Government should do everything in
a light permanent assessment on the soil, instead of the its power to spread English education, the great civilizing
punitive, fluctuating assessments that the Company practised influence. '
outside the Bengal territories. These were the chief measures The Calcutta mercantile community had its own narrower,
which government could be expected to effect. They were more selfish standpoint, but substantially it swelled the great
what John Crawfurd implied when recommending to the tide of liberalism engulfing the English mind in theeighteen-
Parliamentary Committee of 1832 thirties. Militant in its ardour for expansion, the new out-
that if the Government fulfils its duties, that is, secure an equal and look renounced all desire for territorial power as an end;
efficient administration of justice, and forbear from imposing burthen- impatient of frontiers it wished to secure jiothing less
some imposts, or throwing needless impediments in the way of private than a world empire^ of trade. As an article in the Sunday
adventure and the free investment of capital, it may very safely and Times (which the BengaTHurkaru reprinted in 1828) ex-
confidently leave everything else to individual skill and competition.1 pressed it, it must be 'our policy to abandon, altogether a
The call for the withdrawal of all governmental inter- narrow system of colonial aggrandisement which can no
ference must not mask the aggressive spirit of the mercantile longer be pursued with advantage, and to build our great-
demands. 'Efficient administration of justice' meant English ness on a surer foundation, by stretching our dominion over
law, particularly a modern law establishing private-property the wants of the universe'.2 The most eloquent expression
rights in land, and a system of courts which would ensure of this English liberalism is to be found in Macaulay. If the
' that the influence of the law should be fully felt in the re- new British Empire were to be a dominion not over territory
motest hamlet. It meant using law in a revolutionary way, but over the wants of the universe, it followed that it was
!
consciously employing it as a weapon to transform Indian more important to civilize than subdue.
society by breaking up the customary, communal tenures. The mere extent of empire is not necessarily an advantage. T o
This aggressive spirit filled Crawfurd's powerful pamphlet many governments it has been cumbersome; to some it has been fatal.
of 1829. The Indian Government, he asserted, must drop It will be allowed by every statesman of our time that the prosperity
the ridiculous pose of protecting the weaker Indian com- of a country is made up of the prosperity of those who compose the
munity from the stronger and more energetic Europeans. community, and that it is the most childish ambition to covet dominion
which adds to no man's comfort or security. T o the great trading
Only by the powerful stimulus of competition would India nation, to the great manufacturing nation, no progress which any
be aroused. The feeble and ignorant must be placed in a portion of the human race can make in knowledge, in taste for the
state of collision with the strong and intelligent, for this was conveniences of life, or in the wealth by which those conveniences are j
the only way of sharpening and invigorating their faculties produced, can be a matter of indifference. It is scarcely possible to
and of raising them in the scale of society.2 There must be calculate the benefits which we might derive from the diffusion of
an open assertion of the superior civilization. The Govern- European civilisation among the vast population of the East. It would
ment should stand forward as an English government, in- be, on the most selfish view of the case, far better for us that the people
stead of masquerading as the feudal subject of the Mughal of India were well-governed and independent of us, than ill-governed
emperor at Delhi, striking coins with his image, and paying and subject to us; that they were ruled by their own kings, but wearing
him homage through the British Resident at Delhi. English our broadcloth, and working with our cutlery, than that they were
and not Persian should be used as the language of govern- performing their salaams to English collectors and English magistrates,
1
1
[Gavin Young], An Inquiry into the Expediency of Applying the Principles of
Written Evidence of John Crawfurd to Queries of Select Committee, in reply Colonial Policy to the Government of India & of Effecting An Essential Change in its
to Query n : 'Can any measures... be suggested to advance the interest of Indian Landed Tenures and Consequently in the Character of its Inhabitants, 182Z, p. 150.
Commerce?': P.P., 1831-2, vol. x, Appendix, p. 588. Cf. Crawfurd, Vino of Present State, p. 80.
1
Cra«furd, Vina of Present State, p. 101. 2
Bengal Huriaru, 21 Oct. 1828 (editorial).
but were too ignorant to value, or too poor to buy, English manufac- society in civilization was a lasting achievement. The per-
tures. T o trade with civilised men is infinitely more profitable than to manent and mos* profitable form of conquest was that over
govern savages. That would indeed be a doting wisdom, which, in the mind; and this was the species of conquest which
order that India might remain a dependency, would make it an useless
and costly dependency; which would keep a hundred millions of men Macaulay held out to the Commons, at the close of his great
from being our customers in order that they might continue to be our Charter speech of 1833, in a torrent of eloquence which one
slaves.1 of the older members declared would 'console the young
people for never having heard Mr. Burke'.
For Macaulay and many of his contemporaries the political It may be that the public mind of India may expand under our
tie with India was by nature brittle and impermanent. His system till it has outgrown that system; that by good government we
historical judgement taught him that all forms of government may educate our subjects into a capacity for better government; that,
were transitory and superficial, and were at the mercy of having become instructed in European knowledge, they may, in some
deeper, irresistible forces which impelled human society. future age, demand European institutions. Whether such a day will
The true wisdom in politics lay in the constant adaptation ever come I know not. But never will I attempt to avert or retard it.
of institutions to conform with the progress of these forces. Whenever it comes, it will be the proudest day in English history. T o
To attempt to check, them, to oppose an unyielding have found a great people sunk in the lowest depths of slavery and
resistance to their advance, might meet with momentary superstitition, to have so ruled them as to have made them desirous
and capable of all the privileges of citizens, would indeed be a title to
success, but must ultimately result in a violent explosion glory all our own. The sceptre may pass away from us. Unforeseen
as their pent-up pressure broke loose. The governing accidents may derange our most profound schemes of policy. Victory
forces of history were generated by the constant tendency may be inconstant to our arms. But there are triumphs which are
of intelligence and property to increase and diffuse them- followed by no reverse. There is an empire exempt from all natural'
selves in an ever widening circle; and India could not be causes of decay. Those triumphs are the pacific triumphs of reason
insulated from this action. If England were to profit from over barbarism; that empire is the imperishable empire of our arts and
India she must develop her trade. Wealth and intelligence, our morals, our literature and our laws.1
at present the monopoly of the English, would then be Macaulay had said little that was new; everywhere his
diffused among the Indians, and political power must ulti- speech rings with ideas which the elder Charles Grant and '
mately follow this process of diffusion. This was the law of Wilberforce had uttered nearly forty years before. And the
history which Macaulay proclaimed to the Commons in the instrument which he looked to for gaining this conquest
English Reform Bill crisis of 183-1.* There was no cause for over the mind of India was no different. The one sphere in
pessimism in contemplating the future. That the Indian which all Liberal opinion accorded the State a~ right of
people might one day demand and gain their independence intervention was education.1 JBy his entry into the education
was not s/matter for regret. To civilize India was 'on the controversy of 1835, w n e n he was a member of Council at
most selfish view of the case' the proper British policy, for it Calcutta, Macaulay placed himself at the head of the school
would create a wealthy and orderly society linked in the which, in Bentinck's phrase, saw general education as the
closest commercial connexion with England. When this panacea for the regeneration of India.* Writing to his
stage had been reached, the political bond would become father in 1836, Macaulay said that it was his firm belief that^
unimportant and wither away. While the sword won a if the plans for English education were followed up, there
barren and precarious hegemony, the advancement of a would not be a single idolater among the respectable classes
1
Speech of Macaulay in Charter Debate, 10 July 1833: Macaulay, Cimflete 1
Works, vol. xi, pp. 583-4. Speech of 10 July 1833: ibid., pp. 585-6.
1
Speech on Reform, 16 Dec. 1831: ibid., pp. 490-5. * Cf. his speech on education, 19 April 1847: ibid., vol. xii, pp. 231 et ieq.
1
Bentihck to Money (Mancy ?), 1 June 1834 (draft): Bentinck MSS.
THE DOCTRINE AND ITS SETTING .47
of these is through the medium of revolution; the other, through that of
in Bengal thirty years hence; that this would be effected reform. In one, the forward movement is sudden and violent; in the
without any efforts to proselytize; without the smallest other, it is gradual and peaceable. One must end in the complete
interference with religious liberty; merely by the natural alienation of mind and separation of interests between ourselves and
operation of knowledge and reflection.' In his Education the natives; the other in a permanent alliance, founded-on mutual
Minute he left no doubt as to the aim of English education. benefit and good-will. The only means at our disposal for preventing
Never was the doctrine of assimilation so baldly and crudely the one and securing the other class of results is, to set the natives on a f
stated. Explaining his support for the 'diffusion' theory, process of European improvement, to which they are already suffi-j
which envisaged applying the Bell and Lancaster technique ciently inclined. They will then cease to desire and aim at independence
on the old Indian footing.... The political education of a nation is a
of instruction to the massof the Indian population, Macaulay work of time; and while it is in progress, we shall be as safe as it will
said the first object must be to raise up an English-educated be possible for us to be. The natives will not rise against us, we shall
middle class 'who may be interpreters between us and the stoop to raise them; there will be no reaction, because there will be no
millions whom we govern—a class of persons Indian in colour pressure; the national activity wiH be fully and harmlessly employed
and blood, but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals, and in acquiring and diffusing European knowledge, and in naturalising
in intellect'.2 Macaulay was backed by the great bulk of European institutions. The educated classes, knowing that the eleva-
the Calcutta mercantile community in his fight for English tion of their country on these principles can only be worked out under
education. But its most ardent advocate was Macaulay's our protection, will naturally cling to u s . . . . The change will thus be
1
young brother-in-law, Charles Trevelyan, in whose person peaceably and gradually effected; there will be no struggle, no mutual
the fusion of the Evangelical and Radical outlook was most exasperation; the natives will have independence, after first learning
how to make good use of it; and we shall exchange profitable subjects
completely realized,1 In his pamphlet on the Education of for still more profitable allies. The present administrative connection
'jlhdia Trevelyan expounded in its fullest development that benefits families, but a strict commercial union between the first
Liberal policy towards India, which Macaulay had outlined manufacturing and the first producing country in the world,
in his own speech of July 1833, and which was implicit in would be a solid foundation of strength and prosperity to our whole
his reading of history. It is worth citing at length because it nation. If this course be adopted, there will, properly speaking, be no
contains the kernel of the outlook of the Age of Reform, its separation. A precarious and temporary relation will almost imper-
passionate conviction that the ideals of altruism and the ceptibly pass into another far more durable and beneficial. Trained by
strongest claims of self-interest coincided. Substantially it us to happiness and independence, and endowed with our learning and
represents the permanent Liberal attitude to India, which political institutions, India will remain the proudest monument of
survived intact to the end of British rule, which, despite British benevolence; and we shall long continue to reap, in the affec-
tionate attachment of the people, and in a great commercial intercourse
hesitations, was ready with an answer for Indian nationalism, with their splendid country, the fruit of that liberal and enlightened
and which has finally triumphed in our own time. policy which suggested to us this line of conduct.1
The existing connection between two such distant countries as
England and India, cannot, in the nature of things, be permanent: no
effort of policy can prevent the natives from ultimately regaining their
independence. But there are two ways of arriving at this point. One
1
Macaulay to his father, Zachary Macaulay, u Oct. 1836: G. O. Trevelyan,
Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay, 1908 edn., pp. 319-30.
1
Macaulay, Minute on Education, z Feb. 1835. One of the few reasonably
accessible books which reproduces this minute in its entirety is G. O. Trevelyan,
The Competition Wallah, 1864, pp. 410 et seq. Also Selections from Educational
Records, Part I, 1781-1839, ed. H. Sharp, pp. 107 et seq.
1
See note B, p. 313.

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The English Utilitarians and India / Eric Stokes; New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1989 (1-46 p.

THE DOCTRINE AND ITS SETTING

I. The Battle of the Two Philosophies

T the foundations of the British dominion in India. In

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