Charles Grant and British Rule in India 9780231879583

Table of contents :
Preface
Acknowledgments
Contents
I. Passage to India
II. The Nature of the Company’s Rule
III. Problems of an Expanding Empire
Bibliography

Citation preview

No. 606 in

Columbia Studies in the Social Sciences Edited by the Faculty of Political Science of Columbia University

CHARLES GRANT AND BRITISH RULE IN INDIA BY

AINSLIE THOMAS EMBREE

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS NEW YORK 1962

Published in Great Britain by George Allen & Unwin Ltd. This book is copyright under the Berne Convention. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act 1956, no portion may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Enquiry should be made to the publisher. © George Allen & Unwin Ltd. 1962 Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 62-7591

P R I N T E D IN GREAT BRITAIN

FOR R A L P H AND M A R G A R E T

PREFACE Writing in 1894 at the full tide of British power in India, Sir Alfred Lyall, one of the most perceptive of the administrator-historians, remarked that the history of the Indian Empire was unique in that it provided a connected view of the germination, growth and expansion of the sovereignty of a civilized power over another people of a high, but alien, culture.1 The meaning and the results of such an extension of power must weigh, he thought, 'on the minds of reflective men in all times and countries.' Lyall summarized his own attitude by referring to St Augustine, who, after examining Roman expansion, concluded that 'to carry on war and extend rulership over subdued nations seems to bad men felicity, but to good men a necessity.'2 The purpose of this study is to examine the part played by Charles Grant, servant and Director of the East India Company, in the expansion of British power in India and to show how he interpreted the significance of that movement for both India and Britain. The general conclusion suggested is that not only did Grant raise for the first time many questions concerning the nature of the relationship between India and Great Britain, but also that his commentary on events and the record of his public career provide valuable insights into the creative role of the East India Company and its servants in modern Indian history. The process of germination of which Lyall spoke took a long time —stretching over the century and a half from the first voyages at the beginning of the seventeenth century to the middle of the 1760's when it became plain that Britain, or at least the Company, was to be a territorial power in India. The period of growth and expansion, on the other hand, was relatively brief—largely comprised in the fifty years culminating in Lord Hastings' conquests in 1819. Throughout almost the whole of this period, Charles Grant was connected with the East India Company. He began his Indian career in Bengal in 1768, a time and place, as he later said, which reflected 'a kind of dark shade.' His first years in India were spent as private agent to Richard Becher, one of the best-known of the Company's servants of the time. Later, under a regular appointment, Grant advanced rapidly in the Company's service, and before he left India in 1790 he had become an influential figure, having been chosen by Lord Cornwallis to carry out the reform of the Company's Commercial Department. After his return to England he quickly assumed a powerful role in the Indian 1 Sir Alfred Lyall, The Rise and Expansion of British Dominion in India (Fourth Edition), London, John Murray, 1907, pp. 344-46. 2 Ibid.

7

PREFACE

Home Administration, and as a Member of Parliament and a leader of the Clapham Sect his views gained very wide currency. He remained a dominant figure in Indian affairs until his death in 1823. It was of great significance for the British connection with India that its development from the 1760's through the 1820's coincided— only partly fortuitously—with a period of great change and ferment in British life. Considerations for reform and alteration in the mechanism of government at home were reflected in the various Acts passed by Parliament after acquisition of financial control of Bengal in 1765, the most notable of these being the India Act of 1784. Demands for the State to assume responsibility for reforms in India were growing stronger, with humanitarianism finding powerful support from Evangelical and Utilitarian sources. Both of these movements greatly influenced Indian development in the nineteenth century and much in the national structure of modern India can be traced to them. It could be argued, however, that India meant as much to the Evangelicals as they did to her, for India gave them a cause more enduring than Abolition. She also provided the Utilitarians with an area where theory could be applied to legal and judicial systems and where a rational Civil Service could be created. The industrial changes that were profoundly modifying social relationships in Britain throughout this period also reacted upon India. The actual nature of the impact of European industrialization on the economy of India has never satisfactorily been explored— probably the necessary documentation is lacking—but it was clear by the 1820's that a revolution had taken place: the direction of the trade in cotton was no longer from the East to the West. As a young man in Bengal, Charles Grant could scarcely have imagined that he would live to see Britain supplying India with cotton goods. Along with the new methods of production that made this change possible were new ideas regarding the proper relation of the State to trade and industry, and for Adam Smith and his followers, the East India Company served as a symbol for all that was irrational and inefficient in mercantilism. Two other revolutions of the time also played a part in the relationship being forged between India and Britain. News of disasters in America led Warren Hastings to see that an Empire might be created in India to balance British losses, and by the beginning of the nineteenth century the idea of India as an alternative to America was common. It is not surprising that Charles Grant and other Englishmen were annoyed when ships flying the flag of the new nation appeared in Indian waters immediately after the war and began a trade that seriously challenged the Company's commerce. The French Revolution had an even greater effect on British power in India, for it 8

PREFACE

led to a new stirring of interest in the possibility of France re-establishing a foothold there. The fear of French aggression was an important element leading to renewed expansion of British power under Wellesley, and, at the same time, France's involvement in Europe meant that the British had to meet only the resistance of Indian powers, not of European rivals, in extending their sway. Charles Grant's career in India and Great Britain involved him in these interacting movements and events to an extent perhaps not paralleled in the life of anyone else. This is a large claim; but it is difficult to think of any other contemporary whose connection with India extended over such a long period, whose interest was so intense, and whose major concerns were in areas that brought him so sharply and so continuously into contact with the great problems of the time. For Grant, three areas were of special concern—the Company's monopoly, Christian missions, and territorial expansion—and the examination of his views in regard to them provides the organizing principle of this study. That the East India Company was essential to the good government of the Indian territories of Great Britain and that free trade and further Parliamentary interference would destroy the workable administrative framework already created, were fundamental postulates for Grant. He supported this position on historical grounds by arguing that the impulse for reform in Bengal had come from the Company's own servants there, not from Britain, and on economic and political grounds by arguing that conditions in India were such that government could only be maintained through strict economic controls. While doubtlessly partly motivated by his own position within the Company, this was the last really cogent defence of the old system and was based on vast knowledge of commercial and administrative detail. As such, it provides a background for understanding the impact of industrial change and new economic theories on the structure of British India. Grant's religious convictions assumed great importance in the development of the connection between Britain and India, for they led him to use his power and influence to advocate the opening of the Company's territories to missionary work. This resulted in one of the most interesting—and frankest—public discussions in the nineteenth century of the role of religion in national affairs. His argument for the political expediency of missions depended upon two main lines of reasoning. One was that the fabric of Indian social life had been so corrupted by a false religion that only its transformation through the introduction of Western learning and religious truth could make for conditions permitting permanent British control. The other argument was that every government must rest upon moral sanctions, and that 9

PREFACE

British conquests in India could only be justified by its possession of a superior truth which it willingly shared. Although Grant did not succeed in his original object of winning official support for missions, the concessions he did obtain, and above all, the influence of his characterization of the degraded nature of Hindu society, profoundly modified British attitudes toward India. The third area where Grant's views were of particular importance was in the great debate that took place during his lifetime over territorial expansion. As a young man in India, hostile to Warren Hastings and a friend of Philip Francis, he watched the first great extension of British power outside the limits of Clive's original conquests. Later, as a Director and Chairman of the Company, he was the most implacable opponent of Wellesley's expansionist policies, and at the very end of his life he denounced Lord Hastings for the assumption of paramountcy over further large areas. Convinced that expansion was neither politically wise nor morally justifiable, he maintained his opposition at a time when almost all other competent observers were convinced that complete British sovereignty in India was inevitable and would be of undoubted value to both countries. Closely related to his attitude toward expansion was his argument that the Governor-General must be strictly subordinate to the Home Administration. Acquisition of new territory, which was always justified by the argument that the men on the spot had acted in a way that their assessment of the local situation made necessary, seemed to Grant the most certain way to encourage autonomous rule by the Governor-General. His views on the causes of British expansion in India are significant for any consideration of the nature of imperialism in the nineteenth century. Since the aim of this study is not biographical but the examination of Grant's official career and opinions, many aspects of his life have been noted only as they bear upon his Indian interests. His work as a Member of Parliament, for example, has been treated in relation to his Indian interests, with little mention made of his activity on behalf of Northern Scotland. In the same way, no special attempt has been made to cover in detail the intricacies of the internal politics of the Home Administration of the East India Company except as they had some specific bearing on policy. The sources most frequently referred to in this study are the Records of the India Office, now in the Commonwealth Relations Office, London. In addition to the official documents either written by Grant or clearly bearing the impress of his ideas, there are great numbers of his letters in various collections of the Home Miscellaneous Series. Many of the originals and copies of the letters written by Grant during his service in Bengal are preserved in the National 10

PREFACE

Archives of India, while some of his correspondence with Lord Cornwallis from that period is in the Public Record Office in London. A few of his letters to Lord William Bentinck are to be found in the Portland Papers at the University of Nottingham; the Bodleian Library, Oxford, has a number of important letters to Robert Dundas. The Melville Papers in the National Library of Scotland (the microfilmed copies in the National Archives of India were consulted) contain some interesting references to Grant, as do the relevant sections of the Wellesley and Hastings collections in the British Museum. Grant's many lengthy speeches in Parliament and the East India House were usually reported in considerable detail—sometimes from copies or notes he himself supplied—and these have proved of great value in relating his public and private attitudes. For the details of his private life, the major source is the biography published by Henry Morris in 1904. While Morris' chief interest was Grant's connection with the establishment of Protestant missions in India, he printed many excerpts from Grant's journals and private letters, which now seem to be lost.

11

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS My sense of obligation is great towards the many people who have helped me during my research and writing. Like all students of the relations between Great Britain and India during this period, I have been continuously indebted to the works of Professor C. H. Philips of the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, and of Professor Holden Furber of the University of Pennsylvania. In the early stages of my work, they also answered my questions and gave me useful advice regarding manuscripts. So also did Professor Percival Spear of Selwyn College, Cambridge, and Professor Ralph Hidy, then at New York University. At Columbia University, research was begun under the late Professor J. Barlet Brebner; then Professor Chilton Williamson gave me many hours of friendly criticism and advice. I have also profited from the suggestions of Professors Herman Ausubel, E. M. Hunt, and Jacob Hurewitz. None of these are responsible in any way, of course, for errors of fact or interpretation. I am grateful for the kindnesses shown by the Librarians and staffs of many institutions, but those of the India Office Library and Indian Records Section, Commonwealth Relations Office, helped me not only in London but also sent me books to India. The custodians of the National Archives of India also showed me many courtesies. The Librarian of Nottingham University, the Curator of the Bodleian Library, officials of the Bank of England and of Somerset House, all very kindly arranged to have materials in their charge reproduced for me. Finally, I owe a special debt of gratitude to my wife. AINSLIE T . EMBREE,

Columbia University

CONTENTS PREFACE

page 7

L I S T OF A B B R E V I A T I O N S

16

PART I. BENGAL. 1769-90 I.

Passage to India

19

II.

Bengal Apprenticeship,

in.

Charles Grant and the Hastings Era

43

iv.

Commercial Resident, 1780-87

6

v.

Reformer in Bengal

95

1768-70

28

PART II. THE NATURE OF THE COMPANY'S RULE vi.

Proprietor and Director

123

vii.

Advocate of Religious and Social Change

141

vill.

Defender of Monopoly

158

ix.

Guardian of the Civil Service

178

PART III. PROBLEMS OF AN EXPANDING EMPIRE x.

Grant and Wellesley: Conflict Over Territorial Expansion

205

xi.

Interpreter of the Indian Response

231

xii.

Spokesman for the Companys 1813-23

261

xiii.

Charles Grant's Memorial

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Rule: 282 293

LIST OF A B B R E V I A T I O N S

For Archives B.M. British Museum India Office, Commonwealth Relations Office N.A. National Archives of India, New Delhi N.L.s. National Library of Scotland p.R.o. Public Record Office, London

c.R.o.

For Documents Add. MSS. H.M.S. Orig. Cons. Pub. Cons. Pub. Proc. Select Comm. Proc.

Additional Manuscripts (B.M.) Home Miscellaneous Series (C.R.O.) Original Consultations (N.A.) Public Consultations (C.R.O. and N.A.) Public Proceedings (N.A.) Select Committee Proceedings (N.A.) Currency

Values expressed in rupees can be roughly converted into pounds by dividing by ten, since a Bengal current rupee was usually worth two shillings.

PART I

BENGAL, 1769-70

B

CHAPTER I

PASSAGE TO INDIA James Boswell was on his way to London late in 1 7 6 2 he was amazed to find that his travelling companion was not excited at the prospect of seeing London, but considered it 'just as a place where he was to receive orders from the East India Company.' 1 Boswell's surprise would not have been shared by Charles Grant, another young Scot who went to London a few months later. For him, escape from the poverty of Northern Scotland had come because a cousin who had made money in Bengal was willing to help his relatives make their way to India. The pattern that Charles Grant was following had already been set by numerous of his countrymen who had gone to London with a passage to India, not the delights of the great city, as their goal. This affinity of Scotsmen for India was often noticed by contemporaries. In India, Englishmen remarked in disgust that 'no man of any other nation can be served in a province where the chief is a Scot, whilst a Scotsman is to be found,' 2 and at home politicians complained that to the old Scotch interest, a sinister new power had been added by Indian money. In 1806, Lord Grenville was warned by his friends that there was little hope for his Ministry if his enemies 'hoisted the Indian and Scotch standard' against him.3 In Scotland itself the result of the connection with India could be seen, in the pleasant metaphor of Sir James Macintosh, the Bombay Judge, as 'a little stream of East Indian gold . . . spreading cultivation and fertility and plenty along its narrow valley.'4 Charles Grant's career provided ample illustration for the interplay of Scotland and India, since not only did he go to India himself, but in later years as a Director and Chairman of the East India Company he used his patronage for thirty years to send out many other young Scots.8 Furthermore, he was a friend of Henry Dundas, WHEN

1 James Boswell, London Journal, 1762-1763, edited with an introduction and notes by Frederick A. Pottle, New York, McGraw-Hill, 1950, p. 44. 2 Joseph Price, Some Observations and Remarks on a Late Publication Entitled Travels in Europe, Asia and Africa, London, 1782, p. 141. 3 Historical Manuscripts Commission, Report on the Manuscripts of J. B. Fortescue, Esq., Preserved at Dropmore, London, His Majesty's Stationery Office, 1927, VIII, 208, Buckingham to Grenville, 29 June 1806. Cited hereafter as Dropmore MSS. 4 R. J. Macintosh, editor, Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir James Macintosh, London, Edward Moxon, 1836,1,169. 6 See below, pp. 178-87, for a discussion of patronage.

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1

political manager of Scotland, and for nearly fifteen years as Member for Inverness-shire he was the outstanding representative of that 'Scotch and Indian' interest of which politicians complained when they thought it was opposing them. His life illustrates as well those social forces which in Scotland in the middle of the eighteenth century combined with events in India to make a career in the East India Company's service attractive to able and ambitious young Scotsmen. It was a lucky coincidence that the growth of British territorial power in India provided an escape and opportunities for many Jacobites after the defeat at Culloden,2 while the impoverished condition of many Highland families made an Indian appointment, as Grant once pointed out, 'a life prospect.' 3 Charles Grant was born in March 1746.4 His family, the Grants of Shewglie, had lived for generations on the northern shore of Loch Ness in Glen Urquhart. 5 Although miserably poor, they were related to many of the leading northern families. When Charles Grant returned to Scotland in the 1770's as a young Nabob, he found some of the members of his family 'in a state of ruin and distress a thousand times worse than beggary,' but, he proudly noted, 'though they have been poor and distressed, they have not mixed with the vulgar.'8 Many years later, a relative, Mrs. Anne Grant of Laggan, described the family as she had known them as a young woman. 'They were indeed a wonderful family,' she told a friend, 'Charles, good, able and eminent as he is, was the only one not brilliant and extraordinary; but theirs was a transient blaze, and he less exquisitely sensitive, burns steadily on.' 7 This perceptive comment was echoed by other friends about the next generation, Charles Grant's own children. Mme de Stael thought one of his daughters 'nearer to her idea of her own Corrine than anyone she had ever met,' but Marianne Thornton, a very shrewd observer, said that like the rest of the Grants she was inclined 'to be too much disgusted by vulgarity and to fancy too much that all the world was wrong and we were right.'8 William Wilber1

Holden Furber, Henry Dundas, London, Oxford University Press, 1931, pp.175 ff. a William MacKay, Urquhart and Glenmoriston, Inverness, Northern Counties Publishing Co., 1893, p. 280, notices this connection. »C.R.O. Minutes and Reports of Committee of College, I, Pt. II, 5,8 Aug. 1810. 4 Henry Morris, The Life of Charles Grant, London, John Murray, 1904, p. 2. Morris summarizes almost everything known about Grant's early life in Scotland. 6 MacKay, op. cit., is largely an account of the history of the Grant family. • Morris, op. cit., pp. 27-27, Charles Grant to Robert Grant, 11 Dec. 1771. 7 Anne Grant, Memoirs and Correspondence of Mrs. Grant of Laggan, edited by J. P. Grant, London, Longmans, Brown and Elder, 1844,1, 152, Mrs. Grant to Mrs. Hook, 16 March 1805. 8 E. M. Forster, Marianne Thornton, 1797-1887, London, Edward Arnold, 1956, pp. 40-41, Marianne Thornton's "Recollections."

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force made the same point when, after listening to Grant's son, the future Lord Glenelg in Parliament, he wrote in his diary, 'Charles Grant [junior] spoke, beautiful, but too elaborately.'1 This kind of comment was never made about Charles Grant himself, whose soberness contrasted with the dramatic background out of which he came as well as with the brilliance of his children.2 Charles Grant's father, Alexander 'The Swordsman,' was one of the more colourful figures of the 1745 Rebellion.3 Although the head of the Grant family did not openly declare his allegiance to Prince Charles Edward, Alexander Grant joined him soon after he landed, followed him into England and back to Scotland. Shortly before Culloden, Alexander arranged a baptismal service for his son, who was named Charles in honour of the Prince.4 Grant and his companions crossed their swords over the infant, and made him clasp the hilts in token of his dedication to the Stuart cause. There is no evidence that Charles Grant cared for the memories of the Jacobites, but by a curious coincidence one of his last public acts was to refuse a request from George IV for help for a friend. 5 After the defeat of the Jacobites at Culloden, Alexander Grant had a difficult time making a living, and finally joined a Highland Regiment which was sent to the West Indies, where he died.6 According to the historian of the Clan, he had to flee because he had killed a dragoon in a quarrel, but the account is vague.7 Another Alexander Grant, a cousin who had accompanied Charles' father to Culloden, fled to India, where he eventually became an officer in Clive's Bengal army.8 This was the beginning of Charles Grant's connection with India, for it was through this relative's help that he eventually went there. Charles Grant attended school in Elgin for six years.9 While it may be true that at this time Scottish education had entered 'a dismal period of scholastic poverty,'10 it apparently gave a remarkably good grounding to the young Scots who served the East India Company. The administration of the Company's affairs depended to a 1 Robert and Samuel Wilberforce, The Life of William Wilberforce, London, John Murray, 1839IV, 129, Diary, 13 May 1813. Cited hereafter as Wilberforce, Life. ' His two sons, Charles, Lord Glenelg, and Sir Robert, had brilliant careers at Cambridge, and were greatly praised for their wit and oratory as young men. 3 MacKay, op. cit., pp. 250 ff. 4 Morris, op. cit., p. 3. 6 See below, p. 278. 6 Morris, op. cit., p. 3. 7 William Fraser, Chiefs of Grant, Edinburgh, 1883, 1, 517. 8 MacKay, op. cit., p. 280. • Morris, op. cit., p. 4. 10 H. G. Graham, The Social Life of Scotland in the Eighteenth Century, London, A C Black, 1928, p. 447.

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great degree on the ability of its servants to organize data, to formulate policies on the basis of written reports and to prepare memoranda, and Grant, like many other of Company servants who had only six or seven years of formal education, managed to acquire the necessary literary skills. Since the Scottish system aimed at being national, 1 Grant received much the same kind of education as the sons of lairds and well-to-do professional men, despite the povery of his family. Smollett said he made the hero of Roderick Random a Scotsman so that he 'could at small expense bestow on him such education as . . . the dignity of his birth and character required, which could not possibly be obtained in England,'2 and for much the same reason, the East India Company found in Scotland a supply of young men remarkably well-equipped to be clerks in its Indian factories. At the age of thirteen Grant became an apprentice to William Forsyth of Cromarty, one of the largest shipowners and merchants in the North. 3 Forsyth was an interesting and unusual man, for while Highland families like the Grants were seeking an outlet in India, he became the principal agent of a new commercial life in the north of Scotland. By bringing coal from Newcastle, he opened up a new trade and also relieved the Highlands from their dependence on peat and dried dung for fuel.4 Although the Highlanders clung with stubborn tenacity to their old patterns, Forsyth made employment in his business conditional on the families of his employees using the new spinning-wheel.6 Grant was Forsyth's apprentice clerk for live years, and Forsyth, according to his biographer, recognizing his unusual abilities, gave him books to read and introduced him to influential friends.6 Forsyth was also credited with having given Grant the 'impression of the vital importance of religion.'7 While Grant must have learned a good deal from the enterprising pioneer merchant that was of value to him as a trader in Bengal, his letters as an apprentice were full of complaints against the poverty in which his master kept him. He was intensely conscious that he appeared to be 'poor and destitute of friends,' and, he said, 'such Contumelys I cannot well bear.' 8 The fear of poverty haunted him all his life, even when he was surrounded 1

Ibid., p. 433. Tobias Smollett, The Works of Tobias Smollett, edited by George Saintsbury, vol. I: Roderick Random, New York, Bigelow, Brown, n.d., Preface. * Hugh Miller, A Scotch Merchant of the Eighteenth Century, London, Stewart and Murray, 1839, p. 67. 4 Miller, op. cit., p. 12. 4 Ibid., pp. 48-49. «Ibid., p. 67. 7 Ibid., p. 69. 8 Morris, op. cit., p. 5. Charles Grant to John Grant, 14 June 1762. 2

22

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INDIA

by the massive physical security of upper-class London life. It showed in his worries over his wife's household budgets1 as well as in his will in which he sought through complicated bequests to insure his immediate family and their relations against the kind of poverty he had known as a young man. 2 By the time Charles Grant had finished his apprenticeship in Cromarty, his cousin Alexander had returned from Bengal and had become a partner in an East India mercantile house in London. 3 Charles Grant applied to this Nabob relative for a place in his business, which probably was concerned with the trade carried on by the officers of the Company's ships.4 Forsyth recommended him as 'a young man of good genius for writing, cyphering and keeping of accounts, as much as can be expected from one of his small degree of education,'5 and Charles Grant left Cromarty in 1763 for London, the half-way house to Bengal. It was to be a slow journey, however: five years before he reached Bengal, ten years before his 'good genius for writing' started him on the way to fortune as Secretary of the Board of Trade in Calcutta. It was extremely important for Grant's subsequent career that his India connection should have been Alexander Grant, for this gave him at once a relationship with the generation of men who had been involved in the conquest of Bengal. All his life, Charles Grant regarded Clive's statements on British policy in India as the standard by which developments should be judged, and through Alexander Grant he came to know the men who had worked with Clive. A summary of Alexander Grant's career suggests something of Charles Grant's heritage in India. As adjutant in Company's army during the siege of Calcutta in 1756 by Siraj-ud-daula, the Nawab of Bengal, Grant had taken part in what has been called 'one of the least creditable episodes in the history of British India.'6 Along with the Governor and other officers, he had deserted the garrison by escaping in the boats meant for the women and children.7 For the garrison, the sequel was the Black Hole. Subsequently, Grant wrote a defence of his conduct, maintaining that he had tried to persuade the Governor 1

Ibid., p. 361, Mrs. Grant to Charles Grant, n.d. Somerset House, Pcc 21 Erskine, Will of Charles Grant. 3 George Smith, Twelve Indian Statesmen, London, John Murray, 1898, p. 5. 4 Holden Furber,John Company at Work, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1948, pp. 277-84 discusses this "privilege" trade and its importance in the Company's economy. 6 Morris, op. cit., p. 6, William Forsyth to Captain Alexander Grant, 24 Feb. 1763. 6 V. C. P. Hodson, List of Officers of the Bengal Army, 1758-1834, London, Constable, 1928, II, 310; and Sir A. W. Ward, et al, editors, Cambridge Modern History, Cambridge, University Press, 1934, VI, 552. ' Ibid. 2

23

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AND B R I T I S H

R U L E IN

INDIA

to return, and, as this explanation was accepted, he escaped censure.1 In the following year he was one of the officers who convinced Clive that the enemy should be immediately attacked at Plassey, despite their overwhelming superiority in numbers.2 He received eleven thousand pounds as his share of the price that was exacted from Mir Jafar, the new Nawab, for the army's support, 3 and it was this money that he had used to establish himself in London. A few years after Charles Grant went to work for him in London, he returned to India where, probably through the influence of his friends in the Council, he had a number of valuable contracts for supplying transport and food to the army.4 He died in Calcutta in 1768,6 a reminder that not all the Nabobs retired to enjoy their money in corrupting English public life. When Alexander Grant returned to India, Charles was left in charge of his London interests, but India filled his thoughts. 'Good accounts,' he wrote a relative, 'inflame me with the desire of being there.'6 In his expectations, Grant was reflecting contemporary attitudes to India. By 1766, stories of the wealth of the Company's servants, as well as sinister rumours of the way they made it, were common in London.7 Not only impoverished young Scotsmen saw in India a solution to financial difficulties. The Government was urgently concerned over the National Debt, and the revenues of the East India Company seemed, as Chatham said, 'a kind of gift from heaven' sent to achieve 'the redemption of a nation.' 8 Forty years later when the fulfilment of his own expectations had made him Chairman of the East India Company and a Member of Parliament, Grant had to explain why, when individuals had done so well for themselves, Chatham's hopes for relief for the Government from Indian wealth had never been realized.9 1 S . C. Hill, editor, Bengal in 1756-57 (Indian Record Series), London, John Murray, 1905,1,73-89, "An Account of the Capture of Calcutta by Captain Grant, dated 13 July 1756." 2 Ibid., p. cxcviii. * J. M. Holzman, The Nabobs in England, 1760-1785, New York, Published by the Author, 1926, p. 10. * Index to Press Lists of Ancient Documents Belonging to the Public Department for the Years 1760-1769, Calcutta, Government of India, p. 148. 5 Hodson, op. cit., II, 310. • Smith, Twelve Indian Statesmen, p. 5, Charles Grant to Patrick Grant, 27 Sept. 1766. ' Sir John Malcolm, The Life of Robert, Lord Clive, London, John Murray, 1836, III, 105-07, Directors to Select Committee of Bengal, 17 May 1766. • Autobiography of Augustus Henry, Third Duke of Grafton, edited by W. R. Anson, London, 1898, quoted by Lucy Sutherland, The East India Company in Eighteenth Century Politics, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1952,150. ' Parliamentary Debates (First Series), VI, 210, speech by Charles Grant, 25 Feb. 1806. Cited hereafter as Pari. Debates.

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For Charles Grant, the way to a realization of his hopes was through an appointment to the East India Company's service. This required a nomination from a Director of the Company, and once more Alexander Grant probably helped him, since all the three men Grant mentioned in his letters at that time—W. B. Sumner, Luke Scrafton, Richard Becher—had been in Bengal in the 1750's.1 Sumner, who had deserted the garrison with Alexander Grant in 1758, was a member of the Select Committee that Clive had taken with him to Bengal in 1765.2 Scrafton had been Warren Hastings' predecessor as Resident at Murshidabad, the capital of the Nawab of Bengal.3 Although he has been described as a hot-tempered man, advocating violent measures against the Indians,4 from an interesting account he wrote of Bengal he appears to have had a far more intelligent awareness of Indian religion and culture than most of his contemporaries.5 Richard Becher, however, was the most interesting of the three and the one who had the greatest influence on Charles Grant. Becher had gone to India in 1743, and as Resident at Murshidabad and Member of the Council at Calcutta became one of the most important of the Company's officials.8 He made a fortune and retired to England in 1771, but having lost his money through bad investments he had to return to India, where he died in poverty in 1782.7 Throughout his career in India he was keenly aware of the suffering caused the people by corrupt and inefficient government, and his letters show him to have been a humane and intelligent man.8 The appointment that Grant's friends secured for him in 1767 was as a cadet in the Company's army.9 He had no intention, however, of becoming a soldier. 'When I arrive there I shall throw off that character,' he told his brother, 'and in the meantime it will save expense.'10 Nominal enlistment in the Company's army or navy was a 1 Morris, op. cit., p. 11. Grant did not give Sumner's first name in his letters, but it seems likely that his "Mr. Sumner" was W. B. Sumner, who was well-known at the time. 2 Malcolm, The Life of Clive, II, 318. 3 Keith Feiling, Warren Hastings, London, Macmillan, 1955, p. 26. 4 Ibid., p. 27. 5 Luke Scrafton, Reflections on the Government of Hindostán, London, 1773. First published in 1763. 6 W. K. Firminger, editor, Letter Copy Books of the Resident at the Durbar at Murshidabad, 1769-70, Calcutta, Bengal Secretariat, 1919, p. viii. 7 Ibid. 8 Ibid., passim and N. A., Select Committee Proceedings, Richard Becher to President, 7 and 24 May 1769. 9 C.R.O., Index to Despatches to Bengal, I, reference to Despatches to Bengal, IV, 387, appointment of Charles Grant to Bengal as a cadet. 10 Morris, op. cit., p. 10, Charles Grant to Robert Grant, 20 Nov. 1766.

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very common way of securing a free passage to India and at the same time circumventing the Company's stringent regulations against unauthorized entry. This was one of the many evasions of the Company's laws practised by its servants against which Cornwallis, assisted by Charles Grant, took action during his administration.1 Many years later, after Charles Grant had gone to considerable trouble to get a young relative an appointment to India, he found that the boy did not want to go. The boy had become aware, Grant explained to his father, of 'the obloquy that covers so much of the Company's service.'2 If Grant was bothered by any such scruples in 1767, he was too anxious to better himself and to help his brothers and sisters in Scotland, to take any notice of them. Even before he arrived in Bengal, however, he had learned that to be a Company's servant was to be an object of suspicion. His first appearance in the Company's records, aside from the notice of his appointment, was in connection with a charge of attempted smuggling of goods into Calcutta. Just before Grant's ship, the Admiral Watson, sailed from Plymouth late in 1767 it was discovered that three boxes had been brought on board which were not covered by a licence.3 The boxes contained jewellery, gold and silver lace, buttons, thread—all items the Company forbade its servants to take to India without making a declaration and paying duty. There was a very long investigation, which finally discovered that 'Mr. Charles Grant, cadet for Bengal, and Mr. John Douglas, free merchant for Fort St. George, who were passengers in the Admiral Watson, were the principal persons concerned in clandestinely shipping the three boxes of jewellery . . .'4 The Bengal Council were ordered by the Directors to inform 'Mr Grant that we highly resent his being guilty of so notorious a breach of duty,' and that only future good conduct would wipe out 'the unfavourable impression this offence has given us.' 5 Grant admitted that he was technically guilty but argued that the censure was harsher then his conduct warranted. His explanation was that he had been asked to take the boxes to Alexander Grant, but he had not known at the time of the Company's rule, and, he pointed out, he had not tried in any way to conceal the boxes.8 For the sake of the small 1 C.R.O., Bengal Letters Received, XXV, Cornwallis to Directors, 16 Nov. 1786. 2 Fraser, op. cit., II, 510, Charles Grant to Sir James Grant, 2 Dec. 1791. 3 N . K. Sinha, editor, Fort William-India House Correspondence, 1767-1769 (Indian Record Series), Delhi, Government of India, 1949, p. 162, Directors to President of Council, 11 Nov. 1768. 4 Ibid., Directors to President of Council, 17 March 1769. 5 Ibid. 9 N.A., Orig. Cons., 8 Dec. 1769, No. 6, Charles Grant to Council.

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saving in customs it was not likely, he said, that he would have hazarded his future by smuggling.1 The censure was not withdrawn, but the incident appears to have been completely forgotten, and was not used even by Grant's enemies.2 It is a useful introduction, however, to a period of great moral ambiguity and to Charles Grant's interpretation of the significance of that time for the relationship between India and Great Britain. 1 2

Ibid. Morris, op. cit., does not mention this incident.

27

CHAPTER II

B E N G A L A P P R E N T I C E S H I P , 1768-70 CHARLES G R A N T arrived in Bengal in June, 1768 and remained there until January, 1771. Looking back on this period, historians have tended to see it as a time when the East India Company and its servants in Bengal 'wandered deeper and deeper into the night of disorder that seemed . . . without hope of dawn,' 1 until the appointment of Warren Hastings as Governor in 1772 brought a promise of relief which was given more tangible form by the passing of Pitt's India Act in 1784. Against this interpretation of the period, Charles Grant protested vigorously. The year 1769, not 1772 or 1784, he insisted, was the year when British rule began 'the principle of consulting the welfare of the people.'2 It was a common mistake, he told the House of Commons in 1813, to regard Pitt's Act as the basis of good government in India, for 'long before the passing of that Act, the first ideas of the reforms afterwards adopted in the land tenures of India [and] in the administration of justice there had been developed in the discussions between the members of the Bengal government.'3 When Edmund Burke and others of his generation were praised for their work on behalf of India, it seemed to Grant that they were being given 'merit which belongs to others'—to the very Company servants in Bengal who were often so energetically denounced.4 They were the ones, Grant said, who had 'first pointed out errors and first suggested corrections.'6 In his later defence of the Company, Grant's interpretation of this period played a vital part, for, he argued, since the original impulse for reform had come from the Company's servants in India, therefore the Company could be entrusted with continued control of India.6 Furthermore, if the foundations of British power had been laid in this period, then there should not be any essential alteration in the policies of the Indian administration. He recognized, of course, that change and development was necessary, but he saw Cornwallis's administration as the natural outcome of the earlier period, just as he saw Hastings and Wellesley introducing aberrations into the policies that had proven successful in the past. 1 M. E. Monckton Jones, Warren Hastings in Bengal 1772-1774, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1918, p. 67. • Pari. Debates, XXVI, 927, speech by Charles Grant, 28 June 1813. 8 1 6 9 Ibid., p. 928. Ibid., p. 927. Ibid. Ibid.

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Grant's contact with the affairs of the time was through Richard Becher, who was a member of the Select Committee and the Council, the two bodies that administered the Company's affairs in Bengal.1 Becher's special responsibility, however, was the office of Resident at Murshidabad, the capital of the Nawab. 2 In addition to these official duties, Becher like the rest of the Company's servants, was engaged in private trade. To later generations, as well as to many contemporaries, it seemed not only administratively unwise but morally reprehensible that the Company's officials, including the Governor and Council, were both traders and administrators. The private trade of its servants was, however, a normal and essential part of the Company's existence, for men like Becher went out to India to make their fortunes, not to work as Civil Servants. In the past, the combination of the dutues of a Company servant with private trading had generally been a mutually satisfactory arrangement but by the 1760's special difficulties had arisen. The obvious problem, and the one that received the most attention, was the misuse of political and administrative power for private ends, so that, in the strong words of the Select Committee of Calcutta in 1765, 'every spark of sentiment and public spirit was l o s t . . . in the unbounded lust of unmerited wealth.'3 There were, however, more basic problems than gross abuse of power. The greatest difficulty, according to Clive, as he examined the situation, seemed to be that of keeping experienced men in Bengal, since, as he told the Directors, they thought only of 'returning to England and leav[ing]... affairs in the hands of young men.' 4 Furthermore, the work of the Council had so greatly increased that if a man devoted his time to it he had no time 'to acquire anything considerable by private trade.' 8 What Clive was looking for was some incentive, other than the possibility of a quick fortune from private trade, which would keep able men in Bengal. His solution was that the senior members of the Council should be given the proceeds of the salt monopoly, but this was rejected by the Home administration.6 Verelst, the Governor when Grant arrived in Bengal in 1769, put forward the cautious proposal that the Company's administration should be 'totally free from commercial views and connections,' with members of the Council receiving salaries 'chargeable upon that country . . . a method of reward the most honourable 1

N.A., Select Comm. Proc., 19 July 1770. N.A., Orig. Cons., 28 Sept. 1768, No. 7. * Sir John Malcolm, The Life of Robert, Lord Clive, London, John Murray, 1836, II, 338, Select Committee to Directors, 30 Sept. 1763. 1 Ibid., p. 313, Clive to Directors. 6 Ramsay Muir, editor, The Making of British India, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1915, p. 89, Lord Clive to Directors, 1765. • Malcolm, The Life of Clive, III, 81-106. !

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that can be devised for those that are to receive it and most beneficial to the community, being unencumbered with the consequences and anxieties of private affairs.' 1 Although this suggestion was disregarded by the Directors, the problems involved in creating a Civil Service were realized by the Company's servants in Bengal. Richard Becher found a partial solution to the problem of managing a private business while being a senior official of the Company by hiring Charles Grant as his 'man of business.'2 Grant's trading activities as Becher's agent no doubt fitted into the general pattern of private trade during the period. Although the Company's servants were forbidden to trade with Europe, they were free to trade East of the Cape of Good Hope. 3 In addition to the 'maritime trade' with neighbouring countries, the Company servants often made large profits by buying goods and then reselling them to their employer.4 Another common way of making money was through selling to foreign traders. The Directors complained that in the years from 1767 to 1769 the Dutch and French seemed to get much more valuable cargoes from Bengal than they did, and they thought that the implication was plain—their own servants were supplying their rivals.5 As far as Bengal was concerned, these methods of making money probably did not greatly affect the people or the Nawab's government. Where the impact of the European traders was felt was in abuses that had grown up in the eighteenth century as the Nawab's power weakened. The Company had been given the right to buy and transport its goods throughout Bengal without paying the usual customs and excises, but gradually its servants and other Europeans had extended this privilege to cover private trading.6 Not only was the government's revenue system threatened, but the European traders were able to undersell their Indian rivals and, at times, create virtual monopolies in certain goods.' Although these monopolies were much discussed by contemporaries, evidence as to their actual extent is rare and often from sources hostile to the Company's servants.8 It is clear, however, as Charles Grant pointed out many years later, that monopolies 'were too commonly practised 1

N.A., Select Comm. Proc., 16 Dec. 1769. Morris, op. cit., p. 14, Charles Grant to John Grant, 18 Sept. 1769. Monckton Jones, op. cit., p. 40, and Furber, John Company at Work, pp. 160-90. 4 See below, p. 69. 6 N. K. Sinha, Economic History of Bengal, Calcutta, published by the author, 1956,1,76. 6 S. Bhattacharya, The East India Company and the Economy of Bengal from 1704 to 1740, London, Luzac, 1954, p. 138. 7 Monckton Jones, op. cit., p. 50. 8 William Bolts, Considerations on Indian Affairs, London, 1772, pp. 191-92. 2 3

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by natives in the names of Europeans, whom it was thought hazardous to offend.' 1 Complaints poured in from the Nawab's officers that their authority everywhere was being challenged to such an extent by Englishmen or their Indian agents that they could no longer keep order or collect the revenues.4 These abuses had reached their height in the ten years immediately following Plassey, and when Grant arrived in Bengal in 1769 the days of the most flagrant abuses were probably over.3 Attention was shifting, moreover, from the activities of the private traders to the problems of administration. In theory, the conquest of Bengal and the acquisition of the Diwani in 1765 meant that the Company was in an extraordinarily favourable position since it had at its disposal the revenues of India's richest province, but by 1768 the Council in Calcutta was warning the Directors that there was danger of complete breakdown in the commercial life of Bengal.4 Although the immediate cause of the trouble in 1768 was an acute shortage of currency, the real issue, according to an analysis Charles Grant later made of the period, was much deeper.5 A fundamental change had taken place in the trading conditions of Bengal, he pointed out, when the Company began to share in the land revenues. Before that, trade had been 'a mere commercial adventure,' with the East India Company competing for goods and markets with other foreign traders as well as with Indian merchants.® In these years, Grant thought, trade had reached its 'settled level,' dividends and profits were moderate, with the relationship between the Company and the native government on a sound footing. Then 'a most extraordinary event at once altered its whole nature,' for after the victory of 1757 opened the way for control of the territorial revenues of Bengal, trade was no longer conducted on conventional lines.7 Formerly, the essential feature of trade had been export of capital from Europe to India to pay for goods, but through the Bengal revenues India began to supply 'the capital of her trade with the western world.' 8 From this time on, he said, trade with India 'rested in a great degree on remittance, and the profit has been affected by the greater or less amount of property to be remitted, and the competition for making the remittance, not the demand of Europe . . . has regulated the 1

Morris, op. cit., p. 16, Charles Grant to Lord Hastings, 11 Sept. 1819. Henry Vansittart, A Narrative of the Transactions in Bengal from the Year 1760 to the Year 1764, London, 1766, II, 97-102. 8 Monckton Jones, op. cit., pp. 59-60. 4 N.A., General Letter, Council to Directors, 28 March 1768. 6 C.R.O., H.M.S. 405, pp. 691-858, Charles Grant, "Observations on the Question of Enlarging the Trade of British Subjects between India and Europe." (1800). Cited hereafter as "Observations on Trade." 6 7 8 Ibid., pp. 779-80. Ibid. Ibid. 2

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1

importations into Europe.' The use of goods for sending to Europe the surplus revenues of Bengal became, therefore, the main concern of the Company's servants. It remained one of the central problems of Grant's own career, as a Company servant in Bengal, as a private trader and finally as a Director of the East India Company. The use of the Bengal revenues for purchasing the 'Investment,' the goods sent to England by the Company's servants in India, immediately involved the Company in the actual administration of the country, but the apparent failure by the Company to recognize this fact has always been an obvious criticism of its use of the power it had acquired.2 While the revenue collections were used to buy the goods that were sent home, the control of the actual collection was left in the hands of the native revenue officers who, unchecked and unsupervised, racked the inhabitants to meet the demands of the Company, the Nawab and themselves.3 The system was so bad that Richard Becher once said there was no need to describe it: the results were plain enough—'this fine country is hurrying towards its ruin.' 4 The Directors were demanding an increase in the amount of the Investment, which meant that their servants in Bengal had to get more revenue from the people through the land tax farmers. 5 Not only did this attempt to increase revenue collections lead to immediate oppression of the peasants by the officials, but other evils followed as a consequence. Since the chief value of the revenues to the Company was to buy goods, a larger revenue meant a heavier demand for goods, and, according to Grant, this was met by debasing materials and workmanship.6 The transfer of the land revenues to the Company had worked, he argued, 'with the energy of a new revolution [and] had produced a great and unhappy pressure upon the country.'7 This pressure, Grant thought, 'proceeded more from the elation of new success, from extravagant notions of the resources of the country and unreflecting eagerness than from any intentional rapacity.'8 The Company servants, moreover, did not feel any responsibility for the internal affairs of the country since they assumed that the Nawab's ministers were still in effective control and it did not 1

Ibid., p. 781. ' Monckton Jones, op. cit., p. 63. 8 N.A., Select Committee Proc., 24 May 1769, Becher to Council. 4 Ibid. 5 Ibid., 6 M y 1768, Consultations. • C.R.O., H.M.S. 405, pp. 780-81, Charles Grant, "Observations on Trade." 7 Parliamentary Papers, 1812-13, X, Paper 282, p. 11, Charles Grant, "Observations on the State of Society among the Asiatic Subjects of Great Britain." This work is discussed at length below, pp. 141-157. Hereafter cited as "Observations on the State of Asia." Pagination is according to the above Parliamentary Paper. • Ibid., p. 11.

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occur to Englishmen, he pointed out, that the Indian officials would treat their own countrymen so badly as was later discovered to be the practice.1 It was against this background of administrative difficulties that Grant saw the significance of the reforms attempted in 1769. Richard Becher, he claimed, was 'the first person who had the integrity and resolution to call the attention of the government to the unhappy state of the country.' 2 What Grant had in mind was the powerful appeal Becher made in the summer of 1769 for the appointment of Englishmen to superintend the collection of revenue and the administration of justice.3 Out of what he described as a desire 'to relieve the distress of the poor inhabitants and to render service to [his] employers,' Becher had carefully studied the revenue system.4 As Resident at Murshidabad, he had closer contact with the officials responsible for collecting the revenues than any other Company servant, since one of his most important duties was to see that the revenues were made available for purchasing the Investment.6 Although Becher was convinced that the assessments could not be increased, he believed that if English 'Supervisors' were appointed to superintend the revenue system higher yields would result, with lessened hardship to the people, from honest and efficient administration.8 The root of most of the evils associated with the revenue, as Grant pointed out, was the custom of the Government making annual assessments on the basis of crop yields.7 This meant that the peasants tried to conceal the extent of their harvests and the revenue or 'rent' collectors almost always resorted to violence to get as much from the peasants as possible. Fraud and concealment, according to Grant, were so deeply ingrained in the peasants' attitude towards the Government that without force no revenues at all would have been collected.8 Becher's solution for the problem of fraud and violence was that the English supervisors should arrange for fixed assessments and that the tax-farmers, who collected the revenues, should be given semi-permanent leases to the right of collection.9 It was hoped, Grant said, that Englishmen, elevated by 'our national standards of sentiments and morals,' would exercise a more humane and honest 1

Ibid. Ibid., p. 12. 3 N.A., Select Comm. Proc., 24 May 1769, Becher to President. 4 Ibid. 6 N.A., Select Comm. Proc., 24 May 1769, Becher to President. • Ibid., and 12 Oct. 1769. 7 Charles Grant, "Observations on the State of Asia," p. 9. 8 Ibid. • Monckton Jones, op. cit., Appendix to Chapter III, No. 6, gives selections from documents describing the Supervisorships. 1

c

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control than the 'transient adventurers [and] ignorant barbarians' who had supervised the tax-farmers for the Nawab. 1 The Council accepted Becher's plan in August 1769, and an attempt was made to appoint English supervisors in the different districts of Bengal.2 Grant regarded the appointment of Supervisors as 'the first step towards an English provincial administration and the remote beginning of a new system more open to the influence of British genius and principles.'3 The experiment, he clearly recognized, was the beginning of complete administrative control of Bengal, and the end of Clive's 'Dual System' of leaving most of the functions of government in the hands of native officials. Grant's warm praise for the system of English supervisors was somewhat in contradiction, therefore, to his lifelong insistence that Clive had defined the limits of British rule. His explanation was that 'from the first acquisition of a controlling power to the possession of the entire executive government of these provinces, it has been found that there was no point at which to rest.' 4 Clive's system, while plausible in theory, and temporarily of great value because of the complete ignorance of the Company's servants regarding Indian administration, 'proved in practice unsatisfactory to all parties and especially detrimental to the people.'5 The Bengal experience, he was convinced, was sufficient to show the evils inherent in indirect rule. The chief reason for the failure of the attempt to rule through the Nawabs was, he believed, that the Bengal Nawabs were themselves foreign adventurers without roots in the country.6 Caring nothing for the people, their only policy was to improve their own situation; and, furthermore, their only concepts of government were 'implicit obedience [and] absolute command.' 7 They had no understanding of the system of mixed and delegated authority proposed by the Company. According to Grant, Becher and the other members of the Company's administration had grasped the essential realities of the British position in India and without pressure or suggestion from home took the decisive steps towards direct rule. Grant's argument that the reforms were carried out by the Bengal servants on their own initiative is strengthened by the fact that a Despatch sent by the Directors late in 1767 warned the Council in Bengal not to take any action that would have the effect of depriving the Nawab of any of his administrative functions. 8 By the appoint1

Charles Grant, "Observations on the State of Asia," p. 13. N.A., Select Comm. Proc., 16 August 1769. Charles Grant, "Observations on the State of Asia," p. 13. * Ibid., p. 12. Nandalal Chaterjee, Verelst's Rule in India, Allahabad, The Indian Press, 1939, is a sympathetic account of the plan for Supervisors. * Charles Grant, "Observations on the State of Asia," p. 8. •Ibid. ' Ibid. 8 N.A., General Letter from Court, 20 Nov. 1767. 2 8

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ment of the Supervisors, however, the Bengal Council had struck directly at the power still exercised by the old government. Before the Supervisors could properly begin their work, a great famine devastated Bengal. In the 1860's Sir William Hunter, after studying the records of rural Bengal, came to the conclusion that this famine, although scarcely noted by previous historians, formed 'the key to the history of Bengal during the succeeding forty years.'1 The same observation was made by Charles Grant who as a young man had seen the horrors of the famine and afterwards wrote an account of it based on his own recollections and on a manuscript given to him by Richard Becher soon after the famine.2 Because of the famine, Grant claimed, the great experiment of having English Supervisors failed, the Bengal economy was distorted for a generation, and charges of corruption and misgovernment were made against the Company's servants.3 The attempts at reforms as well as the actual achievements of men like Becher were lost sight of, and, as a result, he argued, a false interpretation of the Company's rule in Bengal became current in England. Grant's account of the great famine is interesting not only for his interpretation of the significance of the disaster but also as a vivid and moving description of the events of the time. The Bengal peasants, he pointed out, did not keep on hand a large enough reserve of food grains to provide for even one crop failure, but beginning in November 1769 there were repeated droughts until the summer of 1770.4 Grant's account of the appalling effects of famine in the area around Murshidabad, where he was living, is very graphic: 'The famine was felt in all the northern districts of Bengal as early as the month of November, 1769, and before the end of April following had spread death and destruction through the three provinces [Bengal, Bihar and Orissa]. Rice rose gradually to four, and at length to ten, times its usual price, but even at that rate was not to be had. Lingering multitudes were seen seeking sustenance from the leaves and barks of trees. . . . Fields were strewed . . . streets and passages choked, with the dying and dead. . . . No endeavour was spared to bring all the grain in the country to market . . . The Company, the Nabob, the Ministers, European and native inhabitants contributed for feeding the poor. In Murshidabad, seventy-seven thousand were daily fed for several months . . . but these good offices were hardly discernible amidst the general desolation. In the capital... it became 1

Sir William Hunter, Annah of Rural Bengal, London, Smith Elder, 1868, p. 19. Charles Grant, "Observations on the State of Asia," p. 14. 3 Ibid. 4 Charles Grant, "Observations on the State of Asia," p. 14.

2

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necessary to keep a set of persons constantly employed in removing the dead bodied from the streets and roads and these unfortunates were placed in hundreds on rafts and floated down the river. At length the persons employed in these and offices died also . . . and for a time dogs, jackals and vultures were the only scavengers. It was impossible to move abroad without breathing an offensive air, without hearing frantic cries. . . . There were persons who fed on forbidden and abhorred animals, nay, the child on its dead parent, the mother on her child. At length a gloomy calm succeeded. Death had ended the miseries of a great portion of the people, and when a new crop came forward in August [1770], it had in some parts no owners.'1 Grant thought that three million would be a moderate estimate of the numbers who died during the famine,2 but his figure was probably far too low. Sir William Hunter concluded that ten million was a more reasonable estimate.3 The impact of this disaster on Bengal was immediate and far reaching. Since a large proportion of the famine victims were children, the demographic composition of the population was distorted for at least a generation.4 Thirty years later one third of the land was still uncultivated, and, in addition, the number of weavers was greatly reduced.5 From this time on, weaving ceased to hold a place of great importance in the economy of Bengal, and it seems probable that this was a direct result of the famine. Something of its effects can be seen in the reports that came in from Malda, the great weaving centre where Grant was later the Commercial Resident. The Company's administration in Calcutta was informed that spinner, weavers, and cotton growers had died in such numbers there that prices of materials as well as of finished goods had risen sharply.6 This rise in cost, accompanied by a fall in quality, came just before inventions in England made possible the production of fine machine-made cloth. The result was increasing difficulties for the Company in selling Indian cloth in Europe. Throughout Grant's long connection with the Company, the problem of finding a market for cotton piece-goods, the traditional staple of Indian trade with the West, remained a central concern. A Despatch to Bengal that he signed as Chairman of the Company in 1808 recognized how restricted the market had become in the previous forty years. There was scarcely any demand I

Ibid., p. 14. Ibid. ' Hunter, op. cit., p. 34. 4 Hunter, op. cit., p. 60. 6 J. C. Sinha, Economic Annals of Bengal, London, Macmillan, 1927, p. 103. • N. K. Sinha, Economic History of Bengal, 1,149. II

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for Indian cottons, but, the letter explained, an order was nevertheless being made because of a 'reluctance to discontinue employment which the annual provision of the Investment has so long furnished a large class of manufactures.' 1 As well as distorting the economy of Bengal, the famine had a radical effect on the Company's administration in Bengal. As Grant noted, the institution of Supervisors did not receive a fair trial because the famine coincided with its introduction.2 Within a year of the adoption of the scheme, Becher himself advised its postponement.3 The famine had caused a deficit in the revenue collections of nearly two million rupees by the summer of 1770, and Becher felt that in the disturbed condition of the country any sudden change in the mode of collection might lead to further difficulties.4 The Select Committee ignored Becher's advice, but, as he had predicted,5 the lack of experienced men to operate the new system led to confusion and it was finally abolished by Hastings in 1772.6 Hastings painted a dark picture of a Supervisor as a man who had seized authority and reigned 'as sovereign of the division over which he presides,' farming the lands to whom he chooses to favour, engrossing 'rice and the other necessaries of life.'7 Against this grim account of the abuse of power by the Supervisors, Grant argued that they rendered a valuable service, even during the famine. 'Their presence in the districts,' he said, 'imposed a restraint upon the native officers, and their inquiries and interferences, whilst they evinced the wretched state of the interior, checked many evils.'8 Grant once said that general principles are of little use in criticizing the structure of British power in India, but what was needed was 'an unfettered, unprejudiced, prospective contemplation of the best methods of managing possessions of so peculiar a character as our English acquisitions.'9 The Supervisors, one of whose primary functions was to investigate the administrative structure of Bengal,10 seemed to Grant to be examples of this kind of approach, and he insisted that despite their seeming failure they laid the groundwork for later administrative developments. Moreover, he contended, the decision to use English Supervisors for revenue 1

C.R.O., Despatches to Bengal, XLIX, Commercial letter, 2 Sept. 1808. Charles Grant, "Observations on the State of Asia," p. 13. ' N.A., Select Comm. Proc., 2 June 1770, Richard Becher to President. 4 6 Ibid., 9 June 1770. Ibid. ' Monckton Jones, op. cit., p. 146, Chapter V, Appendix, Warren Hastings to Chairman, Court of Directors, 22 March 1772. 7 Monckton Jones, op. cit., pp. 148-9, Chap. V, Appendix, Warren Hastings to Chairman, Court of Directors, 26 March 1772. • Charles Grant, "Observations on the State of Asia," p. 13. • C.R.O., H.M.S. 405, p. 697, Charles Grant, "Observations on Trade." 10 N.A., Select Comm. Proc., 16 August 1769. s

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purposes 'threw also the judicial administration of the country in civil affairs into the hands of the English.'1 Under the Muslim rulers, all legal questions relating to land and inheritance—the majority of civil cases—were handled by the courts of the Diwan, the official in charge of revenue collection.2 After the Company became Diwan in 1765 and, according to Grant, especially with the appointment of the Supervisors, the prestige of the Company tended to make its courts the centres for hearing all civil suits.3 At the same time, the criminal courts gradually came under the control of the Company's servants in the outlying districts, until 'the dual authority of the English pervaded the interior of the provinces, and the native or country government... was in form and in fact done away with.'4 One of the most important results of the famine, Grant pointed out, was in helping to create in England an image of the nature of British power in India.5 'Without proof, without investigation, without one well-authenticated adequate fact,' the charge was made, he said, that the Bengal famine, with all its fearsome human suffering, had been the product of grain manipulations on the part of the Company's servants or, at the least, that once the famine had begun, they had taken advantage of it through hoarding and monopolies.8 Perhaps more than any other incident, the famine contributed to a feeling of distaste on the part of many Englishmen for their countrymen in Bengal. The poet Cowper was expressing a widespread feeling of indignation when he wrote: It is not seemly nor of good report That thieves at home must hang, but he that puts Into his overgorged and bloated purse The wealth of Indian provinces, escapes.7 This belief that the Company's servants had made fortunes out of the misery of the people during the famine troubled Grant greatly in later years. 'It has been registered,' he wrote in 1792, 'as truth in the pages of history, has been the public subject of religious lamentations, has been embalmed in verse, and still remains such a foul stain upon British character as the annals of any people can hardly parallel.'8 He had a special reason for concern, for among the 1

Charles Grant, "Observations on the State of Asia," p. 16. Jadunath Sarkar, Mughal Administration, Calcutta, M. C. Sarkar, 1920, pp. 86-88 and passim. 3 Charles Grant, "Observations on the State of Asia," p. 16. i 5 Ibid. Ibid. "Ibid. 7 William Cowper, The Task, quoted by Lord Curzon, British Government in India, London, Cassel, 1925, II, 98. 8 Charles Grant, "Observations on the State of Asia," p. 16. 2

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servants who were specifically accused of hoarding and monopoly was Richard Becher.1 Suspicion that the Company's servants, even on the highest level, were implicated was deepened by the failure of the Bengal Council to carry out an investigation when ordered to do so by the Directors.2 In defending the memory of Richard Becher, his friend and benefactor, Grant had, of course, a very personal interest, since he would almost certainly have been involved in Becher's activities during the famine. The original source of the accusations against Becher and other servants, Grant said, should have warned the Directors and others against believing them, for it was the French at Chandernagore, who, 'like the rest of that nation, too ready to blacken the British conduct in India, are accused . . . of being the authors of this tale.'3 The basis of the French story was that in 1769 Becher sent his agent to Chandernagore to sell grain worth Rs. 20,000. 4 It is quite probable that to the French this appeared to be a rather flagrant case of one of the most senior of the East India Company's officials profiteering through selling grain taken from a famine area. Either out of a genuine belief that Becher had been selling hoarded grain or, as Grant thought, out of malice, the French passed the story on to Calcutta, and from there 'it was sent to Paris, to London, and to all Europe.' 5 Grant's explanation of the incident was that Becher had sent his agent—probably Grant himself, although he does not say so—to Chandernagore to sell rice, but that this was just before the famine had started, and the rice was from the previous year's supply.6 This is obviously not a completely convincing argument, but at least it is a plausible one. Moreover, the records of the time show that Becher was the most active of the Company's servants in working for the relief of the people, and apparently it was he who called the attention of the Directors to the fact that in some of the famine areas Englishmen had gone about attempting to buy up all the grain.7 He would hardly have risked suggesting an inquiry into a practice in which he himself was involved. One possible explanation of the charges against Becher is that, as Grant suggested, they were related to political intrigues within the Company and had nothing to do with the famine.8 At the time, a great battle was taking place in London between Clive's followers and his opponents for the control of the Company; 9 it is probable that Becher's dismissal from the Calcutta 1

Ibid. Hunter, op. cit., p. 38. 3 Charles Grant, "Observations on the State of Asia," p. 16. 4 6 6 Ibid. Ibid., p. 16. Ibid. 1 N.A., General Letter, Directors to Council, 28 August, 1771. 8 Morris, op. cit., p. 27, Charles Grant to Robert Grant, 11 Dec. 1771. • Sutherland, op. cit., pp. 55-56, 190. 2

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Council in 1771 was due to his friendship with Clive. For Becher's opponents, whom Grant called 'anonymous scoundrels or Jacks in office,'1 the rumour that he had been a profiteer would have been extremely useful. Grant did not attempt to show that there had been no profiteering by the Company servants during the famine, but he used a complex statistical argument to prove that they would not have been able to create monopolies powerful enough either to have caused the famine or to have appreciably prolonged it.2 The basic premise of his argument was that if monopolies had played any significant part in the famine then they must have been well enough organized to withdraw a sufficient quantity of rice from the market to create starvation conditions for a third of the population—the proportion that died in the famine.3 To have done this, would have meant buying up one third of the total crop, which would have required at least fifteen million rupees, half of the total currency then in circulation in Bengal.4 'Of what magnitude must we conceive the monopoly to [have been],' Grant asked, 'in order to become thus operative?' 5 It would have taken thirty thousand men, he declared, to control such a monopoly, and 'no extravagance of credulity' could permit the belief that there would not have been 'incontrovertible evidence of its existence.'6 If there had been such evidence, Philip Francis and the others appointed under the Regulating Act in 1773 for 'the discovery of abuses' would certainly have found it since they were 'zealous in the execution of their trust, and free in expressing the most unfavourable opinions.'7 For his own part, Grant said that as an eyewitness and agent to Becher he had had 'most particular means of information,' and he was convinced that the accusations had originated in 'calumny or in error.' 8 Quite a different criticism than personal corruption was made by Adam Smith of the conduct of the Company's servants during the famine. In arguing that a drought is never so universal as to cause a general famine, providing there is no interference with the mechanism of free trade, he was faced with the apparent exception to this rule during the Bengal famine. His explanation was that the Company servants, attempting to meet the crisis, had made matters worse through 'improper regulations [and] injudicious restraints.'9 Sir William Hunter made a similar criticism of the attempt of the Com1

Morris, op. cit., p. 27, Charles Grant to Robert Grant, 11 Dec. 1771. Charles Grant, "Observations on the State of Asia," p. 15. 1 6 Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. • Ibid. 7 Charles Grant, "Observations on the State of Asia," p. 16. 8 Ibid. ' Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, edited with an introduction by Edwin Cannan (Sixth Edition), London, Methuen, 1950, II, Bk. IV, Chap. 5, p. 28. 2 3

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pany's servants to exercise some form of control, since, he said, 'private enterprise if left to itself would have stored up the general supply at the harvest, with a view to realizing a larger profit at a later period in the scarcity.'1 What Smith and Hunter had in mind were the activities of the Company officials, apparently largely at Becher's urging, in trying to get the peasants to grow other crops, giving food instead of money in payment for work and controlling the movement of grain shipments.2 For Grant, however, the measures by which Becher and the Council sought to control the famine were proof that the Company's concern for the welfare of the people dated from 1769 and had its origin among the Bengal servants. Unrestricted freedom of trade could not have improved the grain supply in any way, since, he argued, there was an absolute shortage, which was proven by the failure of any grain to appear on the market when the price rose ten-fold.3 It was not the attempts of the Bengal servants to regulate the grain trade that subsequently caused suffering, therefore, but pressures that were applied on the Council by the Directors to keep up the revenue collections to a pre-famine level.4 The inhabitants of the districts, no matter how reduced in number, had to meet the former assessments by paying 'the rents of those who were dead or fled.'5 In the years immediately following the Famine, during the early years of Warren Hastings' administration, the peasants of Bengal, Grant believed, were worse off than perhaps they had ever been before, while immense balances of revenue remained uncollectable.6 Any relief that Hastings was able to provide either to the people of Bengal or to the Company's finances was found, Grant always claimed, through an application of the reforms which had been planned in 1769.7 Charles Grant left Bengal with Richard Becher in January, 1771.8 He had had made no great fortune during the famine, although to his relatives in Northern Scotland he seemed to be a returning Nabob. One of those little streams of East Indian gold of which Sir James Macintosh had spoken9 began to flow among his relatives. He settled marriage portions of £300 on each of his two sisters, sent his 1

Hunter, op. cit., p. 43. N.A., Orig. Cons., 23 October 1769, Numbers 1 and 1 (4) and 30 April 1770, Number 3 (a). 3 Charles Grant, "Observations on the State of Asia," p. 16. 4 4 Ibid., p. 18. Ibid., p. 17. • Ibid., p. 18. 7 Debates at East House (5 April—23 June 1814), pp. 89-101. Speech by Charles Grant, 25 May 1814. 8 N.A., Press Lists of Ancient Documents, 1770-74, p. 65, Charles Grant to Council, 11 Jan. 1771. » See above, p. 19. 2

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brother to the University of Aberdeen, and offered an annuity, which was refused, to the uncle at Elgin who had befriended him as a boy.1 Apparently, he would have preferred to stay in England if he had been able to establish himself in business, but things went badly, and he had to borrow money from Becher, whom he was still repaying ten years later.2 He decided to return to India, but this time he wanted to go in the Company's regular service, not, as before, as a cadet with the intention of becoming a 'free merchant' after he got there.3 In his two years as assistant to Richard Becher he had discovered that a Company servant found it easier to make money than a man who worked on his own. 1

Morris, op. cit., pp. 24-27, Charles Grant to Robert Grant, 11 Dec. 1771. N.A., Pub. Proc., Minutes of Consultation, 14 Sept. 1787, Charles Grant to Cornwallis. 3 Morris, op. cit., p. 22, Charles Grant to James Grant, 1771. 2

42

CHAPTER

III

CHARLES GRANT AND THE HASTINGS ERA did not find it easy in 1772 to get an appointment with the East India Company. He had counted greatly on the influence of Richard Becher with the Directors, but the accusation that Becher had been in some way responsible for the famine was widely believed.1 According to Francis Sykes, another Bengal servant charged with being involved in the manipulation of the food supplies, the accusation was an attempt by the Directors to turn away from themselves the wrath of the Company shareholders, who were enraged in 1772 by the revelation of Company's unsound financial position.2 The Directors decided to tell the public, Sykes said, that the Company's troubles were caused by 'the rapacity and bad management of their servants abroad,' and they searched the records 'for every circumstance . . . which might be deemed extravagance, abuse, fraud.' 3 As a protégé of Becher, Grant was in a difficult position, but, as he told his brother, he tried to 'establish some interest with leading people,' even though he was 'awkward at the business, and afraid of being thought destitute.'4 This fear was not just a matter of pride, for since writerships were very valuable as patronage to the Directors—it was said in 1773 that they had a cash value of £2,000 to £3,0005—a young man whose only connections were with discredited Company servants was not likely to be given an appointment. Finally, however, Becher was able to persuade Henry Savage, one of the Directors, to nominate Grant as a writer.8 Savage had himself been a Company servant in Bengal, and as a Director had defended the conduct of Alexander Grant and the others who had been involved in the loss of Calcutta in 1756.7 Charles Grant arrived in Calcutta for the second time in June, CHARLES GRANT

1

Smith, Twelve Indian Statesmen, p. 7. Sophia Weitzman, Warren Hastings and Philip Francis, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1929, Appendix I, Number 1, Francis Sykes to Warren Hastings, 8 Nov. 1773. 3 Ibid. 4 Morris, op. cit., p. 27, Charles Grant to Robert Grant, 11 Dec. 1771. s Public Advertiser (London), 2 June 1773, quoted in Holzman, op. cit., p. 22. See below, pp. 178-87, for a discussion of patronage. 6 Morris, op. cit., p. 29. ' Sutherland, op. cit., p. 66. 2

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1774, and within a few months received an appointment as Secretary of the Board of Trade. 1 He kept this post until 1780 and these six years in Calcutta were of great significance for his career and for his interpretation of the nature of British rule in India. His previous visit to India and his friendships with the older generation of men who had served under Clive gave him links with the past, but now he began to form new acquaintances and to come into closer contact with the Company's administration. His appointment was significant in itself, for it meant that his work was to be in the commercial department, not in revenue collection, the other great division of the Company's service. It was the Company's commerce that dominated Grant's thinking and his career. Moreover, during these years at Calcutta Grant's circle of friends and his family connections, as well as events in his private life, provided a background for his thinking and his career quite as important as his formal role within the Company's structure. By 1774, Grant had a growing family connection in Bengal. A cousin, Colonel Hugh Grant, had been in Bengal for a number of years and held an important command in the Company's military service.2 There were three James Grants in India at the time, but only one of them, the author of the well-known work on revenue systems, appears to have been a relative.3 Charles Grant's two brothers, Robert and John, were also in Bengal, and although John died soon after his arrival, Robert prospered as secretary and translator to the Nawab of Oudh.4 When he died in 1776, after about seven years in Bengal, he left Grant's children enough money to buy Consolidated Annuities worth eighteen thousand pounds twenty-five years later.5 Grant had married Jane Fraser in 1773, just before he sailed for Bengal, and while she played little part in his public life, her family provided Grant with an important connection in Bengal, for her sister went to India with her, and married William Chambers, the interpreter for the Supreme Court in Calcutta.6 Chambers was a well-known figure and his brother, Sir Robert, a Justice of the 1

C.R.O., Bengal Pub. Cons. 14 Sept. 1787, p. 96. Hodson, op. cit., II, 314. W. K. Firminger, editor, The Fifth Report from the Select Committee of the House of Commons on the Affairs of the East India Company, dated 28 July 1812, Calcutta, R. Cambray, 1917, II, xii. Cited hereafter as Firminger, Fifth Report. * Morris, op. cit., p. 38. 6 Somerset House, Pcc 21, Erskine, Will of Charles Grant. 6 Marianne Thornton described Mrs. Grant as 'the loveliest, sweetest type of Indian mother,' adding that her family 'leant upon her for comfort and advice and sympathy in a way I hardly ever saw in any other household.' (Forster, op. cit., p. 41.). 2

3

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Supreme Court, as an opponent of Hastings and an ally of Philip Francis, was at the very centre of the political intrigues that dominated the Company's Bengal administration during the 1770's.1 Outside this family circle, Grant had other connections which were of great importance to him. One of his closest friends in Bengal, and afterwards in England, was John Shore, who later became Governor-General. Shore had come to Bengal in 1769, and since he was assistant to the Supervisor in the Murshidabad district in 1770 he probably knew Charles Grant at that time.2 At the age of nineteen he was virtually in charge of the area, one of 'the Boys of the Service' who had become, Hastings complained, 'sovereigns of the country.' 3 Shore, however, did not enjoy his situation nor did he find it easy to make money. He regretted that he had not stayed in England and taken Holy Orders like his brother, instead of going to India where, he told his mother, 'the road to opulence grows daily narrower, and more crowded with competitors.'4 However, he very quickly made a reputation as an authority on land revenue.6 Edward Parry, another Company servant with whom Grant was friendly at this time, later was his main supporter when both were Directors and Chairmen of the East India Company.6 Grant's most intimate friend at this time, however, was George Livius,7 who had very powerful friends and connections. His brother-in-law was Edward Wheler, who had been Chairman of the Company in 1773 and then was appointed a Member of the Council in Calcutta, where he was Hastings' opponent.8 Through Wheler, Livius became a friend of Philip Francis, who called him 'an intimate of my house and my left-hand man.' 9 Hastings recognized Livius as one of the most important of those who were undermining his authority, adding, 'God help me, I am ashamed of such an enemy.'10 Livius, in turn, introduced Charles Grant to Philip Francis, who soon found in him a most useful assistant in his attacks on Hastings' administration as well as a warm 1

Weitzman, op. cit., p. 111. Lord Teignmouth, editor, Memoir of the Life and Correspondence of John Lord Teignmouth, London, Hatchard, 1843,1, 28. Cited hereafter as Teignmouth, Memoir. 3 Quoted in Teignmouth, Memoir, I, 28-29. 4 Ibid., 39 and 44, Shore to his mother, 1 and 6 July 1772. 6 Ibid., 70. 9 See below, p. 205. ' Morris, op. cit., p. 43, note 1. 8 Feiling, op. cit., p. 129 and Weitzman, op. cit., pp. 110 ff. • C.R.O., Eur. MSS. E36, Francis Papers, pp. 45-47, Francis to Thomas Dea, 30 Nov. 1774. 10 H. H. Dodwell, editor, Warren Hastings' Letters to Sir John MacPherson, London, Faberand Gwyer, 1927, p. 102, Hastings to MacPherson, 1 Nov. 1781. 2

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personal friend. 'I gave to you what I gave to very few,' Francis told Grant in 1779, 'I gave you my heart.' 2 Before that, however, they had become estranged, partly because of the famous scandal in which Francis had become involved with Mrs. Grand, the future wife of Talleyrand, partly because Grant began to see how dangerous it was for his own prospects in Bengal to become too deeply identified with one side in the great battle between Hastings and Francis.3 Despite the fact that Francis bitterly reproached Grant in 1779 for having abandoned him, in his later attacks on the Company's administration he appealed to Grant as a witness to his character.4 During the years of 'perpetual contest and misery in Bengal,' he said, he and Grant had 'lived together on terms of real friendship and unreserved confidence,' and there could not be 'a more competent witness, nor any human evidence less to be suspected.'5 Grant, then Chairman of the Company, replied that from his personal knowledge he could testify to 'the rectitude of the principles and conduct' of Francis 'not only in England but in Bengal.'6 One product of the friendship of Grant and Philip Francis was the letter that Francis wrote to Lord North in 1777 advocating changes in the Bengal administration.7 The letter is a sweeping attack on the general principles of the Hastings Administration, and Francis declared that in writing it he had 'not only the entire concurrence but the able assistance' of Charles Grant. 8 Although the main remedy that the letter suggests for the reformation of the Government—the complete withdrawal of the Company from any political function— was not one that Grant could have supported later in his career, many of the ideas are the commonplaces of his subsequent writings. The letter's declaration, for example, that 'we provide for our own interests when we consult the happiness and prosperity of the people,' recurs almost verbatim in Grant's writings and speeches.9 The statement that the British had not interfered with the religion of the people, 'much less to give them an idea of a better,' fore1

C.R.O., Eur. MSS. E23, pp. 55-56, Francis' "Indian Journal," 27 Dec. 1777. Morris, op. cit., p. 43, Charles Grant, 'Substance of a Conversation between Mr. Francis and Mr. Grant, 27 Oct. 1779.' This fascinating document makes clear how friendly Grant and Francis had been. 3 Ibid., pp. 43-46. For a full account of the scandal, see Herman Merivale and Joseph Parkes, editors, Memoirs of Sir Philip Francis, K.C.B., with Correspondence and Journals, London, Longmans, Green, 1867, II, 137-50. 4 Pari. Debates, VI, 393, Speech by Philip Francis, 10 March 1806. 6 Ibid., p. 208,25 Feb. 1806 and p. 400,10 March 1806. 6 Ibid., p. 400, speech by Charles Grant, 10 March 1806. ' Philip Francis, Letter from Mr. Francis to Lord North, London, 1793. The letter was written in Calcutta in 1777. 8 Pari. Debates, VI, 208, speech by Sir Philip Francis, 25 Feb. 1806. 9 See above, p. 28 and below, p. 143. 2

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shadowed one of Grant's future interests, just as did the suggestion that the Company should encourage the study of English by making it the language of administration.1 In at least two places the letter pointed toward reforms in which Grant took a leading part during the Cornwallis administration: one was the argument that 'high stations . . . not united with avowed emoluments proportioned to them' leads inevitably to corruption, and the other was the statement that the 'annual demand of revenue, once fixed on a reasonable and permanent establishment would operate to the benefit of the country.' 8 Both these suggestions—the ending of corruption through a well-paid civil service and the establishment of a permanent revenue settlement—did not only look forward, however, to Cornwallis; they also looked back to Clive, Verelst and Becher. Part of the 'able assistance' that Grant gave Francis may have been in furnishing him with details of what had been thought and written in Bengal a decade before. Grant's relations with Hastings, both in Bengal in the 1770's as well as afterwards, were in striking contrast to those with Francis. Although Grant was extremely careful in correspondence not to make any political comments since he did not know through whose hands his letters might pass,3 his general attitude towards Hastings is clear. An incident that occurred in 1814 not only showed Grant's feelings at the time, but also reflected something of the emotions of the tense years when Hastings had struggled to maintain his power in Bengal. By 1814, after the long and bitter strife of the impeachment, Hastings' name was 'a part of history, of the triumph of Great Britain and her allies in the great war.' 4 After he had given evidence in Parliament on India, Members of both Houses rose and uncovered their heads as he left; the Royal family showed him their favour; Oxford gave him a degree. 'Greater causes, a whole world changing, brought light and warmth to shine upon him.' 6 When a motion was made in the Court of Proprietors of the East India Company that his pension increase of a thousand pounds a year should be made retroactive to 1795, there was, however, strong opposition from Charles Grant. 8 It was his 'unpleasant and ungrateful office,' he said, in the midst of the general praise of Hastings, which had been supported by 'a long enumeration of splendid facts,' to be forced into a discussion 1

Francis, Letter to Lord North, p. 49. Ibid., p. 10. 3 Morris, op. cit., p. 51, Charles Grant to James Grant, 25 Nov. 1775. * Feiling, op. cit., pp. 393-94. 8 Ibid. " Debates at East India House, 5 April—23 June 1814, London, 1814, p. 90, speech by Charles Grant, 25 May 1814. 2

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1

of the merits of his administration. His dissent from the praise lavished on Hastings was based, he claimed, on the intimate knowledge he had gained from having closely observed the whole of his government, not from later reports. 2 When Hastings had followed the patterns laid down by his predecessors, as in the revenue administration, then, Grant said, his work had value, but when he had taken a new course, as in his relations with the Indian States, his policies 'had been the cause of great evil to our dominions [and] had retarded the progress of improvement.'3 Grant's attitude to Hastings on a more personal level was shown in the account he wrote in 1777 of an interview he had with the Governor-General. He had gone to see Hastings about the promotion of his brother Robert, but, he reported, he could not 'boast of the honour of any distinguished reception. It was, on the contrary, cold and disrespectful enough.'4 Grant had not expected this, and 'observing that hardly one line of countenance made any motion of civility,' he ended his visit.5 A reflection of this was seen, perhaps, in letters Grant and Hastings exchanged thirty years later when the roles were reversed, with Hastings seeking favours from Grant, who was then Chairman of the Company.6 Hastings wanted Grant's support in getting financial assistance from the Company, but Grant answered in a style that was as lacking in 'any motion of civility' as Hastings had been in 1777. That Grant, who in 1777 had a relatively subordinate post, should have had such easy access to the Governor-General, as well as being an intimate friend of the members of the Council, is a reminder of the informal nature of the Company's Bengal government at that time. Because of this, in the great struggle between Hastings and Francis, while there were deep and fundamental differences of principles at stake, personal relationships played an extremely important part. Sophia Weitzman in her study of the two great rivals has shown that for many years Francis' views triumphed in the administration of India, most particularly in the Permanent Settlement, which was in line with his views on revenue, and in the emphasis on non-interference in the affairs of the native states, which was also a 'Franciscan' policy.7 Charles Grant was deeply committed to both policies, and while he fully accepted the doctrines that underlay them, his personal relationships with Hastings and Francis were obviously significant in the orientation of his thinking. 1

2 3 Ibid., 89. Ibid., 92-93. Ibid., p. 90. Morris, op. cit., pp. 48-49, Charles Grant to Robert Grant, 5 and 7 Sept. 1777. 5 Ibid. • B.M., Add. MSS., 29, 181, p. 83. ' Weitzman, op. cit., pp. xxx, 196-201. 4

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Grant's personal connections in Bengal in the 1770's while extremely important were probably not very different from those of many other Company servants. In 1776, however, events occurred in his private life which gave his career a unique aspect. At that time, in his own words, he 'was brought under deep concern about the state of soul,'1 and felt 'most sensibly the misery of being subjected to habits of sin, and exposed to punishment and accusations of conscience,' while wishing 'for that happiness which must certainly be possessed by those who are in a contrary state.'2 Henry Morris in his biography of Grant describes the resolution of this mood of despair as a 'conversion,' but Grant himself apparently never used this term, and the overtones it acquired in later Evangelical writings of an instantaneous, sometimes unsought, experience, gives a distorted impression to Grant's religious history. Ten years later he was still lamenting that his 'carnal heart. . . loves not to dwell upon its own misery, nor the evil that is in sin,'3 and after nearly fifty years he said he saw 'a little, but too late, the mighty evil of not living in the habitual view and recollection' of death and judgment.4 Grant's religious crisis had as its immediate background a series of personal disasters. He had come back to India hoping to make enough money in private trade to be able to return home and live in comfort, but in his first two years he was singularly unsuccessful. Soon after his arrival in Calcutta he had tried to establish himself in what was known as 'the maritime trade,' 5 that is, the trade between India and the Eastern Sea, in which the Company servants had long made fortunes.8 Although the details of Grant's losses are not known, he had probably followed the customary path of borrowing large sums from Indian merchants and then making heavy advances of cash for goods which could be sold for many times their value on one successful voyage.7 It was just as easy, however, to lose money. As John Shore, Grant's friend, pointed out, Clive's orders requiring the Company servants to pay the ordinary customs duties on their private trade goods deprived them of the only advantage they had over Indian merchants,8 who otherwise could outwit the inexperienced English. Robert Lindsay, who was in Bengal in the 1770's, recorded an early trading experience which must have been very similar to 1 Quoted in J[oseph] I[vemy], 'The Late Charles Grant, Esq., and the Baptist Mission,' Baptist Magazine, June, 1828. 2 Morris, op. cit., p. 64, Mrs. Grant to Charles Grant, 1776. 3 Ibid., p. 125, Charles Grant to Rev. C. F. Schwartz, 15 August 1786. * Ibid., p. 383, Charles Grant to Mrs. Grant, 12 July 1823. s C.R.O., Bengal Pub. Cons., 14 Sept. 1787, p. 97, Charles Grant to Cornwallis. ' Furber, John Company at Work, pp. 160-90. ' Ibid. 8 Teignmouth, Memoirs, I, 26-27, John Shore to his mother, 3 Dec. 1769.

D

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that of Charles Grant. Large sums of money were pressed upon him by merchants, and he launched out in various speculations, which, he said, would 'have succeeded w e l l . . . but from the turbulent state of the country . . . [the] advances were infallibly lost.' 1 The result was that 'from the height of prosperity, in one moment [he was] humbled to the dust.' 2 Another Bengal contemporary of Grant's once remarked that while India was 'considered a part of the world where riches overflowed and distress never appeared,' the truth was that the gaols were loaded with debtors who would never return to England.3 Grant's business losses were increased by heavy debts incurred through gambling and having lived far beyond his income.4 The letters in which he speaks of these debts are those of a penitent, and therefore probably exaggerated. His brother insisted that while he had 'lived above his circumstances' in an attempt to maintain dignity and appearances, he was known to have 'a character of remarkable purity.' 8 This evaluation of Grant's character by his brother, whether true or not, was not inconsistent with either gambling losses or high living, for both were part of the social life of Europeans in Calcutta. Gambling was almost the only pastime, 'the index of boredom' of the men and women who regarded India as a land of exile and found it extremely dull.8 In his old age, Lord Teignmouth, the former John Shore, warned his son who had gone to Bengal that there were endless hours that had to be either 'dozed away in listless idleness' or 'filled up with some occupation,' and gambling was the most common way of occupying time.7 Even if a Company servant did not gamble, the standard of living was so high that a profitable private trade was necessary if he were to keep out of debt. Middleton, the first Bishop of Calcutta, complained that he could not live in proper style on the £5,000 a year the Company paid him.8'Though in England it may seem like a large sum,' he told William Wilberforce, it 'is not here an income which carries with it any impressions of respect.'9 1 Robert Lindsay, 'Anecdotes of an Indian Life,' Lives of the Lindsays, edited by Lord Lindsay, London, John Murray, 1849, p. 172. 2 Ibid. 'William Woodfall, editor, Debates at East India House, (General Court, 13 March 1795), p. 26, speech by Thomas Henchman. 4 Morris, op. cit., p. 66. 5 Ibid., p. 63, Robert Grant to Charles Grant, 24 July 1776. •Percival Spear, The Nabobs, A Study of the Social Life of the English in Eighteenth Century India, London, Oxford University Press, 1932, p. 17. ' Teignmouth, Memoir, II, 348, Lord Teignmouth to F. D. Shore, Feb. 1819. 8 R. I. and S. Wilberforce, editors, The Correspondence of William Wilberforce, Philadelphia, Henry Perkins, 1841, II, 155, Bishop Middleton to William Wilberborce, 18 Feb. 1815. Cited hereafter as Wilberforce, Correspondence. »Ibid.

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In 1785, Henry MacKenzie, 'The Man of Feeling,' satirized in his story of young Mushroom, the Nabob, the lordly way in which formerly poverty-stricken Scotsmen lived in Bengal.1 Madam Mushroom amazed her friends with stories in which 'a lack or half a lack sounds like nothing at a l l . . . of a single supper in the E a s t . . . that cost one of those lacks' 'There are such accounts,' said an old farmer, 'of elephants, palanquins, and processions . . . with episodes of dancing girls . . . I have heard nothing like it since I was a boy, and used to be delighted with the Arabian Nights Entertainment.'2 The other side of the picture was the size of the debts that could be acquired in a short time. In a little more than two years in India, Charles Grant found that he owed his creditors £20,000.3 Grant's business and gambling losses were climaxed by the death of his two children from smallpox.4 He became convinced that he had been singled out 'as an object of the just displeasure of God,' his mind was 'a habitation of horror.' 5 The letters that he wrote at this time to his brother are extremely moving, revealing a depth of emotion and a profound sensitivity which are in strong contrast with most of his writing.6 He sought help from many sources, including the old Danish missionary Kiernander, who was embarrassed by Grant's religious anxieties.7 Finally, apparently through the help of his wife and his friend William Chambers, a close friend of the famous Danish missionary Christian Frederick Schwartz, Grant found 'trust in a free salvation.'8 The significance of Grant's religious experience for his role in the history of the relationship between India and Great Britain is not that from this time on he became virtuous and hard-working. As already suggested, despite the gambling and high living he certainly had no reputation for dissoluteness. Nor was he the only religious man in Calcutta; as John Shore told his mother, it might be concluded from the general immorality of the settlement that 'the number of Free-thinkers must be great: they are in fact but few.'9 What made Grant unique was that, unlike Shore, who did not want his private religious views to become known in case they might be 'dis1 [Henry MacKenzie], The Lounger, New York, Samuel Campbell, 1789, I, 105, No. 17,28 May 1785. 2 Ibid. 3 Morris, op. cit., p. 66. 4 Ibid., p. 59. 6 Ibid., p. 59, Charles Grant to Robert Grant, 29 April 1776. 6 Morris, op. cit., pp. 58-65, prints Grant's letters to his brother in the spring and summer of 1776. ' Joseph Ivemy, op. cit. ' Morris, op. cit., p. 64, Mrs. Grant to Charles Grant, 1766; p. 125; Charles Grant to Rev. C. F. Schwartz, 15 July 1786. • Teignmouth, Memoir, 1,42, John Shore to his mother, 28 May 1772.

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played by a satirical pen,' he felt impelled to make his convictions known. Joseph Price, a Captain in the 'country trade' and friend of Hastings, described Grant at this time as 'a most canting Presbyterian, a methodical, snivelling Oliverian.'2 Price was no theologian, but his meaning was clear: he wanted to identify Grant as both a Puritan and Methodist. Despite Grant's later close association with the English Evangelicals, there can, however, have been little direct 'methodical' influence at work in Bengal in 1766. In common with the great Evangelicals with whom he was to work later—Wilberforce, the Thorntons, Hannah More—Grant cared little about doctrine. Like them, his interest was in what they called 'vital experimental religion,'3 a matter of continuous self-examination, private religious exercises and good works. The most direct influence on Grant's religious thinking probably came from strains of religion more deeply rooted in the British tradition than Methodism. Although he did not think very highly of the Calvinism of Scotland,4 nevertheless it is possible to see something of its power in his rather austere attitude towards the enthusiasm of some of his later associates.5 Another rather different source of religious influence is suggested by the claim of his friend John Shore that books he had given Grant to read played a decisive part in his spiritual struggles.6 While the moderation of some of Shore's favourite authors—Tillotson, Jortin, Paley7—may not have been of much service to Grant in his spiritual despair, at least this kind of reading would have given him a background of Anglican orthodoxy. Above all, Grant's general attitude to life showed the pervasive influence of the English Puritan tradition. It was this tradition that made his religious experience of significance for his understanding of the nature of British rule in India since, having himself received 'that blessed inheritance' which has been promised for 'all penitent and believing sinners,'8 it was necessary to show his gratitude by displaying, in the classical Puritan way, a life more godly than that of men who were not in a similar state of grace.9 1

Ibid., p. 43. Price, op. cit., p. 141. 3 Hannah More, quoted in M. G. Jones, Hannah More, Cambridge, University Press, 1952, p. 87. 1 Morris, op. cit., p. 167. 6 This is particularly true of Grant's relations with John Thomas (see below, p. 109, and for a full account, C. B. Lewis, The Life of John Thomas, London, Macmillan, 1873, pp. 56 ff.). " Teignmouth, Memoir, I, 111. ' Ibid., p. 368-69, Sir John Shore to Charles Grant, 31 March 1796. 8 Morris, op. cit., p. 64, Mrs. Grant to Charles Grant, 1776. 9 L. D. Lerner, 'Puritanism and Spiritual Autobiography,' Hibbert Journal, LV, July 1957, pp. 373-86. 2

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It was Grant's expression of this characteristic attitude that the Reverend Daniel Wilson had in mind when, nearly fifty years later, he tried to describe the impression Grant had made on people in his life time.1 'Worldly men,' Wilson said, 'shrank from what they deemed his excessive piety.' At the same time, although he was endlessly engaged in good works and schemes for the moral improvement of mankind and his whole life was 'an almost unbroken continuance of severe labour,' since he believed that any relaxation was bad unless it was absolutely necessary for health, nevertheless he always 'carefully avoided the ascription of merit to his own works.'2 Grant's ceaseless activity, to which the official records of the East India Company are the best witness, was partly due, Wilson suggested, to his immensely strong physical constitution as well as to his sense of the precariousness of life and the need of rendering a strict account for how it was spent.3 To those who worked with Grant but disagreed with his views, he seemed at times intolerably self-righteous, certain that his ideas were the will of God. 4 To those who knew him well, however, and understood his religious position, he often seemed to be 'harassed with perplexing doubts and fears . . . but with much appearance of unfeigned love and humble sincerity.'5 What led him to insist, often very categorically, that he was right and others were wrong, was his sense that all events were Providential, that, as he told his brother in 1776, things do not 'happen by accident,' but were meant to lead men to salvation.6 Just as his personal disasters in 1776 had brought him to a knowledge of his 'dreadful deformity and apostacy,'7 so the French Revolution, in a wider setting was a judgment on both France and Britain for national sins.8 It was not at all that Grant claimed that he was an inspired agent—such a doctrine would have been as repulsive to him as to his later friends in the Evangelical Movement9 1 Daniel Wilson, A Sermon Occasioned by the Death of Charles Grant, Esq., London, 1823. Wilson was later Bishop of Calcutta. 2 3 /Aid., p. 21. Ibid., p. 32. 4 C. H. Philips, The East India Company, 1784-1834, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1940, p. 131, in reference to Grant's conduct in the East India House says that 'he was convinced that in all matters he acted as the inspired agent of the Almighty God.' 6 C. B. Lewis, op. cit., p. 56. 6 Morris, op. cit., p. 59, Charles Grant to Robert Grant, 29 April 1776. 7 Ibid., p. 63, 8 Aug. 1776. ' Charles Grant, "Observations on the State of Asia", p. 90, f.n. 9 Michael Hennel, John Venn and the Clapham Sect, London, Lutterworth Press, 1958, pp. 264-65, makes clear that the evangelicals were aware of the dangers in 'enthusiasm.' Furthermore, John Venn, the pastor of Clapham Church, warned his followers against the peril of spiritual pride in putting too much emphasis on 'special providences.'

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—but rather that having seen providential designs in his own life, he believed that they should also be sought in the whole of society. As a writer in the Edinburgh Review once pointed out, it was this emphasis on 'particular instances of Divine Providence' that made many sincere Churchmen regard 'Arminians, Calvinistic Methodists and evangelical clergymen of the Church of England' as 'one general conspiracy against common sense and rational orthodox Christianity.' 1 The spiritual orientation that Grant found in 1776, with its emphasis on religious emotion expressing itself through duty and service, went well with his natural proclivity for hard work and his driving ambition to improve himself and his family. This meant, however, that while outwardly he might appear self-assured and confident, inwardly there was often doubt and indecision. Something of this tension is reflected in his two surviving portraits. A painting by Raeburn in Inverness Castle presents a handsome, stylish figure, urbane and pleased with himself and his world; this is the wealthy Nabob, controlling two Scottish seats in Parliament.2 The other portrait is a simple drawing, apparently made by an unknown artist.3 The figure shown in the drawing is more in keeping with the impression left by Grant's own writings—as well as by the comments of both friends and enemies—of a man whose sober exterior masked very strong passions. Physically, too, the simpler drawing probably presents a more accurate image, for while in his old age he was said to have been 'an erect and majestic figure,'4 as a young man he described himself as 'tall and clumsy,'5 and the sketch very definitely gives a sense of a kind of awkward power, and the strong, angular face suggests something of the driving energy to which Sir James Stephen referred when he said Grant had 'nerves which set fatigue at defiance.'6 While he was losing money and undergoing his critical religious experience, Grant was working as Secretary of the Board of Trade. Although he called his six years at the Board 'laborious and unprofitable,'7 it was at this time that he gained much of his familiarity with the great struggle that was going on between Francis and Hastings. 1

Edinburgh Review, XI, 1801, p. 342, 'Ingram on Methodism.' Reproduced by Morris, op. cit., facing p. 290. 3 Ibid., frontispiece. 4 T[homas] F[isher], 'Charles Grant, Esq.,' Gentleman's Magazine, XCIII, Part 2, Dec. 1823, p. 569. 5 Morris, op. cit., p. 24, Charles Grant to Robert Grant, 11 Dec. 1776. 6 Sir James Stephen, Essays in Ecclesiastical Biography, London, Longmans, 1883, p.553. 7 C.R.O., Bengal Pub. Cons., 14 Sept. 1787, p. 96, Charles Grant to Cornwallis. 2

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The Board of Trade was one of the most significant results of the examination of the Company's affairs that had culminated in the Regulating Act of 1773, since it was an attempt to separate the superintendence of the commercial concerns of the Company from other aspects of its administration.1 The precise intentions, however, of those who created it are not clear. Hastings welcomed the plan since, as he wrote Lord North, 'the details of commerce are not fit objects of attention in the supreme administration of a state.'2 At the same time, Hastings' friends in the Court of Directors apparently intended that he would be left in control of the commerce.3 The 'Instructions' sent out by the Directors regarding the new Board were, therefore, probably purposely vague;4 the Governor-General was to define the relationship between the Council and the Board after the experiment had been begun. In general, however, it is clear that the Board was intended to be a support for Hastings. One member, George Vansittart, said that he had been appointed in order to help Hastings,5 while Philip Francis denounced it as Hastings' willing tool.6 Despite the fact that not only George Vansittart but all the members of the Board were regarded as friendly to Hastings,7 very early in its history difficulties arose between the Board and Council, and it is significant that the most acrimonious disputes arose after 1777, that is, when Hastings had a firmer control over the Administration. With its control not only of the Company's Investment (the procurement of goods for export) but also of the salt and opium monopolies, the Board of Trade had great power and almost inevitably tended to become an autonomous body,8 but this authority might have been used to strengthen Hastings's power. That this did not happen was probably at least partly due to the pressures being exerted from within the Board's administration by Charles Grant. In April 1777, for example, he was reprimanded by the Council for having gone beyond 1 C.R.O., Despatches to Bengal, VII, 49-50, Directors to Council, 29 March 1774. 2 G. R. Gleig, Memoirs of the Life of the Right Hon. Warren Hastings, First Governor-General of Bengal, London, Richard Bentley, 1841,1, 539, Warren Hastings to Lord North, 2 April 1775. Hereafter cited as Gleig, Hastings Memoir. 3 Weitzman, op. cit., Appendix I, No. 58, Francis Sykes to Warren Hastings, 13 Jan. 1774. 4 C.R.O., Bengal Despatches, VII, pp. 49-50, Directors to Council, 29 March 1774. * L. S. Sutherland, 'New Evidence on the Nandakumar Trial,' English Historical Review, LXXII, July 1957,444. 6 C.R.O., Eur. MSS., E23, Francis' 'Indian Journal,' March 1778. ' Feiling, op. cit., p. 149. 8 Robert Grant, The Expediency Maintained of Continuing the System by which the Trade and Government of India Are now Regulated, London, Black and Parry, 1813, p. 75.

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the powers of the Board of Trade by writing directly to Court of Directors, instead of sending all letters through the Council.1 Earlier in the year, Grant had written in very strong language complaining, on the Board's behalf, that the Council exercised final decisions on commercial matters, but that the Board had to take full responsibility for results.2 Over against this complaint was one made by Warren Hastings when he said that one of his chief difficulties in India had been the attitude of the Board of Trade towards him.3 The Council supplied the money for purchasing the Investment, but otherwise, he said, the Board controlled expenditures and methods of procurement, which gave its members great power in the Administration.4 The Board showed its independence, he claimed, by not even observing 'the restraints of decency' in its communications with the Council.5 This strong expression could be justifiably used for some of the letters that Grant wrote in 1777. Within the Board itself there was a strong feeling against Grant's well-known friendship with Francis and his supporters. On one occasion, for example, he very nearly sent a challenge to a duel to one of the members of the Board who had made some sneering remark about his associaton with Francis,6 while Francis himself noted in December 1777 that 'the Board of Trade are highly offended with Charles Grant for the information they suppose him to have given Mr. Wheler.'7 Although Francis did not say so, probably the information that Grant was thought to have given had to do with the attempt Francis was making to win Wheler, who had just arrived to fill the vacancy in the Council, to his side.8 From both friendly and hostile sources, as well as from the Board's records, it is clear that Charles Grant very quickly made the office of Secretary to the Board of Trade something more than the merely clerical one it was apparently intended to be. The Board consisted of eleven senior servants who were expected to give a major part of their time to the Company's commercial business,9 but they had other appointments under the Company and their own private trade to distract their attention from the details of the Board's work. Moreover, they almost certainly used their membership on the Board to increase their own fortunes by buying goods for the 1 N.A., Original Consultations, 7 April 1777, No. 3, Minutes of the Members of Council. 2 Ibid., 27 Jan. 1777, No. 4, Board to Council. 3 Warren Hastings, Memoirs Relative to the State of India, London, 1785, p. 135. 1 5 Ibid. Ibid. • Morris, op. cit., p. 40. 7 C.R.O., Eur. MSS., E23, Francis, 'Indian Journal,' 27 Dec. 1777. 8 Weitzman, op. cit., Appendix IV, No. 9a, Francis to E. Wheler, 4 Sept. 1777. • N.A., General Letter, Directors to Council, 3 March 1775.

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Company at inflated prices from their own agents. This abuse of privilege did not become an issue, however, until after Grant left the Secretary's post, although he was well aware of the rumours that were common in Calcutta about the activities of his superiors.2 Grant as Secretary did not have anything directly to do with the purchasing of the Investment, but where he acquired his influence and power was through his mastery of the enormous number of documents which passed through the office of the Board of Trade. A detailed knowledge of the Board's business combined with a familiarity with the intrigues that dominated the Council and the Company's life in general meant that Grant became an extremely effective executive secretary, able to control the technical routines and to apply pressures in the areas where decisions were made. An incident that occurred in 1775 illustrates one way in which Grant may have used his position. He was in charge of the assignment of Company servants to subordinate commercial posts, and it is probably not accidental that in that year out of seven names he suggested for appointment, at least five appear to have been Scotsmen.3 A friendly testimony to Grant's work at the Board of Trade appeared in a book by William Macintosh published in 1782 which vigorously attacked Hastings' Administration.4 While he singled out the members of the Board of Trade for special condemnation, the author said the Board had been able to accomplish some good because of Charles Grant's ability and integrity.6 Macintosh was certainly paid by Philip Francis; it is quite possible the book he was supposed to have written was Francis' own product. 6 The fidelity with which Macintosh's book reproduced Francis' thoughts was shown in a comment on Grant's character. If there was one way in which Grant erred, the book noted, it was in 'the nice scrupulousness of his feelings in matters of right and wrong.'7 It was on this ground, and in almost the same words, that Francis had complained against Grant having deserted him at the time of the scandal over Mrs. Grand. 8 1

C.R.O., Secret Despatches to Bengal, 1,4-18, Directors to Governor-General, 12 April 1786. See below, p. 95, for discussion of the charges against the Board of Trade. 2 C.R.O., Beng. Pub. Cons., 14 Sept. 1787, pp. 95-97, Charles Grant to Cornwallis. » N. A., Orig. Cons., 13 Feb. 1775, No. 4, Board to Council. 1 [William Macintosh], Travels in Europe, Asia and Africa, Delineating, in particular, a New System for the Government and Improvement of the British Settlements in the East Indies, London, 1782. 6 Ibid.,-p. 134. • Merivale and Parkes, op. cit., II, 205-06, discusses Francis' authorship. See also Weitzman, op. cit., p. 143. 7 William Macintosh, op. cit., p. 134. 8 See above, p. 46.

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A hostile witness agreed that Grant had had great influence when he was Secretary of the Board of Trade but said that he had used it for opposition to Hastings. According to Joseph Price, Hastings' friend, Charles Grant, 'the most canting Presbyterian . . . Scotland ever produced,' used his knowledge of the Company's affairs to help in the preparation of Francis' Minutes on mercantile questions.1 When some matter arose in Council, Price said, Francis would record his opposition, and ask time to prepare a Minute for the next meeting.2 Then Francis would call in his young friends for help, with John Shore providing information on revenue matters and Charles Grant on commerce.3 Therefore, Price argued, although Francis sent the members of the Board of Trade 'to Hell in a string,' he praised their Secretary, since he was one of those who furnished him with the data for his 'villanous assertions and insinuations.'4 Hastings' complaint that the virtual autonomy of the Board of Trade gave it power to affect the administration of Bengal8 is plausible when seen against the background of Grant's work as Secretary of the Board of Trade. Although the Board's main function was in theory purely commercial—the purchasing of the goods for the Company's Investment—its activities touched upon many of the controversial issues which were being debated at the same time in the Council. Currency reform, for example, was a very urgent problem for Hastings' administration. There were four mints in Bengal and not only did these all issue coins of similar denominations with different actual values, but the coins of different years from the same mints had variable rates of exchange.6 The Council tried to meet the financial chaos produced by the system of coinage, but without very marked success.7 The Board of Trade was directly involved in this problem, since the variation in value of the coinage made trading extremely difficult.8 Furthermore, the Investment was purchased with the revenue, but money raised in one area of Bengal could only with great difficulty be transferred to another area. Thus Grant spent a great deal of time trying to arrange for money to be transferred without too great a loss resulting from unfavourable exchange rates,9 and it is possible that something of his experience 1

Price, op. cit., 141. Ibid., p. 54. 3 Ibid. Shore's part in writing Francis's Minutes is discussed in Teignmouth, Memoir, I, 53, 86-87 and Grant's in Morris, op. cit., p. 42. Despite the disclaimers of both biographers, Price was probably substantially correct in his account. 4 Price, op. cit., p. 54. 6 Warren Hastings, Memoir, p. 135. ' J. C. Sinha, Economic Annals of Bengal, p. 111. 7 Ibid., p. 125. 8 N.A., Orig. Cons., 31 August 1775, No. 14, Board to Council. 9 Ibid. 2

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and views is reflected in the criticisms that Francis made of Hastings' attempt to improve the currency situation. Hastings thought that closing two of the mints and having the coins all stamped with the one date, 1773, irrespective of the actual year of coinage, would stabilize the currency.1 Francis, however, strongly disagreed on the grounds that only a single currency would solve the problem.2 While Francis' views may be the product of theory or merely of factiousness, they might also represent the experience of someone who, like Grant, was deeply involved in the management of the Company's commerce. The treatment of the weavers by Company servants was another area where the Board of Trade exercised a direct influence on the nature of the Company's administration in Bengal. Charges that the workers who supplied the goods for the Investment were often cruelly mistreated had long been common and were directly related to the way in which cloth was bought. Because of the poverty of the weavers, advances of money were made to them to allow them to buy materials, but final prices were not fixed until the finished goods were delivered.3 During these transactions, there were two points at which the weavers could be oppressed by an unscrupulous agent, who might be either Indian or European. One point was when the advances were made: the weavers might be forced by an overbearing agent to accept money even if they did not want to supply goods to the Company. The other was when the finished goods were delivered, for then the agent might pay a very low price by declaring the cloth to be of a poor quality. While the famous story of the weavers in some places being so filled with despair at the low prices paid them that they cut off their thumbs rather than be forced to work4 may not be true, the existence of widespread oppression is well-documented.5 This oppression was, however, never institutionalized as part of the Company's system, and, although widely practised by those employed by the Company or by Indian merchants through whom they worked, efforts had been made by the Council to prevent the more gross forms of tyranny.6 As early as 1775, the Board of Trade showed its concern for the situation of the weavers by suggesting that special courts might be set up to hear disputes over prices in places where there was no other 1

J. C. Sinha, Economic Annals of Bengal, p. 134. Ibid. 3 See below, pp. 105-08, for a fuller discussion. 4 William Bolts, Considerations on Indian Affairs, London, 1772, pp. 191-94. 5 Ramsay Muir, The Making of British India, 1756-1858, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1917, pp. 68-101 prints a number of representative accounts by Company servants and others. 6 N.A., Pub. Proc., 7 May 1769, Becher to Verelst. 2

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civil authority available.1 The Commercial Resident, the Company's local purchasing agent, the Board urged, should be allowed with the assistance of Indian advisers to hear local cases, and so relieve the peasants of the expense and labour of long journeys to the regular courts.2 The Council Members did not take any action on this suggestion; they may have considered it an encroachment by the Board on their own authority. The Board of Trade also made attempts to exercise some control over its officials. The Company's commercial servants in general, and the members of the Board of Trade in particular, were later accused of gross collusion among themselves, but there was at least one thorough investigation during the 1770's. It was largely conducted by Charles Grant, and the records suggest that the whole inquiry may have been begun at his initiative. A routine transfer of currency to William Barton, a member of the Board of Trade as well as Commercial Agent at Dacca, one of the chief posts in the Company's service, had apparently led Grant to suspect that there were some irregularities in the Dacca accounts.3 In 1775, Grant wrote to Barton reminding him that he had a balance of Rs 669,147 on hand, and since only Rs 173,000 remained to be paid on the Investment he should return Rs 450,000 to the Provincial Council at once.4 Like most of the Commercial Residents, Barton had obviously been using the Company's money to purchase goods for his own private trade, intending to repay it after he made his sales.5 However, he challenged Grant's figures on the grounds that Dacca's 'contingent charges,' the expenses incurred from transportation, exchange and so forth, had been greatly underestimated. These charges, he insisted, should have been Rs 275,000, not the Rs 50,000 as stated by Grant. 6 The case dragged on, and Grant was still investigating the situation in 1778. By then, although Barton had reduced his debt to Rs 59,306, the Directors had become interested and ordered Barton to make a full payment immediately.7 Meanwhile, Barton had the further charge made against him of having accepted Rs 20,000 from a merchant as a bribe for repressing evidence that the merchant had oppressed some weavers.8 In addition, he was said to have taken a commission on all the Company's money that passed through his hands and to have caused the Company heavy losses through false sorting of cloth—declaring good cloth produced 1

N.A., Orig. Cons., 31 Aug. 1775, No. 12, Board to Council. Ibid., No. 13. s Ibid., No. 4, Charles Grant to Barton. 1 4 Ibid. Ibid., No. 5. «Ibid. ' Ibid., 4 Nov. 1778, No. D., Charles Grant to Barton. 9 Ibid. 2

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with the Company's money to be below standard—buying it himself, then selling it in his private trade. 1 Grant had made a formidable calendar of Barton's misdeeds, but the charge of bribery could not be proved, and since the other charges were more or less dependent upon it, the prosecution was dropped. 2 Some form of disciplinary action seemed necessary, however, and Barton was dismissed from the Board of Trade. 3 The Board also requested Grant to attempt to persuade Barton to repay the money that he still owed.4 This rather feeble expedient did not work, since Barton tried to bargain, offering to repay the money if his membership in the Board were restored, while Grant insisted that the repayment should be made without any discussion of conditions.5 Barton was able to go unpunished until he was caught during the great drive against corruption under Cornwallis.6 Even then, however, he managed to escape to Denmark. 7 While the whole incident suggests how difficult it was to punish even flagrant dishonesty, it also shows that an effort was made to improve the administration of the Company's commercial affairs, despite the frequent contemporary assertions that the Bengal servants were engaged in 'a service of confederacy, a service of connivance.'8 Another aspect of Hastings' administration that was of great significance for the development of the connection between Great Britain and India was what was known at the time as 'foreign policy,' that is, the relations between the Company's power and the still independent Indian states.9 For Hastings, three areas were of immediate concern—the Maratha Confederacy, with its power based on Poona in Western India; Mysore, the territory of the Muslim adventurer, Haider Ali; and Hyderabad, the Muslim state that had been founded early in the eighteenth century. The question of the relation of the Company's power to these states was of great importance, for necessarily involved in it was a discussion not only of practical political decisions but also of the future and nature of British power in India. Although Charles Grant had no direct concern with the discussion during the Hastings' era, it became one of the 1

3 Ibid. * Ibid., No. G. Ibid. Ibid., No. H., Extracts of Proceedings of Board of Trade s Ibid. 6 A. Aspinall, Cornwallis in Bengal, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1931, p. 33. ' Ibid. 8 Quoted (source not given) in N.K. Sinha, Economic History of Bengal, I, 214. 8 G. W. Forrest, Selections from the Letters, Despatches, and other State Papers Preserved in the Foreign Department of the Government of India, 1772-1782. Calcutta, Superintendent of Government Printing, 1890, L. xii. Hereafter cited as Forrest, Selections. 4

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great dominating issues of his career, and his evaluation of Hastings' foreign policy was basic to his interpretation of Wellesley's administration. Within the Bengal Administration, foreign policy provided the subject for the most violent disagreement between the Hastings and the Francis factions.1 Governors previous to Hastings had stated their unequivocal opposition to any kind of involvement on the part of the Company in the affairs of the independent states. After the conquest of Bengal, Clive had made clear that 'it was his resolution and hope always to confine our possessions to these provinces [since] to go farther was a scheme so extravagantly ambitious that no government in its senses would ever dream of it.' 2 Verelst, the Governor when Grant had been in Bengal in 1769, declared that 'our name and our authority are carried to the utmost line . . . to go beyond it will be to exceed the bounds of good policy.'3 By 1777, Warren Hastings had come to the conclusion that the policy of 'non-interference' followed by his predecessors was wrong. If British power in India was to be secure, he told a friend, it must seek to establish a kind of hegemony among the powers of India.4 Through treaties with the Company the states bordering on Bengal could be required to maintain armies that would protect them from internal and external subversion and these alliances in turn could be used to strengthen British power against any possible combination of Indian states.5 As Hastings put these plans into operation, he was bitterly attacked by Francis for using alliances as instruments of oppression against weaker states and for involving 'the Company in offensive wars and in schemes of conquest by which no public interest could be promoted.' 6 Although it was Hastings' treatment of the Rohillas and of Oudh that was made most of by his enemies, Grant's criticisms were directed mainly at the series of wars in which the Company was engaged with the Marathas from 1776 to 1782. The wars had begun when the Bombay Council, anxious to acquire territory and prestige, had made an alliance with a pretender to the office of Peshwa, the leader of the Maratha Confederacy.7 Although the Bengal Council 1

Weitzman, op. tit., p. 83. Clive to the Court of Directors, 1765, quoted in J. C. Marshman, London, Longmans, Green, 1871,1,311. 8 N.A., Select Committee Proceedings, Minutes of Consultation, 16 Dec. 1769. 4 Gleig, Hastings Memoirs, II, 131-50, Warren Hastings to Alexander Elliott, 12 Jan. and 10 Feb. 1777. 6 Ibid. 6 Quoted by Weitzman, op. cit., p. 84. 7 S. P. Varma, A Study in Maratha Diplomacy, Agra, S L. Agarwala, 1956, pp. 119-74. 2

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had not been consulted, and at first censured the conduct of the Bombay officials, Hastings supported the war once it was under way. The situation was complicated first by fears that the French were trying to make an alliance with the Marathas, then by the outbreak of war in North America and finally by attacks on the British by Haider AH in the south. For a time, the Company's power was in a desperate position, but Hastings, as he afterwards told Parliament, preserved British rule in India by sending forth armies 'with an effective but economical hand, through unknown and hostile regions.'1 'I maintained the wars which were of your foundation, or of others,' he told his accusers, 'not of mine.'2 Grant totally rejected the view that Hastings was not responsible for the war with the Marathas. It was, he declared, a war of aggression which could be justified neither on the grounds of necessity nor of expediency.3 Whether Hastings had actually started the war or not was immaterial; the truth was, Grant insisted, that he could have stopped it. Instead, he 'persevered in i t . . . after every consideration of its effects, as well as just policy, every reasonable motive should have produced a cessation of it.'4 Aggressive war against the Marathas was a principal feature of Hastings' foreign policy since, Grant argued, as the most powerful group in India they stood in the way of the realization of his dream of alliances.5 When the Indian states became aware of Hastings' aims they were 'united by their separate and common interests in a league which had for its object nothing less than the extirpation of the British power and name in the East.' 8 Hastings' policy, therefore, put the Company 'in the perilous situation of fighting, not for dominion only, but for existence.'7 G. S. Sardesai, the great modern Maratha historian, saw in Hastings' policy the same results for Indian opinion as did Grant. 'There was . . . such antipathy throughout India against the grasping policy of Warren Hastings,' he remarks, 'that most Indian powers warmly welcomed [an anti-British alliance], having been wronged in one interest or another . . . and realizing the threat to their own independent existence.'8 In the midst of the Maratha War, John Shore expressed very similar feelings. 'Had Mr. Hastings been less ambitious; had he not volunteered in a useless, impolitic absurd war,' he wrote in 1780, Bengal would have been secure and prosperous, 1 Quoted by Penderel Moon, Warren Hastings and British India, London, Hodder and Stoughton, 1947, p. 233. a Ibid. s Debates at East India House, 5 April—23 June 1814, p. 90, speech by Charles Grant, 25 May 1814. 4 Ibid. 'Ibid. 'Ibid. ' Ibid.,p.95. 8 G. S. Sardesai, New History of the Marathas, Bombay, Phoenix Publications, 1948, HI, 94.

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but instead it was threatened by ruin by 'our Don Quixote expeditions and unnecessary wars.' 1 Both Shore and Grant maintained their opposition all their lives to the kind of foreign policy which Hastings had followed, for both remained convinced that territorial expansion meant an increase in the hostility of the Indian powers that might prove fatal to British rule. Commentators on the expansion of British political power in India have tended to see it as the by-product and necessary expression of trade, but for Charles Grant, involved in both the Company's commerce and his own private trade, an aggressive foreign policy worked against an orderly and progressive increase in the value of Britain's trade in India.2 Within the historic limits of the territory defined by Clive's conquests, there was, he insisted, ample opportunity for establishing a commercially-sound empire.3 In his interpretation of the wars of Hastings' Administration, as of later ones, Grant would have given full agreement to the conclusion of a modern student of imperialism that 'one of the first victims of war is the marketplace.'4 Aside from having aroused the hostility of the Indian states against the British power, Hastings' foreign policy, according to Grant, had other momentous consequences for British power in India. For Grant, one of the most immediate and disastrous results of the war was the beginning of the Indian debt. 'A large sum,' he said, 'had been prudently stored up in the treasury for a time of real exigency to the amount of two million sterling,' but this was quickly used up, and Hastings had to borrow money.8 The Indian Debt begun by Hastings, Grant argued in later years when the Company seemed on the verge of bankruptcy, 'became the foundation of the one which has since been, sometimes more slowly, sometimes more rapidly, accumulating.'6 By the end of Hastings' rule, the debt stood at six million pounds and from then on it 'oppressed the Company, brought their affairs into frequent embarrassment, and impaired their independence.'7 Grant had personal experience of one way in which Hastings' 1 Teignmouth, Memoir, I, 67-68, John Shore to Bury Hutchinson, 23 Nov. 1780. 2 Debates at East India House, 5 April—23 June 1814, p. 90, speech by Charles Grant, 25 May 1814. 8 Charles Grant, 'Observations on the State of Asia,' pp. 98-9. 4 E. M. Winslow, The Pattern of Imperialism, New York, Columbia University Press, 1948, p. ix. 5 Debates at East India House, 5 April—23 June 1814, p. 90, speech by Charles Grant 25 May 1814. • Ibid., p. 96. ' Ibid.

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borrowing to meet the expenses of war embarrassed the Company's affairs, for money became so scarce and interest so high that by the beginning of the 1780's it was increasingly difficult to trade in Bengal.1 Instead of receiving cash from the Provincial Treasury, the Company's purchasing agents had to accept 'Paper only, at the express regulation of a distant period of payment.' 2 The result was that either only men with very good credit or those who were able to defraud the Company in some way were able to carry on successful trading operations. Thus Hastings' war financing became inextricably bound up with the financial irregularities that marked the end of his administration.3 Most significant of all the results of Hastings' foreign policy was, according to Grant, the Parliamentary investigation into the Company's affairs that followed the arrival in England of the news of the wars and the attendant debt. The wars, he said, 'furnished occasion for the scheme of Mr. Fox in 1783, which had very nearly overwhelmed the Company; they led to the institution of the Board of Control, which everybody knows absorbed or transferred to the Crown, in a great degree, the powers and privileges till then enjoyed by the Company.' 4 Grant's attitude to Parliamentary control of the Company's power in India is extremely ambiguous. At the time, he had welcomed 'inquiries into the evils that afflict the people and the means of redressing them' as 'deservedly . . . a business of Government,' but had 'been thrown into speechless amazement by reading the public orations.' 5 However, he felt that he could not elaborate his views on this 'delicate topic,' possibly being unwilling to be too closely identified with one side of the great controversy that divided the Company servants in Bengal as well as the politicians in London. 4 Even when he became a defender of the remaining rights and privileges of the Company from all encroachments by Parliament and the Board of Control, Grant continued to admit the value of the 1784 Act.7 He insisted, however, that its positive achievements were the stabilization and safeguarding of the reforms already begun in Bengal by the Company's servants.8 In 1780 Grant was appointed Commercial Resident at Malda and his close connection with the central administration ceased until he 1

N.A., Pub. Proc., 14 Sept. 1787, No. 23, Charles Grant to Council, 18 April 1786. 8 Ibid. 3 Furber,John Company at Work, pp. 229-37. 4 Debates at East India House, 5 April—23 June 1814, p. 97, speech by Charles Grant, 25 May 1814. 5 Morris, op. cit., pp. 96-97, Charles Grant to Thomas Raikes, 23 Oct. 1784. 8 Ibid. ' Pari. Debates, XXVI, 927, speech by Charles Grant, 28 June 1813. 8 Ibid.

E

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returned to Calcutta in 1787 to work under Cornwallis. The six years of intimate knowledge of the working of the Bengal Government and especially his friendship with Francis had, however, helped to mould his permanent attitudes towards the nature of British power in India.

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C O M M E R C I A L R E S I D E N T , 1780-87 In the time before the Company acquired a right to the revenues of Bengal, the Commercial Residents had been the most important of its servants since they were responsible for the purchase of the goods that were shipped home each year.1 Even in the 1780's, although the administrative duties of the Company had added new and powerful positions through the creation of revenue collectorships, the Commercial Residencies still 'formed the most lucrative [posts] in the Company's gift, and attracted its best men, while its political functions were made over . . . to "the boys of the service." ' 2 What made the posts so attractive was, as Charles Grant explained, 'the privilege of trade, which the Company had in extensive terms confirmed to their servants by their General Letter of 24 December 1776.'3 Although the Directors were fiercely critical of the abuses of power that had been practised by their commercial servants in the past, they probably realized that it was impossible, even if it had been desirable, to prevent men in the remote interior of Bengal from carrying on a private trade while they conducted the Company's business. The value of an 'up country' appointment was demonstrated just at the time Grant got his appointment by the example of William Thackeray, who after only ten years trading in Sylhet had been able to return home with a fortune. 4 Another contemporary who, like Grant, had contracted large debts in Calcutta, was able, once he received an appointment away from the competition of the city merchants, to completely extricate himself from debt in one successful speculation in salt.5 For Grant, therefore, the appointment as Commercial Resident at Malda offered, as he said, a great 'object of advantage'—the chance through trade to rid himself of his huge debt and to provide for his family.6 The fact that Grant, who had only six years of service in the Company, was given one of the choicest appointments was a demonstration of the way the Administration worked. It was due, first of all, 1

Hunter, Annals of Rural Bengal, p. 349. Ibid. 3 C.R.O., Bengal Pub. Cons., 14 Sept. 1787, p. 99, Charles Grant to Cornwallis. 1 Sir William Hunter, The Thackerays in India, London, Henry Frowde, 1897, pp. 98-99. 6 Robert Lindsay, op. cit., p. 165. 6 C.R.O., Bengal Pub. Cons., 14 Sept. 1787, p. 99, Charles Grant to Cornwallis. 2

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to a rule that the Board of Trade had passed in 1775 giving its members and its Secretary preference in appointments as Commercial Residents.1 When the Malda Residency became vacant in 1780, Grant applied for the post and was given it, although the members of the Board were so unwilling to lose his services that they offered him 'a large consideration' if he would stay.2 Another reason why Grant received the appointment, aside from this arrangement by which the members of the Board looked after their own interests, is suggested by a letter Hastings wrote to a friend after Philip Francis had left Bengal. In order to win over Edward Wheler, Francis's former ally, he had given him, he said, 'the first option in most vacant appointments, and [had] provided handsomely for all his friends.' 3 It is probable, then, that Grant was benefiting from Hastings' policy of conciliation when he received the appointment to Malda. Malda was situated far 'up country' on a northern tributary of the Ganges.4 Although it had been the centre of both Hindu and Muslim kingdoms, it had no political importance in Grant's time but was part of the Dinajpur District. The area had great commercial importance, however, for it had been noted for centuries for the fine quality of its silk and cotton and the East India Company had established a factory at Malda in 1676. The French and Dutch had later built factories in the town. In Grant's time, the English factory was not in Malda itself but three miles away in what had become known as 'English Bazaar,' and there in a strongly fortified compound the Commercial Resident conducted the Company's trading operations. In the 1780's the procurement of goods for export was still the primary concern of the Company, and the Commercial Resident had the key role in the long chain of activities that produced the annual Investment. The chain began in London when the Court of Directors decided on the total value of goods needed and specified the quantities they could sell of each article.8 The Directors' order, accompanied by observations of the quality of goods that had been delivered the previous year, was then sent to Bengal where the Council revised the value in light of local knowledge of the revenues available. On the basis of current prices, the Board of Trade allocated funds to the 1

Ibid., p. 98. Ibid. 3 Gleig, Hastings Memoirs, II, 384, Warren Hastings to Major Scott, 28 April 1781. 4 Sir William Hunter, editor, The Imperial Gazeteer of India, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1908, XVII, 76-77. 6 Peter Auber, An Analysis of the Constitution of the East India and of the Laws Passed by Parliament for the Government of their Affairs at Home and Abroad, London, Kingsbury, Parburry and Allen, 1826, p. 186. 8

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different Commercial Residents and gave them authorization to draw on the Revenue Treasury of the District for the money they needed.1 The Commercial Resident then began the actual work of buying the materials for the Investment.2 Indian agents travelled through the surrounding countryside, first giving advances to the weavers and other workmen who supplied goods to the Company, then later returning to collect the finished products which were deposited in local warehouses in 'aurungs,' or subordinate factories. Finally, the goods were all brought into the central factory, where they were graded and priced by the Resident and his assistants. At Malda, Grant usually had six or seven Company servants3 to help him in grading the raw silk and cotton piece goods which formed the bulk of the Malda Investment.4 The Resident then sent the goods to Calcutta where a final grading took place under the supervision of the Export Warehouse Keeper before they were shipped to England.6 Thus outlined, the work of the Commercial Resident appears simple and straightforward, but in fact it was extremely complex, for the primary function of purchasing agent for the Company was overlaid and complicated by a variety of circumstances that made the post of Commercial Resident not only the most lucrative in the Company's service but also the one most liable to charges of corruption and oppression. Many of the problems arose from the fact that the Commercial Resident's interests as a private trader were frequently in conflict with his official duties as buyer for the Company. For example, if goods were in short supply the Resident might buy the best materials for his own trade and leave the inferior ones for the Company,6 or he might simply buy all the available supplies and then resell them at a much higher price to the Company.7 Other common practices were the ones that Grant had investigated in the case of William Barton of Dacca—the use of the Company's money for private trade and the adding of many fictional charges to expense accounts.8 Involved in these malpractices was much more than loss of money to the shareholders of the Company or dishonest gains for Commercial Residents. As already noted, the rising prices 1

N.A., Orig. Cons., 31 Aug. 1775, No. 6, Charles Grant to Chief of Dacca. An interesting account of Investment procedures is given in Pari. Debates, XXVI, pp. 1064-65, Minutes of Select Committee, Charles Grant, Chairman. 3 Lewis, op. cit., p. 58. 4 N.A., Orig. Cons., 7 Oct. 1782, No. 7, Malda Investment. 6 N.A., Pub. Proc., 14 April 1788, Charles Grant to Board of Trade. • C.R.O., Despatches to Bengal, XVI, 585 ff., Commercial Letter, 27 March 1787. ' Ibid. 8 See above, pp. 60-61. 2

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and inferior quality of Indian goods were tending to make them difficult to sell in Europe, especially when confronted by machinemade goods,1 and if, as the Directors alleged, the Commercial Residents were responsible,2 then they played a large part in the commercial decline of Bengal. Quite apart from the problems created by the dishonesty of some Commercial Residents in their dealings with the Company, the purchasing of goods for the Investment raised certain perplexing issues. One that Grant had already been concerned with as Secretary of the Board of Trade was the treatment of the weavers and other workmen by the Company's agents.3 Another issue was the relationship between the Commercial Resident and the foreign traders, especially the Dutch and the French. Perhaps most interesting of all, however, were the conflicts of interests that arose between the Commercial Resident, representing the Company's commercial concerns, and the Revenue Collector, representing it in its political and administrative aspect. As Commercial Resident at Malda, Grant was deeply involved in all these problems and his actual activities, as well as his suggested solutions for the difficulties that confronted the Company's government, provide help in understanding the complexities of the situation. Most of the problems connected with the Commercial Resident's position were related, in some measure at least, to the methods used to procure the goods for the Company's Investment. As Charles Grant once remarked, 'many warm and well-intended things' had been said about the elaborate buying arrangements of the Company— the whole system of factories, aurungs, Residents and merchants— and the Directors themselves sometimes wondered why their agents could not simply buy goods on the open market in a normal trading operation.4 Grant's answer to this question was given in a long letter he wrote in 1786 while still at Malda to Lord Comwallis, and his explanation of the growth of the Company's system, and its necessity, had the authority of long experience behind it. Two fundamental facts, according to Grant, governed economic relationships in India and made the Company's buying arrangements necessary.5 One was that the poverty of the workmen prevented them buying raw materials and making finished goods to sell to the highest bidder; the other was the lack of any kind of contractual law which 1

See above, pp. 36-37. C.R.O., Secret Despatches to Bengal, I, 5 ff., Directors to Comwallis, 12 April 1786. 3 See above, p. 59. 1 P.R.O., 30-11, Papers of Lord Comwallis, Packet 10, Charles Grant to Lord Comwallis, 31 October 1786. Hereafter cited as Comwallis Papers. 6 Ibid. 2

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was binding on both buyer and seller. The result of these two conditions was that the buyer had always to advance money before the goods were made and if the worker used the money and sold the goods to someone else, the man who advanced the money, instead of having recourse to law, used violence. Conversely, the worker had little hope of any legal protection if he were defrauded by the buyer. Therefore, freedom of trade in the European sense, Grant thought, was impossible in India under the conditions then existing; all that could be hoped for was that all who traded, either as buyers or sellers, should receive their money and goods 'according to priority of engagements and advances.'1 Up to the middle of the eighteenth century, the Company had procured goods for its Investment through contracts made with native merchants. This was a system, Grant told Cornwallis, well suited to foreign traders dealing with 'an arbitrary government and among a knavish people, to whose violence and fraud it was safest to oppose natives.'2 About 1750, however, complaints began to be made by the Company that these Indian merchants were furnishing goods of inferior quality at enhanced prices3—the theme that was to recur in almost every Commercial Letter from London for the next fifty years. This deterioration in the quality of the goods, according to Grant, was not due to the system of native contractors but had an historical explanation—the invasion of India from the north by Nadir Shah, and the attacks on Bengal itself by the Marathas. 4 The sack of Delhi by Nadir Shah meant the loss of the great luxury market on which the Bengal weaving industry had largely depended; at the same time the Marathas were disrupting the life of the countryside. The Directors, Grant argued, had not understood the significance for Indian commercial life of the great historical changes that were taking place in India, and, thinking that the quality of goods could be improved by a change from the old system of native contractors, began to use its own covenanted servants as agents.6 Under the former arrangement, the Company's Residents had made advances to the native contractors who in turn made advances to the weavers; under the new agency system, the Residents, with the help of Indian 'gomastas' or stewards, made the contracts directly with the weavers.6 The principal change was the elimination of the native contractor as middleman. The agency system might have worked, Grant thought, if its introduction had not coincided with the political events that finally 1

2 Ibid. Ibid. ' Ibid. 5 Ibid. Ibid. 9 Ibid. The word is correctly transliterated as 'gumashta,' but Grant always wrote 'gomasta.' 4

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ended in the Company acquiring control of the revenues of Bengal. The Company had now to combine its 'still mercantile object o f . . . trade' with 'the more extensive political one of the general commerce of the state.' 1 Unlike his former friend, Philip Francis, Grant did not think that commerce and political administration were fundamentally incompatible, but he realized that it was necessary for the Company to adjust its inclination to make money through the larger exports made possible by control of the revenues with the economic realities of Bengal. 'In the first elations of acquisition, however, these objects were far from being distinctly perceived,' and, he said, immense revenues were invested in goods with little attention paid to any consideration except quantity.2 The result of the increased production was a further lowering of quality, since the weavers could only produce more by paying less attention to their work.3 Another bad result for the whole economy was that the Company used its great economic power to prevent private merchants, who had formerly supplied the Indian trade, from buying cloth in Bengal. The true policy of the Company, according to Grant, would have been to have used the revenues to buy goods at fair prices in competition with other merchants.4 This, he thought, would have maintained the quality of Bengal cloth, with subsequent benefit both to the Company and the people, but 'only when the evil was incurable was it seen.'5 Once again, the remedy was sought in a change of system, and in 1769 Richard Becher made the suggestion, which was accepted by the Directors, that there should be a return to the system of making contracts with Indian merchants.6 This was not adopted, however, since it was realized, Grant said, that because of the increase in the power of the Company it was inevitable that its servants would have a controlling voice in the procurement of the Investment, no matter what method was used.7 He added, somewhat darkly, that while this argument was true, it was not the only thing that influenced Hastings and his administration.8 What Grant had in mind were the rumours that the Commercial Residents were cheating the Company, as well as oppressing the weavers, and that they were splitting their profits with the members of the Board of Trade.9 The agency system was peculiarly well-suited to such collusion, since accounts of the Residents were audited by their friends at the Board of Trade.10 It was easy, therefore, to charge grossly inflated prices to the Com1

8 Ibid. Ibid. "Ibid. 5 Ibid. Ibid. ' Ibid., and N.A., Select Comm. Proc., 7 May 1769, Richard Becher to Verelst. ' P.R.O., Cornwallis Papers, Charles Grant to Cornwallis, 31 Oct. 1786. 8 Ibid. 9 C.R.O., Bengal Pub. Cons., 14 Sept. 1787, p. 99, Charles Grant to Cornwallis. 10 P.R.O., Cornwallis Papers, Charles Grant to Cornwallis, 31 Oct. 1786. 4

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pany. Furthermore, not only did they profit from the difference they actually paid for the goods and what they charged the Company, but they also charged a kind of commission on the total cost of the Investment at their Residency.1 When Charles Grant went to Malda in 1780 the bulk of the Company's Investment, with the important exception of raw silk, was still provided by the agency system.2 In 1774, in response to the criticism of the Commercial Residents' work as agents, contracts had been given for supplying raw silk to the Company.3 This was scarcely an improvement on the former method, however, since the Board usually gave the contract to the Commercial Residents—who were often its own members. When Grant was appointed to Malda, he would have been given the contract, but he did not apply, to the considerable surprise of one of the members of the Board who assured him that the raw silk contract 'was the best thing there.' 4 Grant had probably seen the storm brewing over the silk contracts, and aware of the collusion between some Residents and the Board of Trade, did not want to become involved.5 During his first year at Malda, therefore, the silk contract was given to someone outside the Company's service, and the silk-filature at the factory was idle. As for the cotton-piece goods which formed the main part of the Malda Investment, Grant supplied them by the agency method, and, he claimed, he had not made anything on the transaction.6 There was no way, of course, of proving if this was actually true, but he was able to present very good evidence in the form of detailed accounts of how he had spent the Company's money.7 His invoiced charges were less than for many of the preceding years, and there were no unspecified sums listed as incidental charges.8 He had accomplished this, he explained, by stating 'the genuine costs paid to the weavers, with the actual outlay at the aurungs and in preparing the cloths for market.' 9 Clearly implied in this is the suggestion that his predecessor, Thomas Henchman, had not done so. He found, however, that the 'free, open trade' he was carrying on in cotton cloth very profitable and by the end of his first year in Malda he had reason to hope that the burden of his debt would soon grow lighter.10 In 1782 the change that had been urged for so long in the method of collecting the Investment finally took place, for Hastings and the Council had become convinced that something had to be done to 1

Ibid.

»Ibid.

• Ibid.

4

C.R.O., Bengal Pub. Cons., 14 Sept. 1787, p. 99 Charles Grant to Cornwallis. 6 Ibid. * N.A., Orig. Cons., 14 Sept. 1787, No. 23, Charles Grant to Board of Trade, 22 June 1782. ' Ibid. ' Ibid. • Ibid. 10 Morris, op. cit., p. 74, Charles Grant to Thomas Raikes, 7 Jan. 1782. 73

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1

bring down prices. Buying goods by contract, it was thought, was 'most likely to secure a faithful outlay o f . . . money' and bids 'were invited from all description of people indiscriminately.'2 Although there was apparently no intention of excluding the Commercial Residents from making bids, it was hoped that through competitive bidding they might be forced to give lower prices.3 Grant did not welcome the change from the agency to the contract system. 'As my object at Malda was the Private Trade,' he wrote, 'I looked upon this resolution which set up the business of my place to contract as an adverse event.'4 Even though he may not have made any money from supplying the Investment under the agency system, nevertheless, as he pointed out, the man who controlled the right to spend £50,000 for the Company's goods in the Malda area had a tremendous advantage over any other trader. 5 Everyone in the vicinity, from weaver to landlord, found it 'in his interest to be on good terms with him.6 A man might be willing, therefore, to make a small profit, or even take a loss, on the Company's contract simply for the sake of gaining authority and power which could then be used to great advantage to oppress the weavers and to drive out other competitors.7 To prevent this happening, Grant sent his bid for the contract to the Council although, he insisted, he would have preferred the agency system to have continued.8 Grant's bid was not the lowest, since several Indian merchants had sent in considerably lower ones, but he had anticipated this, and in letters to the Council at the time and later he argued that accepting the lower bids would lead to 'confusion in every part of this Establishment, to the prejudice as well of the Company as of [his personal] interest.'9 Grant was apparently quite sincerely convinced that Indian merchants treated the weavers worse and were more harmful to the economy in general than were Europeans. While 1

P.R.O., Cornwallis Papers, Charles Grant to Comwallis, 31 Oct. 1786. C.R.O., Bengal Letters Received, XXVII, 205, Cornwallis to Court, 1 Nov. 1788. This letter is based almost wholly on information given by Grant to Cornwallis in various letters preserved in P.R.O., Cornwallis Papers, Packets 10 to 21. 8 Ibid. 4 C.R.O., Bengal Pub. Cons., 14 Sept. 1787, p. 101, Charles Grant to Cornwallis. • N . A . , Pub. Proc., 14 Sept. 1787, N o . 23, Charles Grant to Council, 18 April 1786. • C.R.O., Bengal Letters Received, XXVII, 229, Cornwallis to Directors, 1 Nov. 1788. See above, p. 88, note 5. ' N.A., Pub. Proc., 14 Sept. 1787, N o . 23, Charles Grant to Council, 18 April 1786. 8 Ibid. ' N.A., Orig. Cons., 25 July 1782, N o . 2, Proposals for Contract at Malda, and Pub. Proc., 14 Sept. 1787, No. 23, Charles Grant to Board of Trade, 22 June 1782. s

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Grant did not have any exaggerated opinion of the commercial morality of European traders, there were, he thought, a number of factors that tended to make them better employers.1 They were amenable to some degree of control from their superiors in London and Calcutta, and, in addition, had some sensitivity to public opinion at home. Furthermore, since their main purpose was to make enough money to be able to retire, they often tried to improve the commerce of the country. Native traders, on the other hand, were 'dead to sentiments of honesty and attachment,' and cared nothing for the workers.2 It was possible, Grant argued, for traders, Indian or European, 'who looked not beyond a singled year to force cloths at a reduced price from the weavers, and to dispense with part of the people employed in the provision, but the manufacturers, the fabrics, the establishment, would be ruined.' 3 His own bid, he asserted, was the lowest compatible with justice to the weavers, and for the Company to accept a lower one would be to contribute to the ruin of the country.4 Through a long and detailed analysis of the method by which he had arrived at his prices, Grant defended his bid and his contention that lower prices would have meant oppression of the workmen. This statement is of interest because not only is it probably the fullest existing account of its kind but also it was the evidence upon which Grant depended five years later when, along with other Commercial Residents, he was charged by the Directors with having grossly over-charged the Company for the Malda Investment. In arriving at the proposed contract rate for supplying cotton piece-goods for the Malda Investment, Grant broke the total costs down into three categories—the money paid to the weavers, the incidental charges, and provision for risks.6 A correct statement of the first of these categories, the price paid to the weavers, was, Grant always insisted, the basic fact that the Company had to know in judging the validity of all accounts made by Commercial Residents.8 'The universal rule of commerce,' he told Cornwallis in 1786, was 'to procure the best goods at the cheapest rates possible'; it was essential, therefore, that the Company should know the 'prime' or original cost of the goods.7 In existing conditions in Bengal, with the Resident in charge of all the commercial data of the area, this know1

P.R.O., Cornwallis Papers, Charles Grant to Cornwallis, 31 Oct. 1786. Ibid. 8 N.A., Pub. Proc., 14 Sept. 1787, No. 23, Charles Grant to Council, 18 April 1786. 4 Ibid., Charles Grant to Board of Trade, 22 June 1782. 6 Ibid. 6 P.R.O., Cornwallis Papers, Charles Grant to Cornwallis, 31 Oct. 1786. 7 Ibid. 2

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ledge depended, he pointed out, on the honesty of the Resident and careful examination of accounts of previous years.1 Since he had already sent in his accounts for goods supplied by the agency method, he felt that the Board of Trade could see that his prime costs were correctly stated, apart from their knowledge of his 'having acted faithfully at the Presidency for the Company.'2 The second category of charges included the incidental expenses incurred in preparing the cloth for market, exchange on money transfers and the cost of transportation to Calcutta.3 In addition to a fixed amount for preparing the cloths, Grant thought an allowance of six per cent of the prime cost for exchange and transportation would be reasonable. Provision against risks was the third kind of charge, and it was in this area that the contractor could hope to make money but where he also might lose heavily. There were, Grant pointed out, many hazards involved in a contract: weavers might not furnish the goods for which advances had been made, money had to be remitted through 'shroffs,' the Indian bankers, which entailed many delays and extra charges; 'gomastas' were notoriously unreliable and corrupt; and there was the ever-present danger of drought and famine.4 To cover these risks, Grant asked twelve per cent of the prime cost of the goods bought for the Investment.5 Grant was given the contract for the cotton-piece goods and also for a part of the raw silk needed for the Investment.6 Although he had been too afraid of scandal to take a silk contract during his first year in Malda, he thought the extension of the contract system to the whole of the Company's Investment had altered matters. Something of the deep suspicion that surrounded the Commercial Residents' dealings in raw silk is probably reflected, however, in the fact that Grant was only allowed to provide two-fifths of the total raw-silk needed, despite his offer to contract for the whole amount at 'the lowest price that shall be fixed.'7 To his great displeasure, the balance of the contract was given to Indian merchants.8 For the next three years, Grant received the cotton and silk contracts on the same terms, but in 1786 he made new proposals, although, he said, the fundamental principles—stating the prime cost 1

Ibid. N.A., Pub. Proc., 14 Sept. 1787, No. 23, Charles Grant to Council, 18 April 1786. * Ibid., Charles Grant to Board of Trade, 22 June 1782. 4 6 Ibid. Ibid. 6 N.A., Orig. Cons., 25 July 1782, No. 2, List of Proposals for Contract at Malda. ' C.R.O., Bengal Pub. Cons., 14 Sept. 1787, p. 103, Charles Grant to Cornwallis. 8 Ibid. 2

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and asking for a percentage for incidental charges and risks— remained the same.1 The major changes that he asked for were an increase in the percentage allowed for risk and the granting of the granting of the contract for a three-year period instead of the customary one year. The request for a higher percentage for risk was a reflection of the effects of Hastings' foreign policy. Currency had become so scarce that the Commercial Residents were paid in 'Paper,' that is, bills on the Company's Treasury, and there was a twenty per cent discount on these.2 This discount, Grant pointed out, was 'a new charge, of itself far greater than the allowances made . . . for all the risks of a contractor.' 3 Grant did not ask for the whole discount to be allowed for, but only part of it, because he offered to buy the whole of the Company's Malda Investment on his own credit and to collect from the Company later.4 This proposal indicates how powerful the Commercial Residents were, when their credit was, in effect, better than that of the Company. As Grant explained to Cornwallis in 1786, the Commercial Residents had this good credit position 'both from their situations and connections,'5 Because of the currency problems, the 'banyas,' the Indian merchant class, played a very important part at this time in extending credit and in handling the Company's 'Paper,' and the Commercial Residents, as Grant implied, were the link between the 'banyas' and the Company.6 The Board of Trade and the Council accepted Grant's arguments and gave him the kind of contract he had asked for, adding that they had 'a firm reliance on Mr. Grant's integrity and great experience in the Malda Investment.'7 Despite Grant's misgivings in 1782 over the change in the method of procuring the Investment, his contracts with the Company very soon made him a wealthy man. When he closed his books in 1784 he found that not only was he out of debt but that he had more money than he had ever had before.8 'The result,' he wrote in his Journal, 'is quite beyond my expectation.'9 At the time he had made the contract, he apparently quite genuinely did not expect to make very much from it; his main concern had been to prevent the power 1 N.A., Pub. Proc., 14 Sept. 1787, No. 23, Charles Grant to Council, 18 April 1786. a 8 4 Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. 6 P.R.O., Cornwallis Papers, Charles Grant to Cornwallis, 31 Oct. 1786. 6 Furber, John Company at Work, 354. L. S. Sutherland suggests that those who enjoyed 'the allegiance of these men [the banyas] were the real rulers of Bengal.' ('New Evidence on the Nandakumar Trial,' The English Historical Review, LXXII, July 1957, p. 445.). ' N.A., Pub. Proc., 14 Sept. 1787, Board's Action on Mr. Grant's Proposal, 1786. 8 Morris, op. cit., p. 80, Charles Grant's Journal, 20 June 1784. • Ibid.

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and prestige that went with the control of the Company's Investment from falling into the hands of a rival. After Grant had made his contract, however, the Board of Trade had decided to make a very considerable increase in the quantity of goods supplied by Malda for the Investment.1 Grant discovered that his overhead charges increased very little, but since he was still paid twelve per cent of the total cost of the Investment, he therefore made much more profit than he had expected.2 In the first elation of his success Grant admired 'the goodness of God that [had given him] power to get wealth,' but he also realized that it was necessary to review his gains, 'to see that none of them are exeptionable,' and very soon he was 'severely worked in body and mind by a scruple' about the great profits he had made.3 He considered returning the surplus to the Company, but his friends William Chambers and George Udny, who shared his religious convictions, persuaded him that there had been nothing illegal in the transaction.4 Grant later told the Council that if he had realized at the time how much his overhead charges would have been reduced he would have submitted a smaller figure, but, he pointed out, there had been no attempt at concealment since his accounts clearly stated what the average charges were.5 Although the basis of Grant's fortune came from his profits as a contractor for the Malda Investment, he continued to carry on the private trade operations that had at first attracted him to the post of Commercial Resident. Unfortunately, as is the case for most of the Commercial Residents, few details are known of Grant's private trade. The lack of records, in contrast with the full documentation for the Company's trade, has given a somewhat sinister appearance to this aspect of the Residents' activities, but probably this is undeserved. Grant argued in private letters, as well as in public ones, that the Resident's private trade was 'beneficial to the country and the Company, whose estate it is,' since it was a fundamental rule of commerce that 'the surplus should find a vent,'6 and he was convinced that the Residents' trade was more beneficial to the country 1

N.A., Orig. Cons., 7 Oct. 1782, No. 7, Board of Trade to Council. N.A., Pub. Proc., 14 Sept. 1787, No. 23, Charles Grant to Council, 18 April 1786. 3 Morris, op. cit., p. 80, Charles Grant's Journal, 20 and 26 June 1784. 4 Ibid., p. 81,18 July 1784. 6 N.A., Pub. Proc., 14 Sept. 1787, No. 23, Charles Grant to Council, 18 April 1786. Since Grant was able to clear up his £20,000 debt in two years, he must have made at least £10,000 a year. He made seventeen per cent on his silk contract, which would have given him approximately £2,000. His Company allowances would probably have covered all living costs at Malda, where living would be less expensive than at Calcutta. 9 Morris, op. cit., p. 74, Charles Grant to Thomas Raikes, 7 Jan. 1782. 2

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than was that of free merchants. His argument was that the Company's great establishments—the system of factories and warehouses —gave much more stability to the district than did the impermanent arrangements made by private merchants. The Commercial Resident's work as a private trader, especially when the contract system was in operation, was little more than an extension of his role as Company servant. As the Company's silk contractor, for example, Grant used the silk filatures that had previously been installed on the factory premises at Malda, and the surplus he was able to produce was sold in his private trade. 2 While this control of the silk filature obviously gave Grant a great advantage over any private merchant who was trying to produce silk, at the same time it probably gave a certain degree of security to the workmen connected with the factory. Grant's private trade seems, on the whole, to have been less profitable'than his work as a Company contractor. Thus in 1782, after he had sent a shipment of raw silk to be sold on the Indian market, his agent was unable to sell it for what Grant considered a reasonable price, and it had to be disposed of at whatever price could be got.® Grant also shipped considerable quantities of raw silk to England on his private account—his largest shipment appears to have been in 1786 when he got permission to send three tons of it home on the Company's ships.4 While it is quite possible that Grant was being perfectly truthful when he told his agent that he had never traded a single bale of cloth for which he had not taken a passport at the Custom House,5 there is some evidence that, like most of his contemporaries, he carried on transactions with the Dutch which if not positively illegal were at least greatly frowned upon by the Directors.6 One aspect of the relations of the Company's servants with the Dutch and other foreign East Indian Companies had to do with the remittance home of the fortunes made in India by the Company's servants. The only way of sending home money made in India was in the form of goods or through bills of exchange, but the Directors in London permitted only very small shipments of goods and inadequate transfers through 1

C.R.O., H.M.S. 393, p. 280. Report of Commercial Occurrences, 6 Aug. 1789 [written by Charles Grant]. "C.R.O., Bengal Pub. Cons., 14 Sept. 1787, p. 112, Charles Grant to Cornwallis. • C.R.O., Eur. MSS., F3, Fowke Correspondence, Charles Grant to John Benn, 24 March 1782. 1 N.A., Orig. Cons., 23 Oct. 1786, No. 2, Charles Grant to Board of Trade. 6 Morris, op. cit., p. 74, Charles Grant to Thomas Raikes, 7 Jan. 1782. 8 Furber, John Company at Work, pp. 80-109 discusses the evidence of the dealings of the Company servants and the Dutch, and special attention is given Charles Grant's transactions.

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bills. The result was that the foreign companies found it possible to buy all the goods they needed in India by accepting money or goods from the Company's servants in return for bills on Europe. This mechanism of remittance through foreign Companies was described by Charles Grant on a number of occasions, but never with condemnation of the Company servants who used it.2 Instead, he condemned the short-sightedness of the Directors for their failure to realize that if men were to be allowed to make money in India they had to be provided with some facilities for remitting it.3 Grant had sent money home through Amsterdam while he was still Secretary of the Board of Trade,4 and he sold cloth to the Dutch after he went to Malda in 1780.5 While these transactions were not strictly illegal— it was not until 1781 that a law was passed forbidding British subjects in India to lend money to foreigners or to sell goods to them6— the Directors felt that they were being cheated by their servants of goods that should have formed part of the Investment.7 In Grant's case, if he made any profit from his connection with the Dutch, it must have been in the few months between the time he arrived in Malda at the end of December 1780 and the arrival in April 1781 of the news of the outbreak of war between the Dutch and Great Britain.8 Before that, he had been so unsuccessful in his business that he could scarcely have done any harm to the Company through his financial transactions. Moreover, if he had felt that he had transgressed any law he would probably have had an uneasy conscience, as when he made the very high profits on the Company's contract, even though, as in that case, he might have come to the conclusion he had not done wrong. Whatever the exact nature of Grant's relations with the Dutch were, at least they appear to have been friendly; his attitude towards the French traders in Bengal, on the other hand, was almost uniformly hostile. Because of the war with Great Britain, the French East India Company had already withdrawn its traders before Grant went to 1

Ibid., and N.A., Pub. Proc., Minutes of Consultation, 20 March 1769. C.R.O., H.M.S. 405, p. 817, Charles Grant, 'Observations on Trade,' and H.M.S. 402, pp. 11-39, 'First Report of Special Committee, 27 Jan. 1801.' For Grant's authorship of this Report, see below, p. 235. 3 Ibid. 4 Furber, John Company at Work, pp. 80-82. 5 Ibid. • 21 George III c 65, sec. XIX. 7 C.R.O., H.M.S. 4c2, pp. 11-39, 'First Report of Special Committee, 27 Jan. 1801.' 8 The British in India were on such good terms with the Dutch that at the time the news of war arrived Hastings was actually negotiating with the Dutch officials for the hire of their troops (Gleig, Hastings Memoirs, II, 356, Hastings to Scott, 28 April 1788). 2

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Malda, but under the provisions of the Commercial Treaty signed in 1786, Britain recognized France's trading rights in India. 1 Since Malda had for a long time been a centre of French trade they naturally returned there, but when they raised their flag over their factory and had it carried before them in the villages, Grant vigorously protested what he considered an unwarranted pretension.2 The French complained that he had ordered his men, under his assistant Udny, to attack them, but Grant so successfully defended himself against this charge that the Council complimented him and denounced those who spread ill-founded rumours about their servants.3 This incident had considerable significance, for Grant and the Bengal Council had adopted a policy towards the French that was almost completely opposed to the one that the Directors had ordered their servants in India to follow. In 1783, soon after the Treaty of Versailles had been signed, the Directors had ordered the Bengal Council to 'assure to French subjects a trade, secure, free and independent,' and to 'remove any occasion for dispute between the two countries.'4 Although the Commercial Treaty of 1786 made these instructions even more specific, the opinion of the Bengal servants was very different from that of their employers or the Government in London. In June 1784, in reply to an inquiry from the GovernorGeneral about the privileges the French had enjoyed in the past in Malda and could be expected to have in the future, Grant replied that they had never had any special privileges before, and should have only the same rights as any private merchants—to buy from workmen who were not under any form of obligation to the Company.8 Grant's views were probably very generally held by the Company's servants, for the Council told the Directors that the French were seeking to undermine the Company's authority. 6 The French, according to Grant, 'affected to disregard the Company's prior engagements and to compound the general liberty of trading in the country with the practice of invading the manufactures of others.' 7 Since they had no weavers in their own employ, they offered high 1

Cambridge Modern History, VI, 471. W. K. Firminger, editor, Bengal District Records, vol. I: Dinajpur, 1787-89, Shillong, Government Press, 1914, p. 9, Charles Grant to George Hatch, 20 Sept. 1786. Cited hereafter as Dinajpur District Records. 8 C.R.O., Bengal Letters Received, XXV, Secret Letter to Court, 10 Jan. 1787. 4 Quoted in S. P. Sen, The French in India, 1763-1816, Calcutta, Firma Mukhopadhyay, 1958, p. 418. 5 C.R.O., French in India Series, X, Extract from Bengal Consultations, 14 Sept. 1784, Charles Grant to Council, 25 June 1784. • Ibid., IX, 39, Abstracts of advices from Bengal. 7 C.R.O., H.M.S. 393, p. 30, Report of Commercial Occurrences, 12 Sept. 1787. This was written by Charles Grant. 2

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prices to those who had already accepted advances from him for the Company's goods.1 While it might be 'speciously urged,' he said, that this kind of competition was good for the commercial prosperity of the country, in fact it only tended to raise prices without stimulating production, since prosperity did not follow from 'contending for the labour of the same man, but by bringing more hands into employment.' 2 Displeased with the attitude of their Bengal servants towards the French, the Directors sent out a Despatch in 1788 ordering their servants to comply with the law giving the French freedom of trade. 3 Back of this concern on the part of the Directors for the French was not only the policy of the British government but also the plans of Henry Dundas who had gained great power in the affairs of India through the creation of the Board of Control under Pitt's India Act.4 Dundas, wanting to attack the power and autonomy of the East India Company, saw French commercial competition in Bengal as a valuable ally and therefore insisted that the French traders should not be obstructed by the Company servants.5 It was an interesting coincidence that Charles Grant was one of those who by strongly opposing the re-entry of the French into the Bengal market helped to undermine Dundas' plans to limit the Company's powers since, in later years, he was to be the most formidable defender of the Company against the attempts of Dundas to take away some of its privileges.6 Although the internal weaknesses of the French Company combined with the beginning of the Revolution to prevent the growth of French trade in India,7 for many years Grant continued to urge the Company to be on guard against admitting that the French had any special trading privileges in India, since this would be an 'invalidation of our right,' and would be turned by 'French audacity into encouragement of extravagant pretensions.'8 This was written in 1808, after fifteen years of war, but even before the outbreak of the Revolution Cornwallis, using materials supplied by Grant, had warned against giving the French privileges which would be abused by an 'assuming temper.'9 1

2 Ibid. Ibid. C.R.O., Bengal Letters Received, XXV, Secret Letter to Court, 10 Jan. 1787. 4 Philips, The East India Company, pp. 47-48. 6 Ibid. 6 See below, pp. 160-77. ' Henry Weber, La Compagnie Française des Indes, 1604-1875, Paris, Rousseau, 1904, pp. 644-47. 8 C.R.O., H.M.S. 494, p. 257, Edward Parry and Charles Grant to Directors, 14 Oct. 1808. » C.R.O., Bengal Letters Received, XXVII, p. 238, Cornwallis to Court, 1 Nov. 1788. 3

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While Grant was acting as a contractor for the Company and quarrelling with the French, he had played a conspicuous part in the establishment of a new industry, the growing and processing of indigo. Although Grant may not have actually been the first person, as he claimed, to have started indigo cultivation, he was certainly among the very first who saw the possibility of making money through investment in the buildings and machinery needed to process indigo for the European market. 1 In the seventeenth century, indigo had been an important item in the Company's trade, but after its introduction into the Carolinas the Indian product had lost its market.2 Later, the Spanish and French islands in the West Indies had become the producers of the best quality indigo.3 During the American Revolution, however, an attempt was made to revive the Indian trade, and contracts were made with private traders by the Company in 1 7 7 9 . 4 At this time, apparently, the traders continued the former custom of buying indigo from undomesticated plants, but the venture was not successful.5 Grant's innovation in 1783 was to lease a large amount of land and to begin to cultivate the indigo plant to provide a regular supply of good quality raw material.6 He thus took part in what Sir William Hunter suggested was one of the most important, if least recognized, activities of the British trader in eighteenth century Bengal: the creation of a new centre of rural industry, which helped to diversify the economy and cushioned to some extent the effects of the decay of the old weaving industry.7 The site of Grant's indigo plantation and factory was Gaumalti, near Gaur, the ancient capital of Bengal.8 With hundreds of peasants employed in the cultivation of the plant and in the processing of the dye for shipment to Europe, the establishment must have been one of the largest enterprises of its kind at the time.9 This undertaking was not, however, one of Grant's most successful speculations, and within a few years he regretted that he had invested so heavily in 1

Pari. Debates, XIV, 974, speech by Charles Grant, 9 June 1809. Reports and Proceedings Connected with the Proceedings of the East India Company in regard to the Culture and Manufacture of Cotton Wool, Raw Silk and Indigo in India, London, 1836, 'Report on Indigo,' p. iii. Cited hereafter as Indigo Report. 3 Ibid. 4 N. K. Sinha, Economic History of Bengal, 1,87. 5 Ibid. ' Debates at East India House 5 Jan.—23 Feb. 1813, p. 255, speech by Charles Grant, 26 Jan. 1813. 7 Hunter, Annals of Rural Bengal, 1,350. 8 H. Creighton, The Ruins of Gour Described and Represented in Eighteen Views, London, Black, Parburry, Allen, 1817, p. iii. Creighton was manager of Grant's factory. 9 C. B. Lewis, The Life ofJohn Thomas, p. 70. 2

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it. Indigo, in fact, involved him in a series of embarrassments. One of these was the failure of indigo to become, as Grant and others hoped, the commodity that would take the place of cotton goods in exports from India to Europe.2 There had seemed to be a chance for this happening when Great Britain had been at war with America and France, but 1783 was a singularly poor year to have started a new competitive industry. With the return of peace, the Directors wrote that inferior grades of indigo, such as were being produced in Bengal, could be more cheaply bought in America, and that if the Bengal indigo producers wanted a market they would have to send home superior quality.3 For some time, however, the Company continued to subsidize the production of Bengal indigo by buying it at a loss.4 Grant used to make much of this fact when the Company's monopoly was accused of having stifled industry and commerce in Bengal instead of stimulating them as, it was claimed, free enterprise would have done. The truth was, he declared, that without the helping hand of the Company and 'the adventitious circumstances of war' the industry would never have been started.5 As late as 1787 Bengal indigo was still selling at a loss, and the Directors were complaining that the poor quality appeared to be due to the carelessness, if not the dishonesty, of the private traders in handling and processing it.6 The indigo planters would have been in serious difficulty if the Company had refused to buy from them, but by this time Charles Grant had left Malda and become the most influential member of the Board of Trade, with virtually full control of the Company's commerce in Bengal.7 On behalf of his fellow planters, Grant, according to his own account, 'recommended to his Lordship [Cornwallis, the Governor-General] the propriety of affording protection to the manufacturers as useful to the country, and he agreed to lend them money.'8 Grant exerted his influence again in 1788 when the Directors did not include indigo in the list of required goods to be sent home. Arguing that this was merely an oversight, Grant gave orders for indigo to be added to the Investment,9 and his decision 1 C.R.O., Court Minutes, CIIIA, 881, 10 Dec. 1794, Charles Grant to Court; and Morris, op. cit., p. 361. 2 C.R.O., Bengal Letters Received, XXVII, 255,1 Nov. 1788. 3 Indigo Reports, p. 3, Directors to Council, 11 April 1785. 4 Debates at East India House, 5 Jan.—23 Feb. 1813, p. 255, speech by Charles Grant, 26 Jan. 1813. s Ibid. " C.R.O., H.M.S. 393, p. 26, Report of Commercial Occurrences, 12 Sept. 1787. ' See below, Chapter V. 6 Debates at East India House, 5 Jan.—23 Feb. 1813, p. 255, speech by Charles Grant, 26 Jan. 1813. • P.R.O., Cornwallis Papers, Packet 20, Charles Grant to Cornwallis, 25 Oct. 1787.

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was supported by Cornwallis, who said that since the promoters of the new enterprise laboured under very heavy difficulties they should be encouraged by the Company.1 It was the Revolutionary Wars, according to Grant, that rescued the indigo planters from competition, with the decisive event being the great slave uprising in San Domingo.2 This island had been the source of the best indigo, but the cultivation was never restored after its destruction during the revolt. To supply the new market created by the loss of San Domingo indigo, the Bengal planters hurriedly started to expand.3 The result was the establishment of over eight hundred factories within a relatively short time and a very sharp decline in price.4 In his old age, Grant found his factory so unprofitable that he would very willingly have sold it, but he could not find a buyer who would pay the large amount he had invested.5 Grant's ownership of the indigo factory involved him in other difficulties through the years. One of the most important of these was a rule passed by the Company in 1795 preventing a Director 'under any colour or pretext whatever' from engaging in trade in India.6 As he had just become a Director, Grant was affected by the ruling, but apparently it had been aimed specifically at David Scott, who at that time was very prominent in the Company's affairs, not at him.7 In any case, after he had pleaded that his indigo was all sent home by Company ships and sold at the regular sales, the Directors suspended the by-law for him.8 This suspension was regularly renewed through the years, but occasionally his opponents cited Grant's trade in indigo in combination with his place as a Director as an example of personal hypocrisy and corporate collusion.9 Another aspect of Grant's indigo venture that turned out less successfully than he had hoped was his intention that his establishment at Gaumalti should become the nucleus of a missionary enterprise in Bengal.10 His plan was to hire a missionary to win converts, who 1

C.R.O., Bengal Letters Received, XXVII, p. 255, Cornwallis to Directors, 1 Nov. 1788. 2 Debates at East India House, 5 Jan.—23 Feb. 1823, p. 255, speech by Charles Grant, 26 Jan. 1813. 3 Ibid. * Parliamentary Papers, 1831-32, IX, 189, Select Committee on East Indian Affairs, Testimony of Peter Auber. 6 Morris, op. cit., p. 361. * C.R.O., Court Minutes, CIIIA, 1284, General Court Minutes, 25 March 1795. 7 William Woodfall, editor, Debates at East India House, 1795, London, 1795 p. 32, speech by Randle Jackson. 8 C.R.O., General Court Minutes, VIII, 125-26,133-34. * Pari. Debates, XIV, 974, speech by M. Prendergast, 9 June 1809. 10 Morris, op. cit., p. 105, Charles Grant to John Thomas, [n.d., probably 1789]. 85

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could then come to Gaumalti and live and work under the protection of the Christian managers, free from the persecution that would inevitably face them from Hindu or Muslim landlords.1 His choice of John Thomas, a former ship's surgeon, as a missionary was unfortunate. 2 Bad-tempered, vain, always in debt, Thomas soon showed that he had no intention of leaving the security of the Commercial Resident's house to attempt to make converts among the discomforts and dangers of rural Bengal.3 Grant eventually dismissed him, and some years later he turned up in England where he persuaded William Carey that Bengal was the place to begin his mission work.4 The result of this partnership was that in 1793 Grant refused to support Carey, although he almost certainly would have if there had not been the connection with the disreputable Thomas.5 In the end, Carey did begin his work in India at an indigo factory in the Malda area, but it was one belonging to Grant's friend, George Udny, not the one at Gaumalti.4 Future relations between missions and indigo plantations were to continue to be difficult, for within fifty years of Grant's dream that his factory at Gaumalti might become a centre for Christian converts, the missionaries for whose entry into Bengal he struggled had begun to denounce the indigo planters for their cruelty and oppression.7 The background for all Grant's commercial undertakings in the Malda area, whether his extensive private trade in indigo and fabrics or his official work as Commercial Resident, was his relationship with the political administration of the Districts in which he carried on his activities. In the 1780's 'political' was still practically a synonym for 'revenue,' since, as Sir William Hunter pointed out, the Company considered their primary administrative function to be the collection of revenue, which had also been 'the sole idea of government among the native powers who erected themselves on the ruins of the Mughal Empire.'8 Although Company servants had been appointed as District Collectors in 1781, they had little power for the effective control of revenue administration still remained in the hands of the zamindars and tax farmers of the old government.9 The Collector was largely 1

Ibid. The story of John Thomas' connection with Grant is told sympathetically in C. B. Lewis, op. cit. 3 Morris, op. cit., pp. 136-138, Charles Grant to George Udny, 25 April 1789. 1 S. Pearce Carey, William Carey, New York, G. H. Doran, [n.d.], pp. 118-119. 6 6 Ibid. Ibid. ' Selections from Papers on Indigo Cultivation in Bengal, edited by 'A Ryot,' Calcutta, Stanhope Press, 1859. • Sir William Hunter, editor, Bengal MS. Records, London, W. H. Allen, 1894, I, 17. • F. D . Ascoli, Early Revenue History of Bengal and the Fifth Report, 1812, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1917, p. 80. 2

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dependent upon these officials, and since they were not only corrupt and oppressive, but also extremely inefficient, the work of the revenue administration was characterized by arbitrary exactions and endless delays. For the Commercial Resident, trying to make money for himself and the Company, the revenue system was a source of continual annoyance and frustration. Weavers were beaten and imprisoned or driven from their homes by the tax-collectors, unexpected taxes were laid upon goods and there was a general lack of security for any kind of commercial transaction. The Collector, as representative of the Company's political administration, seemed to the Commercial Resident to be responsible for these difficulties. The Collector, on the other hand, had grievances against the Resident who, he alleged, caring only for his profit, and having impoverished the peasants through the low prices he paid for their work, encouraged them to defy the tax collector. This conflict between the interests of the Commercial Resident and the Collector is very clearly seen in Charles Grant's relations with the revenue administrations of Dinajpur and Rangapur, the two districts where he did business. The Collectors, Grant complained, through the disorder and misrule they either sanctioned or ignored, were ruining the economy of Bengal; the Collectors retorted that Grant and his agents were themselves the cause of the disorder.1 After reading some of the correspondence that passed between Grant and the Collectors in the 1780's, George Unwin saw a parallel between the situation in Bengal and developments in English social and political life. Just as in England, he said, 'the rivalry of English landlord and squire with the captain of industry has contributed in no small degree to the emancipation of the English labourer,' so in Bengal the rivalry between commercial Resident and Collector worked for the protection of the weaver.2 Grant himself would not have argued that his concern for the weavers and peasants of the Malda area was motivated solely by humanitarian considerations; on the other hand, he continually pointed out that the mistreatment of the weavers by the tax collectors was losing him money.3 He would have agreed with a later Indian Civil Servant, however, that 'the laws of God are so happily adjusted that, in benefiting the natives, 1 Many of Grant's letters to George Hatch, Collector of Dinajpur, are printed in Dinajpur District Records. His letters to Richard Goodlad, Collector of Rangapur, are printed in Official Records of Maharaja Devi Singh of Nashipur, edited by Maharaja Ranajit Singh, Calcutta, Kuntaline Press, 1914. 2 George Unwin, Studies in Economic History: The Collected Papers of George Unwin, edited by R. H. Tawney, London, MacMillan, 1927, p. 369. 8 Dinajpur District Records, p. 23, Charles Grant to George Hatch, 20 [ ?month] 1786.

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we benefit ourselves.' The difficulty for the Collectors in seeing this was that, while Grant profited from low prices and low rents, they benefited from high rents and high prices. Most of the disputes between Grant and the Collectors were concerned with the mistreatment by tax-collectors of weavers who had not paid their land rents or some other tax.2 On one occasion, for example, one of Grant's weavers had been badly beaten by a local tax-collector for refusing to pay a fee which, according to Grant, was neither legal nor customary.3 The rest of the weavers in the village refused to work until some compensation was given, and as a result Grant's production was at a complete standstill.4 Another time, the Collector complained to Grant that in one place the weavers, acting either on the advice of Grant himself or his agents, had refused to pay their rents.5 Grant's answer was that before beating and imprisoning the weavers, the Collector should have inquired into the facts. The true story, according to Grant, was that the weavers had been given a lease by the zamindar when they rented the land in 1784, and, as was customary, they returned the lease at the end of the year when they paid their rents.8 They had asked for a new lease, and although they were not given one, they were assured that the rent would be the same as the previous year. Later, after having paid part of the rent, the tax-collector suddenly demanded a fifty per cent increase.7 They tried to give the land back, but the landlord refused to take it, arguing that since they had cultivated it they were responsible for the new tax.8 The issue at stake in these and other cases, Grant was convinced, was the nature of the Company's government in Bengal. What had to be decided, he told the Dinajpur Collector, was whether the Company's rule was a system of power or a system of law.9 The Collector's complaints against him, he suggested, implied that the Collector and the Resident should act in concert to collect the revenue and to procure the Investment, without any reference to the welfare of the people, but depending only upon the use of arbitrary power.10 That this was not the intention of the Company, he said, was plain, for the Governor-General's recent regulations had insisted that a rule of 1 Parliamentary Papers, 1852-53, XXXII, Select Committee of the House of Lords, Item 6649, Evidence of Charles Trevelyan. 2 Weaving was only a part-time occupation, so most of the weavers cultivated land as well. 3 Dinajpur District Records, p. 14, Charles Grant to George Hatch, 20 [?month] 1786. 4 6 Ibid., p. 23,20 Nov. 1786. Ibid., p. 10,28 Sept. 1786. 7 8 • Ibid., p. 11,13 Oct. 1786. Ibid. Ibid. ' Ibid., p. 22,20 Nov. 1786. 10 Ibid.

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law was to be created in Bengal. Both the Resident and the Collector, therefore would have to exercise the authority delegated to them by the Company within the framework of law, not of power.2 Grant had a number of concrete suggestions to offer the Collector on the way the political administration might fulfil its function without at the same time destroying the economy through the use of violence and arbitrary exactions. Referring to the cases where weavers had been imprisoned for refusing to pay taxes, he told the Collector that 'the representation of one side only cannot be implicitly credited, and some previous inquiry must be necessary before decision.'3 This rather heavy sarcasm was especially pointed because just about this time the Collector was put in charge of all the judicial functions of his district.4 Even less tactfully, Grant said that many disputes could be easily settled if the zamindars would bring complants about the weavers to him, rather than to the Collector.5 The reason why they did not come to the Commercial Resident first, he suggested, was because they knew that if they did the weavers would receive just treatment. To prove that the zamindars were not interested in justice, but in extracting as much as they could from the peasants, Grant pointed out that on a number of occasions he had offered to advance money for the payment of his weavers' rents, but this had always been refused by the zamindars.8 The explanation was plain, he thought: the zamindars wanted to be free to make exactions beyond the agreed rents.7 In the ability of the zamindar 'to raise rents at his pleasure,' Grant saw the heart of the problem.8 There could never be a peaceful and prosperous peasantry, he insisted, until the revenue farmers and zamindars were compelled to announce, regularly and clearly, what the actual rents were to be.9 Furthermore, rents should not be raised simply at the will of the tax-farmer: there should be consultation with the peasants to determine willingness and ability to pay any new assessment.10 The dislike for zamindars and tax-farmers that Grant learned at Malda was reflected a few years later in the documents he helped prepare in connection with the Permanent Settlement.11 1

Ibid. The regulations referred to are probably those issued in July 1786 for the control of relations with the weavers (N. K. Sinha, Economic History of Bengal, I, 153). 2 Dinajpur District Records, p. 23, Charles Grant to George Hatch, 20 Nov. 1786. 3 Ibid. 4 Ibid., p. 27, Revenue Department to George Hatch, 5 Dec. 1786. 6 Ibid., p. 14, Charles Grant to George Hatch, 20 [?month] 1786. 6 Ibid., pp. 22-23, 20 Nov. 1786. ' Ibid. 8 Ibid., pp. 11-12, 13 Oct. 1786 •Ibid., p. 20, 20 Sept. 1786. 10 11 Ibid.,*p. 27, 7 Dec. 1786. See below, p. 113. 89

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Grant's most notable connection with the oppressions of the Bengal revenue officials came through Raja Devi Singh, the most notorious of the tax farmers of the time. Devi Singh was first the agent for the estates of Dinajpur during the minority of the Raja and then later tax-farmer of the Rangpur District, and his behaviour in both places provided Edmund Burke with material for some of his most colourful charges against Warren Hastings.1 Devi Singh's exactions were so outrageous that finally in 1783 the peasants were driven to rebellion.2 All through the year before the rebellion broke out, Grant had tried to get protection for the weavers in the District who worked for him. In one area, a group of his weavers who refused to pay a higher rent than they had originally contracted for were 'beaten, plundered, and driven out.' 3 When his agents reported to him that they were unable to collect any cloth in the area, since the weavers had all fled to the jungles in terror of their lives, he went to investigate for himself.4 He found the looms had been deserted for days, and, as he told the Collector, 'the people were in despair, the Investment at a stand, in a word, all the concerns in my hands threatened with irretrievable disappointment and loss.'5 Eyewitnesses gave him accounts of people who had been beaten and killed when they were unable to pay the arbitrary demands of the revenue officials.6 This cruelty and oppression, he warned the Collector, Richard Goodlad, would drive the peasants to violence unless something was done to prevent the worst of the exactions of which they complained. Aside from the brutal beatings and the increase in rents by twenty per cent, Grant found that the peasants were especially incensed by the way assessments were made.7 A sum was imposed on a village as a whole, and no attempt was made to apportion the tax according to the actual holdings of the peasants—a man with little land might be forced to pay more than another with a larger holding simply because he was weaker.8 When there was no improvement in the situation, Grant wrote a very harsh letter to the Collector reminding him that nothing had been done. 'From your own express promises to me and the whole turn of the discussion between us,' he told Goodlad, 'I persuaded myself that 1 Edmund Burke, The Works of the Right Honorable Edmund Burke, Boston, Little, Brown, 1866-67, X, 66. 2 S. B. Chaudhuri, Civil Disturbances During the British Rule in India, 1765-1857, Calcutta, the World Press, 1955, p. 60. 3 Records of Maharaja Devi Singh, p. 336, Charles Grant to Richard Goodlad, 19 Jan. 1782. 4 5 Ibid., p. 337. Ibid. " Ibid., p. 342, 'Account given to Charles Grant by eye-witnesses.' ' Ibid., p. 339, Charles Grant to Richard Goodlad, 19 Jan. 1782. «Ibid.

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these ruinous proceedings in the mofussil were without your knowledge.'1 Since the system of obtaining the Investment had just gone into operation, Grant tried to appeal to him for help on the grounds that he would be personally ruined if the weavers were so oppressed that they could not deliver the cloth for which advances had already been made.2 And even if he were moved neither by the misery of the peasants nor the personal difficulties of the Commercial Resident, the Collector should remember, Grant wrote, that there was a mutual interdependence between the peasants and the revenue system.3 Lawless exactions 'do not at all, even temporarily, benefit government or farmers in the proportion that they injure the people.'4 He offered to be responsible for the rent of his weavers on condition that there should be no increases over the previous year, but he found that the Collector and the tax-farmers were equally evasive.5 Nothing was done and shortly after Grant's last letter to Goodlad a large number of peasants rose in revolt against Devi Singh's oppressions, but, like the numerous other local insurrections of the times, it was easily put down because of the rebels' lack of leadership.8 In the investigation that followed the insurrection, Grant's letters played a prominent part since one of the main points of inquiry was the reason for Goodlad's failure to take any action against the excesses of Devi Singh's revenue officials.7 As with so many other investigations of the time, however, very little decisive action was taken, despite an apparently sincere desire on the part of the Board of Revenue to be just to the peasants.8 Counterbalancing this was the need for revenue and an unwillingness to jeopardize the existing settlement. Furthermore, there may have been a genuine question as to the extent of the cruelty practised by Devi Singh's administration, since Grant, whose accounts of oppression seem to have been the principal evidence from a Company source, might be regarded as an interested partly because of his commercial interests.9 Then, too, Devi Singh felt that he had a grievance, and he was able to submit very plausible accounts to show that he had suffered severe losses from having been cheated by the peasants.10 He would have 1

Ibid., p. 334, 30 Sept. 1782. 3 4 Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., pp. 341-44, Charles Grant to Richard Goodlad, 4 March and 30 Sept. 1782. • Chaudhuri, op. cit., pp. 58-65 gives an account of the uprising based on Records of Maharaja Devi Singh. ' Records of Maharaja Devi Singh, p. 358, Report of Rangpur Commission. 8 Hunter, Bengal MS. Records, I, No. 377, Board of Revenue to J. D. Patterson. • Records of Maharaja Devi Singh, p. 577, Report of Rangpur Commission. 10 Hunter, Bengal MS. Records, I, No. 450, Raja Devi Singh to Board of Revenue, 10 July 1783. 2

6

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agreed with the comment of Robert Grant, Charles' son, that in judging the revenue system of Bengal it was necessary to remember that the strong man who 'dominates, insults and oppresses is surely no less a victim of circumstance than the [weak man] who hates, repines and intrigues.'1 Grant found that his commercial interests led him into conflicts with the political administration, not only because of what he considered to be its unjust and unwise exactions for revenue, but also because of its failure to maintain a framework of law and order that would permit peaceful trade. As Commercial Resident, Grant had no official responsibility for the maintenance of order but was expected to work under the protection of the local zamindars and other officers who constituted the remnants of the Nawab's administration. In practice, however, Grant found that he had to provide his own police protection for the extensive network of commercial establishments that the Company had built up through the years, and that, furthermore, his most dangerous enemies were the zamindars themselves.2 The zamindars, Grant was convinced, not only failed to take any action against the gangs of bandits which made life and property in the Malda area insecure, but in many cases actually sheltered them and shared their plunder. A raid on his factory at Jagganathpur in 1783 by a large number of bandits had provided Grant with what seemed to him decisive proof of the complicity of the zamindars with the robbers.3 Grant sent out his own men—what the Dinajpur Collector accusingly referred to as an illegal private army4—and captured fifty of the robbers. 5 The raid, Grant discovered when he questioned the bandits, had been carried out under the direction of a relative of the zamindar and the plunder from the factory had been taken to the zamindar's house.6 Since criminal cases were tried by the Nawab's Court, Grant's evidence was sent there, but nothing seems to have been done.7 For Grant, this and similar incidents were proof that, no matter what the Collector might think, it was necessary for him to keep his own armed men to guard his 1

Robert Grant, A Sketch of the History of the East India Company, London, Black, Parry, 1813, p. 369. 2 Dinajpur District Records, p. 14, Charles Grant to George Hatch, 20 [?month] 1786. 3 N.A., Orig. Cons., 2 June 1783, No. 5, Charles Grant to Board of Trade. * Dinajpur District Records, p. 14, Charles Grant to George Hatch, 20 [?month] 1786. N.A., Orig. Cons., 2 June 1783, No. 5, Charles Grant to Board of Trade. «Ibid. ' Calendar of Persian Correspondence, Delhi, Government of India, 1938, VI, item 765, Governor-General to Nawab Muhammad Reza Khan, 2 June 1783.

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commerce from 'the violence of the native collectors who have the power of districts in their hands.' 1 The difficulties created for Grant both by the lawlessness of the Malda area and by the attitude towards the Commercial Residents of such law-enforcing agencies as did exist is illustrated by another colourful episode that occurred in 1783. Malda was frequently the scene of raids by the bands of naked, marauding Sannyasis which ranged widely throughout Bengal in the eighteenth century, and during the spring of 1783 they were particularly active.2 Although information about the Sannyasis is meagre and conflicting, they appear to have had some kind of religious origin and, despite their violent raids, they inspired religious veneration in the people, who tolerated them and gave them money.3 When the Sannyasis made their appearance in Malda in 1783 they did not confine themselves, as in the past, to exacting a tribute from the people but they plundered Grant's treasury.4 His own armed men, Grant felt, were inadequate to defend his factories, so he appealed to the Colonel in charge of the Company's closest military station for a detachment of troops to protect the countryside from 'the wandering and robbing fakirs.' 5 The Colonel's answer to Grant showed how widespread were misgivings among the Company's servants about the conduct of the tax collectors. He reminded Grant of the recent ruling of the Council in Calcutta against the use of troops to collect revenue and said that while he would send soldiers to Malda they must not be used to oppress the people.6 The arrival of the soldiers in Malda raised a new issue, for most of them were Hindus and they were unwilling to fight with the Sannyasis whom they regarded as holy men.7 Here, in an extreme form, was the problem that later was to become a central concern for Charles Grant and his conception of British rule in India: the question of religious interference, of imposing on Indian social custom a pattern of law and order that conflicted with the beliefs of the peo1

Dinajpur District Records, p. 14, Charles Grant to George Hatch, 20 [?month] 1786. 2 J. M. Ghosh, Sannyasi and Fakir Raiders in Bengal, Calcutta, Bengal Secretariat Book Depot, 1930, p. 21. ' Brajendranath Banerji, Dawn of New India, Calcutta, Sarkar and Sons, 1927, p. 5. In Bankim Chaterjee's famous Bengali novel, Anand Math, they are pictured as Brahmins who, ruined and dispossessed by the great famine of 1770, became the forerunners of modern nationalist movements. 4 N.A., Orig. Cons., 15 March 1783, No. 13, Charles Grant to Col. Ironside. 5 Ibid. • Ibid., No. 15, Col. Ironside to Charles Grant. 7 J. M. Ghosh, op. cit., p. 91. Ghosh gives a full account of the action taken against the Sannyasis by the Collectors of the neighbouring Districts and summarizes Grant's correspondence with them (pp. 84-100).

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pie. Law and order, Grant insisted in 1783, must take priority over religious prejudices and the sannyasis had to be defeated, even though the soldiers and people might be offended.1 When in later years Grant and his Evangelical friends argued for the necessity of interference in the religious customs of India, they tended to argue on the ground that the religious and moral imperatives of the Christian faith compelled interference, while their opponents maintained that political realities forbade such intervention.2 It is interesting, therefore, to see that in 1783 Grant's argument for intervention was the practical one that the Sannyasis were making commercial life in the district impossible and that the alternative to interference in customs which admittedly had some kind of religious sanction was the abandonment of an ordered life based on law.3 During his six years at Malda, Charles Grant was more deeply and personally involved in the life of Bengal than he had been as Secretary to the Board of Trade or than he was to be in future. His experience as Commercial Resident, especially his relations with the political administrations of the Districts where he had traded, had convinced him that the Company, even from selfish motives of private gain, should work for the prosperity of Bengal. As he rather ashamedly confessed some years later to Henry Dundas, he had at that time 'a more lively feeling of the things that seemed to tend to the immediate prosperity of that country [rather]. . . than to the combined welfare of Bengal and of Britain,' and he was disposed, he said, 'to conclude that measures which appeared to promise immediate advantages to Bengal must be on the whole right.' 4 That this attitude was not confined to Charles Grant but was probably fairly common among the Company servants is attested by two interesting entries in William Carey's diary. On his way to India in 1793 he reflected the common opinion of his time by speaking of 'the abominable East India Company' as an enemy of the progress of the people of India.5 A year or two later, however, he noted that he had 'no spirit for politics here; for whatever the East India Company may be in England, their servants and officers here are very different.'6 When Carey wrote this, he was living in Malda, working for George Udny, Grant's successor as Commercial Resident, and familiar with the Company's commercial activities.7 His judgment was in line with Grant's insistence that the original and vital impulse for the reformation of the Company's rule in India did not come from Parliament, but was a product of the experience of the Bengal servants. 1

2 Ibid., p. 91. See below, pp. 153-55. J. M. Ghosh, op. cit., and passim. 4 C.R.O., H.M.S. 406, p. 276, Charles Grant to Henry Dundas, 17 March 1801. 6 George Smith, The Life of William Carey, London, J. M. Dent, [n.d.], p. 46. • Ibid., p. 75, William Carey's 'Journal,' 27 Jan. 1795. ' Ibid. 3

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CHAPTER V

R E F O R M E R IN BENGAL in 1787, Lord Cornwallis wrote to Henry Dundas, the President of the Board of Control, that he had 'prevailed upon Mr. Charles Grant, a man of abilities and the most acknowledged worth and integrity to accept a seat on the Board of Trade, which he had refused under the former Government.' 1 Although Cornwallis tended to speak of Grant's appointment to the Board of Trade as having been made mainly in order to end moral corruption, its real significance was that it was an attempt to make the Company's Bengal trade commercially profitable, which it was rapidly ceasing to be. Although the classical argument against the Company's trading monopoly was that it 'managed its exports of Indian goods in the main as a measure of remitting the tribute it drew, with a careless eye to profit,' 2 Charles Grant's career under Cornwallis suggests how rigorous an effort was made in the late 1780's to conduct the Company's business according to ordinary commercial considerations. Grant's connection with Cornwallis began in October 1786 when all the Commercial Residents received an order to submit to the Governor-General all the financial accounts of their Residencies back to 1764.3 The origin of the demand was the conviction of the Directors that their Residents, through either 'the grossest frauds of the most shameful neglect,'4 had been cheating the Company. Prices had risen sharply in 1782 and it could not be a coincidence, the Directors thought, that this was the year in which the contract system had been adopted by the Bengal Council and the Board of Trade.5 They had every reason to believe, they told Cornwallis, that the explanation of the high prices they were being charged was collusion between the members of the Board of Trade and the Commercial Residents: in return for giving contracts to the Residents at absurdly high prices the members of the Board received very generous presents.5 Although EARLY

1

N.L.S., Melville MSS., 3385, Cornwallis to Henry Dundas, 28 Jan. 1787. S. C. Checkland, 'John Gladstone as Trader and Planter,' Economic History Review, Second Series, VII, Dec. 1954, p. 217. 8 Morris, op. cit., p. 86, Charles Grant's Journal, 15 Oct. 1786. 4 C.R.O., Secret Despatches to Bengal, I, 5-7, Directors to Cornwallis, 12 6 April 1786. Ibid. 6 Ibid. The outburst of righteous indignation in this Despatch was impressive, but not particularly novel. The Directors had very frequently complained about their servants' honesty; Richard Becher had been dismissed from the Council in 1759 for protesting against the incessant abuse by the Directors of their officials (Ascoli, op. cit., p. 37, note 1). 2

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the general condition of the Company's affairs in India had been the reason for Cornwallis' appointment, 1 a 'full and minute' investigation into the corruption of the commercial servants was given first priority by the Directors.2 As a method of procedure, they suggested that the Governor-General should get the accounts from the Commercial Residents back to 1764 so that he could see what goods had cost before the acquisition of the Diwani in 1765. Then he would be able to go through each year's accounts, requiring the Residents to explain why prices had risen through the years and especially why there had been such a sudden increase in 1782. If, as the Directors confidently expected, the Residents were unable to offer satisfactory explanations for the rise in prices, Cornwallis would then be free to remove them and make new arrangements for procuring the Investment.3 Recognizing that their new Governor-General would not be able to carry out the investigation alone, they advised him to get the assistance of 'persons of intelligence and integrity,' although, they admitted, they were not able to think of any of their Bengal servants who answered that description.4 Cornwallis was well aware that nothing in his former career had equipped him for the task of investigating the complexities of the Company's commercial accounts, but, unlike the Directors he knew that there were 'several gentlemen in the commercial line, of strict honour and eminent ability.'5 He had probably heard of Grant even before reaching India since on the voyage out he had been thoroughly briefed on Bengal conditions by John Shore,6 who would likely have mentioned his friend Charles Grant as a man on whom the GovernorGeneral could rely for commercial advice. Certainly the letter that Cornwallis wrote to Grant asking for his accounts must have been warmer and more friendly than those he sent to the other Residents, for it included not only a request for his private views but also an invitation to come to Calcutta for an interview.7 In reply to Cornwallis' request for informtion on the Company's commerce, Grant wrote a long letter which not only summarized his experience as a trader but also gave his views on the Company's 1 Charles Ross, editor, Correspondence of Charles, First Marquis Cornwallis, London, John Murray, 1959, 1, 168, Cornwallis to General Ross, 25 May 1784. Cited hereafter as Ross, Cornwallis Correspondence. 2 C.R.O., Secret Despatches to Bengal, I, 5-7, Directors to Cornwallis, 12 April 1786. 8 Ibid. 4 Ibid. 5 C.R.O., Bengal Letters Received, XXVII, 194, Cornwallis to Court, 1 Nov. 1788. 6 Teignmouth, Memoir, 1,124. 7 Morris, op. cit., p. 86, Charles Grant's Journal, 29 Oct. 1786.

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government in general. Following a technique that he was to use many times in the future, Grant argued that the Company's problems were rooted in the historical circumstances that had given rise to British power in Bengal and since these could not be altered it was useless to look for any sudden change to be produced by the passing of new laws or framing new regulations. Much could be accomplished, however, through the existing institutions by honest men carefully supervised by the higher authorities. Despite the record of recent years, it was possible, Grant told Cornwallis, to adjust the interests of the Company and its servants to the welfare of the people of Bengal with mutual benefit to all.2 Grant's arguments obviously impressed Cornwallis, for many of them appear almost verbatim in a letter Cornwallis wrote to the Directors in 1788 explaining and defending the commercial policies of his administration.3 When Grant went to Calcutta in December 1786 for his interview, he found that although the Governor-General received him 'with great politeness, [he] talked in a desultory manner about the Investments, [and] seemed to defer much to Mr. Shore.'4 Cornwallis probably had already made up his mind that just as John Shore was to be his chief assistant in revenue matters so Charles Grant would be in charge of the Company's commercial concerns in Bengal. The choice of commercial assistants was limited, and while Cornwallis could not have been sure at this time that Grant was not compromised in the contract scandals, at least he knew he was able and hardworking. These were the qualities that Cornwallis wanted most in his senior officials, for he had come out to India with every intention of controlling the whole of the Government, and what he needed was competent civil servants, not colleagues on the Council to share power with him. Cornwallis was fortunate, as Aspinall points out, that his Council were mediocre men, without any desire to exercise the considerable power they still possessed or even to offer advice; he was forced, therefore, 'to rely on departmental servants for expert knowledge.'6 However, even if he had not had a very low opinion of the abilities of his Council, Cornwallis would still have worked through subordinate officials, such as Shore and Grant, since this enabled him to create the kind of personal government, based 1 P.R.O., Cornwallis Papers, Charles Grant to Cornwallis, 29 Oct. 1786. This letter, which has already been quoted above in connection with the work of the Commercial Resident, consisted of twenty-two closely written pages. 2 Ibid. * C.R.O., Bengal Letters Received, XXVII, 192-270, Cornwallis to Court, 1 Nov. 1788. So closely does this letter reproduce not only Grant's thought but also his phraseology that it seems likely that he wrote most of it. 4 Morris, op. cit., p. 87, Charles Grant's Journal, 24 Dec. 1786. * Aspinall, Cornwallis in Bengal, p. 11.

Q

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firmly on law but under his full control, that was apparently his ideal for the Bengal administration. 1 The appointment Cornwallis gave Charles Grant in 1787 was as a member of the Board of Trade and Export Warehousekeeper.2 Since the former members had been dismissed or suspended under suspicion of corruption, Cornwallis was free to completely reconstitute the Board's membership and duties, and Grant was put in virtual control of its operations.3 As Export Warehousekeeper, he had charge of the final pricing of goods, the assignment of cargoes to ships, the payment of transportation expenses, the grading of piecegoods—in fact, most of the varied sources of profit and patronage connected with the Investment.4 In the past, the power of this office, combined with membership on the Board of Trade, had been used, it was alleged, for corrupt control of the Company's commerce; Cornwallis' hope was that it could also be used to carry out the investigation and reform demanded by the Directors. One of the great difficulties in reforming the Commercial Department, as Grant very soon discovered, was that while the Directors were insistent on reform they also demanded that the normal routines involved in procuring the Investment should continue. 'Their exigencies are so great,' he wrote to his London business agent, 'that there is never time for doing things in the best manner.' 5 The great problem, Grant realized, was one of personnel, for if the Investment ment was to be collected it was necessary to continue to make use of some of the very men who were being investigated.6 Another difficulty concerned the method to be used for getting the goods for the Investment. The Directors had ordered the abandonment of the contract system and the return to the agency system, but a sudden change in the system might result, Grant feared, in a decrease in quantity and possibly a raising of prices.7 Furthermore, since many of the Commercial servants were his old colleagues, he found it hard 'to go a step in the right direction without giving personal hurt.' 8 Despite these problems, by the end of Grant's first six months at the Board of Trade a fairly impressive beginning had been made in the reformation of the Commercial Department. In a long review of 1 Ross, Cornwallis Correspondence, I, 269-72, Cornwallis to Henry Dundas, 14 Aug. 1787. 2 N.A., Orig. Cons., 22 Jan. 1787, No. 11; and 12 March 1787, No. 10. 8 Aspinal, Cornwallis in Bengal, p. 16. 1 N.A., Orig. Cons., 14 April 1788, No. 14, Charles Grant to Board of Trade. 6 Morris, op. cit.. p. 145, Charles Grant to Thomas Raikes, 17 Sept. 1787. 6 P.R.O., Cornwallis Papers, Packet 18, Charles Grant to Cornwallis, 18 Aug. 1787. ' Ibid., Packet 10, 31 Oct. 1786. 8 Morris, op. cit., p. 145, Charles Grant to Thomas Raikes, 17 Sept. 1787.

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the state of the Company's Bengal commerce prepared in September 1787, Grant could claim that certain of the fundamental difficulties had been attacked and, if solutions had not been found, at least the groundwork had been laid for later improvements.1 There were, he thought, three basic achievements to the Board's credit: the procurement of the Company's Investment at 'prime' cost, the beginning of the re-establishment of the agency system, and the proclamation of new Regulations for the treatment of weavers and others who worked for the Company. When Charles Grant had written to Cornwallis in 1786 giving his views on the Company's trade he had insisted that the basic problems for the Company in purchasing its Investment were first of all to know the 'prime' cost of the goods—the amount actually paid to the weaver—and then to devise a purchasing method that would make the amount the Company paid approximate as closely as possible to the 'prime' cost.2 The solution of either problem obviously depended on the other, but in 1787 the immediate concern in procuring the Investment was to decide what was to be done about the Director's instruction to stop giving contracts and to revert to the agency method. Fortunately for the relations between the Board and the Home Administration, Charles Grant had never really been convinced that the contract system was the best way for ensuring that goods were bought for the Company at the cheapest price, since it was to the obvious interest of the contractor to conceal the 'prime' cost.3 Unlike the Directors, however, he thought that the contract system had important advantages which needed to be carefully considered before it was abandoned. The contractor, he pointed out, not the Company, had to stand the loss when weavers failed to deliver the cloth for which they had accepted advances; the contractors were more prompt in delivering their goods in Calcutta than were the Residents when they used the agency system; and, furthermore, the contractors had better credit than did men who were only agents.4 These were important considerations to Grant faced with the responsibility of changing the system and, against the colourful denunciations of the contractors by the Directors, they are also useful reminders that something could be said for the system. The 1 C.R.O., H.M.S. 393, Report of Commercial Occurrences, 12 Sept. 1787. This was written by Grant at the suggestion of Shore and Stuart, who were both members of the Council. Although addressed to the Governor-General, Cornwallis actually did not get a chance to read it before it was sent home (P.R.O., Cornwallis Papers, Packet 18, Charles Grant to Cornwallis, 18 Aug. 1787 and Packet 20,1 Oct. 1787). a P.R.O., Cornwallis Papers, Packet 10, Charles Grant to Cornwallis, 31 Oct. 1786. 8 4 Ibid. Ibid.

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value of the contract system was outweighed in Grant's thinking, however, by his conviction that the agency system provided a more reliable guide to the genuine cost of the articles the Company bought. 1 Another important consideration for him was that he thought a Commercial Resident acting as an agent rather than a contractor would be more likely to experiment with new methods of production and new products.2 His argument, apparently, was that the contractor would insist on a fixed standard of goods, and would be unwilling, for example, to risk buying a new grade of fabric in case he could not sell it to the Company.3 This view was in line with Grant's frequent assertion that the Company's monopoly, so far from stifling enterprise, actually contributed to it.4 For Grant, however, the real issue in the Company's commercial life was not a choice between two systems of obtaining goods for the Investment. Even with the re-establishment of the Commercial Residents as agents, rather than as contractors, certain conditions would have to be met if there was to be any genune reform in the Commercial Department. First of all, the Residents would have to be honest men, for operated by dishonest men the agency system was as liable to corruption as the contract system.6 And, he asserted, despite the impression given by the Directors in their letters, there were honourable men in the Company's service in Bengal. Having appointed honest men to the Commercial Residencies, it was necessary for those in authority to maintain 'a vigilant superintendence,' with careful auditing of all accounts;6 one of the causes of the breakdown of the former system, he said, was the failure of those in responsible positions to supervise the commercial servants.7 In the third place, if Commercial Residents were to act as agents they would have to be paid 'reasonable emoluments.'8 There could be no hope of honest work, he told Cornwallis in 1786, until the Company recognized that every servant should be allowed to return to England with a competency.9 This idea was not original with Charles Grant—it had been strenuously urged on the Directors twenty years before by Clive—but its final acceptance probably owes a good deal to him, for his facts and arguments on the subject were freely used by Cornwallis in his letter persuading the Directors that the time had come for them to set their Commercial Residents 1

2 3 Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. See below, pp. 267-69. 6 P.R.O., Cornwallis Papers, Packet 10, Charles Grant to Cornwallis, 31 Oct. 1786. ' Ibid. 7 Ibid., Packet 18, Charles Grant to Cornwallis, 18 Aug. 1787. 8 Ibid., Packet 10, Charles Grant to Cornwallis, 31 Oct. 1786. »Ibid. 4

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an example of 'fair and liberal conduct.' 1 When Cornwallis wrote that he was convinced that there were men of honour who would 'willingly exchange the temptations, dangers and discredits of the former system of concealed emoluments for an open and reasonable compensation of honest service,'2 it is not difficult to see back of him the experience and views of Charles Grant. One condition that Grant thought essential for the proper working of the agency system and the provision of the Investment at 'prime' cost did not win as ready assent as the others: this was his conviction that the Commercial Residents should be allowed to continue to carry on a private trade. 3 Since the Directors were insistent that private trade of the Residents was the root of much of the corruption of the Commercial Department and had ordered it suspended,4 Grant had to provide sound arguments for his contention in order to win Cornwallis' support. There were, he thought, two decisive reasons why a law should not be passed forbidding the Commercial Residents to trade. 5 One was that such a law would be harmful to the Bengal economy, since the Commercial Residents as private traders provided a large and stable market for a large number of producers. The other reason against making such a law was that it could not be enforced. The private trade of the Residents, he declared 'was of such a nature, that it may pass through many different channels, which cannot be traced to the fountain.' 6 Because of his work for the Company, the Resident had many connections which could never be proven, especially those with Indian merchants, for whom 'secrecy in illicit combinations is a remarkable feature' of business, and the only kind of confidence they would not break.7 These arguments of Grant's, obviously based on deep personal knowledge of the Bengal situation, convinced Cornwallis at the time that the Commercial Residents should be allowed to trade, and he repeated them to the Directors.8 In 1792, however, two years after Grant left India, he modified his position very substantially on the rights of the Residents, and suggested to the Directors that, along 1 C.R.O., Bengal Letters Received, XXVII, 211, Cornwallis to Directors, 1 Nov. 1788. 2 Ibid. 8 P.R.O., Cornwallis Papers, Packet 10, Charles Grant to Cornwallis, 31 Oct. 1786. * C.R.O., Bengal Letters Received, XXVII, 225, Cornwallis to Directors, 1 Nov. 1788. 8 P.R.O., Cornwallis Papers, Packet 10, Charles Grant to Cornwallis, 31 Oct. 1786. • Ibid. ' Ibid. » C.R.O., Bengal Letters Received, XXVII, 225, Cornwallis to Court, 1 Nov. 1788.

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with the Collectors and Judges, they too should be included in the prohibition against trading. 1 Probably the arguments of 1787 seemed less strong without Grant's powerful advocacy. Grant's ideas concerning the Company's commerce were put into practice for obtaining the Investment in 1787 and, he claimed, they worked satisfactorily in purchasing goods at the cheapest figure compatible with the welfare of the people and the long-range interests of the Company.2 He also succeeded in largely replacing the contractors with Commercial Residents who were to act simply as purchasing agents, although, he admitted, there were not enough competent servants to allow appointments to be made everywhere.3 Despite these successes, he was faced, however, with the very embarrassing task of having to explain to the Directors why, when they had ordered an Investment worth eighty-seven lakhs, only seventy lakhs worth of goods had been bought by the Board of Trade.4 As Grant was well aware, shortages in the Investment were regarded by the Directors as one of the most vivid proofs that the old Board of Trade had practised a 'confederate and corrupt system of management.'5 What happened, they charged, was that while they were told that goods were not available for the Investment in Bengal, at the same time the Company's ships were leaving Bengal laden with the private goods of the Residents.6 It was obvious, they thought, that Residents were taking the best goods for themselves, and then sending what was left as the Investment.7 Grant knew that the Directors would have reason to suppose that collusion still existed in the Board of Trade when they learned that at the same time he was having trouble filling their demands for the Investment he had given the private traders a large amount of cargo space on the Company's ships.8 Although he explained to Cornwallis that this was possible because of the unexpected deficiency in the Investment,9 he realized that the Directors would regard it with great suspicion. Therefore he carefully marshalled his arguments to explain what had happened. The Directors saw deficiencies in quantity and quality of the 1

Cornwallis to Court, 2 May 1792, quoted by Aspinal, Cornwallis in Bengal, p. 29. •C.R.O., H.M.S. 393, p. 5, Report on Commercial Occurrences, 12 Sept. 1787. 8 4 Ibid., p. 2. Ibid., pp. 3,31. 5 C.R.O., Bengal Despatches, XVI, 589, Commercial Department, 27 March 1787. 6 7 Ibid., p. 616. Ibid. 8 P.R.O., Cornwallis Papers, Packet 18, Charles Grant to Cornwallis, 18 Aug. 1787. * C.R.O., H.M.S. 393, pp. 27-31, Report on Commercial Occurrences, 12 Sept. 1787.

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Investment as a sure indication of either fraud or negligence on the part of their commercial servants in Bengal, while Grant found explanations in circumstances in Bengal over which the Residents and the Board of Trade had no control. The small Investment of 1787, he insisted, was a reflection of a shortage of goods produced by a number of events, chief of which was the violent rains which had caused floods throughout the province.1 As a result, the silk cocoons had been totally destroyed in many areas so that raw silk production had suffered greatly. So great was the general damage done by the flood, Grant told the Directors, that in the great area of Bihar the Investment contractor had found that he was unable to fulfil his contract and had returned the money that had been advanced to him by the Board. But it was not only natural disasters that had to be taken into account; other factors, which Grant regarded as of extreme importance for the Company's economy, had been at work. In Dacca, one of the main areas for obtaining goods for the Investment, the attempt of the Board of Trade to carry out the reforms desired by the Directors had been largely responsible, he pointed out, for a very small supply of goods.2 In the course of investigating the accounts of the different Residents, the Board had discovered that the Dacca Resident was especially untrustworthy and therefore had refused to employ him.3 While he thought that in the long run the Company would undoubtedly profit from this action, Grant wanted the Directors to understand that in the beginning reform might be more costly than corruption, since it was not always possible to find a person capable of taking charge of a large area such as Dacca. Another difficulty he mentioned was the extremely high rate of exchange that was charged in 1787 on the Company's 'paper' by the Indian bankers in Dacca; this was one of the continuing effects, he argued, of Hastings' foreign policy.4 The failure to procure all the goods for the Investment of 1787 also raised, Grant realized, the fundamental problem of the prices that should be paid to the weavers. The pressure from the Directors to buy cloth cheaply was very great, and Grant knew that this insistence on low prices was a reflection of the increasing competition that Indian textiles were meeting from machine-made cloth.5 But he was also very conscious that while it would be possible to force cloth 1

8 3 Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., and N.A., Pub. Proc., 14 Sept. 1787, No. 23, Charles Grant to Council, 18 April 1786. 5 David MacPherson, Annals of Commerce, London, Nicols, 1805, IV, 80, gave 1785 as the date when it became plain that Bengal 'which for thousands of years stood unequalled in the fabric . . . of fine cotton goods' was to be outclassed by Lancashire. MacPherson dedicated his book to Charles Grant, who was then Chairman of the Company, and the other Directors. 4

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from the manufacturers at a lower price than had been paid in recent years, the result would be even further deterioration in quality, and that this inferior cloth would have even more difficulty in finding a market than better cloth at higher prices.1 Thus both the Company and Bengal would suffer. It was clear, he argued, that if the Company looked for the establishment of a permanent system of British power in Bengal, then positive encouragement would have to be given to the weavers to improve the quality of their goods and at the same time a price level would have to be maintained that would permit competition in the British and European market. 2 Although both the Directors in London and the Board of Trade in Calcutta were aware how serious a situation had been created for Bengal textiles by increased prices in India and technological changes in Britain, they could not agree on the kind of remedial action that was necessary. In the extremely controversial discussions of the Company's responsibility for the decay of the Bengal textile industry at the end of the eighteenth century, it has often been forgotten that the Company's alternatives at this time were very limited, if any actually existed.3 Powerful though the Company was in British politics, it could do very little about the clamorous demands of the British cotton manufacturers for protection from the competition by Indian cloth.4 The later excises on Indian textiles and the failure to give any kind of protection in the Indian market to local manufacturers were products of a time when the Company's political power was weakening; Company officials, including Charles Grant, protested in vain against them.6 In the 1780's, one suggestion made by the Directors was that cotton-piece goods, since they were losing their market, should be replaced in the Investment by shipments of raw cotton.6 This, they thought, would benefit the Indian producers as well as relieving the 1 P.R.O., Cornwallis Papers, Packet 10, Charles Grant to Cornwallis, 31 Oct. 1786. 4 N.A., Pub. Proc., 14 Sept. 1787, No. 23, Charles Grant to Council, 18 April 1786. 3 R. C. Dutt, The Economic History of British India, London, Kegan Paul, 1902, pp. 256-69, is a typical and influential statement of the case against the Company and British economic policies in Bengal. 1 A. Redford, Manchester Merchants in Foreign Trade, 1794-1858, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1934, pp. 110-11. The famous 'Calico Acts' of the eighteenth century were not aimed at protecting British cotton from Indian competition, however; they were meant to protect woollen cloth from the competition of any cotton goods, home or foreign (Statutes at Large, 1 George I c. 7 and 9 George II c. 4). 6 Parliamentary Papers, 1821, VI, Paper 746, p. 304, Third Report on Foreign Trade, Evidence of Charles Grant. 6 N. K. Sinha, Economic History of Bengal, 1,28.

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British manufacturers from dependence on American supplies. The Board of Trade, however, saw an insuperable objection to any large development to trade in raw cotton since the production was not great enough to allow for large exports and at the same time meet local demands.1 This being so, it seemed obvious to the Board that the Indian cotton manufacturers would have first priority since 'it would be an act of extreme hardship not to say injustice and cruelty to this country to throw its poor manufacturers out of employ by depriving them of the material on which their labour and subsistence depend.'2 The Board made an effort in 1787 to improve the quality of Bengal cloth by introducing a new system of reeling thread, but apparently no attempt was made to use the more complex machines which were being used in England.3 Even if this had been done, it is doubtful, given the prevailing conditions of Bengal, that it would have been successful. Grant's later surmise was probably correct that without very considerable change in social thinking and reorganization the peasants would have been unwilling to have adopted new methods requiring fundamental alterations in their habits.4 While the new Board of Trade was not particularly successful in introducing any new methods into textile production, it was able to make a very significant contribution to the creation of a legal framework for the relations between the Company's government and the people. This contribution was embodied in the 'Regulations for Weavers,' which were issued by the Council in July 1787.5 Although specifically concerned with only a small section of the population of Bengal, the weavers who worked for the Company, the 'Regulations' enunciated principles that made clearer than almost any other previous declaration the assumption that the Company's Council in Calcutta was the effective legislative body for the province. Theoretically, legislation for the welfare of the people was still the concern of the Nawab's government, and as late as 1790 a member of the Council, apparently unaware of the changes that had taken place around him, registered his dissent to certain decisions of the Council 1

Ibid., pp. 28-29. Proceedings of the Board of Trade, 1 Aug. 1788, quoted by N. K. Sinha, Economic History of Bengal, 1,29. 3 N. K. Sinha, Economic History of Bengal, 1,27-28. 4 Charles Grant, 'Observations on the State of Asia,' p. 79. One of the best discussions of British commercial policy in Bengal at the end of the eighteenth century is given by C. J. Hamilton, The Trade Relations between England and India (1600-1896), Calcutta, Thacker, Spink, 1919, pp. 99-184. 6 Regulations for Weavers, More Particularly Those in the Company's Employ, with a General Supplementary Article, Passed by the Right Honourable the Governor General in Council on the 23rd July 1787, Calcutta, the Honourable Company's Press, 1787. Cited hereafter as Regulations for Weavers. 2

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on the ground that they implied it possessed a legislative function. 1 The 'Regulations' of 1787, however, were based on the premise that the Council could not only pass legislation but enforce it. Charles Grant was the author of the 'Regulations' and, according to Cornwallis, his main purpose in framing them was to end the oppression of the weavers by the Commercial Residents.2 For Cornwallis, the worst feature of the Commercial Department was not the dishonesty of the Residents in dealing with the Company but their cruelty in forcing weavers to take advances and then paying them less for the finished work than it was worth. 3 This abuse of their power by the Residents not only harmed the weavers but also led to quarrels with the foreign traders who were prevented from making contracts. Grant's 'Regulations,' Cornwallis told Henry Dundas, 'were admirably well-calculated to relieve . . . distress and to prevent . . . disputes.'4 For Grant himself, the fundamental purpose of the 'Regulations' was to provide for Bengal a substitute for the laws of contract which, he believed, were the basis of European commerce and the lack of which in India led to oppression and fraud. 5 As a Resident, he had seen many cases of weavers being cruelly treated to force them to accept advances of money when they did not want to work for a particular trader and then being refused final payments when they delivered the cloth.6 But he knew that it was not just the traders who were at fault: weavers would accept advances from the Company and then sell the finished goods secretly at night to foreigners and private traders.7 The 'Regulations' were designed, therefore, to establish contractual relationships between the weavers and those for whom they worked, and, as Grant emphasized in his explanation for the Directors, they were primarily intended to improve the Company's commerce.8 In this process, however, he was convinced that the welfare of the people of Bengal would also be served. The 'Regulations' began with the declaration that once a weaver had accepted advances from the Company he was required to deliver the stated amount of cloth.9 To enforce this rule, which Grant considered a basic need for commerce, two further regulations were made. One, aimed at the private traders and representatives of foreign companies, made any person liable to prosecution who bought cloth 1

Aspinall, Cornwallis in Bengal, pp. 163-64. N.L.S., Melville MSS., 3385, Cornwallis to Henry Dundas, 14 Aug. 1787. 4 Ibid. Ibid. 6 C.R.O., H.M.S. 393, p. 287, Report on Commercial Occurrences, 6 Aug. 1789. " N.A., Orig. Cons., 21 April 1786, No. 17A, Charles Grant to Council. ' Ibid., 7 Oct. 1782, No. 7. 8 C.R.O., H.M.S. 393, p. 287, Report on Commercial Occurrences, 6 Aug. 1789. 9 Regulations for Weavers, Art. I. 2

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from weavers who had accepted the Company's advances.1 This was a clear assertion of the primacy of the Company's power over all rivals, and seems to have been especially intended to prevent the French, with whom Grant had had such bitter quarrels at Malda, from reestablishing themselves, since, as the French complained, during the war years the Company had been free to bring all the best weavers into its employ.2 The other regulation for preventing the weavers defaulting on their deliveries to the Company gave the Commercial Residents the right to set 'peons' or guards over workmen to ensure that they fulfilled their contracts.3 The brutality of these guards, who were quartered in the workmen's houses, had been one of the most frequent complaints made by the weavers against the Company's servants4 but Grant felt that the system could not be abandoned until a stronger sentiment existed in favour of keeping contracts.5 The provisions for protecting the Company's interests were matched by regulations that carefully defined the rights of the weavers and gave the grounds on which they could legitimately complain of ill-treatment. For example, the Resident and his agents were forbidden to use any form of compulsion to force the weavers to work for the Company, and if they did not pay the prices they had promised, the weavers could expect to be protected by the Courts.6 The likelihood that the 'peons' who were set to guard defaulting weavers would use their position to extort money or goods was recognized, and provision was made for the weavers to complain if they felt that they had been mistreated.7 Although 'false or frivolous complaints' were to be punished, an attempt was made to set up a judicial system that would give, as the existing Courts did not, an opportunity for a peasant to have his grievances heard without too much difficulty.8 If a wrong was committed by an Indian agent, the weavers were first to seek redress from the Commercial Resident, but if the Resident did not listen, or if he himself were involved, then they could appeal to the Collector.9 An important principle was involved in this provision, for it tended to make the Resident responsible for the conduct of his Indian agents instead of allowing him to escape censure for wrong-doing in his area with the plea that he had been unaware of what his agents were doing.10 After having been heard by the Collector, if the weavers were still convinced they had been 1

Ibid., Art. V. N. K. Sinha, Economic History of Bengal, 1,46. 3 Regulations for Weavers, Art. III. 4 Proc., Board of Trade, Dec. 1789, quoted by N . K. Sinha, op. cit. 6 Regulations for Weavers, Art. VII. 9 Ibid., Art. VII. 7 8 9 Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. 10 N.A., Orig. Cons., 21 April 1786, No. 17A, Charles Grant to Council. 2

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unjustly treated, they were permitted to send a delegation to present their case to the Governor General.1 Although most of the regulations were directly concerned with the weavers' relations to the Company's commerce, some of them covered a wider area. One, very definitely reflecting Grant's former troubles with the zamindars and the Collectors, forbade the imprisonment of the Company's weavers without prior discussion of the case with the Commercial Resident.2 Another suggestion that Grant had made in the past to the Collector of Dinajpur was embodied in the rule that declared that no taxes or dues of any kind would be legal that had not been previously made known by public announcement.3 The 'Regulations' ended with the injunction that all of the Company's servants, whether in the 'Revenue or in the Commercial or in the Judicial line,' should treat the workers 'with kindness and encouragement.'4 While the inclusion of these sentiments in a formal commercial code does not necessarily imply that they were followed, at least they suggest a concern on the part of the Company's government for the welfare of the people. While Grant was busy reforming the Commercial Department, a letter arrived from the Directors containing new accusations against the Commercial Residents and the members of the old Board of Trade.5 The first one, on which Cornwallis had acted by bringing Grant into the Board of Trade, had made only general charges® but the letter that arrived in August 1787, just as Grant was completing plans for the Investment, gave the names of all those who were considered to have been guilty of collusion in obtaining their contracts from the Board of Trade in 1782 and afterwards.7 Among the list of names was Charles Grant's own.8 Although this accusation was of great personal importance to Grant—some of the others charged at this time spent their fortunes trying to get their names cleared9 —it was also of great significance to the Bengal Administration. Since Cornwallis had given such wide powers to Grant and depended upon him for practically all his information regarding the Company's commerce, any doubt cast upon Grant's personal integrity might have had a disastrous effect on the programme of reform that 1

Regulations for Weavers, Art. VII. 3 4 Ibid., Art. IX. Ibid., Art. VII. Ibid., Art. XIV. 6 C.R.O., Bengal Despatches, XIV, Commercial Dept., 27 March 1787. • C.R.O., Secret Despatches to Bengal, I, Directors to Cornwallis, 12 April 1786. ' P.R.O., Cornwallis Papers, Packet 18, Charles Grant to Cornwallis, 18 Aug. 1787. • Ibid. " Aspinal, Cornwallis in Bengal, pp. 31-35, discusses the charges; also Furber, John Company at Work, pp. 332-36. 2

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had been initiated in the Commercial Department. Grant's reaction to the charges and his defence of his honesty became, therefore, of very considerable political importance. He was not surprised, Grant wrote to Cornwallis, that 'at length the rage of the Company and the public break forth uncontrolled against the past system here.' 1 The first step in carrying out the wishes of the Directors to prosecute those who were charged with having robbed the Company, he advised Cornwallis, would be to file Bills in Equity and to begin the process of investigation at once. But, he warned, this would not be an easy task; as he had written a year before, if a Commercial Resident wanted to conceal his trading connections, it was difficult to unravel them.2 Also, if the Directors intended 'to throw out . . . those who may have been involved in illegal practices,' there would be the problem of finding men to replace them. 'It would be very desirable,' he suggested, if the Directors would first arrange for 'a succession of men of talent and experience, which the younger part of the service seem but sparingly to furnish.' 3 The truth was, he said, that 'the indiscriminate censures' of the Directors tended 'to console the irregular [rather] than to encourage perseverance in the path of duty.' 4 Although Grant knew that Cornwallis had no doubts about his integrity, he realized that circumstantial evidence was against him. He had been the Secretary of the Board of Trade when the silk contracts were made in the 1770's, and these were especially singled out by the Directors as examples of collusion between the Board and the Residents.6 Then he himself had been appointed a Resident and received extremely lucrative contracts which had made his fortune in a few years. In addition, there was an arrangement with his old friend Richard Becher which looked extremely dubious. And the very fact of having been a contractor, of having lived in a society where many wrong things were done, reflected, as he said, 'a kind of dark shade.'6 To clear himself from suspicion, Grant wrote Cornwallis an enormous letter of defence and explanation to which he added a collection of his correspondence with the Board of Trade and 1 P.R.O., Cornwallis Papers, Packet 10, Charles Grant to Cornwallis, 1787. 2 See above, p. 101. 3 P.R.O., Cornwallis Papers, Packet 18, Charles Grant to Cornwallis, 1787. 4 Ibid., Packet 19,19 Sept. 1787. 6 C.R.O., Secret Despatches to Bengal, I, 5, Directors to Cornwallis, 1786. • P.R.O., Cornwallis Papers, Packet 19, Charles Grant to Cornwallis, 1787.

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Council through the years. His line of defence was simply to give a detailed recapitulation of his relations with the Board of Trade and his conduct as a contractor and to urge the Council to investigate his statements to see if they were not accurate. If he had wanted to make money dishonestly, he argued, the time to have started would have been when he was Secretary of the Board of Trade; yet it was common knowledge that during those years he was deeply in debt.2 As far as the silk contracts were concerned, he had not taken a silk contract in his first year at Malda.3 If the one he received the second year was given in collusion with members of the Board, then he had 'been found in the poorest line of collusive practice,' for he had made very little. To make his position clearer, he swore under oath before the Council that he had never given any member of the Board or anyone else any money or consideration of any kind in return for the contracts he had received.4 As for the very large profits he had made, he urged the Council to go into his contracts through the years, 'as if the terms were still to be made,' and if any error or 'sinister design' were found he would reimburse the Company for any loss it had suffered.5 He would not deny, he said, that his years at Malda were profitable, but he trusted that the Council would ascribe this, as he did, to the favour of Providence.6 Since Grant spent considerable effort in explaining to Cornwallis the nature of his financial relationship with Richard Becher, either there must have been some talk about this in Calcutta or Grant, always sensitive to reflections on his moral character, realized there might be. Becher had returned to India in 1781 after having lost his fortune in England, and the Council, in recognition of his past services, had made him a member of the Board of Trade. Thus he was a member of the Board when Grant received his first contracts. The possibility of scandal arose because the silk contract that the Board had given Grant in 1782 was really Becher's.7 What had happened, he explained, was that out of friendship, he had offered to take the Malda silk contract and to give the profit to Becher; he assumed that the Board, knowing Becher's difficulties, would give him a 'handsome' contract.8 Becher had at first refused Grant's offer, but finally had agreed since Grant still owed him £700 in England.9 Becher himself had not voted on the contract since he was away 1 N.A., Pub. Proc., Minutes of Consultation, 14 Sept. 1787 gives the letter and attached correspondence in over 130 closely written folio sheets. The copy of Grant's letter to Cornwallis dated 14 Sept. 1787 cited in this study is from C.R.O., Bengal Pub. Cons., 14 Sept. 1787, pp. 95-121. 2 C.R.O., Bengal Pub. Cons., 14 Sept. 1787, p. 97, Charles Grant to Cornwallis. 8 4 6 Ibid., p. 105. Ibid., p. 110. Ibid., p. 116. 6 8 Ibid., p. 120. ' Ibid., p. 106. Ibid. »Ibid.

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from Calcutta when it was finally awarded.1 Although Becher died shortly afterwards, Grant had paid the profits from the silk contract into his estate, and this action, he argued, absolved him of any charge of having acted collusively to gain a contract for his own profit.2 This explanation, like Grant's others, was both complex and plausible enough to suggest that while Grant had not been guilty of collusion the normal working of the Board of Trade was such as to make possible transactions that if not illegal were at least extremely dubious. One of the members of the old Board illustrated this when he remarked that while he had received gifts of money which presumably came from contractors he had regarded these as 'the established perquisites of [his] office,' especially since the practice must have been known to the Governor-General and Council.3 Even before Cornwallis had received Grant's letter of explanation he had written that 'all investigation must redound to [Grant's] honour,' 4 and the Council's formal action expressing 'complete satisfaction [with] the truth of Mr. Grant's statement' 5 was almost a foregone conclusion. Not only did Cornwallis regard Grant as a personal friend, but he had lost interest in the indignant accusations of the Directors. When he had first arrived he had spoken of 'Augean stables'6 but after a year he had realized how difficult it was to apportion blame. There were many Company servants in Bengal, he told the Directors in response to their most recent accusations, who were 'as honourable men as ever lived; they have committed no fault except that of submitting to the extortion of their superiors; they had no reason to expect support if they had complained.'7 Charles Grant's information can be very clearly seen in this comment, for Grant had just explained to Cornwallis that although he had suspected that there were corrupt practices at the Board of Trade when he was Secretary, he had done nothing about it, since he knew he would not be supported by the higher authorities.8 Nor was it possible for British politicians to be self-righteous about the corruption in Bengal, Cornwallis sharply reminded Dundas; it was he and Pitt who had thought of letting Sir John MacPherson return to 1 2 Ibid. Ibid. ® C.R.O., Auditors' References, VI, 1792-94, William Rooke to Directors, 11 Feb. 1787. Furber./oAn Company at Work, pp. 332-34, gives an extensive quotation from this interesting letter. 4 Morris, op. cit., p. 150, Charles Grant to Cornwallis, 27 Aug. 1787. 6 N.A., Orig. Cons., 14 Sept. 1787, No. 23. 6 Ross, Cornwallis Correspondence, I, 233, Cornwallis to Henry Dundas, 30 Nov. 1786. 7 Ibid., p. 306, Cornwallis to John Motteux, 16 Dec. 1787. 8 C.R.O., Bengal Pub. Proc., 14 Sept. 1787, pp. 95-96.

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India despite the fact that his government had been 'a system of the dirtiest jobbing.' 1 After the excitement over the charges subsided, Grant continued with Cornwallis' full support to overhaul the Company's commercial establishment. One of his most important achievements after 1787 was the complete reorganization of the Export Warehouses, the department that had charge of final arrangements for the Investment, including pricing and shipping.2 Although Cornwallis regarded the Warehouses as a 'sink of corruption,' 3 after a careful study of their management Grant came to the conclusion that the fault was not so much the dishonesty of previous Export Warehousekeepers and their staffs as the confused accounting system and the antiquated facilities for storage and loading.4 He installed mechanical cranes to help in the faster loading of ships but he advised Cornwallis that very extensive and costly reconstruction of warehouses, offices and quays was essential if the Company's trade was to be profitable.5 The argument back of this recommendation is the same one that Cornwallis constantly reiterated to the Directors: reform was costly and might be more immediately expensive to the Company than the old system.6 Grant's 'new and comprehensive plan' for improving the accounting system of the Export warehouses7 was also in line with the general direction taken by Cornwallis' reforms. Just as Cornwallis came to the conclusion that the only way to secure even a minimum of justice for the people of Bengal was to fill all judicial posts with the Company's British personnel,8 so Grant decided that the 'defective and backward' condition of the export system was due to the employment of Indians in important clerical posts.9 The methods of accounting and of taking inventories used by the Indian clerks made it impossible, he discovered, for the Export Warehousekeeper to examine the course of transactions.10 This meant that he was entirely dependent on the clerks for any information and, consequently, they were able 'to modify accounts according to their own ideas.'11 The general confusion of the accounts were further confounded, he said, by the fact that they were kept in Bengali, with only brief summaries 1

Ross, Cornwallis Correspondence, I, Cornwallis to Dundas, 1 Nov. 1788. See above, p. 98. 3 N.L.S., Melville MSS., 3385, Cornwallis to Henry Dundas, 14 Aug. 1787. 4 N.A., Orig. Cons., 4 Feb. 1788, No. 16, Charles Grant to Board of Trade. 6 Ibid. 6 Ross, Cornwallis Correspondence, I, 533, Cornwallis to Directors, 3 Nov. 1788. ' N.A., Orig. Cons., 4 Feb. 1788, No. 16, Charles Grant to Board of Trade. 8 Ross, Cornwallis Correspondence, II, 200-01. 9 N.A., Orig. Cons., 4 Feb. 1788, No. 16, Charles Grant to Board of Trade. 10 11 Ibid. Ibid. 2

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in English which were useless for prompt and accurate reference.1 Grant's solution for these difficulties was the employment of qualified European accountants to keep all the Company's commercial accounts, including invoices and inventories, in English.2 For Grant, the arguments for these innovations were incontrovertible: the moral and intellectual superiority of the Europeans would give more honest management, while the use of English, through lessening the influence of Indian clerks, would give the Company's officials surer control of the Commercial Department. 3 It was his belief in the validity of these same arguments that made him see Cornwallis' judicial reform as an act of 'providential blessing,' since 'the mean retainers' who formerly made the courts 'the vilest perversion of legal power' were replaced by Company servants who were 'men of principle and ability,' tempering the barbarous laws of the country with 'the mildness of English sentiments.'4 Although Grant's main concern was with the reform and reorganization of the Company's commerce, he had a very close connection with the creation of the Permanent Settlement, the most famous as well as the most controversial of all the reforms of the period. Apart from the fact that the question of a proper revenue system for Bengal had been the most debated public issue throughout his whole Indian career, there were a number of special reasons why, as he said in his old age, he knew enough about land revenue not to be misled by 'conjectural, hypothetical reasonings.'5 As a commercial servant, revenue collection had been of almost as much concern to him as trade since the whole complex process of obtaining the Investment was bound up with the transfer of funds from the Collector to the Resident.6 Furthermore, as he so frequently insisted to the tax-officials in his area, trade could never flourish as long as it was dependent upon a people who were oppressed by the violence and injustice of a completely arbitrary tax system.7 This practical interest in the nature of the revenue system was strengthened by his close friendship with three men who took more interest in the problems of the Bengal revenues than probably anyone else in their time.8 One of these was Richard Becher, whose plan for English supervisors Grant regarded as one of the great landmarks in the Company's administrative history; the others were John Shore and 1

a 8 Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Charles Grant, 'Observations on the State of India,' pp. 21-22. 5 C.R.O., Appendix to Court Minutes, IV, pp. 39-40, Dissent of Charles Grant, 28 Aug. 1822. • See above, pp. 58 and 65. 7 See above, pp. 86-94. 8 Nottingham, Portland MSS., 56, Charles Grant to Lord William Bentinck, 28 March 1806. 1

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his cousin James Grant. It was these two men who provided the technical information on the Bengal revenue and debated its significance—Shore, in his Minutes as member of the Council, and James Grant in a lengthy treatise.1 Finally, Grant could claim a very special connection to the Permanent Settlement because it was he, not one of the Company's servants employed in the Revenue Department, who drafted the letter in 1792 by which the Court of Directors formally created the Permanent Settlement.2 His interpretation of the meaning and purpose of the Settlement had, therefore, not only a background of commercial experience but also of detailed knowledge. According to Grant, the great problem that faced Cornwallis in the revenue administration was to end the 'insecurity and distrust' produced by Hastings' measures.3 In the past, he argued, the great stability of Indian society, which had allowed it to withstand great political change and repeated foreign invasions, had been due to the system of fixed land tenures.4 Even before the establishment of British power this system had been destroyed in Bengal by the Persian and other adventurers who had seized power in the early eighteenth century but conditions had grown worse, he believed, in Hastings' administration. The great evil was annual leases, for these meant insecurity of tenure and the arbitrary fixing of rents according to what the tax collectors thought the peasants could pay, with the result that industry was 'wholly discouraged, for it was taxed in proportion to its exertion.'5 What Grant thought was needed was permanent tenure and fixed rent; given these, the peasants would flourish and the whole economy of Bengal would be stimulated.6 The two great decisions that had to be made by Cornwallis were, first of all, with whom a revenue settlement should be made, and, secondly, for how long a period the rate of taxation should be fixed. In regard to the first question, there was no real controversy, since there was general agreement that under existing conditions a settlement had to be made with the zamindars.7 Despite James 1 Firminger, The Fifth Report, II, Appendices 1 and 5, Minutes of John Shore; pp. 159-477, James Grant, 'Historical and Comparative Account of the Finances of Bengal.' 2 Nottingham, Portland MSS., 56, op. cit. 8 Pari. Debates, XXVI, 518, speech by Charles Grant, 2 June 1813. 4 Nottingham, Portland MSS., 56, op. cit. 6 Pari. Debates, XXVI, 518, op. cit. « Dinajpur District Records, pp. 22-23, Charles Grant to George Hatch, 20 Nov. 1786. 7 H.R.C. Wright, 'Some Aspects of the Permanent Settlement in Bengal,' The Economic History Review, Second Series, VII, Dec. 1954, pp. 204-15.

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Mill's famous and influential argument that Cornwallis made the settlement with the zamindars because of his prejudices in favour of the land-owning class to which he himself belonged, the decision was based on expediency, not doctrine.1 According to Grant, Cornwallis thought that the question of actual ownership was of no real concern and that he was only interested in finding a solution which would be both just and administratively sound.2 Grant himself accepted the argument of his cousin James Grant that the records of Bengal showed indisputably that 'the sovereign was proprietor,' 3 not in the feudal European sense, 'implying a fictitious tenure as lord paramount,' but 'in right and fact the actual landlord.'4 The Administration was free, therefore, to make any arrangement for the payment of land rents that it saw fit; and Grant's personal preference would have been for arrangements to have been made directly with the peasants as the effective occupiers of the soil.5 He realized, however, that since this would have required years of preparation and the services of far more revenue officials than the Company possessed, Cornwallis had no real alternative but to make the zamindars into landlords.6 Although in the past the zamindars had been merely 'officers of government for the collection of rent [and] removable at pleasure,' the government had the right, as the actual owner of the land, to give them a new status as landlords.7 Unlike the establishment of the zamindari, the question of the duration of the tax assessment was the subject of a long controversy between Cornwallis and John Shore. Knowing how uncertain much of the knowledge concerning the Bengal revenue really was, Shore wanted to make a settlement that would be fixed for ten years and then be reviewed in the light of experience.8 Cornwallis was convinced, however, that only the declaration by the Government that the land taxes were settled in perpetuity would bring security to the Bengal economy.9 For Grant, with his deep dislike of the Bengal taxcollectors, Cornwallis' plan appeared to be a sound basis for economic prosperity and an effective way of ensuring that no future administration would permit a restoration of the system that he had observed during his years at Malda. 1

Ibid. Pari. Debates, XXVI, 519, op. cit. Ibid., 518. 4 Firminger, Fifth Report, II, James Grant, 'Analysis . . . of the Finances of Bengal.' 6 Nottingham, Portland MSS., 56, op. cit. 6 Ibid. 7 Pari. Debates, XXVI, 518, loc. cit. 8 Firminger, Fifth Report, II, 478-501, Minute of John Shore, 18 Sept. 1789. ' Ibid., pp. 510-15, Minute of Cornwallis, 18 Sept. 1789. 2

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Grant's sympathy for Cornwallis' point of view meant that although both he and John Shore returned to England while the nature of the Settlement was still under discussion, it was he, not Shore, who Cornwallis 'commissioned . . . to explain and recommend to . . . the authorities . . . the great measure of the perpetual settlement.'1 Although Grant reached England in 1790, two years later he had to report that Henry Dundas, who as President of the Board of Control was the most important of those to whom he had to explain Cornwallis' views, had not been able to find time to consider the Bengal revenue system.2 Dundas' excuse for the long delay was that the Directors were opposed to the idea of the Settlement being permanent, and therefore he had waited until he could get Pitt to lend him his support. 3 This was especially necessary, he thought, since the Directors had Shore on their side with his great prestige and knowledge. Finally in September 1792 Pitt was free to consider Cornwallis' plans, and although Dundas had already accepted the idea of a Perpetual Settlement Grant was called in for further advice and explanation. At their request, he drafted a letter which could be used as a basis for a despatch to Bengal ordering the establishment of a Permanent Settlement,4 and this letter was adopted by the Directors. 'What I expected, happened'; Dundas told Cornwallis, 'the subject was too large for the consideration of the Directors in general, and the few who knew anything concerning it, understanding from me that Mr. Pitt and I were decided in our opinions, thought it best to acquiesce, so they came to a resolution to adopt the despatch entirely as transmitted by me.5 The Despatch to Cornwallis ordering the establishment of the Permanent Settlement showed many traces of Grant's authorship. 6 The relation of the Settlement to the improvement of trade and commerce was emphasized and the past revenue system condemned on the grounds that it had 'reduced everything to temporary expedient [and] destroyed all enlarged views of improvement.' The interior of Bengal had been the scene of a 'degrading struggle' as the Collectors, caring nothing for the economic prosperity of the people, tried to increase revenue. The description of the zamindars as being well known for their 'ignorance, incapacity and want of principle' was characteristic of Grant's attitude as was the statement that good 1

Nottingham, Portland MSS., 56, op. cit. Ross, Cornwallis Correspondence, II, 182, Charles Grant to Cornwallis, 24 May 1782. 3 Ibid., p. 213, Henry Dundas to Cornwallis, 17 Sept. 1792. 4 Nottingham, Portland MSS., 56, op. cit. 6 Ross, Cornwallis Correspondence, II, 213, op. cit. ' Parliamentary Papers, 1810, V, Second Report on the Affairs of the East India Company, Appendix 12A, Directors to Governor-General, 12 Sept. 1792. 2

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laws which worked for the 'order, equity and improvement of the people' would also lead to the extension of commerce. His belief in the necessity of careful supervision of the whole administration by the authorities was expressed in the reminder that although the settlement was permanent, the Government was not abrogating its right to 'interfere from time to time . . . for the protection of the people,' especially in a country where 'the powerful are oppressive and the weak fraudulent.' 1 Although Grant regarded the Permanent Settlement as a 'boon and a blessing,'2 he did not consider that it was the pattern that should necessarily be followed whenever revenue settlements were to be made. In later years, as Chairman of the Company, he opposed the extension of the Bengal system to Madras, supporting instead the proposal made by the Governor, Lord William Bentinck, that the settlement should be made directly with the peasants rather than with landlords.3 This plan, Grant told Bentinck, had the 'evident and essential benefit . . . [of] removing the middle man . . ., for the corrupt and faithless zamindar . . . almost always in one mode or another oppressed the ryots placed under him: more openly and boldly if he be powerful, more artfully and knowingly if he himself be little and poor.' 4 In making the zamindar a landlord in Bengal, Grant admitted, the welfare of the peasants had not been fully protected, and he urged Bentinck to see that this was done in Madras. The best way to avoid oppression, he thought, was 'the division of the lands into very small farms, each capable of being managed by one cultivator . . . and assured to the cultivator by a fixed rent.' 5 What was essential was a perpetual settlement, even though this meant a limitation on future revenues. 'That the tenants should be assessed equitably, should know clearly what they are to pay—these are the great incitements to industry.' 6 Such a system, operated by 'an honourable and enlightened agent, the European servant of the Company,' would create, Grant was convinced, an industrious peasantry.7 Furthermore, a perpetual settlement was admirably suited to a society enthralled by 'ignorance, indolence, and superstition,' for it took into account 'religious prejudice, the long-established order of society, and ancient and rooted habits.8 In Grant's comments on the Permanent Settlement, as in all his 1

Ibid. Pari. Debates, XXVI, 518, op. cit. 3 Nottingham, Portland MSS., 56, op. cit. 4 6 Ibid. Ibid. * Ibid. ' Ibid. 8 Parliamentary Papers, 1812-13, X, Papers Relating to East India Company Affairs, No. 3, Revenue Letter to Bombay, 10 Jan. 1810. Grant was Chairman of the Company when this letter was written, and, since he took a personal interest in the Bombay Settlement, he almost certainly wrote this passage. 2

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references to the reforms carried out during the Cornwallis Administration, along with his continual assertion of the need for 'the internal regulation of the community, the establishment of wholesome laws, and the due administration of them,' went a parallel insistence on the ignorance and dishonesty of the people. 1 As early as 1784, however, he was aware that these two assertions were basically incompatible, for if, as he believed, Indian society exhibited 'a universal want of those qualities that cement society—of integrity, truth, and faithfulness,' then good laws could accomplish little.2 Not only did the moral and intellectual state of the people prevent them from sharing in the administration of good laws but it also meant that they could not even fully benefit from them. 3 As Grant saw the situation, the British in India were faced by the dilemma of being compelled to help 'these poor people whose land we enjoy,' while knowing that 'all remedies will prove ineffectual which have no respect to the moral and intellectual state of the inhabitants.' 4 The only solution was to provide means for the people to 'recover the almost lost life of nature, and to become acquainted with the truth and excellence of Revelation, with the improvements and the rights of man.' 5 This is the earliest of Grant's statements on the need for Christian missions in India, and its phrasing is significant. Along with the truths of revealed religion, the people were to be given a knowledge of 'improvements,' of those skills and techniques of European civilization, which, for Grant, were part of religion and civilization. Grant's conviction that moral reform was needed to make political reform effective found expression in a lengthy paper which he wrote in 1787.6 This document, 'A Proposal for Establishing a Protestant Mission in Bengal and Behar,' is of great importance in the history of Protestant mission work in India, since it undoubtedly led to an awakening of interest by the British Churches in the evangelization of India, but it is also of value for understanding the significance of the later arguments in which Grant became involved over mission work in India. The basic intention of the 'Proposal' was to win 'the patronage of Government' for mission work in India, and it was Grant's preoccupation with the relation of the political administration to evangelism that helped to make the discussion of Indian missions a matter of public concern. Although even before he wrote the 'Proposal' Grant had been advised that so warm a friend of missions 1

Ibid., 1810, V. Second Report, op. cit. Morris, op. cit., pp. 96-97, Charles Grant to Thomas Raikes, 23 Oct. 1784. 3 4 6 Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. 6 Morris, op. cit., pp. 108-16, 'A Proposal for Establishing a Protestant Mission in Bengal and Behar,' 17 Sept. 1787. 2

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as John Wesley doubted if it would be wise to seek government assistance,1 Grant was convinced that the situation in India required it. Not only would prospective missionaries need permission from the Company to go to India, but they would have to be given land by the Government in order to establish themselves.2 Grant's great argument for a connection between the Government and missions, however, was the benefit that the political administration would derive from the propagation of the Gospel. Confronted by the task of governing a people who were 'as depraved as they [were] blind, and as wretched as they [were] depraved,' the British had to create conditions that made good administration possible.3 The introduction of Christianity would provide 'strong common principles' between the rulers and the people, and, furthermore, if the people of Bengal were converted they would cease to have common interests with their neighbours and realize that their only protection came from British rule.4 While these arguments of 'present expediency and probable success' were meant, as the 'Proposal' implied, to win support for missions from political leaders who might not be moved by merely religious arguments,5 they did not have any immediate success. When William Pitt was asked his opinion of Grant's ideas, he gave a non-committal reply,8 and Cornwallis, despite his friendship for Grant, was unimpressed. After Grant had explained the 'Proposal' to him, he made clear that he had 'no faith in such schemes, and [thought] they must prove ineffectual, but he [had] no objection that others should attempt them.'7 Where the 'Proposal' did have an effect was on some of the Evangelical clergy and laymen to whom Grant and his friends sent copies. Bishop Porteus of London was so impressed that he tried, but without much success, to interest the Archbishop of Canterbury in Grant's plan for a government-aided mission to India.8 Another clergyman who received a copy was Charles Simeon of Cambridge, one of the most influential of the Evangelicals; he took up the idea with great zest and later became Grant's collaborator in sending out Evangelicals as Company chaplains.9 William Wilberforce was among the laymen to whom the 'Proposal' was sent, and probably this 1

Morris, op. cit., p. 99, Thomas Coke to Charles Grant, 25 Sept. 1786. Ibid., p. 113, 'A Proposal f o r . . . a Protestant Mission.' 4 5 Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. 9 A. M. Wilberforce, editor, Private Papers of William Wilberforce, London, Fisher and Unwin, 1897, p. 20, William Pitt to Wilberforce, 25 June 1788. ' William Carus, editor, Memoirs of the Life of the Rev. Charles Simeon, London, Hatchard, 1847, p. 77, David Brown to Charles Simeon, 24 Feb. 1789. 8 Morris, op. cit., p. 116, Thomas Raikes to Charles Grant, 5 Aug. 1788. 8 William Carus, op. cit., p. 75. 8

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copy had the greatest effect, for eventually, of all the causes that he supported, only the Slave Trade occupied him more than Indian Missions.1 Grant left India in February 1790, twenty-two years after his first arrival. In that time there had been few aspects of the Company's power in India in which he had not in some way been involved and none in which he had not taken an interest. Through his friendship with Becher and Francis, he had come in contact with the great political issues of the time and had formed strong views on Hastings' Administration. It was his work in the Commercial Department, however, that gave him an almost unrivalled knowledge of the details of the management of the Company's concerns and their relation to the economic and political life of Bengal. It was this knowledge that Cornwallis had in mind when he asked Henry Dundas to receive Grant 'with all possible kindness and attention, . . . [and] to converse with him frequently upon every part of the business of this country.' 2 1 E . M. Howse, Saints in Politics, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1952, pp. 65-94. 2 Ross, Cornwallis Correspondence, I, 480, Cornwallis to Henry Dundas, 12 Feb. 1790.

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PROPRIETOR AND DIRECTOR most of the Company's servants who returned to England expected to continue their connection with India through participation in the home administration, they found that it was not easy for them to gain a position of influence. Not only was control jealously guarded by those already in power, but men who had been away from London for many years found themselves out of touch with the political and financial groups which dominated the Company.1 Those who had served in Bengal in the 1780's had the special disadvantage of association with the scandals and investigations of the past ten years and of sharing, as Charles Grant remarked in 1791, in 'the obloquy that covers so much of the Company's service.'2 For Grant, however, entry into a place of influence in the Company's administration was greatly facilitated by the warm recommendation that he had been given to Henry Dundas, President of the Board of Control, by Lord Cornwallis. Since Dundas had already made clear that he intended to show favour only to those Bengal servants who returned with the Governor-General's commendation,3 it was of great significance for Grant's future that Cornwallis had so strongly urged Dundas to take his advice on Indian questions. While Henry Dundas appeared to many of his contemporaries to be the worst type of jobbing politician, modern historians have tended to place him among 'the small band of men in whose hands the State was slowly to build up again its administrative machinery and to incur ever-increasing administrative responsibilities.'4 Conspicuous among these responsibilities was a larger role in the control of the activities of the East India Company, for as President of the Board of Control he had used the provisions of Pitt's India Act of 1784, as well as his own great skill in political management, to gain for the Government an effective voice in the Company's administration.5 He was convinced that the subordination of the power of the Directors of the East India Company to that of Parliament was in the ALTHOUGH

1

Philips, East India Company, pp. 23-24. * Fraser, op. tit., II, 510, Charles Grant to Sir James Grant, 2 Dec. 1791. 3 Ross, Cornwallis Correspondence, I, 319-20, Henry Dundas to Cornwallis, 29 July 1787. 4 Sutherland, The East India Company in Eighteenth Century Politics, p. 369. 6 Philips, The East India Company, pp. 34 fl.

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interests of both Britain and India and he sought through his supporters in the governing bodies of the Company to exert his personal control even in areas where the India Act did not strictly give him authority. In using the great power that he acquired he was probably guided, as Holden Furber suggests, 'by a high sense of responsibility . . . and devotion to the best interests of British India,' 1 although his enemies saw his influence in the Company as a source of patronage to bolster up his political power.8 In any case, he was a shrewd man, and he realized that Charles Grant would be an extremely useful ally within the East India Company. It was, therefore, as a supporter of Dundas that Grant entered East India House, the centre of the Company's home administration. The Company governed its affairs through a kind of bicameral legislature, consisting of the Court of Proprietors, or General Court, as it was usually known, and the Court of Directors.3 Despite the influence that Dundas had gained for the Government through skilful management of relations between the Company and the Board of Control, the two Courts continued to possess wide control over Indian policy. The General Court, made up of all the Company shareholders, met at least four times a year, and while the Proprietors could not alter any civil or military arrangements made by the Directors, they could exert powerful pressure through their remaining constitutional powers.4 Of these, the most important were the privilege of electing from their membership the twenty-four members of the Court of Directors, and the right to debate all matters of concern to the Company. 5 The debates were often of a very high order,6 and the General Court provided Grant with opportunities for some of the best—and longest—expositions of his views on India. Other constitutional rights of the Proprietors that Grant found useful during his career in India House were the power 1 Holden Furber, Henry Dundas, First Viscount Melville, 1742-1811, London, Oxford University Press, 1931, p. 141. ' Dropmore MSS., VIII, pp. 208, Marquis of Buckingman to Grenville, 29 June 1806. 8 Auber, op. cit., pp. 349-58,195-227. 4 While all the shareholders could attend meetings, only those who held £1,000 worth of stock could vote; £3,000 worth gave two votes, £6,000, three votes and £10,000, four votes. The majority of the shareholders had minimum voting requirements, and very few acquired the maximum number of votes (Robert Grant, The Expediency Maintained . . . p. 56). Grant acquired £1,000 worth of stock in 1791, and another £2,000 worth during the next two years. He maintained this £3,000 holding for the rest of his life. This was the nominal value; he would have paid much more than this. (Information from East India Stock Ledgers, supplied by the Assistant Secretary, Bank of England.). 6 Auber, op. cit., pp. 350-51. 6 Philips, East India Company, p. 3.

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to pass by-laws which were binding on the Company, and the control of all grants exceeding £600.x The Court of Directors was the executive of the General Court, and either under pressure or willingly, the Proprietors had delegated to the Directors virtually complete control of the Company's administration. Since the Company not only managed a great commercial enterprise but still administered the political and military affairs of India under the Board of Control, the Court of Directors performed all the normal duties of a government secretariat in addition to the functions of a trading corporation. Most of this work was done in the twelve committees into which the members were divided on a strict basis of seniority.2 It was a curious and much criticized system, since a member's knowledge of a particular field had nothing to do with his assignment to a committee, only his date of election to the Court, but it worked surprisingly well.3 The motivations that led men to seek influence through membership in the Court of Directors were similar to, and as diverse, as those which took others into Parliament. The salary of £300 a year would not be of much interest to the wealthy men who became Directors, especially as a Director who wanted to become influential in the Company had to give a great deal of time to committee work— probably as much as a hard-working Member of the House of Commons devoted to Parliamentary affairs. For men who had spent their lives in the Company's service in India, there was the obvious desire to continue to take part in the control of events there; for others, business connections in London and abroad were served by a share in the Company's management.4 These two general interests were reflected in the tendency of the Court of Directors and the General Court to divide into two 'interests'—the 'Indian Interest,' made up of Company servants or free merchants who had lived in India, and the 'City Interest,' including the representatives of the banking, shipping and mercantile houses of London. 5 Although these 'interests' were very fluid, since a Company servant might become involved, for example, in a London banking house, they formed recognizable blocs, and there was a tendency for issues to be discussed along party lines corresponding to the Directors' or Proprietors relationships with 'Indian' or 'City' groups. The Directors received a more tangible benefit from their exercise 1

Auber, op. cit., pp. 350-51. Auber, op. cit., pp. 182-94. 8 Parliamentary Papers, 1831-32, IX, 151 ff., Evidence of Peter Auber before Select Committee on East India Company Affairs. 4 Ibid. 5 Philips, East India Company, pp. 23-24. 2

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of political power than did most Members of Parliament for they were rewarded for their labours, as a rather unfriendly critic pointed out, 'by the power of distributing a great and important patronage.1' Despite the inroads made on the Company's political power by the India Act of 1784, the right of the Directors to fill all except the very highest military and civil posts in India was left unchanged, and no privilege was guarded by the Directors more jealously than this.2 Although there were nearly four thousand Company employees in England, what was generally meant by 'patronage' was the privilege of making the appointments for the Company's overseas territories. Of these, the largest group was made up of the writers and cadets who were appointed each year to supply, in the words of the Charter, 'the proper complement of officers and servants . . . according to such return of vacancies as the respective governments in India shall transmit from thence to the . . . Court of Directors.'3 While there was a wide variation in the number of appointments made annually, the average was about one hundred and fifty, of which thirty would be writers and the rest cadets.4 The amount of available patronage was divided equally among the Directors, with the exception that the Chairman and the Deputy Chairman got twice as much as an ordinary Director, and, as a matter of courtesy, the President of the Board of Control received the right to make the same number of appointments as the Chairmen.5 As offices fell vacant, the Directors had the right to appoint doctors, attorneys, barristers and chaplains, and, in addition, they were able to use their influence in the selection of men for the chief offices—Governor-General, Governors, Commanders-in-Chief—even though the Board of Control had the final authority.6 In all, the Company had about 4,500 British employees at the beginning of the nineteenth century, of whom approximately 3,500 were officers in the military services. Their combined salaries were about £3,400,000,7 and neither this amount nor the number of civilian and military officials were excessive in relation to the enor1

William Woodfall, editor, The Debates Held at the East India House, 17 December 1800 to 10 January 1801, p. 26, speech by T. Twining, 20 Jan. 1801. 2 There are many accounts of the Directors' patronage, many of them unfairly critical. One of the best is the analysis of the structure of power in the Court of Directors given by C. N. Parkinson, Trade in the Eastern Seas, 1793-1813, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1937, pp. 9-28. 3 33 George III, c. 52, sec. 59. 4 Robert Grant, The Expediency Maintained. . . . p. 281. In 1806, however, 304 appointments were made (C.R.O., Minutes of Correspondence, 1802-10, Minutes for 12 Nov. 1806). 6 Robert Grant, The Expediency Maintained, p. 271. «Ibid., pp. 276-86. 7 Ibid., Appendices I-VI.

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mous extent of the Company's territorial and commercial responsibilities. The control of this patronage was, however, undoubtedly one of the most important reasons why membership in the Court of Directors was so greatly coveted by many able men. Contemporaries who regarded the East India patronage as a source of sinister and illicit gain were almost certainly wrong, 1 but it was the instrument through which men like Charles Grant exercised their influence in Indian affairs. Perhaps the best comment on the relation of patronage to the Court of Directors was made by Robert Grant, Charles' son, when he remarked that 'the desire of being ascendant, and the desire of multiplying retainers and connections—the love of power and patronage—are as consonant to human nature, as it is consonant to vegetable nature that a tree should shoot its branches into the air.' 2 The Directors' patronage had value because of the expectations that an Indian career aroused, for although the days of great plunder were over, 'families of respectability,' considered an Indian appointment 'a liberal provision for their sons.'3 As Charles Grant remarked to a relative whose son was in India, it now took twenty years to make enough to retire on,4 but success was probably far more assured than it had been at an earlier period. Thanks to Cornwallis' reforms, salaries had been greatly increased, and not only were senior servants very well-paid, but there was always the chance of being appointed to some position that allowed a man to hold two jobs with two salaries.5 Although a Director could not give much help to his protégés once they were established in India, preliminary recommendations certainly were of value, as an incident from Charles Grant's use of his patronage shows. Mrs. Anne Grant of Laggan, who became well known as a writer, once appealed to him to help her provide for her large family. He gave her a cadetship for her son, and when the boy was sent to Bombay, Grant recommended him to the Governor, Jonathan Duncan. Since Duncan was himself greatly indebted to Grant for favours, he saw that the new arrival was appointed Paymaster and Commissary to the expeditionary force that was at that time preparing an attack on the Mauritius.6 It was the value that Indian appointments had as a means of 1 See below, pp. 178-87, for a discussion of alleged abuse of their patronage rights by the Directors. * Robert Grant, The Expediency Maintained.... p. 292. 3 Parliamentary Papers, 1810, XI, Paper 300, p. 26, Petition from Officers, Jan. 1809. * Fraser, op. cit., 11,517, Charles Grant to S; rJames Grant, 8 June 1801. 6 Parliamentary Papers, 1831-32, IX, p. 704, Appendix to Report from Select Committee, Resolution of Governor-General, 17 Feb. 1829. ' Anne Grant, Memoir and Correspondence, I, p. 71, Mrs. Grant to J. Hotsell, 29 April 1806; and ibid., p. 250, Mrs. Grant to J. D. Grant, 13 April 1810.

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settling young men in life that made them what Robert Grant called 'a capital of credit' to be used in exerting an influence in public life.1 While the extent of the influence of East India patronage in political life was undoubtedly grossly exaggerated by contemporaries, one of the chief values of writerships and cadetships was their use as bargaining counters for a seat in Parliament.2 They formed, in fact, along with such things as church livings and university fellowships, part of the complex structure of the public life of the time, and were so regarded by responsible politicians.3 Lord Castlereagh, for example, when charged with having used a writership to help elect a supporter to Parliament replied that he 'had no hesitation to give a writership to any respectable gentleman's son or nephew who could promote [his] views.'4 Grant's own election to Parliament in 1802 as county member for Inverness illustrates the value of the 'capital of credit' that the Company's patronage gave. He did not in any sense buy his way into the House, but, on the contrary, was urged, somewhat against his own will, to seek election by men who knew how valuable the East India connection would be for them and their district. His cousin Col. Hugh Grant, who was himself a 'nabob,' appealed to him to help 'restore the fortunes of a fallen house,' that is, the Grants of Shewglie.5 Another relative, Sir James Grant, one of the most important of the Scottish politicians, was anxious to have Grant as a Member because he was 'a man of business,' who could use his connections in the Company to force the Government to give Northern Scotland some of the benefits it desperately needed.6 Grant was aware, however, that the members of the Highland aristocracy who had long controlled the seat would resent the sudden appearance of a 'nabob' in their midst; 7 as C. H. Philips remarks, the ability of the 'nabobs' to get elected had aroused in the ruling class that 'most potent mixture of feeling, envy and alarm.' 8 After he had decided to contest the election, Grant held the seat for the next sixteen years, and eventually his sons Robert and Charles were elected as the Members for Inverness and Elgin Burghs. It was not surprising that while his opponents bitterly accused him of using the Company's patronage to maintain himself and his 1

Robert Grant, The Expediency Maintained.... pp. 305-09. Parliamentary Papers, 1831-32, IX, p. 151, Report of Select Committee on East India Affairs, Evidence of Peter Auber. 8 Drop more MSS., X, 4, Lord Auckland to Lord Grenville, 8 Jan. 1810. 4 Pari. Debates., XIV, p. 209, speech of Lord Castlereagh, 25 April 1809. 6 Morris, op. cit., p. 274, Hugh Grant [to Charles Grant(?)]. • Fraser, op. cit., II, p 520, Charles Grant to Sir James Grant, 12 Oct. 1801. ' Ibid., 12 Jan. 1801. 8 C. H. Philips, India, London, Hutchinson, [1948], p. 59. 2

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family in power, Grant's friends spoke with admiration of how much he had done for the Highlands. 'My father, [who was] his firm friend and most useful supporter,' wrote the daughter of one of the county magnates, 'seldom applied in vain for anything it was in the old Director's power to give.'8 What she had in mind was not just the cadetships and writerships which filled the Company's Services with the sons of the impoverished Highland gentry and clergy, but also the canals, roads, bridges and churches which he was instrumental in having built.3 Whether it was urging the Government to cut the Caledonian Canal or to help the starving peasants on the Isle of Skye, as a Director of the Company Grant obviously carried more weight than some laird who represented no interest other than the Highlands.4 Grant's entry into the influential world of the home administration of the East India Company coincided with the negotiations for the renewal of the Company's Charter, which was due to expire in 1793. Although the discussion over the content of the new Charter did not arouse any very great public interest, there were two issues that provided a lively controversy within the Company's administration and which subsequently assumed great importance in the debate over the nature of the British connection with India. One had to do with the demand for relaxation of the Company's trading monopoly and the other with the attempt to require the Company to give permission and assistance for missionary work in its Indian possessions. Although Grant's part in the promotion of missions in 1793 was somewhat extraneous to the main concerns of the home administration and therefore will be considered separately,6 his involvement in the private trade controversy led him directly into the area where the Company was most torn by internal dissensions and most bitterly attacked by outside interests. The attacks on the Company's monopoly came mainly from the cotton manufacturers and the Liverpool shipping interests.6 What the cotton interests wanted at this time was very far from free trade, for the Manchester merchants asked for the prohibition of the use of Indian cloth in England while from Glasgow came a demand that the Company ban the use of machinery for the production of cloth in 1

Inverness Journal, 12 Oct. 1821, quoted by Morris, op. cit., p. 292. Reminiscences of a Highland Lady, [daughter of Sir J. P. Grant of Rothiemurchus], quoted by James Barron, editor, The Northern Highlands in the Nineteenth Century: Newspaper Index and Annals, Inverness, Carruthers, 1903,1,142. » Ibid. 4 B. M., Add. MSS., 38267, p. 320, Charles Grant to N. Vansittart, 18 July 1807. 5 See below, Chapter VII. • Philips, East India Company, p. 75. 2

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India. As for the Liverpool shipowners, they were already anticipating the end of slave-trading and therefore were anxious to be allowed to participate in the East Indian trade.2 As politicians, Dundas and Pitt were conscious of the agitation in the northern cities against the Company and realized that some form of compromise would be necessary. In addition, Dundas was greatly impressed, as he told the House of Commons in 1793, that all the competent authorities on political economy were against monopoly.3 At the same time, he was unwilling to take any action that would alienate large numbers of the Proprietors or Directors, since he depended on their support not only in the East India Company itself but also in Parliament.4 Charles Grant provided Dundas with a compromise by drafting a clause for the new Charter that made provision for British subjects to export three thousand tons of goods annually in the Company's ships and to import the same amount from India. 5 This clause was the first real breach in the Company's commercial monopoly, for although merchants had been able to get special licences to send home goods from India, the practice had been a privilege accorded by the Company, not a right guaranteed by Charter. A few years later, when he became the great spokesman for the Company's monopoly, Grant's authorship of the clause became an embarrassment for him, since those who wanted a freer trade charged him with gross inconsistency in having helped to create a precedent which he then proceeded to deny.6 Grant's answer to the later charges of inconsistency was that they were based on a misinterpretation of what his intention had been in 1793 when he drafted the clause giving a guaranteed tonnage to private traders.7 Obviously with Dundas in mind, he said that his original idea had been enlarged by others to give the impression that the clause was to meet the demands of the British cotton manufacturers, but in fact he had not been primarily concerned with the problem of British exports at all.8 His interest was in an old difficulty —the remittance of money to Europe through foreign channels by the Company servants.9 For years, he pointed out, the Directors had 1

Ibid. Auber, op. cit., p. 721. Parliamentary Register, XXV, p. 253, speech by Henry Dundas, 23 April 1793. 4 Philips, East India Company, pp. 76-77. 5 C.R.O., H.M.S., 494, p. 221, Edward Parry and Charles Grant to Directors, 14 Oct. 1808 (with marginal comments by Sir Francis Baring). It is clear both from internal evidence and Baring's very acid comments that Grant was the author of the letter. 8 8 Ibid. ' Ibid., p. 297. Ibid. 9 Ibid., pp. 294-95; and see above, p. 79. 2 3

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denounced their servants for this practice, but they had refused to make their own terms for remittance attractive enough to meet the competition of the foreign traders. 1 His main concern, therefore, was to end a trade which was 'hurtful to the nation and the morals of the Company's servants'2 by making provision in the Charter for enough private trade 'to bring to [England] by legitimate channels the Indian fortunes which were remitted by means of an illicit trade to foreign Europe.' 3 The question of meeting the demands of the British merchants for a share in the India trade was, he insisted, a subsidiary matter, and there had been no intention on his part of giving the least 'countenance to the idea of free trade.' 4 He had recognized, however, that granting tonnage to the merchants would 'diminish prejudice against monopoly,' while 'odium . . . would attend the maintenance of it in all its rigour.' 5 Even before the new Charter Act was renewed, Grant had become uneasy when he saw that his suggestion was being used to give the impression that the Company thought the advocates of relaxing the Company's monopoly had a legitimate case. There were, he warned Dundas in 1792, far greater issues involved in the discussion than commercial considerations regarding the most profitable form of trade between Britain and India.6 Even a limited private trade might lead to India being overrun by 'multitudes of the needy and idle [from Britain] . . . animated by the spirit of adventure and acquisition.'7 This was a theme he was to develop throughout the years, apparently untroubled by the fact that Burke had described the Company's servants in India in very similar terms. The Company received its new Charter in 1793, and in the following year Grant was elected a Director, despite some hostility from those who had opposed the concessions made to private trade. 8 Election to the Court of Directors was very difficult in any case, for although the Proprietors elected six members each year they were almost always chosen from a slate, prepared by the Directors, consisting of former members of the Court who, having served their four year term, had been out of office for a year.9 The only chance of a new man being elected lay in the combination of the sup1

Ibid. C.R.O., H.M.S., 405, p. 727, Charles Grant, 'Observations on Trade.' 3 Debates at East India House, 5 Jan.—23 Feb. 1813, p. 270, speech by Charles Grant, 26 Jan. 1813. 4 C.R.O., H.M.S., 405, p. 727, Charles Grant, 'Observations on Trade.' 6 C.R.O., H.M.S., 494, pp. 294-95, Edward Parry and Charles Grant to Directors, 14 Oct. 1808. • Charles Grant, 'Observations on the State of Asia,' p. 93, footnote, dated 1792. ' Select Committee for Considering the Administration of Justice in Bengal, Bihar and Orissa: Ninth Report, London, 1785. 8 Morris, op. cit., Charles Grant to John Bebb, 24 May 1792. 8 Philips, East India Company, pp. 4-8. 2

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port of powerful interests, an expensive campaign of the Proprietors and, usually, a vacancy caused by death in the list of former Directors. All these factors were present when Grant was elected in May 1794. He had the support not only of Dundas but also of Pitt and he was able to show his letters of recommendation from Cornwallis.1 His canvass was not as strenuous as candidates sometimes had to undertake, although he had been planning his campaign since 1792.2 Finally, the death of a Director presented Grant with an opportunity to stand for election, and he was elected unopposed.3 Apparently he had mustered such strong support that no other candidate felt it was worth running against him. Lack of opposition from either the General Court or the Directors was not to be a characteristic mark of Grant's later career, but the incident suggested something of the power he was soon to acquire. Shortly after Grant's election to the Court of Directors, a great internal struggle broke out over the question of the Company's shipping. The controversy was actually not new; it had been going on for some years, and the argument over the concessions made to the private traders in 1793 was one aspect of it, but in 1794 the issues were more sharply drawn and the parties more clearly defined than they had been before.4 While the extremely complicated details of the struggle are only of significance for understanding the inner history of the Company's management, the issues involved, as Charles Grant tried to show, were of great importance for the relations between England and India. The shipping controversy centred on two essential facts, the first of which was that the East India Company did not own the ships that it used for its trade but hired them from a group of London shipowners.5 In the course of the years, the London shipping interests that supplied these ships had created, in effect, their own monopoly, for the Company never hired ships outside the customary groups. No tenders were ever received for other ships and the rate of freight stipulated by the ship-owners was almost always paid by the Company. The explanation was that the owners had their representatives in both the General Court and the Court of Directors. These members formed 'the Indian shipping interest,' which was, as a Secretary of the 1

C . H. Philips, The Correspondence of David Scott, Director and Chairman of the East India Company Relating to Indian Affairs, 1787-1805 (Camden Society, Third Series), London, Royal Historical Society, 1951, I, 9, Charles Grant to David Scott, 4 Nov. 1793. Cited hereafter as Philips, Scott Correspondence. 2 Morris, op. cit., p. 208, Charles Grant to James Grant, 1 May 1792. a C.R.O., Court Minutes, CIIIA, 200, Minutes for 30 May 1794. * Philips, East India Company, pp. 80-117, gives a detailed account of the shipping controversy in terms of its effect on the Company's administration. 4 Auber, op. cit., p. 649.

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Company later pointed out, 'an opulent, highly respectable [body], but, as regarded the East India Company, a very powerful [one].'1 Its power was greatly increased by its alliance with the other London 'interest'—members who represented the great banking houses. By the time that Grant came into the Direction, this combined interest had enormous influence in the Company's administration. The second fact of importance in the shipping controversy was that the Shipping Interest not only forced high rates of freight upon the Company but opposed any relaxation of the Company's monopoly in the form of concessions to British merchants for participation in the India trade. The reason for this, apart from any belief the members of the Shipping Interest might have in the value of the monopoly, was that a demand for increased private trade was always accompanied by a plea for a lower freight rate.2 One of the arguments of the British manufacturing interests was that the trade with India was small because of the exorbitant rates charged by the Company's ships, so that the discussion tended to raise larger issues than just the monopoly of the London ship-owners. In defence of the Shipping Interest, it was urged that since the East India ships were extremely expensive to build no one would have been willing to supply them without being assured that they would be hired and bring a lucrative return to their owners.3 Although the Shipping Interest had suffered a temporary defeat by the concession made to private trade in the 1793 Charter, they sought to regain control of the Company's administration in 1794. The result of this determination was the decision taken by the Directors to pay the owners £35 a ton for freight instead of the £31 that had been first agreed upon. 4 In the course of a year, this meant an increase in freight charges of £150,000. For some years, the chief opposition to the Shipping Interest had been led by David Scott, who after having made money in Bombay as a free merchant returned to England to become a friend of Dundas and a great power in the Company.5 Despite his prominence in the Company, Scott was essentially 'a free trader and a private trader, an opponent of restrictive trade duties,' convinced that the days of the Company as a trading monopoly and ruler of India were numbered.® He believed that Britain should use her power to control all of India, and he became, therefore, an ardent supporter of Wellesley's policies. Holding these views, it was perhaps inevitable 1

Auber, op. cit., p. 649. Philips, East India Company, pp. 81 ff. * Parkinson, Trade in the Eastern Seas, pp. 171-72. 4 C.R.O., Court Minutes, CIIIA, pp. 61-62, Minutes for 16 Oct. 1794. 5 Philips, Scott Correspondence, I, ix. 8 Ibid. 2

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that he should finally quarrel with Grant, but for six years they worked together to oppose the Shipping Interest. Although Scott's opposition grew out of his belief in free trade and Grant's out of a conviction that the Company's monopoly could be made to serve the interests of both India and Britain, they shared an aversion to the methods and aims of the Shipping Interest. When the ship-owners had used their power to force the Directors to agree to a higher rate of freight than could be justified by any facts, they had, Grant declared, plainly told the Company, 'You must continue to take our ships, and to take them at the rate of freight we find to be reasonable.'1 As a result of this attitude he saw not only enormous losses for the Company, but also 'political consequences of a very important nature.' 2 The great troubles the Company had suffered in the past twenty years, he pointed out, had been due to internal division in the management. 'When the Company had triumphed over all external assaults, when they were fortified with Charters and Acts of Parliament, and enriched by territorial revenues, then internal dissensions broke out, and these gave the first handle to the Administration to interfere in their affairs.' 3 With only commerce left in the Company's exclusive management, the greed of the Shipping Interest, he said, would lead to further intervention that would end the remaining privileges.4 Furthermore, the ship-owners through their representatives in the Courts of the Company would become an independent power within the administration, and 'having no longer anything to fear for their own interests, [they] might by their weight powerfully influence . . . every question which came before the Court. 5 Scott and Grant were unable to prevent the Directors agreeing in 1794 to the demands of the ship-owners for higher freight-rates, but they recorded dissents to the majority decision that made clear their intention of continuing to battle with the Shipping Interest.6 This was the first of the many dissents which through the years Grant was to enter in the Court's Minutes against decisions of Directors, and while the total number of his dissents is not much greater than that of some other members with equally long service, he used his dissents to give very full and detailed expositions of his views whereas others were inclined simply to outline the reasons for their objections.7 He 1 J. Fiott, Three Addresses to the Proprietors of the East India Stock, and the Publick, on the Subject of the Shipping Concerns of the Company, London, Rivington, 1795, p. 280, Report of Debate at East India House, 21 Jan. 1795, speech by Charles Grant. 2 3 1 6 Ibid., p. 281. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. 6 C.R.O., Court Minutes, CIIIA, 609-735, Dissents of Charles Grant and David Scott, 29 Oct. 1794. 7 C.R.O., Dissents, 1764-1856; and Appendix to Court Minutes, 1817-1858.

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defended his practice on the grounds that 'writing was the mode of discussion best calculated to serve truth,' and that he found it easier to make his meaning clear in writing than in speeches.1 In his dissent, Grant made clear that he was not attacking the right of the ship-owners to provide ships, but only their claim to determine the rate of freight as they saw fit.2 The fairest method, he suggested, would be for the Company to fix the rates for a number of years in advance and then give contracts on this basis to the owners; the element of certainty would compensate them for lower rates.3 Since the only argument that the Directors could give for having yielded to the owners' demands was 'the plea of necessity,' it was necessary, he insisted, that the power of the Shipping Interest to pressure the Court should be eliminated.4 Dundas, who had been waiting for some opportunity to attack the Shipping Interest, seized upon Grant's phrase, 'the plea of necessity.' Grant's dissent proved, he said, that the Directors 'acted contrary to their own judgment. . . from an apprehension that there existed somewhere an influence which rendered the concession necessary.'5 This attack was a tactical blunder on Dundas' part, for not only did the Directors remind him very sharply that he had no legal right to interfere in a purely commercial matter but they also subjected Grant to a furious denunciation.6 Because of Dundas' use of his dissent, Grant was regarded as a willing tool who had 'weakly adopted the prejudices of others, whose minds were not so honourably characterized as his own.' 7 This comment by Sir Stephen Lushington, a former Chairman of the Company, suggests another factor that was possibly involved in the alignment of members of the Court. Many of those who were closely identified with the Shipping Interest were also extremely critical of the attempts made by Grant to get the Company to take part in schemes for mission work in India.8 Lushington was one of these, and Sir Francis Baring was another. Baring, head of the famous banking house founded by his family, was one of the principal supporters of the shipping interest.9 Not only did he disagree with Grant's views on the Company's shipping, but he had a general antipathy to Grant's ideas. Possibly 1 C.R.O., Court Minutes, CIIIA, p. 699, Dissent of Charles Grant, 29 Oct. 1794. 2 3 4 Ibid., p. 706. Ibid. Ibid., p. 702. 6 Fiott, op. cit., p. 221, Henry Dundas to Chairman, 8 Nov. 1794. 8 Ibid., p. 292, Sir Francis Baring to Directors, 18 Nov. 1794. ' Ibid., p. 259, Debate at East India House, 21 Jan. 1795, speech by Sir Stephen Lushington. •See below, p. 154. • Ralph Hidy, The House of Baring in American Trade and Finance, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1949, p. 17.

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he resented the suggestion that the ship-owners and their allies were morally at fault, for he himself was noted for the rectitude of his business life.1 Baring was primarily interested in the East India Company as a business concern, regarding it in much the same way as he did his banking and other enterprises. For Grant, the Company was not only a trading corporation but also the Government of Bengal and the other territories it had acquired in the East. His attitude, therefore, was very different from that of Baring and other City merchants. Scott and Grant continued their struggle with the Shipping Interest and in 1796 they succeeded in having substantial changes made in the Company's shipping regulations. The reforms that Grant had urged as necessary to end 'extortion' 2 were incorporated in the provisions that required ships to be obtained by open competition and fixed a permanent rate for freight in peace time.3 The effect of the new rules was an immediate saving for the Company of £183,000.4 Although these changes did not mean that the Shipping Controversy was ended, since it was to break out in a new form a few years later, a very definite precedent had been set with the decision to accept tenders from groups other than the old owners. For Grant, however, almost everything that was necessary had been achieved, as he made clear a few years later when Dundas and Scott used the changes as the basis for new demands.5 Although David Scott had probably played as important a part as Grant in the events that brought about the changes in the shipping regulations, in later years Grant was often given the full credit.6 This was an indication that Grant, rather than Scott, became increasingly identified throughout the 1790's with the control of the Company's administration. While this was partly due to his work in connection with the shipping controversy, it also reflected his relationship during this time with Sir John Shore's Indian Administration, for as one of the few members of the Directors with recent Bengal experience, and as a close friend of Shore's, he was in a very favourable position to influence the Company's administration both in India and at home. Shore's appointment as Governor-General had been decided upon in 1792 when Grant had met with Pitt and Dundas to discuss the 1

Ibid., p. 41. C.R.O., Court Minutes, CIIIA, p. 702, Dissent of Charles Grant, 29 Oct. 1794. ' Auber, op. cit., pp. 657-58. 4 Parkinson, Trade in the Eastern Seas, p. 183. 4 Philips, Scott Correspondence, I, 147, Charles Grant to David Scott, 25 Aug. 1798. See below, p. 159. • Thomas Fisher, A Memoir of the Late Charles Grant, Esq., London, Cox and Sons, 1833, p. 10. 1

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Permanent Settlement. Having been instrumental in persuading them to offer the post to Shore,2 Grant had also succeeded in getting Shore to accept it, for at first he had refused to consider returning to India.3 Unlike Grant, Shore had very little interest in the Company's home administration; he had served the Company 'so long for so little,' he told a friend, that he would not work 'without some certainty of being paid for it.' 4 Under Grant's urging, however, and despite charges by Burke that he had been the 'principal actor and party in certain of the offences charged against Mr. Hastings,'6 Shore went to India in 1793. A Governor-General depended to a very large extent for support for his administration on the ability of his friends in London to interpret his policies both to the Company and to the Ministry. Equally important, friends in London had to explain to the GovernorGeneral the actions of the Government and the Directors, suggesting where it would be wise to modify policies in Bengal or, at times, where, in despite of official disapproval, it might be possible to persist in some course of action.8 The disservice done to Hastings by his well-meaning friends in London has often been commented upon, while Cornwallis' letters make clear how much assistance he expected, and received, from Henry Dundas.7 In addition to Dundas's support, Cornwallis also had the advantage of an established reputation and family connections. Shore was in a very different position, for he had no family connections and having spent most of his life in Bengal, knew very few of the prominent politicians of the time. Even within the Company's administration he had a limited acquaintance —David Scott, who was Chairman nearly half the time he was Governor-General, did not know him even by sight.8 It was natural, then, that Grant should have been the channel of communication between the Governor-General, the Board of Control and the Court of Directors. After he had been in office for some years, Shore wrote to William 1

Morris, op. cit., p. 173, Charles Grant to Mrs. Grant, 1 Sept. 1792. Ibid. Teignmouth, Memoir, 1,221. 1 Ibid., p. 212, John Shore to A. Caldecott, 31 Dec. 1791. 6 Ibid., p. 226, Edmund Burke to Sir Francis Baring, 14 Oct. 1792. 6 The best examples of the relations of a Governor-General to his friends in London are probably provided by Wellesley's career, as shown in Montgomery Martin, The Despatches, Minutes and Correspondence of the Marquess Wellesley, K. G., London, John Murray, 1836, I-IV, passim. Cited hereafter as Martin, Wellesley Despatches. 'Weitzman, op. cit., pp. 146-47; and Ross, Cornwallis Correspondence, I, passim. 8 Philips, Scott Correspondence, I, 79, David Scott to Lord Hobart, 3 Aug. 1796. 8

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Wilberforce that if he was interested in knowing more about 'the public business of [India] . . . than . . . that it goes on quietly and prosperously, Mr. Grant will give you all information.' 1 What Shore had in mind was the mass of detailed reports he had been sending to Grant to use in explaining the controversies in which his administration had become involved. One of the chief of these concerned the relations between the officers of the Company's Army and the regularly commissioned officers serving in India.2 The Company's officers felt that the existing regulations, which had been drawn up by Cornwallis, discriminated against them in favour of the King's Service, and for a time the Company's armies were in a state of almost open mutiny.3 Shore's problem was not only to prevent the discontent spreading, but also to convince Dundas, who was opposed in general to the separate existence of the Company's Army, that the way to restore peace was by making concessions and giving guarantees to the Company's officers.4 Although Grant had had no direct experience in military affairs, Shore sent him his proposals to explain to Dundas. 5 Grant's own prejudices in favour of the Company probably inclined him to support its officers over against the King's Service, even though, like David Scott, he may not have been entirely convinced by Shore's arguments.6 At other times, Shore sent Grant documents which had not been included in the official despatches but which he thought might be useful in explaining matters to the Directors.7 After he had carried out the very intricate arrangements in regard to the succession in Oudh, for example, he wrote all the details to Grant, rather than to Dundas or the Chairman.8 His reason for doing this, he told Dundas, was that most of the details were not important, but that Grant would be able to sort them out.9 What Shore probably had in mind was the need of interpreting the confused situation in a way that would make 1 Teignmouth, Memoir, I, 343, Sir John Shore to William Wilberforce, 5 Oct. 1795 (Shore had been made a baronet in 1792 before he returned to India). 2 Holden Furber, editor, The Private Record of an Indian Governor-Generalship: The Correspondence of Sir John Shore with Henry Dundas, President of the Board of Control, 1793-1798, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1933, p. 29, Sir John Shore to Henry Dundas, 25 March 1793. Cited hereafter as Furber, Private Record. 3 Teignmouth, Memoir, 1,350-51. 4 Ross, Cornwallis Correspondence, II, 282, Cornwallis to Gen. Ross. 26 Jan. 1795. 5 Furber, Private Record, p. 29, Shore to Henry Dundas, 9 Nov. 1793. "Philips, Scott Correspondence, II, 329-33, David Scott to Cornwallis, 29 July 1801. 7 Teignmouth, Memoir, I, 376, Sir John Shore to Charles Grant, 22 June 1796. 8 Furber, Private Record, p. 71, Sir John Shore to Henry Dundas, 12 May 1795. 9 Ibid.

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sense of his actions. This was especially true when a violent quarrel broke out between him and Lord Hobart, the Governor of Madras. Hobart had many influential friends, and Shore felt that it was important that Grant be as well-informed as possible regarding the issue.1 The basis of the quarrel, Shore told him, was that Hobart, acting on his own initiative, had made treaties that extended British control over new territory.2 For both Shore and Grant, this action seemed to involve consequences of great danger to British rule in India, and their discussion of it in 1796 raised many of the fundamental problems later faced in a more acute form during Wellesley's administration. One issue raised by Hobart for Grant and Shore was that of the responsibility of the Company's officials in India—including the Governor-General and the Governors—to carry out faithfully the declared policies of the Home Administration, even though these might conflict with personal predilections. If a permanent system of administration was to be established in India, it was necessary, Shore told Grant, that the Directors define a policy and then insist that it be adhered to. 3 'Whenever your Governors in India act from discretion, according to temporary emergencies, your safety will beceome precarious,' he warned.4 By adding territory to the Company's possessions without the permission of the Home Administration, Hobart had defied the principles of the Act of 1784 forbidding conquest; it was essential, then Shore argued, that he not be supported. This attitude of Shore's was greatly criticized in later years on the grounds that though based on 'a sincere and conscientious desire to govern India agreeably to the strict and literal act of the legislature, and to the wishes of his superiors in England,' it accomplished nothing, in contrast to the brilliant results of Wellesley's disobedience.8 Also involved in Shore's quarrel with Hobart was the question of the means by which Lord Hobart had persuaded the Raja of Tanjore to sign the treaty which added to the Company's lands. 'Nothing can, in my opinion, be clearer,' he wrote Grant, 'than that the Rajah has been dragooned . . . and the misconduct of [his] minister... was made a pretext for compelling the Raja's signature.'6 This was almost precisely the language Grant was to use in a few years when he denounced Wellesley,7 and Shore knew how strongly 1

Teignmouth, Memoir, 1,375, Sir John Shore to Charles Grant, 22 June 1796. 1 Ibid., p. 375. "Ibid., p. 377. Ibid.,p.m. Sir John Malcolm, The Political History of India from 1784 to 1823, London, John Murray, 1826,1,191. 6 Teignmouth, Memoir, I, 374-75, Sir John Shore to Charles Grant, 22 June 1796. 'See below, p. 220. 2

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Grant felt that not only a sense of honour but of political expediency as well, demanded that the British deal fairly with the Indian Princes.1 Even before Hobart had made his treaty, Grant had told Shore that the enmity of many of the native powers, notably the Rohillas, was directly due to 'the injustice of 1774'. .that is, to Hastings' activities.2 Both men were convinced that the British interest in India would be best served by consolidating the 'ancient' territories of the Company —those acquired before 1765—and leaving the Indian states to exist in their own political patterns.3 While the princes might quarrel among themselves, Grant and Shore were convinced they would not combine against the Company. Secure in their own territories, the British, they argued, could establish just rule and at the same time extend the trade and prosperity of the Company.4 Just rule and the Company's prosperity, Grant would have claimed, were the issues in all the controversies in which he had been engaged during his first years in the Company's Home Administration. Furthermore, his participation in them had been marked, on the whole, by success, for despite the great opposition shown to him by the Shipping Interest he had risen to a position of power and influence. In one struggle, however, he had been conspicuously unsuccessful—in his attempt to have the Company support missionary work in India. His efforts at this time, nonetheless, were of immense importance for his own career and for his interpretation of the nature of British rule in India, for in his attempt to win support for his cause he was forced to define his attitudes to India. An analysis of these attitudes is necessary for an understanding not only of much of Grant's history in the Company but also of many later currents in the life of British India in the nineteenth century. 1

Teignmouth, Memoir, I, 378, Sir John Shore to Charles Grant, 22 June 1796. Ibid. 3 Ibid., II, 122, Lord Teignmouth to William Wilberforce, 31 March 1807. (Shore was created an Irish Peer in 1797). 4 Ibid., I, 362-67, Sir John Shore to Charles Grant, 9 March 1796. 2

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ADVOCATE OF RELIGIOUS AND SOCIAL C H A N G E ' I T H I N K I can trace all the calamities of this country,' Edmund Burke declared in 1785, 'to the single source of our not having had steadily before our eyes a general, comprehensive, well-connected, and well-proportioned view of the whole of our dominions, and a just sense of their true bearings and relations.'1 Although Charles Grant would not have accepted many of Burke's judgments on Indian affairs, he would have agreed with this one, for in 1792 he endeavoured to outline for Henry Dundas a general view of the relationship between Great Britain and India that he hoped would provide a basis for future policy. What Grant produced for Dundas was the remarkable and influential tract, Observations on the State of Society among the Asiatic Subjects of Great Britain.2 Grant wrote the Observations to meet a specific need. As already noted, during the negotiations in 1792 for the renewal of the Charter, he had been interested not only in having provision made for private trade but also for missionary work in India.3 This attempt was a continuation of the project he had outlined in his 'Proposals' before he had left India in 1790, which, although it had been well-received by clergymen and laymen of evangelical sympathies, had not had any practical results.4 After returning to England, he realized that if the East India Company and the Government were to be moved to take any action it would be necessary to win Henry Dundas' support, and therefore he wrote an essay for him 'concerning the character and state of the Hindus and means of improving their education.'5 At first, he circulated the manuscript among his friends, urging them to read it, even though, as he told David Scott, he had written it in 1

Edmund Burke, Speech Relative to the Nabob of Arcot's Debts, February 28, 1785, London, 1785, p. 5. 2 C.R.O., Eur. MSS. E93, Charles Grant, 'Observations on the State of Society among the Asiatic Subjects of Great Britain, particularly with respect to Morals, and on the means of Improving It. Written chiefly in the Year 1792.' As already noted, above, p. 32, page references used are to the copy in Parliamentary Papers, 1812-13, X, Paper 282, pp. 1-112. It is also found in Parliamentary Papers, 1831-32, VIII, Paper 734, General Appendix, Number 1, pp. 3-92. 3 See above, p. 129. 4 See above, p. 118. 'Philips, Scott Correspondence, I, 11, Charles Grant to David Scott, 11 Nov. 1793. 141

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haste, and it needed 'corrections and elucidations.' 'The substance of it will be found true and certain,' he said, 'and all that I have proposed I am convinced may be done in the most safe and specific way, without danger present or future.' 1 In 1797, he presented it formally to the Court of Directors as a 'Paper of Business,' and it thus gained a somewhat wider circulation.2 It did not become well known, however, until it was printed in 1813 in connection with the renewal of the Company's Charter. At that time, Wilberforce gave Grant's ideas wide publicity by quoting them in Parliament and urging people to read the Observations.3 By 1820 the Observations was widely known in evangelical circles and regarded as an 'indispensable and decisive authority.' 4 Although not reprinted after 1832, it remained an important source book for writers on India. What made Grant's tract significant was that it was a serious attempt to find a sanction for permanent British rule in India through a comparative evaluation of the intrinsic merits of the two civilizations that were confronting each other. It has often been pointed out that many of the great administrators in India at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century did not look upon British rule in India as permanent. In 1777 Warren Hastings had declared in a memorable passage that 'the dominion exercised by the British Empire in India is fraught with many radical and incurable defects . . . All that the wisest institutions can effect in such a system can only be to improve the advantages of a temporary possession, and to protract that decay, which sooner or later must end it.' 5 Fifty years later, Sir John Malcolm, in the process of bringing great areas of Central India under British control, expressed very similar sentiments, for, like Hastings, he had a sense that India was so essentially alien that British rule would always be extraneous to the life of the people.6 Grant, on the other hand, although strongly opposed to the territorial conquests of men like Hastings and Malcolm, was convinced that British rule in India must be accepted as permanent. There was, he declared, no foreseeable future 'in which we may 1

Ibid. C.R.O., Court Minutes, CVI, 439, Minutes of 16 Aug. 1797. The manuscript copy in the India Office Library is not the one presented in 1797, which was lost, but a copy of it made in 1811. With the exception of footnotes, which are generally dated, the printed version apparently is much the same as the original of 1792 (C.R.O., Eur. MSS., E. 93, pp. 5-6). 3 Pari. Debates, XXVI, 831-72, speech by William Wilberforce, 22 June 1813; and Wilberforce, Life, TV, 114. 4 T. T. Bidulph, Christian Charity, London, 1821, pp. 38-39. 6 Gleig, Hastings Memoirs, II, 149-50, Warren Hastings to Alexander Elliott, 10 Feb. 1777. " Sir John Kaye, The Life and Correspondence of Major-General Sir John Malcolm, G.C.B., London, Smith, Elder, 1856, II, 371-72, and passim. 2

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not govern our Asiatic subjects more happily for them than they can be governed by themselves.'1 The difference between Hastings' viewpoint and Grant's is only partly explained by the fact that Grant was writing after a period of settled government, and Hastings before it; more important were their different attitudes towards Indian civilization. Hastings had a warm tolerance for the customs of India and he sought, in his own striking phrase, to create a system for 'reconciling the people of England to the nature of Hindostán.' 2 In contrast, the fundamental argument of Grant's Observations is that British rule can never really be reconciled to India until the 'nature of Hindostán' was radically altered. Grant began the Observations with a statement of the assumption on which he had based his work, which was that everyone would concur in the sentiment 'that we ought to study the happiness of the vast body of subjects which we have acquired.'3 There were, he thought, two obvious reasons for making this assumption: one was that since Britain profited from India, it was necessary to give good government to the people 'in order that we might continue to hold the advantage we first derived from them'; the other was the Company, 'as part of the Christian community,' was obligated to seek 'the general welfare of the many millions under its government.'4 Both arguments—the appeal to self-interest and the statement of a religious imperative—were characteristic of Grant, as they were of most of the Evangelicals. The argument from self-interest, Grant discovered, was a dangerous one, since many who disagreed with him, while unwilling or unable to discuss whether or not his projects were really legitimate inferences from the Christian faith, were very willing to show that self-interest might suggest an entirely different course of action. Having laid the foundation of his work on the assumption that the Company and the British people ought to seek the welfare of the people of India, Grant went on to draw up 'a national account.' 5 The 'casting of moral balance' sheets has been called the characteristic vice of British writers on Indian history,6 but, unlike most of his successors, Grant did not strike a balance in favour of his fellow countrymen. He examined the history of Bengal during the first thirty 1

Charles Grant, 'Observations on the State of Asia,' p. 94. Quoted by C. H. Philips, 'British Historical Writing on India,' The Listener, LIY, 8 Dec. 1955, p. 985. 3 Charles Grant, 'Observations on the State of Asia,' p. 5. a

4 Ibid., p. 25. "Ibid., p. 19.

• K. A. Ballhatchet, 'Some Aspects of Historical Writing on India by Christian Missionaries,' Paper delivered at South Asia Seminar, School of African and Oriental Studies, London, May, 1956. 143

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years of British rule and, having compared it to the records of the time before the coming of the British, came to 'the humiliating conclusion [that].. . the people were not in so good a condition as that in which we had found them.' 1 While it was possible to get a favourable impression of the period of British rule by comparing it with conditions in the years immediately before the transfer of power, this he said, was unfair, since then the country was torn by civil strife and foreign invasion. The basis of comparison had to be, he insisted, the reign of Aurangzeb, when Bengal had 'enjoyed profound peace without, and experienced only few, and these transient, disturbances, within.'2 British rule was in 'great part a history of our own errors, or of the abuses, public and private, of the power derived from us.' 3 Even the most favourable aspects of British rule were attempts to cure 'political diseases, which either have arisen or become more inveterate, in our time.' 4 Even the great advantages that had followed from Cornwallis' rule—the correction of abuses in the Commercial Department, the Permanent Settlement, the judicial reforms—did not compensate, he thought, for the burden of foreign rule. Grant saw the harmful impact of foreign rule mainly in economic terms. Bengal, he pointed out, had formerly been the outlying province of the Mughal Empire, without any special political or economic significance in the imperial structure.6 Through the British conquest, however, it had become 'the head member of an Empire whose parts . . . intermix with the territories of several powerful princes,' and so had to bear great burdens of defence.6 In addition, Bengal now had to pay for the Company's Investment, and every year 'the tribute paid to us extracts . . . a large portion of the produce of that country without the least return.' 7 Grant was aware that at this point in his argument there would be those who would say that if the parts of India under British rule were worse off than they had been before, then an easy solution would be to give 'back our territories to the natives.'8 Also, if his account of the history of British rule in India were true, then his assertion that the Company could give the people better government than they could give themselves seemed to be contradicted.9 His explanation was that while it was true British rule had been responsible for bad government, the renunciation of power would lead to greater evils since the legatees of British power would either be Indian 'adventurers of less pretension than ourselves,' or the European rivals of Britain.10 While this would not in any way imI

Charles Grant, 'Observations on the State of Asia,' p. 22. 3 4 Ibid., p. 18. Ibid., p. 22. Ibid. 6 * Ibid., p. 19. Ibid. ' Ibid., p. 27. 8 10 Ibid., p. 23. • Ibid., p. 94. Ibid., p. 23. II

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prove the condition of the people, British interests would suffer through the strengthening of her enemies. Since neither moral obligations nor political expediency would permit the Company's withdrawal from India, the only course for the Company, Grant argued, was to accept the full obligations and duties of government in the conquered territories by treating the people as 'exclusively and absolutely our subjects.'1 This duty could not be fulfilled by merely protecting the people from 'feudal oppressions and official abuses' but only by looking into the causes of the disorders that prevailed in Indian society, and then 'with the affection of a wise and good superior, sedulously to watch over their civil and social happiness.'2 In other words, the Company's government was best, not because of its achievements in the past but because of its potentialities for the future: it could analyse the causes of disorder in India society and apply effective remedies. For Grant, the causes of disorder were plain—the character of the people and the prevailing system of religious values. The fulfilment of the obligations of good government, therefore, would require the Company's administration to participate actively in altering the existing system. By way of proof of this contention, Grant gave a lengthy description of Indian society and of the character of the people. To many contemporaries, this description seemed to be a malignant vilification of a whole race; for others, it was as a just and reasonable picture, based on first-hand knowledge and observation. 'Abandoned selfishness,' Grant declared, 'was the distinguishing mark of Hindu character.' 3 Throughout the country, human nature exhibited itself 'in a very degraded humiliating state.' Truth and veracity were almost unknown, and the assumption that guided every human relationship was that fraud and deceit were necessary to gain one's ends. 'Discord, hatred, abuse, slanders, injuries, complaints, litigations, all the effects of selfishness unrestrained by principles, prevail to a surprising degree.'4 Natural affection of parents for children was lacking and conjugal love was unknown. Parents sold their children, not only in times of famine, but very often simply out of greed. Child marriage meant that couples were yoked together like 'animals of a lower species.'5 While men were bound by no moral restraints and lived with 'the insensibility of brutes,' women were doomed to a life of servitude and semi-imprisonment and 'a violent and premature death.' All Grant's generalizations were documented by quotations from the accounts of travellers from the time of Bernier onwards as well as from the Company's records. Even Hast1 1

K

Ibid., p. 25. Ibid. pp. 27-29.

s 5

Ibid., Ibid.

• Ibid., p. 27. 145

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ings' official writings were made to yield evidence for the depravity of Hindu society.1 In listing at great length what he considered to be evidence of the degradation of the mind and spirit of the Hindus, Grant was building up a vital link in his argument. While he wanted to make clear the corruption of Indian society, he was careful in his descriptions to show that the evils were the product of the religion of the people. It was not any inborn weakness that made the Hindus degenerate, he insisted, but the nature of their religion. This religion was 'a despotism, the most remarkable for its power and duration that the world had ever seen.'2 Not only did it fail to teach virtue, but it positively encouraged immorality. The recently translated and published editions of the laws of Manu provided Grant with a wide variety of illustrations to prove 'the cruel genius which pervades the Hindoo code,' and he collected all the passages which have since been so frequently used to show that the Hindu Law Code enjoined fraud, lying and the abuse of people of inferior caste.3 He gave graphic descriptions of the idols worshipped by the people, of the cruel and licentious gods, and especially of the skull-draped images of Kali.4 Aware that Hindu society was immensely old, Grant was greatly impressed by its ability to withstand external assaults. But if the people were as corrupt, and their religion as vile, as he pictured them, how was it possible that 'the frame of society had been preserved from distortion?' 5 His answer to this problem was that the religion, although morally degrading, had created a complex social system that was extraordinarily impervious to attack from without or dissension from within.6 While Grant's colourful denunciation of Hindu character has been the aspect of the Observations that has attracted most attention, this attempt to relate Indian character and the social system to the basic nature of Hindu religion is the most interesting and original feature of the book. From his own point of view, it was the most important part of his argument, since having shown how corrupt the social system was he also had to show that it could be remedied by changing social and religious conditions. It was the institution of caste, Grant argued, that held Hindu society together, and caste was the product of fraud and imposture on the part of the Brahmin priests who had used religion to oppress the rest of society.7 They had 'feigned a divine revelation and appointment, to invest their own order, in perpetuity, with the most absolute order over the civil state of the Hindoos, as well as over 1 4

Ibid., pp. 31 ff. Ibid., pp. 66 ff. ' Ibid., p. 45.

2 6

Ibid., pp. 60-61. Ibid., p. 39, footnote. 146

3

Ibid., p. 66. ' Ibid., pp. 60-61.

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their minds.' Religion, law and custom had all been used to create a society that was virtually indestructible. 'Inequalities in conditions and subordinations in rank,' were seen in all societies, and, Grant said, were 'plainly agreeable to the will of the great Creator,' but the Brahmins had gone far beyond the normal hierarchies of rank. 2 With their 'acute, subtle and penetrating' minds they had promulgated as 'an awful and momentous truth' the assertion that certain classes are 'in their elementary principles, in the matter of which they are formed,' superior to others, and there can never be any change in their status.3 Thus they had succeeded in creating a society, different from all others, where the laws of one group bound the rest of the people in eternal servitude. It was because of this system that 'a life of abject slavery, and unparalleled depravity, have become the distinguishing characteristics of the Hindoos.' 4 As he defined his own attitude towards Hinduism, Grant was consciously combating other views prevalent at the time. The ones that were of most immediate concern to him were those that Percival Spear has referred to as 'the hard-boiled' and the 'sentimental' schools of thought in regard to India. 5 The 'hard-boiled' school, which was made up of merchants and traders connected with the Company both in India and Great Britain, as well as many politicians, including probably Henry Dundas, saw the relationship between the two countries almost wholly in economic terms. Although some traders declared that they had found men of honour and probity among the Indian commercial classes,6 most of them, having seen the worst features of the society, would probably have agreed in general with Grant's evaluation of Hinduism. However, they felt that it was no part of their business to attempt to bring about change, even though they might regard many of the religious practices of the people with contempt.7 Grant's problem with this group— which would include many members of the Court of Directors— was not to convince them that Indian society was corrupt, but rather that there was any reason for seeking to change it. He probably hoped to appeal to them with arguments based on the possibility of improved markets and sources of supply. The real opponents of Grant's views were the increasing number of people who, finding in Indian culture a deep and appealing wisdom, argued that the Indian people had a way of life that was valid for 1

2 3 Ibid. Ibid., p. 44. Ibid. Ibid. 6 Percival Spear, 'Western Historical Writing in the Era of the Nationalist Movement,' Paper delivered at the South Asia Seminar, School of African and Oriental Studies, London, May 1956. ® Robert Lindsay, op. cit., p. 168. ' Ibid. 1

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them, however different it might be from western civilization. One of Grant's early contemporaries in the Company's service said that the central core of Hinduism was 'the universal religion,... no other than the religion of the heart.' 1 Luke Scrafton, who had helped Grant get his first appointment in the Company, as early as 1763 had found that the Hindus accepted 'those truths which form the harmony of the Universe,' and believed in one supreme God, whom they served through charity and good works.2 Even John Shore, who later gave complete approval to Grant's views, as a young man had thought the religion of the Hindus was a pure deism, 'with a wonderful resemblance to the doctrines of Plato.' 3 Other writers found not only the religion of the Hindus appealing, but also praised the institutions and material civilization of India. Just before Grant wrote the Observations, a writer called Q. Crafurd had published a book claiming that India, not Egypt or Greece, was the original home of the arts and sciences, and that the Hindus were 'a polished and civilized nation.' 4 William Hodges who had travelled in India in the 1780's urged his countrymen to cease despising Hindu architecture and sculpture simply because it did no conform to Greek rules of beauty; there were, he suggested, other canons of taste than those of the western world.5 One of the writers of this school of thought whom Grant found especially annoying was the famous Glasgow historian, Reverend William Robertson, whose book on Indian history appeared in 1791.® Robertson thought Hindu law, which Grant regarded as cruel and barbarous, worthy to be ranked 'with the systems of jurisprudence in nations most highly civilized.'7 Even more displeasing to Grant was Robertson's praise of the caste system as a marvellous instrument for ordering and adjusting society.8 This was actually not so different from Grant's own judgment, but Robertson, although agreeing that the caste system was repugnant to the western mind, insisted that it was of great value and utility in India. The most serious challenge to Grant's view of Hindu society came, however, from the writings of Sir William Jones. Even before he went to India as a Judge of the Supreme Court in Calcutta, Jones 1 Mr. Grose, A Voyage to the East Indies, with an Account of the Mogul Government, and of the Mahometan, Gentoo andParsee Religions, London, 1772, p. 183. 8 Scrafton, op. cit., p. 7. 3 Teignmouth, Memoir, 1,108, John Shore to Prof. Ford, 17 Sept. 1783. 4 Q. Crafurd, Sketches Chiefly Relating to the Historical Learning and Manners of the Hindoos, London, 1790,1,71-74. 6 William Hodges, Travels in India during the Years 1780-83, London, 1793. 6 William Robertson, An Historical Disquisition concerning the Knowledge the Ancients had of India, Dublin, 1791. 7 8 Ibid., p. 262. Ibid., p. 248.

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had an established reputation as an Oriental scholar and the results of his researches in Indian literature and religion found a wide audience.1 While other writers had been aware of the greatness and antiquity of Indian culture, their accounts had been based on fragmentary knowledge and, very often, on poor scholarship. Jones, however, spoke with the authority of a first-hand knowledge of the Sanskrit texts and, as his biographer John Shore pointed out, he presented his findings with 'discrimination and rapture.' 2 Grant was aware of Jones' infectious enthusiasm for Indian studies, for on a visit to Malda in 1785 his 'variety and depth of learning' had filled Grant with 'the shame of being unlearned.'3 It was, in fact, probably this encounter with Jones that led Grant, as the footnotes of the Observations show, to read most of the works that had been published in English on India.4 Although Jones did not rhapsodize over Hinduism as a religious system, his works gave a clear indication of its great antiquity, the wealth and variety of its literature and the profundity of its philosophical concepts—in short, as Grant realized, they provided a ready source for those who wished to show that India had no need to import religious doctrines from the west. To counter this use of the great scholar's researches, Grant argued that there was nothing in Jones' works to justify the conclusions that were being drawn from them in regard to missions.6 Not only had he verified the superior antiquity of the Hebrew Scriptures with his discovery that the earliest historical events recorded in the Hindu books were concerned with a patriarch, a flood and an ark, but, Grant insisted, Jones was himself a devout Christian and 'a strenuous advocate for the diffusion of the Gospel in the East.'6 Grant strengthened this argument with a reminder that the tendency to picture Hindus 'as models of goodness and virtue' could be used for other purposes than the subversion of the cause of missions.7 The 'anti-Christian philosophers of Europe,' he pointed out, had eagerly seized upon the new knowledge of Indian culture to attack the truth of the Biblical account of Creation and to 1

A. J. Arberry, Asiatic Jones, London, Longmans, Green, 1946, passim. Lord Teignmouth, The Works of Sir William Jones, London, Stockdale, II, 243. Morris, op. cit., p. 83, Charles Grant's Journal, 11 Sept. 1785. 4 The Observations also contain references to many of the leading French works. 5 Charles Grant, 'Observations on the State of Asia,' p. 85. 6 Ibid. For the article referred to by Grant, see William Jones, 'Chronology of the Hindus,' Asiatic Researches, II, 1788, pp. 111-47. Grant's desire to show that Jones was a Christian and a friend of missions is very clearly reflected in his friend John Shore's edition of Jones' works (Teignmouth, Work of Sir William Jones'). 7 Charles Grant, 'Observations on the State of Asia,' p. 89. 2 3

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deny the Christian revelation. This allusion to French revolutionary doctrines was well-timed, for when Dundas read it in 1792 he was busy crushing the Scottish revolutionary societies.2 The general result of accepting false views of the value of Hinduism was, according to Grant, the belief that 'if any religion is necessary, the religion in which a man happens to be born will do at least as well as any other.' 3 This attitude, he insisted, had the gravest political consequences, since British power in India could not be permanently established except on a basis of good government, which could not flourish alongside the evils produced by Hinduism. It was the obligation of British rule, therefore, to bring to an end this system of error that fed upon the miseries of the people.4 British obligations to India could only be fulfilled, Grant was convinced, by 'the introduction of light . . . for the Hindoos err because they are ignorant; and their errors have never fairly been laid before them.' 5 Once they had been shown the truth, the Hindus would abandon their ancient falsehoods and accept the new revelation which would lead to a new order of society. After his long and detailed descriptions of the monstrous evils of Hinduism, this prescription sounds absurdly simple, but he was apparently quite unaware of this. To a remarkable degree, he shared what has been called 'the generous dream' of the eighteenth century reformers—the belief that through education 'mankind held in its own hands the key to its destiny: it could make the future almost what it would.'6 How greatly Grant differed from other Company servants in his faith in the power of truth to change Indian society was strikingly shown in the answers Bengal magistrates gave in 1801 when they were asked by Wellesley—probably in an attempt to please Grant—to give their opinions of the moral condition of the natives and what might be done by way of improvement.7 While the majority replied that the people were 'indolent, ignorant, superstitious,' 'extremely prolifigate and immoral,' there was general agreement that very little could be done to change them. What Grant meant by 'the introduction of light' was not, as has often been supposed, merely the preaching of the Gospel, but the introduction of the whole of western learning.8 This is made clear 1

Ibid., p. 31. Furber, Henry Dundas, p. 78. 3 Charles Grant, 'Observations of the State of Asia,' p. 89. 4 6 Ibid., p. 76. Ibid. 6 J. H. Randall, Jr., The Making of the Modern Mind (Revised Edition), Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1940, p. 381. 1 Parliamentary Papers, 1812-13, VIII, Paper 166, Answers to interrogations by Governor-General, 1801. 8 Charles Grant, 'Observations on the State of Asia,' p. 77. 2

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by the fundamental place he assigned in his programme to the use of the English language in India. It was perfectly reasonable, he argued, that the British should follow the example of other ruling groups in India and elsewhere by introducing their own language as a means of assimilating the conquered people.1 Many of the troubles that beset the British in India would have been avoided, he claimed, if English had been adopted as the language of government from the very beginning of the Company's territorial administration. This argument was not new for Grant—it had already been expressed in the letter he had helped Philip Francis write to Lord North in 1777, and when he had been in charge of the Company's commerce in Bengal he had very strongly advocated the use of English in conducting all business connected with the Investment.2 In 1792 he extended this practical reason to argue that English would not only improve the Company's administrative efficiency but through its use the natives would inevitably learn the arts, philosophy and religion of the governing race, and 'the fabric of error' would be silently undermined.3 English education would not only affect the opinions and beliefs of the upper classes but it would also reach down to the peasant bound to poverty by his 'diminutive plough' and 'miserable cattle.'4 Through the study of western science, the people would learn the application of useful arts and, by improving their agriculture, they would propser. They would then be freed from the paralysing belief that the conditions of their lives were predetermined, and they would break the ancient laws of custom that made them victims of the corrupt Brahminical priestcraft. 5 'Idolatry, with all its rabble of impure deities . . . its false principles and corrupt practices, would fall,' and the people, having risen 'in the scale of human beings,' would live in peace, comfort and justice under British rule.6 A generation later, Alexander Duff, the great Scottish missionary, and Thomas Babington Macaulay made the idea commonplace that the English language might be used to change the social structure of Indian society, but in 1792 Charles Grant's statement of the belief, if not completely original, was certainly the fullest and amost persuasive that had yet been made. According to Grant, the issue that faced the Company was a simple one: were the people of India to be helped by having 'rationally and mildly' explained to them the 'divine principles which have raised us in the scale of being,' or were they to be left in 'error and ignorance ?'7 Through its rule in India the Company had already shown a concern for 'administrative justice, kindness and modera1

Ibid. See above, pp. 46, 113. Charles Grant, 'Observations on the State of Asia,' p. 77. 4 6 6 Ibid., p. 79. Ibid. Ibid., p. 80. 7 Charles Grant, 'Observations on the State of Asia,' p. 110. 2

3

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tion,' but if it would support religion and education it could advance 'social happiness . . . by extending a superior light farther than the Roman eagles ever flew.'1 The beginning of this support was to be guaranteed by the inclusion in the new Charter of a clause which would state that Whereas such measures ought to be adopted for the interests and happiness of the native inhabitants of the British dominions in India, as may gradually tend to their advancement in useful knowledge, and to their religious and moral improvement; . . . the . . . Court of Directors . . . are hereby empowered and required to send out, from time to time . . . fit and proper persons . . . as schoolmasters, missionaries, or otherwise. . . . The said Court of Directors are hereby empowered and required to give directions to the governments . . . In India to settle the destination and to provide for the necessary and decent maintenance of the persons so to be sent out.2 The wording of the 'Pious Clause,' as well as the whole tenor of the argument of the Observations make clear that Grant's intention at this time was not merely to get permission for missionaries to go to India, but to have the Company appoint them and pay them. It was the same argument that he had already put forward in the 'Proposal' in 1784. In modern terminology, what Grant was asking Henry Dundas and the Directors of the Company to do was to take the initiative in instituting a programme of social change in India that aimed at the complete alteration of the basis on which the existing social structure rested. Although Charles Grant was undoubtedly the driving force behind the attempt to have the 'Pious Clause' included in the Charter in 1793, the leading public part was played by William Wilberforce. This participation by Wilberforce in Indian affairs was extremely important, for it marked the beginning of the momentous associaton of the Clapham Sect with social reform in India.3 Grant's own connection with the members of the famous group of prosperous, hardworking pious men who 'planned and laboured together like a committee that was never dissolved'4 had actually begun before he left India when he sent his 'Proposal' to some of them, including Wilberforce. Soon after his arrival in England, he had met Henry 1

Ibid. Quoted in Wilberforce, Life, II, 392. 3 There are many accounts of the Clapham sect and Grant's relation to it. Besides Morris, op. cit., pp. 225-29, see also Hennell, op. cit., pp. 169-214; Howse, op. cit., pp. 13-27 and M. G. Jones, Hannah More, pp. 92-97. The most interesting is, perhaps, Forster, Marianne Thornton, pp. 35-48. 4 Howse, op. cit., p. 26. 2

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Thornton, who was the real founder of the group. The Thorntons were a great banking family, with many connections with the East India Company's home administration.1 Next to Wilberforce, Henry Thornton regarded Grant as his closest friend,2 and their common interest in the Company's affairs helped to give the cause of missions a prominent place in the thinking not only of the Clapham group but of Evangelicals in general. While Abolition was the most spectacular of the many humanitarian activities in which they engaged, Indian missions provided almost as great a challenge to their energies and one that at first had fewer supporters. It has been said of the famous descendants of the Clapham group who figured so largely in the 'intellectual aristocracy' of the late nineteenth century that they were 'agreed on one characteristic doctrine: that the world could be improved by analysing the needs of society and calculating the possible course of its development.'3 And this can be applied to the Clapham group itself. What they did was to analyse the world in terms of their Evangelical religion, and then they set out to alter it. Almost all of them were practical men of affairs who had established reputations in politics and business, and they used their powers of organization and their professional contacts, as well as their personal wealth, to achieve their ends. They were not, as Thornton told Grant, 'all queer, or guilty of carrying things too far,' 4 but they had a tendency, as a friendly critic noted, to spiritual pride and a cold and critical heart. 5 In 1793, some of the strengths as well as the weaknesses of the 'Clapham system,' as Thornton called it,6 can be seen in the attempt to get the 'Pious Clause' included in the Charter. At first, the plans of Wilberforce and Grant for the Clause went very well. Dundas agreed to give his support in Parliament, and the Clause was inserted in the Charter Bill just before the Third Reading was to take place.7 Although Wilberforce took the lack of opposition to be a mark of Divine Providence, the Directors regarded it in a very different light. Wilberforce, they alleged, had deliberately waited until all the other clauses had been debated; then, when the Company assumed that there would be no more changes, he brought 1 Philips, East India Company, p. 346, Appendix IV, 'Alphabetical List of East India Members of Parliament, 1780-1834.' 2 Henry Thornton, An Inquiry into the Nature and Effects of the Paper Credit of Great Britain (1802), edited with an introduction by F. A. v. Hayek, New York, Farrar and Rinehart, 1939, p. 20. 3 N. G. Annan, 'The Intellectual Aristocracy,' Studies in English Social History, edited by J. H. Plumb, London, Longmans, Green, 1955, p. 250. 4 Morris, op. cit., p. 200, Henry Thornton to Charles Grant, 30 Sept. 1793. 5 Dean Milner, quoted by M. G. Jones, Hannah More, p. 93. • Morris, op. cit., p. 200, Henry Thornton to Charles Grant, 30 Sept. 1793. 7 Parliamentary Register, XXXV, 253.

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up the new resolutions in a thin House, and through his great personal influence had them passed without debate.1 At a meeting of the General Court that followed Wilberforce's action, the Clause was violently attacked by those who had, as Grant put it, 'a vehement determination against the principle of introducing Christianity among our subjects.'2 The main fear of his opponents, he noted later, was not, as it afterwards was, that the preaching of missionaries might offend the religious feelings of the people, but rather of the political effect education and the Christian religion might have on a subject race.3 Sir Stephen Lushington, one of the most prominent of the Directors, expressed this when he said that although he had believed that the age was too enlightened for a government to sanction schemes for making converts, this was what the Bill suggested.4 The great danger, he said, was that the missionaries might succeed, for if they did, this would mean the end of British supremacy in India.5 In a similar vein, another speaker commented that while he did not regret the recent events in America, they should at least serve as a warning of the results that could be expected from the spread of education.6 Grant had already anticipated in the Observations that someone would raise the objection that the spread of the English language and the Christian religion in India might lead the people 'to desire English liberty, the English form of government and a share in the legislation of their own country,' and he had prepared an answer.7 It was not religion and education, he declared, but the lack of them, that had left the French lower classes a prey to 'Jacobinical impostures and delusions, by which they were hurled into the atrocities of anarchy and atheism.'8 As for the American example, he held it to be entirely irrelevant to the Indian situation. To suppose that any educational institutions, no matter how excellent, could give to the people of India the energy and the ideas of political liberty of the Americans was, he insisted, beyond belief and expectation. The 'spirit of English liberty is not to be caught from a written description of it, by distant and feeble Asiatics.'9 The opposition to the 'Pious Clause' was so great that when the 1

William Woodfall, editor, Debate at East India House, 23 April 1793, p. 128. Charles Grant, 'Observations on the State of Asia,' p. 108, footnote. C.R.O., Appendix to Court Minutes, III, Edward Parry and Charles Grant to Directors, 27 Aug. 1813. 4 Woodfall, Debate at East India House, 23 May 1793, pp. 129 and 137, speech of Sir Stephen Lushington. 6 Ibid. 6 Ibid., p. 136, speech by Randle Jackson. 7 Charles Grant, 'Observations on the State of Asia,' p. 106, footnote. 8 Ibid., p. 98. • Ibid., p. 97. 2

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Charter Bill came up for the Third Reading Dundas withdrew his support and the clause was withdrawn. Wilberforce felt that Dundas had acted in 'a most false and double way,'1 but probably he and Pitt thought that despite the pledges they had given the issue was not worth a Parliamentary struggle. Dundas was having difficulty at this time in getting the Directors to agree to the clause providing for an extension of private trade, and the fact that both the offending clauses had been written by his protégé, Charles Grant, strengthened the opposition. The withdrawal of the mission clause would, therefore, serve as a gesture of compromise.2 Another consideration for Pitt and Dundas was that the opposition, led by Fox, had seized upon the 'Pious Clause' for a sudden and unexpected attack on the Government, and, aware of the dangers involved in Company politics, they were anxious to avoid a debate.3 'Our territories in Hindostán,' Wilberforce sorrowfully recorded in his Journal, 'have been left in the undisturbed and peaceable possession of— Brama.' 4 Grant and the Clapham group had been defeated, but at least they had gained experience, and when they reopened the issue of missionaries at the time of the renewal of the Charter in 1813 both their methods and the content of their proposals were changed. Wilberforce came at once to the conclusion that they had relied too heavily on the word of Dundas and Pitt, and that what would be needed in future was the support of voluntary organizations throughout the country.5 By 1813, it was also realized that the attempt to get the Company to actually maintain missionaries was an error, although just when Grant first saw this is not clear. While Grant's proposal that the Company should officially sponsor missionary work in India was decisively rejected by both Parliament and the Company's own administration, his general attitude towards the character of the Indian people and his view of the nature of the obligations of British rule later became almost unquestioned assumptions. The triumph of the kind of ideas found in the Observations was what Max Müller had in mind in 1882 when he deplored the fact that young civil servants went out to India convinced that the people whom they would rule were 'not amenable to the recognized principles of self-respect, uprightness and veracity . . . never restrained in their dealings by any regard for truth, never to be 1

Wilberforce, Life, II, 27, Journal, n.d. Philips, East India Company, p. 78. Parliamentary Register, XXXV, 575-84, speeches by William Pitt and C. J. Fox, 24 May 1793. 4 Wilberforce, Life, II, 27, Journal, n.d. 5 Wilberforce, Life, II, 28, Journal, n.d. 2

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trusted on their word.' Leaving aside the probably unanswerable question as to the validity of Grant's judgment on Indian moral character, the reason for its later wide acceptance seems fairly clear: it provided a justification for British rule in India. A belief that Indian society was degraded, and that this was a reflection of the character of the people, was coupled with the equally strong conviction that it was possible for British power to change conditions or, at the least, to provide a better framework for social justice than could rule by Indians. This attitude did not mean a lack of criticism of British rule—as already noted, Grant was extremely critical of some aspects of the Company's government in Bengal—but it meant that for those who believed in the need for improvement and change in India there seemed to be no alternative to the continuance of British control. It was this belief in the possibility of changing Indian society that sharply differentiated the later administrators from the earlier ones, and not, as has often been suggested, that the first generation of Company servants had a kindlier view of the people and their culture. 'An opinion seems rather to have gained ground in late years,' Mountstuart Elphinstone noted in 1832, 'that it only requires a little enterprize to effect every change in [India] that we think desirable.'2 As an administrator in the Bombay Presidency, Elphinstone had himself been an innovator, but he had a sense that the demand for change was perhaps growing too strong.3 The pressure was coming from two groups in England—the Evangelicals and the Utilitarians—and despite obvious divergences in beliefs, both shared Grant's basic attitude towards Indian society, for both desired radical change.4 While the Utilitarians' prescription for reform did not include the truths of revealed religion, they had the same need as the Evangelicals to find a sanction for their programme of social reform. For this reason, James Mill's Utilitarian evaluation of Indian society in his History of British India was, if possible, even darker than that of Grant in the Observations.5 It has been argued that if the Hindus were as bad as Mill pictured them, then the rest of mankind would be 1 F. Max Müller, India, What Can it Teach Us ?, London, Longmans, Green, 1883, p. 35. 2 Parliamentary Papers, 1831-32, IX, 292, Report from Select Committee on Affairs of India, 5 Aug. 1832. 3 K. A. Ballhatchet, Social Policy and Social Change in Western India, 18171830, London, Oxford University Press, 1957, passim, for Elphinstone's views. 4 E. T. Stokes, The English Utilitarians and India, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1959, explores the influence of the Evangelicals on India as well as of the Utilitarians. 5 James Mill, The History of British India, Fourth Edition, with notes and continuation by H. H. Wilson, London, James Madden, 1840,1, 329-492.

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degraded by kinship with them, but, in a sense, both Grant and Mill were trying to persuade the British people that this degradation through kinship in fact existed and was the reason for reforming India. Lord William Bentinck, friend of Grant and Mill, made this point when he explained why he had abolished sati. He was seeking, he said, to free the Indian people from 'the primitive rudeness and ignorance' of their culture, since this led them to observe customs 'opposed to true happiness and repugnant to the best feelings that Providence had planted in the human breast.'2 Even at a time when neither the dreams of the Evangelicals nor of the Utilitarians stirred the imaginations of British administrators in India it was not possible to abandon completely the kind of sanctions for British rule that Grant had provided in his Observations. Thus Sir Henry Maine said Britain's right to be in India was based upon the 'principle of progress,' which 'we Englishmen are communicating to India . . . We have received it, so we pass it on.' 3 By the end of the century, and perhaps on to 1947, the justification for British rule tended to be, 'What's for their good, not what pleases them.' 4 These are secular versions of the convictions that animate the Observations, but Grant's fundamental argument—that the only possible excuse for British rule in India was the possession of a superior truth and the willingness to use it to transform Indian life— remained. His book merits an important place among the documents of British rule in India, not only because of the direct influence it exerted, but especially for the clarity with which it raised the issue of the right of Britain to control India and the uncompromising nature of the answer given. 1 T. P. Peardon, The Transition in British Historical Writing, 1760-1830, New York, Columbia University Press, 1933, p. 269. 2 Parliamentary Papers, 1837, VI, 187, Select Committee.... on Steam Navigation with India, evidence of Lord William Bentinck. 3 Sir Henry Maine, quoted by E. T. Stokes, 'The Administrators and Historical Writing on India,' Paper for South Asia Seminar, School of African and Oriental Studies, May 1956. 4 Spear, 'Western Historical Writing in the Era of the Nationalist Movement,' op cit.

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D E F E N D E R OF MONOPOLY A L T H O U G H his advocacy of missions and his attitude towards India assured Charles Grant of a place in the history of the British connection with India, for his contemporaries in the East India Company's administration and in Parliament his reputation depended upon his unyielding and articulate defence of the Company's trading monopoly. His defence of the Company's monopoly is interesting, not only because it was the last important one made, but, even more, because it was made in full awareness of changing economic conditions and of new economic theories that seemed to make his position nonsensical. But, as he told Wellesley in 1801, while his 'opinions on these subjects may be regarded by some . . . as visionary,' he was willing to leave the decision to the test of time. This was especially true, he said, since his defence of monopoly was based on 'a strong impelling sense of duty,' and was contrary to his 'habits, inclinations, and private interests.'2 He had made the same point in 1799 in a letter to John Bebb, a member of the Board of Trade in Calcutta. 'You and I,' he wrote, 'have long been satisfied that the adherents to the narrow principle of an exclusive trade were men of very confined minds,' and there were men within the Company who continued to think 'in the spirit of the old rigid system of strict monopoly.' 3 That he was not one of these was made clear, he insisted, by his record in the past—the part he had taken in enlarging private trade while a member of the Board of Trade in Calcutta and then later in the negotiations over the Charter of 1793. But he was convinced that the Company's monopoly involved a "question of great magnitude and complexity, . . . namely, 'the proper rule or measure of intercourse between British India and Europe." ' 4 Since, he argued, the 'proper measure of intercourse' was a limited one, free trade could not be permitted because it would lead to 'an unrestrained, unlimited intercourse,' and this meant 'finally hazarding our power in the east.'5 His reasons for holding this position were given in numerous speeches and letters throughout the rest of his career, but they re1 Martin, Wellesley Despatches, V, Supplement: 'Private Trade,' p. 143, Charles Grant to Wellesley, 14 Sept. 1801. 2 Ibid. 3 Ibid., p. 138, Charles Grant to John Bebb, 4 June 1799. 4 6 Ibid., p. 137. Ibid., p. 139.

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ceived their most unified and cogent expression in connection with the great debate over private trade and shipping that took place from 1798 to 1802. The controversy that began in 1798 was really a continuation of the struggle in which from 1792 to 1796 Grant had taken such a prominent part as the ally of Henry Dundas and David Scott.1 For Scott and Dundas, the victories that had been won against the Shipping Interest on behalf of private trade were only resting places and both were convinced that further restrictions on the Company's monopoly were necessary.2 This was not the case, however, with Grant; he believed that for the present enough had been gained through the shipping reforms and the concessions to private trade. Therefore, when Scott prepared a new and broader attack in 1798 and looked to Grant for support, he found him very hesitant. What Scott suggested was that instead of using only the large, traditional type of ship—the famous 'East Indiamen'—contracts should be given for smaller ships.3 The result of this, he believed, would be not only a reduction in freight rates, but also that a further blow would be struck at the power of the old Shipping Interest, since the use of smaller ships would mean that many more builders would be able to compete for the Company's contracts.4 Furthermore, Indian-built ships would be able to compete, thus further lowering costs. Grant agreed to help Scott carry through his plans, but he reminded him that previously he had never argued for the reduction in the size or number of the Company's ships, but had only insisted on open competition and fixed rates of freight.5 These demands, he said, had been dictated by 'equity, reason and common sense.'8 Before any fresh hostilities were commenced, it would be necessary, 'first that our ground be very clear, then that our subject be sufficiently important, and lastly our manner of proceeding so temperate and rational as to free us from the imputation of party feelings and private motives.'7 Despite considerable hostility, the Directors agreed to Scott's plan, but meanwhile events in India had changed the situation. Along with Scott and Dundas, Wellesley was convinced that the Company's dwindling sale of Indian goods was caused by the high freight rates charged on the Company's ships. Not only did this increase the cost of the Company's own goods, but it meant that private traders in India, including the Company's ser1

See above, pp. 132-36. Philips, Scott Correspondence, I, 96, David Scott to W. Fairlie, 8 March 1797. Ibid., p. xvii. 4 Ibid. 6 Ibid., p. 147, Charles Grant to David Scott, 25 Aug. 1798. 9 Ibid. ' Ibid. 2 3

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vants, were shipping their goods to Europe in foreign ships.1 The largest part of this 'clandestine trade,' as it was called, was being shipped in American bottoms, and Wellesley and his advisers thought that the way to bring the trade back into British channels was to allow the private traders to ship home goods in Indian ships at competitive rates.2 This was done in the 1798-99 season without prior consultation with London; the result was that many of the Directors now became extremely hostile to any alteration in the Company's trading arrangements.3 Since Dundas and Scott had given Wellesley initial encouragement, they were forced to defend his action. There was no intention on the part of any responsible person, Dundas insisted, to do away with the Company's monopoly, but great conquests had been made in India and the British people had the right to expect benefits.4 If the Company were remiss in developing trade with the Indian territories, it was certain, he told the Directors, that foreign traders would replace the British. It was only just, therefore, that Wellesley had taken action to allow private traders to use their capital to increase exports from India. 5 It was not only the question of the increasing sale of Indian goods in Britain that concerned Dundas at this time, however, for once more the British manufacturers were demanding changes in the Company's monopoly. In 1799, petitions were coming into Parliament in increasing numbers asking for the opportunity, as the Exeter merchants put it, for 'exchanging on the true principles of commerce the productions of India for the manufactures of Great Britain.'6 In fact, the rather technical issue of shipping had been replaced by a general attack on the Company's monopoly, no matter how much Dundas might deny this. Opposition to the monopoly was not new, but from this time on it found almost continuous expression, and increasingly questions were raised as to the nature of the British connection with India. The charges against the Company were no longer, as they had been in the 1780's, that its rule was tyrannical and corrupt, but rather that its commercial inefficiency was a barrier to the expansion of British trade. 7 However shallow the concern for the Indian people expressed by Burke and Fox may have been, at least 1

Martin, Wellesley Despatches, V, Supplement; 'Private Trade,' p. 131, G. Udny to Wellesley, 15 Sept. 1800. 1 Ibid. For a full discussion of this complex issue, see Philips, East India Company, pp. 108-21. »Ibid. 4 C.R.O., H.M.S. 405, pp. 659-66, Henry Dundas to Chairman, 28 June 1800. «Ibid., 402, pp. 3-10, Henry Dundas to Chairman, 2 April 1800. • C.R.O., H.M.S., 405, p. 21, Petition of Exeter Merchants, 19 May 1799. ' Ibid.

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it had a prominent place in their oratory; in the new attacks on the Company, the concern was almost wholly for an increased trade. With the turn Wellesley's action had given to events, Grant's preliminary doubts as to the wisdom of Scott's and Dundas' policies were resolved, and he transferred his support from them to their opponents, many of whom were members of the Shipping Interest against which he had previously fought. It has been suggested that Grant's defection was motivated by the desire to gain power in the Court of Directors by identifying himself with the strongest group, 1 but while Grant was undoubtedly very ambitious, this probably did not play a very important part in his attitude towards the monopoly. David Scott denounced him very bitterly, but he accused him of being stupid and narrow-minded in supporting Wellesley's opponents, not of being ambitious.2 Nor was it altogether certain in 1799 that the Shipping Interest would be the winning side—although they had great power, the opposition of Henry Dundas at the Board of Control and of Wellesley in India was a formidable combination. Furthermore, there is nothing in Grant's subsequent career to suggest he had any special preference for the winning side as such— the number and length of the Dissents he recorded to majority opinions suggests how anxious he often was to make his opposition plain. With Grant's defection, Scott and Dundas lost control of the Court of Directors, and while Grant's action was certainly not wholly responsible, it played an extremely important part in the shift in power. Simply in terms of votes within the Court of Directors, the loss of one supporter was important, since divisions were often close, but, aside from this, Grant was a formidable opponent. The clearest evidence of this is the effort Henry Dundas made to maintain his support—certainly no other opponent's views could have received such courteous attention from him as did Grant's in 1800.3 Although not an orator, he was an effective speaker, since, as a contemporary remarked, 'he spoke gravely, and expected his hearers to listen so.'4 His great strength lay, however, in the fact that he had made his position as Director a full-time career, for as C. N. Parkinson points out, to be a successful Director it was necessary to regard it as a profession.5 Even to his children, Grant was known simply as 'The Director.' 6 Much of the Directors' work was done in committees, and 1

Philips, East India Company, p. 109. Philips, Scott Correspondence, II, 423, David Scott to Wellesley, 28 July 1803. 3 C.R.O., H.M.S. 402, pp. 861-91, Henry Dundas to Charles Grant, 31 July 1800; and passim. * Fisher, 'Charles Grant, Esq.,' op. cit. 5 Parkinson, Trade in the Eastern Seas, p. 12. • Forster, Marianne Thornton, p. 41. 8

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very few other members were as assiduous in attending all meetings as he was.1 This diligent committee work combined with his Bengal experience gave him a knowledge of the Company's affairs unequalled by anyone else in the Direction at the time, and since he was also willing to write memoranda and notes, he was usually chosen to draw up the reports of committees of which he was a member. Although he had to express the majority's viewpoint, he was almost always able to express his own particular bias on most issues, and many committee reports are very obviously his private productions. It was these abilities he used to defend the trading monopoly from any inroads by the advocates of a freer trading policy between Great Britain and India. Although Dundas tried to persuade him that the Company's monopoly was not at stake, but only a further modest increase in the private trade, Grant felt that the whole nature of the British connection with India was being questioned.2 It was necessary, therefore, that the Company should be defended on all points which were 'justly defensible,' and this meant proving that the trading monopoly was of immense significance for British rule in India.3 His arguments were presented in many ways, but they found their fullest expression in a lengthy essay which he wrote for Dundas in the summer of 1800.4 Although never published, this work, 'Observations on the Question of Enlarging the Trade of British Subjects between India and Europe,' had an influential circulation. Recognizing its importance as the ablest statement made by any of the upholders of the monopoly, Dundas sent copies to Pitt and Wellesley.5 The one sent to Wellesley had special significance, for in the same letter in which Dundas recommended Grant's 'valuable observations on trade,' he also informed the Governor-General that Grant had been appointed to his Council in Calcutta.6 Grant finally refused the offer, partly on family grounds, but mainly because he knew that if he went it would be said that Dundas had bought him by the appointment. 7 The offer of the Calcutta post did not lessen Grant's opposition to Dundas and 1 C.R.O., H.M.S. 522A, containing reports of a Special Committee on Revising Establishments in India, shows how Grant attended meetings more regularly than anyone else. 2 C.R.O., H.M.S. 405, p. 681, Charles Grant to Henry Dundas, 26 July 1800. 3 Ibid. 4 Ibid., pp. 691-858, Charles Grant to Henry Dundas, 'Observations on . . . T r a d e . . . , " 2 6 July 1800. 5 C.R.O., H.M.S. 402, pp. 86-91, Henry Dundas to Charles Grant, 31 July 1800; and H.M.S. 406, pp. 129-30. 6 N X . S . , Melville MSS., 1062, Henry Dundas to Wellesley, 4 Sept. 1800. ' B.M., Add.MSS., 37275, p. 211, Charles Grant to Henry Dundas, 5 Sept. 1800.

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Wellesley, and the Directors found his abilities as a polemical writer of great use to them, for he was the author of the Reports drawn up by their Special Committees on Trade in 1800 and 1801.1 Both Reports made use of the arguments of the 'Observations on Trade,' and although a few references, such as those to shipping, suggest pressures from the Shipping Interest, to a remarkable extent they faithfully reflect Grant's characteristic ideas.2 Grant's main opponents in this literary warfare were, rather curiously, men with whom he had had close connections in India. One was Thomas Henchman, who had been his predecessor at Malda, and another was Sir George Dallas, who had been his assistant in the Commercial Department; both of them made Grant the principal target of their attacks.3 In many ways, however, the most important of those who argued against Grant's views was his old friend George Udny, a member of the Council in Calcutta. It was Udny who had made the suggestions on which Wellesley's policies were based, and his Minutes were used by Wellesley to explain the commercial policies that were being followed.4 In defending the monopoly, he was not bound, Grant told a friend, by 'dogmatical opinions,' as were those who, on the one hand, 'stickle for the original system of strict monopoly,' or those who, on the other hand, 'are for giving an unlimited scope to the exertions of individuals.'5 But, he admitted, there were certain principles to which he assigned 'nearly the place of axioms.'6 One of these was that by the Charter Act of 1793 Parliament had given the Company 'a monopoly of the India trade for twenty years under certain modifications [and] this . . . ought to be substantially maintained and preserved.'7 As he put the same idea later, the Company had 'property rights,' acquired 'through a long course of dangers and vicissitudes and at the expense and hazard of the Company themselves,' which were not essentially different from any other property.8 When Grant 1 Asiatic Annual Register, IV, 377, Debate at East India House, 8 April 1802, speech by T. Henchman. 8 Philips, Scott Correspondence, II, 378-79, Lord Dartmouth to David Scott, 26 Dec. 1801. 3 Thomas Henchman, Observations on the Reports of the Directors of East India Company Respecting the Trade between India and Europe, London, 1801; and Sir George Dallas, A Letter to Sir William Pulteney, Bart., Member for Shrewsbury, on the Subject of the Trade between India and Europe, London, 1802. 4 C.R.O., H.M.S. 406, pp. 283-88, George Udny to Wellesley, 15 Sept. 1800; and ibid., p. 276, Charles Grant to Henry Dundas, 17 March 1801. 5 Martin, Wellesley Despatches, V, Supplement: 'Private Trade,' p. 137-39, Charles Grant to John Bebb, 4 June 1799. 9 7 Ibid., p. 137. Ibid. 8 Pari. Debates, XXV, 464, speech by Charles Grant 31 May 1813; and ibid., p. 627,14 June 1813.

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invoked the claims of property rights, he undoubtedly believed that he was appealing to a principle that would not be denied by respectable men, since, like most men of his time, he thought of property as a natural right, not dependent upon the will of the state.1 As a Director, he felt bound by his office to prevent the surrender of any of the Company's rights 'unless such surrender were determined by some general solemn act of my constituents.'2 This sense that a Director was bound to protect the interests of his 'constituents'— that is, the Company's shareholders who had elected him—even at times against personal inclinations, was very strong in the Court. Sir Francis Baring, for example, although by conviction a believer in free trade, was one of the most ardent defenders of the Company's monopoly.3 Another maxim that guided Grant in his defence of the monopoly was that 'all our measures for the advancement and prosperity of our Indian territories ought to be calculated with a reservation of the maintenance of our authority over them, because . . . our Government is on the whole the happiest they can have.'4 With this argument, Grant transformed the debate over the enlargement of free trade into a consideration of the Company's political role in India, since, he insisted, the question of the continuance of British rule was bound up with the way commercial relations between the two countries were conducted. The nature of the defence of the Company, he pointed out had varied through the years. In the early seventeenth century, when the Company had been attacked on the grounds that it exported specie, wasted ships and men, and led to the decay of useful trades, its apologists had to show that the Indian trade was of great commercial value to England.6 Then in Cromwell's time, when the controversy shifted to the claims of monopoly over against open trade, it was soon discovered that only an exclusive company could deal with the rapacious Indian rulers.6 The acquisition of territory had brought the discussion to a third stage, for now, he argued, the chief consideration was no longer commerce but 'the preservation of an Empire.'7 By putting the discussion on this level, Grant could admit that the monopoly had commercial weaknesses while defending 1 Paschal Larkin, Property in the Eighteenth Century, London, Longmans, Green, 1930, p. 241. 8 Martin, Wellesley Despatches, V, Supplement: 'Private Trade,' p. 137, Charles Grant to John Bebb, 4 June 1799. 3 Hidy, op. cit., pp. 17-19 4 Martin, Wellesley Despatches, V, Supplement: 'Private Trade,' p. 137, Charles Grant to John Bebb, 4 June 1799. 6 C.R.O., H.M.S. 405, p. 691, Charles Grant, 'Observations on Trade.' «Ibid., pp. 691-92. ' Ibid., p. 695.

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it on the grounds of political expediency. It was this kind of defence that exasperated Lord Dartmouth, Dundas' successor at the Board of Trade, when he read the Directors' Reports in 1801. They were, he complained, 'a long recitation evidently from the pen of Charles Grant, laboriously filled with principles and opinions . . . [and] Mr. Grant's arguments are . . . in the highest degree political rather than commercial.'1 Grant's attempts to defend the trading monopoly on political grounds seemed absurd to a generation that was beginning to regard the teaching Adam Smith as almost self-evident truth. Smith had used as an illustration of the final folly of mercantilism the strange supposition of the East India Company that 'the clerks of a great counting house could rule justly over a great Empire,' 2 and yet Grant seemed to be making precisely that claim. One of his opponents, after complimenting him for his zeal, remarked that he apparently had forgotten that Smith had proved that 'a company of merchants are . . . incapable of considering themselves as sovereigns, even after they have become such.'3 Grant's answer to the jibes of Smith's followers was that it was Smith whose political views were distorted because of his concern with commerce, not the Company and its servants.4 'Those who have any share of administrative power,' he said, 'are required to look farther than mere merchants, or commercial arguments do.' 5 Smith and his followers, on the other hand, 'rashly and crudely' applied their economic theories to India without any concern for political consequence. Not only had Smith used prejudiced sources for his discussion of the Company's rule in India, but in his desire to apply his general economic theory he had failed, Grant argued, to take into account the dissimilarities of western and Indian civilizations and the peculiar nature of British rule in India.8 Before 1783, Smith's followers had urged that the political power of the Company be transferred to the British crown, without any awareness of 'the formidable dangers of giving such a mighty preponderance of power and influence to the executive branch of our constitution.'7 Fortunately, 'juster views of human nature prevailed,' and instead of allowing Indian patronage to pass into the hands of the Ministry, Parliament instituted 'new checks and responsibilities . . . 1 Philips, Scott Correspondence, II, 379, Lord Dartmouth to David Scott, 26 Dec. 1801. 2 Adam Smith, op. cit., Bk. IV, Ch. VII, Pt. Ill, 138. 3 Dallas, op. cit., p. 5. 4 Martin, Wellesley Despatches, V, Supplement: 'Private Trade,' p. 139, Charles Grant to John Bebb, 4 June 1799. 5 Ibid. ' C.R.O., H.M.S. 405, p. 696, Charles Grant, 'Observations on Trade." Ibid., p. 699.

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which put no existing interest to hazard.' 1 In 1800, however, the appeal for free trade threatened British power in India with a fresh possibility of disaster, since, Grant was convinced, an open trade meant colonization, which in turn meant the loss of India.2 In the light of the subsequent history of British rule in India, Grant's argument that free trade would lead to colonization of the country by Europeans seems a patent absurdity, or, as a contemporary called it, 'the weak fancy of narrow and deluded minds.'3 But the fear that settlers might go to India was not confined to Grant; Dundas regarded it as a dangerous possibility, and assured Grant that 'no commercial interest, either public or private, . . . could induce him to be a party to any scheme which would lead to colonization.' 4 There were, in fact, many people in the early years of the nineteenth century who not only regarded colonization as possible but urged it as a valuable way of strengthening the British connection with India, and at the same time improving the condition of India. In 1804, for example, a writer in the Edinburgh Review declared that there could be no better way of ensuring the continuance of British power in India than to have a large number of Englishmen settled there who would keep the natives in subjection.6 The idea also received the support of Lord William Bentinck when as GovernorGeneral he argued that 'the diffusion of useful knowledge, and its application to the arts and business of life, must be comparatively tardy unless we add to precept the example of Europeans, mingling familiarly with the natives. . . . ' 6 Two of the most prominent Indians of the time, Rammohan Roy and Dwarkanath Tagore, endorsed Bentinck's views.7 Grant's belief that English settlements might be created in India was not, therefore, an entirely eccentric opinion. Grant's reasons for believing that any relaxation of the monopoly would lead to colonization were simple. In the first place, the private traders would want to send their representatives to India, since, as he said some years later, it was a fundamental rule that 'men must be allowed to follow their property.' 8 In the past, the number of Company servants had been limited, and they went out as temporary employees, always expecting to return as soon as they had made 1

Ibid., p. 700. Ibid. 3 Quoted by Robert Grant, The Expediency Maintained. . . . p. 172. 4 C.R.O., H.M.S. 405, p. 863, Henry Dundas to Charles Grant, 31 Aug. 1800. 6 Edinburgh Review, IV, 1804, p. 305. 6 Parliamentary Papers, 1831-32, VIII, Appendix, p. 274, Lord William Bentinck's Minute, 30 May 1829. 7 Ibid., p. 364, 'Conduct of Indigo Planters,' Survey made at the order of the Governor-General in 1829. 8 C.R.O., H.M.S. 816, p. 465, Edward Parry and Charles Grant, 13 Jan. 1809. 2

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their fortune. The case would be different, he thought, with private traders—they would tend to stay there, especially since many of them, having failed through their ignorance of Indian business conditions, would never be able to make their way back to Europe. Furthermore, because of the expectations that had been aroused regarding the possibilities of an increasing trade with India, 'multitudes of the needy and i d l e . . . animated by the spirit of adventure and acquisition,' would flood into India.2 The Company's laws had severely restricted access to India, but once these were done away with, the country would be overrun. The result of this influx of Europeans, Grant was certain, would be the end of British rule in India. Although in the beginning no one might desire this, a variety of pressures would make it inevitable. The British traders who would go to India would find their commercial interests different from those of the Company, and they would demand that 'the antiquated vestiges of monopoly might no longer obstruct the free operations of a vast body of merchants.' 3 Just as in America, 'time and usage gave prescriptive sanction' to even the most exhorbitant demand of the colonists, so would the claims of the British merchants in India for freedom from the Company's economic rules.4 Here Grant was obviously thinking of his own experience in India, for many of the regulations that he had framed for the weavers had been intended to protect the Company from the private trader and to force trade to move within the boundaries defined by the Company.6 Traders would find the political framework of the Company's government no less irksome than its commercial laws, since, Grant pointed out, the form of government in the British territories, as everywhere in India, was that of despotism. This was the form of power that had been transferred to the Company by the Indian rulers, and it was suitable to the condition of Asian society. While the Company might very well decide to alter this despotism for the welfare of the people, it would be as a favour granted, not a right claimed. With the English settlers, however, the case would be different, since despotism would not be congenial to them, and they would demand their rights as British citizens.8 Grant vigorously denied that extension of British sovereignty in India implied that the same liberties that were guaranteed in England had to be given in British India, 1

Ibid., 405, pp. 700-03. Charles Grant, 'Observations on the State of Asia,' p. 93, footnote, dated 1793. 3 C.R.O., H.M.S., pp. 809-10, Charles Grant, 'Observations on Trade.' 1 Ibid., p. 798. s See above, p. 106. * C.R.O., H.M.S., p. 714, Charles Grant, 'Observations on Trade.' 8

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since, he argued, the Company was only obligated to maintain the essential forms of the despotic government bequeathed to it by the former rulers. Furthermore, any rights claimed by British settlers would also be demanded by the Indians, and it would be neither just nor feasible to withhold from one group while giving them to another. 1 The logic of Grant's position was long understood by British administrators in India, especially in regard to the claims by British subjects for freedom of the Press.2 There was, he told Parliament in 1811, nothing inconsistent between a belief in liberty for the Press in England and a denial of that liberty to British citizens in India, for the conditions in India were entirely different.3 Even if the British settlers did not themselves use the power of the Press to attack the Company's government, it was certain that the natives would soon use newspapers as a means of seeking to overthrow British power. It has been suggested that Grant's defence of the Company's monopoly and the policy of excluding Europeans was fundamentally in conflict with his belief in missions and the need of the people for Western learning and religion.4 While Grant and the Evangelicals might argue otherwise, 'the logical corollary of their policy was free trade, free European settlement, and the complete abolition of the Company as a commercial organ.' 5 Grant was actually aware of this conflict, and on a number of occasions tried to show that his advocacy of change within Indian society through the introduction of western ideas did not by any means imply a belief, as he put it, 'that every adventurer disposed to speculate in the trade between Europe and India should have free leave.'6 As early as 1793, when he had been writing his Observations for Dundas on Indian society, it had occurred to him that Dundas would think he was advocating free trade, and he had made very clear that he believed that European religious values could be taught in India without in any way endangering the structure of the Company's monopoly.7 Some years later he said that change could take place in Indian society which, while improving the moral condition of the people, would not basically alter their 1

Ibid., p. 703. Parliamentary Papers, 1834, VIII, p. 139, Minute of Lord William Bentinck, 6 Sept. 1830, gives an interesting statement of the issues involved in the freedom of the Press in India. 3 Pari. Debates, XIX, 471, speech by Charles Grant, 21 March 1811. 4 Stokes, English Utilitarians and India, p. 37. 5 Ibid. • Martin, Wellesley Despatches, V, Supplement: 'Private Trade,' p. 139, Charles Grant to John Bebb, 4 June 1799. 7 Charles Grant, 'Observations on the State of Asia,' p. 93, footnote, dated 1792. 2

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social arrangements. Free trade would, he argued, prevent the working out of the kind of moral and spiritual improvement that he advocated, for the 'low and licentious' Englishmen who would flock to India would 'vex, harass and perplex the weak natives,' who, driven desperate by mistreatment, would revolt and drive the British out.2 If, on the other hand, the monopoly with its restrictions on free movement were continued and combined with 'a prudent, kind and attractive communication of our light and knowledge,' the people would eventually be assimilated to 'our sentiments and manners.' 3 Although the argument that the relaxation of the monopoly would lead to colonization occupied a large place in Grant's polemic, he could not altogether rest his case on it. He had to meet the very powerful arguments that a relaxation of the monopoly would help and the clandestine or illicit trade, give British shippers much of the carrying trade that had fallen into the hands of foreign nations and, above all, would lead to a general expansion of trade between India and Great Britain. The problems of the clandestine trade and the carrying trade of foreign nations were very closely linked, for the charge made by Wellesley and his supporters was that the export trade of foreigners, which had tripled or quadrupled in recent years, was being conducted through the capital of the Company's servants and British merchants in India.4 A relaxation of the Company's monopoly, it was held, would mean that the goods carried by foreign ships would come to London instead of going directly to Europe. Although trading with foreigners by British subjects in India had been made illegal in 1781,5 Wellesley charged that at least two-thirds of all the foreign trade was being conducted with capital supplied by British subjects.6 Grant's answer to Wellesley's charge was a sweeping denial of the whole basis on which it had been founded. He collected an enormous mass of figures on trade, and after a detailed analysis of them concluded that the clandestine trade was neither so large as the opponents of the Company monopoly claimed nor was any significant part of it financed by the capital of the Company's servants.7 This was a bold line of attack, and drew the immediate rebuttal that 1 Pari. Debates, XXV, xliv, Report from Committee of Correspondence, 9 Feb. 1813. For Grant's authorship, see below p. 265. * C.R.O., H.M.S. 405, p. 701, Charles Grant, 'Observations on Trade.' 3 Ibid., p. 704. 4 C.R.O., H.M.S. 402, pp. 48-61, Wellesley to Directors, 30 Sept. 1800. 6 Statutes of the Realm, 21 George III, c 65, sec. xxix. • C.R.O., H.M.S. 402, pp. 48-61. Wellesley to Directors, 30 Sept. 1800. 7 C.R.O., H.M.S. 405, pp. 753-54, Charles Grant, 'Observations on Trade.'

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it was based on guesswork, but although it would probably be impossible to establish their validity, his pages of figures are impressive witness to his energy and to his claim that no one else had ever studied the subject so thoroughly before.2 Essentially, his argument was that since the passing of the 1793 Charter Act with its provision for private trade over a million pounds had been remitted in the form of goods by the Company's servants. He computed that this must have been such a large part of the available capital that only a small part of the clandestine trade could have depended upon the illicit trading of Company servants.3 The major property of British capital that supported the clandestine trade probably came, he pointed out, from the Agency Houses, the great commercial establishments in Calcutta that traded on capital from Britain as well as from India.4 As far as the foreigners' trading activities were concerned, there was no real evidence, Grant said, that these were increasing, and that, in any case, it was wrong to argue that the Company was at fault in not having taken steps to prevent foreign trade in India. In the first place, the foreigners had the same right to trade in India as the British—privileges granted by the Mughal Emperor or other rulers. While the British territorial conquests had altered the situation in the Indian peninsula in terms of effective power, the rights of foreign nations had not been abrogated.5 The existence of the foreign traders, then, was part of the same historical process that had created British power in India. While it was perfectly defensible for the Company to exclude British subjects—since it was given that right by the British Parliament—it could not legally drive out all foreign traders. His other argument was that foreign trade was a positive gain to the British in India, for it helped the currency situation by bringing in specie.8 This defence in 1800 of the place of foreign traders in India suggests the difficulties into which Grant was driven in his attempt to defend the monopoly, for temperamentally he was opposed to the competition of foreign traders, as he had clearly shown in his treatment of the French in the 1780's.7 The agrument that foreigners were profiting from trade in India, while British subjects were prevented 1

Henchman, op. cit., p. 15. C.R.O., H.M.S. 405, pp. 750-62, Charles Grant, 'Observations on Trade.' 3 Ibid., p. 739. 4 Ibid.; and for discussion of role of Agency Houses, see Amales Tripathi, Trade and Finance in the Bengal Presidency, 1793-1833, Calcutta, Orient Longmans, 1956, pp. 43-44, and passim. 6 C.R.O., H.M.S. 405, p. 715, Charles Grant, 'Observations on Trade.' 6 Ibid., pp. 745,762. 7 See above, pp. 80-82. 2

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by the Company from taking any part in it, had, however, such obvious popular appeal that Grant felt compelled to try to defend the Company's practice. In doing this, he involved himself in contradictions which his opponents delighted to point out. The most glaring of these concerned the American trade with India. Thus in 1800, he maintained that the Company's monopoly had not harmed British interests by permitting Americans to trade with India while British private traders were excluded, but a few years later, faced by different pressures, he argued strenuously against American trade with India. In fact, although Grant appeared to be tolerant of American trade with India in 1800, along with other Directors he had already protested against the use that was being made of the Jay Treaty.1 According to the Directors, the plain intention of Article Thirteen of the Treaty was that while American ships were to be admitted to all Indian ports under British control, 'it was expressly agreed that the vessels of the United States of America shall not carry any of the articles exported by them [anywhere] . . . except to some port in America.'2 By 1797, however, the Americans were engaging in a 'circuitous trade,' that is, stopping in European ports and selling their Indian cargoes. Since this was obviously very serious competition for the Company's London sales, the Directors complained to Dundas that the Jay Treaty should either be enforced or not be renewed.3 His reply was that he could 'discover no words to justify the proposal that the Americans are bound to go directly . . . without touching at any other point,' and he advised the Company to look for help to 'the exercise of a judicious and well-devised system of commercial policy,' rather than 'legislative regulations and restrictions.' 4 In the dispute in 1800, therefore, it was wise for the Directors to defend the American trade, since any complaints from them would have brought the rejoinder from Dundas that its existence was proof of the weaknesses of the monopoly. The only reference to the problem in the official reports prepared by Grant is in a footnote to one of them, but in a private letter to Dundas he expressed his personal conviction that the Jay Treaty would have to be altered, or the Americans compelled to obey the provision forbidding a 1 C.R.O., H.M.S. 337, p. 417, Henry Dundas to Chairman, 14 June 1797. For a full discussion of the American trade with India, and the Company's attitude, see Holden Furber, 'The Beginnings of American Trade with India, 1784-1812,' New England Quarterly, XI, June, 1938, pp. 235-65. 2 C.R.O., H.M.S. 439, p. 257, 'Extract from the Treaty with America, 18 Nov. 1794.' 3 C.R.O., H.M.S. 337, p. 417, Henry Dundas to Chairman, 14 June 1797. * Ibid., pp. 417 and 426.

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circuitous trade. When he attacked the American traders in 1807, and succeeded in having special duties imposed on their trade in India, he could claim that he was not being inconsistent with his stand in 1800 since they had broken the law. He had argued in 1800, he said, that the American trade with India was beneficial within its legal and restricted limits, but when the laws were broken the trade ceased to be of benefit.2 In defending the monopoly, Grant had in some way to meet the argument that its failure to increase exports of British goods to India and of Indian goods to Britain was the clearest measure of incompetence. He did this by a categorical denial that it was possible to make any significant changes in the pattern of either Indian demand or production. Few of his positions were subjected to more unrelenting criticism than this one, yet in the cluster of ideas around which he formulated his policies for British rule in India, this conviction in regard to the conditions of Indian trade takes an important place along with his attitudes towards religion, territorial expansion and colonization. As far as increasing exports of British goods to India were concerned, Grant was convinced that this was 'the most striking instance of the credulity, and of the power which interest and imagination united, have to impose upon the understanding.' 3 Grant was writing at a time when the old expectation that the Indian revenues might bring relief to the British Treasury was dying and being replaced by the hope that India might provide a new market for the products of an expanding industrial economy. The debate over the Company's monopoly was, in fact, very closely related to conditions quite external to India, for with Napoleon's successes, the European markets were being closed to British goods just as production was increasing.4 With the closing of the Mediterranean ports in 1800 and the Portugese ones the following year, the pressure to find new markets was great, and India seemed to offer a solution.8 Grant insisted, however, that this belief was illusory, because it failed to take into account the unchanging nature of the Indian social system which prevented any variation in taste even if the people could afford western goods. No one who knew the facts, he said, doubted that 'the climate, the natures, the usages, tastes, prejudices, 1

C.R.O., H.M.S. 406, p. 281, Charles Grant to Henry Dundas, 18 March 1801. C.R.O., H.M.S. 494, p. 7, Edward Parry and Charles Grant to Directors, 14 Oct. 1807. 3 Pari. Debates, XXV, xliv, Report from Committee on Correspondence, 9 Feb. 1813. * W. W. Rostow, British Economy in the Nineteenth Century, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1948, p. 13. 5 Redford, op. cit., p. 44. 2

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religion and political institutions of the Eastern people,' all worked together to maintain an almost unchanged market. 1 Although Sir Francis Baring once remarked that Grant's opinions were common enough 'in books published a century or two ago,'2 but not among modern men, his views were actually held by many of the most experienced of the Company's servants.3 Warren Hastings, for example, when asked if he thought demand might be increased among the people of India for British goods, replied that 'the poor of India may be said to have no wants.' 4 The failure of men like Grant and Hastings to predict the change that would take place within twenty years in the direction of trade was due, in a sense, to their knowledge of India, not to their lack of understanding of industrial change in England. It was easier for Adam Smith, knowing little about Indian conditions, to foresee India becoming a great market for British manufactured goods than for those who knew its poverty and conservatism.5 Grant found the other factor in the question of an enlarged trade, the increase in exports from India to Europe, much more perplexing. His friend Udny had argued very persuasively that modifying the monopoly to allow freer trade would mean a growth in production in Bengal, with consequent advantage to the people, and this, Grant admitted, was a powerful argument.6 Like everyone else who had any concern for the welfare of the people, he agreed, he said, that 'to cramp the industry of our provinces in articles of European demand, within what the Company can in any shape take off, is an absurd and intolerable idea.'7 But it was necessary to look to consequences before accepting too readily the argument that an enlarged trade in Indian goods would be of mutual benefit to both the British and the Indians. 'We well know,' he wrote, 'that an unlimited competition [in India] would of course enhance the cost of commodities and occasion a debasement of their qualities.'8 His reasoning was that just as the caste system and the social system in general prevented an increase in demand so it would also effectively 1 Pari. Debates, XXV, xliv, Report for Committee on Correspondence, 9 Feb. 1813. 2 C.R.O., H.M.S. 494 p. 271, Edward Parry and Charles Grant to Directors 14 Oct. 1808. 3 Pari. Debates, XXV, pp. 135-890, Evidence regarding Trade given to Commons by Company servants, March 1813. 1 Ibid., pp. 416-17, Evidence of Warren Hastings, 30 March 1813. 5 C.R.O., H.M.S. 405,789-90, Charles Grant, 'Observations on Trade.' • C.R.O., H.M.S. 406, pp. 275-88, Charles Grant to Henry Dundas, 17 March

1801.

7 Martin, Wellesley Despatches, V, Supplement: 'Private Trade,' p. 139, Charles Grant to John Bebb, 4 June 1799. 8 Ibid.,p. 140.

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prevent a movement of new labour into the areas where there was competition for goods. The result would be, as he had seen in his own trading experience in Bengal, a lowering of standards of workmanship in order to fill the demand. At the same time, while goods would be bought for more in India, they would sell for less in Europe because of increased supply and inferior quality.1 As Grant was probably aware, these were the arguments that had been used in France in 1785 for the restoration of the monopoly to the French East India Company.2 What was fundamentally wrong with the argument that free trade would help the people of India was, according to Grant, its lack of political realism. The real issue was neither the welfare of Bengal nor of Great Britain considered as two separate entities, but 'the combined welfare of Bengal and of Britain as politically united, and united so closely as not to be severed without danger to both.' 3 For Grant, the suggestion made by Udny that the Indian economy would be stimulated by a free flow of capital from Britain was dangerous because it overlooked ultimate political consequences, the chief of which was that centres of economic power would be formed which might have nothing in common with the interests of Great Britain.4 To illustrate his point, he reverted, as he frequently did, to the example of the American colonies, where, he claimed, even Royal Governors were so inclined to support local interests that they forgot that the interests of the sovereign power must also be considered. The truth was that the doctrine of free trade left unexamined and unanswered the problem of securing 'the allegiance of distant dependencies of the parent state, when by the fostering care and protection of that state . . . those dependencies shall have become . . . great.'5 Under the monopoly, on the other hand, conditions had been created that bound India and Britain closely together by ties of mutual need. He saw the whole fabric of the Company's government based upon the fact that, as he put it, India itself through the Bengal revenues supplied the capital for its trade with the western world.6 A mechanism had been created which governed the export of Indian goods, not just be foreign demand, but by the ability of India to supply revenues to purchase goods, and an influx of British capital 1

Ibid. E. J. Hamilton, 'The Role of Monopoly in the Overseas Expansion of Europe,' The Making of Modern Europe, edited by Herman Ausubel, New York, Dryden Press, 1951,1,184. 3 C.R.O., H.M.S. 406, p. 276, Charles Grant to Henry Dundas, 17 March 2

1801. 1 5 6

Ibid. C.R.O., H.M.S. 405, p. 698, Charles Grant, 'Observations on Trade.' Ibid., p. 799.

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would unbalance the equilibrium which had been established by the Company.1 In summing up his defence of the Company's monopoly in 1800, Grant declared that his argument could be reduced to the declaration that 'Trade should be attempted only in subordination to the primary objects of dominion.' 2 This was not a purely selfish attitude on the part of the ruling power, however, since, as he had laboured to show, the people of India were better off under the Company's government than under any available alternative, and free trade, which would lead to the destruction of the connection was therefore to be condemned. But, as he said a few years later, he also believed in the monopoly because he was a mercantilist, and did not accept the 'sounding ideas' and 'loose generalizations' of those who maintained that all trade was beneficial and would 'animate the powers of industry and production, . . . and mutual excitement [would] make countries trafficking with each other grow in riches at the same time and by the same operations.'3 Modern political economists had not been able to show, he insisted, that their principles could be applied to 'all the vast variety of particular questions which arise in the world of commerce,' and this was especially true in regard to the relations between India and Great Britain.4 He saw the Company's administration in India as the product of an attempt to channel economic and political forces along lines that would create a balance between the interests of Great Britain and of India, and, since he did not believe that the unregulated play of economic forces could do this, he sought to maintain the economic and political restrictions of the Company's monopoly. Although in his arguments in favour of the Company's monopoly Grant had ranged very widely over the whole area of the relations between India and Great Britain, the actual issue that had to be decided at the time was the provision that should be made for the enlargement of the private trade. Despite his fears that the demands for an increase in the three thousand tons that had been provided under the 1793 Charter were merely an opening wedge for wider ones, he was quite prepared to recommend a fairly generous allotment of tonnage. All that he had wanted, he said, was that no regulation concerning trade 'which assuredly would have great effects, [should] be passed without previously and maturely weighing all the bearings and supposable contingencies of it, and without due 1

Ibid., pp. 781-83. Ibid. C.R.O., H.M.S. 494, pp. 47-48, Edward Parry and Charles Grant to Directors, 14 Oct. 1807. 4 Ibid. 2

3

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discrimination as well as caution.' The General Resolution passed by the Directors faithfully reflected his fears, for it declared that 'an open trade . . . would not only be subversive to the rights and privileges of the East India Company, b u t . . . [would] pave the way for European colonization and ultimately hazard the loss of those valuable possessions.'2 In the end, the Directors agreed that in addition to the three thousand tons of cargo permitted to the private traders under the Charter, another five thousand tons would be allowed to be carried in Company ships, which might be built either in England or in India. 3 This settlement was, on the whole, less generous than one Grant had outlined to Dundas in 1800. Then he had suggested that there would be no real objection if ten thousand tons were added to the private trade quota, and he gave strong support to the use of Indian ships. British ships, he said, had no inherent right to the exclusive trade with India, and 'the principles of natural equity, the Navigation Laws and the experience of this country,' all seemed to argue in favour of the use of Indian ships.4 There were probably two reasons why the tonnage granted in 1801 was not as large as Grant had proposed. One was that by the time the matter was decided, Pitt's Ministry had been replaced by Addington's, and Dundas's place as President of the Board of Control was taken by Lord Dartmouth, who had none of Dundas's ability for working with the Directors.6 In his relations with Grant, for example, Dundas had always been careful to point out that he recognized Grant's great knowledge of Indian trade and commerce,6 while Dartmouth did not conceal his contempt for Grant's views.7 The other reason why the Court's final settlement was less liberal than Grant had suggested was that he was not a Director at the time the decision was finally made, and therefore was unable to influence the final details, although the general statement used by the Directors was apparently his work.8 The settlement reached in 1801 was undoubtedly a triumph for the Company, for the concessions that were made did not really 1 Martin, Wellesley Despatches, V, Supplement, 'Private Trade,' p. 142, Charles Grant to John Bebb, 4 June 1799. * C.R.O., H.M.S. 406, pp. 251-52, Proceedings of the Court of Directors, 4 April 1801. 3 Philips, East India Company, p. 115. 4 C.R.O., H.M.S. 405, pp. 826-30, Charles Grant, 'Observations on Trade.' 5 Philips, East India Company, pp. 112-16. 9 C.R.O., H.M.S. 405, pp. 861-62, Henry Dundas to Charles Grant, 31 July 1800. ' Philips, Scott Correspondence, II, 378-79, Lord Dartmouth to David Scott, 26 Dec. 1801. 8 Ibid.

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touch the essential features of the monopoly—the right of the Company to control the shipping to and from India, the power to prevent unauthorized persons entering any of the Company's possessions, and the management of the sales of all goods brought to Great Britain from India. It would not be possible to prove that the maintenance of these privileges prevented, as Grant claimed, the downfall of British power in India, but the stability of the relationships between the two countries during the long years of the European war certainly owed a good deal to the Company's monopoly. Many of Grant's arguments were undoubtedly extravagant— especially in regard to colonization—but his insistence on the dangers of unrestricted access to India was not without point in a situation where the Administration was still very largely in an experimental stage, scarcely having recovered from the scandals of the 1780's, with many reforms still to be carried out. In fact, almost inextricably intertwined with the debate over shipping and private trade was one over the calibre of the Civil Service in which Grant defended the Company's monopoly of patronage as vigorously as he had the monopoly of trade.

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G U A R D I A N OF THE CIVIL SERVICE 'NOWHERE, it may be affirmed, throughout his Majesty's dominions,' Charles Grant declared in the 1790's, 'has public business been transacted, so far as the civil servants of the Company are concerned, with more public principles than in Bengal.'1 He was speaking of the period that had followed Cornwallis' reforms, but, even so, his statement must have sounded extravagant to those who still remembered the charges of oppression and corruption that had been made against the Company's servants in the previous decade. That a responsible and well-informed Company official could make such a claim was an indication, however, of a changing attitude towards the civil servants in India, since, as already noted, in the past the Directors had been very willing to believe the worst about their employees.2 A quite noticeable shift in opinion, in fact, took place in the last years of the eighteenth century in regard to the Company's Civil Service. The concern of the critics of the Company was no longer to make charges of gross corruption, but rather to question the competence of the Company to provide suitable personnel to govern its Indian possessions. For the first time, the question of the methods used in recruiting the Company's servants and the kind of training they received became subjects of lively controversy within the Company's Home Administration. The first issue, the methods of recruitment, involved an investigation into the use of the Directors' patronage; the question of training led to the founding of Fort William College in Calcutta and Haileybury College in England. Charles Grant was deeply engaged in all aspects of the controversy, and largely because of the direction he gave to it, the debate tended to become part of his general argument that British power could only be maintained through 'such a rational instrument as the East India Company, constituted as it now is.' 3 One result of this was that all the participants in the discussion, including Grant himself, were forced to take more extreme positions than were congenial to them or than the facts warranted.

Grant first became actively involved in the question of the use that was being made of the Directors' patronage in 1798 when, 1

Charles Grant, 'Observations on the State of Asia,' p. 22. See above, p. 95. ' C.R.O., H.M.S. 405, p. 704, Charles Grant, 'Observations on Trade.' 2

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according to The Times, 'it was evident beyond all question that the public were impressed with the idea that appointments in India . . . could be obtained for money.'1 Since advertisements had been appearing in the newspapers for some time offering positions for sale, this was a perfectly reasonable conclusion, as was the further assumption that the Directors themselves must be selling the appointments. The figure usually quoted as the price of a writership was £3,000 and for a cadetship was £500,2 and since a Director had at his disposal each year at least one writership and six cadetships,3 there would be an obvious motivation for the sales. Although the charges that the Directors sold their patronage were not new, the appointment of a committee by the Court of Directors in 1798 to investigate the alleged abuses was thefirstofficial action the Company had ever taken.4 There were a variety of reasons why action was taken at this time—the charges were more specific and widespread, the Company was more sensitive to public criticism —but Grant's position as one of the most powerful members of the Court was probably the most important factor. Aside from his sensitivity to any reflection on his personal honour, his participation in the reforms in Bengal gave him a special interest in any suggestion of continuing corruption in the Company's service. Furthermore, he apparently saw more clearly than almost any other Director that it would be impossible to defend the Company's claim to rule India if it became an accepted belief among the public that the chief officers of the Company were false in the discharge of one of their most important privileges, the right to appoint the civil servants. The Directors justified their privilege on the grounds that they appointed able young men who were known to them personally,5 but if they were selling places in India, then it was obvious that the abilities of the men sent out received little consideration. Furthermore, even if a Director was not concerned with the calibre of the Company's servants, it seemed obvious to Grant that common sense and self-interest would make him see that the sale of appointments threatened the remaining privileges the Company enjoyed. Outside the Company, among those who had no particular interest in the quality of the Company's government in India nor any personal hostility to the Company as a trading monopoly, the sale of appointments was important because it was part of the whole complex system 1

The Times (London), 25 Sept. 1800, p. 3, Report of the Debates at East India House. 2 Parliamentary Papers, 1809, II, Paper 91, Report from the Committee on East India Patronage, pp. 4-6. 8 See above, p. 126. 4 Parkinson, Trade in the Eastern Seas, p. 368. 6 Robert Grant, The Expediency Maintained.... p. 267. 179

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of offices and places that was of such great contemporary concern. One of the most used—and undoubtedly one of the most potent— arguments of the Company's defenders was that the Indian patronage was so great that if it were in the hands of the Government it could be used to crush all opposition.1 Charles Grant himself made a great point of this danger, arguing that as long as the Company's patronage was in the hands of 'a numerous body belonging to the middle class of society,' there was no threat to British public life, but if it were transferred to the Crown, 'our own constitution might be overset.'2 While Cornwallis was probably correct when he said that 'the paltry patronage of sending out a few writers to India' could not really have much effect on the British Constitution,3 the genuineness of the fear can scarcely be questioned. A Member of Parliament argued in 1809 that whether or not the Directors sold appointments to India was of no more concern to the nation than if the Bank of England sold clerkships,4 but this was an eccentric view. The general feeling was that the Indian patronage could be used to manipulate political power at home, and therefore any abuse of it, such as selling posts in the Company's service to the highest bidder, was a threat to the national life. These views were actually put forward much more persuasively in 1809 when the abuse of the Company's patronage was investigated by Parliament, but they were present in Charles Grant's thinking earlier.5 Grant was a member of the Committee the Directors appointed in 1798 to investigate the charges that patronage was being sold by the Directors, and apparently was the author of the Report that the Committee made the following year.6 Although the Committee did not make any specific accusations, its recommendations made clear that patronage had been sold, and that it was necessary to take steps to prevent this in the future by altering the system of making appointments. Under the existing arrangements, a Director gave a nomination card for the appointment of a writer or cadet to a friend, who would have asked for it for a son or some other relative.7 Later, the candidate would present himself to the clerks at East India House, 1 Robert Grant, The Expediency Maintained. . . . pp. 252-305, gives a full statement of the argument against transferring the patronage to the Crown. a Pari. Debates, VI, 210, speech by Charles Grant, 20 Feb. 1806. ' C.R.O., Charters and Treaties, XIA, 54, Cornwallis to Henry Dundas, 4 April 1790. * Pari. Debates, XIV, 1074, speech by James Stephen, 19 June 1809. 5 See below, pp. 185-86, for brief account of the investigations in 1809. • William Woodfall, The Debates at East India House, 17 Dec. 1800 to 20 Jan. 1801, Minutes of Secret Court of Directors, 25 April 1798. For Grant's authorship, see ibid.,passim. 7 Parkinson, Trade in the Eastern Seas, pp. 367-68.

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and, often without even meeting the Director whose patronage was responsible for his nomination, he would receive his appointment. Since the Directors might leave the nomination card blank, the holder of a card could give it to someone else. This was the way in which appointments were sold, and the Director might very well know nothing at all of the use being made of his patronage. 1 To end this situation, the Committee recommended that henceforth every Director should make a declaration that the person who got the appointment was in fact the person to whom he had given the nomination.2 It was also suggested that every candidate be required to swear that he had not given any 'corrupt confidence' for his appointment, and, as an additional safeguard, the Directors were asked to list all the nominations they had made in the last five years, giving the reasons for having made each appointment. 3 These recommendations were all accepted, and the Committee was reappointed and told to continue its investigations. Possibly the majority of the Directors did not think much would come of the Committee, for when it began to demand action there was a storm of protest, particularly over a new recommendation made by the Committee. This was that every writer or cadet—including those in India—who had received an appointment from any member of the existing Court of Directors should be asked to testify under oath how he had received his nomination.4 The Committee, it was complained, in making such a suggestion had obviously 'suffered their zeal to overpower their discretion.'5 The result was that the Directors voted to discontinue the Committee on the grounds that since it had found no evidence that any Director had actually sold his patronage it was no longer needed, and they also rejected as illegal the suggestion that testimony should be taken under oath from the Company's servants.8 There was a very large section of the Directors, however, who opposed this action, for the vote on the motion had been a tie which had only been broken by drawing lots.7 Encouraged by this strong support, Grant and his friends made the issue public by bringing it up at a meeting of the General Court at the end of 1800.8 1 Pari. Debates, XIII, Appendix, R e p o r t . . . on Abuse of Patronage, 23 March 1809, pp. cxxxvi-cxxxviii. 2 Woodfall, Debates at East India House, 17 Dec. 1800 to 20 Jan. 1801, pp. 40-43, Recommendations of Committee, 1799. 3 Ibid. 4 Ibid., p. 29, Report of Committee, 31 Jan. 1800. 6 Ibid., p. 43, speech by J. Bosanquet, 20 Jan. 1801. 6 Pari. Debates, XIII, Appendix, R e p o r t . . . on Abuse of Patronage, 23 March 1809, pp. cxxxvi-cxxxvii. ' Ibid. 8 William Woodfall, Debates at East India House, 17 Dec. 1800 to 20 Jan. 1801.

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At this time the quarrel over shipping and private trade was at its height, and it might be expected that the debate on patronage would have reflected the same party alignments. This does not seem to have been the case, however, for while Sir Francis Baring and Charles Grant were allied in the fight to prevent any relaxation of the trading monopoly, they bitterly opposed each other in regard to the continuation of the Committee's investigations and especially the use of oaths. Not only does the alignment suggest that there were no very firm 'party lines' in the Company, but it also suggests that Grant's support of the Shipping Interest was not motivated by a desire to advance his own position in the Court, since, if this were so, it would obviously have been wiser not to have attacked its members over the patronage issue. In the debate in the General Court, the opposition to Grant's proposal to use oaths to investigate the abuse of patronage was vigorously and coherently stated by Sir Francis Baring. He poured scorn on the idea of trying to get the hundreds of persons who had been appointed by the Directors to give evidence under oath, since most of them were already in India. 1 His main objection to the use of oaths, however, was that they invited perjury, since anyone who had sold an appointment, or bought one, would not mind denying it on oath. While he had been a member of the Court, he declared, he had seen thousands of perjured oaths.2 When a Proprietor asked for the reports of the investigating committee to be made public, he objected on the grounds that the Directors had found no evidence of corruption, and therefore it was useless for the General Court to attempt to continue inquiry.3 He insisted that if there were any specific charges of corruption, then the evidence should be presented, and the case examined on its merits.4 Grant's argument that the Directors should clear their names by public investigation, since they were all under suspicion, seemed to Baring an absurd yielding to popular prejudices.5 Baring's attitude was incomprehensible to Grant. There was a widespread suspicion, amounting to certainty, that officers were being sold, and the resulting opprobrium that fell on all the Directors had, Grant declared, the same results as actual corruption.6 The 1 Woodfall, Debates at East India House, 17 Dec. 1800 to 20 Jan. 1801, pp. 50 ff, speech of Sir Francis Baring, 20 Jan. 1801. 2 Ibid. 3 Asiatic Annual Register, vol. II, Proceedings at East India House, p. 66, speech by Sir Francis Baring, 24 Sept. 1800. 1 Woodfall, Debates at East India House, 17 Dec. 1800 to 20 Jan. 1801, p. 51, 5 speech by Charles Grant, 20 Jan. 1801. Ibid. 6 Woodfall, Debates at East India House, 17 Dec. 1800 to 20 Jan. 1801, pp. 51 ff., speech by Charles Grant, 20 Jan. 1801.

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refusal of the Directors to continue the investigation could undermine the whole fabric of the Company's rule by a loss of confidence in the integrity of the home administration. At home, the action of the Directors gave the monopoly's opponents proof for their charges of its incompetence, while in India, he argued, the Company's servants would lose respect for their superiors.1 Another Director supported Grant on this point by declaring that his information from India indicated that the attitude of the Directors to the charges had already led the Company's servants in India to assume that the Directors were corrupt. 2 The opponents of a general investigation and the use of oaths had argued that specific charges should be dealt with, but, Grant said, while this sounded plausible it was intended to conceal the fact that corrupt practices could be carried on forever under the present system without being brought to notice.3 Grant was well aware how difficult it was to prove a particular case of corruption, for he and David Scott, probably through the use of an agent provocateur, as C. N. Parkinson suggests, had actually discovered a good deal about the sale of appointments.4 They had succeeded in convicting an agent named Shee of selling appointments, but they were not able to connect him with any Director. 5 It was plain to Grant, therefore, that the inability of the investigating committee to bring forward specific charges against Directors was no proof of the lack of corruption. If there had been facts, he said, there would have been no need of inquiry, but 'presumptive circumstances' suggested that many transactions in appointments had been 'managed with studied concealment.'6 It was very significant, he declared, that it was not until the decisive test of investigation under oath was proposed that some of the Directors had raised such a great opposition to the further work of the committee.7 The debate on the abuse of patronage ended in the Court of Proprietors, as it had in the Court of Directors, with a defeat for the proposed investigation under oath. 8 A further victory for the opponents of the scheme, in which Grant had placed such great importance, came with the opinion of legal counsel that the extra1 Ibid. ' Ibid., p. 63, speech by Sir Stephen Lushmgton. s Ibid., pp. 51 ff., speech by Charles Grant. 4 Parkinson, Trade in the Eastern Seas, p. 368. 'Ibid.,p. 369. 8 Woodfall, Debates at East India House, 17 Dec. 1800 to 20 Jan. 1801, p. 52, speech by Charles Grant, 20 Jan. 1801. 7 Ibid.,p. 53. 8 Asiatic Annual Register, vol. II, Proceedings at East India House, p. 148, Feb. 3,1801.411 voted for investigation, 550 against.

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judicial oaths would have no standing in the law courts, and could not be used for prosecuting an offender, even if evidence should be found through their use.1 Not very much seems to have been accomplished by Grant in this attack on abuses, since the sale of appointments continued. The debate had given him the opportunity, however, to express his conviction that the best way to demonstrate the fitness of the Company to govern India was not by yielding the privileges acquired in the past but by showing sensitivity to public criticism through a desire to maintain standards of probity and rectitude within the Administration. Furthermore, although Grant accomplished little by way of legislative change within the Company in the debate over patronage in 1801, he had prepared himself for battle when another occasion presented itself. This did not come until 1809, but Grant's views and activities at that time are so closely linked with the earlier episode that it will be useful to consider them together. The abuse of the Company's patronage became an issue in 1809 during the famous inquiry into the use of Mrs. Clarke's influence with the Duke of York when it was inadvertently revealed that not only army commissions but East Indian appointments as well could be obtained for money.2 At the time, Grant was Deputy Chairman of the Company, but actually in effective control of its administration, and he immediately seized the initiative from the Company's enemies by asking for a Parliamentary Committee to be appointed to investigate the alleged sales of Indian patronage. 3 The Committee, which included Grant's intimate friend William Wilberforce,4 carried out a thorough investigation, and while it came to the conclusion that no Director had actually sold appointments, it found that many writers and cadets had bought their places in the Company's service.5 The Committee gave the names of every person whose appointment had been bought, how much had been paid, who had received the money, and the Director from whom the original nomination had come.8 This was the kind of information Grant had sought in vain to have collected nine years before, and he used his power in the Court of Directors to have a resolution passed recalling and dismissing every Company servant whose appointment had been 1

Ibid., p. 152. Pari. Debates, XII, 488-89, Evidence before Committee of Whole House, 9 Feb. 1809. 3 Ibid., p. 504, speeches by G. Smith and Charles Grant, 10 Feb. 1809. 4 Journal of the House of Commons, LXIV, 38,10 Feb. 1809. 5 Pari. Debates, Appendix, Report . . . on the Abuse of Patronage, 23 March 1809. • Ibid., pp. cxxxvi-cxxxviii. 2

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bought.1

The immediate reaction to this was an outburst of protest both in Parliament and in the Company that the Directors had acted in a harsh and inhumane way. It was pointed out that many of the young men who would be recalled had probably been perfectly innocent of any part in the transactions, but that their careers would be destroyed, while parents who had paid £,3000 for a writership, as as an investment in the future of their son, would lose everything.2 Grant's reply to the charges of inhumanity was that what was at stake was the Company's government in India, not the welfare of individuals.8 Motions to ask the Directors to withdraw their resolutions were moved in both the General Court and the Commons, and Grant opposed them vigorously. 'The character of the Court of Directors and of the Company,' he protested, 'would receive a deep and lasting wound by rescinding the late resolutions.'4 If the men were not recalled who had obtained their appointments corruptly, then, he insisted, both the public at home and the Company's servants in India would draw the inevitable conclusion that the Directors were protecting some of their own number. Grant fought strenuously for the new regulations, and in the end both Parliament and the General Court gave them their approval, and the sale of the Company's patronage ceased to be a scandal. Throughout the long struggle, he had always defined his aims as 'the purity of the Service,'5 and there is no doubt that in the creation of the standards of honesty for which the Indian Civil Service later became so well known, the rather obscure discussions of 1801 and 1809 played a very large part. Grant's attitude towards the sale of appointments in India was paralleled in an interesting way by the reaction of Wilberforce and the other Clapham 'Saints' during the debate in the House of Commons in 1809 over Parliamentary corruption. Although Wilberforce, Henry Thornton and Grant—the three most prominent 'Saints' in the House—usually gave their support to the Duke of Portland and Perceval, in the summer of 1809 they voted with the more extreme Radicals for some of the measures that were proposed for Parliamentary reform.8 Many of the arguments used to make the case for some measure of Parliamentary Reform were almost identical C.R.O., General Court Minutes, XI, 66, Minutes of 2 June 1809. Ibid.; and Pari. Debates, XIV, 1071-74,19 June 1809. 3 C.R.O., Appendix to Court Minutes, I, 235-41, Dissent of Charles Grant, 20 June 1809. 4 Ibid., p. 240. 6 Ibid., pp. 235-41. 9 Wilberforce, Life, III, 402-08; and Michael Roberts, The Whig Party, 18071812, London, Macmillan, 1939, pp. 197-212. For the arguments of the different groups, see Pari. Debates, XIV, passim. 1

2

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with those Grant had used around 1800 in urging reform within the Company's patronage system. There was the same emphasis on the need for taking public opinion into account, of full investigation of all charges, and of requiring candidates and office-holders to take oaths. While it might not be easy to show that the Economical Reformers in 1809 owed any particular debt to the debates in the Company's Courts in 1800, the fact is that many of the same people were involved in both issues, since of the approximately ninety Members of Parliament in 1809 who had some identifiable connection with the Company,1 many would have been interested in the patronage debates in 1800. As far as Wilberforce was concerned, the sale of public places and the buying of seats in Parliament raised precisely the same problems as Grant had seen in the case of the Company's patronage. What had to be considered, Wilberforce insisted, was 'the collective character' of the House, not just the feelings of individuals, and therefore it was necessary to consider the existing conditions with 'a moral eye.'2 Furthermore, just as in the Company men like Sir Francis Baring admitted that corruption existed, but doubted that laws could make men moral, so in the House Canning and others doubted the value of oaths and declarations.3 Wilberforce and Grant, however, were convinced that oaths and laws could provide a base on which a better system could be built, even though some men might still abuse their positions.4 Their belief was justified in regard to Parliament, just as was Grant's in regard to the Company, for after 1809, 'seats were no longer advertised in the papers, no longer bought and sold in the open market.' 5 While the Company and Parliament marched fairly closely together in attempting to end the more gross forms of corruption in their respective systems of government, the Company during this period showed a concern for the training of its officials that was not matched by Parliament in regard to the nation's civil service. This concern expressed itself in the founding of Fort William College in Calcutta, as well as smaller schools in the other Presidency towns, and of Haileybury College near Hertford. The establishment of these institutions was closely linked with the controversy over patronage, for in the long and acrimonious debate that surrounded the founding of the colleges, the fundamental issue, as in the struggle over patronage, was the nature of the Company's rule in India as reflected in the 1 Philips, East India Company, Appendix I, Lists of East India Interests in Parliament. 8 Pari. Debates, XIV, 523, speech by William Wilberforce, 11 May 1809. " Ibid., p. 526, speech by George Canning. ' Wilberforce, Life, III, 408; and Pari. Debates, XIV, 904, speech by Wilberforce, 1 June 1809. 5 Michael Roberts, The Whig Party, p. 215.

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recruitment and training of the members of the civil service. The debates over the training of the Company's civil servants and over patronage were also linked by the fact that Charles Grant played a dominating role in both. Wellesley's famous decision to found a College in Calcutta for the training of the Company's civil servants must have been made very soon after his arrival in Calcutta in May 1798, for he wrote to the Directors in December that while he had made arrangements for language teaching, he had in mind a more extensive scheme for promoting the study of the laws and regulations of the country.1 Before the Directors' letter giving approval to his language school reached Calcutta, Wellesley had already founded his new institution, Fort William College.2 His plan, Wellesley told the Directors in July 1800, was that all young men coming out to India in the Company's service should spend three years at Fort William College before receiving their appointments. 'Qualifications essential to the proper discharge of arduous and important duties of the civil service in India,' he said, 'cannot be fully attained otherwise than by a regular course of education and study in India, conducted under the superintendence, direction and control of the supreme government of these possessions.'3 The need of such training was obvious, he thought. 'To dispense justice to millions of people of various languages, manners, usages and religions; to administer a vast and complicated system of revenue throughout districts equal in extent to some of the most considerable kingdoms in Europe; to maintain civil order in one of the most populous and litigious regions of the world; these are now the duties of the larger proportion of the civil servants of the Company.' 4 But to fulfil these duties, the Company was supplying the same kind of servants that it found useful in the days when it was only concerned with commerce, and, Wellesley remarked, it would be superfluous to show that such men were unable to 'execute the duties of any station . . . beyond the menial, laborious, unwholesome and unprofitable duty of a mere copying clerk.'5 In addition to Indian languages and history, the students would study modern European 1

C.R.O., H.M.S. 488, pp. 1-4, Public Letter from Bengal, 25 Dec. 1798. Ibid., pp. 5-6, Public Letter to Bengal, 7 May 1800; and pp. 7-17, Bengal Judicial Consultations, 10 July 1800. For a full summary of the founding of the college and its subsequent history, see P. E. Roberts, India Under Wellesley, London, G. Bell, 1929, pp. 150-65. 3 Martin, Wellesley Despatches, II, 357, Regulation for the foundation of a College at Fort William..., 10 July 1800. 4 Ibid., p. 326, Wellesley, 'Notes with respect to the foundation of a College at Fort William,' 10 July 1800. 6 Ibid., p. 332. 2

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languages, as well as Greek and Latin and modern and ancient history. 1 Instead of the excesses that disfigured the characters of the former members of the Company's service, the students at the College would have opportunity of 'forming their manners and fixing their principles on the solid foundations of virtue and religion,' and they would be sheltered from 'the peculiar depravities incident to the climate, and to the character of the natives.'2 After their three years at the College, the young men would be appointed on the basis of their performance to suitable posts throughout India, and the Company's possessions, now 'a temporary and precarious acquisition,' would become 'a sacred trust and a permanent possession.'3 Wellesley's broad vision of a 'University of the East' providing well-trained administrators for Britain's great new empire has often been contrasted with the meanness of the Directors who at first ordered the abolition of the College, and only agreed on its continuance in a truncated form when the Board of Control forced them to change their original decision.4 Many contemporaries also believed, according to Charles Grant, that the Directors had rudely answered a 'luminous despatch' of eighty-nine paragraphs, phrased in magnificent language, by inserting a parenthesis in a letter to Bengal.6 No one knew better than Charles Grant that the opposition to the College was not expressed in a parenthesis, for he was the author of much of the vast correspondence that Wellesley's scheme eventually entailed.6 That opposition had many sources, some of which might possibly be ascribed to meanness of spirit on the part of Directors, but others were as worthy of consideration as Wellesley's arguments for the College.7 Some of the opposition was certainly a reflection of the animosity that a large section of the Court of Directors felt toward Wellesley's support of the private traders, as Grant himself pointed out, 8 but there was also the justifiable feeling on the part of many that Wellesley had deliberately ignored the rights of the Home Administration by not waiting for its permission to 1

Ibid., p. 357, Regulations for Fort William College. Ibid., p. 343, Wellesley, 'Notes,' 10 July 1800. 8 Ibid., p. 339. 4 W. H. Hutton, The Marquess Wellesley, K.G. (Rulers of India Series), Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1893, p. 122; and W. M. Torrens, Pro-Consul and Tribune: Wellesley and O'Cornell, vol. I: The Marquess Wellesley, London, Chatto and Windus, 1880, pp. 239-42. 8 Asiatic Register, IV, 273, Debate at East India House, 5 March 1817, speech by Charles Grant. 8 Philips, Scott Correspondence, II, 427, Melville to Castlereagh, 11 Aug. 1803. ' Philips, East India Company, p. 130. 8 Morris, op. cit., p. 243, Charles Grant to [William Chambers], 2

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found the College. There was also a legitimate doubt that Wellesley was correct in his belief that it would be better to train the Company's servants in India, rather than in England.2 The Directors were also rightly concerned over the rising costs of the Indian Administration since Wellesley's arrival, and they regarded the College as an extremely expensive experiment to have been undertaken so suddenly.3 While to later critics this seemed proof of their penny-pinching, commercial spirit, it was undoubtedly an important consideration to men accustomed to thinking that a balanced budget was an absolute necessity for the Company's government in India. While all these specific criticisms of Wellesley's College had weight for Grant, he saw in the scheme—as he had in the proposals for enlarging the private trade—a general threat to the existing form of British control in India. His interest in the patronage debate had shown his desire to improve the quality of the civil service and to institute changes that would guarantee its integrity; what he apparently genuinely feared was any alteration in the basic system of the Company's structure, and he thought he saw dangers of this in Wellesley's College. For this reason, he did not give the College his wholehearted support, which might have saved it, but rather attempted to alter the whole plan to conform to his own ideas of what was needed. There were many features of Wellesley's plan for Fort William College that appealed to Grant—and some of them were probably included in order to gain his support. Wellesley was well acquainted with Grant's views on the Company's government in India, for not only had they talked together a number of times on Indian problems but Wellesley had been given a copy of Grant's Observations on the State of Asia before he had left for India. 4 Wellesley emphasized that one of the purposes of the College would be to 'instruct and confirm [the students] in the principles of the Christian religion,' and the Provost, David Brown, and the Vice-Provost, Claudius Buchanan, he took care to point out, were 'well known to some members of the Court of Directors.' 5 This reference was to the fact that both owed their places to Grant's patronage and were his constant correspondents.® With William Carey, the Baptist mission1 C.R.O., H.M.S. 488, pp. 54-55, 'Previous Communication' of draft of Letter for Bengal, March 1805. 2 Ibid., p. 185, Draft of Public Letter to Bengal, 27 Jan. 1802. 8 Ibid., H.M.S. 488, Court to Board, Previous Communication, March, 1805. * Martin, Wellesley Despatches, V, Supplement; 'PrivateTrade,' p. 143, Charles Grant to Wellesley, 14 Sept. 1801. 6 Ibid., II, 359, Regulations for Fort William College. 6 Henry Morris, editor, 'Some Unpublished Letters of the Rev. Charles Simeon,' The Record, 21 Nov., 28 Nov., 12 Dec. 1902 and 23 Jan. 1903, passim.

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ary, on the staff as well, the College seemed admirably suited to become, as David Brown predicted, the instrument for the evangelization of India. 1 Wellesley also pointed out that the College would be fulfilling the spirit of the Despatch of 1798 in which the GovernorGeneral had been urged to take measures to preserve the ascendancy of the British rulers over the minds of the natives of India through both external religious practices and sincere attachment to principle.2 This argument could have been reasonably expected to appeal to Grant, since it was generally assumed that he had been the author of the Despatch.3 In the Despatch of 1798 there was a sentence, however, that might have suggested to Wellesley a possible objection that Grant would raise to the College. One of the principal dangers threatening the British connection with India, according to the Despatch, was that the civil servants might undergo an 'assimilation to Eastern opinions,' instead of 'retaining all the distinctions of our national principles, characters and usages.'4 Grant feared what his friend Shore once called 'the deplorable infatuation' with Indian life that led young men to become 'Indianized,' forgetting 'the customs manners and state of society in England,' 5 and it seemed probable to him that Wellesley's College might very well contribute to this. Young boys would go out to India at fifteen or sixteen to complete their education, and they would become a part of India, not representatives of the culture and civilization of Great Britain.6 The possibility of educating young boys in India raised other dangers, Grant pointed out. Civil servants would not have to send their sons home to be educated, and in this way a hereditary class of civil servants would soon be created, divorced from English life and self-perpetuating.7 The result would be colonization, that evil that haunted Grant's mind.8 Grant was not the only person who saw the danger of colonization in Wellesley's scheme, for Henry Dundas also thought that the possibility of the Company's servants educating their sons in the College was a genuine argument against Wellesley's plan.9 Another 1 Charles Simeon, editor, Memorial Sketches of the Rev. David Brown, London, Cadell, 1816, pp. 302-04. a Martin, Wellesley Despatches, II, 346, Wellesley, 'Notes with respect to . . . the College at Fort William.' 8 J. W. Kaye, Christianity in India, London, Smith, Elder, 1859, p. 145. * Martin, Wellesley Despatches, II, Appendix N, Extract from Public Letter to Bengal, 23 May 1798. 5 Teignmouth, Memoir, II, 352, Teignmouth to F. J. Shore, 1818. 6 Morris, op. cit., p. 242, Charles Grant to David Brown, 19 June 1801. ' Asiatic Journal, IV, 273, Debate at East India House, 5 March 1817, speech by 8 Charles Grant. Ibid. " Philips, Scott Correspondence, II, 429, Melville to David Scott, 26 Aug. 1803. Dundas had become Lord Melville in 1802.).

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fear of Dundas, probably shared by Grant, was that the 'literary and philosophical' men that Wellesley would collect at the College might very easily become a school for Jacobinism.1 Wellesley's proposal that the appointment of the graduates of the College to their posts in the Civil Service should be made by the Governor-General on the basis of their achievements was another detail of the plan that seemed to Grant to threaten the Company's government. If this recommendation were adopted, Grant pointed out, the Governor-General would have the power to decide whether a young man would be given a post in Bombay or in Bengal, whether he would receive an appointment that might lead to a fortune or one that meant stagnation in some obscure post.2 What Wellesley was in effect suggesting was that 'the whole of a most important branch of patronage which had hitherto rested with the Directors, should be vested in the Governor-General.' 3 The 'branch of patronage' to which Grant referred was the right of the Directors to determine whether a writer or cadet went to Bengal or Bencoolen or St. Helena. While, as Robert Grant once remarked, the value of this form of patronage could not be the subject of strict accounting, the power to appoint a young man to 'particular stations highly convenient in other views than simply of emolument' was extremely important. 4 Although the salaries might be the same in both places, an appointment to Bengal was a reward, while one to St. Helena was regarded almost as a punishment.® The transference of the right of appointment to a particular area, coupled with the oversight of the writers' education, would undoubtedly have given the Governor-General a very large measure of independence from the Home Administration, and this was the basis of Grant's fear that he would gain control of patronage, not a purely selfish concern for the Directors' private sources of power. It seemed to Grant that by the establishment of the College Wellesley was attacking the whole conception of the Governor-General's office as it had been understood in the past. Before Wellesley had gone to India, Sir John Shore had warned Grant that if British power was to be maintained in India it was necessary that the Governor-General carry out a policy defined by the Home Administration, and not act 'from discretion, according to temporary emergencies.'6 Grant was in complete agreement with this view, and although he recognized that the Governor-General had to be 1

B.M., Add. MSS., 37275, pp. 189-90, Dundas to Wellesley, 4 Sept. 1800. Asiatic Journal, IV, 273, Debate at East India House, 5 March 1817, speech by Charles Grant. 3 Ibid. * Robert Grant, The Expediency Maintained.... p. 305. 5 Parkinson, Trade in the Eastern Seas, p. 369. • See above, p. 139. 191 2

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given very wide executive powers, he believed that the GovernorGeneral had to exercise them as the representaive of the Home Administration. 1 To Wellesley, of course, few things could have been more repugnant than Grant's doctrine that the Governor-General and the Civil Service should be representatives of the merchants of Leadenhall Street, for he fully shared the view of his biographer that 'men of mere facts, figures, and money bags' could not enter into his 'enlightened and comprehensive views of uplifting the character of the natives of India.' 8 In his first letter regarding the College he had made very clear his conviction that men trained in commerce were utterly unfitted for statesmanship, apparently forgetting that many of the men whose good-will he needed, and Charles Grant in particular, had spent many years in the 'fruitless labours of a copyingclerk or index-maker' on which he poured such scorn.3 Although nowhere in his letters does he betray it, it is difficult to believe that, with his pride and sensitivity, Grant did not resent Wellesley's continual references to the inability of those with a commercial background to take part in the Company's political affairs. Grant's refusal to give his full assent to Wellesley's College, therefore, can be seen as part of a basic disagreement over the nature of the Company's rule in India. Unlike the majority of the Directors, however, he did not at any time reject the plan outright, but actually gave it considerable support. Although he and David Scott had sharply differed over Wellesley's support for the private traders, Scott turned to him for assistance in trying to make the College acceptable to the rest of the Directors.4 In response to Scott's appeal, Grant drew up what he called a revision but which in fact was almost a complete redrafting of Wellesley's original plan.5 Instead of one central college at Calcutta, training all the civil servants, Grant suggested that schools should be established in each of the three Presidency capitals, so that the Bombay and Madras students would receive the education they needed for their own areas. While this effectively prevented the Governor-General from usurping any of the patronage privileges of the Directors, it was also probably a more 1 C.R.O., H.M.S. 486, p. 8, Court to Board, Previous Communication, March, 1805. 2 Robert Pearce, Memoirs and Correspondence of Marquess Wellesley, K.P., K.G., D.C.L., London, Richard Bentley, 1846, II, p. 201. s Martin, Wellesley Despatches, II, 333, Wellesley, 'Notes with respect . . . to College at Fort William.' 4 Philips, Scott Correspondence, II, 306, David Scott to Cornwallis, 10 May

1801.

6 Morris, op. tit., p. 242, Charles Grant to David Brown, 19 June 1801, and pp. 240-47.

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realistic arrangement, since the languages and customs were quite radically different in the three areas. Even more drastically, Grant recommended that the plan to give the students a general education in western learning should be abandoned and the education given in India be confined to Indian languages and the study of the Company's laws and regulations.1 When a decision was finally taken on the College in December, 1801 by the Court of Directors, Charles Grant was no longer a member, having gone 'out by rotation' in the spring. Nor was David Scott any longer Chairman, for in an unprecedented move the Shipping Interest had compelled him to resign because of the support he had given to Wellesley's ideas on private trade and shipping.2 Despite the great hostility that existed to Wellesley, the Court, however, at first accepted the establishment of the College, although they declared that it should be operated along the lines suggested in Grant's revision.3 Just at this time, however, Lord Dartmouth, the new President of the Board of Control, angered the Directors by expressing his agreement with the private trade interests, and Wellesley reported new and heavy expenditures from India.4 The response of the Directors was to order the abolition of the College.5 For Wellesley, the College had become a symbol of the nature of government that he believed necessary for India. 'The College must stand,' he warned David Scott, 'or the Empire must fall,' 8 and he threatened to return to England and put his case before Parliament if the Directors did not change their decision.7 The Directors, for their part, saw a threat to their power in Wellesley's attitude and in the strong support given him by the Board of Control, and it seemed that only a decision by Parliament would break the deadlock.8 Meanwhile, however, Charles Grant had again become a member of the Court and exercised a moderating influence. Not only did he have some sympathy with the idea of the College, but he was aware how unpopular the abolition of the College was with people outside the Company, especially among his evangelical friends who had re1

Ibid. Philips, East India Company, p. 113. 3 Philips, Scott Correspondence, II, 377, Dartmouth to David Scott, 15 Dec. 1801. 'The Paper upon the College' Dartmouth referred to was almost certainly the revision of Wellesley's plans made by Grant (Morris, op. cit., p. 240). * Morris, op. cit., p. 243, Charles Grant to Claudius Buchanan, 5 Jan. 1802; and ibid., [to William Chambers]. 5 C.R.O., H.M.S. 488, pp. 181-96, Draft of Public Letter to Bengal, 27 Jan. 8

1802.

• Pearce, op. cit., II, 212, Wellesley to David Scott, 12 Aug. 1802. ' Ibid., p. 214, Wellesley to Dartmouth, 5 Aug. 1802. 8 Philips, East India Company, p. 129.

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garded it as a preliminary step for the evangelization of India.1 Furthermore, in 1803 Addington's Government had no desire to risk a Parliamentary battle over an Indian issue, with all its attendant cross-currents of interests, and a compromise was reached between the Directors and Wellesley.2 The College was continued, but it was Grant's revision, not Wellesley's original plan, that was supported.3 While the College at Fort William had more nominal dignity, its functions were much the same as the language schools that were established in the other Presidencies. Wellesley himself was under no illusion about the fate of his dream, and when he heard the decision he wrote to Castlereagh that he assumed it was unnecessary to repeat his 'unqualified contempt and abhorrence of the proceedings and propensities of the Court of Directors.'4 Grant's concern for the training of the Company's civil servants did not end with his attempt to have a modified version of Wellesley's College accepted by the Court of Directors but continued for the rest of his life through his interest in Haileybury College, which was established in 1805.6 Since the founding of Haileybury followed so closely upon the debates over the Fort William College it was generally assumed by contemporaries—and also by later historians of the Company6—that the Directors had been moved to action only because of Wellesley's prior concern for a well-trained Civil Service.7 This was an assumption that Grant was at pains to refute, partly, perhaps, because of a dislike that grew with the years of hearing Wellesley praised, but mainly because he knew from his own involvement in both Fort William and Haileybury that the story of the origin of Haileybury was more complex than as an answer to Wellesley's scheme. In founding Haileybury, not only was the Directors' 'professed intention . . . the real one, to give the best education which could be crowded into the years young men destined for India should pass in this country,' 8 but, he insisted, they had also thought of it prior to the Fort William College plan.9 1 Pearce, op. cit., II, 226, William Wilberforce to Archdeacon Wrangham, Nov. 1807. 2 Philips, East India Company, p. 129. 8 Morris, op. cit., pp. 24CM3. 4 Pearce, op. cit., II, 225, Wellesley to Castlereagh, 19 June 1804. 6 At first the College was located in Hertford Castle. The new buildings at Haileybury were completed in 1809. The College did not open until 1806, but the action creating it was taken in 1805 (C.R.O., Minutes and Reports of Committee of Haileybury College, I, passim.). ' Hutton, op. cit., p. 124. ' Asiatic Journal, IV, 273, Debate at East India House, 5 March 1817, speech by Charles Grant. 8 Morris, op. cit., p. 245, Charles Grant to Sir James Macintosh, 17 Sept. 1805. 9 Ibid, [date not given, but apparently 1801 or 1802].

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According to the report of a Company committee of which Grant was a member, as early as 1796—that is, long before Wellesley had made his plans for Fort William College—the need for an institution for training the Company's civil servants had been recognized by some members of the Court of Directors.1 Grant was almost certainly one of those, for this early discussion of training the young men who went out to India was also mentioned in his private letters.2 There is also a reference to it in a draft for a letter to India—based on materials prepared by Grant—that was written when the Directors first discussed Wellesley's College.3 They had in mind, they said at that time, to establish an institution for giving candidates for the Company's service 'along with classical and mathematical instruction, the elements of those branches of science most useful in our service abroad.' 4 This statement did not appear in the letter that was finally sent to India, however, for the Board of Control, angered by the Directors' hostility to Wellesley's scheme, ordered all mention of the proposed institution to be expurged from the official despatch.5 As Grant pointed out some years later, this action by the Board made it appear as if the Directors had not given any thought to the training of its servants until prodded to do so by Wellesley.6 The Directors took their first formal action in regard to training their servants on 19 September 1804 when they asked the Committee of Correspondence to report on the need and to make suggestions.7 Two weeks later the Committee gave a report recommending the establishment of an institution for the education in England of candidates for the Company's service, and this was given general approval by the Court. 8 Although the Committee of Correspondence included, in addition to Charles Grant, who was Deputy Chairman at the time, the Chairman, Sir Stephen Lushington, as well as the nine senior members of the Court, there was never any question in the minds of those familiar with the Company's administration that Grant was the driving force behind the move to establish a College and was the author of the Report that outlined its constitution.9 1 C.R.O., Minutes and Reports of Committee of Haileybury College, I, pp. 1-2, Minutes of 26 Oct. 1804. 2 Morris, op. cit., Charles Grant to Sir James Macintosh [no date, but apparently 1801 or 1802]. 3 See above, p. 188. 4 C.R.O., H.M.S. 488, p. 185, Draft for Public Letter to Bengal. 6 Ibid. 8 Asiatic Journal, IV, 273-79, Debate at East India House, 5 March 1817, speech by Charles Grant. 7 C.R.O., Minutes and Reports of the Committee of Haileybury College, I, 8 1-2, Minutes, 26 Oct. 1804. Ibid. • Asiatic Journal, III, 150-380, Debates at East India House, 18 Dec. 1816 and 6 Feb. 1817,passim.

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In later years, whether the College was praised or blamed, it was referred to as Grant's child—on one occasion as his 'bandy, squinteyed rickety brat.' 1 For Wilberforce, it was the one thing that seemed to justify Grant's 'excellent and assiduous culture on so ungrateful a soil [as the East India Company].'2 Unlike Wellesley's writings on Fort William College, the Report made in 1804 by the Committee of Correspondence gave little space to arguments for the need of training; anyone acquainted with the Indian Administration, it was pointed out, realized that a properly educated Civil Service was 'recommended by the most obvious views of utility.'3 Nor was it necessary to argue for England as over against India as the place for receiving training—the answer to that had been given, first with the abolition of Wellesley's College, then with the later permission to continue it along the lines of Grant's revised plan. What had to be decided in 1804 was, first of all, what kind of education was needed for civil servants in India, and, secondly, whether or not it was possibly to obtain this education at existing institutions, or if the Company had to establish a College of its own. According to the Committee, the kind of education needed was obvious: one that would give young men, in addition to a classical training, 'the elements of such other parts of knowledge as may be more peculiarly applicable to the station they have to fill' in the administration of justice, the collection of revenue, the conduct of commerce, and in political transactions of all kinds.4 No existing institution could meet these needs, the Committee declared, and by way of proof presented the curriculum which it considered essential for the training of the Company's civil services, recommending that it be adopted as the basis for the proposed College.6 The Report assumed that when boys of fifteen or sixteen entered the College they would have had a grounding in the classics, and the study of these would be continued as the necessary basis for 'a superstructure of that liberal knowledge which is required of men invested with public trust.' 6 Great attention would also be paid to English literature and composition, however, since in India so much of the administration depended upon the ability of the Company's servants to express their ideas clearly and forcibly. Arithmetic and mathematics were also essential, despite the fact that they were commonly regarded as 'a vulgar attainment,' needed only by men interested in commerce.' This was a regrettable attitude, the Report 1

Ibid., IV, 163,25 Feb. 1817, speech by D. Lowdnes. Morris, op. cit., p. 246, William Wilberforce to Charles Grant, 24 Sept. 1804. * C.R.O., Minutes and Reports of the Committee of Haileybury College, I, 3, Minutes of 26 Oct. 1806. 5 8 'Ibid., p. 6. Ibid., pp. 7-10. Ibid. ' Ibid. 2

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said, for not only was a sound mathematical training needed in many branches of the administration, but it was useful for 'strengthening and improving the reasoning faculty.' The laws and constitution of Great Britain would receive careful study, and detailed instruction in the principles of political economy, commerce and finance would help to make public business intelligible to the civil servants.1 Considerable place was given in the Report to the discussion of the amount of training that ought to be given in the Indian languages before the students left for India. This was an extremely controversial subject, since not only were there those who believed that it would be best not to begin language study until after arriving in India, but also the defenders of Wellesley's College regarded the suggestion that Indian languages should be taught in England as a further attack on Fort William.2 Grant was adamant, however, that at least the basic elements of one or two Indian languages should be taught in England. While the Report suggested a pedagogical reason for this—it was easier to acquire languages at an early age—the argument that was stressed was a patriotic one. 'It is a sort of reproach to the country,' the Report noted, 'that notwithstanding our vast connexions with the East, no pains have been taken to make any provision for this kind of learning.'3 Many of the Company's servants knew the Indian languages well, but when they returned to England the Universities made no use of their knowledge, while the translations that had been made added to the general information about India but not to the knowledge of the Oriental languages themselves. Napoleon's government, whatever its aims or principles might be, the Report pointed out, had given great encouragement to Oriental learning.4 An immediate and practical result was that the French were able to carry on diplomacy in the native courts of the East without interpreters, while the British were dependent upon them. For national reasons, then, the study of Indian languages should be started in England, and the Company could make a contribution by maintaining a teacher of Oriental languages, since the Universities had failed to do so.6 Occupying a less formal place in the curriculum of the College, but playing an extremely vital role in the creation of well-trained administrators, were other interests. 'Natural and experimental philosophy,' the Report suggested, would give them an introduction to subjects that they could pursue later with pleasure in India, as 1

Ibid. Morris, op. cit., p. 245, Charles Grant to Sir James Grant, 17 Sept. 1805. C.R.O., Minutes and Reports of the Committee of Haileybury College, I, 7-10, Minutes of 26 Oct. 1804. 4 5 Ibid. Ibid. 2

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would the study of French, geography and drawing. The private reading of the students could be directed to histories and accounts of the Eastern people, and in the vacations they could be taken on tours of the manufacturing establishments of England as well as of the great public works, such as docks and arsenals.2 Overarching the whole curriculum, moreover, was to be a concern for religion and morality, for without a full attachment to the principles and truths of the Christian faith, the Report insisted, the young civil servants would not be able to fulfil their trust either to Great Britain or the people of India. 3 Charles Grant once fell asleep when Robert Owen was expounding his theories on education to him,4 but throughout the plan for the curriculum for the proposed College can be seen the new attitude towards education which had seized Grant, no less than Owen. The increased interest in education—reflected in the growth of the dissenting academies, the Bell and Lancaster systems, the various educational societies—was an area where the old dissenters, the Evangelicals and the Benthamites found a common cause.6 This interest, it has been suggested, was due to 'the steady rise in wealth, numbers and influence of men engaged in trade and commerce' who were creating a new social order and demanded a different education for their sons from that obtainable in the old grammar schools.6 This class also understood the need for trained personnel to manage the increasingly complex system of government, and in outlining the constitution for the Company's college Grant was seeking to meet this need as far as India was concerned. As E. L. Woodward pointed out, Haileybury was the first attempt in England to secure a supply of properly qualified men for administrative work, and no other arrangement on such a large scale was made again until the introduction of the competitive civil service examinations.7 The advantages of a school based on the kind of curriculum recommended in their Report were numerous, the members of the Committee declared. Instead of being left to the unlikely chance of acquiring the necessary education at existing schools, the Company's civil servants would receive a standard course of studies at one central institution, and after having been taught by the best available teachers in the Kingdom, they would all be subjected to the same 1

4 3 Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Wilberforce, Life, IV, 91, Diary, 30 Dec. 1812. 6 Elie Halevy. A History of the English People in the Nineteenth Century. Vol. I: England in 1815. New York, Peter Smith, 1949, p. 587 and passim. Often this common interest led, of course to conflict. 6 M. G. Jones, Hannah More, p. 5. ' E. L. Woodward, The Age of Reform, 1815-1870 (Oxford History of England, vol. XIII), Oxford, Clarendon, 1954. 4

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strict examination. As a result of this, the Committee said, the young men would be initiated 'in one uniform system of right principles,' and 'fortified against erroneous and dangerous opinions.' A further advantage of a common education would be that the civil servants would not only share the same educational background but would also know each other before they went to India, which would help to give them a sense of identity amidst the millions of alien subjects over whom they would rule.2 Although the Directors gave general approval in 1804 to Grant's plan, there were a number of practical details that had to be settled. One was the number of years students should be required to spend at the College, and this involved the question of the age at which the Company should send out its personnel. The legal minimum was fifteen, but since in recent years the average tended to be eighteen, it was felt that all candidates could be required to spend three years at Haileybury and then two years in language study in India.3 Also related to the age of the students was the issue—argued at great length through the years—whether the institution should be a school or college.4 What was at stake, Grant insisted, was no mere matter of nomenclature, but the very nature of the training the students would receive.5 If it were a school, he said, it would not attract the best teachers, and the teaching would be of a low standard, but if it were a college, university men would not object to teaching at it. Grant won his point, but only with great difficulty, and it was as a College that his institution opened its doors in February, 1806.6 'To the inconsiderate,' a writer in the Edinburgh Review once remarked, '[Haileybury] College may appear of much the same importance with Harrow . . . an affair of individual rather than national concernment,' but this was not so, he pointed out, since Haileybury was the only avenue for appointments to a Civil Service that ruled sixty million people.7 Certainly no other English school was the subject of such a variety of criticism as was Haileybury during its early years. In his famous speech on India in 1813, Lord Grenville criticized the Company for giving the future administrators of India an education that cut them off from the main stream of the national 1

C.R.O., Minutes and Reports of the Committee of Haileybury College, I, 4-5, Minutes of 26 Oct. 1804. 2 Ibid. "Ibid.,pp. 5-6. 4 Asiatic Journal, III, 150-380, Debates at East India House, 18 Dec. 1816 and 6 Feb. \&\1,passim. 6 Ibid. * C.R.O., Minutes and Reports of the Committee of Haileybury College, I, 1-15, Minutes of 26 Oct. 1804. ' Edinburgh Review, XXVII, Dec. 1816, pp. 511-12, Review of T. R. Malthus's 'Statement Respecting the East India College...' 199

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life—from 'English manners, English attachments, English principles, and I am not ashamed to say, from English prejudices.'1 Another criticism was that too much attention was given to English literature; it was feared that the students would go to India and write essays, not despatches.2 Other critics scoffed at the heavy concentration on history and legal institutions—instead of capable commercial servants, grumbled one Proprietor, the College was turning out 'an army of young Grotiuses and Puffendorfs.' 3 Added to this dissatisfaction with the curriculum, were the persistent reports of indiscipline among the students, who it was said, 'with outrageous indecency,' whistled and groaned at the professors,4 while they terrorized the people in the neighbourhood with their wild behaviour.6 Grant's answer to the critics of Haileybury was that their arguments were marked by 'injustice, error and perversion.'6 While he could not deny the charges of indiscipline, since he had been responsible for investigating many of them,7 he argued that this had been a problem only in the first few years when the Principal had not had the power to dismiss students, but that once this right was given him, discipline had improved.8 As a rule had also been made that no writer could be appointed to India who had not graduated from Haileybury, the power given to the Principal to expel a student was, as Grant pointed out, an extremely important limitation on the use of patronage by a Director.9 Part of the hostility among some of the Directors towards Haileybury was, in fact, probably a reflection of resentment against Grant, who had been largely responsible not only for the creation of the school but also of these regulations which meant that nomination by a Director was no longer equivalent to Civil Service appointment.10 As far as the College curriculum was concerned, to the end of his life Grant continued to maintain that it produced men who were 1

Pari. Debates, XXV, 750, speech by Lord Grenville, 9 April 1813. C.R.O., H.M.S. 488, pp. 435-38, Board to Court, Report on College, 25 July 1805. 8 Asiatic Journal, III, 371, Debate at East India House, 6 Feb. 1817, speech by Charles Grant. 4 C.R.O., Minutes and Reports of Committee of Haileybury College, I, 274, Minutes of Secret Committee of College, 17 Nov. 1808. 5 Asiatic Journal, III, 162, Debate at East House, 18 Dec. 1816. 6 Ibid., p. 368,6 Feb. 1817, speech by Charles Grant. ' C.R.O., Minutes and Reports of the Committee of Haileybury College, I, 403, Minutes of 26 Oct. 1809. 6 Asiatic Journal, III, 381, Debate at East India House, 6 Feb. 1817, speech by Charles Grant. 1 C.R.O., Appendix to Court Minutes, III, 1355, Dissent of Charles Grant, 13 Jan.1813. 10 ibid. 2

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not only good servants of the Company, but also 'good citizens and enlightened patriots,' who were 'imbued with reverence and love for religion [and] the constitution and laws of their own country.' 1 While great territories might be conquered by arms, he said in 1819, 'the due administration of them, in which their utility to this country and the Company must chiefly consist and the happiness of their vast population only be found, must depend on the principles, the talents and the zeal of the civil servants.'2 The argument from utility and happiness that Grant used in defence of Haileybury was, in effect, the basic argument that he used throughout the years to defend the Company's rule in India. In his participation in the discussion of the issues that confronted the Company's Home Administration after 1790 he had, in one form or another, asserted that only the Company could maintain the usefulness and value to Great Britain of control in India while at the same time working for the welfare of the Indian people. Although the issues were very disparate—private trade, missions, shipping, patronge, the training of the civil service—he was able to form them into a pattern that related to his general thesis that the mutual welfare of Britain and India were involved in the continuance of the Company's trading monopoly and its control of the political administration of the conquered territories. Although he had dissented very frequently and very strongly from the opinions of many of his colleagues within the Home Administration as well as from those of the GovernorGeneral and the President of the Board of Control, by 1804 it was acknowledged that as spokesman for the Company he had no equal. This dominance was given formal recognition in April 1804 when he was elected Deputy Chairman of the Company. 3 1

Asiatic Journal, III, 370-71, Debate at East India House, 6 Feb. 1817, speech by Charles Grant. 2 C.R.O., Appendix to Court Minutes, IV, Dissent of Charles Grant, 1 Sept. 1819. 3 C.R.O., Court Minutes, XCIII, 4,12 April 1804.

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CHAPTER X

GRANT AND WELLESLEY: C O N F L I C T OVER T E R R I T O R I A L EXPANSION WITH his election in 1804 to the office of Deputy Chairman of the Company, Grant's attitudes and opinions regarding British rule in India took on new significance, for if the Chairmen used their position skilfully they could exert great influence on almost every aspect of the Indian Administration. The Chairman normally presided over the meetings of the Court of Directors and of the General Court, but otherwise there was very little distinction between his functions and those of the Deputy. They were, in effect, joint executive secretaries of the Company, and they shared, rather than divided, their powers and responsibilities.1 The joint nature of the chairmanship was emphasized by the fact that the Deputy was almost invariably elected as the Chairman at the end of his year in office, so that a man was usually assured of two years in office once he was made Deputy. In this situation, a strong personality and familiarity with the mechanism of the Company's government would obviously tend to give one of the 'Chairs,' as they were known, a more dominant role than the other, and both of these factors played an important role in Grant's long control of the leadership of the Company. In the six years when he was one of the Chairmen—1804-06, 1807-10 and 181516, he was singularly fortunate in the colleagues who shared office with him, for either they lacked his great knowledge of the Company's administration or they were content to be guided by him. The only exception to this was his first year in office when the Chairman was William Elphinstone, a man of strong opinions who found Grant's religious views particularly distasteful.2 They managed to work well together, however, and afterwards Grant always overshadowed his co-chairmen. This was especially true from 1807 to 1809 when his friend Edward Parry was Chairman, for while Parry shared his interests and convictions, he lacked Grant's driving energy. The result, as their joint correspondence clearly shows, was that while Parry was Chairman, Grant had effective control of the executive power.3 1

Auber, op. cit., p. 203. Henry Morris, editor, 'Some Unpublished Letters of the Rev. Charles Simeon,' The Record, Nov. 12,1902. 8 Among the most important of the letters signed by both but which were written by Grant are the following: C.R.O., H.M.S. 494, pp. 5-91, Edward Parry 2

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Adroit management of customary privileges rather than actual provisions of the Company's constitution made possible much of the influence exercised by Grant in Indian affairs during his years as one of the Chairmen. One of the long established customs was that matters were not brought up in the Court of Directors without the previous permission of the Chairmen, and this meant, as C. H. Philips points out, that a good tactician like Grant could 'either carry any desirable measure by waiting until his opponents were absent, or defer the consideration of any objectionable question as long as he was in office.'1 The Chairmen could also exercise considerable power through controlling the information that was made available to the Directors, for while in theory every Director could see all documents which were not secret, in practice the 'chairs' had much easier and quicker access to them. It was this situation Sir Francis Baring had in mind when, unable to find documents he needed to prove a point, he commented that as soon as 'Grant quits the Chair (but not until then) some intelligent clerk can easily produce authority from the records.'2 The power of the Chairmen was also increased by the informal agreement that all matters of importance would be discussed with the President of the Board of Control before they were brought up before the Court of Directors.3 The aspect of the Company's administrative structure that made possible the greatest extension of the Chairmen's influence, however, was the extraordinary degree to which the government of India was carried on through correspondence. Charles Grant once claimed that the Chairmen of the East India Company were responsible for the most voluminous correspondence of any public servants in Great Britain,4 and the vast collections of documents that passed through their hands are an impressive witness for his claim. Between 1793 and 1813, for example, nine thousand volumes of letters and documents were received from India; four thousand letters—some many hundreds of pages in length—were sent in reply; and three thousand items of correspondence went back and forth between the Chairmen and Charles Grant to Directors, 15 Sept. 1807; ibid., 207-333,14 Oct. 1808; H.M.S. 816, pp. 138-41, Grant and Parry to Robert Dundas, 21 Sept. 1807; ibid., pp. pp. 185-208, 26 Jan. 1808; ibid., pp. 452-70, 13 Jan. 1809; and Bodleian Library, MSS. Eng. Hist. c210, letters from Grant and Parry to Robert Dundas regarding missionaries. 1 Philips, East India Company, p. 13. • C.R.O., H.M.S. 494, p. 221, Edward Parry and Charles Grant to Directors, Oct. 1808; marginal comments by Sir Francis Baring. ® C.R.O., H.M.S. 208, p. 75, Castlereagh to Chairman, 12 Sept. 1804. * C.R.O., Letters from the Court to the Board, IV, 1, Edward Parry and Charles Grant to Robert Dundas, 3 March 1809.

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and the Board of Control. Much of this was routine, but almost all of it received some attention from the Chairmen, and a great deal of it especially when Grant was one of the 'chairs,' received close scrutiny. Two committees—the Committee of Correspondence and the Secret Committee—were responsible for the preparation of these letters, and as members of both committees the Chairmen played a crucial part in setting the tone and determining the contents of the correspondence. Although the Committee of Correspondence was responsible for an extraordinary variety of business—applications for leave, recommendations for pensions, and recruitment for the Company's military services—its principal function was to prepare despatches to be sent to the Company's governments in India. In fact, this meant, as James Mill pointed out when he was in charge of the Company's correspondence, that the person who was 'master of the facts scattered in a most voluminous correspondence,' would have a preponderant share in making policy.2 The clerks of the Committee went through the letters received from India, and having assembled the data they thought relevant, prepared a draft outline for the despatch that was to be sent to India. 3 The Chairmen then completed the draft, and discussed it with the President of the Board of Control. After this the draft was submitted to the Committee of Correspondence who normally accepted it and forwarded it to the Court of Directors.4 In this process, an aggressive Chairman who had a wide knowledge of the Company's affairs could obviously use the correspondence with India to promote his own personal views. Not even a very forceful Chairman always got his own way, however, and a determined Court could make a Chairman sign a despatch of which he strongly disapproved. Furthermore, the Board of Control could require the Court to send out despatches on political matters even though the Directors were opposed to the contents. The Secret Committee was the other channel through which correspondence passed to India, and which the Chairmen could use to impress their views on Indian affairs. Constitutionally, the Secret Committee was merely a forwarding agent for the Board of Control, with no other function than transmitting to India the secret decisions of the British Government 'concerning the levying war, or making 1 Parliamentary Papers, 1831-32, IX, 16, Select Committee on Affairs of India, Public, Evidence of Peter Auber. 2 James Mill to Dumont, in The Works of David Ricardo, edited by R. Straffa, VIII, 40, quoted by Stokes, The English Utilitarians and India, p. 48. " C.R.O., Letters from the Court to the Board, IV, 3, Edward Parry and Charles Grant to Robert Dundas, 3 March 1809. * Philips, East India Company, pp. 16-22, gives a description of the process of preparing a despatch for India.

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peace, or treating or negotiating with any of the native princes or states in India.' 1 Its proceedings, Charles Grant told the House of Commons in 1806, 'were utterly unknown to the Court of Directors. . . [and it] was subject in no way or respect whatsoever to the Court of Directors.' 2 This would seem to be a clear and unequivocal rejection of any creative or responsible role for the Directors, and, by implication, for the Chairmen, in formulating the policies contained in the despatches sent out by the Secret Committee, but when Grant made this statement he was speaking with the definite polemical purpose of absolving himself of any responsibility for action taken by the Secret Committee when he was Director, but not one of the Chairmen. 3 In actual fact, the Secret Committee, which was composed of the two Chairmen and the senior Director, was the most powerful of all the Committees at work in East India House.4 While its constitutional function required it at times to send out orders to India on matters of which the ordinary Directors knew nothing, and with which the Chairmen might disagree, in practice, its members 'always discussed the Board's Secret Drafts, frequently dissented, and returned them for amendment, often originated secret political orders, and for a short period in 1806-07, even assumed control of the Company's external policy.'5 During Grant's periods of office, the Secret Committee itself originated nearly half of the Secret Despatches that were sent to India, and obviously shared in the preparation of many that came from the Board.6 The Secret Committee was, in fact, a kind of Cabinet, providing the internal cohesion and agreement necessary for the management of the Company's territories in India. In time of war, Peter Auber noted, there was a tendency to vest in the Chairman and the Deputy Chairman 'the whole executive authority of the Company, that they might watch over the general safety of their dominions and trade.' 7 Since during most of Grant's years as Chairman Britain was at war with the one European power capable of challenging her control of India, the 'chairs' were able to use the Secret Committee, along with their normal influence in the Committee of Correspondence, to advance their policies in India. Nowhere was the enormous significance of 'government by correspondence' more clearly shown than in the great conflict between Wellesley 1

3 3 Geo. Ill, c. 52, sec. 19. Parliamentary Debates, VIII, 1024, speech by Charles Grant, 26 Feb. 1807. Ibid. * C. H. Philips, 'The Secret Committee of the East India Company,' Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, X, Parts 2 and 3,1940, pp. 299-315, and 699-716. 5 Ibid., p. 701. • C.R.O., Minutes of the Secret Committee, IV and V passim. 7 Auber, op. cit., p. 189. 2 8

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and the Home Administration which reached its climax after Grant's election in 1804 and continued, in one form or another, for the rest of his life. The issue in the clash between the Governor-General and the Directors was clearly stated by Grant in a letter he wrote in 1804 to Jonathan Duncan, the Governor of Bombay. Since Wellesley's external policies had given 'a new composition to our Empire,' it was inevitable, Grant said, that this would be followed by 'many important changes in the legislative constitution of British India, both at home and abroad.' 1 For Grant, the astonishing additions Wellesley had made to British territory were 'the splendid road to ruin,' the beginning of that false dream that had beguiled every Indian conqueror, the belief that India could be unified under one sovereignty.2 Although the hostility of the Directors to Wellesley's territorial policies had obvious roots in the controversies over shipping and private trade, it seems almost certain that even without them conflict would have developed, for there was a fundamental divergence between Wellesley's concept of the nature of British power in India and that of Charles Grant, and by 1804 Grant's power was great enough to challenge that of the Governor-General. Grant's views on territorial expansion, which had been formed long before Wellesley had gone to India, were an essential part of his whole attitude towards the place of the British in India. As already noted, he was not entirely convinced that the original conquests in Bengal had been for the best interest of either the Indians or the British, but once having been made, they could not be abandoned.3 The limits of Clive's conquests, however, defined for Grant the extent of British territory in India, and to attempt to increase it either through wars or treaties seemed to him to be both unjust and impolitic. He was certain that enough territory had been acquired to provide, in the words of the Directors in 1687, 'the foundation of a large well-grounded and sure English dominion in India for all time to come.'4 That further extension of territory would threaten what had been already achieved was, he wrote in 1804, one of 'the long received maxims . . . which experience has so much justified [that it has] at length been enacted into laws.'6 The law to which he referred was the section of the India Act of 1784 which forbade any further conquests in India by the Company's servants as 'repugnant to the 1

Morris, op. cit., p. 255, Charles Grant to Jonathan Duncan, 1 June 1804. Ibid. See above, p. 144. 1 Despatch to Fort St. George, 12 Dec. 1687, quoted by P. E. Roberts, History of British India (Third Edition), London, Oxford University Press, 1952, p. 44. 5 Morris, op. cit., p. 258, Charles Grant to George Udny, 1 June 1804. 2

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wish, the honour, and the policy of the British nation.' Nothing in the Indian situation, he insisted, justified the territorial acquisitions that Wellesley had made in defiance of the Act. Wellesley's justification for his territorial policy was that a correct reading of the facts of the Indian political situation made clear that neutrality and non-interference, the great watchwords of his predecessor, Sir John Shore, were no longer guarantees for British security in India. In his own phraseology, the time had come when it was necessary to make 'the unmolested exercise of . . . separate authority' by each native state depend upon 'the general protection of the British power.' 2 A number of considerations, according to Wellesley, made this extension of control imperative. One was his belief that the French would attempt to form alliances with the native powers in order to make an invasion of India possible, and that the only way to forestall this was by firmly establishing British authority in every capital.3 Moreover, the native states constituted a constant threat to British power because of the 'restless spirit of ambition and violence,' which, according to Wellesley, was 'characteristic of every Asiatic government.'4 Since no other power in India except the Company possessed the power to curb the ambitions of the states, it seemed obvious to him that self-interest demanded interference by the British. Also, he was apparently quite genuinely impressed with the disorder and anarchy prevailing in the areas outside British control, and believed that the welfare of the people would be improved through bringing them under the Company's government.5 At times he also argued that expansion would not only pay for itself, but, once all the country was under one government, that the 'most sanguine expectations of commercial profit will even be succeeded.'6 Wellesley's suggestion that conquest would solve all the Company's financial problems should not be taken too seriously, however, as a motivation for his external policy; he almost certainly advanced it mainly in the hope that it would win over the Directors. Aside from the territory acquired following the war with Tipu Sultan in 1799, Wellesley extended British authority through an1

Malcolm, Political History of India, 1,201. Martin, Wellesley Despatches, IV, 177, Governor-General to Secret Committee, 13 July 1804. 8 Ibid., I, pp. 159-208, Minute of the Governor-General, 12 August 1798. 4 Wellesley, quoted by Sir Alfred Lyall, The Rise and Expansion of the British Dominion in India, London, John Murray, 1907, p. 268. s Martin, Wellesley Despatches, II, 225-49, Wellesley to Henry Dundas, 5 March 1800. • B.M., Add. MSS., 37275, p. 234, Wellesley to [Henry Dundas (?)], 13 Nov. 1800. 2

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nexations for which the ruler had given his formal consent and, most significantly, through the formation of the famous 'subsidiary treaties.' As far as the war against Tipu was concerned, Grant had no fault to find with Wellesley, for even at time when he was critical of almost every other aspect of Wellesley's administration he insisted that this had been a defensive war, with no alternative in dealing with Tipu but to destroy him. 1 Grant's criticisms centred around the annexation of Tanjore and the Carnatic, where the rulers were given pensions and the Company took over their lands, and the subsidiary treaties, particularly those made with Oudh and the Maratha Confederacy. While the subsidiary treaties differed in details, the essential features were that a ruler agreed to a mutual defence pact with the Company, and to enforce the treaty he allowed the Company to maintain an army in his territory, which was paid for by the revenue from lands surrendered in perpetuity.2 The immediate effect of subsidiary treaties, according to Cornwallis, who had strongly opposed them during his administration, was involvement by the Company in quarrels between the Indian states,3 but Wellesley's argument was that the presence of the Company's army and its political agents in a state would prevent quarrels breaking out. 4 For Grant, the subsidiary treaties, with their implication of extending British rule over the whole of India, involved 'the idea not of established tranquillity, but of perpetual warfare, not of increasing prosperity from the arts of peace, but of continual expenditure both of wealth and human life.'5 This angry denunciation of subsidiary treaties was written in 1804, but, as Wellesley's friends pointed out, the Carnatic had been annexed in 1801, the subsidiary treaty with Oudh was signed in the same year, and the one with the Marathas in 1802.® How was it, one of them asked, that 'Mr. Grant, in that grave and measured tone of voice that gave solemnity to everything which fell from him, ventured to assert that the "horrible business of Oudh" was not known to the Directors' until 1804, when they had given general approval to all of Wellesley's treaties by asking him not to resign in 1802 and then in 1803 had specifically approved the Oudh settlement?7 The explanation of this apparent approval given earlier to Wellesley l

Parl. Debates, VIII, 111 7, speech by Charles Grant, 15 Marchl808. Martin, Wellesley Despatches, II, 709-12, Appendix C, 'Treaty . . . between t h e . . . Company and . . . the Nabob Nizam ...,' 12 Oct. 1800. 3 Ross, Cornwallis Correspondence, III, 542, Cornwallis to Arthur Wellesley, 16 Aug. 1805. 4 Martin, Wellesley Despatches, IV, 177, Governor-General to Secret Committee, 13 July 1804. 5 Morris, op. cit., pp. 255-56, Charles Grant to Jonathan Duncan, 1 June 1804. • Pari. Debates, VI, 871-76, speech by Wellesley Pole, 22 April 1806. 7 Ibid., p. 871. 2

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by the Court of Directors was of great importance to Grant, for unless he could give a reasonably cogent statement his enemies would have gone a long way towards proving that opposition to expansion only arose when the Directors found that it was going to be a costly process. Grant's explanation of the apparent approval given to the early phases of Wellesley's external policies was that the failure of the Governor-General to send information to the Directors combined with pressures applied by the Ministry and the Board of Control had made it impossible for the Directors to express their views before 1804. During the crucial years from 1800 to 1804, he charged, Wellesley had deliberately withheld all details of what was happening in India so that the Directors would not be able to exercise their authority.1 It was the Secret Committee, not the Court of Directors, he insisted, that had approved the annexation of the Carnatic and the treaty with Oudh, and the oaths of secrecy taken by the members of the Committee prevented them from informing their fellow Directors what was taking place.2 Furthermore, the fact that in 1802 Wellesley was asked to remain in India was no indication of the attitude of the Directors toward him, since, Grant argued, this had only been done after pressure had been applied on the Court by Wellesley's powerful friends in the Ministry.3 By 1804, however, enough information had been received from India regarding the subsidiary alliance that had been signed with the head of the Maratha Confederacy in December 1802 to make clear to the Directors the direction in which Wellesley was leading the Company's government.4 What was perhaps the most important factor of all in explaining the hostility of the Directors towards Wellesley in 1804 was not mentioned by Grant—his own election as Deputy Chairman. All the important documents relating to Wellesley's policies were, he once complained, locked up in 'the secret recesses of the Secret Committee,'5 but when he was made Deputy Chairman these became available to him. Among them were the documents relating to the Treaty of Bassein, which the retiring Chairman had tried in vain to get permission to put before the Court of Directors.6 For Grant, the Treaty of Bassein, the subsidiary alliance made in 1802 with the Peshwa, the head of the Maratha Confederacy, was 1

C.R.O., H.M.S. 486, p. 83, Draft Despatch, March 1805. Pari. Debates, VIII, 1024, speech by Charles Grant, 26 Feb. 1807. Ibid., p. 873, 22 April 1806; for Castlereagh's account of this, see Martin, Wellesley Despatches, III, 37, Castlereagh to Wellesley, 27 Sept. 1802. 4 Pari. Debates, VI, 812, speech by Charles Grant, 22 April 1806. 6 Ibid. 6 C.R.O., Minutes of the Secret Committee, IV, Minute of J. Bosanquet, 10 April 1804. 2 3

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the cardinal error of British policy in India; for Wellesley, it was the crowning achievement of his attempt to link all the Indian states to the Company. After the defeat of Tipu Sultan of Mysore in 1799 and the forming of subsidiary alliances with the states of Hyderabad and Oudh in 1800 and 1801, the Marathas were the only independent powers in peninsular India. 1 While the Maratha Confederacy was weakened and divided by internal quarrels, and no longer the great power that fifty years before seemed likely to gain the hegemony of all India, Wellesley recognized that there was always the possibility of a reunion of the Maratha states under a strong Peshwa.2 Since a united and hostile Confederacy would have been a formidable foe, especially in alliance with France, Wellesley set out to prevent its reunion by making a subsidiary treaty with the Peshwa at Poona, which would place British power at the heart of Maratha power.3 At first the Peshwa stubbornly refused all Wellesleys offers of alliance, but when he was attacked and defeated by his chieftain, Holkar of Indore, he turned to Wellesley for help.4 For Wellesley, the situation seemed 'to afford the most favourable opportunity for the complete establishment of the British power in the Mahratta empire,' and the Peshwa accepted an alliance that effectively separated him from the other Maratha chieftains.6 After the Treaty was signed, Wellesley wrote to the Secret Committee that all danger of war with the Marathas had now passed, and the Company was in a position to maintain control over the Confederacy. Unless Wellesley was extremely ill-informed about the nature of the Maratha states, it is difficult to suppose that he actually believed that peace would result from the Treaty of Bassein, for it was almost inevitable that the great Maratha chieftains—Holkar of Indore, Scindia of Gwalior and Bhonsla of Nagpur—would regard the Treaty as a declaration of war. To them, as to modern Maratha historians, the Peshwa's acceptance of a subsidiary alliance with the Company seemed the basest betrayal of the Confederacy, for it not only meant the end of hopes of a revival of Maratha unity but it put the British in a position to attack the chieftains at will.6 Wellesley's failure to recognize this, or if he saw it, his willingness to accept the 1 The states of the Sikhs in the Panjab and of the Amirs in Sind did not impinge upon the Company's power to any extent at this time. 2 Martin, Wellesley Despatches, III, 6, Wellesley to Secret Committee, 24 3 Dec. 1802. Ibid. 4 P. C. Gupta, Baji Rao II and the East India Company, 1796-1818, London, Oxford University Press, 1939, pp. 37-62. 5 Martin, Wellesley Despatches, III, 6, Wellesley to the Secret Committee, 24 Dec. 1802; and ibid., pp. 627-31, Appendix A, Treaty of Bassein. 9 R. D. Choksey, A History of British Diplomacy at the Court of the Peshwas, 1786-1818, Poona, by the author, 1951.

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consequences, was the basis of Grant's criticism of the Treaty. By setting 'a British head over the members of the Mahratta Empire,' he declared, it 'violated essentially the constitution of that Empire, and the rights of the separate members as well as of the treaty of Salbeye.'1 This treaty, which had concluded the war with the Marathas during Warren Hastings' time, had specifically recognized, Grant pointed out, that Scindia was one of the guarantors of the Peshwa's position, and had provided that no changes in the internal composition of the Confederacy would take place without his consent, but the Treaty of Bassein had completely ignored these former pledges.2 Even more important, according to Grant, was the effect the treaty would have on Holkar, the most powerful of the Marathas chiefs. Since it was he who threatened the Peshwa, Wellesley's defensive treaty was, in effect, a declaration of war by the Company against his power. It was clear, then, that 'the life principle, the inevitable and intended effect of [the Treaty] was instant and offensive war against Yeshwantrao Holkar, who had neither committed nor threatened any aggression against the British government.'3 It was not with Holkar, however, but with the other two great Maratha chieftains, Scindia and Bhonsla, that the Company found itself at war soon after the signing of Treaty of Bassein. Although Wellesley had announced in 1800 that the 'Mahratta power is absolutely destroyed,'4 it took very hard and bitter fighting to subdue the chieftains and force them to sign subsidiary treaties. The fact that vast new territories were added to the Company—the great plains between the Ganges and the Jumna, seaports on the west coast, the province of Cuttack, and the Delhi area including the control of the Mughal Emperor®—did not make Grant any more favourably inclined towards the Treaty of Bassein. 'We are chargeable with all the guilt of it,' he wrote, 'the bloodshed, miseries and devastations which it has occasioned.'6 In September 1804, while the outcome of the Maratha war was still being discussed in Parliament and East India House, news was received that the Company was once more at war, this time with Yeshwantrao Holkar, the ablest of Indian military leaders.7 Grant's 1

Morris, op. cit., p. 256, Charles Grant to Georg Udny, 1 June 1804. C.R.O., Secret Committee Minutes, IV, Minute by Chairmen, 30 Oct. 1805. Ibid. 4 B.M., Add MSS., 37275, p. 234, Wellesley to [Henry Dundas (?)], 13 Nov. 1800. 8 Martin, Wellesley Despatches, III, 634-36, Appendices B and C, Treaties with Scindia and Bhonsla. • Morris, op. cit., p. 256, Charles Grant to George Udny, 1 June 1804. 7 C.R.O., Bengal Despatches, LXII, Directors to Governor-General, 26 Nov. 1804. 2

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views of this new war—and the weight his opinion carried—was clearly reflected in a letter that Cornwallis wrote in October, 1804 before any detailed news of the war had reached England. 'I should scarcely believe it possible,' he told a friend, 'that after having escaped the extreme hazards to which our interests in India were at various times exposed during the late contests with the Marattas, [Wellesley] should so soon, not only wantonly, but according to Charles Grant's statement, criminally involve himself in all the difficulties of another war.' 1 It was obvious, Cornwallis thought, that Wellesley would have to be recalled, even though the Ministers 'might be disposed to let him down easy.'2 Although by the end of 1804 the Government made clear to Wellesley that he was expected to return, it was not necessary to recall him formally, since he had already announced his intention of giving up the government as soon as his successor was appointed. 3 It was not possible, however, despite the good intentions of the Ministers, 'to let him down easy,' for his external policies had aroused very widespread criticism. The Directors were almost unanimously opposed to him, and in Parliament his methods were denounced in terms that recalled the Hastings debates. Many of his critics were, in fact, the men who had taken a leading part in Hastings' impeachment—Sheridan, Fox, Lord Moira and Sir Philip Francis.4 The most important of the critics, however, both at East India House and in Parliament, was undoubtedly Charles Grant. The others had been so long identified as opponents of the Company's rule, as well as being members of the political opposition in the House, that their hostility could almost be discounted. As a supporter of the Government and as an official spokesman for the Company, Grant was in a different position. Wellesley's friends recognized this by always attempting to meet his arguments more fully than those of other critics.5 Grant's criticisms of Wellesley's external policies found two avenues of expression after 1804. One was through the correspondence between the Directors and the Board of Control over the contents of a despatch to India on Wellesley's administration, the other was through the very long debate that took place in Parliament 1 Ross, Cornwallis Correspondence, III, 518, Cornwallis to General Ross, 14 Oct. 1804. 2 Ibid. 3 Martin, Wellesley Despatches, IV, 533-34, Castlereagh to Wellesley, 20 Dec. 1804. 4 Pari. Debates, II, passim; and Asiatic Annual Register, IV, Proceedings in Parliament, passim. 5 See, for example, Pari. Debates, VII, pp. 1064ff., speech by Sir Arthur Wellesley, 23 July 1806.

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when an attempt was made to impeach Wellesley. The correspondence with the Board of Control centred around one of the most interesting of Grant's writings, a draft for a despatch to be sent to India giving the Home administration's criticisms of the way that the Company's Indian territories had been ruled for the previous six years.1 Sir Thomas Metcalfe, the only Director who supported Wellesley, gave a fair idea of the contents of the Draft when he said that Grant had 'undertaken the unprecedented task of raking from the records everything that could make against the government without taking notice of any meritorious act.' 2 While the bulk of the Draft dealt with the details of Wellesley's external policy, it also mentioned everything that seemed to prove the illegality and irregularity of his administration—his repeated absences from Council meetings, the founding of Fort William College, his lavish expenditures on buildings so that he might live in 'Asiatic Pomp.' 3 Grant admitted that the Draft listed only Wellesley's faults, but he was writing an indictment, he pointed out, not a history of the administration.4 Although Grant finished the Draft early in March 1805, the despatch covering the points it discussed was not sent to India until nine months later, for the Board of Control refused to give its consent to it. Castlereagh, who was President of the Board at the time, did not attempt to deny the truth of many of Grant's statements, but he argued that it would be extremely unwise to publicly question the legality of the actions of an administration when there was no possibility of reversing them.5 All that the Directors had done in the Draft, he insisted, was to criticize; 'no measure whatever, either has been, or is now proposed to be founded upon it.'6 In a long and eloquent letter, Grant argued that Castlereagh misunderstood the nature of the Company's Indian Administration.7 Through long experience, he said, the Company had discovered that a 'system of publicity' was an essential support for 'the spirit and the motives which formed the high character' of its servants in India.8 1 C.R.O., H.M.S. 486, pp. 5-619, contains not only the original draft as written by Grant, but also all the many changes made by the Board, the correspondence between the Court and the Board and the draft for the despatch that was finally sent. The dispute over the draft is discussed in Roberts, Wellesley in India, pp. 265 ff., and Philips, East India Company, pp. 141-42. 2 Pari Debates, VI, 879, speech by Sir Thomas Metcalfe, 22 April 1806. 3 C.R.O., H.M.S. 486, p. 539, Draft Despatch, March, 1805. 4 C.R.O., Letters from the Company to the Board, III, 21-56, Chairman to Board, 6 Nov. 1805. 6 C.R.O., H.M.S. 486, pp. 615-19, Board to Chairmen, 30 Nov. 1805. 6 Ibid., pp. 555-57,19 Oct. 1805. ' C.R.O., Letters from the Company to the Board, III, 21-56, Chairmen to Board, 6 Nov. 1805. 8 Ibid., p. 30.

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'Every individual holding an important station there is now animated to laudable exertions' by the knowledge that 'he is acting upon a public theatre, that his proceedings will be publicly recorded there and publicly judged here.' 1 Even though Wellesley himself would have left India before the letter arrived, its arguments would be a warning to future Governor-Generals, and a reminder to all the Company's servants that they were expected to rule within constitutional limits.2 In the end, Castlereagh had a new despatch prepared, and using the authority given to the Board of Control under the India Act, forced the Directors to send it instead of Grant's draft. 3 Actually, the contents of the Board's letter was not very different from the original draft, but the tone was much milder and the stronger criticisms of Wellesley were deleted. Furthermore, Grant achieved his purpose of publicising the Directors' criticisms of Wellesley, for his draft was privately printed in 1806 and in the following year it was summarized in Asiatic Annual Register, a periodical that circulated widely among those interested in Indian questions.4 In this way, the Draft provided a compendium of carefully documented materials for those who attacked Wellesley in Parliament. In the extremely lengthy Parliamentary discussion of Wellesley's policies, lasting from 1805 to 1809, Grant played a prominent but somewhat ambiguous role. In 1805, he supported Philip Francis's unsuccessful attempt to get the Commons to pass a resolution declaring that 'to pursue schemes of conquest and extension of dominion in India are repugnant to the wish, the honour and the policy of the nation,' 6 but the following year when James Paull and Francis began their campaign to have Wellesley impeached, he at once made clear that he would oppose them.6 This attitude brought from Wellesley's friends the derisive suggestion that Grant was against impeachment proceedings because, unlike Paull and Francis, he knew all the facts about the Indian Administration, and he realized that Wellesley would be vindicated.' Grant's reply to this charge was to make a distinction between public censure—the use of 'the system of publicity' he had told Castlereagh was essential for the Company's government—and impeachment, which was a drastic remedy to be applied only when normal methods of control had failed.8 If it were allowed to operate without interference from the 1

2 Ibid., p. 29. Jbid. C.R.O., H.M.S. 486, p. 616, Board to Court, 30 Nov. 1805. 4 Asiatic Annual Register, IX, 1807, Miscellany, pp. 1-106. 6 Thomas Fisher, 'Charles Grant, Esquire,' op. cit., p. 569. • Pari. Debates, VI, 870, speech by Charles Grant, 22 April 1806. 7 Ibid., speech by Wellesley Pole. 8 Ibid., speech by Charles Grant. s

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Ministry, the Company's system, he insisted, would be able to provide the needed checks on the power of a Governor-General without recourse to impeachment. It was probably Philip Francis's brilliant and mordant speeches that clarified the issue for Grant. Francis's line of attack was that Wellesley's conduct in India, far from being exceptional, was precisely what could be expected under the Company's government.1 As early as 1777, he reminded the House, in a letter to Lord North he had expressed his conviction that it was impossible for the Company to prevent its servants from 'pursuing the old game of war and conquest in [its] name, at [its] expense, and finally to [its] destruction.'2 As long as the profits of expansion could be used for trade, he said, ambitious Governors-General would use this as an excuse for adding to their glory by making war. Showing his flair for drama, he remarked that the letter to Lord North had not been merely an expression of his private views; 'it happened,' he said, 'that on the whole of that representation I had not only the entire concurrence but the able assistance of the present Chairman of the Court of Directors.'3 The only way of meeting Francis's arguments, Grant realized, was by showing that Wellesley's policies were in no way a necessary corollary of the Company's government but were actually a direct contradiction of its spirit. While condemning territorial expansion as vigorously as Francis did, Grant insisted that Wellesley had repudiated the Company's historic policy and disregarded its constitution. His attack on Wellesley became, therefore, a defence of the Company, just as the supporters of Wellesley almost inevitably tended to question the Company's rights and privileges. He was fighting, in fact, on two fronts: on one hand, there were those who like Francis shared in the traditional 'Whig' enmity of the Company, and, on the other, there were Wellesley's friends, who included many men who regarded the Company's trading monopoly as an economic anachronism that must be swept away. The only thing the two groups had in common was a belief in the incapacity of the Company and, although Francis would not have admitted it, a sense that continued British expansion in India was inevitable. The task that Grant imposed upon himself was to show that not only was the Company 'the fittest organ by which [Great Britain] can beneficially manage and govern its empire in the East,' 4 but also that expansion was neither inevitable nor desirable. He was convinced that alternatives existed to Wellesley's policy of establishing British ascendancy over 1

Ibid., p. 208, speech by Sir Philip Francis, 25 Feb. 1806. Ibid. For the letter to Lord North, see above, p. 46. 3 Ibid. 4 Pari. Debates, VI, 210, speech by Charles Grant, 25 Feb. 1806. 2

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the whole of India, and he argued that expansion could be not justified by public morality, political necessity or a prudential regard for British interests. Under these three categories, he examined and rejected Wellesley's policies. For Wellesley and his supporters, the argument that continued British territorial expansion in India was morally justifiable seemed one of the strongest answers to his critics. Especially in regard to the annexations in the Carnatic and Oudh, Wellesley had argued that a good government had been substituted for a corrupt and tyrannical one.1 By the treaty with Oudh, he told the Secret Committee in 1801, the Company would become 'the instrument of restoring to affluence and prosperity one of the most fertile regions of the globe, now reduced to a condition of the most afflicting misery and desolation by the depraved administration of the native government.'2 This was an argument that appealed greatly to a later generation of British administrators, and Henry Morris, writing Grant's biography at the beginning of the twentieth century, expressed surprise that Grant had not understood and accepted what seemed so obvious. Although in his Observations on the State of Asia Grant had shown himself 'decidedly far-seeing and sagacious,' he somehow failed, Morris said, 'to grasp the idea of the supremacy of the British government in India being really for the benefit of the people of that country.' 3 Grant was not unaware, however, of the apparent contradiction between his strongly expressed beliefs in the benefits of British rule for India and his opposition to the extension of that rule; but he was convinced that Wellesley's methods did not justify the hope that improvement would follow from their use. Because of the methods Wellesley had used, Grant argued, his external policy was in 'its nature and progress extremely unjust,' 4 and could never be reconciled 'to principles of common justice or the law of nations.' 5 As justification for the Carnatic annexations, Wellesley had argued that not only was the Nawab's administration hopelessly corrupt, but that intercepted correspondence showed that he was filled with 'the spirit of independence and the desire of emancipation.'6 But according to Grant, such arguments were 'frivolous and contemptuous'; it was only to be expected that the Indian princes would hope to regain their freedom, and, in any case, 1 Martin, Wellesley Despatches, II, 607, Wellesley to the Secret Committee, 14 Nov. 1801. 2 Ibid. 3 Morris, op. cit., p. 255. 4 Pari. Debates, XXVI, 927, speech by Charles Grant, 28 June 1813. 6 Ibid., XI, 772-74,1 June 1808. * Parliamentary Papers, 1806-07, VIII, Paper 94, pp. 33-35, Memorandum by N. B. Edmonstone.

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Wellesley had planned to dethrone the Nawab long before he had any real evidence against him. 1 In regard to the subsidiary treaty with Oudh, there could be no real doubt, he insisted, but that bad faith and fraud had been used to extract concessions from the ruler. Wellesley's agents, he claimed, had deliberately violated the letter and spirit of the Treaty Sir John Shore had made with the Nawab, by demanding that he give up half his lands or have them all taken from him.2 'It is painful,' Grant wrote, 'to pursue the correspondence on the subject of the negotiations, if a positive demand accompanied by threats of a most alarming nature can be so denominated,' nor was it surprising, he thought, that the Nawab declared that 'after the execution of the treaty he should be ashamed to show his face before his people.'3 It was not only towards the Indian princes, according to Grant, that Wellesley had shown bad faith, but also towards the Company. His whole Indian career was marked by so many violations of 'the great principles of the Constitution of British India, as in fact, to amount to discretional dispensation with these principles,' and to make plain that he had tried to establish in India 'a pure and simple despotism.'4 What Wellesley had wanted, Grant told Castlereagh in 1805, was the kind of power that the Portuguese had given their Indian governors—absolute authority, exercised at the Governor's sole discretion, and controlled only by the possibility of being recalled if the Home Government disagreed with the Governor's action.5 The East India Company, on the other hand, had soon learned that absolute power was no more necessary in India than in England, and therefore had decided that India would be 'best administered and the national character, of which a just liberty is the animating principle, [would] be best preserved from degenerating by a due portion of the mix't government which we enjoy at home.' 8 What Grant meant by 'mix't government' was the combination of the authority of the Governor-General, the Supreme Council, and the London Administration, all functioning within the limits defined in the Company's Constitution. In Grant's opinion, by exalting the authority of the Governor-General over the other branches of the Indian Administration, Wellesley had plainly shown his rejection of this concept. In regard to the Council, the Governor-General could not be 1

Pari. Debates, XI, pp. 773-74, speech by Charles Grant, 1 June 1808. C.R.O., H.M.S. 816, p. 294, Memorandum by Charles Grant, 6 June 1808. 3 C.R.O., H.M.S. 486, pp. 108-14, Draft Despatch, March 1805. 4 Ibid., pp. 8,42. 5 C.R.O., Letters from the Company to the Board, III, 33, Chairmen to Board, 6 Nov. 1805. «Ibid., pp. 33-34. s

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out-voted by the members—as Hastings had been before the passing of the India Act of 1784—but he was expected to consult with them and to keep them informed on all the actions of the Administration. Yet Wellesley, as Grant pointed out in the rejected Draft, had negotiated subsidiary treaties, added vast territories to the Company's dominions, and declared war on other states, all without the knowledge or consent of the Council.1 In a letter to his friend George Udny, a member of Wellesley's Council, Grant raised a fascinating question: what would have happened if he himself had accepted a seat on the Council, as Dundas had urged him to do in 1800? With a not very subtle reference to Udny's failure to oppose the GovernorGeneral, he expressed his thankfulness at not having to share in Wellesley's war-guilt: 'Near the warm sun of superior power, dazzled with many specious and plausible reasonings, delivered with great mastery of language, and combined with very sagacious political management, I might have too easily yielded, without enough reflecting on the awful responsibility to those who let loose the scourge of war upon the earth.' 2 For Grant, Wellesley's relations with the Home Administration showed the same despotic trends as did his treatment of the Council. While Wellesley's failure to send home any accounts of what was happening in India was deplored even by his friends, to Grant it was a clear proof of his desire to prevent the Directors from taking their rightful share in the Indian Government. Even when the Directors did have enough information to send orders, Wellesley ignored them, or, as the Directors complained, altered them.3 When Wellesley dismissed the demands of the Directors that their orders should be obeyed as merely signs of 'disordered temper,' brought on by fear of losing control of some of their patronage,4 he was not only grossly unfair to many of them but completely misunderstood the attitude of Charles Grant. Quite apart from Wellesley's policies, Grant was thoroughly convinced that the good government of India and the continuance of British power there required that the Governor-General's freedom to make policy should be restricted as much as possible. This had been one of the main themes in his correspondence with Sir John Shore who had very clearly formulated the position that the Home Government, not the Governor-General, should lay down policy, and that the Indian Government should 1 C.R.O., Bengal Despatches, XLII, Directors to Governor-General in Council, 28 Nov. 1804; and H.M.S. 486, pp. 15-19, Draft Despatch, March 1805. " Morris, op. cit., p. 257, Charles Grant to George Udny, 1 June 1804. 8 C.R.O., Letters from the Company to the Board, III, 40, Chairmen to Board, 6 Nov. 1805. 1 Martin, Wellesley Despatches, III, 57, Wellesley to Castlereagh, 12 Feb. 1803.

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follow it as closely as possible. Grant had expanded this idea at considerable length in the Draft which the Board of Control rejected,2 and it became an ideal for later administrators of the Company's affairs. In 1829, Lord Ellenborough, as President of the Board of Control, gave the doctrine its classic expression when he remarked that he hoped to make 'every public servant in India feel that he was at all times under the eye and within the reach of the British Government.' 3 Although this aim was not fully achieved until the invention of the telegraph, its roots were in Grant's 'system of publicity' and in his insistence that Wellesley should be censured for having deliberately departed from the Company's historic policies. It is interesting to note how close Grant's conception of the relationship that should exist between the Governor-General and the Home Administration was to that of Gladstone, whom Grant resembled in many other ways. In a speech in 1872 attacking Lord Lytton, the GovernorGeneral, for having adopted a foreign policy that led to war with Afghanistan, Gladstone echoed not only Grant's moral condemnation of British expansion in India, but also his insistence that in order to prevent arbitrary actions that would harm both India and Britain, the Governor-General must follow policies determined by the Home Administration.4 Not altogether dependent upon Grant's judgment of Wellesley's method, but related to it, was another reason why he was not greatly impressed with the argument that the taking over of territory would benefit the people. This was his fundamental belief that the social evils of India were not due to misgovernment but to the religion of the people. Simply altering the form of government, therefore, would make little difference to the general welfare of the country. What was needed, he believed, was direct support by the Company for the spread of Christian knowledge in India, but since in 1793 the Company itself as well as Parliament had definitely rejected the idea of support for missions, there seemed to be little meaning in claiming that British rule brought any very great benefits. Although Wellesley had been more friendly to William Carey and other missionaries than any previous Governor-General, much to Grant's regret he had stopped short of actual assistance. In a letter to Wellesley in 1801, when the controversy over private trade and Fort William College had been at its height, Grant had offered Wellesley what appears to have been almost a kind of bribe. 'If you had seen fit to recommend the 1

See above, p. 139. C.R.O., H.M.S. 486, pp. 10-11, Draft Despatch, March 1805. 3 Board to Court, 3 Dec. 1829, quoted by Philips, East India Company, p. 267. 4 Pari. Debates (Third Series), CCXLIII, 897-905, speech by W. E. Gladstone, 16 Dec. 1879. 2

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diffusion of [the Christian religion] among the heathen,' Grant wrote to him, 'no one could have done this with so much effect; and though diversities of opinion on some other Indian subjects . . . unhappily prevail, yet in the true glory of espousing such an object, all the best judgments of the present and future times I am convinced would be agreed.' 1 Wellesley did not take the hint, but even in 1807, after six years of bitter quarreling, Grant acknowledged that Wellesley had done a great deal 'in countenancing ministers of religion and ministerial labours,' and, he wrote to his friend Rev. David Brown, 'if anything could have bribed me to wink at enormous faults in his administration, this would.'2 Although Wellesley's supporters denied Grant's charges that the annexations and subsidiary treaties were the products of bad faith towards the Indian rulers and of disregarding the Company's constitution, they insisted that even if these accusations were true, the actions had been justified by the Indian political situation. The subsidiary treaties, the heart of Wellesley's policy, were, they argued, the fruit of a critical and realistic appraisal of conditions in India; they had not only saved British power from destruction by the combined attacks of the French and the Marathas, but they had also created a new financial base for the Company. 3 Technical violations of the Company's constitutional system or moral ambiguities that arose in dealing with Indian rulers who used deceit and fraud as a matter of course were not, Wellesley's defenders argued, of primary importance when an Empire had been at stake. What mattered was that Wellesley had seen the possibilities of a judicious use of power and, in his own words, he had been 'the efficient cause of our present transcendent situation in the most valuable branch of our foreign empire.'4 Grant willingly accepted Wellesley's evaluation of the role he had played in bringing about the great changes in territorial relationships in India. The Governor-General's 'sole will and his sole power,' he wrote in 1805, 'have instituted all the most important changes originating abroad during the latter years of his government.'6 He denied, however, that Wellesley's analysis of the Indian situation had been correct and that the changes he had made were either necessary or of value to Great Britain and the Company. To attempt to prove that Wellesley's judgment of Indian condi1

Martin, Wellesley Despatches, V, Supplement: 'Private Trade,' p. 143, Charles Grant to Wellesley, 14 Sept. 1801. 2 Morris, op. cit., p. 302, Charles Grant to David Brown, 20 June 1807. 8 Martin, Wellesley Despatches, V, Supplement: 'Mahratta War,' 318-37 'Sir Arthur Wellesley's Observations on Lord Castlereagh's Notes.' 4 Dropmore MSS., VIII, 203-04, Wellesley to Lord Grenville, 24 June 1806. » C.R.O., H.M.S. 486, p. 10, Draft Despatch, March 1805.

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tions was wrong was a far more formidable task than to show he had acted illegally and in bad faith. For Grant, however, the Maratha wars were conclusive evidence that subsidiary treaties could not guarantee security against French and Indian aggression, which had been Wellesley's argument for them, while the Company's financial state in 1806 was sufficient witness to the economic results of expansion. 1 While Grant was not inclined to underrate the dangers to British power in India from French hostility, he differed from Wellesley in discounting the practicality of an actual invasion. Wellesley apparently believed that invasion of India by either land or sea was possible, and that the numerous French officers in the armies of the Indian rulers were preparing alliances against Britain.2 An important aim of the subsidiary treaties, therefore, had been to drive the French army officers out of India. 3 Grant, however, was convinced that there was very little danger to be expected from the officers, since they were only mercenaries who could, if necessary, be bought off by the British.4 Neither the Treaty of Bassein nor any other subsidiary treaty could be justified, he insisted, on the ground of expected danger from what a Despatch referred to as 'an inconsiderable body of Europeans.' 5 Grant did not deny that the Indian rulers would try to get help from France, and in 1805 he told Castlereagh that he had received information that the Raja of Berar was trying to send an emissary to Napoleon.6 But the best defence against such attempts, he was certain, would be native intelligence agents located at the courts of the rulers.7 Even if there should be an attempted invasion by France, subsidiary treaties would provide no security, Grant argued, since the Maratha War had shown how little help could be expected from Indian allies.8 The Peshwa had been bound by the Treaty of Bassein to provide assistance when the Company was at war, but he had refused to give any troops.9 The Nizam of Hyderabad had supplied 1

Pari. Debates, VII, pp. 1153£f., speech by Charles Grant, 15 July 1806. Martin, Wellesley Despatches, III, 363, Governor-General in Council to Secret Committee, 25 Sept. 1803. 3 Ibid. 4 Morris, op. cit., p. 257, Charles Grant to George Udny, 1 June 1804. 5 C.R.O., Board's Drafts of Secret Letters to India (1804-10), Number 31, 24 Sept., 1807. Grant's argument finds support in the careful study of French influence in India by S. P. Sen, The French in India, 1763-1815, Calcutta, Mukhapadhyay, 1958,11,546 ff. • C.R.O., Minutes of the Secret Committee, vol. IV, 19 Sept. 1805. 7 C.R.O., Board's Drafts of Secret Letters to India (1804-10), Number 16, 25 Feb. 1806. 8 C.R.O., H.M.S. 486, p. 138, Draft 128. • Ibid. 2

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troops, but the officers were so 'contumacious and disobedient' that it was obvious that they served only under duress.1 All that the various treaties had accomplished was to excite fears in every native ruler that Britain sought to destroy his power, and to make him anxious to find a suitable opportunity for attacking the Company.2 Thus, Grant said, while Wellesley had argued that the subsidiary treaty with the Peshwa was aimed at preventing the Marathas uniting, in fact it had had precisely the effect of forcing the chieftains together.3 According to Grant, in this instance as elsewhere, the subsidiary alliances, instead of strengthening the British position in India against a possible French attack had weakened it through involvement in unnecessary wars. Grant's own suggestions for meeting the danger from France were in line with his general emphasis on the need to protect the Company's existing territories without any further extension of political frontiers. A French invasion, if it should come, would best be met, he argued, by a strengthening of the Company's and King's armies in India, not through unreliable alliances.4 Ever since the beginning of the European war there had been a deficiency in the number of British soldiers in India, and by 1804 the usual complement had been reduced by a third. 5 The Commander-in-Chief in India blamed the Directors for this shortage, but Grant said they had struggled without success for years to get an increase in the British troops in India.6 One of the many evils he had seen in Wellesley's external policy was the wastage of European soldiers in wars against the Marathas. 7 The result was that their place had been made up by an increase in the proportion of native troops, and it would be folly, he warned, to attempt to meet an invasion by French soldiers with armies made up largely of natives.8 Another suggestion Grant made for meeting the French danger was that all the bases in Africa and the Indian Ocean which the French might use in an attack on India should be captured. Shortly after becoming Chairman in 1805, he had argued that the capture of the Cape of Good Hope would increase the security of the Company's 1

Ibid. Ibid., p. 148. 8 Ibid. 4 C.R.O., Secret Committee Minutes, vol. V, 3 August 1807 and H.M.S. 817, pp. 537-44, Charles Grant and William Astell to Robert Dundas, 22 June 1809. 6 C.R.O., H.M.S. 502, pp. 117-23, W. F. Elphinstone and Charles Grant to Castlereagh, 6 Nov. 1806. 6 Ibid., p. 197, Extract from Letter of Commander-in-Chief, 9 Nov. 1803. ' Morris, op. cit., Charles Grant to Cornwallis, 16 Sept. 1805. • C.R.O., H.M.S. 817, pp. 537-44, Charles Grant and William Astell to Robert Dundas, 22 June 1809. 2

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Indian territories, and he later urged the conquest of the Portuguese possessions in East Africa as a protection against the French if they should get ports on the Red Sea.2 An incidental, but valuable, byproduct would be the opening up of a new trading area for Britain. In line with this general policy, in December 1809 he advised the sending of an expedition to take the island of Mauritius, which was being used as a base for privateers and for sending agents to India.® Territorial expansion of this kind he regarded as essentially different from that carried out by Wellesley, for it involved none of the dangers inherent in expansion within India itself. It was to the danger of Wellesley's policy that Grant always returned, for his fear of expansion was deeply rooted in his understanding of the Company's place in India. He was convinced that one power could never rule the whole of the Indian peninsula, and that the attempt to do so had been cause of the downfall of previous rulers. 'It was the unwieldiness of the Mogul Empire,' he insisted, 'that accelerated its fall,' and he drew the moral that 'the wider British dominion in India spread, the more vulnerable it becomes.'4 Thanks to Wellesley, Britain ruled over a wider Empire than Akbar's, but, he asked his friend Udny, 'Is this a change to exult in ?' Certain that British power was over-extended, he urged a withdrawal to the old frontiers established by Clive and Cornwallis. 'With what energy and success can a distant delegated government like ours in the East,' he asked, 'subject to perpetual changes of men and administered by foreigners to the country, hope to wield the sceptre of Hindostan, that sceptre which proved too ponderous for the ablest princes of Timour's race?' 6 Even if it were possible for the British to control all of India, he was convinced that the price would still be too high because of the endless wars that would be necessary to keep the rebellious princes in subjection, the administrative costs of holding a vast and disjointed territory together, and the inability of Britain to supply personnel to govern the country properly.6 It is interesting that although they did not mention it publicly, two of Wellesley's ablest and most devoted assistants, Sir John Malcolm and Sir Arthur Wellesley, shared some of Grant's disquiet regarding territorial expansion. Looking back on the Mughal experience, Malcolm 1

C.R.O., Minutes of Secret Committee, vol. IV, Minute of Conversation between Grant and Castlereagh, 26 July 1805. 2 C.R.O., H.M.S. 816, pp. 154-56, Edward Parry and Charles Grant to Robert Dundas, 10 Dec. 1807. 3 Ibid., p. 436,16 Dec. 1808. 4 Morris, op. cit., p. 258, Charles Grant to George Udny, 1 June 1804. 6 Ibid. 'Ibid.

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came to the conclusion that 'territory is coming upon us too fast,'1 while Arthur Wellesley, in the process of aiding his brother, warned that 'we have enough, as much at least, if not more, than we can defend.'2 Deeply concerned as he was with the Company's finances, the annual budgets presented to Parliament in the last years of Wellesley's administration seemed to Grant to be ample proof of the falsity of the claim that an increase of territory meant financial gain. As he pointed out to Robert Dundas in 1808, the debt for the financial year 1805-06 was £28,523,804, and two thirds of this had been added during Wellesley's administration.3 To pay for the Marathas Wars alone, he pointed out, the Company had to borrow £6,500,000 at an annual interest of £520,000, while the cost of maintaining the army had risen by another £600,000.4 To offset this total annual increase in new charges of £1,120,000, the Company received from the newly conquered territories only £574,000 after expenses of administration had been paid. There was an annual loss to the Company's Indian government, therefore, of £546,000, and, Grant insisted, this was not compensated for by any increase in trade within the new possessions.5 It was true that there had been an overall increase in the Company's revenue during Wellesley's time from £8,000,000 to £15,000,000, but, he argued, since the expenditures had grown at an even faster rate, the former annual surplus of £1,600,000 had been replaced by a deficit of £1,100,000.® The financial results of Wellesley's policies were felt not only by the Company, Grant pointed out, but also by the Indian states which had to meet the cost of the alliances, and, he contended, Wellesley's advisers—notably his brothers—had shown extreme disregard for the people of the tributary states in the settlements that had been forced upon them.7 Arthur Wellesley's financial arrangements with Amrit Rao, the Peshwa's brother, was an example of the oppressive practices that Grant believed followed from interference in the native states. In an attempt to gain the support of Amrit Rao in 1803, Arthur Wellesley had promised him a pension of Rs 700,000 1 Sir John Kaye, The Life and Correspondence of Major-General Sir John Malcolm, G.C.B., London, Smith, Elder, 1856, II, 374, Malcolm to Major Stewart, [1817-21], s Sir Arthur Wellesley, quoted in Teignmouth, Memoirs, 1,482. 3 C.R.O., H.M.S. 816, p. 195, Edward Parry and Charles Grant to Robert Dundas, 26 Jan. 1808. 5 6 'Ibid., p. 193. Ibid. Ibid. 7 C.R.O., Bengal Despatches (Original Drafts), L. 225-50, 6 April 1809. All this material was expunged by the Board of Control from the Despatch that was actually sent. These paragraphs express Grant's private views so closely that it may be assumed that he was personally responsible for them.

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a year during his own and his son's lifetime. This settlement, Grant alleged, was arranged without the consent of the Peshwa, from whose revenues the money would ultimately come, and without inquiry into the actual resources that Amrit Rao could bring to the assistance of the Company.2 It was later discovered that Amrit Rao had neither territory nor an army. 3 In Bundelkhand, Arthur Wellesley had made the same kind of hasty arrangements.4 In theory, the Company was supposed to benefit, but the assignment of territory was so haphazard and the conditions so contradictory that, according to Grant, only the death of some of the persons involved prevented the Company from being charged with breaking treaties that it could not possibly have fulfilled.® Later writers have often seen in the preoccupation of Grant and the other Directors with the financial implications of Wellesley's policy only the narrow vision of merchants, anxious for their dividends. 'At home the Directors thought of commerce,' one of Wellesley's biographers wrote, but only he 'saw that there lay before us the making of an empire, and through that of a nation.' 6 Contemporaries, however, and the Wellesleys among them, were aware how vital the financial question was. It was realized that if Grant could prove his charges that Wellesley's external policy could not be met by the available resources in India, then it would be very difficult indeed to defend it. Wellesley's supporters turned the argument against Grant by declaring that the large debt, which undeniably existed, represented not the cost of the policy of expansion but of the Investment, which had been sent home regardless of the conditions in India.7 This charge was broadened into a general attack on the Company as a commercial concern on the grounds that it was insolvent and only managed to continue its trading operations through borrowing in India.8 Grant gave increasing attention to this attack on the Company, but meanwhile he used his great knowledge of the Company's economic policies in India to show that the debt could not be accounted for by the Investment but must be wholly attributed to Wellesley's external policy. One of the most elaborate attempts to prove that the debts in India were due to the Company using the revenues to pay for its Investment was made by Sir Arthur Wellesley in the House of 1

C.R.O., Bengal Despatches (Original Drafts), vol. L, pp. 225ff., 6 April 1809 3 Ibid., pp. 240-46. Ibid. Ibid., pp. 203ff., and pp. 278 ff. 5 Ibid. ' Hutton, op. cit., p. 109. ' Pari. Debates, vol. VII, pp. 1063 ff., speech by Sir Arthur Wellesley, 10 July 1806. 8 Ibid., p. 1059, speech by Philip Francis. 8

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Commons in July 1806. Grant's comment was that while he was certain Wellesley was satisfied with the accuracy of the statement he had made, unfortunately 'it would be found to be very erroneous.'2 For some time, Grant had been preparing statistics to establish the pattern of the Company's trade in the past fifteen years, and the picture he gave to the House was very different from Wellesley's. He found that for the fifteen-year period ending in 1803 the total value of imports by the Company into India and China had been £48,439,527, while the exports had been £48,573,406, making a favourable balance of £133,879. The figures for Wellesley's administration, however, showed a very radical change taking place in the trade pattern. During that period, imports totalled £28,615,859 against exports of £28,079,274, leaving an unfavourable balance of £536,585.3 The conclusion to be drawn from these figures, according to Grant, was obvious—that there was 'no evidence that the commerce owed anything to the territory, or that any part of the increase of the Indian Debt was to be charged to the commerce.'4 The financial problems of the Company were caused, therefore, by the policy of territorial expansion, not the Company's trading activities.5 The Indian Debt, he insisted, was 'occasioned by the expenses of the military expeditions undertaken in India, at the desire of the King's government, by the wars we have carried on there since 1798, and by the larger balances which the extended scale of our affairs had placed in the various offices and departments of the different presidencies.'6 Later generations, admiring the results that had followed from British expansion in India, found nothing to commend in Grant's unremitting hostility towards Wellesley's policies, and little even to explain it, except, in the phrase that was frequently used, 'the craven fear of being great.'7 What Wellesley had done, according to a speaker in East India House in 1841, was 'to place the British Empire in India on a basis of security, to drive from that country the European influence which [the British] had the most reason to dread, to elevate British character in native estimation, and to make the British government paramount among the states of India.' 8 In the light of this evaluation of Wellesley's achievement, Grant's attack seemed to be merely the product of 'ephemeral calumnies and unfounded prejudices.'9 What these admirers of Wellesley were inclined to forget, 1

Ibid., pp. 1063 ff., speech by Sir Arthur Wellesley. Ibid., p. 1153, speech by Charles Grant, 15 July 1806. Pari. Debates, VII, 1155-58, speech by Charles Grant, 15 July 1806. 4 6 6 Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. 7 Quoted by Morris, op. cit., p. 254. 8 Pearce, op. cit., Appendix A, 'Public Tribute of . . . the East India Company to . . . Marquess Wellesley, 17 March 1841.' 8 Ibid. 2

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however, was the background of events in India after 1806 against which Grant made his criticisms of Wellesley's external policy. While his general antipathy to Wellesley was based on long standing opposition to further territorial expansion, conditions in India immediately after Wellesley's departure seemed to justify Grant's fears that an aggressive external policy, attended with unrest among the Indian people and a diversion of attention by the Company's administrators from their primary responsibility—good government in the existing territories—might lead to the destruction of British power in India.

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I N T E R P R E T E R OF THE I N D I A N RESPONSE IN historical retrospect, the six years following Wellesley's return from India seem uneventful in comparison with the preceding years, but for Charles Grant, deeply involved in the Company's internal administration, in many ways this was the crucial period for the maintenance in India of the kind of rule in which he believed. At no other period in his career did he quarrel so bitterly and with so many people as he did at this time, but he was convinced that he was fighting for principles which made British control in India both possible and desirable. The many problems of those years—the long quarrel over the appointment of a Governor-General, the uprising in Travancore, the two army mutinies, the passionate debates over the nature of the Company's responsibilities in regard to religion —were all, in Grant's opinion, rooted in the errors of Wellesley's administration or in the interference of the British Government in the Company's affairs. Although the solution that he offered for all of these problems was a return to older and better principles, to many of his opponents he seemed to be proposing not conservative remedies, but innovations which would almost inevitably destroy British rule in India. This fundamental divergence in understanding of the Indian situation by Grant and his opponents not only tended to embitter every discussion of Indian problems but often to prevent many problems from being solved. The appointment of a successor to Wellesley was of immense importance to Grant, for he was convinced that only a GovernorGeneral who was committed to a reversal of Wellesley's external policies could give India the peace that the Company and the Indian people needed.1 The kind of man who should be sent out, he wrote his friend George Udny in Calcutta, was someone like Clive or Cornwallis, men who had 'the spirit of sage legislators as well as of warriors —they were for cultivating a garden instead of turning the fruitful field into a scene of battle.'2 Whether it was Grant who first urged that Cornwallis should be asked to return to India is not clear, but it was assumed by other members of the Court of Directors that he had 1 C.R.O., Board's Drafts of Secret Letters to India (1804-1810), Number 16, 25 Feb. 1806. This letter, originated by the Secret Committee, not the Board, expressed Grant's views on the kind of Governor-General needed. 8 Morris, op. cit., p. 258, Charles Grant to George Udny, 1 June 1804.

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taken the leading part in the negotiations.1 Cornwallis was sixtyseven, but as Sir John Malcolm remarked, probably with Grant in mind, he listened 'with avidity to those, who desirous of the authority of his great name to their plans, represented to him, that his presence alone could save from inevitable ruin the empire which he had before ruled with such glory.'2 Although he only lived for two months after taking office, he managed to outline a plan for revoking many of Wellesley's policies and to begin a settlement that restored to the Maratha chieftains most of the lands that had been taken from them.3 The Treasury was empty, the army's pay was five months in arrears, and among his subordinates, he complained, there was an 'almost universal frenzy . . . . for conquest and victory, as opposite to the interests, as it is to the laws, of our country.' 4 For Grant, Cornwallis' attempt to revert to the territorial frontiers that had existed before 1803 meant 'peace with all the Maratha powers on a liberal and solid foundation, as a most important object in itself, and likely to preserve the continent of India in the tranquillity we ardently desire.'5 The news of Cornwallis' death was a tremendous blow to Grant, for while he had been aware that the appointment was only an interim one, he had had no idea how ill his old friend had been when he left England in 1805.6 Not only was he filled with remorse at having urged him to return to India, but he was afraid that a new GovernorGeneral might not carry out the plans which had already been made. The matter was greatly complicated by political events at home, for just at this time Pitt died and a new Ministry was formed under Grenville and Fox, both of whom had well-known views on India and the Company.7 Grenville was Wellesley's friend and an opponent of the trading monopoly, while Fox's enmity towards the Company had formed an essential feature of his political life. In addition, the new President of the Board of Control, Lord Minto, had also been identified in the past with the Company's enemies, since he belonged, as Grant said, to 'the school of Burke and [was]... somewhat theoretical.'8 It was not surprising that Grant was deeply perturbed over the possible choice that such a Cabinet might make for the GovernorGeneralship. 1 C.R.O., Appendix to Court Minutes, II, 1029, Dissent of John Huddleston, March 1811. 2 Malcolm, Political History of India, 1,335. 3 Ross, Cornwallis Correspondence, III, 546-54, Cornwallis to Lord Lake, 19 Sept. 1805. 4 Ibid., p. 541, Cornwallis to Sir John Malcolm, 14 Aug. 1805. 6 C.R.O., Board's Drafts of Secret Letters to India (1804-1810), Number 16, 25 Feb. 1806. 6 Morris, op. cit., p. 266, Charles Grant to Sir George Barlow, 26 July 1806. 7 Philips, East India Company, p. 144. 8 Morris, op. cit., p. 266, Charles Grant to Sir George Barlow, 26 July 1806.

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The immediate arrangement made by the Ministry, however, quieted Grant's fears, for it was agreed that Sir George Barlow, the senior member of the Council, should be named Governor-General.1 This was not an unexpected appointment, for not only had Barlow become acting Governor-General on Cornwallis' death, but as early as 1803 it had been assumed that he would be Wellesley's successor.2 Although Grant had apparently led the opposition to Barlow's appointment in 1804 on the grounds that he had supported Wellesley's external policies—and therefore could not be trusted to carry out the orders of the Home Administration—the willing co-operation he had given Cornwallis altered the situation. Furthermore, when he took over the government after Cornwallis' death Barlow made clear to the Directors that he intended to carry out the plans that had already been made.3 This change of attitude was not due, Grant declared, to 'mean compliance' on Barlow's part in order to gain the GovernorGeneralship, but rather to his realization of 'the positive determination of the authorities at home to change the system of foreign policy which Lord Wellesley had followed.'4 A week after Grant had written congratulating Barlow on his appointment,6 Minto informed the Chairmen that the Ministry had decided to appoint a new Governor-General.6 The result was an extremely acrimonious controversy between the Government, represented by Minto, and the Company, represented by Grant. Briefly stated, Minto's case was that Grant knew that Barlow's appointment was temporary, a stopgap until the new Ministry had time to get established, and that the Government had the right to select a Governor-General who would have their full confidence. While Grant was forced to counter this claim by the Ministry with an assertion of the Company's rights, his essential concern was that no one should be appointed as Governor-General who might jeopardize the attempt being made in India to undo the effects of Wellesley's external policy.7 When Minto first informed him of the Ministry's intention to send out a new Governor-General, Grant had no idea who was being considered for the post, but he argued that any change would have a bad effect on the Indian stituation.8 Barlow, he pointed out, had the 1 C.R.O., H.M.S. 506, p. 217, Minto to Chairmen, 14 Feb. 1806. For a somewhat different interpretation of the quarrel over Barlow's appointment, see Philips, East India Company, pp. 141-51. 2 Ross, Cornwallis Correspondence, III, 496, Cornwallis to General Ross, 10 Feb. 1806; and ibid., p. 527,7 Dec. 1804. 3 Morris, op. cit., p. 261, Charles Grant to Sir George Barlow, 28 Feb. 1806. 4 Pari. Debates, VII, 1162, speech by Charles Grant, 15 July 1806. 6 Morris, op. cit., p. 261, Charles Grant to Sir George Barlow, 28 Feb. 1806. 6 C.R.O., H.M.S. 506, p. 312, Minto to the Directors, 29 May 1806. 7 Ibid., pp. 227-34, Charles Grant and George Smith to Minto, 8 March 1806. 8 Ibid.

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advantage of long experience in India and knew the languages and customs of the people.1 Furthermore, since he had already started negotiating a settlement with the Marathas, his authority would be immediately weakened when the Indian rulers realized that he was being replaced.2 The case for Barlow was greatly strengthened when the Ministry's nomination became known. Grant's worst fears regarding the kind of man the Grenville-Fox Ministry might send out to India were realized, for the choice was Lord Lauderdale, an old enemy of the Company.3 Not only was he an opponent of the Company's trading privileges, but he had attacked Cornwallis in 1791 as a warmonger, and later he had defended the French Revolution in the House of Lords dressed in a Jacobin costume.4 'A character of this description,' Grant wrote Barlow, was a strange substitute for 'a tried servant in the moment of his being engaged in arduous and beneficial labours.' 8 Grant warned Minto that the Directors would be shocked at Barlow's supersession,6 and the announcement of Lauderdale's nomination—which appeared in the newspapers before it was publicly confirmed—aroused an immediate and hostile reaction in the Court of Directors.7 Although Grant retired from the Court for the year 1806-07, the new Chairmen, one of whom was his close friend Edward Parry, maintained his position. There was, they insisted, not the slightest reason for replacing Barlow, since 'he followed rigorously the steps of his excellent predecessor in prosecuting the great work of the pacification of India, the retrenchment of expense and the restoration of the finances.'8 The Ministry refused, however, to discuss the new appointment in terms of the merits of Barlow's administration. They insisted that they were merely exercising the accepted prerogative of a new Government of making changes without having to give reasons for their actions.9 Grant answered this with the assertion that no other Ministry had ever claimed the Governor-Generalship was an office of patronage, on a par with government positions in England, to be changed with the Government, and that if this interpretation were to be accepted by the Company it would mean chaos in the Indian Administration.10 One of the primary purposes of the Company's 1

2 Ibid., p. 229. Ibid. Ibid., pp. 257-58, Minto to Charles Grant and George Smith, 14 March 1806. 4 Annual Register, LXXXI, 1839, p. 364. 5 Morris, op. cit., p. 265, Charles Grant to Sir George Barlow, 26 July 1806. • C.R.O., H.M.S. 506, p. 229, Charles Grant and George Smith to Minto, 8 March 1806. 7 Ibid., p. 337, W. F. Elphinstone and Edward Parry to Minto, 7 June 1806. 8 Ibid. • Pari. Debates, VII, p. 958, speech by Lord Grenville, 8 July 1806. 10 C.R.O., H.M.S. 506, p. 412, Charles Grant and George Smith to Directors, 11 June 1806. 3

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constitution, he insisted, was to provide a check on the Ministry's control, but if Barlow were recalled, it would be a complete denial of the principles of the India Act. A very personal turn was given to the discussion when Minto charged that all the misunderstanding had arisen because of Grant's failure in the very beginning to make clear to the Court of Directors that the Ministry had no intention of making Barlow's appointment permanent. 1 While Minto only hinted that Grant had deliberately deceived both the Board of Control and the Directors, Grant's old enemy, Sir Francis Baring made the accusation quite explicit.2 The charge made by Baring and Minto centred around a phrase in a letter Minto had written on 14 February 1806, notifying the Court of Directors of Barlow's appointment. While the Ministers reserved the right to make future changes in the Government of Bengal, 'at the present moment,' the letter noted, 'there is no change in contemplation.'3 According to Minto, it was at Grant's suggestion that this phrase had been inserted in the original draft of the letter in order to make clear that only the Governor-General was likely to be changed, not the whole Council.4 Then, Minto and Baring said, although he knew this was not the case, Grant had used the phrase to give the Directors the impression that the Ministry had given an assurance that Barlow would not be removed.5 Baring was obviously delighted to find an opportunity to attack Grant for what appeared to be a piece of flagrant dishonesty, but Grant defended his behaviour—and attacked his accusers—in lengthy minutes and letters. His arguments were fairly simple, and, on the whole, reasonably convincing. He had realized, he said, that the way Minto inserted the phrase appeared to give the impression that neither the Governor-General nor the Council were to be removed, but since the rest of the sentence made clear that the Ministers were reserving the right to make future changes, there was no real ambiguity.6 He and the other Directors, however, had understood, Grant insisted, that the appointment of Barlow as Governor-General with full powers meant that there would be no immediate change.7 Grant kept talking, Baring said, about the word 'immediate,' but never stated what he meant by it, 'whether days, months or years,'8 1

Ibid., Minto to Chairmen, 28 May 1806. Ibid., pp. 375-91, Sir Francis Baring to Directors, 11 June 1806. Ibid., p. 217, Minto to Chairmen, 14 Feb. 1806. 4 Ibid., pp. 291-314, Minto to Chairmen, 28 May 1806. 5 Ibid.; and ibid., pp. 375-91, Sir Francis Baring to Directors, 11 June 1806. 6 Ibid., pp. 423-28, Charles Grant and George Smith to Directors, 16 June 1806. 7 Ibid. 8 Ibid., p. 386, Sir Francis Baring to Directors, 11 June 1806. 2 a

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and this was, of course, the basis of the misunderstanding. Grant had probably genuinely assumed that Barlow's appointment having been made permanent, there would not be any change for at least a few months. By that time, he perhaps reasoned, either Barlow would have proven his capabilities, or the Grenville-Fox Ministry would have fallen, and the worst danger would have passed. Baring made much of the fact that even after Grant had been definitely informed by Minto of the Ministers' intention to send out their own man, he failed to tell the Directors,1 but again, Grant's explanation seems reasonable enough. Only a week elapsed between the time Minto told him and the announcement of Lauderdale's appointment, and he had spent the week, as the Directors would have wished, in trying to get the Ministers to change their minds.2 Even after Grant left the Court, the deadlock continued, for while the Directors refused to consider Lauderdale as a possible candidate, the Ministers regarded the issue as a decisive test for the right of Government control over Indian affairs.3 Grenville was probably wrong, however, when he attributed the opposition of the Directors to a desire to reassert their old powers and to prevent the Government from taking any part in the Indian Administration.4 The Directors were very well aware, according to Grant, that any such dream was futile, and that in the end the Ministers could always force the Court to accept whom they wished.® The problem, as Minto told Grant, was the exercise of 'common, and in many cases, concurrent authorities' by both the Directors and the Board of Control.8 Grant made the same point in writing to Barlow: what the Directors wanted, he said, was merely an assurance that Lauderdale would not be appointed; once this was given, they would give in over Barlow.7 For the Government, however, this compromise seemed an unacceptable yielding to the Company, and Barlow's appointment was revoked by the King without the Directors' consent.8 Finally, however, Lauderdale was abandoned, and at the end of June 1806 Lord Minto himself was appointed Governor-General.9 Grant was satisfied with this settlement, for it was, in effect, the solution he had proposed to Minto three months before—to let Barlow continue in office for a time and then to send out someone 1

Ibid. Ibid., p. 413, Charles Grant and George Smith to Directors, 11 June 1806. 8 Dropmore MSS., VIII, 160, Lord Grenville to C. J. Fox, 6 April 1806. 1 Ibid. 6 Morris, op. cit., p. 265, Charles Grant to Sir George Barlow, 26 July 1806. • C.R.O., H.M.S. 506, p. 245, Minto to Chairmen, 10 March 1806. ' Morris, op. cit., p. 265, Charles Grant to Sir George Barlow, 26 July 1806. 8 C.R.O., H.M.S. 506, pp. 283-87, Royal Warrant, 28 May 1806. 9 Dropmore MSS., VIII, p. 206, Lord Grenville to C. J. Fox, 27 June 1806. 2

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1

other than Lauderdale. As far as the choice of Minto was concerned, this also pleased him, since despite their quarrel he had grown to respect his judgment and ability.2 Nor did Barlow's prestige suffer as much by his supersession as Grant had feared, for just before Minto arrived in India in July 1807, word had been received of the outbreak of the Vellore Mutiny. Barlow was therefore appointed Governor of Madras to provide the South, as Grant told him, 'in its very critical and exigent state with the best Government which appeared within our reach.' 3 Vellore was the fortress in the Eastern Ghats, about ninety miles from Madras, to which Wellesley had sent the family of Tipu Sultan after the fall of Mysore.4 There, on 6 July 1806, the Company's Indian troops rose against the British officers and soldiers and killed nearly a hundred of them. The sepoys gained complete control of the fort, and elsewhere, notably in Hyderabad, there were signs of unrest among the native soldiers. The uprising did not last long, however, and the fort at Vellore was quickly recaptured by a relief force from nearby Arcot. Nevertheless, the Vellore Mutiny was the most profound shock British power in India had received since the fall of Calcutta in 1756. The sepoys were an essential part of the foundation of British control, and their loyalty had been unquestioned. 'Never before,' remarked the Directors when the news of the Mutiny reached England, had 'there been an example of the native troops rising upon the Europeans . . . never upon any occasion before have we seen [them] enter into schemes of rebellion and revolt.'6 Both in India and England there was a sudden awareness of how lightly-based dominion in India might really be. The few thousand British servants of the Company were confronted by the hostility of the Marathas, with whom an uneasy peace had just been made, and an invasion by the French seemed to many to be an imminent possibility.8 Even in peace time, it probably would have been impossible to have kept enough British troops in India to have maintained control without the use of Indian soldiers; in the midst of the great European war such an idea was, of course, unthinkable. Since, therefore, British power in India was dependent upon the Company's sepoy armies, to find the cause of the Mutiny was of great importance. 1 C.R.O., H.M.S. 506, pp. 257-58, Minto to Charles Grant and George Smith, 14 March 1806. 2 Morris, op. cit., p. 265, Charles Grant to Sir George Barlow, 26 July 1806. 3 Ibid., p. 298,1 June 1807. 1 C.R.O., H.M.S. 507, 508, 509 and 510, have many accounts of the Mutiny. Bodleian Library, MSS. English Misc. 630, gives an interesting account by an Englishwoman was who in the Fort during the mutiny. 6 Parliamentary Papers, 1812-13, VIII, Paper 194, p. 1, Directors to Governor and Council Fort St. George, 29 May 1807. • Ibid.

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An immediate explanation for the Mutiny was available in what William Cobbett called the 'whisker-shaving affair.' 1 The new Commander-in-Chief of the Madras Army, Sir John Craddock, displeased with the unsoldierly appearance of the sepoys in his command, had issued Regulations that they were all to cut their beards, wear a uniform style of head-covering and remove the caste-marks from their foreheads before coming on parade. 2 These regulations, which seemed sensible to the Governor, Lord William Bentinck, as well as to Craddock, were regarded by the soldiers as degrading and offensive.3 Before the actual Mutiny had broken out, many of the soldiers had refused to obey the new rules, and the general impression given by the records of the Courts-Martial is that the officers had attempted to enforce the regulations with stupid brutality.4 As Bentinck said many years later, the sepoys were proud men, of 'high caste and character, of respectable connections and proverbially faithful to their salt.' 5 To ask them to change their traditional mode of dress was, however, an affront to their self-respect. In a traditional society, where little distinction was made between custom and religion, it was an easy transition for the sepoys to begin to believe that if their officers wanted them to dress like Europeans, it was because they wanted to make them Christians. Since there seemed to be no doubt that the Regulations had led to the outbreak, blame immediately fell upon Craddock for having introduced them and upon Bentinck for not having exercised more careful supervision. Both men were recalled, and while it was recognized that Bentinck was not directly responsible, it was felt that he had shown 'a want of prudence and discernment so requisite in administering the government of a numerous and peculiar people.'6 The decision to recall Craddock and Bentinck was based on the assumption that the Army Regulations had been the fundamental cause of the outbreak, but this belief was soon challenged. Both Craddock and Bentinck, filled with resentment at the injustice which they considered had been done them, demanded that the Directors examine the facts more carefully.7 Even before this, however, the 1

Cobbett \s Political Register, XIII, Jan.-June 1808, pp. 588-90. C.R.O., H.M.S. 506, pp. 87-177, Statements of Sir John Craddock. Ibid., p. 267, Evidence at Court-Martial, 15 July 1806. 4 Ibid., pp. 17-136,24 May 1806. 6 Parliamentary Papers, 1836, XL, Paper 319, 10, Evidence of Lord William Bentinck. 'Ibid., 1812-13, VIII, Paper 194, p. 2, Directors to Governor and Council, Fort St. George, 29 May 1807. ' C.R.O., H.M.S. 510, pp 859-95, 917-19, Directors to Sir John Craddock, 31 July 1809; and Lord William Bentinck, Memorial Addressed to the Court of Directors by Lord William Bentinck, containing an Account of the Mutiny of Vellore, with the Cause and Consequences of that Event, London, 1810. a

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accusation was made in India and England that the real cause of the outbreak was not the Regulations but the activities of the missionaries and evangelical chaplains that Charles Grant had sent to India.1 Since Grant had become Deputy Chairman of the Company in the spring of 1807, before final action on the Mutiny had been taken, and the Chairman was Edward Parry, who shared his religious views, the question of the cause of the Mutiny became an intensely important issue. In meeting the accusation, Grant attempted first of all to show that there was not the slightest evidence that missionaries had anything to do with the Mutiny, and then, in characteristic fashion, he went on to argue that the uprising was an expression of the accumulated resentment of the Indian people against the way that they had been governed in recent years. The Mutiny, he concluded, so far from providing evidence that there had been interference in the customs and religion of the people was the clearest proof that no enduring links had been forged between the two countries. Grant's preliminary task was to meet the argument that the sepoys' belief that the Army Regulations were aimed at making them Christians had its roots in the preaching of missionaries. There were, Grant admitted, responsible Company servants who, although knowing nothing about the work of missionaries and little about the Christian faith, were genuinely convinced that the missionaries would antagonize the people against the Government.2 There were many others, however, who, actively hostile 'to the propagation of Christianity and to the spirit of that religion,' had found in the Mutiny an opportunity to attack both missionaries and their faith. 3 Grant was also painfully aware that the charges against the missionaries were used by his personal enemies in the Court to undermine his influence. 'Monstrous and malevolent' accusations were being levelled at him and others, he wrote Bentinck, of being 'indirectly parties to the Mutiny of the native troops,' since they had supported missions.4 Even before the Mutiny, very strong feelings had been aroused among some of the Company's servants in Bengal by the activities of the Baptist missionaries at Serampore and the evangelical chaplains who had been sent out by Grant. 5 As far as the missionaries were concerned, criticism focussed on the publications of their press at Serampore. Under Wellesley, William Carey and his group had 'University of Nottingham, Portland Papers, 110, Charles Grant to Lord William Bentinck, 17 April 1807. * Bodleian Library MS. English Hist. c210, Edward Parry and Charles Grant to Robert Dundas, 8 June 1807. 8 University of Nottingham, Portland Papers, 110, Charles Grant to Bentinck 17 April 1807. '•Ibid.

' C.R.O., H.M.S. 690, pp. 211-43, Claudius Buchanan to Minto, 9 Nov. 1807.

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enjoyed considerable favour, but tracts put out by them later were denounced by Company officials on the ground that they contained 'the most direct and unqualified abuse of the principles and tenets of the religion of the country, proscribing its ordinances, and vilifying its founders.' 1 Similar charges were made against the Company's chaplains, especially Claudius Buchanan, whose attacks on Hinduism so alarmed the government that orders were given that none of his sermons were to be printed without being censored.2 The Bengal correspondence and the speeches in India House in 1806 and 1807 regarding the evangelical chaplains give the impression that Grant had sent dozens of them to Bengal, but in reality at that time there were only four. Two of them, however, Claudius Buchanan and Henry Martyn, made their presence known to every Company servant in Calcutta. The members of the Government may have been genuinely concerned for the effect that the writings of the Serampore missionaries might have on the Indians, but they found Buchanan and Martyn personally irritating. Both were brilliant Cambridge scholars who had been appointed by Grant as chaplains through the Rev. Charles Simeon, who was his adviser in selecting evangelical clergymen.3 Buchanan was harsh and arrogant, even in his relations with the Governor-General.4 Martyn, a great linguist, was tormented by the sins of the British community in Calcutta as well as by his own, and denounced his fellow Company servants no less vigorously than he did Hindus and Muslims.5 Although official notification of the difficulties with the missionaries and the evangelical chaplains did not reach England until 1808, private letters had given details to friends of both sides of the controversy.6 One of the defences offered by the missionaries was that their printing-press had received support from the British and Foreign Bible Society, of which Lord Teignmouth was President and Charles Grant a Vice-President, and this had been seized upon by Grant's enemies as an effective argument to alienate him from the Court's sympathies.7 1

Ibid., pp. 25-29, The Governor-General to the Governor of Serampore, 1 Sept. 1807. 2 Ibid., pp. 211-43, Claudius Buchanan to Minto, 9 Nov. 1807. 3 The Record (London), 21 and 28 Nov., 12 Dec. 1902 and 23 Jan. 1903 for their remarkable correspondence. 4 National Library of Scotland, Melville MSS. 1063, Robert Dundas to Minto, 27 Dec. 1808. 5 S. Wilberforce, editor, Journals and Letters of the Rev. Henry Martyn, B.D., London, Seeley and Burnside, 1837, passim. 6 C.R.O., H.M.S. 816, p. 73, Charles Grant and Edward Parry to Teignmouth, 15 June 1807. 7 Ibid., p. 148, Edward Parry to Robert Dundas, 4 Nov. 1807.

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The discussion of the causes of the Vellore Mutiny had as a background, therefore, the issue of missionary activity in general. This made the issue of the debate, Grant told Lord Teignmouth, 'a very important and extensive question, both in a religious and political view,' since it involved the duty and character of the nation towards its Indian subjects.1 That Grant came to the conclusion that missionaries had played no part in the uprising was not, of course, any more unexpected than that those who had previously opposed missions now found in the Mutiny positive proof for their fears of the result of missionary propaganda, but he argued his case with great ability since, as he told Robert Dundas, unlike his opponents, he was intimately acquainted with his subject.2 Grant pointed out that missionary activity was not a new factor in the South Indian situation, as many seemed to think. 3 The Danish Protestant missionaries had had their centre at Tranquebar for over a century, the Roman Catholics had been active for three hundred years and a large number of Christians of the ancient Syrian Church had lived peaceably in Malabar for many centuries.4 The only place in British territory where missionaries were to be found in any number was in Bengal, where, he emphasized, there had been no revolts.5 In the whole Carnatic area, on the other hand, there was only one missionary, and not a single one near Vellore.6 The truth was, he insisted, that in all the voluminous documents that had come from Madras, there was not one fact which would 'warrant it to be asserted that the conduct of [missionaries] has had a direct effect in producing jealousies on the score of religion in the minds of the sepoy.'7 While Grant insisted that missionary activity had nothing to do with the Mutiny, he agreed that the sepoys in the Madras Army had undoubtedly believed that their religion was in danger. What this proved, however, was the existence of a well-organized plot that had used the offensive Regulations 'to diffuse sedition and discontent, and to convert intended conspiracy into the cause of religion.' 8 For Grant, the Mutiny was no sudden outburst, but the result of a carefully prepared plan to overthrow British rule. ''•Ibid., pp. 74-75, Charles Grant and Edward Parry to Teignmouth, 15 June 1807. 2 Bodleian Library MS. English Hist. c210, Edward Parry and Charles Grant to Robert Dundas, 8 June 1807. 3 1 6 Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. 'Ibid. 7 Ibid. There were only six or seven Protestant missionaries in South India at the time, according to Kenneth Ingham, Reformers in India, Cambridge, University Press, 1956, Appendix B. 8 C.R.O., H.M.S. 816, pp. 138-42, Edward Parry and Charles Grant to Robert Dundas, 21 Sept. 1807.

a

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The idea that the Mutiny was a conspiracy engineered by the sons of Tipu Sultan at Vellore had been almost the first reaction of the Madras government, but later many of the Company servants doubted if the evidence really did implicate the princes.1 For Grant, however, everything seemed to suggest that the aim of the Mutiny had been the restoration of Tipu Sultan's family to Mysore. The fact that the outbreak took place at the fort where Wellesley had established the family with three thousand retainers, the accounts by British officers of having seen many of these servants taking part in the fighting, above all, the coincidence that most of those who had refused to follow the Army Regulation regarding dress were Muslims, pointed, he was convinced, at a plot engineered by the Mysore princes.2 As late as 1809, when all the reports of the Courts-Martial and investigations had been received from India, Grant, having reviewed and summarized their evidence in a long memorandum, still concluded that there was indisputable proof that Tipu Sultan's family had been active in instigating the troops to mutiny long before the issue of the Army Regulations.3 Grant found nothing surprising, or even particularly blameworthy, in the antagonism of a former Muslim ruling house to the power that had supplanted them. It was only to be expected, he thought, that they should seek to regain their rule, but it was part of Wellesley's mishandling of the situation that having been defeated they should have been left surrounded with their servants in a strategic area.4 Nor was it surprising that they had apparently turned to the French for help. While there was no direct evidence that the French had taken any part in the Mutiny, Grant thought it extremely likely since just before the uprising in Vellore, agitators had appeared giving puppet shows representing a battle between the English and the French, with the English running away.6 But the Mutiny was more than a Muslim conspiracy, Grant argued, since it had undoubtedly made a widespread appeal to the Hindus in the south. While from 'a political point of view,' it might be well to let it appear 'that the Mutiny [might] have been the work of a fallen family and a race always inimical to the British power, [rather than] the spontaneous offspring of the Hindoo mind . . . which forms the 1 C.R.O., Abstracts of Letters Received from Madras, IX, 30 Sept. 1806; Madras Draft Despatches, XIII, p. 829,13 Aug. 1807. 2 C.R.O., H.M.S. 510, pp. 737 ff., Draft Despatch, 29 May 1807. 3 C.R.O., Appendix to Court Minutes, I, pp. 274-90, Charles Grant to Directors, 13 Sept. 1809. 1 Ibid. 6 C.R.O., H.M.S. 816, p. 139, Edward Parry and Charles Grant to Robert Dundas, 21 Sept. 1807.

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majority of our population,' the truth was plain.1 The events of the time made clear, he was convinced, that there was a general alienation between all sections of the population and the British rulers.2 The reason for the prevailing mistrust, he wrote Barlow, was not 'the few and assuredly harmless efforts' of missionaries, but 'the general spirit and prominent measures of our Government there for some years past.' 3 In other words, the Mutiny was a symptom of misgovernment, and the Company must look for real causes, instead of being led astray by the enemies of missions. This theme, that the Mutiny was of great political significance, was elaborated in private letters to many correspondents, but especially to Robert Dundas, the President of the Board of Control, who was much less friendly to Grant's ideas than his father, Henry Dundas, had been in the past. Grant sought to show him that the real issue in the assignment of responsibility for the Mutiny involved an examination of the nature and aims of British rule in India. Wellesley's precedent had given absolute power to the GovernorGeneral, Grant warned, and as a result there had been increasing unwillingness for the Indian Administrations to take into account the opinions and reactions of the people.4 One of the fruits of the appointment of new men with new ideas was that the experience painfully gained by the Company's servants in the past was now disregarded.6 Indians themselves were now almost totally excluded from any share in administration, and while he thought this was perhaps inevitable in the system of government that had been established, it meant the creation of an aggrieved class of people.6 Although Grant had favoured Cornwallis' system in Bengal, which had largely replaced Indians in higher administrative posts with the Company's servants, he became convinced that one of the evils of expansion was that it further lessened opportunities for talented Indians. Some years later, he declared that by conquering the whole of India, and leaving no areas where Indians had full control, Britain had created 'permanent dissatisfaction and secret disaffection' among the upper classes.7 It was, he remarked, a 'singular feature [that] in one of the most populous and extensive empires of the globe . . . the 1

Morris, op. cit., p. 299, Charles Grant to Sir George Barlow, 1 June 1807. C.R.O., H.M.S. 816, p. 141, Edward Parry and Charles Grant, to Robert Dundas, 21 Sept. 1807. ' Morris, op. cit., p. 297, Charles Grant to Sir George Barlow, 18 April 1807. * C.R.O., President's Secret Correspondence, vol. IV, p. 1, Edward Parry and Charles Grant to Robert Dundas, 18 May 1807, quoted by Philips, East India Company, p. 162. 5 6 Ibid. Ibid. ' Asiatic Journal, vol. VII, p. 301, Debate at East India House, speech by Charles Grant, 3 Feb. 1801. 1

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natives . . . do not participate in any of the superior functions of the state.' 1 Wellesley's policies, therefore, by limiting the opportunities of the upper classes to find employment in the administration of the native states had unwittingly contributed to the Mutiny. While Grant always insisted that the very existence of British power within the Indian system was in itself an unsettling force, there had been, he thought, special features in the administration in the South which since 1800 had tended to create centres of resentment and bitterness. The seizure of the Carnatic lands, the dispossession of the Raja of Tanjore, changes in the revenue and judicial system, all had worked together to give the impression that the British government had planned an assault on the old order.2 When Wellesley had urged the extension of the Bengal system of land revenue to the Madras Presidency, Grant had urged that a very full discussion take place before alterations were made. 3 While he believed certain changes in Indian customs would be greatly for the advantage of the people, their land systems had been admirably suited to preserving stability and good order. 4 Any Government, he remarked at another time, had to carefully consider the effect its administration of laws would have on 'the long-established order of society and ancient and rooted habits.'6 Grant noted that many of the mutineers had been poligars, petty chieftains and landlords, who were members of a group that felt a special grievance against the Government.6 A few years before, a large number of these men had revolted as a result of changes in the land system.7 Just after he became Chairman in 1805, Grant took a great interest in the revolts, and the Directors had sent out a Despatch to Madras suggesting that the Collectors may have been responsible for the outbreak and censuring the Government for the treatment of the defeated rebels.8 No distinction had been made, according to the Directors, between the leaders and their followers, and death sentences had been imposed without sworn evidence.9 In the same Despatch, behaviour of officials had been noted which was likely to inflame the people against British rule. A Brahmin, for example, ordered by a Collector to get into a boat with pariahs, had 1

Ibid., p. 302. C.R.O., H.M.S. 816, pp. 138-41, Edward Parry and Charles Grant to Robert Dundas, 21 Sept. 1807. 8 See above, p. 117. 4 University of Nottingham, Portland Papers, 58,21 March 1806. 5 Parliamentary Papers, 1812-13, vol. X, Paper 306, Revenue Letter to Bombay, 10 Jan. 1810. • Morris, op. cit., p. 299, Charles Grant to Sir George Barlow, 1 June 1807. 7 C.R.O., Madras Despatches, vol. XXXIV, pp. 432 ff., Revenue Letter, 15 May 1805. 8 Ibid. »Ibid. 2

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committed suicide rather than suffer this degradation. 1 Another Collector had warned a landlord that if he did not pay his taxes, the Company would 'exterminate him and all his adherents.'2 It was such behaviour that Grant had in mind when he said that the actions of the Company's officials in recent years had by 1806 alienated the goodwill of the 'poligars, zamindars and principal Hindus,' and created a spirit of hostility to which the enemies of British power could appeal.3 Added to all these political and social grievances, a famine in the Carnatic lands had increased the sense of instability among the people.4 The methods used before the Mutiny to take advantage of the prevailing unrest and hostility to British rule convinced Grant that French agents must have instructed the people in revolutionary techniques,5 but the most striking feature of the activities he described is their remarkable resemblance to events in North India before the uprising in 1857.® Prior to the outbreak in the summer of 1806, there had been a sudden increase in the number of wandering religious mendicants in the vicinity of the principal British stations.7 These mendicants formed secret societies, and told the people that the British had 'insiduously possessed themselves of Indian territory and gradually removed every Nabob, Rajah and Prince . . . and having enriched themselves and impoverished the people [were] at length designing to enforce upon them their usages and religion.'8 Hindus were told that the Government sought to defile them by selling salt mixed with cow's blood, while Muslims were told that it contained swine's blood. The mendicants emphasized, however, that the British were in reality weak and helpless, 'a handful of strangers and merchants who had no country of their own,' who could be easily driven out if the Marathas, Hindus and Muslims remembered that they were all brothers and united against the invader.9 It is impossible to say how reliable the evidence was on which Grant based his account of the events before the Mutiny, but that ideas and arguments so vividly reminiscent of the 1857 Mutiny should have found expression as early as 1806 is very remarkable. The parallels between the mutinies of 1806 and 1857 were not only in the pattern of events in India, but also in the interpretations 1

2 Ibid., p. 393. Ibid., pp. 390-91. C.R.O., H.M.S. 816, p. 138, Edward Parry and Charles Grant to Robert Dundas, 21 Sept. 1807. 1 5 Ibid., p. 140. Ibid., pp. 138-40. • S. N. Sen, Eighteen Fifty-Seven, New Delhi, Ministry of Information, Government of India, 1957, pp. 2-3,398, and passim. 7 C.R.O., H.M.S. 816, p. 138, Edward Parry and Charles Grant to Robert Dundas, 21 Sept. 1807. 8 Ibid. * Ibid. 3

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given by British officials of the significance of the uprisings. In 1857 there were those who argued, as Grant did in 1807, that the fundamental cause of the Mutiny was antipathy to British power— that it was, in other words, a 'national movement.'1 In preparing the Directors' version of the Mutiny in 1807, Grant had emphasized this view by including an extract from a Minute his friend Sir John Shore had written in 1795 declaring that even though it greatly improved the condition of the people of India, British rule could not hope to gain the sympathy of the people since it was 'unnatural.' 2 On the other hand, there were those in 1857, as in 1807, who were certain that the mutiny was caused by fears of attack on religion, brought on by the activities of missionaries.3 These two interpretations arose out of very different premises regarding the nature of British rule in India. One, which was accepted by Grant, assumed that hostility to British rule was the normal response of a conquered people; the other assumed that the Indian people cared very little who ruled them, as long as religious customs were not infringed. If Grant's interpretation of the Mutiny were true, then the recall of Bentinck and Craddock and the appointment of a new Governor and Commander-in-Chief would not alleviate the general hostility and contempt felt by large sections of the Indian people for the British Administration in Madras and elsewhere. Other action, he felt, was necessary if peace was to be obtained. As immediate steps, he and Edward Parry, in their capacity as Chairmen, advised the sending out of a strong contingent of British troops to show the people the strength of the Government, and, at the same time the appointment of a Commission to go to India to study the causes of the Mutiny.4 The Commission would not only provide useful information but would demonstrate to the people the desire of the Government to investigate genuine grievances.5 It was perhaps unfortunate that the commission was not appointed, for if Grant's suggestion had been followed to have men sent out who had no previous connection with India, nor looked for any in the future, 8 interesting information might have been gathered. Even if immediate remedial action were taken, the basic problem would still remain, Grant insisted, of reconciling a government and people who were alien to each other in race, religion, education and 1

[W. Sinclair], The Sepoy Mutinies: Their Origin and Their Cure, London, 1857. C.R.O., H.M.S. 816, p. 23, Sir John Shore's Minute of 22 June 1795, included in Bengal Political Letter, 18 May 1807. 3 S. N. Sen, Eighteen Fifty-Seven, New Delhi, Publications Division, Government of India, 1957, pp. 8-16. 4 C.R.O., H.M.S. 816, pp. 140-41, Edward Parry and Charles Grant to Robert Dundas, 21 Sept. 1807. 4 6 Ibid. Ibid. 2

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manners. Once more he stated his argument of the 'Proposals' of 1784 and of the Observations of 1792: the only 'cementing principle' conceivable was that of common religious sanctions shared by the government with the people.2 Even supposing, he said, that the Company's servants should be so base as to accept the practices of either Hinduism or Islam as their guide, one great section of the community would still feel no common bond of interest.3 The only possibility was to win the allegiance of the people to the religion of the rulers, and, therefore, the work of missionaries, far from being a danger to British power in India, actually pointed the way to the solution of the difficulties inherent in alien rule.4 Grant regarded as an illusion the belief of many of his contemporaries that the Indians would accept the British as rulers because they gave better government than previous conquerors. Could anyone really believe, he asked in 1807, that the Indians would be 'so sensible of the superior wisdom and goodness of our government as cordially to prefer it with all the disadvantages attending it?' 6 But he was equally convinced that force alone could not hold India, especially since the Mutiny had shown how easily the sepoys might be seduced from their allegiance. Having won an Empire and established a rule that was intended to be permanent, the best way that the British could ensure their power was to use every prudent method of spreading a knowledge of Christian truth. While he recognized that political expediency was not the highest motivation for propagating the Gospel, it was, he thought, legitimate in terms of the ends to be gained.8 There were those, he told Bentinck, who would be ready to 'trample on the cross of Christ to avoid the apprehension of native jealousy on the score of Christianity,' but this timidity was as wrong in a political as it was in a religious sense.7 It completely overlooked the valuable political possibilities in Christianity. If it were possible, he said, by 'calm reason and affectionate persuasion' to make 'any large portion of our Indian subjects Christian, it is clear that they would then have a strong common principle with us, and render our government more secure.'8 While Grant usually reserved this argument from political expediency for correspondents such as Robert Dundas and Lord William Bentinck, whom he apparently expected would not be convinced by a purely evangelical plea for missions, it was soon very widely used by other polemical writers. Joshua Marshman the Serampore missionary, argued that even a partial success for 1 Bodleian Library MS. English Hist. c. 210, Edward Parry and Charles Grant to Robert Dundas, 8 June 1807. a 4 Ibid. » Ibid. Ibid. 5 Ibid. «Ibid. 'University of Nottingham, Portland Papers, 110, Charles Grant to Lord 8 William Bentinck, 17 April 1807. Ibid.

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Christianity in India would act as 'a powerful counterpoise' to Hinduism,1 and Claudius Buchanan made it the theme of one of his most widely circulated tracts, An Apology for Promoting Christianity in India.2 With the writings of these men, interest in the results of missionary activity shifted from the Vellore Mutiny to Calcutta, where new problems in the relations of the beliefs of the rulers to the ruled faced Grant. The publicity given to missions by Marshman and Buchanan created some misgivings in Grant and the older partisans of the evangelization of India, for they tended to think in terms of unobtrusive government support. When Grant wrote to Wellesley on the subject in 1801, for example, he spoke of being able to rely on the 'secrecy' of George Udny in getting information useful for promoting mission work,3 and he always emphasized that 'prudent' means should be used in spreading the Gospel. Harriet Martineau, in her popular but perceptive study of British rule in India, remarked that the real issue had not been whether missionaries should be allowed to go to India, but 'whether the fanatical rantings of selfappointed preachers would involve in their condemnation all future schemes.'4 Grant made this same point, for while in public he defended the right of the Serampore missionaries and the chaplains to preach and publish their doctrines, in private letters he deplored the behaviour of some of them as subversive of mission work. He was overwhelmed with shame, he wrote to his old friend Udny, that their Mission to Bengal should be so bitterly attacked because of the imprudence of the missionaries.5 When Buchanan returned to England in 1808 Grant received him coldly, and asked Simeon of Cambridge to warn him against further indiscretions.6 Lord Teignmouth also expressed his regret at the new kind of public attention being given to the mission work in Bengal. He was disturbed by Buchanan's establishment at Cambridge of a Prize for 'Disputations' on missions, since, he said, 'to tell the natives that we wish to convert them is not the way to proceed.'7 This emphasis on the need for 1 Joshua Marshman, Advantages of Christianity in Promoting the Establishment and Prosperity of the British Empire in India, London, 1813, p. 8. 8 Claudius Buchanan, An Apology for Promoting Christianity in India, London, 1813, p. 106. 3 Martin, Wellesley Despatches, vol. V, Supplement, Private Trade, p. 142, Charles Grant to Wellesley, 14 Sept. 1810. 4 Harriet Martineau, The History of British Rule in India, London, Smith, Elder, [1857], p. 219. s Morris, op. cit., p. 302, Charles Grant to George Udny, 9 April 1808. 6 Henry Morris, editor, 'Some Unpublished Letters of the Rev. Charles Simeon,' The Record [London], 21 Nov. 1902. 7 Teignmouth, Memoirs, vol. II, pp. 131-32, Teignmouth to Rev. John Owen, 5 Nov. 1807.

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moving quietly without undue publicity was in keeping with Grant's general concept of British rule in India as a process of 'consulting the welfare of the people,' open to public scrutiny and judgment in England, but not finally dependent on the dictates of public opinion either in India or at home. That the Company's government was responsible, not to popular opinion, but to the duty of giving good government within the framework of its legal constitution was an argument to which Grant frequently returned in his attempts to explain and defend his policy. The discussion of the origins of the Vellore Mutiny and of the activities of the Serampore missionaries merged into the celebrated quarrel over the part the Company's Government should take in the maintenance of the famous Jagannath Temple and in collecting the pilgrim tax. 1 The issue had arisen when Grant's friend, George Udny, as a member of the Governor-General's Council objected to the Company having anything to do with the appointment of priests at the Temple or profiting in any way from the tax on pilgrim traffic.2 Since this happened at the same time as the Governor-General had imposed a strict censorship on the preaching and publishing activities of the Serampore missionaries, there was an immediate outcry, especially from Claudius Buchanan, that the Government was anti-Christian.3 With the quarrel over the Serampore missionaries and the Yellore Mutiny still unsettled, Grant was very unwilling to have a third religious problem debated in the Home Administration, but he felt it could not be avoided. It was unthinkable, he told Robert Dundas, that the Company should refuse to assist Christian missions on the grounds that this meant interference in religious matters while at the same time it actively interposed its authority in one of the chief shrines of Hinduism.4 Grant knew that the Board of Control would strongly disagree, but he and Edward Parry, the Chairman, were convinced that 'on principle, it is improper for a Christian government to take upon itself any regulation of Heathen worship—any nomination of priests or direction of their services.6 Robert Dundas' answer to Grant and Parry was that government control of religious endowments and temple personnel was necessary 1

Ingham, op. cit., pp. 23-43. Parliamentary Papers, 1812-13, VIII, Paper 194, pp. 16-19, Minute of George Udny, 3 April 1806. 3 C.R.O., H.M.S. 690, pp. 211-43, Claudius Buchanan to Lord Minto, 9 Nov. 1806 4 C.R.O., H.M.S. 59, pp. 46-78, Edward Parry and Charles Grant to Robert Dundas, 31 Aug. 1808. « Wilberforce, Correspondence, II, 37, Charles Grant to William Wilverforce, 30 Aug. 1808. 2

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1

for the public welfare. When the Company had taken over Indian territory, he argued, it had contracted obligations to maintain the existing public institutions, whether these were religious or secular.2 For Grant, however, this interpretation of the Company's rule in India was based on a complete misconception, since, he insisted, the Company had assumed no obligations as to the form and content of its administration.3 The Company was bound to consider the welfare of its subjects, but for the definition of welfare it must look to the moral sanctions of the rulers, not of the ruled.4 Although no decisive action was taken at the time regarding temple maintenance and the pilgrim tax, Grant's argument that the moral sanctions of the government must be those of the British, not of the Indians, eventually gained wide acceptance. One of the people with whom he discussed the problem was Lord William Bentinck,8 and many years later by the abolition of sati, Bentinck illustrated Grant's argument that the British Government in India could use its power to modify social customs that were in conflict with the moral ideas of the rulers. In a statement very reminiscent of Grant's reasoning, Bentinck explained that while he had very carefully considered the opinions of the people before taking any action, in the end the decision was made in the light of his own moral judgments, not those of the people.6 The most uncompromising statement of Grant's essential idea was given, however, in 1883 by Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, the agnostic grandson of a Clapham saint. British rule in India, Stephen asserted, 'does not represent the native principles of life or of government, and it can never do so until it represents heathenism and barbarism.' 7 Nothing could be more dangerous, he went, on than to have at the head of a Government founded upon conquest, men who shrank from the 'open, uncompromising, straightforward assertion' of 'the superiority of the conquering race, of their ideas, their institutions, their opinions and their principles.'8 When Grant had expressed a similar view in 1807, Robert Dundas had replied that 'no man has the right to make another happy against his will.'9 Dundas' epigram, while doing credit to his spirit of tolera1 C.R.O., H.M.S. 59, p. 489, Edward Parry and Charles Grant, Notes on Dundas' letter of 6 Sept. 1808. 2 8 4 Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. 6 University of Nottingham, Portland Papers, 110, Charles Grant to Lord William Bentinck, 17 April 1807; and Morris, op. cit., p. 305, Charles Grant to William Petrie, 16 Sept. 1808. • A. B. Keith, Speeches and Documents on Indian Policy, 1757-1921, London, Oxford University Press, 1922,1,211-12, Minute of Lord William Bentinck, 1829. 7 Letter of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, The Times, 1 March 1883, quoted by 8 Stokes, English Utilitarians and India, p. 288. Ibid. > C.R.O., H.M.S. 818, p. 355, March, 1807, quoted by Philips, East India Company, p. 161.

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tion, suggests something of the confusion that still existed in regard to British power in India. He was far more willing than Grant to 'grasp the sceptre of Hindostan,' but he failed to understand that British sovereignty posed some remarkably complex problems concerning the relationships between British and Indian civilizations. The primary necessity in governing India, he told Grant in 1808, was to consult 'the religious prejudices and superstitions of the natives,' a view, he claimed, that had the authority of Sir William Jones. 1 This drew from Grant the tart rejoinder that if Jones was to be quoted as an authority,'his meaning in the words he used must be taken, not the meaning which may correspond with the views of another person.' 2 What Jones had pleaded for, he said, was toleration of Hinduism as a system, not its use as a guide in forming British policy.3 For that, the British would have to draw on their own resources, seeking only the lasting good of the people.4 Although the actions of Lord Minto's administration in regard to the Serampore missionaries and the Jagannath Temple did not meet with Grant's approval, its external policies were such that Grant later looked back on Minto as a worthy successor to Lord Cornwallis.6 It was true that acting on his own initiative he had sent an expedition to capture the Portuguese island of Macao, but when the Secret Committee objected, he abandoned it.6 The Committee had feared that the Chinese government might regard British occupation of the island as a hostile action.7 On the other hand, the expeditions Minto sent to capture the French islands in the Indian Ocean had received Grant's prior support. 8 Within India itself Minto's policies towards the native states contrasted sharply with those of Wellesley, and the Secret Committee, in a letter which Grant had obviously written, spoke of the 'state of tranquillity' which had prevailed during his time.9 India had been at peace because Minto had agreed that 'the system which was consolidated at the close of the last Mahratta War [was] as conducive to the public welfare as the very peculiar nature of our situation admits.' 10 There were, nevertheless, occasions 1 C.R.O., H.M.S. 59, p. 474, Robert Dundas to Edward Parry and Charles Grant, 6 Sept. 1808. * Ibid., p. 488, Comment by Grant on Dundas' letter of 6 Sept. 1808. 8 Ibid. * Ibid. 6 C.R.O., Secret Committee Minutes, IV, 29 Sept. 1815. 6 C.R.O., Board's Drafts of Secret Letters to India (1804-1810), No. 58, 2 Oct. 1809. ' Ibid. 8 See above, pp. 225-226. • C.R.O., Board's Drafts of Secret Letters to India (1804-10), No. 58, 2 Oct. 1809. 10 Ibid.

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when the Company's Government was driven to intervene in the affairs of the states, and there are grounds for believing that before he left India Minto had been forced to the conclusion that a policy of neutrality and non-intervention would not work. 1 He may have hoped by his very moderation and caution to convince the Directors of the impracticability of their policies. Grant, however, was not convinced, and when interference seemed inevitable, he seldom neglected to use the opportunity to show that Wellesley's subsidiary treaties, not the intransigence of the native princes, were the source of the difficulties. In 1808, events in Travancore provided Grant with an illustration for his theme that continual intervention in the internal affairs of the native states was the fruit of Wellesley's policies. Travancore was one of the Company's oldest allies, but a new subsidiary treaty had been made by Wellesley in January 1805.2 Three years later the state refused to pay the subsidy that had been agreed upon, and its armies attacked the British Residency. When the news of this uprising reached England, Grant took personal charge of the investigation of the circumstances3 and, after a minute review of the past history of the. relations between Travancore and the Company, he found the same sources of discontent as had been present before the Vellore Mutiny.4 There were rumours of French invasion the British power was supposed to have been weakened, and, most important, the ruler's rights had been undermined by Wellesley's policy and the subsequent action of the Company's officials.5 The fundamental trouble with the Travancore subsidiary alliance, according to Grant, was that, like all the other similar treaties, it had been signed by the ruler against his will.6 Company troops had put down a revolt in 1804 against the Raja, and the price he had had to pay was the subsidiary treaty, even though the sums demanded from him were far too large for the resources of the state.7 In their relations with the ruler, the British officials, moreover, had acted in an insulting manner, and finally he had been driven to the desperate course of rebellion, even though he knew his little state, surrounded by the Company's territory, could not offer any effective resistance.8 The evils of the subsidiary system were ex1

Malcolm, The Political History of India, 1,440-41. Martin, Wellesley's Despatches, IV, 637-38, Appendix D, Treaty with Travancore. 8 C.R.O., H.M.S. 817, pp. 567 ff., Charles Grant to Lord Harrowby, 2 Sept. 1809. 4 C.R.O., Madras Draft Despatches, XV, 1491-1551, N o . 198, 26 Sept. 1809. This was the material prepared by Grant. 6 9 Ibid., p. 1504. Ibid., p. 1545. 8 ' Ibid., p. 1545. Ibid., p. 1491. 2

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emplified, he concluded, by the fact that even though there had been injustice done in the past, all that could now be done was to make the Raja pay for the war which Wellesley's policy had helped to bring about. 1 While some relief could be given by reducing the subsidy payment, the problem created by the subsidiary system remained.2 Minto's Administration, which had begun when the repercussions of the Vellore Mutiny were still being heard, ended in the aftermath of another uprising, the 'White Mutiny' of the officers of the Company's Madras Army. 3 This mutiny, Grant once declared, was 'the most remarkable and most important event that had occurred in the history of British India.' 4 Beginning in the summer of 1808 and lasting for two months, the mutiny took the form of a refusal by the officers to obey any orders issued by the Madras Government.6 At almost every military post in South India, the officers 'encouraged one another in treason [and] talked of fighting against a tyrannical government in defence of their rights.'6 While there was not a great deal of bloodshed, there was a feeling, according to Sir John Malcolm, that 'one step [might] involve the country in all the horrors of civil war,' and there were many, he added, who 'desired to accelerate that event.'7 The causes of the Mutiny were deeply rooted in the general condition of the Company's armies, where previous mutinies had taken place among the officers, but the immediate reasons for the outbreak seems to have been a combination of specific grievances. The Home Administration had decided not to appoint the Commanderin-Chief as a member of the Madras Council, and many of the officers regarded this as a slight on the Army. On top of this, partly as an economy measure, but mainly to improve the honesty and efficiency of the Army, the officers were forbidden to take commissions on the supplies they furnished their troops. 8 The officers regarded this action as the work of Sir George Barlow, the new Governor, and they retaliated by refusing to accept the authority of his government. Barlow met the crisis by immediately requiring the officers to sign a declaration of loyalty to the government, with those who refused being suspended and separated from their regiments.9 1

s Ibid., p. 1545. Ibid., p. 1551. Parliamentary Papers, 1810-11, VII, Paper 95, p. 46 [Charles Grant], 'Paper on the Madras Officers Mutiny, 10 Sept. 1810.' 4 Ibid. 5 Alexander Cardew, The White Mutiny, London, Constable, 1929, passim. ' Sir John Kaye, quoted by Cardew, op. cit., p. 80. 7 Sir John Malcolm, quoted by Cardew, op. cit., p. 80. 8 Cardew, op. cit., pp. 49-50,145-47. • Ibid., p. 98. 3

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According to Grant, by this simple and effective device Barlow saved the Indian Empire from destruction and anarchy.1 After the mutiny was over, Barlow treated the suspended officers with what by modern standards seems extraordinary leniency. Most of the officers were restored to their former rank, while the rest were given the option of a court-martial or immediate dismissal. Only three elected to stand trial, and these were all cashiered.2 When the official records of the Mutiny reached England, Grant was Chairman, and under his urging, the majority of the Directors gave their unqualified approval to Barlow's handling of the situation.3 In addition, they dismissed William Petrie, a member of the Madras Council, for having opposed Barlow's methods.4 There was very strong opposition among the Directors to Grant's actions, however, and as soon as he left office in the spring of 1810, the dismissed officers were reinstated, Petrie's dismissal was condemned as being grossly unjust, and, finally, in 1812, Barlow was recalled from his post. This reversal of Grant's policy was perhaps the greatest defeat he ever suffered in the Home Administration, and on one level it is a reflection of the bitter division that had taken place within the Court between Grant and his opponents.5 The Directors who recalled Barlow were not the same ones who had praised him a few years before, but were the dissenting minority of 1810 who had now gained power.8 They were, according to Grant, motivated by 'personal enmity and political intrigue,' and through changes in the composition of the Court—four of Barlow's supporters were 'out by rotation'— and 'by other favouring circumstances as deplorable as they were surprising,' they were able to get rid of Barlow.7 Grant was particularly annoyed because the motion to recall Barlow was passed at a meeting of the Court called while his opponents knew he was in Scotland and could not return in time to attend the meeting.8 'Sedition and faction' had been crushed at Madras, he said, but had reappeared at East India House.9 It is clear from the correspondence of the time that Grant rather than Barlow was often felt to be the enemy that had to be put down. 1 C.R.O., Appendix to Court Minutes, II, p. 1073, Charles Grant and William Astell to Directors, 7 April 1811. 2 Cardew, op. cit., pp. 136-40. 3 C.R.O., Appendix to Court Minutes, II, pp. 943-1336, gives an account of the Directors' actions in the Dissents of the minority. 4 Ibid. 5 Philips, East India Company, pp. 192-95. 6 C.R.O., Appendix to Court Minutes, II, 1333, Charles Grant's dissent to recall of Barlow, 30 Dec. 1813. 8 9 ' Ibid. Ibid., p. 1302. Ibid., p. 1324.

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Some of Grant's unpopularity in 1811 and 1812 can be credited to causes which were not directly related to the Officers' Mutiny, but rather had to do with the Company's general policies. For a number of years, for example, his very strong opposition to American trade in India had brought him into sharp conflict with the influential section of the Court of Directors led by Sir Francis Baring.1 Also, the investigation into patronage for which he had been responsible in 1809 had made him unpopular with some of the Directors. Perhaps most important of all, his stand on Yellore and missionary activity had angered many of his colleagues, especially since he made men who considered themselves good Christians according to 'the plain and established usages of the Protestant Church' appear to be the enemies of religion.2 As an angry pamphleteer remarked, he had an unfair advantage over others in East India House, because his 'religious sanctity, which sometimes descends to help the lowliest job or the coarsest intrigue imparted [to all his opinions] a gravity and authority.'3 The hostile majority in the Court of Directors attributed so much of the responsibility to Grant for Petrie's dismissal and the support of Barlow that William Astell, who had been Deputy Chairman at the time, pointed out that although most of the work had been done by his industrious colleague, he had given his full approval to all the disputed actions.4 Grant was willing to meet all the charges made against him, and he countered at great length with examinations of the personal motivations of his opponents. He argued, however, that the significance of the debate was being obscured by the personal allegations, since 'by such glosses as this, all facts and characters may be explained away.'5 He insisted that the Mutiny and Barlow's handling of it had genuine political significance for British rule in India and that the reversal by the Court of its previous action would establish precedents that would alter the character of the Company's Government in India.6 While on one level the debate might be reflecting divisions extraneous to the Indian situation, on another level, however, a genuine difference of opinion can be seen arising out of divergent concepts of the nature of the Company's rule. 1

See above, p. 171. Joseph Farington, The Farington Diary, edited by James Greig, London, Hutchinson, 1925, V, 16. 3 Charles Marsh, A Review of Some Important Passages in the late Administration of Sir George Barlow, Bart., at Madras, London, 1813, p. 7. 4 C.R.O., Appendix to Court Minutes, II, 1075, Charles Grant and William Astell to Directors, 9 April 1811. • Parliamentary Papers, 1810-11, VII, Paper 95, p. 79, 'Paper on the Officers Mutiny.' • C.R.O., Appendix to Court Minutes, II, 1301-36, Charles Grant's Dissent on recall of Barlow, 30 Dec. 1813. 2

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The leaders of the opposition to Grant, of whom Elphinstone was perhaps the most important, were interested in the Mutiny largely in terms of the injustice that they considered had been done to the dismissed officers and William Petrie. They believed that Barlow's treatment of the officers had been as harsh and arbitrary as Grant's had been of Petrie.1 When they examined the causes of the Mutiny, they were inclined to see it explained, if not actually justified, by Barlow's extreme unpopularity with a large section of the Company's civil and military servants.2 Furthermore, Petrie's dismissal seemed to be clear evidence of Grant's partiality towards Barlow. The reason Grant had given for dismissing Petrie was his opposition as a member of Council to the Governor's measures, but, it was pointed out, only a few years before Grant had persuaded the Court to censure Barlow for having failed to oppose Wellesley's policies.3 By recalling Barlow, Grant's opponents argued, they were admitting that the Directors had made a mistake in supporting Grant's action against Petrie, and, at the same time, the restoration of the dismissed officers would restore confidence between the Army and the Madras Government.4 Grant's answer to these arguments was that his opponents, out of concern for the personal welfare of a few Company servants, were ignoring the fact that the Mutiny had threatened British power in India.' 5 Only Barlow's prompt action, he argued, had saved the Company's rule, for if the Indian rulers—especially the Marathas— had realized soon enough what was happening they would certainly have attacked the Company's possessions.6 Even if it could be shown that Barlow had used excessive severity, he would still have to be supported, since he 'had erred in the manner of supporting a good object and there was no justification of the officers.'7 The fundamental cause of the Mutiny was not personal grievances, he contended, but the desire on the part of the officers to overawe and dominate the civil government.8 Against all the arguments of his critics, Grant insisted that the revolt was not 'a sudden paroxysm of resentment,' but a 'matured, systematic combination and pretension which could only be the work of time.'9 Long before Barlow had arrived in Madras, 1 Ibid., I, 420-83, Dissents of Inglis, Baring, Huddlestone, and Elphinstone, 24 April 1810. 2 Ibid. 3 Ibid., Dissent of Inglis and Baring. 4 Ibid. 6 Ibid., II, 1072, Charles Grant and William Astell to Directors, 9 April 1811. • Ibid., pp. 943-74, Charles Grant and William Astell to Directors, 28 Feb. 1811. 8 ' Ibid. Ibid. • Parliamentary Papers, 1810-11 VII, Paper 95, p. 47, 'Paper on the Officers Mutiny.'

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there was evidence of 'a spirit of insubordination and cabal and of the doctrine of the rights of the army,' and, Grant pointed out, it was William Petrie who had informed the Home Administration of this.1 The officers had persuaded themselves that they had a special right to profit from British rule in India, and when Barlow asserted the priority of the civil government they sought to overthrow not merely a Governor whom they disliked but a whole concept of administration.2 Some years later, Grant returned to the theme of the relation of the Army in India to the civil authorities, and he declared that the officers tended to forget that in 'a free and enlightened country' the soldier was first of all a citizen.3 In any nation, there was danger from a military caste, but this was particularly true in India where soldiers live apart from civil society; realizing this, Barlow took appropriate measures. No European government, Grant emphasized, would have tolerated the kind of insubordination that the Madras officers had shown, and if the Mutiny had taken place in England, the punishment would have been much more severe than dismissal.4 Barlow's great achievement, according to Grant, was not only in having acted quickly enough to prevent hostile Indian powers from taking advantage of the situation, but in having asserted in unmistakable terms that the British government in India was civilian, not military, in character.5 In this way, the people had demonstrated to them that the Company's rule, unlike that of previous conquerors, was not conducted for the benefit of a few military adventurers.6 It would have been easier for Barlow to have given in to the officers, rather than to fight them, but he realized this would have meant 'the prevalence of military usurpation and the restoration of a constitutional paramount authority would have [been] a work of great difficulty.'7 Petrie had been rightly dismissed, therefore, for what he had opposed was the civilian foundation of British rule in India.8 While a member of Council had a duty to express his views, he must be willing to take responsibility for them, whether he voted with the majority or the minority.9 Petrie was removed, Grant insisted, not for having opposed the Governor, but for having acted irresponsibly.10 It was true that in 1805 he had censured Barlow for having failed to express his views on Wellesley's illegal actions; 1 s Ibid., p. 48. Ibid. ® C.R.O., Appendix to Court Minutes, IV, 3, Dissent of Charles Grant, 28 Aug. 1822. 4 Parliamentary Papers, 1810-11, VII, Paper 95, p. 48, 'Paper on the Officers' Mutiny.' 6 Ibid. "Ibid., p. 89. ' Ibid., p. 80. 8 Ibid., p. 43, Charles Grant and William Astell to Directors, 10 Sept. 1810. 9 10 Ibid. Ibid.

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on the same public principles he now supported him and censured Petrie.1 This kind of argument was referred to by one of Grant's opponents as 'refuted sophistry,' used to justify 'the pious labour' of securing the condemnation of Barlow's victims without a hearing,2 but Grant claimed that the full process of the Company's administration had been at work. The delegated authorities at Madras—the Governor and his Council—had taken what seemed to be appropriate action, which was then reviewed by the Home Administration who approved Barlow's decision and censured Petrie.3 The clamour of a section of the Company's servants could not be regarded as an important consideration in making decisions for the welfare of the Company's possessions.4 The alleged unpopularity of Sir George Barlow raised the important issue for the Company's government, Grant said, of deciding how much weight should be given by the Home Administration in judging the acts of its highest officials in India to the personal opinions expressed by Company servants. The expressions of unpopularity in regard to an Indian Administration that found their way to India were, he argued, almost inevitably the reflection of opposition within the Administration itself, and bore no relation to genuine public opinion.5 If the opinions of the British community in India were to be consulted, the stability of British rule in India would end, for good government would no longer depend upon the Home Administration judging measures according to reason, but upon 'the voice of faction.' 6 This argument was part of Grant's general contention that British citizens in India had none of the rights they could claim at home, and, apart from their functions as Company servants, they could not expect to have any share in the Government.7 No other decision of the Court of Directors, not even the rejection of the 'Pious Clauses' in 1793, received such bitter condemnation from Grant as did Barlow's recall and the reinstatement of the dismissed officers. It was, he said, a 'disgraceful and arbitrary' action,8 and he was driven to the conclusion that the Court of Directors was 'the weakest part of a system, [which is] on the whole, good for the government of India.' 9 The rule of law had received a hard blow, he told Barlow, future revolt had been encouraged, and 'a lesson in 1

Ibid. Marsh, op. cit., p. 7. 3 Parliamentary Papers, 1810-11, VII, Paper 95, p. 90, 'Paper on the Officers' Mutiny.' 4 5 Ibid. Ibid. 7 * Ibid. Ibid. 8 C.R.O., Appendix to Court Minutes, II, 1304, Charles Grant's Dissent, 30 Dec. 1812. 9 Morris, op. cit., p. 310, Charles Grant to Sir George Barlow, 18 Dec. 1812. 2

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terror [given to] every future Governor who might be disposed to obey the dictates of public office.'1 At the same time that the Directors were recalling Barlow, the Cabinet decided that Lord Minto should be replaced as GovernorGeneral by Lord Moira. The reason given for this was that Minto had given full support to Barlow's actions in Madras, but, Grant told him, this was only an excuse.2 The truth was that the office of Governor-General had been drawn into 'the vortex of the ministerial system at home.' 3 What Grant was referring to was the complex political crisis of May, 1812, when Lord Moira, after having worked hard for the Prince Regent, but not having received the place in the Cabinet promised him,4 was given the Governor-Generalship as a kind of consolation prize.6 In Grant's letter to Minto condemning the Ministers' action in recalling him to make a place for Moira, there was no reminder that six years before Minto himself had been accused of using the office for political purposes. On the same day that he wrote to Minto, Grant also wrote to Barlow; he felt humiliated, he said, by the way the Directors and the Ministers had treated two of their ablest servants.6 It was plain, he declared in the Dissent he wrote to the Court's action, that Indian experience no longer counted when men of honourable character and great abilities were replaced by those who had no other claim than that of 'greater interest.'7 While the quarrels in which Grant was engaged from 1806 to 1812 with his fellow Directors, the Board of Control and, at times, some of the Company's servants in India, may have weakened the internal structure of the Company's Home Administration,8 nevertheless they served the valuable purpose of forcing both Grant and his opponents to examine their presuppositions in regard to British rule in India. In all the issues—Barlow's appointment as GovernorGeneral, the two mutinies, missionary activity—Grant's arguments were determined, he claimed, by 'general principles and maxims of policy.'9 For his opponents within the Company, these principles and maxims were often a source of annoyance, and they undoubtedly caused him to take more extreme positions than were perhaps neces1

Ibid. Ibid., p. 311, Charles Grant to Minto, 18 Dec. 1812. 3 Ibid. 4 Michael Roberts, The Whig Party, pp. 372-93. 6 Philips, East India Company, p. 178. 6 Morris, op. cit., p. 310, Charles Grant to Sir George Barlow, 18 Dec. 1812. 7 C.R.O., Appendix to Court Minutes, II, 1307, Charles Grant's Dissent, 30 Dec. 1812. 8 Philips, East India Company, p. 180. • C.R.O., Appendix to Court Minutes, II, 1307, Charles Grant's Dissent, 30 Dec. 1812. 2

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sary. In the great debate in 1813 over the renewal of the Company's charter, however, for which the events of these years provide the background, these principles made it possible for Grant to defend the Company's privileges in a way no other member of the Court of Directors could have.

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CHAPTER XII

SPOKESMAN FOR T H E C O M P A N Y ' S R U L E : 1813-23 the recall of Barlow and Minto in 1812 had been a defeat for Grant's personal power within the Company's administration, his influence remained strong because of the part he played in the negotiations for the renewal of the Company's Charter. As early as 1808 the President of the Board of Control had reminded Edward Parry and Grant, who were then Chairmen, that while the Charter did not expire until 1813, it was time that preparations were made for applying to Parliament for a new one.1 Since the Directors agreed that the preliminary negotiations should be carried on by the Secret Committee of Correspondence, Grant was in a very favourable position to use his knowledge and experience to impress his views on the other members of the Committee.2 Above all, no one else among the Directors felt as strongly as he did that the fate of British rule in India was bound up with the Company, and that any attack on the old privileges was likely to lead to disaster. This belief, combined with his mastery of the Company's affairs, made him the Company's spokesman in 1813 when the debates in Parliament provided him with his last major opportunity to express his views regarding the nature of British power in India. During the Charter Debates, George Canning once expressed surprise that Grant always spoke as if the Company had enemies in Parliament.3 The only disagreement that existed in regard to the Company's claims, he said, was with Grant's continual insistence that the Company ruled in India by right, when the truth was that it ruled through a concession granted by Parliament.4 Since this was so, there was no need to pay attention to 'the exaggerated pretensions of those territorial lords to dominion acquired by British enterprise, purALTHOUGH

1 C.R.O., H.M.S. 816, p. 429, Edward Parry and Charles Grant to Robert Dundas, 12 Oct. 1809. 2 Ibid., p. 434, 1 Dec. 1808; and Charles Grant and William Astell to Robert Dundas, 5 Dec. 1809. The Secret Committee of Correspondence had the same membership as the regular Committee, but in certain circumstances was given permission to conduct its business without reporting to the Directors (Auber, op. tit., p. 103). 3 Pari. Debates, XXVI, 473, speech by George Canning, 31 May 1813. • Ibid.

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chased by British sacrifices, and yet held by British arms.' 1 A writer in the Edinburgh Review—probably James Mill—had made the same point a number of years before. Except for the accidents of circumstance, he argued, the functions of a great empire would never have been entrusted to such a body as the East India Company. 'Among all the visionary and extravagant systems of policy that have been suggested, no one,' the writer declared, 'has been absurd enough to maintain that the most advisable way of governing a mighty empire was by committing it to the care of a body of merchants residing at a distance of many thousands of miles.'2 It is against the background of these generalized attacks that Grant's defence of the Company in 1813 is to be understood. As Canning implied, there was no very widespread demand for any fundamental administrative changes in the relationship between India and Great Britain, for even those who disliked the Company realized that however irrational it was to have a commercial body governing a great empire, conditions were not favourable for any drastic alterations. As Thomas Grenville, a former President of the Board of Control, pointed out, the war in Europe, the mutinies in the Company's armies, the vast interlocking system of Indian and British patronage, made it unwise to attack the Company's rule, despite what he considered its intolerable evils.3 For Grant, however, the attitude expressed by Canning and Grenville was as much a threat to the Company as an outright demand that its power be abolished, for it denied his own basic position that the Company's rights in India were founded on other claims than a Parliamentary concession. While Parliament had defined and guaranteed the Company's rights, it had not created them: they were grounded in property rights which were independent of the will of Parliament. To question the Company's rights in India seemed to Grant to open the way to a demand that the Company abandon all its privileges and transfer them to Parliament. The form the attack on the Company took in 1813 was, in fact, despite Canning's disclaimer, a well-organized demand that the trading monopoly be abolished and that all the ports of Britain should be allowed to trade freely with India. The most striking manifestation of this movement was the barrage of petitions that poured into Parliament in 1812 and 1813.4 These petitions were 1 Edinburgh Review, SVI, April-August, 1810, p. 150, 'Affairs of India.' For Mill's authorship, see F. W. Fetter, 'The Authorship of Economic Articles in the Edinburgh Review, 1802-47,' The Journal of Political Science, LXI, Number 3, June 1953, p. 247. 2 Ibid. 3 Dropmore MSS., X, 324, Thomas Grenville to Lord Grenville, 12 Jan. 1813. 4 Journals of the House of Commons, LXVIII, 1812-13.

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impressive not only for their quantity but also for the remarkable unanimity they showed in denouncing the Company's trading policies and in expressing their expectations of the results that would follow from opening the Indian trade. Most of the petitions assumed, as the Directors pointed out, that because the Company was a great joint-stock monopoly it necessarily had to be managed with 'negligence, waste and prodigality.'1 While this attitude was partly due to the new economic theories, it was also a reflection of an older view that joint-stock companies were, as a Member of Parliament said during the debates, 'public nuisances and injurious to the property and rights of the subject.'2 The Company was constantly denounced, not for its wealth and power, but rather because it was badly managed and only able to survive because of the support it received from the Government. According to many of the petitions, clear evidence of the Company's ineptitude was that although it controlled the Indian revenues and monopolized trade, it had not only failed to keep its promise to pay half a million pounds annually into the Treasury, but had to keep on asking for loans from the Government.3 For most of the Company's critics, however, the great proof of its incompetence was its inability to expand the trade between India and Great Britain.4 Private merchants, it was argued, would have increased the sales of Indian goods in Great Britain and have found a larger market for British goods in India. But what the British merchants found especially galling was that while they were excluded from the Indian trade, the Americans, 'being unfettered have undersold the Company in the markets of Europe and have deprived t h e m . . . of the markets of South America, the West Indies and Malta, whilst the English trade had become less extensive and unprofitable.' 5 As the Directors remarked in a paper that Charles Grant had probably written, the British people had become convinced that it was 'the undoubted birthright and inheritance of the people of this empire, of every subject of it,' to trade freely with all the world, and especially with India. 6 The grievances against the Company had as their background the economic dislocation caused by the long war. It was significant that the opening of discussion on the renewal of the Charter coincided with the severe depression that after 1810 particularly affected North England and the Midlands, the areas most dependent on foreign 1 Pari. Debates, XXV, xviii, Report from the Committee of Correspondence, 9 Feb. 1813. 2 Ibid., XXVI, 189, speech by J. Marryat, 1 June 1813. 3 Pari. Debates, XXV, xviii, Report from the Committee of Correspondence, 9 Feb. 1813. 4 Ibid., pp. xviii-ix. 4 Ibid. • Ibid.

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trade. The situation worsened dramatically in 1811 when the American Non-Intercourse Act came into force, for the value of exports fell from £11,217,685 in 1810 to £1,847,917 in 1811.2 It was not surprising that in the following years the petitions from the northern manufacturing towns and ports dwelt on the iniquity of the Company's monopoly, which seemed to rob the British people of a rightful market for their surplus goods. According to Grant, 'the wildest notions . . . spread of a new world of commerce, the most extravagant expectations were entertained, the loudest clamour excited,' because men became convinced that the ending of the monopoly would solve the country's economic problems.3 Grant's primary defence of the monopoly in 1813 was that the Company's political administration in India was dependent upon the trading system that had grown up through the years.4 There was, he declared, no question of the Company wanting to keep the monopoly in order to make profits, since everyone knew that 'the India trade as an object of gain had gradually ceased to be of importance either to the Company or to individuals.'5 But as part of the administrative system, he insisted, the trading monopoly played an essential part in maintaining those peculiar characteristics of the Company's government that made British rule in India possible. The arguments that Grant used to prove that the Company's administration could not function without the trading monopoly were essentially those he had expounded at such length in the private trade controversy in 1800.® Once more he argued that the whole complex credit system which had grown up between India and Great Britain depended upon the Company's control of trade, and that even though the Company's trading operations might not be conducted at a profit, they provided the base for all other financial tions.7 The argument to which he returned again and again in the Charter Debates, moreover, was the one that had occupied so much of his attention in 1800—that only a strict control of trade by the Company could prevent the colonization of India by Europeans. At the very beginning of the negotiations he wrote a letter to the 1 F . O. Darvall, Popular Disturbances and Public Disorder in Regency England, London, Oxford University Press, 1934, pp. 53 ff., discusses foreign trade in relation to the economic situation. 2 Ibid., p. 19. 3 Pari. Debates, XXVI, 1230, speech by Charles Grant, 22 March 1813. 4 Debates at East India House, 5 January—13 February 1813, speech by Charles Grant, 26 Jan. 1813. 5 C.R.O., H.M.S. 816, p. 453, Edward Parry and Charles Grant to Robert Dundas, 13 Jan. 1809. • See above, Chapter VIII. ' C.R.O., H.M.S. 816, p. 453, Edward Parry and Charles Grant to Robert Dundas, 13 Jan. 1809.

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President of the Board of Control which became the foundation of most of the Company's arguments, and in it he gave the most prominent place to the danger of colonization.1 Once the Government yielded to the clamour for open trade, the days of British rule in India were numbered, he warned Robert Dundas. 'Large communities of Europeans will struggle for popular rights; new feelings with respect to the mother country, new interests and attachments, will then spring up, and in a region so remote, so rich and populous, so accustomed to yield to the ascendancy of the European character, the tendency and process of these things cannot be difficult to conceive.'2 One argument that received more attention from Grant in the Charter Debates than it had previously was the effect on the trade with China if the monopoly were broken. As Grant once told the shareholders, the China monopoly was vital for the Company's existence, for it was the profits of the tea trade, not the trade with India, that paid their dividends and, to a very considerable extent, had financed Wellesley's wars.3 Although the Government had assured the Company that the opening of the trade with India would not mean the end of the China monopoly, Grant was convinced that once the Indian market was opened, the pressure to abolish the China monopoly would be so great that the Government would yield.4 Even if the monopoly were kept, the Company would find it impossible to prevent private ships going on the China Seas once they were allowed to come freely into Indian waters, and the results, he predicted, would be disastrous. Instead of passing through the Company's London warehouses, tea would be smuggled into the country through every seaport and the national revenues would lose the huge sums they derived from the tea duties.5 The Company's tea, on which duty would be paid, would not be able to compete with the smuggled tea, and at one blow the tea profits that sustained the profitable three-cornered trade between India, Great Britain and China would be lost.6 Finally, the entry of private traders into the China ports would probably lead to quarrels with the Chinese 1 Ibid., pp. 452-470. This letter, which was called 'as just a review of the [Company's] case as had ever been presented to any Government,' was acknowledged as Grant's own work (Proceedings at East India House, 1798-1812, p. 619, speech by George Johnstone, 25 March 1812). It was printed in Parliamentary Papers, 1812-13, VII, Paper 122. In a modified form, it appears in Pari. Debates, XXV, xv-liv, as the 'Report from the Committee of Correspondence, 9 Feb. 1813.' 2 Ibid., p. 464. 8 Debates at East India House, 5 January—23 Feb. 1813, p. 34, speech by Charles Grant, 5 Jan. 1813. 4 C.R.O., H.M.S. 816, pp. 464-65, Edward Parry and Charles Grant to Robert Dundas, 13 Jan. 1809. s Ibid. * Ibid.

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officials that would end in the expulsion of all foreign traders. 1 Grant's argument was that although the Chinese Government was 'proud, arbitrary, punctilious, undervaluing commerce,' through the years the Company had been able to establish working relations. This was largely because of the good behaviour of the Company's servants, combined with their willingness to submit to the abuses and indignities the Chinese authorities had heaped upon them. This situation would change, he thought, once British private traders were allowed to go to the Chinese ports, since the licentiousness and wild behaviour of the British sailors would enrage the officials.2 Grant admitted that Americans had been trading in Canton with great success, but said that they were regarded as 'a caste of Englishmen,' and usually sheltered under the Company's flag.3 Although Grant gave great prominence to arguments that he thought showed the monopoly was necessary for the continuance of the Company's political administration, he was extremely anxious to prove that the expectations of increased trade that had led to the demands for its being abolished were, in fact, illusory. There is no doubt that he was just as sincerely convinced of the impossibility of increased trade with India as he was of the dangers of colonization. Again, he repeated and modified the arguments that he had used in the 1800 controversy. He found especially annoying the charge that the Company had not tried to increase the sale of British products in India, since during his years as Chairman, the Board of Trade in Calcutta had continually been urged by the Directors to use every possible means to find markets for British goods.4 In 1805, for example, woollen cloth and other British products worth Rs 95,000 had been sent to the great annual fair at Hardwar in Northern India, but sales had only amounted to Rs 4,800.5 For two hundred years, he pointed out, the Company had tried—usually at a loss to itself—to find a market for woollen cloth, and yet the Sheffield merchants were absurd enough to suggest that 'where no demand existed, the enterprising spirit of merchants could have the effect of creating it.' 6 The conclusive evidence for the lack of demand for British products seemed to be given in the statistics he collected for the use made by merchants of the facilities he had helped to get for them in the 1793 Charter. In the twenty years that had past, he declared, not a single 1

Pari. Debates, XXVI, 1254, speech by Charles Grant, 1 July 1813. C.R.O., H.M.S. 816, p. 464, Edward Parry and Charles Grant to Robert Dundas, 13 Jan. 1809. 3 Pari. Debates, XXVI, 1254, speech by Charles Grant, 1 July 1813. 4 C.R.O., Bengal Despatches, XLII, Public Letter, 13 March 1805, and passim. 6 Ibid., 13 March 1805. 6 Debates at East India House, 5 January—13 February 1813, p. 242, speech by Charles Grant, 26 Jan. 1813. 8

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new market had been found, and out of the 54,000 tons of shipping made available in that time, the private traders had used only 20,800 tons.1 As for increasing the sales of Indian goods abroad, Grant was convinced that this hope was also founded on a false understanding of economic realities. For a man who had spent most of his life buying and selling Indian goods, the over-stocked warehouses in London and Calcutta were sufficient proof that the Company had done all it could.2 Not only had the war cut off the traditional European markets, but it had caused such a rise in freight rates and insurance that Indian goods were being priced out of the home markets.3 Although Grant did not mention it in the 1813 debates, a market for Indian cloth had recently been lost because of the activities of Wilberforce and his other Abolitionist friends. Printed Indian cottons, which under the 'Calico Acts' could not be sold in England, had been one of the major items in the trading stock of all European slave traders, 4 and the Abolition Act of 1807 immediately affected this market. In 1808, Grant and Parry, who were both Abolitionists, as Company Chairmen had to inform the Board of Trade in Calcutta that unless some new market could be found to replace the old African one, the export of printed cottons would have to be reduced.5 Grant also knew that quite apart from markets lost in this way and through the war, Indian goods could no longer compete with British machine-made cloth.6 As far as other Indian goods were concerned, he could see little hope of an expanding market in Europe. All the spices needed could be brought home in one or two ships a year, and while Indian sugar could probably find a market, this would be at the expense of the West Indies.7 The Company's opponents regarded it as a mark of the stupidity of monopolists in general and of Charles Grant in particular that the arguments against expansion of Indian trade referred only to the old established products, without any thought being given to making India the source of supply for new raw materials.8 But as Grant 1

Ibid. C.R.O., H.M.S. 816, pp. 195-208, Edward Parry and Charles Grant to Robert Dundas, 26 Jan. 1808. 8 Ibid. 1 A. P. Wadsworth and J. de L. Mann, The Cotton Trade and Industrial Lancashire, 1600-1780, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1931, p. 118. 6 C.R.O., Bengal Despatches, XLIX, Commercial Dept., 2 Sept. 1808. 6 C.R.O., H.M.S. 816, p. 459, Edward Parry and Charles Grant to Robert Dundas, 13 Jan. 1809. ' Ibid. 8 William Spence, 'Speech on the East India Trade, April 6, 1812,' in Tracts on Political Economy, London, Longmans, Hurst, 1822, p. 250. 2

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frequently pointed out, and as his own career showed, the Company had actually done a good deal in this direction. As a Commercial Resident and as a member of the Board of Trade, he had helped to establish the production of indigo and raw silk in forms suitable for export, and during his term of office as Chairman, the Company had made special efforts to have Bengal, rather than Italy, supply the English market with raw silk.1 He had also been very active in promoting experiments in growing hemp to see if the Indian product might replace foreign supplies in rope making.2 Most important of all, perhaps, was the interest he had shown in the market for raw cotton. When American cotton disappeared from the English market as a result of Jefferson's Embargo Act, he and Parry, without consulting the Directors, had ordered the Bombay government to send home two million pounds of Indian cotton to see if it could be used by the English manufacturers. 3 In this attempt to supply the British market with raw materials, Grant was aware of a problem that did not seem to concern the Company's critics. It was necessary, he insisted, that the Company should act responsibly towards India in starting the production of cotton for export.4 While the Embargo Acts remained in force, there would be, he said, a demand for the Indian cotton; as soon as they could, however, the British manufacturers would return to the use of Georgia cotton, since it was cheaper and better than the Indian product. 5 The result would be that the Indian peasants who had been encouraged by the Company to grow cotton would find they had no market. The Company, Grant argued, had therefore to consider the future before it changed the pattern of its subjects' economy.® He had once written that India, being 'a dependent territory, must fall under that system of regulation which the paramount state in a combined view of its general interests sees best on the whole, and such a system will embrace the extension of the trade of the dependency as far as may consist with a due regard to objects of still higher concern.'7 At the time, he had been arguing that Britain, in her own interest, had the right to impose limitations on Indian trade. In the Charter Debates he used the same principle to show that it was greatly to the advantage of India not to over-expand the production of raw cotton, even though a momentary demand existed. This part of Grant's de1

C.R.O., Bengal Despatches, XLVIII, Commercial Letter, 26 Feb. 1808. C.R.O., H.M.S. 816, Edward Parry and Charles Grant to the Duke of Portland, 8 Sept. 1809. 3 C.R.O., Bengal Despatches, L, Commercial Letter, 10 Feb. 1809. 4 Pari. Debates, XXVI, 470, speech by Charles Grant, 31 May 1813. 6 6 Ibid. Ibid. ' C.R.O., H.M.S. 494, pp. 41-42, Edward Parry and Charles Grant to Directors, 14 Oct. 1807. 2

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fence of the monopoly against the Company's opponents bears a striking resemblance to the arguments of later Indian nationalists that the free traders, without any consideration for the welfare of the people, had made India into a supplier of raw materials. Grant restated his attitude towards the idea that India should be made a supplier of raw materials for British industry very vigorously in 1821 when he was called to give evidence before the Select Committee on trade. Was it not possible, the Chairman asked, for the British cotton manufacturers to capture the whole of the Indian market for finished goods, and to have the raw cotton produced in India sold to Britain, instead of being used by Indian spinners and weavers?1 It would be quite possible, Grant agreed, but he reminded the Committee that the British cotton industry had grown up under laws that protected it from Indian competition. 'If we use the power we have in that country now, to introduce into it the fabrics of this country so as to exclude their own, it may be questioned,' he continued, 'if we act justly with respect to our Indian subjects; for it may be taken for granted, that if they were under an Indian government they would impose protecting duties upon their own fabrics, in their own markets, as we have in ours.' 2 It was noteworthy that one of the last survivors of Burke's 'birds of prey and passage' should have argued the case for the Company's monopoly in humanitarian terms tinged with the ideas of later economic nationalism. For his contemporaries, however, these arguments seemed to be 'a mere wordy mass of futility,' and proof that he was ignorant of the teachings of political economy.3 Despite the fact that Grant argued so vehemently for the monopoly in 1813, as early as 1809 he had recognized that concessions to the northern manufacturing and shipping interests would be necessary.4 He hoped, nevertheless, that the general framework of the agreement made in the 1793 Charter would be preserved, with an extension of privileges being given to private traders, but with all trade firmly controlled by the Company. Since there was no chance of the sanguine expectations of the traders being fulfilled, it was absurd, he thought, to 'require the Company to make essential sacrifices for the sake of giving the public what would after all be more ideal than a real benefit, and in other respects, productive of incalculable disadvantage.'5 But by 1813 the opposition to the monopoly was so 1

Parliamentary Papers, 1821, VI, Paper 746, Third Report of Foreign Trade, Minutes of Evidence, 10 July 1821, p. 304, Evidence of Charles Grant. 2 Ibid. 3 Spence, op. cit., p. 243. 4 C.R.O., H.M.S. 816, p. 465, Edward Parry and Charles Grant to Robert Dundas, 13 Jan. 1809. 1 Ibid.

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formidable that the majority of the Directors were ready to come to some kind of an agreement with the Government,1 and Grant reluctantly accepted this position. By the provisions of the new Charter, the India trade was opened to all British merchants, although the Company was allowed to continue trading and the China monopoly was untouched.2 To the very end of the debate, however, Grant insisted that both the Company and the people of India were being wronged. The decision to open the trade, he said, was 'grounded upon theory, enforced by clamour and private interest ill-informed and pregnant with injury to existing establishments, without promoting any national advantage in compensation.'3 The Company, he felt, had been offered a cruel dilemma: either to acquiesce in the ending of the monopoly, or to terminate its whole connection with India.4 The only consolation he had was his belief that the evidence he had presented had sobered the expectations of many of the manufacturers regarding an expanding trade with India, so that there was not as much danger as he had feared of a great rush to enter the Indian market, with consequent ruin both to the traders and the British connection with India.5 While Grant was predicting disaster if the trading monopoly should be taken from the Company, at the same time he was supporting a proposed new clause for the Charter that many thoughtful men, both in the Company and Parliament, were certain would lead to far more trouble than would any change in the trading regulations. This proposal was a revised form of the 'Pious Clause' of 1793, and although Wilberforce was its chief Parliamentary supporter, everyone connected with Indian affairs knew that Charles Grant was the driving force behind it.6 'It is the duty of this country,' the Preamble of the new Clause declared, 'to promote the interests and happiness of the native inhabitants of the British Dominions in India; and such measures ought to be adopted as may tend to the introduction among them of useful knowledge, and of religious and moral improvement; and in the furtherance of the above objects, sufficient facilities ought to be afforded by law to persons desirous of accomplishing those benevolent designs.'7 This Clause asked far less from Parliament and the Company than had the 1793 proposal,8 1

Philips, East India Company, p. 190. 53 Geo. Ill, c. 155, sec. vi-vii. 3 Pari. Debates, XXVI, 1251, speech by Charles Grant, 16 June 1813. 4 Ibid. 6 Ibid., p. 930,28 June 1813. • C.R.O., Appendix to Court Minutes, III, Dissents of G. Robinson, et al., 28 July 1813. 7 53 Geo. Ill, c. 155, sec. xxxiii. 8 See above, p. 152. 2

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for Grant and Wilberforce now realized that it was useless to expect direct government support for missionaries in India. All that they proposed in 1813, aside from a statement by Parliament that the British people had a duty to promote the well-being of the Indian people, was to compel the Company to legalize the entry of missionaries into India and to provide for the appointment of a Bishop. There was no great resistance to the idea of creating an Ecclesiastical Establishment in India; no one expected a Bishop to cause trouble. The proposal to require the Company to allow missionaries to go to India, however, did arouse opposition.1 While there were Churchmen like Sydney Smith who objected to a rabble of 'consecrated cobblers' spreading Evangelicalism among the Hindus,2 more seriousminded men saw other evils. 'We are conquerors in India,' wrote Thomas Grenville, 'and I do not like to see a regiment of missionaries acting under and with the authority of unrestricted power.'3 The most frequent objection made was that the preaching of the missionaries would arouse the hostility of the people and drive them to revolt.4 As Grant noted, the character of the opposition was quite different in 1813 than it had been in 1793.5 Then the fear had been that through Christian teaching and western learning, the Indians would learn ideas that would cause them to throw off their allegiance to Great Britain; but in 1813, with the Vellore Mutiny a very potent memory, it was argued that missionaries would antagonize the people through attacks on the old religions.6 The way in which Wilberforce and the other Saints managed to have the Clause included in the Charter, despite the great opposition of the House of Commons and many of the most influential members of the Home Administration of the Company, was by bringing pressure to bear on Parliament through a remarkable organization of public opinion. The basic plan was to convince the people of England of the need of India for the Gospel, and to make clear that those who opposed missionaries were, in Grant's phrase, 'ready to trample on the cross of Christ.' Wilberforce arranged to have Grant's Observations on the State of Asia printed, and he urged his friends to read it, 1 Wilberforce, Life, IV, 1-149, contains many references to the passing of the legislation. Howse, op. cit., 82-94, gives an account of the activity of the Clapham Sect. 2 Edinburgh Review, XII, April-June 1808, 151-81, is an attack on the missionaries, particularly William Carey, which was probably written by Sydney Smith. 3 Dropmore MSS., X, 337, Thomas Grenville to Lord Grenville, 7 May 1813. 4 Pari. Debates, XXV, 414-890, passim, evidence given before Committee of the Whole House. 6 C.R.O., Appendix to Court Minutes, III, Edward Parry and Charles Grant to Directors, 27 Aug. 1813. 9 Ibid.

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especially those who, 'full of prejudice and ignorance,' were 'indifferent to the happiness of our fellow-creatures.'1 In his magnificent speeches in Parliament, especially the one he gave on 22 June 1813, he made very effective use of Grant's material, giving it a colour and drama it lacked in Grant's own presentation.2 And since, as he told Hannah More, 'more is done out of the House than in it,' he and the eight other Members of the House who were included in the general circle of the Clapham Sect spent an enormous amount of time in lobbying.3 Outside the House of Commons, the Saints made use of the many organizations of which they were the leading members—the Church Missionary Society, the Bible Society, the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge—to win support for 'Christianizing India.' 4 To give 'information on the state and wants of the heathen,' they started a new paper, The Missionary Register, which was filled with accounts of the evils of Hinduism and of the triumphs of the missionaries.5 The most spectacular effort, however, was the mobilizing of public opinion throughout the country to send petitions in favour of the Clause, with a view, as Wilberforce put it, of bringing Christian 'sentiments and feelings to bear upon the opposite tenets and dispositions of Members of Parliament.' 6 According to one enthusiastic account, petitions came in from nearly 1,500 different groups,7 but while this was probably an exaggeration, the number was certainly quite unprecedented, representing a kind of organization that was new in political life.8 As Wilberforce had anticipated, the Government was impressed by this display of public support for the missionary clause, and agreed to support its inclusion in the Charter. Lord Castlereagh, who was handling the Charter Bill for the Government, thought that while this would satisfy the enthusiasts, it would do no harm, since he was convinced that despite the number of petitions, very few Englishmen were really anxious to go out to India as missionaries.9 In addition to requiring the Company to permit missionaries to go to India and creating an Indian Episcopal See, the Charter 1

Wilberforce, Life, IV, 114, Diary, 27 April 1813. Pari. Debates, XXVI, 831-72, speech by William Wilberforce, 22 June 1813. 3 Wilberforce, Life, IV, 1-149, passim. The Members who usually supported Clapham projects, in addition to Wilberforce and Grant, were Charles Grant, Jr., T. Babington, Z. Macaulay, H. Thornton, W. Smith, J. Bowdler, and J. Stephen. 4 Josiah and John Pratt, Memoir of Rev. Joseph Pratt, B.D., New York, Robert Carter, 1855, p. 72. Pratt was editor of The Missionary Register. 6 Ibid., p. 74. 6 Wilberforce, Life, 1,102. 7 Carus, op. cit., p. 208. 8 Journals of the House of Commons, LXVIII, 1812-13. • Pearson, Memoir of Claudius Buchanan, II, 307-08. 2

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provided that the Governor-General could spend up to £10,000 a year on education from the public funds. This grant for public education—one of the many instances where the British Government passed more advanced legislation for India than it did for Britain— fulfilled one of Grant's oldest and most cherished aims. As far as immediate results of the missionary clause were concerned, Castlereagh's view was proven to be well-founded, for greatly to their embarrassment, the Saints at first could not find a single missionary to send to India. 1 The fears of those who thought Grant and his friends would 'march from Clapham Common to overturn the religion of all India,' and that Spanish methods of 'the sword and stranglings' would once more make their appearance there,2 were as groundless as the hopes of those who believed that Hinduism would crumble once light were introduced. As Grant sadly remarked to George Udny, anyone who was afraid that the Indian Administration would encourage Christianity would be 'soon satisfied by the little countenance which the Company's servants in general will give to missionaries.'3 For Grant, the main importance of the Clause was that 'the duty of communicating Christianity in India is now directly recognized by the Legislature,' and that 'missionary exertions in future [would be placed] on a more respectable footing.' 4 Perhaps the most significant result of the missionary clause and of the propaganda that had led to its introduction was that, in a way it had never been before, the nature of British power in India became a concern of a very large section of the British people. While Burke and his followers had denounced the behaviour of servants of the East India Company, Wilberforce had accused the whole nation of abusing its trust in India. Next to the slave trade, he said, 'the foulest blot on the moral character of the country was the willingness of the Parliament and the people to permit our fellow-subjects . . . in the East Indies to r e m a i n . . . under the grossest, the darkest and most degrading system of idolatrous superstition that almost ever existed upon earth.' 5 Wilberforce was here faithfully reflecting Charles Grant's evaluation of Indian society as well as his belief that Britain had a responsibility to work for its reformation. During the Charter Debates, Grant's attitude to India for the first time found popular expression through a multitude of sermons and pamphlets, and the picture of India as a land of darkness, waiting for the light, caught 1

Ibid. Dropmore MSS., X, 337-38, Thomas Grenville to Lord Grenville, 7 May 1813. Morris, op. tit., p. 331, Charles Grant to George Udny, 4 Sept. 1813. 4 Ibid. 6 Wilberforce, Life, IV, 11, William Wilberforce to J. Butterworth, 15 Feb. 1812. 2 3

s

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the imaginations of ordinary people who before had had no concern with the problems of British control of India. And as contemporary protagonists of missions recognized, the awakening of interest over India was generalized to include an interest in the rest of the nonChristian world.1 The nature of the audience to which Grant and Wilberforce made their most successful appeal was also very interesting. In the first place, as they were both keenly aware, their support had come very largely from Methodists, Baptists and the Evangelical clergy of the Church of England, sections of the population not very highly regarded for either their intelligence or their social standing.2 'Their welldrilled riders,' said a pamphleteer some years later, were 'despatched with commercial punctuality to lay an unsuspecting credulity under contribution.' 3 It was this kind of charge that Wilberforce had in mind when he noted that 'Both Mr. Grant and I have been afraid lest the Anglo-Indians, who are among the most intelligent members of the higher circles, should be able to produce an impression that we carried our point in the House of Commons by availing ourselves of a popular delusion, contrary to reason.' 4 Certainly, for many people the mission campaign seemed singularly unpleasant because of the use of Grant's descriptions of 'the offal of Hindoo morals' to appeal to the religious emotions of the people.® Observing the campaign in old age, Warren Hastings sadly concluded that the attitude towards India which Grant championed had triumphed over his own. 'Our Indian subjects having been represented as sunk in grossest brutality,' he wrote the Governor-General, ' . . . it is therefore said that as we possess the power, so it is our duty to reform them, nay, to "coerce" them into goodness by introducing our faith among them. ' 6 The other group which responded most willingly to the plea for missionary support was the northern manufacturers. As Wilberforce had shrewdly foreseen, the northern manufacturers and the religious interests were natural allies against the Company's monopoly. Those interested in the cause of religion, he wrote in his Diary in 1812, should 'join the great body of commercial men . . . for destroying the monopoly of the Company, and leaving the road to the East Indies free and open.'7 This opinion is typical of Wilberforce's 1

Pratt, op. cit. p. 79. Wilberforce, Correspondence, II, 268. 3 John Bowen, Missionary Incitement and Hindoo Demoralization, London, 1821, p. 6. 1 Wilberforce, Correspondence, II, 268. 8 Bowen, op. cit., p. 33. • Warren Hastings to the Marquis of Hastings, quoted by P. Moon, op. cit., p. 349. 7 Wilberforce, Life, IV, 14, Diary, 12 Feb. 1812. 2

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attitude towards the Company, for although out of friendship for Grant he usually supported its interests in Parliament, he thought that it was an obstruction to commerce and good government. There is no evidence, however, that he drew Grant's attention to the mutual advantages that the advocates of missions and of free trade would get from supporting each other. In the Court of Directors, his opponents did actually accuse Grant of having helped to break down the monopoly by the support he had given to the missionary movement,1 but he indignantly repudiated this, arguing that there was no necessary connection between allowing missioners to enter India and allowing merchants.2 Twenty years later, however, the alliance between the two interests became unmistakably plain when the social reformers appealed to the northern manufacturers to make common cause with them against the Company, the enemy of all enlightened progress.3 Probably all that prevented an alliance in 1813 between supporters of missions and the free traders was that Charles Grant was the spokesman for one movement and the most uncompromising opponent of the other. Although the Charter Debates marked Grant's last major public appearance as the defender of the Company's monopoly, until his death in 1823 he remained a powerful figure within the Home Administration. His last appointment as Chairman, for the year 1815-16, was a recognition of this, for he was elected in order to strengthen the waning power and authority of the Directors against the encroachments of the Board of Control. 4 In his year in office, Grant succeeded in once more making the Chairmen what they had ceased to be for a number of years, a genuine power within the Administration, but this was at the cost of co-operation with the President of the Board of Control. He energetically asserted the claim that under the Company's constitution the Board had no right to interfere in any matter that did not concern the levying of war, making peace or negotiating with foreign powers and Indian princes, but he had to admit that it was increasingly difficult to differentiate between such functions and the ordinary working of the Indian Administration®. A case in point was a letter Grant and the Deputy Chairman had written to Calcutta informing the Board of Trade that preparations should be made to resume trade with the Americans on terms similar to those that had existed before the War of 1812.® The President of 1

C.R.O., Appendix to Court Minutes, III, Dissent of G. Robinson, et. al., 28 July 1813. 2 Ibid., Edward Parry and Charles Grant to Directors, 27 Aug. 1813. 3 Oriental Herald, XX, Jan.-March 1829 p. 540. 4 Philips, East India Company, pp. 206-08. 5 C.R.O., Minutes of the Secret Committee (1806-1824), Minutes of 21 April 6 1815. Ibid.

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the Board ordered the reference to re-opening the trade cut out, although he admitted the Chairmen had the right to send it. 1 His argument was that since no commercial treaty had actually been signed, the information that the Chairman had proposed sending to Calcutta would give the American minister an undue advantage.2 More and more, Indian affairs, even those that might seem purely commercial, were becoming a concern of the national Government. During this final year as Chairman, the question of territorial expansion again became a matter of urgent concern, and Grant once more expressed the opinions which had become almost identical with his name. Soon after his arrival in Calcutta in 1813, Lord Hastings, who had succeeded Minto over Grant's strong protests, came to the conclusion that it was necessary to complete Wellesley's work of making the British power paramount everywhere in India.3 The result was that the first five years of his administration were marked by almost continuous war. In 1815, after a war with Nepal, he had extended the British frontier far into the Himalayan region until it touched the borders of the Chinese Empire.4 Of far more interest to contemporaries, however, was Hastings' relations with the Maratha states, which, under Grant's urgings, had been given a free hand since Wellesley's departure. From 1817 to 1819, Hastings waged war against them, with the result that the Peshwa lost all power but got a large pension, while Scindia and Holkar accepted subsidiary alliances after the latter had made the last great stand by any Hindu prince against the British.5 It is one of the ironies of the history of British rule in India that Lord Hastings, having denounced Cornwallis as a warmonger for his fairly modest acquisitions of territory from Mysore in 1791,® should have been responsible for bringing vast areas of Central India under British control. Although the Board of Control required the Secret Committee to give formal approval to Hastings' first measures in 1815, the Committee members made their personal opinions clear in a letter obviously written by Grant. 7 Nothing had happened in India, they declared, that made necessary any alteration in the settlements made by Corn1

2 Ibid. Ibid. M. S. Mehta, Lord Hastings and the British States, Bombay, Taraporevala, 1930, pp. 2-31. He became Governor-General as Lord Moira, but was created the Marquis of Hastings in 1817. 4 Sir C. U. Aitchison, editor, A Collection of Treaties, Engagements andSanads, relating to India and Neighbouring Countries, Calcutta, Government of India, 1929, XIV, 54-56. 5 Mehta, op. cit., 122-23. 6 Parliamentary History, XXIX, 145-47, speech by Lord Moira, 11 April 1791. 7 C.R.O., Secret Committee Minutes, V, Secret Committee to Board, 29 Sept. 1815. 3

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wallis and Barlow under which 'our possessions have for ten years continued in a state of tranquillity.' 1 Grant was not one of the Chairmen when the news arrived that war with the Marathas had broken out, but he publicly denounced Hastings with as much vigour as he had Wellesley fifteen years before. Hastings' defence of his actions was that when he arrived in India he had seen around him 'the elements of a war more general than any which we have hitherto encountered.'2 He believed that the Maratha states were implacably hostile to British rule, with the Peshwa merely waiting for a chance to unite his former feudatory chieftains in a war against Britain.3 In addition to the Maratha danger, the existence of roving bands of plundering free-booters, the Pindaris, based in the Maratha states, kept the whole of Central India in constant turmoil.4 More than anything else, it was the accounts of the atrocities of the Pindaris that persuaded the Board of Control— as well as many Directors—to approve Hastings' wars with the Marathas, whose rulers were often in active alliance with the Pindari leaders.5 For Grant, however, the whole weight of evidence made clear that it was the Governor-General, not the Marathas or the Pindaris, who was the author of the war. While Hastings' friends might argue that the increase of territory resulting from the war was an 'incidental, not a designed object,' documents in East India House proved, he said, that 'the scheme of bringing the remaining powers of Hindostan under the control of the Company's government had been entertained by Lord Hastings early after his arrival in India, and before any war broke out.' 6 The documents that Grant had in mind were Minutes Hastings had recorded at various times in 1814 expressing his belief that the time had come when the Company's power should be acknowledged by every Indian power.7 On the basis of the views expressed in these Minutes, Grant argued that Hastings, having planned conquests, found an excuse for war in the alleged lawlessness of the Maratha states. While it was true, he admitted, that the Marathas and their allies, the Pindaris, had used barbaric methods of war, it should be remembered that 'they considered us the ag1

Ibid. Private Journal of the Marquis of Hastings, I, 47, 1 Feb. 1814, quoted by Mehta, op. cit., p. 13. 3 Minute of Lord Hastings, 1 Dec. 1815, quoted by Mehta, op. cit., p. 22. 1 Mehta, op. cit., pp. 16-21. 5 Ibid., p. 103. 8 Morris, op. cit., p. 358, Charles Grant, 'Conversation with Lord Bexley, 26 May 1823.' 7 Minutes of Lord Hastings, 3 April and 21 June 1814, quoted by Mehta, op. cit.,p. 17. 2

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gressors, . . . and when the weak act under this impression against the strong, are they not too apt to have recourse to sinister ways 7'1 Grant was one of the few Englishmen, either in his own time or later, who ever defended the Pindaris, but his dislike of expansion was so strong that he sought to show the weakness of every argument that was used to support it. He was aware that his views were increasingly isolating him from his fellow-countrymen, but, as he told Lord Hastings in 1822, he could not 'disavow any part of that system of Indian policy which, from an early period, [he had] held, unimportant as it may be to everybody [else],2 Detecting a growing tendency for Englishmen to boast about the extension of British possessions in India, he regretted that the country was being placed in 'a disgraceful light before the world,' as a nation that gloried in war and conquest.3 Even though he warmly approved of Hastings' interest in education, once saying that he had done more than any other Governor-General for the moral and intellectual welfare of the people,4 Grant could never forget that Hastings had made war to extend the boundaries of British India. One of the last acts of his life was to refuse a personal request from the King to support a motion in the Company to give Hastings a large sum of money in recognition of his services.5 Lord Bexley, the Chancellor of the Exchequer reported to the King that, despite all his efforts, he had not been able to meet Grant's objections, 'particularly that which relates to his own consistency.'8 In the long record of consistent opposition to territorial expansion of which Grant was so proud, there was one incident which occurred in the last years of his life that seemed to be curiously at variance with it. This was the support he gave to Sir Stamford Raffles over the acquisition of Singapore. The explanation of this apparent inconsistency is that Raffles succeeded in convincing Grant that to acquire Singapore was justifiable from 'a moral, political and commercial view.'7 No one had ever been able to do this in regard to Indian 1 Asiatic Journal, VII, 301, Debate at East India House, speech by Charles Grant, 3 Feb. 1819. 2 Morris, op. cit., p. 354, Charles Grant to Lord Hastings, 15 Jan. 1822. 3 Asiatic Journal, VII, 300, Debate at East India House, speech by Charles Grant, 3 Feb. 1819. 4 Morris, op. cit., pp. 354-55, Charles Grant to Lord Hastings, 15 Jan. 1822. 5 There are two accounts of this interesting episode: Morris, op. cit., pp. 356-59, Charles Grant, 'Conversation with Lord Bexley, 26 May 1823,' gives Grant's own account, while A. Aspinal, editor, The Letters of George IV, 1812-30, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1938, III, 15, gives Bexley's version. 6 Aspinal, Letters of George IV, III, 15, Bexley to the King, 26 Aug. 1823. 7 C. E. Wurtzburg, Raffles of the Eastern Seas, London, Hodder and Stoughton, 1954, pp. 582-83, Charles Grant to S. Raffles, 19 July 1819.

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territory, but Raffles, unlike Wellesley, had made his case in terms that were meaningful to Grant. At the end of the Napoleonic Wars, when Raffles had tried to persuade the British Government to retain some of the Dutch Islands in the East Indies, he met with no success. But when he returned to England in 1816, his humanitarian work in Java, where as Governor he had ended the Dutch slave labour system, assured him of a welcome within the Company from Grant, who introduced him to the Clapham circle.1 Not only had he abolished slavery, but he had an attitude towards mission work that Grant had sought for in vain from any Indian Governor-General, even his friends Sir John Shore and Cornwallis. 'There is no political objection whatever to missionaries in this part of the East,' Raffles declared, 'and so far from obstructing, they may be expected to hasten and assist the plans which are already in operation.' 2 Raffles did not depend on his advocacy of missions to win Grant's support, but used his great powers of persuasion to argue that a base in the East Indies would be of immense political and commercial significance to Great Britain and India. Grant had been convinced of this by Raffles' letters as early as 1815, for shortly after he became Chairman in the spring of that year, the Directors had written to India that Raffles' enterprise had opened up the possibility of trade with Japan, 'an intercourse . . . so long held to be unattainable and at the same time so desirable that . . . we are disposed to regard with approbation any attempt . . . which has that object as its ultimate end.' 3 Therefore, when the news arrived in 1819 that Raffles had acquired Singapore through a treaty with the local ruler, Grant's attitude was very different than it had been towards reports of acquisitions of territory in India.4 The Government, on the other hand, was extremely annoyed, because at that time Canning was trying to reach an agreement with Holland, and he realized that the Dutch would bitterly oppose the establishment of British power in the area they considered to be their sphere of influence.5 Raffles thought that because of the 'ignorance, injustice, and party spirit, in London, the only hope of keeping Singapore would be 'if Mr. Grant should come into the Chair,' 6 but even out of office Grant was still a powerful advocate. Called to give evidence before a Parliamentary Select Committee, he argued that the Island was 1

Ibid., pp. 352,422, and passim. * D. C. Boulger, The Life of Sir Stamford Raffles, London, Horace Marshall, 1897, p. 277, S. Raffles to Rev. R. B. Raffles. 3 Bengal Despatch, 5 May 1815, quoted by Wurtzburg, op. cit., p. 318. 4 Wurtzburg, op. cit., pp. 582-83, Charles Grant to S. Raffles, 19 July 1819. 6 Philips, 'The Secret Committee of the East India Company,' op. cit., p. 708. 6 Wurtzburg, op. cit., p. 579, Raffles to [?].

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ideally situated 'to be a great commercial emporium [which would] very soon rise to great magnitude and importance.' 1 As a member of the Special Committee that the Directors appointed to help Canning in his negotiations with the Dutch, Grant was in an excellent position to press for the retention of Singapore.2 Apparently convinced by the arguments of Grant and the other Directors, Canning finally persuaded the Dutch to accept Britain's new status as a power in the area they had controlled for so long.3 In 1821 Grant appeared before Select Committees of both Houses of Parliament to give evidence on the present condition and the future prospects of British foreign trade. 4 Although the other witnesses on trade with the East had been required to state their connection with India, the Chairman remarked that such a question was superfluous in Grant's case.6 His arguments were also familiar to those who followed debates on India during the previous thirty years: trade with India could not be substantially expanded, opening the China monopoly would destroy existing trade relations, India must be protected from a flood of adventurers settling there. Through the use of lengthy and complex statistical tables, he tried to show that the monopoly had worked for the benefit of both Britain and India, but in 1821 he was fighting a battle already lost. The other Company representatives spoke with little conviction, and it was obvious that Grant would have no successor as a champion of the Company's monopoly. It was significant that when John Gladstone, speaking for the Liverpool shipping interests, refuted Grant's evidence, no Company spokesman seriously challenged him.6 Not only the Company, but Grant himself was feeling the passage of time. 'The bodily fabric must decay,' he wrote to his wife in August, 1823, 'the only wonder is that mine has been preserved so well so long.'7 He was seventy-six at the time; a month later he was dead, after a full day's work at the East India House.8 For the Clapham Circle, his death meant the loss of one of the most respected and effective members of the group. 'The ranks of the righteous seem to be 1

Charles Grant, quoted by Wurtzburg, op. cit., p. 582. Philips, 'The Secret Committee of the East India Company,' op. cit., p. 708. Ibid. 4 Parliamentary Papers, 1821, VI, Paper 746, Third Report of Foreign Trade.. 10 July 1821; and Paper 476, Report of Select Committee of House of Lords . . ., 11 April 1821. 5 Parliamentary Papers, 1821, VI, Paper 476, p. 302. 6 Ibid., VII, Paper 476, p. 195, Evidence of John Gladstone. 7 Morris, op. cit., p. 383, Charles Grant to Mrs. Grant, August, 1823. 8 William Roberts, editor, Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Mrs. Hannah More, New York, Harper and Brothers, 1835, II, 360, Rev. Daniel Wilson, to Mrs. More, 1823. 2

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thinning sadly,' was Hannah More's characteristic remark when she heard the news; Wilberforce commented that Grant 'was one of the best men [he] ever knew.'2 'What a loss,' exclaimed Daniel Wilson, who was soon to become Bishop of Calcutta, 'yet what sources of comfort spring up on all sides! So honourable, so distinguished, so pure, so long a course of Christian rectitude and piety!'3 His services would never be forgotten, Wilson continued, for 'India with its countless millions is indebted to him.' The final echo of this chorus of praise was still heard over a century later in independent India when the date of Grant's death was listed in the revised Prayer Book of the Church of India, Pakistan, Burma, and Ceylon along with the founders and martyrs of the Indian Church. In 1823—and afterwards—there were many who would not have joined in praising Grant. Many had been repelled by his piety and moralism, especially those who had struggled with him for power within the Company's administration. Men like Wellesley whose Indian policies he had attacked with unremitting vigour were not likely to regard him as a wise guardian of British interests, nor would the politicians who had found him a formidable opponent be inclined to stress the purity and simplicity of his methods. Yet anyone who knew the Company's Administration would certainly have agreed with the judgment of his friends Edward Parry and George Udny that 'the East India Company [would] never again possess so valuable a public servant.'4 1

Ibid., p. 368, Mrs. More to William Wilberforce, 26 Dec. 1823. Wilberforce, Life, V, 206. William Roberts, Memoirs . . . of Mrs. Hannah More, II, 360, Rev. Daniel Wilson to Mrs. More, 1823. 4 Morris, op. cit., pp. 390-91, George Udny to Edward Parry, 26 July 1824. s

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CHARLES GRANT'S MEMORIAL 'WAS the late Mr. Grant,' a Company shareholder asked in 1823, 'the prime mover in any system which swayed the destiny of [the] Indian Empire?' 1 The question was raised because of a motion made in the General Court two months after Grant's death that the Company should erect a monument to him in his parish church, St. George's, Bloomsbury.2 In the lengthy debate that followed, the answers given to the Proprietor's question suggested how difficult it was to assess Grant's place in the history of the British connection with India. One member thought that while Grant had been 'the clearest speaker and the best reasoner' of his time in the East India House, this did not entitle him to an honour paid in the past only to heroes.3 Joseph Hume, the Radical politican and former Company servant, who had often attacked Grant's policies, declared that he had 'performed his duty to the best of his ability, zealously and faithfully,' but this merited him no special consideration.4 Everything he had done, Hume said, would have been done by any Director in his place; it was only accident that he had been in a position at different times to take the leading part. 5 As for his famous adherence to his views in the face of all opposition, it was true that 'Mr. Grant always pursued that course which, according to his judgment, appeared to be best,' but this was no ground for erecting a monument, since he had usually been wrong.6 W. F. Elphinstone, who had been a Director even longer than Grant, and was jealous that so much credit was being given to his old rival, pointed out that in the long history of the Company, not only had a statue never been erected to a Director, but there was no record of such a suggestion even having been made before.7 The only men the Company had ever recognized in this way had been men like Clive, Warren Hastings and Cornwallis, who 'had acquired, defended and consolidated [our] Indian 1

Asiatic Journal, XVII, Jan.-July, 1824, p. 73, Debate at East India House, 17 Dec. 1823, speech by Mr. Gahagan. 2 Ibid., p. 61, speech by John Smith. Grant had been living at 40 Russel Square since he left Clapham in 1802 (Morris, op. cit., p. 269). 3 Asiatic Journal, XVII, Jan.-July, 1824, p. 76, Debate at East India House, 17 Dec. 1823, speech by Sheriff Laurie. 4 Ibid., p. 65, speech by Joseph Hume. 5 6 Ibid. Ibid. 1 Ibid., p. 62, speech by W. F. Elphinstone.

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territories.' 1 Where was the comparison, he asked, between Charles Grant and these men? They had each rendered some definite, specific service to the Company, but Grant had only acted as a Company servant or as a Director, the co-equal of all his fellows.2 At first, Grant's friends tried to defend their position by referring to specific events in which he had played a prominent part—the shipping controversy, the abuse of patronage, the Charter Debates, and so forth—but it was fairly easy for Hume and others to argue that he had only been doing his duty as an official of the Company. The real defence of the proposal for the monument came from those who flatly declared that there was no need of detailing specific acts: any one who was acquainted with the history of the Company for the previous fifty years was aware that Grant's contribution had been unique.3 That the Proprietors had never before been 'called upon to vote for great services of general superintendence and assistance in that House, ably and unostentatiously performed,' only proved, another member said, how rare such service had been, not that it was unworthy of recognition.4 In a gathering of businessmen and merchants, it was strange, one man remarked, that objection should be made to honouring Grant on the grounds that he was not a soldier and he had opposed war; 'did all patriotism,' he asked, 'consist in the successful use of the sword and shield?'5 But the best statement of what Grant's friends had in mind in making their motion—and the clearest summary of Grant's place in the history of British rule in India—was given by a rather obscure Proprietor, William Trant. 6 Forty years ago, he reminded the Court, Edmund Burke had remarked that if the British were expelled from India, in a short time not a trace would remain that any part of the country had ever been under their rule. That this was no longer true, Trant declared, was due in large part 'to the continued services and continued labours of the late Mr. Grant.' This was a large claim; but in retrospect there seems little reason to doubt the soundness of Trant's judgment. As much as any man of his generation, Grant had helped to create British India. That this was not merely a designation for a territory held by foreign arms, but was a historical entity with a life of its own, was in many ways a result of his career within the Company's administration and of his interminable papers and speeches defending the monopoly, supporting missions, and denouncing territorial expansion. When the Proprietors agreed in 1823 to erect his monument they recognized that while his contribution to the complex 1

Ibid. Ibid., p. 4 Ibid., p. 6 Ibid., p. • Ibid., p. 3

72, speech 77, speech 78, speech 74, speech

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pattern of relationships that had developed between India and Great Britain was very different from that of the great warriorstatesmen, it was scarcely less crucial. As his friends recognized in 1823, one of the most significant features of Grant's connection with India and the Company was simply its long duration. For many of the great men with whom Grant was so unfavourably compared, their Indian experience had been comparatively brief—even Warren Hastings had only ten years of real influence. Grant's contribution also differed from theirs in that his interpretation of the meaning of British rule in India was as important as the actual results his policies achieved. Hastings, for example, had stated his firm opposition to territorial expansion, yet, as Grant pointed out, he had set the pattern followed later with such great success by Wellesley and Lord Hastings. Grant, on the other hand, had been able with astonishing consistency over a period of fifty years to integrate his private views on Indian affairs with the public policies that he supported. The result was that for the last thirty years of his life he was identified with a set of opinions that were so well known as to make his responses on almost any issue quite predictable. This was of special significance in a period when the demand for better and more efficient administration of the political structure at home had made the Company's system in India seem to be the most glaring example of the evils of patronage, monopoly and inefficient business management.1 For most of the Company's critics, the root of this mismanagement was obvious— the combination under one administration of the functions of trader and governor. 'No sovereign . . . has ever yet traded to profit,' Lord Grenville declared in 1813 as if stating a self-evident maxim, and 'no trading company . . . had ever yet administered government for the good of its subjects.'2 Against this view was placed not only Grant's interpretation of the Company's rule but also his own career in the Company's Commercial Department in Bengal and as a defender of monopoly in the Home Administration. The first impulse for reform in the Company's territories in Bengal had come, Grant argued, not from the Parliament but from the Company's own servants, for most of whom administration was only incidental to trade. 3 In his own experience as Secretary to the Board of Trade and later as Commercial Resident at Malda he had found that without a sound—and reasonably just—administration, trade was impossible.4 Out of this realization had come his struggles 1

Sutherland, The East India Company in Egihteenth Century Politics, p. 57. Pari. Debates, XXV, 718, speech by Lord Grenville, 9 April 1813. 3 See above, Chapter II. 4 Ibid., Chapters III and IV. 2

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with the Company's political representative, the Revenue Collector. In the same way, the commercial reforms he had carried out under Cornwallis had far more importance than the improvement of the Company's trading position and the ending of the grosser forms of financial corruption: they were part, in one of his favourite phrases, of a system for 'the combined welfare of the people of Great Britain and India.' 1 When he insisted that the trading monopoly was necessary for the political administration of India, what he had in mind was the necessity of government control of trading relations between the two countries, since he was convinced that despite great deficiencies, the Company's form of government had established a base on which good government could be built.2 For this good government, however, something more than adherence to the old privileges was needed. It was at this point that Grant's views, which were so deeply conservative in regard to trade, were sharply differentiated from those Directors who, he once said, with 'very confined minds,' believed that India could still be controlled 'in the spirit of the old rigid system of strict monopoly.' 3 At the same time, his views on how British rule could be made to work for the welfare of both Great Britain and India were also very different from those held by men of liberal temperament. Basically, the cause of Grant's disagreement with so many of his contemporaries was his conviction that British rule in India could function only through an administrative structure that would be essentially British in character and under sanctions and standards of British, not Indian, origin.4 Not only Company servants of an earlier time, but men of a younger generation than Grant—Malcolm, Munro, Metcalfe and Elphinstone—had argued for the retention of an Indian framework for the exercise of power, but he saw intolerable contradictions involved in this proposition. For Grant, a very specific illustration of this was provided when the Bengal Government had pleaded the precedent of their Muslim and Hindu predecessors for the maintenance of the Jagganath Temple.5 Grant's conviction of the need for a British administrative structure to be undergirded by the sanctions of the rulers found vivid expression in his long advocacy of missions and in his evaluation of Indian civilization.8 While his dark image of Hinduism was very closely allied to his religious beliefs, it was, in a sense, independent of 1

Ibid., Chapter V. Ibid., Chapters VIII and XII. 3 Martin, Wellesley Despatches, V, Supplement: 'Private Trade,' p. 138, Charles Grant to J. Bebb, 4 June 1799. 4 See above, Chapter VII. 6 Ibid., Chapter XI. • Ibid., Chapters VII and XII. 2

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them, and an expression of an attitude towards Indian culture that was probably quite common among men of not particularly intense religious faith. But this attitude and his evangelical faith fitted well together, and provided a base for his argument that education and religion should be used by the Government to transform the moral character of the people. Without such a transformation, he was convinced, there would be lacking the kind of common bond between rulers and ruled that could make British rule anything more than a passing incident in Indian history. This idea found expression not only in Grant's formal support of missionary activity and in the long debate over the Vellore Mutiny but also in his interest in the education of the Company's civil servants.1 His indignant denial of the charge that he had founded Haileybury College in order to defeat Wellesley's plans for his institution at Calcutta was probably justified, for he quite clearly had envisioned Haileybury as a training ground for men who would be not just capable civil servants but also bearers of a moral and religious tradition from a superior to an inferior society. The triumph of Grant's idea was symbolized in 1857 when the Archbishop of Canterbury told the last graduating class of Haileybury that British civil servants in India were quite as much missionaries as men sent out by the Church, for they, too, were fighting in the vanguard of civilization for the conversion of India.2 For saying less, Grant had been denounced in his own time by both Churchmen and his colleagues in the Home Administration for threatening the peace of India. If a later generation was inclined to look more favourably on Grant's religious views than were his contemporaries, they found the other great passion of his life—his hostility to territorial expansion in India—quite inexplicable. His insistence that the British could not hope to control the whole of the India peninsula, and that even if they could, it would be morally wrong, seemed absurd in the light of later history.3 The chaos of the Central India states after 1800 was accepted as irrefutable proof of the weakness of his argument that the Marathas should have been left in control of their own areas, with the Company using all its energies to improve its own territories. Grant's conception of British power localized in Bengal, with enclaves at Madras and Bombay, while the rest of India was left to the Indian powers, was probably not workable, given the conditions 1

Ibid., Chapter IX. The Times, 8 Dec. 1857, quoted by Sir M. Monier Williams, 'Reminiscences,' Memorials of Old Haileybury College, F. C. Danvers et. al., London, Constable, 1894, p. 125. 8 See above, Chapter X. 2

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of the time, but to the end of his life he insisted it was British aggression, not Indian, that had led to the breakdown of what he considered the historic boundaries of British power. That the policies of Wellesley and Lord Hastings resulted in the great nineteenth century achievement of the unification of India did not prove, however, that Grant was wrong. It is possible that his hostility to subsidiary treaties and annexations may have prevented the too-rapid expansion of power which might have ended in disaster for the British. His vigorous and effective denunciations of Wellesley led Minto to proceed cautiously, giving the Indian finances time to recover and bear the burden of the renewal of expansion under Lord Hastings. Perhaps quite as important as this, he helped to raise doubts about the solidity of the great successes won by the men he opposed. The British had grown so accustomed to success in India, he remarked in 1819, that they could not imagine any other condition, but, he asked, 'Is it consistent with the course of human affairs that this should be perpetual?' What would happen to British power in India, he continued, if instead of eminent men and unvarying prosperity there should be a combination of mediocre leaders and disaster to British arms? 'Such is our situation in India, so much does our safety depend upon success and on public opinion resulting from it, that even one serious check might be felt in the very centre of our old possessions.'1 Perhaps his greatest contribution, however, was that he created an uneasy conscience about the very existence of British rule in India. Edmund Burke and his followers had tended to give the impression that the wrongs committed in India had been due to the East India Company and could be remedied; but Grant, through his defence of the Company's administration, showed that the real issue was whether any form of British control in India could be justified. This unease was a factor in the transfer of power in 1947. Over against the claim for the importance of Grant's ideas and work for understanding the development of British India must be set the fact that within a few years of his death he seems to have been virtually forgotten. The reasons for this neglect are fairly obvious. By the end of his life his economic theories seemed hopelessly outmoded, the products of prejudice and ignorance. In 1808 Sir Francis Baring had remarked that Grant's writings on economic subjects 'contain precisely the principles of writers (chiefly theoretical) of the seventeenth century,'2 and although this was unfair criticism, it indicated how little attention was likely to be given Grant's ideas 1 Asiatic Journal, VII, January-July, 1819, p. 302, Debate at East India House, 3 February 1819, speech by Charles Grant. 2 C.R.O., H.M.S. 494, Edward Parry and Charles Grant to Directors, 14 October 1808, p. 241, marginal comment by Sir Francis Baring.

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in the first half of the nineteenth century. At the end of his life, when he pleaded for protection of Indian goods from British competition, he seemed to be unaware of new movements that had swept away the usages of the past. In the middle of the century, for men like Cobden and Bright, with a generous vision of a world made peaceful through free trade, Grant's plea, if they had been aware of it, would have seemed to be a typically desperate expedient of the East India Company to prolong its existence. Grant's views of territorial expansion, which had for so long been dominant in the Home Administration, were formally repudiated in 1841 when Wellesley's statue was erected in East India House. 1 Long before that, however, the value of Indian conquests had been widely accepted. Although the apathy of many Englishmen in the first half of the nineteenth century towards colonies has often been stressed by historians, this feeling was rarely generalized to include India in its scope. In the decade before 1850, the period often considered to have been marked by little imperial activity, vast new additions were made to the Empire by the acquisition of Sind and the Panjab. By the last quarter of the century nothing could have been less congenial to the spokesmen for the New Imperialism than Grant's fear of expansion and his denunciation of Hastings and Wellesley for the immorality of their wars. For men like Cecil Rhodes and Joseph Chamberlain, imperial expansion and the wars that were an inevitable concomitant did not find a justification merely in economic results; imperialism was the legitimate expression of vital forces within the British character. This was what Chamberlain had in mind when he declared that he believed 'in this race, the greatest governing race the world has ever seen; in this Anglo-Saxon race, so proud, tenacious, self-confident and determined. . . . ' a Grant's hesitancies, his doubts as to whether British rule in India really was of benefit to either nation, his questioning of Wellesley's motivation, his uncompromising refusal to acknowledge Warren Hastings' claim to greatness, were all irrelevant to a generation that found the sanctions for conquest inherent in the character of the conquerors. Yet while the ideas that Grant had championed so long seemed to have been forgotten, they can be traced, in fact, throughout the century. Fundamentally, Grant's attitudes, not those of the advocates of the New Imperialism, were characteristic of much of British thought in regard to the Empire; Chamberlain and his followers were an interlude in the story, not the main act or even the climax. MidVictorian and earlier attitudes did not disappear; they were only 1

Pearce, op. cit., Ill, 425. Quoted by Alfred Cobban, 'The Idea of Empire,' Ideas and Beliefs of the Victorians (B.B.C. Third Programme), London, Sylvan Press, 1950, p. 329. 2

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temporarily cast in the shade. This is the point made by Alfred Cobban when he observes that, 'For all its popularity and nationwide influence, late Victorian imperialism was an abnormal growth, alien to the deeper political habits and thoughts of the country.' 1 On this deeper level the continuity of Grant's ideas and the significance of his interpretation of the nature of British rule in India become apparent. While it cannot be claimed that he remained a conscious influence—there seem to be no references to him in the speeches and writings of those concerned with India—the problems he raised and the principles he advocated found frequent expression. One of the most striking examples of the continuance of Grant's ideas is to be found in the writings and speeches of Richard Cobden. Busy in his attacks on the Company, Cobden was apparently unaware that he was using arguments given currency by one of the Company's greatest defenders. In 1853, in a pamphlet whose arguments and method of presentation are almost identical with those used by Grant, Cobden asked, 'How are wars got up in India?' 2 As Grant had done on a multitude of occasions, Cobden answered by producing documents to show that in the war with Burma the GovernorGeneral or his subordinates had deliberately provoked a native ruler to adopt an aggressive attitude and then had punished him for it. When the war was over, the Governor-General could be sure that all classes in England would be 'ready with approbation for every fresh acquisition of territory,' since the Indian peasants, not themselves, had borne the cost of it. 3 Another argument of Grant's given renewed emphasis by Cobden and Bright was that, contrary to popular ideas, there was a great latent hostility to British rule among the Indian people. This belief had undergirded Grant's version of the Vellore Mutiny as well as his attitude towards the Marathas. 4 The rise of nationalism in India would not have surprised Grant; on the contrary, he would have seen it as proof of his conviction that the Indians had a deep antipathy towards foreign rule. John Bright's warning after the Mutiny of 1857 that an Empire had been created which was too vast to manage, that territories had been annexed that should have been left independent, and that wars had been undertaken that were as needless as they were unjustifiable,6 is an echo of what Grant had said fifty years before. Grant's solution for meeting the hostility created by British 1

Ibid., p. 333. Richard Cobden, How Wars Are Got up in India, London, W. and F. G. Cash, 1853. 3 Ibid., pp. 57-58. 4 See above Chapter X. 5 Pari. Debates (Third Series), CLI, 339, speech by John Bright, 24 June 1858. 2

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rule in India was clearer and more definite than that of either Bright or Cobden: it could be overcome, he insisted, only by a radical social transformation brought about by the introduction of Christianity. While thus providing a common moral sanction which could unite ruler and ruled, Britain would also, in Grant's thinking, be repaying the debt of obligation she owed to India. Closely related to this emphasis was Grant's immensely influential evaluation of Hinduism as a degrading force that had enslaved and dehumanized the Indian people. It followed, then, that the sanctions which should guide British rule in India would be those of the governors, not those of the people; that decisions had to be made with reference to the understanding of the needs of India as formulated by the administrators, not as articulated by the people themselves. Throughout the nineteenth century this understanding of the imperial role continued to find advocates among the most thoughtful and perceptive administrators. Lord Cromer, for example, one of the most outstanding proconsuls of the New Imperialism, had a concept of the nature of British rule over alien people that is remarkably similar to Grant's. Britain was not compelled, Cromer insisted, to ask what conquered people thought best for their own interests; rather, every decision should be made in reference 'to what, by the light of western knowledge and influence, tempered by local considerations, we conscientiously think is best for the subject race.'1 The idea underlying this theory is quite different from either Edmund Burke's argument for empire as a trusteeship or from Chamberlain's argument of innate superiority; it presupposes both the transformation of the old society and the possibility of the conquered people accepting the values of the governors. There is a certain irony in Cromer's advocacy, for it was his grandfather, Sir Francis Baring, who had taken the lead a hundred years before in denouncing Grant for attempting to tamper in a new and dangerous manner with the customs and habits of the Indian people. In a secularized version, Grant's idea had been built into the structure of imperial administration. In the end, then, one of the harshest critics of the men who extended British sovereignty over all of India shared in their achievements and was himself one of the founders of the great new Empire in the East. So it seemed to the men who built the new India House in the 1860's, after both the East India Company and its old home in Leadenhall Street had been destroyed. In the great central court of the new building in Whitehall, they placed a bust of Charles Grant along with those of the other Company servants famous in the 1 Earl of Cromer, Political and Literary Essays, 1908-1913 (First Series) London, Macmillan, 1913, pp. 12-13.

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story of the founding of the Indian Empire.1 There was no need then to pay attention to the warning given in 1823 when a Proprietor had said that if a monument were to be erected to Grant, at least it should not be in East India House, where there already was a statue of Warren Hastings. 'For how could Charles Grant,' he asked, 'look Warren Hastings in the face, or Warren Hastings, Charles Grant?' 2 By the 1860's the Indian Empire was so different from what either of them had planned or foreseen that India House could honour both, forgetting how opposite were the views they had represented. But the spirit of the rulers in the 1860's would have been more congenial to Grant than to Hastings, for it was Grant's attitude to India and his interpretation of the meaning of British rule there, rather than Hastings', that found expression in the great era of constructive bureaucracy. Nevertheless, Grant would perhaps have agreed with William Morris that 'men fight and lose the battle and the thing they fought for comes about in spite of their defeat, and when it comes, turns out not to be what they meant.' 3 1

Now the Commonwealth Relations Office. Asiatic Journal, XVII, January-July, 1824, p. 73, Debate at East India House, 17 December 1823, speech by Mr Gahagan. 3 William Morris, quoted by Goldwin Smith in review of Revolutions of 1848, by P. Robertson, American Historical Revew, LVIII, October 1952, p. 113. 2

291

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311

INDEX Becher, Richard, 7, 25, 29, 30, 32, 33, 34, 37, 39-42, 43, 47, 72, 95, 109-11, 113, 120. See also under Grant, Charles Bell, Andrew, 198 Bencoolen, 191 Bengal, 31-41, 62, 70-73, 83-84, 8793, 97, 99, 100, 105, 106, 110, 115-17, 118, 136, 143-44, 173, 174, 178, 191, 209, 239-41, 24344, 268, 286 Bengal Council, 26, 29, 39-40, 41, 48, 58, 60, 62, 68, 73, 78, 81, 93, 95,97,105,110,113,162,220-21, 235, 249 Bentham, Jeremy, 198 Bentinck, Lord William, 11, 117, 157, 166; and Vellore Mutiny, 238-39, 245-47, 250 Berar, Rajah of, 224 Bernier, François, 145 Bexley, Lord, 278 Bhonsla, 213, 214 Bihar, 103 Bishops, appointment of, 271-72,

Aberdeen, 42 Addington, Henry, 176, 194 Admiral Watson, the, 26 Afghanistan, 222 Africa, 225, 226, 267 Agency Houses, 170 Agency system, 71-74, 99-103 Akbar, 226 American Revolution, 8, 63, 83, 154, 167, 174 American trade, 171-72, 255, 26364, 268, 275-76 Amrit Rao, 227-28 Amsterdam, 80 Anglo-Indians, 274 Apology for Promoting Christianity, 248 Arcot, 237 Armies. See under East India Company Army Regulations, 238-39, 241-42 Asiatic Annual Register, 217 Aspinall, A., 97 Astell, William, 255 Auber, Peter, 208 Aurangzeb, 144 Aurungs, 69, 73

281

Black Hole of Calcutta, 23 Bloomsbury, 282 Board of Control, 65, 123, 124, 126, 137, 188, 193, 206, 212, 215-16, 217, 236, 249, 259, 276; President of, 206, 207-8, 222, 232, 243, 262, 265, 275 Board of Trade, 23, 44, 55-62, 68, 72, 76, 78, 84, 95, 98, 99, 100-5, 108-11, 158, 201, 267, 275 Bombay, 19, 62,127,133,156,191, 268, 286 Boswell, James, 19 Bowdler, J., 272 n.

Babington, T., 272 n. Bank of England, 124 n., 180 Baptists, 239-40, 274 Baring, Sir Francis, 130, 135-36, 173, 182, 186, 206, 235-36, 255, 287, 290 Barlow, Sir George, 233-37, 243, 253-59, 277 Barton, William, 60-61, 69 Bassein, Treaty of, 212-14, 224 Bebb, John, 158-63 312

INDEX

Brahmins, 147, 244 Bright, John, 288-89 British and Foreign Bible Society, 240, 272 British Empire, 229, 288 Brown, David, 189-90, 223 Buchanan, Claudius, 189, 240, 248-49 Bundelkhand, 228 Burke, Edmund, 28, 90, 131, 137, 141,160,232, 269, 273, 283, 287, 290 Burma, 289 Cadet, 25 Calcutta, 23, 24, 25, 26, 44, 96, 97, 148, 158, 170, 186, 237, 248, 266, 267, 275, 276, 286 Caledonian Canal, 129 Calico Acts, 267 Calvinism, 52 Cambridge, 119, 248 Canning, George, 261, 262, 280 Canterbury, Archbishop of, 119, 286 Carey, William, 86, 94, 189, 222, 238 Carnatic, 211, 219, 241, 244-45 Caste, 146-47, 148, 172 Castlereagh, Lord, 194, 216, 217, 224, 272-73 Central India, 142, 276-77, 286 Chamberlain, Joseph, 288 Chambers, Sir Robert, 44 Chambers, William, 44, 51, 78 Chandernagore, 39 Charters. See under East India Company Chatham, Earl of, 24 China, 229, 265-66, 270, 276, 280 Church Missionary Society, 272 City Interest, 125 Civil Service. See under East India Company Clandestine Trade, 131,169-72 Clapham Sect, 8,152-53,155, 185, 271-73, 279, 280

Clarke, Mrs., 184 Clive, Lord, 10, 21, 25, 29, 34, 39, 44, 47, 49, 62, 64, 100, 209, 226, 231, 282 Cobban, Alfred, 288 Cobbett, William, 238 Cobden, Richard, 288-89 Collector. See Revenue Collector Colonization. See under Grant, Charles Commander-in-Chief, 225 ; of Madras Army, 238, 253 Commercial Department, 98, 106, 107, 108,109,113,144,163, 284. See also under Board of Trade Commercial Resident, 60, 65, 6794, 95-96, 99-103, 106, 107-9 Commercial Treaty of 1786, 81 Committee of Correspondence, 195-96, 206-7, 261 Committees. See under East India Company and Secret Committee Contract system, 71, 74-77, 98-102 Cornwallis, Lord, 7, 11, 26, 28, 47, 61, 66, 70-71, 77, 82, 84, 95-120, 123, 127,132,137,144, 180,215, 226, 231-33, 276, 279, 282, 284 Cotton, 8, 36, 72-73, 76, 84, 103, 105, 129, 130, 268-69 Cowper, William, 38 Craddock, Sir John, 238-39, 246 Crafurd, Q., 148 Cromarty, 22-23 Cromer, Lord, 290 Cromwell, Oliver, 164 Culloden, 21 Currency in Bengal, 58-59, 77, 103 Cuttack, 214 Dacca, 60, 69, 103 Dallas, Sir George, 163 Danish missionaries, 241 Dartmouth, Lord, 165, 176,193 Debt, Indian, 64-65, 227-29 Delhi, 214 Denmark, 61

INDEX

Devi Singh, Rajah, 90-91 Dinajpur, 68, 87, 88, 90, 92, 108 Directors, 55, 56,67,68,72,75, 80, 81, 82, 84, 85, 95, 98, 99, 100, 101,102,106,108,109, 111, 112, 116,123,142,147,152,225,231 ; controversies over appointment of Governor-General, 232-37; over Fort William College, 18694; over Haileybury College, 194-201; over missions, 153-55, 275; over Officers' Mutiny, 254-59; over patronage, 178-86; over Private Trade, 159-63, 171 ; over shipping, 132-37; over Vellore Mutiny, 237-49; over Wellesley's foreign policy, 20930; description of, 125-27, 205-9 Diwani, 31, 38, 72, 96 Douglas, John, 26 Duff, Alexander, 151 Duncan, Jonathan, 127, 209 Dundas, Henry, 19, 82,94,95, 106, 116, 120, 123-24, 130, 131, 132, 135,136,137,138,141, 147,150, 152, 153, 155, 159-65, 166, 168, 171, 176, 190, 243 Dundas, Robert, 11, 227, 241, 243, 247, 249-51, 265 Dutch in India, 30, 68, 70, 79-80 Dutch East Indies, 279-80 East India Company, 24, 28, 32, 38, 94; army of, and King's service, 138, 225, 237, 253-59; chairmen and deputy chairmen, 126, 184, 193, 195, 201, 205-8, 253, 255, 261, 275; Charter of 1793, 129-31, 133, 141, 151, 154-55, 158, 163, 170, 175, 26667, 269; Charter of 1813, 155, 260, 261-75, 283; civil service, 25, 29, 30, 32, 177, recruitment, 178-86, training, 187-201, 256; committees, 125, 161-62, 180-83, 195; and economy of Bengal,

102-4, 267-68; finances, 43, 64-65, 210, 226-29, 232; Home Administration, 10, 99, 123-40, 178,184,188, 191, 201,220, 221, 233, 253, 254, 257-59, 271, 275, 284, 286, 288; monopoly, 9, 129-31, 158-77, 182, 264-70; petitions against, 160, 262-63; nature of its rule in India, 14345,151-52,185,189,191, 216-17, 220, 249-51, 255, 262, 273-74, 284-85,287; its shipping, 132-36, 140, 159-77; voting regulations, 124 n. East India House, 214, 215, 229, 240, 254, 277, 280, 288, 291 Ecclesiastical Establishment, 271 Edinburgh Review, 54, 166, 262 Education grant, 273 Egypt, 148 Elgin, 21, 42, 128 Ellenborough, Lord, 222 Elphinstone, Mountstuart, 156, 285 Elphinstone, William, 205, 282 Embargo Act, 268 English Bazaar, 68 Evangelical Movement, 8, 49, 5253, 54, 94, 141-42, 143, 153, 156-57, 168, 193, 198, 270-74; evangelical chaplains, 239-41 Exeter, 160 Export Warehouse, 69, 112 Famine of 1769-70, 35-41, 43 Foreign Traders, 169-72. See also Dutch and French in India Forsyth, William, 22-23 Fort St. George, 26 Fort William College, 178, 186-95, 196, 197, 216, 222, 286 Fox, C. J., 65, 155, 160, 215, 232, 234, 236 Francis, Sir Philip, 10, 40, 45-48, 55-59, 62, 66, 68, 72, 120, 151, 215, 217-18. See also under Grant, Charles

INDEX

Fraser, Jane, wife of Charles Grant, 44 and n., 280 Free Merchants, 79 Free trade, 129, 133, 134,168, 169, 172-75, 262-64, 269-70, 274-75 French in India, 9, 30, 39, 68, 70, 80-82,107,174,210,223,224-26, 237, 242, 245 French Revolution, 9, 53, 82, 85, 150, 154, 234 Furber, Holden, 79 n., 124, 171 n. Gambling, 50 Ganges, 214 Gaumalti, 83, 85, 86 Gaur, 83 General Court. See under Proprietors George III, 236 George IV, 21, 278 Gladstone, John, 280 Gladstone, W. E., 222 Glasgow, 129 Goodlad, Richard, 87 n., 90-91 Gomasta, 71 and n., 76 Governor-General, nature of his power, 139-40, 191-92, 217, 22022; dispute over appointment, 231-37 Grant, Mrs., 57 Grant, Alexander, cousin of Charles Grant, 21, 23-25, 26, 43 Grant, Alexander, father of Charles Grant, 21 Grant, Mrs. Anne, 20, 127 Grant, Charles, birth, parentage, and education, 20-24; first appointment to Bengal, 25-42; second appointment, 43-44; marriage, 44; Secretary of Board of Trade, 23, 44, 55-62, 70, 284; in debt, 50-51, 73, 77-78; religious crisis, 49-54; Commercial Resident in Malda, 36, 66, 67-94, 95-96, 284; owner of indigo factory, 83-86, 268; his private trade, 29, 30, 49-51,

73-80, 109-11; accused of fraud, 108-12; member of Board of Trade, 84, 96-119; Director of East India Company, 129, 13132, and passim; Member of Parliament, 128-29, 217-29; chairman and deputy chairman of Company, 184, 201, 205-8, 212, 218, 239, 254, 261, 267-69, 275-76, 279; character, 52-54; method of working, 161-62; memorial to, 282-83, 290-91; place in history, 282-91; author of: Despatch in 1798, 190; of Dissents, 134-35, 161, 259; of 1805 Drafts on Wellesley, 216, 221, 222; of letters to Cornwallis, 74 n„ 109-10; of letter on trade in 1809, 265 n., of Observations on State of Society among the Asiatic Subjects of Great Britain, 141-57; of Observations on .. . Trade, 162; of Regulations for Weavers, 106; of Report on Bengal Commerce in 1787, 99 n.; of report on patronage, 180; and see footnotes, passim; and Sir George Barlow, 23337; and Richard Becher, 25, 29, 33-35; on British rule in India, 31-41, 142-44, 150-52, 156-57, 246-49, 250-51, 255-57, 268-69, 273-74, 284-85, 288-90; and 1793 Charter, 129-31; and 1813 Charter, 155, 260, 261-75, 283; on colonization, 166-69, 176, 190, 264-65, 280; and Cornwallis, 95-120, 231-33; and Dutch in India, 79-80; on the East India Company's monopoly, 9, 28-29, 129-31, 134, 15877, 218, 261-70, 280, 284-85; on the use of English, 47, 113,151, 154; on 1770 famine, 35-41; and Fort William College, 188-94; and French in India, 80-82; and Sir Philip Francis, 45-48, 56-58,

INDEX

Grant, Charles—continued 218; and Haileybury College, 194-201, 286; and Warren Hastings, 10, 47-48, 55-58, 61-65; and Hinduism, 93-94, 113, 119, 141-57, 285, 290; and missions, 9-10, 85-86, 118-20, 129, 141-57, 239-41, 247-49, 255, 259, 270-74, 279, 286; and Officers' Mutiny, 253-59; and patronage, 19, 17886, 283; and the Permanent Settlement, 113-17; and the 'Pious Clause', 152-55, 258,270; and the press in India, 168; and Revenue Collectors, 86-93; and shipping, 133-36, 159-61, 283; and Sir John Shore, 45, 52, 13640; on Supervisors in Bengal, 34, 37; on territorial expansion, 9-10, 62-65, 209-30, 243, 276-81, 286-87; and Vellore Mutiny, 237-49, 271, 286; and Wellesley, 10, 209-30; and William Wilberforce, 119, 152-55, 196, 267 Grant, Charles, junior, Lord Glenelg, 21 and n., 128, 272 n. Grant, Hugh, cousin of Charles Grant, 44, 128 Grant, James, cousin of Charles Grant, 44, 114, 115 Grant, Sir James, 26, 127, 128 Grant, John, brother of Charles Grant, 44 Grant, J. P., 129 Grant, Robert, brother of Charles Grant, 25, 43, 44, 48, 50, 51 Grant, Sir Robert, son of Charles Grant, 21, 92, 127, 128, 191 Greece, 148 Grenville, Lord, 19, 199-200, 232, 234, 236, 284 Grenville, Thomas, 262, 271 Gwalior, 213, 214 Haider Ali, 61, 63 Haileybury College, 178, 186, 194201, 286

Hardwar, 266 Hastings, Lord, 7, 10, 215, 259, 276-78, 284, 287 Hastings, Warren, 8,10,25,28,37, 41, 45, 47, 52, 55, 56, 57-59, 61-63, 68, 73, 77, 90, 103, 114, 120, 137,140, 142,143, 145,173, 214,215,221,274,282,284,288, 291 Hatch, George, 92 Henchman, Thomas, 50, 73, 163 Hertford, 186 Himalayas, 276 Hindus and Hinduism, 93, 118-19, 143-52, 240, 245, 248, 249, 271, 272-74, 285, 290 Hobart, Lord, 139, 140 Hodges, William, 148 Holkar, 213, 214, 276 Holland, 279 Hume, Joseph, 282-83 Hunter, Sir William, 36, 40, 83, 86 Hyderabad, 61, 224, 237 Imperialism, British, 7, 64, 288-90; Roman, 7; see also under Grant, Charles, British rule in India India Act of 1784, 8, 28, 65, 82, 123,124, 126,134, 139,209, 221, 235 India House, 290, 291 'Indian Interest', 125 Indian merchants, 71, 74-75, 77, 101 Indian Ocean, 225 Indian Princes, 62-64, 140, 210-14, 223-26, 243, 251-52, 275 Indigo, 83-86 Indore, 213 Industrial Revolution, effect on India, 36-37, 70, 103, 160-61, 172-74, 267 Inverness, 128 Investment, 32, 55-56, 58-59, 68-78, 84, 88, 91, 96, 97-105, 113, 144 Ironside, Colonel, 93 Italy, 268

INDEX

Jacobinism, 154, 191, 234 Jacobites, 21 Jaganathpur, 92 Jagannath Temple, 249-51, 285 Japan, 279 Java, 279 Jay Treaty, 171 Jefferson, Thomas, 268 Jones, Sir William, 148-49, 251 Jortin, John, 52 Jumna, 214

Kali, 146 Kiernander, J. L., 51 Lancaster, Joseph, 198 Land Revenue, 31-32. See also under Permanent Settlement and Revenue Collectors Lauderdale, Lord, 234-37 Leadenhall Street, 192, 290 Lindsay, Robert, 49, 67 Liverpool, 129, 130, 280 Livius, George, 45 London, 19, 23, 24, 125, 132, 169, 267 Lushington, Sir Stephen, 135,154, 195 Lyall, Sir Alfred, 7 Lytton, Lord, 222 Macao, 251 Macaulay, Lord, 151 Macaulay, Z., 272 n. Macintosh, Sir James, 19, 41 Macintosh, William, 57 MacKenzie, Henry, 51 MacPherson, Sir John, 111 Madras, 117, 237-38, 241-42, 244, 245, 286; Army Officers' Mutiny, 253-59 Maine, Sir Henry, 157 Malcolm, Sir John, 142, 226-27, 232, 253, 285

Malda, 36, 67, 68, 69, 70, 73-83, 86, 92-94, 107, 110, 115, 149, 163, 284 Malta, 263 Manchester, 129 Manu, Code of, 146 Marathas, 61-64, 71, 211, 212-14, 223-26, 227, 232, 237, 245, 251, 276-77, 289 Maritime Trade, 30, 49 Marshman, John, 247-48 Martineau, Harriet, 248 Martyn, Henry, 240 Mauritius, 127, 226, 251 Melville, Lord. See under Dundas. Mercantilism, 175 Metcalfe, Sir Charles, 285 Metcalfe, Thomas, 216 n. Methodists, 274 Middleton, Bishop, 50 Midlands, 263 Mill, James, 115, 156, 207, 262 and n. Milner, Dean, 153 Minto, Lord, 232-37, 251-53, 259, 276, 287 Missionary Register, 272 Missions, 9-10, 85-86, 118-20, 129, 141-57, 168, 222-23, 238-42, 246-49, 270-74, 279 Moira, Lord. See under Hastings, Lord Monopoly. See under East India Company More, Hannah, 52, 272, 280 Morris, Henry, 11, 49, 219 Morris, William, 291 Mughal Empire, 144, 170, 214, 226 Müller, Max, 155 Munro, Sir Thomas, 285 Murshidabad, 29, 35, 45 Muslims, 242, 245, 285 Mutiny of 1857, 245-46. See also under Vellore Mutiny and Officers' Mutiny Mysore, 61, 237, 242, 276

INDEX

Nadir Shah, 7 Nagpur, 213 Napoleon, 172, 197, 224 National Debt, 24 Nationalism, 269, 289 Native States. See under Indian Princes Navigation Laws, 176 Nawab of Bengal, 23, 30, 32, 34, 92 Nepal, 276 Nizam, 224 Non-Intercourse Act, 264 North, Lord, 46, 55, 151, 218 Observations on the State of Society among the Asiatic Subjects of Great Britain, 32 and n., 141-57, 168, 189, 219, 271 Observations on Trade, 162 Officers, Mutiny, 253-59 Oudh, 44, 62, 138, 211, 212, 219-20 Owen, Robert, 198 Paley, William, 52 Parkinson, C. N., 126 n., 161,183 Parliament, 125, 128, 130, 155, 160,163,180, 184,185,186,194, 208, 215, 217, 234, 261-62, 271-74 Parry, Edward, 45, 205, 234, 239, 245, 261, 267 Patronage, 19, 43, 126-29; alleged abuses of, 178-86, 191, 192, 234, 256, 283 Paull, James, 217 Perceval, Spencer, 185 Permanent Settlement, 47, 48, 89, 113-17, 137, 144, 244 Peshwa, 62, 213, 214, 224-26, 227-28, 276-77 Petrie, William, 254-58 Philips, C. H., 53 n., 128, 132 n., 206 Pilgrim Tax, 249-50

Pindaris, 277-78 'Pious Clauses', 152-55, 258, 270 Pitt, William (the younger), 82, 116,119, 123, 130,132,136,155, 176, 232 Plassey, 31 Plato, 148 Plymouth, 26 Poligars, 244-45 Poona, 61, 213 Porteus, Bishop, 119 Press in India, 168 Price, Joseph, 19 n., 52, 58 Portland, Duke of, 185 Portuguese, 220, 226, 251 Prince of Wales, 259 Private Trade, 29-31, 102, 129-31, 159-75,182,188,265-66. See also under East India Company, monopoly Proposal for Establishing a Protestant Mission, 118-20, 141, 152 Proprietors, 124, 125, 131, 154, 181-83, 205, 282-83 Punjab, 213 n., 288 Puritan tradition, 52 Raeburn, Henry, 54 Raffles, Sir Stamford, 278-80 Rangapur, 87 Red Sea, 226 Regulating Act, 40 Regulations for Weavers, 105-8 Reports on Trade, inl800andl801, 163, 171 Revenue Collectors, 70,86-93,107, 108, 113, 116, 244-45, 284 Rhodes, Cecil, 288 Robertson, William, 148 Rohillas, 62, 140 Roman Catholics, 241 Roy, Rammohan, 166 Saint Augustine, 7 Saint George's Church, 282 Saint Helena, 191

INDEX

'Saints', the, 185. See Clapham Sect Salbai, Treaty of, 214 San Domingo, 85 Sannyasis, 93 and n., 94 Sanskrit, 149 Sardesai, G. S., 63 sati, 157, 250 Savage, Heniy, 43 Schwartz, C. F., 51 Scindia, 213-14, 276 Scotland and India, 19-20, 22, 41, 57, 128-29, 254 Scott, David, 85, 133-34,136, 137, 138, 141, 159-61, 183, 192, 193 Scrafton, Luke, 25, 148 Secret Committee, 207-8, 212-13, 219, 251, 276 Select Committees, 29, 37, 269, 280 Serampore, 239-40, 247-49, 251 Shee, Mr., 183 Sheridan, R. B., 215 Shewglie, 20, 128 Shipping controversies, 132-36, 140, 159-75, 182, 283 Shipping Interest, 132-36, 159-61, 163 Shore, Sir John, 45, 49, 50, 51, 52, 58, 63, 96, 97, 113-15, 136-40, 148, 149, 190, 191, 210, 221, 240-41, 246, 279 Silk, 69, 73, 76-77, 79, 103, 109, 110-11,268 Simeon, Charles, 119, 240, 249 Sind, 213 n., 288 Sindhia. See Scindia Singapore, 279-80 Siraj-ud-daula, 23 Skye, Isle of, 129 Slave trade, 8, 120, 130, 267 Smith, Adam, 8, 40, 165, 173 Smith, Sydney, 271 Smith, W., 272 n. Smollett, Tobias, 22 Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 272 South America, 263

Spear, Percival, 147 Spence, W., 267 n., 269 Spices, 267 Stael, de, Madame, 20 Stephen, James, 272 n. Stephen, Sir James, 54, 250 Stuart, Charles, 99 n. Subsidiary treaties, 211-14, 223-24, 252, 276 Sugar, 267 Sumner, W. B., 25 Supervisors, 33-34, 37 Supreme Court, 44, 148 Sykes, Francis, 43 Sylhet, 67 Syrian Christians, 241

Tagore, Dwarkanath, 166 Tanjore, Rajah of, 139, 211, 244 Tea, 265 Teignmouth, Lord. See Sir John Shore Territorial expansion, 9-10, 63-65, 209-30, 276-81. See also under Grant, Charles, and Wellesley, Lord Thackeray, William, 67 Thomas, John, 86 Thornton, Henry, 52, 153, 185, 272 n. Thornton, Marianne, 20, 44 n. Tillotson, John, 52 Times, The, 179 Timur, 226 Tipu Sultan, 210-11, 213, 237, 242 Tranquebar, 241 Trant, William, 283 and n. Travancore, revolt in, 231, 252-53 Treasury, 263

Udny, George, 78, 81, 86, 94, 163, 173,174,221,226,231,248,249, 273 Unwin, George, 87 Utilitarians, 8, 156, 198

INDEX

Vansittart, George, 55 Vellore Mutiny, 237-49, 252, 253, 255, 271, 286, 289 Verelst, Henry, 29, 47, 62 Versailles, Treaty of, 81 War of 1812, 275 Weavers, 36, 59-60, 70, 72, 74-75, 87-93, 105-8 Weitzman, Sophia, 48 Wellesley, Sir Arthur, 226, 227-29 Wellesley, Lord, 10, 28, 133, 139, 150, 239, 242, 243-44, 248, 288; and expansion, 210-30, 231-33, 252-53, 256-57, 265, 276, 277, 279, 284, 287; and Fort William College, 187-95; and trade, 158, 159-61, 169. See also under Grant, Charles Wellesley Pole, William, 211 n., 217

Wesley, John, 119 West Indies, 83, 263, 267 Wheler, Edward, 45, 56, 68 'White Mutiny.' See Officers' Mutiny Whitehall, 290 Wilberforce, William, 20, 50, 52, 119, 137, 152, 153-55, 184, 185, 186, 196, 267, 270-74, 281 Wilson, Daniel, 53, 281 Woodward, E. L., 198 Woollen goods, 266 Writers. See under East India Company, Civil Service

York, Duke of, 184

Zamindars, 88, 89, 91, 92, 108, 115-17, 245

320