All the members of the administration,
besides, trade more or less upon their own account;
and it is in vain to prohibit them
from doing so. Nothing can be more completely
foolish than to expect that the clerks
of a great counting-house, at ten thousand
miles distance, and consequently almost quite
out of sight, should, upon a simple order
from their master, give up at once doing any
sort of business upon their own account;
abandon for ever all hopes of making a fortune,
of which they have the means in their
hands; and content themselves with the
moderate salaries which those masters allow
them, and which, moderate as they are, can
seldom be augmented, being commonly as
large as the real profits of the company trade
can afford. In such circumstances, to prohibit
the servants of the company from trading
upon their own account, can have scarce
any other effect than to enable its superior
servants, under pretence of executing their
master's order, to oppress such of the inferior
ones as have had the misfortune to fall under
their displeasure. The servants naturally
endeavour to establish the same monopoly in
favour of their own private trade as of the
public trade of the company. If they are
suffered to act as they could wish, they will
establish this monopoly openly and directly,
by fairly prohibiting all other people from
trading in the articles in which they choose to
deal; and this, perhaps, is the best and least
oppressive way of establishing it. But if, by
an order from Europe, they are prohibited
from doing this, they will, notwithstanding,
endeavour to establish a monopoly of the
same kind secretly and indirectly, in a way
that is much more destructive to the country.
They will employ the whole authority of government,
and pervert the administration of
justice, in order to harass and ruin those who
interfere with them in any branch of commerce,
which by means of agents, either
concealed, or at least not publicly avowed,
they may choose to carry on. But the private
trade of the servants will naturally extend
to a much greater variety of articles than the
public trade of the company. The public
trade of the company extends no further than
the trade with Europe, and comprehends a
part only of the foreign trade of the country.
But the private trade of the servants may
extend to all the different branches both of
its inland and foreign trade. The monopoly
of the company can tend only to stunt the natural
growth of that part of the surplus produce
which, in the case of a free trade, would
be exported to Europe. That of the servants
tends to stunt the natural growth of every
part of the produce in which they choose to
deal; of what is destined for home consumption,
as well as of what is destined for exportation;
and consequently to degrade the
cultivation of the whole country, and to reduce
the number of its inhabitants. It tends
to reduce the quantity of every sort of produce,
even that of the necessaries of life, whenever
the servants of the country choose to deal in
them, to what those servants can both afford
to buy and expect to sell with such a profit as
pleases them.
From the nature of their situation, too, the
servants must be more disposed to support
with rigourous severity their own interest,
against that of the country which they govern,
than their masters can be to support
theirs. The country belongs to their masters,
who cannot avoid having some regard for the
interest of what belongs to them; but it does
not belong to the servants. The real interest
of their masters, if they were capable of understanding
it, is the same with that of the
country;[42] and it is from ignorance chiefly,
and the meanness of mercantile prejudice,
that they ever oppress it. But the real interest
of the servants is by no means the same
with that of the country, and the most perfect
information would not necessarily put an end
to their oppressions. The regulations, accordingly,
which have been sent out from
Europe, though they have been frequently
weak, have upon most occasions been well
meaning. More intelligence, and perhaps
less good meaning, has sometimes appeared
in those established by the servants in India.
It is a very singular government in which
every member of the administration wishes to
get out of the country, and consequently to
have done with the government, as soon as he
can, and to whose interest, the day after he
has left it, and carried his whole fortune with
him, it is perfectly indifferent though the
whole country was swallowed up by an earthquake.
I mean not, however, by any thing which I
have here said, to throw any odious imputation
upon the general character of the servants
of the East India company, and much less
upon that of any particular persons. It is
the system of government, the situation in
which they are placed, that I mean to censure,
not the character of those who have
acted in it. They acted as their situation naturally
directed, and they who have clamoured
the loudest against them would probably not
have acted better themselves. In war and
negotiation, the councils of Madras and Calcutta,
have upon several occasions, conducted
themselves with a resolution and decisive
wisdom, which would have done honour to
the senate of Rome in the best days of that
republic. The members of those councils,
however, had been bred to professions very
different from war and politics. But their
situation alone, without education, experience,