LETTERS,
Ifc. Sfc.
" It is of most dangerous example, of most corruptive tendency, ever
to let the faults of statesmen pass uncensured, or to treat the errors or
the crimes, which involve the interests of millions, with the same indul-
gence towards human frailty, which we may, in the exercise of charity,
bestow towards the more venial transgressions that only hurt one
individual, commonly the wrong-doer himself." — Edin. Hev. No, 135.
LETTERS
TO AND FROM THE
GOVERNMENT OF MADRAS,
RELATIVE TO THE
DISTURBANCES IN CANARA,
IN APRIL, 1837,
WITH SOME EXPLANATORY NOTES.
TO WHICH IS PREFIXED
A LETTER
TO TEIE HONOURABLE THE COURT OF DIRECTORS
OF THE
EAST INDIA COMPANY.
BY
F. C. BROWN, Esq.
OF TELLICIIEUR Y.
PUDET ET H^C OPFROBRIA NOBIS,
AC DICI POSSE, NEC P0TUIS8E REFELLI.
LONDON:
PrBLISHED FOH THE AUTHOR,
BY SMITH, ELDER, AND CO. 65, CORNHILL.
October 1838.
LONDON :
'RINTED liV STEWART AND Ml'RRAY,
OLD BAILEY.
A LETTER.
^ TO THE
I HONOURABLE THE COURT OF DIRECTORS
OF THE
EAST INDIA COMPANY.
2^ Honourable Sirs,
CD
■"■ It is now four months since I had the honour of
o laying before your Honourable Court, collectively through
^ the medium of your Secretary, and individually before every
Director, printed copies of certain " Letters to, and from, the
Government of Madras, relative to the disturbances which
occurred in the province of Canara in April, 1837," now
nineteen months past, accompanied by "some explanatory
notes" from myself. 1 stated on the occasion to your Ho-
nourable Court, " that I should take the severest blame to
myself, if I had left anything undone in India, which a man
could do, to avert the necessity of submitting this corres-
pondence to the authorities before whom it must now come ;
r<^ and that it was now merely printed, not published, in order
to facilitate its perusal," by those authorities.
B
nri4-f'fi4
2. The earnest hope which dictated this step, as soon
after my arrival from Malabar as the letters could be pre-
pared, was that, without prejudging any individual, or pro-
nouncing any opinion upon the very serious and important
matters submitted to your consideration, and then revealed
for the first time, the decision of your Honourable Court
would be, that a prima facie case had been established,
upon evidence entitled to ordinary credibility, which de-
manded that a full, a strict, an impartial, and a public
inquiry should be instituted into the events, which are re-
lated to have occurred in the province of Canara, in the
months of March and April 1837, and into every circum-
stance connected with, and which followed, those events ;
and that the demands of public justice, the cries of huma-
nity, the honour of Great Britain, and the future preservation
of India — not to think of the immediate quiet and content-
ment of its millions of Natives — all concurred to require,
that inquiry should originate directly from your Honourable
Court; that it should be taken out of the hands of the
local authority which, it appeared, had been goaded into
the initiative of a professed inquiry; and be confided
to persons selected by your Honourable Court, possessing,
therefore, your own and the entire public confidence,
wholly unbiassed, and strangers to the scene and to the
parties concerned, but who should have the firmness to hold
the scales with strict impartiality between the European
and the Native, and the manliness to expose misconduct
and brand guilt, wheresoever detected, and whomsoever the
delinquent, whatever his rank, his station, his influence, or
his connections.
3. The leading and striking points of the case, which I
believed were sufficiently established to encourage and war-
rant the hope I entertained, resolve themselves, as succinctly
as they can be embodied and derived from the evidence of
facts and dates, into the following heads :
(1) That on the 30th March 1837, an agrarian mob of at
most 500 persons, late the subjects of the Rajah of Coorg,
and armed, some few with matchlocks, the rest with sticks
and bill-hooks, collected together at Pootoor,a place situated
in the Jungle at some distance from Mangalore, the Capital
of the Province of Canara :
(2) That the principal Collector of the Province, accom-
panied by a party of 150 Sepoys, marched to the spot, and
there took possession of a house (the travellers' bungalow):
(3) That the party retreated from this position to Manga-
lore, in the middle of the night; there being at Pootoor a
Pagoda perfectly defensible, supplied with water, and at the
time stored with a sufficiency of grain:
(4) That the party arrived at Mangalore on the 3rd of
April:
(5) That on the morning of the 4th of April, "a consult-
ation was held" by all the European functionaries, Civil
and Military ; at which consultation " the unanimous
opinion " arrived at was, that "the proper mode of proceed-
ing" was that "the Servants of the Government," (meaning
thereby the European servants. Civil and Military,)** for the
preservation of their lives, the Sepoys, their families, and
the treasure in the place should," the whole, " be put on
board boats," and setting sail, "abandon the place," and
the Provinces of Canara, "and proceed to Cannanore,"
eighty miles distant, the Military Head Quarters of the
two maritime frontier Provinces of Canara and Malabar :
(6) That "the attempt" to carry this "unanimous"
resolution into effect, was then made; and the Servants of
the Government, the Sepoys, their families, and the Trea-
sure marched down to the beach for immediate embarkation,
about thirty-six hours before a single man of the mob of
rioters at Pootoor appeared, or " before an attack was
made:"
(7) That " the attempt failed, owing to the want of boats
in sufficient numbers," to carry away the families of the
Sepoys, who expressed their disgust at being ordered to
b2
abandon the place, and who almost broke out into open
mutiny, when it appeared that they were required to embark,
and desert a part of their wives and families :
(8) That the wives and children of all "the Servants of
the Government" were sent off by sea to Tellicherry and
Cannanore :
(9) That, nevertheless, " there was no appearance of the
rebels coming down upon the town, before about One, p.m.,
on the 5th of April:"
(10) That such was the terror, such the panic, such the
total anarchy, which reigned at Mangalore, the Capital of
the Province of Canara, the seat of the Government, and
of the European Courts of Justice, that, " for the three days
previous, nearly the whole of the Judges' and Collectors'
establishments had quitted Mangalore, and the duties of
every department had ceased to be performed : "
(11) That this dissolution of all Government, this end of
all legal authority and subordination, this utter want of all
protection to life and person, and of all security to property,
drove to flight all those of the inhabitants of Mangalore
and their families, who could fly :
(12) That this general flight, the unparalleled occur-
rence, — *' that the greater part of the inhabitants had left
Mangalore," — it was, which was insisted on as the first and
chief reason, at the "consultation" held on the 4th of
April, in support of the " unanimous" resolution then taken
by " the Servants of the Government," of abandoning the
place, and leaving the rest of the inhabitants, who could not
fly, to the mercy of "the insurgents, who were reported to
be assembled in number about 10 or 12,000, and determined
to take Mangalore : "
(13) That all these occurrences, all these resolutions, all
these attempts, and all these scenes, were officiallj/, and in
the very words here quoted, reported to the Governor in
Council of Madras by the Zillah and Criminal Judge of
Canara, " the hour" that he, having " fortunately effected
a safe embarkation on the ship Eamont" on the 5th of
April, arrived at Cannanore on the 6th, in company with
'* the Assistant Judge of the Adavvlut," of whom he jointly
speaks as the corroborator of his narrative :
(14) That the Criminal Judge further reported, supported
by another evidence, whose testimony he forwarded and
refers to, that he beheld " the simultaneous ignition of
several parts of the town," heard " the blowing up of the
Magazine," and feared that all had been massacred ;" " in-
telligence of the most disastrous nature," and likely to " be
attended with a vast loss of life, both to the civil and
military departments of the Government," which the Judge
regretted " to have to notify for the information of the
Right Honourable the Governor in Council," as well as " to
the Commandant of the District, with the least practicable
delay :"
(15) That, the reverse of all this intelligence, the result
proved, that not a hair of the head of one of " the servants
of the Government" was touched, nor hardly a native life
lost, nor the Magazine approached, during the two attacks
of Mangalore, on the 5th and 7th of April; tiiat native
eye-witnesses of the attacks declared and wrote privately
to their relatives, that " the rebels" fled and dispersed in
all directions at the very first discharge from the Sepoys,
who overtook and slaughtered them in great numbers,
while an English eye-witness, a gallant, devoted officer,
likened the affairs to boys capturing bees' nests :
(16) That the official dispatch of the Criminal Judge from
Cannanore reached the Governor in Council, on or before
the 12th April, and the official dispatch from Mangalore of
the 10th, reporting the utter defeats, and discomfiture, and
dispersion, and great slaughter of " the rebels," reached
him on or before the 16th, accompanied by the return of
the casualties sustained by the troops in repelling the
attacks, which casualties were declared to be, " one Sepoy
killed, three wounded, one since dead:"
6
(17) That this return, compared and contrasted with the
narrative and the details given by the Criminal Judge, or
with whatever else of a similar character might be written
and reported on the same occasion, sufficed to disclose at a
glance to the Governor in Council, as it revealed to all other
men, the kind of enemies and assailants the troops had
encountered :
(18) That with the official knowledge of all these plain,
legible facts, and of all the previous occurrences before
him, and with the responsibility of being required to know,
that Mangalore is distant only eighty miles (at that season
twelve hours' sail) from Cannanore, the head-quarters of
one complete European, and of two Native regiments; of
being required to know, that a body of these troops could
have been transported by sea in row-boats, and landed at
Mangiilore, fresh with their arms and ammunition, in the
space of thirty or thirty-six hours; the Governor in Council
of Madras, on the 9th of May, many days after, published
in the Gazette a General Order, in which, with " much
satisfaction," he recorded " his approbation of the per-
severing gallantry with which the defence of Mangalore
was maintained against repeated assaults by superior num-
bers, and in the uncertainty of being reinforced or relieved," —
" and directs that the favourable sentiments with which the
Government are impressed, by their steady and soldier-like
conduct, throughout service of so harassing a nature, may
be made known to the officers and men of the — regi-
ment N. I.:"
(19) That the Governor in Council proclaimed martial
law in several of the districts (counties) of Canara Proper;
while the official report of the Judge stated to him, that
the persons who had suddenly risen were "numbers of the
inhabitants of the Coorg country,''^ who had "taken possession
of the treasure ;" and that their further overt acts were,
" to place their seals, together with our own, on our Dis_
trict Cutchcries and Treasuries, and offer service to the
Potails (village headmen) and servants:"
(20) That this information conveyed at the outset strong
presumptive proof, that it was not the inhabitants of
Canara who either previously knew of, or who voluntarily
took part, in the disturbance; even if the presumption had
not been converted into undoubted fact, by the immediate
flight of great numbers of the respectable inhabitants with
their families to all the coast-towns of Malabar, by the
complaints of desertion and the appeals for protection,
wholly neglected, which others of the chief inhabitants
addressed to Mangalore, and by the urgent petitions for
aid, which others among them dispatched to Tellicherry
to the Judges of the Provincial Court for the Western
Division :*
(21) That martial law being thus proclaimed, the regi-
ment of infantry, which garrisoned Mangalore, which had
attempted to abandon the place, and " failed for want of
boats," and had received in General Orders the thanks of
the Governor in Council for its " conduct throuohout service
of so harassing a nature," — this regiment was employed
and detached in enforcing martial law in the proclaimed
counties, in sending as prisoners to Mangalore such of the
inhabitants as they seized, there to be tried by a Court
Martial, assembled by order of the Governor in Council, the
* Immediately the disturbances broke out, the principal inhabitants
of South Canara dispatched messenger after messenger with petitions to
Cannanore and Tellicherry, urging that means might betaken to quell it,
and protect them. Four miles from Cannanore there is an inland back-
water, extending to within about forty miles of Mangalore: 100
Sepoys dispatched at that time, and led as Madras Sepoys are accus-
tomed to be led, would in twelve hours have cleared the coast-road, and
settled the whole affair. But there was no Magistrate on the spot with
authority to move troops. Tlie Collector of Malabar, the nearest Magis-
trate having the authority, was left alone in his Province; he could not
be in every part of it, and he was then in a distant one. lie posted to
Cannanore as soon as he possibly could; but the time was passed, and
the panic in Canara then irremediable. This is the internal Government
uniformly described, and declared, and supposed to be strong. Strong !
— the strengtii of anility, with its wisdom and temper.
President of which Court Martial was the Officer, who com-
manded at Mangalore, and marched down his men to the
beach for embarkation on the 4t!i of April, the interpreter
of the Court being likewise an officer of the same corps:*
(22) That the Governor in Council, — in a case, and on an
occasion, the extreme necessity of which rested, as far as
the iniiabilants of Canara Proper were cognizant of, or
implicated in, any riot or disturbance, upon the occurrences
officially related, and upon the testimony officially given to
him, — delegated to, and vested the power of confirming, and
of carrying, without reference to Madras, into immediate
execution the capital sentences passed upon the prisoners
by the Court Martial, in the hands of the Officer com-
manding the Provinces of Malabar and Canara, — an officer
an entire stranger to the people, and generally to the
country : the Governor in Council grounding the act of
delegation upon the following Regulation of the Government
of Madras, which is here quoted at length, in order that
your Honourable Court and the people of England may
learn and dwell upon the kind of offence, which, in the
deliberate judgment of the Governor in Council of Madras,
was deemed and declared to be treason and rebellion within
the Regulation, and to be deserving, in the persons above
described, seized, and convicted before the Court Martial,
" of the immediate punishment of death, by being hanged by
the neck till dead" and of the forfeiture "to the British
Government of all property and ejects, real and personal :f"
* To remove this regiment at once, all that was required was to have
it relieved, if necessary by detachments from Caunanore. It was kept
spread over Canara, and was not put in orders to leave the Province
until the 12th December, 1837; a date which the subsequent proceedings
render it necessary particularly to notice.
t A.D. 1808. Regulation VII.
I. Whereas during wars in which the British Government has been
engaged against certain of the native Powers of India, certain persons
owing allegiance to the British Government have borne arms in open
hostility to the authority of the same, and have abetted and aided the
9
(23) That, in conformity to the last section of the Regula-
tion, the next measure of the Governor in Council was, to
appoint a Special Court, or Commission, consisting of two
enemy, and have committed acts of violence and outrage against the lives
and properties of the subjects of the said Government; and whereas it
may be expedient that, during the existence of any war in which the
British Government in India may be engaged with any power whatever,
as well as during the existence of open rebellion against the authority of
the Government, in any part of the British territories subject to the
Government of the Presidency of Fort St. George, the Governor in Council
shall declare and establish Martial Law, within any part of the territories
aforesaid, for the safety of the British possessions, and for the security of
the lives and property of the inhabitants thereof; by the immediate
punishment of persons owing allegiance to the British Government,
who may be taken in arms, in open hostility to the said Government, or
in the actual commission of any overt act of rebellion against the
authority of the same, or in the act of openly aiding and abetting the
enemies of the British Government, within any part of the territories
above specified; the following regulation has been enacted by the
Governor in Council to be in force throughout the British territories,
immediately subject to the Government of the Presidency of Fort St,
George, from the 1st day of October, 1808.
II. The Governor in Council is hereby declared to be empowered to
estabhsh Martial Law, within the territories subject to the Government of
the Presidency of Fort St. George, for any period of time, while the
British Government in India shall be engaged in war with any native or
other power, as well as during the existence of open rebellion against
the authority of the Government in any part of the territories aforesaid,
and also to direct the immediate trial, by Courts Martial, of all persons,
owing allegiance to the British Government, either in consequence of
their having been born, of their having served under it in any capacity,
or of their being resident within its territories, and under its protection,
who shall be taken in arms in open hostility to the British Government,
or in the act of opposing, by force of arms, the authority of the same, or
in the actual commission of any overt act of rebellion against the State,
or in the act of conspiring with, or of openly aiding and abetting, the
enemies of the British Government, within any part of the said
territories.
III. It is hereby further declared, that any person born, or residing
under the protection of tlie British Government, within the territories
aforesaid, and consequently owing allegiance to the said Government,
10
Judges, who were deputed from Tellieherry to Mangalore, to
try tlie prisoners spared by martial law:
(24) That, after the principal Collector and Magistrate of
Canara had reported (at Cannanore) that he could not
answer for the safety of the persons of those Judges on their
journey through his Province, where martial law was being
enforced, the Judges had personal, ocular demonstration at
every stage of their progress, from the Rajahs and other in-
habitants who came to them in mass, that, so far from
there being any spirit of turbulence or disaffection existing,
the inhabitants appealed to them, and exclaimed in the
strongest manner against the end and withdrawal of all
government over them, and at their persons, their families,
and their properties being left exposed defenceless, to the
attacks of the first band of robbers who should choose to
plunder and murder them :
(24) That, arrived at Mangalore (3rd May) the Judges
knew not, nor could learn from the officer (a Bombay officer,
an entire stranger,) to whom they were officially referred for
the information, what prisoners they were to try :
who, in violation of the obligation of such allegiance, shall be guilty of
any of the crimes specified in the preceding section, and who shall be
convicted thereof by the sentence of a Court Martial, during the esta-
blishment of INIartial Law, shall be liable to immediate punishment of
death; and shall suffer the same accordingly, by being hanged by the
neck until he is dead. All persons who shall, in such cases, be adjudged
by a Court Martial to be guilty of any of the crimes specified in this
regulation, shall also forfeit to the British Government all property and
effects, real and personal, which they shall have possessed within its
territories, at the time when the crime of which they may be convicted
shall have been committed.
IV. The Governor in Council shall not be precluded by this regula-
tion from causing persons charged with any of the offences described in
the present regulation to be brought to trial, at any time, before the
ordinary Courts of Judicature, or before any special Court appointed for
the trial of such offences, under Regulation XX, 1802, instead of causing
such persons to be tried by Courts IMartial, in any cases wherein the
latter mode of trial shall not appear to be indispensably necessary.
11
(25) That the functionaries who, according to Regulation
(20 of 1802) were enjoined to assist in expediting the trial
of the persons charged with crimes against the state, were
the Principal Collector and Magistrate, and his Assistants
at Mangalore, every one of whom was present at, or a party
to, the resolution taken and attempted, on the 4th of April,
of abandoning the place:
(26) That these functionaries, all of whom, as well as
every other European functionary, Civil and Military,
parties to the same resolution were, without exception,
maintained in office and authority at Mangalore, were also
the sole civil functionaries who, by virtue of their Magis-
terial powers, were actively engaged in detecting, seizing,
committing, and arraigning capitally, all persons accused
of participation, overt or covert, in the disturbances; being
aided in this duty by the Native Officers of Revenue and
Police employed under them, many of whom were declared
to have altogether disappeared for three days previous to
the attacks:
(27) That in order to forward and facilitate the convic-
tion of the persons so seized and so accused, the Governor
in Council delegated to the Principal Collector and Magis-
trate, individually, the power of pardoning any persons,
whose evidence he might require for this end ; qualifying
this delegation, made in violation of all Regulation, with the
observation, "that the Government put the most implicit
trust in his exercising the power with the soundest dis-
cretion :"
(28) That the Principal Collector and Magistrate issued
a proclamation, which the Governor in Council has never
either disavowed, or disallowed, putting the price of 10,000
rupees upon the head of Apparampara, and 5,000 rupees
upon the head of Kallianappa, two persons therein des-
cribed as the rebel leaders ; the positive, undisputed fact
being, that Apparampara was at the time, and for months
previous, a prisoner in jail at Trichinopoly, and Kallianappa
12
a prisoner in jail at Bangalore, both hundreds of miles
away from the disturbance :
(29) That Devappah, the head native functionary under
the Collector and Magistrate, and who, with others, was
made prisoner at Pootoor, declared, on his liberation by the
Coorgs and arrival atMangalore in the end of April, that the
rioters had not more then 200 stand of fire-arms among them :
(30) That the prisoners had previously declared the same
thing, and declared that they had no intention of approach-
ing Mangalore, until news was brought to them, that the
Europeans and troops had deserted the town, leaving behind
the treasure which the inhabitants would not suflfer to be
taken away :
(31) That, at length, on the 31st May, feeling it in my
own case impossible to remain longer silent under the re-
proaches of my conscience, which accused me; seeing all
that I had seen of the panic in Malabar, knowing what I
knew of the real events in Canara, hearing what I heard of
them from all around me, and hearing of the number of
persons that were being publicly executed; of being privy
to the deaths of the greater number who were dying in jail
at Mangalore, all without another human being than my-
self to undertake their cause, or say one word, nut in their
defence, but in revelation of the real facts of the case; being
further made privy to the nameless horrors, to which their
homes and families were delivered up ;* at length, I ad_
* Let any man read the following extract of a letter : —
Mangalore, 9th May, 1837.
" 's detachment appears to be the acting one, 's the looting
(plundering). The Bombay officers (including those of H.M. 6th, who
returned yesterday) cry 'shame, shame!' I hear. On the lUh the hang-
ing will commence, I presume. The ravishing is said to have been exe-
cuted by 's detachment already. The people fly whenever it ap-
proaches their villages. The people here were in great alarm yesterday,
having heard of the performances in the Mofussil (the inland country),
and htlitvcd that the town was to be given up for three days' loot (sack
and plunder) from to-day !"
13
dressed the Governor in Council, supplicating for mercy
for the rest of these ignorant, unfortunate, misguided crea-
tures ; showing, from the private, familiar testimony of a
native to his own family circle, that they were, from the
beginning, a mere mob ; imploring, not that he would credit
me, but that he would grant a brief space for enquiry and
investigation, and suspend his belief in their guilt or inno-
cence, until he read their trials, and heard the judgment
upon the events, which impartial, unbiassed men of rank
and character, deputed to the spot, should pronounce :
( If writing, as I believed I was writing, under the seal
of confidence which, from a British subject, a landholder,
and a Justice of the Peace, in my situation, it will, I think,
be held, that it was no less the interest of the Governor in
Council to encourage, than it was his duty to respect, the
feelings which overwhelmed me labouring for utterance,
betrayed me into an undue warmth of expression, not war-
ranted by the necessity, the urgency, or the fearful magnitude
of the occasion, or that was calculated to wound the feel-
ings of the functionaries, of whom, and of whose conduct,
it was my duty to speak, in a degree beyond what the plain,
undisguised narrative of harrowing, yet indisputable occur-
rences, which men would give a thousand after-lives to
recal, must ever wound; or if, having for my object to
arouse and, if possible, to arrest the Government in its
career of spreading universal hatred and abhorrence of the
British name, it shall be thought, that eternal, impartial
truth could have suffered me to stop short in what I wrote
to attain that object, even if the hazard were the severing
for ever of the ties of long, inviolable, friendships cemented
in other climes, and of ending the hitherto unbroken rela-
tions of private life with others around me ; if this be my
error or my crime, I shall lament it, and join in its con-
demnation.)
(32) That the next step taken by the Governor in Coun-
cil, at the lapse of more than five months after the official
14
report of the Criminal Judge had been before him, was, to
appoint a Commission, consisting of a MiUtary and of a
Civil Member, the latter a Member of the Board of Reve-
nue, "to inquire" (in the words of the Gazette, 16th
Sep., 1837) "into the causes of the late insurrection in
Canara, &,c. :"
(33) That in a month (20th Oct.) the Military Member,
Major-General Vigoureux, was relieved from the Commis-
sion for the reason that his Regiment, H.M. 45th, was
under orders, as it was when he was appointed, for embark-
ation to England from Madras; and was succeeded by
Major General Fearon, C.B., Deputy-Adjutant-General to
H.M.'s forces, who again, on the 1st December, "was per-
mitted, in consequence of certified ill-health, to relinquish
the appointment of Commissioner : "
(34) That no Military Member replaced General Fearon;
and that four days after his resignation, on the 5th Dec,
the Civil INIember likewise appeared in the Gazette, as
permitted to proceed to sea for eighteen months on medical
certificate, none of the Members having to that time pro-
ceeded further than Bangalore :
(35) That after the Commission was announced, — after
it was known that the appointment of the Commission
ascribed to my letters to Madras and Bengal was a sub-
ject of annoyance to certain of the authorities at Man-
galore, — and after those authorities had had private,
secret possession of one of my letters to the Governor
in Council of Madras, for three months, a respectable
Native of Mangalore declared to me and to other persons
at Tellicherry, referring to and producing a Native Officer
of Canara to corroborate the truth of what he said, that
he saw with his own eyes, and heard with his own ears, the
town-crier go about the town with a Proclamation, prohi-
biting the inhabitants from even speaking of the scenes
and events they had witnessed, and been made the innocent
victims of, under pain of being immediately seized, and
sent to jail :
15
(36) Lastly, that such was the monstrous distortion,
such the unpardonable exaggeration, with which the riots
in Canara were coloured and industriously reported, far
and near, that the Natives of the adjoining Province of
Malabar were alarmed and convulsed, for a season, and in
a manner beyond belief; a season, which the Collector of
the Province, on the spot, and in the midst, has designated
as " a trying time," to all who witnessed it, and had a stake
in the country, or who felt any anxiety for the maintenance
of public tranquillity, or for the continuance and stability
of the British rule.
4. Such, however numerous, their cumulative weight
residing still more in their gravity and importance than
in their number, are the leading and strikingly promi-
nent features of the case, which I did myself the honour
of laying before your Honourable Court, on the 2nd of last
July.
5. A cursory perusal of the letters would, I conceived,
show, that the evidence upon which rest by far the greater
number of the facts and occurrences related, are indisputa-
ble official reports and records, transmitted to the Gover-
nor in Council of Madras ; and that the proof of the
remainder is of that direct, connected, and presumptively
credible nature, as would secure its reception and im-
mediate consideration in any ordinary case, demanding en-
quiry, a fortiori in so unexampled a case as the present ;
wherein the suppliant is not the humble individual who
addresses you, but in which the real suppliants,for hearing
and for redress, are a million and a half of Natives, the
subjects of one of your Madras Provinces, and through
them, the whole body at large of the Natives of your Indian
Empire; in bringing whom before the eyes of your Honour-
able Court, the more visibly because they are unseen, let
me be suffered to say, with every sentiment of respect, that
the Creator has seen fit, and has been pleased, to endow
them likewise with reason, to gift them with speech, and
16
to possess them uiili human feelings. Hence the hope
felt, that your Honourable Court would take, on the occa-
sion, some public, decisive steps in the briefest space
required for deliberation and due preparation.
6. Presumptuous indeed would it have been, to call it
by no harsher name, if so humble a person as the writer
had suffered any suggestion to emanate from himself; if,
losing sight of the deference and consideration due to your
Honourable Court, I had not stiictly confined myself, at
that stage, to a simple exhibition and illustration of the
official correspondence, which took place before I left India.
There are occasions, when the path which justice and
patriotism, which public duty and private honor dictate, is
so plainly and imperiously pointed out, that to hint at that
path, to men possessed of high-mindedness and self-
respect, is justly held and received in the light of the most
inexpiable of insults.
7. The strict and unbroken silence, however, of so many
months, which your Honourable Court has preserved to-
wards me, notwithstanding a written and a verbal offer to
furnish any other information in my power, leads me greatly
to fear, that it is not the facts adduced, nor the evidence
alleged, which are so much open to doubt and suspicion,
as the channel through which the one and the other have
been brought before you ; and that the distrust, the dislike,
the discredit, and the discountenance with which your
Honourable Court were once wont to receive and treat all
conmiunications relative to India and its silent millions, from
persons whose lot it is not to be in your service, is regarded
as an all-sufficient reason why the present case, coming
from one of these persons, should likewise be passed over
sub silentio.
8. If this fear should, unhappily, be well-grounded, if,
what I am most averse to think, the ancient animosity felt
towards thesealien Englishmen, gaining strength from years,
prove at heart indestructible, I shall most deeply lament it;
17
not so much from the personal disgrace afflicting them and
myself, for —
"Suffering is the badge of all our tribe;"
as from this feeling being at the present time a great public
calamity, certain of producing very evil effects upon the
minds of the people of India, as well as fatal and most
pernicious consequences both upon the commercial and
upon the political interests of the Empire at large.
9. But finding it impossible to believe in the existence of
such a feeling, — believing rather, that the judgment of your
Honourable Court, however anxious to decide and act,
remains in suspense, from some broken, imperfect link,
requiring to be joined and connected, in order to render
entire, continuous, and complete the chain of evidence
illustrating the conduct held by the Government of Madras,
throughout the present occasion, ab ovo usque ad mala; it
becomes my duty, after this considerable pause, to supply
the apparent want to the best of my ability, by producing
some further testimony, all likewise official, in support of
what has been advanced ; testimony which, independent of
its extrinsic and intrinsic authority, impartiality may, per-
haps, be disposed to think entitled to be received with some
additional confidence, when it is stated, as it can be proved,
that the existence of this testimony was unknown to me in
July, when I did myself the honour of addressing your Se-
cretary.
10. I proceed with the detail. The SpecialJudicial Com-
mission, already mentioned, which was ordered to proceed
to Mangalore, and immediately commence the civil trial
of the prisoners, arrived there in obedience to this order
on the 3rd of May, 1837. In addition to this special
duty devolved upon both, the senior of the two Judges
was charged with the further duty of the ordinary Circuit,
and directed to proceed with the half-yearly sessions and
jail-delivery of the province of Canara, in substitution
c
18
of his immediate senior, the first Judge of Tellicherry, to
whom this duty properly and in turn belonged.
11. Part of the oath taken by a Judge of Circuit is,
(Regulation 7th of 1802, sect. 5.) "that he will truly and
faithfully execute the duties of Judge — that he will admi-
nister justice according to the Regulations that have been, or
may be, enacted by the Governor in Council, to the best of
his ability, knowledge, and j udgment, without fear, favor,
promise, or hope of reward." He is enjoined by tbe same
Regulation (sec. 32) "to visit the jails on every Circuit."
The Judges of a Special Court or Commission are enjoined
to "proceed like Courts of Circuit;" and they are em-
phatically ordered, to ^'exercise all the powers and authorities,
vested in the Courts of Circuit by the Regulations." (Reg. 20,
of 1802, sect. 3.)
12. In obedience to tiiis soleami oath, and to these ex-
press Regulations; not to quote the orders of his immediate
superiors, the Court of Fonjdaree Udalut, alike binding and
imperative upon him; the Circuit Judge of the Commission
proceeded, on the 26th May, some weeks after his arrival
at Mangalore, to visit the jail, when, as he afterwards offi-
cially reported, "verbal complaints of unjust arrest were
made to him," by many among the prisoners with whom
the jail was crowded; but the Judge did not deem it
" necessary to call for explanation" at that time, for the
reason that " the number in confinement afforded reason-
able ground for conclusion, that even a slight enquiry, to
warrant detention, could hardly have been held in all cases,
though, even by that time, much, he conceived, might have
been done."
13. At the lapse of some more weeks, on the 16th or 17th
June, the Circuit Judge conceived it his duty again to visit
the jail. Again was he beset and overwhelmed with the
same complaints as on his first visit. He states, that, "a
boy only ten or eleven years of age, the son of a prisoner,
had been in confinement nearly four months" — that,
19
"another, a youth, was actually sent (for trial) before the
Special Commission, without ever having been confronted
with an accuser, and no one would, or ever did, accuse
him" — that "four Madras Coolies, who brought (and it
must be concluded, delivered) Stationery for the public
offices, were confined without the slightest ground for
suspicion." The Judge also found, " that the Magistrate had
a large body of men under a Military guard, independent
of 237 found in the regular jail of the Zillah, who may have
NO FRIENDS, OR OTHER MEANS, to bring the hardship
of their cases to Ms notice, and consequently before the higher
authorities" — that "he further had heard of most distress-
ing cases of despondency, which may naturally be expected,
when there are such frequent instances of persons being
led out for execution :" (meaning by this observation, as
I am persuaded the Judge did mean, that the prisoners in
jail were either dying of, or putting an end to their ex-
istence from, utter despair at the hopelessness of their
fate and treatment.)
14. For all these paramount reasons, from the surmise
grounded, as the Circuit Judge stated, " on uncontroverted
fact, that the innocent might be suffering," and " that
amid so much confusion, innocent persons may have been
arrested;" for the reason, that nearly three months had
elapsed since the suppression of the outbreak ; seeing " that
the Magistrate, Joint Magistrate, and two Assistants had
all been at the station for a considerable time ; " — having
reason " to believe that he (the Magistrate) had not made
due progress in ascertaining whether there was even slight
ground for detaining each person whom he had in custody;"
believing that " the Regulations, as well as the first princi-
ples of justice, obviously require, that the Magistrate should
lose no time in making a list of all persons in his custody,
or confined under his orders, showing the date of apprehen-
sion, and the cause:" for all these solemn and paramount
reasons, the Circuit Judge, conceiving that the time for
c2
20
his interference had imperatively arrived, yet disclaiming all
" wish to embarrass the Magistrate, or to interfere unne-
cessarily with the execution of his duty," addressed one
requisition, then another (17th and 20th of June), to the
Magistrate ; the first simply calling for " a list of all prison-
ers who have not been brought to trial, the date of appre-
hension, and grounds for detention, according to a form ;"
the second, for the particulars of the case of a prisoner
named, a Native of Mi/soor, whose brother complained to the
Judge in open court, that he had presented two Jruitkss
petitions to the Magistrate.
15. A correspondence ensued between the Circuit Judge
and the Magistrate, which ended in the Magistrate rcfiisino;
compliance with one requisition or the other, and in his
appealing direct to the Governor in Council; before whom
the whole correspondence was likewise brought by the Fonj-
daree Udalut, the superiors of the Judge, accompanied by
a running conmientary to which it is wholly superfluous to
direct attention, exhibiting, as it does, a state of government,
a state of law, and a state of criminal justice, without a
parallel in any country believed to have a government, to
have laws, and to have courts of justice.*
* Extract from the proceedings of the Fonjdarce Udalut, under date
the 3d July, 1837:—
Read letters, dated respectively the 23d and 24th ultimo, from the 2d
Judge on Circuit in the Western Division, submitting copy of a corres-
pondence with the Magistrate of Canara respecting the number of
persons under his custody, charged with the commission of crimes
against the State, and adverting to the style and tenor of the ]\Iagistrale's
replies, and to liis " disposition" to evade compliance v/ith the requisitions
of his "precepts," requesting that the Court of Fonjdaree Udalut will
" obtain" for him " their support of" his " authority," and " the enforce-
ment of the subordination which the Regulations prescribe."
1. The cause of the 2d Judge first addressing the Magistrate, on the
subject of the number of prisoners in his custody, charged with crimes
against the State, is stated in his letter of the 17th June, 1837, to have
been to " enable him to communicate to the Court of Fonjdaree Udalut,
21
16. Immediately on the receipt of the Appeal from the
Magistrate, the Governor in Council, situated nearly five
hundred miles away from the place where all these scenes,
on the subject of the duties required of" him ; and he accordingly
requested to be informed of the number of prisoners in his custody, who
were likely to be brought before the Special Commission.
2. In reply, the Magistrate* informed the 2d Judge, that he had not
been able to make all the inquiry necessary to a due answer to the
question, but that he had fifteen cases then ready for the Special Com-
mission, and that he conceived at least thirty more would come before it.
3. The 2d Judge on Circuit, considering this information insufficient
for the purposes for which he required it, pointed out to the Magistrate,
in a letter, dated the 19th of the same month, that he wished to be in-
formed of the numher of prisoners likelij to be brought before the Special
Commission, and begged he would do him " the favour to say how
many" he had in custody, and give even a rough estimate " of the
number likely to be brought to trial."
4. The Magistrate replied, in the course of the same day, that he was
unable to answer the question " with even an approximation to correct-
ness ;" that the number of prisoners to be brought before the Special Cora-
mission would " depend on a variety of circumstances which" he could
not at that "time embrace;" that the various shades of guilt "in each
case must be considered," also " whether the case be" for a Court Mar-
tial or the Special Commission," and that " these questions" involved
"a sifting of evidence," for which there had "not as yet been sufficient
time."
5. Upon receipt of this letter,f the 2d Judge on Circuit issued a
Precept to the Magistrate, pointing out " that the Regulations, as well as
the first principles of justice, obviously required, that the Magistrate
should lose no time in making a list of all persons in his custody, or
confined under his orders, shewing the date of apprehension, and the
cause of it," as it was " very possible that, amid so much confusion,
innocent persons" had " been arrested," — that on the 2d Judge " visiting
the jail on the 26th" of the previous month (May), " verbal complaints of
unjust arrest" had been "made to him," but that he had not deemed " it
necessary to call for explanation then," as the number in confinement
afforded reasonable ground for conclusion, that even a slight inquiry to
warrant detention could hardly have been held in all cases, though even
* Magistrate's letter, dated 19th June, 1837.
t Vide Pro. of the Court of Circuit of the 20th June, 1837.
22
all these sufferings, all these executions, all these distressing
cases of despondency, were daily occurring before the eyes
by that time "much might have been done;" that " such reason for non-
interference no longer" existed,— and that he could " foresee no difficulty
as to making sufficient inquiry to ascertain whether anij have been ground-
lessly seized, (a measure of obvious duty, as some had been taken so far
back as 6tl) of April), since the Magistrate, Joint-magistrate, and two
Assistants," iiad " all been at the station for a considerable time," — that,
therefore, he had resolved, " with reference to a petition from one Patia
Shetty" complaining " of the unjust detention of his brother, Padma
Shetty, an inhabitant of Mysore," to require the Magistrate to " submit
a list of all prisoners" then " in confinement, who had not been brought
to trial, the dates of apprehension, and grounds for detention," " in order
that the Judge on Circuit may be enabled to call for any further explana-
tion, or to make a representation to higher authority."
G. The 2d Judge on Circuit, at the same time, observed, that he
" would not wish to embarrass the Magistrate, or to interfere unneces-
sarily with the execution of his duty ; but as he was aware that the
Magistrate had a large body of men under a military guard, independently
of 237 whom he found in the regular jail of the Zillah, who may have
no friends, or other means, to bring the hardship of their cases to his
notice, and, consequently, before the higher authorities; and as further he
had heard of most distressing cases of despondency (which " might
naturally be expected when there" were " such frequent instances of
persons being led out for execution") he considered it " an urgent duty
to call for such statement without further delay."
7. Instead of conforming to the instructions contained in this precept,
or shewing cause for not doing so, the Magistrate, in his return of the
22d ultimo, merely acknowledged its receipt, stating that he had wished
" to avoid collision with the Circuit Judge, but finding this almost incom-
patible with his requisitions, he had determined to apply for the orders
of the Government."
8. The Court of Fonjdaree Udalut cannot but consider such a return,
addressed to a superior officer, as highly insubordinate. If the Magis-
trate objected to furnish the information required by the Judge of
Circuit, he should have stated the grounds of such objection, and
awaited the further instructions of the superior Court, and in the event
of the final orders being, in his opinion, contrary to the Regulations, it
would have been open to him, to have requested a reference to yet
higher authority.
9. At the same time the Judges must observe, that they consider the
proceedings of the 2d Judge, of the 20th June, 1837, open to objection,
23
of the Natives, all of whom were hourly exposed, in
addition, to the extreme rigours and terrors of Martial law ;
inasmuch as the reference made to the Magistrate respecting «// prisoners
in his custody, involved a call for information respecting prisoners liable
to be tried by Martial Law, over whom the 2d Judge could exercise no
jurisdiction; and with reference to the state of the District, the press of
business, and the difficulties surrounding the Magistrate, the call for any
information on the subject was, perhaps, inopportune.
10. The Court of Fonjdaree Udalut, however, give full credit to the
2d Judge's assertion, that humane and public motives alone dictated his
interference.
11. Witli respect to the return made by the Magistrate, under date
the 24th ultimo, to the precept issued by the Judge on Circuit of the
same date, calling for information in respect to the confinement of Pud-
raaya Shetty, the Court of Fonjdaree Udalut have only to observe, that
if the Magistrate had confined himself to the explanation afforded in
paragraph 2 of his return, there could have been no cause of objection;
but to proceed to " caution" the 2d Judge, in the style and tone adopted
in the 3d and 4th paragraphs of his return, is an instance of disrespect
and contempt of superior authority which, in the opinion of the Fonjdaree
Udalut, deserves severe reprehension.
12. The Governor in Council having called upon the Magistrate to
furnish the information in respect to the number of prisoners in confine-
ment, charged with crimes against the State, and the nature of the
evidence against them, which it was the object of the precepts issued by
the 2d Judge to obtain, the matter is, of course, taken out of the hands of
the 2d Judge; but the Court of Fonjdaree Udalut deem it necessary to
submit the correspondence for the consideration and orders of the
Governor in Council, as the Judges feel persuaded, that, unless such
repeated instances of insubordination on the part of the Magistrate be
speedily checked, serious interruption to important business will be the
consequence.
Ordered, that extracts from these proceedings, together with the
original correspondence referred to above, be forwarded to the Chief
Secretary to Government, for the purpose of being laid before the
Governor in Council.
(A true Extract.)
(Signed) Register.
To the Chief Secretary to Government, Judicial Department.
[Not to encumber the page, the sequel of this official correspondence
will be found at the end of this letter. See Note A.]
24
the Governor in Council, thus situated, and before vvliom
by an act of his own Council, the ink of which was hardly
dry, a Native in the Provinces was virtually and actually
prohibited (as shall presently be shown) from appearing in
complaint, even if despair for the life of an innocent, im-
prisoned father, brother, or son, — nay, if the innocent lives
of all three such victims united, had hurried off to Madras
a Native of Canara, bravino; the danoers and fatigues of a
five-and-twenty days' foot-journey, in the hope of staying
the sword of the executioner, kept ready-drawn over lives
so dear to him ; the Governor in Council, thus situated,
without the presence of a Native in his Council, without,
it must be thought, one Native near, whose mute presence
should remind him of the existence of such beings as Na-
tives, and that it was the lives, then at stake, of hundreds of
them, crowding and dying in a jail, — some proved to be
innocent even of a suspicion of crime ; others, without
friends or means to bring the hardshij) of their cases to light,
other than the interference of the Circuit Judge who, after
a lapse of many weeks, sought no more than a bare discrimi-
nation of the mass of innocent from the guilty — of those
without crime or accusers, from those criminated in, or even
suspected of, mob-rioting : the Governor in Council, in order,
as the Fonjdaree Udalut observes, that the matter "might,
of course, be taken out of the hands of the Circuit Judge,
called upon the Magistrate to furnish (direct to Government)
the information, in respect to the number of prisoners in con-
finement, charged with crimes against the State, and the
nature of the evidence against them, which it was the object
of the Precepts issued by the Judge to obtain."
17. Without stopping to ask your Honourable Court to
lay your hands on your hearts, and now declare, as upright
men, whether, in the case which was previously delineated
and set before you, there is, or there can be, one feature of
exaggeration ; without stopping or asking you to dwell upon
this one fact, that there is here official proof, dated 3d
25
July, 1837, under the sign and seal of the Court of Fonj-
daree Udalut, — the highest Court of criminal, civil, and
magisterial justice, the Court uniting and exercising the
powers of the Court of Queen's Bench and the Court of
Chancery combined, over all the Courts, and throughout
all the territories of Madras ; — that the Governor in Council,
after having proclaimed Martial law for weeks and months
before in Canara, after having assembled a Court Martial
then sitting at Mangalore, and trying prisoners for treason
and rebellion, and having devolved into other hands the
power of confirming and carrying into immediate execution,
the sentences of death and of forfeiture of all property,
passed on the Natives convicted ; after having dispatched to
Mangalore another Special Court, and after having been
apprised, since April, of the great and unresisting slaughter
which had been made of the rioters, wherever the troops
had encountered them ; without stopping, I say, to rivet
your attention to this one proof derived from the highest
Court, that it was in the very end of June, after all these
severe and sanguinary measures had been enforced, when
the Governor in Council, for the first time, called upon the
Magistrate under whose authority all the prisoners were
confined, for information relative to their number, their
crimes, and the evidence against them ; without stopping to
remark that this call, when made, so far from being spon-
taneous, or originating with the Government, was forced
from it by the firmness and decision of the Circuit Judge;
without stopping to put one of the multitudinous questions,
■which crowd for answer, even upon this one solitary point
of conduct on the part of the Executive; I proceed to relate
the next step taken by the Governor in Council.
18. On the 24th Jul}-, the urgency of the case remaining
unabated, the Governor in Council proceeded to review the
correspondence between the Circuit Judge and the Magis-
trate, submitted to him, together with the accompanying
remarks of the Fonjdaree Udalut. The Governor in
26
Council begins his Minute by declaring, that " an attentive
perusal of the papers has impressed him with a very un-
favourable opinion of the conduct of both" the public
functionaries concerned, who " are observed to have given
way to their private feelings and idle notions of dignity, and
to have acted in a manner which is highly discreditable to
them as officers of the Government, and calculated to prove
injurious to the public interests ;" that " the interference of
the Judge with the Magistrate's functions was vexatious,"
and they are warned " that a repetition of such proceedings
will be visited by a more decided mark of displeasure."
19. This is the language, these are the words, yes, the
ipsissima verba, — these the deliberate opinions and judg-
ment placed on record on this occasion by the Governor in
Council of Madras, to be transmitted at the fitting season
for the confirmation and approval of your Honourable
Court, as a just exposition and impartial summing up of the
real merits of this case, and a fit sentence to be passed upon
the actors, according to the joint and equal measure of their
errors and delinquency. But although these are the very
words of the Minute, although every character of this
" Consultation," such is its name, is as plainly and palpably
before my eyes, as every word of it is faithfully transcribed
below, for the perusal and astonishment of those who may
chance to read these pages;* although I have read and
* Extract from the Minutes of Consultation, 24th July, 1837.
From the Magistrate of Canara.
Submitting for order an extract from Read the following Papers : —
the proceedings of the 2d Judge on Circuit
in the Western Division, calling upon him
to state how many prisoners he has in his
custody, on account of crimes against the
State, and for an estimate of the number (Here enter 23d June, 1837.)
likely to be brought before the Special
Commission, together with his observa-
tions, showing the unreasonableness of
27
re-read this paper, and cannot therefore doubt its existence,
cannot doubt, that such a Minute did emanate on the day
of its date from the Governor in Council of Madras ; yet
the demand in the present state of affairs
in Canara.
From the some.
Submitting a further Precept from the
2d Judge on Circuit in the Western
Division, in reference to his communica-
tion of yesterday's date, and also another
from the same officer respecting the arrest (Here enter 24th June, 1837.)
of Pudna Shetty, one of the prisoners
connected with the late insurrection, and
requesting the early orders of Government
on the subject.
Extract from the Proceedings of the
FONJDAREE UdALUT.
Submitting for the consideration and
orders of the Governor in Council the
originals of a correspondence between the
2d Judge on Circuit in the Western Divi-
sion, and the Magistrate of Canara, and (Here enter 3d July, 1837,
communicatingthe opinion of the Court of No. 193.)
Fonjdaree Udalut, that unless the spirit of
insubordination, evinced by the latter
officer, be not speedily checked, serious
interruption of important business will be
the consequences.
1. An attentive perusal of the papers, recorded above, has impressed
the Governor in Council with a very unfavourable opinion of the con-
duct of both the second Judge and the Magistrate. At a time, and on
an occasion, when the public interest imperiously demanded, tliat the
most entire cordiality and co-operation should subsist between public
functionaries, working together for the attainment of a great and im-
portant object, these gentlemen are observed to have given way to their
private feelings and idle notions of dignity, and to have acted in a man-
ner, which is highly discreditable to them as Officers of the Government,
and calculated to prove injurious to the public interest. Tlieir proceed-
28
tlie will, however pursued and overwhelmed by this weight
of evidence, shrinks away wholly powerless at moments, in
the effort of compelling a helief in the reality; while reason
would willingly cheat itself into thinking, that the whole
must be " some idle coinage of the brain ;" that the
" imagination has bodied forth the form of things un-
known," and unheard of before, among the acts and deci-
sions which harsh, despotic, and irresponsible power, past
or present, has brought itself to record.
20. For, what spirit, what meaning, is there not breath-
ing and embodied in every line and every letter of this
sentence? It declares to the Natives of Canara, more
expressively than the plainest words can declare, that the
Circuit Judge, he who had been selected, and who had
sworn to administer justice to them " ivilhoutjear or favour,
and according to the Regulations ;" who, in obedience to
ings are the less excusable, as neither tlie second Judge nor the Magis-
trate can plead inexperience, or ignorance, of what was expected of
them.
2. The Governor in Council cannot omit particularly to notice the
objectionable language, in which the magistrate's communications are
couched, which is observable likewise, in the letter addressed by him to
Government, under date the 23d ultimo ; nor the vexatious interference
of the second Judge with that gentleman's functions at a time, when he
was already overwhelmed by harassing and arduous duties ; and, as
this is not the first time both these gentlemen have rendered themselves
obnoxious to the censure of Government, for precisely similar miscon-
duct, the Governor in Council resolves to warn them, that a repetition
of such proceedings will be visited by a more decided mark of the dis-
pleasure of Government.
(A true Extract)
(Signed)
Chief Secretary.
To the Judges of the Fonjdaree Udalut for their information, and for
communication to the Second Judge, and the Magistrate respectively.
(True CopiesJ
(Signed)
Register.
29
this oath and to clear and express Regulation, had, after a
delay of some weeks, visited the jail, where hundreds of
prisoners were confined, and could not there shut his ears
to the complaints they made to him of unjust arrest; who,
after a silence, and at the lapse, of several more weeks,
again visited the jail, and was met and overwhelmed by the
same complaints, wholly unredressed ; who, in the execution
of his duty, became aware that, independently of these
prisoners, the Magistrate had a large body of men under a
Military guard, who had no friends, or other means than the
Judge's interference, of bringing the hardship of their cases
to the knowledge and notice of the Governor in Council ;
the Judge, who heard and knew of most distressing cases
of despondency occurring among the persons confined,
caused by the sight of frequent executions; who stated,
uncontrovertedly, the case of a boy, a prisoner's son, only
ten or eleven years of age, having been in confinement with
his father nearly four months ; who stated the case of four
Madras Coolies, laden with Government Stationery, confined
without the slightest ground for suspicion ; who stated the
case of one prisoner, a youth, having been sent up for trial
capitally, without its being possible to find any person, who
ever did or would accuse him ; the Judge, who proved the
correctness of his surmise, that innocent persons were suffer-
ing arrest and imprisonment, by tlie further case of a Native
of Mysoor, whom the Magistrate informed the Government
he had no intention of releasing, but whom he did release,
after the Judge's interference, and after the man's brother
had, weeks before, presented tivo Jruitless petitions ; who
further proved the correctness of his surmise by the uncon-
tradicted fact, that the Magistrate daily released numbers
of prisoners, after he made his appeal to the Government
against the Judge's interference, but not before that inter-
ference; the Judge who, if this call, 'the desiring to know
the number of persons confined, and their crimes, was
" inopportune," was declared by the Fonjdaree Uduhit to
30
have made it ^^ from humane and public motives alone i'^
the Judge who, of every person, of every part, of every
portion, of the Madras Government, is proved to have been
the very first person, at the lapse of several months, who
did consider it any part of his duty to call for any infor-
mation whatever on the subject (this, in a country where a
Habeas Corpus is no more known, than mercy is heard in
the region of doomed spirits, and where the substitute pro-
vided for it is the production inserted below!*); the
* Let those take the consequences, whose proceedings and productions
have now made it a crime of deep die to withhold the following revela-
tions. Up to the 16th May, 1837, the Natives of the Madras Presidency
had always had one sacred asylum left to them in their complaints: the
doors of the Government House had always been thrown and kept wide
open to their petitions, whence they received kind and conciliatory
answers in all cases, in some cases, redress. Hence the Natives invariably
separated the Governor from his Council. The Council, as they knew,
and intensely felt, brought up apart from the dawn of manhood, were
named and sent there to represent their own order, and their own
separate caste interests. But the Governor was an Englishman, usually
taken from the body at large of English gentlemen of rank. Respectable
Natives admitted to his presence found, instead of pride and arrogance,
manners, kind, open, mild, and encouraging. He would give them a
chair; he thought it no degradation that a Native should be seated before
him. To him, therefore, the Natives instinctively clung and looked up
as their representative; as the person in the Government who, above
caste leanings and prejudices, was really best disposed to listen and do
justice to their representations ; and among themselves, they would
wind up their complaints by exclaiming, " If we do not get redress, we
will petition the Governor Saheb."
Accordingly, many petitions used to be addressed direct to the
Government House, for the Governor in Council; petitions often con-
veying information of the very last importance for the Governor to
receive. In support of this (and if the averment be unfounded, there is
the late manly, upright Governor of Madras to contradict me), I refer
to the proofs and indications, not of faults nor mere offences, but of
serious, heinous public crimes, which have been transmitted to Govern,
ment by Natives, who were afraid to put their names to what tiiey wrote.
It is their crime, doubtless, that they are in a condition that an honest
31
sentence declared to the Natives, that the Circuit Judge,
for this act of almost negative interference in behalf of the
unfortunate prisoners, after knowing and seeing with his
man among them dare not come forward, and denounce corruption and
guilt; dare not say to the offender to his face, "you are the criminal, and
here are the proofs!" without feeling certain that he and his family will
sooner or later be sacrificed.
The consideration which justified the keeping open of this sole channel
of direct communication of the Governor with the Natives, the leaving to
them this one safety-valve to their complaints, in a system which, by
every other means, keeps the Governor blindfold, was the lamentable, the
melancholy necessity of the case, the res dura et regni pi'avitas. Hardly,
however, had the late Governor turned his back (4th March), and before
the new Governor could be aware of the purpose for which his name was
being used, when the opportunity was seized efl'ectually to bar up this,
the last remaining, refuge to the people, by issuing and prescribing to
them strict obedience to the following " Rules :" —
Fort St. George Gazette, May 16, 1837.
The following Rules respecting Petitions are published for general
information :
1. Whereas the practice of making applications and appeals direct to
the Government, who are unable to pass any orders thereon without pre-
vious reference to the Department concerned, is productive of incon-
venience io public offices, and of delay and disappointment to individuals :
the Right Honourable the Governor in Council is pleased to promulgate
the following Rules for general information.
2. Persons having cause of complaint against an officer of Govern-
ment, civil or military, or his agents at the Presidency, or in the Pro-
vinces, shall, in the first instance, seek redress /row the officer in whom
the local autliority is vested ; and that officer will, in every instance in
which he is unable to comply with the requisition, give the petitioner a
written endorsement, or where endorsements are not authorised, a copy
of the order, setting forth the grounds upon which it is refused. If the
petitioner is dissatisfied with this decision, he is at liberty to address the
Board or Court, or superior civil or military authority by which the
subordinate officer is controlled ; and the Government, in cases in which
there is no intermediate authority.
3. The Government will not receive (italics in the original) a petition
ON ANY MATTER, unlcss it shall appear that the Petitioner lias already
applied successively to the subordinate officer, and to the Board, or Court,
32
own eyes all that was going forward, had impressed the
Governor in Council with a very unfavourable impression of
his conduct, — that he had given way to private feelings,
or superior military Officer; and the answers, or orders, of those autho-
rities respectively, if any have been passed, or copies of them, must be
annexed to the petition addressed to Government.
4. The Government, having passed one order on any appeal made to
it, will not notice a second petition on the same subject, unless new and
important matter be introduced; and anonymous petitions will be totally
disregarded.
5. As the Right Honourable the Governor in Council never interferes
with the distribution of subordinate appointments, applications in the
gift of Heads of Departments will also remain unnoticed.
Revenue Department.
6. The proper course for persons having petitions or complaints to
make regarding matters belonging to the Revenue Department, is to
address, in the first instance, the Collector, or subordinate covenanted
officer, to whose charge the matter appertains: in the latter case, if the
answer or order of the subordinate officer does not satisfy the com-
plainant, he ma2/ address the Collector ; from the order of the Collector,
on a petition or complaint addressed to him in the first instance, or on
an appeal from the order of a subordinate officer, an appeal may be
preferred to the Board of Revenue, and eventually to Government, but it
is to be understood tliat it is only iri extraoi-dinurij cases that Government
will interfere in matters which have been considered and disposed of in
due course by the local and controlling authorities.
7. Upon complaints of persons dismissed from office by Collectors
and Sub-collectors, the decision of the Board of Revenue is final with
respect to offices below that of Head-S/tcristadar. (italics in the original.)
8. Persons dismissed from the office of Head-Sheristadar, whose dis-
missal has been confirmed by the Board of Revenue, are at liberty to
appeal through the Board to Government. Petitions direct to Govern-
ment will not be received, (italics in the original.)
Judicial Department.
9. Petitions will not he received by Government, (italics in the original)
regarding any matters which form the subject of judicial proceedings in
the Courts, or which properly fall within the jurisdiction of tlie Courts, or
containing complaints relating to the administration of civil or criminal
33
acted in a manner highly discreditable to him as a Judge,
and Injurious to the public interests ; and that if he per-
sisted in discharging his duty as he had done, fearlessly
justice, in cases on which another mode of obtaining redress, is open to
the complainant, under the Regulations, and in which by the Regula-
tions, a subordinate authority is competent to pass a final decision.
10. In other cases petitions wilt not be received by Government con-
corning the administration of civil or ci-iminul justice, or the proceedings
of the O^cersemployed therein, unless it shall happen that the Petitioner
has already brought the subject before the proper controlling authority
and has not received satisfaction, in which case the petition to that
authority and the order passed upon it, if any has been passed,
must be produced.
11. Government icill not receive petitions from persons dismissed from
Ministerial offices in the Courts : such persons having cause of com-
plaint, may offer petitions to the proper controlling authorities, by whose
decision they must abide.
Military Department.
[Two similar paragraphs here follow.]
Published by order of the Right Honourable the Governor in Council.
It has been proved by the official testimony of the Circuit Judge and
of the Fonjdaree Udalut, that in a month after the publication of these
" Rules," two successive petitions were presented, in accordance with
them, to the Magistrate of Canara, by the brother of a prisoner, an inno-
cent man and a foreigner, then confined for high treason ; that both
petitions proved ^'■fruitless," that is to say, received neither notice
nor endorsement : it has been proved that the Circuit Judge in-
terfered to obtain an answer to them, and that his interference
was " fruitless ;" it lias been proved that the Governor in Council,
the framer of the " Rules," publicly stigmatized the Judge's " inter-
ference" as "vexatious." So much for cases immediately occurring
and brought to light, in which the lives of the Natives were at stake.
As to " the Revenue Department," that is to say, their petitions of Reve-
nue grievance, I have by me two of these petitions ; cases, every parti-
cular of which I so well knew, and thought so cruel, that I myself drew
up both petitions, ill the hope that I could make them more easily intel-
ligible, and obtain redress for the sufl'ercrs. Both petitions were pre-
sented und refused to be received by " tlie local authority." It will be
said, the petitioners had an appeal. Suppose then, that they made the
D
34
and honestly, by breaking tlie peremptory silence now
imposed on his lips, whatever the injustice, whatever the
cruelty, whatever the oppression, he might see or hear of,
appeal as usual, by post, to a distauce. The easy answer to a reference
on the subject would have been, that " search had been made, and no
such petitions had been received, as all the Native public Officers were
ready to attest;" and the consequence to the Petitioners would have
been, the Revenue and Police authorities being always united in the same
persons, and thei/ being " the local authority" appealed against, that
the Petitioners would have been liable to immediate fine and imprison-
ment for making afulse complaint.
It is hence plain that the operation of these " Rules," under a Govern-
ment so framed, so constituted, and so conducted, was, in point of fact,
to place the Natives, in cases of liberty and property, out of the pale of
humanity as effectually, as if "Rules" had been passed in the late Slave
Colonies, enacting that no slave should complain to a Magistrate of ill
treatment by his Master, or by hin Jliasto'sorf/ers, unless he first presented
a petition to his Master, setting forth this ill treatment, and produced his
Master's "written endorsement" upon the Petition.
But these, howsoever painful, are only very limited illustrations of the
effect of these "Rules" upon the personal protection and happiness
meted out to a people in the state of society, where the " Rules " were
devised and promulgated. " Manners," observes one of the first and
wisest of men (Burke), "are of more importance than laws. Upon them,
in a great measure, the laws depend. The law touches us but now and
then, here and there. Manners are what vex or soothe, corrupt or purify,
exalt or debase, barbarize or refine us, by a constant, steady, uniform,
insensible operation, like that of the air we breathe. They give their
whole form and colour to our lives. According to their quality, they aid
morals, they supply them, or they totally destroy them."
To picture, then, the kind of manners by which some among the
governing class scruple not " to debase " those who cannot resist them,
it must now be stated, that I have known it to be an order in a Court of
Justice, given to the Judge's tipstafis, whenever a Native present hap-
pened to sneeze, or to cough, or spit, to take the offender by the neck
and shoulders, and thrust him out of Court. It will be found entered,
in plain letters, on the records of another Court of Justice, that a Judge
dismissed one of the Native Officers, and reduced him to beggary, for the
crime of not having bowed to the ground sufficiently low, one morning
when the Judge entered the Court; the culprit had bowed, it was admit-
ted, but the Kotou was not abject enough !
It has been known that a Judge, when sitting on the Bench, would
35
the Judge should (to transh\te in plain, unambiguous words
the threat held over him) be forthwith removed, and sus-
pended from office !
send one of his tipstaffs to the beach, at the time the boats were return-
ing from fishing, have a large basket of fish brouglit into Court, and the
contents all turned out on the floor; select from them the best and
freshest fish for his tiffin (noon-day meal) or dinner, and then order the
Bramin Treasurer of the Court to pay for this fish ; thus fitly finishing
this scene, gone through in a Court of Justice called British before all
the Natives present, without the smallest reserve or compunction, by
putting the grossest outrage he could put upon this man's personal and
religious feelings ; an outrage so gross that the Treasurer immediately
wrote his resignation of office.
It is wholly superfluous to observe that, in Courts of Justice so pre-
sided over, corruption and venality among the Native Officers of it must
be the rule. 1 have in my possession a letter from a Native to a suitor,
offering to obtain a decree for the latter for 20 Rupees (£2 sterling). But
let me here add, that there are exemplary and noble exceptions ; that I have
known, and know, Judges deserving of the high rewards which their
country can bestow ; whose righteous cond uct lives engraved on the hearts,
and embalmed in the memories, of the grateful Natives; Judges, whose
names rise to my pen, as they dwell in my mind, were my painful duty
with names, and not with things.
Morals cannot be disunited from manners, and to those I must now
pass. I will not do more than allude to the commonness of the practice,
of employing the public Peons, given to functionaries for their personal
honour, in pandering for their private pleasures ; that is to say, to em-
ploying a Native Oflicer, clothed witli one of the Honourable Company's
badges of Office, and receiving public pay, in the degrading avocation of
a p — p. But I ask, and let virtuous men answer the question, let them,
I say, think of the honour of their country, and fearlessly answer it;
whether, for several years, it was not a subject of conversation at Madras,
and on the Madras side, both among Europeans and Natives, that a
Judge had appointed his chief p — p to the office of Moonsif, had ap-
pointed this person to the office of Native Judge over his countrymen, to
the first office in honour to which a Native can aspire ? I myself knew
and saw a Native Officer made a Judge, who, some years before, had
brought a female he called his sister to the house of the European Judge,
newly appointed to the Court, (it is from the latter's mouth that I repeat
the relation,) thinking by such means to secure his favour. But trans-
cending all belief would be the following narrative, if 1 had not received
it from a gentleman higli in tiio Service, and well informed of the parti-
I) 2
36
21. I am aware, and I have no doubt tlie circumstance
will elsewhere be brought prominently forward and insisted
on, as a proof of rigid impartiality, that, in the words of
this " Consultation" which were designed to meet distant
eyes, the Magistrate is linked together in the same censure
culars. Some time ago, the Sheristedar of a Court of Justice, that is,
the Native Officer next in rank and dignity to the European Judge, had
a beautiful and virtuous wife ; in every respect, in her own country,
a hdij, both by birth and education. The Judge heard of her beauty,
and scrupled not to send proposals to her. She rejected them witli the
liveliest scorn and indignation. A short time after, it was discovered in
Court that the husband had committed some fault, deserving of (sus-
pension from office, and he was suspended. In a few days again, the
Court Officers saw him restored; the wretched wife had been brought to
submit to the violation of her person, as the price of his restoration !
Now let any man, — let any Englishman, read this, think of this, think
of these people, think of only one such deed being done to them, — of its
being known, and talked of even in a whisper, and then let him turn to
and think of tliese "Rules 1" " Rules" enjoining and obliging the pros-
trate victims of conduct such as this, if they sought redress, to petition
the wrong-doer ; ordering the husband to proclaim his dishonour, the
wife to detail her shame and violation, by petition in open Court, and
obtain "a written endorsement!" the Governor in Council declaring to
them and to all Natives, that he " will not receive a petition on any matter
unless it shall appear that the petitioner has applied successively to the
subordinate officer and to the Board or Court ! " Let a man think, that the
framer,orframers, of these " Rules" are the persons for whose chief benefit
and advantage the Government is devised, and by whose sole voice it
is conducted ; and that they seized the moment of obtaining to the
" Rules" the sanction of a young Nobleman, scarcely landed, inexpe-
rienced, high principled, confiding in those placed around him, with a
heart overflowing with kind and generous emotions towards all men,
and who would sooner have cut off his right hand than have affixed it to
such a paper, could he have been brought to conceive all that its provi-
sions would sanction and let loose upon the people, he was sent to listen
to and protect. To complete the picture, let it be known, that the
" Rules" were hailed by the Madras authorities, with hardly an excep-
tion, with the loudest praise: this production being, it seems, the last
stone wanting to complete the work of their hands : it being their " Bill
of Rights !" Fitting is it, tiiat the Natives be gagged, and every alien
Englishman driven out of the country !
37
as his superior, the Circuit Judge. The eyes, the senses,
and the fears, however, which were really and immediately
meant to be addressed by it, were those of the European
and Native public of Mangalore ; where English is com-
monly read, and fluently and correctly spoken and written
by many Natives ; and where, in order that all men might
discriminate, without the possibility of mistake, the func-
tionary against whom the censure of the Governor in
Council was fulminated, while this "Consultation" was
produced in one hand, the Magistrate had the power of
producing, as he did produce, in the other, constant, fre-
quent, confidential letters, written to him by a Member of
the Government, the President of the Board of Revenue,
his immediate superior ; letters not merely conveying entire
approval and hearty praise of his conduct throughout, but
going the length of, in a manner, courting his suffrage and
his favor; a degree of confidence and unflinching support,
which was the general topic of conversation at Mangalore,
and was there openly ascribed, to the well-known and oft-
repeated circumstance, of the Magistrate having a near
connection a Member of your Honourable Court, to his pos-
sessing the ability to influence and command votes in the
Court of Proprietors, and hence the plain, open inference,
that supporting him, at all hazards, was the conduct which
would prove most acceptable to your Honourable Court, and
be remembered as an eventual passport to your favor, and
that of the Court of Proprietors.
22. Now, let your Honourable Court picture to yourselves,
if the human mind can bring itself to picture it, the condi-
tion of the people of Canara. Martial law proclaimed, its
sentences executed without reference to Madras, a Circuit
Judge silenced in his vain efforts to discharge his duty^
by the opprobrious censure of having given way to private
feelings, the law henceforth dead, the Magistrate encour-
aged to persevere in the career, oflicially described and
denounced, by the strongest private countenance and
:5.54if54
38
support ; the Governor de facto deaf to the people, the
Council de facto deaf to them, every person, every power,
every authority, deaf to them; and lastly, to crown and
consummate this scene, the hearts of your Honourable Court
represented and believed to be seared and closed, the
feelings of the Court of Proprietors to be hardened and
deadened to their complaints, by local influences and by
private interests so powerful and all-absorbing, yet so inef-
fably selfish and sordid, that their cries would be received
and regarded here, in England, the sacred dwelling-place
of humanity, as the idle wind, even if Heaven should lend
its blasts to make them audible across the globe !
23. Your Honourable Court will fly from this picture ;
you, and all men who behold it, will rush into incredulity
and scepticism, to escape from a stupor of horror. Be it so.
Be incredulous : call me, if you will, a maligner and calum-
niator. This is relief, to labouring longer with this dreadful
incubus, fatal to all peace and to all rest. But there exists
a disproof of the truth of this representation, a disproof of
it perfectly clear, obvious, ready, and easy ; and nothing
but this disproof will, or can, suffice. It is this. Every
letter, and every part of a letter, which a Member of the
Government wrote to the Magistrate of Canara, or he to a
Member of the Government, touching his conduct, his
duties, his differences, or the stateof his Province, through-
out this melancholy period, was a demi-official letter. Every
one of these letters must be in existence, in the original,
must be, or it ought to be, on record. There can, on such
an occasion, and on such subjects, be no seal of privacy,
no destruction. Let all these letters be produced, and let
them contradict what has been declared to me, what I am
forced to believe, and am now forced to declare, relate
although it does to men, whom I never met, never thought
of, nor ever thought of mentioning, but with feelings of
kindness and esteem. But |)ending the production of these
letters before the authorities, who have an undoubted
39
right to call for and see them, and to pass judgment upon
the tendency and effects, which their contents were calcu-
lated to have upon the minds of the people at Mangalore,
your Honourable Court will admit the force of the reasons
which kept me away from thence ; you will feel in your
own breasts all the force of the execration I should deserve,
if, following a first and strong impulse, I had gone thither,
and exposed one Native more, could one Native have been
found possessed of moral courage enough to approach, and
not to fly from, me as from pestilence and death, to the
chance of the calamities in which such multitudes around
felt hopelessly involved.
24. Having produced before your Honourable Court this
*' Minute of Consultation," the severity of truth demands
that, among whatever number the legal responsibility of it
may be divided and diminished, the moral responsibility
which attaches to this deliberate act, before the tribunal of
public opinion, should be traced and fixed to the real
author, or authors.
25. The Governor in Council then of Madras, de facto,
during the wholeof this period, consisted of the Commander-
in-Chief, nearly an entire stranger to India, who it was
believed and understood restricted his interference and
control to his own immediate department, and of one
civil Member of Council, the President of the Board of
Revenue ; upon whom devolved, and who in point of fact
exercised, all the executive functions of the Government.
His Lordship the Governor was absent from Madras,
between Bangalore and Ootacamund,from Juneto October;*
the other civil Member, who completes the Council (for
nearly twenty previous years, the able and respected head
of the Board of Revenue, but in Council made the titular
President of the Fonjdaree Udalut,) was also absent on the
Neilgherrics, all the time, on account of his health, which
* See Asiutic Jouriuil for November ;iiid December, 1H37.
40
speedily after compelled 1) is retirement. His Lordship the
Governor of Madras de jure, therefore, was as ignorant, and
all men will feel persuaded, as innocent, of " the Minute of
Consultation of the Governor in Council of Madras" de
facto, until the Minute was recorded, and dispatched,
and had been read, and passed from hand to hand at Man-
galore, as if His Lordship had been all the time, where he
was a few months before, in Great Britain. That I may
not be suspected of stating to your Honourable Court a
circumstance, upon which the public of Madras were suf-
fered to be in the least doubt or ignorance, or which does
not rest upon official proof, your Honourable Court need
only refer in evidence to the Fort St. George Gazette of the
period in question, where it will be seen that, during His
Lordship's absence, all acts of the Government are headed
in the name, and were done under the authority, of " The
Governor in Council ;" while, immediately upon His Lord-
ship's return, the more ample and expanded formula of,
" His Lordship the Right Honourable the Governor in
Council," prefaced as heretofore, and ushered forth, the
deliberations of the Government.
26. Having felt debarred by the strongest reasons from
repairing to Canara, I cautiously abstained in the letters I
addressed to the Government, and which are before your
Honourable Court, from adverting to the causes of the dis-
turbances there ; to the complaints and grievances which
drove a simple, quiet, peaceable, inoffensive race of men to
assemble from their wilds and jungles, and commit riots.
That I have truly represented the disposition and character
of these people, I refer your Honourable Court to the testi-
mony of Mr. Viveash Baskerville, and of Mr. F.Anderson
of the Madras Civil Service, both now in England ; who,
I am sure, will suffer me to mention their names in the
cause of truth and humanity. The first gentleman will
tell your Honourable Court that he was the Principal Col-
lector and Magistrate, when the Coorg districts below the
41
Ghauts, the original seat of the disturbances, were annexed
to the Province of Canara, and was the Collector who first
made " Jumma-bundee " with the people; that is to say,
using English language and intelligible speech, who first
commuted, agreeably to the much-lauded and extolled Ma-
dras Ryotwar Revenue System, the definite assessment hi
produce and in kind upon their lands, which these people had,
from the beginning of time, paid to their Rajahs, into, what
is called a Jixed annual maximum assessment in money;
a change which they received and obeyed with all respect
and with all humility, as if it had been the fiat of Superior
Wisdom. Mr. F. Anderson will tell your Honourable
Court, that he made these annual Settlements for the three
following years with the Gowdas, such is the caste name
of the chiefs among these people; and that he found them
all as quiet, docile, and well-disposed as they had previously
showed themselves to his predecessor.
27. Not one of these people had I an opportunity of
seeing and questioning, and of learning from themselves
their subjects of complaint. But every Native of Canara,
whom I saw and spoke to, stated, without exception, the
cause of the first disturbance to have been the following.
The Gowdas and Natives of the new districts had gone on
paying for three years, or as long as they could pay, this new
fixed maximum Money assessment demanded from them,
until all their means of raising it from other sources being
exhausted, they could pay it no longer. They represented
their inability to the Collector's Sheristedar, on his Jumma-
bundee arrival at Pootoor in March ; they said, money they
had not, but there was their produce, let him take that,
as their Rajahs had always done (and let one single instance
be proved of any Native, in any part, refusing to pay his
assessment in produce, as long as he has produce to pay).
The Sheristedar told them in reply, that he had nothing to
do with their produce ; that they must pay down in money,
or, in default, their cattle and moveables should be attached
42
and sold, and these failing, their lands, according to Regu-
lation : proceeding, as some said, to execute the threat,
others said, using it only to intimidate and silence the com-
plainants. Whether this, or the reverse, be true, the
assembled people, hearing or fearing the threat, exclaimed,
** What are we to do without our plough-cattle ? how till
our fields next rains ? can we plough with nothing left but
our hands and nails? Starve then, it is clear, we must next
year; so we may as well be killed, and die at once."
Whereupon they seized their clubs and bill-hooks, seized
the Sheristedar and his fellow-servants at Pootoor; and
having next succeeded in making the Collector and a party
of one hundred and fifty Sepoys retreat from thence in the
middle of the night, they naturally deemed and reported
themselves to be invincible.
28. This account of the origin of the riots is so natural,
so clothed with probability, so illustrative of, and so accord-
ant with, every page in the Revenue History of Madras,*
* It is not possible, nor is this the place, to produce all these accu-
mulated pages of Madras Revenue Management. In 1802, when the
Province of Malabar was transferred, by a stroke of the pen, from
Bombay to.Madras, a "crack" Ryotwar Collector, an original tleve of the
system, arrived from Coimbetoor, followed by one assistant, a mere
youth, and a host of hereditary Potails (village headmen), on five rupees
a month, and other such statesman-like devices, to supersede a dozen
experienced Bombay functionaries. In about eighteen months, this
Collector contrived to kindle a furious civil war, from one end of the
Province to the other; having done this, he disappeared by the light,
leaving the conflagration to be extinguished by torrents of blood, at the
cost of lacs and lacs of rupees, and by the conversion of the homes and
habitations of men into, what they continue to be to this day, the lairs of
wild beasts. This solitude was then called " internal peace !"
The two following instances, drawn from different countries, and
exhibited at long intervals of time the one from the other, show that no
amount of experience is effectual in teaching wisdom, moderation, and
reflection at iMadras.
" Another measure was tried by the Commissioners of the Presidency
of Fort St. George (1796); namely, to tax, in the first instance, all cocoa-
43
so strictly confirmed by the narrative which the Criminal
Judge gave, from the first, to the Governor in Council ;
reporting that, "The Collector of the District, without
having the slightest idea of any spirit of disaffection existing
in the District, received information (30th March) from a
Tahsildar (Head Native Officer of Revenue and Police) of
a Talook (County), bordering upon the confines belonging
nut trees, at the rate of one fanara each yearly. The collection of this
tax occasioned again a general discontent, which soon broke forth into
an open opposition; and it was speedily found expedient to abandon it.
The reasons offered against this tax were, that it was laid on an article of
raw produce, and one of the necessaries of life ; — that it was laid, too, in
a most unequal proportion ; for all trees, not only the most productive,
but those which were the least so, had been taxed according to the same
rate of one fanam per tree : {making the tax, in some cases, forty, itiolhers,
not so much as six, per cent.) A tax of this nature must inevitably have
been vexatious in the extreme : and its being imposed in money rendered
it at that time particularly difficult to be complied with, because money
was then exceedingly scarce in Ceylon. If we judge, in fact, from the
feelings of the natives, the latter circumstance (namely, the payment of
the tax in money) was the most disagreeable part of it ; because they
offered to contribute, instead of it, the tenth part of the produce of the
trees in kind, which was imprudently refused: the good opportunity was
then lost, and it afterwards became necessary to relinquish it altogether." /
(Bertolacci's Ceylon, p. 323.)
From the Principal Collector of to Captain , Ootacamund,
December 2d, 1831 :—
" Sir,— I have the honour to apprise you that I have forwarded to the
Cash-keeper at Ootacamund a certificate in your favour of the permission
of Government for you to occupy the land therein described, together
with a bill for fees due to the Register of Grants at the Presidency,
amounting to Rupees 35.
" This charge has been authorised by Government, as well as the
assessment of Quit-rent on all lands on the Neilgherries, whether within
or without the Cantonment, for which grants or licences may be issued, at
the uniform rate of 5^ Rupees per Cawney."
A Cawney is Ijd Acre; "the assessment on all lands" was annual.
The rent, therefore, demanded from an occupier for every acre of a tract
of mountain land which, from the Hood, had been waste, and whether
44
to the late Rajah of Coorg, that numbers of the inhabi-
tants of the Coorg country had suddenly risen, and taken
possession of the treasure, amounting to about 15,000
Rupees, together with the Head Sheristedar and his
Cutcherry of Servants, who were on Jiimmahundi/ at the
place :" all these proofs drawn from opposite quarters,
European and Native, lead me to place more than ordinary
confidence in the general correctness of the account,
although to ascertain its strict truth obviously required
required for building or for agricultural purposes, was fixed bj/ the
Government in 1831, at ten shillings an acre, equal, according to the
different value of money, to about £lO in England!
Asiatic Journal. — October, 1838.
" The Madras papers state, that Government has ordered an assess-
ment on all the petty cultivation of the Neilgherries, and that the conse-
quence has been, that the place is fast falling into its former state ; the
little gardens that had given employment and support to many, and
furnished the tables of the visitants with a plentiful supply of superior
vegetables, being abandoned."
And what is this region, which is in progress of being reconverted into
a wilderness? It is one, the possession of which is the same, as if a part
of the South of France or of North Italy had been transplanted, and set
down in the heart of the Madras territories; a region, blessed with a very
fertile soil, and the salubrious climate of tlie temperate zone; highly
restorative in most tropical maladies, and particularly delightful at the
season of the year when the heats rage in the countries below, and render
change to such a scene and temperature a priceless bounty, which one
would think Providence had bestowed upon all Europeans in India, for
the express restoration and preservation of their health and mental
energies. It is, in truth, a spot capable of being made one of the most
delightful residences in the world.
But the laud assessment expels the Natives out of it, who were con-
verting that land into "gardens;'' it starves the Europeans out of it, for
want of the necessaries of life, and forces them to the Cape, where it is
known that they annually draw out of India and spend £120,000;
12 lacs of Rupees : locally an enormous sum, double the surplus revenue
of most of the Madras Provinces! In vain will the world, past or pre-
sent, be searched for a Government like this!
45
immediate, patient, temperate, and impartial enquiry on the
spot.
28. Your Honourable Court will not be brought to believe
that the Earth, in India, does not produce Rupees, but
grain ; that the trees do not bear coined money, but fruit ;
that never, from its creation, until your rule, was such a
thing there heard of, or known, as ^ fixed maximum money
assessment on the land, wholly chimerical and unrealizable
as this incredible tax is, even under your rule*. Your
* It would be a mockery to set about shewing here, in England, where
every man of ordinary information knows that the price of wheat has
fluctuated, in modern times, from 42 to 122 shillings a quarter, that no
country in the world can pay such a tax as " a fixed maximum money
assessment" on the land. To instance only a provision in the late Tithe i
Commutation Act; the money tenth is, according to it, determined by
the price of corn and produce, during the seven preceding years, every
succeeding year making the seventh in this perpetual cycle of reference
to the only equitable standard of value. But what is the history, what
is proved to be the authentic, recorded history of money assessments at
Madras? In 1807, Colonel Munro, the Collector of the Ceded Districts,
wrote thus: — " If no alteration be attempted, the Ceded Districts will
yield, one year with another, 18 lacs of Pagodas, and it will never be
necessary to call out a single Sepoy to support the collections." The
land revenue, which he reported upon (Report 2Glh July, 1807) was a
maximum rent in money y fixed on every field and spot of land, " culti-
vated or waste," after " a survey," made of a country as large as Scot-
land by Natives, "provided with a chain 33 feet long," and amounted
then to 640,000/. In 1827, after 20 years of peace, the same person,
Sir Thomas Munro, he being Governor of Madras, and in the Ceded
Districts, was obliged to reduce this assessment, which he had declared
in 1807, "was collected with the greatest ease," to 485,714/.; a redac-
tion of nearly one-third of the whole amount, (Report of Select Commit-
tee, 16th August, 1832.) What name ought to be given, where English
is spoken, to the exactions on the Natives, that were going on throughout
these 20 years? VVliat would English Statesmen say to one of their
number, who would venture to appear before them, with such an expo-
sition of 20 years' management of the most important branch of Revenue,
derived from the Kingdom of Scotland ? Tins then is the result of the
fixed maximum money assessment in the 7nodel Ryotwar Province of
Madras. The result of the management of all the Provinces, for the
46
Honourable Court cannot be brought to perceive that, if you
insist upon taking, as revenue, six-tenths of his produce from
the Native, every obligation of justice and policy, stifling
every claim of humanity, requires that you should take it
in that which he has to give ; that which his preceding
sovereigns took ; that which every private landlord in the
country, wherever such a class of persons is still suffered to
exist, is obliged to take, as rent : not in that which, often
by no possibility, can the Native get. The plainest, the
simplest, the most direct, and the most obvious of all gene-
ralizations show, to those who will be at the trouble of
making them, or at the least pains of learning the real con-
dition of the people, that in a country where there are no
roads, thero can be no towns, where there are no towns,
there can be no trade, where there is no trade, there can be no
exchanges, no exchanges, no money ; and where there is
no money, that men must be reduced to barter, as they are
throughout the Peninsula of India, to barter one with the
other, the little surplus they have left for the supply of
their half dozen wants. To insist on having his revenue in
money, therefore, is insisting on having that which the
Native cannot get, nor can he give, could he coin his
same period of 20 years, all years of profound peace, is exactly of the
same commendable, instructive, character. "In 1808 — 9, the actual
collections of Revenue were 4,09,30,000 Rupees (4,093,000/.); in
1827 — 8, they were 4,01,72,000 Rupees, {4,017,2001.) decrease in 20
years, 75,8001. ! Such is the iiresistible force of circumstances and situa-
tion in moulding the opinions of men, that the functionary, one of the
ablest in the service, who exhibits this astounding and almost incredible
result of the Government of a large kingdom, (and of whose knowledge
and great capacity the home authorities have wisely availed themselves),
produces it as clearly establisliing the fact, that " the system of civil
" administration actually in force at Madras has been successful,
" according to all the tests by which it can be fairly tried !" (Calcutta
Finance Committee, p. 132.) There is here provided an unerring "test"
of the entire success " of tlie system," that is, when " the actual collec-
tions of Revenue" shall be — zero.
47
blood into drachmas. For, of the money which is collected
from him monthly, during ten months of the year, and the
minutest fraction of which is spent on the spot, every Rupee
of the residue is kept hoarded and locked up in the pro-
vincial Treasuries, until it is sent, as proximity dictates,
either to Madras or Bombay ; whence the slow wants of a
restricted, an impeded, and a circuitous, ybre/g-w trade must
bring it back to the few inland marts there are, before this
coin can again come within the reach of the Native, to
enable him to pay his maximum in it.* This regular, annual,
* To the Secretary to Government in the Financial Department, Fort
St. George.
Tellicherry, 29th October, 1836,
"Sir,
" It is with rebictance that T bring the following matter to the notice
of the Right Honourable the Governor in Council : were it the first in-
stance of the kind, or did it not demand a remedy, I should be silent.
" It is hardly necessary to inform Ilis Excellency in Council, that the
whole surplus Revenues of the Provinces of Malabar and Canara, as
well as the subsidies of the tributary states of Cochin and Travancore, to
the amount of at least 25 or 30 lacs of Rupees, are annually sent to
supply the necessities of Bombay ; and that this great drain of the coin,
required for the circulation of these countries, is made in Bombay cur-
rency, till lately, some local coins excepted, the only currency known.
Were the sums that have been thus exported for the last 25 years added
up, the amount will be found to be so great, that it is a matter of
astonishment how these countries have borne up against this annual drain,
and have continued to pay, year after year, into the Treasuries of the
Collectors, the increasing money-revenue assessed upon them in this ex-
ported coin. But whatever may be the opinion entertained on this point,
it will hardly be disputed that the necessities of the people of the
Western Coast for coin, to meet the public demands, must be sufficiently
obvious as to merit consideration, and that they have some title to expect,
at all times, from the Government of Bombay, every facility to remit-
tance transactions; that is to say, to expect that bills on the local Trea-
suries, for cash paid at Bombay, shall not be refused, when those
Treasuries are filled with money ready to answer all bills. I put the
matter on the narrowest ground.
"The demand for money, in exchange for produce, begins early in
48
sy&iemAi'icforestal/ing by the Government o^ the coin, which
such a country requires or can attract, leads inevitably to
an annual regraiing of the produce ; making the price
worthlessly low, when the producer is compelled to seliybr
money, to pay his tax, and extravagantly high, when he is
obliged to buy, as his necessities are sure to oblige him to
September with the first of the ten annual Kists, (Revenue instalments)
that falls due ; before the Coast is well open for country craft, and six
weeks before ships willingly touch. Several weeks before, and after this
period, my agents in Bombay applied for Bills on the Collector, and
were told repeatedly in reply, that the Treasury was shut, and not likely
to be opened. Finding this to be the case, and hearing that the Hon-
ourable Company's Cruizer Clive was about to be despatched to the
Coast, they took the only alternative, and made me by this vessel a remit-
tance in specie, the freight charged upon which is double the rate paid
upon sending specie to Great Britain. The Clive passed down, not
being suffered to anchor : yesterday she returned and landed my specie,
after having received from the Collector of Malabar alone four lacs and
thirty thousand Tinpees oi the remaining surplus Revenue of the Pro-
vince; every rupee of which, I speak advisedly, would now have been
paid into the Bombay Treasury, to the great saving of time, for every
rupee must return, and to the infinite accommodation of the people, if
the Government had thought fit to receive the money, which myself and
the merchants had ready to pay in exchange for bills.
" Whenever a vessel is despatched from Bombay to this Coast for trea-
sure, in addition to the expense of the vessel, a number of Shroffs are
put on board, sufficient to furnish one for every port whence treasure is
to be shipped. It is superfluous to say, that this and every expense
whatsoever would be saved, and no more than reasonable facility be given
to the money transactions of the Western Coast, if the Government of
Bombay would follow, as regards them, the invariable practice when
formerly it drew bills on Calcutta, and insert a periodical notice in the
Gazette, stating that the Treasury would be open for a given time and
for a given amount for tenders for bills on the Coast Treasuries."
" 1 have the honour, &c.
" F. C. Brown."
With regard to the remittances of European functionaries, every Officer
is allowed to receive one-third of his month's pay in a bill at thirty days
on the General Treasury, and every Civilian the whole of his pay in a
bill at ten days.
49
buy, to repay in kind the next year.* In addition to this
direct tax upon the land, akin to which nothing has ever
been seen in the world, and the warrant for exacting
which are the positive, express orders of Your Honour -
able Court ;t — in addition to the Monopolies of two of
the necessaries of life — Salt and Tobacco ; the Monopoly
of Salt enforced by penally prohibiting the Natives frnm
touching the sun-evaporated sea-salt at their own doors ;
that of Tobacco enforced by prohibiting them fro m grow-
i ng a leaf of the plant on tlieir lands ; thus making
i t profitable to the smuggler to introduce and sell Amer i-
* An Assistant Collector from Canara observed that he would wil-
lingly serve there without pui/, provided the Government would allow
him to trade. He was asked why ? " You are sure," he replied, " of
making regularly twenty to thirty per cent., if you only buy grain when
the crops begin to be cut, and the Ryots want money, and sell it
towards the end of the season."
f " We are aware that the difficulty lies in ascertaining the degree in
" which, in all the variety of cases, the surplus produce already is, or is
" not, absorbed by the Government demand. But this is the difficulty
" which exists in forming or adjusting the settlement everywhere. Minute
'' accuracy cannot be obtained ; but in making the best approximation to
" it in our power, we shall avoid all material ^vii.,if the surplus produce
" is, IN ALL CASES, vuitle the tTTMOST extent of our demand.'" (Court's
"Letter to Fort St. George, 12th December, 1821, paragraph 99.) \
" By this latter sentence," observes General Briggs, who quotes the -; ;
letter (p. 294) in his, the ablest work ever written on, Indian Land-tax, | I
"it seems clear that, in the latter end of the year 1821, the Indian * •■
Administration in England was of opinion that it was just and expe-
dient to take from the landholders of India the whole surplus pro-
duce ; i. e. the whole of the landlord's rent, leaving the cultivator only a
sufficiency for his own subsistence and the maintenance of his stock !" .i >
But why stop short at this demand? Why not take "the surplus
produce in all cases," of every loom, of every tool, of every engine, of
every manufacture, of every house, nay, saving a sufficiency of food and
raiment, to be determined by the taker, why not take "the surplus pro-
duce" of every man's brains in the country, howsoever exerted? The
right is the same in all these cases as in the first ; its exercise would be
as just, and — as wise.
E
50
can Tobacco in India ! — in addition to this direct tax of,
at least, the luhole of the nat rent of the land, suggesting
the plain enquiry what more the Sovereign can demand from
his Native tenant, whom he proves to be a mere occupier
by reducing him to the condition of one ; — in addition to
this tax and to these Monopolies, ingenuity, one would
suppose, had tasked its powers in devising what indirect
taxes could be imposed, that should be most profoundly
cruel, mischievous, and suicidal to the happiness and pros-
perity of the people. For, not only are there frontier duties
and export duties levied from Province to Province, thus
erecting every Province into a separate foreign Kingdom,
each with a separate Tariff, but there are export duties
exacted upon all produce and goods taken from port to
port in the same Province; so that not an article can be
taken by a Native for sale at the nearest mart by any one
of the navigable rivers, the highways with which Nature
conceived and designed to bless and civilize his country,
without its being stopped at the mouth for export duty !*
What has been, what must be, the result of a system
of revenue and internal taxation, such as this? The result
invariably has been, in every instance, that in a few brief
years, the maximum money assessment proves to be wholly
unrealizable from the land ; and the discovery is made,
either when the people, preferring immediate death to lin-
gering starvation, seize what arms, clubs and sticks, rage
and despair supply, and break out into violence; an issue
which is speedily extinguished by their decimation by the
bayonet and the gibbet, and the failure of land-revenue
is, of course, attributed "to their lawless and unprovoked
rebellion ; " or, when having parted with so much of their
produce, to raise the money maximum, that not enough re-
mains to sustain life the year through, famine and disease
relentlessly seize upon hundreds, and upon thousands, and
* See Note B. at the end of the Letter.
51
Upon tens of thousands; and it is then reported to your
Honourable Court, that the unburied bodies of the dead
lie so heaped and accumulated, as to taint the air for miles
around, and to pall the maws of legion troops of every
obscene bird and beast of the air and earth.
Bear witness to this present picture, ye famine-devoured
Provinces of Agra! Bear witness to it, ye Englishmen!
casual, compulsory sojourners amid this desolation, who
wrote and published throughout India, to stimulate the hu-
manity of your countrymen, that for a subscription of only
one rupee, for a sum of no more than twenty-four pence
sterling, food enough could there be bought to subsist a
human being for a whole month through ! — Bear witness to
it, ye who beheld in the places where this quantity of food
could be bought for such a sum, who beheld with your
own eyes, mothers sell their children, nay, offer their
nurseling infants in barter for one meal, and this failing,
cast them headlong into the stream ! *'
And this spectacle in a country, where the teeming powers
of Nature still continue to be such, that the earth yields
harvests, although deprived of all those reproductive, recre-
ative aids, barren of which, the fertile, smiling fields of Great
Britain would be as waste, desert, and silent as the sands of
Arabia : for, from Cape Comorin to the Himalayahs, such
is the general poverty of the people, that the accumu-
lation of their cattle-folds, instead of being hoarded and
lavished, as in every other agricultural country on the globe,
in restoring and invigorating their exhausted lands, and
thus increasing the produce, and ultimately the public reve-
nue, ten, aye, a hundred-fold, this manure is resorted to,
and daily prepared, and forms the general, in some Provinces
the sole, fuel which the Natives have it in their power to
command, for the preparation of the pittance of food left to
them to consume !
* See Note C. at the end.
e2
52
30. Impossible as it is to compress all the proofs and
demonstrations of this subject within the compass of the
present letter, it is not possible, when attempting to throw
light on the causes of riots and insurrections in India, to
keep out of view this vast gangrene, this frightful ulcer,
deriving and descending from the very head of the body-
politic, which is incessantly preying upon the vitals of the
Natives ; the unerring proofs and progress of which are sure
to manifest themselves, by periodical famines and tumults
breaking out in every part, where a vigorous arm, wielded
by an enlightened head and a noble heart, has not gone to
the root, and extirpated the causes, as in Bengal Proper and
Benares' Province ; or where some natural local advantages
do not exist, as in Malabar, and operate as adventitious
sources of health, in counteracting the otherwise inevitable
tendency of the mass to festering, convulsion, and dissolution.
31.1 solicit your Honourable Court's forgiveness for this
digression from the subject-matter of this letter, to which I
return. I have stated that official notices led me to conclude,
as I may, perhaps, have led your Honourable Court to con-
clude, that the Commission appointed by the Governor in
Council of Madras in September, " to inquire into the
causes of the insurrection in Canara, etc.," of the previous
April, was dissolved in December by the successive retire-
ment of the two General Officers, the Military Members,
and by the Medical Certificate granted to the Civil Member
on the 5th December.
I sailed for England on the 6th, and from Colombo on
the 17th December. My Letter to the Government of
the 23rd November, did not reach Madras before the 8th
or 9th December. Its transmission was purposely delayed,
in order that it might arrive at the same time as any
letter, which the first Judge of Tellicherry might think pro-
per to send, in reference to the observations upon his con-
duct in April, with a copy of which I furnished him. For
several days before I sailed, the troops at Cannanore were
53
kept in readiness to receive Sir Henry Gough, K.C.B., the
General commanding the Mysoor Division, within whose
range and controul is the subordinate command of Malabar
and Canara. Sir H. Gough's route and progress to these
Provinces were, of course, regularly reported to Madras ; so
that the Governor in Council was apprised, at the time of
General Fearon's retirement from the Commission, that
there would be, on the spot, a Queen's Officer of high rank,
independent command, distinguished character, acknow-
ledged experience, and, moreover, an entire stranger to all
the functionaries. Civil and Military, at Mangalore; if the
presence of such an Officer had been at any time deemed
indispensably necessary, as the head of the Commission,
in forming and delivering to the Government adispassionate,
unbiassed, impartial opinion upon the melancholy events
which had occurred in Canara, and in pouring oil and balm
into the wounds of the unfortunate Natives.
32. Although the Governor in Council therefore was pos-
sessed of this information, late letters state that the Com-
mission of Inquiry did proceed in the course of December,
that it was reduced to a sole Member, and he, the Civil
Member — whose state of health was such, that he was pro-
vided with a medical certificate to sea for eighteen months,
and who, however able, and however estimable, was the
known, the declared, and the intimate friend of some of the
authorities at Mangalore, whose public acts and conduct
formed the subject of his investigations. These circum-
stances now render it imperative upon me to place before your
Honourable Court the particular Regulation (8 of 1822),
under which the Commission, so constituted, was empowered
and directed to act.
The title is, " A Regulation to rescind (certain) Regula-
tions; and to make provision for the investigation of the
conduct of the public Officers of Government, European
or Native, when necessary, iri the way which in each par-
ticular case may be deemed MOST convenient."
54
The Preamble is :
"Whereas the Rules of Regulations III of 1809, and II
of 1810, prescribing a particular course of inquiry on
charges, or information of corruption, embezzlement, or
other high misdemeanor, against the European public Offi-
cers, employed in the several Civil departments under the
Government, have been found to be inconvenient in practice,
and otherwise objectionable : the Governor in Council has
resolved to rescind those Regulations, and also Regulation
VI. of 1818, supplementary to the before-mentioned Regu-
lations, and to enact the following Rules, to be in force
from the date of their promulgation."
II.
III. " Whenever it shall appear to the Governor in Coun-
cil to be necessary that an investigation should be made into
the conduct of any Officer of the Government, European
or Native, relative to any alleged or supposed corruption,
embezzlement, breach of trust, or any other gross malver-
sation, or high misdemeanor, or violation of public duty,
the Governor in Council will determine hij what persons,
and in what way, such investigation shall be made and
conducted, on consideration of the particular circumstances
of every such case."
33. About the end of February, or the beginning of
March, the Commission closed its labours, the difficulty
and responsibility of which, from the first, must have been
greatly lightened and lessened by the prejudgment arrived
at, and placed on record, by the Governor in Council, rela-
tive to " the causes of' the insurrection in Canara, etc." On
the 6th April 1837, the Criminal Judge reported in the very
words doubtless he had heard the principal Collector use,
that the latter, at Mangalore, had not " the slightest idea
of am/ spirit of disaffection existing in the District"
(Province.) On the 19th January 1838, the Governor in
Council at Madras, is pleased to observe : " It is a well-
known fact that, for many tnonlhs previous to the outbreak
55
above spoken of, the District of Canara was infested with
large armed bands of robbers, though not certainly in the
immediate vicinity of the scene of insurrection. From
those bands, it does not appear too much to suppose, that the
force which attacked the town of Mangalore was principally
recruited."
34. Contemporaneous with the termination of the Com-
mission, appeared in the Gazette the removal of the prin-
cipal Collector and Magistrate of Canara, and his promotion
to the higher, more dignified, and more lucrative Office of
second Judge of the Court of Appeal and Circuit for the
Centre Division. So far back as the previous July or
August, before the orders from Bengal, directing a Commis-
sion to be assembled, were received, this Officer had ar-
ranged, with the customary tacit consent of the Government,
an exchange of Provinces with the principal Collector of
Salem ; thus adding the weight of his own irrefragable tes-
timony, to the conviction all men felt, and his best friends
warmly urged, of the propriety and necessity of his removal,
al that time, from Canara. On the present occasion, eight
months after, in conveying the promotion, for which he
had applied, and in communicating the public reasons on
which it was grounded, the Governor in Council is pleased
to advert to "the repeated insubordinate and unjustifiable
conduct," of the Collector, "and to declare that it will be
more advantageous to employ him in a situation, where his
want of discretion will be less detrimental to the public ser-
vice." Such is the approved official formula, by which, at
Madras, a displaced Collector-Magistrate, is raised, pro-
moted, and transmuted into a Circuit Judge.
35. There are, there must be, fresh among the Madras
records at the India House, the trial, almost recent, of
Ramiah, "a Native Officer of the Government," the head
Sheristedar of Coimbetoor, and the very first Native in
rank, character, and consideration, throughout that large
Province. This Native Officer was tried by a European
66
Commission held under the same Regulation, consisting also
of a sole Commissioner, he, his accuser, the Collector and
Magistrate of the Province, and his Superior; and as the
Regulation enjoins, "in the way which in his particular case
was deemed most convenient.^' The way was, that this Na-
tive Officer, of the highest rank and station among a mil-
lion and more of his countrymen, was suddenly seized with-
out warning or accusation, suspended from office, separated
from all his family, kept a close prisoner in his house,
debarred access to any person whatever, all his private
papers and letters, all his accounts, all his books, seized and
carried off', — the houses of all his relatives, all his friends,
searched and ransacked, in order to discover a trace of evi-
dence to criminate him ; depositions against him extorted
by fear and threats; every word and every act of his life,
public and private, sought, traced, and hunted out, to be
tortured into a matter of charge; in fine, every oppression,
every cruelty, every indignity, which tyranny, whetted
apparently by baffled malignity, could devise, was heaped
upon his defenceless head. Not for days, nor even weeks,
but for many months following, was this Native Officer
knowingly subjected to this treatment, before the Board of
Revenue, the Superiors of his accuser and Judge, inter-
fered to mitigate its rigour. At length, at the expiration
of about three years of open shame and intolerable dis-
grace, this Native Officer was wholly acquitted, not of
crime, not of guilt, for suspicion was, from the first, the sole
matter of charge against him ; he was acquitted of all
suspicion of " violation of public duty :" he was so wholly
acquitted, both in India and by your Honourable Court,
that he is now, under your express sanction and authority,
the first and the only Native of Madras, who has been
raised to the office of Assistant Collector. If the record
of his trial were efFaceable, I cannot but be persuaded that
your Honourable Court, individually and collectively, heard
the aniple and authentic details of the treatment he suffered
67
from the mouth of Mr. John Sullivan, whose head Sheris-
tedar for eight years in Coimbetoor Ramiah was, and as he
there left him, loaded with the highest praise.
Was the voice of your Honourable Court heard in the
farthest corners of India, denouncing in accents of thunder
the treatment, called a trial, of this high Native Officer ?
Did any Gazette, any publication, any paper, accessible to
the Natives, appear, filled with your Honourable Court's
indignation at this conduct; reprobating it, not as being
illegal — for what conduct to a Native is illegal ? * — but as
being worse than illegal, as being cruel, unfeeling, and
unmanly? No, not one: you preserved over all the silence
of the dead. Be not surprised, therefore, for the blame
is not theirs, if the Natives are prepared, nor if they
have been fully prepared, to hear your voice now resound
at Madras, fraught with loud echoes of the praises,
the thanks, and the General Orders, which have been
lavished and published on all the deeds and achievements
at Mangalore.
36. Such, then, to sum up all in a few brief words, are
* Regulation II. of 1802, sect. 10: "The Zillah (local) Courts are
prohibited from entertaining any cause which, from the production of a
former decree, or the records of the Court, or other instrument, shall
appear to have been heard and determined by any former Judge, Super-
intendent of a Court, Collector, or other public officer, having competent
jurisdiction or authority."
Sect. 11:" The Zillah Courts are prohibited from interfering in any
respect in any cause or matter of a criminal nature, declared cognizable by
the Magistrates of the several Zillahs, the Courts of Circuit, or the Fonj-
dary Udalut, or any Courts for the trial of cases of a criminal nature,
that now exist, or which may hereafter he established."
Sect. 15 : " If a Native, or any other person not being a British sub-
ject, shall consider himself aggrieved under any established Regulation,
by an act done by any of the officers of Government described in Sect. 7
(Collectors of Revenue and their Assistants, &c.), pursuant to a special
order originating with the Governor in Council, or the Board of Revenue
or Trade, the officer by whom the act may be done shall not be liable lo be
sued for it."
68
the Governor in Council, whom European British subjects,
that is to say EngHshmen at Madras, are expected to reve-
rence and obey; such the Judges of Circuit, the Judges of
Civil and Criminal Justice, to whom alone they are now
made amenable in all cases not capital ; such the Collector-
Magistrates, alone exercising police jurisdiction over their
persons, and vested with revenue authority over their pro-
perties.
37. But the fate and fortunes of these aliens in India,
however indissolubly bound up with all the future hopes and
prospects of that great country, however certainly the cor-
ner stone of all solid, rational, belief in the easy, secure, and
permanent retention of that, her fourth vast Empire by
Great Britain, are as dust in the balance, when weighed
against the condition, present and to come, of its millions
of Natives. If Englishmen, the ornament and security of
every other region on the globe which they are suffered to
inhabit and improve, be the bane and the ruin of India,
and if it be thought at Madras that, although it be unavoid-
able legally to tolerate, it is indispensable practically to pro-
scribe them, let them be proscribed. But the Natives cannot
all expatriate themselves ; the Natives cannot all go to De-
nierara, to Jamaica, to Australia, to Mauritius, to Ceylon, to
the four quarters of the earth, where outstretched arms are
beckoning them to come in thousands and tens of thousands,
and offering, as an irresistible inducement for life-transport-
ation, abundant food for their starving bodies, and ample
occupation for their idle hands.
38. For the wants and necessities of those among them
who, resisting these allurements, prefer dwelling and de-
scending to the grave in the land, wherein their forefathers
dwelt in honour and died in peace, for thousands of years
before your rule, some attention, some consideration, will be
pronounced to be due. The most instant, the most urgent,
the most pressing, of all those present wants and necessities
is, that their sacred — sacred because helpless — cries of
59
local injustice and oppression shall directly reach your
Honourable Court and the people of England, through the
channel of persons, who shall be linked to them by the ties
of a common caste, a common country, a common lan-
guage, a common kindred, and more than all, and above
all, these requisites, by the ties and sympathies of a com-
mon humanity. Let me, therefore, most humbly and most
earnestly implore your Honourable Court to blot from your
recollection that it is an Englishman who is addressing you :
let me intreat you to banish from your minds the individual
— obnoxious if he unhappily be — who has been driven
before you to state their wrongs : let me, with respect not to
be surpassed, beseech you, solicitous as you are of knowing
their wants and of supplying their necessities, and valuing,
as beyond human price, the future peace and repose of your
own breasts, to do a blessed violence to your imaginations,
and to see before you, not him, this individual, but one of
your Native subjects, a Native of Madras : to see, only, one
of these Natives, who has left his home and country, and
appears a suppliant in your presence, bending under the
load he produces of official proofs and documents, establish-
ing in characters ineffaceable, the cruel sufferings and
calamities in which thousands of his fellow-subjects have
been plunged, wholly innocent as they were, even in thought,
of all crime and of all guilt towards the British Govern-
ment : proofs showing that, under a reliance upon your
anticipated silence and tacit approval, more than the law's
vengeance has been let loose and wreaked upon their per-
sons, their liberty, their homes, and their property ; in order
that this signal punishment, proclaimed to the world as the
due of traitors, might hide from the light of day the know-
ledge of the conduct of the Officers, Civil and Military,
at Mangalore ; whose meeting, whose resolution, and whose
attempt, to abandon the Capital and the Province of Ca-
nara, that trust confided to them by the British people,
more than a whole day before a man opposed to them
60
appeared, caused universal panic and confusion throughout
the whole Native population, far and near; which panic
and confusion, inevitable from such conduct, were after-
wards seized upon, to represent and to convert a mob-rising
of, at first, a few ignorant wild men, into general insurrec-
tion and civil war.
As the first and immediate reparation of wrongs and suf-
ferings such as these, and as an eternal barrier placed by
the virtue of your Honourable Court, against the recurrence
of the dishonour which has been brought upon the name of
England, this suppliant prays, that your Honourable Court
will not suffer another dispatch to depart for Madras, with-
out conveying in it your positive and peremptory orders to
the Governor in Council, to elect and immediately to cause
two or more Natives to take their seats, now and in all time
coming, as Members of the Council of Government at that
Presidency.
39. It is this first and indispensable act of justice and
humanity, this instant protection against the perpetration
of similar wrongs and outrages which the Natives of Madras,
with all respect and with all humility, now beseech at the
hands of your Honourable Court, entreating that their
cause may not fail from the weakness of the advocate.*
* The acts of the Governor in Council will best show his disposition
to give effect to the injunctions of the legislature, which has ordered, that
no Native shall be excluded from holding any office, by reason of his
birth, caste, colour, or religion.
In January, 18^, the Government acknowledged the receipt of a
Memorial, from the Native Gentlemen of Madras, praying to be enrolled
as Justices of the Peace, with or without emolument. Four months after,
a public paper, the Madras United Service Gazette, informs the world —
" The acts of Lord Elphinstone's Government, from the day of his arrival
in India, have deservedly gained him golden opinions from every class of
society. It is our highly gratifying task to announce, that the Right
Honourable the Governor's Private Secretary, on the 3d May, made
known that, with reference to an address presented to him by certain
Native Gentlemen, seeking to be admitted as Justices of tiie Peace, Lord
Elphinstone had been pleased to accede to the wishes therein expressed,
61
But, whether his pleadino- be successful or spurned, whe-
ther it be read or despised, your Honourable Court will, he
trusts, acquit him, after your having withlield, for four
and that he had determined to include the names of three Hindoo
Gentlemen in the commission about to be issued (here follow the names)
three of the most wealthy and respectable Native Gentlemen at Madras.
Heartily do we congratulate these Gentlemen on the honour that awaits
them, and in all sincerity do we rejoice at seeing the road to distinction
thus gradually opening to the Natives of this Presidency."
Madras has been in the possession of the British Crown for upwards
of two centuries (1630.) It is the capital of a kingdom far larger and
more populous than many kingdoms in Europe: its population has been
rated at 400,000 souls. It is here seen that, in the fifth year of the Charter,
after a pause of five months, a Governor is said to win " golden
opinions," because he lias discovered that three Native Gentlemen,
the most wealthy and respectable, may be placed '* on the road to dis-
tinction," by being nominated Justices of the Peace. Three persons out
of 400,000 ; out of a population twice as large as that of Glasgow, the
second city in the United Kingdom ! If there be no more Natives fit
for this titular office, what can be said for the Government ? if there be
more, what can be said of the mockery offered to them and to the
Natives at large by the parade of selecting three after five months' choice?
Such are the great and numerous distinctions showered upon the
Natives of Madras as the meed of unblemished lives ! As to their
masters, the European functionaries, the following is another signal
public instance of the sure and solid rewards which await, and which the
Governor in Council fails not to make an occasion for bestowing upon,
desert among them.
On the 8th May, 1838, the Fort St. George Gazette notified the pro-
motion to the dignity of Acting 2d Judge of the Court of Circuit and
Appeal for the Provinces of Malabar and Canara, stationed at Telli-
cherry, of the Criminal Judge who, on the 6lh April, 1837, just one
twelvemonth before, had reported to the Governor in Council his " safe
embarkation" and arrival from Mangalore, and the more than probable
massacre of all the Europeans and Sepoys by the insurgents! The
vacancy for this promotion was made, by sending the 2d Judge of that
Court, the same Judge whose public conduct on the Commission at
Mangalore the Governor in Council had stigmatized as "vexatious,"
" discreditable, and injurious to the public service," to preside over
another Commission assembled three hundred miles off, and nearer to
Madras, a place filled, one would suppose, with functionaries as fit, or
62
months, from his former letter the honour of a simple
acknowledgment, of having voluntarily sought again to in-
trude upon your notice. You will, he doubts not, arrive
who ought (o be as fit, as he for the duty ; by again sending off this
Judge at tlie hottest and most unhealthy season of the year, when it was
certain that he, or the Natives he would be obliged to take, must suffer from
the malignant fevers which, at that time, infect the jungles they would
have to travel through. Even this will, perhaps, be pronounced " too
bad!" But there was, as there is, in the same Court another, the third,
Judge, who, while the Criminal Judge of Mangalore (looking only to
time) has served ten years in India, has served twice the same number of
years in those two Provinces ; who, throughout those twenty years, has
never suffered a day to pass over his head without devoting a part of it
to the exemplary discharge of his duty. It is fit that the name of this
Gentleman, an example of public duty, conduct, and integrity, be known:
it is W. B. Anderson, Esq. of the Madras Civil Service. This act, there-
fore, the promotion of the Mangalore Judge, ten years his junior, but
fortunately brother to a Member of Council, having first accomplished
the punishment of the 2d Judge, was not considered complete without
the supercession and degradation of such a man as the 3d Judge, put
upon him in his own Court, and before all the Natives of the two
Provinces. Of course, in a few months, the instant his service expires,
he quits the country for ever, making way for a College-writer to govern
it, stimulated by the twofold example set before him. But can there be any
other design, in deliberate, premeditated acts like these, than to try how
the Natives shall be brought most to abhor, and most to despise, a
Government capable of them? Such an act proves, that that Govern-
ment holds them to have neither feelings nor opinions on the occasion.
What voice did make itself heard in Council I know not; after the ap-
pointment had been duly made and publicly appeared, it was sub-
sequently cancelled.
To show how utterly blind that Government is to the plainest indica-
tions of public feeling manifested by the Natives, even under its own
eyes, and how fatally ignorant and indifferent it will one day be dis-
covered to be, to all their opinions and sentiments growing up and
maturing around it, I cannot refrain from inserting an address, which
the Natives of Madras presented in Novr. 1837, to the late Governor of
Ceylon; an island quite distinct from the Government of India, and in
which six years of a wise and just administration have sufficed to intro-
duce and give life to public reforms and general improvements, so
wholesome and beneficial, as to have wrought a revolution well nigh
63
with him at the conviction that, whatever may be the con-
sequences to himself, whether greater loss, or eventual
ruin, or the breaking up of all the future tranquillity and
miraculous in the well-being of the people, and have made them, as the
revenues of the island attest, and close observation will bear out, among
the most prosperous, contented, and happy of any people in the world.
*' To His Excellency the Right Honourable Sir Robert Wilmot Horton,
Bt. C.C.H., Governor and Commander-in-Chief of Ceylon.
*' Right Honourable Sir,
" The times are gone by when those, who wielded the destinies of
India, regarded the welfare of its inhabitants as an object of secondary
importance, if indeed they considered it at all worthy of their serious
attention. The views of the former were opposed to the interests of the
latter, and thus the rulers saw reasons, arising out of the unnatural posi-
tion which they occupied with respect to the governed, to induce them
to suspect tlie attachment of a conquered people ; while to give addi"
tional magnitude to the evil, they looked upon them as too ignorant to
desire, and too contemptible to deserve, any consideration. A change has
come over the spirit of the times ; other men have succeeded these mono-
polists of power, and better measures have been substituted in the place
of a system of exclusive benefits ; so that a more liberal policy has at
length begun to identify the interests of Government with those of the
millions committed to its protection. The principles of Government in
operation are some of the causes of this alteration in the sentiments of
those entrusted with the administration of the affairs of India ; but the
country is chiefly indebted for the improvement, which has already in
part taken place in the condition of the people, to the good-will and
exertion of a few enlightened Statesmen, who, liberating their powerful
minds from theshackles of preconceived notions, justly base the stability
of this portion of the British empire on the attachment of the people,
and the prosperity of Government on the elevation of all classes of their
Indian subjects, to an equality with themselves in the possession and
exercise of political privileges.
"As Hindoos of this part of India, we exult in the prospect which opens
before us, and rejoice to number your Excellency among the benefactors
of our country. Though not immediately affected by the liberal prin-
ciples brought under your Government into beneficial operation, as
regards the welfare of the inhabitants of Ceylon, yet we know that their
influence cannot be limited to that island, and that the moral efl'ect of
your noble example will extend beyond it, and be felt in the councils of
64
amenities of his private life, the time is imperatively come
when, to address to your Honourable Court the words he
used to the Government of Madras, " to preserve silence on
the subjects of this Letter would be treason to the People
of England."
I have the honour to be,
Honourable Sirs,
Your most obedient, humble Servant,
And in India,
Your faithful, devoted subject,
F. CBROWN.
London, 26th October, 1838.
the Legislative authorities of this part of the country, and tlius by its
indirect influence and necessary tendency, ultimately carry forward the
final emancipation of India; the foundation of which is already laid in
the recognition of the liberties of the people by the Legislative provisions
of the Charter. But in you, the Natives of India have had a zealous
defender of their privileges, and one memorable occasion in which you
prominently stood forth as the champion of those privileges in the island
of Ceylon, shall never be forgotten.
"Thus being endeared to the Native community, you are justly regarded
as one of the best benefactors of an ancient and numerous people, who
have adopted this mode of expressing, however feebly, their sincere
regard for your person and respect for your virtue. We, the Hindoos of
Madras, cannot of course represent the whole body of the Natives of
India, but we are confident that we are not alone in the expression of the
attachment and gratitude to which you have entitled yourself. — We do
not, therefore, scruple in the name of the community, to wish you a safe
return to your native country, and the enjoyment of every possible hap-
piness and prosperity,
" We have the honour to subscribe,
" Right Honourable Sir,
Your Excellency's most obedient and humble Servants,"
; ^ [The Signatures.]
65
(Note A. Page 23.)
TO THE REGISTER TO THE COURT OF FONJDAREE
UDALUT.
Sir, Fort St. George.
1. I have the honour to request that the Judges of the Fonjdaree
Udalut will do me the favour to submit the following remarks to the
consideration of the Right Honourable the Governor in Council, with a
hope that he may be pleased to review the severe expressions of disap-
probation conveyed in the Extract from the Minutes of Consultation
under date the 24th ultimo, copy of which reached me on the 4th instant.
2. The Governor in Council declares, 1st, that he has a " very unfa-
vourable opinion of my conduct;" 2d, that I have "given way to pri-
vate feelings and idle notions of dignity;" 3d, that I have acted in a
manner which is " highly discreditable" to me, and calculated to " prove
injurious to the public interest;" 4th, that my proceedings are the less
excusable, as I cannot plead inexperience or ignorance of what was
expected of me; 5th, that my interference was vexatious; 6th, that I
have previously rendered myself obnoxious to the censures of Govern-
ment, for precisely similar conduct; and, in conclusion, I am warned,
that a repetition of such proceedings will be visited by a more decided
mark of the displeasure of Government.
3. The second of these declarations appears to be the most serious, as
it impeaches my veracity; for I am sworn to act on public grounds. In
the 9th paragraph of my proceedings of the 20th June, I declared, that
it was " not my wish to embarrass the Magistrate, or to interfere unne-
cessarily with the execution of his duty ;" and, in the 5th paragraph of
my letter to you, dated the 24th June, I (in reference to observations of
the Magistrate regarding "conduct not characterized by good feeling")
disclaim any other feeling "than what duty prompts."
4. As the Court of Fonjdaree Udalut give me credit for right
motives, on a view of what was submitted to them, the opinion of Govern-
ment may, perhaps, be foimded on something hastily introduced into
F
66
the Magistrate's addresses to Government, the language of whicli is de-
clared to be "objectionable." However the case may be, I trust that I
shall not be denied a declaration of the grounds on which the decision is
founded, if the Right Honourable the Governor in Council, on review
of what is already before them, and what I now submit, should still
adhere to so unfavourable an opinion of me.
5. As evidence that my conscience has acquitted me, and that I have
full confidence that even the Magistrate would not deliberately attribute
to me unworthy motives, I have to refer to the correspondence annexed to
this marked A., in which it will be seen that, on receipt of the observa-
tions of Government, I requested him, not only to state whether he was
of opinion that private feelings influenced me, and, if so, the grounds
thereof, but also to declare whether I had not, upon all occasions, co-
operated with him in the most cordial manner.
6. Mr. has not made so explicit an acknowledgment as I
expected. It, therefore, devolves on me to say, that I have repeatedly
brought to his notice good and bad conduct of his public servants,
observed on trials before the Special Commission, and that he has acted
in many instances on my information, in dismissing, or rewarding; that
I have communicated to him all information, relating to the rebellion,
which appeared to me of use and interest, whether noted on trials, or
obtained from private sources, — and that I have offered suggestions,
which my information and experience of Canara, extending to a period
of fifteen years, led me to think might be useful. In short, I have
omitted no opportunity of trying to aid him in his duty. When even
my authority had been opposed and was in abeyance, I informed him,
by a private note, (only a few days before I received the censure of
Government,) of the case of a boy, son of a prisoner under trial, and
only ten or eleven years of age, having been in confinement nearly four
months, and, thereupon, procured his release.
7. In proof of the above assertions I can appeal, if necessary, to ex-
tensive correspondence (chiefly private), and to the testimony of my
colleague, who knows how carefully I have studied to avoid irritating
the Magistrate's (to me well known) susceptible temper. The corres-
pondence which I annex, marked B., will show what my disposition
was, even at the time that our official difl'erence was under reference to
superior authority, and after the Magistrate's reflections in his return to
my Precept.
8. 1 confess myself unable to discover the grounds for imputing to me
67
'* idle notions of dignity ;'' and I hope they may be pointed out for my
correction, as I disavow any disposition to assume authority, while I
consider it a duty to insist on respect for that which is clearly delegated
to me. My observation on the seal can hardly be alluded to, 1 think ;
for, as the Government have deemed it necessary to limit the size, by
printed Regulation, it appears to be my duty to require observance of
the order. I would beg a patient comparison of the terms of my notice
of it, and of the Magistrate's reply.
9. With regard to my interference being called " vexatious," I humbly
request a re-perusal of the whole of my demands made (in the usual
form of Precept), after two letters from the Magistrate had led me to
believe that he had not made due progress in ascertaining whether there
was even slight ground for detaining each person whom he had in cus-
tody. The first demand is comprised in these few words of the 8th
paragraph of my Proceedings of the 20th June, viz. for " a list of all pri-
soners who have not been brought to trial, the dates of apprehension, and
grounds for detention, according to a Form," which shows that the infor-
mation required was very slight : the second was ''to state whether one
Pudmaya Shetty had been charged on oath with any offence, and, if so, the
particulars thereof, as well as the date on which he was charged, and that
on which he was apprehended. If no charge on oath hud been taken, the
grounds for his detention to be stated."
10. The last requisition arose from a special application to me, after
two petitions to the Magistrate were alleged to have failed. So little
was I disposed to interfere, without actual necessity, that I desired the
petitioner to repeat his address to the Magistrate (as stated in the 4th
paragraph of my letter to you of the 24th June), " because it was likely
that pressure of business might have prevented the Magistrate from giving
attention to his first."
11. On making my other demand, I stated, in the 5th paragraph, that
" the Regulations, as well as the first principles of justice, obviously
require that the Magistrate should lose no time in making a list of all
persons in his custody, or confined under his orders, showing the date of
apprehension, and the cause for it. It is very possible that, amid so
much confusion, innocent persons may have been ari-csted." These
observations remain uncontroverted by any of my superiors. The
correctness of my surmise, that the innocent might be so suffering, is
proved by the case of the boy, noticed above, in paragraph 6 ; by the
fact, that Pudmaya Shetty, whom the Magistrate said (in his Return of tiie
F2
68
24th June) that he had " informed the Government tliat it was 7iot his
intention to release," was discharged on the 15th July (as his brother,
the petitioner, informed me in open Court); that nutiibcrs were released
by the Magistrate, daily, immediately after he made his reference to
Government against my interference (but not before), that only lately
four Madras Coolies (who bought stationery for the public offices) were
released after having been confined (as I am credibly informed) without
the slightest ground for suspicion; and that in case No. 14, the 6th pri-
soner, a youth, was actually sent before the Special Commission, with-
out having been ever confronted with an accuser, and no one would, or
ever did, accuse him.
12. In the 6th paragraph of my proceedings, I showed that I had
consideration for the heavy duties of the Magistrate, and had abstained
from any demand for information, on the appeal made to me, nearly a
month before, (when I visited the jail,) because " the number then in
confinement afforded reasonable ground for conclusion that even a slight
enquiry, to warrant detention, could hardly have been held in all cases,
though even by that time much might have been done."
13. I proceeded to state, in the 7th paragraph, that I thought that the
time for interference was come ; and that I could " foresee no difficulty
as to making sufficient enquiry to ascertain whether any have been
groundlessly seized (a measure of obvious duty before this, as some have
been taken so far back as the 6th April) since the Magistrate, Joint-Ma-
gistrate, and the two Assistants, have all been at this station for a consi-
derable time." And in the lOlh paragraph of my letter to you, of the
23d June, I observed, "If Captain Le Hardy, the sole European civil
officer in Coorg, could send up 189 prisoners (who arrived here via
Cannanore, eleven days ago) with such particulars as I have required, it
can hardly be considered unreasonable to expect as much from the
Magistrate of Canara, with so many European Assistants." The Magis-
trate appeared to me to be wanting in method. The examination of the
189 prisoners, I had every reason to believe, was but an inconsiderable
portion of the duty which had fallen to Captain Le Hardy, who was
without assistants.
14. The only answer which the Magistrate made, to the demand of a
superior authority, which (in his Return of the 24th June) he admits did
" not contravene the Regulations," is this: "The Magistrate wishes to
avoid collision with the Circuit Judge; but finding this almost incompa-
tible with his requisitions, he has determined to apply for the orders of the
f)9
Government." The 6tli and 7th paragraphs of my proceedings were
calculated to show him that I was open to reason. Had he, then, evinc-
ing a disposition to yield the obedience which the Regulations require
of him, complied as far as he could with my demand, and proffered
weekly or other periodical additions, I should have given due attention
to his representations, as may be inferred from the latter part of the 3d
paragraph of my letter to you of the 24th June, where I observe, " He
does not deign to represent his difficulties, and request my consideration
of them, and a consequent extension of time for making his Return."
15. In the 9th paragraph, I gave additional grounds for my interfe-
rence, slating that I was aware " that the Magistrate had a large body of
men under a Military guard, independently of 237 whom I found in the
regular jail of the Zilla, who may have no friends, or other means, to
bring the hardship of their cases to iny notice, and {consequentlij) before
the higher authorities ; and as, further, I had heard of most distressing
cases of despondency (which may naturally be expected when there are
such frequent instances of persons being led out for execution) I consi-
dered it an urgent duty to call for such statement without fuither
delay."
16. Having quoted Regulations and an order of the Fonjdaree Udalut,
whereon I felt bound to interfere; and the force of them not having
been questioned, I conclude that my interference must have appeared
" vexatious" with reference to time only ; in regard to which it was for me
to exercise my judgment, as prescribed by my oath ; the Regulations
affording me no guide, but, rather, strongly proscribing delay. Though
the grounds which I have noticed (in the 12th to 14th paragraphs) for
my thinking that the time for interference had arrived, may still be con-
sidered erroneous, I trust that I shall not, merely on that account, be
deemed obnoxious to such censure as has been applied to me. Even
the Bench of Judges of England, " learned in the law," frequently differ
in opinion, though unbiassed, honest, anxious, and under check of a
VIGILANT PUBLIC ; and, in every sphere of life, such differences are to be
found.
17. I regret that pressure of business has prevented me from pre-
paring this address earlier.
I have, &c.
(Signed)
Mangalore, Second Judge, Western Division.
31st August, 1837.
70
Fonjdaree Udalut.
No. 282.
TO THE CHIEF SECRETARY TO GOVERNMENT.
Sir,
I am directed by the Judges of the Couit of Fonjdaree Udalut to
transmit to you copy of a letter addressed to this Court by the Second
Judge on Circuit in tlie Western Division, together with the copy of the
correspondence which accompanied it, and which the officer requests
may be laid before the Governor in Council for his consideration, with
reference to the extract from the Minutes of Consultation, under date
the 24th of July, 1837.
I have the honour to be, &c.
(Signed)
Fonjdaree Udalut, Register Office, Register.
16 September, 1837.
Order of Government, dated 28 September 1837, on Fonjdaree
Udalut Letter, No. 282.
No. 918.
The Governor in Council sees no reason to alter the opinion expressed
in the Minutes of Consultation, dated the 24th July last. No. 668, upon
the conduct of the Second Judge and the Magistrate. From the tenor
of the former gentleman's communication to the Fonjdaree Udalut of
the 31st August 1837^ it might be supposed that the Government, in
censuring him, had absolved the Magistrate from all blame, whereas, in
fact, they are both included in the animadversions which the Govern-
ment felt bound to record on the occasion, and it is observed that the
censure passed upon the Magistrate's conduct is the stronger of the two.
(Signed)
Chief Secretary.
On the 30lh November, after His Lordship the Governor's return to
Madras, the Second Judge made another appeal, the courteous answer
71
to which merits to be contrasted with the language of the first reply from
*' the Governor in Council."
TO THE REGISTER TO THE COURT OF FONJDAREE
UDALUT.
Sir, Fort St. George.
1. I have the honour to request that the Judges of the Court of Fonj-
daree Udalut will submit to the Right Honourable the Governor in
Council the following further appeal on my behalf against the censure
recorded on my conduct in the Minutes of Consultation of the 24th
July last.
2. I have deferred making it till this time, partly on account of
pressure of duty, and partly because I did not wish to intrude on his
Lordship's time immediately after receiving (on the 8th ultimo) copy of
the order, dated the 28th September, on my former appeal, it appearing
probable that on his return to the Presidency, many matters of impor-
tance would claim his immediate notice.
3. I trust, however, that His Lordship in Council will now be able
to give his attention to the subject of my appeal, and that he will deem
it deserving of his serious consideration, since it has been imputed to
me that I have been so regardless of my oath as to have " given way to
private feelings and idle notions of dignity," whereas I have asserted,
and with all respect I do assert, that I acted purely on public ones (for
which the Fonjdaree Udalut have given me " full credit"), and I have
requested that I may be shown the grounds on which improper motives
can be imputed to me.
4. No person of honourable feeling can quietly submit to a simple
imputation against his veracity. JNIine has not only been impeached,
as above shown, but my conduct has been pronounced " highli/ discre-
ditable," and I labour under a threat, the operation of which appears to
me to be avoidable only by entire submission to the pleasure of every
Officer, whom the Regulations bind me by an oath to controul.
5. In the twenty-seventh year of my service, under a full conscious-
ness of constant zeal for the interests of Government, a Judge of a Pro-
vincial Court for nearly eight years, I request merely that the same
justice which (under Section 16, Regulation II. of 1802) is the due of
72
every party in a suit for a few rupees, may be accorded to me; my cha-
racter, the highest property of man, being the matter affected by the
decision.
6. My request, for information on the grounds on which I was con-
demned, has been met with the mere observation, that the Magistrate
was also censured, and more strongly than I was. That, however, I beg
to observe, can be no satisfaction to me, when urging my claims for
justice to my own character. I acted towards him, as I conceived that
duty required, and on his resisting, I pursued the course dictated by
Clause 3, Section 40, Regulation IX., of 1816, by bringing his conduct
to the notice of our superiors, that he might be dealt with as they might
think fit.
7. I therefore trust that His Lordship in Council will re-consider my
letter of the 31 st August last, and comply with the requests therein made.
I have, &c.,
(Signed)
Mangalore, Second Judge on Circuit.
30th November, 1837.
Order of Government, dated 3d February, 1838.
Tlie anxious desire evinced by the Second Judge to have the censure
recently passed upon his conduct removed, is considered by the Right
Honourable the Governor in Council to be most creditable to his feel-
ings and character, both private and official, and His Lordship in Coun-
cil, in allowing him the full benefit of the explanations which he has
offered on the occasion, is willing to believe, as asserted by him, that
l\is proceedings were influenced by zeal for the public service.
(Signed)
Chief Secretary.
73
(Note B. Page 50.)
Lest I should be suspected of dealing in fiction, the following are,
word for word, in the original English, (a few unimportant clauses
omitted,) sanctioned by the Madras Board of Trade, presided over by a
Member of Council, the
Rules for the Collection of the Sea Customs of the Provinces of
Malabar and Canara, and for the Guidance of the Managers.
CUSTOMS.
1 . Duties are to be levied on all Exports, Imports, and Trans-ship-
ment of Goods, on British vessels, or on vessels belonging to Natives of
the British territories, or to subjects of the Native powers of Asia, and
to be subject to the following Rules : — ,
Imports.
2. Duties on Imports are to be levied according to the value in the
Tariff. 3. The duty is 8 per cent, on the value. 4. A certificate from
any port or place under the Government of Madras is to be taken in
full, or part payment, of this duty. 5. These certificates, when pro-
duced, are to be examined by the Tariff of these Provinces, and the goods
imported are to be valued by our tariff; if they are more valued hy our
tariff, the difference must be taken, and upon the rowannahs, or certifi-
cate which is produced, must be written " the rates of duty," " the total
value," and " the total customs," and then a receipt must be given ac-
cording to this form on the old rowannahs. — {Here follows the form on
a stamp.)
Imports for Exportation.
6. Any person importing goods, and declaring he intends to re-export
them, must deposit the amount of the duty. 7. . 8. On the re-
exportation of such goods, two-thirds of the duty will be returned, if the
goods are exported in six months, passed through the custom-house,
•ucluded in tiie manifest of the export cargo, and in tlie same package
as imported in ; if not so done, then no part will be returned. 9. .
(These six months were afterwards shortened to three.)
74
Import Duty.
10. Goods imported from ports and places not under the Government
of Fort St. George are to pay import duty of 8 per cent, on the tariff
price. 11. .
Exports.
12. An export duty is to be levied on all the goods laden on British
vessels, or vessels belonging to British settlements in India or Natives of
Asia. 13. The export duty is to be 8 per cent., except on the articles
which have a particular duty (varying from 15 to 18 per cent, on all the
most valuable articles of produce), and are in the list at the end of this.
14. The duty is to be levied according to the tariff price. 15. The cer-
tificate of the inland duty is to be received in part payment of the sea
duty. 16. . 17. Goods exported from one part of the Coast to
another, between Cochin and Sedashagur, having paid duty, are to be
allowed to be re-exported in fifteen days, otherwise must pay duty again
on exportation.
(Cochin and Sedashagur are the limits, south and north, of the two
Provinces, and include a coast-line of about 400 miles, or one-fifth
that of Great Britain. Grain and rice, the universal food of the people,
were not excepted from this rule, a sample of a Madras corn-law.)
Private Baggage.
18. . 19. Private baggage is not to pay duty, but it must be
really baggage ; any piece of cloth not cut up for use, and all things not
of the description of private baggage, are to pay import duty.
Trans-sh ipping.
20. Goods trans-shipped from one vessel to another shall be charged
with duties the same as if the goods had been imported. 21. As this
may be hard upon the traders, when they object, the Managers will tell
them to apply to the Collector, and state all circumstances ; then the
Collector will order according to what may appear proper, and report to
the Board of Trade. 22. Goods trans-shipped without permission of the
Custom Manager, or shipped on any other vessel, than mentioned in the
permit, are to be charged with double duty, and if done to defraud the
circar (Govt.), to be confiscated. 23. Applications for to trans-ship goods,
must be in the following terms. {Here follows a form of twelve columns.)
75
Manifest and Port Clearance.
24. , 25. The commanders or supercargoes of any vessels, being
a European, is to deliver his manifest and port clearance at the Custom-
office. 26. The commanders and tindals of all vessels being Natives,
are to deliver true accounts of their cargo, and port clearance, to the
Managers at the Custom-office, and if any doubt of the truth, the Manager
will inquire of the broker, and if there is still any doubt of the truth,
must then make him deliver a list of the cargo according to the account
of the tindals, and require satisfactory proof from him. 27. After the
manifest is seen, and port clearance is seen by the Manager, and found
all proper, then he is to give permit to land the goods. 28. If the port
clearance is not produced, no permission to land or trans-ship from the
vessels is to be given, unless they pay fine of 25 star pagodas (£lO) on
given security for the payment of the fine. 29. . 30. .
Certificates.
31. A certificate of the export duty having been received, shall be
given in the usual form under the seal of the Collector of Customs, and
signed by him, or by his deputy, and countersigned by a sw^orn clerk of
certificates, and also signed by the Managers of the port where the duty
was taken, and sealed with the port seal of the manager. 32. .
33. Where certificates have the part payment of the duties in another
certificate- the amount so in part received, and the numbers of the cer-
tificates are to be inserted under the head of Government Customs
received, and a memorandum made of the amount, date, and number of
the certificates, and place granted at made at the bottom of the certifi-
cate. 34. .
General Rules.
35. . 36. The Managers are to take care that no goods are
landed or shipped, except at the place appointed ; and if they find any
so landed or shipped, they are to seize the same, and report the circum-
stance directly to the Collector or his deputy who is nearest the place at
the time, and await order. 37. Goods and merchandize which should
pay duty, passed, or attempted to be passed, without paying, are to be
seized and confiscated. 38. . 39. Any persons giving informa-
tion to the Custom officers of any goods smuggled, will be entitled to
share of the amount for which they sell. 40. The produce of the sale
76
of goods to be divided in future, after deducting the duty which sl)ould
have been paid, one-half to the Collector and his subordinates, as the
Governor in Council pleases, one-half to the Custom officers who seized
the goods and the person who informed ; if no informer, all to the Cus-
tom-house officer who seized them. 41. When the goods seized may
be returned on receiving double or treble duty, then, after deducting
the proper duty, the rest to be divided as above between the informer
and the Custom officer. 42. . 43. The Managers are to seize any
goods landed, or shipping from the godowns of the merchants, or others*
without permission of the Collector, or his deputy, is produced on
writing, and report it as in Rule 38. 44. The Managers are to give
permits to boats to be employed in trans-shipping goods, besides the
permit given to the merchant to trans-ship the goods; and if any goods
are trans-shipped in boats that have not got such permit, they are liable
to confiscation. 45. The Managers of the Customs, and all other per-
sons belonging to it, are to do according to the Rules in the Boat Regu-
lations, and seize merchandize on board unregistered boats. 46. The
Managers must cause the Custom Peons to do their duty according to
the rules for them. 47. When a merchant intends to export, a durkast,
or manifest, is delivered ; it sometimes happens that the goods cannot
he shipped, and the merchant then requires back the duty he has paid
on that quantity which has not been shipped, the Managers are not to
return the duty, but to acquaint the merchant he must give proof to the
Collector or his deputy that he was unable to ship it, and then what is
proper will be ordered. 48. , 49, . 50. The Managers of
the Custom Department are to give good security for their personal
appearance when wanted. 51. If the security do not produce the per-
sons they are security for, then they will be held answerable. 52. .
53. The goods are to be searched, weighed, marked, and counted be-
tween 9 o'clock and 4 o'clock ; but as on this Coast the time of shipment
must, for the benefit of trade, be allowed when the boats can go off, and
in places where there are rivers, when the tide serves, from sunrise to
sunset is allowed as the time for shipping the goods which have been
examined. 54. . 55. . 56. The monthly accounts are to
be made up on the 25th. 57. . 58. . 59. The Managers
are to make themselves acquainted with the trade of the port they are
stationed at, with the price of all things selling, buying, with the
exchange of the money. They are to make all the people under them
obey, and take care of the circar (Govt.) interest; and if they do not,
77
they are to acquaint the CoUector; they are not to be excused any neg-
lect, by saying, " I told to do so ;" they must take care it is done.
They must obey most strictly the orders they receive, and read often,
till they properly understand. They must take care that the people do
not throw any stones in the river, or build banks without permission ;
they must prevent people from building opposite or round the Custom-
houses, so that they cannot see around. They must see the boats em-
ployed in carrying merchandize are good and proper ; they must attend
to their duty, and, by so doing, themselves and families will get good. —
{Sic orig.)
E. P. Blake,
Mangalore, 12 July, 1812. Collector of Customs.
Rules for Levying Duties on the Trade of Foreign European States.
1. Foreign European ships belonging to any nation at peace with the
English that has got settlements in India, may trade with the British
sea-ports ; but if they intend to trade to Europe, they must go straight
to their own country in Europe. 2. Foreign European ships belonging
to any nation that has not any settlement in India, and American, when
at peace with the English, may trade to British ports, if they come direct
from their own country, without touching anywhere except for refresh-
ments or from distress. The papers of such vessels must be sent for
inspection to the Collector of Customs, or his deputy. .3. The above
vessels are not to go anywhere but to their own countries, and there
unload. 4. The commander or supercargo of such vessels must give a
bond, with the security of a merchant who lives at the port where the
ship takes the cargo, with penalty of 100 rupees per ton (£lO) that she
delivered the cargo in the port bound for; when the certificate is pro-
duced that such has been done, the bond is to be made null and void.
5. The above vessels are not to be allowed to trade along the Coast, but
may take in part of the cargo at one port and part at another. 6. A
certificate for inland duty is to be taken in part payment. 7. Goods
trans-shipped are to be liable to the same duty as if imported, but the
Collector of Customs may alter this, if it is hard to the trade. 8. .
9. . 10. .
E. P. Blake,
Collector of Customs.
78
Rules for the Peons and Kolkars (officers) of the Sea Customs.
1 . The Peons employed in this department must be young, active,
and vigilant. 2. They are to find security for their good behaviour.
3. . 4. . 5. . 6. They are to take care that no boats
are employed at night, except by particular orders, or in case a ship is
in distress. 7. They are to search the goods, and to take care that no
goods pass but what have been searched, and are regularly brought to
the Custom-house yards. 8. . 9. The peons are to seize all goods
passing without paying duty. 10. Such goods they are to deliver to the
Manager, and mention all the circumstances; and then, if confiscated,
they will receive one-half of the price of them. 11. If any person in-
forms of persons smuggling, the Peons must assist, and half of the price
of the goods seized will be shared between the Peons and the person
who informed. 12. . 13. They are to inform the managers of
any persons who fill up rivers by throwing ballast into them, or build
walls in the rivers, &c. 14. They are to prevent any goods being landed
or shipped after sunset, or before sunrise. 15. . 16. When neces-
sary, they are to go on board of vessels and demand of the commander
to let them see there is no smuggled articles on board. 17. If any are
found, they are to have them landed, and carry them to the Custom-
house. 18. . 19. .
E. P. Blake,
Mangalore, 12 July, 1812. Collector of Customs.
These are the Custom-House Regulations, whicli I found strictly en-
forced in Malabar, on arriving there to reside.
The then Governor of Madras was Sir T. Munro. Some years before
(1817) he had visited that Province as Revenue Commissioner, for the
purpose, in official phrase, " of developing its resources ;" the resources
of India being developed not by the skill, the labour, and the capital of
the people, but by the periodical visits of the tax-hunter. It was im-
possible but that Sir T. Munro must have visited some of the Sea-Custom-
houses, as well as the Inland, and there have seen these Regulations.
This being the case, I conceived the best way of drawing attention to
them was to send them to the Court of Directors. I accordingly trans-
mitted an attested copy to the late Mr. Rickards, with an earnest re-
79
quest that he would bring them privately to the notice of the India
House. Mr. Rickards informed me he had lost no time in putting them
into the hands of one of the most influential among the Directors,
this gentleman shrugged up his shoulders, and took no other notice
whatever of them. Nearly fifty consecutive years' proofs have I in my
possession, of the same ceaseless, persevering, continued attempts, made
by father and son, to render important services in every department of
the Government, without the least desire of notice or return. What is the
reward of all ? To be driven from my property, or to consent to live on it
upon the condition of being an object of scorn and contempt to every
honourable mind, and of loathing to myself. But that is beside the
present case.
It has been seen that the express orders of the Court of Directors,
the Supreme Lords of the soil, are, to begin by taking from the land of
India, as direct tax, " the whole surplus produce in all cases" and that in
money, determined by their own Collectors, without the least respect
either to the immemorial practice of the country, which always fixed
the demand upon the Native, in produce, or the smallest reference to the
great and regularly progressive increase in the value of money, as com-
pared with produce, which such a tax must inevitably generate and
perpetuate. The Custom-House Rules enforced show that, in the Ma-
ritime Provinces of Madras, where the sea is the only higiiway, the
indirect tax fixed upon every article whatever of produce, except the
most valuable, which are liable to 15 or 18 per cent., is an export duty
of 8 per cent., besides Stamps and Fees, levied upon them, when taken
from the interior coastways, for sale at the nearest port, if it be but a
mile; that this duty is again exacted if, at the expiration of a short
time, the produce remaining unconsumed, it is transported for sale from
the first to any otlier port in the same Province; and that if the produce
be transported, within the time allowed, for sale in any other Province,
it is there subjected to duty, as an import, agreeably to the different Tariff
of that Province.
In order to make the operation of such a system plain and palpable, let
it be applied to any other country in the world — to Scotland, for example
— no larger than many Indian Provinces. Let us suppose the Government
of Great Britain to take in the first instance, in money, the whole rental
of the land of Scotland ; to take it from every acre and every fraction of
an acre in every parish in that kingdom; to collect this money at every
county town ; and, monthly, to send every farthing, except the fraction
80
(36 shillings) spent in each parish, to be hoarded in the Treasury at
Edinburgh : let us suppose that there are no roads, — therefore, no carts,
in the country; that all the inland traffic is by porters, with tolls at
every bridge and at every ferry, at which a Native with only a bundle
in his hand is considered as a loaded animal, and pays double toll every
time he passes, the European and his suite paying nothing. (Some years
ago, the tolls levied in Malabar, lying in the Treasury, amounted to
60,000 Rupees, a sum which, judiciously expended, would have made
many, many miles of excellent roads. What was done with it ? Every
Rupee was carried to account as surplus revenue !) Let us suppose
a Custom-House erected at the mouth of every stream, and river, and
accessible spot on the coast from the Tweed east, to Solway Firth west;
at which every article of produce passing sea-wards is stopped for 8 per
cent, duty, besides stamps and fees : let us suppose this to be called
an export by sea, and the same articles, if subsequently taken to another
port in Scotland, if from Leith to Dunbar, to be subject to a fresh
duty of 8 per cent. : let us suppose the article taken to any port in the
adjoining counties of Cumberland or Northumberland, and to be there
stopped, as a7i import, and taxed with fresh duty, besides stamps and
fees, according to a different tariff in that county : let us suppose the
articles to be so met and stopped at every port in every different county
coastways, all the way to London : let us suppose all the coin of Scot-
land so collected directly and indirectly at Edinburgh, to be transmitted
periodically to London : let us suppose that it is the return trade
(imports) from London to Scotland, placed exactly upon the same
footing as the trade outwards, which must bring all this coin back to
Scotland, during the eight months of the year that the Coast-Navigation
is open ; while, during ten months of the year, the Government is
rigorously calling upon the people in the remotest parishes and hamlets
to pay monthly the direct land-tax, and their tax on every house and
shop, in this coin, under pain of having their moveables and immove-
ables sold, and these failing, their persons imprisoned : let a man
suppose two necessaries of life, Salt and Tobacco, to be Government
Monopolies : let him suppose all these, only the most striking points of
the system, to be applied to Scotland, and then let him say whether
the marvel would be, not that the people were almost uniformly quiet
patient, and submissive under such a Government, but that the standing
miracle would be, that the whole country was not one deadly, perpetual,
endless scene of riot, insurrection, and bloodshed from one end to the other.
81
There is that country, there are the people; let any candid, impartial
man, desirous for the truth alone, go among and question them, and then
let the truth of what I have here adduced and stated be gainsaid.
If, with the same desire, he wishes to consult on the subject high
modern authorities, writing above all suspicion of prejudice, partiality,
or local interest; discarding all preconceived notions, he has only to
read with patient attention two very moderate-sized works : the first,
" The present Land-tax of India," by Major-General Briggs, an Officer
who for many years filled several of the highest civil situations under
the Government : the second, " Notes on Indian Affairs," by the late
Honourable Frederick Shore, a Judge in Bengal ; whose untimely death
I conceive to be one of the greatest calamities which has befallen India,
and as a public loss to his country.
(Note C Pageol.)
Even such afflicting details will convey nothing like a correct idea of the
incurable condition in which these desolate countries now become plunged .
There is left in them nor seed-corn, nor plough-cattle, nor money to buy
them with. The Government is obliged to turn money-lender, and
make advances for seed, and cattle, and present food, to the remnant of the
population, taking receipts for the future repayment of the advance,
called " tuccavi;" the name by which this fatal remedy is disguised,
yet the only remedy there is to stay the pestilence. Of ten Rupees
" tuccavi," which the Collector advances, through the agency of course
of hundreds of Native officials, the starving village cultivator may get
three, passing a receipt for ten (or not getting one if he refuses), which
sum is entered against him in the public Accounts. The Revenue is
partially remitted for one or more years ; but " the Jimimu," as it is
called, or Jixed assessment, remains unaltered in the Accounts, as the
standard to be reverted to and demanded, together with the advance,
whenever there is a prospect of realizing them, all or in part. A very
few years are sure to brine; round a " crack" Collector, or a want of rain .
If the first, he issues peremptory orders, desiring all outstanding balances
to be collected, under pain of dismissal, to his Native subordinates;
and to show them he is in earnest, he carries every fraction of their pay to
G
82
1 thft public account, as revenue collected. This I have positively known
to be done. I have known arrears of 19 years' standing exacted by the
Collector himself. From the nominal debtors ? No, not at all ; they were
mostly dead and departed ; the arrears were exacted from whomsoever
was found in actual occupation or possession of the land. I have seen
these men confined for days and days together, until, wearied out with the
persecution, they paid the demand, and — then starved with their families
for the rest of the year through, while the Collector received the highest
praises for his zeal and ability.
If the country be a bare, open country, the recurrence of a failure of
rain, partial or total, is inevitable, in consequence of the physical
character of the climate, produced and perpetuated by the same system;
hence, as inevitably, a recurrence of famine. No Native toiling for his
scanty daily food can dream, under such a system, of planting a tree,
which would require 15 or 20 years to yield him fruit. If he were such
an idiot as to plant one, he knows he would have to pay assessment,
just the same, for the ground it stands on and covers. " When a field
contains a few tamarind, kikar, or other productive trees, you will make
NO DEDUCT] ON for the land under their shade, because the ryot (occu-
pant) derives a profit from them." — (Sir T. Munro's Instructions to
Revenue-Surveyors, Rule 15. Would that men of sense and feeling
would read all these rules and judge for themselves of their operation !)
Thus, the fact of there being a fruit-tree in the open fields in India (a
crab-mango, worse than a crab-apple) is proof' that it yields a profit !
The Government, the sole Landlord, of course never thinks of planting
a tree for fruit, or shade, or for one of the ameliorating uses of soil and
climate, for which trees, in the wise economy of nature, are the indispensa-
ble agents. What then is the consequence ? The soil, incessantly cropped
without manure, becomes exhausted of its fertilizing constituents. But
the capacity of a soil to absorb and retain moisture depends entirely
upon its fertility, upon the proportion of fertilizing constituents which
it holds. As soon, therefore, as the scanty crop is off this exhausted soil,
the fierce sun darts down, unobstructed, and destroys and drinks up in
a few days every trace of vegetation and moisture. Then are generated
and arise the hot winds, the Simoom of India, sweeping night and day
over the arid, adust, wastes, loaded with fire and sand, making respiration
an effort, and existence a burthen. If, from some cause difficult to trace,
but certain to recur, the fiery blast continues to rage beyond the usual
months of suffering, the rain-fraught clouds, instead of being condensed
83
and descending in blessed drops at the vvislied-for time, pass over, and
leave the devoted country a prey to all the horrors of another famine.
Although I have witnessed this result from partial experiment, I shall
cite in support of its inevitable occurrence, far higher and abler autho-
rity, and refer others, who may still feel doubts as to the universality of
a great physical law, or who think that the profound purposes of Nature
are meant to subserve the crude and cruel theories of man, to the his-
tory of New Holland ; where uniform experience has shown, that the
destruction of the trees in a tract of forest has invariably been followed
by the desertion of rain and moisture from the tract. (See Lang's
New South Wales.)
" The character, as well as the temperature, of a climate must depend
very much on the quantity of rain which falls, while the quantity of rain
and the vegetation of u country mutually act on each other as cause and
effect. This interesting fact we will explain by an example :
" Let us consider an extended plain of sand in any tropical country,
as Africa. The sun will heat the surface and the air ; but the earth,
accumulating the heat more rapidly and more permanently, will com-
municate to the lower portion of the air a greater degree of temperature
than it would otherwise have; and, from a well-known law, this heated
portion of air would ascend, and its place be supplied with colder air
coming from a distance, which would, in its turn, become heated, and
rise, producing a constant current upwards of hot air. Now this cur-
rent of hot air would prevent the clouds passing over the spot from
condensing by cold and rain ; hence no rain would fall on the parched
soil, and it is certain that, without moisture, little or no vegetation can
be produced.
" But if the plain consist, instead of barren sand, of some earth favour-
able to vegetation, the last would screen the earth from the accumulating
heat. Little or no current upward would arise; either clouds would be
condensed in the higher regions, and rain would fall, or the vapours would
be condensed by the colder vegetable clothing, and this dew would
accelerate the growth of fresh plants, till in time a forest might cover the
former naked expanse. These trees would still farther shade the earth,
and preserve its moistened surface from evaporation ; it would also
attract moisture, and consequently keep down the temperature of such
a country."
So total and complete is the revolution which is gradually being
wrought in the climate of Madras, that, for the last fourteen successive
84
seasons, there has not been known what is called " a good Monsoon ;"
that is, there has not fallen the quantity of rain which used to fall every
year between October and January, and the perennial regularity of
which is attested by the tanks and embankments constructed there, as
generally throughout India on every advantageous spot, not only as
reservoirs to retain the periodical rain, but as vast basins to receive
swollen streams, diverted into them from running waste to the sea.
Coincident nearly with this change, in the character of the climate, have
been the visitations of the Cholera, whicli never wholly cease, and have
there been more rife and fatal, among the Native population, than in
almost any other region swept by the scourge.
Thus it is, as the impartial inquirer will find who directs his investi-
gations to that great country, the cradle of human civilization, that, by
uprooting the foundation of civil society, coeval with, and arising with
all its relations from, the institution of private property in tlie soil, and
incapable of being rested on any otiier solid and permanent basis than
the sacred and inviolable recognition of this right in the descendants, by
whatever legal title, of those who first felled the forest and peopled the
waste ; short-sighted rapacity, like the earth devouring her children,
is sure gradually to convert the fairest regions on the globe into little
better than howling wildernesses ; by usurping a dominion which it is
impossible for Sovereign Power, from its constitution, its paramount
duties, and its unavoidable ignorance, to exercise in any other manner,
than by entailing irremediable evil and misery upon the victims whom
it despoils, at the same time that it degrades, in the course of one gene-
ration, to the abject moral and physical condition, whence centuries
alone of struggles and of experience could have enabled them, or any other
people, to emerge.
The European instrument of this spoliation, sent over the waste to
hunt out land-revenue, but panting in vain for repose or rest, or stricken
to the heart by the fatal climate, beholds the scene with unutterable
loathing and abhorrence; and although stumbling at every step on monu-
ments attesting liie wealth, the industry, and the civilization of the former
myriads who peopled it, he doubts whether the beneficence of Provi-
dence can have designed such a country for the habitation of civilized
man. From blasted inanimate nature, he turns to the wasted forms of
animated existence he now sees around, cowering at his presence; he
denies that beings, who accept of life on such terms and conditions, as
living there as they live, can be possessed of the feelings and sentiments
86
which entitle them to rank in the creation in the same scale as that to
which he himself belongs, and hence, incapable as they are of resistance or
remonstrance, he learns, by degrees imperceptible to himself, to debase
them by treatment, which his better nature would revolt from bestowing
upon the dog which crouches at his feet.
If from India the enquirer turn to Great Britain, in whichsoever way
he directs his regards, he will find that this same system of impolicy and
injustice is gradually enveloping and coiling round the permanent great"
ness and prosperity of his own country, insure, hidden, deadly, and inex-
tricable folds. If he look at the far West, he will see that the system has
forced into existence, in little more than forty years, one production alone,
the staple for centuries and tens of centuries of India, as it would still be
in supplies wholly illimitable from the unfettered land and labour of
one hundred millions of Natives ; and that Great Britain, not merely for
the continuance of her commercial predominance, but for the hourly
maintenance of her domestic tranquillity, is rendered dependent upon
receiving from America three-fourths of the cotton which America, by
tlie labour of 600,000 slaves, has now been brought to produce (1 ,600,000
bales); the possession of which staple, doubling as its growth there does
every nine years, must, in the same rapid progress of time, hurried on-
wards by the gigantic growth of capital, enable this rival to supplant
and ruin British Manufacturers in all the marts of commerce they now
frequent, as she already successfully competes with them in some the
most distant and profitable, those of Africa and China,
In the extreme East, upon which all classes of the empire, from the
peasant in his cottage to the Prince on the throne, depend for an indis-
pensable necessary of life, he will see that, by the proscription of the
fur cheaper cotton of India; supplied with which the British Manufac-
turer would, at the hour that is now passing, have clothed the hundreds
of millions of the population of China, from Canton to the Great Wall,
in peaceable, friendly, and most beneficial exchange for their tea; the
British Merchant is beheld setting at defiance, and waging armed war
against, the established laws of a vast Empire, for the purpose of forcibly
introducing into it, as almost the only equivalent he can procure, a most
pernicious drug (opium) which that Empire deems it a duty peremptorily
to prohibit^ as being alike fatal to the health and the morals of its peo-
ple ; he will hear the Merchant calling loudly upon his country to
avenge by the sword the personal insults and contumelies heaped upon
him, because this Empire, averse to war, yet mighty in its strength, will
86
no more than tolerate a race of men, whom their conduct obliges it to
regard in the light of a band of hardened smugglers, nor suffer them to
inhabit any other spot in the country than a despised, remote corner of
a few hundred yards extent, nor to hold intercourse with any but the
dregs of its populace.
If the inquirer ask whence is derived the supply of this noxious com-
modity, if he demand, what its necessity? he will learn, that it is all
derived from India, that the Government of India it is, which retails the
poison to the Merchant, after first erecting it into an odious and vexa-
tious Monopoly upon the Natives, and that it is that Government which
defends and maintains the necessity of the monopoly by the declaration
that, deprived of this resource, India in its hands would be bankrupt !
These are only a few of the results, in one or two branches of com-
merce, which await the candid and impartial inquirer after truth, who
calmly traces no more than the obvious effects of the system of Govern-
ment, pursued towards the Natives of India, upon the great and solid
interests of Great Britain; these are the results which he will find await-
ing his investigations; this is what he will discover, instead of beholding
such a spectacle as the world never before beheld, but which it would
now behold — the spectacle of his country flourishing as the seat of a com-
merce so vast, that her present unrivalled greatness, maritime and
manufacturing, sinks by the side into utter and worthless insignificance:
a commerce and an industry which unbeheld, exceed all the powers of
the imagination to grasp in value or in extent; but which would now
exist, made palpable to the senses by the certainty of living demonstra-
tion, if a course of enlightened wisdom, impartial justice, and strict
moderation had ruled India in leading subserviency to her own in-
terests, demonstrably proved to be the plain, the real, and the cardinal
interests of Great Britain: by giving to the millions of peaceable, indus-
trious Natives of that great country, all they asked in return for a
willing and cheerful obedience, and all that they now ask, entire secu-
rity of person, and the right conceded and inviolably preserved to every
other subject of the British Crown, whatever his caste, his complexion,
or his country, the right of tilling, unmolested by the Government or its
myrmidons, that soil, which the plainest understanding must perceive,
no Government on earth, nothing but the capital, the labour, and the
knowledge alone of their forefathers, could have redeemed from the
waste, could have converted into the property, which the Sovereign-lord
now seizes ;is his mvn, and have made it the habitation of man.
87
But if such would now be the commercial spectacle presented by
Great fJritain, had this just and simple course of rule been followed, the
boundless moral and political consequences which are growing out of,
and impending in both hemispheres, from the rigid and cruel adoption
of the very opposite one, defy alike human sagacity to trace, and human
fortitude calmly to scan. For if the whole recorded past be any guide
in conducting us to a knowledge of what the ways and the unerring
justice of Providence will assuredly be in time to come, retribution has
inscribed it in the opfening page of Great Britain, as fearfully and as
plainly as the handwriting on the wall, that in this system of impolicy, ra-
pacity, injustice, and oppression, pursued towards a mute and defence-
less people, are being sowed wide as the earth and irradicably deep, the
seeds of revolutions, of convulsions, and of events which, in the swift
maturity of time and the fulfilment of a laboured doom, must sap the
prosperity of this Queen of Nations, and lay all her greatness low.
" Then come it will, the day decreed by fate.
How my heart trembles as my tongue relates !
The day when thou, Imperial Troy ! shalt bend.
And see thy Heroes fall, thy Glories end I "
This vast and most melancholy subject, which saddens all the past
history of India, and darkens all the future with its portents, has, in
spite of myself, grown under my pen.
F. C. B.
[See Postscript at the end of the following Letters.]
LETTERS,
&.C. Sec.
TELLICIIERTtY, Ji«j/ 31, 1837.
TO THE SECRETARY TO GOVERNMENT IN THE SECRET
AND POLITICAL DEPARTMENT, FORT ST. GEORGE.
Sir,
It has long been notoiiods to the vvell-inrorined
part of the community, European and Native, thiougliout
Canara and North Malabar, that the real nature of" the
events which have lately occurred in the former Province,
seems to be known to all but the Government. The alarm
and dismay* which were felt and exhibited at Manga-
* Relation given by Captain Burtsall, of the ship Eamont, on iiis
arrival from Mangalore at Tellicherry.
" On the 5lh of April, while standing into Mangalore, I was hailed by
Mr. , who said, he feared that Mangalore was in possession of
the insurgents, and the civilians and garrison massacred. Shortly
after, I saw several other boats pulling out. The Harbour-master and
Mr. came on board ; the former said the boat, in which the
ladies had embarked, had drifted ashore and gone to pieces, and that
the ladies had been all night on the beach. Mr. came from the
garrison ; he said the enemy were momentarily expected, and requested
H
90
lore, may possibly be held fo palliate the colouring that
was given to those events in the first official reports. But
the reign of such sentiments, one would hope, would have
been the briefest ; and upon their extinction, upon the
subsidence of even all imaginary alarm, one would suppose
that scores of official pens would have hastened to place
the plain, unvarnished truth before the Government; first,
from the obligations of duty; secondly, in order that no
generous precipitation should present the Government to
the world, as hurrying by its approval to identify itself
with a course of conduct which, since England has been
England, is believed to be nearly without parallel.
Sir, I know not how casuistry explains away this reserve,
whether under the name of a prudent reticence, or of a
discreet regard for the reputation of individuals, these in-
dividuals being public men, and their conduct public pro-
perty ; but this I know, that, in the language Englishmen
think and speak, such silence seems to be an unpardonable
tampering with the credulity of the Government; nor shall
it be said, while there is an Englishman on the spot cogni-
zant, as he believes, of the truth, and able to tell it, that
he also stood aloof, and countenanced by his privity the
aid. I went on shore with Messrs. and ; met two boats
containing and , and ladies ; directed them to the Eamont.
I afterwards met a boat, by which I wrote to my mate for the guns. Into
this Mr. got. At the mouth of the Backwater I met Mr. with
ladies in a state of very great alarm, ^^'e got to the position taken up by
the garrison at the very moment the lines (the Sepoy's huts) and some
houses were fired. Resistance was considered hopeless. The confusion on
shore vms great.
" On the 30th of March, three officers and 150 men, accompanied by
Messrs. and , went out to Pootoor, 40 miles distant, and
took possession of the traveller's bungalow. Large bodies of insur-
gents were on the heights. The party were besieged for two days, and
there being no hope of relief, and the water cut off, they retreated.
Tiiey were fired upon by the enemy from under cover, for about eighteen
miles ; tlie Subadar major, several Native officers, and about fifty men
were killed."
91
delusion which is eiiteitained on this very serious
subject.
The most leading; and marked amonoj the events I have
alluded to, that which doubtless made the greatest impres-
sion upon His Lordship in Council, as it at first made upon
all who heard of it, were the attacks on Mangalore, " by
6,000 or 12,000 rebels in arms ! " I will not trust myself
with saying one word, upon my own authority, of this
occurrence ; but shall here insert, verbatim, an account of
these attacks given by an eye witness, a native of Manga-
lore, in a letter to his father then residing in tiiis town,
an account intended only, as will be seen, for the informa-
tion and satisfaction of the writer's own family.
Mangalore, April 15, 1837.
My dear Father,
I know that you would have been glad if you
had heard from us earlier, and I regret that I could not
write before, because the post was shut to us up to the day
before yesterday, and yesterday we had no leisure to write,
having to attend to our duties. I hope, in God, that you
are doing well; as for us, every one at home is quite well,
thanks to the Almighty.
I have never thought that Mangalore would fall into
such distress. It is a pity to see Mangalore in its present
state. The greater part of the inhabitants have fled the
country. Several have lost their houses and property.
The best buildings at this place are reduced to ashes, and
every man complains that he has lost something. I shall
give a short account of all that passed here.
On Monday, the 3rd inst., while I was in Court, we re-
ceived information of the defeat of a detachment of Sepoys,
who went to Buntwal on the night of the preceding Friday,
on hearing of a disturbance there. At the same time we
heard that Coorg people were advancing upon the town of
Mangalore. This news alarmed the whole town, and every
individual was so anxious for his safety, that some went on
92
board Paltaniars, and others, who could not hire a vessel,
proceeded to the sea-sliore. Perliaps you will think we
were safe from the infection ; no, it was general.* We,
and some other families, among whom was that of our
neighbour ■ , procured a Pattamar, wherein we re-
mained from Monday night to Wednesday morning, intend-
ing to sail for sume neighbouring port, in case the enemy
should make an attack ui)on us. Every hour that we
were on board, we received information that "the devil
Apparampura was coming;" but one day and two nights
j)assed quietly without his making his appearance ; and
considering that the news were false, we began to be tired
of the Pattamar, particularly as the owners thereof, taking
advantage of the occasion, had raised the freight so much,
that each night cost us all about twelve rupees. We,
therefore, landed on Wednesday morning about eight
o'clock. We had scarcely arrived at home when we heard
that the Coorg people had marched as far as the other
side of the Oollaul river. To know whether this was true^
I ran to the Marine-yard; and after I saw them with my
own eyes, I did not lose a moment, but ran home, and gave
the information to every one. We removed all the move-
ables from the house, and placed them in the garden, that,
in the event of the house being fired, the property at least
should be saved ; we were afraid of the house, because the
Sub-collector's Cutcherry was near, and it was very probable
they would set fire to it. Within a quarter of an hour the
* A gentleman wrote, " I liave had a long conversation with a smart
fellow who quitted Mangalore on Wednesday. His account of the pro-
ceedings is deplorable, and evidently pretty correct. Not the least
attempt at ' bundobust' by proclamations and patroles of Peons, during
the two days and a half from the return of the Sepoys, till the attack
was made!"
An official report stated, tfuii for the three days previous, nearly the
whole of the Judge and Collector s establishments had quitted Man.
galore, " and that the duties of every department had ceased to be
■ petformed ! "
93
Coorg people appeared, and halted near uncle's house ; and
here they are said to have made a bow to the church (the
Roman Catholic Church), and a moment before the Coorg
people were seen in numbers about 2,000 near the signal
staff'; and, at the same time, we perceived several houses
on fire, and among them the large house of Mr. Sheffield.
The people then advanced as far as the Court-house (old),
and then the Sepoys, whom the number of the enemy had
perhaps frightened out of their wits, and who were going
up and down the Old Fort, as if at a loss of a proper place
to take their station, entered Mr. Hudleston's compound,
and an Officer with some Sepoys went to meet the enemy,
who had now arrived near the Barracks; while another
Officer followed his example, and proceeded with a few
Sepoys near the Mess-house, where he halted, and fired a
volley of balls at the men, who were ranged near uncle's
house ; one or two men fell on the spot, and the rest
immediately dispersed and ran different ways; but tiie
Sepoys followed them, and killed many. More than a
hundred fell in the river, while they were attempting to
cross it, the Sepoys firing from the shore into the boats.
Those who came as far as the Barracks from the Milagres
side likewise ran away, as soon as the Sepoys fired at them,
but few of them fell ; but the slaughter was very great
among those who came from the BoUar-road. I pity their
case ; they were mere Ryots, and were forcibly brought by
the Ringleaders ; and I heard from a boy, who lay wounded
on the road, that the greater [)art of the men were inoffen-
sive villagers, and that nothing but the fear of death at
the hands of the rebels, not only of themselves but of their
family, induced them to join in the insurrection. Among
them I even saw some who could not walk but with the
aid of a cane ; others had scarcely any instrument in their
hands but sticks and clubs ; and one of twenty was armed
with a matchlock, and some carried large coythas, or bill-
hooks. Yet they were setting up such alarming " coooks"
94
ur cries, tliat they frightened tlie town with it, more than
with their number of arms; and 1 think that that was
the best prowess of their military skill. But with all this,
and the extent of their number, they fled at the fire of a
few Sepoys,* who, had they known their courage before,
would not have suffered them to step into Mangalore;
but they thought they were the same that defeated
them at Buntwal. But that was a jungle and this a
plain. Of the second attack I have nothing more to
say, than that the Sepoys had more courage than before
their success on Wednesday ; the day of the second attack
was Friday, and we were at home on this day, but on
Monday we went near Pascoa's house. The fire of the
Sepoys did not last more than a quarter of an hour, and
soon the enemy retreated ; and since that day they have
not made their appearance again; and if they now make
another attack I should be very glad, for there is now suffi-
cient force here, and they will receive a good drubbing.
But I think he is not so foolish as to enter Mangalore now.
About 800 men with some guns arrived here on Wednes-
day last from Cannanore, and on Thursday we received
200 men with 60 cavalry men from Nuggur. Among those
who came from Cannanore, there are 200 Europeans ; and
this morninsf we have received a further reinforcement
from Bombay, consisting of 300 Sepoys; and 200 Euro-
peans are coming in the rear. Now we are not afraid, and
you must not have much concern about us.
I, and every one at home, request your blessing, &c. &c.
I remain
Your most obedient and affectionate Son,
TP •??• tF -w*
Excuse haste and the handwriting.
• A letter from Maugalore reported that, " after hard fighting, they
completely drove away the insurgents. Two guns landed from the
Eamont did tremendous execution." Of the two shots from the guns,
the Natives declare that one struck a tree, the other a house ; but the
report was quite enough, and sent " the rebels" scampering away.
95
Such, Sir, is the account given by this lad of the
attacks on Mangalore, on the 5th and 7th of April, 1837.
I request His Lordship in Council to pause upon the
graphic picture of the occurrences, as detailed by this
impartial witness, prejudiced, if at all, in favour of his
own townsmen, and of his own superiors, and to compare
it with the narratives which have been transmitted by
others. In this there is nothing meant for the eye of His
Lordship in Council, nor for the public ; the writer, a
Native, describes what he actually saw, and describes
it in his own words, to his own humble family circle. The
people of Mangalore have dwelt in profound peace for
nearly forty years ; their town is the seat of Government,
and the capital of the Province, populous, wealthy, and
civilized. I ask His Lordship in Council to think, for a
moment, upon the state of entire disorganization into
which this town was thrown, of the tenor into which its
inhabitants were suddenly plunged, of the utter insecurity
and defencelessness they all felt, when all those who
could, imitating the example set to them, deserted their
houses and property, and took refuge in boats and Patta-
mars, or fled miles away ; and this too, two ivhole days
and nights before the shadow of " a Coorg" was descried !
And when, at length, these formidable enemies did appear,
when these warriors, not one of whom had been seen since
the 2nd of April, did venture to come forth, with numbers
vastly augmented by success, even the writer of this letter,
who probably never saw 500 men assembled together in
a body, rates their whole number at 2,000, states that
only one in twenty had a matchlock, the rest bill-hooks,
sticks, and clubs, that the armed and the unarmed
trusted to their shouts, as their most terrible weapon,
that the greater part, poor Ryots, only waited for a dis-
charge of blank cartridge to fly to their homes in the
jungles, and that the whole body did Hy on the first volley
of ball from the Sepoys !
All these facts and occurrences, detailed by this eye-
96
witness to his family, indisputable and irrefragable as I
tinnly believe them to be, will appear incredible to His
Lordship in Council. Well may they so appear, and
would that they were incredible ! But the sequel remains
to be related, and I shall relate it the most succinctly I can.
" The Rebels," who compelled a party of 150 Sepoys to
retreat from Pootoor in the dead of night, were at most
170 or 200 men, armed with bad matchlocks, and pro-
vided with a scanty supply of wretched ammunition, and
about 200 or 300 Ryots, some of whom may have had
bows and arrows.
This fact is established by the testimony of Devap-
pah, the head Siieristedar of Canara,* who, with several
others, was captured by " the rebels " at Pootoor, and
remained with them nearly a month. But the same infor-
mation was given to me at this place on the 3rd of April,
by a respectable Koombla merchant, who had just arrived
from " the rebels." They had sent for him and for others
of the chief inhabitants, and asked them to join the rising;
their arms and numbers he and the rest then saw and
noted.
Satisfied with having driven the troops from their own
country, " the rebels" followed no further than Buntwal,
sixteen miles from Mangalore, the limit nearly of the
Jungle ; and no one who knows the people or the country
will suspect, that the former had any design of proceeding
further, even if the absence of all design were not clearly
proved by the fact, of not one of them having advanced
until the morning of the 5th.f On the 3d, I believe,
* Devappah and his companions were deserted by " the rebels" on
the advance of the Coorg Dewan, Bappoo. lie stated, on his return to
Mangalore, that they had not more than 200 stand of fire arms among
them.
f The prisoners, on their capture, said in justification, that they were
invited to Mangalore by the towns'-people, who told them there was
plenty of treasure, and no troops to defend it. Whether the excuse
97
the unanimous resolution was taken, and all but unani-
mously subscribed in writing, by all the European func-
tionaries, of abandoning Mangalore, undefended, to its fate !*
Early on the morning of the 4t,h, the treasure (16,000
rupees, f not the powder with which the magazine was
filled) was marched for embarkation to the beach, amid the
bootings and revilings of the towns-people. Some of these
insulted, calumniated people demanded in the hearing of
the German Missionaries to be furnished with arms ; " they
would," they said, "defend the place,"J and received for
reply ; " Go, we can do nothing for you." A part of the
Sepoys, almost in open mutiny, to their infinite honour be
their conduct recorded, were actually embarked in boats,
and the whole of them, could boats have been got, would
have been embarked and, together with their Officers and
all the Europeans, would have arrived at Cannanore, the
Military Head Quarters of the two Provinces, eighty miles
distant, in the course of the same night, about twelve hours
before a single " rebel" appeared at Mangalore. § From
the want, however, of sufficient boats, the Sepoys were
obliged to be marched back to their Barracks ; such their
exultation, that one noble fellow rushed from the ranks,
and clasped his Officer in his arms!|| and Mangalore
be true or the reverse, their advance two dai/s (tfter sufficiently proves the
absence of all design on their part of approaching the town, previous to
its reported abandonment.
* See the official letter which follows, wherein this resolution was
reported to the Governor in Council, on the Gth of April.
f This is an error. The sum, I afterwards heard, was 80,000 rupees
—8,000/.
X This circumstance was narrated by the Missionaries on their arri-
val at Cannanore. The treasure the towns-people would not suflTer to
be embarked, urging that they would have to answer for it to the rebels.
§ A party of ladies and children, sent from Mangalore on the 5th,
arrived that night at Tellicherry, ten miles further south than Cannanore.
II When the Sepoys were on the beach, and when in consequence of
the boats proving insufficient for them and for their families, the Bugle
I
98
was obliged to be defended. What defences were thrown
up, I know not. On the following morning, the 5th, the
witless "rebels," trusting to the correctness of the news of
the abandonment of the place, brought to them on the 4th,
and not dreaming that a single European or Sepoy remained,
advanced with shouts from Buntwal, as to a deserted town,
received one discharge of musquetry from a few Sepoys,
and instantly dispersed and fled. A part of them, in at-
ten)pting to cross the river, having landed lower down at
Oollaul, a suburb inhabited by Mapillas, were seized by
these unarmed Mapillas, stripped of whatever arms they
had and of every vestige of clothing but a Lungouty, or loin
cloth, and bidden " to go now and make war !"*
Such is declared to have been the passage of arms at
Mangalore, such the defence with which the name of His
Lordship in Council is associated in General Orders, record-
ing his encomiums^ on the gallantry displayed against
sounded the Recall, the joy and alacrity with which the men marched
back were unbounded.
* This scene was related at Teilicherry by some of the Hindoo inha-
bitants of Mangalore, witnesses of it.
t "Fort St. George, Mai/ 9, 1837. — His Excellency the Com-
mander-in-Chief having transmitted to GovernTuent, reports of the ope-
rations of the detachment lately commanded by , from the advance
to Pootoor, at the requisition of the Principal Collector, to the second
repulse of the large bodies of insurgents who attacked the town and
cantonment of Mangalore, the Right Hon. the Governor in Council has
much satisfaction in recording his approbation of the persevering gal-
lantry witii which the defence of that station was maintained against
repeated assaults by superior numbers, and in the uncertainty of being
reinforced or relieved ; a defence which reflects great credit upon ,
the European and native commissioned officers, and all ranks composing
the small body under his command. His Lordship in Council directs
tliat the favourable sentiments with which the Government are impressed,
by their steady and soldier-like conduct throughout service of so harass-
ing a nature, may be made known to the oflicers and men of the
regiment N. I. ; and His Excellency the Commander-in-Chief is re-
quested to call upon to furnish, for submission to Government, a
roll of those among tlie native commissioned officers, the non-commis-
99
the numerous assailants, 350 firelocks handled by dis-
ciplined men, against 200 matchlocks, 500 clubs, sticks,
and bill-hooks, and 10,000 shouts ! Such the exploit,
which can boast, I hear, of having received the individual
thanks of so distinguished a soldier as the Commander-
in-Chief! — Five thousand men in arms! The whole of
Canara could not produce them ! The Canarese are not
merely unvvarlike, and unused to, but they are wholly
averse to the use of arms* : and as to 5,000 armed men
issuing from the jungles of Bellarrypet and Soolia, unless
men with matchlocks grow there like forest trees, or the
poor creature, Kallianappa the Ilnd., could raise them from
the earth by a stamp of his foot, I can assure his Lord-
ship in Council they are a physical impossibility. Would
that the Commander-in-Chief could see a few of these
warriors, examine their arms and ammunition, and look at
them, loading and firing, with an Elephant for a mark !
But as a climax to all these incredible things. We, the
people of the country, We, the subjects of this Govern-
ment, have presented to us the spectacle, of the Officer who
commanded at Mangalore being the President, and some
of his brother Officers Members of the Court Martialf
now sitting there, and trying for their lives, the poor, igno-
rant, misguided wretches who, on the faith of the departure
of the Europeans and Sepoys, mustered up courage, and
came to see whither they had gone ! We see the Magis-
trate of Mangalore, the chief Civil Officer on the occasion,
sioned, and privates, whom he considers to have been particularly dis-
tinguished by their zeal and gallantry at Pootoor, during the retreat, and
in the defence of the cantonment at Mangalore."
* When those who took refuge in Tellicherry were asked, why,
instead of flying before such enemies as they described the insurgents to
be, " wild men from the jungle," they did not remain and defend their
houses and villages ; " Fight !" they exclaimed, " what do we know
about fighting ? We have no fire-arms, and if we had, we do not know
how to use them."
f The interpreter of the court was likewise an oflicer of the same corps.
i2
100
committing capitally for the same oft'ence, before another
extraordinary Tribunal, others whom the summariness of
Martial law cannot reacli ! We see the Government, in
the case of the former prisoners, abdicating its dearest pre-
rogative of life and death, of justice and mercy, into the
hands of the Officer Commanding the Provinces! Good
God! Sir! what a horrible spectacle! Ilis Lordship in
Council does not know that public men, (there are most
honourable exceptions,) seemed to take leave, for many
days in April, of the senses God gave them ! Can I wish to
disparage an old officer like the Officer Commanding? But
is it not known that he, who has never been less secure from
attack at Cannanore than the Governor in Fort St. George,
wrote to a lady living within a few yards of a guard of
his Kegiment, that he could not answer for the safety of
her lamps, and advised their removal ? *
* The Officer Commanding the Provinces was empowered by the
Governor in Council to confirm the sentences passed upon the prisoners
hy the Court Martial, and to carry those sentences into immediate
execution, without reference to Madras. This Officer was nearly an en-
tire stranger both to the people and to the country; and I am aware, felt
himself bound to be guided in his measures and opinions by the reports
he received of the state of North Malabar, as well as of Canara, from per-
sons whose information and authority he was not at liberty to doubt.
That his persuasion, derived from these sources, and partly perhaps from
what he saw in the Madras Papers, was, that the Natives around were
generally disaffected and ripe for revolt, became manifest, by his order-
ing the Fort of Cannanore to be put into a state of immediate defence,
a measure that was executed with equal skill, judgment, and prompti-
tude. Nor was this belief confined to himself only; for the salutation
with which the Natives were received was, that they were " a set of
traitorous, treacherous villains, for whom hanging was too good."
But the question which the Natives put, and which they solicit to have
answered, is, whose letters and reports was it which thus spoke of
them, which raised this general belief to their prejudice, a belief calcu-
lated to set their country, without remorse, under fire and sword ?
" The extraordinary tribunal," above mentioned, was a special com-
mission, consisting of two Judges, dispatched from Tellicherry to Man-
101
Why, Sir, what more certain, than that you and I
should be found with arms in our hands, defending our
homes and families, had we been deserted as the people of
galore, to try the other prisoners, under the summary provisions of
Regulation 20 of 1802.
As this Regulation is the Statute of Treasons under which the Natives
are attainted for their lives in the Presidency of Madras, every dictate of
humanity, as well as of justice, demands that its enactments be made
known. They are as follow: —
Clause I. ordains that, " Persons charged with treason, rebellion, or
other offences against the State, may, in particular cases, be
brought to immediate trial before the Court of Circuit, or before a
special Court," named and convened by the Governor in Council.
Clause II. The above courts, " consisting of three Judges and two
Mahomedan law-officers, or of any other nM»ifcer of Judges and
law-officers," are to take cognizance of these crimes.
Clause III. The Courts to proceed like Courts of Circuit, except that
their sentence is to be reported, before execution, to theFonjdarry
Udalut; and to be guided, in cases not provided for, " by special
orders."
Clause IV. Death or absence of any of the Judges or law-officers, not to
affect nor to interi'upt proceedings, even if no other judge be
appointed.
Clause V. The Fonjdarry Udalut to report sentence and proceedings,
and await the orders of the Governor in Council.
Clause VI. Magistrates to assist in expediting trials, and bringing
offenders to justice.
These are the whole of the provisions of the Regulation. It will be
seen by them, that the law is entirely devoid of every safeguard with
which the universal experience of mankind has found it indispensable,
in order to secure the rendering of impartial justice, to fence round the
life of an individual charged with a crime against the state. Without
the benefit of a Jury, or even of one independent Native Assessor, the
Native accused of treason or rebellion under this law, has no right re-
served to him of challenging any one of his Judges, English or Native,
appointed by the Government, on any ground whatsoever ; not on the
ground of competency, qualification, knowledge, prejudice, nor integrity.
Not a provision is made, not a precaution is taken, by which the accused
shall be made acquainted and furnished with a copy, in writing, of the
precise crime he is charged with, specifying the day, the time, the
place, the manner of its commission, the names of the witnesses, and
102
Mangalore were? What more certain than that, as long as
we drew breath, we should never again trust their defence or
our own to the same defenders? We might as certainly be
the written depositions against him. Not merely wholly ignorant of the
law, but sometimes wholly ignorant of the language in which his trial
for life is held, and, in his Judges, perhaps seeing Europeans for the first
time, in this situation, in the state of mind in which he must thus cir-
cumstanced be plunged, without a friend near, and removed miles away
from his own country, not an individual of his own caste or com-
plexion is assigned to him, to calm his terrors, and support his resolution;
not a person is appointed, as an adviser, to inform his ignorance, to ex-
tenuate his guilt, or even to establish his innocence: nor is there a
precaution publicly taken, that the presiding Judges shall be sufficiently
conversant wilh some one of the native languages, as to understand
his viva voce defence for his life, and to detect the prevarications of
approvers, whose hopes of pardon maybe made to depend upon his con-
viction. And against whom, on the present occasion, was this law
enforced? The native letter-writer describes the greater part of "the
rebels" he saw at Mangalore, some of whom he conversed with, to
have been " mere Ryots, inoffensive villagers, whom nothing but the
fear of death for themselves and families led to join the insurrection."
This is his description of them. The following is the description of an
English eye and ear witness: — •" Some of them say they did go, because
their Potails ordered them; and they really look spooney enough to
obey such an order without thinking of consequences." After these
two descriptions, it is relief inexpressible to be able to reflect, from long
personal knowledge, upon the character and qualifications of the two
Judges, to whom was assigned the duty of trying these men.
But, as an index to the exasperated feelings which had been excited,
and which existed, elsewhere, it is necessary to revert to the instructions
which the Judges are related to have received from Madras. They were
ordered to depart, and commence their task with the least practicable
delay; for which purpose they were desired to communicate on their
way with the Officer commanding the Provinces, who, they were
instructed, would put them into immediate possession of the number
and names of the prisoners to be tried, their crimes, the depositions
against them, and the witnesses. This Officer, when applied to at Can-
nanore, wholly uninformed of one of these particulars, referred the
Judges to the Officer commanding at Mangalore. To him they wrote.
He proved to be an officer of the Bombay army, just arrived, an entire
stranger to the place, and left, as he replied, without a record, note, or
103
seized with those arms, and taken prisoners by a posse of
valorous Peons, every man of whom, imitating the example
set to them, only more successfully, disappeared for
several days; and upon their reappearance, were stripped
of their badges, and told that the restoration of these
depended on the number of prisoners they should capture
and bring in! * What more certain than that, upon the
evidence of any two or more of these men, we should be
convicted, and if, in defence, we turned to the President of
the Court Martial, and said : " We are innocent, we are
not rebels, nor traitors; arms we had for own protection,
and it is you, who drove us to have them;" what more
certain, than that we should be led to an ignominious
death ?
Sir, let me earnestly implore His Lordship in Council
to recall this fearful power of life and death, of which
he has divested himself. Divested himself! He does not
suspect to what deeds he may be a party. The human
breast knows no such vindictive passion as fear. I have
witnessed, and others have witnessed here, yes here, in
Tellicherry, many days after the Bombay troops had
reached Mangalore, a degree of alarm so great, that not
memorandum of any kind, to enable him to furnish any part of the in-
formation required of him, and wliich he was described to be quite pre-
pared to give! In other words, the Judges hastened to Mangalore, and
found no prisoners for trial ; the senior Officer there, to whom they
were sent, could not tell them who were the persons to be tried : the
OfiBcer commanding the Provinces, he who had received thepower of life
and death from the Government, could not tell them. What informa-
tion the Government possessed, or could furnish, on the subject in their
haste for punishment, may hence be gathered.
* The predicament obviously was, that not one of these Peons
could be discharged. It would have been too much to make it a matter
of crime against these men, that after seeing their superiors first send oft"
their wives and children, and then follow themselves to the beach with
the treasure, thoy, the Peons, did not wait to sec when their superiors
would return.
104
a hecatomb of victims would appease it! Will it be
believed, no, it will not, that the removal of the pubhc
treasure from hence, notwithstanding all tliat had passed
at Mangalore, was mooted and urged, the Assistant Magis-
trate being on the spot, and the Magistrate, responsible for
that treasure, within a few miles ! Is it not a miracle that
the whole country was not in a flame? The Government
knows not of, suspects not, conduct like this. Alas! Sir,
it does not, and it delegates away, without appeal, the
power of life and death I
I do not ask His Lordship in Council to credit, on mif
iiuthority, a word of what I have related. I ask him to
suspend his judgment ; to call for all the Mangalore trials,
civil and military, to read them, when he will see that I
have not related a tithe of what will be established by the
clearest evidence.* If ray entreaty could have weight, I
* The following is the confession of one of the first prisoners tried
before the special commission ;
" The consultation to attack Bellarypet was held at Moodnoor, in
Soolya, by K. Ramiah Gowda, the principal man, several Potails, and
all the chief inhabitants of Amara Soolya, in number about fifty.
Kallianappa came from the Poomaley jungle, with another Ramiah
Gowda, and about 120 armed men. The whole party went to Bellary-
pet; the public servants and money were seized 5 Soobryah was sent
with a force to Cassergode ; the rest advanced to Pootoor, and repulsed
the Sepoys. The rebel party here consisted of 200 armed men and 300
Ryots. From the Bungar Rajah's house, P. Antapi)a Slietty, and 200
armed men of Amara Soolya, advanced upon Mangalore. Many Ryots
followed. At the last annual feast at Adoor, Narsojee and a Caff'ree
woman, who were in jail at Mangalore, sent a Cadjan to Soobryah, in-
viting him to attack the town. After the jail was opened (on the 5th of
April), these two, with about 60 of the prisoners, joined Kallianappa.
Three years ago, Apparampara was seized and confined for eight months
in jail at Mangalore. He is the son of Rajah Appajee, liie elder uncle
of \'eera Rajah, the last Rajah. On his release he was directed to go
to Mysoor. I have heard that he was again seized and sent to Trichi-
iiopoly. Kallianappa was also seized and sent to Mysoor (Bangalore),
lie {this KftUianappd) is tlic son of tlic wife of \^ecr Rajiuider Wadya,
105
would beseech His Lordship in Council, as he consults the
honour of his own great country, and the peace and tran-
an uncle of Apparampara's : the Kallicmappa, v/ho attacked Bellarypet,
is another person ; he is the son of a woman who was kept by the above
Veer Rajunder Wadya, and is about twenty-five years of age, rather a
fool, short, dark complexioned, and somewhat pock-marked. At the last
Nowaratree festival, three persons (named) went to Trichinopoly, to see
Apparampara; they saw Kallianappa (the first one) at Mysoor. He
told them to raise a force below the Ghants, that he would raise one
above. He and a merchant raised a force to attack Merkara (the capital
of Coorg). L. Narnappa, Dewan, heard of the plot from a slave, and
gave information to the Sirkar. Guns were placed in Merkara, and a
gentleman (a conductor of ordnance) fell from the ramparts and died-
The force not appearing, the Dewan was disbelieved and put into con-
finement. Raniiah and the others, on this failure, were perplexed ;
when Ramiah exclaimed, ' If even a dog could be found that was born in
the palace (of the Rajahs), this dog would do to raise and command a force
against the Government ! ' Munjya then said he would bring a person
that was born in the palace ; he went, and brought the Kallianappa, who
attacked Bellarypet. For a month before the outbreak he was lodged in
the Poomaley jungle. The Coorgs and the people of Amara Soolya
(the rebels) are in great dread of cannon. When a ship came with a
cannon, which made darkness with its smoke (the Hugh Lindsay steamer)
the news spread through Coorg in a moment, there being posts at every
three miles."
This confession was fully corroborated in every main particular by
other unexceptionable testimony. In truth, every circumstance that was
disclosed, every inquiry that was made, only added strength to the uni-
versal conviction, that " the rebels/' from the first, were despicable in
tlie extreme, as to means, numbers, and resources. In their desire for
succour they wrote to the French Chief of Mahe entreating that he
would join them with his forces, consisting of six unarmed Peons !
This gentleman sent their letter to the principal Collector of Malabar ;
but I have strong reasons for believing that, in the faithful discharge of
his duty, lie likewise transmitted to his own Government a detailed con-
fidential report of every particular connected with the outbreak, which
he had good means of learning, botli from several of the Canarese fugi-
tives who sought the protection of the French flag at Mah^, and from
his being only four miles distant from Tellicherry; and that he drew,
for the information and for tlie reflection of his country, a picture de-
rived, not from words, but fiom iucouliovertible facts and occurrences
106
quillity of this, to depute to Canara some functionary of
high and commanding chaiacter, and armed with plenary
that happened within his own sight and cognizance, in two extensive,
maritime and frontier Provinces of the Madras Presidency, of the opi-
nion entertained at heart of the strength, the stability, and the security
of the Indian Empire, by the body of European functionaries, who ad-
minister the Government to the Natives.
The Native, in his letter, says that the war-cry at Mangalore,
throughout the days previous to the attacks, was, " The Devil Appa-
rainpara is coming;" and that this fearful sound it was which led to
the general panic and flight. Throughout Malabar all the authorities,
European and Native, and all the heads of villages, myself among the
number, received copies of Proclamations, offering 10,000 Rupees re-
ward (equal there to 10,000/. sterling in England), for the apprehen-
sion of the principal rebel-leader, " named Apparampara ;" and 5,000
Rupees (equal to 3,000/. sterling), for the second leader, " named Kal-
lianappa."
No man will bring himself to believe, that these two proclaimed ring-
leaders of the insurrection, this Apparampara and this Kallianappa, are
no other than tiie very same persons who are stated, in the confession,
to have been all the time confined in jail ; to have been then, and months
and months before, the one a prisoner at Trichinopoly, the other at
Bangalore ! No Englishman will prevail upon himself to credit, that a
British Government, the Government of Fort St. George, or some
power exercising supreme authority under it, could issue and circulate
Proclamations throughout the subordinate territories, setting an enor-
mous price upon the heads of two unfortunate men, who both were, all
the while, prisoners in two of the Government jails ! The incredibility
of such an occurrence will defend it from belief. But most true, too
true, alas ! is it, as the following accounts will show : —
" Mangalore, 29th April. — The latest news is as follows : — The
Palmers are released. He was released by the Coorg Dewan, Bappoo,
who, with his people, were within an ace of the pretended Apparam.
Perhaps you are not aware tuat the real apparam is in jail
AT Trichinopoly. Our force at Nerunky burned a Mutt (a small
temple), with plenty of food taken, ditto prisoners, with sundry killed.
Our enemies dispersed in every direction."
" 30lh April. — How mortifying that all this alarm should have been
created by Apparam 's shadow! The true Kallianapa is said to he
IN JAIL AT Bangalore."
It is hence a positive, and now an undisputed, fact, as the confession
107
authority ; who, with capacity to probe to the bottom, and
elicit, the whole truth connected with the late events, civil
stated, that both Apparampara and the real Kallianappa, " the two arch
rebels," were prisoners in jail, hundreds of miles away from Canara,
during the whole of the insurrection !
The confession describes Apparampara to be first cousin to the de-
posed Rajah of Coorg. Kallianappa is not even a relative ; he is the
son, as it would appear, by another father, of a wife of one of the
Rajah's uncles. Yet these two men, void of any other offence than the
foregoing, the one of being a Prince, and a male heir to the Raj, the
other, a man of birth and note ; Apparampara, in the people's belief, the
rightful heir, in common with the other members of the last Rajah's
family, to a sum of about twelve or fourteen lacs of Rupees, which had
long been invested in Company's paper, of every Rea of which the
family have been stripped; these two men are seized, transferred from
jail to jail, and confined without trial, as felon-prisoners, upon a Magis-
trate's warrant; they are thus treated, it appears, because fly where they
would. East, North, South, they must fly to, and be found in, the Com-
pany's territories. There remained to them, it is true, one refuge, one
escape from a dungeon: there was the friendly sea on the West; this
was open to them, into which to plunge and forget that Heaven had once
given them rank, station, wealth, a country, kindred, and a home ! From
the treatment dealt to these men, it may perhaps be conjectured that
the detestation manifested by the Coorgs to the Government may not be
wholly without foundation ; it may be thought, that the intensity of
bitter hatred expressed by the chief man among a wild, ignorant, people,
when he exclaimed, " Let but a palace-born dog be found, and he xuill
head us to shake off this yoke!" is not entirely without cause. Since
the suppression of the outbreak, they have repeatedly told the Governor-
General and the Governor of Madras, that, " come what may," they will
not continue subject, for another three years, to the Courts and Cutcheries
of Canara.
With regard to Kallianappa the second, he who actually came to Man-
galore ; on the dispersion of his followers, he was speedily taken, and
arraigned before the Court Martial, when he proved to be, as he had
been described, a poor, ignorant, simple-minded young man, whose pre-
tension to be made the nominal leader of the rebels consisted in his
having been born in the Palace of an obscure Concubine, and in his
name being Kallianappa. He told his story without guile or disguise.
He said he was living in quiet and obscurity, when he was taken to, and
kept in, the Jungle where the Gowdas and Potails had assembled; that
108
and military,* shall have the firmness and manliness to
declare it without respect to persons. Surely were an
they told him he must be their Rajah : whereupon they set him on
a horse, and as he had never been on one before, they tied his legs to
prevent him from falling off, and paraded him up and down ; that he was
a mere puppet, meant no harm, and endeavoured, to the degree in his
power, to prevent harm being done by others, and that, whatever he
had himself, rice or money, he gave to Dr. and Mrs. Palmer, and to the
Collector's servants, who were prisoners, and hiding with him in the
Jungle. His story was not disputed. It also came out that he had re-
fused to suffer Mrs. Palmer's Palankeen-bearers to leave her and her
child, saying, they were that lady's servants, and must remain as long
as she wanted them. Inquiry would have shown, that if the first rising
had taken place, as contemplated, this Kallianappa would never have
been heard of. He was condemned by the Court Martial, and, without
reference to Madras, executed.
* The greater part of a Bombay regiment, amounting to about 400
men and Officers, with a Joint-Magistrate at their head, were sent to, and
kept for many days, at Cassergode, a coast-town thirty-five miles south
of Mangalore, with orders not to act but in repelling an attack : and
this at a time when a traveller passing through that part of the country
wrote — "All is as quiet as if the street were covered with straw!"
Several Rajahs, living a few miles distant, wrote to Mangalore, com-
plaining of being deserted, and stating that not one of the ordinary
public Officers had been near them since the first outbreak. The Rajahs
received no answer. They then addressed the Joint-Magistrate ; he said
he would forward their remonstrance to the Huzzoor (the Presence).
One of the Rajahs showed a Mangalore Proclamation, offering 1,000
Rupees reward for the apprehension of certain persons who, it was
stated, "Tiad assembled with bad intentions," but apparently without
names, for names they had none ! The people in South Canara appeared
to think their plight had been considered too bad for remedy, and hence
all attempt at protecting them withheld; or, as was said, "theSirkar
seemed dead, and his servants discharged." They contrasted their situ-
ation with that of their neighbours in North Malabar. The Magistrate
there, Mr. Clementson, left witiiout one European Assistant, immediately
dispatched Sheristedar K. Karnagara Menon, one of the best known and
most influential men in the country, with instructions to see all the Rajahs
and principal men, to inform them that he was in the neighbourhood
(at Cannanore), and assure them they had nothing whatever to fear
from anything that had occurred in Canara, — a mission which the Sheris-
tedar faithfully, ably, and most diligently executed.
109
angel to descend from heaven, his Lordship in Council will
not beheve, that a few wild, untutored men, dwelling in
their jungles and mountains, who never heard of the name
of war until three years ago, when they beheld their
Swamee, their God as they called their Rajah, the Rajah
of Coorg, hurled in three days from his throne by the
British power, as an elephant tramples down a worm, that
such men could have worked themselves up to face that
power, unless goaded on by the sense of some intolerable
wrong or oppression ! They would have as soon thought of
facing the thunderbolt. But this letter, rather than the
subject, demands an end. 1 shall close it with the follow-
ing questions : — ^Is what I have stated true? If true, does
it concern the Governor in Council of Madras, more than
all men, to know it?
I have the honour to be, Sir,
Your most obedient Servant,
F. C. Brown.
FROM THE ZILLAII AND CRIMINAL JUDGE OF CANARA,
TO THE CHIEF SECRETARY TO GOVERNMENT, FORT
ST. GEORGE.
Cunnanore, 6th April, 1837.
Sir,
I REGRET to have to notify, for the information of
the Right Honourable the Governor in Council, intelligence
of the most disastrous nature, and which from the conse-
quences likely to accrue from it must, I have every reason
to believe, be attended with a vast loss of life, both to the
Civil and Military Departments of the Government, and
110
which, from the entire stop put by the rebels to all com-
munication by Tappal from Mangalore, will probably be
the first intimation Government can receive on the subject:
consequently, I will attempt to lay before the Right Honour-
able the Governor in Council, the whole of the particulars,
commencing from the period the INIilitary were first called
out, until the hour I left Mangalore ; viz. two o'clock on
Wednesday the 5th of April.
On the night (ten o'clock) of the 30th of March, the
Collector of the district, Mr. , without having the
slightest idea of any spirit of disaffection existing in the
district, received information from a Tahsildar of a Talook
of the territory bordering upon the confines belonging to the
late Rajah of Coorg, that numbers of the inhabitants of the
Coorg country had suddenly risen, and taken possession of
the treasure, amounting to about 15,000 rupees, together
with the Head Sheristedar* and his cutcherry of servants,
who were on Jummabandy at the place. Mr. , with-
out a moment's hesitation, together with his head Assistant,
Mr. , Major , and three officers of the
Regiment of N. I., with about 150 rank and file, pro-
ceeded, by forced marches, to the place called Pootoor,
where the rebels were said to be assembled, and found
them in numbers too strong to attack them openly. They
consequently took up a position in a mud Bungalow where
they remained, I believe, for upwards of twelve hours; but
finding their men were gradually diminishing, f and the
rebels opposed to them collecting, it was deemed advisable
to retreat, and after having experienced hardships of every
description, they were enabled to reach Mangalore on the
evening of the 3rd : and the morning of the 4th, Mr.
received hourly information of the advance of the rebels,
* Devappah already mentioned.
f The diminution in numbers previous to the retreat, I am unable
to state.
Ill
from three sides, upon the town of Mangalore, and that
two of his treasuries in the district had been looted of all
that was in them ; that the whole country in the imme-
diate vicinity was in possession of the insurgents, who
were reported to be assembled in number about 10,000 or
12,000, and determined to take Mangalore. A consulta-
tion was then held as to the proper mode of proceeding,
and it was the unanimous opinion, that as the greater part
of the inhabitants had left Mangalore ; that as the united
number of the effective Sepoys amounted only to 270 or
280 men;* that as all communication had been cut off, +
and no reasonable probability could exist of our being
speedily relieved by the arrival of troops ; that for the
preservation of the lives of the Servants of the Government,
the Sepoys, their families, and the Treasure in the place,
an attempt should be made to remove the whole on board
boats, and, abandoning the place, to proceed to Cannanore.
The attempt was made, but owing to the want of boats
and accommodation in sufficient numbers, it failed, and
the Barracks on the parade ground, selected as the strongest
yjosition to which the Treasure should be removed, and with
the Sepoys and Peons, was occupied by us during the night
of the 4th. That night passed without an attack being
made, and with nothing worthy of remark save two fires in
the town — considered to be the work of a parly of Moplas,
apparently in league with the insurgents.
The reports still continued, that men were advancing in
* The Honore detachment of about 70 men, reached Mangalore by
sea on the 6lh of April. Mr. E. Maltby, the Joint-Magistrate there,
lost not a moment in despatching every man of them to the aid of the
place.
f This must be an oversight. The communication by sea, north or
south, was not interrupted for one moment since, as the sentence states,
the abandonment of Mangalore, in bouts (meaning coasting vessels) " by
the Servants of Government and the Sepoys,'' was unanimously deter-
mined on, and foiled onl^for want ofboafs.
112
numbers upon the town ; and a flag of distress, hoisted at
the signal-staff, attracted the attention of a vessel passing
in the offing, which came to an anchor ; and on Mr. 's
requisition, the Captain (Burtsal of the Eamont) dis-
patched from his vessel two six- pounders with shot. I
have reason, however, to believe, that the place where these
guns must have been landed, being in possession of the
insurgents, who had suddenly come up that side (in num-
ber about 500, armed with guns and matchlocks), that our
troops were never in possession of them.
It will now be necessary for me to inform the Right
Honourable the Governor in Council of the cause of the
Assistant Judge of the Adawlut, Mr. , and myself,
having arrived this day at Cannanore ; and I have merely
to state that, on returning from placing our families, and
those of other residents, on board a boat to be sent to
Tellicherry, and while at the mouth of the bar, within a
few yards of the landing place, at about one p. m., we per-
ceived the Coorg rebels coming up along the shore, as
above alluded to, and almost at the same moment our own
houses, the Court-hcuse, the Collector's Cutcherry, with
several other parts of the town, in a simultaneous flame.
We shortly after heard sounds of muskets, and the blowing
up of the Magazine;* and, consequently, feeling con-
* It is consoling to know that the writer was deceived ; the Maga-
zine was never once in the least danger. The number of houses
destroyed was, I believe, eighteen. He will forgive a stranger for
observing, that the houses he speaks of, the Court House, and the
Collector's Cutcherry, form no part of the town. They are from one
to two miles distant. Except his own, and the Sub-Collector's house,
the latter near the lines, which were thatched and easily fired from with-
out, all the others are solid, tiled buildings, placed on commanding emi-
nences; and if I add, that they were readily defensible against those
who assailed them, I only express the opinions uttered by all persons
who know the buildings and their situation. It will not surprise that,
when found open and deserted, the latter were first plundered at leisure,
and then fired from within by the rabble.
113
fident that nothing but certain death most assuredly must
take place, and no possibility of joining our comrades to be
expected, we prevailed on our boatmen to take us through
the bar, at the imminent risk of being shot by the men who
were ranged along the shore, and fortunately effected a safe
embarkation on the ship Eamont, which has this hour
brought us to Cannanore.
After coming on board, we tacked on and off Mangalore,
in the hope of some of our unfortunate friends being enabled
to effect an escape, and joining us ; but, with the exception
of some ladies and a few others, I believe no one had been
enabled to do so. At the period when Mr. and
myself left the shore, 11 a.m, there appeared to be no
more immediate apprehension of the rebels coming down
upon the town, than there had been for the last two days ;
but the simultaneous ignition of all parts of the town, the
pouring in of the rebels from the three sides, at one and the
same hour, evinces a plan of arrangement little to have been
foreseen or apprehended.
The Captain of the vessel who had gone on shore, and
who effected his retreat about half an hour subsequently
to us, states that he did so with the greatest degree of
difficulty, and thinking that the particulars of what he saw
up to the minute of embarkation, would be more satisfac-
tory to the Right Honourable the Governor in Council, it
has been taken down in his own words, and accompanies
this communication.
From a Proclamation issued by the rebels, I am inclined
to believe that two individuals belonging to the late Rajah's
Government, styling themselves Apparampara Swami and
Kenchup Naique, are at the head of the insurrection ; but
I am at a loss to imagine what their ultimate expectation
or intention, with regard to remaining in possession of our
territory, can be, inasmuch as their system hitherto, as far
as we were able to ascertain^ has been to place their seals
together with our own, on our district Cutcherries and
K
114
Treasuries, and offer service to the Potails and servants
employed by us.
In conclusion, I must not omit to bring to the notice of
the Right Honourable the Governor in Council, the kind
and anxious exertions of Captain Burtsal, of the ship
Eaniont, now on her way to Madras, who, at his own per-
sonal risk, at the requisition of the Collector, landed his
Guns and Muskets, and where, after remaining as long as
practicable, in the hope of saving the lives of those who
might be fortunate enough to effect an escape, has hurried
down to land us at Cannanore, in order to furnish this
important and disastrous information to the Commandant
of the district with the least practicable delay.
I have the honour to be, Sir,
Your most obedient Servant,
* # * #
Judge and Criminal Judge.
Captain Burtsal, who was the last on shore, has kindly
allowed me to take down the particulars of the state in
which he left the Cantonment at Mangalore.
" Upon my landing at Mangalore, in company with
Lieut. Cotton of the Madras Cavalry,* we immediately
proceeded to the spot where the Sepoys were drawn out in
line, and found that the lines had been attacked and set
on fire, and musket shots were passing in several directions.
The Collector, Mr. , and several other European
Gentlemen, were collected, and on his inquiring what
* The conduct of this Officer, Lieutenant Cotton, cannot be too
generally known. He was a passenger on the Eamont, in bad health,
going from Bombay to Madras. No sooner did he hear that some of his
comrades on shore were in danger, than he insisted on instantly joining,
and remaining with them, although told that he " would only share their
hopeless fate." He it was who, on landing, if I am rightly informed, led
a party of Sepoys to the attack of the insurgents.
115
assistance I could afford him, I replied that the two Guns
and a few Muskets, which were then on their way to the
shore, was the only aid in my power. After remaining
there a short time, and finding I could be of no service, I
returned to the boat by the advice of Lieut. Cotton, who
insisted upon remaining. I then got into my boat, and
remained there for some time, expecting to be able to effect
the escape of some of the Gentlemen of the place. Finding,
however, no one approach, and hearing from several who
came down to the shore that all had been massacred, and
that the rebels were mustering at the bar of the river,
through which I had to pass, I made the best of my way
out, and in doing so counted 32 men armed with match-
locks, who twice pointed them with the intention of firing
at us, and latterly launched two canoes, which followed us
to some distance. From what I saw of the confusion, and
subsequent reports, together with the ceasing of the mus-
kets, and the simultaneous ignition of so many parts of the
town, I have little doubt but what I heard prior to leaving
was authentic, and all had fallen."
(Signed) A. Burtsal.
FROM THE REGISTER AND ASSISTANT CRIMINAL
JUDGE OF CANARA.
Mangalore, 14th Aptil, 1837.
Sir,
It has become my duty to avail myself of an early
opportunity, after the opening of communication with the
Presidency, to report to the Judges of the Sudr and
Fonjdaree Adawlut, such circumstances connected with the
k2
116
present disturbances in Lower Canara as relate immediately
to the department of the Court.
In so doing it will be my endeavour to avoid allusion to
such matter as does not immediately affect this depart-
ment; but it is necessary, to render my statement clear,
that I should mention, that on the evening of the 30th
ultimo, the Principal Collector, on receiving information
that an insurrection had broken out in the country lately
belonging to tlie Rajah of Coorg and its vicinity, pro-
ceeded to the spot with a party of the military; but finding
himself overpowered by the numbers of the insurgents,
was compelled to effect a retreat with much difficulty and
reduced numbers to Mangalore, which he reached on the
evening of Monday the 3rd.
As Mangalore was immediately threatened, it was neces-
sary that every Sepoy of the small party present at the
station should be available for its defence, and that the
guard stationed at the jail, which is situated at a consi-
derable distance from the Cantonment, should be with-
drawn, their place being supplied by a levy of Peons, fully
equal to the duty of preventing the prisoners from effecting
an escape, unless aided by the enemy.
On the evening of Tuesday, the 4th, the Judge, Mr,
, visited the Jail. He found that the prisoners, em-
boldened by the absence of a Military Guard, were in a
state of insubordination ; but the prompt measures he took
of punishing the most turbulent soon restored quiet, and
he remained on the spot until they were safely locked in
the inner wards, and the confidence of the Jailor and Peons
appeared to be restored.
On the following morning (Wednesday the 5th), Mr.-
again visited the Jail, when all was quiet, and Mr.
was satisfied that, unless an attack was made upon the
station, their detention was ensured.
I regret to state that, at a subsequent hour on Wed-
nesday, an attack was made, when the prisoners were
117
released by the insurgents, whom the greater part of them
appear to have joined. I have also to state, that an attempt
was made to destroy the Court House and the Records
which have suffered considerable damage; but 1 have
reason to hope that it is less extensive than could have been
expected. The Jail remains uninjured. *
The present state of affairs does not a^mit of any steps
being taken to apprehend the prisoners, except in common
with the insurgents, who are still in arms; but several have
been already seized, and I feel much confidence that, when
quiet is restored, a great number, or all, of them, will be
retaken.
I have communicated with the Sub-Collector of Canara
at Honors, with reference to such of them as might be
likely to return to their haunts in that part of the district.
The full report, made by Mr. , to the Secretary to
Government, will explain the cause of my addressing you
at this moment.
I have the honour to be,
&c. &c. &c.
Register and Assistant Criminal Judge.
* The Jail Guard of Sepoys was withdrawn, for embarkation with
their comrades, on the morning of the 4th. Whether the levy of Peons,
for the custody of the prisoners, was then made does not appear. The
Peons sufficed to save the Jail, but not the prisoners. As several of the
latter voluntarily returned, they may possibly have been insubordinate
on the day of the 4th, from fear of their lives, if the Jail were attacked,
as much as from turbulence, or an intent to escape.
118
TO THE SECRETARY TO GOVERNMENT,
FORT ST. GEORGE.
Anjarakandy, 27th June, 1837.
Sir,
In illustration of my letter of the 31st ult., I do
myself the honour of sending some munitions of war, cap-
tured from "the rebels" of Canara, in the shape of a
powder-flask filled with powder, and of a cartouche box
containing two balls. The powder, it will be found on
trial, may be used twice, or at most three times, before it
renders the piece so foul as to be unserviceable ; as to the
balls, the casting of them was among the unknown arts in
the Jungles of Soolia and Pootoor.
The spoils captured in the houses and villages of Canara
are openly exhibited as the trophies of this war ! As
His Lordship in Council may not exactly recollect any
Armoury, which the Spolia Opima I now send would
grace, I should feel indebted by his directing them to be
returned, in order that I may present them to the Econo-
mical Committee of the Royal Asiatic Society, as specimens
of the uses in war to which the shells of abortive cocoa-
nuts are applied.*
I have the honour to be, Sir,
&.C. &c. Sec.
F. C. Brown.
* So wretched is the ammunition which the Natives of the Western
coast can themselves fabricate, that the most acceptable present that
can be made to a Native Malabar, of any rank, especially in the interior,
is some good powder and ball. I am in the habit of distributing,
annually, a considerable quantity among my neighbours ; yet, notwith-
standing this supply, it was reported to me, during the last two seasons,
119
The above letter of the 27th June, and the one of the
31st May, are the only letters which, after the lapse of
many weeks, on seehig every functionary at Mangalore,
without exception, maintained in office and authority, on
finding that no inquiry into the circumstances of the
outbreak was instituted or thought of, I could no longer
refrain from addressing to the Government.
Let it be granted, that the resolution, and the attempt, to
abandon the town, be susceptible of the fullest excuse, the
amplest extenuation ; let it be granted, that the desertion
of a Province be considered, and be declared at Madras,
to deserve high praise, instead of the shadow of blame :
yet, until the justification of such an act be made public
before all the world, until the grounds of the applause
that between 30 and 40 head of cattle had been carried off in my five
parishes by Tigers and Cheetahs. It was this knowledge which led me
to send to Canara for some of the rebel powder and ball, which I for-
warded to Madras in the receptacles they came; cocoa-nut shells of the
same kind, about four inches long, and one and a half in diameter, as are
used for the same purposes by the Natives around me. The specimen
of powder was rather worse than that made in Malabar; the balls were
cylindrical, not round.
As to the spoils, it is painful to advert to them, and to think of what
was written from Canara relative to the terror, the sufferings, and the
losses endured by the unoffending country people, after the proclamation
of Martial Law among them. An account of the personal losses of the
Europeans and their families at Mangalore, in houses, furniture, clothes,
plate, &c. was called for, and immediately dispatched for compensation to
the Court of Directors. Were the losses of their all by multitudes of Natives
inquired into, and submitted at the same time, to the commiseration of the
Honourable Court? The Court can answer; but tiiis I know, that if all
the circumstances attending their losses, if the plunder, and burning, and
destruction of their houses, were fully, freely, and fearlessly told, every
feeling mind would be horror-struck at the recital of the calamities
which were brought upon them. The conduct of the rebels the Judge
has described : — " Their system hitherto," he says, " as far as we were
able to ascertain, has been to place llicir seals, together with our own, on
our district Cutcherries and Treasuries, and of^'er service to the i'otails
and Servants employed by us."
120
bestowed upon it be proclaimed, in the name of that sacred,
spotless, stainless, sinless Justice, we all revere and hope to
meet, I ask, are the functionaries, the persons prominently
concerned in this act, those who ought to have been
conspicuously seen maintained in office, and prosecuting
the prisoners to be tried ? Are they the functionaries,
whom the people of India, as well as the people of Canara
and Malabar, ought to have witnessed, seizing, committing,
accusing, and arraigning capitally, as the local represen-
tatives of the Sovereign and the people of England, the
poor, ignorant, misguided, creatures, who were deluded
into approaching Mangalore, by the persuasion that all these
functionaries had deserted it ? In my humble opinion, not ;
I conceived the world ought not to witness such a specta-
cle ; in my conviction, by it the Government of Madras
was rendering the very name of the British Government
odious, detested, and contemptible to the Natives of the
Presidency at large. The Natives of the other Provinces,
warned by what they saw the Government of Madras do and
sanction, and not by what that Government might write or
say, would feel that they possesed no security whatever, that
the treatment, which their fellow- subjects in Canara were
suffering to day, might not be their own fate to-morrow.
It is clear that every thing like tumult, violence, or in-
surrection must, for the sake of the Natives themselves, be
immediately put down with the strong arm ; but if human-
ity to them demand this severity, I challenge any man
really acquainted with their character, I call upon any
person whose knowledge and authority are deserving of
weight, to deny, whether, in every case of tumult or insur-
rection without exception, justice does not imperiously
demand, in order to be kept pure from the taint of error
and vindictiveness, that impartial inquiry should go hand
in hand with punishment ? I call upon any man, tolerably
familiar with the Native disposition and modes of thinking,
to say, whether there exists, under Heaven, a race of
121
men more quiet, more placable, more averse to violence, or
more naturally lovers of order ; more accessible to reason,
when it is made plain to their understandings in tempe-
rate, conciliatory language, or more open to kindness,
when ordinary kindness and consideration are shown to
them by those in authority : in truth, I ask, whether there
exists, on earth, another race like them, demanding no
more, in their present condition, from their rulers, than the
boon of being suffered to live?
As to the Gowdas, a caste of Hindoos, lately the
subjects of the Rajah of Coorg, who headed this out-
break, I confidently refer to the testimony of the Officers
who broke them into the system of Jumraa-bundies,
that is, into the Madras system of annual surveys and
settlements, an operation sufficiently trying to the temper
of a body of rude farmers; and I ask those gentlemen to
say, whether they ever had to deal with a more harmless,
tractable, inoffensive race of men, or men more disposed to
be obedient and submissive to the novel Government placed
over them ?
The information I gave to the Government might de-
serve, and would probably meet with, little favour. I
sought none ; it would be set down as erroneous, or partial
or exaggerated, or prejudiced. It might, however, induce
a pause in the measures that were enforced ; and as to
myself, the question left for my solution was, whether I
would longer bear the upraidings of my conscience for re-
maining silent.
But there was, as it appears, the official letter of the
Criminal Judge of Mangalore, which had been for weeks
before the Government. Surely that letter speaks for it-
self! Surely the circumstances, detailed in that letter,
speak for themselves to all, who have eyes to read or feel-
ings to rouse ! Surely after that official letter, a full, a
public, an im|)artial, and itnmed'uite enquiry was imperiously
demanded fVoin the Government, the power which alone
122
legally and solely possessed the initiative on the occasion !
The National name demanded it; public justice demanded
it ; above all, the characters of the functionaries named,
implicated, and concerned, demanded nothing less.
It is with the sincerest pain that I am obliged to men-
tion the feelings with which enquiry, when enquiry was,
at length, talked of, was viewed and received. My letters
had immediately found their way from the Political Se-
cretary's office at Madras to Mangalore, and were thus
spoken of: "There is reason to believe that the appoint-
ment of the Commission, to enquire into the matter of the
rebellion, which is said to have been ordered pursuant to
instructions from Bengal, is a subject of annoyance to
certain of the authorities at Mangalore. Brown is men-
tioned, as having written letters to Madras and Bengal,
which have led to this order for an enquiry. One letter, it
is said, was known there three months ago. The Mapilla
Petition, in which the rebellion is spoken of slightingly, has
been attributed to him. The matter has been made a great
mystery of, and his alleged part in it kept a profound secret,
until a few days ago. As far as can be learned, his cor-
respondence has been betrayed" (September, 1837.) For
what purpose, and with what design, this correspondence
was "betrayed," will appear too plain, I fear, in the sequel.
This course, secretly adopted towards me, drove me to see
whether the same repository of official correspondence
would not also furnish the letter of the 6th April, from the
Criminal Judge to the Government ; a letter which, but
for such a course, would never have been sought for, nor,
in accordance with my own feelings and wishes, ever made
more public.
F. C. B.
123
C. R. COTTON, Esq., ONE OF THE CANARA COMMIS-
SIONERS, FOR THE SECRETARY, TO F. C. BROWN, Esq.,
TELLICHERRY.
Bangalore, October, 1837.
Sir,
With reference to a letter from the Government
of Fort St. George, addressed to you under date 11th
July last, I am desired by the Commissioners appointed to
investigate the circumstances of the late insurrection in
Canara, to request you will, at your earliest convenience,
communicate to them such defined allegations as you may
think proper to make, individually, against the European
Civil and Military officers of Government, to whose con-
duct allusion is made generally, in your letter addressed
to the Secretary to Government under date 30th May last ;
and that you will have the kindness, at the same time, to
state, in detail, the means of substantiation available, to
enable the Commissioners to investigate the matter brought
forward by you.
I have the honour to be, Sir,
&c. &c. 8cc.
C. R. Cotton,
For the Secretary. *
* Tills Commission consisted of a Military and of a Civil Member,
and a Secretary. To the Civil Member, a Member of the Board of
Revenue, who had served in Canara for several years, both as a Sub and
as Principal Collector and Magistrate, strong objections were made at
Mangalore. If he was known to the people, and knew the country, he
was also a most intimate friend of some of the parties. The Military
Member was Major General V^igoureux, of H.M. 45th, whose regiment
was at Madras, under orders for embarkation to England. The senior
Officer of it could not be left behind ; so that before the General could
enter on his new duties, it became necessary to relieve him. lie was
124
TO C. R. COTTON, Esq., FOR THE SECRETARY TO THE
CANARA COMMISSION, BANGALORE.
Anjarakandy,near TeUicherrij, Oct. 19, 1837.
Sir,
I have the honour to acknowledge the receipt of
your letter, without date, from Bangalore.
succeeded by a distinguished Officer, the Deputy Adjutant General to
the Queen's Troops, a near adviser of the Commander-in-Chief. One of
the first steps which followed General Fearon's appointment was, the
calling upon every one of the Officers, Military and Civil, who were at
Mangalore at the commencement of the outbreak, for a statement in
writing of what occurred at the meeting, when the resolution was taken
of abandoning the place ; from the Magistrate was required, a history of
the first occurrences of the rising.
This requisition was made in the very end of October, or the begin-
ning of November last : I am compelled to call attention to the fact and
to the date. In the second Presidency of India, in what is, in reality, a
great dependent kingdom of the British Empire containing, including
tributaries, a population of as many millions as the whole of the United
Kingdom, the abandonment of one of the largest and wealthiest frontier
Provinces is officially reported to the Governor in Council, in the month
of April, as having been unanimously determined on thirty-six hours
before an enemy appeared ; and it is a subordinate Commission which,
at the distance of nearly seven months, first calls upon the several actors
for an account of so unprecedented an occurrence, and demands to know
the causes which drove a newly acquired people into rebellion ! Whe-
ther the answers returned to the inquiries, or the nature of the duties
which became disclosed to him, affected General Fearon's health, the
world is not likely to know. He proceeded no further than Bangalore,
where he was speedily relieved on urgent Medical Certificate. From
that time to the middle of December, the date of my leaving India, no
successor to him had been named, nor had the Commission got a
step further. And as, on the 5th December, Mr. Cotton, the Civil
Member, obtained leave to proceed to sea, this Commission appointed,
as the Madras Gazette stated, in phraseology which excited general and
significant remark, " to inquire into the causes of the late insurrection in
Canara, etc." I am led to conclude, terminated its labours and expired-
123
With every possible respect for the Government of Fort
St. George, I beg to be permitted to observe, that I am no
public informer. I am an English British subject, residing
in the Province of Malabar ; which Province was plunged
into alarm and agitation, in consequence of the events
which occurred in Canara in April last. Those events are,
I believe, not matters of doubt nor for contradiction, they
are matters of official record. It has been officially reported
to the Government by one or two of its own officers, that
the abandonment of the capital of Canara and of the Pro-
vince was unanimously determined upon by the public
functionaries, and fruitlessly attempted, on the 4th of
April, twenty-four hours (36) before an insurgent appeared.
It is, hence, manifest, that lean have no charge to make
" iitdividua/l^" against those functionaries, to almost all of
whom, by name, I am a stranger. But I am possessed of
considerable landed and immoveable property in Malabar;
the security of that property, the security of the property
of every other man in the country, was endangered, it
would probably have been destroyed, had the abandon-
ment of Mangalore been effected. The value of my pro-
perty is seriously deteriorated by what did happen.
It was impossible for an Englishman in my position to
forbear, on such an occasion, to suggest enquiry. Whether
enquiry be needed, the Commissioners and the world may
judge, not from any circumstance advanced or alleged by
me, on information perhaps deemed questionable, but from
the declaration of an English eye-witness, described to
be a straight-forward, plain-spoken, man. This witness,
Mr. , the late Master-Attendant at Mangalore,
lately passed through Tellicherry. In speaking to others
of the attacks of the insurgents, he observed, " Lord, sir !
if we had known as much then as we do now, we would
have banged them well with twenty men ! "
The letters from the Government render it necessary that
I should address it in reply. I shall do so, at the earliest
126
moment that a press of occupation, arising from preparing
my produce for immediate shipment to England, will
permit.
I have the honour to be, Sir,
8cc. &,c. &c.
F. C. BROWN.
TO F. C. BROWN, Esq.
Political Department.
Sir,
I AM directed to return, herewith, the specimens
transmitted with your letter of the 27th ultimo, and to
inform you that the Governor in Council presumes that
you are prepared to substantiate the very serious charges
against Public Officers, vs^hich are contained in your com-
munication of the 31st of May last.
I have the honour to be. Sir,
Your most obedient Servant,
RICHARD CLARK,
Secretary to Government.
Fort St. George, Ut/i July, 1837.
TO F. C. BROWN, Esq., TELLICHERRY.
Political Department.
Sir,
With reference to my letter of the 11th of July
last, I am directed by the Governor in Council to acquaint
127
you, that your communications of the 31st May and 27th
June have been laid before the Commissioners * Major-
General Vigoureux and C. R. Cotton, Esq., appointed to in-
vestigate the causes of the late insurrection in Canara,
with instructions to call upon you to substantiate the state-
ments which they contain.
I have the honour to be. Sir,
Your most obedient Servant,
RICHARD CLARK,
Secretary to Government.
Fort St. George, V2th September, 1837.
TO THE SECRETARY TO GOVERNMENT IN THE SECRET
AND POLITICAL DEPARTMENT, FORT ST. GEORGE.
Anjarukundy, 2'ird November, 1837.
Sir,
1. I HAVE had the honour to receive your letters
of the 11th of July, and 12th of September; the last
intimating that my letters to Government of the 31st of
May and 27th of June have been placed in the hands of
the Commissioners newly appointed to inquire into the
affairs of Canara, and that these Officers have been in-
structed to call upon me to substantiate the statements
therein made.
* It was not stated to the Commissioners that my "communications"
had been privately dispatched to Mangalore months before, witli a view,
doubtless, of clearing the way to their investigations, and of putting it
in my power to establish the statements, for the substantiation of which
they were instructed to call.
128
2. It is to me a subject of unfeigned regret to perceive,
from the tone and the style of your two letters, a tone and a
style not to be mistaken, that my letters have been received
by the Right Honourable the Governor in Council with
sentiments strongly akin to displeasure and distrust.
3. No person can be more forward to acknowledge the re-
ceived insignificance of so humble an individual as myself, a
solitary British subject not in the Service; nor to admit,
how little his communications are deemed worthy of the ordi-
nary attention and confidence, which elsewhere are bestowed
upon the letters of an English resident, written upon local
subjects, touching which he may be supposed to be cor-
rectly informed.
4. Yet every man in the Commission of the Peace in
England, or in any British Colony, is not merely considered
entitled, he is held bound, and he is encouraged, by the
strictest faith and discretion maintained towards him, to
correspond unreservedly with a Secretary of State, or a
British Colonial Secretary, upon all subjects affecting the
peace of the country he resides in, or the honour and cha-
racter of the British Government; secure, at all times,
that if he is betrayed into any errors of the judgment, or
of the feelings, they will be viewed with indulgence, and
charitably construed.
5. It is known that I am, by descent and inheritance, a
Landholder of some extent in the Province of Malabar,
and that I am the only European British subject of that
class residing in the two distant, extensive, and important
Provinces of Malabar and Canara, containing a population
of more than two and a half millions of Natives. The
Government has been pleased, for some years past, to in-
clude my name, unsolicitedly, in the Commission of the
Peace for the territories of Madras.
6. The first character makes it, I conceive, a part of my
allegiance as a British subject, living under a Government
subsisting by the opinion entertained by the Natives of its
129
wisdom, firmness, and stability, to communicate every
occurrence, leaving the Government to estimate its im-
portance, which appears to me calculated to give a shock
to that opinion. The second character involves a public
trust, and imposes, in my belief, the corresponding obliga-
tions discharged by a Justice of Peace in every other
possession of the British Crown.
7. It was in this twofold character, derived from an
intimate connection with the people of the country on one
hand, and from the trust reposed in me by the Government
on the other, and under a sense of the duties which this
character exacted, that I took the liberty of addressing,
confidentially, to the Government my letter of the 31st of
May ; a letter which I am compelled to see has given
much umbrage, if not offence.
8. In this letter I certainly did implore the Right Ho-
nourable the Governor in Council, most earnestly, perhaps
most warmly, implore him, on an occasion when the lives
of hundieds of human beings were at stake, not implicitly
to believe, but to inquire, not to strike, but hear; and
lastly, not to delegate to any hands whatever his inalien-
able prerogative of life and death* in the case of men,
* This is an error, the result of inadvertence. The Governor in
Council of Madras cannot be said to have ever exercised of himself
this, the most valued privilege of humanity, the noblest attribute of
Sovereign power. All sentences of death and of transportation are
passed, in the first instance, by the local Judges, and if ratified by the
Court of Fonjdaree Udalut, are executed upon warrants, signed by two
Judges of that Court, without any communication to the Governor in
Council. (Regulation 8, of 1802.) Upon such subjects, as the extent
and state of crime, the number and nature of the sentences and exe-
cutions taking place in the dominions confided to his sway, the Governor
in Council was legally dispensed from inquiry or responsibility. The
trials being all in writing, the custom is to circulate them for perusal
from one Judge to the other, who writes upon them his final sentence,
acquitting or condemning. It is not very many years since, that the foot
or margin of a trial exhibited a sentence, condemning to death (I believe
L
130
the vast majority of whom appeared, from every concurrent
report, to be far more deluded than criminal, more the
objects of compassion than of public vengeance. Against
no individual, nominatively, did I make a charge; and if I
was driven, most reluctantly driven, to illustrate by an
example the agitated state of men's minds, as well in
North Malabar as in Canara, let those answer who left me
no other mode than this, to plead with effect the cause of
mercy and deliberation, which it was my express design to
supplicate.
9. If the letter in question be considered by his Lord-
ship in Council to exceed the demands of any station I fill,
or to outstrip the limits of any duty I am bound to dis-
charge to the Government, and to the people ; if the peace
and good order of the country, the security of the persons
and property of two millions and a half of Natives, the
tranquillity of their minds, and the honour and character
of the Government which rules over them, be deemed
concerns alien to, and far above, my cognizance ; and that,
however I may see, however I may conscientiously believe
those great interests to be fatally committed, it is my pro-
vince to be mute, while evils are in progress which, if un-
known and unchecked, must lead sooner or later to the
destruction of my property, to the destruction of the pro-
perty of every other man of character and respectability,
and to the extinction of the British name ; if these be the
sentiments entertained by His Lordship in Council, I hope
it is not asking too much, undesignedly as I have offended,
if I request to be favoured, upon these points, with the
opinion in the affirmative of His Lordship in Council, for
one of the witnesses, but certainly) an innocent man. The mistake was
discovered in time; but it was related as an anecdote, and the Sentencer
continued to be, for several years after, a Judge in the highest and last
resort. This was the state of the law until October or November last,
when an Act of the Council of India ordained that penal sentences
should be made known to the Governor in Council.
131
my own correction, and for the guidance of other European
British subjects.
10. I dare hardly venture to solicit, not a favourable
consideration, but an impartial, dispassionate perusal of
any thing I may now write. Circumstances have, how-
ever, occurred, which render it imperative that I should
detail to His Lordship in Council, even at the risk of in-
creasing- offence, but with a solemn disclaimer of designino-
it, occurrences which happened under my own eye in this
remote spot, from the beginning until after the middle of
April last, and some which I afterwards witnessed at Telli-
cherry ; occurrences so wholly unexpected, and of so
deeply painful a character, as to have forced upon my at-
tention the causes which led to them, and hence to have
occasioned my letter of the 31st of May.
11. It was about the 1st or 2nd of April, that fugitives
from South Canara brought to Tellicherry, where I then
was, the first news of some disturbances existing in that
proverbially tranquil and orderly country. As the rumours
gained ground, on the 3rd of April, I examined, as I
have before related, one of these fugitives, a Koombla *
Merchant who, with others, had been sent for by the In-
surgents to Bellarypet, and who gave me the first inti-
mation of the seat of the disturbances being in Lower
Coorg, and that the number of men of all arms he saw
assembled was about 200.
12. All these particulars, the nature and locality of the
disturbances, the numbers and means of the disaffected,
were, of course, well known to the inhabitants of Telli-
cherry, among whom were dwelling, in perfect confidence
and security with their wives and children, all the most
opulent and respectable of the fugitives, all of them Hin-
doos. Not the smallest impression upon the inhabitants
did the news make ; up to the time of my leaving the
* A sea-i)ort in Soutli Canara.
l2
132
town on the 5th of April, no other notice did they bestow
upon it, than expressing their surprise at the pusillanimity
of the persons who had fled from such a danger and such
opponents.
13. Early on the 5th, I set out for my property here. It
is situated about 25 miles from the frontier of Upper Coorg,
the intervening country being chiefly thinly peopled moun-
tain and forest. The most direct road to Tellicherry is by
a branch one, I myself have made through a neighbouring
Jungle. My store-houses here were full of valuable pro-
perty ; there was besides a considerable sum, upwards of
31,000 Rupees, in ready money. Both the house and
store-houses are quite untenable, and may be fired at any
time without detection. They were plundered and burned
to the ground, and the plantations destroyed, by a rabble
of marauders in 1803, an occasion when my father and
family lost every thing they possessed.
14. My first business, on arriving, was to ascertain^the
exact state of Upper Coorg, from which quarter alone was
any risk to be apprehended affecting the tranquillity of
North Malabar.
15. I immediately dispatched persons to Veerajahpet,
the principal mart in Coorg, and to all the intervening-
marts below the Ghauts, which the Coorg traders pass or
frequent, with orders to bring me correct accounts of what
they saw and heard, and to inquire particularly at the
stations of the Post-runners, whether the Post from Madras,
which passes through Upper Coorg, had been intercepted
or delayed.
IG. From the nearest places of resort the messengers
returned with reports, that every thing was perfectly quiet
and tranquil, all transactions going on as ordinarily, and
numerous Coorgs, with droves of salt and grain bullocks,
proceeding as usual, to and from Cannanore and the Coast.
17. The persons sent to Veerajahpet returned after
attending one of the weekly markets held there. They
133
reported, that the throng of people was so great, particularly
of people from Mysoor, that the market had in fact lasted
two days instead of one. The Post had not met with an
hour's delay.
18. No proofs more conclusive than these could be given,
showing the peaceful and satisfactory state of the country,
both above and below the Ghauts in this vicinity, and in
Western Mysoor. Until the pressing of the people as
Coolies for Military Service began, similar reports con-
tinned to be brought, and were regularly transmitted by
me to Tellicherry, for the satisfaction of the residents there
during the time I remained absent.
19. Such, Sir, was the calm, orderly, and tranquil aspect
presented by the country, when, let my astonishment
be conceived, to find my doors beset on the morning of
the 8th April, before seven o'clock, by a crowd of people,
all loaded with Pepper, and all clamouring to have Rupees
given to them in exchange for it.
20. Pepper, and not money, is the medium of exchange
best known to the people. It is their universal custom to
hoard their Pepper and to part with it in small quantities,
never at once, and that chiefly, when the tax-gatherer
demands his money payments. It is iience a daily traffic
throughout North Malabar. Saving the few roads I have
made, there are here none but mountain paths. Not a
cart nor beast of burden is known off' the few Government
roads; all the inland traffic is by porters. A load of
Pepper is three maunds, or 102 lbs. : the two great marts
for the commodity are the maritime Towns of Tellicherry
and Cannanore.
21. The disastrous commercial advices from England
had made me desirous not to increase my stock of Pepper.
Solicitous, however, not to give birth to the smallest doubt
or uneasiness among the people, as to the cause of any
reduction in price at that time, on the 7th, I had reduced
the price for the day following, the 8th of April, one Rupee
a Candy.
134
22. On the 9th, there was, from sun-rise to sun-set, a
perfect rush of people with their Pepper, and a crowd of
other Natives, all in the same consternation, flocking
hither for news and advice. On this day, I learned from
them the cause of this unprecedented scene : from the
7th, every shop in Tellicherry and Cannanore had been
shut; not a Native would buy a grain of Pepper,
23. On the 10th, the day was not long enough to weigh,
( Pepper is weighed by the single Maund,) receive, and
pay for all the Pepper that came pouring in. Persons
whom we had never seen nor heard of before, respectable
Bramins and heads of families, from the extremity of the
neighbouring districts, arrived in one universal panic,
intreating for money. Although I refused not a grain of
their Pepper, giving to the Hindoos, who are the bulk of
the population, a Rupee more, I talked to, and endea-
voured to reason with them, but in vain. It was in vain
that I argued, that I remonstrated with them, that I told
them truly all I knew of the occurrences in Canara, that I
besought them not to be alarmed, but to take back their
Pepper, and return quietly to their homes. Their fears
made them deaf to every thing I could say. "We had
no wish to sell our Pepper," they exclaimed, " we kept
it for our Niggdee (assessment); but the Saheb-mars
(British functionaries) must know what has happened better
than you that are here. There they are, arrived from Man-
galore in a ship and Pattamars, with their wives and
children ; the Saheb-raars at Tellicherry have detained
the ship, and what can this be for, but to go away too,
and leave us at the mercy of thieves and robbers ? Better
get what money we can, and fly too ! " Whither, poor
creatures, they knew not ! Among this panic-stricken mul-
titude were some of the Mapillas from Cottapurumba, four
miles distant; some of those very Mapillas who, at the very
time, were declared by name in one of the Madras papers,
the Conservative, the reputed organ of the Government, to
be all ripe for insurrection.
135
24. All men liave heard of, some men have seen, a run
upon a failing Bank in a remote town in England, have
witnessed the awful picture of despair and distress, which
the scene exhibits. Sir, this is not a town, it is not a
village: it is the solitary dwelling of an Englishman in
the middle of the Jungles of India, without even a ham-
let near, save that of my own labourers. Let a man ima-
gine to himself the scene of terror and dismay, that was
here exhibited to me ; a scene occasioned, not by any pri-
vate imprudence nor calamity, such as may induce ruin
and bankruptcy, but by an universal belief among the
Natives in the end and dissolution of all Government!
No, Sir ! as long as memory endures, the grief, the shame,
the indignation, caused by such a spectacle, will never be
effaced.
25. The urgent letters I wrote to Tellicherry, the remon-
strances I addressed to all the principal Natives there,
with whom my word would have weight, but still more,
the example I set, restored some degree of confidence :
the shops in the Towns and Bazaars, were re-opened, and
the buyers resumed their purchases. But the desire there
evidently was in the people, so opposed to their rooted
habits and prejudices, to get rid of their Pepper, and pos-
sess themselves of all the money they could collect, showed
but too plainly that the feeling of security, in the strength
and stability of the Government, had received a fatal and
alarming shock.
26. I, therefore, persisted in purchasing all the Pepper
that was offered. In twenty-four days (from the 7th to the
30th of April ), I paid away for Pepper, Rupees 16,986,
in sums from one quarter of a Rupee, and half a Rupee,
to 222 Rupees, the highest sum any seller received.
Up to the 22nd of May, and not until then, was I satisfied
that the minds of the people were tranquillized, and the
late scenes, in a degree, obliterated, the sum paid away
136
was Rupees 25,189,* the quantity of Pepper received,
in quantities of 2h pounds and upwards, was 223,173
pounds, upon which, when sold in England, I estimate
my loss will be from 8,000 to 10,000 Rupees.
27. The Government requires me to substantiate what
1 say. Sir, there are the facts, accompanying are the
accounts, the daily accounts, J with the name of every
man entered, during the first twenty-four days (the others
are forthcoming), the pounds of Pepper he brought, and
the Rupees he took away. The Government demands
witnesses; I refer the Government to a whole population.
IVor let me be mistaken. This disclosure has been extorted
from me. The feeling which dictated any sacrifice, to pre-
serve unsullied the honour and reputation of my country,
is something very different from any feeling which either
courts praise, or quails at censure.
28. On the 18th of April, the arrival of a guest, a
gentleman from Manilla, induced me to return to Telli-
cherry.
29. It was then that I learned, in detail, not from
choice, nor curiosity, nor inquiry, but from necessity, from
the sole staple of conversation, from facts and particulars
in the mouth of every gentleman I met, and of every
respectable Native, an explanation of what had hitherto
passed my comprehension, the causes which had convulsed
this Province, from one extremity to the other. For
if dismay and alarm had prevailed throughout North
Malabar, South Malabar had been the scene, if possible
of greater; insomuch that a Native gentleman of Calicut,
whose means of information are the very best, told me
that the Rajahs and principal persons there had secreted
* It is necessary to bear in mind the very different value of money in
Malabar and Canara, and that to tlie receiver and the giver, a rupee may
there represent a pound sterling elsewliere.
l \'oucher A, (not printed, being loo voluminous.)
137
all their gold and valuables, and had taken steps to fly
instantly into Travancore !
30. From this explanation I learned, that the first shock
which the public confidence received, was the arrival at
Tellicherry, in a Pattamar * from Mangalore, of five ladies
with their infants at the breast, without food, without
water, some without a change of raiment, or a mattress to
lie on. These ladies were five out of a number of eleven,
who, with thirteen children, were put on board a Pattamar,
in the river of Mangalore, on the 4th of April. A cry was
raised, " the Coorgs are coming ;" the cable was immedi-
ately cut, there was no crew on board, the boat drifted to
near the river's mouth, there grounded, beat violently on
the sands, and nearly filled with water ; in which state,
drenched to the skin, and expecting her every moment to
sink, these ladies passed one whole night. On the follow-
ing morning, they were descried and succoured. But the
five in question and their children, without any other re-
freshment than a cup of tea, some in their drenched attire,
were put on board another Pattamar and sent off to Telli-
cherry, there to appal every heart by the exhibition of their
present sufferings, and the anticipation of their future
woes.
31. The second great shock received, was the arrival of
the Eamont on the 6th of April at Cannanore, bringing all
the other ladies and children, two gentlemen (one, it is
said, compulsorily) and the two Judges of Mangalore ; who,
as is known to all, officially, and, I believe, conjointly, re-
ported to the Government that they feared all human aid
to Mangalore was vain : that the abandonment of the place
by all the Europeans and Sepoys had imanimousli/ been
determined upon, and fruitlessly attempted, on the 4th of
April, but that they (the writers) and the persons with them,
•^ An open coasting vessel.
138
it was feared, alone survived to bear witness to the truth of
tlie tale.
32. Sir, if my wonder was not dissipated, if my absence
and position made me the last person to hear all these
astounding particulars, it was relief inexpressible to hear
them, possessed of the assurance that not a single Euro-
pean, nor hardly a Native, life had been sacrificed at Man-
galore, that the British flag had long since replaced that of
the Insurgents, and that the British authority was either
restored, or had continued unshaken, throughout all the
ancient districts of Canara.
33. Then it also was that, of the European residents at
Tellicherry, I was, I believe, the last to read, what had
been in all other hands, the letter of the 15th of April,
(a copy of which accompanied my letter of 3 1st of May,)
from the Native of Mangalore; giving to his family an
account of the state of terror and anarchy into which that
town was plunged from the 3d of April, and of the scenes
he himself witnessed on the 4th and on the 5th, the day of
the first attack. No sooner did I read this letter, than I
urged its immediate dispatch to the Government, in order
that the attention of the Government might be timely
awakened to events, the real nature of which was no longer
a doubt to the Natives of the two Provinces, nor to any of
its own servants.
34. Solicitous, moreover, to have more information, and
being possessed of property at Mangalore, I dispatched
thither some queries, founded on the details given in this
letter, and directed some of the rebel ammunition to be
sent to me, for the purpose of comparing it with the kinds
which the Natives, in this neighbourhood, fabricate and
use.
35. The answers returned to the queries fully bore out
the letter : it was further completely borne out, before my
return to Tellicherry and before, I believe, every gentleman
139
there, by the testimony of Hadjee Oomur,* a very respect-
able and opulent Malioniedan Merchant of Mangalore, who
witnessed the two attacks upon the town, and who stated
to all, that the number of armed insurgents did not exceed
500. The Hadjee having successfully defended his pro-
perty from pillage during the attacks, no longer deeming
the persons of his large family secure, when numerous
troops entered the place, came with them all to Tellicherry.
36. It was also on my return, that I obtained an expla-
nation of another incomprehensible circumstance. The
panic-struck people had repelled all my arguments to calm
them, by declaring that the European Residents had en-
gaged and detained a ship to embark in and sail away.
On the arrival of the Eamont at Tellicherry, it occurred,
first I believe to a valued friend of mine, that the services
of this ship might be valuable, in transporting a body of
troops to Mangalore. He proposed, and all others con-
curred, that she should be detained at the joint private
expense, until the offer of her was made to the Officer
Commanding the Provinces. The intention of this patri-
otic and considerate act was beyond all praise. Unfortu-
nately, its object seems not to have been freely and unre-
servedly communicated to the Natives. They saw and
heard only, that the ship was detained at the height of the
alarm, and they jumped to the conclusion, not now I fear
to be easily eradicated, that, as at Mangalore, so she was now
engaged for no other purpose, than to bear all the residents
away. Of such moment is it, at all times, but particularly
in times of alarm and disturbance, that public men who
not only represent, but who are, the Government, should
weigh with scrupulous care the imj)ressiou which the best
intentioned, as well as the most indiflerent, act may make
on the minds of the Natives around them.
* Also by Abdul Lalif, another Maliomedan morcliant, and by tliu
Mooftee of the Mangalore Court, who likewise came away to Tolliclierry.
140
37. The events I afterwards heard of were, the Procla-
mation of Martial Lawin Canara, the assembling of a Court
Martial at Manoalore, the centre of agitation and excite-
ment, presided over by the Officer there commanding to
try the Prisoners, and the abdication by His Lordship in
Council, in their case, of his prerogative of life and death
into the hands of the Officer commanding the Provinces.
38. On the 15th of April, the Bombay Troops reached
Mangalore. The troops that had been poured in from
Cannanore and Mysoor had, as was known, long pre-
ceded them. It was after this intelligence had been public
several days, that a scene was acted at Tellicherry which
shocked me past endurance.
39. On the 20th or 21st of April, I beg the date may be
attended to, a gentleman drives down full tear three miles
from his house to the beach, where a group of others,
myself of the number, were assembled ; throws himself
from his Bandy, his horse a sheet of foam, bestows not a
sign of recognition upon any one, seats himself on a stone,
pulls a letter from his pocket, and reads aloud to all pre-
sent, " that all Canara was in revolt, all JMysoor and all
Coorg ready to rise, and that the most formidable and
extensive insurrection India ever saw was on the eve of
breaking out." He had stopped on the road a gentleman
driving a lady, and had at first read to them, that a most
extensive massacre of Europeans had taken, or was to take
place ! I appeal to this gentleman, if he did not. The
authority for this intelligence was declared to be unde-
niable; every word of it was credited, and then came
reproaches and upbraidings of the Principal Collector for
keeping so large a sum in his Tellicherry Treasury; of the
temptation it held out to the Coorgs to come, and sack,
and burn the European houses; of the ease with which the
exploit might be performed before any one was aware of it ;
of the risk it heedlessly exposed the Europeans to: and
then came suggestions of the propriety and necessity of
141
removing this treasure. Its removal into boats had, I hear,
been mooted once before.
40. And who was the person who thus conducted him-
self? What was the scene of this conduct? The scene
was, the populous town ofTellicherry, the Sudder (principal)
station of the two Provinces of Malabar and Canara, open
to the sea, with a defensible Fort, within sight of the can-
tonment of Cannanore, and about a hundred miles away
from any disturbances. The person who thus conducted
himself was the first Judge of the Provincial Court, in
standing the oldest Civil Servant, in rank the first man
in the two Provinces, and, at the very time, the Judge
actually on his Circuit to Canara, there to hold criminal
Sessions !
41. Let it be imagined possible that, after the Irish
rebellion was known to be entirely suppressed, and the
authority of the Government firmly restored, an English
Chief-Justice (the comparison will, I fear, be set down as
odious,) could produce at Tilbury Fort, a letter in the
manner I have described, and there read from it to all who
might chance to hear, that Ireland was again in a flame,
Scotland ripe for rebellion, Wales in arms, and the most
formidable insurrection England ever saw, ready to burst
upon her ; and thereupon, that he should express his
doubts, lest his house and furniture (his house from which
he is obliged to see such a Cantonment as Canna-
nore!) sliould be plundered and burned, before he was
aware of it, and suggesting that all temptation should
be removed that might lead to so probable and so heinous
an act.
42. Such a scene in England would be more than in-
nocuous. Far different, however, might its consequences
be on the spot where it was exhibited. The readei- knew
not, but that the contents of ihe letter he |)roduced might
be sent, that moment, to the Papers, as every absurd,
calumnious, tale has been sent, and disseminated, on the
142
authority of the first Judge of the Provinces to the four
quarters of the country.
43. If the smallest tittle of this monstrous intelligence
had been true, the oldest Civilian, the highest functionary
in the two Provinces, one would think would have been the
man, above all other men whatever, to bury it in the deepest
recesses of his own breast, lest, if even whispered to him-
self, echo should hear and repeat the damning tale. But
when every part of it was so plainly monstrous, so palpably
unworthy of a moment's belief, what must have been his
state of mind, what his calmness and self-possession, both
before and at the time, when, instead of tearing such a
letter into a thousand pieces, and warning the writer how
he again trifled with a person holding his, the First Judge's,
high and responsible station, when, instead of this, he flies
to produce it, and publishes its contents, it may be said, in
triviis !
44. The same functionary scrupled not to proclaim, with
all the authority of his acuteness, let him say that he did
not also write it, as an undoubted proof of the treasonable
intentions lurking in the breasts of the inhabitants of Telli-
cherry that, " for some days, they looked as pleased as if
they had got the Lac of Rupees in the Lottery!" Ad-
mirable and characteristic illustration of treason in a Native
population ! This gentleman will suffer me to interpret for
the inhabitants, since they cannot interpret for themselves,
this look, big with a lac of meaning, which they put on.
I can assure him, upon their own indubitable testimony,
that they merely meant to express by it those feelings of
jeering and derision, at the blank looks they saw which,
convulsing them internally, at length mastered all Native
powers of face ; feelings which men would vent elsewhere
in shouts to rend the earth.
45. This, Sir, was the real, and, they trust, the ex-
cuseable, meaning of " the looks" of the people of Telli-
cherry ; looks, which they hope will not be held to
143
compromise a century and more of unshaken loyalty and
fidelity conspicuously proved to the British Government.*
* The Fort and Factory of Tellicherry, a territory about five miles
long, and not one mile broad, have been in the peaceable, uninterrupted,
possession of the British Crown since the year 1668, a period of 170
years. During the same period, if small things may be mentioned witli
great, England herself has witnessed one Revolution, and three formida-
ble Rebellions. In the war with Hyder, of 1769 — 70, when the British
power was reduced to the lowest ebb, when Hyder overran the Carnatic,
when his troops filled Malabar, and securely held all Canara, when not
a Rupee remained in the Bombay Treasury, nor a man could be spared
for the defence of Tellicherry, the Chief and Factors received orders to
abandon this, the remaining British settlement in the Province, and
remove with all the public property to Bombay.
In this extremity, all the heads of families, Hindoo and Mahomedan,
Nyr and Mapilla, with one spirit and with one accord, came forward,
and voluntarily bound themselves in writing before the Chief, not only
to enrol themselves, but to contribute for the defence of the place, one-
fourth of the rent of all their rice fields, and one-fifth of that of all their
gardens, both estimated in pi'oduce, according to the ancient, uniform,
equitable, and invariable practice throughout India, previous to British
rule.
This engagement, the first land-tax the inhabitants had ever known,
was joyfully ratified by the Chief, in the name of the Government of
Bombay, and the place was maintained and saved.
Among the numerous and important political consequences which
speedily resulted from this signal and timely act of fidelity and devotion,
a prominent one was that, in the subsequent war with Tippoo, a large
division of the Bombay army was enabled speedily to advance from the
Western Coast, and by effecting a junction with Lord Cornwallis under
the walls of Seringapatam, powerfully contributed to secure the peace,
which the Governor-General then dictated to the Sultan, (1792) one of the
chief conditions of which was, the cession of the whole of the Maritime
Province of Malabar, an area of about 6,000 square miles, and a popu-
lation of 800,000 people, to the British Government.
The last survivor of this band of faithful and devoted men, a patriarch
of nearly one hundred years, died about four years ago. Often have 1
heard from his lips a narrative of the scene which then passed ; ascene,
when despair and despondency in the Chief and Factors were exchanged
for gratitude, confidence, and exultation. This man lived to see the
co7'H-rent of one-fourth of his rice lands, which he had engaged to pay.
144
46. But what was the meaning, which the First Judge
fixed to these " looks" himself, and designed should be af-
fixed to them by those to whom he addressed himself? His
meaning, at the time and under the circumstances, could
be no other, than that the inhabitants of Tellicherry were
exulting in their hearts at the reported capture and burning
of Mangalore by the Insurgents, at the defeat of the Sepoys,
and the massacre of all the Europeans!
47. It was the first and the oldest British functionary
in these two Provinces, who circulated this belief in the
diabolical treachery and malignity of a people, among
whom he has been dwelling in peace and security for the
last twelve years. This gentleman says that, throughout
the course of nearly forty years service, he has " made it a
converted really into a money tax of one-half; and the produce rent of
his gardens, of one-fifth, into a money tax of often more than a half:
he lived to see a succession of tax-gatherers follow each other yearly,
and, year by year, come and survey his gardens, there count and note
every tree he had planted, and, wiien the first fruit appeared on its
branches, rate the tree as full bearing, and exact from him the full
money tax ; he lived to be compelled to choose by the Madras Govern-
ment between the following alternatives — either to pay the full money
tax upon all his past hearing trees, or to have them all cut down — to
have cut down, before his eyes, all his past bearing Cocoa-nut, Betel-nut,
and Jack, trees, he having no further right nor property in them, he being
a biped creature, paying revenue, nothing more !
All this did this Mapilla, for he was a Mapilla, live to see; all this do
his descendants, and the descendants of his fellow-townsmen and
fellow-subscribers see, and patiently suffer ; those descendants have
also lived to be taunted and branded, as traitors to the British Govern-
ment because a tumult occurred 100 miles off, and because they were
the astonished hearers and spectators of all that followed this tumult in
Canara and Malabar! This has been their treatment; their treatment,
after they and the people of Malabar universally (as also of Canara) gave,
only four years ago, another most striking proof of their fidelity, in
having resisted, to a man, all the offers and inducements which the
Coorg Rajah, seated on his Musnud, and with a full treasury at his
command, held out to them to join him in his hostilities against the
Government.
145
point not to encourage %vliat are called Native visils.'" The
practice, on this authority, must be held indisputable: I
truly believe that not a Rajah nor Native of rank crosses
his threshold; and they will admit, that he knows as iiiuch
of the people and of the country, as the day he entered the
latter. But they presume that his candour has made him
prefix this declaration, as a standing motto, to all the
voluminous Sessions and Circuit Reports he has yearly
compiled, to be transmitted to the Court of Directors, and
consulted by the English authorities, as correct and faithful
expositions, founded upon his personal knowledge and
inquiries, of the internal state of two important and distant
Provinces, over all the tribunals of which. Criminal, Civil
and Magisterial, he presides in chief. But where, I ask, was
his sense, not of justice, not of consideration, to the people ;
if twelve years of their marked and uniform respect and
attention, if 42,000 Rupees of their toil and sweat paid
yearly to him, had failed to imbue a human breast with
feelings of kindness and trust? where was his sense of duty
to the Government, at a time when that duty required
him to be the foremost man in showing, and in committing
the first man who failed to show, the most unbounded
confidence in their loyalty and attachment; a time, when
commotion agitated one Province, and alarm the other ;
where was his sense of duty to the Government he serves,
and to his country, when, at such a time, he, the First
Judge, could publicly exhibit, and inculcate a totally op-
posite belief? If such conduct towards the Natives of their
European rulers, if such wanton sowing of dragon's teeth
among them, produce not this portion of the earth in the
fulness of time, bristling with armed men, arrayed against
every man and every thing that is English, Divine Justice
sleeps! But the First Judge has served his Annuity; the
reaping of this harvest regards not him.
48. To witness such conduct, to hear such a speech,
is, I own, a just retiibution which injured humanity has
M
14G
doomed me to suffer, for preserving silence on another
occasion.
49. That a Judge should voluntarily and freely state,
that he had hanged the wrong man, and wrongly trans-
ported another for life, in a case of murder; that he
should state this to the Judicial Officer, who committed
the case for trial before him ; that this Officer should
declare to the Judge, that he also had come to the same
harrowing conviction, relative to the innocence of these
men; that this Officer should instantly prepare, for sub-
mission to tlie Court of Fonjdaree Udalut, the irresis-
tible grounds of his conviction, terminated by an earnest
prayer to be allowed to take further evidence in the
case; that he should communicate these grounds to the
Judge, and beseech him to concur in, and support, the
prayer; that the Judge should distinctly refuse; that
one of the Judges of the Fonjdaree Udalut should thank
God that he had had nothing to say to the case; that
another of the Judges should express his fears, lest a
judicial murder had been committed ; that the collective
Court should, nevertheless, at the distance of eighteen
months after the reference made to it of this case, affirm the
first conviction, and negative the prayer ; that the Judge,
he who had condemned, and now believed in the innocence
of, the two victims, he who knew that the survivor of them,
the one whom the gibbet had spared, was by his, the
Judge's sentence, wearing out his days as a transported
felon, he who believed the real murderers to be still abroad ;
that this Judge, on learning the decision of the Fonjdaree
Udalut, should declare, in writing, that "decision to be
most satisfactory ;" that 1 should know all this, hear all
this, have afterwards in my possession the perfect proofs of
the innocence of these two unfortunate men, and that I
should have maintained public silence, is an offence, it is a
crime, to humanity and to society which merits all the
punishment I have suffered. With deep contrition do I
147
ask pardon of God and the people for it ; although truth
be the witness, that all that a powerless, private, man could
do, to bring' forward the case, I atteinj)ted, and that if a
competent Court had existed, I would have prosecuted it.*
50. Not satisfied, however, with seeing a traitor in every
Native face, an enemy in every form, the Post, the Press,
private correspondence, and the public Papers, every Euro-
pean weapon, which the ignorance and helplessness of the
Native render him incapable of wielding in self-defence,
was relentlessly turned against him, in order to disseminate
an universal belief in the lurking treachery and disaffection
of the people.i" The Members of the Government will
say, whether this belief was not sought to be impressed
privately upon their minds. At Ootacamund, Wynaad
was reported to be in so disturbed a state, that the Sub-
collector of Malabar, whose presence was urgently required
on the Coast, was afraid to bring his wife through the dis-
trict, one under his own charge ! From Bangalore, the Com-
missioner of Mysoor officially reported to the Government,
with all the solemnity of a King's speech, that he " con-
" tinned to receive from all parts, the most satisfactory
* Since this leUer was first printed, I have learned, accidentally, but
from undoubted authority, that the late Governor of Madras, to whom I
transmitted the proofs of the innocence of these two unfortunate men, left
behind him a minute, recording his opinion that they had been convicted
on insufficient evidence. Sir F. Adam quitted India in March, I in
December 1837. To the hour of my departure from Tellicherry, not a
word had been heard of this minute. What became of it ?
I have now no hesitation in declaring to those who are acquainted
with the people and the country, that in this case one Native was put to
death, and another transported for life, upon evidence, that would not
have justified the conviction of one of the lower animals.
f Throughout the Bombay Presidency it was reported and believed,
that " the Coorgs, Mapillas, and Nyrs of the Coast were all in a state of
rebellion. All the different Brigades (of the Bombay army) received
orders to hold themselves in readiness to march at an hour's notice." In
Ceylon, the 90th Light Infantry (Queen's) were under orders for em-
barkation and field service on the Coast !
M 2
]48
" assurances of quiet, and that the only danger of disturb-
" ance to the public peace was to be apprehended from the
" turbulent population of Malabar!" The turbulent popu-
lation of Malabar! a population guiltless of even a tumult
for the last thirty years ! numbers of whom I saw, and
every other man might have seen, humiliating and mourn-
ful sight to behold I with natures so emasculated, as to
have lost the instinct of self-defence, and to know no
safety but flight !
51. Who was it, Sir, that so industriously and perse-
veringly disseminated these calumnies, both in society and
among the European public ; calumnies that have been
repeated by the Press of Bengal and Bombay, and which
will be re-echoed in England?* Who was it that thus
* Since my arrival in England, 1 have Uirned to some of the English
Papers, and content myself with inserting, as specimens, the two follow-
ing extracts of " Mangalore News," the first from a daily Paper, the
Momivg Herald, the other from a weekly Paper, the Naval and Military
Gazette : —
Morning Herald, Sept. 4, 1037.
Invasion at Mangalore. — The following is an extract of a letter
from an Officer of H. M. S. Winchester, dated Bombay, May 5, 1837 :—
"The Admiral fixed the 15th of April as the day of our sailing for
Colombo, when, on ti>e evening of the 11th, an express was received of an
invasion at Mangalore, and the hostile appearance of the Coorgs before the
town to the number o/" 30,000 men, with the declaration from the autho-
rities that they could hold out but a few days longer. A messenger was
sent on shore by the Captain to state that, at the request of Sir Jolni
Keaii, Commander-in-Chief, the Winchester would sail with a part of
II. M.'s 6lh regiment, and a Brigade of Artillery, at daylight next morn-
ing; and, therefore, to prepare accordingly and be on board; and at
eleven o'clock the next day we sailed for Mangalore, with 200 of the 6th
regiment, commanded by Major Crawford, and the Artillery, which were
to be followed by the Hugh Lindsay, with 200 more. Mangalore is
about 400 miles to the southward of Bombay ; and on our passage down
we spoke the Atalanta steamer, from England, having touched at Cochin
for coals. She informed us that the Coorgs were in great force at Man-
galore; and a Major of the , commanding 600 men, had been
defeated by them. This news being taken on to Bombay, tlie Atalanta
149
laboured to poison the mind of the Government with
doubts and suspicions relative to the allegiance, not of
individuals only, but of the masses ? Was it the Natives,
and Amherst, Company's sloops of war, sailed the following day with the
23rd Regiment to reinforce us. We arrived at Mangalore in forty-nine
hours from Bombay, having had a splendid passage, and found the
town still in the possession of the English. The Coorgs had been twice
repulsed ; but they succeeded in burning the houses of the Collector,
Judge , and many others, with all their property ; and it was by
the greatest miracle that the ladies escaped on board ship, and got down
to Cannanore, where the 57th regiment are yet quartered, and Wellman,
Bate, and many of our old friends are there also. We landed the troops
immediately. Captain Uniacke was ready with his detachment of Royal
Marines, to share in the glory if necessary. In a few days after, the
Atalanta and Amherst arrived, when we went to Cassergode, and landed
the 35th regiment there, a distance of thirty miles south of Mangalore.
We returned to Mangalore in a few days, and found the enemy had dis-
appeared everywhere ; and as we could be of no further assistance,
started immediately for Bombay, and arrived here yesterday."
Naval and Militarj/ Gazette, Sept. 16, 1837.
[From a Courespondent.J — Observing that the statement in your
Paper of the 9th inst., relating to the affair at Mangalore, has created
some doubt as to its authenticity, t/ou muy rely upon the following fads
luleli/ received from that quarter: —
" Towards the latter end of March, Mangalore was attacked by a
numerous body of insurgents, and, during a few hours, burned to the
ground, with ])roperty to a considerable amount, the insurgents declaring
no war to the Europeans. Major , of the Company's N.I., gallantly
defended the place, and thereby saved the lives of all the civilians and
women on the station ; some of the latter escaped on board a vessel acci-
dentally in the roads, others by boats to Tellicherry and to Cannanore.
So well organized were the insurgents, that all communication was cut
off with the Mysore, and tiie different places on the coast, for several
days; at length Mr. of the Civil Service, with the wives and fami-
lies of other Civilians and Officers, arrived in open boats at Cannanore,
and having reported these facts to Brigadier , commanding II. M.
57th Regiment in Malabar, that Officer immediately ordered 100 men of
tiie 2nd N. I., 400 of the 4th N. I., the flank Companies of U. M. 57th
regiment, and a Company of Artillery, I'ioncers, Lascars, ^c. &c., under
Colonel , who arrived without molestation, and relieved Major
150
or was it Europeans 7iot in the Service ? It notoriously
was not. I beg it may be distinctly remembered by all
men that, on the occurrence of what was bruited forth as
insurrection and civil war, it was no Native, nor English
" interloper," that it was not one of these two classes, who
exhibited to the world, "with damnable iteration," such a
picture of the blessings enjoyed by the Natives under the
Honourable Company's Government, and of the hold this
Government possesses on their affections, after a century
and half a century of rule, that a distant, contemptible
outbreak, of a few hundred wild men, sufficed to sever in
a day every tie of allegiance and attachment, and to set
's party at Mangalore, on the 12tli or 13th of April. In the mean-
while Brigadier placed the Fort and Cantonments on the coast on
the \var establishment, which restored confidence to the Rajahs and other
Chiefs who had applied to him for protection, in that neighbourhood.
On the 16th of April, 200 of H. M. 2nd regiment arrived from Bombay ;
shortly after. Colonel 's party was considerably augmented by other
detachments of troops from the northward, and, when the last accounts
left Mangalore, orders had arrived from Madras directing Brigadier
to proceed with a large force to take possession of the Lower Coorg
country, and probubhi into the Alj/sore. lieports, however, had reached us,
that the Niars to the southward of Cochin were in open rebellion against
the authorities, arid that European troops might be required in the Travan-
core district."
These statements, however delivered as bond fide, defy all correction.
Those who desire to see many more similar ones, have only to refer to
the Papers and Publications of the same date, which profess to be the
sources of correct East India intelligence. But I entreat the English
reader to remember, and I am sure he will not remember it without a
blush, that these are the accounts to which he is obliged to trust for all
information relative to a distant, a prostrate, people ; who have neither
the means of knowing what is written and published to their prejudice,
nor the ability of exposing its falsehood ; while they are the certain
victims to the universal indifference in their fate and fortune, generated
by this wide-spread belief in the hatred they bear, and in the treachery
and disaffection tiiey are ever ready to show, to their English rulers.
151
them whetting their daggers for the throats of the European
functionaries ! *
52. In ordinary cases there are some limits to indigna-
tion ; but where are the limits, where the bounds, to it,
when it is known, and can be proved as plain as day, that
these calumnious reports, which compromised millions of
innocent, defenceless, men, which might have led, as in
Canara, to the proclaiming of Martial Law among them,
and to all the unavoidable excesses resulting from the
military occupation of large provinces, as it has led to the
increase of troops, had not one atom of foundation, save
in the imagination of those, who spread these reports to
cloak their own ungovernable fears.
53. I now appeal to the Governor and the Commander
in Chief, individually. They cannot be tainted with the
odious, vindictive, spirit of caste, they are not candidates
for the Direction. As British subjects of the highest rank,
and vested with the highest trusts, I ask them to survey
this vast dependency of the Empire, to reflect upon the
* Whoever will be at the trouble of looking over the files of the Madras
Conservative for April last, will find paragraphs of " News " from Ca-
nara and Malabar, which he would almost be disposed to think had been
sent, with the ink fresh, from the Council Chamber to the Printing Office.
There is not a Madras Paper which can be said to be known to the Na-
tives in the Provinces, so that a free press is, at present, to them what
the sun is to the blind, or rather what the sun is to the inhabitants of the
Arctic regions during their long dreary night. While he is kindling and
enlightening and vivifying the rest of the universe, on them his glorious
rays shed no light, no radiance ; for them he has no warmth, no heat, no
existence ! A people so defenceless are the very people whom, it would
be supposed, a generous, paternal Government, commanding the services
of salaried Law Officers would interpose to shield with the law from
defamation ; on the same ground, that the weakness and ignorance of
children and minors are held to render them the peculiar objects of pub-
lic legal protection. Yet the Papers published on, private letters swarmed,
and the Government took not one step to trace the reports, and to give
the authors an opportunity of substantiating publicly what tlicy wrote.
152
delicate breath of opinion which chains every portion of
it to Biitish rule. 1 usk them, by any supposition, however
strained, to place themselves in my very humble situation,
to imagine themselves land-holders of forty years' posses-
sion in a remote part of the country; and there to behold,
when exerting all their influence, and expending their
fortune, to preserve order, and inspire confidence among
the Natives, to behold, as I did, almost in an instant, a
terror and panic spread past belief, the apprehended dis-
solution of all Government, their own property, and that
of every other man in the country, rendered not worth a
day's purchase, even hardly safe from the temptation held
forth to its immediate plunder.* I ask them to think of
this scene, to revolve all that I was obliged to hear, and
doomed to see, on my return to Tellicherry, and I then
ask his Lordship and his Excellency, as British Officers,
how they would feel their uniform to wear, if, after this,
they had maintained absolute silence towards the Govern-
ment? I anticipate both their ansvvers. Sir, I, too, am a
British Officer.
54. Not to be precipitate, however, I waited for the
Officers of the Government to come forward, and put the
Government in possession of facts and details, which were
flying from mouth to mouth. I anxiously waited for nearly
two months, after the British authority was re-established
in Canara, in the hope of seeing some public notice, other
than lavish, indiscriminate praises in the Gazette, which
should satisfy the people of the two Provinces, that the
Government was not wholly uninformed of the real nature
of the events which had occurred, and of the danger to
* It has been established by the clearest evidence, at the last (July
1837) Criminal Sessions for South Malabar, held at Calicut, on a trial for
burglary; in which a house was entered and robbed of all it contained,
as deliberately and undisguisedly as in open day; that the crime was
committed, as confessed by the perpetrators, for the reason that "now
was the time (the time of the aluini)to get ricli, by robbing all those who
were so ! "
133
which their persons and property had been causelessly
exposed.
55. I expected, in common with all other men, that,
without particularizing those events perhaps, or naming
individuals, the Government would so far sympathise in
the losses and sufferings which its peaceable, unoffending,
subjects had endured, from no fault nor misconduct of
their own, as to publish a strong, earnest, and energetic
remonstrance, appealing to the honour, the patriotism, the
sense of duty, of its (European) servants ; recalling to them
the vast trust reposed in their hands; reminding them that,
when all other exclusive privileges and monopolies were
proscribed and rooted out, the great and magnanimous con-
fidence of their country had virtually continued to them,
the exclusive privilege of governing and ruling over one
hundred millions of their fellow men ; had still continued
to them the glorious monopoly of doing, in their public and
private capacity, to these millions, that boundless sum of
moral, intellectual, and physical good, which the fervent
wishes of the British people, embodied in one aspiration,
desired should mark and distinguish the future connection
of Great Britain with India; that the public servants are
the sole depositaries of all power, of all influence, and of
all authority, the sole mirrors which reflect upon those
beneath them, the honour, the dignity, and the authority
of the British Government ; that they are also the sole
reporters of their own acts and of their own conduct ; and,
lience, that not a thought, it was to be hoped, could find
entrance into their breasts, which could lessen that honour,
lower that dignity, or impair that authority.
56. It is superfluous to say, that I waited in vain for
any such appeal ; nay, the public (and private) dispatches
to Mangalore were reported to be only the more and more
encomiastic, the powers they conveyed only more and more
unlimited, the identification of the Government, with every
act and proceeding held there, only the more entire and
complete.
154
57. I, therefore, at length, deemed it my duty to address
the Government, with the design of strongly awakening
its attention to the character it was filling in the eyes of
the people of Canara and of Malabar ; a character, which
seemed to me incompatible with the diffusion and continu-
ance of quiet and contentment in these Provinces. I wrote
warmly, for I felt warmly ; I feel so now, and shall so
feel, as long as feeling I have. But I wrote as generally
as my design permitted ; with two or three exceptions, I
am a stranger by name to every Officer, Civil or Military,
in Canara.
58. My letters, despatched under the safeguard of official
confidence, had hardly reached Madras, when copies of
them were transmitted, with profound mystery and secrecy,
to Mangalore, coupled, as it appears, with an intimation, of
a Commission of enquiry being probably held, in conse-
quence, at some future time.
59. If the circumstances I detailed were unknown to the
Government, yet should nevertheless prove true, candid and
impartial men, solicitous alone for the truth, will, I think,
admit, that no course was more imperative, both for the
honor of the Empire and the satisfaction of India, not only
that no step should be taken, which might be construed
into a design to render inquiry illusory and abortive, by
making the discovery of the truth impracticable ; but that
no step should be indirectly permitted, which might be
open even inferentially to the same construction.
60. If my letter was sent to Mangalore with the know-
ledge of His Lordship in Council, with this decisive proof
before my eyes, that, from the hour of its receipt. His
Lordship in Council, the final Judge and the nominator of
the Commission, was determined to throw the whole weight
of his station, of his authority, and of his opinion into the
opposite scale ; it would be the height of presumption and
indecency in a private, unsupported, solitary, friendless,
individual like myself (even if every public man regarded
155
not himself as bound to follow the example set) to array
himself against His Lordship in Council.
61. If my letter was privately transmitted to Mangalore,
by Officers high in the confidence of His Lordship in Coun-
cil, the result, in defeating and compromising the ends of
enquiry, is the same. In this event. His Lordship in Coun-
cil can alone vindicate his authority; it is the weight of
His Lordship in Council, which can alone now pursue, with
any hope of success, an enquiry into events and occur-
rences of more than six months' date, involving the conduct
of high Public Officers exercising supreme authority, and
removed 500 miles away from the seat of Government.
62. If it were possible that I could be guilty of such
gratuitous cruelty, not to say mockery, the humanity of
His Lordship in Council would never suffer me to produce,
as witnesses before the Commissioners, the Natives of
Mangalore who have unreservedly communicated to me,
what they saw and what they heard. His Lordship in
Council would not suffer any Natives to be placed in a
situation, where they would be compelled to choose between
their fears and the truth on the one hand, and, on the other,
the inculpation of their European rulers, irresistible from
rank, from office, from power, from emolument, from con-
nections ; actively busied up to, and during, the very hour
of enquiry, in pursuing, seizing, and committing for trial
capitally, all persons suspected or accused of participation,
overt or covert, in the late disturbances,* and fully prepared
* I was informed by a Native of Mangalore, tliat he saw the town-
crier go about the town, about a month ago (October, 1837), witli a
paper in his (the crier's) hands, from which he read aloud, that all per-
sons were forbidden to speak of the late disturbances, under pain, if
heard, of being taken up and committed to Jail. I asked the reason of
this Proclamation. "To frighten and silence the people," replied the
man. "As to committing prisoners," said he, " if there was another
Jail at Mangalore, as large as the present one, that too would be filled
with them." Observing my great surprise and incredulity relative to
the Proclamation, he produced a Talook Gomastah to corroborate what
156
to meet enquiry by public, recorded, approbation. If they
were spared now, these witnesses would believe that it
would only be to be marked and hunted down hereafter.*
he said. Of the "rebel" prisoners, the Special Judicial Commission
had, by the middle of September, tried 200, who were not half the num-
ber of those whose trials were then determined upon ; and as the Com-
mission did not leave Mangalore before the beginning of February, not
less than about 500 persons, in addition to those executed by Martial
Law, must have been arraigned and tried upon the Madras Statute of
Treasons, in consequence of this unhappy outbreak. There remains to
know how many more died in Jail, a Jail proverbially deadly and fatal
to the Natives confined in it.
* Not content with preserving a silence of months, the mark of appro-
bation which, in the eyes of the Natives, would be considered as the
strongest the Government could pass on the occasion, not satisfied with
this course which, in their minds, would be open only to one construc-
tion, the Government went beyond it. The Government (it is to be
placed in a most painful situation to have to state facts which stagger all
belief) even went beyond the law ! The Government vested the Magis-
trate of Canara, individually, with the power of pardoning any persons
whose evidence he might require, to convict the prisoners he himself
seized and sent up for trial, and coupled the investiture with the obser-
vation, that the Government put "the most implicit trust in his exer-
cising the power with the soundest discretion." By law, (Regulation 8,
of 1802, Section 20,) the power of pardoning accessaries is vested solely
in the Governor in Council, upon the recommendation of the Fonjdarry
Udalut, and that for the crimes specified, viz. " murder, gang-robbery,
arson, and the like." The Regulation, of course, contains no clause, no
provision, by which he can divest himself of this power, and depose it at
will into other hands. Further, in rebellion, the imputed crime, all
being [principals, none can be made accessaries or approvers.
What a spectacle, from first to last, was presented to die Natives ! In
the case of the prisoners condemned by Martial Law, they saw those
])risoners led to death, without the Government deigning to satisfy itself
of their guilt: in the case of the other prisoners, they saw the Govern-
ment set aside the law, strip itself of the prerogative of pardon, and vest
that prerogative, unlimitedly, in the Magistrate, in order to secure con-
victions ; and this at a time, when it was formally announced to lite
Public, that the Government were sending Commissioners to Mangalore
" to investigate the affairs of Canara, &c. !"
The Government and the people of England expect the willing obe-
J 57
63. I admit that the design has been well laid, that
ample time has been given to marshal tlie incidents, and
prepare the conclusion : —
" Et quED sibi quisqiie timebat,
Unius in miseri exitium conversa tulere."
But I must be forgiven, even when the intended moral
is the warning of the Native Spectators by my exam-
ple, if I decline to fill the blended part of dupe and victim,
in which it is designed that I should singly act and
suffer.
64. At this present time, nearly seven months after the
events, in this, the eleventh hour, with all the statements
in the official letter of the Judge of Mangalore, uncontra-
dicted as regards the public, with every functionary, whose
conduct that letter professes to relate, maintained in autho-
rity at Mangalore, and exalted by power and praise, the
dience of the Natives of India. They are prepared to exact that obedi-
ence, upon the requisition of the local Government, with all the phy-
sical force of the Empire. If the settled design had been to goad on
the Natives of Canara into rebellion, to imbue every man in the Pro-
vince with an indelible spirit of hatred and abhorrence of the British
Government, to keep their minds kindling with a fever of indignation,
let me put it to any upright, impartial, man to pronounce, whether a
more likely or more effectual course of measures than this could be
taken? And when it is known, that the Natives have humbly and
patiently borne and submitted to all, that not a tumult has occurred, not
an order been questioned nor disobeyed, nor any of the functionaries
continued over them treated with anything but respect; is it, I ask, in
the power of human beings to give more convincing proofs of their
peaceful, orderly, quiet dispositions? Is it in the power of men to give
a more unanswerable denial to the charge of disaffection, sought to be Jived
upon them, in order to colour this treatment ? Or is it possible for men
to show more forcibly, how truly they deserve that a strict, an impartial,
and a public inquiry be made, without respect to persons or authorities,
into the transactions of Canara, and into every circumstance connected
with them, in order that the British Government may truly know, who
have been the breakers of the law, who the fomenters of sedition ; what
all the miseries, and indignities, and sufferings, heaped upon this people ?
158
question is not, what I can substantiate, nor, let nie say
with all respect, can it be made the question.
Go. All that a loyal subject and private man could do in
his position, to preserve and maintain inviolate the honour
and authority of the British Government, during a season
of public ferment, I did. * But the supreme Guardians
* Voucher B.
Principal Collector's Office, on Circuit,
Kiikanchcrr^, \9tli Oct. 1837.
TO F. C. BROWN, Esq.
Sir,
I have the honour to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of
the 16th inst., requesting me to state my opinion, as to how you dis-
charged your duty to Government, as a British subject, and as to the
example you, as an individual, set the inhabitants at the time of the
unfortunate outbreak in Canara in April last.
2. In reply, I have no hesitation in saying, that the calm firmness
displayed by you during this period, was attended by the best results,
and restored confidence to the people around you, who had been consider-
ably alarmed by the ill-timed and unnecessary fears of others; and that
the example you set generally was the talk and admiration of the Natives.
I may also add, that I learnt from one of the European gentlemen at
Tellicherry, whom I saw shortly after, that your determination and ex-
ample had been highly useful, and under the circumstance then brought
to my knowledge for the first time, very valuable.
3. Nothing called, at that time, for an official report from me to
Government, as Malabar was happily quite free from any participation
in the disturbances of Canara; otherwise, I should certainly have stated
freely my opinion, as regarded the share you had in allaying the excited
feelings of those around you. As some accounts, however, would be
looked for from me, they were submitted in a demi-official form ; and
I had occasion in these letters, to notice the information that I had, at
different times, received from you ; 1 stated also generally, that your
conduct, throughout the trying time, " had been admirable."
I have the honour to be. Sir,
&c. &c. &c.
F. F. CLEMENTSON,
Principal Collector and Magistrate.
159
of that honour and authority arc the Governor in Council
of Madras. The noble trust is not vicarious ; it is inde-
feasible. That honour and tiiat authority, it is declared
by all men, received a fatal shock, the national name a deep
stain, by the attempted abandonment of Mangalore by
every Officer, Civil and Military, on the morning of the
4th of April, twenty-four (36) hours before an insurgent
appeared ; this abandonment, all but unanimously sub-
scribed in writing, has been officially known to, and has re-
mained unquestioned by, the Government for nearly seven
months. This is now the cause ; two Provinces of the
Empire are the Witnesses, the People of England must
hereafter be the Judges. No private man can be suffered
to interfere, and distract the attention from the public,
privileged, actors to himself.
66. Sir, it is a general rule in the United Services of the
Empire, an inexorable rule in one, which not the Lord
High Admiral nor the youngest Midshipman can evade;
that, in every instance of the loss, or the abandonment of a
vessel committed to the charge of an Officer; even should
the abyss have entombed her and left but a foremast^to
tell the tale; the survivor should immediately appear before
a competent Court, and there purge the memory of his Com-
mander, his Officers, and his Messmates from having
failed, even in death, in aught demanded by the trust their
country reposed in them. Scarcely a twelvemonth passes
that this rule, which Honour and Patriotism have imposed
upon Justice, brings not to light, even in times of peace,
some heroic instance of constancy, firmness, and greatness
of mind displayed under appalling perils ; of a Commander,
the impersonation of calmness, fortitude, and resolution,
exhibiting in these moments, an attention to, a recollection
of, every person around but himself; a fertility of resource,
increasing with every emergence ; and so infusing his own
indomitable mind into the breasts of all under him, that
the whole ship becomes instinct with one spirit of order
160
and resolution, vvhicli seems to say to the elements, " Roar
on! ye cannot shake the hearts of Englishmen ! " Great
and glorious as are the triumphs of the British name, who
is there that reads of one of these victories, achieved over
danger and death by the exercise of these god-like quali-
ties, without feeling his own nature inexpressibly exalted at
the recital ? Yet the hero of it, he, before whom men invo-
luntarily feel disposed to bow as a superior being, is com-
pelled to appear before his country, stripped of the sword
his hands are so worthy to grasp. Sir ! it was no vessel
of the Empire, it was a part of the Empire itself, it was a
Million and more of men, that were trusted to the function-
aries of Canara, to defend from the moral tempests of
anarchy and civil war, as long as a foot of ground remained
to tread on.
67. And what recollections are there not associated with
the theatre of this reported conduct ! Mangalore, the
grave of hundreds of a garrison of a few thousand (3546),
Europeans and Sepoys, who, the historian relates, under
their heroic leader Major Campbell, successfully resisted for
nine consecutive months the whole army of the Sultan of
Mysore, "amounting to 60,000 liorse, 30,000 disciplined
Sepoys, 600 French Infantry under Col. Cossigny, Lally's
corps of Europeans and Natives, a French troop of dis-
mounted cavalry commanded by an Officer of the King of
France, irregular troops to the amount of many thousands,
and nearly one hundred pieces of artillery." They resisted,
until two-thirds of " the garrison were sick, and the rest
had scarcely strength to sustain their arms," in which state
"they marched to Tellicherry, with their arms, accoutre-
ments, and all the honours of war."
68. The present occasion is one, therefore, when all men
must feel, that private regards and considerations must
merge in a regard for the public weal and the national
name. All men will echo the sentiments of a great writer :
" A man who loves only himself, without regard to friendship
161
or desert, merits the severest blame ; and a man who is only
susceptible of friendship, without public spirit, or a regard
for the community, is deficient in the most material parts
of virtue."
69. I presume it will be a matter of positive instruction
to the Commissioners, to reject all inferior evidence when
the best possible can be obtained. I have already stated
that I repaired, on the first rumour of disturbances in
Coorg, to the part of the country where my influence could
be best exerted in preserving order, and inspiring confidence.
It was impossible, therefore, that I could be at Mangalore,
or at other places, to speak personally to events or occur-
rences, which happened at them : and fortunate is it, for
the ends of truth, that this is the case, for the persons who
can speak, are above exception ; they are all, " within the
pale," are all officers, Civil or Military, in the Service,
wiiose testimony will relate to events, which they either
witnessed and took part in, or that they heard of from the
actors.
70. The letter of the Judge of Mangalore, the minutes
of the Civil and Military trials held there, and the spon-
taneous confessions of the prisoners, are public, authentic,
indisputable records, to inform the Commissioners, and
direct their inquiries. I know not whether the venue of the
latter, as of the trials, be unalterably laid at Mangalore.
If it be not, and His Lordship in Council desires to abridge
and facilitate the labours of the Commissioners, he will
instruct these Gentlemen to begin them at Cannanore. It
was there that the Eamont landed all the persons she re-
ceived on board at Mangalore ; it was there that they gave
a narrative, fresh and vivid, of what had occurred, of what
was done, and had been intended to be done, up to the
hour of their leaving the place.
71. The Honourable Mr, Sullivan can tell the Commis-
sioners, I crave his forgiveness if I am in error, whether he
has not read an extract of a letter from a gallant young
N
162
Officer, a witness of undisputed authority, comparing the
attacks on Mangalore to boys capturing bees' nests. The
Chaplain of Cannanore will relate what he heard from the
German Missionaries of Mangalore, who fled and took
refuge with him; and I appeal to the honour of every
British resident at Tellicherry to declare, whether the
events of Mangalore, as related by the Native letter-
writer, and by other unexceptionable witnesses, were not
the universal, nay, the sole topics of conversation, at the
period I returned among them ; whether the order given to
the Peons of IVlangalore, when they again started into life,
was not written from thence. They will likewise say,
whether some ladies were sent to Cannanore, by sea, on
the plea that the land road (13 miles) was unsafe, and
whether a remonstrance was suggested to be addressed
to the Officer Commanding the Provinces, upon the danger
and imprudence of further lessening the number of troops
at Cannanore.
72, The arms, means, and equipments of the Insurgents,
will be best estimated from all the captured munitions of
War, which are doubtless at hand, and ready to be pro-
duced; their designs and numbers, from their own confes-
sions, from the wealth and intelligence of their wealthiest
leaders, and from the population of their districts. The
casualties of Colonel Green's detachment, 1,000 strong,
exposed for a whole day to their fire, will show their skill
as marksmen.* As to the means of resistance at Man-
galore, a military eye will, 1 think, have little difficulty in
fixing on a part of the ancient defences, which may be
deemed inexpugnable; and the same eye will descry a
Pagoda at Pootoor, stored at the time (in April) with
grain, supplied with water, and capable of being held
against all ordinary assailants. But there is another
position which, it is to be hoped, the Commissioners will
* The casualties on the occasion were, I believe, a Drummer and *
Bheestie wounded.
163
visit in person ; the position chosen for the erection of a
Gibbet, which was in progress of being raised at Man-
galore, while the Court Martial was sitting, and trying
the Prisoners. *
73. The Principal Collector of Malabar can describe
the state in which he found Tellicherry, when he passed
through to Cannanore; and the assistance he derived in
discharging the very arduous and responsible duties it fell
to his share to perform, for some time, unaided by any
officer under him.
74. The two special Judicial Commissioners, deputed to
Mangalore, can bear witness to the manner of their re-
ception, and to the disposition manifested by the whole
population, Hindoo and Mapilla, of North Malabar on
their progress through the country; to the dangers they
ran in South Canara, after the Magistrate of Canara had
reported, that he could not answer for the safety of their
persons on the journey to Mangalore, and advised their
coming by sea.
* The Officer who, it is stated, stopped the erection of this Gibbet,
was Captain W. P. Macdonald, of the 41st N. I., the Judge Advocate
who conducted the Trials. Immediately the circumstance came to his
knowledge, with the spirit, the feeling, and humanity worthy of a Madras
Officer, he refused to continue the proceedings, until the structure was
removed. This Officer was afterwards first named as Secretary to the
Canara Commissioners, in echo of his own merit and qualifications, and
of the public voice. He had filled the same office in Kimedy, and had
been thanked in General Orders for his services. lie had conducted
the Military Trials at Mangalore, where he had resided for some time,
in prosecution of the inquiries into the delinquency of the prisoners,
necessary to the discharge of this duty, and had become officially ap-
prised of, and familiar with, the leading events which had there occurred.
A fitter Secretary could not be named, and the current phrase was, " the
truth will now come out." But " there, was a screiv loose somewliei-e,"
as he wrote from Madras; where, and wherefore, may be best known at
Madras and Mangalore, and Captain Macdonald was not appointed.
I am a stranger to this Officer, and only speak of him as I have heard
him spoken of.
N 2
164
75. Witli regard to the sentiments of the people of
Tellicherry,who have been so cruelly and unjustly maligned,
there is one proof of their innocence, even in thought, so
easy and complete, that 1 trust His Lordship in Council
will instruct the Commissioners to reduce it to the test.
The proof is, to direct a search for arms and ammunition
to be made throughout the town. After the search, I will
willingly give a Rupee to every male adult of the popula-
tion, who shall !^hovv in public, that he knows how to prime
and load a piece with ball, and will put a ball through a
common target at forty yards.
76. I have now established to the conviction, I believe,
of all impartial minds ; first, that there are reasons unan-
swerable, which preclude ray obeying the commands of His
Lordship in Council, to attend upon the Commissioners,
unfeigned as is my respect for these gentlemen, unless my
design was to frustrate the objects of inquiry, by under-
taking a duty, which pre-eminently pertains to the Govern-
ment, and by it alone can now be adequately discharged :
secondly, that if these reasons did not exist, it would be
presumptuous in a private man, when so many public
actors and witnesses are present and at hand, further to
step out of the sphere imposed upon him, that of a sorrow-
ful spectator and compulsory listener, whose offence it
prima facie is, that he gave expression to the feelings which
all men around him entertained and privately uttered.
77. There are, moreover, other considerations of not less
weight than the foregoing, which prescribe to me unalter-
ably the same conduct.
78. It was observed to me, in April last, by one of the
most influential Natives in the country, when conversing
upon the events which had transpired: "The Civit Gentle-
men (he used the very words) can sail away in ships, with
their wives and children, on the breaking out of any dis-
turbances, and find a full Treasury of Rupees wherever
they go: but what are you or I to do? how, or where, are
165
we and the Koodians, (the people of the country) to take
away our lands and families, and what belongs to us? "
79. This pertinent question was not only put to me,
but the Government may rest assured, that it has been
put and discussed, at fiill length, by the large and intel-
ligent circle of this Native's acquaintance; and that sub-
sequent events have led them to the following answer:
" Either the Government knows not of these things, or it
does know, and is determined tu ignore them."
80. Had my lips, with baseness unheard, been sealed in
the same seeming silence as theirs, had I, as they, con-
tinued to wait, " with bated breath and whispering hum-
bleness," for what might next be vouchsafed to be done ; yet
the powerful workings of their minds upon what they saw,
and upon what they might suffer, upon such soul-absorbing
topics, as their individual safety, the safety of their wives
and children, and the security of their property, as involved
by the conduct of their European rulers, these workings
would nevertheless have proceeded full surely, contemned
and unheeded as they have been, and may be.
81. Circumstanced thus, We are driven to reflect upon
the primal cause, the origin and fount of all these mis-
chiefs; upon what must be the course of conduct, the
course of uniform mental discipline, which men must be-
come habituated to, when it is seen that, in the momentous
position of the British Empire in India, public men of high
official rank, mature age, and reputed experience, could
bring themselves to harbour, and to act upon, such a reso-
lution as the total abandonment and immediate loss of a
large Province, specially committed to their charge.
82. Calm, dispassionate, and impartial men who, at a
distance from the scene, at a distance from India, will con-
sider this resolution, apart even from the occasion, and
examine it in connection with the preceding narrative, will
find it hardly possible to avoid arriving at the following
conviction ; that the whole system of internal Government
166
must permit, and sanction, so entire and unrestrained a
latitude of conduct in public men, must be so devoid of
anything like an approach to effective check, or to real
responsibility, is so freed from every restraint of public
opinion, and must teach so thorough a contempt for the
feelings and sentiments of the Natives beneath them ;* that
there is no act whatever, not even the desertion of one
Province, and the consequent convulsion of another, which
they may not hazard, with the certainty of reaping imme-
diate fame and reward upon their own reports, and with
the assurance that, if enquiry does follow, it will follow
only at the distance of many months, that they will be
amply forewarned and forearmed, be maintained in power
and authority, and be prepared and encouraged to meet
enquiry with public, recorded, approbation.
83. Such a system not merely excludes every hope in a
private man, it leaves room only for despair. Against the
Assagai', the Tomahawk, the War-club, the Scalping-knife,
or the Bush-arrow of the Savage, an Englishman dwelling
in the Colonies of the Empire, may hope to guard by
every prudent precaution, and by a blameless life, spent in
the discharge of every kind and good office towards those
around him. But against the passions, against the tumults,
against the plunder, against the anarchy, produced by the
flight of every authority, the end of all Government, and
the surrender of all public trust, no individual prudence,
no firmness, no virtue, can defend him. Had there been
British Settlers and Capitalists scattered through Canara,
it is they, who would have sealed tliis system with their
heart's blood ; it is their lives, their families, their proper-
ties, which, no man can doubt, would have fallen the in-
stant sacrifices to the infuriated Natives, stung to madness
at the desertion of the European Officers salaried and ap-
pointed to protect them, a desertion which the hapless vic-
tims could neither anticipate nor prevent.
* See Note at the end.
167
84. The secret has thus been discovered, without vio-
lating the letter, of fatally and effectually blighting the
spirit, of an Act of the Legislature, the grand, humane,
enlightened, and politic provision of which, the provision
which bade India hope, and Great Britain and the world
rejoice, secured for the Act the title of " The Charter of
India." Whatever may be the design of the law, or the
promptings of the heart, the secret has been discovered, of
warning every European British subject of character,
respectability, and property, to fly far from this portion of
India. No man who reads what I saw in Malabar, or
reflects upon what occurred, and is related to have oc-
curred, in Canara, can have a heart so devoid of the feel-
ings of humanity, as to bring himself to desire, that his
greatest enemy should venture his property, and risk the
lives of his wife and children in a country, where the one
and the other would be exposed, sooner or later, to the
hazard of destruction.
85. Precluded in my own case from longer dwelling here
in honour and security, I have been driven to seek to sever
a family connection with these Provinces of nearly seventy
years' duration. I have been driven to offer for sale the
whole of my property on this Coast, this estate included,
the fruit of forty years' toil and dear-bought experience,
and a great amount of capital ; where a population has
been born strangers to another landlord ; where, following
the example bequeathed to me, the little good I have done,
and the hope of being suffered to do more, have been the
solace and the reward of days and years consumed in soli-
tude and obscurity, away from all the enjoyments which
most men deem life wortli living for. Some minds may,
perhaps, sympathise in the struggle which such a resolu-
tion cost.
86. But not a purchaser offered. In such a mart as
Bombay, my property, this estate purchased from the
Honourable Company, is not now marketable. What would
168
loan-holders in the Service not say, what measures would
the Government not have instantly resorted to towards me,
or towards British subjects like me, if it were possible, that
I or they could be instrumental in rendering the Govern-
ment Promissory Notes perfectly unsaleable ?
87. Foiled in the desire to sell, there only remains to
me to quit the country, and return to England. To that
determination 1 long since came, and intended, if possible,
to embark in the September Steamer. But my produce
will not be shipped before the middle, or the end of Novem-
ber. I accompany, or follow it : happy, were it possible to
forget elsewhere events and occurrences, which, when I
reflect upon the sinister effect they have already had, and
upon the effects which I firmly believe they will hereafter
have, upon the honour, the character, the dignity, the
strenoth, and the stability of the British Government, in
the eyes of the people of this portion of India, I would
freely give my life to have averted, and to avert.
88. There is a remaining duty forced upon me, from the
performance of which, however painful, however fraught,
as the warning voice of the past repeats to me, with the
consummation of my own ruin, I am forbidden to shrink.
To preserve silence, on the subjects of this letter, would be
treason to the people of England. With the people of
England it must rest, seriously to reflect upon the conse-
quences involved in them ; and to weigh, with deep and
patient attention, what the moral, intrinsic, value of this,
their greatest, inheritance purchased with the best blood of
their country, is likely to be, when, their long minority
ended, they shall be suffered to take possession, and be
permitted to see, to survey, and to examine its real condi-
tion and past Government, by the light of their own un-
hoodwinked, unobstructed senses, and of their impartial,
enlightened, and unprejudiced understandings.
89. I have only one request to make to his Lordship in
Council. Ample time has been given to store up and
169
accumulate against me the odium of public men. To ex-
asperate it among all, it has been stated that I have written
many letters to Bengal, on the same subject. I have never
written one ; but as the present letter may possibly convey
some information to the Right Honourable the Governor
General of India, my request is, that his Lordship in Coun-
cil will have the goodness to send a copy of it to his Lord-
ship the Governor General.
I have the honor to be,
Sir,
Your most obedient humble Servant,
F. C. BROWN.
170
NOTE TO PAGE 166.
" Were there a species of creatures intermingled with men which^
though rational, were possessed of such inferior strength, both of body
and mind, that they were incapable of all resistance, and could never,
upon the highest provocation, make us feel the effects of their resent-
ment; the necessary consequence, I think, is, that we should be bound,
by the laws of humanity, to give gentle usage to these creatures, but
should not, properly speaking, lie under any restraint of justice with
regard to them, nor could they possess any right or property^ exclusive
of such arbitrary lords. Our intercourse with them could not be called
society, which supposes a degree of equality, but absolute command on
the one side, and servile obedience on the other. Whatsoever we covet,
they must instantly resign. Our permission is the only tenure by which
they^ hold their possessions : our compassion and kindness, the only
check by which we curb our lawless will : and as no inconvenience ever
results {to us) from the exercise of a power so firmly established in
nature, the restraints of justice and property being totally useless, would
never have place in so unequal a confederacy. This is plainly" (says
the ethical writer on Justice, who thought the condition he described
could never be that of any human beings) " the situation of man with
regard to animals."
I shall be accused of exaggeration ; in the face of the testimony of a
life, given to endeavouring to strengthen the Government, and to recon-
cile the Natives to it, by daily exhortation and example, whoever might
be the local depositaries of its authority, I shall be denounced for pre-
judice and distortion. Let, then, those who seek for materials to inform
and guide their opinions, who desire to have facts, as the fouiydation
whereon to base their judgments, consider dispassionately the following
narrative, and pronounce upon the amount of security of person, upon
the degree of individual liberty, and upon the extent of the rights to
property, possessed by, and permitted to, a people under a system of in-
ternal Government and law, to which the detail will furnish an index.
In the middle of last July, I was told that an opulent and respectable
Native land-owner and merchant, living at the distance of some miles
from me, had called and wished particularly to speak to me. I went to
him, and, to my surprise, found him in the custody of a Delayet (a
hi«her kind of silver-budged official, of whom a number are attached to
171
the persons and suite of European Collectors and Magistrates) and of
two inferior Peons. He told me, that these persons had come to his
house at Eerikoor, produced to him a paper from the Joint Magistrate,
with a seal upon it, and directed him to sign it; that after he had signed
and returned the paper, the Delayet said he had orders to search every
part of his, Paree's house (Mehnee Paree is the Native's name) for the
other gun he had found in his well, and which the Magistrate heard he
had secreted ; whereupon the Delayet and Peons entered his house,
turned into the street all that it contained, the Grain, the Pepper, and
every other thing, and probed and sounded it in every part : they next
went to the rooms of the women of his family, and there did the same.
He said that this was the second time his house had been searched in the
same way, the first time by the Talook (county) Officers. Not finding
any trace of the gun, the Delayet took him into custody, together with
one of the Coolies (a Teean) whom, with others, he had employed to
clear out the well, and were now taking them both to Tellicherry;
when, as they passed my house, he begged to be allowed to stop and
see me.
The Delayet, before whom all this was stated, confirmed its truth ;
his man, whose father had long been in our service, made no scruple in
telling me his belief, that there never was more than one gun found in
the well, and that the story of the second was a fabrication. Nevertheless,
the old man Paree, his prisoner, upwards of 72 years of age and in bad
health, was in great and natural alarm ; he said, he had never in his life
been suspected nor accused of a crime, was wholly unacquainted with
Courts and Cutcherries, and he, therefore, entreated that I would give him
a note to the Joint Magistrate, to testify that he was a man of good cha-
racter, not turbulent, nor ill-disposed (as his appearance and health, and
the feebleness of his years, visibly bore witness), and that he was de-
serving of belief on his word.
It happened that 1 was thoroughly informed of the occurrence, which
had led to his apprehension on this suspicion, of what seemed to be con-
sidered as constructive treason ; this finding, accidentally in his well, of
a piece of ordnance, a two or three pounder, two and a half or three feet
long, which one able-bodied man easily carried on his shoulder; and
hence was aware of the truth of all that he stated. The most consi-
derable and influential Nyr, living close to Eerikoor, named Anunden
Ejamahnen, or " Lord" Anunden, as tlie Natives style him, liad called
upon me a few days after the discovery, about two months before, in the
172
end of April or the beginning of May, and had mentioned the particulars
of it. He added, that a report had been got up of a second gun having
been found, in order to extort money from Paree, but that in reality
there was only one.
To give, when possessed of this information, the note he asked to an
old and highly respectable Native, like Paree, would have been, at any
time, an act of simple justice and humanity on my part : but, at that
particular time, after the ferment and agitation into which the Province
had been thrown, and from which the Natives were only slowly recover-
ing, it became a positive duty to prevent, by every means, the refiring
of the same train which might follow, if this accusation known to be
groundless, raised against a man of blameless life and respectable con-
dition, of his having produced one gun and secreted another, for the pur-
pose of selling this other gun to the Coorgs, were credited by the Joint
Magistrate, and hastily acted on. I, therefore, immediately gave him
the note he asked to tliis gentleman, and he and the Cooley continued
their journey, as prisoners, to Tellicherry.
The finding of the gun was this. Some three or four years before,
Paree had bought a ground at Eerikoor, which had been part of the
family property of one of the head servants (Karistens) of the Beebee
of Cannanore, and had settled it, according to the usual custom, upon
his daughter and her infant son. During the dry season of 1836, he
had endeavoured to clear out an old abandoned well in this ground, but
had desisted from alarm, on seeing masses of the sides fall in on the
workmen. In 1837, a drought, unparalleled for severity and duration,
desolated the country for eight months; from the beginning of Sep-
tember, 1836, to the end of the following April, not a drop of rain fell.
The cattle were perishing in hundreds ; most of the wells, even in the
vicinity of the sea, were dry, and water became very scarce for the uses
of the people. In this state of suffering, Paree, in the hope of getting
a supply for his own family and for his neighbours around, and being
best able to bear the expense of the work, again had recourse to the old
well, and resumed the clearing of it. After the workmen had been so
engaged three or four days, they first found some pieces of copper and
metal and other remnants; they then came to something longer and
weightier, which proved to be, to their surprise and that of every body
else, what they called " a Great Gun," (V'alia Tok). The neighbours
and town's people flocked to see this gun hauled up; when up, tlie four
Mookistens, or Parish Elders, immediately came to see it; they sent for
173
the Potail (Adigaree), and lie came. He and the Elders thereupon
drew up and dispatched a formal proch verbal of the discovery to the
County (Talook) Cutcherry; the county Duffadar (Head Constable),
and a body of Peons arrived at tliis time ; he and they all saw it. They
were on their way to receive, and escort to Mangalore, a body of
Canarese prisoners, who had been seized in Coorg, and were being
marched down after the late outbreak; thus establishing the fact, that
the well was being dug, and the gun found, aj'tci- this outbreak was
universally known to have been suppressed.
The gun was then taken away to the County Cutcherry, whither
Paree, although ill, was summoned (a day's journey from his home) and
a particular deposition of its finding taken from him. About six or eight
days after, the Potail and Parish Elders were likewise there summoned,
and similar depositions taken from them. The gun was next removed
from the County, and sent, with all the reports, depositions, and exami-
nations, to the Magistrate's Cutcherry at Tellicherry.
It appeared from them, that nor Paree, nor Potail, nor Elders, nor
neighbours, nor any one else could, in their ignorance, explain how the
gun came into the well. It never was suspected, nor charged against
Paree, that he hid, or that he or any one else knew of, the gun being
there; it never was doubted, but that the gun was found by pure acci-
dent, in the manner described, buried six or eight feet in the mud : the
charge conslructivelj/ against him was, that he had found tivo guns, had
produced only one, and secreted the other, with the intention of selling
this other to the Upper Coorgs; to the Upper Coorgs who, let it be re-
membered, had continued steadily faithful throughout the late commo-
tion in Canara, and had very mainly and actively contributed to its sup-
pression; and of selling this gun to them, after the commotion was en-
tirely suppressed. Whence the inference arrived at against him seems
to have been, that he was a traitorous, evil disposed person, who che-
rished hostile designs to the British Government, designs of aiding its
overthrow with this hidden two or three pounder, without powder or
ball. He had at this time, like every other man, the Government war-
rant for having, if he pleased, in his open, undisguised possession, fifty
guns ; the people being authorised and enabled by public proclamation,
two years before, to have arms.
From my inquiries, and from a knowledge of the previous history of
the country, the explanation of the gun being found in the well, was
simply this. Until the pacification of the Province, about forty years
174
ago, the Beebees of Cannanore and the ancestors of Lord Anunden,
neighbouring chiefs, were constantly at war. As regularly almost as
the season came, inroads and forays were made into each other's lands,
always accompanied, and generally led, by the head servants (Karistens,)
Nyr and Mapilla, on each side. The gun in question is just the kind of
ordnance, that would be the piece de reserve used in these onslaughts ;
and a deep well, in a ground at Eerikoor belonging to a Mapilla leader,
the very place in which it would be deposited for security, whether after
success, and certainly after disaster.
Paree, on his arrival at Tellicherry, a two days' journey from his home
and family, was taken with the Cooly, to the Cutcherry before the Joint
Magistrate, to whom he delivered my note. The Magistrate desired
him, through an interpreter, to speak the truth, and asked, where was
the other gun ? He assured the Magistrate that only one had been
found, and offered to give any security to be named, in attestation of the
truth of what he stated. Without anything more passing on the occa-
sion, without any further proceedings being held, or any other questions
asked, he was handed over to the custody of the Cutwal, who took and
immediately lodged him in the town Watch-house, with strict orders to
the Peons in charge, not to allow him to speak, or be spoken to, by any
person whatever, not to allow the persons who should bring him food to
approach him, nor to suffer him to go to a Mosque to prayers. These
orders were strictly obeyed ; in this abode, this nightly receptacle for
the reputed thieves and sweepings of the streets, and in this state, he was
kept three days and three nights. At length, on the fourth day, the
Cutwal inquired what was to be done with his prisoner, and how much
longer he was to be so confined. On this, Paree was ordered to be
brought up. This day, some of his friends had prepared, and brought
for presentation to the Joint Magistrate, a Petition stating his advanced
age and infirm health, and praying that he might be released on bail.
On seeing this Petition, the Sheristedar, or Head Native Officer of the
Cutcherry, came up and declined to receive and present it : the Petition,
he said, was unnecessary, Paree should be released on his producing
bail for his appearance. One of his friends stepped forward, and be-
came bound in a penalty of 100 Rupees, that Paree should attend daily
at the Cutcherry (the outside of it) from nine in the morning, until five
or six in the evening. Bail, at the same time, and of the same kind
was offered, bj/ Petition, for tlie Cooly, who had been taken into custody
with, and accompanied him to Tellicherry, but was positively refused;
175
and this man was continued to be kept in close confinement in the Ma-
gistrate's Cutcherry itself.
A few days after Paree's visit to me, I was surprised to see three of
the Eerikoor parish elders (JNIookibtens, the fourth absconded) arrive at
my house, all also in the custody of Peons, and all on their way to Telli-
cherry. These men are not in any respect Government Officers ; they
are the respectable chosen elders, or Church Wardens, of their several
parishes, who discharge gratuitously, and at a yearly great sacrifice of
time and personal trouble, many local duties and inquiries essential to
the purposes of Government, and the good order and well-being of their
community ; and whose very least reward for these great, though noise-
less, services, ought to be, all the return they ask, some show of respect
and consideration evinced to their persons and character, by the paid
Officers of the Government.
The Mookistens, on seeing, appealed to me, and earnestly besough
me what to do : they declared, they had only seen and heard of one gun
being found in Paree's well ; that they had so reported and stated at the
time at the County, but it was now said that there were two guns, and it
was insisted upon by the Peons, who had them in custody, that they were
to say so too at Tellicherry. On hearing this, one of the Peons present
turned round, and abused them grossly before my face, called them all
liars, and threatened them with the consequences, if they persisted in
their denial on their arrival at Tellicherry.
I endeavoured to pacify them as well as I could, told them not to
heed any threats, but to proceed quietly, and if what they had before
stated was the truth, to repeat it before the Joint Magistrate, without
fear of being punished, or found fault with.
They proceeded, and were delivered at the Cutcherry. After attend-
ing there daily for eight or nine days, without being once called up, or
questioned, or examined, living all the while at Paree's expense, one
afternoon they were suddenly given in charge of a Peon, together with
the Cooly who had, until that hour, been kept in confinement in the
Cutcherry, with orders to the Peon, that he was to proceed without stop-
ping, and deliver them all, and a letter of which he was the bearer, that
night to the County Peshkar who, with other County Officers, had ar-
rived at Eerikoor, in pursuance of fresh instructions to resume a strict
search for the missing gun.
The season when this occurred was the height of the rains. At dusk
the same evening, the party reached tlie neighbourhood of my house.
176
thoroughly drenched. Arrived there, the Parish Elders refused to go a
step further that night; there remained about sixteen miles of bad road,
through an unfrequented Jungle ; they had had no food since the morn-
ing, while the Cooly had twice dropped down on the way in a fainting
fit. The Peon insisted on his positive orders; a violent hubbub arose,
and they all came to me. I, of course, directed them all to be provided
with food and lodging for the night, and gave the Peon a note to
exonerate him from blame for the delay.
The next morning they continued their journey, and the species of
investigation and inquiry for the gun, which followed on their arrival at
Eerikoor, before the County Officers, will be best learned from the
following statement of his examination before these Officers, made by
one of the persons examined, (I insert one only) one of the Coolies who,
in the exercise of his calling of a day labourer, had been employed in
clearing out the well : —
Statei7ient of , of Eerikoor, made on the 5th August, 1837.
" Friday week yesterday, as I was sitting in the shop of , a
Kavye-district Peon, and Mookisten came, and took me near to the
Manatah Pagoda, where were assembled the County Peshkar, the
Police Gomastah, and the Mookistens. The Gomastah said to the
Peon, " Take this man to a distance, and after questioning him accord-
ing to custom, bring him back." On this, the Peon took me to the
river side, to a place where there was no one else, and said, " Tell the
truth." " I will," I replied. lie then asked, " How many guns were
found in digging M. Paree's well ? I hear two were found." I said,
" I, and , and , (two persons named,) it was, who dug M.
Paree's well, we found only one gun, no more." On this, the Peon first
abused me ; " You son of a b , you son of a thief, tell the truth !"
On my saying, " What I have said is the truth, why do you abuse me ?"
he first struck me on the back of the head, and then hit my chin up with
his fist, saying, " Do you think I will let you alone, until I make you
tell the truth ?" I began spitting blood, and said, " If it is the Saheb's
orders, that you are thus to beat and abuse me, by way of asking ques-
tions, do so." He then took me by the back of the neck, shoved me,
and took me before the Gomastah.
I there told the Mookistens how the Peon had ill-treated me: " iliey
said, "Tell it to the Peshkar and Gomastah;" which I did before all.
177
Neither of them said anything. The Gomastah, Peshkar, and Peon
then took me, , and (two persons named) to a short distance
from where the rest were, put each of us apart, examined, and took a
deposition from each, which depositions they never read over to us, nor
do I know whether what we said, or what we did not say, was written
down. I only said what I saw. On their desiring us to sign, we
signed, fearing if we said we would not, until the depositions were read
over, that we should be subject to worse treatment than we had already
suffered from the Sirkar Officers, whom it was vain for us to think of
opposing or resisting. I was unable to speak from the pain in my jaw.
I told all this when it happened to my father." (Signed) .
Even these examinations and the others, thus conducted, failed to
produce a trace of a second gun. Paree's house was searched for the
third time, as it had been searched twice before, his well, the wells of
his neighbours, and the tanks, were drained and examined ; the
Nullahs and river banks were explored, the grounds (Parumbas) dug,
and the Jungle around carefully searched : all in vain; the two-or-three
pounder was nowhere to be found. The County Officers were in a great
dilemma : their orders were, to send in their report to Tellicherry vntft
the missing gun, orders which I had the means of knowing, they con
strued to mean, that they were not to send their report without the
ordnance. But as no trace of the latter could be got, they hit, as I
heard, in their fear and perplexity, upon the following expedient to
save themselves : — They decided on reporting, with Lord Anunden, ray
first informant, sitting beside them, their belief in a second gun, that
it was most probably buried in the sands of the river, which being now
filled by the rains, no further search could then be made, but that an-
other search properly conducted, when the water should subside, would
doubtless bring the gun to light.
A day or two after this report was received at Tellichery, and
twenty-hvo dai/s after Paree had been taken into custody, and there
detained, he was called up, and asked whether he was ready to enter
into the security, which he offered to give the day he was brought in.
He said, he w^as ready; he was thereupon desired to produce a rupee
to pay for the requisite stamp ; after this preliminary, a Bond, of which
the following is a translation, was drawn out, and after he had duly
executed it before the Joint-Magistrate, he was told that he was now
permitted to return to his family and his home. The gun, his property,
was confiscated.
O
178
" Security Bond executed by M. I'aree, inhabitant of Malaputtum
parish, in the town of Eerikoor, and County of Kavye, to the all-
powerful Company Sirkar.
" The Joint Magistrate of Malabar having summoned and examined
me in consequence of its having been said that, besides the large g-un
in my possession, which was taken to the County (Cutcherry) I had
another large gun wliich I meant to sell to the Coorgs, and I having
declared to the Magistrate, that there was no other than one large gun,
and the Magistrate having desired me to give a Bond to that effect; I
hereby declare the truth as follows : There is in my possession no other
large gun whatever. I have neither secreted, nor have I sold to any
one, any large gun. If, therefore, any large gun be found in my posses-
sion, or be found anywhere else with my privity, at any time; if, at any
time it be found that I have sold, herebefore or hereafter, any large gun
to any one whatever, or given one away, or secreted one, I engage to
appear and be responsible to the Sirkar (the Government) for the same.
If I do not appear, I engage to pay to the Sirkar a fine of 500 Rupees;
if I do not pay this fine immediately, I and my heirs, consent that.
it shall be levied out of any property wliatsoever belonging to me.
I have subscribed this Security Bond before two witnesses at Tellicherry,
22 Karkadagum 1012, (4 August, 1837)."
Such is a narrative of the treatment which this Native publicly re-
ceived, such the treatment to which was subjected, before all his country-
men, this man arrived at the very verge of human life, beset with the
mental and bodily infirmities of his years, of spotless character, the head
of a numerous and respectable family, of age enough to be the Grand-
father of the Joint Magistrate, as considered, as esteemed, as respected,
in his own country and rank of life as, I must be suffered to say, the
Father of this gentleman in his. Tlirice is his house entered, thrice
searched, and sounded, and emptied of all its contents ; the privacy of
his women's apartments is similarly violated ; he is then summoned to
the District Cutcherry, he is next taken into sudden custody, dragged
away in the depth of winter, two days' journey from his home and family,
and lodged like a malefactor, for three successive days and three nights,
in a Watch-house, the nightly den of the thieves and vagabonds of the
town, with strict orders that no human being be suffered to have access
to him, or he to a house of prayer. On the fourth day he is tliought
of, and turned out of his prison, in the manner that an animal would be
from a pen, and ordered to pass all the hours of every day in outward
179
attendance at the Cutcheiry, under pain, if lie absents himself, of being
fined 100 Rupees. On the twenty-second day of this attendance, he is
brought before the Joint Magistrate; and witliout being accused of any
crime whatever, without being confronted witli any accuser, witliout
hearing a single witness, without being told one word further of tiie
reason of (or the smallest reparation being offered, or judged necessary
to be offered, to soften, to excuse, or to palliate in any way) this treat-
ment, imprisonment, and detention, and without being furnished with
any clue, to enable him to trace and expose a false accusation, and ob-
tain redress for all that he has suffered, he is ordered to sign and
execute a stamp Eiond; which, being bought with his own money, the
act is made to wear the appearance of being his own free, voluntary,
unsolicited act, binding himself unci /lis lieirn in a penalty of 500
Rupees, equal to him to 500/., in case a gun be, at any time hereafter,
found or traced to him. lie is made to suffer this treatment, because
he has been guilty of conduct, not merely guiltless, but innocent, not
merely innocent but blameless, not merely blameless but, in the highest
degree, kind, considerate, charitable, and praiseworthy; because two
months before, during a visitation of Providence, so cruel and desolating
as a fervid drought in the Torrid Zone, he ventured to resume the
clearing out of a well, on what is miscalled, his property, in order to
get a supply of water to allay the pressing wants of his faiiily and his
neighbours; because he did this, ciJ'Ltr the commotion in Canara had
been suppressed, and because, in the progress of the work, a two or
three pounder gun was found buried in the mud of this well. The
treatment which the day labourers he employed received, for following
their calling, and gaining their bread by the sweat of their brow, was,
that one of the number was, with him, taken into custody, and marched
a prisoner to Teliiclierry, where bail for this man was refused, and he
was kept in close confinenent, in the Cutcherry itself, for many days,
(his mother supported by his labour starving,) until his state was such
that, on the day of his release, he fainted twice in a walk of twelve
miles; the other men are abused and assaulted by the Native Officers
deputed to examine them, because they persisted in saying, as at first,
that tliey found only one gun in the well, and knew nothing of any
other. The public treatment which the Mookistens, the respectable,
chosen Elders of their community, received, because their eyes saw, and
their ears heard of, only one gun, and could not out of this one make
two, was, first to be bandied to the County Cutcherry, then like criininals-
o2
180
to Tellicheny, the prisoners of Peons, who insulted and abused them
all the way; to be kept there from their homes and concerns for several
days, and sent back unquestioned and, as they came, prisoners.
Such was the treatment which all these persons met with at the
hands of the Revenue and Police Officers; for as the Joint Magistrate
is also Sub-Collector in his districts, so all his Native subordinates are
both Tax-gatherers and Police Officers: such the outrages, indignities,
and contumelies, all these innocent, blameless, men were subjected to in
their persons and individual liberty, without hesitation, without pause,
without comment; and this, immediately after a season of unexam-
pled public agitation ; the whole affair being treated and regarded as a
common, ordinary, occurrence, an every-day matter, dealt with and
disposed of according to the usual practice and routine of Magisterial
office.
The Joint Magistrate, I have no doubt, is naturally as kind, well
intentioned, and considerately disposed, as any Officer in the Service;
and such is the system in which many of the modern statesmen and
law-givers of Madras are, from the first, schooled and familiarized,
that I am persuaded no one would feel greater surprise than himself,
at any part of these proceedings being considered open to question or
objection, as deserving of blame for harshness, wantonness, arbitrariness,
irreflection, or caprice; no one more convinced than Viimself, that every
part of them was regular, formal, authorized, and customary, within the
strict bounds of the powers which as Sub-Collector and Magistrate, he
conceives to be undeniably vested in him, over the acts, the persons,
the liberty, and the property of every Native whomsoever, of what-
ever rank, degree, or condition, in his Sub-Collectorate ; or in his
Province, whenever interest or seniority shall raise him to be the
Principal Collector and Magistrate of a Province, containing a million
and more of men. Not a doubt, nor a misgiving, nor a suspicion, I
am sure, crossed his mind in the course of these proceedings, of the
lesson that was being authoritatively taught by them, to be practised
by all his Native subordinate Officers, whenever promotion and removal
to higher grades shall give them an opportunity of " bettering the
instruction;" and if unhappily, on the present occasion, the people had
given vent to the indignation witli which they burned, if, wrought into
momentary fury at seeing the whole power, the whole authority, and the
whole influence of the alien Government ruling over them, employed
and engaged, for days, in labouring to make the conduct proveably
181
true, innocent, and exemplary, of an old, infirm, helpless man, appear
falsified and treasonably criminal, in order to overtake this man with
condign punishment, and to cast a suspicion of disaffection generally
upon the whole of them as a body; if, seeing this, the people had risen
tumultuously, and headlong burst the bars of his ignominious prison,
the Magistrate would, instantly and unhesitatingly, have called for
troops, and British troops would have come, and would have exterminated
them, while no other eye than the eye of Heaven saw and marked, that
they had been driven to desperation by treatment, which it will be else-
where inconceivable that men should be men, and bear.
F. C. BROWN.
London, June, 1838.
183
POSTSCRIPT.
There are, settled at Mauritius, two foreigners, the joint
proprietors of an estate which now yields them a clear
income of 10,000/. a-year. This estate, bought with the
fruits of their honourable and successful industry during
their residence on the island, is a model estate, where
planters and persons go who desire to see an example of
skill, science, economy, and good management applied to
the growth of the sugar-cane, and the improved manufac-
ture of sugar. The annual expenditure upon this estate
cannot be less than 40,000?., nor the indirect contributions
to the revenue short of at least 5000/.
Both these foreigners read, write, and speak French cor-
rectly ; they are welcome guests at every English and French
house, respected visitors at the Government House. One
of them has rendered important public service. Reader,
English reader, desire you to know who these estimable
men are ? who these two foreigners are, increasing so greatly
the prosperity of their adopted country, and adding so praise-
worthily to the general wealth of the British Empire. Learn
then, that they are both of them Natives of the Presidency of
Madras, the one of the Northern Circars, the other of Tanjore!
The latter will tell you, as he tells all who ask his history,
that he is a man of high caste, and was born to competent
hereditary landed property in his own Province; but that
the continued exactions and oppressions of the Collector
drove him forth a wanderer on the earth, abandoning family,
kindred, friends, country, property, every good held
184
dear by man. Reader, you have heard, and you will con-
stantly hear, that Biitish India contains 100 millions of
men; these 100 would, at the present hour, be 200 mil-
lions, for it is a thinly peopled country compared to its
extent, and its population only requires food to double in
25 or 30 years. Think you that, with only 100 millions of
men, having preserved to them the same property in the
land of their fathers as these two, their exiled countrymen,
have acquired under the fostering spirit of British laws
in the rock of Mauritius, India would be poorer than she
now is — that her revenues {the land tax having fallen off
from 16 millions to 10) would be less than they now are, or
her commercial value to Great Britain more fractional com-
paratively than it is? Think you, if these 100 millions
knew and felt, every hour of their lives, that they bad a
hearth and a home of their own to defend, they would be
slow, led on by British landholders and capitalists, in defend-
ing such possessions against all enemies, whether foreign or
domestic ? Would you not, knmoing that they enjoyed these
blessings, laugh to scorn all the attempts that Russia,
with her thousand secret emissaries, or any other rival or
enemy whatever, European or Asiatic, open or concealed,
could make to debauch their allegiance, and convert theni
into covert traitors against the British Government ?
Do you wish to see the contrast ? Do you desire truly
to know what the sum of blessings really is which the
Natives of India have granted to them to possess, to
enjoy, and to defend ? Discard and despise the volumes
of pompous, self-laudatory generalities by which, perhaps
w'ithout design, but certainly without examj)le, the con-
fidence of a great and generous people has been duped and
deluded, and its patience tasked in a degree never before
witnessed. It is not from 16,000 studiously penned folios,
from any governing class, it is by descending to record par-
ticulars, patiently noted and learned on the spot from direct
communication with the people, that the operation of a
185
Government upon their happiness and well-being is to be
truly known and gathered. Insist henceforth upon having,
and upon hearing periodically, from independent, unbiassed
witnesses, and from every region of India, full, minute, and
authentic particulars of a system, which leaves no person
and no thing throughout the country uninterfered with, or
untouched — which makes a King, and fixes the hire of every
artisan and day-labourer, prescribing that he shall receive
so much, in reward of his day's toil, and no more ; which,
in fact, sees in him, from the hour he first draws, until the
moment he resigns, his breath, nothing but a creature made
to pay revenue, to be grateful that he lives, and — to be silent.
Every word of the previous pages, addressed to the Court
of Directors, was sent to the press before the receipt of the
late intelligence from India, which has made known to all,
that Russian spies and emissaries have been traced, tam-
pering successfully with Native powers, both on the frontiers
and in the heart of the British territories, and that the whole
population desire nothing so ardently as their success.
It is no longer a choice, it becomes a duty, to throw
every possible light, even at the risk of prolixity, upon the
causes of this universal hatred and dislike to the Govern-
ment, which are now felt to exist among the Natives — causes
spurned and despised in India, and unsuspected in Eng-
land ; and to show why it is, that a countless and submis-
sive population are all believed by their local rulers, to turn
a greedy ear to every liope that is whispered to them from
afar, not of regaining self-dominion, for of that desire they
are not susj^ected, but of seeing a change from their present
to any other foreign masters.
The following letters, as will be seen, were never designed
for publication ; the first, meant solely to serve, gave umbrage,
I fear, in a quarter which demands and deserves at my hands
every service, public or private, in my power to render. The
particulars it details, however, are such that they cannot
now be withheld, whatever their shape or their words.
186
TO Esq., SUB-COLLECTOR.
Anjarakandy, 27th June, 1837,
My Dear
I mentioned to you the case of some Teers (Culti-
vators) who had taken the lease of a morass in Cottayum
(a County), for the purpose of draining, clearing, and cul-
tivating it ; but who were arrested and stopped in the
middle of their labours by the assessment which the revenue
Officers fixed upon the land. As the case requires to be
fully known, I will give you the particulars of it at length.
The following is a translation of the lease, which was
granted to these persons by the proprietor of the land, one
of the Rajahs of Cottayum : — " This is the lease of a swamp
" executed by the Cottayum Ponerye Rajah, in favour of
*' Teers, PaddavadeeKannen, and Oochumel Tolen Cootty,
*' of Ponerye. The river having now for many years over-
" flowed, and the jungle overgrown, two Paddy fields called
** Oochumel and Ottakandum, belonging to my South Pa-
** lace, in the Padnakara Deshum (Parish), and of the
*' yearly rent of 200 Dungays of Paddy, I have hereby
" granted to you, in consideration of these fields being waste
** and salt-water swamps, a lease of them for ten years, rent
*' free. — (Here follow the boundaries.) At the expiration
" often years, when the jungle has been rooted out, and
" the fields brought into cultivation, you are every year to
" bring to, and measure at, the Erroovetty Palace 200
" Varum Madda Dungays of Paddy, as the rent of the
" same. If this Deed (royal writing) is mortgaged to any
" person whatsoever, the act shall be null and void. Dated
" 3 Kannee, 1007 (18th September, 1831)."
187
On obtainino- this lease (for which the only consideration
paid were 6 fanams (2s. 6d.) as the writer's fee), the tenants
immediately set about the first and most indispensable work,
that of constructing a dam along the bank of the river
bordering the swamp, of sufficient width and solidity to
exclude the salt water at spring-tides, and to bear the pres-
sure of the Monsoon floods. This work, and that of rooting
out the dense matted jungle, with which the swamp was
overgrown, both laborious and, to persons in their circum-
stances, most expensive tasks, occupied them the whole of
that year, 1007, and the one following. In 1009 (1833),
the fields were sown for the first time. In Meenom (March
1834) of that year, long after the crop was reaped and off
the ground, and when nothing remained on it but the stubble,
a Talook (county) Officer came and looked at the fields, and
assessed them for that year in a motiey revenue of 70 rupees.
The rent which the tenants contracted to pay, at the expi-
ration of 10 years, an exemption which could alone have
tempted them, or any other men in their senses, to under-
take the reclaiming of a morass was, as we have seen, a
rent hi kind of '200 V. Dangays of Paddy, equivalent to
180 Macleod, or Government, seers, which at the average
price of 30 rupees per mil seers, would be rupees 5.1. 60.
The Government demand, therefore, amounted to more than
13 times the reserved rent for one year, and to upwards of
one third more than the whole reserved rent for 10 years !
But the stipvdated rent represents, as of all Paddy fields,
one-third of the grow produce ; so that the tenants were
called upon to pay an assessment of upwards of four times
the entire gross produce of their fields, supposing the fields
had been redeemed and brought into perfect cultivation, a
task not to be completed under several years.
It being clearly impossible for them to pay such a tax,
they appealed to the Tahsildar (the head county Officer of
revenue and police). The 1'ahsildar came and reduced the
tax from 70 rupees to 28 \, as low, perhaps, us he thought
188
lie could prudently or expediently reduce it. But this
reduction, great as it appears to be, still left the money
assessment immediately demandable, five times more than
the money value of the reserved rent. The result is, that
from that time, the Teers have abandoned their fields,
the dam, which cost them so much money and expence,
is washed away, the salt-water floods the spot at one
season, the rains at another, and it again is, what it was, a
pestilent morass.
This interference of the Government between a private
landlord and his tenants has, therefore, been productive of
nothing but pure, unalloyed mischief to all parties concerned ;
and as the evil is of a more serious, profound, and exten-
sive nature than may at first sight be apparent, you will
pardon me, I am sure, for pointing it out plainly and in
some detail.
In the first place, there can be no doubt that the imme-
diate effect of the proceeding has been, to rob the tenants
of all their outlay, in draining and clearing the swamp, and
in bringing it into a state fit for cultivation — an outlay
which, in one instance, was procured on the security of
other property, and the repayment of whi(^ will probably
consign the borrower to a jail. As the act was the act of
the Officers of Government, it is taken to be that of the
Government itself; and the impression, therefore, of the
suffeiers and of all around them is, that they have been
robbed by the Government of the fruits of their labour,
their time, and their money, on an occasion when they felt
entitled to its approbation, at least, if not to its rewards.
Were the spoiler a private individual, they know they
would have a chance of remedy, and might hope for redress j
but as it is the Government, and as the case is a {land) Revenue
case, it is withdrawn from the protection of all law. But,
superadded to the privation of all legal redress, and super-
added to the wrong they suffer, is the feeling to which they
are sensibly alive, whatever they may be able to say, that
189
the hand which has been stretched out to despoil them is
the hand which, above all others, should be ever extended
for their efficient protection and encouragement in all the
pursuits of honest, lawful, praise-worlhy industry.
In the second place, the shock given to industry and the
security of property, has been as extensive as the circum-
stances have been known. " What possible good can it
" do the Sirkar (Government) ?" said a Nyr to me, when I
was on the spot, surrounded by a number of Natives,, and lis-
tening to what they had to say — " What possible good can
•' it do to the Sirkar, to prevent me from turning these
•* marshes, where there are now only thorns and alligators,
" into Paddy fields ? In a few years the Varum (rent)
" upon them would be due, in four years more the Ponnerye
" Rajah (the landlord) would have received his due, and
" been able to pay Niggdee (assessment), while the Koo-
" dians (tenants) and their families would have been pro-
" vided now and hereafter with food and employment ; —
" now, no one gets, or can get, anything : all is loss, all the
" labour, time, and expence incurred, and who, after the
" treatment of the Teers, will venture again to incur them?"
The countenances of the by-standers, and a waste of
swamp on either side where we stood, were sufficient answers
to the question. Had no interference of the kind been suf-
fered, had the private engagement of these parties, from
which nothing but good could accrue, been scrupulously
respected, I am satisfied that the whole expanse of morass
would, ere now, have been one scene of cultivation.
The reverse of all this, this interference has annihilated
the certain and immediate revenue which would be paid by
the Rajah, when he began to receive his rent; it has, in
effect, blotted out from the map of the country the spot
that had been reclaimed, and others similar to it that arc
reclaimable, constituting some of the most valuable land
in the country, when brought under the plough ; it has
sacrificed the much greater revenue, which would certainly
190
iind permanently be derived, (Vom suilering these baneful
seats of disease and death to be converted into sources of
health and plenty ; and it has engendered in the breasts of
the liibouriniJ: population, that class the most valuable and
the most helpless of all, a deep inipression, that no sooner
is their industry exerted, and all their scanty means be-
stowed, blamelessly »nd beneficially, in providing a main-
tenance for their families, and in adding to the general
wealth of the country, than the Government steps in, and
bids them cease, and starve.
In the third place, it is not to be disguised that the con-
duct of the Government goes to the length of declaring all
leases between landlords and tenants to be null and void,
and of establishing it, as a principle, which the Revenue
Officers are ordered to enforce, that private propertj/ in the
hind is not recognised to exist, (juasi the Government. For,
for the Government to tell the tenants of a landlord, that
they shall not cultivate the land he has given them on a
lease of years, unless, as a preliminary, they pay an assess-
ment amounting to more than four times its gross produce,
is telling them that they shall not cultivate the land at all j
that their lease is a farce ; that the landlord has, in fact, no
right nor title to dispose of his laud as Jie thinks proper;
and that if the Government shall will it to lie waste, lie
waste it shall. It is impossible, therefore, for the landlord
not to feel that he has been stripped by the strong arm of
power of all property in these Paddy fields; and that he has
been stripped at a time, when he particularly merited to be
maintained in all the security of possession. To both the
Government and the public he had done his duty as a pro-
prietor; he had procured good tenants to cultivate and
reclaim what was before a waste; he had passed a written
obligation, forbearing from all demand upon them, until
their outlay was reimbursed ; and he had probably made
liberal advances (of which he is likewise a loser) to enable
them to proceed efifectually with their task. The Govern-
191
ment, on the contrary, which fixes and demands such an
assessment years before he can receive a rea of rent, has
not supplied the land, nor procured the tenants, nor ad-
vanced the outlay, nor run the risk of failure. In a work
of great and essential public benefit, the Government has
not only not had the smallest share, but the part which it
takes is, to blight all the good that has been done, all that
would directly, indirectly, and immeasurably flow from the
work, by stripping the landlord of his land !
The nature of the land, whether wet or dry, Paddy field
or Parumba (garden), waste or cultivated, can in no degree
afiTect the equity of this act. Every landlord in the
country feels the case to be his own. The principle which
is applied to this property to-day may be applied to all
others to-morrow ; and seeing that the very opposite of any
increase of Revenue must be really contemplated by it,
satisfied that the Government does not act deliberately and
systematically, except upon a settled design, the landlords
can arrive at no other conclusion than that their existence
is felt as a crime; that they are, in fact, a proscribed race,
whose extinction is doomed by the slow and gradual acqui-
sition of all their lands. In truth, no law of mortmain
was ever more certain or more fatal. It may be very well
for Mr. , who never bought nor cultivated an acre of
land in his life, and for twenty-four gentlemen echoing his
opinions amid the smoke of Leadenhall-street, to declare
that, as nothing more {more!!) than the rent of the land is
demanded from the Natives of India, they are, in reality,
untaxed. If you had bought 10,000 Rupees worth of Com-
pany's paper, upon the faith of receiving 5 per cent, inte-
rest upon it, and if the Civil Auditor had the power of
taking every year the whole of this interest, under the name
of " Assessment," Mr. , or those twenty-four gentle-
men, would have great difficulty in persuading you that
you were wholly untaxed; and in preventing you from
feeling, that you were robbed of 10,000 Rupees' worth of
192
your honest acquisitions. If, again, you preferred land as
an investment to the Honourable Company's paper, and
after laying out your money on a farm, the rent of which
you expected would yield you 5 per cent, if a Collector
came and walked over your farm, and without knowing
wheat from barley when he sees them together, thinks it
suflicient to look at the stubble, in order to decide upon
the returns of your land, and your ability to pay taxes ; if,
after this, he were politely to ask you for no more than this
interest, that is, for all the rent of your farm, as your tax,
your incredulity, as to your paying no tax at all would, I
imagine, remain unshaken. But if the same functionary
were to ask you for four times the gross produce, as your
annual contribution, w'ere to declare this demand to be no
more than fair and reasonable, and were to assure you, in
the same breath, of his perfect "good intentions," if you
made any reply, you would probably say, " such good inten-
tions would make Paradise a H — 11 !" Now, in this Province
(Malabar), there is a numerous body of men who, until
about forty or fifty years ago, upon the sanctity of venerable
laws, upon the faith of most ancient titles, from long unin-
terrupted descent, and upon innumerable transfers and pur-
chases of land, enjoyed the whole rent of their estates with-
out any deduction whatsoever.* As land then sold for
* The pretence and the justification for all this interference with the
landlords of the country, is grounded upon certain previous official reports
and surveys, the authority of which no local functionary dares question,
even if he had the inclination during his flitting sojourn and tenure of
office ; or if his understood orders were not to exact revenue, and to ask
no questions.
The following extract from a Diary is some illustration of the value of
those authoritative documents, and a sample of the manner in which the
most notorious, the best attested, and the most ancient of the rights of
the people of India over their own soil have, from first to last, been in-
variably written and reported away by persons who, being debarred from
themselves holding private properly, seem to be quite incapable of appre-
hending what the right to it is, when acquired and possessed by the people.
193
thirty and thirty-five years' purchase, much as it now does
in England, this rent, in the great majority of instances,
was not more than a return of three or four per cent upon
the price actually paid for the land. Since the period above
mentioned, the right of these landlords to a poiiioN, howso-
ever varying, of the rent, has never been openly denied ; it
has never been stated, in express terms,* that they were
Telltcherrj/, 24/// June, 1834.
"I had along visit of some hours yesterday evening from K. Karna-
gam Menon. Talking of surveys, I told him the people of Malabar
had to thank him for all the surveys which have taken place. He asked,
how? I said, that both Sir T. Munro and Mr. , with whom he was
Sheristedar (head Native), had stated in their reports, I concluded upon
his authority, that it was the immemorial custom, in the time of the
Rajahs, to re-survey and assess all lands, garden and field, every twelve
years ; and hence, it was now believed by the Government that, follow-
ing this practice was, in truth, adhering to the ancient custom of the
country. He became much excited, and asked me if it was possible I
could believe him capable of such gross misrepresentation; he who
knew, as did every man in the country, that, in the time of the Rajahs,
there was no such thing as land-tax at all ? He declared, that what he
stated to those gentlemen was, that, at the expiration of leases^t)?" waste
land, which were usually granted for twelve years, it was the custom to
fix the rent the landlord was to receive (after first paying the tenant for
his products); that, as to re-survei/ing Paddy (rice) fields, the thing is an
absurdity in terms ; because, as soon as a field is brought into thorough
cultivation, the produce is reaped, threshed, and divided into three lines,
" varum," or shares; one of which is assigned for the expences of culti-
vation; the second for seed and the farmer's profit; and the third, to
the landlord as rent ; and this being a corn, not a money rent, the quantity
is immutable. He added, "Thus it is ; Gentlemen do not understand the
customs of the country, and not knowing what they are asking about,
mistake what is said to them in reply ; they then make a report, con-
sisting of these mistakes, which the people know nothing about, and
never hear of, while the Government believes it all to be true, and treats
and taxes them accordingly."
There is the speaker, whose words I have given, to be referred to for
their correctness ; one of the first Natives in the country, and most de-
servedly pensioned for his services to the Government.
F, C. B.
Except by the Court of Directors.
P
194
entitled to no portion whatsoever; or, in other words,
they have never been told in plain English, that tlieir
existence is an incumbrance on the earth, that tiiey are a
nuisance which ought to be abated.
Such language they hold to be quite superfluous, when
public measures are permitted, which carry irresistible con-
viction to their feelings :
" You take my life,
" When you do take the means whereby I live."
Whenever, as in this instance, the assessment exceeds the
gross produce, whenever it equals that produce, whenever
it exceeds the rent, whenever it absorbs no more than the
rent, whenever it absorbs so much of the rent as not to
leave the landlord wherewithal to exist; in short, whenever,
in the language of the country, the Niggdee (Assessment)
is more, or no more, or a fraction less, than the Patum
(Rent), the Jenmec (Landlord) is told, far more intelligibly
than in words, that he is left to starve.
Would it be wise, would it be politic, were the increase
of Revenue to be as great and immediate as it is certain of
being less, to sink such a conviction deep in the minds of
the landlords of the country ; that similar may be their
fate, at the nod of any Revenue Officer? They are men,
that are thus dealt with, not stocks, nor stones; I admit,
patient, enduring, peaceable, well-disposed, men ; but as
long as they are men, the authorized existence, the delega-
tion, and the exercise of a power, which may make them
the victims of such acts of caprice and folly, as the one 1
have instanced, must impress then, with a deep-rooted and
settled distrust and dislike of the Government.
I have heard of one instance, but can scarcely credit it,*
in which a Revenue Officer prohibited a landlord from cul-
tivating a piece of his own waste land, unless he gave the
* Faet.
195
preliminary security of his other property to pay the assess-
ment fixed on the waste, in case the returns of the waste
should fall short of the assessment !
Fourthly, in all communities, be they more civilized or
less, men feel that they have a right, as a condition of their
very being, to enter into agreements for their mutual bene-
fit; they feel, even the most untutored feel, that their
individual benefit cannot be productive of public injury;
and hence they feel, with a force greater than any demon-
stration, that it is among the first and most essential duties
of the Government they live under, to respect all lawful
agreements, and to uphold their inviolability. Moreover,
in any community purely agricultural, all men (in Malabar
almost all women also) are either directly interested in the
land, as proprietors, or cultivators, or indirectly, as creditors
and mortgagees ; and hence, the last class of persons, who
may be said to include all those not comprehended in the
other two classes, feel intuitively and as keenly as thelatter,
that it is the duty of a Government strictly to protect the
right of all men to private property, and to encourage its
acquisition by every security, with which law and authority
can fence it. Whenever, therefore, a Government departs,
or what in the result is the same thing, whenever a Govern-
ment is felt, whomsoever the agent, to depart in its conduct
from the rigid performance of these, its cardinal duties ;
whenever, out of its boundless authority, it interposes to
break, and not to maintain, the lawful contracts of indivi-
duals, whenever it confiscates and annihilates, and not
preserves, the property of any one class of the community,
as surely as wrong begets wrong, and injustice hate, so
surely does such conduct call up in hostile array against
it the feelings of every man whatever, without distinc-
tion of rank, caste, or sect, subject to its sway. So
indissolubly has the Great and Good Being, who made
man the brother of his fellow-man, knit his sympathies
with his kind, by the tie of a common, inseparalile interest!
p 2
196
Such is the conviction to which we are brought, step by
step, by an examination of the case I have instanced; the
more cahnly and dispassionately it is considered, the more
strong and deep-felt will, 1 think, that conviction be,
namely, that this conduct must produce an universal feel-
ino; of fear and hatred to the Government, amon^all classes
of the community. I have instanced only one case; the
same landlord, the P. Rajah has been stripped of his land,
and his tenants of their outlay, in two other cases of lease,
similar to the foregoing, except in the amount of the rent.
In one of the two, the rent to be paid by the tenant, at the
end of ten years, was to be 100 Varum Madda Dangays,
equal to 83 Macleod (Government) Seers, of the average
value in money of R. 2. 1. 96.
The field was assessed by the Talook (County) Officers
at the same time, and in the same manner, as the former,
at R. 27 per annum, which was afterwards reduced to
R. 14, and which being about six times the rent, the field,
like the former, was obliged to be abandoned. The particu-
lars of the third case I have not got.
All these cases occurred at Ponnerye, an Amshum (Pa-
rish) only three miles distant from Tellicherry, long the seat
of a principal Revenue Cutcherry, and of several high
European Functionaries. They occurred now three years
ago. Of the sufferers, one is a Rajah, a man of the highest
rank in the country; and yet you would never have heard
a word of one of them, unless I had brought them to your
notice. Had they been solitary instances of their kind,
had they been the first which had occurred, had the people's
minds not become familiarized with them, it is hardly pos-
sible but that some of the aggrieved parties would have
found their way immediately to your Cutcherry (Office).
The people of Malabar, it is commonly said, are ever
ready with petitions and complaints. I will tell you, in
their own words, why one of the parties, the Teers, did not
complain. " Where was the use of our petitioning? " said
197
they. "The petition would have been sent in the common
course, to the Talook (County), for inquiry and report. It
was tlie Talook Officers who set aside our leases ; of whom,
and of whose two assessments, we complained. They
would have said, in reply, that our assessment had been
reduced from R. 70, the first imposition, to 28^, less than
one half; that instead of being grateful, we complained of
even l/iis moderate demand, which plainly showed that we
were troublesome, disputatious persons ; that the fields
were under cultivation, and well able to pay Niggdee
(Assessment). The Saheb (Collector) must trust, in such
matters, to his Karistens (Native Officers); and whose
story would be believed, theirs, with this appearanee of
truth and moderation, and the Cutcherry servants to back
it, or ours, which we might not render properly intelligble?
And if we had been ordered to pay the Assessment they
might, in return, have demanded it from our other property."
That such would be the reply, returned by the Talook
(County) to the reference, is obvious, and that it would
appear, prima facie, so satisfactory as to disarm suspicion,
and establish the groundlessness of the complaint, can
scarcely be doubted. Nevertheless, I am not disposed to
impute blame to the Talook Officers. From intercourse
with Native Servants, in general, I am satisfied that the
Talook (County) Officers felt persuaded they were doing no
more than a duty, especially prescribed to them, as the
business of the surveys and assessments they are dispersed
over the country annually to make. To prevent his vigi-
lance from slumbering, a second follows the steps of a first,
to detect his omissions and expose his errors. They have
often told me, what they cannot tell yon, that it is no fault
of theirs, if they are sent to survey fields, when nothing
but the stubble remains on the ground, or to rate a tree by
looking at the leaves; they will candidly confess, that they
were not bred on a farm, but from boyhood, in a Court or
Cutcherry, that they have no experience in land, of its
198
modes of culture, products, returns, accidents ; but tliut
being ordered to assess it, as if they had, they obey; and
they will freely say, that being Sirkar (Government) Ser-
vants, anxious for advancement and emolument, and know-
ing that under-assessment is always held to be criminal,
while over-assessmentis usually extenuated intoover-zealand
honesty of purpose, they make a point of leaning in every
case to the Sirkar (Government), leaving the aggrieved to
seek redress, where reduction is not open to suspicion.
All these things are talked of among themselves openly
and unreservedly. But, in addition to the etiquette preserved
with you, there is another reason why you are not likely to
hear aught against surveys and Jummabundies (annual
assessments) from them ; and that is, because it has become
a proverbial expression that " Surveys are the best trade
going." Everything, therefore, and every person around
you, combine to keep you in the dark, while the Govern-
ment has interposed its will, in order scrupulously to bar
the only avenue by which the truth could possibly reach
you. If the Rajah, as the proprietor of this land, as the
inheritor, or the purchaser, it matters not which, of the fee-
simple, had an undoubted right to execute the leases he
granted to his tenants, (and it will hardly be denied in
terms, under any Government English even only in name,
that he had not this right,) it would follow in a Government
of law, in any Government that did not place him, and all
men with wrongs like him, out of the pale of the law, that
he would have his remedy, prompt and effectual, provided
by the law, not only for his leases having been treated as
waste paper, and his property confiscated ; but, assuredly,
the law would award exemplary damages for the ejection of
his tenants, and the non-culture of his land for five years,
and this, upon the palpable, self-evident ground of the
injury which, through him, the public had received. His
tenants would, in like manner, and for a like reason, obtain
immediate restitution and ample indemnity for their losses.
199
Hence, on the very first instance that occurred, you would
have had public knowledge of it, you would have had the
satisfaction of aiding its investigation, and you would have
laid down to rest with the consoling reflection, that no
instance of similar tyranny could recur in the districts
(counties) under your charge, even were all the public ser-
vants banded against you, without the certainty of detection,
of punishment, and of redress. It is not you who would be
loaded with an odious and impracticable responsibility —
that of trusting numerous men with the power to oppress,
and that of tracing and exposing every instance of op-
pression.
How different is the present state of things, how calcu-
lated to awaken a crowd of startling reflections ! It is at
the lapse of years, and privately from me, a solitary indi-
vidual — a foreigner, like yourself, in the country — one of a
race till lately proscribed, that you receive, rather by acci-
dent than design, the first intimation of these acts of tyranny ;
the sufferers despairing or fearing to raise their voices in
complaint, because their case is a Revenue case, because,
for Uiat express reason, the public Justice of the country is
peremptorily interdicted from even listening to them, and
because their oppressors armed, as they know full well,
with Police as well as Revenue Powers, are the witnesses
against them, and the Judges ! When we speak of a law,
we mean no more than a proclaimed general rule, adminis-
tered by Officers, representing the Government, and placed
above all temptation — who are sworn to a|)ply the rule,
without bias or favour, in determining whether any act or
conduct complained of has wronged an individual, and
through him the community at large, either in his property
or person ; if so, to redress the wrong, and to punish the
wrong-doer. For this class of wrongs, and all its ramifi-
cations affecting every man in South India, arising out of
the appropriation and usurpation of the land of the people
for the behoof of the Government, there is no law, there
200
are no Courts, no Judges ; and this, for the avowed reason,
lest tlie public Revenue should be endangered !
Public revenue, which must ever be measured by the sum
of" private revenue, or, in other words, of private property —
private property which knows no measure, nolimit, so long as
it is vested with security, which security it can alone derive
from the law. Property, therefore, is the child of law, or
rather, as a great man has said — " Law and property are born
" together,and will die together; previous to law, no property
" — take away the law, and there is an end to property."
I know no subject more replete with painful, humiliating
reflections than to think, that the authors of a state policy,
which bade the law be dead in cases of land Revenue, are
the idols whom all men are called upon to bow down and
worship. What elsewhere would be indelible opprobrium,
is here fame ! The every-day phrase of, " things xvill last
mij time," which lias become incorporated into the language
of India, is the true and faithful, but unintentional, index
to the general cast of thought, engendered by this wise and
humane policy, and of the ever-present feeling of instability
and insecurity to which it gives birth in the minds of those
who administer it. Apply the same principle to money —
to Company's paper — which is only one species of property,
its nature comes immediately home, and one turns revolted
away at the abuse of power, at the abuse of reason, which
would make the public rapine of money the parent of public
revenue.
I have entered gravely and seriously into an examination
and exposure of this case, but not more gravely or more
seriously than I think it deserves. What specially deter-
mined me to this course, — what, in fact, has made it
imperative, — were conversations I had, after the Canara
affairs, with two of the oldest retired Native servants.
These men have no individual grievance, are men of rank
and consideration, and cannot be suspected of disaffection ;
but the late extreme, most lamentable, and unfortunate
201
panic, which was propagated from one end of the country
to the other, had ruffled and broken the usual cahn of the
surface — it was an occasion, when even cautious men
speak out; and the subdued feeUngs rose and found vent
in a bitterness of tone and remark, which flashed conviction
to me, as to what was passing in the minds of the upper
classes of Natives, and formed the leading subject of con-
versation among them. I am no alarmist; but most true
is it, that I have reflected, from that time, upon my own
situation here with a doubt and solicitude I was before a
stranger to. What, indeed, more natural, than that the
Natives should feel, and at a fitting time say to me : " You
were seated and settled amongst us; You, at least, were no
flitting bird of passage, nor chance sojourner; 7/ou have
not the plea of ignorance, which thei/ may offer, to palliate
oppression; for t/ou not to reveal, was to sanction it." The
house I am now writing from, was once burned to the
ground, and my Father and Mother turned penniless on the
world, by men who were stirred to vengeance by a similar
conviction — truth and the public records can declare how
erroneous! It is in me, therefore, a duty to state my con-
scientious belief, that there prevails throughout all classes
a deep, intolerable feeling of hatred and disgust, at the
insecurity of property, and the destruction of all confidence
and all enjoyment, produced by these annual surveys and
assessments; and a yearning to be rid of them, that would
turn to almost any quarter for relief. Pause upon this one
instance : a Revenue Officer and Smveyor demanded 100 Rs.
as the price of not raising the Annual revenue of an Amshum
(Parish); the money was collected and paid to liim ; after
which the Jumma (yearly demand) comes back from the
Talook (County), raised by him 80 Rs. ! After this, think
for a moment what might be tlie consequences, if the People
were only brought to believe, that five or ten thousand
Arabs, or Russians, or Turks, any nation thei/ t/iink a
match for our European Troops, had landed, and would
202
deliver them from Revenue Surveyors! Nor let it be
forgotten, that their credulity is in proportion to their
ignorance.
The wit of man can devise but one mode of putting
an end to iniquities like these; that is, by fixing the
demand upon the land for twenty-five years, and by
enacting, that so long as this demand is discharged, any
Revenue Officer interfering with the proprietor, in any
manner whatsoever, shall be sent on the roads for fourteen
years. There are but two springs that can animate and
invigorate human industry ; the certainty of enjoying the
present, and of benefitting by the future. Dry not up
these springs, for with them withers every germ of attach-
ment to the Government. Restore security, and revive
hope, the balm of life, wherever life there is, and the peo-
ple of Malabar will ever show themselves to be as indus-
trious, as enterprising, as submissive to the laws, and as
attached to the Government, as any people subject to its
sway.
I have addressed you, because you are on the spot, and
I had mentioned some of the particulars of this letter, but
pray communicate it to *
I am, yours, (fee,
F. C. BROWN.
* This letter, addressed privately to the Sub-Collector, relates only
three cases of rice-fields, the undoubted property of a private landlord,
which were abandoned by the cultivating tenants, in consequence of the
exorbitant money assessment fixed upon, and demanded for, these fields
by the Government Surveyors and Assessors, who are a t.so the Govern-
ment Revenue and Police Officers, in immediate authority over the cul-
tivators, — demanded eight years before the landlord was entitled to
receive a rupee of rent.
I instanced only these three cases, my object and my wish being
merely to lead to enquiry, and, if possible, to redress.
But, besides these three, there were in this one parish alone, fourteen
other fields, all also the private property of individuals, — all, like them.
203
TO THE HEAD ASSISTANT-COLLECTOR OF MALABAR,
TELLICHERRY.
Anjarakandy, 6 Jh/j/,1 832.
Sir,
I HAVE the honour herewith to transmit an answer
to your Malayalim letter (the Native language) of the 28th
ult., requiring to know the quantity of Tobacco consumed
in progress of being cleared, reclaimed, and cultivated, all of which
were also obliged to be given up and deserted by the tenants for the very
same cause. I particularly asked the head of the parish (Potail) and
the Accountant, whether there had been anything underhand in the
granting or taking of the leases, whether there had been any attempt at
fraud or concealment on the part of the tenants. These authorities de-
clared there had been nothing of the kind ; that, so far from anything
clandestine being thought of, the tenants gave due notice that they had
obtained cultivating leases, in conformity to the 'uiunemorlal practice of
the country, and in the usual form, and were going to reclaim the lands
leased to them.
The date of the letter is June 1837. On the 2d or 3d of December,
two or three days before I sailed from Tellicherry, as I was passing the
Sub-Collector's Cutcherry, the Head of the Parish and the Accountant
ran out to speak to me. They said that they themselves, and the princi-
pal and most influential persons of the Parish had all been sent for, and
were now at the Cutcherry, where they had received positive orders from
the Head Slieristedar (chief Native Officer) to make the refractory culti-
vators, whose cases I had related, and ivho were also brought in and
there detained, to make these men consent and submit in writing to pay
the Government Assessment fixed upon their fields; rather than pay
which, when first demanded, the cultivators had borne the loss of all
their outlay, and had abandoned their fields for four whole years. There
is a favourite Madras Revenue phrase called, " Sumjui'shing the Rt/ots."
Is the meaning of the phrase desired ? This is the real, uniform, prac-
tical, meaning of it ; using means like these to force the Natives, by the
instrumentality generally of head Native Officers, to cultivate the land,
upon any terms whatsoever that are dictated to them by those Govern-
204
monthly in these five Parishes. I have stated tliat this
quantity fluctuates from three to five Chippums (the name
of the package in which the Govt. Tobacco is retailed) ac-
cording to the season of the year ; and the explanation of
this fluctuation is so completely illustrative of the con-
dition of the lower classes of people, who are the great
consumers of Tobacco, that I beg you will permit me to
say a few words upon it, in English.
The falling off' in the consumption from five to three
Chippums, or two-fifths of the whole quantity, takes
place during the months of Meedhoonum, Karkadagum,
and Chingum (June, July and August); during which
months there is no demand for labour, for there remains
nothing to pay it with, and a stop is put by the annual
rains to the inland carrying trade, which, in the absence of
every species of carriage or beast of burthen, necessarily
employs a great number of men. In Kannee (September)
the first crop of rice comes in ; other crops follow, Ponuni
(hill rice), Modum (dry grains), Moondone (December rice).
Pepper; the carrying trade is resumed, and the consump-
tion of Tobacco increases, until the return of Meedhoonum,
when the same falling oflf takes place as before.
nient Officers, not allowing them even to abandon it; and making, first,
their property (if tliey have any), next their persons, answerable for the
entire demand ; nay, I have known their children to be taken up and
confined for it, and I have known this act to be J'ruitlesslj/ represented
and complained of. There was, I much fear, on the present occasion,
another lesson to be taught to these Natives, and to all others around
them ; the lesson of the good they would get, by presuming to go to a
European }iol in the service, and comjjlaining to him, because he would
listen and could understand them, of the losses, grievances, and oppres-
sion they suffered from the public Officers: in whose hands, it is their
own universal conviction that the union of all Revenue and of all Police
authority over them is expressly designed and maintained, for the sole
purpose of stifling their complaints, or if they should venture to make
a eomplaint, of providing the means whereby their hardihood shall
sooner or later be punished, the crime being one that is never forgotten
nor forgiven.
205
The quantity of Tobacco which a labouring man, if he
can buy it, consumes a day is one-quarter of a pice, or
half a farthing's, worth ; and it is an undoubted fact that
for three months of the year, he is without the means of
purchasing even this quantity of what to him is, not a
luxury, but a necessary of life; for if he would starve
without rice, he cannot loork without Tobacco. I repeat,
that he cannot earn this money, or the money's worth.
Such, after forty years of nearly uninterrupted peace, is
the accumulation of capital, or, in other words, the fund
for employing productive labour in this country !
Far be it from me to breathe a syllable in disparage-
ment o^ the good intentions of the Government towards the
people. But the truth must be told, and optimists awakened
from their day-dreams : that truth is, that wherever such a
state of things as I have described habitually prevails, it is
as plain as demonstration, that the condition of the great
body of the people cannot be progressive.
I have, the honour to be,
Sec. &c.
F. C. BROWN.
The official requisition on the subject of Tobacco W'as
addressed to me, as the person through whom the public
revenue of the five Parishes is collected and paid in. This
revenue has been so collected and paid for the last forty
years, and every local public duty discharged, without one
Rupee of expence to the Government. The Government
had, for tiuelve years, annually revived and kept suspended
over me, together with the arrears, a demand for land-tax
charged in the public Accounts, not against my lands, but
generally against the five Parishes ; the amount of which
206
must have irretrievably ruined any Native placed in the
same situation. From the first, I had simply requested
that the lands, chargeable with the demand, might be
pointed out. This never was, and never could be, done ;
and the demand was finally relinquished in 1836. But in
1835, in reiterating this request, I took occasion to show
to the Government, inviting an examination of the proofs,
that the collection of one lac ( 1 00,000) of Rupees of revenue
in the five Parishes, which had cost the Government nothing,
had cost me 10,000 Rupees ; the greater part of which
sum consisted of the land-revenue balances of the inha-
bitants, which I had made good, from an intimate know-
ledge of their utter inability to pay the demand against
them.
F. C. B.
PrilNH'l) BV SIFWAKT AND SUMtRA^', OLD UAII.rV.
ERRATtJM.
Page 60, (note)_/fli' January 1837, read Janur.ry 1838.
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