CHAPTER XXVI. · Part 2

Some of the half-savage mountain tribes of Peshawur and the Afghan frontier gave occasional trouble; but neither there nor in Sinde were the authorities prevented from sending reinforcements to the more troubled provinces. In connection with Sinde, it may be mentioned that Mr Frere, commissioner of that province, communicated a singular document to Lord Elphinstone, governor of the Bombay presidency. It was not directly connected with the mutiny or its instigators; but was nevertheless deemed important by Mr Frere, as illustrating phases of Hindoo character concerning which Europeans know so little. The information was given by Mr Macdonald, deputy-collector of Larkhana, in his weekly digest under date 20th of March. We transcribe it in a foot-note.[154]

We may now conveniently turn our attention to Central India—that region, south of the Jumna, in which Mahrattas and Bundelas were so strong. We have stated in former chapters that Sir Hugh Rose, a distinguished Bombay officer, was placed in command of various regiments and detachments known collectively as the ‘Central India Field-force.’ He was gradually working his way northward to the notorious city of Jhansi, defeating rebels everywhere on his road. On the 4th of March, Sir Hugh Rose was enabled to telegraph the following news, from his camp at Peeplia: ‘Yesterday, the troops under my command forced the pass of Mudenpore, after a short but very vigorous resistance. The troops, British and native, behaved gallantly. The pass is extremely strong, and the enemy suffered severely. They numbered about 4000 or 5000 Pathans and Bundelas, and 600 or 700 sepoys of the 52d and other regiments. I sent Major Orr in pursuit; and he cut up 50 or 60 rebels, of whom a large proportion were sepoys. The enemy are scattered in every direction. They have abandoned the little fortress of Seraj, a fort or arsenal which is the property of the Rajah of Shagurh, in which I shall have a small force to keep up my communication with Saugor.

I am now in communication with my first brigade (under Brigadier Stuart) at Chendaree, and this gives me command of the whole of the country up to Jhansi, with the exception of two or three forts, which I can take.’ About a week later, he sent news to Bombay that the capture of the pass of Mudenpore—on the line of hills which separated the British district of Saugor from the little state of Shagurh—and the defeat of the rebels on the 3d, had produced advantages far exceeding those at first anticipated by him. The rebels had successively abandoned several strongholds which they had possessed—first the fort of Seraj, with four guns, a rude manufactory for powder, shot and shell, carriages and tents; then the town and fort of Murrowra, with a triple line of defences; then the town and fort of Multhone; next the pass of Goonah; then the pass and town of Hurat; and lastly, the fort of Cornel Gurh. As all the passes had been fortified and barricaded, their precipitate abandonment by the rebels was fortunate for Sir Hugh.

Another result was the occupation by him of the hitherto independent district of Shagurh; the rajah having joined the rebels, Sir Robert Hamilton and Sir Hugh Rose resolved to punish him by ‘annexing’ his small territory, or at least occupying it until instructions could be received from Calcutta. Accordingly, on the 10th of March, the British flag was hoisted at Murrowra, in Shagurh, in presence of Rose’s second brigade, under a salute of twenty-one guns. The encampment of the brigade at this time was about twenty-five miles from Jhansi. Rose and Hamilton were well on the alert; for Balla Sahib, brother of the Nena, was at that time heading an army of rabble, and levying contributions in various parts of Bundelcund. What troops this rebel had with him, was not clearly known; but it was found that the Rajah of Chuanpore had been mulcted by him of seven lacs of rupees; and the Rajah of Churkaree, resisting a similar demand, had had his town destroyed by fire, and was compelled to take refuge in his fort. Mr Carne, British resident in Churkaree, narrowly escaped capture at the hands of the rebels.

While Rose was thus engaged, Brigadier Stuart, with the first brigade of the Central India Field-force, was clearing out various rebel haunts in districts lying southward of Jhansi. On the morning of the 6th of March, Stuart’s column or brigade set out from his camp near the Chendaree fort, and marched six or eight miles to Khookwasas, a fort near which a large body of rebels were assembled. The route being through a thick jungle nearly the whole distance, the 25th and 86th regiments advanced cautiously, in skirmishing order. Arriving at a small pass near the fort, Stuart found that the enemy had barricaded the road, and lined the hills on either side with matchlockmen. The engineers soon cleared away the barricades; while a small party of the 86th rushed up the hills and dislodged the matchlockmen. Shortly afterwards, however, it was ascertained that the chief body of the enemy had taken up a position behind the wall of an enclosure about a mile from the fort. The 86th dashed forwards to gain this enclosure; two of the officers, Lieutenant Lewis and Captain Keating, climbed to its top before any of their men, and jumped down into the interior of the enclosure.

The troops soon cleared out the enclosure, and then pursued their operations against the fort itself. Working his way steadily onwards, defeating and expelling bodies of insurgents from neighbouring villages, Stuart was at length enabled, on the 17th, to capture the fort of Chendaree itself. This place, situated in Malwah, about a hundred miles from Gwalior, is in a district which was assigned by Scindia in 1844, according to agreement with the British government, to assist in the maintenance of the Gwalior Contingent. The fort—consisting of a strong rampart of sandstone, flanked by circular towers, and crowning a high hill—was in the hands of insurgents at the date now under notice; and it was Brigadier Stuart’s duty to capture it. After cannonading on the evening of the 16th, he formed a practicable breach in the walls, and resolved to take the place by assault on the following morning. This he did very effectually. The 25th and 86th regiments, by an impetuous rush, carried everything before them. Captain Keating was severely wounded whilst foremost with the storming-party. The enemy mostly escaped, on account of the simple failure of a letter.

On the preceding evening, the brigadier received a message informing him that Captain Abbott was within available distance with a considerable body of irregular cavalry; and in return a letter was despatched to Abbott, requesting him to gallop forward and invest the north side of the fort. This letter did not reach Abbott in time; and as a consequence, there was no obstacle to the escape of the rebels northward. All the guns, eight of iron and two of brass, were taken. The fort was given up to the keeping of one of Scindia’s lieutenants or soubahs, in friendly relation with the British; and the inhabitants of the town resumed their peaceful avocations, apparently glad to get rid of the presence of the rebels.

Stuart’s operations at Chendaree greatly facilitated the advance of Sir Hugh Rose towards Jhansi. He marched on, with the second brigade of his Central India Field-force, and reached that blood-stained city on the 21st of March. He gave a sketch of his operations from the 20th to the 25th in the following brief telegraphic form: ‘On the 20th my cavalry invested as much as possible the fort and town of Jhansi. The next day the rest of my force arrived. The rebels have fortified the walls of the town, and, shutting themselves up in the town and fort, have not defended the advanced position of Jhansi. The ranee has left her palace in the town, and has gone into the fort. The rebel garrison numbers about 1500 sepoys, of whom 500 are cavalry, and 10,000 Bundelas, with 30 or 40 cannon. Their position is strong; but I have occupied two good positions, one a breaching, the other a flanking one. I have been delayed by the want of a plan of Jhansi, and consequently have been obliged to make long and repeated reconnaissances. I opened a flanking fire, vertical and horizontal, yesterday (the 25th), and hope to open a breaching fire to-morrow, or at latest the next day.’ We shall see in a later page that Sir Hugh completely succeeded in his assault, early in April.

The present may be a proper place in which to advert to a matter which greatly agitated the public mind from time to time, both in England and India—namely, the conduct of the insurgents towards those of the British who unfortunately fell into their power. Jhansi was one of the stations in respect to which horror was most distressingly expressed. The morbid taste for horrors engendered by the incidents of the Revolt gave rise to many exaggerations. The terrible news from Delhi, Cawnpore, Jhansi, and other places, during the early months of the struggle, produced mischief in two ways; it created a demand for indiscriminate sanguinary vengeance; and it produced a tendency, not only to believe, but to exaggerate, all rumours of atrocities as committed by the natives. In England as well as at Calcutta, controversies almost of a fierce character arose on these points; the advocates on one side treating it as a point of honour to believe the tragedies in their worst form; while those on the other, in bitter terms demanded proof that the rumours were true.

It was extremely difficult to disprove any statements concerning atrocities committed; for in most cases there were no Europeans left behind to give trustworthy testimony. Circumstances became known, during the progress of the military operations, which led to an inference that, though inhuman slaughter of innocent persons unquestionably took place soon after Delhi fell into the hands of the insurgents, it was not preceded by so much of hideous barbarity towards the women and children as had at first been reported and believed. It also became more and more evident, as time advanced, that many of the inscriptions on the wall of the slaughter-room at Cawnpore must have been written _after_ the departure or death of the hapless persons whose writing they professed to be, by some one who failed to see the cruelty of the hoax he was perpetrating. This subject is adverted to in the present place, because the month of March lightened a little the terrible severity of the story of Jhansi, one of those which made a distressing impression on the public mind. It will be remembered[155] that, early in June of the preceding year, the British at Jhansi, upwards of fifty in number, were all put to death by the insurgents, acting at the instigation of a woman, the ranee or chieftainess of Jhansi; the destruction was so complete, that no European was left to tell the true incidents.

Nine months afterwards, in the month of March, some of the English newspapers in India gave a detail of revolting indignities said to have been inflicted on the females of the party at Jhansi—greatly adding to the distress already felt by the relatives of the murdered persons. Jhansi had by that time been restored to British rule; and Captain Pinkney, superintendent of Jhansi, Jaloun, and Chendaree, determined to ascertain how far the real facts could be got at. After a diligent inquiry in various quarters, he arrived at a belief that the massacre, however barbarous, had not been deepened in atrocity by the frightful circumstances put forth in the newspapers. The truth appeared to him to be as follows: When the British in the fort were unable longer to hold out through want of food, they surrendered to the rebels, who swore that they would spare all their lives. No sooner, however, were the fort-gates opened, than the rebels entered, bound the men, and took them as well as the women and children to a place outside the city-walls called the Jokun Bagh.

Here the men were placed in one group, and the women and children in another. The rebels and the ranee’s armed servants then murdered all the men, Major Skene being the first cut down by the jail darogah, one Bukshish Ali. After this the women and children were put to death with swords and spears. The dead bodies were stripped, and left two days in the Jokun Bagh, when they were all thrown into a neighbouring stream. Shortly after the writing of Captain Pinkney’s report, a letter was sent to the supreme government by Sir Robert Hamilton, political agent in Central India, in which a few of the facts were somewhat differently stated. According to his account, when the unhappy Europeans reached the Jokun Bagh, ‘they were stopped on the roadside under some trees. They were accompanied by a crowd of mutinous sepoys, irregular sowars, disaffected police, fanatic Mussulmans, men in the service of the ranee, inhabitants of the town, and rabble. Here Bukshish Ali, jail darogah, called out: “It is the ressaldar’s order that all should be killed;” and immediately cut down Captain (Major) Skene, to whom he was indebted for his situation under government.

An indiscriminate slaughter of the men, women, and children then commenced; all were mercilessly destroyed, and their bodies left strewn about the road, where they remained until the third day, when, by permission of the same ressaldar, they were all buried in two gravel-pits close by.’ Execrable as this was, it was far less harrowing than the newspaper narratives which had given rise to the investigation. Captain Pinkney ascertained that the total number of Europeans thus barbarously murdered was sixty-seven, of whom just about one half were women and children. Sir Robert Hamilton caused the ground around the two gravel-pits to be cleared, and an enclosing wall to be built; he and all the other officials, on a selected day, attended a funeral-service at the spot, delivered by the Rev. Mr Schwabe, chaplain to the station; and he also planned the erection of an obelisk. Strange that India should become the ground for so many obelisks and crosses erected in memory of Europeans ruthlessly murdered by natives. One hundred and two years before, in 1756, Suraj-u-Dowlah, after conquering Calcutta from the Company’s servants, drove a hundred and forty-six adult Europeans, on a sultry June evening, into a dungeon only twenty feet square; and of those miserable creatures, a hundred and twenty-three died during the night, of heat, thirst, pressure, suffocation, and madness. An obelisk was afterwards set up, to mark this terrible ‘Black Hole of Calcutta.’ And now, in the middle of the nineteenth century, the English again found themselves engaged in erecting these damning memorials of native brutality, at Cawnpore and at Jhansi.

[Illustration:

Obelisk built on the Site of the Black Hole, Calcutta, to commemorate the Murder of the One Hundred and Twenty-three Englishmen.—From a Drawing in the India House. ]

Leaving Jhansi and its mournful recollections for a while, we pass over from the Mahratta territories into Rajpootana; where numerous petty chieftains kept the territory in a state of much agitation. There were scarcely any of the mutinied Bengal regiments in that part of India; but the Kotah Contingent, and other auxiliary corps which had revolted, sided with some of the chieftains in hostilities against the British. So far as concerns the operations of the month of March, those of the Kotah insurgents were the chief that call for attention. We have in former pages alluded to a ‘Rajpootana Field-force,’ formed of several regiments sent up from Bombay. The first division of this force set forth from Nuseerabad on the 10th of March, for service against Kotah. It consisted of H. M. 95th foot, a wing of the 83d, the 10th Bombay infantry, the Sinde horse, and some horse and foot artillery. Siege-material of formidable character accompanied the column; comprising eighteen field-pieces, of which ten were 8-inch mortars and howitzers, and an immense supply of ammunition. The second division, that started on the following day, consisted of H. M.

72d foot, a wing of the 83d, the 1st Bombay Lancers, a mountain train, Brown’s battery, and an engineering corps. The 8th Hussars, with detachments of horse and foot artillery, were afterwards to join the columns. Several of the guns in the siege-train were drawn by elephants. Brigadier-general Lawrence accompanied this field-force, but only in a political capacity; the military command was held by General Roberts. The conquest of Kotah was looked forward to as a difficult enterprise, not only from the force of the enemy in men and guns, but from the peculiar position of the town itself. Kotah is bounded by the deep river Chumbul on one side, and by a lake on the other; and there was a probability that batteries would have to be erected on the opposite side of the river. The approach to it by land from Nuseerabad was also beset by many obstacles. It would be necessary to traverse the Mokundurra Pass, a long and narrow valley between two parallel ranges of hills, easily rendered formidable by a small number of men. It was altogether a larger and more important operation than the conquest of the numerous petty forts with which Rajpootana abounded.

Many persons in India thought that those forts might safely be left to themselves; since the hill-chieftains were more frequently incited by hostility towards each other than towards the British, and since it was very little better than a waste of power to pursue them into the wilds and jungles which intersect that part of India. One favourable circumstance in connection with Kotah was, that the rajah was faithful, and as much opposed as the British to the insurgents.

The middle of the month was occupied by the march of Roberts’s force from Nuseerabad, over a difficult country. Surmounting all obstacles, the general arrived at Kotah on the 22d of March, and encamped a mile or two distant, on the north bank of the Chumbul. The rebels were in possession of the south bank, having with them a powerful array of guns, many of large calibre. The fort, the palace, and half the city, were held by the rajah, with Rajpoots and troops from Kerowlie. On the 25th, a portion of the British, about 300 in number, under Major Heatley, crossed the river, to aid the rajah at a critical moment. The rebels had that morning made a desperate attempt to escalade the walls, and drive the rajah’s troops into their only remaining stronghold, the castle; but this attempt was frustrated; had it succeeded, the rebels would have commanded the ferry over the river. Portions of H. M. 83d, and of the Bombay troops, formed the small force which crossed the river on the 25th. Two days afterwards, 600 men of H. M. 95th, with two 9-pounders, crossed over. On the 30th General Roberts was able to announce by telegraph, ‘I this day assaulted the town of Kotah with complete success, and comparatively trifling loss. No officer killed. The whole town is in my possession.’ Upwards of fifty guns were captured. The victory was gained by a clever flank-movement, which turned the enemy’s position, and rendered their defences useless. This was a point in tactics which the rebels seldom attended to sufficiently; they repeatedly lost battles by allowing their flanks to be turned.

Eastward of the Mahratta and Rajpoot territories, there were isolated bodies of insurgents in the Saugor regions, between the Jumna on the north and Nagpoor on the south. But General Whitlock, with a field-force gathered from the Madras presidency, kept these rebels under some control. His movements, however, scarcely need record here.

The South Mahratta country kept up just so much disturbance as to demand the vigilant attention of the authorities, without exciting any serious apprehension. In the month of March there was much of this disturbance, near the frontier between the two presidencies of Bombay and Madras, at Belgaum. On the one side, the Bombay government offered a large reward for the apprehension of three brothers, rebel leaders, Baba Desaee, Nena Desaee, and Hunmunt Desaee; while the governor of the Madras presidency put in force a disarming statute on his side of the frontier. One of the leaders, Hunmunt Desaee, after many contests, was driven, with the wives and families of others among the insurgents, into a tower on the summit of a peak in the Coonung range; it was a one-storied structure, with a ladder leading to an entrance trap-door. Such towers had been used by the military police in that range, and Hunmunt defended himself here as long as he could. There were other traitors in this part of the country. Towards the close of March, Mr Manson, one of the Company’s civil servants, obtained a clue to a conspiracy in which several natives—Naga Ramchunder, Balla Bhoplay, Bhow Shrof Chowdry, and others—were concerned; having for its object the collecting of guns unknown to the British authorities, and the inciting of other natives to acts of rebellion. One of these men was the chief of Jamkhundie, one a money-lender, and two others were Brahmins. The money-lender was supposed to have assisted the mutineers of Kolapore with pecuniary means for carrying on their operations. By lodging these mischief-makers in safe keeping at Belgaum and Satara, preparatory to a trial, the authorities checked an incipient disturbance.

This little patch of country, inhabited to a considerable extent by the southern Mahrattas, was the only part of the Bombay presidency south of the city itself which was in any anxiety concerning the proceedings of the insurgents. And indeed, northward of the city, there were no manifestations of rebellion short of the regions around Gujerat and Rajpootana; where even those who were disposed to be peaceful found themselves embarrassed and imperiled by the turbulence of their neighbours. In Gujerat, Sir Richmond Shakespear commenced and steadily carried on a general disarming of the population; the Guicowar or native sovereign cordially assisted him, and the two together collected many guns and thousands of stands of arms. As to the Madras presidency, it was quite at peace. From Cuttack in the north to Travancore in the south, there were no rebellious regiments, and few chieftains who ventured to endanger their safety by disputing the British ‘raj.’ In the Nagpoor and Saugor territories, belonging rather to the Bengal than to the Madras presidency, the elements of convulsion surged occasionally, but not to a very alarming extent. The Nizam’s country was troubled in a way which shews how desirable it is that orientals should not be tempted by anarchy or weakness in the governing power. The regular troops were moderately steady; but the news of mutiny elsewhere excited all the turbulent elements of the Deccan. Robber chieftains and city ruffians rose, not so much against the British, as against any who had property to lose. The town of Mulgate, held by a chieftain who commanded a motley band of Rohillas and Arabs, resisted the Nizam’s authority for some time; but it fell, and the leaders were taken prisoner.

This chapter will have shewn that, when the last day of March arrived, the attention of the military authorities in India was chiefly directed to those districts which had Azimghur, Bareilly, Calpee, and Jhansi for their chief cities, and which swarmed with large bodies of rebels ready to make a desperate resistance. It was left for the months of April and May to develop the strategic operations against those places.

Notes.

So frequent is the mention, in all matters relating to the local government of India, of ‘covenanted’ and ‘uncovenanted’ service, and so peculiar the duties of those covenanted servants who bear or bore the title of ‘collectors’—that it may be well to sketch briefly the Company’s remarkable system, so far as it refers to those two subjects. The collectors and magistrates suffered much and braved much during the mutiny, owing to their peculiarly intimate relations with the natives; and their duties deserve on that account a little attention in the present work. For many reasons it will be desirable, as in the volume generally, to adopt the past tense in speaking of this system—bearing in mind, however, that the system was fully in operation during the mutiny, except when the officials were actually driven away from their districts.

_’Covenanted’ and ‘Uncovenanted’ Service._—The ‘services’ supported by the East India Company were of four kinds—civil, military, naval, and ecclesiastical. The military has already been frequently noticed; the Company supported a military force of something near three hundred thousand men, involving various engagements on the one hand with the British crown, and on the other with native princes. The naval service was limited to a force of about sixty vessels and five thousand men, employed chiefly in surveying, coast-guarding, mail-conveyance, and the prevention of piracy. The ecclesiastical service, maintained by the Company for their own servants only, consisted of three Church of England bishops, about a hundred and forty Protestant clergymen, three Roman Catholic bishops, and about eighty Roman Catholic priests. The Protestants were liberally supported; the Roman Catholics simply received a grant, in aid of larger funds to be derived by them from other quarters. But it was the civil service that constituted the most remarkable feature in the Company’s organisation, embracing all the persons engaged in the collection of revenue or the administration of justice.

The civil service was of two kinds, covenanted and uncovenanted. The uncovenanted civil servants were very much like _employés_ in other countries, paid reasonably for their services, but having no peculiar privileges—no declared provision for life, no claim to promotion by seniority, no stipulated furlough or leave of absence, no claimable pension. They comprised Europeans, Eurasians or half-castes, and natives. Subordinate duties, fiscal and judicial, were intrusted to them, according to their range of ability and supposed honesty, as judged by the local governments. The Europeans in this class were chiefly persons who had gone out to India in some other capacity, or were sons of officers already in service in India. The European and Eurasian uncovenanted servants barely reached three thousand in number. The class was mainly composed of natives—Mohammedans more generally than Hindoos. The employment of natives as uncovenanted servants of the Company was commenced by Lord William Bentinck (1828 to 1835), and steadily increased under other governors-general: insomuch that the judicial administration of the lower courts fell almost wholly into the hands of natives. The humbler offices in the revenue department were also filled by them. A few of the uncovenanted servants received salaries ranging from £500 to £800 per annum; but in the greater number of instances the amount was far lower.

The covenanted servants comprised nominated or favoured persons who, after receiving a special education in the Company’s seminary at Haileybury, were subjected to examination in England, and then sent out to India at the Company’s expense. They entered into a covenant, prescribed by ancient custom, ‘That they shall obey all orders; that they shall discharge all debts; and that they shall treat the natives of India well.’ Until 1853 (when a system of public competition was established by the charter granted to the Company in that year), the appointment of persons to this favoured service was wholly in the patronage of the directors. After a certain amount of tuition and examination, the young men (’writers,’ as they were sometimes called) were conveyed to India, where they pursued further studies, chiefly in oriental languages, at Calcutta, Madras, or Bombay. While so studying, they received an ‘out-of-employ allowance.’ At length they commenced employment as ‘assistants’ to magistrates and collectors in country districts, as soon as they possessed a certain amount of knowledge of vernacular languages, criminal law, and revenue law. Their daily duties were partly magisterial, partly fiscal.

After some years’ practice, the assistant was competent for promotion. He became collector or magistrate of a district, under regulations differing in the different presidencies. In Bengal, the offices of judge, magistrate, and collector were held by three different persons, all ‘covenanted;’ in the other presidencies the offices of magistrate and collector were held by the same person; in the ‘non-regulation provinces’ (Punjaub, Nagpoor, Sinde, &c.), all three offices were held by one person. The local government had a voice in the selection of persons to fill these offices; but the principle of promotion by seniority was extensively acted on, and was almost claimed as a right by the ‘covenanted.’ The salaries paid were very munificent. The lowest assistant received £500 per annum, and the amount rose gradually to £10,000 per annum, the salary of a member of the Supreme Council at Calcutta.

Such were the chief points of difference between the covenanted and uncovenanted services of the East India Company. It was not so much a distinction of race, colour, or creed, as a means of favouring selected persons in England, and of giving those persons a special education to fit them for civil duties in India.

* * * * *

_Collectors and Collectorates._—We shall next notice in a succinct way the remarkable duties of such of the covenanted civil servants as filled the office of collector—especially in those districts where the collector was also the magistrate. In the Northwest Provinces, to which the mutiny was mainly confined, the collector-magistrate of each district was in many matters controlled by the commissioner of the province in which the district was situated; but he had in a larger degree than the commissioner an intimate knowledge of the villages and villagers of India, their incomes, hopes, fears, wants, and peculiarities; and he became more deeply involved in anxieties and dangers consequent on the mutiny.

The term ‘collector’ very inadequately expresses the status and duties of the official so named. So far from being a mere tax-gatherer, he was a revenue judge, an executive district authority, with large powers and heavy responsibilities. As collector and magistrate, he was responsible to two different departments—to the higher judicial courts for his conduct as a magistrate, and to the revenue department in all that concerned his collectorship. He had two sets of assistants, with duties clearly defined and separated. The magisterial duties being dismissed without further description, as susceptible of easy comprehension, we shall dwell only on the collectorship.

The duties of the collector were fivefold. He was collector of government revenue; registrar of landed property in his district; revenue judge between landlord and tenant; ministerial officer of courts of justice; and treasurer and accountant of the district. None but a man of varied and extensive attainments, united to zeal and industry, could adequately fulfil so many duties; many of the great names in the recent years of Indian history are those of men who laid the foundations for their greatness as collectors. The districts over which the collectors presided varied greatly in size and wealth; but in all cases they comprised several thousand villages each, and yielded revenue varying from one to two hundred thousand pounds per annum—for the whole of which the collector was responsible. In the whole of India, the collectorates were somewhat under a hundred and seventy in number, for the most part identical with districts, but in a few cases comprising whole provinces newly annexed; and these collectorates yielded, in 1856, revenue to the amount of about thirty millions sterling.

The collector-magistrate had generally two assistants, like himself ‘covenanted’ servants of the Company. Besides these there were ‘uncovenanted’ servants, European and native, sufficient in number for the duties to be rendered. The district was marked out into sub-districts containing from one to two hundred villages each. The collector resided at the head-station of the district, with a staff of clerks, writers, and record-keepers. Each sub-district was under the revenue management of a responsible native officer, who had subordinates under him to keep his accounts and conduct the details of his office. Carrying down the classification still more minutely, every village in every sub-district had its headman and its native accountant, who were in intimate correspondence concerning the revenue of the village.

The chief official of the district, as collector of government revenue, obtained this revenue mainly from three sources—land-tax, spirit and drug duty, and stamps. The second and third items were so small in amount, that many well-wishers of the Company urged the abandonment of those imposts; and at anyrate only a small share of the collector’s attention was devoted to them. The land-tax was the great source of revenue; and until the government of India undergoes an entire revolution both in spirit and in practice, such must continue to be the case. So decided was the importance of this tax compared with all others, that of the thirty millions sterling raised in 1856, no less than seventeen millions resulted from land-tax. The land-tax formed the great fund out of which the vast expenses for the executive government, military and civil, were mainly paid. Hence the importance of the revenue-collector and his land-tax duties. The assessment of the land, for the realisation of the tax, differed in different presidencies, according to the relations existing between the state, the landowners, the farmers, and the labourers.

In Bengal the revenue was collected in gross from great and powerful zemindars, the state having little or nothing to do with the actual cultivators. In Madras no zemindars or great men were recognised; the state drew the tax from the ryots or cultivators, each on his own bit of land. In Bombay the Madras system existed in a modified form. In Oude nothing could be done till the annexation in 1856, when the peculiar _thalookdaree_ system[156] laid a foundation for many troubles in the following year. In the Northwest Provinces the assessment depended on the peculiar village tenures, which had existed from time immemorial, and according to which the ownership of the soil could not be interfered with by the state so long as the village paid the revenue. Great as may have been, and great as were, the differences between the Hindoo, Mohammedan, and English governments, this village system maintained its ground century after century. The tenure of land in these provinces, recognised by the Company as among those institutions which they wished to respect, were mainly three in number:

_Zemindaree_—denoting those estates where the property was held collectively without any territorial division, whether the owners were one, few, or many.

_Puttidaree_—those estates where the property was partially or entirely divided, and held separately by the coparceners.

_Bhyacharuh_—estates held by coparcenary communities, where actual possession had overborne law; it was a kind of Puttidaree founded on actuality rather than right.

Whichever of these systems prevailed, the Company respected it in assessing the land-tax; and thus each piece of land was represented in the tax-books by the name of a particular tax-payer or community of tax-payers. The actual assessment, the percentage on produce, depended on circumstances specially ascertained in each district; but the two guiding principles laid down by the Company, when they established a revenue-system for the Northwest Provinces were—that the rate should be light enough to leave a wide margin of profit to the cultivators; and that it should be fixed without alteration for a considerable period of years. The collector, knowing how much was assessed upon every village or every piece of land, was armed with powers sufficient to enforce payment. Whether the assessment was ‘light’ or not, was a standing controversy between those who respectively supported the zemindaree, the ryotwaree, and the village systems. The Company’s advocates generally urged that, though the ratio of tax to produce seemed heavy, any comparison with English land-tax would be fallacious; seeing that the villagers and cultivators in India were not called upon to pay, in addition to land-tax, any such imposts as excise, tithes, church-rates, county-rates, poor-rates, or income-tax. The excellences and defects of the system, however, are not discussed here; we simply describe the system itself.

The collector, having a definite amount to receive, from a definite number of villages, represented by a definite number of persons, could neither increase nor lessen, anticipate nor postpone, the tax, without special reasons. If a district suffered from drought, the government often deferred or wholly remitted the tax; but this only under well-defined circumstances. The collector’s register recorded all changes in ownership or occupancy by death or private transfer; and as he knew each year who _ought_ to pay, he was intrusted with certain powers to enforce payment by imprisonment, distraint of personal property, annulment of lease, sequestration of profits, transfer of defaulting share to a solvent shareholder of the same community, farming of the estate to a stranger, or sale by public auction.

In most districts, until the time of the Revolt, the collection of revenue was an easy task, occupying only a portion of the collector’s thoughts in May and June, November and December. ‘So complete the machinery,’ said a writer in the _Calcutta Review_, ‘so prosperous the provinces, so well adjusted the assessment, that the golden shower fell uninterruptedly; and the collector, who had without an effort of his own transmitted a royal ransom half-yearly to the public treasury, was scarcely aware of the financial feat which he and his subordinates had performed.’ But when a drought, an inundation, or any great calamity interfered with the growth or harvesting of the crop, the collector’s duties were most trying and laborious; seeing that he had to listen to petitions for relief or delay from hundreds or thousands of villages in his district.

His ordinary duties as a collector of revenue occupied only a small portion of his time and thoughts. As registrar of landed property, he kept maps and registers of land, drawn out with a degree of minuteness scarcely paralleled in any other country in the world; and these maps and registers were renewed or corrected annually, to shew the size, position, ownership, and crop of every cultivated field in the whole district. As revenue judge between landlord and tenant, he was often called upon to assist the responsible landowner to collect his rent from the cultivators, or to assist the cultivator in resisting oppression by the landlord; it was a duty requiring a knowledge both of law and of revenue matters. As a ministerial officer of the courts of justice, he had to put in force, somewhat in the manner of a sheriff, all decisions of the judge relating to land, transfers of property, or arrears of land-tax; and his local knowledge often enabled him to assist the judge in arriving at an equitable decision. As treasurer and accountant, he took care of the bags of silver coin in which the land-tax and the other taxes were chiefly paid, tested and weighed the coin before making up his accounts, paid monthly stipends to some of the military and civil officers of the district, kept a minute debtor and creditor account, and transmitted his accounts and his surplus silver to Calcutta.

In addition to all these duties, the collector, considered as the European who possessed most knowledge on various subjects in his district, performed miscellaneous duties scarcely susceptible of enumeration. ‘Everything that is to be done by the executive, must be done by him, in one of his capacities; and we find him, within his jurisdiction, publican [tax-gatherer], auctioneer, sheriff, road-maker, timber-dealer, enlisting sergeant, sutler, slayer of wild beasts, wool-seller, cattle-breeder, postmaster, vaccinator, discounter of bills, and registrar-general—in which last capacity he has also to tie the marriage-knot for those who object to the Thirty-nine Articles. Latterly, he has been made schoolmaster of his district also. Every new measure of government places an extra straw on the collector’s back. Whatever happens to be the prevailing hobby, the collector suffers. One day specimens are called for, for the Exhibitions of London or Paris; the next day, the cry is for iron and timber for the railway, or poles for the telegraph.’

[Illustration:

GROUP OF INDIAN ARMS.

1. Matchlock. 2. Head of a Hunting-spear. 3. Potta. 4. Creece. 5. Knife. 6. Hunting Tulwar. 7. Common Tulwar. 8. Kundeer. 9. Kundeer. 10. Ballagondeeka. 11. Powder-horn. 12. Pouch for balls. 13. Bow. 14. Arrow. 15. Borsee Spear—carried before chiefs, &c. 16. Bottom end of a Spear. 17. Head of common Spear. ]

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Footnote 152:

‘The commander-in-chief prohibits columns from moving to the attack of forts, whether large or small, without at least two heavy guns, or a heavy gun and a heavy howitzer. If possible, such columns should always have mortars also; namely, two 8-inch and two 5½-inch. Arrangements are to be made by the inspector-general of ordnance to insure the presence of a proportion of heavy guns, howitzers, mortars, and cohorns, at all stations where British regiments are quartered. Wherever there is a possibility of movable columns being organised, the necessary elephant and bullock draught should be maintained. When an expedition against a fort is deemed absolutely necessary, and heavy ordnance cannot be obtained, a special reference is to be made to the chief of the staff by telegraph. If, however, the station be removed from the wire, the general officer commanding the division or station must, of course, exercise a discretionary power; but the commander-in-chief begs that it may be recollected, as a principle, that, except in cases of the most absolute necessity, forts are not to be attacked with light guns only.’

Footnote 153:

Chap. xiv., p. 234.

Footnote 154:

‘A circumstance well worthy of note has taken place during the last week; it calls for remark, inasmuch as it exposes the peculiar superstitions of the Hindoo shopkeepers of this country. In the talooka of Nuseerabad, below the hills which form the western boundary of Sinde, and not far south of the jaghire of Ghybee Khan, the Sirdar of the Chandia tribe, there stands the ancient and still important town of Hamal. It is situated on a mound close to the great Western Trunk-road, which runs from the town of Dost Allee, in Kumbur, to that of Gool Mahomed Luggaree; this part of the country is annually flooded by the hill-torrents, and for this reason all the towns are built on eminences, and surrounded by strong bunds. About twelve months ago, a certain shopkeeper of the town went out to his field with his donkey to work. On returning in the evening he loaded the ass, and was proceeding homewards, when the animal fell down and died. The Hindoos of that town consider that if, through any man’s carelessness, the death of a beast of burden is caused, that man must make a pilgrimage to the town of Narrainsir, a few miles south of Lucput, in the Runn of Kutch, and there, shaving his head and performing other numerous ceremonies, expiate his fault.

Consequently, when this unfortunate man returned home and reported the death of the donkey, he was at once told that, unless he immediately made the requisite pilgrimage to Narrainsir, and there expiated his fault, they would neither eat nor drink with him, nor hold any intercourse whatever with him. As the poor man thought the ass’s death was in no way brought about by any fault of his, he appealed to the punchayets (Hindoo juries of five persons each) of Larkhana, Guerrilla, and Kumbar, other large towns in the Larkhana district. They returned answer that the punchayet of Hamal was wrong in its decision, and that they acquitted the man of all blame as to the cause of the ass’s death. A controversy was at once raised throughout this part of the country, and it ended in all the punchayets of the towns of the Katcha country siding with the punchayet of Hamal, and the punchayets of the towns on the plain near the river taking part with Larkhana. The dispute came to a climax during the past week, when the Larkhana punchayet, in the name and acting for the minor towns near the river, issued a notice that the Hindoos of these towns would no longer associate with, nor have any intercourse with those of Hamal, Ghybee Dherah, and other towns of the Katcha country.

This challenge was at once accepted, and the punchayets of the Katcha country issued a counter-notice, forbidding all Hindoos of their towns to hold intercourse with those of the district towns above mentioned; marriages before agreed upon have been broken off, agencies broken up, partnerships dissolved, and even the ties of relationship are no longer binding. To such an extent do the superstitious feelings of these men act upon their social conduct.’

Footnote 155:

Chap. xi., p. 179.

Footnote 156:

Chap. xxi., p. 360.

[Illustration:

Zemindar, Hindoo landowner. ]