ART. VI.-A Pamphlet on the Salt Trade of India, by D. C. Aylwin of Calcutta. London, Printed by Madden and Malcolm. Leadenhall Street, 1846.

THE appearance of this pamphlet, which would have been more properly termed "a pamphlet on the Salt trade of Bengal," has induced us to lay before our readers the following account of the source from which the Government of India derives a clear annual revenue of more than £2,000,000 sterling, and upon which it depends for at least one-eighth of the means necessary, but hardly sufficient, to preserve the security and maintain the institutions of the country. We intend however on the present occasion to confine ourselves to a consideration of this branch of the public resources in the Bengal Presidency, including the North West provinces, because it is to the modification of the system on which the salt duty on this side of India is realized, that the efforts of Mr. Aylwin and his patrons, the Chamber of Commerce of the White Salt trade, are mainly directed. The tax levied on the manufacture of salt in the Bombay and Madras presidencies is light in amount, and too indirectly connected with the trade between England and India to attract the attention, or rouse the indignation, of the Cheshire philanthropists. It is true that Mr. Aylwin's speech at the Blackburn meeting, in which he uttered his most hyperbolical and fabulous description of the atrocities practised at Madras in the collection of the salt revenue, was listened to in decent horror, and possibly received with found credence; but we do not find that these alleged atrocities were made the foundation of any of the proposals brought forward by the mixed body of misinformed gentlemen, who afterwards waited upon the President of the Board of Control to petition him to abolish "the monopoly." We must therefore beg the forgiveness of our readers for dismissing this part of the subject with a brief remark that at Bombay the revenue is raised by an excise duty of twelve annas a maund on the manufacture of salt, and at Madras, by a similar duty of one rupee. The gross revenue at the former presidency in 1843-44 was Rs. 18,60,563, and at the latter Rs. 43,21,604.

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We must commence by protesting against the use of the term "monopoly," which, in reference to the system under which the revenue from salt is now realized in Bengal, is wholly without meaning. This odious word, which since the reign of Queen Elizabeth, has conveyed to English ears a sense more hateful even than the reality, has tended, more than any prac

tical evidence of the injurious influence of the salt tax upon the condition of the people, to expose this branch of the resources of the Indian Government to a degree of obloquy which might have been altogether escaped if the same amount of revenue had been raised from the first, as it now virtually is, by a combined system of customs and excise. It happens too, that one of the most oppressive taxes ever imposed by a despotic Government, the French Gabelle, should have proverbially inclined men to suppose that the effects of a tax upon salt must of necessity, from its very nature, be grinding upon those subject to it, whether it be light or heavy in amount, whether it be imposed upon a lightly taxed community, or upon one already overburthened with fiscal imposts. The same feeling is induced by the recollection of the English salt tax, repealed in 1825,—a tax which, if imposed in moderation on an article of great bulk and small value, would, in the opinion of high authority, at this time have added a million sterling to the revenue of the British Empire without being felt by the consumer, but which, having been foolishly raised to nearly 3,000 per cent. upon the prime cost of the article, prohibited consumption except for culinary purposes, and thus, as well as by the inquisitorial machinery necessary for its collection, excited such a degree of unpopularity as to render its entire abolition an unavoidable sacrifice to public indignation.

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That we are justified in our assertion that the term monopoly" is inapplicable to the system under which the revenue is at present raised in the Bengal Presidency, will be evident to any one who will take the trouble to examine in the most cursory manner the real facts of the case. Of Rs. 2,34,95,069 derived from salt in 1845-46, Rs. 37,90,886 were raised by customs duty on salt imported by land from the producing districts on the North West frontier, Rs. 43,70,696 by a similar duty on salt imported by sea into Bengal, and Rs. 1,53,33,487 by the sale of salt manufactured not by, but on account of, the Government. That the Government possesses a monopoly, that is, the sole privilege of selling salt in the presidency of Bengal, is at once negatived, not only by the existence of a free permission to other parties to sell, but by the fact that in 1845-46, 15,81,144 mds. were actually imported on private account by sea, principally from England, Bombay and the Persian Gulf, and sold to the retailers after payment of the fixed duty. The only real privilege which the Government does possess by law, and which would be absolutely necessary for the security of the revenue, even if the duty were levied on home-made salt in a manner more nearly resembling that

in which excise duties both in England and India are usually collected, is that of prohibiting the manufacture except under certain conditions. Those conditions are, that all the salt shall be delivered to the agents of Government, appointed for that purpose, at a price fixed long before the manufacture takes place and well known to the people engaged in it. The price varies from seven to twelve annas a maund, and is fixed at a rate calculated to afford the manufacturers a fair profit, such as they would derive from their trade if it were free from all restrictions; to this is added the actual cost of transporting and storing the salt, and of guarding it after it has been stored; and these items, together with the fixed amount of duty levied on imported salt, constitute the price at which it is deliverable at the public warehouses in quantities of not less than fifty maunds. By the use of the word "monopoly" people are led to imagine that the Government possess and exercise the power to depress the interests of the manufacturer, and to derive a profit from the necessities of the people or the fluctuation of trade; whereas, in effect, the Government only say to the manufacturers," Instead of paying us a duty of two rupees and twelve annas upon every maund of salt you make and sell (to secure which payment it will be necessary to subject you to all kinds of inconvenient restrictions) deliver us your salt at a fair remunerative price, and we will realise the duty, through the wholesale dealers, from the consumer." And to the wholesale dealers, "Instead of collecting your salt in small quantities from the molunghees at a hundred different places in the Sunderbuns and other seaboard districts, and paying us through them, in driblets, the duty of two rupees and twelve annas on every maund, you may purchase at our warehouses in quantities of not less than fifty maunds, (under two tons) at fixed and advertised prices, equal in each case to the prime cost of manufacture and storage added to the duty aforesaid; unless indeed you prefer the imported salt upon which duty has already been paid and which the owners are free to dispose of as they please." The Government, in short, do nothing more than step in between the manufacturer and wholesale dealer, without interfering with the profits of either and take the salt from the former as security for the payment of the fixed duty by the latter.

That this plan is agreeable to the manufacturers themselves we propose to shew more fully in the sequel. We will here only advert to the fact, that in 1845 the Cheshire salt proprietors, actually proposed to the Court of Directors

to enter into an engagement to deliver to the public authorities in India a supply of salt on similar terms, instead of importing it, like ordinary merchandise, subject to the payment of customs duty. This offer was of course declined, and we apprehend the Government would be equally well pleased to wash its hands of the enormous labor and risk involved in the annual purchase and sale of from forty to fifty thousand maunds of home made salt, if they could be satisfied of the possibility of raising an equal or nearly an equal amount of revenue, with equal or nearly equal facility and convenience to all parties, under any other plan. That the present system is agreeable to the wholesale dealers needs no demonstration. Of its effect on the consumers we shall speak hereafter. We only here desire to affirm, in limine, that none of the features of a monopoly are incidental to the existing mode of levying the salt tax, and whatever be the merits or demerits of the tax itself, and of the method of collecting it, we request our candid readers to judge of them by reference to actual facts and consequences, and not by the mistaken use of an inappropriate byeword.

We now proceeed with our history. Under the Mahommedan Government an ad valorem duty of five per cent. payable by Gentoos, and two and a half per cent. payable by Mussulmans, was levied at Hoogly on the wholesale price of salt transported into the interior of the country. After the East India Company had acquired possession of Calcutta and the 24-Pergunnahs, their officers levied a chokey or transit duty on all boats conveying salt from the manufacturing aurungs or districts, and likewise imposed upon the manufacture within the limits of the Company's territory a rent of three rupees per khalary, or Salt Work. These imposts were commuted in 1762 to a consolidated tax of thirty rupees per khalary, but shortly afterwards in order to reimburse the Company for the liquidation of certain balances due by the molunghees or mauufacturers to the farmers of the revenue, a further tax was imposed of ten rupees on every 100 maunds of salt produced at the said khalaries. Each khalary was supposed to be capable of yielding from 250 to 300 maunds in the season, and the quantity ordinarily produced being about 25,00,000 maunds, the revenue which the East India Company ought to have received under these arrangements may be estimated at about five lakhs of rupees, or £50,000l. sterling a year. We regret that it is not in our power to inform our readers what amount of revenue was actually realised on account of salt previous to 1765, but the evidence taken before the Select

Committee of the House of Commons in 1773 leaves no doubt, that the malversation of the farmers and the mismanagement and connivance of the Company's servants, left but a small proportion of it to find its way in the shape of net profit into the public treasury.

It was not until the end of 1757, that the servants of the Company and other Englishmen began to trade with the natives in salt, and although they claimed a general exemption from all duties under the Emperor's firman, yet in practice they appear to have paid to the Nawab the established duty on salt, in addition to the tax levied by the Company's Government. In 1763 it was settled in the treaty concluded by Mr. Vansittart with Nawab Kasim Ali Khan at Monghyr, that the transit duty levied by the latter on salt taken by Englishmen into his dominions should be raised to nine per cent. But the Council at Calcutta refused to ratify this engagement, which they asserted was entered into by their President without their concurrence, and the English were afterwards, on the accession of Jaffir Ali Khan to the viceroyalty, placed on a footing with the Mahommedan subjects of the Emperor, and permitted to trade in salt on payment of the lower rate of duty, or two and a half per cent. This state of things continued until the assumption of the Dewany by Lord Clive, on the part of the East India Company, in 1765.

Previous to this period the price of salt seems to have been subject to great fluctuation. From the evidence taken before the Select Committee appointed by the House of Commons in 1773, it appears that the price of salt at Calcutta, including the khalary and transit duties levied on behalf of the East India Company, was as follows:

Rs. 156 at 170 the 100 mds.

In 1761
1762

..

1763

1764

1765

Mr. William Bolts, a merchant of Calcutta, who was one of the principal witnesses examined before the Committee gave the following evidence on the subject:

"The khalary or ground duty upon the making of salt, all over Bengal and Orissa, was always extremely inconsiderable, before the establishment of the regulations made by the various Committees of the English Council at Calcutta, from the year 1762 to the present time; insomuch that a salt merchant making his salt at first hand, in a great part of the salt countries could have made, transported, and landed his salt in Calcutta, within the expense of twenty-five Rupees per hundred maunds.