But besides presents and official incomes, there were the farming of the revenues, and domestic trade, which opened up boundless sources of profit. The revenues were received in each district by zemindars from the ryots or husbandmen, and handed, after a fixed deduction, to the chief office of the revenue. But between these zemindars and the ryots were aumils, or other inferior officers, who farmed the revenues in each lesser district or village; that is, contracted with the zemindars for the revenues at a certain sum, and took the trouble of exacting them from the ryots, who paid a rate fixed by law or ancient custom, and could not be turned out of their lands while such rate was regularly paid. Wherever the English obtained a claim over the revenues of a prince, which we have seen they speedily did, they soon became the zemindars, or their agents, the aumils, or other middlemen between them and the ryots. Anciently, the ryots paid one tenth of their produce, for all their taxes were paid in kind, but in time the rate grew to more than half. When the English power became more fixed and open, and it was found that under the native zemindars the exactions of the revenues did not at all satisfy their demands, they took on themselves the whole business of collecting these revenues. This, as we shall see, on the evidence of the Company’s own officers, became a dreadful system to the people. The Mahomedan exactions had been generally regarded more considerate than those of the native Hindu chiefs; but the grinding pressure of the English system brought on the unfortunate ryot the most unexampled misery. Of this, however, anon. It only requires here to be pointed out as one of the various sources of enormous profits and jobbing which made India so irresistibly attractive to Englishmen.
The private trade was another grand source of revenue. The public trade, that is, the transit of goods to and from Europe, was the peculiar monopoly of the Company; but all coasting trade—trade to and between the isles, and in the interior of India, became a monopoly of the higher servants of the Company, who were at once engaged in the Company’s concerns and their own. The monopoly of salt, opium, betel, and other commodities became a mine of wealth. The Company’s servants could fix the price at whatever rate they pleased, and thus enhance it to the unfortunate people so as to occasion them the most intense distress. Fortunes were made in a day by this monopoly, and without the advance of a single shilling. The very Governor-general himself engaged in this private trade; and contracts were given to favourites on such terms, that two or three fortunes were made out of them before they reached the merchant. In one case that came out on the trial of Warren Hastings, a contract for opium had been given to Mr. Sullivan, though he was going into quite a different part of India, and on public business; this, of course, he sold again, to Mr. Benn, for 40,000_l._; and Mr. Benn immediately sold it again for 60,000_l._, clearing 20,000_l._ by the mere passing of the contract from one hand to the other; and the purchaser then declared that he made a large sum by it.