Indian Antiquary Vol 58

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Charles E A W Oldham, S Krishnaswami Aiyangar, Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarka
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 204

189
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
[OCTOBER, 1929
THE EARLY DEVELOPMENT OF THE GOVERNMENT OF THE PRESIDENCY OF
FORT Sr. GEORGE.
By C. S. SRINIVASACHARI, M.A. For long the English system of administration, in the early days when their Indian settlements had not attained to anything like great strength, was a haphazard growth. As Kave well remarks ;! "Wę traded, wo conqucrcd, wo governed. It was long before this matter of government came palpably before us. At first all that we had to do was to govern ourselves, and this we did in a very loose manner-rather according to laws of power and impulses of passion than to principles of justice and reason."
The Company's factors were subject of course to the orders of their own immediate chiefs. Surat, the earliest English factory in the country, was controlled by the Council of the factors but often the General or Commander of the Fleet had a regulating power. The factors complained that he regulated their promotion and precedence, that consultations were often held on board the ships in the roads, that the Chief of the factory signed his name after that of the chief naval officer, and that the captains of the ships sat often in their coun. cils and interfered in their affairs. With regard to the factors' relations with Indians, their disputes had to be adjusted by the tribunals of the Native powers-as instanced by the terms of Captain Best's treaty with the Mughal Viceroy of Gujarat that" in all questions, wrongs and injuries that shall be offered to us and to our nation we do receive from the judges and those that be in authority speedy justice, according to the quality of our complaints and wrongs done us, and that by delays we be not put off or wearied by time or charge." As among themselves, that is, among the English residents, justice was administered in cri. minal cases by virtue of a King's Commission under the Great Seal which empowered the Commissioners to punish and execute offenders by martial law—this is illustrated by a Surat record of 1616 describing the crimirtal proceedings which condemned a murderer to death." In civil cases the President or the chief of the factory had absolute powers.
All the establishments on the Western Coast and in the interior were first subordinate to Surat ; while those on the Coromandel Coast, including Madras also for some years, were subject to the factory at Bantam. Each Presidency came to be under a President and Council ; and in course of time the control of the naval authorities was shaken off. The authority of the Presi. dent became supreme; the Council came to possess definite functions, and by the close of the 17th century, there had grown up the nucleus of the body, that is now known as the Indian Civil Service, with the gradations of writers, factors, merchants, and senior merchants. 4
The names of the Company's servants had to be enrolled in a regular seniority list; they could be transferred from one Presidency to another; and on occasions of emergency or when there was strife in any agency (so the subordinate factory was called) the Directors sent out one of their own number or a relative of one of their chief members to improve the affairs.
1 The Administration of the East India Company (1853), p. 64.
2 Thus Kaye quotes from the MS. India House Records that Joseph Salbank, one of the oldest of the Surat factors, wrote home in 1617 complaining that "your proud captain Keeling towards whom I have ever carried myseli genteelly, or rather more humbly than I ought to have done, should offer me that indignity as to place me under punies and younglings to whom for my years' sake I might be esteemed grandfather, yea, this he did though he never saw them to whom he gave precedence above me."
3 The condemnation of Gregory Lellington to death for the offence of manslaughter by a Surat Consultation of February, 1616, preserved in the MS. Records of the India Office, being, according to Kaye, "the earliest account of our judicial proceedings in India."
• The Court Letters of the Company say thus :-." For the advancement of our apprentices we direct, that after they have served the first five years, they shall have £10 per annum for the last two years; and having served those two years, to be entertained one year longer as writers and have writer's salary, and having served that year to enter into the degree of factors, which otherwise would have hoen ten years. And knowing that a distinction of titles is in many respects necessary, we do order that when the coprentices have served their terms they be styled writers, when the writers have served their torms they le styled factors, and factors having served their terms to be styled as merchants." (P. from England, vol. 1 : 24th December, 1075, and The Madras Manual of Administration (1884, vol. I, pp. 166-167).