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The Third Earl Grey and the Maintenance of an Imperial Policy on the Sale of Crown Lands in Ceylon, c. 1832–1852

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2011

K. M. de Silva
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Extract

Among the cardinal weaknesses of existing studies on British land policy in Ceylon is the almost total neglect of any reference to the theoretical foundations of this policy, and the tendency to study the situation in Ceylon in isolation instead of against the background and within the wider context of a colonial land policy. These weaknesses are all the more glaring for the years from c. 1830 to 1855 when a common land policy was gradually but systematically imposed throughout the British Empire, and an institutional apparatus controlling land policy and emigration was built up. The basis of the land policy of these years was an adherence to some of the fundamental principles of the theories of Edward Gibbon Wakefield.

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Articles
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The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 27 , Issue 1 , November 1967 , pp. 5 - 20
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Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1967

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References

1 For a review of Wakefield's theories, see particularly, Mills, R. C., The Colonization of Australia, 1825–42, the Wakefield Experiment in Empire Building (London, 1915)Google Scholar; Knorr, K. E., British Colonial Theories (Toronto, 1941)Google Scholar; Morrell, W. P., British Colonial Policy in the Age of Peel and Russell (Oxford, 1930)Google Scholar; Winch, D., Classical Political Economy and Colonies (London, 1965)Google Scholar. There is a trenchant criticism of some features of the Wakefield doctrines in Merivale, H., Lectures on Colonisation and Colonies, 2d ed. (London, 1861)Google Scholar. For the land policy of the Colonial Office, see Riddell, R. G., “A Study on the Land Policy of the Colonial Office, 1763–1855,” Canadian Historical Review, XVIII, 385–405.Google Scholar

2 For Grey's own views on land policy, see, the third Grey, Earl, The Colonial Policy of Lord John Russell's Administration, 2 vols, 2d ed. (London, 1853), I, 304 ff.Google Scholar

3 Riddell, , op. cit., p. 399Google Scholar; Knaplund, P., Sir James Stephen and the British Colonial System 1813–47 (Wisconsin, 1953) p. 73Google Scholar; Mills, , op. cit., pp. 160–63Google Scholar; Winch, , op. cit., pp. 107 ffGoogle Scholar. For Grey's acknowledgment of Wakefield's influence, see his speech in Hansard 3rd series, XLVII, 898–99Google Scholar. Winch notes that Wakefield addressed a number of articles on colonialization to Howick. Letters to Lord Howick, signed P in The Spectator, 1830–31.

4 For a full treatment of the theory of the “sufficient price,” see Mills, , op. cit., pp. 98–120, 327–32.Google Scholar

5 Wakefield, E. G., A View of The Art of Colonisation (London, 1849, reprinted Oxford, 1914), p. 339.Google Scholar

6 Ibid., p. 347.

7 Wakefield was very critical of the auction system, and he expressed his dissatisfaction with it in his evidence before the House of Commons Committee on Colonial Waste Lands (1836) and the Committee on South Australia (1841). He called Grey “the parent of the auction nuisance in our colonies.”

8 Wakefield refused to commit himself to a precise statement of what he regarded as the “sufficient price.” Indeed as Winch (op. cit., p. 100) points out, Wakefield in his Letter from Sydney stated that he did not know how the price of land should be fixed except by experience.

9 On the question of devoting the whole proceeds of the land fund to emigration, Wakefield's ideas varied from time to time. From the beginning he was willing to accept that incidental expenses such as the costs of surveys should be defrayed from land sales revenue. He was willing to admit that in practice it might be necessary to use land sales revenue for other purposes, from improving means of communication in a colony to meeting the cost of general administration. See, Mills, , op. cit., p. 110.Google Scholar

10 The Chairman of this Committee was Henry Ward who was later to be Governor of Ceylon (1855–60). The other members were Francis Baring, H. L. Bulwer, W. E. Gladstone, Sir George Grey, William Hutt, J. A. Roebuck and P. Scrope. The principal witness before the Committee was Wakefield himself.

11 Wakefield went on Durham's personal payroll as his advisor.

12 The Durham Report urged that the “only points on which the mother country requires a control” are “the constitution of the form of government—the regulation of foreign relations, and of trade with the mother country, the other British colonies and foreign nations—and the disposal of public land.” Lucas, C. P., ed., The Durham Report (3 volumes, Oxford, 1912) II, 281–82.Google Scholar

13 Hitchins, F. H., The Colonial Land & Emigration Commissioners (Philadelphia, 1931).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14 Mills, , op. cit., p. 326.Google Scholar

15 Riddell, , op. cit., p. 401.Google Scholar

16 On the immigration of Indian labor to Ceylon during the coffee era (i.e. from about 1835 to about 1880) see particularly, M. W. Roberts, “Indian Estate Labour in Ceylon during the Coffee Period, 1830–1880,” Parts I & II, The Indian Economic and Social History Review, III(1), 1–52, 111(2), 101–136Google Scholar. de Silva, K. M., Social Policy and Missionary Organizations in Ceylon, 1840–1855 (London, 1965) pp. 235–81.Google Scholar

17 A good many of these speculators turned out to be senior civil servants of the Ceylon government.

18 As this essay will attempt to show, Grey showed some grasp of this.

19 For a review of the history of coffee cultivation in Ceylon, see Driesen, I. H. Vanden, “Coffee Cultivation in Ceylon,” Ceylon Historical Journal, III, 31–61, 156–72Google Scholar. Two notable contemporary accounts are, Lewis, R. E., Coffee Planting in Ceylon—Past and Present (Colombo, 1855)Google Scholar, and Rigg, C. R., “Coffee Planting in Ceylon,” The Ceylon Examiner, June 16, 1852.Google Scholar

20 This was part of the old Kandyan kingdom, the last independent kingdom in Ceylon. It was ceded to the British in 1815.

21 Chena (hena in Sinhalese) was a forest clearing. Chena cultivation was a form of shifting agriculture practiced in the forests around the village settlements. The chenas specialized in the cultivation of “dry” grains rather than rice, and the income derived from this source supplemented that from rice which was the staple village crop.

Although shifting cultivation in Ceylon had much in common with shifting cultivation in other parts of Asia and Africa, there was one significant difference—in Ceylon shifting cultivation was practiced by a peasantry which undertook permanent methods of cultivation in paddy fields and gardens.

22 Lewis, , op. cit., pp. 36–38Google Scholar; Rigg, , op. cit.Google Scholar, Ferguson, A. M., Ceylon in 1837–46 (Colombo, 1886) p. 36.Google Scholar

23 Among the factors impeding population expansion were polyandry and regular epidemics of cholera and smallpox. These epidemics tended to become more virulent and more frequent with the immigration of plantation labor from South India.

24 At the census of 1821, the population of the Kandyan area was 256, 836. In 1833, the administrative boundaries within the island were drawn afresh, and parts of the Kandyan provinces were attached to the low-lying areas of the Maritime districts. There were to be five provinces in all and of these the Central Province constituted the core of the old Kandyan kingdom. The annual Blue Book of statistical information relating to the island for the years 1843 to 1846 estimates the population of the Central Province at around 190,000 and its extent at about 3,000 square miles. The population figures were at best an intelligent guess.

25 A recent student of the economic history of this period, estimates the population of the Central Province in the mid-eighteen forties at around 150,000. He makes the point that during the whole coffee period, the peasant population of the Central Province possessed enough land for chena cultivation, even though population more than doubled itself in the period 1830 to 1880; in addition the peasants were able to convert into “native” coffee at least 50,000 acres of chena. Jayawardana, L., “The Supply of Sinhalese Labour to Ceylon Plantations (1830–1930).” Unpublished Ph.D. thesis (Cambridge, 1963), pp. 116–23.Google Scholar

26 See W. H. Simms's memorandum to Governor Torrington, enclosed in Colonial Office despatches series 54, volume 240 (hereafter, C.O.54/240 etc.) Torrington, to Grey, , despatch 150 of November 8, 1847.Google Scholar

27 Up to 1846 the government had sold about 280,000 acres of land throughout Ceylon, including land sold to native buyers, and to planters in the Maritime provinces. Of this only 52,722½ acres were actually planted with coffee at that date.

28 Mendis, G. C., ed., The Colebrooke-Cameron Papers, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1956). I, 218.Google Scholar

29 Ibid., p. 88.

30 Ibid., p. 252.

31 Robert Wilmot-Horton, an early advocate of emigration schemes, and competitor with Wakefield's National Colonization Society for public interest in Colonial affairs, served as Governor of Ceylon from 1831 to 1837. Wilmot-Horton was numbered among Wakefield's most notable critics. During his administration of Ceylon, the revenue from the sale of crown lands for plantation agriculture first made its impact on the island's revenues; a critic of laissez-faire policies, Wilmot-Horton advocated more direct participation by government in the affairs of a colony than Wakefield recommended. But while he welcomed the participation of European capitalists in ventures in Ceylon, he realized that Ceylon was a tropical colony where European settlement could never be extensive. Thus the only aspect of Wakefield's theories that affected him in Ceylon were the land sales system (sale by auction) and the idea of a minimum upset price, both of which he accepted without any strong objection. For Wilmot-Horton's administration of Ceylon see, Hardy, S. M., “Wilmot-Horton's Govenment of Ceylon, 1831–1837,” University of Birmingham Historical Journal, VII (2), 180–99Google Scholar, and Philalethes (Wilmot-Horton) Letters on Colonial Policy, particularly as applicable to Ceylon (Colombo, 1833).Google Scholar

32 See particularly Pridham, C., An Historical Political and Statistical Account of Ceylon, 2 volumes. (London, 1849), I, 400–01Google Scholar. Pridham has had access to official documents on land problems of this period, and he quotes quite extensively from the despatches without acknowledging his source.

33 Driesen, I. H. Vanden, “Plantation Agriculture & Land-Sales Policy in Ceylon—The first phase, 1836–1886; Part I,” University of Ceylon Review, XIV, 6–25Google Scholar; particularly pp. 10–17. See also C.O. 54/179, Mackenzie, to Russell, , 62 of April 9, 1840Google Scholar; C.O. 54/180, Mackenzie, to Russell, despatch of May I, 1840Google Scholar; C.O. 54/196, Campbell, to Stanley, , 26 of February 12, 1842Google Scholar, 51 of April 11, 1842, and 80 of May 27, 1842.

34 The auction system worked as follows. The intending buyer selected a tract of land and handed in his application for it to the Surveyor-General's Office with a description of its locality and boundaries and a statement of the extent required in acres. In time a government surveyor was sent along who marked out the boundaries and measured the land, not however being pledged to the exact boundaries or acreages desired by the purchaser. The land was then put up for public auction. If there were no bidders, and usually there were none, the land was sold at the minimum upset price. The purchaser was also expected to meet the costs of the survey, the plan and the title deeds. See Pridham, , op. cit., I, 400.Google Scholar

35 C.O. 54/196. Stanley, to Campbell, , 137 of September 21, 1842Google Scholar, and its enclosure, a memorandum from the Colonial Land and Emigration Commissioners to the Colonial Office dated June 8, 1842.

36 He was restrained in this matter by the conservatism of the Imperial Treasury which suggested a postponement of the adoption of this principle until “the settlement of the finances of the Island which is now in its crisis.” See C.O. 54/200, Trevelyan, C. E.'s letter to Stephen, James of July 12, 1842.Google Scholar

37 In fairness to Stanley it is necessary to point out that while Campbell's statement was quite true, it had no real bearing on the two principles at stake; viz., the need to increase the upset price, and the desirability of reserving proceeds from land sales to special purposes instead of merging it with revenue. In fact he accepted the first. How did the presence of considerable private holdings of villagers invalidate the second? Indeed if it was understood that the costs of surveys should be a first charge (before receipts were allotted to the land fund) or else that one of the objects to which the fund could be applied was the enlargement of the survey establishment, its adoption would have helped his purpose.

38 Campbell was anxious to separate the offices of Surveyor-General and Civil Engineer, but the Colonial Office, for long, hesitated to do this, but at last in April of 1846 the separation was approved. Driesen, Vanden, op. cit., p. 17Google Scholar, notes that subsequent events proved Campbell to have been too optimistic in his estimate of the benefits to be derived from this measure.

39 Driesen, Vanden, op. cit., p. 16.Google Scholar

40 Ibid., pp. 16–20.

41 After all, Wakefield's own version was essentially flexible; his “sufficient price” was always to be determined by local demand, to the point of not meeting this local demand so completely as to jeopardize the supply of free labor.

42 Patanas were grasslands generally in the hills.

43 Wakefield argued that the price of land should help maintain a due proportion between land and labor in a colony and should serve to keep laborers working as wage earners for a considerable period before they became owners of land. This restriction, however, in itself was not desirable except as a means to an end; it should merely mark a stage in a laborer's transition to the status of landowner. See Mills, , op. cit., p. 100.Google Scholar

44 C.O. 54/234 Campbell, to Grey, , 44 of March 6, 1847.Google Scholar

45 See the letter of the Colonial Land and Emigration Commissioners to Stephen, James of May 14, 1847Google Scholar in C.O. 54/241 where they recommended the transmission to Ceylon of a copy of the Order-in-Council of March 9, 1847 for establishing “Regulations relative to the occupation of Waste Lands in New South Wales under the powers for that purpose contained in Act 9 & 10 Victoria, c. 104.”

46 C.O. 54/244 Torrington to Grey, Memorandum No. 10 on Ceylon.

47 Ibid. Torrington made the point that the regulation relating to wastelands in New South Wales could hardly serve as a model for Ceylon since conditions in the two colonies were so totally dissimilar. It was Torrington's contention that the crown lands in Ceylon showed much greater variation as regards the nature and quality of soils than lands in New South Wales.

48 In his book The Colonial Policy of Lord John Russell's Administration, Grey outlined his objections to the lowering of the minimum upset price of land. “There can be no doubt that, by reducing the price so much as would be necessary to meet the views of the chief opponents of the existing system, a powerful impulse would be given to the spirit of land jobbing—the curse of countries of which the settlement is in progress. Speculators would soon buy up (if it were sold at a very low price) the land eligible for the occupation of settlers; and thus persons hereafter proceeding to the colony to settle, would be compelled to pay for land the highest price which the greediness of the land jobber could extort, instead of paying a moderate price for land purchased direct from the crown, with the advantage of having the money so paid expended in the introduction of labour, in the construction of roads, or in other works if utility, and thus virtually returned to them in the increased value given to their property.” Grey, , op. cit., I, 317–18.Google Scholar

49 C.O. 54/244 Grey's minute, no date, on Torrington to Grey, Memorandum No. 10.

50 de Silva, K. M., ed., Letters on Ceylon, 1846–50, The Administration of Viscount Torrington and The ‘Rebellion’ of 1848 (Colombo and Kandy, 1965), pp. 5–11.Google Scholar

51 C.O. 54/256, Torrington, to Grey, , 224 of December 13, 1848.Google Scholar

52 C.O. 54/260, Torrington, to Grey, , 116 of September 8, 1849Google Scholar, and 124 of September 14, 1849. The first of these referred to an application to Government on behalf of a Mr. Tyndall, a substantial shipowner of London, and proprietor of one of the largest coffee estates in the neighborhood of Kandy, Hunnasgiriya Estate, to be allowed to buy 2,000 acres of land on the banks for the Walawe Ganga in the Southern Province for sugar cultivation, at a lower upset price than the minimum then in force. The Ceylon Executive Council at its meeting September 7, 1849 recorded its “conviction that the public interests suffer injury and inconvenience from the rigid maintenance of the £1 an acre system in all cases in this colony.” The despatch of September 14, 1849 referred to an application from Wilson, Ritchie, & Co., to rent 50 acres of government land in the neighborhood of Negombo at 2sh. an acre per annum, and also to buy 1,000 acres of land in the same locality at 5sh. an acre for the purpose of supplying peat for fuel for the needs of the Belmont Mills which they occupied.

53 C.O. 54/260, Grey, to Torrington, , 473 of December 19, 1849.Google Scholar

54 C.O. 54/266, Grey, to Torrington, , 370 of March 24, 1849.Google Scholar

55 This reference to speculation needs explanation. One of the objections raised by the Colonial Land and Emigration Commissioners to the concession urged by Torrington, was that Europeans might be provided an opportunity of acquiring Crown Lands at less than their actual value “through the agency of the natives.” The Commissioners explained that “… the main object of imposing a high price on land is to prevent inordinate speculation whether by natives or Europeans, which has been shown to be universally injurious. And we can see nothing in the circumstances of Ceylon to lead us to suppose that it would prove an exception to this general rule. We cannot therefore recommend an exceptional law which would enable the natives to purchase land for the purpose of reselling.” A more valid point, but one which neither the Commissioners nor Grey explicitly stated was that since chena cultivation hardly called for permanent possession, all that was needed was a lease or a permit for one or more years. Purchase implied an intention to develop intensive cultivation. C.O. 54/266, the Report of the Land and Emigration Commissioners, February 24, 1849, on Torrington, to Grey, , 224 of December 13, 1848.Google Scholar

56 C.O. 54/266, Grey, to Torrington, , 370 of March 24, 1849Google Scholar, paragraph 10.

57 C.O. 54/260, Grey, to Torrington, , 473 of December 19, 1849Google Scholar. Thus he urged that the money to be obtained from Tyndall for the Walawe lands, should be spent on road improvements or minor flood protection schemes in that area.

58 C.O. 54/278, Anderson, to Grey, , 42 of 03 29, 1851Google Scholar, and Grey's reply, 80 of May 30, 1851.

59 Grey, , op. cit., I, 319.Google Scholar

60 Riddell, , op cit., p. 404–05Google Scholar. See also Merivale, H., Lectures on Colonialization and Colonies (London, 1861), p. 423.Google Scholar

61 C.O. 54/298, Anderson to the Duke of Newcastle, 6 of March 3, 1853.

62 C.O. 54/298, Newcastle, to Anderson, , 61 of May 24, 1853.Google Scholar

63 Ibid.

64 Instructions to this effect were sent to Ceylon in Sir George Grey's despatch to Anderson, , 17 of July 18, 1854Google Scholar in C.O. 54/312. But it was Anderson's successor Ward who first gave effect to them when he allowed the people of the Batticaloa district to pay the purchase money in four equal installments in four years. See, C.O. 54/328 Ward's despatch to Labouchere, , 31 of February 27, 1857Google Scholar, and the enclosed minutes on Land Sales by Ward of the same date. During the four years in which the purchase money was being paid, the land was exempted from the paddy tax.

65 C.O. 54/312. Land and Emigration Commissioners' memorandum to the Colonial Office, July 10, 1854.

66 Ibid.