o more
than mercantile, and the servants were generally unacquainted with the
country, they used the intervention of certain factors among the
natives, which were called _banians_: we called them so, because they
were of the tribe or caste of the banians or merchants,--the Indians
being generally distributed into trades according to their tribes. The
name still continues, when the functions of the banians are totally
altered. The banian is known by other appellations. He is called
_dewan_, or steward; and, indeed, this is a term with more propriety
applied to him in several of his functions. He is, by his name of
office, the steward of the household of the European gentleman: he has
the management of his affairs, and the ordering of his servants. He is
himself a domestic servant, and generally chosen out of that class of
natives who, by being habituated to misery and subjection, can submit to
any orders, and are fit for any of the basest services. Trained under
oppression, (it is the true education,) they are fit to oppress others.
They serve an apprenticeship of servitude to qualify them for the trade
of tyranny. They know all the devices, all the little frauds, all the
artifices and contrivances, the whole panoply of the defensive armor by
which ingenious slavery secures itself against the violence of power.
They know all the lurking-holes, all the winding recesses, of the
unfortunate; and they hunt out distress and misery even to their last
retreats. They have suffered themselves; but, far from being taught by
those sufferings to abstain from rigor, they have only learned the
methods of afflicting their fellow-slaves. They have the best
intelligence of what is done in England. The moment a Company's servant
arrives in India, and his English connections are known to be powerful,
some of that class of people immediately take possession of him, as if
he were their inheritance. They have knowledge of the country and its
affairs; they have money; they have the arts of making money. The
gentleman who comes from England has none of these; he enters into that
world, as he enters into the world at large, naked. His portion is great
simplicity, great indigence, and a strong disposition to relieve
himself. The banian, once in possession, employs his tyranny, not only
over the native people of his country, but often over the master
himself, who has little other share in the proceedings of his servant
but in giving him the ticket