The Charter Act of 1813

Why it matters to a legislature topic

Three reasons, and an answer should give all three because the Act is otherwise easy to describe as merely commercial.

Sovereignty makes legislation intelligible. A legislature must legislate for somebody, under some authority. Once Parliament had declared the Crown's sovereignty over the Indian territories, the question "by what right does the Governor-General in Council make law for the inhabitants of Bengal?" has an answer. Before 1813 it did not have a clear one, and the judges of the Supreme Court had complained of exactly that, as Module I records.

The education clause is the beginning of a State duty. A legislature that appropriates revenue for the education of the people it governs is doing something no trading company's ordinance-making power had contemplated. The lakh of rupees is small; the principle is not, and the Charter Act of 1833's Law Commission and the codification that followed are the same idea applied to law.

And the end of the monopoly changed who was in India. Free merchants, planters and missionaries arrived in numbers, and their presence produced most of the legal questions of the next half century: the jurisdiction over Europeans in the mofussil, the position of the indigo planters, and eventually the Ilbert Bill controversy of 1883.

A worked example

Three questions that could not be answered in 1800 and can be answered in 1815.

"By what authority is the revenue of Bengal collected?" In 1800: as Diwan under a grant of the Mughal Emperor, by a company holding a charter from the Crown. In 1815: by a company administering territories over which Parliament has declared the sovereignty of the Crown to be undoubted.

"May an English missionary settle in Bengal and open a school?" In 1800: not without the Company's leave, which was refused as a matter of policy. In 1815: yes, under licence.

"Is any part of the revenue applied to the education of Indians?" In 1800: no. In 1815: not less than one lakh of rupees a year is to be set apart.

What beginners get wrong

"The Charter Act of 1813 ended the Company's monopoly." It ended the monopoly of the Indian trade. The China trade and the tea trade remained the Company's until the Charter Act of 1833.

"It created a legislature." It extended existing legislative authority. The single all-India legislature is the work of the Charter Act of 1833.

"The education clause created universities." It set apart a sum out of the revenues. What was to be done with it, and in particular whether it should be spent on oriental or on English learning, was fought over for twenty years and settled, after Macaulay's minute, in favour of English education in 1835.

"1813 transferred India to the Crown." It asserted the Crown's sovereignty; the government of India passed to the Crown only by the Government of India Act 1858, after the events of 1857.

Limits and criticism

The honest place to put the criticism of this chapter is on the authority base rather than on the Act.

We do not hold the text of the Charter Act of 1813. The compendium this book's statutes come from begins its documents at 1773 and moves from Pitt's Act to 1833; the India Office collection of charters ends in 1761; and the United Kingdom's statute website cannot be reached from this network at all. What is stated above is the Act's effect, taken from the period authorities that set it out provision by provision, and nothing in this chapter is quoted as the statute's own words.

That is a real limitation and it is recorded here rather than concealed. A student answering on the Charter Act of 1813 should give its effects, which are well settled and consistently stated, and should not attempt to quote it.

The criticism of the Act itself is the one that applies to the whole of this half of Module IV: an Act about the government of India, debated at length in Parliament, with a provision for the education of Indians and none for their representation, passed in a year in which no Indian sat in any body that could make law for India.

Quick revision

• Charter Act 1813, 53 Geo. III c. 155. Renewed the charter for twenty years.
• Ended the monopoly of the Indian trade; kept the China trade and tea.
• Asserted the undoubted sovereignty of the Crown over the Indian territorial possessions.
• Admitted missionaries under licence; created the bishopric of Calcutta.
• Not less than one lakh of rupees a year for the revival and improvement of literature, the encouragement of learned Indians and the promotion of the sciences.
• Extended the legislative authority of the Indian Governments.
• We hold no text of this Act; effects only, from the period authorities.

Test yourself

1. What did the Charter Act of 1813 do to the Company's monopoly? It ended the Company's exclusive right to trade with India, throwing that trade open to British merchants under licence, while leaving the Company its monopoly of the China trade and of the trade in tea until 1833.

2. What is the constitutionally important provision of the Act, and why? The express assertion of the undoubted sovereignty of the Crown over the Indian territorial possessions. It matters because it supplied the answer to the question by what authority law was made and revenue collected in India, which the Regulating Act and the Settlement Act had left unstated.

3. State the education provision. That a sum of not less than one lakh of rupees a year should be set apart out of the surplus territorial revenues for the revival and improvement of literature, the encouragement of the learned natives of India, and the introduction and promotion of a knowledge of the sciences among the inhabitants of the British territories in India.

4. Why should an answer on this Act not contain a quotation? Because no reachable source prints its text: the compendium used for the other statutes in this book jumps from Pitt's Act to 1833, the India Office charter collection ends in 1761, and legislation.gov.uk is unreachable. The Act's effects are well settled and can be stated; its words should not be invented.