British Merchants and Planters

(Excertped from Selected Journalism by HAJ Hulugalle)

If it is now the end of the road for the agency houses (this article was first published March 1976), the event marks an important landmark in the Island’s history. It is a traumatic experience for those closely concerned, like the coffee crash in the middle of the last century when local banks were compelled to close down.

Agency houses may be irrelevant in the present context and unless they have read the signs of the times ahead and sought other avenues, they too will be forced to put up their shutters. It is now fashionable to regard them as the principle instrument of exploitation adopted by the foreign capitalist. Their contribution to the development of the country is too easily forgotten. As Shakespeare’s Mark Antony said, “the evil that men do lives after them, the good is oft interred with their bones.”

The first agency house in Ceylon, Acland. Boyd and Company, was opened in 1829. One of the partners was a Member of the Legislative Council. The next was Crowe and Co., and George Crabbe, a partner was an MLC in 1840.

Many of the higher officials of the Government including the Governor himself, were involved in the rush to buy and develop tracts of forest land. There was plenty of land and the population was a mere fraction of what it is today. The biggest mistake the Government committed was to fail to demarcate land for village expansion and the future needs of a fast-growing population. This may be a hindsight view, for the expectation of life even in England then was 40 years. In Ceylon today, it is 60.

The foreign capitalists minded their business and were detached from the general population. They lived to themselves, – had their exclusive clubs and associations, and employed Ceylonese with rare exceptions in subordinate positions. They brought labour from India when they could not get willing and amenable workers in Ceylon. All these practices have left their mark.

The massive contribution made by the agency houses, despite serious setbacks like the coffee crash, was the building up of the tea, rubber and coconut industries, to say nothing of the minor ones like cinnamon, cardamom and cocoa. It is these industries which today enable our people to maintain a reasonable standard of living which could be improved if they were able to organize better and work harder.

At the end of the last century there was a steady flow to Ceylon of young Britishers seeking employment in the mercantile and planting spheres of the economy. Some of them reached the top and were even knighted. They-strove in their respective fields of activity to serve not only their own interests but also those of Ceylon as well as their mother country. They worked hard, made their money and sometimes settled down in the Island.

I came into close contact with a few of them in the course of my work as a journalist, especially with those who were members of the legislature. One of them was Thomas Lister Villiers. He arrived in Ceylon in 1887, at the age of 18-years, with 10 pounds in his pockets, to take up a job as a planting apprentice.

His father, Prebendary Henry Montagu Villiers, belonged to the Clarendon family and his mother was a daughter of Lord John Russell, one of Queen Victoria’s Prime Ministers. He was brought up with his cousin, Bertrand Russell, the third Earl, who was in his day a well-known philosopher and scientist.

Villier’s career as a planter demonstrated the truth of A P Herbert’s dictum that it needed a public school boy to produce the best tea. Villiers had been to Sherborne.

In due course, he bought Dickoya Estate and came down to Colombo in 1906 to join George Steuart and Co., whose founder was once Master Attendant and Magistrate of the Joint Police Court, Colombo. Keenly interested in public affairs, Villiers was a member of the Colombo Municipal Council for 10 years, and later a member of the Legislative Council (1924-31), and the State Council (193132).

He built himself a baronial mansion at Haputale and called it “Adisham.” The rows and rows of faces which confronted the ornate staircase were those of his aristocratic forebears through whom he was related to, or connected with, half the ruling families in England.

When I first came to know him he was about twice my age. Having made the first draft of his well-known book, ‘Mercantile Lore’ he wrote me a letter dated December 1, 1938 :

Dear Mr. Hulugalle, – Though I do not think I have had the pleasure of meeting you, I feel that I know you through your writings, and Mr. G K Stewart has I know, told you about my proposed publication, and the interest that you are taking in it. I am sorry that you cannot come on the 3rd but quite understand that it is impossible, and possibly it is a good thing, for you may have occasion to disagree with me after my speech on the 8th, though I do not think so, and certainly hope not.

I am going to Dickoya on my way back from Colombo, but if you promise definitely to come on the December 10, I will postpone that visit. It is really the last week-end that I can make free, for I am thinking of going to Bombay the following, week to meet my wife, who is such an invalid that I cannot promise any date after her arrival. If you come by the night mail of Friday 10th, I would arrange to have you met. – Yours sincerely, Tom Villiers.

Soon, I was spending week-ends at “Adisham” and helping him with his book. He appreciated my co-operation and made me write the Preface to his second book, a slim volume called “Pioneers of the Tea Industry.” Anyone wanting to write a history of the agency houses, a worthy project, will find his two books invaluable.

I have a pile of letters from Sir Thomas Villiers discussing all sorts of topics such as the usefulness of the Bank of Ceylon with State participation, of the Marketing Board and Anglo-Ceylonese relations. In a letter written in 1940 he said, “What the Europeans want to do is to help the Singhalese to hold their own, but certain members of that community, unfortunately the noisy section do all they can to antagonize the European. Probably we appear to antagonize the Singhalese and I know this is so. I regret it.”

Lady Villiers died in Bombay after a long illness and he wrote to me to say that “it is difficult to face an entirely new life at my age, but anyway I am relieved to think that she is past all pain and sorrow.” He left Ceylon in 1949 and died 10 years later in England.

I also have letters from M. J. Cary, who was also a member of the Legislative Council, Col. T. Y. Wright and Sir John Tarbat. Cary was troubled about the island’s financial situation and said,

“You have a hard task to try and create any sort of public opinion against expenditure. The public is very ready to cry out when taxed, but will never unite in protesting against either the creation of additional posts or money spent on building.”

T. Y. Wright who had a distinguished planting career in Kurunegala, my home town, knew my family well. As I indicated at the beginning of this article the system may or may not have been beneficial to the Ceylonese, but many of the men who were called upon to work it were decent human beings.

(First published in 1976)