Baxár, 1764.

who ordered 24 of the ringleaders to be blown from guns, an old Mughal punishment. In 1764, Major Munro won the Battle of decisive battle of Baxár, which laid Oudh at the feet of the conquerors, and brought the Mughal Emperor as a suppliant to the English camp.

second

Meanwhile, the Council at Calcutta had twice found the Clive's opportunity they loved of selling the government of Bengal governor. to a new Nawáb. But in 1765, Clive (now Baron Clive of ship, Plassey in the peerage of Ireland) arrived at Calcutta, as 1765-67. Governor of Bengal for the second time. Two landmarks stand out in his policy. First, he sought the substance, although not the name, of territorial power, under the fiction of a grant from the Mughal Emperor. Second, he desired. to purify the Company's service, by prohibiting illicit gains, and guaranteeing a reasonable pay from honest sources. In neither respect were his plans carried out by his immediate But the beginning of our Indian rule dates from this second governorship of Clive, as our military supremacy had dated from his victory at Plassey.

successors.

1765.

Clive landed, advanced rapidly up from Calcutta to Allah- Clive's partition of ábád, and there settled in person the fate of nearly half of Gangetic India. Oudh was given back to the Nawab Wazír, on condi- valley, tion of his paying half a million sterling towards the expenses of the war. The Provinces of Allahábád and Kora,1 forming the greater part of the Doáb, were handed over to Shah Alam himself, who in his turn granted to the Company the diwání Díwání or fiscal administration of Bengal, Behar, and Orissa, and also grant of Bengal, the territorial jurisdiction of the Northern Circars. A puppet 1765. Nawab was still maintained at Murshidábád, who received an annual allowance from us of £600,000. Half that amount, or about £300,000, we paid to the Emperor as tribute from Bengal.' Thus was constituted the dual system of government, by which the English received all the revenues and undertook to maintain the army; while the criminal jurisdiction, or nizámat, was vested in the Nawab. In Indian phraseology, the Company was diwán and the Nawab was nizám. The actual collection of the revenues still remained for some years in the hands of native officials.

Clive's other great task was the reorganization of the Company's service. All the officers, civil and military alike, were

1 The 'Corah' of the E. I. Company's records; the capital of an ancient Muhammadan governorship, now a decayed town in Fatehpur District. See article KORA, vol. v. p. 437, of the Imperial Gazetteer of India.

2 The exact sums were Sikka Rs. 5,386,131 to the Nawáb, and Sikka Rs. 2,600,000 to the Emperor.

Clive's

reorgan. ization

of the

service,

tainted with the common corruption. Their legal salaries were paltry and quite insufficient for a livelihood. But they had been permitted to augment them, sometimes a hundredfold, Company's by means of private trade and gifts from the native powers. Despite the united resistance of the civil servants, and an actual mutiny of two hundred military officers, Clive carried through his reforms. Private trade and the receipt of presents were prohibited for the future, while a substantial increase of pay was provided out of the monopoly of salt.

1766.

Dual system of

administration,

Lord Clive quitted India for the third and last time in 1767. Between that date and the governorship of Warren Hastings in 1772, little of importance occurred in Bengal beyond the 1767-72. terrible famine of 1770, which is officially reported to have swept away one-third of the inhabitants. The dual system of government established in 1765 by Clive, had proved a failure. Warren Hastings, a tried servant of the Company, distinguished alike for intelligence, for probity, and for knowledge of oriental manners, was nominated Governor by the Court of Directors, with express instructions to carry out a Abolished predetermined series of reforms. In their own words, the Court had resolved to 'stand forth as diwán, and to take upon themselves, by the agency of their own servants, the entire care and administration of the revenues.' In the execution of this plan, Hastings removed the exchequer from Murshidábád to Calcutta, and appointed European officers, under the now familiar title of Collectors, to superintend the revenue collections and preside in the courts.

1772.

Warren

His administrative reforms.

Clive had laid the territorial foundations of the British Empire in Bengal. Hastings may be said to have created a Hastings, British administration for that Empire. The wars forced on 1772-85. him by Native Powers in India, the clamours of his masters in England for money, and the virulence of Francis with a faction of his colleagues at the Council table in Calcutta, retarded the completion of his schemes. But the manuscript records disclose the patient statesmanship and indomitable industry which he brought to bear upon them. From 1765 to 1772, Clive's dual system of government, by corrupt native underlings and rapacious English chiefs, prevailed. Thirteen years were now spent by Warren Hastings in experimental efforts at rural administration by means of English officials (1772-85). The completion of the edifice was left to his successor. But Hastings was the administrative organizer, as Clive had been the territorial founder, of our Indian Empire.

Hastings rested his claims as an Indian ruler on his admini

strative work. He reorganized the Indian service, reformed Hastings' policy every branch of the revenue collections, created courts of with justice and some semblance of a police. But history remem- native bers his name, not for his improvements in the internal ad- powers. ministration, but for his bold foreign policy, and for the crimes into which it led him. From 1772 to 1774, he was Governor of Bengal; from the latter date to 1785, he was the first Governor-General of India, presiding over a Council Warren nominated, like himself, under a statute of Parliament known Hastings as the Regulating Act (1773). In his domestic policy, he Governorwas greatly hampered by the opposition of his colleague in General, council, Philip Francis. But in his external relations with Oudh, with the Marhattás, and with Haidar Alí, he was generally able to compel assent to his views.

first

1774.

His relations with the native powers, like his domestic His twopolicy, formed a well-considered scheme. Hastings had to fold aims.

find money for the Court of Directors in England, whose thirst for the wealth of India was not less keen, although more decorous, than that of their servants in Bengal. He had also to protect the Company's territory from the Native Powers, which, if he had not destroyed them, would have annihilated him. An honest man under such circumstances might be led into questionable measures. Hastings in his personal dealings, and as regards his personal gains, seems to have been a high-minded English gentleman. But as an Anglo-Indian statesman, he shared the laxity which he saw practised by the native potentates with whom he had to deal. Parts of his policy were vehemently assailed in Parliament, and cannot be upheld by right-thinking men. It is my business neither to attack nor to defend his measures, but to give a short account of them as a connected whole.

makes

Warren Hastings had in the first place to make Bengal pay. Hastings This he could not do under Clive's dual system of administra- Bengal tion. When he abolished that double system, he cut down the Nawab's allowance to one-half, and so saved about

£160,000 a year. In defence of this act, it may be stated that the titular Nawáb, being then a minor, had ceased to render even any nominal service for his enormous pension. Clive had himself reduced the original £600,000 to £450,000 on the accession of a new Nawab in 1766, and the grant was again cut down to £350,000 on a fresh succession in 1769.1 The

1 The detailed history of these transactions, and a sketch of each of the 14 Nawabs of Bengal from 1704 to 1876, will be found under District Murshidábád, vol. ix. pp. 172-195 of my Statistical Account of Bengal.

pay.

Sells Allahábád and Kora,

1773.

allowance had practically been of a fluctuating and personal character. Its further reduction in the case of the new childNawab had, moreover, been expressly ordered by the Court of Directors six months before Hastings took office.

Hastings' next financial stroke was the sale of Allahábád and Kora Provinces to the Wazir of Oudh. These Provinces had been assigned by Clive, in his partition of the Gangetic valley, to the Emperor Shah Alam, together with a tribute of about £300,000 (26 lakhs of rupees), in return for the grant of Bengal to the Company. But the Emperor had now been seized by the Marhattás. Hastings held that His Majesty was no longer independent, and that it would be a fatal policy for the British to pay money to the Marhattás in Northern India, when it was evident that they would soon have to fight Withholds them in the south. He therefore withheld the tribute of the

the £300,000 from the puppet Emperor, or rather from his

Emperor's tribute.

The Ro

hilla war,

1773-74..

Marhattá custodians.

Clive, at the partition of the Gangetic valley in 1765, assigned the Provinces of Allahábád and Kora to the Emperor. The Emperor, now in the hands of the Marhattás, had made them over to his new masters. Warren Hastings held that by so doing His Majesty had forfeited his title to these Provinces. Hastings accordingly resold them to the Wazir of Oudh. By this measure he freed the Company from a military charge of half a million sterling (40 lákhs of rupees), and obtained a price of over half a million (50 lákhs) for the Company. The sale included the loan of the British troops to subdue the Rohillá Afgháns, who had held a large tract in those Provinces ever since Ahmad Shah's desolating invasion in 1761. The Rohillas were foreigners, and had cruelly lorded it over the peasantry. They now resisted bravely, and were crushed with the merciless severity of Asiatic warfare by the Wazir of Oudh, aided by his British troops. By these measures Warren Hastings bettered the finances of Bengal to the extent of a million sterling a year on both sides of the account; but he did so at the cost of treaties and pensions granted by his predecessor Clive.

He further improved the financial position of the Company by what is known as the plunder of Chait Sinh and the

1 See separate agreements with the successive Nawabs of 30th September 1765, 19th May 1766, and 21st March 1770, in each of which the grant is to the Nawab, without mention of heirs or successors.-Aitchison's Treatie and Engagements, vol. i. pp. 56-59 (ed. 1876).

2 For the history of the Rohillá Afgháns, on whom much sentiment has been needlessly lavished, see article BAREILLY DISTRICT, Imperial Gazetteer, vol. i. pp. 433, 434, and other Districts of Rohilkhand.

of Chait

Sinh, I78o.

fines the

Begam of Oudh. Chait Sinh, the Rájá of Benares, had grown Plunder rich under British protection. He resisted the demand of Warren Hastings to subsidize a military force, and an alleged correspondence with the enemies of the British Government led to his arrest. He escaped, headed a rebellion, and was crushed. His estates were forfeited, but transferred to his nephew subject to an increased tribute.1 The Begam, or Queen-Mother, of Oudh was charged with abetting the Benares Rájá in his rebellion. A heavy fine was laid upon her, which she resisted Hastings to the utmost. But after cruel pressure on herself and the Oudh eunuchs of her household, over a million sterling was extorted. Begam, On his return to England, Warren Hastings was impeached, in 1782. 1786, by the House of Commons for these and other alleged acts of oppression. He was solemnly tried by the House of Lords, and the proceedings dragged themselves out for seven years (1788-95). They form one of the most celebrated State trials in English history, and ended in a verdict of not guilty on all the charges. Meanwhile, the cost of the defence had ruined Warren Hastings, and left him dependent upon the charity of the Court of Directors—a charity which never failed. The real excuse, such as it is, for some of Hastings' measures Hastings' is that he had to struggle for his very existence; that native poor perfidy gave him his opportunity; and that he used his opportunity, on the whole, less mercilessly than a native Viceroy would have done. It is a poor excuse for the clearest English head, and the firmest administrative hand, that ever ruled India. In his dealings with Southern India, Warren Hastings had not to regard solely the financial results. He there appears as the great man that he really was; calm in council, cautious of enterprise, but swift in execution, and of indomitable courage in all that he undertook.

excuse.

The Bombay Government was naturally emulous to follow the example of Madras and Bengal, and to establish its supremacy at the Court of Poona by placing its own nominee upon the throne. This ambition found its scope, in 1775, by the treaty of Surat, by which Raghunáth Ráo, one of the claimants to the throne of the Peshwá, agreed to cede Salsette and Bassein to the English, in consideration of being himself restored to Poona. The military operations that followed are known as First Marthe first Marhattá war. Warren Hastings, who in his capacity hattá war, 1778-81. of Governor-General claimed a right of control over the decisions of the Bombay Government, strongly disapproved of the treaty of Surat. But when war actually broke out, he threw 1 See Imperial Gazetteer, article BENARES, vol. i. pp. 533, 534, and 543.