the whole force of the Bengal army into the scale. One of his Goddard's favourite officers, General Goddard, marched across the peninmarch, sula from sea to sea, and conquered the rich Province of 1779. Guzerat almost without a blow. Another, Captain Popham, stormed the rock-fortress of Gwalior, which was regarded as the key of Hindustán. These brilliant successes of the Bengal troops atoned for the disgrace of the convention of Wargaum in 1779, when the Marhattás had overpowered and dictated terms to our Bombay force, but the war was protracted until 1781. It was in 1782 closed by the treaty of Salbai, which practically restored the status quo. Raghunáth Ráo, the English claimant to the Peshwáship, was set aside on a pension ; Guzerat was restored to the Marhattás; and only Salsette, with Elephanta and two other small islands, was retained by the English. Treaty of Salbai, 1782. War with Mysore, 1780-84. Death of Haidar Corn wallis, 1786-93. Meanwhile, Warren Hastings had to deal with a more formidable enemy than the Marhattá confederacy. The reckless conduct of the Madras Government had roused the hostility both of Haidar Alí of Mysore and of the Nizám of the Deccan, the two strongest Musalmán powers in India. These attempted to draw the Marhattás into an alliance against the English. The diplomacy of Hastings won back the Nizám and the Marhattá Rájá of Nágpur; but the army of Haidar Alí fell like a thunderbolt upon the British possessions in the Karnatic. A strong detachment under Colonel Baillie was cut to pieces at Pollilore, and the Mysore cavalry ravaged the country up to the walls of Madras. For the second time the Bengal army, stimulated by the energy of Hastings, saved the honour of the English name. He despatched Sir Eyre Coote, the victor of Wandewash, to relieve Madras by sea, with all the men and money available, while Colonel Pearse marched south overland to overawe the Rájá of Berar and the Nizám. The war was hotly contested, for the aged Sir Eyre Coote had lost his energy, and the Mysore army was not only well-disciplined and equipped, but skilfully handled by Haidar and his son Tipú. Haidar died in 1782, and peace was finally concluded with Tipú in 1784, on the basis of a mutual restitution of all conquests. Two years later, Warren Hastings was succeeded by Lord Cornwallis, the first English nobleman of rank who undertook the office of Governor-General of India. Between these two great names an interval of twenty months took place under Sir John Macpherson, a civil servant of the Company (Feb. 1785 to Sept. 1876). Lord Cornwallis twice held the hig post of Governor-General. His first rule lasted from 1786 to 1793, and is celebrated for two events-the introduction of the Permanent Settlement into Bengal, and the second Mysore war. If the foundations of the system of civil administration were laid by Hastings, the superstructure was raised by Cornwallis. It was he who first entrusted criminal jurisdiction to Europeans, and established the Nizámat Sadr Adálat, or Supreme Court of Criminal Judicature, at Calcutta; and it was he who separated the functions of Collector and Judge. cennial The system thus organized in Bengal was afterwards extended to Madras and Bombay, when those Presidencies also acquired territorial sovereignty. But the achievement most familiarly associated with the name of Cornwallis is the Permanent Settlement of the land revenue of Bengal. During four years, 1786-90, he laboured, with the help of an able Bengal civilian, John Shore, to arrive at the facts of the case. Warren Hastings had introduced, unsuccessfully and only for a period, a five years' settlement of the land revenue. Lord Cornwallis, after three years of inquiry and of provisional measures, introduced a ten years' or 'decennial' settlement The De(1789-91). Up to this time, the revenue had been collected Settlepretty much according to the old Mughal system. The ment, zamíndárs, or Government farmers, whose office always tended 1789-91. to become hereditary, were recognised as having a right to collect the revenue from the actual cultivators. But no principle of assessment existed, and the amount actually realized varied greatly from year to year. Hastings seems to have looked to experience, as acquired from a succession of quinquennial settlements, to furnish the standard rate of the future. Francis, on the other hand, Hastings' great rival, advocated a limitation of the State demand in perpetuity. The same view recommended itself to the authorities at home, partly because it would place their finances on a more stable basis, partly because it seemed to identify the zamindár with the landlord of the English system of property. Accordingly, Cornwallis took out The Perwith him in 1787 instructions to introduce a Permanent manent Settlement. Settlement of Bengal, The process of assessment began in 1789, and terminated in 1793. 1791. No attempt was made to measure the fields or calculate the out-turn, as had been done by Akbar, and as is now done whenever settlements are made in the British Provinces. The amount to be paid in the future was fixed by reference to what had been paid in the past. At first the settlement was called decennial, but in 1793 it was declared permanent for ever. The total assessment amounted to Sikka Rs. 26,800,989, or Second war, 1790-92. Sir John Shore, 1793-98. about 3 millions sterling for Bengal. Lord Cornwallis carried the scheme into execution, but the praise or blame, so far as details are concerned, belongs to Sir John Shore, afterwards Lord Teignmouth, a civil servant, whose knowledge of the country was unsurpassed in his time. Shore would have proceeded more cautiously than Cornwallis' preconceived idea of a proprietary body, and the Court of Directors' haste after fixity, permitted.1 The second Mysore war of 1790-92 is noteworthy on two accounts. Lord Cornwallis, the Governor-General, led the British army in person, with a pomp and a magnificence of supply which recalled the campaigns of Aurangzeb. The two great southern powers, the Nizám of the Deccan and the Marhattá confederacy, co-operated as allies of the British. In the end, Tipú Sultán submitted when Lord Cornwallis had commenced to beleaguer his capital. He agreed to yield one-half of his dominions to be divided among the allies, and to pay 3 millions sterling towards the cost of the war. These conditions he fulfilled, but ever afterwards he burned to be revenged upon his English conquerors. The period of Sir John Shore's rule as Governor-General, from 1793 to 1798, was uneventful. In 1798, Lord MorningMarquis of ton, better known as the Marquis of Wellesley, arrived in Wellesley, India, already inspired with imperial projects which were 1798-1805. destined to change the map of the country. Mornington was the friend and favourite of Pitt, from whom he is thought to have derived his far-reaching political vision, and his antipathy to the French name. From the first he laid down as his guiding principle, that the English must be the one paramount power in the peninsula, and that native princes could only retain the insignia of sovereignty by surrendering their political independence. The history of India since his time has been but the gradual development of this policy, which received its finishing touch when Queen Victoria was proclaimed Empress of India on the 1st of January 1877. To frustrate the possibility of a French invasion of India, influence led by Napoleon in person, was the governing idea of 1798-1800. Wellesley's foreign policy. France at this time, and for many years later, filled the place afterwards occupied by Russia in the imagination of English statesmen. French in India, Nor was the danger so remote as might now be thought. French regiments guarded and overawed the Nizám of Haidarábád. 1 The Permanent Settlement will be referred to in greater detail, and its practical working exhibited, under the Administrative section, post, pp. 337, 338. The soldiers of Sindhia, the military head of the Marhattá confederacy, were disciplined and led by French adventurers. Tipú Sultán of Mysore carried on a secret correspondence with the French Directorate, allowed a tree of liberty to be planted in his dominions, and enrolled himself in a republican club as 'Citizen Tipú.' The islands of Mauritius and Bourbon afforded a convenient half-way rendezvous for French intrigue and for the assembling of a hostile expedition. Above all, Napoleon Buonaparte was then in Egypt, dreaming of the conquests of Alexander; and no man knew in what direction he might turn his hitherto unconquered legions. fore Lord Wellesley, Wellesley conceived the scheme of crushing for ever the India beFrench hopes in Asia, by placing himself at the head of a great Indian confederacy. In Lower Bengal, the conquests 1798; of Clive and the policy of Warren Hastings had made the English paramount. Before the end of the century, our power was consolidated from the seaboard to Benares, high in the up the Gangetic valley. Beyond our frontier there, the Nawab north; Wazír of Oudh had agreed to pay a subsidy for the aid of British troops. This sum in 1797 amounted to £760,000 a year; and the Nawáb, being always in arrears, entered into negotiations for a cession of territory in lieu of a cash payment. In 1801, the treaty of Lucknow made over to the British the doáb, or fertile tract between the Ganges and the Jumna, together with Rohilkhand. In Southern India, our possessions in the south. were chiefly confined, before Lord Wellesley, to the coast Districts of Madras and Bombay. Wellesley resolved to make the British supreme as far as Delhi in Northern India, and to compel the great powers of the south to enter into subordinate relations to the Company's government. The intrigues of the native princes gave him his opportunity for carrying out this plan without breach of faith. The time had arrived when the English must either become supreme in India, or be driven out of it. The Mughal Empire was completely broken up; and the sway had to pass either to the local Muhammadan governors of that Empire, or to the Hindu confederacy represented by the Marhattás, or to the British. Lord Wellesley determined that it should pass to the British. His work in Northern India was at first easy. The Lord Weltreaty of Lucknow in 1801 made us territorial rulers as far lesley's work; as the heart of the present North-Western Provinces, and established our political influence in Oudh. Beyond those in the limits, the northern branches of the Marhattás practically north; U in the south. Treaty with the Nizám, 1798. Third war, 1799. held sway, with the puppet Emperor in their hands. Lord Wellesley left them untouched for a few years, until the second Marhattá war (1802-04) gave him an opportunity for dealing effectively with their nation as a whole. In Southern India, he saw that the Nizám at Haidarábád stood in need of his protection, and he converted him into a useful follower throughout the succeeding struggle. The other Muhammadan power of the south, Tipú Sultán of Mysore, could not be so easily handled. Lord Wellesley resolved to crush him, and had ample provocation for so doing. The third power of Southern India-namely, the Marhattá confederacy-was so loosely organized that Lord Wellesley seems at first to have hoped to live on terms with it. When several years of fitful alliance had convinced him that he had to choose between the supremacy of the Marhattás or of the British in Southern India, he did not hestitate to decide. Lord Wellesley first addressed himself to the weakest of the three southern powers, the Nizám at Haidarábád. Here he won a diplomatic success, which turned a possible rival into a subservient ally. The French battalions at Haidarábád were disbanded, and the Nizám bound himself by treaty1 not to take any European into his service without the consent of the English Government,-a clause since inserted in every engagement entered into with Native Powers. Wellesley next turned the whole weight of his resources against Tipú, whom Cornwallis had defeated, but not subdued. Tipu's intrigues with the French were laid bare, and he was given an opportunity of adhering to the new subsidiary system. On his refusal, war was declared, and Wellesley came down in viceregal state to Madras to organize the expedition in person, and to watch over the course of events. One English army marched into Mysore from Madras, accompanied by a contingent from the Nizám. Another advanced from the western coast. Tipú, after a feeble resistance in the field, retired into Seringapatam, and, when his capital was stormed, died fighting bravely in the breach, 1799. Since the battle of Plassey no event so greatly impressed the native imagination as the capture of Seringapa- Seringapatam, which won for General Harris a peerage, and for Wellesley an Irish Marquisate. In dealing with the territories of Tipú, Wellesley acted with moderation. The central portion, forming the old State of Mysore, was restored to an infant representative of the Hindu Rájás, whom Haidar Dated 1st September 1798.-Aitchison's Treaties ana Engagements, vol. v. pp. 173-176 (1876). Fall of tam, 1799. |