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From the Edinburg Review.

Memoirs of the Life of Warren Hastings, first Governor-General of Bengal. Compiled from Original Papers, by the Rev. G. R. GLEIG, M. A. 3 vols. 8vo. London: 1841.

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on the faults of this book, we attempt to give, in a way necessarily hasty and imperfect, our own view of the life and character of Mr. Hastings. Our feeling towards him is not exactly that of the House of Commons which impeached him in 1787: neither is it that of the House of Commons which uncovered and stood up to receive him in 1813. He had great qualities, and he rendered great services to the state. But to represent him as a man of stainless virtue, is to make him ridiculous; and from regard for his memory, if from no other feeling, his friends would have done well to lend no countenance to such puerile adulation. We believe that, if he were now living, he would have sufficient judgment and sufficient greatness of mind to wish to be shown as he He must have known that there were dark

THIS book seems to have been manufactured in pursuance of a contract, by which the representatives of Warren Hastings, on the one part, bound themselves to furnish papers, and Mr. Gleig, on the other part, bound himself to furnish praise. It is but just to say that the covenants on both sides have been most faithfully kept; and the result is before us in the form of three big bad volumes, full of undigest-was. ed correspondence and undiscerning panegyric. spots on his fame. He might also have felt with If it were worth while to examine this perform- pride, that the splendour of his fame would bear ance in detail, we could easily make a long article many spots. He would have preferred, we are conby merely pointing out inaccurate statements, inele- fident, even the severity of Mr. Mill to the puffing gant expressions, and immoral doctrines. But it of Mr. Gleig. He would have wished posterity to would be idle to waste criticism on a bookmaker; have a likeness of him, though an unfavourable likeand, whatever credit Mr. Gleig may have justly ness, rather than a daub at once insipid and unnatuearned by former works, it is as a bookmaker, and ral, resembling neither him nor any body else. nothing more, that he now comes before us. More Paint me as I am,' said Oliver Cromwell, while eminent men than Mr. Gleig have written nearly as sitting to young Lely. If you leave out the scars ill as he, when they have stooped to similar drudge- and wrinkles, I will not pay you a shilling.' Even ry. It would be unjust to estimate Goldsmith by in such a trifle, the great Protector showed both his the Vicar of Wakefield, or Scott by the Life of Na- good sense and his magnanimity. He did not wish poleon. Mr. Gleig is neither a Goldsmith nor a all that was characteristic in his countenance to be Scott; but it would be unjust to deny that he is ca- lost, in the vain attempt to give him the regular feapable of something better than these Memoirs. It tures and smooth blooming cheeks of the curl-pated would also, we hope and believe, be unjust to charge ininions of James the First. He was content that any Christian minister with the guilt of deliberately his face should go forth marked with all the blemishes maintaining some propositions which we find in this which had been put on it by time, by war, by book. It is not too much to say, that Mr. Gleig sleepless nights, by anxiety, perhaps by remorse; has written several passages, which bear the same but with valour, policy, authority, and public care, relation to the Prince' of Machiavelli that the written in all its princely lines. If men truly great 'Prince' of Machiavelli bears to the Whole Duty knew their own interest, it is thus that they would of Man,' and which would excite amazement in a wish their minds to be portrayed. den of robbers, or on board of a schooner of pirates. Warren Hastings sprang from an ancient and ilBut we are willing to attribute these offences to lustrious race. It has been affirmed that his pedihaste, to thoughtlessness, and to that disease of the gree can be traced back to the great Danish seaunderstanding which may be called the Furor Bio-king, whose sails were long the terror of both graphicus, and which is to writers of lives what the goitre is to an Alpine shepherd, or dirt-eating to a negro slave.

We are inclined to think that we shall best meet the wishes of our readers, if, instead of dwelling JANUARY, 1842,-MUSEUM.

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coasts of the British channel; and who, after many fierce and doubtful struggles, yielded at last to the valour and genius of Alfred. But the undoubted splendour of the line of Hastings, needs no illustration from fable. One branch of that line wore, in

When he was eight years old, his uncle, Howard, determined to take charge of him, and to give him a

the fourteenth century, the coronet of Pembroke. | ruled fifty millions of Asiatics, his hopes, amidst all From another branch sprang the renowned Cham- the cares of war, finance, and legislation, still pointed berlain, the faithful adherent of the White Rose, to Daylesford. And when his long public life, so whose fate has furnished so striking a theme both to singularly chequered with good and evil, with glory poets and to historians. His family received from and obloquy, had at length closed for ever, it was to the Tudors the earldom of Huntingdon; which, after Daylesford that he retired to die. long dispossession, was regained in our time by a series of events scarcely paralleled in romance. The lords of the manor of Daylesford, in Wor-liberal education. The boy went up to London, and cestershire, claimed to be considered as the heads was sent to a school at Newington, where he was of this distinguished family. The main stock, in- well taught but ill fed. He always attributed the deed, prospered less than some of the younger shoots. smallness of his stature to the hard and scanty fare But the Daylesford family, though not ennobled, was of this seminary. At ten he was removed to Westwealthy and highly considered, till, about two hun-minster school, then flourishing under the care of Dr. dred years ago, it was overwhelmed in the great ruin Nichols. Vinny Bourne, as his pupils affectionately of the civil war. The Hastings of that time was a called him, was one of the masters. Churchill, zealous cavalier. He raised money on his lands, Colman, Lloyd, Cumberland, Cowper, were among sent his plate to the mint at Oxford, joined the royal the students. With Cowper, Hastings formed a army, and, after spending half his property in the friendship which neither the lapse of time, nor a cause of King Charles, was glad to ransom himself wide dissimilarity of opinions and pursuits, could by making over most of the remaining half to Speak-wholly dissolve. It does not appear that they ever er Lenthal. The old seat at Daylesford still remain- met after they had grown to manhood. But many ed in the family; but it could no longer be kept up; years later, when the voices of a crowd of great and in the following generation it was sold to a mer- orators were crying for vengeance on the oppressor chant of London. of India, the shy and secluded poet could image to himself Hastings the Governor-General, only as the Hastings with whom he had rowed on the Thames and played in the cloister; and refused to believe that so good-tempered a fellow could have done any thing very wrong. His own life had been spent in praying, musing, and rhyming among the water-lilies of the Ouse. He had preserved in no common measure the innocence of childhood. His spirit had indeed been severely tried, but not by temptations which impelled him to any gross violation of the rules of social morality. He had never been attacked by combinations of powerful and deadly enemies. He had never been compelled to make a choice between innocence and greatness, between crime and ruin. Firmly as he held in theory the doctrine of human depravity, his habits were such, that he was unable to conceive how far from the path of right, even kind and noble natures may be hurried by the rage of conflict and the lust of dominion.

Before the transfer took place, the last Hastings of Daylesford had presented his second son to the rectory of the parish in which the ancient residence of the family stood. The living was of little value; and the situation of the poor clergyman, after the sale of the estate, was deplorable. He was constantly engaged in lawsuits about his tithes with the new lord of the manor, and was at length utterly ruined. His eldest son, Howard, a well conducted young man, obtained a place in the Customs. The second son, Pynaston, an idle, worthless boy, married before he was sixteen, lost his wife in two years, and went to the West Indies, where he died, leaving to the care of his unfortunate father, a little orphan, destined to strange and memorable vicissitudes of fortune.

Warren, the son of Pynaston, was born on the 6th of December, 1732. His mother died a few days later, and he was left dependent on his distressed grandfather. The child was early sent to the village school, where he learned his letters on the same bench with the sons of the peasantry. Nor did any thing in his garb or fare indicate that his life was to take a widely different course from that of the young rustics with whom he studied and played. But no cloud could overcast the dawn of so much genius and so much ambition. The very ploughmen observed, and long remembered, how kindly little Warren took to his book. The daily sight of the lands which his ancestors had possessed, and which had passed into the hands of strangers, filled his young brain with wild fancies and projects. He loved to hear stories of the wealth and greatness of his progenitors of their splendid housekeeping, their loyalty, and their valour. On one bright summer day, the boy, then just seven years old, lay on the bank of the rivulet which flows through the old domain of his house to join the Isis. There, as three-score and ten years later he told the tale, rose in his mind a scheme which, through all the turns of his eventful career, was never abandoned. He would recover the estate which had belonged to his fathers. He would be Hastings of Daylesford. This purpose, formed in infancy and poverty, grew stronger as his intellect expanded and as his fortune rose. He pursued his plan with that calm but indomitable force of will, which was the most striking peculiarity of his character. When, under a tropical sur, he

Hastings had another associate at Westminster, of whom we shall have occasion to make frequent mention-Elijah Impey. We know little about their school days. But we think we may safely venture to guess that whenever Hastings wished to play any trick more than usually naughty, he hired Impey with a tart or a ball to act as fag in the worst part of the prank.

Warren was distinguished among his comrades as an excellent swimmer, boatman, and scholar. At fourteen he was first in the examination for the foundation. His name in gilded letters on the walls of the dormitory, still attests his victory over many older competitors. He stayed two years longer at the school, and was looking forward to a studentship at Christ Church, when an event happened which changed the whole course of his life. Howard Hastings died, bequeathing his nephew to the care of a friend and distant relation, named Chiswick. This gentleman, though he did not absolutely refuse the charge, was desirous to rid himself of it as soon as possible. Dr. Nichols made strong remonstrances against the cruelty of interrupting the studies of a youth who seemed likely to be one of the first scholars of the age. He even offered to bear the expense of sending his favourite pupil to Oxford. But Mr. Chiswick was inflexible. He thought the years which had already been wasted on hexameters

and pentameters quite sufficient. He had it in his power to obtain for the lad a writership in the service of the East India Company. Whether the young adventurer, when once shipped off, made a fortune, or died of a liver complaint, he equally ceased to be a burden to any body. Warren was accordingly removed from Westminster school, and placed for a few months at a commercial academy, to study arithmetic and book-keeping. In January, 1750, a few days after he had completed his seventeenth year, he sailed for Bengal, and arrived at his destination in the October following.

He was immediately placed at a desk in the Secretary's office at Calentta, and laboured there during two years. Fort William was then a purely commercial settlement. In the south of India the encroaching policy of Dupleix had transformed the servants of the English company, against their will, into diplomatists and generals. The war of the succession was raging in the Carnatic; and the tide had been suddenly turned against the French by the genius of young Robert Clive. But in Bengal, the European settlers, at peace with the natives and with each other, were wholly occupied with Ledgers and Bills of Lading.

After two years passed in keeping accounts at Calcutta, Hastings was sent up the country to Cossimbazar, a town which lies on the Hoogly, about a mile from Moorshedabad, and which then bore to Moorshedabad a relation, if we may compare small things with great, such as the city of London bears to Westminster. Moorshedabad was the abode of the prince who, by an authority ostensibly derived from the Mogul, but really independent, ruled the three great provinces of Bengal, Orissa, and Bahar. At Moorshedabad were the court, the harem, and the public offices. Cossimbazar was a port and a place of trade, renowned for the quantity and excellence of the silks which were sold in its marts, and constantly receiving and sending forth fleets of richly laden barges. At this important point, the Company had established a small factory subordinate to that of Fort William. Here, during several years, Hastings was employed in making bargains for stuffs with native brokers. While he was thus engaged, Surajah Dowlah succeeded to the government, and declared war against the English. The defenceless settlement of Cossimbazar, lying close to the tyrant's capital, was instantly seized. Hastings was sent a prisoner to Moorshedabad; but, in consequence of the humane intervention of the servants of the Dutch Company, was treated with indulgence. Meanwhile the Nabob marched on Calcutta; the governor and the commandant fled; the town and citadel were taken, and most of the English prisoners perished in the Black-hole.

design; and Hastings, who was now in extreme peril, fled to Fulda.

Soon after his arrival at Fulda, the expedition from Madras, commanded by Clive, appeared in the Hoogly. Warren, young, intrepid, and excited probably by the example of the Commander of the Forces, who, having like himself been a mercantile agent of the Company, had been turned by public calamities into a soldier, determined to serve in the ranks. During the early operations of the war he carried a musket. But the quick eye of Clive soon perceived that the head of the young volunteer would be more useful than his arm. When, after the battle of Plassey, Meer Jaffier was proclaimed Nabob of Bengal, Hastings was appointed to reside at the court of the new prince as agent for the Company.

He remained at Moorshedabad till the year 1761, when he became a member of Council, and was consequently forced to reside at Calcutta. This was during the interval between Clive's first and second administration-an interval which has left on the fame of the East India Company a stain, not wholly effaced by many years of just and humane government. Mr. Vansittart, the Governor, was at the head of a new and anomalous empire. On the one side was a band of English functionaries, daring, intelligent, eager to be rich. On the other side was a great native population, helpless, timid, accustomed to crouch under oppression. To keep the stronger race from preying on the weaker, was an undertaking which tasked to the utmost the talents and energy of Clive. Vansittart, with fair intentions, was a feeble and inefficient ruler. The master caste, as was natural, broke loose from all restraint; and then was seen what we believe to be the most frightful of all spectacles, the strength of civilization without its mercy. To all other despotism there is a check; imperfect indeed, and liable to gross abuse, but still sufficient to preserve society from the last extreme of misery, A time comes when the evils of submission are obviously greater than those of resistance; when fear itself begets a sort of courage; when a convulsive burst of popular rage and despair warns tyrants not to presume too far on the patience of mankind. But against misgovernment such as then afflicted Bengal, it was impossible to struggle. The superior intelligence and energy of the dominant class made their power irresistible. A war of Bengalees against Englishmen, was like a war of sheep against wolves, of men against demons. The only protection which the conquered could find was in the moderation, the clemency, the enlarged policy of the conquerors. That protection, at a later period, they found. But at first, English power came among them unaccompanied by English morality. There In these events originated the greatness of Warren was an interval between the time at which they be Hastings. The fugitive governor and his compa- came our subjects, and the time at which we began nion had taken refuge on the dreary islet of Fulda, to reflect that we were bound to discharge towards near the mouth of the Hoogly. They were naturally them the duties of rulers. During that interval, the desirous to obtain full information respecting the pro- business of a servant of the Company was simply to ceedings of the Nabob; and no person seemed so wring out of the natives a hundred or two hundred likely to furnish it as Hastings, who was a prisoner thousand pounds as speedily as possible, that he at large in the immediate neighbourhood of the court. might return home before his constitution had sufHe thus became a diplomatic agent, and soon esta- fered from the heat, to marry a peer's daughter, to blished a high character for ability and resolution. buy rotten boroughs in Cornwall, and to give balls The treason which at a later period was fatal to Su- in St. James's Square. Of the conduct of Hastings rajah Dowlah, was already in progress: and Has-at this time, little is known; but the little that is tings was admitted to the deliberations of the conspirators. But the time for striking had not arrived. It was necessary to postpone the execution of the

known, and the circumstance that little is known, must be considered as honourable to him. He could not protect the natives: all that he could do was, to

abstain from plundering and oppressing them; and this he appears to have done. It is certain that at this time he continued poor; and it is equally certain, that by cruelty and dishonesty he might easily have become rich. It is certain that he was never charged with having borne a share in the abuses which then prevailed; and it is almost equally certain that, if he had borne a share in those abuses, the able and bitter enemies who afterwards persecuted him, would not have failed to discover and to proclaim his guilt. The keen, severe, and even malevolent scrutiny to which his whole public life was subjected-a scrutiny unparalleled, as we believe, in the history of mankind-is in one respect, advantageous to his reputation. It brought many lamentable blemishes to light; but it entitles him to be considered pure from every blemish which has not been brought to light.

The truth is that the temptations to which so many English functionaries yielded in the time of Mr. Vansittart, were not temptations addressed to the ruling passions of Warren Hastings. He was not squeamish in pecuniary transactions; but he was neither sordid nor rapacious. He was far too enlightened a man to look on a great empire merely as a bucanier would look on a galleon. Had his heart been much worse than it was, his understanding would have preserved him from that extremity of baseness. He was an unscrupulous, perhaps an unprincipled statesman; but still he was a statesman, and not a freebooter.

pression of the talents and attainments of his visiter. Long after, when Hastings was ruling the immense population of British India, the old philosopher wrote to him, and referred in the most courtly terms, though with great dignity, to their short but agreeable intercourse.

Hastings soon began again to look towards India. He had little to attach him to England; and his pecuniary embarrassinents were great. He solicited his old masters, the Directors, for employment. They acceded to his request, with high compliments both to his abilities and to his integrity, and appointed him a member of Council at Madras. It would be unjust not to mention, that though forced to borrow money for his outfit, he did not withdraw any portion of the sum which he had appropriated to the relief of his distressed relations. In the spring of 1769 he embarked on board of the Duke of Grafton,' and commenced a voyage distinguished by incidents which might furnish matter for a novel.

Among the passengers in the Duke of Grafton' was a German of the name of Imhoff. He called himself a baron, but he was in distressed circumstances; and was going out to Madras as a portrait painter, in the hope of picking up some of the pagodas which were then lightly got and as lightly spent by the English in India. The baron was accompanied by his wife, a native, we have somewhere read, of Archangel. This young woman, who, born under the Arctic circle, was destined to play the part of a Queen under the tropic of Cancer, had an agreeable In 1764, Hastings returned to England. He had person, a cultivated mind, and manners in the highest realized only a very moderate fortune; and that mo-degree engaging. She despised her husband heartiderate fortune was soon reduced to nothing, partly byly, and, as the story which we have to tell sufficienthis praiseworthy liberality, and partly by his mis-ly praves, not without reason. She was interested management. Towards his relations he appears to by the conversation, and flattered by the attentions have acted very generously. The greater part of his of Hastings. The situation was indeed periious. savings he left in Bengal, hoping probably to obtain No place is so propitious to the formation either of the high usury of India. But high usury and bad close friendships, or of deadly enmities, as an Indiasecurity generally go together; and Hastings lost man. There are very few people who do not find a both interest and principal. voyage which lasts several months insupportably He remained four years in England. Of his life dull. Any thing is welcome which may break that at this time very little is known. But it has been long monotony-a sail, a shark, an albatross, a man asserted, and is highly probable, that liberal studies, overboard. Most passengers find some resource in and the society of men of letters occupied a great eating twice as many meals as on land. But the part of his time. It is to be remembered to his ho- great devices for killing the time are, quarrelling, and nour, that in days when the languages of the East Hirting. The facilities for both these exciting purwere regarded by other s rvants of the Company suits are great. The inmates of the ship are thrown merely as the means of com nunicating with weavers together far more than in any country-seat or boardand money-changers, his enlarged and accomplished ing house. None can escape from the rest except mind sought in Asiatic learning for new forms of in- by imprisoning himself in a cell in which he can tellectual enjoyment, and for new views of govern- hardly turn. All food, all exercise, is taken in comment and society. Perhaps, like most persons who pany. Ceremony is to a great extent banished. It have paid much attention to departments of know- is every day in the power of a mischievous person to ledge which lie out of the common track, he was in-inflict innumerable annoyances; it is every day in clined to overrate the value of his favourite studies. the power of an amiable person to confer little serHe conceived that the cultivation of Persian litera-vices. It not seldom happens that serious distress ture might with advantage be made a part of the liberal education of an English gentleman; and he drew up a plan with that view. It is said that the University of Oxford, to which Oriental learning had never, since the revival of letters, been wholly neglected, was to be the seat of the institution which he contemplated. An endowment was expected from the munificence of the Company; and profes-in any court of Europe. The gentleman had no dosors thoroughly competent to interpret Hafiz and Ferdusi were to be engaged in the East. Hastings called on Johnson, with the hope, as it should seem, of interesting in his project a man who enjoyed the highest literary reputation, and who was particularly connected with Oxford. The interview appears to have left on Johnson's mind a most favourable im

and danger call forth in genuine beauty and deformity heroic virtues and abject vices, which, in the ordinary intercourse of good society, might remain during many years unknown even to intimate associates. Under such circumstances met Warren Hastings and the Baroness Imhoff; two persons whose accomplishments would have attracted notice

mestic ties. The lady was tied to a husband for whom she had no regard, and who had no regard for his own honour. An attachment sprang up, which was soon strengthened by events such as could hardly have occurred on land. Hastings fell ill. The baroness nursed him with womanly tenderness, gave him his medicines with her own hand, and even

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