DIWANI GRANT OF BENGAL. 387 this second governorship of Clive, as our military supremacy had dated from his victory at Plassey. 1765. grant of Bengal, Clive landed, advanced rapidly up from Calcutta to Allah- Clive's ábád, and there settled in person the fate of nearly half of Gangetic India. Oudh was given back to the Nawáb Wazir, 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, the Delhi Emperor, who in his turn granted to the Company the diwáni or fiscal administration of Bengal, Behar, and Díwání Orissa, with the jurisdiction of the Northern Circars. A puppet Nawab was still maintained at Murshidábád, with an 1765. annual allowance from us of £600,000. Half that amount, or about £300,000, we paid to the Emperor as tribute from Bengal.2 Thus was constituted the dual system of Government, by which the English received the revenues of Bengal and undertook to maintain the army; while the criminal jurisdiction, or nizámat, was vested in the Nawáb. 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. ization service, Clive's other great task was the reorganization of the Com- Clive's pany's service. All the officers, civil and military alike, were reorgantainted with the common corruption. Their legal salaries were of the paltry and quite insufficient for a livelihood. But they had Company's been permitted to augment them, sometimes a hundred-fold, 1766. 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. tem of Lord Clive quitted India for the third and last time in 1767. Dual sysBetween that date and the governorship of Warren Hastings adminiin 1772, little of importance occurred in Bengal beyond the stration. terrible famine of 1770, which is officially reported to have 1767–72; swept away one-third of the inhabitants. The dual system of government, established in 1765 by Clive, had proved a 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 in 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. Dual system abolished, 1772. Warren nistrative reforms. 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 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 to Calcutta from Murshidabad, which had up to that time remained the revenue head-quarters of Bengal. He also appointed European officers, under the now familiar title of Collectors, to superintend the revenue collections and preside in the courts. Clive had laid the territorial foundations of the British Hastings, Empire in Bengal. Hastings may be said to have created a 1772-85. British administration for that Empire. The wars forced on him by Native Powers in India, the clamours of his masters in England for money, and the virulence of Sir Philip Francis with a faction of his colleagues at the Council table in Calcutta, His admi- 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' policy with native powers. Hastings' true fame as an Indian ruler rests on his administrative work. He reorganized the Indian service, reformed every branch of the revenue collections, created courts of justice and some semblance of a police. History remembers his name, however, not for his improvements in the internal administration, but for his bold foreign policy, and for the crimes into which it led him. From 1772 to 1774, he was Warren Governor of Bengal; from the latter date to 1785, he was Hastings the first Governor-General, presiding over a Council nomifirst Governor nated, like himself, under a statute of Parliament known General, as the Regulating Act (1773). In his domestic policy he was greatly hampered by the opposition of his colleague in council, Sir Philip Francis. But in his external relations with Oudh, with the Maráthás, and with Haidar Ali, he was generally able to compel assent to his views. 1774. HASTINGS BENGAL TRANSACTIONS. 389 fold aims. His relations with the native powers, like his domestic His twopolicy, formed a well-considered scheme. Hastings had to 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 the object of the present summary 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 pay. 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 Nawáb in 1766, and the grant was again cut down to £350,000 on a fresh succession in 1769.1 The 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. Allahábád Hastings' next financial stroke was the sale of Allahábád and Sells Kora Provinces to the Wazir of Oudh. These Provinces had and Kora, been assigned by Clive, in his partition of the Gangetic valley, 1773. 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 nad now been 1 The detailed history of these transactions, and a sketch of each of the 14 Nawabs of Bengal from 1704 to 1884, will be found under District Murshidábád, vol. ix. pp. 172-195 of Hunter's Statistical Account of Bengal. 2 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 Treaties and Engagements, vol. i. pp. 56-59 (ed. 1876). seized by the Maráthás. 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 Maráthás 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 puppet Emperor, or rather from his the Emperor's £300,000 from the tribute. The Ro 1773-74. Maráthá 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 Maráthás, 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 nearly half a million sterling (40 lakhs 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 hilla war, the Rohillá Afgháns, who 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. Plunder of Chait Singh, 1780. Hastings fines the Oudh Begam, 1782. He further improved the financial position of the Company by what is known as the plunder of Chait Singh and the Begam of Oudh. Chait Singh, the Rájá of Benares, had grown 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.2 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 to the utmost. But after 1 For the history of the Rohillá Afgháns, on whom much sentiment has been needlessly lavished, see article BAREILLY DISTRICT, The Imperial Gazetteer of India, and other Districts of Rohilkhand. 2 See The Imperial Gazetteer of India, articles_BENARES DISTRICT and BENARES ESTATE. HASTINGS WORK IN THE SOUTH. 391 cruel pressure on herself and the eunuchs of her household, over a million sterling was extorted for the English Company. On his return to England, Warren Hastings was impeached, Charges in 1786, by the House of Commons for these and other alleged against Hastings. 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. excuse. 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. war, 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 First Maráthá known as the first Maráthá war. Warren Hastings, who in his 1778-81. capacity of Governor-General claimed some degree of control over the decisions of the Bombay Government, strongly disapproved of the treaty of Surat. But when war actually broke out, he threw the whole force of the Bengal army into the scale. One of his favourite officers, General Goddard, marched across Goddard's the peninsula from sea to sea, and conquered the rich Province march, 1778-79. of Gujarat almost without a blow. Another, Captain Popham, snatched by storm the rock-fortress of Gwalior, which was regarded as the key of Hindustán. These brilliant successes of the Bengal troops atoned for the contemporaneous disgrace of the convention of Wargaum in 1779, when the Maráthás overpowered and dictated terms to our Bombay force. The war in Bombay lasted till 1781. |