This, just prepared by himself, was to the effect that "Messrs. Brooke and Stratton, two of the majority, had, by signing the order to the secretary, been guilty of an act subversive of the authority of the government." It would seem that by the standing orders of the Company, no member of Council, when under an accusation, could vote on any question referring thereto, and hence the effect of this move, by reducing the two factions to an equality, gave the casting vote to Lord Pigot, who, instantly availing himself of the privilege, carried a motion suspending Messrs. Brooke and Stratton. On the 23rd of August the majority, instead of attending the Council, sent a formal protest by a notary, wherein they denounced the proceedings of the previous day, and declaring themselves the governing body, claimed the loyal obedience of the presidency; nor was the claim long permitted to remain unacted on, for copies of the protest were instantly served on the commanders of the troops, and on all vested with authority. Inflamed by anger at all this, Lord Pigot summoned the Council, but none attended save his own party, who passed a vote suspending all the rest, and ordered Sir Robert Fletcher to appear before a court-martial. demanded the immediate surrender "of George, Lord Pigot," with a safe conduct on board the flagship, in the name of His Majesty; but this application was first ignored, and finally resisted by the Council. These strange proceedings in Madras raised at home a storm in both Houses, which was heard in long echoes throughout every part of the country; and Admiral Pigot declared in the Commons that his brother had been offered a bribe equal to £600,000, if he would only defer the full restoration of the Rajah of Tanjore. After various proceedings, which a writer has justly characterised as "difficult to describe with brevity, and as difficult to be understood if given in the fullest detail," on the 26th of March, 1777, the Court of Directors, by a majority, took a favourable view of Lord Pigot's administration, and ultimately they recalled the members of Counci! who had deposed and arrested him; they restored him to office, but ordered his instant return to Britain, and that he should deliver over the government to his successor and opponent, Sir Thomas Rumbold, Bart. (of Farrand, in Yorkshire). But ere these orders reached Madras, poor Lord Pigot was in his grave. The imprisonment and affront had preyed so deeply on his health and spirits, that he died about eight months after his arrest. On the evening of the same day, the majority of the Council met elsewhere, and appointed Colonel James Stuart temporarily commander-in-chief, as In April, 1779, his brother, Admiral Pigot, Sir Robert Fletcher was on the sick list, with moved and carried a series of resolutions in the orders to arrest the president. This obnoxious House of Commons, among which was an address task the colonel executed in a manner that showed to George III., praying for the prosecution of four a singular want of delicacy and good taste. His of the members of the Madras Council who were appointment to the command having been approved then in England-Messrs. George Stratton, Henry of by the unsuspicious president, he spent the Brooke, George Player, and J. Megin. They were greater part of the 24th with him over business accordingly tried in a court of law, but merely for matters. They breakfasted, dined together, and a misdemeanour, and the verdict of a special jury the colonel had an invitation to sup with him, and was obtained against them. "When brought up during all this time the arrangements for the arrest for judgment, their only punishment was a fine of were in progress, and it was put in execution thus: £1,000 each, which to men so wealthy was scarcely Lord Pigot, in his carriage, with his intended guest a punishment at all, and was not so severe as by his side, returning from an evening drive, found taking five shillings from a poor man for being himself suddenly surrounded by a guard of soldiers, drunk and disorderly." who seized his horses, and ere he could speak, the colonel drew a warrant from his pocket, and told him that he must consider himself a prisoner. In this capacity he was conveyed to his residence at Mount St. Thomas, and detained in custody, while all who adhered to him were suspended by the violent and dominant party. He now claimed the protection of the king's flag, on which our admiral, Sir Edward Hughes, Sir Thomas Rumbold had reached Madras in February, 1778, and took upon himself the civil government, while the command of the forces was assigned to General Sir Hector Munro. The Carnatic now began to be menaced again, by Hyder Ali and his irrepressible allies, the French; but ere treating of his advance through the Ghauts, it will be necessary to narrate some proceedings elsewhere. 1772.] THE HASTINGS FAMILY. 149 CHAPTER XXIX. WARREN HASTINGS. THE FIRST GOVERNOR-GENERAL.-AFFAIRS IN BENGAL, ETC. AFTER the departure and loss of the three super- | Essay, "sprang from an ancient and illustrious visors, Vansittart, Scrafton, and Colonel Forde, in the Aurora frigate, the government of Bengal had been left in the hands of Mr. Cartier; but within two years it was notified by the Court at Leadenhall Street to Mr. Warren Hastings that "he was nominated to the second place in Council at Calcutta ; and that, as soon as Mr. Cartier should retire, it was their wish that he should take upon him the charge of government till further orders." The course of all events in India-then so remote from Europe, so far as rapid communication went had long been regarded in England with total indifference, save by the relatives of the few who were then in the service of the Company, or the holders of stock; and there was long the feeling that it was impossible for people in Britain to understand the transactions in Hindostan; but now these were beginning daily to attract more and more attention, though few men, not holders of India stock, could comprehend the strange anomaly, presented in Leadenhall Street, of a dozen or so plain, business-like citizens of London, calling themselves directors, and a few hundred holders of shares, called proprietors, managing the affairs of about 100,000,000 souls, at the distance of so many thousand miles. Warren Hastings reached Calcutta on the 17th of February, 1772, and on the 13th of the subsequent April, on the resignation of Mr. Cartier, he assumed the actual government of the presidency; and from that time began the brilliant and startling career by which his name, like that of Clive, is inseparably woven up with the history of British India. In pursuance of the "Regulating Act," and in choosing him who was to be the first GovernorGeneral, there was no difference of opinion as to the person most worthy of that important post. All pointed to Warren Hastings, from his long experience of India, his wonderful industry, and many other merits. Clive had considered him the best man for the appointment, and had been the first to congratulate him upon it. But the four members of Council appointed with him, and, unfortunately, each with powers nearly co-extensive with his own, were General Clavering, Colonel Monson, Mr. Philip Francis, and Mr. Barwell. "Warren Hastings," says Lord Macaulay, in his race. It has been affirmed that his pedigree can be traced back to the great Danish sea-king, whose sails were long the terror of both 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 the fourteenth century, the coronet of Pembroke. From another branch sprang the renowned Chamberlain, the faithful adherent of the White Rose, whose fate has furnished so striking a theme both to poets and historians. His family received from the Tudors the earldom of Huntingdon, which, after long dispossession, was regained, in our time, by a series of events scarcely paralleled in romance. The lords of the manor of Daylesford, in Worcestershire, claimed to be considered as the heads of this distinguished family. The main stock, indeed, prospered less than the younger shoots. But the Daylesford family, though not ennobled, was wealthy and highly considered, till, about two hundred years ago, it was overwhelmed by the great ruin of the Civil War. The Hastings of that time was a zealous Cavalier. He raised money on his lands, sent his plate to the mint at Oxford, joined the royal army, and after spending half his property in the cause of King Charles, was glad to ransom himself by making over most of the remaining half to Speaker Lenthall. The old seat at Daylesford still remained in the family; but it could no longer be kept up, and in the following generation it was sold to a merchant of London. Before this 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 poor, and lawsuits soon ruined the holder of it. His eldest son, Howard, obtained a place in the Customs; his second, Pynaston, a reckless lad, married before he was sixteen, and died in the Antilles, leaving to the care of his penniless father an orphan boy, before whom lay a strange and ever memorable destiny—Warren Hastings, who was born on the 6th of December, 1732. "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 anything 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, 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 threescore and ten years later he told the tale, rose in his mind that which, through all the turns of his adventurous 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 sun, he ruled 50,000,000 of Asiatics, his hopes, amidst all the cares of war, finance, and legislation, still pointed to Daylesford; and when his long public life, so singularly chequered with good and evil, with glory and obloquy, had at length closed for ever, it was to Daylesford that he retired to die." A writership for him was obtained in the Company's service, and after perfecting himself in arithmetic and book-keeping, young Warren-so called from the family name of his mother-still remembering his inflexible resolution to recover Daylesford, in his eighteenth year sailed for India, then regarded as the sure high-road to fortune; that India which (out of Leadenhall Street) was still a land but little known in England, save as a shore, the bottom of whose sea was rich with pearls and ambergris; whose mountains of the coast were stored with precious stones; whose gulfs breed creatures that yield rich ivory; and among the plants of whose shores are ebony, redwood, and the wood of Hairzan, aloes, camphor, cloves, sandal-wood, and all other spices and aromatics; where parrots and peacocks are birds of the forest, and musk and civet are collected upon the lands." + Full of such ideas, Warren Hastings landed in Bengal in the October of 1750, and began his * Macaulay. + Travels of Two Mohammedans." career in the factory of Cossimbazar, where he was made prisoner, when, as already related in its place, it was surprised by Surajah Dowlah, and Ensign Elliot shot himself. Under Clive he served at Plassey as a private volunteer; and having early attracted his attention, Hastings was, by him, appointed agent for the Company at Moorshedabad in 1758, and there he continued till 1761, and in those three years must have had ample opportunity to make a fortune, had he chosen to imitate the reckless cupidity of those around him ; and after becoming a member of the Bengal Council, at a period when his colleagues were heedlessly following their insatiable thirst for gain by grinding oppression of the natives, and after vehement protestations against their conduct, he returned to England in 1764, by which time he had acquired a moderate degree of wealth, for he was enabled to present £1,000 to a sister, and settle £200 yearly on an aunt. As Clive, at this time, was somewhat averse to employing Hastings in Bengal, from the circumstance of his having been a member of Vansittart's obnoxious Council in Bengal, he was appointed second member of Council at Madras, for which he sailed, in the Duke of Grafton, in the spring of 1769; and it was on this voyage that the only eccentric event of his life took place. Among the passengers was a German named Imhoff-who called himself a baron, yet worked as a portraitpainter-with his wife, a native of Archangel, a witty, agreeable, and attractive woman, with whom Hastings fell in love, all the more readily that she seemed heartily to despise her husband; and long ere the protracted voyage round the Cape was over, it had been finally arranged that, for the payment of a sum of money, "the baron" was to apply for a divorce in some German court, where the marriage tie could be most easily dissolved, and that Hastings, when the lady should thus be set free, was not only to marry her, but to adopt her children. The baron, by this speculation, pocketed far more money than he could hope to gain by painting portraits in India; while "the young woman who was born under the Arctic Circle was destined to play the part of a queen under the tropic of Cancer." The Imhoffs continued to live in Madras as man and wife, Hastings defraying the expense of their splendid establishment, till about a year after, when he became President of Bengal, and "the decree of divorce permitted the baron to depart with a well-filled purse, the wages of dishonour; and the baroness now became Mrs. Hastings, to hold her levees, as the wife of the first Governor General of India. The children also seem not to a state of affairs so perilous around him, it have been forgotten, for one of them is afterwards required, on the part of Warren Hastings, the met with, bearing the rank and title of Lieutenant- most steady vigilance to maintain the balance of General Sir Charles Imhoff." Hastings began his administration at Calcutta under many disadvantages. The famine, to which we have alluded, had occurred under the government of Cartier, and only a few months before the accession of Hastings to the chair took place. power in India, where our wars, in general, hitherto had arisen from the necessity of preventing the French, Portuguese or Dutch, from being too strong for our safety. At this time, all the states and tribes around us were intent on incessant warfare, plunder, and "The situation of affairs," wrote Clive to him at the acquisition of territory; while many of their this juncture, "requires that you should be very chiefs had higher ambitions still. The Court at circumspect and active. You are appointed Leadenhall Street deemed Allahabad, 450 miles Governor at a very critical time, when things are up-country from Calcutta, as the leading centre, suspected to be almost at the worst, and when from which, "as from a watch tower, the English a general misapprehension prevails of the mis- could look around upon the greedy and restless management of the Company's affairs. The last powers that prowled about them." From thence, parliamentary inquiry has thrown the whole state so long as it suited their policy, they respected of India before the public; and every man sees the nominal power of the Mogul, but under its clearly that, as matters are now conducted abroad, prestige exercised themselves the reality thereof. the Company will not be long able to pay the £400,000 to Government. The late dreadful famine, or a war either with Sujah Dowlah or the Mahrattas, will plunge us into still deeper distress. A discontented nation and disappointed minister will then call to account a weak and pusillanimous Court of Directors, who will turn the blow from themselves upon their agents abroad, and the consequences will be ruinous both to the Company and their servants. In this situation, you see the necessity of exerting yourself in time, provided the Court give you proper powers, without which, I confess, you can do nothing; for self-interest or ignorance will obstruct every plan you can form for the public." And now, it may not be out of place to note the relations of Britain to the adjacent Indian powers, and of those powers to one another at this period, when the government of all our three possessions in the peninsula of Hindostan devolved upon Warren Hastings. The government of the emperor at Delhi, who for years had been dependent upon the British, the Nabob of Oude, or the Mahrattas, was feeble in the extreme-so feeble, that even the Nizam of the Deccan, or the Soubahdar of Bengal, could affront his authority, which the major portion of the princes of India had completely shaken off. Thus now many vassals took advantage of the general decay of the Mogul power to raise their own, by any means, while Afghans, Sikhs, and Mahrattas, and the more powerful nabobs, were insulting the territories of those adjacent to them, and over many of which they usurped that authority which belonged, by legitimate right, to the Mogul emperor. With * Beveridge. From that point of vantage, with its powerful fort, could be watched the territories of the Rohillas, Mahrattas, and Jauts, and of Sujah Dowlah, the Nabob of Oude; and, indeed, previous to the arrival of Hastings, the Council at Calcutta had ordered a strong brigade to occupy Allahabad, as being the key to Central India. Northward of the mighty Ganges reigned the Nabob of Oude, who, by his position and great resources, could always prove a troublesome enemy; and who, if in alliance with the Company, could make them, and himself, the umpires of power in Hindostan. The numerous chiefs of the Rohillas ruled their warlike tribes in detached bands near the frontiers of the Mogul and those of Sujah Dowlah, but yet were unable to make any great movement without the instant knowledge of the former or his vizier; yet they could, at any time, launch 80,000 soldiers, chiefly well-mounted cavalry, on any point they chose. These Rohillas were among the best warriors in India, and regarded the Nabob of Oude as having some traditional authority over Rohilcund, the land wherein they dwelt. They were also deemed the best swordsmen in India, and were famous for the use of those terrible rockets, then so often handled in war, and which, under the name of a fougette, a French writer describes thus : "In shape it resembles a sky-rocket, whose flight is gradually brought to take a horizontal direction. It forces itself immediately forward, cuts as it penetrates, by the formation of its sides, which are filled with small spikes; it becomes on fire at all its points, and possesses within itself a thousand means by which it can adhere, set in flames, and destroy. It is more effectual," he continues. "for |