x770.] THE RAJPOOTS AND SIKHS. the defence of harbours than red-hot shot: by means of its natural velocity it does more execution, and in a less space of time, than the most active field-gun could achieve, and requires but one horse; and as a defensible weapon, it must be admitted that, where a small body of men is attacked, the fougette may be adopted with the greatest advantage." The tribe of the Jauts extended over the land, from Agra to within a few miles of Delhi, and they held three forts, which, like many others in India, enjoyed the reputation of being impregnable. Their artillery enjoyed, moreover, the highest reputation for skill and efficiency. South-west of Delhi lay the country of the Maharajah Madhoo, a ruler over many tribes; but the mass of his people were Rajipoots, or Rajpoots. 153 doctrine was universal toleration, held all the territory from Sirhind, a barren and sandy district, in many places destitute of water, to the banks of the "Forbidden River," as the Nilab is named; for Ackbar, on his way to conquest, ordered a fort to be built upon the stream, which he named Attock, which means, in the Hindoo language, "forbidden;" hence by their superstition it was unlawful to cross that river. They were now rapidly rising into importance in war and politics; but they were, as yet, too remote to be considered by the British in their Indian complications, however brave, energetic, and industrious they might be. Of all the tribes, from their power, policy, and position, the Mahrattas were the most likely to give Warren Hastings trouble-except, perhaps, the people of Mysore, whose importance depended on the skill and genius of their rajah. A kindred race with the Mahrattas, occupying contiguous territory, the Mysoreans were nearly similar in their social and military habits. The general instructions given by the Court of Directors to the governors and councils in this remote land to which they sent them, were to the effect that they were to be—if possible—on friendly terms with all these nations, but to avoid, at the same time, alliances with them, offensive or defensive, as such would be certain to lead to wars; but also, not to allow any one to attain sufficient preponderance of power to attempt the conquest of the rest, and thus, by welding India into one vast people, become too formidable for us. "These were deemed the proudest and bravest warriors in Hindostan. They were vain of their lineage, that they were universally descended from kings, and hence their name of Raj-poots. They could not patrol or forage like the Mahrattas, nor fling their rockets like the Rohillas, nor handle their cannon like the Jauts, neither had they the stature of the men of Oude; but they surpassed even the Rohillas in the use of the sword, and had the prestige of never having given way in battle. In a war with the Jauts," he continues, "their cavalry charged through the fire of ninety pieces of cannon, were thrice repulsed, each time only retiring to re-form, and at the fourth charge they won the victory. In stature they were rather below the middle size; but their persons were well-proportioned, their countenances handsome, and expressive of dignity and courage." The Sikhs, originally a Hindoo sect, whose chief as first Governor-General. And generally and intelligently was the policy thus inculcated, carried out by the Councils of Presidencies, prior to the appointment of Hastings CHAPTER XXX. MOHAMMED REZA KHAN AND THE RAJAH NUNCOMAR. WARREN HASTINGS, it has been remarked by a recent writer, guided his government by an intimate knowledge of, and sympathy with, the people. At a time when their tongue was simply deemed a medium of trade and business, Hastings, skilled in the languages of India, was versed in native customs, and familiar with native feelings; so we can scarcely wonder that his * Nolan. popularity with the Bengalees was such that, a century after the great events we are about to narrate, the Indian mother hushed her babe to sleep with the name of Warren Hastings; and with him began, consciously and deliberately, the great purpose of subjecting all that vast peninsula to the crown of Great Britain. The first duty of public importance that devolved + See Dow's "Hindostan." upon Hastings was in connection with the instructions sent out by the Court of Directors in 1771, and which arrived only ten days after he succeeded to the chair-relative to the curtailment of the allowance of the boy-nabob, Mubarek-ud-Dowlah, whose father had perished of small-pox during the dreadful famine. After this, Nuncomar (or Nundcomar), an infamous Hindoo Brahmin, to whom we have referred in relating the events of Mr. Vansittart's government, was competitor for the post of chief minister, with Mohammed Reza Khan, a Mussulman of Persian extraction, a man of active, able, and religious habits, after the manner of his race. In England he would have been deemed a corrupt politician; but, judged by the Asiatic standard, he was a man of perfect honour. Nuncomar, the Brahmin, whose name, by a melancholy fatality, has been inseparably connected with that of Warren Hastings, was a man who had played many important parts in the revolutions which had taken place in Bengal since the time of Surajah Dowlah, the perpetrator of the Black Hole atrocity; and in Nuncomar the national character of the Hindoo-if nationality he has-was strongly personified; and what that character is, is thus strongly summed up by Macaulay : "What the Italian is to the Englishman, what the Hindoo is to the Italian, what the Bengalee is to other Hindoos, that was Nuncomar to other Bengalees. The physical organisation of the Bengalee is feeble, even to effeminacy. He lives in a constant vapour-bath. His pursuits are sedentary, his limbs delicate, his movements languid. During many ages he has been trampled on by men of bolder and more hardy breeds. Courage, independence, and veracity are qualities to which his constitution and his situation are equally unfavourable. His mind bears a singular analogy to his body. It is weak, even to helplessness, for purposes of manly resistance; but its suppleness and its tact move the children of sterner climes to admiration, not unmingled with contempt. ... What the horns are to the buffalo, what the paw is to the tiger, what the sting is to the bee, what beauty, according to the old Greek song, is to woman, deceit is to the Bengalee. Large promises, smooth excuses, elaborate tissues of circumstantial falsehood, chicanery, perjury, forgery, are the weapons, offensive and defensive, of the people of the Lower Ganges. All those millions do not furnish one sepoy to the armies of the Company. But as usurers, as money-changers, as sharp legal practitioners, no class of human beings can bear a comparison with them. With all his softness, the Bengalee is by no means placable in his enmities, or prone to pity. The pertinacity with which he adheres to his purpose yields only to the immediate pressure of fear. Nor does he lack a certain kind of courage, which is often wanting in his masters. The European warrior, who rushes on a battery of cannon with a loud hurrah, will sometimes shriek under the surgeon's knife, and fall into an agony of despair at the sentence of death; but the Bengalee, who would see his country overrun, his house laid in ashes, his children murdered or dishonoured, without having the spirit to strike one blow, has been known to endure torture with the firmness of Mucius, and to mount the scaffold with the steady step and even pulse of Algernon Sydney." Mohammed Reza Khan, on being appointed Naib-Dewan and Naib-Nizam, had complete control of the Bengal revenues, for the behoof of the Company, through the former office, while the latter enabled him to wield executive authority during the nonage of the orphan nabob. He had enjoyed the government of the province for about seven years; and in addition to the annual salary of nine lacs (£90,000) paid to himself, he had the uncontrolled disposal of about £320,000, entrusted to him for the use of the nabob; and when the order came to reduce that stipend to sixteen lacs of rupees, it fell to Hastings to put it in execution and for this he was afterwards censured and condemned, as if the act had originated in himself. However much the saving made may have lessened corruption, or purified the atmosphere of the young nabob's court, no corresponding increase was visible in the exchequer at Calcutta ; and Hastings, in perplexity, was left to struggle through all the cares consequent on an almost empty treasury, while every ship and every despatch from Leadenhall Street brought clamorous demands for money-ever and always money. Great were the power and influence which were placed in the hands of Mohammed Reza Khan ; but, though his character stood high, and the belief was general that he had displayed equal fidelity and ability in the discharge of his trusts, nevertheless, rumours to the contrary began to be circulated, mysteriously and insidiously, whenever it was found that the revenues were falling short of what the Council of Bengal had sanguinely anticipated would be the means of exculpating themselves; and ultimately they did not scruple to insinuate that the fault lay with the management of Mohammed Reza Khan-thus it was resolved to deprive him of his important and profitable employments. The general opinion now got rapidly abroad that he must have acquired enormous wealth during 1771.] MOHAMMED REZA KHAN. 155 those years in which the little nabob's thirty-two Naib-Dewan of the kingdom of Bengal. But, lacs, and all the money raised by taxes, duties, and though we have declared our resolution in this privileges in Bengal, had passed through his hands. respect to our president and council, yet, as These rumours were industriously propagated by the measures to be taken in consequence thereof certain Hindoos, who had considered that a might be defeated by that minister, and all inquiry Mohammedan minister of finance was a great into his conduct rendered ineffectual, were he to encroachment upon that monopoly which the have any previous intimation of our design, we, greedy race thought they should have in all money the Secret Committee, having the most perfect matters; and the chief of those grumblers was the confidence in your judgment, prudence, and inMaharajah Nuncomar, who had resolved to destroy tegrity, have thought proper to entrust to your the Mohammedan administration, and rise upon special care the execution of those measures its ruins, although the Company's servants had which can render the naib's conduct subject to repeatedly detected him in the most criminal the effects of a full inquiry, and secure that retriintrigues, and once in a case of forgery. On bution which may be due." another occasion, while professing the strongest attachment openly to the British, it was discovered that he was the medium of a secret correspondence between the Mogul emperor at Delhi and the French in the Carnatic, with a view to undermine us. As no Indian minister who ever held such a post as his had proved honest, it became an easy matter to accuse him of duplicity and rapacity, as there were few habits so ancient in the East, or for which there were so many precedents; and now Nuncomar began openly to urge that Mohammed Reza Khan, who had always been far too popular, was becoming a great deal too powerful, and was nursing in secret a plan to overturn the Company. The alarm thus sounded, it became an easy matter to dissipate the esteem in which he had been held, especially by the poor, when there were laid to his charge every vague or true story of oppression and calamity, but chief of all, the recent plague and famine, with the spread of the small-pox. These charges, with all the others, and hints as suspicious concerning them, had been duly transmitted to the directors in London by a crafty Hindoo named Huzzernaul, a well-paid creature of Nuncomar, who had an extensive acquaintance with the servants of the Company; while his master made himself popular in Calcutta by a judicious distribution of presents, and thus formed a party sufficient to influence the votes and opinions of the members of the Court of Directors, whose embarrassments and cupidity made them readily take the worst view of the unsubstantiated charges brought against the luckless Mohammed Reza Khan, whose downfall was at once resolved on. And with this view, on the 28th of August, 1771, the Secret Committee wrote thus to Hastings :"By our general orders you will be informed of the reasons we have to be dissatisfied with the administration of Mohammed Reza Khan, and will perceive the expediency of our divesting him of the rank and influence he holds as the The unconscious naib was not the only person to be arrested, as the governor was also enjoined to take measures for securing the whole family of Mohammed, together with the persons of all his known partisans and adherents, and, by such means as prudence might suggest, to convey them all instantly to Calcutta. Though Hastings had not the least feeling of hostility to the naib, he was compelled to enforce these obnoxious orders, and took his measures with his usual zeal and dexterity. At midnight a battalion of sepoys surrounded the palace of the doomed minister at Moorshedabad. He was roused from sleep, and told that he was a prisoner. With Mussulman gravity, he simply bent his head in submission to the will of God, and went forth. But he went not forth alone, as, among others, there was arrested with him a chief, named Schitab Roy, whom he had made governor of Behar, and whose valour was only equalled by his attachment to the British; and this loyalty was never so much evinced as on that day when Captain Knox's little band of British bayonets scattered the whole host of the Mogul like chaff before the walls of Patna. After being conducted to Calcutta, the inquiry into the conduct of the fallen minister was postponed for many months; and in the meantime, his office at the court of Bengal was entirely abolished. It was ordered by the Secret Committee, that none of those persons who were arrested with him should be liberated until he had exculpated himself, and made full restitution of all those sums which he was alleged to have appropriated to his own use; and yet further, they vaguely instructed the governor "to endeavour to penetrate into the most hidden parts of his administration, and to discover the reality of the several facts with which he was charged, or the justness of the suspicions they (the Secret Committee) had of his conduct." Such instructions were more worthy of the ferocious Vehmgericht of the Middle Ages than of too much for his services, and not to promise him the office of Naib-Dewan." * "We cannot forbear recommending to you to |--but they warned Hastings not to give the villain avail yourself of the intelligence which Nuncomar may be able to give respecting the naib's administration; and, while the envy which Nuncomar may bear this minister, may prompt him to a ready communication of all proceedings which have come to his knowledge, we are persuaded that nothing scrutable of the naib's conduct can have escaped the watchful eye of his jealous and penetrating rival." Concerning these singular instructions, a writer says most justly : The office of minister at Moorshedabad, we have said, was abolished, and the government was transferred from thence to Calcutta-from native to European hands; and a system of civil and criminal justice, under British superintendence was established, and the nabob was no longer, even * Knight. when of age, to have an ostensible share in the government, though he was still to receive his diminished annual allowance, and to be surrounded by a mock state of sovereignty. As he was still an infant, the guardianship of his person and property was entrusted to a lady of his father's harem, known as the Minnee, or Munny Begum; while the office of treasurer of the household was bestowed upon Goordass, a son of Nuncomar. The services of the latter were wanted-or his silence, perhaps and it was deemed a master-stroke of policy to reward the able and unprincipled spy and traitor by the promotion of his unoffending son. The double government was now dissolved, and every way the Company were lords and masters of Bengal. Still the trial of the accused was delayed from time to time, till they were brought before a committee, over which Hastings presided in person. The gallant Schitab Roy was fully acquitted of all charge or suspicion, and a formal apology was tendered for the unmerited affront put upon him, and every Eastern mark of honour was | accorded him. Presented with jewels, clothed in a shining robe of state, he was sent back to the seat of his government at Patna; but his health had suffered in captivity, and his high spirit had been so wounded by the degradation he had endured, that he died soon after of a broken heart; his appointments were given to his son, Kallian Sing. The charges against Mohammed Reza Khan were not so quickly disposed of, as the inquiry, instead of being confined to the time he was NaibDewan of Bengal, was taken back to his earlier years, when he had been collector of the revenues at Dacca; and equally numerous and confident were the charges of his accusers, who were certain of his conviction, and of the distribution of his defalcations among them. One blunder with regard to the Dacca charges was soon proved. The name of Mohammed Reza Khan had been substituted for that of his predecessor in office, Mohammed Ali Khan; and he had, in consequence, been charged, during the two years he had held |