short time the subscription list was well filled. The amount subscribed was £400,000, and the list contained the names of 1,219 shareholders, among whom were the leading nobles, public bodies, clergy, lawyers, merchants, officers of the army, and individuals of all classes, thus showing, beyond all doubt, that this new Indian Company was a great national movement by a people eminently intelligent, wary, and resolute in action. Liberal subscriptions were anticipated from other countries, and the managers, among whom was the famous William Paterson, a native of Dumfries, founder of the Bank of England, and also of the Bank of Scotland, dispatched commissioners to London, Amsterdam, and Hamburg with authority to open new lists, and confer the privileges on all who might apply for them. But now the English Parliament took the alarm, and their attention was specially drawn to the subject by a petition from their own company in the December of 1695, complaining bitterly that all Scotland, by an Act of her Parliament, had been made a vast free port for East India commodities, which, the petitioners added, "will unavoidably be brought by the Scots into England by stealth, both by sea and land, to the vast prejudice of the English trade and navigation," and to the detriment of the revenue. William of Orange, though he hated the Scots, and knew that their crown had been given him by an illegal convention of the Estates, found himself in a dilemma. He dared not question the competency of the Scottish Parliament to grant the Act complained of, without attacking the national independence of the kingdom, and he dared not sanction it without placing himself in opposition to the English Legislature. "I have been ill served in Scotland," he answered vaguely, "but I hope to find some remedy to prevent the inconveniences which may arise from this Act." He thought to achieve this by dismissing most of the Scottish Ministry and choosing others, while the English Parliament took a more decided and more absurd step, by resolving that the directors of the Scottish East India Company were guilty of a high crime and misdemeanour, and that Lord Belhaven, William Paterson, and others whom they named, should be impeached for the same. Though the English Parliament were powerless, and legally incompetent to pass such a resolution, it only had the effect of rousing indignation in Scotland. The commissioners sent from Edinburgh to Hamburg had every prospect of having their subscription list well filled by the traders of that opulent city, when their hopes were frustrated in a very unexpected manner. This On the 7th of April, 1697, a memorial was presented to the Senate of Hamburg, signed by William's envoy at the court of Lüneburg, setting forth that for the merchants of that city to enter "into conventions with private men, his subjects, who have neither credential letters, nor are any other ways authorised by His Majesty," would be an affront which he would not fail to resent. document, which was not of a satisfactory description, contained what appeared to many to be a deliberate falsehood, and a gross misrepresentation of what the Scottish commissioners actually were. It was considered to amount to an unwarranted interference with the independent rights of Scotland and Hamburg, and drew forth the following reply from the senate and general body of the merchants : "We look upon it as a very strange thing that the King of Britain should hinder us, who are a free people, to trade with whom we please; but are amazed to think he would hinder us from joining his own subjects in Scotland, to whom he has lately given such large privileges by so solemn an Act of Parliament." The tenor of the envoy's document, however, had the effect of spreading such doubts in the Bourse, that, though the merchants signed for large sums, they appended conditions which virtually made their subscriptions void, unless some protection were offered them against the intimations of King William's memorial. To afford them this protection, on the 28th of June in the same year, the Council-General of the Scottish Company presented an address to the king, remonstrating with him on the iniquity of his proceedings in threatening the city of Hamburg, by persons acting in his name. William now found the awkwardness of his position, and feared that to justify the memorial of his envoy might throw all Scotland in a flame, no difficult matter in those days; so after the delay of a month he promised, on his return to England from the Continent, to take into consideration the complaint of the Scottish East India Company, and in the meantime his envoy would cease, by the use of his name, to obstruct their trade with the merchants of Hamburg. This answer, which was probably interpreted as an evasion, promised more than William ever performed, and matters were drawing to a crisis, when the proceedings of the Scottish Company paved the way for their own extinction. Finding themselves baffled in attempting to settle on any territory in amity with Britain, they selected the Isthmus of Darien, situated between the Atlantic and Pacific, which seemed so advantageous that all other con 1775.] WARREN HASTINGS' PROTEST. 179 threw overboard 100 corpses. The squalid survivors, as if they were not sufficiently miserable, raged fiercely against one another. Charges of incapacity, cruelty, and insolence, were hurled backward and forward. The rigid Presbyterians attributed the calamities of the colony to the wickedness of Jacobites, prelatists, and atheists, who hated in others that image of God which was wanting in themselves.. Paterson was cruelly reviled, siderations were forgotten, and the first expedition, | The Caledonia, the healthiest ship of the three, consisting of five large vessels, laden with merchandise, military stores, and 1,200 men, sailed from Leith to found on that distant neck of land the colony of New Caledonia, and a city to be called New Edinburgh. Other ships and other colonists, full of enthusiasm, sailed from Scotland; but Spain claimed the land on which they settled, and sent an overwhelming force against them. In vain, amid starvation and pestilence, did they defend a fort patriotically named by them, St. Andrew, and engage single-handed in war with the powerful monarchy of Spain, while all resource and succour were cut off from them by every sea and shore, till of the 3,000 Scotsmen who landed on Darien, only a remnant ever returned home, being permitted to embark in the Company's ships. "The voyage was horrible!" says Macaulay, "scarcely any Guinea slave-ship ever had such a middle passage. Of 250 persons who were on board of the St. Andrew, 150 fed the sharks of the Atlantic before Sandy Hook was in sight; the Unicorn lost all its officers, and about 140 men. and was unable to defend himself. He had been completely prostrated by bodily and mental suffering. He looked like a skeleton. His heart was broken. His invention and his plausible eloquence were no more, and he seemed to have sunk into second childhood." And thus, in the year 1698, passed away the Scottish East India Company, ending in what was named the Darien Expedition, which, like other projects, formed without due knowledge of actual facts, and carried into execution without the necessary preparations and proper precautions, was an entire and miserable failure. CHAPTER XXXV. THE CONSPIRACY OF NUNCOMAR.—HIS ARREST, TRIAL, AND EXECUTION. WHILE the capture of Salsette and other events in Western India had been in progress, other bands of Mahrattas, descending into the valley of the Ganges from Delhi and Agra in 1775, plundered severely the northern portions of the dominions held by Asoff-ud-Dowlah, the young Nabob of Oude, who was as great a coward as his father had been, and, moreover, was totally destitute of the ability the old man possessed. These devastations caused a serious decrease in the current of supply to a treasury which the Supreme Council had emptied; and they were accompanied by alarming rumours of a new league between the Mogul Emperor, the Sikhs, Mahrattas, Rohillas, and other Afghan tribes, with a view to the general conquest of the whole kingdom of Oude. As the plans adopted by the Supreme Council at Calcutta, to break up or repel this league-if it really existed—were neither good nor consistent, the nabob owed his safety, as yet, to quarrels which broke out among the chiefs of these warlike tribes, and the poverty and indecision of the Court of Delhi; for at Calcutta, in every meeting of Council, the voice that was least heeded, was that of the Governor-General Hastings. The latter, full of indignation, and hopeless of achieving any change, sent to London, for the perusal of the premier, Lord North, papers which he averred were perfect and literal copies of his correspondence with Mr. Middleton, our former resident at the court of Oude. This he did to vindicate his own character, and announced to his friends at home that he should, without fail, return to Britain by the first ship, unless he received a vote of approbation from the Court of Directors on his past conduct, for the petty, yet most hostile, majority, continued to heap up accusations against him. In a letter to Mr. Sullivan, dated 25th February, 1775, he wrote thus :-"These men (Clavering, Monson, and Francis) began their opposition on the second day of our meeting. The symptoms of it betrayed themselves on the very first. They follow that his account was inaccurate, and the condemned me before they could have read any important question therefore is, Were these dispart of the proceedings; and all the study of bursements really made? Did Mr. Hastings, when the public records since, all the information they have raked out of the dirt of Calcutta, and the encouragement given to the greatest villains in the province, are for the sole purpose of finding grounds to vilify my character, and undo all the labours of my government." It would appear that, on the 2nd May, 1775, Mr. Charles Grant, a well-known philanthropist and statesman, whose father fell in the Pretender's army at Culloden, who was then one of the members of the Provincial Council at Moorshedabad, forwarded to Calcutta a set of accounts which he had received from a native, who was now in his service, but had formerly been a clerk in the treasury of the nabob. According to these papers the guardian of the latter, the Munny Begum, had received nine lacs of rupees more than she accounted for; and when questioned on this matter, the clerk asserted that the begum's head eunuch had endeavoured to bribe him, before he parted with the accounts, to deliver them up and return to the nabob's service, while Mr. Grant asserted that similar offers had been made to himself. The majority of the Supreme Council were thus satisfied that the accounts were correct, and resolved to suspend the begum from her office, which was, for the time, united with that of the nabob's dewan, then held by the son of Nuncomar, Rajah Gourdass; and Mr. Goring was dispatched to Moorshedabad to investigate the matter without delay. As Goring received his appointment from the majority, he was fully influenced by their spirit, and the orders given him were, to require from the begum the whole of the public and private accounts for the preceding eight years, and to hand them over to the Provincial Council, Messrs. Grant, Maxwell, and Anderson, who were to examine them minutely. Goring, a few days after his arrival, dispatched to Calcutta memoranda of disbursements amounting to £15,000 to Hastings, and the same amount to Middleton. Hastings, when these accounts were read, wished Goring to be asked, "in what manner he came by the accounts he now sent, and for what reason this partial selection was made by him?" This question, which they declined to put, would, it is averred by some, have elicited the fact that he had extorted the account by intimidation, and selected these particular items to inculpate Hastings. "But though Mr. Goring's bias might thus have been made manifest," says a writer, "it does not Gleig's "Warren Hastings." he went to Moorshedabad, in 1772, and the begum was formally installed as the nabob's guardian, receive £15,000 from her under the name of entertainment money? It is admitted on all hands that he did. In his answer, so far from denying the receipt, he justifies it on various grounds. The Act of Parliament prohibiting presents was not then passed, the allowance made was in accordance with the custom of the country; it put nothing into his own pocket, and had he not received it, he must have charged an equal amount against the Company." Hastings, by other arguments, fully defended himself, but now another charge was brought forward by "Francis, Clavering, and Monson, who had got hold of the great informer or arch-devil of Bengal, the notorious Nuncomar, and were inciting him to collect evidence and bring charges against Hastings, as Hastings had encouraged him, by command of the Secret Committee of the Court of Directors, to produce charges against Mohammed Reza Khan." Nuncomar put into the hands of Francis a letter addressed to the Governor-General and Council, requesting him, in his official capacity, to lay it before the board, and Francis, nothing loth, accordingly did so, on the day he received it. This document entered into various details respecting the case of Mohammed Reza Khan, insinuating that he had obtained his release by bribery and corruption, and concluded with "the specific charge against Mr. Hastings of having received three lacs and a half (354,105 rupees) for the appointments of Munny Begum and Gourdass." In presenting this formidable letter, Mr. Francis, of course, professed to be totally unacquainted with the contents thereof, but Hastings, knowing as he did the deep craft and malignity of the Hindoo character, was not without reason to feel disquieted, A violent altercation ensued, and Hastings spoke bitterly of the manner in which he was treated, and with supreme contempt of Nuncomar and his accusation, and at the same time denying the right of the Council to sit in judgment upon the GovernorGeneral. On Colonel Monson very improperly suggesting that Nuncomar should be called before them, Hastings resolved to shield himself from the intended insult. "Before the question is put," said he, "I declare that I will not suffer Nuncomar to appear before the board as my accuser. I know what belongs to he had expected such an attack to be made upon him, as he had seen a paper containing many accusations against him, and had been told it was taken to Colonel Monson by Nuncomar, who, for some hours was employed in explaining the nature of the charges to the colonel. He then produced a translation of the paper and desired it to be recorded. Monson, thus suddenly put on his defence, denied that he had seen any paper whatever, though he admitted the fact that he had been visited by Nuncomar. At this crisis, Hastings wrote thus to Sullivan :"Nuncomar, whom I have thus long protected and Nuncomar was laid on the table, requesting that he might be permitted to attend and substantiate his allegations. Tempestuous was the debate that ensued, till Hastings rose, declared the sitting at an end, and left the room, followed by Barwell. The other members kept their seats, voted themselves a Council, put Clavering in the chair and requested Nuncomar to appear. He accordingly did so, and not only adhered to his former charges, but, in true Oriental fashion, produced a large supplement. He boldly stated that Hastings had received a great sum for appointing Gourdass treasurer to the * Gleig's Warren Hastings." (. nabob's household, and committing the care of his person to the Munny Begum; and he put in a letter, bearing her seal, to establish the truth of his story. This seal Hastings alleged to be forged; but if genuine, it proved nothing, "as everybody who knows India had only to tell the Munny Begum that such a letter would give pleasure to the majority of the Council, in order to procure her attestation. The majority, however, voted that the charge had been made out; that Hastings had corruptly received between thirty and forty thousand pounds, and that he ought to be compelled to refund." * The Council did yet more than all this. At the prompting of Nuncomar, the trio called to their aid a Hindoo woman, the Ranee of Burdwan, whom Hastings had expelled from Calcutta in consequence of her violent and intriguing character; and she, after being duly instructed, sent in most circumstantial charges, accusing Hastings of extortion to the amount of 1,500,000 rupees, and his banyan, or native secretary, with extorting a great deal more; the fabulous total being set down at considerably above nine millions of rupees. She produced witnesses in support of all this, but, as natives, they were deemed totally unworthy of credit. The next great charge entertained by this trio was, that Hastings had appropriated to himself two-thirds of the salary of the Phousdar, or governor of the fort and town of Hooghly, a post once held by the irrepressible Nuncomar. Hastings was willing to refer all these matters to the English judges, but denied the competency of the Council to take them up. Moreover, however innocent, he was certain to be misjudged by them; so the trio continued their sitting, though Hastings and Barwell were absent. This last charge was worse supported even than that made by the ranee in her revenge. Two Indian witnesses and two dubious letters, were all the evidence produced. But thick and fast other charges came pouring in. "The trumpet has been sounded," wrote Hastings in a letter given by Gleig, "and the whole host of informers will soon crowd to Calcutta with their complaints and ready depositions. Nuncomar holds his durbar in complete state, sends for zemindars and their vakeels, coaxing and threatening them for complaints, which, no doubt, he will get in abundance, besides what he forges himself. The system which they have laid down for conducting their affairs is, I am told, after this manner: The General rummages the consultations for disreputable matter with the aid of old Fowke. Colonel Monson receives, and, I have * Macaulay's Essay. been assured, descends even to solicit, accusations. Francis writes. Goring is employed as their agent with Mohammed Reza Khan, and Fowke with Nuncomar." In Bengal, the general feeling among the British residents, at this most painful crisis, was strongly in favour of the unfortunate Governor-General; while the Company's servants were all in his favour, as one who had attained his high position. from being a civilian and a volunteer, serving with a musket on his shoulder. Despite the general sympathy accorded him, Hastings felt his position painfully; and, knowing that if the authorities in England took part with his pitiless and unwearying enemies, nothing would be left for him but to send in his resignation: to be prepared for the worst, he placed it in the hands of his agent in London, Colonel MacLean, with instructions not to produce it until the feeling in the India House should prove completely adverse to him. Now indeed the vengeance and triumph of Nuncomar seemed complete. His daily levees were crowded by his exulting countrymen, and thither resorted the triumphant trio of the Council. His house became literally an office for the reception of charges against the Governor-General; and, it is said, that by alternate threats and wheedling, this villanous Hindoo induced some of the wealthiest men in Bengal to lodge complaints. But he was playing a perilous game with institutions of which he knew not the nature; neither did he know the danger of driving to despair a man possessed of the acuteness and resolution that characterised Warren Hastings. Neither did it occur to him that there was in Bengal an authority perfectly independent of the Council-one which could protect him whom the Council meant to disgrace and destroy. Yet such was the fact. Within the sphere of its own duties, the Supreme. Court was entirely independent of the Council; and, with his usual sagacity, Hastings had seen the advantage to be derived from possessing himself of this stronghold, and he acted accordingly. The judges-especially the Chief Justice-were quite hostile to the obnoxious trio, and the time had now come to put the formidable machinery of the law in action, and Nuncomar was soon to be rudely awakened from his pleasing day-dreams. On the 11th of April, he was accused, before the judges of the Supreme Court, of being party to a conspiracy against the honour of the GovernorGeneral and others, by compelling a certain person to write a petition, in tenor injurious to their character, and sign a statement of bribes having been accepted by his Excellency and his officials. |