CHAPTER XXI.

THE GOVERNMENT OF WARREN HASTINGS.— THE EPISODE of Cheyt singh, the RAJAH OF BENARES.

A.D. 1780-1.

OTWITHSTANDING the humiliation to which the English commissioners had been compelled to submit by Tippoo Sahib, in concluding the treaty agreed to by the incompetent Council of Madras, the result on the whole was a most advantageous peace for England. The real danger in the Carnatic was passed by Coote's great victory at Porto Novo. The French power in India had been overthrown, vast acquisitions of territory had been made, and the impression had been produced among nearly all the native princes that the power of the British Empire in India was irresistible. The extent of these operations was magnificent in the extreme; for it embraced the three sides of the vast triangle of India, from Calcutta down the eastern coast, including the Northern Circars and the French settlements of Pondicherry, to Cape Comorin; and from Cape Comorin along the western coast, through the newly formed Mysorean kingdom of Hyder Ali, up to Bombay and Surat ; and the splendid march of General Goddard right across India, from Calcutta to Surat, which resulted

NOTWITHSTANDING

in his triumph over the Mahratta confederacy, may be said to have completed the territorial triangle.

By this means the British Empire in India was saved, when our empire in the far West, through the incapacity of the home Government, was irrecoverably lost. No patriotic Englishman can even now contemplate without dismay the effect which would have been produced in Europe, if the loss of our Indian Empire had been added to the loss of the thirteen states of North America; and that this had not happened was owing, under Providence, to the wonderful genius, the resolute daring, and the serene courage of one man the illustrious Warren Hastings, the Governor-General of Bengal.

Hastings' great principle of action was that the Carnatic must be rescued, and India saved, at all costs; and as the first step towards such preservation it was necessary to obtain the funds, which the Madras Council implored him to send them, without delay. If the expenses of the three separate wars with the Mahrattas, the Franco-Dutch, and Hyder Ali, had not strained the Bengal treasury to the utmost, it is certain that Hastings' administration in a financial point of view would have been as successful as he or the directors at home could have desired. His early success both at Madras and Calcutta, before he received the appointment of Governor-General, proved his capacity as a financial administrator; and his improved systems of rental and collections of revenue had been at least as successful as could be expected in the commencement of an important change. Still the drain on the treasury had never ceased; and while the Bom

Hastings Financial Success.

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bay and Madras presidencies could supply next to nothing, but were a heavy burden on the Calcutta exchequer respecting the means for carrying on the wars which were confined to the territories of those two presidencies, the demands for more money to be sent to England, for the use of the proprietors of East India stock, were loud and incessant. Moreover the debt in Bengal had now again reached more than a million sterling, while the credit of the Company was no better than when Hastings found it, and when he subsequently showed by his masterly operations how a deficit of two millions could be converted into a surplus of the same amount.

The testimony of Hastings himself on this point, together with his prognostication of the growth of the British Empire in India, deserves to be remembered. Writing to his friend Sulivan, one of the chief directors, in April, 1779, he says: "I came to this Government when it subsisted on borrowed resources, and when its powers were unknown beyond the borders of the country which it held in concealed and unprofitable subjection. I saw it grow into wealth, and again sink into a decline that must infallibly end it, if a very speedy remedy be not applied. Its very constitution is made up of discordant parts, and contains the seeds of death in it. I am morally certain that the resources of this country, in the hands of a military people, and in the disposition of a constant and undivided form of government, are both capable of vast internal improvement, and of raising that power which possesses them to the dominion of all India (an event which I may not mention without adding that it is what I never wish

to see); and I believe myself capable of improving them, and of applying them to the real and substantial benefit of my own country." (Gleig, ii., p. 275.)

Hastings, when called upon by the Council of Madras for money, money, money, to enable them to resist the terrible invasion of Hyder Ali, was placed in a most difficult and delicate position. He could not increase the burdens of the British provinces, for they were already taxed to the uttermost. He dared not withhold the Company's investments, for then no dividends could have been paid, and the outcry on the part of the shareholders would have been tremendous. He was very unwilling to reestablish a bonded debt, the absorption of which had redounded so much to his own credit, and had proved so beneficial to his employers. Something, however, must be done, otherwise the ruin of the Company's affairs, together with the loss of our Indian Empire, must be regarded as certain. Under these circumstances, Hastings resolutely and wisely determined to utilize the privileges which the constitution of the country and the customs of the Mogul Empire gave him, and to call upon his dependent chiefs, the rajahs and nabobs and greater zemindars, like a European sovereign of the middle ages, for such aid as the critical condition of the British Empire in India might render indispensable. Several of the neighbouring princes, who owed their political existence to the power of the British arms, were known to possess hidden treasures of a vast amount. The plan was to compel them, by firm and necessary pressure, to disgorge some of these treasures, for their own as well as England's good,

The Wealth of Benares.

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as it was well known, although they owed everything to the English, they would not willingly or freely part with a sou, even when they saw themselves threatened with destruction.

Oude and Benares, though nominally independent states, were to all intents and purposes tributary to the British power, and they would not have hesitated to have so acknowledged themselves. Shujah-oodDowlah, the Viceroy of Oude, who is described as a prince who "wanted neither pride nor understanding," would have been proud to be called the Vizier of the King of Great Britain, and had, as Hastings wrote to a friend, actually offered to "coin his money in the name and with the effigies of George III." If this offer of sovereignty had been accepted; if the East India Company, as representing the English nation, had frankly proclaimed themselves what they were de facto, the rulers of Oude and Benares; if, when they obtained dominion over these principalities, they had assumed their proper style and title, in place of calling themselves protectors, allies, and the like, with a false moderation of language which deceived no one, Lord Clive and Warren Hastings would have been alike relieved from an occasional false position, and actions scarcely warranted by their nominal relations with native princes would have been reconcilable with the law of nations.

Hastings' first design, in order to procure means for carrying on the war in the Carnatic, was on Benares, a city which in wealth, population, dignity, and sanctity, was among the foremost in Asia. The schools and temples drew crowds of pious Hindus from every province where the Brahminical faith was