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CHAPTER XXII.

CONCLUSION OF HASTINGS GOVERNMENT.

A.D. 1782-5.

MACAULAY, in his brilliant and interesting

"Essay on Warren Hastings, observes, after the Court of Directors had refused to obey the resolution of the House of Commons, which required the recall of the Governor-General, as being the vote of only one branch of the legislature, that, "Being thus supported by his employers, Hastings remained at the head of the Government of Bengal till the spring of 1785. His administration, so eventful and stormy, closed in almost perfect quiet. In the Council there was no regular opposition to his measures. Peace was restored to India."

An attentive perusal of Hastings' letters, which are so fully given in Gleig's "Memoirs of Warren Hastings," the very book under review on which Macaulay has based his essay, scarcely supports such a conclusion, with the exception of the last sentence, that peace was restored to India as the result of the masterly policy of the Governor-General. According to the following letters written by Hastings, putting aside the ceaseless quarrels between Lord Macartney, the incapable Governor of Madras, and Sir Eyre

The Court of Directors.

225

Coote, the able general whom Hastings had sent to rectify the blunders of the Madras Council, it would seem that the Governor-General was anything but supported as he should have been by the Court of Directors at home, or that the members of the Supreme Council, Messrs. Macpherson and Stables, whom they had sent out to supply the vacancies at Calcutta, allowed him that supremacy in conducting the administration which his position, his experience, and his success fully warranted. Hence, in a letter to his agent, Major Scott, of February, 1783, he writes as follows: "Three days ago I received the resolutions of the Court of Directors, condemning my conduct in the affairs of Benares as a breach of treaty, and justifying Cheyt Singh. Are these men aware, in their eagerness to vilify me, they sow the seeds of distrust and rebellion among their own subjects, and that a declaration so authentic in the favour of a rebel, now residing under the protection of the chief of the Mahratta State, at the crisis of our negotiations with him, might tempt the former to resume his pretensions, and the latter to espouse them; and that a slight spark would be sufficient to blow up our possessions and those of the Vizier, if it fell on so combustible a ground? What is to follow these resolutions? An order to restore Cheyt Singh ? The conclusion is inevitable; for if we are bound by treaty with him, if he faithfully performed all his conditions of it, and we have broken our engagements with him, and the Court of Directors solemnly pronounce this at their judgment, they must render him justice, or they are the violators of public faith by their own avowal.

"It will not be expected that I should obey such an order, and how can I oppose it without exposing my person, fortune, and reputation to the most fatal extremities? And how can I elude it, but by resigning the trust which imposes on me so infamous a duty?... I trust to Lord Shelburne (Prime Minister) and to the injunctions of Lord Ashburton and Sir Robert Palk. In the meantime I hope that my narrative, which I find must have arrived in England within a few days of the passing of these resolutions, will have completely defeated them; for if there ever was a demonstration produced by argument, I have demonstrated the falsehood of Cheyt Singh's pretences to independency, and those of his advocates who assert that we were bound by any treaty or any engagement differing from that of a common. zemindary. While the Court of Directors assume the style and form of the late parliamentary resolutions, they may affirm what they please, with the preface that 'It appears to this Court, for who can contradict them whilst they have the dishonest discretion to conceal the grounds of the assertion? . .

"I shall bear with patience and forbearance every article of abuse that is yet to come; but the right of judging when I ought to quit the service because I can no longer retain it with effect or with credit, I shall certainly exercise; and at all events I shall stay till I know the result of the present deliberation in Parliament concerning India. I wish to see the war closed in the Carnatic, and the defeat and capture of the French; and this I trust will be effected before the month of October, if Coote gets safe to the coast and lives. When this work is accom

Conclusion of Hastings' Government. 227

plished, I care not what they may do with me in England." (Gleig, iii. 36-40.)

Of his coadjutors which the Court of Directors had sent him from England to help him in the most arduous task which has ever befallen the lot of any statesman since England became a nation, he thus writes to his agent in January, 1784, after speaking of their want of resolution, their fickleness, promising one day to support the Governor-General, and the next day retracting their consent :

"In short, I can confidentially mention as a certain fact that the members of the Board see less danger in doing nothing than in acting and seeing a standing Committee of the House of Commons on the watch for matter of crimination against us all, and determined, right or wrong, to condemn whatever is done; a powerful party, covetous of our places; a weak administration (Lord Shelburne's), courting support from all quarters, and this government affording a wide field of profitable patronage; they do not choose to add to the number of their enemies the connections of Lord Macartney, or give them fresh and strong ground of attack. This Mr. Wheeler has confessed. As to the other two, they received an early hint from their friends not to attach themselves to a fallen interest, and they took the first occasion to prove that if I was to be removed, their removal was not to follow as a necessary consequence of their connection with me, by opposing me on every occasion, on the most popular ground, on the plea of economy and obedience of orders, which they apply indiscriminately to every measure which I recommend; and Mr. Stables, with a spirit of rancour

which nothing can equal, but his ignorance has so acted throughout. His friend, with the most imposing talents, and an elegant and unceasing flow of words, knows as little of business as he does; and Mr. Wheeler is really a man of business. Yet I cannot convince him of it, nor persuade him to trust to his own superiority. He hates them, and is implicitly guided by them, and so he will always be by those who command him, and possess at the same time a majority of voices." (Gleig, iii. 145.)

Two years later, in writing to his intimate friend Mr. Anderson, after his arrival in England, he sums up the defence of himself, while dwelling on the extraordinary difficulties under which he laboured during the whole of the time that he was at the head of affairs, and engaged in consolidating the British Empire in India, which had been founded by the genius and skill of Clive. In this confidential communication to an intimate friend, which, as his biographer remarks, was evidently never meant for any other eyes than those of his correspondent, the principal points dwelt upon are these :—

When Mr. Hastings was appointed to be the head of the Bengal Government in 1772, he found it deeply in debt, and without resources. He constituted all the offices now extant, divided the departments of the Council, instituted new courts of civil and criminal justice. With great labour he reduced the expenses of every department, and formed a complete system of economical establishments. He first converted the funds of salt and opium from private emolument to the profit of the East India Company, and in the course of a few years he con