The sale of Allahabad to the Nawab Wazir at once improved the Company's finances and strengthened Oudh, whose frontier was now riverbound and safe on the south and east. 9. But there was still a weak point in the northwest. The Mahrattas had overrun Rohilcund in 1770 and 1772. The forces of Oudh and the Company drove them out. But the Rohillas withheld their promised subsidy and even intrigued with the Mahrattas. Hastings helped Oudh to conquer and annex Rohilcund and so obtain a firm barrier, which the Mahrattas never again ventured to assail. His conduct has been attacked with unreasonable violence. The most that can be said against him is that, while his action was politically expedient, it is open to doubt whether morally there was yet a full case for interference that to lend British troops to a native power is repugnant, if not to the political morality of the eighteenth century, at all events to ours; and finally that he possibly might not have acted but for the financial profit. Judged by results, the policy was successful. : 10. Lord North's Act of 1773 marks a new departure. It was the first of several Acts culminating in 1858 by which Parliament interfered for the good government of India. As Governor-General Hastings received some control over Bombay and Madras. Parliament controlled him by the new Council and the Supreme Court. But the Act was vaguely drawn. It left in obscurity the main questions-what law was to be administered, over whom jurisdiction was to be exercised; where did ultimate sovereignty lie, with the Governor-General, the Council, the Supreme Court, the Directors, or with Parliament? Another dual system was set up. The new officials, sent out with orders to work in harmony, drew apart in two hostile camps, reunited only when Hastings regained supremacy through the death of Monson and Clavering. They came out determined to overthrow Hastings, and till 1776 Francis was practically supreme. The Court and the Council also drifted into war. These quarrels hindered, but did not ultimately stop, Hastings' system. He met them with marvellous patience and self-control. 11. The attempt to ruin him through Nuncomar failed signally. The charges against him and Impey in this connection can no longer stand after the criticism of Sir James Stephen. The worst that can be said is that it is still an open question whether Hastings may not have intimated privately to Nuncomar's prosecutor that now was the time to strike. Small blame can attach, if he did. Proof there is none either way. 12. The charges regarding Cheyte Sing and the Begums of Oudh also bear now a very different complexion from that given them by Macaulay. Feudatories may fairly be asked for money in time of stress and punished for intriguing with our foes. Yet Hastings cannot be acquitted of all blame. His action showed too much of a disposition to carry things with a high hand, not unnatural in one so long cut off from western influences, and living amid the methods of Asiatic rule. 13. No doubt he justified himself by the financial stress of the great war with the Mahrattas and Mysore, rendered more acute by the renewal of French intrigue and the revolt of the American colonies. In those black days the British Empire seemed falling to pieces. Elsewhere was defeat and despair. In the East alone Hastings not only kept the flag flying, but laid the solid foundations of our future policy. His final treaties with the Mahratta States mark an epoch. He was the first to see that the British power could not stand alone. It must form such alliances with the Native States as should make it the dominant factor in the politics of all India. His system of subsidiary alliances paved the way along which Lord Wellesley and others moved to dominion. 14. After the departure of Francis his last days of office were spent in peace. But he had now a bitter and unresting foe at home who found men ready to listen. English politics were rising out of the slough of corruption and place-hunting to a higher and purer ideal. A healthier public opinion had grown up. America had been an object lesson in the results of misgovernment. Might not what remained of the Empire be saved from it? Not to speak of Lord North's effort to turn out Hastings in 1776-7, or of the Directors' condemnation of the Rohilla War, Indian affairs were attracting more and more attention, especially in the years 1781-6, when the report of Dundas' Committee furnished material for debate, and even led to a vote adverse to Hastings. Fox and Burke, his burning zeal soon to glow white hot amid the tumult of the French Revolution, made the subject their own. But ministries were too short-lived for much to be done. North went out in 1782. Rockingham followed with Burke and Fox. Shelburne succeeded in July, but in April 1783 fell before the Coalition Ministry of Fox and North. Their East India Bill failed, and Pitt became Prime Minister in 1784, and his India Bill established the Board controlling the Directors at home, and laid down the principle of responsibility to Parliament. 15. Hastings' Impeachment might never have come had it not been for his failure to understand his position, and the unwise challenge of his agent, Major Scott. This brought Burke to the point. Hastings, secure of the royal favour, thought himself equally sure of Pitt. To everyone's surprise Pitt gave way. The great trial dragged its slow length along. At first it absorbed universal attention. But the excitement died away amid the law's delays, and a natural revulsion of feeling in favour of him who had done England such service, heightened not a little by the intemperate language of Hastings' assailants. Acquittal came, but the punishment was severe. The hope of distinction was gone: Hastings was a ruined man. But his broken fortunes were repaired by the generosity of the East India Company. For his disappointment he found solace in "his own noble equanimity, tried by both extremes of fortune and never disturbed by either," in the support of friendship, in a happy home life, in the firm affection of the peoples of India and of the servants of the Company, to which his successors in office bore striking testimony. 16. It may well seem now that the impeachment should never have been and that Hastings was a much wronged man. Some misgovernment there may have been. But it was due to the system, not to the man. Our first government of dependencies had failed in America with men of our own blood. With an alien race in a lower stage of civilisation the task was even harder, and it had to be performed through men never trained for the position they were suddenly called upon to assume. All was experiment and groping in the dark. Not in attacks on individuals lay the remedy, but in the reform of organisation, the permeation of the Civil Service by higher ideals, the patient study of conditions and their slow and wise amelioration. Yet so far as it awakened the national conscience to those duties the impeachment served its turn. |