[1774 A.D.]

From Clive's third visit to India dates the purity of the administration of our eastern empire. When he landed in Calcutta in 1765, Bengal was regarded as a place to which Englishmen were sent only to get rich, by any means, in the shortest possible time. He first made dauntless and unsparing war on that gigantic system of oppression, extortion, and corruption. In that war he manfully put to hazard his ease, his fame, and his splendid fortune. The same sense of justice which forbids us to conceal or extenuate the faults of his earlier days compels us to admit that those faults were nobly repaired. If the reproach of the company and of its servants has been taken away; if in India the yoke of foreign masters, elsewhere the heaviest of all yokes, has been found lighter than that of any native dynasty; if to that gang of public robbers, which formerly spread terror through the whole plain of Bengal has succeeded a body of functionaries not more highly distinguished by ability and diligence than by integrity, disinterestedness, and public spirit; if we have seen such men as Munro, Elphinstone, and Metcalfe, after leading victorious armies, after making and deposing kings, return, proud of their honourable poverty, from a land which once held out to every greedy factor the hope of boundless wealth, the praise is in no small measure due to Clive. His name stands high on the roll of conquerors. But it is found in a better list, in the list of those who have done and suffered much for the happiness of mankind. To the warrior, history will assign a place in the same rank with Lucullus and Trajan. Nor will she deny to the reformer a share of that veneration with which France cherishes the memory of Turgot, and with which the latest generations of Hindus will contemplate the statue of Lord William Bentinck.h

H. W.-VOL. XXII. G

WARREN HASTINGS, the first governor-general of India, was born in 1732. He was sprung from a branch, or rather, as they alleged, the main stem, of the great old house of Hastings, from which in another line the earls of Huntingdon descend. But at the time of Warren's birth his branch was fast decaying; and Daylesford, its ancient seat in Worcestershire, was already sold. It was only through the kindness of a kinsman that he obtained his education at Westminister school; and when that relative died, he was shipped off at seventeen as a writer to Bengal. He was noticed by Lord Clive as a man of promise. Under Mr. Vansittart1 he had much more opportunity to shine. Thus, through the various gradations of the civil service at that time, he sped with credit and success. Having married, but become a widower, he returned to England in 1765. But four years afterwards he was again sent forth as second in the council of Madras; and early in 1772 he proceeded to a far higher, and, as it proved, more lasting post, as first in the council of Bengal.

Spare in form and shrunk in features, with a mild voice and with gentle manners, Warren Hastings might seem to a casual observer as wanting in manly firmness. It is remarkable that, on his appointment as governor of Bengal, Lord Clive deemed it right to warn him against this, as he imagined, the weak point of his character. Never was an error more complete.

It may be said of Hastings, that tenacity of purpose was not merely the principal feature of his character, but the key and mainspring of the rest. It made him, on the one hand, consistent and courageous. On the other hand, it gave him a certain hardness and insensibility of heart; it made him, [The period of Vansittart's government has been truly described as the most revolting page in our Indian history."]

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on several great occasions in his long career, callous to the sufferings which his policy inflicted, and careless of the means by which his policy might be pursued. He was firm, it may be added, in all his friendships and attachments, but few men have ever been more rancorous and unforgiving.

It was one among the merits of Hastings, that he had made himself thoroughly acquainted, not only with the literature, but also with the temper and feelings of the nations which he came to rule. Their languages he spoke with ease and fluency; their prejudices, whether of religion or of race, he was ever, unless impelled by

some state necessity, studious not to wound. By such means he was at all times, whether in his triumphs or in his hours of danger and distress, a favourite with the native tribes of Hindustan -a favourite, moreover, at a period when in most cases they had little or no sympathy for the island-strangers.

When in the year 1772 Hastings first assumed the administration of Bengal, he found the whole country weighed down by the effects of the recent famine and de

population. The greatest praise perhaps of his able rule is the simple fact that scarce any trace of these effects appears in the succeeding years. He enforced a new system in the land revenue founded on leases for five years; a system indeed far from faultless, yet the best, probably, which at that period could be framed. Under that system nearly

WARREN HASTINGS

(1732-1818)

the same amount of income was collected from the far diminished numbers with less, it would seem, of pressure than before. For the accumulating debt and financial embarrassment of the company more than the common resources seemed to be required. These Hastings strove hard to supply, not always, as will presently be shown, by the most creditable means. At the same time, to the great and manifest advantage of the natives, he put an end to the oppressive tax or duty levied upon marriages. As one of the results of his system of revenue-collection, he established, with signal good effect, district courts for the administration of justice, and district officers to maintain the public peace. Within a few months the provinces were in a great measure cleared of the dacoits or gangs of thieves, and other prowling marauders. These and such like measures of reform, or of public policy, were carried through by Hastings amidst numerous objections in his council and incessant calls upon his time.

[1772 A.D.] Among the earliest acts of Hastings in Bengal was one for which, right or wrong, he was in no degree responsible. It arose from the peremptory and positive commands of the directors at home to arrest and try Muhammed Reza Khan, who had now for seven years held his great office at Murshidabad, as naib diwan, or chief minister of the finances. The reports against him of embezzlement and fraud in his high functions appear to have arisen mainly through the intrigues of Nandkumar or Nuncomar his disappointed rival. Muhammed Reza Khan was seized in his bed at midnight by a battalion of sepoys. The same measure was extended to his confederate, Shitab Roy, at that time governor of Behar; a chief who, in the recent wars, had fought with signal bravery upon the English side.

The two prisoners were carried to Calcutta, where after many months of postponement and delay they were brought to trial before a committee over which Hastings himself presided. Nandkumar, with a vengeful rancour, such as no time could soften, no calamities subdue, appeared as the accuser of his ancient rival. But no guilt could be proved to call for any further punishment, nor even to justify the harshness already shown. Both prisoners, therefore, were acquitted and set free; Shitab Roy, moreover, being sent back to hold office in Behar, clothed in a robe of state and mounted on a richly caparisoned elephant, as marks of honour and respect.

Nandkumar throve as little in his hopes of ambition as in his projects of revenge. Hastings had meanwhile been effecting a complete change in the former system. It was not merely that he arrested the minister; he abolished the office. He put an end to the scheme of double government at Murshidabad and at Calcutta, transferring to the latter city and to the servants of the company the entire machinery of state affairs. An empty pageant only was left at the former capital, still decked with the name and honours of nawab. That nawab, the heir of Mir Jafar, was now an infant. On that plea, Hastings took occasion to reduce the yearly allowance granted by the company from 320,000l. to half that sum. To alleviate in some degree the disappointment that was gnawing at the heart of Nandkumar, his son Rajah Goordas, was appointed treasurer of the young prince's household. The guardianship of the young prince himself was bestowed, not on his own mother, but on another lady of his father's harem - the Munny Begum, by title and name.

External affairs also claimed the early care of Hastings. Shah Alam the emperor, in name at least, of Hindustan, had more than once endeavoured, but in vain, to prevail upon the English to assist him in expelling the Mahrattas. Finding that alone he could not attack these invaders of his patrimony with the smallest prospect of success, he took the opposite part, and threw himself into their arms. He was received at first with every token of respect and homage, and led back in triumph to his ancestral seat of Delhi. Soon, however, a quarrel ensued between them, when he found himself no more than a prisoner and a puppet in the hands of his new allies. They compelled him to sign an edict, transferring to them the districts of Allabahad and Korah, which had been bestowed upon him by Lord Clive. But here Hastings interposed. He determined not merely on resuming the districts of Allabahad and Korah, but on discontinuing all further yearly payments to Shah Alam. Breach of faith on this account became, at a later period, one of the charges brought against him.

The districts of Korah and Allabahad were promptly occupied by English troops. But it was computed that the expenses of maintaining them at so great a distance would exceed the utmost revenue they could bring. It was

[1773–1774 A.D.]

therefore the wish of Hastings to yield them for a stipulated sum to the adjacent state of Oudh. He repaired to the city of Benares to confer in person with the nawab vizir. There, in September 1773, a treaty was agreed upon between them; the nawab vizir undertaking to pay for the two districts the sum of fifty lacs of rupees.

ENGLISH TROOPS LENT FOR THE DESTRUCTION OF THE ROHILLAS

But alas for the fair fame not only of Hastings, but of England! another and a weightier question was then decided at Benares. The Rohillas, a tribe of Afghan blood, had earlier in that century, and as allies of the Mughal, descended into the plains of Hindustan. They had obtained for their reward that fertile country which lies between the Ganges and the mountains on the western boundary of Oudh. That country bore from them the name of Rohilkhand. It had been earned by their services, and it was flourishing under their dominion. Of late there had sprung up a difference between them and their neighbours of Oudh, with respect to some pecuniary stipulations which the Rohillas contracted and were backward to discharge. On that ground, Sujah-ud-Daula had a plea for war against them.

He applied to the English governor for the aid of English bayonets; and this request came before Hastings at a time when the Bengal treasury was weighed down with heavy debts, and when nevertheless the letters from the court of directors were calling on him in the most earnest terms for large remittances. The Indian prince wanted soldiers, and the English chief wanted money, and on this foundation was the bargain struck between them. In April, 1774, an English brigade under Colonel Champion invaded the Rohilla districts; and in a hard-fought battle gained a decisive victory over the Rohilla troops. Exactly half a century afterwards an English bishop, on his first visitation progress, found the whole scene still fresh in the traditions of the country.

Throughout this conflict, nothing could be more dastardly than the demeanour of the troops of Oudh. They had slunk to the rear of the armies; they had kept aloof from the fight; and it was only after the battle was decided that they came forward to plunder the camp and despoil the dead and dying. Many an indignant murmur was heard from the British ranks: "We have the honour of the day, and these banditti are to have the profit!" Nor was this all. The vizir and his soldiery next applied themselves to wreak their fury on the vanquished, and to lay waste with sword and fire the rich plains of Rohilkhand. No terms whatever had been made by Hastings for the more humane and merciful conduct of the war; and Colonel Champion, in his private letters to the governor, might well avow his fear that, although his countrymen stood free from all participation in these cruel deeds, the mere fact of their having been silent spectators of them would tend, in the minds of the whole Indian people, to the dishonour of the English name.

The case of Hastings as to the Rohillas- a case at the best a bad one was farther injured by the indiscretion of his friends. Some of them afterwards pleaded for him in the house of commons, that the Rohillas were not among the native possessors of the soil in India, but only an invading tribe of foreign lineage and of recent conquest. With just indignation, Mr. Wilberforce exclaimed, "Why, what are we but the Rohillas of Bengal?" But Hastings himself took better ground. Besides the pecuniary advantages, on which no question could exist, he had political arguments to urge in vindication of his treaty. It was of paramount importance to the British to form