Page images
PDF
EPUB

Returning to England in 1839, Macaulay again entered Parliament, and for a number of years had a seat in the Cabinet. Laborious as were his Ministerial duties, he yet found time to pursue with unflagging ardour his literary work. The essays on Lord Clive and Warren Hastings are the product of this period, as are those admirable specimens of "rhymed rhetoric," the Lays of Ancient Rome. But alternate legislating and electioneering were not favourable to literary composition; and Macaulay was ambitious to do more than write essays and compose verse. He had long cherished the idea of writing a History of England; and, fortunately for literature, Parliamentary defeats and loss of office gave him the leisure, though now late in the day, to put his wish into effect. From now to the close of his life, with a brief interruption incident to his temporary return to politics, Macaulay threw his whole heart into the writing of his History. Few Englishmen at the time were so deeply versed as he in the country's annals; and none had hitherto hit the idea of making history popular, or were able to treat it with such picturesque effect. Alas! he lived to see but four volumes published; the fifth, a fragment, appeared posthumously, for, at the close of 1859, the brain that had woven the wonderful fabric had ceased its function.. Its author died Baron Macaulay; and on the 9th of January, 1860, his remains were interred with impressive pomp in the Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey.

The social aspects of Macaulay's life present some very loveable traits. His attachment to his sister, Lady Trevelyan, and the fond indulgence of a bachelor-uncle to her children, are prominent features in his biography and pleasingly attest his affectionate disposition and warmth of heart. The Life and Letters," by his nephew, Mr. Trevelyan, is one of the most admirable biographies in the language, and should be read by all admirers of the great historian, orator, and essayist.

Macaulay is the most pictorial prose-writer in English literature. His power of graphic narration has rarely been equalled and never surpassed. With wide and accurate knowledge, and the faculty of readily bringing it to his aid, he has enriched the literature of history and biography with scenes and studies that bid fair to have perennial life. He was a typical Englishman; and his writings, both historical and literary, deal with subjects that interest the national mind and enlist the sympathies of the national heart. His power of reproducing the past is great; and the impression he leaves on the mind of the reader is vivid and lasting. His work always tells, for it is hearty and genuine. Nor is it ever timidly put forth, but invariably with confidence and conviction. In

not a few instances this leads him into error, and gives a colour to his statements that does injustice to facts. At times one has to stand off from his work to get its proper focus, and to see his facts out of the glare of his rhetoric. But he has painted many striking pictures, and imbued with fresh life many forgotten incidents and memorable figures of the past.

The characteristics of Macaulay's style are strength and clearness. It is said that ne never wrote but one obscure sentence in his life. With equal truth it may be affirmed that he never penned a weak one. In reading Macaulay one often sighs, indeed, for an hour of langour, and for a passage of quiet repose. But there is as little of repose as there is of emotion. The tenderness that was in his nature he never imparts to his books. We have the firm hand of the robust rhetorician, but never the soft touch of the idealist or the poet. Macaulay has no acute sensibilities; and hence in his writings there is little of humour and less of pathos. Yet every page is instinct with life, bright with colour, and affluent of illustration. From every nook of literature he brings something to enrich his narrative and ornament his work. Not only are his facts inexhaustible, but inexhaustible also are the resources of his art. On canvas there may be daubs of colour, but the man and the scene he sets out to paint he always succeeds in making live before one. The process may be mechanical and the details too minute, but the result nevertheless is art.

The essay on Warren Hastings exemplifies both the merits and the defects of Macaulay as a writer. Though somewhat overloaded with ornament, the narrative is clear-cut, forcible and brilliant. It displays vast and varied knowledge, and is enriched with apt, if profuse, illustration. But Macaulay rarely brings out the deeper significance of events, and seldom looks into the heart for the motive of his actors. Not only is there an absence of the analytic habit, there is often a narrowness of view, and not infrequently poverty of thought. He is seldom original, and never profound. To the ordinary reader this is concealed by an animated style, and by a florid and abundant rhetoric.

Macaulay's fondness for antithetical writing often detracts from his sense of justice, and leads him unfairly to praise one man by defaming another. In one other respect his work is defective: as the artists say, his pictures want atmosphere; he gets too near to the canvas, and, consequently, there is a lack of perspective. But despite these defects Macaulay is a great and attractive writer. He is always in earnest, and his industry makes his work thorough, if not at all times accurate. The national history may yet be witten more scientifically, but never with a sturdier patriotism or with more enthusiasm and fire.

INDIA BEFORE THE TIME OF WARREN HASTINGS.

British settlement in India practically dates from the year 1600, when the East India Company was founded. A hundred years earlier the Spaniards, the Portuguese, and the Dutch, actuated by the spirit of enterprise of the time, were all eager to reach the Indies, and to bring home some of its fabled wealth. During the whole of the 16th century the Portuguese had the monopoly of trade in the East. When the crowns of Portugal and Spain were for a time united the national interests of Portugal were merged in Spanish conquest in the West, and her Asiatic trade passed into the hands of the English and the Dutch. Competition between the two latter Powers for the commerce of India was in the 17th century keen and on both sides aggressive. But in 1758 the tide turned in favour of Britain, when Clive, at Chinsurah, forced the Dutch to capitulate. Sixty years later Dutch trade on the mainland of India received its death blow, when England, during the great French wars, from 1793 to 1811, won all the colonies of Holland.

But England had other rivals besides the Portuguese and the Dutch in the trade of the Orient. France had early laid covetous eyes on the wealth of the Indies, and possessed a Trading Company in the East under charter of the French Crown. There were also various English companies formed for trading purposes in India and the Indian Archipelago. In 1709 the two chief companies were amalgamated, and were henceforth known as the "East India Company." At successive periods this great corporation obtained a renewal of its charter, though its powers were more or less modified as time went on, until the year 1858, when the Company and its affairs were transferred to the British Crown. On some of the islands of the Indian Archipelago the Company established factories, or houses of trade, which ere long brought its servants into collision with the Portuguese and the Dutch. In 1623 occurred the massacre by the Dutch at Amboyna, which drove the English from the Spice Islands to the mainland of India. The Company soon obtained a footing on the Coromandel coast, where it erected Fort St. George, its first territorial possession, and the nucleus of the later city of Madras. Settlements were ere long effected at Bombay, at Fort William (Calcutta), at Moorshedabad, once the capital of Bengal, and at various points on the Hooghly, a navigable branch of the Ganges. The French also made good their foothold in the country, establishing themselves at Chandernagore, just above Calcutta, and at Pondicherry, a hundred miles south of Madras.

The

At first the English East India Company pursued its trade by permission of the native princes, whose rights it for a time respected, though the cupidity of the Company and its employés were ere long utterly to disregard both political and commercial morality. rivalry of the trading companies of other nations, particularly the French, soon introduced discord into the country, and with it a factor of no inconsiderable account in the spoliation of India. Its fruit was soon seen in setting the native rulers by the ears, in deposing some, and extorting from others immense sums of money and ere long their territorial possessions. The trading companies were greedy and their servants unscrupulous. Such was the position of affairs in India when, in 1744, war broke out in Europe between England and France. At this time M. Dupleix, the French Governor of Pondicherry, was ambitious that the rule of his countrymen should be the dominant one in India. The English were the special objects of the Governor's designs; and in 1746 Madras surrendered to a French squadron which was then cruising on the coast. In 1748 it was however restored to Britain.

[ocr errors]

Meanwhile the whole of Southern India, on the fall of the Mogul power at Delhi, had become practically independent; and in the Deccan the Nizam-ul-Mulk was founding at Hyderabad a hereditary dynasty. The Carnatic, the lowland district lying between the central plateau and the Eastern Sea, was governed by a deputy of the Nizam, known as the Nawab of Arcot. To the south lay Mysore, Tanjore, and Trichinopoli, which were all seats of independent Hindoo power. On the death, in 1748, of Nizam-ul-Mulk, the "War of Succession to the throne of the Deccan, referred to in Macaulay's Essay, began to rage. The English supported the claim of Nasir Jung, a son of the late ruler; while it suited the purpose of the French Governor, Dupleix, to maintain the cause first of one grandson and then of another. In like manner, to the subordinate sovereignty of Arcot, the French and English advanced the interests of rival claimants. The former upheld the pretensions of Chunder Sahib, while the latter countenanced those of Mahommed Ali. To end the trouble, which was a source of danger to Madras, and to cripple the influence of France in the Carnatic, the English directed Clive, who had come to India in 1743, to proceed with a small but brave force to seize Arcot. Clive's capture and subsequent defence of the place was the first of his great military achievements. From that period French power in the East begun to decline; and its overthrow occurred nine years later, when Sir Eyre Coote won the victory of Wandewash, and in the following year starved Pondicherry into a surrender.

The scene now shifts to Bengal, and to the advent of Warren Hastings. In 1740 the hereditary succession to the throne of the Province had been broken by a usurper, who died in 1756. His grandson, Surajah Dowlah, a hot-headed youth of eighteen, became Nawab of Bengal. The Court was at Moorshedabad, contiguous to Cossimbazar and the European factories on the Hooghly. Down the river, at Calcutta, there was by this time a large settlement of English. Suddenly the city was seized by a panic on the appearance at its gates of an army of the Nawab. On the pretext of capturing a relative, who had escaped from his vengeance, Surajah Dowlah had marched upon and invested Calcutta with his forces. Most of the English fled down the river in their ships; though about 150 of them were captured and flung for the night into the military jail at Fort William. Only 23 emerged on the morrow from the horrors of the "Black Hole."

While this tragic occurrence took place Clive was at Madras with the British fleet. On hearing of the calamity he instantly set out for the mouth of the Ganges, and Calcutta was promptly recovered. The Nawab fortunately consented to a peace and made ample compensation for British losses. But Clive soon found the opportunity to settle accounts more satisfactorily with Surajah Dowlah. War having again broken out between France and England, the hero of Arcot made it the pretext to seize the French settlement on the Hooghly of Chandernagore. This enraged the Nawab; and in hot haste he took up the cause of the French. Clive, acting upon the policy of the Governor of Pondicherry, put forward a rival claimant for the throne. Resort was had to arms. At Plassy, about 70 miles north of Calcutta, the die was cast ; and Clive with less than a tenth of Dowlah's army met and scattered it to the winds. Placing Meer Jaffier on the throne of Bengal, Clive dictated his own terms on elevating him to the position, and the East India Company practically became masters of the Province.

:

Little remains now to be said, for Warren Hastings comes at this period upon the scene, and Macaulay's Essay takes up the thread of the narrative. Plassy was fought on the 23rd of June, 1757 and in the following year Clive was appointed by the Court of Directors Governor of the Company's settlements in Bengal. The incidents connected with the dethronement of Meer Jaffier, the revolt of Meer Casim, and the reconquest of Bengal, brings the story of British occupation well on in the career of Hastings. These and subsequent stirring events brought out the resources of that famed administrator; and, with Clive's military genius, make the history of the period a notable one in the annals of India.

« PreviousContinue »