SECOND PERIOD: BENGAL PROVINCES.
1756-1798.
§1. From Calcutta to Plassy, 1757-58. §2. Nawab Rule under British
Protection. §3. British Arrogance: Massacre at Patna. §4. Lord
Clive's Double Government, 1765-67. §5. Warren Hastings, 1772-85:
Life and Career. §6. British Rule: Treatment of Bengal Zemindars.
§7. British Collectors and Magistrates: Circuit Courts and Sudder.
§8. Innovations of Parliament. §9. Collisions in Calcutta Council:
Trial and Execution of Nundcomar. §10. Clashing of Supreme Court
and Sudder. §11. Mahratta War: Goddard and Popham. §12. Triple
Alliance against the British: the Mahrattas, the Nizam, and Hyder
Ali. §13. Parliamentary Interference: the Two India Bills. §14.
Charges against Warren Hastings. §15. Lord Cornwallis, 1786-93:
Perpetual Settlement and Judicial Reforms. §16. Sir John Shore,
1793-98: Non-Intervention.
[Sidenote: Madras politics.]
In June, 1756, Calcutta was lost; the news reached Madras in August. War
with France was trembling in the balance. An army of Europeans and
sepoys, under Colonel Clive, was waiting to attack the French in the
Deccan. A Royal fleet, under Admiral Watson, was waiting to bombard the
French at Pondicherry. But the news from Calcutta outweighed all other
considerations; and Clive and Watson were dispatched to the river Hughly
with 900 Europeans and 1,500 sepoys.
[Sidenote: Calcutta recaptured.]
§1. The force appears small in modern eyes, but it was irresistible
against Asiatics. The ships of war, with their tiers of cannon, were
sufficient to create a panic. The expedition reached Calcutta on the
1st of January, 1757. The Mogul commandant at Fort William fled away in
terror, and next morning the British flag was hoisted over the factory.
The Company's merchandise, which had been reserved for the Nawab, was
lying untouched, but every house in the town, Asiatic as well as
European, had been plundered by the Mogul soldiers.
[Sidenote: Nawab accepts terms.]
At this moment, news arrived that war with France had begun. Clive and
Watson were anxious to make peace with the Nawab in order to fight the
French. The Nawab, on his part, was frightened at the British fleet, and
was ready to promise anything if the ships and cannon would only go
away. He agreed to reinstate the British in all their factories and
privileges, and to pay full compensation for all the plunder that had
been carried away from Calcutta, so that nothing further was wanted but
the execution of these terms.
[Sidenote: Treachery and intrigue.]
The Nawab, however, never seems to have intended to fulfil his promises.
He vacillated, procrastinated, and lied egregiously. He signed a treaty,
but evaded every application for the money. He worried Clive and Watson
with fresh promises and excuses until they were wild with the delay. At
last they discovered that he was intriguing with the French for their
destruction. But the Nawab himself was environed with dangers of all
kinds. His own grandees were plotting against him, and opened up a
secret correspondence with Clive. Englishmen, Mohammedans, and Hindus
became entangled in a web of conspiracy and craft, from which it was
difficult to escape with an unsullied reputation. Eventually, the Nawab
sent an army to Plassy, on the route to Calcutta, as if to overawe the
British settlement. The army was commanded by Mir Jafir, the head of
the conspiracy for dethroning the Nawab. Shortly afterwards, the Nawab
himself followed Mir Jafir to Plassy, and the whole force was estimated
at 50,000 men and forty pieces of cannon.
[Sidenote: Battle of Plassy, June, 1757.]
Clive advanced from Calcutta to Plassy with 3,000 men and nine pieces of
cannon. The battle of Plassy was fought on the 23rd of June, 1757, just
a year and three days after the Black Hole tragedy. It was more of a
British cannonade than an action between two armies. Clive was expecting
to be joined every moment by Mir Jafir. The Asiatic plotter had sworn to
be faithful to both parties, and was mortally afraid of both the Nawab
and the British. He dared not desert the Nawab, and he dared not fight
the British. For hours he did nothing. At last, towards the close of the
day, he moved his forces from the field, and made off towards
Murshedabad. Clive advanced to charge the Nawab's camp, but the Nawab
saw that he was deserted and betrayed, and fled in abject terror. The
days of the fugitive were numbered. He hid himself for a while with a
favourite wife and his choicest jewels, but was then taken prisoner and
brutally murdered by a son of Mir Jafir. Such was the end of the once
notorious Suraj-ad-daula, better known to British soldiers and sailors
as "Sir Roger Dowler."
[Sidenote: Overflowing riches.]
Colonel Clive marched on to Murshedabad, and installed Mir Jafir on the
throne as Nawab of Bengal, Behar, and Orissa. Clive, and Clive alone,
was the lord paramount of the hour, the hero of Plassy, the invincible
warrior. The money and jewels in the treasury at Murshedabad were
lavished by Mir Jafir on Colonel Clive and his party. The British
officers of the army and fleet received large donations. One million
sterling was given to the East India Company, another million sterling
to the inhabitants of Calcutta--European and Asiatic. A hundred boats
loaded with silver went down the river from Murshedabad to Calcutta,
followed by the curses of the grandees; whilst the sight of the boats
approaching Calcutta was hailed with the joy of men who had escaped
shipwreck. "For once," says a contemporary, "and only for once, the
people of Calcutta were all friends."
[Sidenote: Terrible responsibilities.]
§2. The battle of Plassy was a British triumph, but it entailed enormous
responsibilities. Colonel Clive had raised up a Nawab to be absolute
ruler of territories larger than Great Britain and Ireland, and far more
populous. Bengal, including the delta of the Ganges, was one of the most
fertile regions in the world, whilst the inhabitants were most
submissive and easily governed. For centuries the Bengalis had been
oppressed by foreigners--Turk, Afghan, Abyssinian and Mogul. The
revenues, however, had been collected by Hindu officials, as being at
once more exacting in their demands, and more easily stripped of their
ill-gotten gains.
[Sidenote: Wretched rule of Mir Jafir.]
Nawab Mir Jafir was most subservient to the British and most anxious to
please them, but was otherwise as dissolute and worthless as any Turkish
pasha. In his younger days, when the Mahrattas were harrying Bengal, Mir
Jafir might have been a good soldier, but since then he had degenerated
into a worn-out voluptuary, spending all the money he could get on
jewels and dancing-girls, whilst his own troops were in mutiny for want
of pay, and his British supporters and protectors were demanding
further supplies for the payment of their own forces. To make matters
worse, the Nawab was removing the old Hindu officials and placing his
Mohammedan kinsmen in their room.
[Sidenote: Delhi affairs: flight of the Prince Imperial.]
Suddenly, a new vista opened out to Clive through the territory of Oudh,
on the north-west, to the remote capital of the Great Mogul at Delhi.
The Great Mogul was a mere pageant in the hands of the Vizier, who
exercised what remained of the imperial authority. The Prince Imperial,
the son and heir of the Great Mogul, was afraid of being murdered by the
Vizier, and fled away into Oudh, and threw himself on the protection of
the Nawab.
[Sidenote: Invasion of the Nawab of Oudh.]
The Nawab of Oudh had long desired to get possession of the Bengal
provinces, and thought to secure them by making the Prince Imperial a
cat's paw. He proclaimed that the Prince Imperial had been invested by
his father with the government of Bengal, Behar, and Orissa. He then
sent the Prince forward with a large force to enforce the proclamation,
whilst he himself remained behind in Oudh and awaited events.[7] To make
matters worse, the Hindu officials in the Bengal provinces, who had been
dispossessed, or were expecting to be dispossessed, were preparing to
join the invaders.
[Sidenote: Clive's difficulty.]
Mir Jafir was in a panic of fear at the appearance of the Prince
Imperial, and proposed to pay him a sum of money to go away. Clive would
not listen to the suggestion. He ignored the Prince Imperial and the
Great Mogul, and soon routed the invading army. The Prince Imperial then
became a suppliant to the British, and implored Clive for help; but
Clive had been requested by the Vizier at Delhi to arrest the fugitive,
and would not commit himself. He, however, sent a bag of 500 mohurs,
about 800_l_. sterling, to relieve the immediate necessities of the Prince
Imperial, and the money was gladly received by the impoverished
fugitive.
[Sidenote: Wanted, a British army.]
Meanwhile, Clive was at his wits' end for money. The Bengal provinces
could be held against any enemy in India by a standing army of Europeans
and sepoys. Such an army could be maintained for half a million sterling
per annum, and the public revenue amounted to three or four millions;
but the Nawab refused to disband his own rabble soldiery, and pretended
that he could not pay the Europeans.
[Sidenote: Solution.]
At this crisis Clive received a secret and startling proposal from the
Vizier at Delhi, that he should accept the post of Dewan to the Great
Mogul for Bengal, Behar, and Orissa. In the palmy days of the Mogul
empire, every province was governed by two officials, the Nawab and the
Dewan. The Nawab kept the peace and administered justice; the Dewan kept
the public purse, received the revenues, paid all salaries, and sent the
surplus as tribute to the Great Mogul. The later Nawabs had become their
own Dewans, and spent the revenue as they pleased, without sending any
tribute to the Great Mogul. Had Clive closed with the offer, it would
have involved a mortal struggle with Mir Jafir, for it would have
deprived the Nawab of all power over the public purse. But it would have
removed every financial difficulty, as the Vizier would have been
satisfied with a yearly tribute of half a million sterling, or even
less, whilst Clive would have had the whole remaining surplus at his own
disposal.
[Sidenote: Clive's offer to Pitt, 1759.]
Clive would not accept the post of Dewan, either for himself or for the
East India Company. But he wrote privately to the British premier, the
first William Pitt, and proposed that the British Crown should act as
Dewan to the Great Mogul. Under such an arrangement, the Crown might
have taken over the Bengal revenues, sent half, or a quarter of a
million a year to Delhi, spent another half million on a standing army,
and devoted another half million to the salaries of the Nawab and his
officials; and then might have secured a surplus of two millions a year
towards the payment of the national debt. William Pitt, however, was
already alarmed at the growing power of the Crown, and he declined
taking over the proposed income lest it should endanger the liberties of
the British nation.
[Sidenote: Turmoils in the north-west.]
In 1760 Colonel Clive returned to England, and in 1761 the war with
France was over. India might now have been at peace, but the north-west
was in a turmoil. The Great Mogul was murdered by his Vizier. The
Afghans had slaughtered 200,000 Mahrattas on the fatal field of Paniput,
and established their ascendency at Delhi. The fugitive Prince Imperial
was proclaimed Padishah, or Emperor, by the Nawab of Oudh, who assumed
the title of Nawab Vizier; and the Padishah and his Nawab Vizier invaded
Behar and threatened Patna.
[Sidenote: Change of Nawabs.]
§3. The British at Calcutta were now in sore peril, and there was no
Clive to guide them. They deposed Mir Jafir on their own authority, and
set up his son-in-law, Mir Kasim, as Nawab of Bengal, Behar, and Orissa.
The new Nawab was unquestionably a better man than the deposed Mir
Jafir; but the transfer of a throne by a Governor and Council of British
merchants was somewhat startling. There was, however, no one to resist
the Calcutta traders, and Mir Jafir yielded to his kismet, retired from
his post as Nawab, and removed to Calcutta, as a safer residence than
Murshedabad.
[Sidenote: Mastery of the British.]
Mir Kasim agreed to all the British demands. He was bound over to pay
half a million sterling for the maintenance of the British army; but he
averted money disputes with the Company's servants by ceding three
districts in the immediate neighbourhood of Calcutta, which yielded the
same amount of revenue, and the British could collect the money for
themselves. Above all, the new Nawab agreed, as Mir Jafir had done
before him, to free the Company's servants from the payment of all
inland transit duties within the Bengal provinces.
[Sidenote: Dealings with the Padishahs.]
Mir Kasim, accompanied by a British force, took the field against the
young Padishah and the Nawab Vizier. The invaders were soon defeated;
the Nawab Vizier fled back to Oudh, but the young Padishah remained at
Patna. Accordingly, the British determined to get his sanction to their
proceedings, and thus to justify their appointment of a new Nawab in the
eyes of the people of India and the European nations trading with
Bengal. He was without territory or revenue. His throne and capital at
Delhi were in the hands of the Afghans. Yet he had been proclaimed
Padishah in India, and was legally the Great Mogul. Accordingly, the
British determined to recognize his sovereignty, and arrange for the
appointment of Mir Kasim as Nawab of Bengal, Behar and Orissa, under his
imperial seal and commission.
[Sidenote: British set up a Great Mogul.]
It was somewhat audacious for a handful of British traders to set up a
Great Mogul for themselves as lord paramount of India. It was still more
audacious to carry out the ceremony of installation in a building sacred
to silk and saltpetre. Nevertheless, the work was done. The Company's
factory at Patna was converted into a Mogul palace; the centre room into
a hall of audience; the dining-tables into an imperial throne. The
Padishah was carried in procession to the factory, and enthroned on the
dining-tables as the Great Mogul. Mir Kasim paid homage to the
sovereign, and was invested with the post of Nawab of the Bengal
provinces. In return, the Nawab was bound over to pay a yearly tribute
to the Great Mogul of a quarter of a million sterling.
[Sidenote: Enthronement at Patna.]
The installation of the Great Mogul, and the formal appointment of the
Nawab of Bengal, were established facts, but no party was satisfied. The
Padishah was disgusted, because the British would not conduct him to
Delhi and place him on the throne of Aurangzeb. The Nawab was disgusted
at paying a heavy tribute when the Padishah might have been forced by a
little pressure to sell the appointment for a bag of rupees. He was
apparently bent on breaking off all relations with the British, and
there was no objection to his doing so. He moved his court from
Murshedabad, which was only a hundred miles from Calcutta, to Monghyr,
which was more than three hundred miles. Here he formed an army of
picked men, and employed a European deserter, known as Sombre or Sumru,
to drill the troops in British fashion, and began to manufacture muskets
and cast guns.
[Sidenote: No one satisfied.]
The quarrel began about the right of the British servants of the
Company, under the treaty with Mir Kasim, to carry their commodities
through the Bengal provinces free from the payment of all transit
duties. The British at Calcutta twisted the privilege of non-payment
into a right to carry such native commodities as salt, tobacco, opium,
betel, sugar, and oil, without payment; whilst all Bengali dealers were
compelled to pay a duty at every station. The British were thus able to
undersell native dealers, and monopolise the whole trade of the country.
The Nawab protested against this interpretation, and insisted on
collecting the duties, unless the goods were bought for exportation by
sea. Then ensued quarrels, misunderstandings, frays and reprisals; the
Nawab complaining of the loss of duties, whilst the British set him at
defiance, and resisted all attempts to collect the duties by force of
arms.
[Sidenote: Quarrel with Mir Kasim.]
Mir Kasim cut away the British monopoly by abolishing all inland transit
duties. The Bengali dealers were thus placed on the same footing as the
Company's servants. The Company's servants were blind with wrath at this
measure. They insisted that they enjoyed a certain privilege under the
treaty with Mir Kasim, and that this privilege was rendered valueless,
by the general abolition of duties. Accordingly, they proposed sending
two of their number to Monghyr to argue the matter with the Nawab.
[Sidenote: Fresh exasperations.]
The city of Monghyr is situated on the river Ganges, three hundred miles
above Calcutta and a hundred miles below Patna. The two British envoys
were received and entertained by the Nawab, but told there was nothing
to settle; he had ceased to collect duties from his own subjects and the
British had nothing to do with the matter. At this very moment a boat
arrived at Monghyr on its way to Patna with a cargo of firelocks from
Calcutta for the garrison at the British factory. The Nawab at once
suspected that the British were preparing for war. He confiscated the
firelocks, and kept one of the envoys as a hostage, but permitted the
other to return to Calcutta. The latter man was doomed. On his way down
the river he was fired upon by the troops of the Nawab, and brutally
murdered.
[Sidenote: Mir Jafir restored.]
When the news of this catastrophe reached Calcutta, the Company's
servants seem to have lost their heads. In vain they were told that the
British at Patna, and those at another factory, were at the mercy of the
Nawab. They swore that they would be avenged although every Briton up
country was slaughtered; and they wrote out a declaration to that
effect, and each man signed it. The Governor and Council of Calcutta
then went in a body to the house of Mir Jafir, and restored him to his
post as Nawab of Bengal, Behar, and Orissa, on the condition that he
once again levied the duties from Bengali traders. Mir Jafir readily
promised, and indeed would have promised anything to recover his lost
throne.
[Sidenote: Perils at Patna.]
Meanwhile, the British at Patna were in extreme danger. They had a
European garrison at the factory, but the factory was untenable. They
made a desperate effort to seize the town of Patna, and for a few hours
were successful. The Mogul commandant was taken by surprise and fled
with most of his troops; but the Mogul fortress still held out. The
British ought to have stormed the fortress, but delayed on account of
the heat. The result was fatal. The European soldiers went to the bazaar
for drink, whilst the sepoys plundered the shops and houses, and within
a very short time the whole force was utterly demoralised.
[Sidenote: British prisoners.]
Suddenly, the Mogul commandant met with reinforcements, and returned and
recovered the town. The British fled back to the factory, but saw that
they were being environed by the Nawab's troops. They hurriedly embarked
in boats, in the hope of escaping up the stream into Oudh, but the enemy
closed around them. Had they resisted to the last, some might have
escaped. As it was they surrendered as prisoners, and were taken to
Monghyr, where they found that the British inmates of another factory
had been arrested and imprisoned in like manner.
[Sidenote: British advance: massacre at Patna, 1763.]
An avenging army was soon on its way from Calcutta. Murshedabad was
captured, but not without a stout resistance, for the drilled troops of
the Nawab were vastly superior to the rabble hosts that had fought at
Calcutta and Plassy. The British force, however, overcame every
obstacle, and pushed on to Monghyr, whilst the Nawab fled to Patna,
carrying his prisoners with him to the number of a hundred and fifty
souls. At Patna the Nawab heard that Monghyr was taken by the British,
and resolved on exacting a terrible revenge. His prisoners were shut up
in a large square building with a courtyard in the centre. He ordered
Sombre to slaughter the whole, and the miscreant environed the building
with sepoys. The British assembled in the courtyard, bent on fighting
for their lives. The sepoys climbed to the roof, but were assailed with
a storm of brickbats and bottles from the courtyard. Sombre ordered them
to fire on the prisoners, but they hung back, declaring that they were
sepoys and not executioners, and would not fire on men without arms in
their hands. Then Sombre grew furious and violent; struck down the
nearest sepoys with his own hands, and threatened and bullied the rest
into obedience. The sepoys yielded to their European master. Successive
volleys were fired into the courtyard, until it was strewed with dead
bodies. Not a single prisoner escaped that horrible slaughter.
[Sidenote: Mir Kasim and the Nawab Vizier.]
The massacre at Patna sealed the doom of the Nawab. He fled away into
Oudh with his family and treasures, but the avenging Furies were at his
heels. The Nawab Vizier received him with ostentatious hospitality, but
only that he might strip him of his treasures. The Nawab Vizier declared
war against the British for the restoration of Mir Kasim, but it was
only that he might eventually get the Bengal provinces into his own
hands.
[Sidenote: Battle of Buxar, 1764.]
The war lasted many months, but was brought to a close in 1764 by the
battle of Buxar. The victory gained by Sir Hector Monro at Buxar on the
Behar frontier was as decisive as that of Plassy. The Nawab Vizier fled
away in terror to the Rohilla Afghans beyond his north-west frontier,
leaving his dominions at the absolute disposal of the British; and Sir
Hector Monro marched on to the capital at Lucknow and took possession of
the whole of Oudh.
[Sidenote: British triumph.]
The triumph of the British was complete. Mir Kasim lost his treasures
and died in obscurity. The Nawab Vizier was a helpless fugitive;
neither Rohillas, nor Mahrattas, nor any other power could help him
against the British. The Great Mogul was once more a suppliant in their
hands. The British were _de facto_ masters of the bulk of the old Mogul
empire, and might have taken possession of the whole of Northern India
in the name of the Great Mogul. As it was they proposed making over Oudh
to the Afghans, and restoring the Great Mogul to the throne of his
fathers at Delhi. Before, however, the Governor and Council at Calcutta
could change the map of India, the Court of Directors upset their plans
by sending out Clive for the last time with the authority of a dictator.
[Sidenote: Lord Clive Dictator, 1765.]
§4. The Directors of the East India Company had been alternately
infuriated and terrified at the news from Bengal. They were extremely
angry at the quarrel about the private trade, especially as they had not
shared in the profits; but the massacre at Patna filled them with grief
and despair. Accordingly Clive, who had been raised to the peerage, was
sent to Bengal as Governor, with full power to act as he thought proper.
[Sidenote: Settlement of Oudh.]
When Lord Clive landed at Calcutta Mir Jafir was dead, and the existing
Governor and Council had sold the throne of the three provinces to an
illegitimate son for 200,000_l._ and divided the money amongst
themselves. Lord Clive was extremely wroth, but could do nothing. The
offenders retired from the service of the Company and returned to
England. Meanwhile Lord Clive stopped the expedition to Delhi, restored
Oudh to the Nawab Vizier, and secured a handsome sum out of the
transaction for the benefit of the East Indian Company.
[Sidenote: Company acquire Bengal, Behar, and Orissa, 1765.]
But the crowning event in Lord Clive's life was the acceptance of the
post of Dewan to the Great Mogul in the name of the East India Company.
Henceforth, the Governor and Council at Calcutta took over the revenues
of Bengal, Behar, and Orissa from the Nawab's revenue officers, and
provided for the military defence of the three provinces. A quarter of a
million sterling was paid to the Great Mogul, and half a million to the
Nawab at Murshedabad for the salaries of himself and his officials; but
all interference on the part of the British with the administration of
the Nawab and his ministers and servants was strictly forbidden, as
contrary to the policy of non-intervention. Accordingly, the Nawab and
his officials were left to govern the country in their own fashion,
without a revenue and without an army.
[Sidenote: Sorrows of the Great Mogul.]
The Great Mogul, however, was not content. He would not live in the
Bengal provinces; he wanted to go to Delhi, and he was sulky because the
British would not take him there. He set up his little court at
Allahabad, half-way between Calcutta and Delhi, and lived like a prince;
but he was unhappy. A British brigade was posted hard by, and the
officer in command would not allow him to support his imperial dignity
by beating the imperial kettledrums, because of the noise.
[Sidenote: Agony of Bengal, 1765-72.]
The arrangements as regards the Bengal provinces, known in India as the
acquisition of the Dewanny, were carried out in 1765. In 1767 Lord Clive
returned to England, and the Bengal provinces were reduced to greater
misery than ever. There was no one to control the native officials, and
they accumulated riches at the expense of the masses. The wealth which
the old Nawabs had lavished on their pleasures was at least spent
within the three provinces; whereas it was now sent to China to buy tea
and silk for the East India Company, or was remitted to England as the
private fortunes of the Company's servants. Bengal was drained of its
silver, and the masses loudly complained that the British ought to
protect them against their oppressors. But non-intervention was the cry
both in Bengal and in the British Isles, and nothing was done.
[Sidenote: British supervisors.]
Meanwhile the revenue had rapidly declined. Before Lord Clive left
Bengal he was compelled to do something in spite of his policy of
non-intervention. He sent a British civil servant to every district in
the Bengal provinces, under the name of Supervisor. The supervisors were
to watch and report what was going on, but not to interfere with the
Bengali officials.[8] They were to collect statistics respecting the
land, its produce and capacity; the authorised amount of land revenue
and the illegal exactions; the administration of justice and the
regulation of trade. The British supervisors could only report what they
saw, and what the native officials chose to tell them. One thing was
certain: the people were terribly oppressed and the administration was
in utter confusion; and so long as the British played at
non-intervention it was impossible to apply a remedy.
[Sidenote: Famine, 1770-71.]
At last the dreadful famine of 1770-71 desolated and depopulated the
whole country. Terrible reports reached England that the Company's
servants had leagued with the native officials to buy up all the grain
and sell it at famine prices. Meanwhile the revenue had rapidly
declined, and the blame was thrown on the Bengali officials. Accordingly
the Court of Directors resolved to dismiss the Asiatic officials, and to
appoint covenanted British servants in their room; and they selected
Warren Hastings to be Governor of Bengal, with peremptory orders to
carry out the necessary reforms.
[Sidenote: Restricted authority of Lord Clive.]
§5. The change from Lord Clive to Warren Hastings was most momentous.
Lord Clive was a soldier born to command. Warren Hastings was
emphatically an administrator born to rule. From the first Lord Clive
had shirked all political responsibility. He was content to place the
East India Company in the position of Dewan, with the additional duty of
maintaining a standing army for the defence of the country, but without
attempting to invest it with the ruling powers of a Nawab. So long as
the Company took over the revenue, the Nawab and his officials were left
to govern the people, and administer law and justice, according to their
own will and pleasure. For himself, Lord Clive was content to rule the
Company's settlement and some small cessions of territory of no account,
and to leave the outside masses in utter darkness.
[Sidenote: Vast dominion of Hastings.]
Warren Hastings went to Calcutta as absolute ruler over the three
provinces. He was a prince amongst princes; the equal if not the
superior of any Hindu or Mohammedan ruler within the Himalayas and the
two seas. As President of the Council his authority was not confined by
the Mahratta ditch, but stretched far away over territories as large,
if not larger, than Great Britain and Ireland. He united the powers of
British Governor, Nawab, and Great Mogul. He was destined to strip the
Nawab of every vestige of authority; to cut down his yearly income from
half a million sterling to 160,000_l_., and to reduce him to the condition
of a private Mohammedan grandee dwelling at Murshedabad. As for the
Great Mogul, he had vanished from the scene. In 1771 he had quitted Oudh
and returned to Delhi with the Mahrattas, and thereby forfeited his
pension and empty suzerainty as far as the British were concerned. Later
on, the Mahrattas demanded payment of the yearly tribute, but were
flatly refused by Warren Hastings.
[Sidenote: Career of Hastings _ante_ 1772.]
In 1772 Warren Hastings was forty years of age, with very large
experiences. He had landed at Calcutta at the age of eighteen, and
served as a clerk and warehouseman in the factory at Calcutta. In 1757,
after the battle of Plassy, he was Resident at the court of Nawab Mir
Jafir at Murshedabad. Later on, during the quarrel with Mir Kasim, he
was a member of the Council at Calcutta, and one of the very few who
took the part of the Nawab. In 1764 he went to England and became poor.
In 1769 he returned to India and was appointed member of the Council at
Madras. In 1772 he proceeded to Calcutta to become Governor of Bengal,
Behar, and Orissa, in other words--to govern territories covering an
area of 150,000 square miles, or one-tenth of the great continent of
India. Henceforth his dominion extended from the mouths of the Ganges to
the foot of the Himalayas, and from the frontier at Oudh to the
frontiers at Assam and Bhutan.
[Sidenote: Two portraits.]
Warren Hastings must be regarded in two different aspects. In 1766,
whilst residing in England, his portrait was painted by Sir Joshua
Reynolds, and represents a mild, benevolent, and intelligent English
gentleman. Twenty years afterwards another portrait was painted, which
represents a stubborn and vindictive official, from whom all traces of
the mild gentleman had disappeared.[9]
[Sidenote: British rule in Bengal provinces.]
§6. The first task of Warren Hastings was to introduce British
administration into the Bengal provinces. The work had been easy enough
when dealing with the population of towns, who were dependent on the
East India Company for employment and protection. But dealing with
provinces having a population of twenty or thirty millions of Hindus and
Mohammedans, who knew very little of the British, and very little of
their laws or ways, was a very different matter, and demanded extreme
tact and caution.
[Sidenote: Land revenue.]
Warren Hastings began the work of government with the reform of the land
revenue--the backbone of all administration in India. In those days the
task was beyond the strength of any Englishman or body of Englishmen.
During the Mahratta invasions and sudden changes of Nawabs the
collection of the revenue had fallen into utter confusion, and it was
impossible for Europeans to understand local rights or wrongs.
[Sidenote: Zemindars and ryots.]
The bulk of the land revenue in Bengal was collected by middle men,
known as zemindars, from tenant farmers known as ryots. The zemindar was
half a landlord and half a revenue collector. He generally possessed
some hereditary land which was the family demesne; but outside the
demesne were the landholders or ryots, from whom he collected the rents.
The zemindar was not a landlord in the eyes of the ryots, because under
Mogul law he could not raise the rents. Still he was a great man within
his zemindary. He was magistrate, judge, and controller of the village
police; and he had armed followers in his pay, who helped the village
police in pursuing robbers and collecting rents. He had the right of
hunting, fishing, and cutting wood, throughout his zemindary. Moreover,
he levied irregular cesses, benevolences or aids, from the ryots, to
defray the expenses of a birth or marriage within his own family, or to
meet the demands of the Nawab in an emergency like a Mahratta invasion.
[Sidenote: British zemindar at Calcutta.]
The changes in the status of Bengal zemindars may be gathered from what
is known of old Calcutta. Before the battle of Plassy the East India
Company itself was nothing more than a Bengal zemindar, and held the
settlement at Calcutta on a zemindary tenure. The Company was pledged to
pay to the Nawab a fixed yearly royalty for their little territory. A
British civil servant was appointed to represent the Company as
zemindar, to bear the name and fulfil the duties of the post; and he
collected the ground-rents within the Company's bounds and paid the
yearly royalty to the Nawab. He could not raise the rents, for that was
forbidden by Mogul law, but otherwise he was all powerful. He
administered justice, criminal and civil, like the Justices of the
Choultry at Madras. He also raised an additional income by farming out
certain trades as monopolies, levying octroi duties on provisions, and
taking fees for the registration of marriages, and sale of houses,
boats, and slaves.
[Sidenote: Auction sales of Calcutta lands.]
After Plassy the British zemindar at Calcutta cared nothing for Mogul
law. He raised the rents within the Company's bounds by the simple
process of putting the leases up to auction; and the eagerness of the
Bengalis to hold lands and sub-let them to under-tenants led to much
competition and a large advance of rents. The zemindar who carried out
this innovation was no other than Mr. Holwell, the same gentleman who
was accepted as Governor of Calcutta on the morning of the day that
ended in the Black Hole disaster. During that terrible night Mr. Holwell
seems to have imbibed hatred and contempt for Moguls and Nawabs. Whilst
Clive was shilly-shallying with Mir Jafir, Holwell was urging the
deposition of the Nawab, the annexation of the Bengal provinces, and the
radical measure of putting up all the zemindaries to public auction.[10]
This scheme was ignored at the time as the dream of a madman; but
nevertheless, within fifteen years, or half a generation, it was
seriously considered by Warren Hastings.
[Sidenote: Mogul revenue records.]
[Sidenote: Mysterious disappearance.]
The revenue records of the Moguls had always been singularly complete
down to the minutest detail. The holding of every ryot and the area of
every zemindary had been measured and remeasured; the average value of
the yearly produce of every field had been calculated; and the yearly
rents payable by the ryots and the yearly revenue payable by the
zemindar had been fixed in each case on the basis of the average
harvests. All these details had been entered at length in the Mogul
records. But the revenue records which contained all the details
respecting the land in the Bengal provinces had mysteriously
disappeared when they were most wanted. A Mohammedan contemporary says
that they were all destroyed when Mir Kasim fled into Oudh. Possibly
they may have been thrown into the Ganges and carried out to sea.
[Sidenote: British collectors.]
Warren Hastings did perhaps the best he could under the circumstances.
By the stroke of a pen he converted the British supervisors into British
collectors of revenues; and thus brought the new collectors into direct
contact with the zemindars, who collected yearly rents from the ryots or
tenant farmers. The next work would have been to re-measure all the
lands and to make fresh estimates of the average yearly value of the
produce of each field. This work had been carried out within the
Company's zemindary at Calcutta, and many frauds and errors had been
discovered and corrected. But what was possible in an estate, was
impossible in a territory considerably larger than the British isles.
Warren Hastings had no means at his disposal for re-measuring the lands
and revaluing the yearly produce, and it was utterly impossible to get
at the actual facts as regards rents and revenues. Not only were the
records lost, but the revenue administration was in utter confusion; the
ministers exacted what they could from the zemindars, and the zemindars
in their turn oppressed the ryots. Moreover, no reliable information
could be obtained from ryots or zemindars, who were alike suspicious of
British intentions and mortally terrified by the British invasion. The
new British collectors, with the help of native officials, arrived at
some approximate estimate of the rents paid by the ryots in each
zemindary, and then every zemindar in possession was called upon to pay
a certain lump sum as yearly revenue for the whole during a term of five
years. If he accepted a lease for the five years, well and good. If he
refused, the lease was sold to the highest bidder, with no other reserve
than that of requiring him to give the necessary security for the yearly
payment to the British collectors.
[Sidenote: Disastrous results.]
[Sidenote: Auction sales of zemindaries.]
The experiment proved a failure. The revenue demands had been fixed too
high. Such was the passion for local influence, that many zemindars had
agreed to pay a larger revenue than could be realised from the rents.
Vast amounts were lost as arrears that could not be realised. Many
zemindaries were sold by auction, and were bought up by native
speculators who were ruined in their turn. When the five years' leases
had run out no attempt was made to renew them; but zemindaries were let
on yearly leases until some permanent system could be devised, and this
arrangement continued in force until the end of Warren Hastings's
administration.
[Sidenote: Judicial reforms: Mohammedan criminal courts.]
§7. The system of judicial administration introduced by Warren Hastings
was equally cautious and experimental. Bengal zemindars ceased to act as
magistrates or judges. The British collector became magistrate and civil
judge.[11] As magistrate he made over all prisoners for trial to a
Mohammedan court, which was created in each district, but over which he
maintained some degree of control. A cazi sat as judge and tried the
prisoners, whilst muftis and mulvis expounded or interpreted Mohammedan
law; but the British collector was present to see that trials were
properly conducted, and perhaps to intercede when the punishment awarded
was barbarous or cruel. This was little more than a reform of the
existing system--such a reform as might have been carried out by an
Akbar or Aurangzeb. For centuries Mohammedan law had been the common law
of Northern India, and Hindu criminal law, with its hideous severities
as regards caste, had been ignored by Mogul rulers, although, no doubt,
caste laws were often enforced by the Hindus themselves.
[Sidenote: Mixed civil courts: collectors, cazis, pundits.]
Civil justice was administered more directly by the British collectors.
In civil disputes, especially as regards inheritance and marriage, the
parties concerned were necessarily guided by their own laws. Accordingly
the collector sat as judge, but was assisted by Mohammedan lawyers in
deciding cases between Mohammedans, and by learned Brahmans, or pundits,
in deciding cases between Hindus. Under most circumstances the cazi or
pundit must often have been the real judge, whilst the British collector
was only the representative of the supreme authority.
[Sidenote: Courts of circuit and appeal.]
Courts of circuit and appeal were also appointed to travel through
different areas, and sit as British judges of assize in both criminal
and civil courts. Here was that same mixture of British and Asiatic
judges as in the collectors' courts. But many changes were made from
time to time in the judicial system, and the whole question will be
better considered hereafter when dealing with the reforms of Lord
Cornwallis, who eventually succeeded Warren Hastings as
Governor-General.
[Sidenote: Chief court or Sudder.]
Meanwhile the Governor and Council still formed the chief court at
Calcutta, and confirmed all capital sentences, or heard appeals in
important civil cases, as in the old times when British authority was
bounded by the Mahratta ditch. From time to time they passed regulations
for the guidance of collectors, and eventually Warren Hastings drew up a
clear and concise criminal code with his own hands. This chief court was
known as the Sudder. It had a civil and a criminal side, and lasted as
an institution down to the latest days of the East India Company.[12]
[Sidenote: Patriarchal justice.]
Under such circumstances British ideas of justice gradually superseded
Mohammedan usages. Indeed it was impossible to maintain the criminal law
of the Mohammedans in courts controlled more or less by British judges.
Under Mohammedan law theft was punished by mutilation, adultery was
punished by death, or not punished at all unless four eye-witnesses
could be produced; whilst the most atrocious murderer might escape from
justice by the payment of a blood fine to the kinsmen of his victim.
Cazis and muftis might be nominally independent, but practically they
yielded to British influences; and British judges administered justice
in a patriarchal fashion, which might be condemned by trained lawyers,
but was far better suited to the condition of the masses than British
courts of law in the last century.
[Sidenote: New members of Council and barrister judges.]
§8. Whilst carrying out these reforms Warren Hastings was taken somewhat
aback by the appointment of three English gentlemen, not in the service
of the Company, to seats in the Calcutta Council. At the same time four
barrister judges, equally independent of the Company, were sent out from
England to form a Supreme Court of Judicature at Calcutta for the
administration of English law, civil and criminal. The jurisdiction of
the Supreme Court was to extend to all British subjects, and to all
Asiatics who were servants of the Company or had dealings with British
subjects. The Chief Justice was Sir Elijah Impey, who was known to
Hastings, as the two had been schoolfellows together at Westminster. The
three other barristers were puisne judges.
[Sidenote: Regulating Act of 1773.]
The three new members of Council and the four new Supreme Court judges
had been appointed, not by the East India Company, but by Parliament and
the Crown. The public mind in England had been greatly stirred by
reports of maladministration, and in 1773 a "Regulating Act" had been
passed to bring the administration of merchant rulers under some control
independent of that of the East India Company. No offence was intended
to Warren Hastings; on the contrary, he was raised by the same
"Regulating Act" to the post of Governor-General, with a controlling
power over Madras and Bombay on all questions of war and peace. He
filled the chair as President of the Council, but besides him there was
only Mr. Barwell, who belonged to the Company's service. The three
remaining members were the three strangers and outsiders--General
Clavering, Colonel Monson, and Mr. Philip Francis, the reputed author of
the _Letters of Junius_.
[Sidenote: Warren Hastings and Philip Francis.]
§9. From the very first there were jealous suspicions in the Council
between the two gentlemen in the service of the Company and the three
gentlemen appointed by the Crown. In one direction Warren Hastings had
laid himself open to an attack. In an evil hour he had lent the services
of a British brigade to the Nawab Vizier of Oudh, and the Nawab Vizier
had employed the brigade against the Rohilla Afghans on the north-west
in a quarrel with which the British had no concern. The Rohilla Afghans
were defeated by the British brigade, and then plundered and brutally
ill-treated by the cowardly troops of the Nawab Vizier. Warren Hastings
could only defend himself by saying that money was urgently required by
the East India Company, and that the Nawab Vizier had paid heavily for
the brigade.
[Sidenote: Charges against Hastings.]
Whilst Philip Francis and his two independent colleagues were denouncing
this transaction, the idea spread amongst the Bengalis that the three
new members of Council had been sent by the King of Great Britain to
redress the wrongs of natives. Petitions against Warren Hastings were
poured into the Calcutta Council, and seriously investigated by Philip
Francis and his two colleagues, whilst Hastings and Barwell formed a
minority and could not override their proceedings. Hastings was charged
with having taken a bribe of 100,000_l._ from the Nawab Vizier of Oudh.
Then it was said that the public auctions of zemindaries were shams;
that the native servants of Hastings and others had succeeded in getting
large estates at low leases, and that Hastings had shared in the gains.
Finally, a Brahman, named Nundcomar, a man of notoriously bad character,
charged Hastings with having taken bribes for certain lucrative
appointments in the household of the Nawab at Murshedabad.
[Sidenote: Nundcomar executed.]
Warren Hastings might have rebutted the charges by producing his
accounts, and allowing his steward and other servants to be examined
before the Council. But he preferred standing on his dignity and
refusing to answer the charges brought forward by Nundcomar, who was
notorious for perjury, for forging other people's seals, and for
carrying on secret correspondence with the enemies of the British.
Suddenly Nundcomar was arrested on a charge of forgery, and tried in the
Supreme Court by a full bench, comprising Chief Justice Impey and the
three puisne judges, and, after a fair summing up, was found guilty by a
British jury, and hanged accordingly.
[Sidenote: Inaction of Hastings: extenuating circumstances.]
Nundcomar was a Brahman, and in those early days no Brahman, under Hindu
law, could be put to death; whilst killing a Brahman, even by accident
or unavoidable circumstances, was regarded by Hindus as the most
horrible crime that could be committed by man. Forgery was a capital
offence under English law, but not under Hindu or Mohammedan law.
Hastings might have reprieved Nundcomar, but would not interfere. Philip
Francis and his two allies, Clavering and Monson, were insolent and
aggressive in the extreme. They had pushed Hastings into a corner from
which he could not escape without damaging his position as Governor in
the eyes of the Bengali population. They were equally insolent towards
Sir Elijah Impey and the Supreme Court. They demanded, in arrogant
language, that every respect should be paid to the caste feelings of
Nundcomar during his imprisonment; and whilst the trial was proceeding
they addressed the Chief Justice in the language of reprimand, as though
they had been his superiors. Sir Elijah Impey went so far as to consult
Hindu pundits on the proper treatment of a Brahman under confinement,
and to act in accordance with their suggestions. Indeed he seems to have
regarded the pretensions of a Brahman to be above English law, to be as
deserving of respect as the old "Benefit of Clergy," which was still in
existence in England, although taken away by statute from several
offences. The execution was delayed for more than a month after
conviction, and Nundcomar would probably have been reprieved altogether,
but for the arrogance of Philip Francis and his two allies, and the
additional perjuries and forgeries which were committed in the course of
the trial. Had Sir Elijah Impey submitted further to the dictation of
Francis, the Supreme Court would have lost all authority in the eyes of
the people of Bengal. The abstract justice in executing Nundcomar for
the crime of forgery may be open to question, but Sir Elijah Impey, as
Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, was bound to follow English law,
without making any exception in favour of a Brahman.
[Sidenote: Collision between the Supreme Court and the Sudder.]
§10. Meanwhile there was a collision between the Supreme Court and the
Sudder. The Supreme Court began to exercise jurisdiction over zemindars
and other Asiatics throughout the Bengal provinces, and to override the
decisions of the Company's Courts. Its powers had not been clearly
defined, and on one occasion it had been called upon to arbitrate in a
quarrel between Warren Hastings and General Clavering, thus assuming a
superior authority by deciding differences between the Governor-General
and a member of his Council. Again, the judges of the Supreme Court were
qualified lawyers appointed by the Crown, and they ignored the decisions
of the Company's servants, who were not lawyers.
[Sidenote: Points in dispute.]
The collision, however, was entirely due to the false position which the
East India Company had taken up. The servants of the Company had as yet
received no authority from Parliament or the Crown to act as judges, or
to make laws. They affected to treat the Nawab as a sovereign, and to
act in his name; but the Nawab was a fiction set up to hide the
territorial power of the East India Company from the British nation.
Warren Hastings pleaded that the Bengal zemindars were servants of the
Nawab, over whom the Supreme Court had no jurisdiction. The judges
replied that the Nawab was a puppet, a phantom, as unsubstantial as a
king of the fairies. Unfortunately, the maintenance of this phantom
Nawab for the benefit of the East India Company has been for more than a
century a dead weight on the revenues of Bengal.
[Sidenote: Parliamentary settlement, 1781.]
In 1781 another Act of Parliament was passed which put everything to
rights. It authorised the Governor-General and Council of Bengal to make
regulations which should have the force of laws, and it restricted the
jurisdiction of the Supreme Court to the old bounds of the settlement
between the Mahratta ditch and the river Hughly. But the state of
Englishmen--that is, of British born subjects of the Crown--was
exceptional. They could not be tried by any of the Company's Courts, or
under any of the Bengal regulations. A British born subject who
committed a criminal offence in any part of the Company's territories in
Bengal could only be tried by the judges in the Supreme Court, in
accordance with English law, and could only be convicted by a jury of
his own countrymen.
[Sidenote: Alleged corruption of Impey.]
Whilst the struggle was going on between the Supreme Court and the
Sudder, Warren Hastings appointed Sir Elijah Impey to be chief judge in
the Sudder, on a salary of 7,000_l._ per annum, in addition to his post
as chief justice in the Supreme Court. Philip Francis denounced this
arrangement as a bribe to Impey; possibly it may have been so, but in
itself the appointment was admirably suited to the exigencies of the
time. As an experienced lawyer, Sir Elijah Impey was far better fitted
than Warren Hastings to act as chief judge in the Sudder, to hear
appeals from the Company's Courts up-country, and to control the
judicial administration of the Company's judges, who could not pretend
to any legal training. But the malice of Philip Francis was as obvious
in the case of Impey as in the case of Hastings. Francis had been cast
in heavy damages by the Supreme Court as a co-respondent; and he was
bent on the ruin of Impey. The result was that Impey was recalled to
England and impeached.[13]
[Sidenote: Origin of the Mahratta power.]
§11. Meanwhile the British had been drawn into a war with the Mahrattas.
For a hundred years the Mahrattas had been the terror of India. Between
1660 and 1680, Sivaji, the hero of the Mahrattas, founded the Mahratta
kingdom in the Western Deccan, between Surat and Goa. The head-quarters
of the family of Sivaji had been at Poona, about seventy miles to the
south-east of Bombay, and Sivaji's early life and exploits were
associated with Poona. Subsequently, in consequence of Mogul
aggressions, the Mahratta capital was removed to Satara, about seventy
miles to the south of Poona.
[Sidenote: Rise of the Peishwas, 1748.]
In 1748 there was a revolution. The last descendant of Sivaji was shut
up in a fortress at Satara, whilst the Brahman minister, known as the
Peishwa, removed to Poona, the ancient seat of Sivaji's family, and
cradle of his dynasty. The imprisonment of the sovereign at Satara, and
the reign of a Brahman minister at Poona, hardened into an institution;
and whenever a Peishwa died, his successor went to Satara to be invested
with the office of minister by his imprisoned sovereign.[14]
[Sidenote: Peishwa and his feudatories: Sindia, Holkar, &c.]
The Mahratta kingdom covered the greater part of the area of the
Mahratta-speaking people. But the Peishwa sent his lieutenants to
collect chout, or black-mail, in Northern India; and one of these
lieutenants, Mahadaji Sindia, became a greater man than his master.
Sindia always professed to be the loyal servant of the Peishwa, and yet
he managed to exercise a commanding influence at Poona. It was Mahadaji
Sindia who carried off the Great Mogul to Delhi in 1771 and established
a dominion in Hindustan, extending from the Gwalior territory northward
over the valleys of the Jumna and Ganges. The other lieutenants were
only beginning to play their parts in history; they included Holkar of
Indore, the Gaekwar of Baroda, and the Bhonsla Raja of Berar in the
Deccan, immediately to the northward of the Nizam.
[Sidenote: British relations with Berar.]
Very soon after the battle of Plassy, the British at Calcutta came into
contact with the Bhonsla Raja of Berar. It was the Bhonsla Raja who
compelled the later Nawabs of Bengal to pay chout, and to cede Cuttack;
and when Lord Clive had concluded his settlement with the Great Mogul
and the Nawab Vizier of Oudh, he advised the Court of Directors to pay
chout on condition of getting back Cuttack. But the Directors did not
want Cuttack and would not pay black-mail; and the Bhonsla Raja pressed
his demand at convenient intervals, but wisely abstained from invading
the Bengal provinces.
[Sidenote: Bombay and the Peishwas.]
Meanwhile, the British at Bombay had come into contact with the
Mahrattas at Poona. For years the East India Company had been anxious to
hold two important positions close to Bombay harbour, namely, the little
island of Salsette and the little peninsula of Bassein. But the
Mahrattas had wrested Salsette and Bassein from the Portuguese, and
would not part with them on any terms. A civil war, however, had broken
out in the Mahratta country. A Peishwa had been murdered. An uncle
ascended the throne, but was banished on suspicion of being the
murderer. He applied for help to the British at Bombay, and offered to
cede the coveted positions if the British at Bombay would restore him
to the Mahratta capital. The Governor and Council at Bombay closed with
the offer, and the war began.
[Sidenote: Disastrous retreat.]
After some successes, the British at Bombay met with disaster. Mahadaji
Sindia appeared at Poona with a large army to act against the banished
Peishwa. A British force advanced from Bombay towards Poona, but took
alarm at the report of Sindia's army, and suddenly halted, and beat a
retreat. During the return march, the British force was environed by the
Mahrattas, and finally surrendered to Sindia under what is known as the
"Convention of Wurgaum."
[Sidenote: Success of Warren Hastings.]
Warren Hastings condemned the war from the outset; as, however, the
Company was committed to a war, he exerted himself, in the teeth of
Francis, to maintain British prestige in India. He sent an expedition,
under Colonel Goddard, from Bengal to the Mahratta country, and detached
another force under Captain Popham to capture Sindia's fortress at
Gwalior. The success of these exploits electrified half India. The war
was brought to a triumphant close, but all conquered territories,
excepting Salsette and Bassein, were restored to the Mahrattas. Indeed,
Warren Hastings was not a conqueror like Clive; he acquired no territory
during his régime, excepting that of Benares, which was ceded to the
Company by the Nawab Vizier of Oudh.
[Sidenote: Three Asiatic powers in India.]
§12. During the Mahratta war secret negotiations were carried on between
the Indian powers for a confederation against the British. The two great
powers of the Deccan--the Mahrattas on the west representing the Hindus,
and the Nizam on the east representing the Mohammedans--had hated one
another for the greater part of a century. A third power, that of a
Mohammedan adventurer named Hyder Ali, was becoming formidable further
south on the western tableland of the peninsula. Hyder Ali is said to
have once served as a sepoy in the French army. Later on, he entered the
service of the Hindu Raja of Mysore, and eventually ousted the Raja,
usurped the sovereign authority, and conquered the countries round
about.
[Sidenote: Hyder Ali of Mysore.]
For many years Hyder Ali was the Ishmael of the Deccan and peninsula.
His hand was against every man, and every man's hand was against him. He
invaded alike the territories of the Mahrattas and the Nizam in the
Deccan, and those of the Nawab of the Carnatic up to the suburbs of
Madras and Fort St. George. At the same time, he more than once
exasperated the British by his secret dealings with the French at
Pondicherry.
[Sidenote: Invasion of the Carnatic, 1780: breaking up of the
confederation.]
About 1779 Warren Hastings was warned that the three powers--the
Mahrattas, the Nizam, and Hyder Ali--were preparing for simultaneous
attacks on Bengal, Bombay, and Madras, and that a large Mahratta army
was already on the move from Berar territory for the invasion of the
Bengal provinces. In 1780 Hyder Ali desolated the Carnatic with an army
of a hundred thousand men, but he was the only one of the three allies
that kept to his engagement, and was eventually driven back by Sir Eyre
Coote, one of the half-forgotten warriors of the eighteenth century. The
Nizam did nothing; he probably waited to see what the others would do.
The Mahrattas of Berar encamped in great force in the hills and jungles
of Orissa, but only appear to have wanted a money present; and after
wasting several months they were induced by Warren Hastings to return to
Berar. No movement of any kind was undertaken against Bombay; and thus
the strange confederation of Mohammedans and Mahrattas melted away.
[Sidenote: Parliament interferes.]
§13. The quarrels, the wars, and the irregularities of Warren Hastings
induced the British Parliament to attempt radical changes. The
antagonism between Philip Francis and Warren Hastings had led to a duel,
in which Francis was wounded; and he returned to England to pour his
bitter prejudices against Warren Hastings into the ears of Burke and
Fox. The result was that a bitter animosity was excited, not only
against Warren Hastings, but against the East India Company; and
Parliament was called upon to decide whether the control of the
administration of British India ought not to be transferred from the
Court of Directors to the British Crown. The main question was one of
patronage. The patronage of Indian appointments would render the Crown
too powerful, as the elder Pitt had foreseen in the days of Clive; and
George III. was already straining his royal prerogative over Parliament
and Ministers to an extent which was exciting alarm.
[Sidenote: Fox's India Bill, 1783.]
In 1783, when the coalition ministry of Charles James Fox and Lord North
was in power, Fox brought forward a bill for abolishing the Court of
Directors, and transferring their authority and patronage to seven
Commissioners nominated by Ministers. The bill was passed by the
Commons, but George III. opposed it, and it was rejected by the Lords.
[Sidenote: Pitt creates a board of control, 1784.]
In 1784 William Pitt the younger brought in another bill, which left the
Directors in full possession of their power and patronage, but brought
them under the strict supervision of a Board of Control, consisting of
six privy councillors nominated by the Crown. Henceforth the President
of the Board of Control, who was always a member of the Cabinet, was the
centre of all authority, and was strictly responsible to Parliament for
the conduct of Indian affairs.
[Sidenote: Trial of Warren Hastings.]
§14. Warren Hastings returned to England in 1785 to find that the minds
of Burke, Fox, and other leading statesmen had been poisoned against him
by Philip Francis. Eventually he was impeached by the Commons and tried
by the Lords in Westminster Hall. Hastings was certainly responsible for
the Rohilla war, and also responsible for the execution of Nundcomar;
but the crowning charge against him was that he had connived at the
torture of the servants of the Oudh Begums by the Nawab Vizier of Oudh.
The charge was painted in terrible colours by Sheridan, and it may be as
well to sum up the actual facts.
[Sidenote: Case of the Oudh Begums.]
A Nawab Vizier of Oudh died in 1775, leaving treasure to the value of
some two or three millions sterling in the public treasury at Lucknow.
The son and successor of the deceased ruler naturally assumed possession
on the ground that the money was state property; but his mother and
grandmother, known as the two Begums, claimed it as private property,
which the late Nawab Vizier had made over to them as a gift. Warren
Hastings declined to interfere. Philip Francis, however, insisted that
the British Government ought to interfere; and eventually the money was
made over to the Begums on the condition that they paid some quarter of
a million towards the State debt due to the East India Company.
[Sidenote: Did Hastings connive at torture?]
During the Mahratta war money was urgently required. The Nawab Vizier
owed large arrears to the Company, but could not pay up unless he
recovered possession of the State treasures. Philip Francis had returned
to England. Accordingly Warren Hastings abandoned the Begums to the
tender mercies of the Nawab Vizier, and connived at the imprisonment of
their servants. It subsequently appeared that the Nawab Vizier tortured
the servants until the money was surrendered, but there is no evidence
to show that Warren Hastings connived at the torture.
[Sidenote: Services of Hastings.]
Warren Hastings was undoubtedly a man of great abilities and marvellous
energy. His services to the East India Company, and to British interests
in India, are beyond all calculation. But he was exposed to great
temptation in times when public virtue was less exalted than it has been
in the present generation, and he was hedged around with enemies who
were spiteful and unscrupulous enough to misrepresent any and every
transaction. His errors were those of his time, but his genius is
stamped for ever on the history of British India. His misdeeds cannot be
entirely overlooked, but he paid a bitter penalty. For many months he
was threatened by the proceedings which culminated in his trial at
Westminster Hall. Eventually he was acquitted of all charges, but his
trial was protracted over seven long years and ruined his private
fortunes and public career.
[Sidenote: Merits as an administrator.]
After the lapse of a hundred years, the flaws in the character of Warren
Hastings may be condoned in consideration of his merits as an
administrator. He found the Bengal provinces in chaos, and introduced
light and order. He converted British traders into revenue collectors,
magistrates, and judges, but he established Courts of Appeal to
supervise their proceedings; and if his magistrates and judges had no
legal training, they were at any rate Britons with a national sense of
justice, and their decisions were infinitely better than those of Bengal
zemindars, without law, or justice, or control. Warren Hastings kept a
watchful eye on British interests as well as on the welfare of the
people under his charge. He sent a mission to Tibet, which shows his
anxiety for the extension of trade. He recorded a touching tribute to
the memory of Augustus Cleveland, a young Bengal civilian who had done
much to humanise and elevate the rude Sonthals of the Rajmahal hills,
which sufficiently proves his sympathy with the well-being of the
masses. Altogether, if Warren Hastings is not so free from blame as he
is represented by his friends, he certainly was not so black as he has
been painted by his enemies.
[Sidenote: Lord Cornwallis, 1786-93.]
§15. In 1786 Lord Cornwallis, an independent peer, was appointed
Governor-General. This event marks a change in British rule. Lord
Cornwallis was the first British peer, and the first Englishman not in
the service of the East India Company, who was appointed to the post of
Governor-General. He carried out two measures which have left their mark
in history, namely, the perpetual settlement with the Bengal zemindars,
and the reform of the judicial system.
[Sidenote: Perpetual settlement.]
The settlement with the Bengal zemindars was still awaiting a decision.
Lord Cornwallis was anxious to arrange the land revenue of the Bengal
provinces on English lines. He abandoned the yearly leases, and
concluded leases for ten years, with the view of eventually declaring
the settlement to be perpetual. Mr. John Shore, a Bengal civilian,
pressed for a preliminary inquiry into the rights of the ryots, for the
purpose of fixing the rents. But Lord Cornwallis was opposed to any
further delay. In 1793 he proclaimed that the ten years settlement would
be perpetual; that the tenant-rights of ryots would be left to future
inquiry; and that henceforth the Bengal zemindars would be invested with
the proprietary rights enjoyed by English landlords, so long as they
paid the fixed yearly revenue to Government and respected all existing
rights of ryots and cultivators.
[Sidenote: Judicial reforms.]
The judicial system introduced by Warren Hastings was modified by Lord
Cornwallis. The British collector, as already seen, was also magistrate
and civil judge. Lord Cornwallis decided that a collector ought to have
no judicial duties under which he might be called on to adjudicate in
revenue questions. Accordingly a regulation was passed under which the
duties of revenue collector were separated from those of magistrate and
judge, and the magistrate and judge was to be the head of the district,
whilst the revenue collector was his subordinate. It is difficult to
understand the merits of this measure. Since then the two offices have
been sometimes united and sometimes separated. Eventually the two
offices of magistrate and collector were united in the same person.
[Sidenote: Non-intervention.]
Four provincial Courts of Circuit and Appeal were created by Lord
Cornwallis, and remained without alteration for a period of forty years.
One Court was at Calcutta, a second at Dacca, a third at Murshedabad,
and a fourth at Patna. Each Court consisted of three civilian judges and
three Asiatic expounders of the law, namely, a Mohammedan cazi and
mufti, and a Hindu pundit. The judges sat in their respective cities to
hear appeals in civil cases; and they went twice a year on circuit to
try the prisoners who had been committed by the district magistrates
within their respective jurisdictions.
[Sidenote: Munsifs and darogahs.]
Lord Cornwallis also created a class of Hindu civil judges named
munsifs, and a new body of Asiatic police under the name of darogahs.
These changes are best dealt with in connection with modern reforms
which will be brought under review in a future chapter.
[Sidenote: First war against Tippu.]
Lord Cornwallis was engaged in two campaigns against Tippu of Mysore,
the son and successor of Hyder Ali. The war is a thing of the past.
Tippu had invaded the territory of the Hindu Raja of Travancore, who was
under British protection; and a triple alliance was formed against him
as a common enemy by the British Government, the Peishwa of the
Mahrattas, and the Nizam of Hyderabad. In the end Tippu was reduced to
submission and compelled to cede half his territories, which were
distributed amongst the three allies. The confederation, which only
lasted to the end of the war, is memorable for suggesting the idea of
maintaining the peace of India by a balance of power, which for a brief
interval dazzled the imaginations of Anglo-Indian statesmen.[15]
[Sidenote: Shore, 1793-98; abolition of "dharna."]
In 1793 Lord Cornwallis was succeeded by Sir John Shore, the Bengal
civilian who pressed Lord Cornwallis to settle the rights and rents of
the ryots before proclaiming the perpetual settlement with the
zemindars. He is better known by his later title of Lord Teignmouth. He
was the first British ruler who suppressed a Hindu institution. He put a
stop to "sitting in dharna," a Hindu usage which was subversive of all
justice and all law. It was based on the superstitious belief that the
life of a Brahman was as sacred as that of a sovereign, and that killing
a Brahman, or being in any way implicated in his death, was the most
hideous crime that could be committed by mortal man. Any Brahman might
ruin a Hindu, either for private revenge or to avenge another, by
sitting at his door and refusing to take food. The victim was as
helpless as a bird under the fascination of a serpent. He dared not eat
so long as the Brahman fasted. He dared not move lest the Brahman should
injure himself or kill himself--a catastrophe which would doom the
victim to excommunication in this life and perdition in the next. The
terrors of this superstition were removed by a British regulation passed
in 1797; and although "sitting in dharna" is still a crime under the
Penal Code, the memory of the usage is passing away.[16]
Sir John Shore strictly adhered to the old policy of non-intervention,
which amounted to political isolation. Meanwhile the Mahratta powers
united to demand enormous arrears of chout from the Nizam; and the Nizam
was utterly defeated, prostrated and paralysed. All hope of a balance of
power for the maintenance of the peace of India was thus cast to the
winds. Finally, as if to show beyond all question the absurdity of the
idea, the Mahratta powers were at war with each other for the mastery at
Poona. Such was the state of affairs in 1798 when Lord Mornington,
better known by his later title of Marquis of Wellesley, succeeded Sir
John Shore as Governor-General, boasting, as he left Europe, that he was
going to govern India from a throne with the sceptre of a statesman, and
not from behind a counter with the yard measure of a trader.
FOOTNOTES:
[7] The three provinces of Bengal, Behar, and Orissa are known to
Europeans by the one name of Bengal. Bengal proper includes the delta
of the Ganges and Brahmaputra. Behar is the frontier province towards
Oudh, having its capital at Patna. Orissa lies to the south of Behar
and Bengal proper, but Cuttack and the hilly country to the south and
west had been ceded to the Mahrattas. The Orissa of the period
comprises little more than Midnapore; but the high-sounding title was
still retained of Nawab of Bengal, Behar and Orissa. After the
Mahratta wars of 1803, the British took possession of Cuttack and
remaining portions of Orissa, in order to hold the sea-board against
invasion.
[8] In the present day there are forty-five districts in the Bengal
provinces, namely, thirty-seven regulation and eight non-regulation.
The distinction between the two classes of districts will be explained
hereafter.
[9] The first portrait of Warren Hastings was exhibited at the
Grosvenor Gallery in 1883. The second portrait is still hanging in the
Council Chamber at the India Office at Westminster.
[10] See Holwell's _Historical Events in Bengal_.
[11] The control over the country police was also transferred from the
zemindars to the new magistrates and collectors. This measure was good
in itself, but attended with disadvantages, which will be brought
under review hereafter.
[12] The old Sudder Courts at Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay finally
disappeared in 1862, when they were amalgamated with the Supreme
Courts, which will be described hereafter, and which, up to that date,
were exclusively composed of barrister judges. In the present day they
are forgotten by all but lawyers familiar with a past generation, yet
the Sudder Courts played their part in the history of the past. In the
beginning of the nineteenth century, when the Marquis of Wellesley was
Governor-General, three civilians were appointed judges in the Sudder,
one being a member of Council and the Chief Judge in the room of the
Governor-General.
[13] The defence of Sir Elijah Impey has been thoroughly investigated
from a legal point of view, in the _Story of Nuncomar and the
Impeachment of Sir Elijah Impey_, by Sir James Fitzjames Stephen.
[14] Two centuries have passed away since the death of Sivaji, yet in
June, 1885, a public meeting was held at Poona to take steps for
repairing his tomb. His admirers styled him the Wallace of the Deccan.
[15] Lord Cornwallis carried out important reforms in the Bengal army,
and thus enabled his successors to build up the larger Indian empire.
The British army in India, Asiatic and European, will be brought under
review it Chapter V., which deals with the sepoy revolt of 1857-58.
[16] The abolition of "sitting in dharna" by Sir John Shore was the
first great social reform which was carried out in India under British
rule. In 1802 Lord Wellesley abolished the still more horrible
practice of sacrificing living children by throwing them to the
alligators at the mouth of the Ganges; whilst the once famous rite of
suttee, or the burning of living widows with their dead husbands, was
practised under British rule down to 1829, when it was abolished by
Lord William Bentinck.